Lelith hesperax, p.1
Lelith Hesperax, page 1
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Contents
Cover
Warhammer 40,000
Lelith Hesperax: Queen of Knives
Dramatis Personae
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Epilogue
About the Author
An Extract from ‘The Lion: Son of the Forest’
Backlist
A Black Library Publication
eBook license
For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the Master of Mankind. By the might of his inexhaustible armies a million worlds stand against the dark.
Yet, he is a rotting carcass, the Carrion Lord of the Imperium held in life by marvels from the Dark Age of Technology and the thousand souls sacrificed each day so his may continue to burn.
To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruelest and most bloody regime imaginable. It is to suffer an eternity of carnage and slaughter. It is to have cries of anguish and sorrow drowned by the thirsting laughter of dark gods.
This is a dark and terrible era where you will find little comfort or hope. Forget the power of technology and science. Forget the promise of progress and advancement. Forget any notion of common humanity or compassion.
There is no peace amongst the stars, for in the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
DRUKHARI
THE CULT OF STRIFE
Lelith Hesperax
Grand Succubus; known as Her Excellence, the Queen of Knives
Xithria Mourn
Succubus
Kharavyxis Kestra
Hekatrix of Lelith’s Bloodbrides
Zela Elynna
Bloodbride
Kylos Vex
Bloodbride
THE CULT OF THE THIRTEENTH NIGHT
Morghana Nathrax
Grand Succubus
THE SHRINE OF THE RED DAWN
Morae’el
Klaivex
THE COVEN OF CLAWED RUIN
Lady Immelia
Haemonculus
THE COVEN OF THE FLENSED TALON
Khaebris Kro
Master Haemonculus
THE KABAL OF THE BLACK HEART
Asdrubael Vect
Supreme Overlord of Commorragh, Master Archon
YNNARI
Yvraine
Priestess of Ynnead; known as the Emissary
The Visarch
Bodyguard and companion to Yvraine
HARLEQUINS
THE MASQUE OF THE SILENT DUSK
Prydian Wraitheye
Great Harlequin and Troupe Leader
PROLOGUE
Balance is the key to all things.
Balance is what keeps the stars spinning through their cosmic paths. Balance can be altruism. Balance can be vengeance. Balance is what keeps the dancer forever on the edge of falling, without ever tipping over that final precipice.
Ah, the Fall.
Balance led us here. When the weight of our kind’s pressure on the fabric of the warp grew too great, as we stumbled from one excess to another, the warp itself balanced the universe again. She Who Thirsts was an act of balance; three became four, and we became far fewer. Now we live with the consequences of that balancing in every second of our existence, and we deal with it in our own ways.
The Asuryani of the craftworlds understand balance to a certain degree, in that they hold themselves tightly to a centre line and rarely permit themselves to stray too far from it. Everything they do is measured, just so much and no more. It is an existence of a sort, for those whose minds prefer rigidity to fluidity. The Exodites follow a similar code by a different means, eking out a rustic existence as though isolating themselves from the greatest achievements of our collected peoples will prevent threads of desire from tugging on their souls. Perhaps it does. Both groups trap their spirits in crystal in the end, to keep them from the maw of She Who Thirsts; a largely efficient method, if somewhat lacking in grace. The Ynnari seek to rebalance the balance, by raising their god to eliminate She Who Thirsts entirely. Only time may yet tell how successful or disastrous that particular tipping of the scales will prove to be.
As for the Harlequins, we prefer the dance. Never-ending movement, applying a touch of pressure here, or a moment of support there. We are always in motion, following the steps of our god in the Great Dance. It allows us to cheat She Who Thirsts, but that is not its only purpose. We are known as storytellers, but we weave new tales as well, and there is no tale so important as the future.
But there is one group of players yet to be mentioned. The drukhari shun any notion of balance, pretending that they are safe from She Who Thirsts as they sit in the centre of the webway and relive the days of the cults of excess that brought her into being in the first place. However, that in itself is a form of balance, for they are the dark mirror to the rest of us; and besides, the drukhari are not so free as they make out. They are trapped in a world of knives, where a single misstep will see them impaled on the ambitions of another. Truly, the drukhari must mind their balance more than any of us, if they wish to survive their own kind. Who amongst the dark kin can express vulnerability, or affection, without having it immediately used against them? Precious few of them have that sort of power, and even fewer would use it.
Yet despite that, Commorragh can still be destabilised. When the Prophet of Ynnead arose, a great disjunction shook the Dark City to its core. It clung to existence, but the methods utilised were extreme, even for that kindred of torturers and murderers. The Supreme Overlord of Commorragh retained his position and his city, but at great cost. Asdrubael Vect sought to become a Living Muse, and in so doing… Well, the balance may have tipped too far.
