‘The Decapitator came for him,’ Xhakoruakh shrugged as if that explained everything. Before Bellathonis could reply Xagor scurried over from where he had been examining the body in detail.
‘Single cut left to right. Large, straight-edged power weapon. Very clean, very precise,’ Xagor chattered nervously. ‘Cranium entirely absent. Assume taken by attacker.’
Bellathonis nodded distractedly as he considered Xhakoruakh’s statement further. In his studies about the shadow-realm he’d come across occasional references to a legendary figure named The Decapitator, Kheradruakh – literally ‘He Who Hunts Heads’. He’d thought of the Decapitator as a mythical figure, a paragon for the mandrakes rather like the Father of Scorpions was a paragon for the incubi – the first and greatest of them or some similar nonsense. It was unsettling to know that there really was an untraceable killer on the loose who was sufficiently expert to be both feared and respected by the mandrakes.
‘Master, this one made another observation,’ Xagor leaned in closer and hissed in a stage-whisper to Bellathonis. ‘Marks of Chaos on the body! Rapid mutation!’
Bellathonis’s eyes narrowed and he stole another glance at the body as it was hauled unceremoniously out of the chamber. The wrack was right: too many fingers on one hand, one foot curling itself into a bird-like claw. Azoruakh had become corrupted by the daemonic influences from beyond the veil just as Xhakoruakh had.
For a moment Bellathonis experienced a curious tightening sensation around his chest and forehead at the sight. It was an autonomic bodily response he recognized from his own test subjects as the onset of fear. It was interesting to note how the body he was inhabiting responded without any conscious input from its current occupant. It seemed that fear of the void, or at least fear of infection by its unpredictable energies, had been something deeply ingrained in young Kharbyr. There again the real Kharbyr had been to accursed Shaa-Dom in person. He might be said to have had more intimate experience of the untrammelled power of the void than Bellathonis could claim himself.
The seeds of corruption may or may not have been present within the shadow-realm before the Dysjunction, but its impact had certainly caused them to sprout there with frightening vigour. After Bellathonis had evaded the Black Descent’s assassination attempts Aelindrach had seemed like a safe haven to escape to. Now it was beginning to feel very much like a trap, or a prison with some particularly nasty inmates.
‘So what next for your kingdom now that your throne has been rightfully re-acquired?’ Bellathonis asked Xhakoruakh.
Decades spent interacting with Commorrite archons both high and low enabled the haemonculus to keep all his fears and suppositions carefully concealed behind a pallid mask of superciliousness. The sable giant finally tore his attention away from the hanging chains and turned it upon Bellathonis with the air of one indulging an overly demanding pet.
‘Aelindrach has been united under my rule. A few renegades may choose to hide and sulk, but after this…’ Xhakoruakh gestured reverently towards the hanging chains, ‘…this blessing from the Decapitator, no one can deny my power.’
‘His intercession certainly cleared the way for you in an unexpected fashion,’ Bellathonis observed somewhat sceptically. ‘No climactic duel to the death between the two rivals. No battle royal where you both got to truly test your strengths – and the favour of your respective patrons in full…’
Xhakoruakh shook his great head slowly and boomed, ‘No. No final battle. My brother was fleeing when the Decapitator took him. Azoruakh sought escape from Aelindrach at the end – he was a coward and a traitor to the last.’
‘Fleeing? How so?’ Bellathonis said. ‘There is no other way out of this room save the one we entered by – although admittedly that was no barrier to the escape of this Decapitator character of yours.’
The shadow-king chuckled. It was an ugly, thudding sound like cudgels smacking into flesh. The bloated giant was still chuckling as he turned and waddled over to settle himself rather awkwardly into the throne with the iron scythe resting across his knees.
‘You know so much and yet understand so little,’ Xhakoruakh boomed. ‘You perceive only a room with a chair and call it a throne room.
‘This place is important not just for its symbolism. There is a portal here. No one can say how old it is but it’s as ancient as any in Aelindrach. Some believe that it was the very first portal to open in this realm, that it is the navel of our world.’
