Free The Masque of Vyle by Andy Chambers Page A

one tale of struggle, triumph and woe from a later age. Hear the story of one who was once, very briefly, the master of this house. Heed his words and ask yourself if you would have acted differently.’
    Suddenly Olthanyr Yegara stood alone in a pool of radiance to one side of the performance. He was fearful and unmoving while all about him the dancers still whirled like comets as they fought against the simulacra of death. The martial chanting of the chorus dropped away until it was only a background sibilance as of waves scouring the shore. The last Yegara was wide-eyed and sweating as he struggled to speak. From the darkness where the audience were watching there came a snort of derision as Vyle or Kassais let their contempt be known.
    The sound seemed to bring a sudden and peculiar change to the last Yegara. His head snapped upright as if it had been gripped from behind, his mouth worked and words began to spill out of it in a high, sing-song voice.
    ‘ My ancestors found this abandoned realm long ago,
    as they fled from a terror yet to cast its shadow upon the stage,
    sore pressed they were, and fearful, when they came upon the Sable Marches,
    so they took it for their own, despite the brute primitives that did dwell here,
    benighted creatures left to their own devices when their ancient masters withdrew. ’
    The pool of radiance widened to show that a tableau had formed behind Olthanyr as he spoke, although he did not turn his head to look at it – indeed he seemed incapable of moving at all. A group of eldar stood at one side of the tableau, all dressed in spoiled finery and led by a bold-looking warrior with lustrous dark hair. The smooth-skinned, saucer-eyed natives of the Sable Marches knelt before them, offering up polished conch shells and silver-scaled fish.
    ‘ B’Qui Yegara knew how to deal with upstarts,
    She knew how to teach respect.
    She built this keep out of their blood and bones,
    she stole their petty gods,
    and taught them to worship her instead. ’
    There was a flash and in its aftermath it could be seen that the tableau had changed. The dark-haired warrior now stood atop a mound of smooth-skinned dead with Hradhiri Ra at her shoulder. The surviving natives shrank away from the warrior and cowered on their bellies but they were trapped within the circle of light. The light encompassed their world and imprisoned them inside it with their tormentor.
    ‘ For long, dreaming ages my clan endured in this hidden arbour that B’Qui made.
    Generation after generation lived in luxury and sloth on the backs of the conquered.
    The clan prospered, branched and divided across the islands.
    Its members only came together again generations later,
    to scheme over who would win the inheritance after B’Qui’s passing. ’
    Now in the tableau behind Olthanyr Yegara several eldar stood posed around a funeral bier bearing the dark-haired warrior. At each corner of the bier stood a beast-headed jar, a small detail that Olthanyr shuddered away from, and Hradhiri Ra stood at its foot. The eldar attending the bier were noble-looking and finely dressed yet they eyed one another with obvious enmity and ill-disguised contempt. Beyond the immediate tableau, one of the pinwheeling conflicts swept silently closer and more skull-masked Death Jesters slunk onto the scene. These scions of death came to stand behind every shoulder in the tableau like grinning shadows.
    ‘ Qu’isal Yegara proved to be the wisest,
    he was the first to realise conflict was inevitable and struck first.
    Ferocious cunning laid his rivals low within Windgrave’s Confluence,
    and he claimed B’Qui’s inheritance for his own.
    Alas, that he could not wipe out every root and branch
    of our fractured clan in that instant. ’
    The skull-masked shadows struck at the eldar with knives in hand. Some of the victims died, some fled and soon only one noble was left crouching possessively over B’Qui’s funeral bier with a smile of feral triumph on his