Path of the Renegade

by Andy Chambers

  ‘Unwise,’ said Morr as he knocked her hand aside. She spun with an oath to strike at the incubus but found her wrist caught in a vice-like grip. ‘Observe,’ Morr intoned calmly and turned her back to face Vyril.

  Looking now she saw the hand extended to her was in reality a grasping claw, and the face behind it was not that of Vyril but some saucer-eyed, fang-mouthed daemon. Xyriadh recoiled in horror. An agonised howl from close by broke into insane, tittering laughter.

  ‘Bravo, that was a close-run thing,’ said a new voice. Morr released Xyriadh and spun to face the newcomer with blade at the ready. A slight figure dressed in motley garments stepped into sight.

  ‘Oh, put away your over-sized cutlery, incubus, no one is dining just yet,’ the stranger responded airily.

  The individual had the appearance of an eldar dressed in an archaic-looking doublet and hose made with so many variegated colours that from a distance they appeared to be grey. A black and white domino mask hid the upper part of his face, but the mouth and chin beneath it looked full and mobile. Right now the full mouth was grinning impudently with its red lips and white teeth.

  ‘Do not toy with me, apparition,’ Morr rumbled dangerously.

  ‘You are a fierce one, aren’t you?’ The newcomer’s accent was strange, neither a High Commorrite cant nor Low Commorrite vulgarity, but somewhere between the two. ‘Well, fear not, I bear no weapons and I bear you no ill intent either, I was merely surprised to see fellow travellers abroad… and why, hello, Sindiel! I didn’t see you lurking back there!’

  Morr wheeled to glare at Sindiel. The grey figure took advantage of the momentary distraction to slip over to where Xagor and Kharbyr stood. The motley-clad individual smoothly disappeared and reappeared as if he had moved in one extraordinarily long step. The domino mask peered at the worldsinger slung over Xagor’s shoulder appraisingly.

  ‘You’ve been busy, I see. Recent events make a lot more sense with that little piece of information. Thank you.’

  Morr snarled and whirled his deadly blade through the grey figure in a decapitating arc. His target seemed only to bow courteously and razor-edged destruction flew through the space where it had been.

  ‘I’d love to dance, Morr, really I would, but we simply don’t have the time,’

  ‘Identify this… individual, Sindiel,’ Morr said.

  ‘Pish posh, I can speak for myself. I’m the one that gave Sindiel the little bauble that brought you here.’

  ‘It’s true,’ admitted Sindiel. ‘Linthis introduced us.’

  ‘And how is Linthis, hmm?’ asked the grey one brightly. ‘In fact how are all your little woodland friends, Sindiel? Did they help you find what you were looking for? I’m thinking that your new friends indicate that they did not.’

  ‘No. Linthis was just as hollow and full of lies as all the rest,’ Sindiel said quietly.

  ‘Enough,’ said Morr. ‘Assist us or leave at once.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll help you. Don’t you worry. The world-singer can’t go back and you can’t stay here, so you all have to go forwards along the path you’ve made for yourselves…’

  The motley one paused and stood on tiptoe for a moment, hand cupped to one ear in a pantomime of listening. The howling burst forth anew, and monstrously misshapen silhouettes could be glimpsed sliding through the translucent blocks all around them.

  ‘…There will be a small price, of course,’ the grey figure continued. ‘Tiresome, but there are certain customs and traditions that have to be obeyed.’

  ‘Name it!’ cried Sindiel, ‘whatever it is!’

  ‘Three guesses.’

  ‘The worldsinger?’

  ‘No, no, I already told you I can’t take her back. Guess again.’

  ‘…Me?’ Sindiel swallowed.

  The motley one laughed musically in response. ‘Oh you don’t understand the joke at all, do you? Poor Sindiel. Last try.’

  ‘The… spiritstones,’ Sindiel said, sounding ashamed.

  ‘Yes! I’ll be taking the spiritstones you filched from Corallyon, Linthis and Belth, I think. Their souls deserve a better fate than to be taken to the dark city, I’ll see that they get home.’