Bellathonis glanced uncertainly towards the pit in the centre of the room. Portals in Aelindrach commonly appeared as dark rifts or crevices without any of the ornate arches and over-engineered fail-safes to be found around warp gates in Commorragh itself. Now, with the shadow-realm expanding its boundaries almost organically as it bled into Commorragh, such strictly defined delineation points were becoming blurred. Xhakoruakh laughed again.
‘No. Not down there, haemonculus, even your heart is not dark enough to descend that path,’ the giant pointed upwards to where the hanging chains were lost to perception at the top of the chamber. ‘Up there. We call this place the vault of ascension for that reason, the way out is above and leads directly into Commorragh.’
‘A useful thing to control in ordinary times, I understand,’ Bellathonis shrugged, ‘but surely now it has become meaningless. One needs only to walk to the fringes of Aelindrach and it is possible to step into Commorragh right now – or at least so I’ve been led to believe.’
Xhakoruakh smiled disturbingly, his shadowy face seeming to split open to reveal far too many fangs packed into a shark-like grin. ‘Ah yes,’ the shadow-king chortled, ‘but this path leads us into the very heart of our foes, Bellathonis. I had my ur-ghuls try to pierce their defences from Commorragh so they might invade Azoruakh’s stronghold from within but the simple creatures were unequal to the task. Now we will reverse the strategy and emerge inside the labyrinth.’
‘The labyrinth? You can’t mean…?’ Bellathonis exclaimed. Xhakoruakh positively shook with merriment at the haemonculus’s surprise.
‘Yesss,’ the shadow-king hissed, ‘the labyrinth of the Black Descent – did you never wonder how it came by that title? I’ll wager that few outside the shadow-realm can remember the source of that particular jest.’
Bellathonis nodded in understanding, ‘The coven hierarchy always took great pains to keep its secrets well hidden. Even though I once stood among their ranks I never even heard a whisper of a rumour about this one.’
‘The Black Descent trapped me at Azoruakh’s behest – by so doing they placed my brother in their debt and also held me in readiness, poised to replace him if they so desired.’
‘Would you have still served them after your incarceration and torture? You were in a sorry state when I found you in Zykleiades’s chambers.’
‘I would have done anything to regain my throne. I would have gnawed off my own limbs. I would even have obeyed my oppressors… for a time. They were too wise to put my loyalties to the test, but the threat was always there and gnawing at Azoruakh’s mind.’
Bellathonis stood in silence gazing up towards the portal hidden by clouds at the apex of the chamber. He had wished to escape from Aelindrach and here he was presented with the solution with all the customary mockery that the Dark Gods reserved for the delivery of their decidedly mixed blessings.
‘So now that you have control of this portal what do you intend to use it for?’ Bellathonis asked at last. He felt he already knew what the answer would be but he wanted to hear it from Xhakoruakh’s own lips.
‘The city will be ours. Even now my creatures bring the blessings of Aelindrach to the arrogant denizens of Commorragh. They treated the shadow-realm as being beneath their attention for too long. They can ignore us no longer.’
‘The city is too vast for you to conquer with ur-ghuls and mandrakes alone,’ Bellathonis said, but there was a worm of doubt in his mind about that.
Xhakoruakh did not need his minions to conquer the city in order to rule it. They only needed to spread the daemon-plague among enough of the surviving population and the dynamics of a pandemic would take care of the rest.
‘There will be vengeance too, of course,’ Xhakoruakh boomed. ‘I will take my revenge on the curs that kept me away from my throne for so long. They will all drown in lakes of blood. You should take joy in the fall of the coven that branded you a renegade and sought to end your life.’
‘In fairness I can’t say that I didn’t provoke them,’ Bellathonis said, leaving unspoken the thought that he really had made a serious error of judgement by letting himself become involved in Yllithian’s schemes in the first place. ‘Besides, I told you when we first met that I don’t personally give myself over to vengeance. I find it’s far too time-consuming and self-destructive to be a worthwhile pursuit. I also feel I should warn you that if you act against one coven all of the other covens will move to oppose you, and without the haemonculi on your side… well, Commorragh just isn’t Commorragh any more, is it?’
