Path of the Dark Eldar

by Andy Chambers

  ‘The ur-ghuls? There were packs, um, reported in the Old City right after things went crazy–’ Kharbyr fumbled for the words as Angevere hissed into his mind.

  Shut up! Tell him nothing!+

  ‘– maybe the Dysjunction had something to do with it?’ Kharbyr finished lamely. ‘Their toughness, I mean.’

  Yllithian looked around with renewed interest at the charnel house his warriors had created. ‘Infused with energy by the Dysjunction… I suppose it’s possible,’ the archon said as he examined the corpses more closely. ‘Ah yes, but a very specific colour of energy – note the lesions on the skin and the triple-lobed pustules – I’ve seen those marks all too recently when we fought over Gorath. The gods of Chaos are attempting to inveigle us in their sport.’

  Angevere emitted a mad peal of laughter inside Kharbyr’s skull at Yllithian’s words. He was momentarily too distracted to respond and the archon wandered away with his bodyguards in tow. For one mad moment he had the urge to run after him, confess everything and beg Yllithian’s forgiveness for tricking him. Anything that could get him away from the mad witch seemed preferable to continuing to serve her.

  He’d just kill you, child,+ Angevere chuckled inside his mind. +Or perhaps he would corrupt you and pledge your vagrant soul to his secret master if he understood who he truly serves. It matters not. Hurry along and attend to him, you don’t want to miss out on what comes next.+

  Yllithian’s warriors had moved on and were now guarding an open hatch in the sheer wall of the dry canal. As he approached Kharbyr could see that there was a spiral design roughly carved into the lintel over the hatchway. Sprawled in the opening were the bodies of more ur-ghuls and two Commorrites clad in rough, nondescript clothing. They looked to be another pair of Yllithian’s agents to Kharbyr’s eyes and they had clearly been killed by ur-ghuls swarming out of the hatch when they opened it. The looks of horror frozen on their torn faces still faithfully communicated their shock and surprise.

  Do you see the design? That marks the beginning of the Black Descent’s territory,+ Angevere whispered. +You must tread carefully. The labyrinth proper begins further inside, but the traps start here.+

  Yllithian caught his eye and gestured expansively at the hatchway. ‘From this point our guidance must flow from you, Bellathonis. I can console myself that any shortcomings on your part will be swiftly remedied by the plethora of death traps your friends in the Black Descent are alleged to be so keen on.’

  The White Flames warriors stood around him, silent and enigmatic in their coal-black armour, but Kharbyr could see by the upward tilt of their chins that they were amused by Yllithian’s dark humour. The incubi gave no such indications. They watched him just as dispassionately as they watched everyone that might threaten the safety of the archon they had sworn to protect. Kharbyr hesitated.

  You have to go in, child. There’s no need to be afraid with me here to help you, as long as you obey my orders to the letter.+

  Kharbyr swallowed his fears and wished that it were true that there was nothing to be afraid of. He stepped through the hatch into the gloom beyond it. The first thing he became aware of was the stench; a stomach-twisting, bile-rising, eye-watering putrescence that made him completely forget the mild unpleasantness of sliding down through the sluice-mists. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness he saw a rough passageway with openings irregularly spaced along either wall.

  Go to the fourth opening on the right,+ Angevere whispered. Kharbyr did as he was bidden and noticed another spiral design chalked beside the opening. The hole itself looked as if it had been gnawed at by vermin. Beyond it was another passageway, narrower and arrow-straight with sharply defined walls. A faint breeze wafted out of the hole and the putrescent stench waxed even stronger. Kharbyr stopped in his tracks – not due to the smell this time, but at the sight of more bodies. A dozen or more dismembered ur-ghuls lay scattered along the passageway.