  Kharbyr, Aez’ashya and Morr, with more or less reluctance respectively, gave over the spiritstones they had taken from the Rangers slain on Lileathanir. The small gems shone with a lambent amethyst glow as they were brought out, the trapped souls within them seeming to blaze like stars in the darkness. The grey-clad one tucked them away carefully and the gloom rushed in again.

  ‘You have your payment,’ Morr rumbled. ‘Now do your part. Lead us to Commorragh with no more games.’

  ‘Lead you? Oh no, I never lead anyone anywhere – quite the reverse in fact. I simply make you aware of the paths available,. Whether you go down them or not is up to you. We’ll discuss this further at another time, but time is pressing so listen to this. Lil’ashya nois shaa oum.’

  The words rang in the air like clear bells. Enraged, inhuman voices burst out all around the agents, giving tongue to their frustration at their prey slipping away. The landscape of mist and translucent shards dissolved around them and was replaced by a timeless sensation of falling. A merciless black void rushed in from all sides to engulf them, dragging them deeper into the undertow.

  They found themselves crouching upon a bleak heath that sloped downwards into roiling clouds of rust-red smog. Tilted shapes towered out of the smog like skeletal titans, the remains of machines or buildings long since rotted to their bare framework. Wan, ruddy light filtered from above, the pervasive smog turning the sky into an upturned bowl of blood.

  ‘Iron Thorn,’ breathed Morr, making the name sound like a curse or a prayer.

  CHAPTER 9

  PACTS AND BARGAINS

  ‘Author of evil, unknown till thy revolt! These acts of hateful strife – hateful to all save thee and thy foul adherents – disturb our most holy peace. How hast thou instilled thy malice into thousands? Those once upright and faithful are now proved false and all is despair.’

  – The Broken King to Duke Vileth, in Ursyllas’s Dispossessions

  The raiding forces were returning from Lileathanir in triumph. The barbed, predatory ships raced one another exuberantly along the webway back to Commorragh. Their crews were drunk with bloodletting and cruelty and their holds were packed to bursting with slaves, raw materials, exotic lifeforms and other plunder for the ever-hungry markets of the eternal city.

  Of course a raid returning to Commorragh was always a triumph for the leaders of an expedition, or at least it was depicted as such if it could be viewed as anything short of the most unmitigated disaster. A failed raid reflected badly on every participant from top to bottom and so there were no failed raids. Everything from exaggerations to outright lies were expected and frankly encouraged on the part of all involved from the lowliest returning warriors to the highest commanding archons.

  In the final measurement Malixian had escaped with his crop of captured beasts and his life intact so he was more-or-less happy. Xelian would be equally pleased with the selection of dangerous carnosaurs and over-sized invertebrates procured from the reeking jungles of the maiden world for her arena bouts. Even the lesser archons would make a small profit in addition to enhancing their reputation by participating. The value of eldar slaves, even regressionists like Exodites, far outweighed that of any lesser species by a hundred to one. That would go some way to compensating for the relative paucity of the harvest from such a large undertaking.

  Soon enough the crews coming off the sleek and deadly ships would tell outrageous stories of their vicious cunning and derring-do. As the vessels disgorged their cargoes of bewildered slaves onto Ashkeri Talon tales would be told of the bloody massacres and mass suicides that were the reason that so few had been taken alive. By the time the wretched Exodites were being hauled onto the auction blocks in the flesh markets lurid stories would be circulating about the annihilation of their maiden world home.

  Yllithia
n on the other hand, pacing impatiently on the elegantly appointed bridge of the Intemperate Angel, was distinctly displeased by the outcome of the raid. His agents had failed to return or give any other indication of their survival so their mission had evidently failed. That was a minor disaster in its own right and annoying if not entirely unanticipated. It was the continued absence of Kraillach’s chief executioner that was proving unexpectedly problematic.

  Without Morr to act as de facto head of the Realm Eternal the whole kabal was in danger of collapsing in on itself in a furore of backstabbing and politicking. The kabal’s ships and warriors accompanying the raid were already showing signs of internal strife that boded ill for their return to Commorragh. Kraillach was in danger of revivifying as an archon without a kabal.

