The Masque of Vyle (3 page)

‘Then who attacked them and why?’ Ashanthourus demanded, having recovered some of his poise. ‘They could have posed no threat.’

‘Ah well, there is the quandary. From what I’ve seen they had barred all of the portals into the webway. They probably never even knew that others had survived the Fall and feared an influx of daemons or some such – not without good cause it must be said. Anyway, they had sealed themselves away and no one knew of their existence. I haven’t even been able to find anything that indicates the name of this craftworld.’

‘How did you find it in the first place, Motley?’ Cylia asked softly.

‘Why, by following my nose, your majesty, as I always do,’ Motley said, while ostentatiously tapping the offending organ with one finger. ‘I literally stumbled across it and soon realised... well, I recognised what is by now obvious to you all. Forgive me for not greeting you at the portal but I felt you needed to come in further to see it for yourselves before making any decisions.’

‘Focus, fool, your unnecessary prattling begins to offend my ears,’ said Ashanthourus solemnly. ‘Who were the attackers? What was their purpose?’

‘I am coming to that as rapidly as I can, your majesty, it is not a simple matter to explain and in truth I am not in possession of all of the facts. However, I can surmise from the few I hav–’

Ashanthourus clapped his hands to his mask in a show of frustration before jabbing one finger at Motley and crying out in a thunderous voice: ‘Who. Did. This? Answer!’

Motley became still and silent, hanging his head in shame. ‘That, I do not know,’ he admitted reluctantly.

Hradhiri Ra laughed mordantly. Ashanthourus threw up his hands and stalked away, his footfalls scattering rainbow clouds from the dust. After a moment Cylia came forwards, a sliver of her mirrored mask peeping from beneath her cowl like a newly risen moon.

‘What
can
you tell us, Motley?’ she said gently. ‘Ashanthourus did not tell you to stop.’

Motley smiled and continued as if there had been no interruption. ‘I can surmise from the few facts I have found that the surviving inhabitants, for reasons we may never know, did in fact unbar several portals into the webway. They must have been desperate, I think, to have done so after so many millennia alone in the dark, or perhaps they had other reasons we cannot know.’

Ashanthourus was standing away from the rest of them, but the arch of his back and the angle of his head showed he was listening despite himself. Motley chattered on, the words spilling out of him in a babbling stream.

‘So they unbarred the portals and daemons didn’t come swarming in and so they must have thought they might get to live on after all. They must have been happy at that moment and happier still when they found out that their own race, the eldar race, had survived the Fall. Somebody found them, you see, pretty quickly after they opened their craftworld. As quick as I was getting here, somebody was a good deal quicker. They must have been waiting and watching for a portal to open that hadn’t opened in millennia so they got here… first. I don’t really have to tell you who I think it was do I?’

‘Yes!’ chorused Cylia and Hradhiri Ra in frustration. Motley sighed volubly, seemingly unwilling to make accusations yet unable to deny the evidence of his own eyes.

‘I believe they had visitors from Commorragh,’ Motley said after a moment. ‘It was someone from the eternal city that found them first.’

‘It is obvious that is what we are meant to think,’ Ashanthourus threw dismissively over his shoulder. ‘The calling cards left behind as traps imply as much.’

‘I thought that too, at first.’ Motley shrugged. ‘Too obvious, but then I looked again and wondered why should renegades or craftworlders go to such trouble to do such a thing? Look around you… this place has been completely stripped of its spirit stones and wraithbone. The craftworlds would never take them – to even conceive of such a thing would be the blackest crime imaginable to them. Most renegades would not think to value them nor stoop so low as to steal them. No, only in Commorragh are such things as captive souls and stolen wraithbone given a blood-price so high that the kabals would commit almost any outrage to gain more.’

‘None of that changes what Ashanthourus has said,’ Cylia sighed. ‘A seer council may have determined that orchestrating this outrage will drive the craftworlds to unite and assail Commorragh. A single renegade with a grudge may have unleashed all of this as horrible revenge for some forgotten slight…’

‘Yes, to all of these things – yes!’ Motley crowed with delight. ‘I would much rather see this as some vile plot than a Commorrite kabal doing what comes naturally to them. That’s simply too dreary and depressing. I merely answered your question with my own beliefs. With your help perhaps we can prove me wrong, hmm?’

Silence fell across the scene. Lo’tos remained squatting with his mask reset to a flashing kaleidoscope of images. Cylia and Hradhiri Ra stood before the slight figure of Motley, looking like a bony image of Death and a waif-like revenant menacing a child. Ashanthourus stood to one side appearing most kingly in his hauteur. Nonetheless, as final arbiter of the activities of his troupe it was the High Avatar who finally broke the silence.

‘So then what would you have me do?’ Ashanthourus said.

