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  The Path Forsaken – Rob Sanders

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  The Path Forsaken

  Rob Sanders

  The spirehalls and chambers of Great Iyanden seemed to float on the distant reverence of shrinesong and mournful mantras. For Una Belphoebe – ranger and outcast – the haunting chorale was simultaneously what was most beautiful and oppressive about her craftworld home. Wherever she travelled in a galaxy broad and deep, she carried its serenity in her heart. A calm and certainty that called her back to mighty Iyanden. Here, however – saturated in the intensity of order and at the intersection of so many of her people’s paths – it drove her to the wayport. To the portals and the possibilities that lay beyond.

  As she buried provisions and spare crystal cores into the depths of her cameleoline cloak and satchelpack, the ranger felt that she was no longer alone in her preparations. She stopped for a moment.

  ‘Farseer Kelmon.’

  ‘Una Belphoebe,’ the aged eldar said. As the Farseer entered the chamber, his staff tapped against the wraithbone of the wayport floor. ‘I see the frightened child I once knew in the eldar before me. Running away again, ranger?’

  ‘I fear nothing...’ Belphoebe said.

  ‘That’s what scares me, child.’

  ‘More lectures, farseer. Must we do this again?’

  ‘No lectures, child.’

  ‘Then I bid you farewell,’ the ranger said, scooping up her helm and long rifle. ‘Please pass on the dutiful respects of a daughter, should you see my father.’

  ‘Where are you headed?’ Kelmon asked.

  ‘You tell me, farseer.’

  ‘You return to Ephraeleon,’ Kelmon told her, ‘to enjoy the embrace of the Exodite, lovesick and starry of eye.’

  ‘Metaphors do not become you, sir.’

  ‘Nor the backwater worlds you, my child.’

  ‘Did my father send you?’ Belphoebe asked.

  ‘The bed of Isarion Stormsmourn calls to you,’ the farseer accused.

  ‘That is none of your concern, venerable seer,’ the ranger told him. ‘Stay out of my future.’

  ‘I wish that I could,’ Kelmon said, turning the ranger towards the webway portal, ‘but you walk into it blind. The romance of adventure cripples you. Use your foresight, child. See the doom that awaits you and your backwater prince.’

  Belphoebe allowed the rush of time and distance to wash over her. She peered briefly into eternity and found her way to the Exodite world of Ephraeleon. She soared above its rugged peaks and the cloudy canopy of its vapour forests. The exotic cacophony of life rose to meet her. The hiss of the steam vents grew to a harsh, alien seething. The profusion of forest life descended into the clacking, snapping and the screeching of beasts from the beyond.

  ‘No,’ Belphoebe whispered.

  ‘The Great Devourer stakes its claim,’ Kelmon told her. ‘Swarm fleets appearing from the coldest void, fresh from feasting on the mon-keigh and the outlying empires. The worlds of wine and honey stand in the Devourer’s path. Exodite worlds. Myrandias. Q’sandritoc… Ephraeleon.’

  ‘I have to warn them,’ Belphoebe said.

  ‘It’s too late, child. Though it pains me greatly, Ephraleon’s time has come. Its skies darken with the doom to come. From lifeless rock it sprang and to lifeless rock it will soon return. To the loss of all.’

  ‘We can evacuate the tribes through the world gates,’ the ranger said, not listening.

  ‘Isarion Stormsmourn will not abandon his paradise to the tyranid,’ Kelmon said artfully. ‘You know this. The savage prince is skilful but proud. He united the great equatorial tribes, buckling them like a belt about their world. He led dragon riders, worldsingers and scouts to victory against the Corpse-Emperor’s armoured kin and drove the destructive green invader from the surface of Ephraeleon. The shadow in the warp begins to cloud my sight. But it is clear that Isarion will convince himself – and others – that this new threat can be met. But it cannot. The paradise will perish and his people will be lost to the voidspawn, their number countless and cold. The galaxy will be denied a world and the eldar a legend in the making.’

  ‘It makes no difference. I…’

  ‘Say it. Speak the words.’

  ‘I love him,’ Belphoebe told the farseer and herself. ‘I will go to him. Do not think to stop me.’

  ‘Fate forbids that I stand between the destined and their destiny,’ Kelmon replied.

  ‘Fate is with me?’

