Free The Masque of Vyle by Andy Chambers Page B

lips. The pool of radiance abruptly vanished and Olthanyr Yegara’s microcosm was swallowed up in the cavorting conflicts of the wider performance. The eldar were surging triumphantly against the skulking death bringers, leaping acrobatically over their heads as they drove the ghoulish shapes into the shadows. Ashanthourus stood forward to narrate again.
    ‘ Death had been banished,
    chased away into the darkness from whence it came.
    The children of the gods looked about their new inheritance,
    and found the gods were less often at their side.
    Our kind, confident in their new-found power,
    began to turn the great wheel to their own purposes. ’
    As the troupe-master spoke the dancers of the troupe moved seamlessly into various groups. Some sketched airy towers of light with their movements, others fell into stylised depictions of study or discourse, others explored the hall and passed among the audience peering at various individuals as if at something newly discovered. Some of the troupe continued to dance seemingly only for the sake of dancing while others made music to accompany them simply out of the joy of playing.
    At length Isha and Kurnous reappeared in the wings before moving from one group to another. Each time they were ignored. Now the gods were apparently unseen and unheard by their children. Isha wept and Kurnous attempted to comfort her but to no avail. As the sorrowing gods exited, Olthanyr Yegara reappeared in his pool of radiance. Cylia and Lo’tos’s display of easy grace made him look even more clownish and uncomfortable by comparison.
    As Olthanyr spoke his next stanza, miniature tableaux popped into existence and disappeared all over the hall almost before they could be registered. Each showed a gruesome death being enacted: a lone traveller set upon by assassins, a lord in his hall choking on poisoned wine, two lovers clasping passionately together as one drew a blade behind the other’s back, a flailing form tumbling from a high window, and more, many more.
    ‘ So it went,
    blood demanding blood,
    vendetta breeding vendetta,
    until only Qu’isal’s progeny remained.
    But too few lived on to enjoy the victory.
    The house of Yegara became a diminishing thing,
    Worn down by time as a cliff is worn away by the sea. ’
    The scenes of violence sputtered to a halt leaving just Olthanyr standing alone in his circle of light. Around its periphery the smooth-skinned, saucer-eyed natives watched inscrutably as by some sleight their numbers slowly yet inexorably increased. Now it seemed that Olthanyr was hemmed in by the light, trapped within a shrinking circle.
    ‘ Qu’isal saw what end would come, unavoidable now.
    Clear-eyed as before, he was the first to perceive,
    in the Onyx wing he took his final breath,
    bringing all to fire and destruction about him.
    His sacrifice worthless and unmourned,
    his last gasp a curse against the ruin he had made. ’
    Behind Olthanyr a lone figure walked away down a corridor into inky blackness. Before the figure disappeared entirely from sight, a curtain of flames sprang into being behind it. A hoarse, keening cry could be heard before a rumble of stones and crackle of fires obliterated it. Silence fell across the hall and Olthanyr seemed to struggle for breath. Moments drew out into long seconds before a new voice prompted him to continue the story, laughing and seemingly full of humour at the grim tale.
    ‘ So help was needed?
    New friends found?
    Into portals, quick my friends!
    Off to where such things abound! ’
    Olthanyr blinked at the slight grey figure that squeezed between the smooth-skinned natives and invaded his little circle of light. Motley grinned widely at him and bowed before him, gesturing for the last Yegara to continue his tale. Olthanyr licked his lips nervously and then nodded.
    ‘ B’Qui had once barred the portals, but with Qu’isal’s passing new portents shone,
    None could see but I what must be done.
    A lingering death and then