‘As I explained, I don’t really know who did this or why.’ Motley smiled. ‘But I do have one very pertinent piece of knowledge that can, in its turn, resolve all the other questions.’

‘And what would that be, Motley?’ Hradhiri Ra whispered. ‘And why have you waited this long to share it?’

‘Because of your insistence in questioning me about who did it,’ said Motley with an impossibly infuriating grin. ‘You pushed entirely beyond what I knew to what I surmised. I can scarcely be held responsible for that now, can I?’

Hradhiri Ra tilted his skull mask in response. ‘I recall now why we strive to cross paths irregularly,’ the Death Jester whispered. ‘Pray forgive my impatience and continue.’

‘Just so, as I was saying. I don’t know who they were or why they did this, but…’

All four of the troupe principals looked at the slight figure of Motley with ill-concealed impatience as he once again paused for dramatic effect.

‘…I know where they went.’

‘This is the
one,’ Motley said a sly grin. ‘I entered through that portal over there and when I examined the others this was the only other one that had been activated in the recent past.’

The sloping wall before them held a dozen leaf-shaped warpgates, none of them larger than an ordinary doorway.

‘It will not be hard to trace such a cavalcade of woe through the webway when we know their starting point,’ Hradhiri Ra whispered. ‘The stolen spirit stones they carried will have been wailing every step of the way.’

They closed down all of the craftworld’s portals and locked them, save the one that Motley showed them. Cylia located the craftworld’s emergency control circuits and brought them flickering back to life for long enough to set a new course for the vast ship. They had debated long on what to do, shouted that the sacrifice of such a vessel even in its crippled state was a criminal loss to the race as a whole.

Ultimately they could only agree that the craftworld could not be found in its current condition. Cylia set its course to return it to the depths of the void and they departed from it with many a backward glance. Even stripped of its wraithbone and spirit stones the craftworld had a lingering presence. It was almost as if an indefinable sense of life and consciousness clung to it from the multitudes that had lived out their lives within its walls. More accurately it was possible to sense the slow, incremental passing of something that had once been vast and incredible. The great vessel was a titanic corpse that could only hint at how much greater the complete living entity had been.

They turned their backs on the dark place as it sank into the multi-hued depths of the void and they took to the webway once more. A single thread of probability led them through time and space to a realm outside both the void and the material universe: a dewdrop of reality trembling on the inter-dimensional strands of the webway, a bubble of matter like and yet unlike many others created out of the eternally churning froth of warp space.

Chapter Two

The Sable Marches

As he emerged
from the portal, Archon Kassais eyed the turbulent, storm-wracked skies of the Sable Marches with undisguised disdain. Far out to sea he could glimpse long-bodied grav-craft dumping something into the iron-grey waters, which was odd as he’d thought the whole point of this place was to take things out of the water rather than put them back in.

Kassais shrugged mentally. He had been a visitor to a hundred different sub-realms in his time. None of them ever came close to the dark grandeur of Commorragh, the eternal city, with its glittering spires and endless, twisting streets. Some, it had to be granted, evinced a sort of primordial energy and primitive squalor that sharpened the appetite and roused the more base instincts to a pleasing pitch. He already knew that the Sable Marches was not destined to be one of these places.

Kassais knew the Sable Marches had squalor in plentiful quantities but beyond that it was highly unlikely that they had anything else to offer by way of diversion. This was mostly because for unfathomable reasons its creators had chosen to fill up most of the realm with salt water when they shaped it. The Marches were still known as a wild realm, one so primordial and fierce that it had been virtually abandoned soon after its inception. This particular realm had only been formally recolonised much, much later, after many centuries of neglect. Kassais consoled himself that at least he would not be staying in the benighted sub-realm for too long. A quick visit and then away to more agreeable realms.

Archon Kassais and his entourage had entered the realm through a moss-grown arch close to the water’s edge. Rutted tracks led off left and right along a crumbling rock wall before beginning to twist tortuously back and forth in order to climb overhanging sea-cliffs. Scrofulous-looking hovels clung precariously to the cliffs alongside the track, like accretions of droppings interconnected by flimsy-looking ladders and swaying rope bridges. The air was full of the scent of brine and rotting fish. The crash of waves and the cries of birds assailed Kassais’s ears in a highly objectionable fashion.

They began to wend their way up the track with Kassais’s warriors swiftly pushing ahead to clear the way for his smoothly floating palanquin. The natives endured the warriors’ curses and blows with a studied sullenness that verged on impudence, a fact that irritated Kassais still further. They lined the narrow track on either side to watch the entourage’s progress through lidless, saucer-like eyes. Kassais considered making an example of some of them but reluctantly decided he really couldn’t afford the delay. Vyle was already waiting for him somewhere above and patience was not one of his fellow archon’s stronger suits.