  ‘The crone is fickle, speaking in riddles about half-truths yet to come,’ the farseer said. ‘The skeins have revealed to me that your noble savage might be one of the foretold princes of providence, guardians of the east, fiery beacons to be lit on the dark frontier.’

  ‘You begin to sound like your crone, seer.’

  ‘You have served our people well,’ Kelmon said, ‘as outcast and as one of us. You have been the craftworld’s eyes on distant worlds. Your rifle has been an end to enemies and the finger on its trigger light in the taking of treasures once ours. Isarion Stormsmourn is not a treasure of our past, but our future. Mighty Iyanden calls for him.’

  ‘You want me to deliver Isarion, but not his people?’ a stunned Belphoebe asked.

  ‘He has a bright future,’ the farseer said. ‘His people do not.’

  ‘You argue with yourself, Lord Kelmon. As you said, the prince will not abandon his world.’

  ‘None of the other treasures you recovered for me had such a say in their recovery,’ Kelmon told her. The ranger’s heart felt like stone in her chest.

  ‘He will hate me for eternity.’

  ‘Eternity is the price you pay for the love he bears for his people… and yours, in turn, for him. Fate has found a use for such wanton blindness. Now you see?’

  Belphoebe stared back into the portal, allowing the impossible trajectories of the webway to carry the gaze of her tear-glazed eyes to distant Ephraeleon. As she drank in the doom of the Exodite world, she became lost in the shrieking of alien beasts, an ear-splitting horror that grew and grew until… silence.

  ‘I see.’

  The searing crack of interdimensional energy. This was followed by another. And another. The arcs intensified into a blaze as the agitated space at the centre of the webway portal achieved actuality. The sizzle of translation erupted about the cloaked silhouettes – one, two, three, four, five – that cleared the gate with feline grace, landing lightly in the surrounding undergrowth.

  They became immediately immersed in an equatorial fug of sound and heat, as the vapour forests and Ephraeleon highlands closed in about them. Steam rose from groundvents and snaked its way through the thick, blue foliage and up into the forest canopy. The air was thick with the buzz of vapour-shrimp and the croaks of tree-hugging amphibia that swooped down through the swarms on webbed limb-wings, collecting the bounty in their great, ballooning gullets. Condensed droplets fell in fat splatters from the tree tops. Cutting through the miasma, Belphoebe could hear tree imps in the canopy, shrieking their alarm at the rangers’ arrival and the booming, reptilian squawk of some feathered but flightless behemoth in the distance.

  ‘Helms and pan-spectrals,’ Belphoebe ordered, as the rangers slipped their heads into slender helmets and activated the sights on their long-rifles. With a soft chirp and a hum, both rifles and scopes were primed. ‘Switch to thoughtcasting.’

  Belphoebe heard the voices of her rangers echo about her mind. During the often covert nature of their enterprises, where the presence of a ranger might be advertised by traditional communications, thoughtcasting became invaluable. With practice, an eldar could telepthically commune with a group
of kindred and ensure the silence essential to a ranger’s survival.

  +Darhedron, harmonised.+

  +Kal-Saar, harmonised.+

  +Tassarion, harmonised.+

  Kal-Saar and Tassarion were brothers. Like Belphoebe, they were keen-eyed Iyanden eldar who shared a talent for offworld hunting. Darhedron was Belphoebe’s right hand. Short and scrappy for an eldar, the ranger was the veteran scout of hundreds of alien worlds and was both the voice of cautious experience and enthusiasm for new ventures. Hailing from Biel-Tan, Darhedron was well-suited to aid the Exodite cause on Darhedron, though his craftworld’s own farseers had apparently been blinded to the danger. Belphoebe had not been entirely truthful with any of them about the true reason for their expedition and the dangers they would face. As their minds intruded upon one another, she was careful to guard such secrets and insincerities.

  +Helshandra, harmonise,+ Belphoebe said with irritation. Helshandra had been a different case entirely. Following Farseer Kelmon’s warning, Belphoebe had needed a fifth ranger, and fast. Helshandra was young and inquisitive, drifting from path to path but longing for adventure that could only be found beyond the wraithbone walls of the craftworld. She was not without talent with a long-rifle but was too young to take up the mantle of the outcast. In a moment of necessity, Belphoebe silenced her personal misgivings about the girl and finally gave in to her entreaties.

