Ghost Warrior, page 25
Her toe caught on something and she finally looked down.
Her father’s face, absent the tip of his nose and an ear, looked back up at her, a crack running from chin to the corner of his right eye.
In the next instant she saw him whole and alive, and standing before her, smiling, offering kinship and hope and comfort.
‘A lie,’ she murmured.
She did not believe her own testimony. It was too visceral to ignore.
But the face was not her father’s. It was Sydari’s. And he… What had he been? A distant uncle? A severed cousin?
She mused on the detail for the moment, seeking distraction from the truth.
He had been family. They had been of the House of Arienal.
And she had doomed them all.
She stooped to pick up the broken head but stopped, her tears falling onto the sculpted eyes, making them glisten as if also crying. Iyanna’s fingers traced the curve of the jaw, remembering.
Iyanna felt a presence behind her, burning, close, familiar. In the droplet of a tear she saw the distorted reflection of her visitor. A figure of shadow with fire for eyes, of smoke given form.
‘You have finally come back for me, Kaela Mensha Khaine,’ she said, closing her eyes. ‘You let none walk free from your grasp.’
Feel no guilt. They died not at your demand, Iyanna, said her companion, his voice soft and compelling. Heed my words. Blood is not upon your hands, they are clean. This was fated, a doom set into motion, before we lived.
‘They are all dead, Althenian,’ Iyanna replied, rising, opening her eyes, the emptiness replaced with a mournfulness so deep it threatened to drown her.
Yes they are. They have been taken from you. Yet you live.
The simple admission was more powerful than any platitude or sympathy. It was acceptance, and from it came strength and from the strength came a strange comfort. Not hope. Hope was for poets. Simply determination, resolution that even without hope not all was lost.
All are dead, but it is not the end yet, Iyanna. We fight on. We are the ghost warriors. Ynnari.
CHAPTER 29
THE GATE OF MALICE
They stood before the Gate of Malice and there was not one, not even the dead, that did not feel the hot wrath of the war god flowing from its metal. The runes of Kaela Mensha Khaine wrought into the crossed blades of the gateway flickered with fire and the air between writhed as though tortured by heat. The smell of blood hung about the dire portal, the black marble step upon which it sat veined with crimson.
Its glow fell upon the featureless domes of the wraithnobles, the Houseless such as Althenian arrayed behind them. In the corridors and chambers around the Hall of Gates the hosts of the Ghost Halls waited for the command of their leaders, as did the Ynnari army hanging on the word of Yvraine. Only absent were Iyasta and Telathaus. With all hope of alliance with Zaisuthra destroyed, the twins had excused themselves of any further involvement in ‘this sorry mess’ and had returned to their ship with the handful of survivors from their escort. Their presence was not missed by the Ynnari.
The Opener of the Seventh Way stood before its bleak majesty, the Sword of Sorrows bared, her war fan held across her face, shielding her mouth from the wash of vapours that coiled from the energised portal.
‘It fed on their deaths,’ said Yvraine, meaning the Zaisuthrans.
‘No, Ynnead took that power,’ countered the Visarch. ‘Death holds no lure for Khaine, only the taking of life. The soul departed is the ephemera of our lives cast aside, and that goes to Ynnead. The Bloody-Handed, he is more desiring of the act, the moment when mortality is cleaved in half, when violence breaks the bond.’
‘Bloodshed, then,’ said Iyanna. The gate let out a low moan, echoing the words from her, indistinct but perverted with cruel intonation.
‘War, murder, it matters not,’ said the Visarch. ‘The slaughter we have perpetrated must echo loud through the halls of time.’
‘Not least that perversion of Khaine’s Avatar that died by your hand, sister,’ said Yvraine.
She had looked upon the grotesque corpse of the Patriarch and marvelled at the fusion of alien beast and metaphysical demigod. The fusing of immaterial and material made her wonder more about herself, about the energies she channelled when she summoned the Yncarne. She had brought forth the manifestation of the Whispering God, drawn the Yncarne from the place between worlds where it had been born among the death throes of Biel-tan, there had been a moment when she had not known any barrier. She and the Yncarne had been one.
