by Guy Haley
The sensation passed.
Teleport flare opened his way to a scene of devastation. He and his force of eleven others arrived upon a field where a battle had been fought and lost. Wrecked tanks dotted muddy hillsides. The cadaver of an Ecclesiarchy war train loomed a few hundred yards away. There were scattered bodies, most green bones that appeared to have been there for decades. Patches of slime marked the places daemons had fallen. Whatever had happened there was over now. Smoke raced along the ground in the face of a strengthening wind. Mist escaped before it, fleeing over the horizon. It was night-time, but in the east over the marshes was the promise of dawn.
‘Fan out,’ Varsillian told his brethren. ‘Locate the survivors. Gelistan, Hadrianus, with me.’
Varsillian set out to the medicae facility. They passed a couple of Adeptus Astartes grav-tanks on the way in. Both were resting on the ground, grav-fields out. There were a dozen Novamarines within and around them. Several were still alive, all unconscious.
‘Mark their positions,’ Varsillian said. ‘Send for medicae evacuation transports.’
They went within. Derelict halls greeted them, ripe with centuries of decay although it was not so long since the facility had been overrun. There were dead stands of fleshy plants, and more noxious puddles where daemons had died. But they saw no sign of active Neverborn, either by sight or upon their sophisticated armour sensoriums.
They headed further in. A deathly stillness lay over everything. There was no sign of life other than the wind. Above, the cloud was clearing. Shreds of sky appeared.
‘I mark five living Adeptus Astartes in the central chamber,’ Hadrianus voxed. Location dots sprang up on Varsillian’s helmplate.
‘Let us start there, then,’ said the Warden.
They picked their way through corridors blocked with falls of rubble. They came across the corpses of dead Novamarines. They marked their positions. Though they were too badly affected with plague or rapid mutation to allow their gene-seed to be harvested, honour would be done to them and their battlegear.
The five life signs pulsed weakly from battleplate running on emergency systems. The Custodians entered the central chamber, and found the Adeptus Astartes laid out around the origin point of a blast.
‘The artefact site, no doubt,’ said Gelistan. There was nothing left of it, only a black starburst on the floor. Varsillian walked over to it while his comrades checked the Adeptus Astartes, and found a sixth body, standard human, so small he took it at first for a pile of rags.
‘This one is alive too,’ said Varsillian. Hadrianus joined him.
‘How is that possible?’ he said. ‘And these others have been flung aside by explosion. Why is he still here?’
‘He is sick,’ said Varsillian. Gently, he rolled the body over. A diseased, emaciated face looked up at him with blind eyes. ‘The militant-apostolic,’ he said.
Mathieu drew in a wheezing breath. His hands spasmed.
‘Help me,’ he said.
‘Rest easy, help is already on the way,’ said Varsillian.
‘Not help,’ Mathieu moaned. ‘I must… I must go to him. I have one last message to deliver, at the Emperor’s command.
‘I must speak to the primarch.’
Chapter Thirty-Nine
THE RAINFATHER’S GAMBIT
‘The thing about you psykers,’ said Rotigus, and it cast a torrent of stinking water at Tigurius, ‘is that you overestimate yourselves.’
A shield of blue spiritual power flared in front of Tigurius, and Rotigus’ deluge splashed against it. The water slopped around the Librarian, diverted away by his power, sluicing down priceless tomes and turning them to piles of sodden rubbish that sprouted knots of brambles.
The Rainfather continued to hurl spells at the Librarian, driving him back. Tigurius sent bolts of corrupting power away from himself with sweeps of his staff, but they hit the caged books lining the corridor, rotting them, transforming them, or setting them ablaze. Smoke and noisome gases filled up the narrow way.
‘I hear much about you being some mighty warrior. How disappointed I am, when I finally face you, to find this… this… example.’
Rotigus flicked its rod forward. Screaming loops of crimson power raced towards Tigurius that he was hard-pressed to deflect. They burst among the cages, causing them to implode with screams of metal.