  +Harmonised,+ the young recruit confirmed finally. +Why is everything blue?+

  +Darhedron,+ Belphoebe prompted.

  +The Exodite world’s sun is lacking in cardinal frequencies,+ the ranger informed her. ‘This affects the… soul of the vegetation and everything that eats it.+

  +And everything that eats everything that eats it,+ Helshandra replied.

  +She has a point,+ Kal-Saar admitted. +Adjust scopes and crystal refraction for spectral deficiencies.+

  +The lesson is ended,+ Belphoebe said. While Darhedron and the others considered such tutelage essential to Helshandra’s survival – and by extension, their own – Belphoebe knew they had no time for such indulgence. +Darhedron, our surroundings. What can you tell us?+

  The undergrowth swooshed as Darhedron moved lightly through it, studying the signs and symbols of alien nature.

  +We’re on a game trail,+ Darhedron announced, after a moment of consideration.

  +Why place a gate on a game trail?+ Helshandra asked.

  +The trail exists because of the gate,+ Belphoebe interrupted with some annoyance.

  +Visitors are the game?+

  +Listen and you might learn something,+ Belphoebe told her.

  +The ground’s worn here+ The leaves of a groundshrub rattled as Darhedron pulled them close. He sniffed. +Evidence of a kill here. Some blood. Tracks indicate predation. Large megafauna.+

  At that moment, the raw, reptilian bellow of some forest beast erupted in the distance.

  +Isarion’s dragons,+ Belphoebe mused.

  +I thought you said you had been here,+ Helshandra put to her.

  +Different gate. Tassarion, find a waystone and commune with the world spirit. We need guidance, the fastest route to the colonies. We need to find the seat of Ishtariel-La.+

  +Yes, mistress.+ The ranger slipped through the mist and foliage, out of sight.

  +Something’s coming,+ Darhedron warned them suddenly.

  +Dissemble,+ Belphoebe ordered and the rangers melted into the vapour forest. With a swish, the eldar were gone, one with their surroundings. The sound of forest life re-intruded on the scene, including the snorts of an approaching jungle forager. The creature was all tusk, multi-snout and swollen belly. It snuffled its way towards the webway portal but as it did the sounds of the forest died away. The forager sniffed at the air.

  The surrounding trees suddenly gave an agonising groan, the brumewoods shearing and snapping as they were pushed aside by the storming charge of some great beast of the forest. The ground shook with the steps of a colossal, feathered biped, a thick muscular tail balancing in the squat jaws of a vapour forest predator. The raw, reptilian bellow of the monster rattled the canopy. The thumping stomp of its charge carried it past the webway portal. The forager squealed and ran, but with a sweep of its jaws, the monster had it. After the brief horror of snorter’s death-shrieks, the portal-site filled with the flesh-squelching, bone-crunching mastication of the feeding beast.

  Suddenly the megasaur stopped. With half the carcass still dripping from its maw, it raised its ungainly skull and – like its prey had done previously – sniffed at the air. From above came a sky-shattering roar of another Exodite world creature. The call was a doom-laden announcement of predacious superiority. The beating of great leathery wings thrashed the treetops before a pair of gigantic, scaly talons crashed down through the canopy. The flying reptile hammered down into the megasaur, burying its giant talons in the creature’s muscular back flesh. The megasaur gave a shriek of shock as it was skewered by the beast’s claws. The monster’s mighty wings took it once again into the heavens and the megasaur was torn skywards, its pitiful moans drifting away into the distance.

  After a few moments, the chorus of forest life returned, and with it, the ranger Tassarion.

  +It’s gone,+ he told the hidden eldar. With a whisper of foliage, the rangers revealed themselves.

  +The world spirit?+ Belphoebe put to him.

  +Indicates that the colonies are a few hours to the east,+ Tassarion said. +For Ishtariel-La we will have to cross the highlands.+

  +It’s situated amongst paddy terraces cut into the mountainsides, upland crops and the like,+ Belphoebe said. +A few hours?+

  +The passes and crossings will take longer,+ Tassarion informed her. +The route takes us up through some harsh country.+

  +We don’t have a few hours,+ Belphoebe returned. +Single file, double-stride. We stop for nothing. Darhedron, take scout-point. Be the breeze whistling through the trees, the crooks and canyons. Find me a way through this forest. Kal-Saar, the wind at our backs.+

  +What is that in the sky?+ Helshandra asked, pointing up through the demolished canopy. The rangers peered up at the firmament. The sky was streaked with swirling clouds and the trails of cyst-spores that speckled the heavens like a glowing rash or affliction.