  After a moment Angevere whispered in his mind. +It’s a simple monofilament spinner but it fills the whole corridor if you trigger it. Have Yllithian’s thugs shoot at the walls halfway down the passage at shoulder height and that will disable the sensor.+

  Kharbyr hesitated again as he wondered whether the witch’s insight could really be so accurate. As he did so he became conscious of Yllithian’s warriors moving up behind him and felt a sense of mounting dread. The only way was forward and only Angevere could help him with that. Truly feeling like a puppet now, he directed the White Flames warriors where to shoot, as Angevere had ordered him. They used disintegrators to punch holes in the walls just to be sure, but they still made Kharbyr walk to the end of the passageway first.

  The passage came to a dead end. Kharbyr stood in front of the blank wall in confusion for a moment before he noticed a slight breeze against his face. Closer inspection revealed that the wall in front of him was inching with infinitesimal slowness from left to right.

  Just wait here for now,+ Angevere whispered. +You’re still wondering how I can guide you through it. Trying to explain it to you would be like trying to describe colours to a blind person. Understand it this way. One who can see into the weft and weave of the warp can see into the future and the past, into destiny and desire, into action and reaction, because the void contains all of those possibilities.+

  So take heart, young Kharbyr. At this time and in this place it is a child’s game to see which footstep will bring about your doom or which path will lead you to your goal. For example, I can tell you that the real labyrinth begins at this point, and that this is one of its entrances.+

  As Angevere fell silent a gap appeared at the left-hand edge of the wall and slowly widened like a maw opening. Through the opening another passageway was revealed that stretched off into the gloom. The passage was featureless apart from some fresh, ominous-looking stains and still at a slight angle to the one Kharbyr was in. As the wall inched towards making a perfect alignment he stepped impatiently through the entrance and into the labyrinth of the Black Descent. The only way forward was to get this over with.

  Zykleiades was a patriarch noctis in the coven of the Black Descent. To his inferiors – the various masters, secretaries, elects, provosts, custodians and stewards over whom he held the power of life and death – his rank represented a degree of almost incomprehensible descent within the coven’s byzantine hierarchy. Most of these lesser coven members were only permitted to know the ranks of their immediate superiors and lived forever in the belief that they were getting closer to the hidden ruling powers within the coven with each advancement of their own. Some of them had never even heard of the rank of patriarch noctis. Nor would they ever do so throughout their entire miserable careers unless they fouled up so spectacularly that his presence was called for at their subsequent excruciation and execution.

  Zykleiades had been promoted through the coven ranks a total of twenty-one times during his exceedingly long and eventful life. Each time new ranks and complexities had been revealed. Each time he had discovered himself to be now beholden to a whole raft of shadowy individuals that seemed if anything more numerous than they were before. By now he was convinced that he would never advance far enough to truly become one of those invisible rulers of the coven that might be speculated to exist at its lowest degree of descent. He was just as answerable to his superiors in the coven now as when he had joined its ranks as a lowly, wide-eyed wrack centuries ago.

  He now stood in his chambers facing a dark mirror almost as tall as himself that had a rim of twisting leaves rendered in molecular carbon. Agitated clouds of inky blackness swirled on the mirror’s surface as a voice spoke from behind it. Vocal modulators had been applied to make the voice sound as sibilant and unrecognisable as an aural shadow. The individual communicating with him was ranked as a ‘Descendant Interlocutor’ and that was as much as a patriarch noctis like Zykleiades was permitted to know.

  ‘…retain control?’ the voice whispered.
Zykleiades snapped his attention back to the last few seconds of conversation. His attention had drifted momentarily. It was becoming a common problem these days. Fortunately it was easy enough to cover his distraction.

  ‘The labyrinth is besieged!’ he cried with some feeling. ‘While I can appreciate the desire to retain control I can assure you that every means to do so is being fully deployed already.’

  ‘…Yet still our beautiful labyrinth is being overrun by vermin – precisely the kind of filth it is designed to exclude… This is… unacceptable.’

  ‘Then release more coven members to my control! Forgive me, Interlocutor, but I have already detailed how the forces at my disposal are insufficient for this allegedly minor task. The labyrinth was heavily damaged by the Dysjunction and the ur-ghuls… the ur-ghuls continue to appear in quite literally inexhaustible numbers despite their losses.’

