Gray clouds shrouded the sky like a sheet of bulging tumours. Flocks of meyra - ill omens in the best of times - crowded the roofs around the thoroughfare that the returning troops marched down, all silent. Too few troops, and too soon.

Something had gone wrong. Jheriss had not appeared that morning, and the palace itself had been draped in oppressive silence. There was no chatter of servants or courtiers in the gardens outside her window, nor could she smell food cooking from the nearer kitchens. It was as if the pall of death had invaded the place.

Worry wove knots in Liriel's mind. She was sorely tempted to pull out the scrying stones and divine what had occurred, but the aeldar had learned over generations how unwise it was to traverse the empyrean with a troubled soul. She recited her mantra to herself but though her mind sharpened, she could not find the inner stillness needed to call upon the Warp without disaster.

There was little she could do but adjust the tehra around herself and pace, her staff tapping out a slow rhythm on the floor.

The summons was almost a relief. A messenger rang the bell at the base of her tower. He was flanked by two guards, and spoke with a mixture of determination and fear, staring only at the head of her staff. "Seer Liriel, the King and Council have demanded your presence in the Council Chambers."

"Why?" she asked calmly. Still, the messenger flinched as if slapped, and the guards looked increasingly agitated.

"Seer Liriel, the King and Council have demanded your presence in the Council Chambers. Will you come peaceably?"

Allowing herself a small scowl, she stepped into the hallway. The messenger stumbled backwards away from her and, trying to recover his dignity, led the way to the Council Chambers. Liriel followed, aware of the guards slightly too close on either side of her. Setting her jaw, Liriel prepared herself for what was to come.

Capital punishment had been used before in the aeldari justice system. It was unusual, reserved for only the gravest of crimes, such as treason, but King Miythis, like his father before him, was tempted to see traitors everywhere. There were worse fates, too, when he felt particularly vindictive. It was for no unclear reason that so many nobles detested him, and that the leader of his guards was so vigilant against attempts on his life.

Liriel did not want to die. She certainly did not want to die pointlessly. Such as by trying to save a civilization committed to destroying itself. A small part of her held out hope that this was not what it was clearly going to be. The greater part of her mind prepared to fight her way out of the palace. It would have been smarter to run, to cripple the laughable guard detail and make a break for the wall. She could make it.

And then what? Live the rest of her life as she had lived her adolescence - a monster for mothers to scare their children with, hunted in the forests and hills? How long would it take before they found her again, with a real army at their backs?

Perhaps they wouldn't even bother; just leave her to go insane in isolation as society crumbled.

No, she would face her sentence, and meet death with eyes open and teeth bared. Tellyth and the others in the court believed that they knew what she was capable of. A draw in the duelling ring, without the aid of the Warp or in her full fury.

She may die, but she would not die alone.


It was a wide hall, with a high vaulted ceiling that glittered with candlelight from the suspended chandeliers reflecting off surfaces polished to a mirror shine. At the ground level was an almost circular table, with a notch cut out of it on the side nearest the huge twin doors that were the main entrance. The notch led to stairs down into a central pit, deep enough that an aeldar standing in it would be eye level to the seated councillors. Around the kings seat, farthest from the doors, were his most trusted advisors, the heads of the five clans that dominated Ynriad, the chief historian Briadath, the Captain of the Guard Tellyth, the bonesinger Seqieth, and a smattering of other positions, all swarming about the aged king like scavengers around meat.

King Miythis sat slumped in his chair, looking if anything bored by the proceedings. Liriel once again found his appearance wanting. He was… small. He wore a modest circlet with a glowing diadem atop his small head. His narrow-set eyes looked down a narrow nose at her, his thin lips set hard. His clothes hung on his frame as if on a scarecrow, fine voluminous robes pretending at a grandeur that the man could not fill.

The councilors were all standing as she was allowed in, staring at her in silence as she moved to the designated spot on the floor, the center of the semicircle of the table.

The guards closed the doors of the chambers with a loud boom and the councilors sat. There were still no restraints on her. The small flicker of hope she had still wavered inside of her, but extinguished as the flame of a candle at the King's first words.