  +That’s invasion,+ Belphoebe told her. +That’s the descent of the Great Devourer. That’s why we don’t have a few hours. Rangers, move out.+

  Una Belphoebe was young by the standards of her race. She was in the peak of her physical prime, however, her long legs carrying her at speed – and with a dancer’s grace – through the vapour forest’s tangled ascent. Still, the eldar found herself pushed to her physical limits by the Ephraeleon highlands. Darhedron raced ahead, forcing his mistress and her rangers to keep the relentless pace. Cradling her long-rifle at the ready and with her cameleoline cloak flowing behind her like a rippling mirror of the surroundings through which she leapt, rolled and darted, Belphoebe did her best to keep up. All she knew was the rapid staccato in her chest, the unusual labour of her breathing and the light crunch of her footfalls scudding through the undergrowth. The young Helshandra, eager to impress, was at her heels every step, with the brothers bringing up the rear.

  With the foliage whipping by and the forest haunted by the calls of alarmed beasts, Belphoebe occasionally risked a glance up through breaks in the canopy. The sky was dark with the Great Devourer’s plummeting heralds of doom. She had heard reports from fellow rangers – presented as tales of caution – regarding the eastern homesteads and worlds of the fringe. Worlds stripped bare of organic life by some voracious galactic plague. What Lord Kelmon had told her of the tyranid scourge haunted her further.

  ‘What are they?’ Belphoebe had asked.

  ‘The beginning of the end.’ the farseer had replied. ‘The talon-tip of a greater doom to come. Something reaching out for us from beyond the galaxy. Something insatiable and unswerving in its desire to assimilate all life as we conceive of it.’

  ‘How do we stop it?’


  ‘You don’t halt such ruination. It is an apex predator writ large upon the galaxy. You get out of its path. You allow it to feed on enemy empires, while you save your own.’

  ‘Ever has it been the path of the Iyanden people to evade adversity.’

  ‘Though Iyanden has faced the tyranid and survived.’

  ‘What of the Exodite worlds on the fringe?’ Belphoebe asked. ‘Evasion is not an option for them.’

  ‘The Exodites are nomads. They will do what they did before,’ Kelmon assured her. ‘They will travel light and travel far. Though they will lose much, theirs will become a guerrilla war, their tribes running and fighting from world to world. And Isarion Stormsmourn will lead them.’

  +Cover break,+ Darhedron thoughtcast suddenly, bringing the rangers to a halt at the edge of the vapour forest.

  +Report,+ Belphoebe ordered.

  +Arable land, cleared for crops,+ Darhedron said. +Terrace paddies leading up the mountainside to a settlement.+

  +That’s Ishtariel-La, the seat of the old chieftain,+ Belphoebe confirmed.

  +Is that smoke?+ Darhedron asked.

  +Kal?+ asked Belphoebe.

  Kal-Saar’s scope hummed as he brought it to his helm. +Vanguard organisms,+ he confirmed.

  +What are we waiting for?+ Helshandra asked.

  +Wait,+ Darhedron said. +Look, on the terrace. The labourers, out by the spirit posts.+

  The scout pointed out a group of Exodite labourers, desperately trying to bring a terrified beast of burden under control. The long-necked megadon trumpeted its fear and stamped down into the paddy with its colossal feet, causing a thunderous splash. Meanwhile, the Exodite farmers unchained their draft animal from the logs it was clearing and called their calming command up at the creature.

  +Mistress,+ Kal-Saar said, still behind his humming scope. +The sky.+

  The rangers looked up just in time to see a flock of winged horrors sweep down from the heavens and out across the glassy surface of the paddy.

  +Dissemble!+

  The sky-slashing swarm seared past, a swooping rush of flapping wings and screeching jaws. The flock whirled and banked before ripping through the Exodite labourers and their beast of burden. The megadon’s trumpeting alarm and the brief screams of the farmers were lost in the nightmare of slashing jaws and barbs that shredded the exposed group.