Wild Rider - Gav Thorpe

by Warhammer 40K

  Tzibilakhu looked suitably impressed, though it was impossible to know if she was feigning the reaction.

  Except it was not impossible, Aradryan remembered. He let the Whisper flow through him, feeling the spirit of the Commorraghan.

  ‘That would not be wise,’ Tzibilakhu told him, growing serious. She raised an admonishing finger. ‘You are not yet ready to share the soul of another, and certainly not one that has lived as I have.’

  Rebuffed, he let the Whisper fade, and shrugged to dismiss her complaint, and his embarrassment.

  ‘So what is your role here?’ he asked. ‘Chaperone? Valet? Are you to show me to my abode?’

  She did not reply immediately. Her smile returned, mischievous but fleeting.

  ‘It was passed to us that you have some experience as a steer-thought. If you commanded a ship, as you say, we might even find a vessel for you to captain.’ She moved to stand alongside him and, with a gentle hand on his arm, encouraged him to start walking along the quayside. He glanced back to see that the dawnsail transport that had brought him had already withdrawn its boarding gantry and was floating away from the dock.

  ‘I would…’ He looked at her, wanting to start this phase of his life in trust, but cautious of the perils of familiarity that had brought him such pain in the past.

  ‘I understand,’ she said, stopping, turning both of them to face the departing ship. ‘You wish to see the ship leave. To know for certain that you are here, one of the Ynnari, and to accept that there is no return to the life you once led.’

  ‘That is remarkable insight for…’ He trailed away, regretting the remark.

  ‘For an Ynnari?’

  ‘A Commorraghan,’ he confessed.

  ‘We are not renowned for our empathy,’ she conceded. ‘But I have travelled the journey you’ve only just started.’

  Her nod directed his attention back to the departing transport, which raised silver moth wings as it slipped through the shimmer of the docking bay’s force field. The undulating iridescence of the webway flashed along the ship’s length for a few heartbeats and then the vessel turned and rose out of sight. A sigh escaped Aradryan and his shoulders slumped.

  ‘I am not a servant,’ Tzibilakhu told him as they continued towards the high archway at the end of the pier. ‘There is no Path of Service here. No slaves or menials. We each stand together, and alone.’

  ‘So how is it that you have come to see me off the transport?’

  ‘I will be your mentor. One who has heard the Whisper for some time guides each of those newly called to Ynnead. As Yvraine showed us the power of the Whispering God, we now pass it on to others.’

  ‘So you have been with the Ynnari for some time? I have come to realise that age is no guide, but you seem barely more than an adolescent to me.’

  Her laugh was easy and warming, so genuinely full of humour that Aradryan could not stop himself from smiling at the sound.

  ‘It is you that is the child to me,’ she told him. They were almost at the gateway now, a ruddy-lit hallway beyond. ‘Do you know the story of the Lanathrialle?’

  ‘Only rumour,’ replied Aradryan. ‘It is said that among her many lives before becoming the Opener of the Way, Yvraine was a corsair captain, commander of the Lanathrialle, also known as the Sword of Winter’s Vengeance.’

  ‘I always liked that name. Alas, when Yvraine was forced to flee Commorragh she came seeking the Lanathrialle to aid in her escape. Pursued by the ships of Asdrubael Vect, the starship was destroyed, sacrificed to give her time to evade the imminent wrath of the Kabal of the Dark Heart. A sacrifice made with great loss but no regret. Even after that time her crew still adored her, you see.’

  ‘That is quite a claim on Yvraine’s behalf. None can know for sure.’

  ‘Except that I can, for I was captain of the Lanathrialle when Yvraine returned to us, and chief navigator when I served under her.’

  Aradryan stopped and stared at Tzibilakhu, shocked at such a blatant falsehood.

  ‘You? No, impossible. That would make you at least twice as old as I am, if you served as you say.’

  Tzibilakhu fixed him with a stare, her humour now gone.