  ‘…Others in the coven labour beneath the same difficulties as you and yet enjoy more success… Learn from their dedication.’

  One of the compensations of Zykleiades’s rank was that withstanding the outright criticism of his superiors had become a less gruelling affair. He was not humiliated in front of his fellows to illustrate a point or given demeaning tasks to perform that would reinforce his menial relationship with the true exercise of power and authority. He had moved beyond such games. Instead he was simply being warned: improve your performance or face removal by your replacement.

  ‘As you wish,’ he said with resignation, ‘I shall redouble our efforts armed only with the materials on hand.’

  ‘…Ensure that you do…’ The clouded mirror cleared abruptly as the Interlocutor broke the connection.

  Zykleiades stepped away from the mirror and wiped cold sweat from his face with shaking hands. The mirror now showed only a reflection of himself: a white, glistening face cut to display a wide, permanent smile amid hanging jowls that twisted into a beard-like mass of purple tendrils at his chin. Black, ribbed robes concealed the patriarch noctis’s surprisingly corpulent body while a pointed demi-hood rose from the nape of his neck to frame his pallid visage. He had made recent alterations to give himself the beard-like fringe of finely attuned sensory tendrils. Now they were giving him ample opportunity to experience the rank taste of his own fear.

  Normally he would have said that another compensation of achieving the rank of patriarch noctis was that direct communications from his superiors became so rare as to be almost unknown. The fact that he had now received three of them in as many hours was highly disturbing. The Dysjunction and the renegade Bellathonis’s part in it all had already been a source of considerable alarm for Zykleiades even before hordes of ur-ghuls arrived, inexplicably obsessed with entering the labyrinth.

  The patriarch noctis’s secret chambers were located in a series of wide, low rooms on differing levels nestled deep inside the labyrinth. How deep he did not know exactly. Like all coven members he was only taught the safe routes necessary for passage between a number of selected destinations, ‘interstices’ in the jargon of the coven. Wandering in the labyrinth without knowing the precise steps and timing needed to evade its innumerable death traps was tantamount to suicide – as the ur-ghuls were discovering to their cost. The troglodytic predators were dying by the thousands, clogging passageways, glutting traps, dulling blades with their numbers… and yet more continued to arrive. The labyrinth was designed to catch or kill individual intruders, certainly, but it was not designed to hold an army at bay. The only real blessing was that the ur-ghuls lacked weapons and direction.

  All of Zykleiades’s rooms interconnected with one another via multiple archways and short flights of steps. Now the patriarch noctis shuffled restlessly through them as he tried to reason out a solution to his dilemma. His rooms were furnished with spindly-looking chairs and tables made of metal or carved bone. Skin-covered tomes and intricate alchemical apparatus gleamed on shelves in some rooms. Mosaics of dark gems and captured weaponry glittered from the walls while rich furs and exotic skins covered the floors. Being patriarch noctis did carry a few small compensations, he did have to admit.

  While many of the pieces in his sanctum were of quite spectacular value, Zykleiades kept the majority of the collection for sentimental reasons. Each object represented a keepsake extorted out of some notable coup made by him: silvered alembics claimed from an old rival after his overthrow, pre-Fall furniture seized from an archon who had been unable to repay his debts, the rolled skins of an entire bloodline that had provoked the ire of the coven centuries before. Valueless junk in some cases, but every piece was precious to him.

  A recent addition to Zykleiades’s chambers were the shrunken, hairless heads that hung beneath every archway. The patriarch noctis hated the sight of them. They served as a reminder that even before the Dysjunction struck, Bellathonis had been a poison within the coven. The renegade had somehow traversed the labyrinth and broken into Zykleiades’s own chambers. He still shook with rage and humiliation at the memory of the discovery. Zykleiades had had to increase his own security as a matter of course after that and the shrunken heads remained the most visible sign of the additions made.

  A minimal level of consciousness still clung to the grisly artefacts, enough to register intruders and remember their passage or, as in this case, to warn of their approach. Their eyes rolled and lips moved as they struggled to form words with no breath behind them. Nonetheless words formed in the air seemingly from a hundred dry throats – it was synthesised, unfortunately, as there had been no time to create a more elegant solution.