Tigurius said nothing, refusing to be drawn into debate with the Rainfather, but answered instead with his own display of might. He drew at the warp so hard Fabian felt reality flex. Lightning raced from the tip of his staff. Rotigus attempted to block it with a wall of boiling filth conjured from nothing, but the energy speared through it, hitting the Great Unclean One in the centre of the chest, leaving a spiderweb of burns in its decaying skin.
Rotigus coughed, and a geyser of maggots gushed from its principal mouth.
‘So you do bite,’ it said, wiping vermin from its lips. It flung out its left arm, and hurled a ball of flies from the mouth below its hand at the Librarian. They hit as hard as a catapult-cast stone, knocking Tigurius back, then burst on his armour, and began to gnaw at his ceramite. ‘But I have more teeth than you,’ it said.
Tigurius wreathed himself with flame, burning the flies to dust.
‘Try harder, daemon,’ he said.
Fabian rolled onto his front and got onto all fours. Once there, he felt dizzy and had to steady himself, taking deep breaths of stale, recycled air. He hurt all over. Nausea threatened his stomach. Reality warped like melting glass under the punishment of the psychic duel.
The library is still here, he told himself. I am still here.
He checked through his suit systems one by one, as he had been taught, to distract himself from the madness unleashed by Rotigus. The air shook to unearthly laughter. Flopping worms as big as his fingers were pushing their way out through the walls and up from the floor. One brushed his hand, and he snatched it back in terror, but it thrashed about and did him no harm.
That gave him the energy to get up, though he nearly passed out, and had to lean against the wall.
Smoke was thickening in the side room. Rotigus and Tigurius were still fighting, but drawing away from him, back towards the higher stacks.
His eyes fastened on the book on the floor. All the rest in the room were unreadable mush. What terrible secret was hidden between the survivor’s pages?
He could not move. He should leave. He should not pick it up, but, he reasoned, what harm could it do? He had seen his share of forbidden grimoires that held mind-destroying secrets. This did not appear to be one of those, for it had been kept in this side room, which though protected by a heavy door, did not possess the warding sigils or psychic circuitry usually employed to restrain such things as sorcerers’ tomes. It was just a book. It lay face down on the floor, the title hidden.
The sounds of fighting echoed up the corridor. Tigurius was striking at Rotigus with his staff. Crystalline matrices within the shaft burned as walls of light, leaving crater wounds on the daemon’s surface. Rotigus smashed its rod down, and Tigurius caught it on the horned head of his staff, and poled it away and aside. He slammed the butt on the ground, sending out a shockwave that rolled up Rotigus’ flab in visible waves, making its jowls flap. The mouth in the daemon’s belly snapped at the Librarian, and in reply Tigurius shattered its teeth with a concentrated blast of energy.
Fabian could not get out. Their melee blocked the corridor completely. He glanced again at the book. Should he take it?
Rotigus sprawled into the caged shelves, destroying them completely. Tigurius slammed the staff head into the mouth in its arm, breaking fangs. The tongue was severed and flopped on the floor. Rotigus shrieked, a surprisingly high and girlish noise, and grabbed at the wound.
‘This is over, daemon,’ said Tigurius, raising his staff to strike again.
A tolling rang throu
gh the library, faint but powerful. Three rings that made reality wobble further, and the library shake. Books fell in avalanches from the stacks, and hung on their chains like dead avians strung up by vengeful agricultors. Tigurius staggered.
Rotigus heaved itself back upright.
‘That it is, human.’ It brought its rod down hard on Tigurius. The psychic hood around the Chief Librarian’s head exploded, stunning him. His massive suit of armour toppled to the floor, and the lights on his hood and around his staff went out.
‘Not very impressive at all,’ said Rotigus with a tut, then rubbed its wounded arm-mouth with a grimace.
Rotigus turned its attention back to Fabian.
‘Ah, still there. Very good.’ It came rolling up the corridor, stooped like an ape.
