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Soul Warden – Extract

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SOUL WARDEN

Miles A Drake

The Woven Gate, the entrance to the Ymmerloc Enclave, was a sight to behold. It was an immense ring of interlocking branches, sculpted from the bone-like fronds of the bryozoan trees that hung from the Helfrost ice cap above. The bioluminescent symbiotes threading through the structure made it shimmer with ghostly light.

Beneath the gate there was only darkness – the yawning abyss of a hidden ocean, entirely concealed from Shyish’s pallid sun by the ice overhead.

Keeping a hand on the rail of his Leviadon’s howdah, Lotann steadied himself against the undulating motions of the enormous bond-beast as it meandered its way towards the gate.

Lotann knew the gate was a symbolic thing. Predators and enemies could simply approach the city from below, making it useless as a defence. It existed to provide an entrance for other Idoneth to pass through, seen and announced. Attempting to enter the enclave by other means would be seen as an act of hostility.

‘Truly remarkable,’ Lotann said, marvelling at the ring as the Leviadon passed through it.

The nearest harpoon gunner, an Akhelian woman, glanced at Lotann, her expression masked by her black helm.

‘I was speaking to Mnemesthli,’ he added, gesturing at the man-sized Ochtar that drifted behind him.

The cephalopod’s tentacles pulsed as it kept pace with the Leviadon.

The Akhelian turned away, uninterested.

Lotann’s escorts were Mor’phann, and were thus a reticent lot. Throughout his journey from Mor’drechi, they’d hardly spoken to him. And so he had discussed his work with Mnemesthli. The Ochtar couldn’t speak, of course, but that was no representation of its intelligence.

The rest of the city, a pale tangle of hanging, tree-like bryozoans, came into view. The inverted forest was sculpted by the Chorralus to form hollowed tunnels, flattened walkways and spherical buildings, all hanging from the ice above, and glowing with ghostly bioluminescence.

One of the Leviadon’s harpoon gunners called out as a shoal of Akhelian cavalry emerged from a gloomy thicket in the city ahead. They rode pallid Fangmora Eels, and wore translucent, glasrime armour. Their meshed underarmour was as pale as their colourless skin. More bizarrely, their Fangmora mounts did not possess the blinding skullplates fitted onto most bond-beasts – but then, they had no eyes to blind.

Lotann steadied his entourage, and the Leviadon slowed. ‘’Tis but our welcoming committee,’ he said. ‘We have obeyed the custom. We will be allowed to speak our piece.’

The approaching riders, shrouded in rippling corposant, circled the Leviadon, lowering their voltaic lances. The leading rider, clearly marked as a Lochian Prince by his spined helm, spoke first, his voice a sibilant hiss.

‘By the words spoken by Ymmeros of yore to Volturnos the Uniter, and the assembral woven henceforth, we grant you words to proclaim your intent before our judgement. Speak true, and we shall grant you assembral. Speak false, and we shall grant you our lances!’

Lotann spoke. ‘I am Lotann. You may know me as the Warden of the Soul Ledgers.’

The Fangmora riders looked between each other. They clearly recognised the name.

The Lochian Prince turned a cold glare to Lotann, his grip tightening on his lance. ‘For years, we have beseeched the Ionrach for aid. And now, their answer is to send one errant Soul Warden?’

Lotann blinked. His escorts tensed further.

The prince continued, his voice dripping with spite. ‘We require phalanxes with which to repel the deathly tide that encircles us. Not more Soul Wardens. Our own Soul Wardens have been enough help already.’

Lotann detected further spite in his voice, but before he could wonder why, the prince lowered his lance and spoke again. ‘Nevertheless, warden, we will grant you assembral.’ The prince wheeled his Fangmora around, directing it back into the hanging city. ‘Follow,’ he commanded.

Lotann nodded, and bid his escorts to comply.

With a crack of the ma’harr’s reins, the Leviadon drifted into the passages of the city-forest.