  ‘Ekarynis, master elect of nine, has entered,’ the voices intoned.

  Zykleiades looked up to see the hatchet-faced master elect approaching, his hands tucked within the sleeves of his slate-grey robe. The master elect moved with an overly precise, mechanical gait as though his limbs were constructed of wheels and steel rods. Long ago Ekarynis had his eyes replaced with flat plates of black crystal that now winked ominously in the uncertain light.

  ‘Master Elect Ekarynis,’ Zykleiades said formally, ‘I am displeased. This continued trespass–’

  ‘–Has encountered a new development,’ the master elect interrupted brazenly. The sound of Ekarynis’s voice was a special kind of torture: a grating, slicing, crushing mockery of language without a sense of warmth or comradeship with any living thing. For a wild moment Zykleiades feared that his superiors had already decided on his replacement and that the master elect was about to make an attempt on his life.

  But that was not Ekarynis’s style at all. The master elect’s preferred methodology was one of relentless endurance. Where others faltered or failed Ekarynis drove ever onward like a machine – unemotional, tireless, soulless. He advanced through the coven via the simple expedient of stepping over the bodies of those who had fallen ahead of him. The master elect was punctilious, but he was loyal (in his own way). He would simply wait for the patriarch noctis’s downfall without acting to hasten it. Naturally he would also not act to prevent it.

  ‘What new development?’ Zykleiades snapped, his underlying fear manifesting itself as irritation. ‘Don’t waste my time with mysteries, Ekarynis, my patience has grown thin with them.’

  ‘A force of kabalite warriors have entered the labyrinth and are advancing through it in a highly determined fashion,’ Ekarynis grated.

  ‘Which kabal?’ Zykleiades blurted in astonishment.

  ‘The warriors bear the sigil of the Black Heart.’

  The colour drained from Zykleiades’s tendrils at the news. It was just as he’d feared. Asdrubael Vect had uncovered the coven’s albeit tenuous connection with the Dysjunction and decided to punish them for it.

  ‘Who… who is leading them?’ he whispered.

  ‘The renegade Bellathonis is leading the warriors,’ the master elect noted with acidic distaste, ‘and due to his assistance they are proceeding rapidly and with very few casualties.’


  ‘Impossible,’ Zykleiades murmured. ‘No… no, Vect would never swallow Bellathonis’s lies so completely as to send him back here with a force of his own. Something else is going on if Bellathonis is involved… A ruse of some sort, a third party trying to make us antagonise Vect… But who? Who has that renegade found that has common cause to act against us?’

  Ekarynis had been about to speak but he fell silent at Zykleiades’s rhetorical question and appeared to be considering it in a literal fashion. The flat black crystals in his eye sockets winked as the master elect tilted his head first one way and then another to consider the problem. After a moment Ekarynis’s head came up and his glittering gaze locked with that of the patriarch noctis.

  ‘Archon Nyos Yllithian of the White Flames,’ Ekarynis spat. ‘Recent reports indicate White Flames have acted in open rebellion against the supreme overlord’s authority. Yllithian also has prior association with Bellathonis and is believed to have sponsored the renegade’s actions in the build-up to the Dysjunction.’

  Zykleiades narrowed his eyes shrewdly at Ekarynis’s summation. He had spoken with Nyos Yllithian at Corespur very recently. As the Dysjunction broke upon the city Vect had summoned the surviving leaders to Corespur to issue them with instructions and, doubtless more importantly in the tyrant’s eyes, to reassert his dominance. Zykleiades had attended as the representative of the coven of the Black Descent.

  Unexpectedly the archon of the White Flames had accosted Zykleiades outside the audience chamber. With veiled words Yllithian had strongly implied that he knew about Bellathonis’s role in triggering the Dysjunction. He had further suggested that he would be amenable to joining forces to eliminate the troublesome haemonculus once and for all. The patriarch noctis briefly outlined the encounter with Yllithian to Ekarynis.