Fabian had nowhere to go. He was numb to all sensation, past fear. Rotigus was such a terrible sight, it was easy to believe the daemon was not real, and that Fabian was in a nightmare. But it was happening. He stood rooted to the spot as Rotigus approached.
‘I mean you no harm, truth seeker. Look, look at me!’
It pushed a hand out at Fabian, and the historitor saw it disintegrate before his eyes. Skin slid off muscles green with decay. Veins shrivelled. Sinews dried and snapped. Its fingers fell off and melted on the floor.
‘See? It is over,’ said Rotigus, displaying its stump. ‘Mortarion’s plans have come to nothing, and therefore I must go. The network of decay he wasted so much establishing is undone, and the warp’s grip loosens on Ultramar. I bid you farewell. Enjoy your book, little reader.’
Rotigus collapsed into itself, its skin ripping like old silk, and a wash of dirty water rushed out. Its head was last to go, folding in on itself like a discarded mask before dissolving into black smoke.
After a moment’s thought Fabian picked up the book, saving it from the puddle of filth oozing from Rotigus’ remains, and limped up the corridor to the Chief Librarian’s side. In the corridor, those books that were not rotted black were ablaze, and fire was spreading into the main body of the library. He heard data crystals shattering in the distance. If he had not been wearing the environment suit, he would have been dead of disease or smoke inhalation within moments.
He activated his vox, and found the channels clear.
‘Chapter command, Fabian Guelphrain, historitor majoris, seeking aid. Lord Tigurius is down, and the Library of Ptolemy ablaze. Please, please come and get us.’
There was a short delay.
‘Affirmative. Position logged. Incendor suppression teams and Apothecary on their way. Stay where you are.’
‘I do not know if that will be possible,’ Fabian murmured.
The vox-link went dead.
A stack of books collapsed with a roar at the end of the corridor, sending a storm of embers racing towards him. He felt a profound sadness that so much knowledge was to be lost, and gave a little prayer to the Emperor that some would be saved.
Prompted by that thought, he turned over the book he held. It was wholly ordinary. There was no author’s mark, but there was a title. Fabian read it aloud.
‘The Reign of the Emperor Sanguinius, a history.’
He frowned at the title. It meant nothing to him. Sanguinius had never been an emperor of anywhere, so far as he knew. Had he been given a fanciful work? Was this some kind of cosmic jest at his expense?
The thought that a god would wish to tease him filled him with terror.
Tigurius’ hand twitched. Within the smoking remains of his psychic hood, his helmet rolled.
Fabian hurriedly stuffed the book into an ammo pouch on his thigh. It only just fit.
‘The daemon,’ said Tigurius.
‘It is gone,’ said Fabian.
The Librarian slowly got up. Fabian dismissed the idea of helping him. There was no way he could move that mass of metal and flesh. He’d only be a hindrance.
‘There are people coming for us,’ Fabian said. ‘I suggest we wait in there, with the door shut.’ He pointed back to the room. ‘You will survive out here, probably, but I don’t want to burn alive.’
Groggily, Tigurius agreed.
Chapter Forty
SAINT MATHIEU
‘He is still alive?’ Guilliman asked.
Chiromancer-Captain Bazhiri of the isolation ship Sanctuary nodded solemnly. Guilliman doubted if the man had any other expression but solemn, for his duty was a weighty one. The vessel he commanded was a death ship that few who entered left alive. The diseases Bazhiri treated were maladies of the soul as much as of the body. He had seen the worst the warp could conjure. By necessity, he was a psyker himself, of a middling sort, a rare individual somewhere between surgeon and sorcerer.
What times are these, Guilliman thought, that individuals such as this must serve the Emperor.
‘Yes, lord regent,’ the chiromancer-captain said. ‘He is alive.’
Guilliman let out a thoughtful breath that came out close to a sigh. He was weary, yet had so much still to do. He asked himself if meeting Mathieu was more indulgence than necessity. On the one hand, appointing the priest could be seen as one of his rare errors. On the other, he wondered if it had been his choice at all, and if it had not, how much of anything was his choice.
