The fire burned steadily, the damp wood offering little resistance once encouraged by the use of Warp-fueled powers. The jhire's fat sizzled and spat when it fell from the dressed carcass. It was the only sound audible in the small knot of trees, and offered an unparalleled distraction for a hungry belly.
Liriel knew better than to allow herself to focus on it, yet her eyes kept drifting towards the slowly cooking animal. As much as she tried to keep herself alert for any nightly predators that would challenge her for the prize, the smell and sound of the sizzling meat dominated her senses.
But thankfully, no such interloper came. She finished her meal still hungry, but at least the gnawing emptiness of that hunger had been blunted. After she sucked the last tender bits of flesh off the thin bones, she cleaned her hands in the soft earth. It had rained most days earlier this week, making the climb through mountain valleys riskier than she would have liked. But she could not stop to wait for a safer time. The World Stone called to her.
Settling her back against a tree trunk, Liriel repeated her mantra and stilled her mind. As she did so, and as her mind slipped from the universe of laws and sanity to the turbulent realm of deception and revelation, her seer's stones filled with power, taking their places in the air around her. Their runes both guarded and guided her through that hell, allowing her to tease meaning from madness.
Scrying had always been difficult for her. The paths of the future were functionally infinite, and seemed constantly to twist away from her. It seemed that even placing her attention on a path would cause it to evaporate like fog under the morning sun. Anathan had blamed her impulsive nature, claiming that a Seer must be able to observe without acting. It made sense. And so she had practiced honing the ability to resign herself to the role of observer, to little success.
But there was another way. Scrying the past. Liriel had suggested it once to Anathan and he had adamantly refused the idea, swearing that dire consequences were the only outcome for peering into the past. He said such scrying was difficult, usually only made possible when the Seer followed another's fate line backwards. It was a serious taboo to trace another's life without their consent, to rob them of all dignity and privacy.
Liriel had obeyed his restriction while an apprentice, but now found herself with no clear path forward - at least, none that normal scrying could reveal. So she explored the past. Every night that she had managed to fill her stomache, she spent trying to trace the cause of the doom of Mathara. She sped through her own past, the past of the King, the city, and others. Nothing worked so far. The field of possibilities was too large, her focus too narrow. She was stumbling through Vaul's forge blindfolded without even an inkling as to the object of her search.
There was one event, however, that she kept coming back to, a bridge linking greatness and decline. The Ashawir Coup.
She knew of the history, of course; the Meeting of Three Tribes, the Uprising, the battle of Ghira's Folly. But she had begun to suspect that the roots of the sickness stretched further than the century since her birth, further even than Anathan had suspected. He had never discussed the coup openly with her, had even evaded her attempts to question him deeply about it.
Scrying that far was difficult, tracing fate lines all but faded through the turbulent chaos of the Warp without allowing the infinite alternate possibilities to distract or confuse. Every attempt she had made to go further than a few decades back had failed, the paths tangled into knots around themselves. She struck upon a new idea. Rather than try to find the fates of the few individuals she knew were involved - the majority of records of the Ashani and Wiri'il tribes had been scrubbed from the archives in the newly ascended King's fury - she followed her suspicions of her mentor down his own fate line. He was well known to her, and she could easily find the branching point on her own line where his had terminated.
A psyker's presence in the Warp was orders of magnitude greater than their contemporaries. They shone brightly, carving through the dross of the Warp like Anaris, the Dawnlight. Even the most careful left their mark on that place. Carefully, slowly, Liriel traced the path of Anathan's life through the timeless void. It was difficult; the old Seer had been paranoid, obfuscating his fate line often in the waning years of his life to frustrate just such an attempt. But she had learned under him, knew how he had done it. And the further back she went, the easier it became.
Years flashed by in moments; lives intersected his, but always at a distance. She kept her touch on the thread of his fate light, only diving into it, seeing the world as he had seen it, to orient herself in time through that timeless place.
Anathan lit the incense wick and blew out the flame, joining the line of people in the throne room presenting their condolences to the King. Two hundred years, and still, they were required to ridicule themselves in this fashion, as if their remembrance could revive the dead. Each person in front of him spoke ritual words, bowing and affirming their allegiance to the royal line.