But who, or what, could balance out Asdrubael Vect? Who, or what, could be the foil to the infinite patience and byzantine schemes of a creature that has sat at the centre of the webway for ten millennia; glutted on power yet ever hungry for more, like Ilhomeraech, the great spider of legend? Not a schemer, not a planner, not someone whose mind works in a similar manner, because such a mind would look at the Supreme Overlord of Commorragh and recognise that it was outmatched. I speak from experience, for I have my own designs, but I must move most delicately around the periphery of his web lest I reveal myself to him, and am ensnared and devoured.
No, this requires a warrior. A being of action, in perpetual motion. And so, with the scene set, let the dance begin…
ONE
Lelith’s knives sang a song of silver and scarlet, and she danced to their tune.
They were on a world. They were always on one world or another, now; either that, or travelling through the webway. Lelith had stopped bothering to keep track of what name the worlds might have had. Kharavyxis always knew, in any case. The Hekatrix of Lelith’s Bloodbrides paid attention to that sort of thing; she believed in the cause of the Ynnari with a fervency nearly as sharp as the razorflails she wielded, and hung off every word uttered by Yvraine, the new religion’s high priestess and self-proclaimed saviour of the aeldari. Lelith wasn’t sure whether Kharavyxis had committed herself so fully to the God of the Dead because she was desperate to escape the claws of She Who Thirsts, which relentlessly tugged at the soul of every drukhari, or because Lelith herself had led the way.
It didn’t really matter. Yvraine had brought them here, to another flyspeck world with an unimportant name, adrift in the glittering whirl of stars that formed the galaxy, and Lelith was killing things. That was how life went now.
She spun and whirled, twisted and thrusted, revelling in the sensations: the air passing over her skin as she moved; the lingering caress of her blades as they danced crimson trails across her enemies’ flesh; the solid impact when she drove them home, seeking vital parts with the intimate knowledge of a lover. Everyone – everything – that fell before her came at her with the belief that they would be the one to end her life and cast her soul loose into the uncertain fate that awaited it, and she delighted in proving each individual wrong; only once each, but terminally so.
She cut her way through an entire mob of gibbering humans, who wailed and flailed and swung their weapons as though any of them could survive getting close to her. Then she was faced with three bipedal daemons, fair-faced and crab-clawed, shrouded in fumes of bitter musk, their forked tongues flickering as they sang songs of sweet sorrow and lustful disgust in attempts to ensnare her. Daemons were trickier; the infernal servants of She Who Thirsts did not live by the rules of the physical realm, and blows that should have struck limbs from bodies or heads from shoulders might glance off without effect, or pass through flesh as though it were mist. However, Lelith had trained in the arenas of Commorragh for millennia, and she had developed her body to the point where she could push
She toyed with them briefly, parrying unnatural chitin and warp-forged steel with equal ease and mocking laughs, but slowing her deadly dance enough to make the beasts think they had her. They closed in, offering up twisted hymns to their mistress and creator, singing of the death they would inflict and the endless torments Lelith would suffer once they shucked her soul from its meat husk. They were mere splinters of their patron, but Lelith could feel the hunger bleeding from them – the hunger and the hatred, but also the fear. She Who Thirsts had been born of the aeldari, and She Who Thirsts was the aeldari’s doom and bane, but few things in the galaxy or beyond ever went entirely one way. The aeldari could, perhaps, turn that fate on its head; that was what the Ynnari sought to achieve, and that was what She Who Thirsts feared. That was why the god’s servants pursued Yvraine and her followers wherever they journeyed, and that was why Lelith was here.
To fight.
She feinted a parry, then ducked under a razor-edged claw seeking to snare her wrist and break it. She slashed the weapon in her right hand across one enemy’s thighs, and drove her other knife into the stomach of the daemon on her left while its blow whistled harmlessly above her. She was rewarded by twin howls of inhuman agony, and launched upwards into a backflip in which she cracked the third beast’s head backwards with a blow from her right foot. She landed in a crouch, then sprang immediately back at her prey.
The daemons were screaming now. Lelith knew their kind: quicksilver fast, and arrogant with it. Insofar as they had any individuality beyond their patron’s will, they delighted in being the first to strike, then slipping beyond their enemies’ reach, again and again, until desperation set in. They would not kill with the first blow, or even the third, or the fifth, unless there was a pressing demand for it. Instead they sought to demonstrate their perfection, and in so doing gave worship to the god that had spawned them. Tonight, however, it was they who faced perfection under the wan light of twisted stars.
They were found wanting.
Lelith fought to kill now, her knives darting like glimmering serpents in the dim light. A daemon blocked her blade with the unnaturally hard armour of its claw, and Lelith spun smoothly past it to bury the other into its back. One of the daemon’s kin lunged for her with a shriek of rage, but Lelith twisted aside and the razor-tipped appendage sank into the flesh of the daemon she’d just wounded. Her spin sent her long hair lashing out, and the tiny blades embedded within took the eyes from the third daemon. The beast howled, now blinded, and Lelith gutted the one that had just struck its fellow, then sidestepped the thrashings of the blinded one and scissored her blades together to prise its head from its shoulders.