Was it possible that the fate that awaited her in the blooding of the five croneswords was not simply the wakening of Ynnead but her own personal transformation into something beyond mortal? Not simply Reborn, but Ascended?
It was like Yvraine to think of such a grandiose becoming, to accept the death of her species yet expect remarkable destiny for herself. But it was not purely selfishness that drove these thoughts. Time and again it seemed that since her awakening in the Crucibael Yvraine had been destined for something more than to share the quiet death of her people. She was an emissary of a god, after all.
‘Life and death.’ Runes cut the air with a hiss as the wraithseer Kelmon Firesight moved from the group of tall constructs. ‘Beyond, if myth is to be believed, lies the Well of the Dead. Who can say what that name foretells?’
‘A seer, maybe?’ muttered the Visarch.
Kelmon turned on Yvraine’s champion, runes spinning faster, swirling around the warrior and seer, binding them together in a blur of flashing psychic trails.
‘I cannot look past death, foolish creature,’ Kelmon said slowly. ‘Nor into the depths of legend. If we are to believe what has been written, we step through to the burial place of Eldanesh. More than that, to the site where bloody Khaine struck him down. It is not simply a resting place, it is a nexus of fate.’
He moved to Yvraine, his shadow chilling after the prickling heat from the Gate of Malice. A single rune, of the Blood God, swayed back and forth in front of the Opener of the Seventh Way, hypnotising as it spun about its axis, alternating colours of bone, shadow and blood.
‘Ynnead controls power over the dead. I must ask again the question raised by the Soulseeker, Lord Aethon. What do you hope to find on the other side? If you would resurrect the ancient dead, think carefully on what you bring back. If Ynnead should rise, would other gods return?’ Kelmon waved a broad hand, indicating the other gates arrayed about the group. His hand came to rest, a finger pointing up to the rune of Khaine that smoldered in the ceiling above them. ‘Not all gods wish our people well.’
‘A sword,’ said Yvraine. ‘I seek the cronesword. Nothing more.’
Kelmon withdrew, leaving Yvraine stood before the baleful portal once more. She took a step, and then another, heart beating faster and faster as she approached.
She was three strides from the base of the gate when the Visarch intercepted her. He shook his head.
‘You are not stepping through first,’ he declared. ‘We have no idea what lies beyond, if anything at all.’
‘I would ask no other to do what I would not,’ said Yvraine. ‘Stand aside, my champion.’
The Visarch did not move. Alorynis raked claws across the metal of his greaves, the screech of their touch jarring the nerves of all present that drew breath.
‘Together, if you must,’ conceded Yvraine, indicating for the Visarch to step to her side. Behind, the surviving Bloodbrides and Coiled Blade moved closer, joined by the blue-armoured warriors of the Silvered Blade Dire Avengers. The soulbound.
Blades held before them, they stepped onto the plinth and, together, passed into the hot wind that sighed around them in greeting.
Transition was near-instant, the Visarch realised. There was no traversing of the webway, simply stepping from Zaisuthra to… this place. He had expected something more, perhaps a ring of fire, a clarion of harsh trumpets. For a journey of such import it struck him as underwhelming.
The heat from the gate did not dissipate as the Visarch felt his tread sink into soft sand. Everything was harsh, from the bright red sky to the dryness of the air, to the shrill keen of a sharp wind across his armour.
A faltering breath reminded him of Yvraine at his side. The Opener of the Seventh Way held her fan across her face, deflecting the particles of sand carried in the air – particles he had not even noticed, enclosed within his warsuit.
He took another step, the sketch of sand shifting beneath his tread. The Visarch’s eyes adjusted to the glare and he made out dunes of dark red. The desert seemed endless, stretching in every direction to the horizon, where it bled into the sky with barely a change in hue.
The sound of footsteps caused him to move forwards, to make room for those coming through the portal behind. A shadow fell over him and he did not need to turn to recognise the shape of Althenian, the far smaller shadow of Iyanna at the wraithlord’s side.