His turn at the farce came, and he bowed low to the imbecile. "A thousand blessing to your line, Majesty. May the bards sing ever of your glory. May the memory of your father guide your actions." As he rose, he caught Miythis' expression, cold and harsh. It was always thus now, the cabal of sycophants he had gathered around him poisoning his ears against the counsel of the Seer. Fools and ingrates, all.
They had tried to get to him before, offering their agents as pupils to better sabotage him. He knew that they were the cause of his recent difficulties with Warpcraft. Somehow they were sabotaging him. Only his reasonable caution had kept him safe from their conspiracies, but soon even that would be insufficient. No aeldar was omniscient. He needed allies he could trust. Even if he had to mold them to be such.
The remembrance that the King held every decade, keeping the horror of the Coup alive in the memories of the people. Two hundred years after its end would place the memory only a year before she and Anathan had crossed paths. She increased her pace, intent on covering centuries this night.
The council looked on with shock as the sentence came down. The King was grim-faced, pale and trembling as he concluded his edict. The tribe of Nasra'il was to be scattered, their history stricken from the records, their leaders executed and remanded to the World Spirit, their people exiled into the wild lands, and their lands absorbed by others.
Anathan felt neither guilt nor pity. The law had been clear, their treachery glaring. They had had little defense against the charges he had presented, years of testimony gleaned from intense scrying of their pasts and interrogation of their victims. There was nothing they could have hidden from him, even with that last damned pupil of Suvan among them.
But as he surveyed the room, the weeping members of the Nasra'il led away from the council chambers, he could see the glances shared by the remaining nobles. The other leaders, no more loyal or noble than the Nasra'il had been, now knew the danger he posed. They knew that their secrets were open to him. A shiver ran down his spine as he met their gazes.
The damnatio memoriae of the Nasra'il had taken place barely fifty years after the Coup, though any more details were difficult to find. All that she knew was that the last refuge of sympathizers to the Ashani and Wiri'il had been eliminated in the purge. People did not discuss their fate, cautious of the wrath of the King.
Slower now; she was closer to the object of her search. Trivial inflection points, irrelevant trysts, and minor meetings passed through her fingers as she drifted along the line of Anathan's life. Then she noticed the knot. It was massive, half a dozen lines of fate as bright or brighter than his all tangled together. Psykers, all, but how? There had only been a single Seer at the royal court for centuries, ever since the last Council had disappeared on the Day of Sorrow. The pull of the knot was vast, sucking her into the memory despite herself-
Anathan glared out of the window, careful to keep back from it lest Ghira or the others see movement. They passed through the gate singly or in pairs, as they had been all night. Once every few hours, so as not to raise the suspicion of the guards. They were leaving the palace. Without him. Traitors.
So his arguments, their agreement, meant nothing. This was how the great students of the last true Seers of Mathara would act, stealing through the streets like thieves in the night. He recalled every insufferable dismissal and presumptuous comment they had made to his efforts. He remembered their insistent claims of moral superiority, as if the fact that they studied under true Seers mattered. And yet when the time came to sacrifice for the good of all, they chose cowardice.
He watched them leave, and spite grew roots in his heart.
Liriel fell out of the memory harshly, her former mentor's emotions burning like hot iron nails on her soul.
Ghira was a Seer? As far as she knew, Ghira was the supposed leader of the Ashawir Coup, a tribal chieftain who had riled up smaller tribes against the Ulluthani. And a group of Seers, teaching others in the royal palace? There was nothing of this in the records, either in the royal library or in Anathan's own. Curious and suspicious, Liriel found the brightest line branching off of Anathan's thread and followed it forward. It was easy to follow, even without familiarity with the aeldar it represented. This psyker was more powerful than Anathan, and did not bother to obfuscate his fate.
Ghira looked across the large tent as the entrance flap opened to admit Melilliel and Saeriss, the last members of the council. They nodded at the rest in greeting before taking their places in the circle, such as it was.
Ghira, Suvan, Prydocu, Ialirr, Melilliel, and Saeriss. The last of the Seers. Ghira looked over each in turn. All were adept at manipulation of the Warp; none of them would have made this decision, thrown in their lot with him, without taking the elementary step of auguring their futures. They knew what awaited them for failure.