As they made their way into the enclave, Lotann marvelled at the grace of the architecture. The Chorralus sculpted cities from benthic life forms, and this place was no exception. It was simply… upside down. Precarious walkways sculpted from flattened branches wound through the forest, but beneath many of them, there was simply nothing. Lotann found it disorienting.

The city’s Namarti appeared from time to time, pruning the branches of the bryozoa, or catching swarming ghost-krill with mesh nets. Most faded into the dense tangle as soon as they detected the passing Leviadon.

Such reclusiveness might be expected if the Namarti knew Lotann and his entourage were outsiders, but blind as they were, there was no way for them to tell.

‘Do the Namarti seem… afraid to you?’ he asked the nearest harpoon gunner.

‘They are Namarti,’ the Akhelian said, her tone dour.

As if that were an explanation.

‘Perhaps it is a remnant of the war,’ Lotann mused. The prince had confirmed the rumours Lotann had heard back in Mor’drechi. ‘Nagash’s wraiths search for this city, do they not?’

The Akhelian nodded.

Lotann sighed. The Mor’phann were very reticent.

Lotann guessed the constant threat of discovery and invasion would require many Namarti to take up arms. He also knew certain enclaves were more aggressive with their recruiting than others. Perhaps the Namarti thought his Leviadon was coming to gather them, and press them into the fighting ranks.

Either way, that they seemed so skittish spoke of potential misconduct by the higher castes, and that was something Lotann detested. The Namarti were the lifeblood of the Idoneth, after all.

But he quelled his concerns, for the enclave’s heart, Yggisilarc, came into view.

Yggisilarc was an enormous bryozoan, descending far deeper than those around it. Its twisting boughs were sculpted with perfect elegance. Much like the rest of the city, the tree shimmered with pale bioluminescence. Shoals of fish swarmed through its branches, and six Leviadons drifted beneath its hanging canopy, warding away threats from the deep.

Yggisilarc had four trunks, each splaying out at the base to pierce deep into the ice above. Lotann’s Leviadon and its new escorts easily slipped into the gap between two of the trunks, and came to a halt in the tree’s hollow heart. The hollow descended deep into the gloom below, lit by stepped gardens of iridescent sponges. Several robed Isharann of the Chorralus fane, wielding pole-mounted tools, pruned the gardens from atop the backs of giant, spindly sea spiders. Above, the chamber widened into a roof of gleaming ice, suspended between the trunks. A glasrime stair descended from the roof, widening into a platform.

The Leviadon came to a halt at the platform as a lone Akhelian descended the stair. He wore the spined helm and pale mantle of a Lochian Prince.

‘Warden,’ he said. ‘Your presence is expected.’

Lotann glanced around. In the gloom below, he spied the telltale glowing eyes of a shoal of Scryfish. They had been following his Leviadon ever since it had passed through the Woven Gate. ‘No doubt,’ Lotann said dryly.

Such surveillance was not uncommon.

‘The Dialochian is waiting,’ the new prince continued.

Lotann nodded and disembarked from the Leviadon, drifting onto the platform.

The prince then glanced up to the Fangmora riders drifting overhead. ‘Prince Karandrys,’ he said, his voice conveying a certain disdain, ‘escort the Mor’phann back to the Woven Gate, and ensure that they depart the enclave with due haste.’

Lotann tensed, and looked sharply at the unnamed prince. ‘Am I not permitted my escort?’ he protested.

‘You are not,’ the prince returned, coldly. Clearly the matter was not up for debate.

‘Very well,’ Lotann said. He would not push the point. The Ymmerloc could just as easily banish him as well. He looked back to his escorts, and reluctantly bid them a safe return journey back to Mor’drechi.

Mnemesthli joined him on the platform, its tentacles coiling around the ornate railing.

‘Your familiar must stay here,’ the prince said.

Lotann narrowed his eyes. ‘Fine. Mnemesthli, wait here.’

The prince nodded, and bid Lotann to follow him up the stair.

Giving his Ochtar a reassuring glance, Lotann did exactly that.

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