Xhakoruakh’s smile vanished and Bellathonis understood immediately that he had made a mistake. The shadow-king’s plans had no need for the arts of the haemonculi or immortality in general. In fact quite the reverse was true and every haemonculus represented a threat – an individual that could resist the plague and even discover a cure for it. Bellathonis moved swiftly to correct himself.
‘Listen, I know the Black Descent and I know the haemonculi. They are all cowards and they will be terrified by the power rising out of Aelindrach – turn them into your slaves! Make them work for you in gaining final victory instead of letting them become a distraction from it. That is a plan I can wholeheartedly support, for the selfish reason that I will gain access to all of the equipment, supplies and wracks I’ll need to keep making more of my grotesques for your armies. You seemed to like the grotesques and I’m sure you’d appreciate having more of them available.’
The shadow-king nodded slowly. Xhakoruakh seemed too mired in his own plots for the future to believe that Bellathonis would do anything but play along with him. The urge to punish the coven of the Black Descent for holding him prisoner had probably been slowly eroded away by the more grandiose plans of his patron Chaos god.
‘Yes, there is wisdom in that. We must make them fear the night and then take delight in the bonds of their terror becoming bonds of slavery. They will serve Xhakoruakh and make more flesh-beasts as you instruct. Your creatures will be in the vanguard of all my new conquests – the ones you have already made… and a million more like them.’
Chapter 17
XELIAN
Angevere was not infallible.
The sound of the blood wasps was a nightmare – a high, angry buzzing that sawed at the ears so hard that it felt as if they must burst. The sound of the warriors screaming was worse as the vicious insectile weapons burrowed into their flesh, swarmed into their eyes and choked their mouths with tiny, stabbing bodies. The geno-engineered creatures were, in contrast to so many of their kind, permanently fertile and laid their eggs in anything they penetrated with their freakishly oversized ovipositors. The larval offspring hatched in seconds and burrowed deeper so that they could metamorphose just as quickly into their bloodthirsty adult forms.
Yllithian, stepping back adroitly from the mess, allowed himself a moment to enjoy the efficiency of his warriors as they went about cleaning it up. He had hand-picked those accompanying him into the labyrinth from among the finest of his trueborn. All of them had been with him on Gorath and he knew that all of them were dependable.
Plasma grenades and shredders obliterated the razor-limbed swarm while blasters were used to incinerate those overcome by it. There was no hesitation at killing their compatriots, only a swift, deadly efficiency. In a few seconds the corridor was clear again, swept clean by white-hot fires and scoured by monofilaments. He sent for the haemonculus for an explanation.
‘Tell me what happened,’ he said to Bellathonis when the haemonculus arrived. ‘You missed something and it cost me three of my warriors.’
Once again Bellathonis exhibited the curious delay before answering. It was just a fraction of a second and Bellathonis was trying to hide it but to Yllithian it spoke volumes. After a fashion such nuances were his speciality. He’d had to learn a lot about them in order to hide and become able to lie more convincingly. In this case the nuance meant that the individual in question was getting information fed to them from the outside.
‘The trap must have reset after I passed this point,’ Bellathonis said. ‘Blood wasp hives sometimes need a bit of time to regenerate after they’ve been very active. Or it might have been on a delayed trigger…’
‘All of which are speculations that I could supply for myself,’ Yllithian remarked coolly. ‘You need to do better than this, Bellathonis. I can’t imagine that we are even close to our goal yet and we still have to get out of here afterwards.’
‘An undertaking like this doesn’t work with certainties,’ the haemonculus replied wearily. ‘I’m doing the best that I can.’
‘Then try harder and find me Xelian soon,’ Yllithian warned, ‘or the next time we find a trap I will feed you into it.’
‘You could never find your way out without me,’ Bellathonis said with a surprising spark of defiance. ‘I’m sure you’ve been marking the path we’ve taken like anyone with sense would, but that doesn’t work in the labyrinth. If you try to follow your trail back you’ll find it’s gone.’
