The Masque of Vyle (6 page)

Ashanthourus inclined his grinning mask in deference to Vyle. ‘Wise words, my lord. Truly there can be few in all the great wheel of existence that have such a pragmatic grasp of reality as yourself.’

‘So how do you intend to repay Vyle’s indulgence?’ Kassais demanded arrogantly. ‘How will you entertain us?’

Something about the Harlequins was disturbing Kassais. Possibly it was the unctuous assurances of their make-believe ‘king’. Possibly it was the way that he kept catching the other Harlequins looking at them sidelong as if they were objects of particular amusement. Whatever it was, Kassais was finding himself increasingly discomforted by the entertainers’ unexpected presence.

Ashanthourus replied in a voice that was quickened with what seemed to be barely repressed excitement. ‘We will be undertaking a performance of Ursyllas’s rendition of the Fall, the cycle that is most commonly known as the
Penumbra
.’

Vyle glanced surreptiously at Kassais, but he saw no recognition of the names the troupe-master had used in the other archon’s face. He decided it was safe to show ignorance and play it off as bravado. What true archon of Commorragh had the time or patience to study the vast myriad of plays, comedies, tragedies and morality stories surrounding the Fall of eldar civilisation?

‘Never heard of it,’ the Shrike Lord said carelessly. ‘You’re not about to bore us with some obscure nonsense no one gives a damn about, are you?’

‘Not at all!’ Ashanthourus declared passionately. ‘The
Penumbra
is a masterpiece! Unusually it takes places in three separate acts, making it highly suitable for an extended event or celebration such as this. A full performance has been attempted less than a hundred times, but sadly I don’t think we can hope to achieve that even in this august company.’

Vyle found himself bristling at the Harlequin’s words. ‘What? Why not? I am worthy of the best you have to offer and more!’

Ashanthourus replied with some hesitation. ‘A full performance of the
Penumbra
requires… how may I put this delicately? A full performance requires a measure of participation from the audience that most are unwilling to countenance.’

+Be subtle now,+ Cylia’s mind-speech whispered inside Ashanthourus’s brain. +Don’t over-sell the difficulty or they may realise they’re being manipulated.+

+I know what I’m doing,+
Ashanthourus responded tersely. +Concentrate on Kassais – he’s the weaker willed of the two. If he commits then Vyle will too – he won’t allow himself to be upstaged by his guest under any circumstances.+

Vyle and Kassais were grinning at one another knowingly. Both knew there was nothing the other was unwilling to countenance as long as it did not diminish their personal power or prestige. Kassais was about to speak when he was interrupted by Motley leading forward a pale-faced and trembling Olthanyr Yegara. Motley pointedly ignored Kassais and Vyle as he grandly presented Yegara to Ashanthourus with another of his exaggerated bowing fits.

+What’s Motley’s game now?+
mused Cylia. Ashanthourus did not respond but the Shadowseer could sense the heightened tension in the High Avatar’s mind.

‘This worthy fellow has volunteered to participate in our first act, your majesty,’ Motley trilled proudly. ‘He’s assured me he understands all of the potential risks entailed.’

Ashanthourus inclined his mask fractionally before turning back to Vyle and Kassais. ‘It seems we already have a volunteer thanks to Motley’s efforts. If you will excuse me, my lords, this means I must attend to my troupe and make certain adjustments to the performance. We will be ready to begin the first act momentarily…’

+Risky…+ admonished Cylia.

+Motley has left me little choice,+
Ashanthourus sighed mentally. +I believe they won’t be able to resist the baited hook once it’s properly dangled before them.+

‘You’ll go nowhere until you’ve explained what’s happening to me,’ Vyle snapped. He snatched up a goblet and drank deeply from it, both to give himself more time to focus his thoughts and to force Ashanthourus to wait upon his pleasure. The Shrike Lord had a sense that the Harlequin troupe-master was trying to keep a worthy prize from him, thinking him unfit for it. ‘Well?’ he barked as he slammed the delicately fluted drinking vessel back onto the table. A slave hurried forwards to refill it.

Ashanthourus looked a little chagrined, his grinning mask pointed at his toes as he spoke. ‘Ursyllas’s masterpiece calls for one or more members of the audience to weave their own tales into the grand array of events being depicted. It was felt that the events of the Fall could be rendered more poignant and immediate to the watching audience by employing them as the backdrop to a personal story, if you will.’

