Path of the Warrior (7 page)

“You are still annoyed that he didn’t like your sculpture!” Thirianna was half-amused and half-scornful. She sighed in exasperation. “You think that if he learnt to ‘see’ things the proper way he would appreciate your genius all the better. You think his criticisms are invalid simply because he has not shared the same education as you.”

“Perhaps that is the case,” Korlandril said in a conciliatory tone, realising he had chosen the wrong tack. “I do not want us to be divided by Aradryan’s absence. He will return one day, of that I am sure. We have both coped without him, and we will do so again. If we stay close to each other, that is.”

“Your friendship has been important to me,” said Thirianna, warming Korlandril’s hopes. He pressed on.

“I have a new piece of sculpture in mind, something very different from my previous works,” he announced.

“That is good to hear. I think that if you can find something to occupy your mind, you will dwell less on the situation with Aradryan.”

“Yes, that is very true! I’m going to delve into portraiture. A sculptural testament to devotion, in fact.”

“Sounds intriguing,” said Thirianna. “Perhaps something a little more grounded in reality would be good for your development.”

“Let us not get too carried away,” said Korlandril with a smile. “I think there may be some abstract elements incorporated into the design. After all, how does one truly replicate love and companionship in features alone?”

“I am surprised. I understand if you do not wish to tell me, but what inspires such a piece of work?”

Korlandril thought she was being coy for a moment, but a quick reading of her expression confirmed that she had not the slightest idea that she was to be the subject. That serpent in Korlandril’s gut, hissing with annoyance, uncoiled itself. What had been the point of all of his overtures? He had not been obvious in his affections, but neither had he been too subtle in his intent. Was she playing some game with him, wanting him to say aloud what they both understood to be true?

“You are my inspiration,” Korlandril said quietly, eyes fixed on Thirianna. “It is you that I wish to fashion as a likeness of dedication and ardour.”

Thirianna blinked, and then blinked again. Her eyebrows rose in shock.

“I… You…” She looked away. “I do not think that is warranted.”

“Warranted? It is an expression of my feelings, there is nothing that needs warranting other than to visualise my desires and dreams. You are my desire and a dream.”

Thirianna did not reply. She stood and took a couple of paces away before turning to face Korlandril, her face serious.

“This is not a good idea, my friend,” she said gently. “I do appreciate the sentiment, and perhaps some time ago I would not only be flattered but I would be delighted.”

The serpent sank its fangs into Korlandril’s heart.

“But not now?” he asked, hesitant, scared of the answer.

She shook her head.

“Aradryan’s arrival and departure have made me realise something that has been amiss with my life for several passes now,” she said. Korlandril reached out a hand in a half-hearted gesture, beckoning her to come closer. Thirianna sat next to him and took his hand in hers. “I am changing again. The Path of the Poet is spent for me. I have grieved and I have rejoiced through my verse, and I feel expunged of the burdens I felt. I feel another calling is growing inside me.”

Korlandril snatched his hand away.

“You are going to join Aradryan!” he snapped. “I knew the two of you were keeping something from me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Thirianna rasped in return. “It is because I told him what I am telling you that he left.”

“So, he did make advances on you!” Korlandril stood and angrily wiped a hand across his brow and pointed accusingly at his friend. “It is true! Deny it if you dare!”

She slapped away his hand.

“What right do you have to make any claim on me? If you must know, I have never entertained any thoughts of being with Aradryan, even before he left, and certainly not since his return. I am simply not ready for a life-companion. In fact, that is why I cannot be your inspiration.”

Thirianna took a step closer, hands open in friendship.

“It is to save you from a future heartache that I decline your attentions now,” she continued. “I have spoken to Farseer Alaiteir and he agrees that I am ready to begin the Path of the Seer.”

“A seer?” scoffed Korlandril. “You completely fail to divine my romantic intents and yet think you might become a seer?”

“I divined your intent and ignored it,” said Thirianna, laying a hand on his arm. “I did not wish to encourage you; to admit your feelings for me would be to bring them to the light and that was something I wished to avoid, for the sake of both of us.”

