Path of the Renegade by Andy Chambers

Author:Andy Chambers
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Publisher: Black Library
Published: 2012-01-24T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 8

THE HEART OF THE WORLD

The World Shrine of Lileathanir was called Lil’esh Eldan Ay’Morai; ‘Holy mountain of dawn’s light first gleaming’. It lay thousands of kilometres away from the webway portal, marking the termination of a mystic spiral that girdled the entire planet. For the past several hours Laryin Sil Cadaiyth had been there trying to soothe the raging world spirit as it shuddered and rebelled in response to the incursion of outsiders. Laryin was young as eldar count such things, and she had never before experienced the level of discord that now flowed through the psychic conduits of her world. In concord with the disturbed spirits she herself felt angry and frightened.

The holy mountain was safe, the World Shrine buried at its roots beneath hundreds of metres of solid rock. A small honour guard had remained there but most of the clan warriors had gone to help fight against the invaders. Those that had been left behind were surly and nervous as they stood fingering their double-handed clanths of star-metal and their laser lances. They whispered among themselves with mind speech when they thought Laryin wasn’t paying attention. Dark Kin! The soulthieves had come to Lileathanir!

Many of the guards had secretly laughed at the wardens’ dire warnings of the Dark Kin, and questioned the necessity for their endless vigil. Keeping watch for a threat unseen in living memory seemed foolish to the clan warriors. Life was hard enough on a maiden world and the Exodites chose to live there for precisely that reason. It bred a people shorn of temptation by the day-to-day necessities of survival, the kind of society which set little value on ancient lore.

The World Shrine itself was, of course, naturalistic in its aspect. Living rock formed its sweeping buttresses and towering pillars, water rushed from cracks in the stone to form glittering waterfalls and deep, clear pools. The ancients had seen fit to seed tiny crystal suns in the upper reaches of the shrine so living things grew there too, from simple ferns and mosses to miniature Eloh trees and gloryvine. The rich veins of minerals and fantastic crystal growths that glittered along the walls added a fey sheen to the pools and grottoes.

Here and there polished sections of stone were carved with runes that pulsed with their own phosphorescent witch-light. Laryin moved from one to another of these attempting to calm the spirits of the wild flowing through the holy mountain, singing to them quietly of love and harmony and the hope of better days to come. She welcomed the souls of her own kind that had been violently loosed into the world serpent by the coming of the Dark Kin, mourning their passing and weaving songs of their rebirth. She had felt death many times before, the cycle of life inevitably passed through death like the turning of a great wheel, but she found that this was different. Lives were being cut short, souls being snuffed out as the flame of war was carried into their land.

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