Suvan spoke first, the impetuous aeldar never one to speak with reserve. "We don't have to hide what we know from Ghira's damned apprentice any more. So does anyone have real information about what we're dealing with? Has there ever been anything like it in the historical records?"
He addressed the last question to Ialirr, keeper of the chronicles, who shook his head. "It resembles no plague from our history, nor curse I've ever seen. I would consult with the Farseers of the merchants, were they available, but…"
Suvan cursed, and were it not for the dignity of his position as First among them, Ghira would have joined him. The inaccessibility of the Webway, and the isolation of the planet from all other forms of civilized life, had removed all possibility of external aid or retreat for them. Mathara would live or die on their efforts.
"While I understand the urgency we must operate with," Prydocu said slowly, "I don't know if we have each realized the same thing. Perhaps we could first elucidate the nature of the… What are we calling it?"
"The Blight," said Saeriss. The normally reticent aeldar spoke softly, but she was often a peacemaker among the group, and each listened closely to her words. "The symptoms arise slowly, over the course of a lifetime. This is why it is so difficult to find the origin; it most likely started during the opening of the Rift. Otherwise, our old masters would have surely been aware of it. It also seems to affect the aeldari in Ynriad more strongly than those in outlying regions. Suvan and I each journeyed to the farthest tribes and noticed the symptoms were much reduced with distance.
"As for the symptoms themselves, they are entirely mental. In its earlier stages, the people affected turn towards our darkest impulses - avarice, venality, lust for power or pleasure. They sacrifice others willingly to further their goals. All conception of honour is lost to them. In a few individuals, this would be tragic but survivable. But such attitudes present among our entire ruling class… Well, we've seen what it has done to the King.
"As time goes on, the Blight twists them further. Paranoia and dementia wrack their minds. They imagine enemies everywhere, or are haunted by shadows and illusions. You all remember my pupil, Asidhee…" She paused for a moment, emotion filling her voice at the name. The others remained silent and allowed her the time to compose herself. "I'm sorry. Any Seer afflicted with the Blight at this stage becomes extremely unstable and dangerous when channeling any amount of power. Which is why we suspect the cause is Warp-related.
"At the end, the person afflicted becomes totally consumed by their particular obsession. If it cannot be continuously satisfied, they became apathetic; they do not clean themselves, or speak, or even eat. They simply waste away."
"Is that the understanding that everyone else is working under as well? Are there any other links we've found?" Prydocu asked.
"It rarely progresses to the final stages," Ialirr noted. "The paranoia usually leads sufferers to death more quickly when they abandon their communities out of fear. Additionally, since the Day of Sorrow, there have been a marked increase in border raiding and uprisings against the King, in addition to the loss of all of our lands past the western mountains to mutated beasts. The loss of so many of our people to violence has masked the more overt symptoms of the disease."
"But that violence probably has the Blight at its root," Suvan added. Ialirr and Saeriss nodded at that.
"Hmm. There may be more effects," Prydocu said. "All of what you've said is clearly happening. But I think the overt symptoms hide the subtle ones."
"You've found something else?" Melilliel asked.
"Suspicions, mostly. Tell me, how do you feel about our kin outside the planet?"
The others looked at one another, not comprehending his intent. Ghira finally spoke, "Do you mean the heritors of the aedari legacy, or the merchants?"
"Either. Both."
"Those clinging to depravity are insane, obviously. They bleed madness into the world and bring nothing but ruin to all that they touch. The merchants are cowards, but useful cowards." Ghira paused a moment, shocked by his own words. "No, that can't be right. I don't believe that. Why did I…?"
"The Blight affects more than our emotions. I think our memories are being altered and thereby our beliefs slowly changed. I've spoken to vosin sap addicts, half-submerged in fantasy. What they report is disturbing. Aside from the usual effects of the drug, they experience strange recurring dreams. Dreams dredged up from their own pasts, with details subtly altered. Never enough to cause noticeable confusion, but over time, their minds become untrustworthy. A subtle brainwashing."
"Sap addicts have always been suggestible. Do you expect us to believe that the entire planet is being affected like this?" Suvan protested.