"Seer Liriel has been accused of theft, assault, murder, and treason. She has the right to deny her crimes or admit to them, as she sees fit. Should she deny them, the trial shall commence. How does she plead?" The last, only, was directed at her.

"I deny and admit to nothing, as I have committed no crimes," Liriel said. She no longer bothered to hide the contempt in her voice.

Dispensing justice was not the purpose of an aeldari court. It was assumed that anyone called in was already guilty - a society nominally run by those who could peer at fate itself, prune the branches of probability to determine truth, had no need for an investigative process. Trials were stages, places for a criminal to express regret for their wrongdoing and for the community to vent their anger. If she knelt her head, expressed her profound sorrow and vowed never to bother her betters again, they may just leave only her pride killed.

The thought never so much as crossed her mind.

"Let it be known, then, that she dishonours herself by professing her own innocence," the King said. His tone was restrained, without the sadistic glee she would expect from the creature. "Who shall speak in her defense?"

"I need no one to speak for me," Liriel spat.

A silence followed her words. "And who shall speak against her?" the King asked.

"I shall," said Seqieth. Liriel glared at the bonesinger, shocked. Seqieth glared back at the Seer, her gaze venomous.

"Let us waste no more time, then. Seqieth, you may begin."

Seqieth spoke loudly, her voice high and resonant in the chambers. "The Seer's first appearance here is no secret among us. Captured for her crimes by the noble prince Tai'ree, my own cousin, she was fated to meet justice in the arena. It was only a sleight of fate, a mere chance, that allowed her to escape that justice. The intervention of the Mad Seer himself."

"The first charge was theft - was I the item stolen?" Liriel asked. No chance for mercy. May as well make a mockery of the entire proceeding.

A few of the other councilors tittered. The King, Seqieth, and Tellyth did not. King Miythis and Tellyth were not even looking at Seqieth - they stared only at her. A creeping discomfort entered her spine, but she tried to ignore it as Seqieth prattled on, only slightly shaken by his target's indifference.

"We charge her with the theft of food and supplies from starving villages! Living as a savage, she took all that she wanted from others, left villages to starve in her gluttonous greed!" Her finger pointed accusingly at Liriel.

"And what does the defence have to say?" the King asked, tone nearly neutral.

"It's true; I took what was necessary from villages. Enough to feed a starving child, a decade ago. And why do the people there still starve? Surely it is not because the noble prince still gluts himself on their farms, and drowns his court in the fruit of their vine?" Liriel asked.

The King slammed his sceptre on the table before him to silence out the mutters of the councillors. This was not going as they wished, her disrespect angering their own sense of propriety. "The criminal will stay silent," he announced. Liriel bit back a retort.

"The Seer Liriel's propensity towards violence is well-known," Seqieth finally continued, "even in her own childhood. In the weeks since her arrival was announced throughout the land, many individuals have come to me personally to voice their concerns. The Seer Liriel was a violent, uncontrollable child, beating her playmates viciously and with neither pity nor remorse. She was chased from her village after the death of her parents, not being willing to work alongside anyone else to earn her place. This habit she preserved in her adulthood, nearly crippling members of the royal guard on her arrival to the palace, and lashing out even worse in the seclusion of Seer Anathan's home estates. I have with me a witness-"

From the back of a room came an older aeldar in a simple robe, bearing a familiar face. A servant from Anathan's estates? Liriel narrowed her eyes, trying to recall her name. Ophia? Ophi'i?

"This is Andara, a member of Anathan's own household, who witnessed the brutality of the Seer herself."

Andara's eyes welled with tears as she spoke. "Liriel was a terror to us all, but to Anathan especially. He was never anything but the kindness of Isha personified to her, and she repaid him with…" The woman shuddered, and if nothing else Liriel commended her skill as an actress. "… abuse so vile, I hate to even speak of it." Andara began to recount episodes of such brutality, as colourful as they were tragic. "She could not write, could barely read, and raged at him when he tried to correct her. She would beat him bloody in her fouler moods, and every time I or the others would try to convince him to abandon this… this animal, he would simply smile and say that there was a core of good inside her. That he could save her from herself." She sniffed, her words turning harsh. "I think he believed that right until the moment she killed him." Some of the councilors were weeping silently at the conclusion of her tale.