He thought back to the garden.
He looked through a triple layer of armaglass into the treatment room. Sacred symbols were engraved into each pane. Somewhere nearby, esoteric machinery worked to hold back the influence of the warp.
Mathieu occupied the single bed in the centre of the room. Medical equipment crowded the space around him. He was wrapped in a white shift that was stained by seepage from his many sores. He had no wounds; all the lesions that covered his skin were the result of disease. He more resembled a bundle of sticks than a man, crudely assembled into human form and draped with skin. One of the few things Mathieu had taken pride in was his hair, and that was falling out, covering his pillow. His cheeks were sunken beneath an oxygen mask. His eyes stared blankly at the ceiling, and wept tears of pus.
‘How is it possible that he still lives?’ Guilliman glanced at the doctor. ‘From a purely physical, medical standpoint.’
‘Medically?’ said Bazhiri. ‘I do not know how. It should be impossible. He went into the most contaminated part of Iax without protection. From what the Adeptus Astartes who brought him here told me, he faced down one of the great plague creatures of the enemy. He touched a tainted artefact. He would have been exposed to all manner of disease, and the malefactions of the warp, as you can see. But he lives.’
‘I can see,’ said Guilliman.
‘Although the psychic element of his afflictions is no longer active, we have seen to that, the sheer number of morbidities afflicting him should have killed him hours ago. This man should not be alive.’
‘As you have said,’ said Guilliman softly. ‘And what is your opinion from a non-medical point of view?’
‘There is his desire to see you, my lord. In other cases, I would say that this was keeping him alive. I have seen soldiers who should have succumbed to their wounds cling on for hours in order to receive final benediction from regimental priests. I have seen others suffer injuries that would kill a Space Marine outright so that they might complete their given task before they will allow themselves to die.’
‘But not in this case?’
‘No. He should still be dead. There is something going on here I am not familiar with. He is being kept alive by an outside influence, I am almost certain. These keep out any kind of psychic energy.’ He gestured at the sigils in the glass. ‘We are warded technologically and to the best abilities of the fleet’s psykers. But even so, something is reaching him from the outside.’
Guilliman was silent for another moment.
‘Is it his faith?’
‘What is faith, my lord?’ said Bazhiri. ‘It is only another expre
ssion of the warp. No mortal man could believe so strongly to keep themselves alive through this. It is impossible. The actions of gods are stymied by these wards.’
‘The evident practical is that he is alive,’ said Guilliman. ‘What is your theoretical?’
Bazhiri had seen too much horror in his life to fear anything, not even the primarch, and the look he gave the giant son of the Emperor had a hint of admonishment.
‘We are seeing the work of the Emperor before us. A miracle. That is my only feasible theory. Do you not think so, my lord?’
Guilliman chose not to answer.
‘I will see him now. I wish to know what he has to say. Then perhaps he can die in peace.’ He turned to face the chiromancer-captain. ‘There will be no record made of this meeting. You will leave. You will deactivate all machinery tasked with the gathering of data, do you understand?’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘Clear this area for two hundred yards on all sides.’
Another little glance, another dose of admonishment. ‘I am not sure that is strictly nec–’
‘This is your ship, chiromancer-captain, but this is my command as Lord Commander and Regent of the Imperium of Man. Do as I say.’
‘Gladly, my lord.’ Bazhiri gave a bow. ‘But I must remain to open the chamber.’
‘Afterwards, you will leave also,’ said Guilliman.
‘Yes, yes, as you command.’
Bazhiri went to a locker, where a soft plastek hazard suit awaited him. He was practised in its use, and put it on quickly. Guilliman went to stand by the door.
Bazhiri closed the fastenings on the suit. ‘My lord, I would advise you to wear your helm. He harbours many sicknesses, and I do not know if you will be immune.’
‘I will not need my helm,’ Guilliman said, and faced the entrance. ‘Open the door.’
Bazhiri attached the breathing tubes and inflated the suit. ‘Very well,’ he said.