  ‘You must rid yourself of these prejudices and self-delusions if you are to foster the power of the Whisper. I cannot say that you will not face deception and self-interest among the Ynnari, but you should not come to expect it. We are united in our belief in Yvraine, and in our service to the God of the Dead. I gain nothing from lying to you. I was captain of the Lanathrialle and it was my command that drove it into a webway portal too small for it to pass, blocking all pursuit, killing hundreds of my crew and dooming the rest to despicable ends at the hands of Vect’s torturers and his haemonculi allies. I and only a handful of my closest crew escaped with Yvraine.’ She stroked the back of her hand across her smooth cheek. ‘You would be surprised at the rejuvenating properties of a lifetime spent drinking souls kept in agony and despair.’

  Aradryan shuddered, reminded of the diabolic nature of drukhari existence.

  ‘Do you still…?’ He hardly dared ask the question.

  ‘Not out of preference,’ she replied. ‘But you will learn more of that as I teach you about the Whisper and the forces it can channel. Before then, we shall get you settled and then we shall see Yvraine.’

  ‘Yvraine?’ He did not think he could be more startled. ‘What do you mean we will see her?’

  ‘When time permits, she grants audience to every new soul drawn to Ynnead. We have time now.’ She laid a hand on his shoulder and he noticed for the first time her fingernails had been replaced with sharpened slivers of red crystal. He cringed away at the thought of the blades so close to the blood vessels in his throat.

  ‘Tell me, on which ship did you serve? What was the name of this corsair fleet that called you admiral?’

  ‘The Fae Taruth,’ he told her as they resumed their journey. It had been a long time since he had named the ship and it brought back a flood of recollection, little of it as pleasant or glorious as he had thought at the time. ‘My fleet was known as the Azure Flame. We ran from the Golden Gate to the Winter Gulf, terror of the aliens.’

  ‘No,’ said Tzibilakhu, shaking her head. ‘I have not heard of them.’

  Aradryan told himself that it did not matter, that it was better that his period of shame was left in the past. Yet he could not fight a small resentment, and wished that he could enjoy just a little notoriety from those dark times.

  Nuadhu’s starship, the webrunner Eltereth, slid into place alongside his clan’s boarding pilaster in the forward docking spars of Saim-Hann. The neighbouring towers were lightless, devoid of activity where once they had bustled with the affairs of Clan Fireheart. Two other starships sat dormant at their quay-pillars, all that remained of a flotilla that had once numbered more than a dozen.

  The mood of the Wild Riders was understandably sombre as they disembarked onto the pale stone dockside, the alighting hall humming with the noise of anti-grav engines. In solemn procession, they glided down the Eltereth’s ramp, their bright banners removed, sashes of white – the aeldari colour of death – laid upon the sleek noses of their craft.

  Nuadhu led them atop Alean, jaw clenched as tightly as his fingers gripped the rail of his fighting platform. Caelledhin followed, and the others in order arranged by their relationship to the clan heir. Druthkhala did not join them, but waited in the bay of the starship. Nuadhu hoped it was out of respect for their observances for the dead, but with the Commorraghan he was not sure of her motivations. He had avoided her on the journey home, not wishing to confuse his grief with thoughts of her. To feel as the ancients had felt, that was the Wild Rider creed – whether to sadness or anger, laughter or lust – but there were only so many emotions one could handle at a time, and he had fled the one extremity to wallow in another for a while.

  B’sa
innad stopped just beside the arch that led into the tower’s interior, allowing Nuadhu to vault down from the Vyper. Caelledhin pulled over her jetbike on the opposite side of the gold-wreathed gateway, her eyes downcast.

  One by one the Wild Riders flowed past, heads bowed, one hand upon the spirit stone mounted above the heart. It took a painfully short time for them all to depart, leaving Nuadhu with Caelledhin. Still his half-sister did not look at him, head turned away.

  The growl of a different engine timbre drew his gaze to the approach of Druthkhala. She stopped a short distance away and sat up straight in the saddle of her reaver-bike, arms crossed.

  ‘Your losses are not in vain, Fireheart,’ she told him. ‘I will send word to Yvraine of what we have uncovered on Agarimethea.’

  ‘And what will she do?’ Caelledhin snapped suddenly, face flushed, eyes rimmed with the red of long weeping. ‘Mistress of the dead, shall she conjure our fallen back from the embrace of Ynnead?’