"If it was, how would we possibly know?" Prydocu countered. "The same could be happening to us, through our own dreams. Over the course of decade, centuries…"
"Enough," Ghira said. "It may be as you say, Prydocu, and it would do well on us to contemplate the consequences, but it does not change our actions going forward. We must still find the cause of the Blight and destroy it. I have a theory, consistent with the patterns of symptoms found so far, that the cause originates from the World Stone near Ynriad. Something has gone wrong with it."
"Hence the King's refusal to allow you communion with it?" Ialirr asked. Ghira nodded. The forbiddance of what had once been a sacred rite had shocked the Seers, and had galvanized them to abandon the court as too far gone to effectively resolve the situation.
"We've lived near the World Stone for centuries," Suvan pointed out. "Shouldn't the Blight have affected us just as much?"
Prydocu frowned at the question. "Perhaps. If the Blight is a psychic phenomenon, then our own abilities may protect us from its influence, at least partly. Or the training we have done to guard our minds may work just as well against this malady. Or," he said with resignation, "perhaps it has affected us after all, and we are simply unaware."
Suvan looked ill at the thought, his emotions as ever easy to read. "Then we're going to need to overthrow the King, aren't we?"
The rest looked at him with surprise.
"Explain," Ghira said.
Suvan gathered his thoughts before responding. "We can't escape the planet. We have no way of calling for help from our kin. We can't just stay away and hope it never catches up to us; over a few hundred years, everyone will be affected, everyone will die, and the World Spirit, our own souls included, will be easy prey. If the source of the malady is something wrong with the Spirit or the Stone, we need to get access to it. But the King won't allow that; he's entering into the paranoid stage of the Blight himself. We will need uninterrupted access to the Stone to study it, which means we need to control Ynriad, which means a coup."
"Before we get too invested in this," Melilliel said, "there is something else we ought to consider."
"Melilliel," Saeriss said uncertainly. The twins were deeply alike, and often worked together to greater effect than any other pair of Seers. Deeply sensitive to the Warp and its intricacies, Ghira had often relied on them when his own augury had proved insufficient.
"We have another theory for the source of the Blight," Melilliel said, ignoring her sister's caution. "The moon."
"The moon? How have you come to suspect it?" Prydocu asked.
"Have you paid attention to the flow of the Warp under the moon? Observe it without influencing it, as if you are scrying, and pay attention to the currents," Melilliel instructed. "Attune yourself to the stream. There is something there, an intelligence at work. This is no flaw or random chance."
"That is…" Ialirr said uncertainly.
"Hard to believe," Suvan said, more diplomatically than Ghira expected. "It would require a psyker of unbelievable power, or a cabal of them, working for hundreds of years to keep that manipulation stable."
Prydocu hummed in agreement. "It would also be, I'm sorry to say, irrelevant. If the issue were truly a force on the moon, we would have no way to challenge it. At that point, we may as well accept defeat and resign ourselves to oblivion."
A sharp withdrawal of breath met his words, Melilliel flushing angrily. Before regrettable words were spoken, Saeriss broke in. "The two theories are not mutually incompatible. But it is valuable to keep alternatives in mind, lest we ignore evidence that contradicts our conclusion."
Ghira nodded in agreement. "This issue has affected us for centuries; it is reasonable to assume that it is a subtle and layered problem, and any proposal we make now is founded on incomplete information. We must stay unified against this threat."
The memory faded on the sight of the council affirming their leader's words. Their names and faces were unfamiliar, but each had been a powerful psyker, and the fragments that Ghira had recalled about them indicated how important they had once been in court.
An entire cabal of Seers, stricken from all records.
Liriel felt her heartbeat quicken. Anger at the arrogance and spite of the elders for hiding this information mixed with the sick feeling of the foundation of her knowledge crumbling. Who knew what else may have been hidden from her? How much else that she believed was built on lies and misinformation?
Who knew how much she could have learned, if only Anathan had been a better student of these Seers?
Gritting her teeth, Liriel kept following Ghira's fate line. Here, at least, she was not being misled.
The bellows of megadons filled the air again; dull, snuffling roars between unfamiliar males brought too close together. A sign that the Wiri'il party had finally arrived, despite the delays of the earlier rainstorm. From his place at the back of the tent, Prydocu prepared the arweh. Melilliel finished arranging the seats to their final places. Done, they took their places at Ghira's side.