Korlandril waved away her arguments, pulling his arm from her grasp.

“If you have not the same feelings for me, then simply say so. Do not spare my pride for your comfort. Do not hide behind this excuse of changing Paths.”

“It is true, it is not an excuse! You love Thirianna the Poet. We are alike enough at the moment, our Paths different yet moving in the same general direction. When I become a Seer, I will not be Thirianna the Poet. You will not love that person.”

“Why deny me the right to find out? Who are you to judge what will or will not be? You are not even on the Path and now you think you can claim the powers of the Seer?”

“If it is true that you feel the same when I have become a Seer, and I feel the same too, then whatever will happen will come to pass.”

Korlandril caught an angry reply before it emerged, his mind catching up with Thirianna’s words. Hope blossomed, bright flowers stifling the angry serpent.

“If you feel the same? You admit that you have feelings for me.”

“Thirianna the Poet has feelings for you, she always has,” Thirianna admitted.

“Then why do we not embrace this shared feeling?” Korlandril asked, stepping forward and taking Thirianna’s hands in his. Now it was her turn to pull away. She could not bring herself to look at him when she spoke.

“If I indulge this passion with you, it would hold me back, perhaps trap me here as the Poet, forever writing my verses of love in secret.”

“Then we stay together, Poet and Artist! What is so wrong with that?”

“It is not healthy! You know that it is unwise to become trapped in ourselves. Our lives must be in constant motion, moving from one Path to the next, developing our senses of self and the universe. To overindulge leads to the darkness that came before. It attracts the attention of… Her. She Who Thirsts.”

Korlandril shuddered at the mention of the Eldar’s Bane, even by euphemism. His waystone quivered with him, becoming chill to the touch. All that Thirianna said was true, enshrined in the teachings of the craftworlds; the whole structure of their society created to avoid a return to the debauchery and excesses that led to the Fall.

But Korlandril did not care. It was stupid that he and Thirianna should be denied their happiness.

“What we feel is not
wrong!
Since the founding of the craftworlds our people have loved and survived. Why should we be any different?”

“You use the same arguments as Aradryan,” Thirianna admitted, turning on Korlandril. “He asked me to forget the Path and join him. Even if I had loved him I could not do that. I
cannot
do that with you. Though I have deep feelings for you, I would no more risk my eternal spirit for you than I would step out into the void of space and hope to breathe.”

There were tears in her eyes, kept in check until now. “Please leave.”

Korlandril’s anguish was all-consuming. Fear and wrath in equal measure tore through him, burning along his veins, churning in his mind. Dropping beneath it all was a deep pit of shadow and despair, down which he felt himself falling. Korlandril wanted to faint but held himself upright, forcing himself to breathe deeply. The serpent inside him wound itself tight around every organ and bone, crushing the life from him, filling him with a physical pain.

“I cannot help you,” Thirianna said, staring with misery at the anguish being played out in Korlandril’s actions. “I know you are in pain, but it will pass.”

“Pain?” spat Korlandril. “What do you know of my pain?”

His whole psyche screamed in torment, honed by his practice as an Artist, thrashing for expression. There was no outlet for all of the pent-up frustration; passes upon passes of suppressing his emotions for Thirianna threatened to erupt. Korlandril was simply not mentally equipped to unleash the torrent of rage that whirled inside him. There was no dream he could go to for solace; no sculpture he could create to excise the pain; no physical sensation he could indulge to replace the agony that wracked his spirit. Incandescent, his waystone was white hot on his chest.

Violence welled up inside Korlandril. He wanted to strike Thirianna for being so selfish and shortsighted.

He wanted to draw blood, to let his pain flow out of deep wounds and wash away the anger. Most of all he wanted something else to feel the agony, to share in the devastation.

Wordless, Korlandril fled, his anger swept around by a vortex of fear at what he had unleashed within himself. He stumbled out onto the walkway and stared up into the endless heavens, tears streaming down his face, his heart thundering.

He needed help. Help to quench the fire that was now raging in his mind.