‘I can do that,’ Kassais blurted suddenly before looking momentarily surprised at his outburst.

+And you impugn my sense of subtlety?+
Ashanthourus sniped. He received only the impression of Cylia’s tinkling laughter in return.

‘Indeed,’ Vyle nodded approvingly. ‘Kassais here has plenty of tales that would turn your hair white – and some of them might even prove to be true! All of them are pale shadows in comparison to the depth and richness of my own history, of course, and I feel aggrieved that you seem so intent on denying me the opportunity to participate, troupe-master.’

‘Please believe me, I meant no slight,’ Ashanthourus said, his rich and mellifluous tones replete with regret. ‘As I mentioned the process is not without risk. In the past participants have become so caught up in the performance that they have harmed themselves in the belief that they were living through the events depicted either in their own tale or the wider canvas of the Fall. Some have even lost their lives… As our honoured host and patron I would not wish to expose you to any danger.’

+Again – don’t oversell it, my king of fools,+
Cylia breathed into Ashanthourus’s mind.

‘Dangers are meat and drink to our kind,’ Kassais purred, having recovered some of his usual aplomb. ‘I don’t give much for Yegara’s chances of survival but Vyle and I are certainly made of sterner stuff. All true archons of Commorragh have a fine insight into playacting versus reality; it’s a game we play with one another every day.’

+Again, you underestimate the bravado of Commorrites,+
Ashanthourus replied somewhat smugly. +These are creatures reared in a nest of razors rather than the soft confines of a craftworld.+

‘Quite,’ said Vyle, while looking sidelong at Kassais’s rather gauche assertion. ‘It’s settled then – Kassais and I will participate. You said there will be three acts. Yegara can have the first to show how not to do it, Kassais has the second to warm up the crowd with his outrageous boasting and I’ll take the final one to show how it’s done with a tale that will freeze the blood of those who hear it.’

+They mistake it for a chance to re-tell old horror stories,+
Cylia whispered.

+And that will serve our purposes perfectly,+
Ashanthourus thought back.

‘It shall be as you command,’ Ashanthourus said, and bowed. ‘You may change your mind at any time if, having witnessed Yegara’s efforts for example, you should no longer wish to proceed.’

‘I begin to tire of your doubts, troupe-master,’ Vyle said coldly. ‘Be about your preparations without further delay.’

Ashanthourus bowed again and backed away before stepping rapidly over to where Yegara now stood with Cylia and the grey-clad Solitaire. Beneath his domino mask Motley was grinning broadly.

Chapter Six

Dawnrise / A Traitor’s Tale

Stars twinkled coldly
in the depths of the void, planets wheeled in their orbits. Ashanthourus stood before them now all clad in white, his golden staff in his hand as he sonorously chanted.

‘
In the dawn times our people arose,

were led by the gods to claim their place,

upon reality’s great wheel.
’

Ghost-like children of light emerged from the ground all around the troupe-master. They gazed about with luminous eyes as they took in their surroundings, and silently expressed innocent joy in finding themselves not alone. Great, shadowy shapes moved against the backdrop of the stars and they were revealed now as the gleam of eldritch eyes, then as the glitter of crowns or the bejewelled folds of the garments the gods wore as they watched from on high.

A clear, feminine voice sang out, calling the children together with a haunting refrain. It was soon joined by other voices: male, female, high and low, each of whom sang their own tune as they coalesced from the starry sky. Ashanthourus spoke the names of the gods as they appeared:

‘
Great Asuryan and his paramour Gia,

wise Hoec and Cegorach the trickster,

far-sighted Lileath, deadly Khaine,

industrious Vaul, the crone Morai-Heg…

and two that loved us best of all,

two from whom we sprang;

Isha of the harvest and Kurnous of the hunt.
’

Cylia took the role of Isha, Lo’tos became Kurnous of the red moon. Some of the other gods were noble, some were savage, but all joined their voices together into a greater song that rose and fell through the hall as Isha and Kurnous danced together. Cylia’s
creidann
launcher spat tiny, star-like sparks that burst into scented clouds over the audience. These pre-programmed hallucinogenic gases were carefully designed to enhance and exaggerate the watchers’ perceptions.

Meanwhile the children of the gods were swept into the wake of Kurnous and Isha like windblown leaves. They whirled before the majestic choir, growing less and less childlike as they followed in the steps of their creators. The children grew long-limbed and elegant, poised and confident as they danced.