The forms of this meeting were particular, and it was critical for the Seers to represent them properly. The seating - stiff reed cushions helpfully donated by villages the group of Seers had travelled through - was arranged in a broad semicircle facing the back of the tent, where Ghira would sit. The center of that semicircle was occupied by two short stools no grander or lesser than Ghira's own seat; little differentiation, but enough to indicate the places of honour for the leaders of the delegations. It would be an unusual position for the Ashani and Wiri'il tribes; they were often at odds, and Seers who were called to them were often there to facilitate peace talks, with the two factions set at opposing ends of a table.
There was no table here; the presence of one would indicate distance, reflection. Just as the hanging vines signaled secrecy and the arweh encouraged cooperation, every part of this gathering had been calculated. They needed to exude an air of control, of confidence, and of care.
The left-hand entrance flap opened, and Saeriss walked in, dust still clinging to her terah. "The Wiri'il procession is arriving. They saw that the Ashani were already here and wouldn't hear of delays-"
At that moment, Ialirr entered from the right-hand opening, terah disheveled and speaking quickly. "The Ashani are coming. They were trying to freshen themselves, but stopped when the Wiri'il began their march."
Ghira did not give their clothing so much as a pointed look, but smoothed out his own, the bands of colour weaving through and around one another in a hypnotic dance.
The two lowered their eyes in embarrassment of their condition and straightened themselves. The language of the cloth was old and arcane, but a few signals were understood by all; the prominence of white over the heart to signal honesty, red on the arms indicating military action, green wrapped around legs in patterns to signal the need for immediacy. These were the least subtle signals, but interwoven with others that gave greater information and context.
One Seer communicating with another could make an entire speech without saying a word.
"Who is coming?" Ghira asked.
"The Ashani sent Yhiac, their new chief, and I think I saw Taitwen leading the Wiri'il," Ialirr said. Saeriss nodded confirmation.
That was good. Both of his envoys had hinted that the other tribe had already confirmed that their delegation would include their tribe's chief, making sending their own a point of honour. It was vital that both come together in this endeavour, and meeting as equals would be the first part of that.
A drumbeat sounded from one end of the tent, fast and insistent. Footsteps accompanied it; a dozen or more pairs of marching feet, followed shortly on the other side. They stopped just outside the entrance, the rattle of weapons against shields taking the place of the instrument.
Opposite from them, an anthem rose up, some iron-lunged aeldari reciting battle poetry detailing the victories of the Ashani against their foes. Many of which were of the Wiri'il. The rattling intensified as the Ashani responded to the call-outs of the poet making increasingly hyperbolic claims about the strength and prowess of his tribe.
Best to stop them before they goaded one another further. Ghira signaled Saeriss, who's voice carried well outside the confines of the tent. "The Council recognizes the tribe of Wiri'il! Wiri'il, the Shining Blades of the Eastern Plains! Wiri'il, who danced red death by starlight and became the night terrors of their foes! Wiri'il…" She continued as the delegation entered, Taitwen leading half a dozen of her people into the large tent.
They stood before their seats, dignified in decorated clothing of frilled lheyir cloth and small trophies and jewelry traded from more settled tribes. Taitwen herself bore elaborate tattoos on her face and running down her exposed arms, and carried a large ironwood sceptre bearing many intricately carven symbols. She had been amenable to the meeting, but of the two leaders Ghira was concerned about her cooperation most. The former leader of the Wiri'il, she had stepped down in her waning years to allow her son to take the post. He had died decades ago to a blood feud with the Ashani, and she had had to return to leadership despite her wishes.
Ghira had bet this plan on the hope and belief that she was more interested in the security of her tribe than on revenge. He met the eyes of the Wiri'il leader, matching her cool gaze with his own neutral one, as Ialirr began his proclamation.
"The Council recognizes the tribe of Ashani! Ashani, the People of Three Blessings! Ashani, death-striders and dawn-riders! Ashani, poets who sing sweet endings to their foes! Ashani…" and on he went as their delegation entered. Ghira's first look at Yhiac revealed a relative youth with a shock of dark black hair kept in place with a diadem within which glittered semiprecious stones. He did not bear the aristocratic cast to his face, the high narrow cheekbones and delicate nose, that Ghira remembered of his father, but rather a ruddier, ruder look. In his eyes gleamed ferocious intelligence, and he moved with the grace and easy power of a stalking cat.