  ‘The necrontyr will have no interest in their spirit stones,’ replied the Commorraghan. ‘The artifice of the soul is anathema to their thinking. Your dead can be recovered.’

  ‘What will Yvraine do?’ Nuadhu asked. ‘Will she travel to Agari­methea, will she come to Saim-Hann?’ He really wanted to know if Druthkhala would be staying for much longer but avoided the question.

  ‘I cannot guess her mind,’ admitted the Bloodbride. ‘Many are her concerns, and more still the voices that clamour for her attention.’

  ‘But you promised support for Clan Fireheart…’

  ‘Support?’ Druthkhala frowned. ‘The Ynnari do not like to meddle in the politics of individual craftworlds.’

  ‘You said that we would be friends of the Ynnari.’

  ‘Your recollection is flawed. No promise was made. The friendship of Yvraine is… uncertain. There are many that actively seek to avoid it. We are the Reborn, servants of Ynnead, messengers of the dead. It is often unwise to court our company.’

  Nuadhu was not sure if she meant it as such, but he took her last words to be a more specific warning rather than a general one.

  ‘Some things are worth a little risk,’ he told her.

  Caelledhin snorted her derision, but Druthkhala rewarded him with a lopsided smile.

  ‘I shall bring word of Yvraine’s intent to the council, if you would call the leaders to attend.’

  ‘I do not have that authority,’ confessed Nuadhu. The reminder was a twist of the knife that pierced his heart. ‘Only my father can call the council on behalf of Clan Fireheart. But I am sure they would wish to listen to the emissary of Yvraine as they did before.’

  His gaze slid to his half-sister, meeting her scowl with an innocent smile.

  ‘Perhaps if you spoke–’

  ‘No! You will see father first, and it will be from your lips that he will hear the names of the nephews and nieces he will not see again.’

  With a last venomous glare for Druthkhala, Caelledhin sped beneath the arch, leaving Nuadhu alone with the Commorraghan. He was about to invite her to the Clan Fireheart palaces in the Flameglades but she gunned the engine of her steed and shot after Caelledhin, the wind of her passage buffeting Nuadhu as she raced away.

  Alone, leaning heavily on Drake’s Fang as though wearied by long toil, Nuadhu considered his immediate future. He sighed heavily and shook his head, not sure which of the surviving gods he had offended to deserve such a destiny.

  Chapter 3

  THE EMISSARY

  Yvraine sat alone in her chambers aboard the Ynnead’s Dream, in a few precious moments enjoying the absence of others – the closeness of her familiar, Alorynis, notwithstanding. The gyrinx lay on his side and purred contentedly, eyes half-closed. She dulled the noise of the Whisper, letting the souls of those in the ship around her seep from her awareness. Cocooning herself in mental silence, she performed the same muting thoughts upon the spirit energy that ebbed through her body, sustaining her life long past its allotted fate.

  A near-silence of the soul descended, bringing an approximation of peace. Even so, there was one soul-sound that could not be ignored, like the ripple from a constant drip into a still pool. The cronesword Kha-vir, Sword of Sorrows. She laid a hand upon its sheathed blade and felt the coldness of the void-death that it brought to those it cut. In that instant of contact, the shard of Morai-Heg wavered in its yearning to be reunited with its companions, and in the following instant of peace Yvraine indulged her introspection.

  Occasions of true joy were rare for Yvraine. She had known periods of immense physical pleasure, and had indulged intellectual and spiritual desires with equal fervour. Raised on the Asuryani Path, she had learned to carefully control every emotion, parcelling out her deep passions like sips of water in a desert. She had been a warrior and a seer, a creator and a servant, a lover and a philosopher. Each discipline she had mastered quickly, often to the surprise of her mentors, but so wary had she been of becoming trapped on a particular Path that she never delved in any depth. It had not provided the satisfaction she sought.

  As a corsair she had let herself roam free across the stars, hunter and hunted, living her life on the edge between existence and oblivion. She had partaken of narcotics and other intoxications, but always the loss of self had concerned her and she had shied from becoming addicted to those highs, wary of the inevitable lows.