In the time before the War in Heaven, before even the coming of the eldar, the gods schemed their schemes and planned their plans, engaging in an eternal game of deceit and love, treachery and teasing. Kurnous, Lord of the Hunt, was the lover of Lileath of the Moon, and they enjoyed both the blessing of Almighty Asuryan and the friendship of the other gods; save for Kaela Mensha Khaine, the Bloody-Handed One, who desired Lileath for himself. He craved her not for her beauty, which was immortal, nor for her playful wit, which made friends of all the other gods. Khaine desired the Moon Goddess simply because she had chosen Kurnous. Khaine endeavoured to impress her with his martial skills, but Lileath was unimpressed. He composed odes to woo her but his poems were ever crude, filled with the desire to conquer and possess.

Lileath would not be owned by any other. Frustrated, Khaine went to Asuryan and demanded that Lileath be given to him. Asuryan told Khaine that he could not take Lileath by force, and that if he could not win her heart he could not have her. Enraged, Khaine vowed that if he could not possess Lileath then no other would. Khaine took up his sword, the Widowmaker, the Slayer of Worlds, and cut a rent in the void. He snatched up Lileath by the ankle and cast her into the rift in the stars, where her light could no longer shine. For a thousand days the heavens were dark until Kurnous, brave and resourceful, dared the blackness of the rift and rescued Lileath so that her light would return to the universe.

It took some time for Korlandril to restore a small measure of equilibrium. Ashamed and desperate, he hid himself amongst the trees of the Dome of Midnight Forests, no longer weeping or growling. Korlandril detached himself from his physical processes, allowing them to continue without his intervention, losing all sense of sight and touch, smell and hearing. To isolate himself in such a way was a legacy of the Path of Dreaming, shut off entirely from outside stimuli. He was locked up with his own thoughts with no distraction, but resisted the urge to plunge into a memedream and forget everything. On the Path of Awakening he had learnt to divide his attention in the opposite direction, locking away conscious thought, concentrating purely on sensation and response.

The two Paths had complemented well his choice to become an Artist, but now they left him vulnerable. His experience as an adult had been directed towards compartmentalising and controlling his interaction with the world; later, as Korlandril the Sculptor, he had been a conduit for creative expression, turning thought into deed. Now his thoughts were bleak, bloody even, and he could not express them.

Sorting through his impressions and memories, Korlandril tried to make sense of what had happened. He did not understand what had broken the emotional dam that had kept his darker feelings in check. He could not find an answer. Disturbed, he was not sure what questions needed answering. He knew that he could not let these thoughts run rampant, nor could he act upon them. That would be to embrace the mayhem and indulgence that had brought about the Fall.

Korlandril thought for a moment of finding an infinity terminal and contacting Abrahasil. He dismissed the notion. He was in no state to be interacting with the infinity circuit. His emotional instability would be sure to attract attention of the wrong kind, if it didn’t do any actual harm to him or the circuit. Even if he could muster enough self-control to navigate the circuit properly, Abrahasil would not be able to help him. This was not some dilemma of form or sensation, or even one of expression. Korlandril simply could not comprehend why he had become so distressed, and why that distress was manifesting itself in such a destructive manner.

Amidst the maelstrom of his thoughts, Korlandril’s attention was brought to a small matter that needed resolving. A thought-cycle demanded his attention, a future-memory yet to be experienced. Korlandril analysed it and was reminded of the appointment he had made with Arthuis and Maerthuin. He linked the reminder with a memory and cycled them together with his current feelings. He encountered a shock of recognition, drawing on what he had seen, or rather not seen, in the blank stares of his friends while they had been wearing their war-masks. The deadness that was there, an expression devoid of shock, guilt, shame or remorse.

If anybody could help him understand the turbulence that so unbalanced him now, it would be the Aspect Warriors.

The Crescent of the Dawning Ages curved out from the starward rim of Alaitoc, bathed in the glow of Mirianathir. The kilometres-long balcony was covered by an arching vault of subtly mirrored material that dimly reflected the patrons below, blending their visual simulacra with the ruddy light of the star to paint an ever-moving scene across the heavens.