He had won his sovereignty of the tribe, Ghira knew, from his three siblings, two of which were among his delegation. The last had been cast out of the Ashani after the power struggle. There was an intensity to the chief that came across clear even in as insignificant an action as walking to his seat.
Yhiac inclined his head to his counterpart. Taitwen returned the gesture, despite the glares their respective entourages were too polite to throw at one another.
Ghira could feel the animosity rising in the room, and gestured to Prydocu to serve the arweh. After the tribesmen took the cups, he spoke the words to begin the gathering. "Under the light of Asuryan, may his fires burn away falsehood and deceit." That was all; that was enough. In those pregnant words he had communicated the dire nature of their gathering. To invoke the king of the gods in this ritual was to consign one's soul to damnation for falsehood.
At least, so it was before the gods died.
Yhiac blanched at the words, stumbling over the required response. The faintest ghost of a smile might have passed over Taitwen's features and those of the other Wiri'il.
Ghira did not allow the shame that Yhiac must have felt the time to fester. Best to refocus them on the matter at hand. "The planet is dying."
To his left, Saeriss shifted slightly. This was not how they had planned to start things, but given the animosity that still clove the two groups apart, a different approach would be required.
"A sickness has been spreading from the capital. Its progress is slow, but within a few centuries, there will be not a single aeldar unaffected. You have not heard of it because it is subtle; it is not a disease of the body, but of the soul. A Blight that poisons the hearts of our people, turning them to despair, to treachery, and ultimately to madness and death. Invisible and deliberate, it has infected our civilization from root to leaftip. Even the World Stone has been corrupted." A gasp answered that last, from one of the lesser delegates. Ghira continued without pause. "Unless we find its cause and root it out, the planet will die, our souls laid bare for the appetite of She-Who-Thirsts."
With each word, the aeldar facing him grew more tense. But there was no disbelief in their faces, only the grim acceptance of their situation that exemplified the aeldar. The word of a Seer was sacrosanct, after all. When he finished, there was a moment of reflection as the others digested his words.
It was Taitwen who spoke first. "Are the souls of our dead safe for now?"
"We do not know," Ghira answered honestly. "The King has banned all access to the World Stone to us. He has ordered it guarded night and day; were we to attempt communion with the spirits, we would be found and stopped in short order. We have tried accessing the World Spirit via the lesser stones in the various sacred sites we passed on our journey here, but it is lethargic. We believe the corruption already infecting the souls of the living may be spreading to the Spirit itself. If so, it will take all of our power, concentrated at a location where we have greatest access to the Spirit, to cleanse the taint."
"The other Stone, in the wild lands; have you tried to access that as well?" Yhiac asked, his earlier mistake well forgotten.
"We have sent one of our number to seek it out, but travel through the wild lands is dangerous and slow, and there is no guarantee that our presence there would be helpful. The sickness is emanating from the World Stone; our people are centered there, and it is a vital trade hub for the continent. If the source of the Blight is what we suspect, we will need to engage it there."
Taitwen looked unconvinced by the argument. Good. She and Yhiac were of like minds. The worst result of this would be her and Yhiac taking opposing positions merely due to their own dislike for one another. "You are speaking around the facts of the matter, Seer. You ask us to go to war against the Ulluthan and all of their allies, when there could be a more peaceful solution in the Stone in the wild lands. The Wiri'il would be pleased to offer you an escort and supplies, should you need them, but is it not remiss of us to thoroughly explore that option first?"
Yhiac was itching to declare martial support. Ghira could see it in his eyes, the twitch of his lips as Taitwen spoke. A chance to show up the Wiri'il as cowards. He could not allow the hot-blooded leader the chance. "It is a good suggestion, and one I dearly would prefer. If we were able to resolve the issue without bloodshed, the planet would be infinitely better for it. But I fear that to be an impossible hope. Realize; you have been protected from the effects of the Blight by your distance from Ynriad, both physically and politically. All the rest are captured by it, bound to it. The King has shown himself to be susceptible. If we cross lands under the Ulluthani control again, they will act first and kill us all."