‘
Time passed and the gods taught us,

All that we could learn,

in turn we learned why they had need of us,

Death reached his mouldering grasp across the great wheel,

Grim mortality smote down all that stood before it.
’

The bony, skull-masked figures of Hradhiri Ra and his fellow Death Jesters rose from the darkness as if summoned by Ashanthourus’s words and the gods abruptly withdrew. The voices of the chorus became jagged and martial as the grim figures appeared on the scene. The Death Jesters began to pursue the children of the gods hither and yon, but the nimble dancers darted and weaved between their soughing scythes with laughter on their lips.

Now some of the dancers wielded their own blades in defence, bright arcs of multi-coloured energy that dashed aside the dark metal blades of the reapers. The central conflict broke apart into a multitude of whirling pools of light and dark where frenetic, acrobatic forms fought on without pause. Ashanthourus spoke again, this time addressing the audience directly.

‘Against this time of deadly strife hear now one tale of struggle, triumph and woe from a later age. Hear the story of one who was once, very briefly, the master of this house. Heed his words and ask yourself if you would have acted differently.’

Suddenly Olthanyr Yegara stood alone in a pool of radiance to one side of the performance. He was fearful and unmoving while all about him the dancers still whirled like comets as they fought against the simulacra of death. The martial chanting of the chorus dropped away until it was only a background sibilance as of waves scouring the shore. The last Yegara was wide-eyed and sweating as he struggled to speak. From the darkness where the audience were watching there came a snort of derision as Vyle or Kassais let their contempt be known.

The sound seemed to bring a sudden and peculiar change to the last Yegara. His head snapped upright as if it had been gripped from behind, his mouth worked and words began to spill out of it in a high, sing-song voice.

‘
My ancestors found this abandoned realm long ago,

as they fled from a terror yet to cast its shadow upon the stage,

sore pressed they were, and fearful, when they came upon the Sable Marches,

so they took it for their own, despite the brute primitives that did dwell here,

benighted creatures left to their own devices when their ancient masters withdrew.
’

The pool of radiance widened to show that a tableau had formed behind Olthanyr as he spoke, although he did not turn his head to look at it – indeed he seemed incapable of moving at all. A group of eldar stood at one side of the tableau, all dressed in spoiled finery and led by a bold-looking warrior with lustrous dark hair. The smooth-skinned, saucer-eyed natives of the Sable Marches knelt before them, offering up polished conch shells and silver-scaled fish.

‘
B’Qui Yegara knew how to deal with upstarts,

She knew how to teach respect.

She built this keep out of their blood and bones,

she stole their petty gods,

and taught them to worship her instead.
’

There was a flash and in its aftermath it could be seen that the tableau had changed. The dark-haired warrior now stood atop a mound of smooth-skinned dead with Hradhiri Ra at her shoulder. The surviving natives shrank away from the warrior and cowered on their bellies but they were trapped within the circle of light. The light encompassed their world and imprisoned them inside it with their tormentor.

‘
For long, dreaming ages my clan endured in this hidden arbour that B’Qui made.

Generation after generation lived in luxury and sloth on the backs of the conquered.

The clan prospered, branched and divided across the islands.

Its members only came together again generations later,

to scheme over who would win the inheritance after B’Qui’s passing.
’

Now in the tableau behind Olthanyr Yegara several eldar stood posed around a funeral bier bearing the dark-haired warrior. At each corner of the bier stood a beast-headed jar, a small detail that Olthanyr shuddered away from, and Hradhiri Ra stood at its foot. The eldar attending the bier were noble-looking and finely dressed yet they eyed one another with obvious enmity and ill-disguised contempt. Beyond the immediate tableau, one of the pinwheeling conflicts swept silently closer and more skull-masked Death Jesters slunk onto the scene. These scions of death came to stand behind every shoulder in the tableau like grinning shadows.

‘
Qu’isal Yegara proved to be the wisest,

he was the first to realise conflict was inevitable and struck first.

Ferocious cunning laid his rivals low within Windgrave’s Confluence,

and he claimed B’Qui’s inheritance for his own.

Alas, that he could not wipe out every root and branch

of our fractured clan in that instant.
’

The skull-masked shadows struck at the eldar with knives in hand. Some of the victims died, some fled and soon only one noble was left crouching possessively over B’Qui’s funeral bier with a smile of feral triumph on his lips. The pool of radiance abruptly vanished and Olthanyr Yegara’s microcosm was swallowed up in the cavorting conflicts of the wider performance. The eldar were surging triumphantly against the skulking death bringers, leaping acrobatically over their heads as they drove the ghoulish shapes into the shadows. Ashanthourus stood forward to narrate again.