More came, the soulbound bodyguard of Yvraine. Their arrival through the heat shimmer was like a mirage taking shape, first a vague movement that then became an outline, which eventually resolved into solid figures, as though emerging from a great distance though the gate was no more than a dozen paces away.
A murmur of discontent and several shouts of dismay escaped the throats of the hardened fighters, even those of his former shrine on Biel-tan and the battle-sworn of the incubi. Taken aback, the Visarch took a moment to realise that they were staring almost directly up.
He turned then, to see the gate behind. From this side it was a black obelisk, easily ten times his height, tapering to a point far above his head. There was not a mark upon its surface, only the telltale glimmer of the heat wash to betray the portalway.
He continued to follow their gazes and saw the reason for their dismay.
Directly above the monolith hung a red moon, its surface pocked with craters, edged by a halo of what seemed to be dark flame. Its presence loomed on the thought as well as in the eye, a weight that settled upon the minds of all that looked upon it, oppressive and unkind. It sucked in all vitality, leeching the energy from the sky.
Looking too long upon the sight inverted one’s perception, so that instead of looking up at an object against the sky, one was looking down into terrible depths.
The Well of the Dead.
The Visarch trembled to look upon it, despite all thought and experience to the contrary. It was beyond reasoning, beyond training and any appeal to willpower or discipline. It was raw fear. Jaw clenched, he tightened his grip on the hilt of his sword and felt sweat run down his cheek – though it may have been a tear.
Not any red moon this, but the Red Moon of darkest legend; the orb stained by the blood of Eldanesh. Throughout aeldari culture it had been an ill sign, a portent of disaster even to those in Commorragh and the outcasts, a symbol so ingrained in the spirit-memory of his people that even reference in poetry or representation in art brought a cold shudder.
He heard a gasp and turned just in time to see Iyanna almost faint. Althenian caught the seer, stooping swiftly despite his immense frame.
‘Poor sister,’ said Yvraine, and the Visarch recalled how the spiritseer’s family had been wiped out during the ill-named Battle of the Red Moon – not just her kin but the spirits of her ancestors eradicated.
More and more Ynnari marched out of the heat haze, directed by Meliniel, dispersed to defensive positions around the gate-stone. Their disquiet was evident, not just in their whispers and glances, but the hunch of shoulders, the manner in which they held themselves taut.
Meliniel moved to join Yvraine as the air about the monolith churned darkly, stuttering almost, a shadow played about the sands that had not been there before. Hands moved to weapons and all eyes were drawn to the sputtering web portal.
They relaxed as more of the Ghost Hall cohort emerged. Their wraithbone bodies shimmered in the transition.
Gasps of surprise greeted them, as the dead-that-walk emerged from the shimmer, clad in forms not unlike those they had worn when alive, but rendered from psychoplastic. They were not alive, not flesh, but less like the abstract mannequins that had been fashioned for them by the bonesingers, into which shells Yvraine’s power had now permanently bound their souls.
Faces, the sketchiest of expressions, danced across domed heads, and limbs clad in a weave of strange skin were raised, fingers clad in not-flesh wriggled in surprise before eyes that were nothing more than deeper shadows upon the curve of their artificial skulls.
Surprised whispers, exclamations of shock and joy sounded from the dead legion, given strange voice by their transformation. They looked about, blessed with physical senses, many had not seen or heard as a mortal for several lifetimes.
Through them strode the wraithnobles, banners fluttering at their backs, pennants on their gun barrels and hanging from the hilts of swords. Sharing the celebration of their companies.
Kelmon emerged, and like Althenian, Lady Faenorith, Faristar Danceblade and the other greater spirits, their bodies were unchanged. Kelmon quickly marshalled the excited wraith companies, urging their leaders to maintain some semblance of order despite this unusual turn of events.
Discipline had to be quickly restored, for in transforming to an approximation of mortality the frailties of the living had also been returned. At Kelmon’s direction the assembled Houses formed cohorts and squads, mingled with the forces of Meliniel to guard against whatever other unknowns might arise from the remarkable world in which they found themselves.