  Beyond such entirely practical considerations Yllithian also needed to know just what had happened at the World Shrine so that he could ensure nothing could be traced back to him. There could be no disguising the unusually bitter fighting during the latter stages of the raid, nor the seemingly unleashed fury of the planet itself. The spontaneous eruption of dozens of volcanoes that filled the atmosphere with choking ash was bound to be an event worthy of note even among the jaded citizenry of Commorragh. The rakes and sybarites would soon turn their attention to other gossip but for the present Malixian’s raid was bound to become a hot topic.

  The causes of such an event would become the object of much speculation over the days that followed, some of it accurate, some of it wildly fanciful. The absence of Morr would be noted by some, perhaps connected by others and then the pieces would begin to fall into place. As such Yllithian had every desire to get ahead of any rumours and have his story straight before the tyrant’s spies became too interested in precisely what had happened on Lileathanir and why. The failed mission should be easy enough to cover up as long as Yllithian could reassure himself that there were no inconveniently surviving witnesses.

  Among all the many subtle resources at his command Yllithian could think of only one that might pierce the veil and give him the knowledge he sought. He ordered the helmsman to bring his ship up to full speed and promised a rich reward if they were the first to dock at Commorragh.

  Within the dark pits below the White Flames’ palace Syiin was busily hurrying to complete his own preparations before Archon Yllithian returned to the city. His workbench was strewn with tools and components that made a dully gleaming landscape over the stained metal surface. The object of his attentions rose in the midst of it all, a miniature palace above a shanty town of cogs and wires.

  He had taken the runic tetrahedron so generously donated by the coven of The Black Descent and placed it within a framework of four tiny suspensor units. These in turn were held in place by an open egg-like contrivance of slender struts and tubes. Four different trigger sensors, motion, pressure, heat and aural, were suspended from the egg. Syiin had configured the sensors to trip if the master haemonculus Bellathonis were detected within five metres, easily close enough to ensure his annihilation. Once the sensors were tripped the suspensors acted as blunt fingers to make the movements necessary to open the gate. That had been the hardest part to pull off by far and now, after much cursing and spitting along the way, Syiin was rather proud of the results.

  The distinctly sinister looking device Syiin had built was going to be concealed inside an altogether more innocuous container. With the correct inducement the gourmand at the Red House had yielded a full description of the jar retrieved from there previously by one of Bellathonis’s wracks. Now, outwardly at least, its twin stood before Syiin. In this case the hide-wrapped vessel also concealed a tiny mimic field built into its base that would defeat all but the most careful examination of its contents. The very esoteric nature of the threat itself would evade most tell-tales and detectors better than molecular explosives or binary poisons ever could, and the mimic field would render it completely undetectable.

  In many ways hiding the dark gate was the easy part. Persuading Bellathonis to actually accept the gift would be the real trick. Syiin was counting on the confusion of Yllithian’s return to be the right moment to strike. The archon would be flushed with success and fully engaged with his sycophants for a time after his arrival. Bellathonis, on the other hand, would be anxiously awaiting word of the capture of a pure heart and expecting a message or package from Yllithian.

  Syiin licked his thin lips and smiled, picturing Bellathonis lifting up the jar triumphantly and unstoppering its lid moments before he was obliterated. Would the master haemonculus have long enough to realise how thoroughly he had been duped? Syiin hoped so. He had tried to imagine a way to be present at Bellathonis’s death but decided it was simply too risky. Syiin’s presence would make Bellathonis even more suspicious than usual, and the… event itself might be dangerously unpredictable. He was going to have to console himself with reports after the fact, and perhaps a little pilgrimage to the scoured circle left by the activation of the gate at some later date.

  And yet… He was still concerned about the calibration of the triggering sensors. During his last meeting with Malixian and Bellathonis he’d had the presence of mind to surreptitously read Bellathonis’s vital signs and file them away for just such an eventuality. The problem was that haemonculi altered their bodies so frequently that such information had a distinctly limited shelf-life.

  Syiin could broaden the parameters used by the sensors to account for a potential shift in morphology on Bellathonis’s part, but that would increase the chances of accidental activation before the gate reached its intended target. As it stood Syiin had left the sensors tightly bound to Bellathonis’s last recorded imprint, but he kept wondering uncomfortably about the wisdom of that decision.