Apparently such islands as the Sable Marches could boast as suitable for habitation were all much like this one. Their interiors were overgrown with gloomy forests and tangled thickets that had become home to stalking leontyrs, ill-tempered grox and other less readily identifiable creatures. The towering cliffs fringing the edges of the islands overlooked permanently storm-tossed seas wherein, it was said, the amphibian natives of the realm plotted the downfall of all land-dwelling invaders.

The atmosphere was certainly tense, Kassais soon came to realise. An almost palpable sense of suppressed rage radiated from the crowd as the procession pushed through them. Kassais felt as if they were moving through a fog bank that retreated only reluctantly. Increasingly the sullen eyes gazed with a murderous intent that was swiftly hooded. Kassais smiled wickedly and hoped they were stupid enough to try something. The twenty kabalite warriors he had brought with him would be sufficient to raze the entire settlement without so much as breaking a sweat.

Kassais glanced upwards from his smoothly travelling palanquin. More saucer-eyed faces lined the buildings and bridges above them. Sooner or later one of them would think they could get away with dropping a pot of excrement on the barbed warriors shoving their way up the track. Either that or someone would simply jostle someone else and knock something down by accident. Kassais didn’t care; any provocation would be enough to put him in a killing mood. He licked his lips in anticipation. He’d simply have to explain to Vyle later why he’d found it necessary to maim and torture a few hundred of his subjects.

A disturbance was occurring above; it would come any moment now. Kassais rested one hand on the ornate hilt of his pistol in readiness.

‘Hold, please!’ an unctuous voice murmured in his ear. The smooth-skinned natives were dropping to their knees like wheat before a scythe and hiding their sullen eyes behind webbed fingers. The whine of grav-engines came to Kassais’s ears and a second later a trio of Venom sky-chariots dropped into position hovering alongside the track. The decks of two of the craft were empty but the central one bore a figure in pleated finery that would have been impressive in the eternal city several millennia ago. Kassais bit back disappointment as he recognised the pinched face of the clothes’ occupant.

‘Yegara! What do you want, toad?’ Kassais called out loudly. His warriors cocked their helmeted heads at the new arrival in a fashion that made it clear they beheld it with contempt.

‘The great and terrible Shrike Lord sent me to find you, Archon Kassais,’ the one called Yegara replied. ‘He grew impatient to hunt so he bid me to find you and bring you to him without delay.’

‘I’ll wager he wasted fewer words on you than that,’ Kassais snorted. He looked around at the grovelling natives. They suddenly seemed to be a lot less interesting to him now. ‘All right, take me to him. I know Vyle can get wickedly grouchy if he gets bored.’

Yegara smiled back ingratiatingly. Kassais could have made his life a lot harder by being awkward. ‘I took the liberty of bringing additional transportation, as you can see, in case you preferred a more… ah… direct route out of the slums.’

‘You can’t keep slaves cowed by flying around above their heads all of the time,’ Kassais complained as he dismounted from his palanquin. ‘You have to teach them respect where they live – down in the dirt.’

‘Oh, a very finely observed point…’ Yegara agreed hesitantly as Kassais gripped the rail of his Venom and vaulted aboard. Ten of Kassais’s warriors efficiently swarmed aboard the other two craft in groups of five.

‘I had thought perhaps you would like one of the… ah… other craft for your own personal use,’ Yegara said a little desperately. Kassais was strongly built and wearing full armour that left only his face bare. In the close confines of the Venom’s deck the elaborate pleats and folds of Yegara’s garment were uncomfortably close to being shredded by the barbs on the shins and elbows of the archon’s baroquely sculpted armour.

Kassais bent closer, forcing Yegara to sway back over the rail to avoid impalement. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ he said into Yegara’s sweating face. ‘Put myself alone on one of your provincial little sky-cycles and simply trust to Lhilitu that I make it to the end of the journey intact. Such a tragic accident might occur, quite unforeseeable I’m sure. Still, I’ll wager your own vehicle will be in peak condition.’

Yegara swallowed uncomfortably and forced a smile as he scrambled to recover his dignity. Commorrites like Kassais always viewed outlanders like Olthanyr Yegara with disdain. Forget that the Yegara clan had ruled the Sable Marches independently for centuries, forget that the bounty of their seas was vital for feeding the innumerable hungry mouths of Commorragh. All that mattered to Kassais was that Yegara was not from the eternal city; he was a peasant, a provincial bumpkin, a barbarian, barely more than a slave.

Kassais was gazing straight into his eyes and caught the spark of defiance kindling there. The Commorrite grinned mirthlessly and leaned closer still, pushing Yegara back further. He appeared to be seriously considering sending Yegara over the railing and to his death on the rocks hundreds of metres below. After a long, agonising moment Kassais relented and dragged Yegara upright with one gauntleted hand.