Within moments, she had gone from facing three adversaries to one. The bonds that tied two of the daemons into their physical forms were severed, and they dissolved into insubstantial ectoplasm as their true essence returned to the warp from which it had been spun. The last creature, bleeding ichor from the wounds Lelith had slashed across its thighs, attempted to rush her.
Even hurt, it was still fast. Many lesser fighters would have been overwhelmed by its speed and savagery, but then, many lesser fighters would not have survived long enough to slay two of its kindred. Lelith threw one of her knives overhand, and it burst clean through the daemon’s skull and out the other side. The creature staggered to a wavering halt, but its unnatural resilience kept it clinging to existence for a moment longer. Lelith did not allow it to succumb to death in its own time; she came to meet it and opened the smooth, pallid purple skin of its neck with her other weapon, then yanked her first blade out. Her final foe collapsed, disintegrating as it did so. With no other enemies within her blade’s reach, Lelith took a moment to assess the nature of the battle.
It was all but over. The forces sent against them by She Who Thirsts had never been enough to wipe the Ynnari out, but they did not need to be. The Ynnari were flesh and blood, despite serving the God of the Dead, and although the energy of the fallen could enervate their living comrades, Yvraine’s followers had a limited number of hands to wield weapons. Their adversary, on the other hand, had virtually infinite resources. It could spawn new daemons from the warp, especially now the galaxy’s reality was more unstable than ever, and there was never a shortage of sentient mortals that were willing to give themselves over to the service of the Dark Prince. The Ynnari’s foe might not have gathered enough strength in one place to spell their final destruction, but it could wear them down drip by drip, and death by death.
Besides which, Lelith knew well enough that there was only really one death that truly mattered, in terms of the Ynnari’s galactic importance.
Yvraine, the Emissary of Ynnead, wielder of the Crone Sword Kha-vir, which was carved – according to legend – from a finger bone of the goddess Morai-Heg. It was her rebirth in Commorragh that had announced the arrival of the Ynnari as a power, and it would take her death to truly end the Ynnari sect, for she was the one who inducted new members into their ways. It was Yvraine who had severed the craftworlders’ reliance on their waystones, and it was Yvraine who had lifted the burden of the soulthirst from the drukhari. Lelith had felt that sensation herself, when the nagging, lingering ache at the corners of her soul had finally yielded before the whispering power of the God of the Dead. She Who Thirsts was sucking at the edges of Lelith Hesperax’s mind no longer, and the Queen of Knives no longer needed to feed herself on the pain of others to stave off her soul’s gradual degradation.
It was almost amusing, Lelith reflected, watching Yvraine’s distant figure pirouette gracefully under the broad branches of a gigantic tree and sever the head of a four-armed monstrosity, just before its own blade could find her flesh. Yvraine had removed the part of Lelith’s being that required death and suffering to sustain itself, but in the process had recruited her as a bodyguard. It was just as well that Lelith Hesperax had never fought simply in order to feed her soul. She was the greatest gladiator in the galaxy, and it was not the pain of others for which she had always truly hungered, but a challenge. Yet here she was with the Ynnari, killing daemons and mortal pawns instead of seeking out the most dangerous foes in the galaxy to prove herself against them, with her only challenge being to keep a priestess alive until her desperate prophecy came true.
A flight of reaver jetbikes screamed past, their underslung splinter rifles spitting toxic shards and felling the last huddles of humans who had not yet thrown themselves on the weapons of the Ynnari. Lelith spun her blades in her hands to shake loose the remaining ichor, then replaced them in their sheaths and began to cross the field of carnage.
The Ynnari were disparate, but cohesive; diverse, but one. Every aeldari background was represented, from the traditionalist ascetics of the craftworlds to the hedonists of Commorragh; from the rustic recluses of the Exodite clans to the gregarious, mercurial corsairs; even the sinister mirth of the Harlequin troupes had a presence. Each brought their own histories, unified behind Yvraine and Ynnead.
The sea of Ynnari around Yvraine parted in front of Lelith in the same way that fish shoaled away from a predator, and she swaggered through them with all the poise and confidence she had worn when striding out onto the sands of the Crucibael, the combat arena of her Cult of Strife back in Commorragh. Lelith was not Ynnari, not truly, and everyone present sensed that. The majority accepted it because they had no choice in the matter, and who Yvraine chose to keep close to her was the Emissary’s own business. The few who might have some sway raised no objection because only a fool would drive away a fighter of Lelith’s quality without an excellent reason. They considered her a tool to be used for their purposes, and they were not the first. The rest, however, just made sure they got out of her way.
Lelith’s Bloodbrides fell in behind her – two dozen of her most skilled wyches, who had followed her from Commorragh in search of the promised refuge from the attentions of She Who Thirsts, or the same sort of challenges that had drawn Lelith herself here, or even out of whatever passed for loyalty amongst the drukhari. Lelith was one of the brightest stars of their race, after all, and there was plenty of glory to be found from standing in her light, so long as one was not foolish enough to seek to depose her.
