Prince Maesa, page 31
He was not unworthy in essence. But because he doubted himself, he would prove unworthy… because the worthy never doubted themselves or their worthiness.
Did they?
A paradox. And a maddening one, at that.
Ferendir glanced upwards. Serath had reached the rocky ledge above. There he stood, just beyond the ragged edge of the sere alpine grass that faded against the mountain’s stony shoulder, his silent impatience subtly palpable even though his face was as stony and unreadable as a sheer cliff. Ferendir forced himself to move swiftly over the last uneven span of ground between where he climbed and where his master waited. He scrambled over the ledge and took his place beside Serath, Desriel following quickly behind.
They stood upon a broad, bare rocky shoulder that receded from the steep slope towards a more sheer, vertiginous cliff wall a few more yards behind them. For a moment, the three aelves – masters and student – stood silent and exultant, the rising cliff at their backs, the sparsely forested slope falling away sharply beneath them. They drank in the stunning vista that sprawled before them: widely scattered spruce and pines, sickly and stunted beside bent, curling birch and giving way to bare alpine rock; the thicker, darker forest lying like a green blanket on the slopes and hills beneath, a broad green valley bounded by the declining spurs of the mountain’s roots, tumbling away below until the land once more rose towards the peak of a neighbouring mountain some great distance away. In the great gulf separating them from the nearest peak, they saw raptors whirling lazily on the thermals rising out of the valley below and heard the echoing screech of a bird of prey carried on the breeze to their waiting ears.
Ferendir studied the sublime scene, awed and reassured by it in the same breath. Birds in flight. Balmy, upswept breezes intertwined with fierce, chill gusts from the heights, the whole of the world before him burnished with gentle golden Hyshian sunlight. Far away, on the far side of the ridgeline to the east of them, lay their home temple nestled warmly into a beautiful, shady dell on a misty promontory beside falling waters. They had set out from that place mere hours before, but now it felt a world away.
Desriel dared a subtle, satisfied smile as he studied the view.
‘Ennobling,’ he said.
‘It’s beautiful,’ Ferendir agreed.
‘It simply is,’ Serath added flatly. ‘It can be nothing else. Come, we’re wasting light.’
He turned from the ledge and began a steady march up the shallow stony slope towards the cliff face. Now that they were out of the forest, Ferendir could finally see their destination – a high, narrow cleft in the slate-grey stone of the mountainside, barely visible because the pattern of light and shadow upon the cliff face painted the sharp rent in a sort of camouflage. Somewhere, deep within the mountainside, his fate awaited him.
Ferendir looked to Desriel. His master only swept his arm sideways, as if to say, After you, supplicant.
Ferendir fell in behind Serath, following his stone-faced master up the sweep of the grassy sward towards the beckoning shadows of the canyon.
The cleft gave the appearance of allowing only narrow passage, but as they entered, it broadened beyond. Though the canyon floor was wide enough for three Dawnriders to gallop abreast, it was nonetheless strewn with fallen boulders of various sizes and mounds of rocky scree deposited by old wash-outs and landslides. A shallow, snaking brook burbled along the canyon floor, under large rocks and over smaller ones, really little more than a steady seep. The walls of the canyon climbed high on either side, angling outwards to a certain height then ominously contracting inwards again, looming precipitously, as though threatening at any moment to collapse. Because the canyon was so narrow and uneven, little light penetrated. As a consequence, the air was still and cool, the silence oppressive. Worse, the meandering path of the canyon meant that Ferendir could not see more than a few dozen yards ahead of him. However deep their destination lay in this accursed place, it was not readily visible.
Ferendir forced himself to stand still, performing a sort of silent appraisal of the place where he now found himself. The presence of all that scree and the absence of plant life suggested it was a young formation, but a hundred thousand geological epochs were clearly visible in the layered regolith.
Serath led the way, picking out the most direct path along the canyon floor, over mounds of fallen scree and past boulders that might have hindered the progress of lesser beings without such nimble feet. Here and there, the little stream would find deeper depressions in the rock and seem to flow for a few metres as a proper body of water before the stone beneath it once more shallowed and it turned thereafter into a vaguely running wet stain along the canyon floor.
At intervals, sharp winds cut through the narrow alley, compressed and solidified by the rock walls on either side of them. Ferendir clearly heard the voice of the mountain itself in that wind, the narrow breezeway giving the cool, driving air a voice of its own, one moment a moan, the next a plaintive sigh. It seemed a strange road they now traversed – working their way at a slow, steady pace towards the mountain’s interior via such a strangled aperture – but Ferendir knew better than to question the route.
His place was not to question. Only to follow.
‘I would be remiss,’ Serath suddenly said, marching ahead of him, ‘if I did not ask you, for a final time, if you feel equal to the trial before you, young supplicant.’
Serath was uncanny. Even wholly unemotional and speaking in even tones, he managed to impart a vague sense of dismissal and condescension. Ferendir fought the urge to be overwhelmed by shame or anger in answer. He only sought the appropriate response to the prompt within himself.