‘Very true, which is why I took the precaution of bringing something along that I can rely on to get me out of here if it becomes necessary. You really are dispensable, Bellathonis, in every sense of the word. I’ll admit I would like to find Xelian after coming all this way for her. However, my patience is not without limits. The only reason I keep you alive is because you are useful to me. If that ends then so do you.’
Suitably chastened the haemonculus slunk away back to the head of the column. Yllithian enjoyed the sense of control he was having. In the past Bellathonis had always been too damnably slippery to pin down and threaten in a satisfying fashion. The incident made Yllithian wonder how he’d ever thought of the haemonculus as anything more than he really was – a lowly carver of meat.
Angevere was not infallible but Kharbyr had quickly learned to obey her commands quickly and without question.
Down!+
Kharbyr dropped flat the instant Angevere’s voice hissed in his mind. The quickest way to get out of harm’s way in a pinch was to let gravity do the work for you – loosen the knees and drop without the fractional delay of tensing muscles to spring. The disadvantage was that it left you exposed afterwards, but in a situation where easier targets were left standing around in the open the trick could be a lifesaver.
Kharbyr dropped and a volley of shots hissed straight over him. The warriors that were standing directly behind him weren’t so lucky. He heard the cracking sounds of their armour being pierced and their shrieks as the poison took hold. Kharbyr ignored them and rolled to one side of the corridor where he tried to cram himself into the angle between floor and wall as tightly as he could. A firefight was about to break out over his head and he had left himself with nowhere else to go.
Amateurs,+ Angevere sneered. +They should have easily taken you with their first volley.+
Vivid bolts of darklight pulsed down the corridor and splashed the darkness with flares of entropic energy as Yllithian’s warriors retaliated. Misshapen, shambolic figures were outlined in the glow and more shots homed in on them like a swarm of angry blood wasps. The charging figures were misshapen giants, monstrously over-muscled, with metal blades and bone spikes jutting out from them at all angles. Kharbyr had seen their kind before – grotesques. He knew the haemonculi used them as guards or gladiators. He’d never seen a grotesque in its berserker state before.
In the narrow confines
of the corridor the hulking grotesques could barely fit two abreast, while seven or eight of Yllithian’s warriors could shoot at a time. Simple mathematics said the grotesques should have been cut down almost immediately. Instead they stormed forwards despite missing limbs, cratered torsos and, in one memorable case, a missing head.
Kharbyr came up into a crouch and raised his own pistol to shoot. The compact, spiral-barrelled weapon seemed faintly ludicrous in comparison to the ravening energies around him but he fired it anyway. The grotesque that he hit swelled obscenely in the course of a few seconds until its straining flesh burst open in a welter of blood. The grotesque lumbered a few steps closer sporting a ragged, bloody crater where its chest had been, before it was cut down by another flash of energy.
The dead grotesque slumped over to become part of an impromptu barricade of mangled flesh that was being formed by the fallen just a few metres in front of Kharbyr and Yllithian’s warriors. The remaining grotesques were forced to scramble over this twitching mountain of meat into the teeth of the White Flames’ firepower. It was sheer foolhardiness for them to continue but the grotesques were burning with the fires of neo-adrenaline and meta-steroids. Their berserker rage drove them onwards into certain death.
All pretence of battle was lost as it turned into a slaughter. The air became thick with smoke and the stench of burning. Strobing light from blasters and disintegrators converged on the roaring grotesques as they struggled to clear the obstacle, each new casualty piling it higher. Kharbyr stood up so that he could get a better angle to keep shooting – the dead were getting closer to the roof of the passage. Pretty soon the grotesques wouldn’t be able to squeeze through at all.
Someone had failed to let the grotesques know that they were being slaughtered. Just as Kharbyr stood up the bulwark of dead and dying flew apart as if an explosive device had been triggered. Through the bloody breach roared the biggest and ugliest monstrosity Kharbyr had yet seen. Glaring red eyes burned behind its iron-grilled mask as it barrelled into the front of Yllithian’s warriors. Kharbyr reflexively ducked beneath a swinging, blade-studded fist and rolled to get behind the creature as it tore into the warriors’ ranks.
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