Liriel could bear the melodrama no longer. "And then I tied his body to the back of my carriage and rode it through the town like Kurnous did the Beast of White Falls, didn't I? Did I cackle as I did this, the image of a children's play villainess?"

The King slammed his sceptre on the table again, all pretense at control gone. "The criminal will stay silent or will be made silent!"

"Enough of this madness," Liriel retorted. "Theft, assault, and murder, all borne by tales a child would discount. Come, let us laugh at the last as well. Treason, was it?"

This time, it was not Seqieth who spoke. The King turned to Tellyth, silent so far in the proceedings, and the councillors followed his example. His face bore an expression unreadable to Liriel. He stood slowly, as if the weight of his message was too great to carry, and began to speak in grave, measured tones. His gaze never left Liriel's eyes.

"Five days past, the Seer came to me claiming to have evidence of treachery among the ranks of nobles. She insisted that, should we send the royal guard into the wilderness, we would uncover the beginnings of a rebellion against the King. She advised taking a certain path, through the Valley of Ghira's Folly, which she claimed was the only way to reach the traitors without them discovering our forces.

"The journey was to take three days. I assigned my best lieutenant to the expedition, Lhivan, along with two hundred of our warriors and their mounts. On the morning of the second day, a squad was held up due to some damage to their equipment in the night, and Lhivan made the decision to continue without them, as time was of the essence. The smaller group could move more swiftly and catch up.

"This information comes from the scouts of that smaller group, who returned here as swiftly as they could. As the main force was crossing the valley, the dam at its head broke." Worried murmurs began, but Tellyth continued over them. "The contents of the Polassi reservoir flooded the vale before our forces could react. Those that were not broken on the rocks of the rapids at its feet were eaten alive by the kolos fish that swarmed the river.

"Lieutenant Lhivan is dead, as are over a hundred warriors of the royal guard." There was only the barest tremor of emotion in his voice as he finished his proclamation.

An eruption of voices called out, but Liriel could barely hear them. A coldness spread from her outermost limbs to her core, and her arms felt leaden. Her vision narrowed, blocking out the whispering irrelevancies of the councilors. Her tongue was too large in her mouth, her thoughts too slow to guide it in any case. Guilt - real, unalloyed guilt - pierced her heart no less painful than an arrow.

Before she could recover, the councilors had settled down, encouraged by the frantic banging of the King's sceptre against the growing field of dents on the table. "Defense, have you anything to say?"

Liriel tried to speak, tried to find some explanation of her failure. But what defense could she offer in the face of the dead?

After a scant moment's pause, the King spoke again, "Then the judgment is clear." King Miythis raised his sceptre, prepared to make some grandiose statement.

Liriel paid him little attention. The time for the rational part of her was finished. There was nothing else to be done; Tellyth's soldiers were dead, but she could yet live. It would be difficult, but she could eliminate this entire pit of vipers before they realized the true extent of her capabilities. She prepared to draw upon the power of the Warp. She would have only one chance.

"If I may, Majesty?" came a small voice.

From the back of the room, one of the silent observers stepped forth. That simpering sycophant, Belasys. He advanced at the King's gesture and whispered into his ear. Liriel could not make out the words or read his lips, blocked as they were by Miythis' own head. The King's expression was strange, passing from annoyance, to interest, to disbelief, to deep thought. Finally, Belasys stood back and bowed his head, returning to the court's audience. The King was silent for long moments, the other councilors glancing between themselves in confusion. Finally, Miythis turned to face her, face bearing neither amusement nor outrage, nor any other emotion she could place. The effect was deeply unsettling.

"The noble Belasys has raised a plea for mercy towards the Seer," he said simply, "and argued most eloquently on her behalf. There is not enough evidence that she acted with malice rather than ignorance, and it is beyond precedent for a Seer to be condemned in such a manner."

He brought his sceptre down on the table, striking it with finality. "The Seer shall be exiled from all civilized lands, hereafter and forevermore."