  Ideally he would have liked another reading to cross-reference against, but Bellathonis was nowhere to be found at present. The master haemonculus had vanished the moment Yllithian and Malixian left the city. He was not on the ships – Syiin’s spies had been certain of that. No, Bellathonis was almost certainly hidden away in his secret laboratory in the catacombs, probably not far from Syiin’s own domain. The thought enraged him and he snarled at one of his wracks, bringing the masked apprentice running over.

  ‘What news of the raid?’ Syiin demanded. ‘How soon will the Lord Yllithian return?’

  ‘The wager-slaves are giving the best odds for a return within the next six hours, master,’ the wrack rasped after a moment. ‘They say a signal announcing Malixian’s triumph was received late yesterday. Crowds are gathering at Ashkeri Talon to welcome back the fleet.’

  ‘To beg for scraps more like, and to do their utmost to separate our brave warriors from their new-found wealth before it can be brought into the city,’ Syiin murmured cynically as he peered through a magnifying lens to make a final adjustment.

  ‘Master?’ the wrack asked in confusion.

  ‘Nothing, wait there a moment,’ Syiin grunted and turned his attention back to the device, tapping one of his tools meditatively. Wherever Bellathonis might be right now he would soon need to be on hand to welcome Malixian back to the Aviaries. Syiin could send the jar there and be fairly certain it would cross paths with the target, but would the triggers prove reliable? Without another reading it was impossible to be sure, but the attempt had to be made now when Bellathonis resurfaced – any later might be too late.

  Syiin lifted the delicate egg-shaped mechanism carefully by its uppermost struts. He moved it slowly over the mouth of the jar before lowering it inside. The framework expanded with a soft pneumatic hiss as it touched the bottom of the jar so that the device was snugly cradled within. He stoppered the jar, binding the lid in place with hide thongs. Finally he released a breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding.

  ‘Take six of your brethren and ensure this jar is delivered to the Aviaries of Malixian the Mad, intact and unopened, for the immediate attention of the master haemonculus Bellathonis,’ Syiin said crisply.

  The wrack gingerly lifted the jar with
both hands. He was ignorant of the exact contents but he was fearful after seeing the care his master took with it. He started to leave the low-domed workroom but Syiin’s voice stopped him.

  ‘Wait,’ the haemonculus said and stood from his bench, muttering. ‘This won’t do it, won’t do it at all,’ he said before raising his voice to the wrack. ‘Are you aware of the thirteen foundations of vengeance? Could you name each of them to me?’

  ‘Of course, master, though I’ve heard many more than thirteen maxims claimed as foundations.’

  ‘Yes, yes, but are you aware of the one pertaining to individual as opposed to collective effort?’

  The masked wrack appeared to ponder for a moment. ‘If you want something attending to satisfactorily you must attend to it yourself?’ came his eventual reply.

  ‘Just so,’ said Syiin. ‘And as such I’m coming with you.’

  Bellathonis had begun surreptitiously moving some of his most vital pieces of equipment out of the Aviaries several weeks prior to the raid on Lileathanir. Deliveries were quietly redirected and devices disassembled to be placed into ‘storage’, ostensibly to make room for examining one of the giant pterasaurs Malixian planned to bring back from the maiden world. The normally cramped confines of the tower occupied by Bellathonis and his wracks were beginning to feel distinctly roomy.

  Bellathonis had waited until Malixian and the bulk of the Ninth Raptrex were safely out of the way before moving the most sensitive items. His new torture-laboratories were buried within a honeycomb of hidden chambers and secret ways that touched on the White Flames’ territory in High Commorragh. The main area comprised a wide, high chamber with rows of cells along one dripping wall and a cracked floor. Very safe, very secure – if lacking a little of the ambience of the old tower.

  Bellathonis stood in the echoing space directing his wracks as they wheeled in examination tables and resurrection sarcophagi, lugged around jars filled with chemicals and less readily identifiable substances, connected cables to energy generators and strung lights. The master haemonculi ensured two sarcophagi were hoisted into place overlooking the examination table at the centre of the chamber. Archon Yllithian had indicated that Archon Kraillach would also need to be revivified when the Exodite catalyst was secured. This was in addition to resurrecting the mysterious and long-dead worthy that was the true subject of their bargain.