‘I cannot believe it,’ said Yvraine, kneeling to run her slender fingers through the fine blood-red grains by her feet. ‘Can it be true, that we walk upon Firstworld?’
‘A version of it,’ Kelmon replied. ‘A facsimile, perhaps, or the world itself transported into a different sphere. The world was lost during the War in Heaven, antiquity even before the Fall. Given the means by which we came here, it was moved, or fell, into the webway when the gods clashed.’
‘Or fell further.’ This disturbing conjecture came from Idraesci Dreamspear, who stepped lightly across the sands, his troupe close upon his heel. ‘There are places outside the webway where lost worlds might settle.’
‘The Eye of Terror,’ said Yvraine darkly, standing up. She scattered the sand from her palm and gazed about with narrowed eyes. ‘I had not thought, or I might have delayed further our entry. It is fresh in the memory that we barely escaped our last journey into the Womb of Destruction.’
‘Nothing is certain but the fading of glory and the treachery of our hearts,’ said Dreamspear, clasping a hand to his breast as though struck through.
‘Where trod the gods themselves, and the first dominions began,’ said Iyanna, who had recovered her composure after the shock of seeing the baleful red moon.
‘Where it ended,’ laughed Dreamspear. He pirouetted, a flamboyant wave of the hand encompassed the desolation around them. ‘The first time, at the least. You know, we are a sorry people, so long of history yet short of memory. To lose one empire might be considered unfortunate. To lose two… carelessness.’
‘An absence,’ said Althenian, even his deep voice lost in the vastness, his spirit-tone dissipated into the endless wastes. ‘That which we came here to find, where is it? The tomb hall, of Khaine’s first murdered victim, Eldanesh?’
‘I do not desire to trek across an entire world seeking it,’ said Yvraine. ‘We should bring through transports and…’
She trailed off as an almost imperceptible shudder quivered through the dunes.
The Visarch felt something else, a brightness behind the eyes, the sudden quickening of the pulse. It was a sensation he remembered well, when in the past he had donned his war mask in the shrine of the Silvered Blade, or faced a challenger in the Chambers of the incubi.
His nostrils filled with the scent of blood – an intoxicating aroma that reminded him of so many battles. The recollection flashed through him, a dizzying montage of slaughter and vitality, of life and death a blade’s width apart, of dancing along the precipice between joy and despair.
The souls within his armour – within him – writhed and contorted at the memories, sharing their own deaths and triumphs until the ground whirled about and the crash of battle rang in his ears.
Through the battle haze he saw the sands ahead piling up into an immense mound, and then spilling away, revealing pale stone pitted by an age of erosion. From the depths of the sands the edifice surfaced, ruddy drifts cascading between pillars and sliding from the shallow slope of many-tiered roofs.
A fey light played about the domed summit of the building, burning blue against the scarlet sky, forming the shape of a rune in the air. A rune that all recognised immediately.
The sigil of Eldanesh, the First, Father of the Aeldari.
CHAPTER 30
THE WELL OF THE DEAD
Yvraine grinned as the tomb revealed itself, three storeys of windowless walls surrounded by a columned plaza, ringed about by shallow steps. A doorway, square and unadorned, broke the smoothness of the lower wall, beneath a lintel inscribed with a language so old that none present could read it.
Her heart soared at the thought of being so close to her prize. She could feel something powerful within, a force beyond nature harboured within plain-cut stone. The sand underfoot fell away, revealing a paved road between the monolith of the portal and the flight of steps leading up to the tomb, barely three hundred paces between them.
The horizon had changed also. No longer desert unending, their environs had resolved into dark rock, split and sundered many times by crevasses from which the flickering light of flame issued. Smog bubbled forth from tar pits heated by the raging earth below and towering mountains with flame-ripped summits belched forth sulphurous billows of darkness. The bright trails of lava down their flanks wrote battleverses in the ancient runes of the aeldari, each flow an ode to conquest, a sonnet to the love of slaying.