‘The mountain has called to me, master,’ Ferendir said, ‘bid me come to the place of trial and submit myself to its reckoning. Such has been my only aspiration for all my years of education and service. So called, I come.’
‘A worthy outlook,’ Desriel said from behind him. Somewhere, a small stone fell from a great height. It rattled down the throat of the cleft, clicking and clacking in noisy echoes as it did so. ‘I predict success for you, supplicant. Not only in today’s trial but in the years yet before you.’
‘Predict nothing,’ Serath said. Though cutting a path over uneven ground, ground frequently littered with obstacles and obstructions, he yet maintained a swift pace that even young Ferendir struggled to match.
‘Weigh probabilities and analyse all possible outcomes to anticipate that which is most likely,’ Serath continued. ‘Prediction is a fool’s game – the province of non-aelven scryers and fortune tellers. Analysis requires a combination of both knowledge and discernment – clear senses assessing hard facts, nothing more.’
‘Just so,’ Desriel said. ‘And yet, there is a diaphanous membrane connecting the two, would you not agree? A web, if you will–’
‘A web?’ Serath asked.
‘Between knowledge, discernment and rational analysis lies the web of intuition, Serath – the understanding that leads to true seeing, true knowing, even when what is seen and known defies what is rational.’
Serath was silent for a long time, pressing on, never looking back. He skipped up a rockfall and over a rocky incline in order to cut a track past a massive boulder blocking their primary path. Finally, just as he was about to disappear on the far side of the rockfall: ‘I would call your intuition a false and personalised mask placed upon rational analysis. It is not a web at all, but a line, moving from each object to the next in an unbroken pathway of causation and effect. Nothing more.’
‘We shall agree to disagree,’ Desriel said. ‘As we so often do.’ Ferendir thought he heard a smile in his master’s voice, though he wagered that if he dared look back at him he would see no such smile.
Serath said nothing in answer.
As Ferendir mounted the same rockfall his master had just clambered over, a cold, stiff mistral whipped suddenly, mercilessly, through the narrow rocky pass. It raised a terrible howling sound in Ferendir’s ears and assailed him for an unnerving instant with a bone-numbing cold that made him shudder reflexively and halt his forward progress. He smelled something on that wind, as well… something foul and unnatural. Though he could not immediately identify that scent, the subtle, wind-borne clue yet seemed to stir Ferendir’s whole body to nervous excitement. The beating of his heart increased unbidden, and he sensed a tautness and tremulous energy shooting through all his limbs from the centre of his being to his extremities.
Farther ahead of him, on the canyon floor, Serath stood rigid, his lithe, muscular body squared and ready for violence. His master’s head was tilted slightly to the left and his chin subtly raised, as though he were listening for something and sniffing the scents on the wind the same instant.
Ferendir heard the subtle crunch of Desriel’s soft leather boots on the loose shale of the rockfall. Heaving up beside his supplicant, Desriel drew a deep breath of his own, then slowly blew it out.
Ferendir dared a look at his master. Desriel’s eyes were slowly rolling about in their sockets, studying the narrow confines of the meandering canyon as though in search of something hiding among the ledges and precipitous overhangs.
‘Master?’ Ferendir asked.
Desriel said nothing. He only nodded forward, towards Serath.
Ferendir looked to his other master. Serath stared back at them, gaze steady but narrowed. Clearly he sensed something of import ahead… something unexpected.
‘Slowly,’ Serath said, then led the way. As he progressed, he drew his sunsteel longhammer from where it bumped and jostled, strapped across his back. The brutal spike protruding opposite its flat, terrible head caught the dim grey light in the canyon and glinted.
Desriel had drawn his hammer as well. Ferendir, wishing at that moment that his trial was already passed and that he held such a weapon in his own hands, tightened his grip on his yew staff. Part of him wanted to ask what that strange, unnatural smell portended – what now had both his masters so tense, so on edge – but he knew better.
Follow their lead, he reminded himself. Their actions tell you all you need to know at the moment. Waste no words on idle conjecture…
They pressed on.
In short order, the canyon took a sudden bend to the left. Just past that bend, they emerged from the narrow throat of the canyon into its broad, boxy terminus. The space before them, though bounded by the stony cliff walls, was wide open, large enough to accommodate a great phalanx of Auralan sentinels, forty wide and two hundred deep. At the far end of the box canyon, meltwater from the mountain peaks above trickled or fanned down along the sheer rock walls, collecting in a wide, shallow pool at the back end of the gulf and flowing forth out of the canyon as that persistent trickle that meandered along the path they’d just threaded. High above, where the cliffs receded, mists hung low and obscured their view of the reclining mountainside and snowy peaks that loomed far above them. Streamers of dripping moss and sagging saplings drooped precipitously from the canyon walls, the only signs of life in the otherwise damp and desolate slag heap.
Serath stood at the mouth of the gorge, surveying the canyon before them, still on edge about something. Ferendir sniffed, but could no longer detect that foulness that had assailed him when they’d been mounting the rockfall just moments before. Now, there was only the fresh, mineral scent of the fanning waters from the mountain heights, the vague, distant perfume of pines and loamy soil mingling with the pure, strong scent of wet stone and damp gravel.