Many of the delegates were taken aback by that claim, but Taitwen pressed on. "And if we were to deny this treachery?"
"You both hold no love for the Ulluthani." There was no room in the oath to Asuryan for the dissembling that would have normally accompanied those words, the diplomatic phrasing that would have given them plausible deniability of his claims. A few of the Wiri'il delegates looked nervous at his honesty, but the leaders were not phased in the slightest. "Both of your tribes have been disfavored for millennia, relegated to lands far from natural resources. I do not fear you would betray us all for the sake of the tribe that so treated you."
"And yet you had no trouble allowing our condition to continue," Taitwen said, lightly but with a hint of buried anger, as she sipped the last of her arweh.
"Would you have accepted a peace offering from the King? Now, when your tribe has for generations taken pride in its privation?" Ghira countered.
She conceded the point with a wave of her hand. As Prydocu refilled her cup, Yhiac said, "We alone will rise against the King? How could two tribes possibly defeat the might of all the rest?"
Ghira nodded, opening his mouth to explain and a splitting pain was ripping her skull open.
Liriel fled from the memory, stars bursting into migraines inside her head. Raw Warp energy coursed through her, a fraction of a second's slipped control allowing the ravening forces of chaos a pinprick's entrance into her mindscape. Rocking in her own mental ocean, she martialed the forces available to her and cleansed the taint from her soul, closing off the hole that had formed lest something truly terrible make its way through.
Liriel gasped for breath, drifting in the shifting seas of potential.
She was still in that half-dream state, tethered to Ghira's fate line. It pulsed and twisted beneath her, bound tightly now to the tribes the Seer leader had managed to bring to his cause. She did not want to risk tarrying long in this place, observing every detail of his life; the runestones were useful, but not all-powerful, and the longer she spent separated from her body, the easier prey she would be for the creatures of the Warp. She moved on, hunting the last piece of the puzzle, the battle that had renamed a landmark.
Wind whistled in the cool evening air, rustling the branches of the deciduous trees against one another. But for that gentle sound, silence prevailed.
The graceful arc of the bridge lay like a single stitch across the landscape binding the threads of two meandering roads. It seemed impossible that so large a structure could be so thin, or capable of holding so much weight. Megadons moved across it, a vast herd carrying hundreds of riders, tents, food, water, and other war materiel. Below them, the River of Twisted Hungers raged, frothy white waters teeming with kolos hungry for prey.
Ghira had been one of the first across, joining a scouting party soon after the sun fell. Now, the moon shone clear and bright above them, centre jewel in a vast vault of stars stained an ugly purple by the Warp-spewing wound that carved the sky in twain. He tried to ignore the thing, focusing instead on the troop movement.
It was a danger, of course, to march at night. The pace was slower by necessity and accidents were more common. But stealth served the group better than speed; the less warning they gave, the fewer reserves the Ulluthani could call in from distant tribes. His forces would likely be outnumbered in any case.
The Ashani and Wiri'il were better combatants than the relatively peaceful inner tribes. Despite the decades of unrest, the warriors of the Ulluthani were more used to peacekeeping actions than true war. And the Blight would surely inhibit the ability for their foes to coordinate. But Ghira still felt uneasy.
He had scried the fates of the Seers around him earlier to no avail. Contradictions, paradoxes, and self-referential loops abounded. This was not unusual when many Seers were involved in a conflict. Predictions of predictions, countered by still more predictions, did more to muddy fate than a thrashing megadon did to muddy a pond. But Ghira still felt uneasy.
He held in his hands the last and greatest treasure of the true Seer Council, who vanished on the Day of Sorrow. The Staff of Rendition was well balanced, the bulbous head filled with crystalline shards slumbering for now. It was as deadly a weapon as the exodites had ever made, more than a match for anything the King's forces could muster. The runes carved into it amplified his abilities still further, making the Seer a truly deadly foe. At his side would be the full might of his friends and allies, with an army at his back. But Ghira still felt uneasy.
The last of their forces were beginning to cross the bridge. He motioned to the leader of their scouting parties to tell him to widen their patrols, when an arrow sprouted from the man's chest. He made a small noise, then the arrowhead exploded, sending the top half of his body tumbling into the water below. More arrows began flitting down from the sky, and cries of alarm rang through the army.