  Looking back, it had been inevitable that she would end up in Commorragh. She had to fully travel the broad spectrum of aeldari experience to find her place within the cosmos. She had won favour easily with the archons of the kabals, carefully managing her alliances, striking bargains only of benefit, always shy of becoming too embroiled with a single cause or cult.

  That she had drifted to the wyches and the arenas was another progression in a life seeking meaning. As a gladiatrix of the Crucibael she had finally lost herself for a while, relishing the blend of deadly fights and equally lethal politicking.

  Even then she had served nothing but herself, and that cause only by necessity rather than desire. She had wearied of the blood-matches but had finally ended up in a place from which she could not escape, the very thing she had always sought to avoid. To anyone else it seemed as though the Daughter of Shadows was a queen among the wyches. Glory and praise, riches and patronage were all hers for the taking. Enemies also, and even as her influence grew, as her fame brought greater benefits and power, so the obstacles set in her path were raised higher and higher by those determined to see her fail.

  And in the end it had finally caught up with her. As the chosen champion of Lady Malys, Yvraine inherited by proxy her mistress’ foes, and they hated Lady Malys with a cold intensity only an aeldari could muster. Though the lady herself might be beyond the assassin’s poison or the touch of a traitor’s stiletto, killing her undefeated champion would be enough to remind Lady Malys that she was not beyond retaliation for her bloody ascension through the ranks of the kabals.

  The Night of Revelations, it had come to be known. Yvraine smiled at the thought. A perversion of what had been called previously the Night of Revels, a rare – and often unobserved – occasion, when warring powers put aside their grievances for mutual celebration of life. Nobody could remember when the Night of Revels had begun, its history lost somewhere in the darkness of the time just after the Fall, when the cults of the dominion had been forced to set aside their traditional conflicts for the sake of survival, in a universe that now included the Great Enemy.

  The Crucibael had thronged with Commorraghans. Yvraine remembered well waiting behind the gates of the immense arena, listening to the ring of cruel laughter, the jeers and the shouts of encouragement. She recalled with intimate awareness, skin prickling again at the recollection, the sensation of knowing she was going to die. It was no premonition, simply an acknowledgement of fact. Vect himself had decided to make a point to Lady Malys, and Yvraine’s death would be the message
. She was to face Lelith Hesperax, deadliest warrior of the Crucibael, leader of the Cult of Strife, the blade that had ended a thousand lives and more on the sands of combat, and ten times that number on battlefields beyond the Dark City.

  Yvraine had not been ready to surrender meekly to this fate, but though she had risen quickly in notoriety against skilled foes, she was chillingly aware that her opponent had been fighting in the wych-style for ten, perhaps twenty times as long as she had. The attentions of the best haemonculi ensured that the old adage of youthful vigour versus aged experience was weighted firmly in the favour of the latter. Yvraine had studied holos of Lelith in action and saw no weakness to exploit, no slowness of limb or thought despite her long-serving history to the Cult of Strife.

  Even more acutely, she felt again the knife-blow through her chest that had nicked her heart. A fool would have thought it fortunate that Yvraine had lived past that moment; that Lelith’s blow might easily have ended her there and then had it penetrated deeper. Yvraine knew better. She had watched with dimming vision Lelith walk contemptuously away, having dealt Yvraine a blow with such precision that it was assuredly fatal, but not for some time. The Queen of Knives had not deigned to remain for her vanquished foe’s demise.

  Coldness swept through the Opener of the Seventh Way as she relived the moment. Death’s grasp crawled up her legs, along her spine, its clammy touch robbing her of sensation, slowing her movements. Though Lelith had moved on, there was no shortage of foes that wished to end the life of the Daughter of Shadows. Every dagger thrust Yvraine made, every parry with her war fan, had forced her heart to pump a little faster and brought her demise a fraction closer. Her bursts of frantic, devastating anger had become infamous, and her rage had kept Lelith Hesperax at bay for a time, but the canny wych-fighter had turned that anger against Yvraine. Lelith’s last blow had been a telling insult, a taunt to Yvraine to lay down and surrender to fate that she might live longer. But Yvraine could not. She had to fight – her anger would let her do nothing else.