Finally, Serath seemed satisfied. He jerked his head sideways, in the direction of the waterfall.
‘This way,’ he said, and led them up the slow, easy incline towards the great pool of dark water at the canyon’s far end.
As they went, Ferendir studied the bare grey landscape surrounding them. He could see no wildlife, but he still sensed it – small, furtive souls threading the dark shadows under the looming rock, tiny claws scrabbling eagerly along narrow cliff ledges, birds making nests in the cracks and crevices far above them, staring down with dark, implacable eyes, wondering just what these trespassing strangers might be doing in their normally quiet, out of the way canyon home. In short, everywhere, life – teeming, edgy, eager.
‘Is this everyone’s place of trial?’ Ferendir asked as they trudged on. ‘Or only mine? Do all come here to seek the mountain’s anointing, or was this place chosen for me?’
‘Immaterial, in either case,’ Serath said over his shoulder without breaking stride.
‘It’s a fair question,’ Desriel said. ‘The boy only wishes to know the how and the why of what he’s about to undergo. He may, after all, someday have to perform the same function for another young supplicant as we perform today for him.’
‘I have a question of my own, then,’ Serath countered, still not looking back. ‘Tell me, Ferendir – how does this place feel to you?’
‘How does it feel, master?’
‘Must I repeat myself?’
Ferendir frowned. ‘Honestly, it feels… anxious,’ he said after a moment, answering intuitively rather than logically. ‘Restive and on edge, as though expecting something unpleasant in the next instant. Whatever we smelled back in the cleft–’
Serath froze. Turned. He speared Ferendir with a probing gaze. ‘You noted it as well?’
‘Of course,’ Ferendir said, vaguely insulted that his master would think him so obtuse.
‘What about now?’ Serath asked.
Ferendir sniffed the air. For the most part, he could only smell the myriad scents of the canyon: cool water, washed stone, damp moss, sandy soil and the vague, musty under scent of sprouting fungi. But there was something else, wasn’t there? Something foul… bitter…
Something that did not belong.
‘We’re not alone here,’ Ferendir said suddenly.
Serath made no reply. He only looked to Desriel, just over Ferendir’s shoulder.
‘Do you concur, old friend?’ Serath asked.
Ferendir turned to Desriel. His other master nodded slowly, eyes darting about, searching the bright heights and dark shadows of the world around him.
‘I concur, Serath. I suggest we be on our way.’
‘No!’ Ferendir said emphatically, instantly ashamed of his emotional reaction to his master’s order. Desriel and Serath both stared at him, seemingly just as shocked by his outburst as he was.
‘We cannot,’ Ferendir said slowly, quietly. ‘I came here to be tested. I will be tested.’
‘Be careful what you wish for, supplicant,’ Serath said, eyes narrowing again. ‘The realms have a way of giving us the things we most desire in ways we never imagined – ways we are often wholly unprepared for.’
‘He’s right,’ Desriel said. ‘This has nothing to do with your trial, Ferendir. Something is very wrong here. Your trial will be tainted by it. Our only option is to go. Come on.’
Desriel turned to lead the way back along their track… but their retreat was already blocked.
Three strange figures stood in a broad skirmish line, obstructing the entrance to the narrow gorge that allowed them access to the canyon.
Ferendir stared, trying to make sense of what he saw, or thought he saw. Their forms were vaguely anthropoid – two arms, two legs, heads and torsos – and yet they were wrong, all wrong. He saw pale skin; black, unnatural eyes; curled flesh and pins and wires; bright, colourful silks stained by soil and sweat and the damp air; the glint of bright jewels and baubles on the clothing and the wearers themselves.
And yet, for all their apparent humanity there was something beastly about the trio. Hands that were not hands. Feet that more resembled hooves. A swishing tail. Faces, twisted and transformed by some blasphemous art that Ferendir could not identify, let alone imagine the ultimate purpose of.
Serath moved up beside Ferendir, shoulder to shoulder with Desriel.
‘Get behind us, supplicant,’ Serath whispered.
The three figures at the mouth of the canyon advanced slowly, casually. The closer they drew, the more terrible they seemed to Ferendir. The young aelf was overwhelmed by a sense of dread and terrible wonder.
‘Well, now,’ one of the creatures drawled, ‘what have we here?’
Movement. Boot heels and hooves on bare stone. Ferendir and his masters turned, surveying the great gorge behind them.
There were more than just the three blocking their egress.
They were surrounded.
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A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
First published in Great Britain in 2022.
This eBook edition published in 2022 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.
Represented by: Games Workshop Limited – Irish branch, Unit 3, Lower Liffey Street, Dublin 1, D01 K199, Ireland.
Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Billy Christian.
Prince Maesa © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2022. Prince Maesa, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, Warhammer, Warhammer Age of Sigmar, Stormcast Eternals, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
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ISBN: 978-1-78999-856-6
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