The ambush was nearly perfect; from the cover of trees, they scattered the Ashani and Wiri'il forces, forcing loose formations into the forest to hunt them down. War cries began to sound, the ululations of the aeldar echoing against valley walls and the din of combat rising. Ghira moved to join them, when an ear-splitting crack resounded through the valley.
Ghira froze in shock.
The entire structure of the bridge swayed and collapsed. Hundreds fell to their doom in the rapids below. The bestial roars of the megadons merged with the panicked screams of the aeldari desperately clutching at spirit stones lest their souls too be devoured in the darkness.
He was unable to comprehend what had happened as an attack. His mind ran in circles, superstitiously searching for an omen he had missed. Reason asserted itself with a jolt. The bridge must have been sabotaged. Madness. Madness! To defeat your opponent in battle was honourable, courageous, noble. Physical conflict itself, though he loathed to resort to it, was a cornerstone of soul purification. This was pure cowardice.
Then the screaming changed its tenor behind him. He snapped into focus, turning to meet the new threat. What he saw took him aback again.
The trees were alive, thrashing in the night. Warriors were being wrapped in vines, lifted into the air, and slammed into the ground. Blood splashed out of pulped bodies. Others were impaled on thorny growths larger than an aeldar's leg, sprouting in seconds into massed ranks of soldiers. Megadons rampaged, driven into wild ferocity for some reason. Their riders clung to their saddles for dear life as they trampled their own allies.
All about him, his army died to no foe other than the planet itself. For the first time, Ghira understood the depths of his folly. Anathan - his meek, inoffensive, conciliatory apprentice - had galvanized the World Spirit against them. And now it rampaged. No one could control this.
He had to try. Ghira opened his mind to the Warp, seeking to commune with the spirit of the world roused to such rage against him.
And it twisted in his mind, viperous.
The slaughter went on for hours, days. Aeldar died, and Ghira could not help them. He was unbound in time, every movement slowed to uselessness. He saw his friends die over and over again; Prydocu, impaled by thorns; Ialirr, his head torn open by a lashing vine, slowly bleeding out, staring into his eyes; Melilliel and Saeriss, falling from the bridge, clutching one another tightly as they plunged into the waters below. This and a thousand more visions he saw, until finally the power left him and he collapsed to the ground, heaving.
The vision had taken only minutes. The moon had barely moved in the sky, the forest rang with real screams, and his friends and the greater part of his army was dead.
A hand lay in the dirt near him, attached to nothing. All that was left of one of the scouts. Beyond it, a stretch of ground soaked with blood. Then an eye. A torso, three limbs brutally hewn off.
Ghira saw it all, and could process none of it. He moved through the world in a daze, supported only by the Staff of Rendition. Riders moved around him, but did not seem to see him, chasing down the fleeing warriors of the Ashani and Wiri'il. Aeldar died on the ground, begging for a mercy that would never come.
His side was not the only one slaughtered. He saw bodies in Ulluthani colours, no more mercifully destroyed. A noble scion he had guided from childhood, choked to death on the thick tendril of purplevine rammed down her throat. The leader of the royal guard, trampled to death by his own rampaging carnosaur. Others, too many to name, that he had known for years.
The King himself was there, body swaying in the evening breeze. Come to watch the rebellion put down, most likely. Ghira stood, watching him a while, waiting for the end.
Finally, one of the riders noticed him. Ghira knew the boy; barely a century old, newly risen as a leader of his own squad. It would have been easy to preserve his own life, but what was the point, now, of dying with another's blood on his hands? Ghira stood, arms open, as the rider ran him down, speartip thrust forward.
Ghira hoped he would one day find absolution.
Liriel fell out of the vision with a gasp, the smell of blood still in her nostrils, the din of screams ringing in her ears. She could still feel the spear piercing her chest, her lifeblood seeping into the cold ground. It was many moments of wide-eyed panic before her hammering heart slowed and reason reasserted itself.
Before her, the flames had burned themselves out to embers and above, clouds shrouded the sky.
She told herself that that was why the night seemed darker, the wind colder, and the trees pressed more closely around her.