‘Well, let’s go and find Vyle, then,’ Kassais said, as if nothing had happened. Olthanyr Yegara shivered in his grasp.

Yegara gasped an order to the driver to take them to the keep. The three Venoms rose and slipped smoothly away. Soon the ten of Kassais’s warriors that had been left behind were just a row of ant-like figures inching up the cliff-face. Kassais wondered if the natives would take their chance to attack the reduced number of warriors and regretted that he wouldn’t be there to see it if they did.

A prow-like promontory
rose at one end of the island, a mountain of earth and stone overlooking the forests of the interior. Perched atop it was a rambling pile of local stone that had seemingly been roughly shaped into an array of moss-covered towers, turrets and bastions. Thick, sloping walls girdled three sides of the structure but the side closest to the sea was a
honeycomb of open rooms, half-stairs and corridors that emptied into nothingness. Below them at the foot of the cliff the waves crashed triumphantly over fallen masonry and tirelessly worked to undermine the remaining structure further.

This was Windgrave, the Yegara clan’s ancestral home. The Yegaras had raised this keep in the very first days of settlement, or more strictly speaking they had forced the enslaved natives to do so on their behalf. The creatures had been more numerous then and it was said that the great matriarch B’Qui Yegara had mortared the stones with their flesh and blood. There were keeps on other islands but Windgrave was the first and greatest of them – the Yegaras had bribed, politicked and assassinated for centuries to ensure that it remained so.

Until comparatively recently, Windgrave with its slow, dreaming atmosphere of fattened privilege and endless scheming had encompassed Olthanyr Yegara’s entire world. Now his family home stood festooned with the lurid purple and crimson banners of the Shrike Lord. A thousand gleaming points showed where impalement spikes had been crudely jammed between the ancient stones as proof that the Shrike Lord was not named such out of mere fancy. Most of the unfortunates occupying the spikes were members of the Yegara clan: Olthanyr’s cousins, nephews, nieces, matriarchs and patriarchs. More recently they had been joined by an increasing number of the smooth-skinned natives as their settlements were brought to an understanding that all of their lives had changed forever.

The three Venom sky-chariots swept down towards an open expanse of grassy turf before the keep. Here the encroaching forests had been burned away to leave space for outdoor entertainments and visiting ships. At present it was a hive of activity with liveried servants dashing back and forth, armoured guards patrolling and beastmasters castigating their charges. Archon Kassais perked up a little and paid attention for the first time in the journey.

‘What are those things?’ the Commorrite asked with surprising interest.

Yegara looked at the scene with some confusion; there was nothing unusual to be seen in it as far as he could tell. Unless…

‘You mean the riding beasts?’ said Yegara in a carefully neutral tone. Nonetheless Kassais gave him a withering glare.

‘Yes, of course the riding beasts, you stupid toad,’ Kassais spat in disgust.

‘We call them arcotheurs. They are a local lifeform normally found only in deep water,’ Yegara rushed to explain. ‘If captured young enough they can be raised as you see them here, in an air-dwelling form.’

The arcotheurs were ribbon-like in their body shape, with multiple curved legs dangling beneath. Chitinous plates protected them from tip to tail, starting no bigger than a thumbnail and widening to a double arm-span width around the midriff. The creatures ‘swam’ just above the surface of the grass in a series of undulating ripples moving backwards from their hooked mouthparts.

As they dismounted from the Venoms, Kassais saw that most of the creatures had high-backed saddles strapped just above the mouthparts. A few already had riders in tall plumed helmets, equipped with long, hooked lances. Yegara led him towards the densest knot of creatures and flunkies, the rank smell of the riding beasts assailing his nostrils as he got closer. There, beside a particularly striking specimen that was striped in black and gold, was Vyle.

The Shrike Lord turned a dour look towards Kassais and Yegara as they came up. His dark, swept-back hair and predatory features very much brought to mind his totem, the butcher bird. Archon Vyle’ak Ak Vyle Menshas, also known as the Shrike Lord, recent inheritor of Yegara’s birthright of the Sable Marches and favoured of the Supreme Overlord, Asdrubael Vect.

‘I’m surprised you bothered to come, and even more surprised that you made it here,’ Vyle said dismissively. ‘You must want something badly to make the trek.’

‘Nonsense!’ cried Kassais with a grin. ‘A fine welcome to your own blood after travelling so far from civilisation to congratulate you on your latest acquisition!’

Vyle seemed unmoved by Kassais’s protestations as he turned to Yegara. ‘What happened at the waterfront? Any problems?’

‘No, all was quiet, my archon,’ Yegara simpered.