‘
Death had been banished,

chased away into the darkness from whence it came.

The children of the gods looked about their new inheritance,

and found the gods were less often at their side.

Our kind, confident in their new-found power,

began to turn the great wheel to their own purposes.
’

As the troupe-master spoke the dancers of the troupe moved seamlessly into various groups. Some sketched airy towers of light with their movements, others fell into stylised depictions of study or discourse, others explored the hall and passed among the audience peering at various individuals as if at something newly discovered. Some of the troupe continued to dance seemingly only for the sake of dancing while others made music to accompany them simply out of the joy of playing.

At length Isha and Kurnous reappeared in the wings before moving from one group to another. Each time they were ignored. Now the gods were apparently unseen and unheard by their children. Isha wept and Kurnous attempted to comfort her but to no avail. As the sorrowing gods exited, Olthanyr Yegara reappeared in his pool of radiance. Cylia and Lo’tos’s display of easy grace made him look even more clownish and uncomfortable by comparison.

As Olthanyr spoke his next stanza, miniature tableaux popped into existence and disappeared all over the hall almost before they could be registered. Each showed a gruesome death being enacted: a lone traveller set upon by assassins, a lord in his hall choking on poisoned wine, two lovers clasping passionately together as one drew a blade behind the other’s back, a flailing form tumbling from a high window, and more, many more.

‘
So it went,

blood demanding blood,

vendetta breeding vendetta,

until only Qu’isal’s progeny remained.

But too few lived on to enjoy the victory.

The house of Yegara became a diminishing thing,

Worn down by time as a cliff is worn away by the sea.
’

The scenes of violence sputtered to a halt leaving just Olthanyr standing alone in his circle of light. Around its periphery the smooth-skinned, saucer-eyed natives watched inscrutably as by some sleight their numbers slowly yet inexorably increased. Now it seemed that Olthanyr was hemmed in by the light, trapped within a shrinking circle.

‘
Qu’isal saw what end would come, unavoidable now.

Clear-eyed as before, he was the first to perceive,

in the Onyx wing he took his final breath,

bringing all to fire and destruction about him.

His sacrifice worthless and unmourned,

his last gasp a curse against the ruin he had made.
’

Behind Olthanyr a lone figure walked away down a corridor into inky blackness. Before the figure disappeared entirely from sight, a curtain of flames sprang into being behind it. A hoarse, keening cry could be heard before a rumble of stones and crackle of fires obliterated it. Silence fell across the hall and Olthanyr seemed to struggle for breath. Moments drew out into long seconds before a new voice prompted him to continue the story, laughing and seemingly full of humour at the grim tale.

‘
So help was needed?

New friends found?

Into portals, quick my friends!

Off to where such things abound!
’

Olthanyr blinked at the slight grey figure that squeezed between the smooth-skinned natives and invaded his little circle of light. Motley grinned widely at him and bowed before him, gesturing for the last Yegara to continue his tale. Olthanyr licked his lips nervously and then nodded.

‘
B’Qui had once barred the portals, but with Qu’isal’s passing new portents shone,

None could see but I what must be done.

A lingering death and then extinction, or the intercession of a higher power.

I chose the latter and gathered my knowledge carefully,

I went forth to the eternal city to trade my secrets for my heart’s desire.
’

Olthanyr spoke with shaky bravado as if he were the hero of the piece. However behind the last Yegara an exaggerated simulacrum of himself – ably played in this instance by Lo’tos –
gave lie to his words through its actions. This false Olthanyr crept forth like a thief in the night: listening at keyholes, peering through windows, digging through piles of detritus in forgotten chambers. At length this creeping, snivelling figure was seen in silhouette before a webway portal and then vanished.

To the watching audience it seemed as if they no longer stood in Windgrave’s stuffy hall. The horizon became distant, jagged with razor-edged spires and barbed steeples. High above them limpid, poisoned suns swam slowly past, dripping their corpse-light across the dark landscape below. In the foreground Olthanyr was now on his knees before a coven of pale-skinned, black-armoured Commorrite nobles. Olthanyr hid his face in his hands so Motley spoke again, his clear voice full of rich irony.