by John French
She tried to rise from the cover of the support pillar again.
A pair of crimson troopers were four paces away, guns levelled, fingers on triggers. Time became an instant caught between drawn breaths. Mersadie could see it all.
The armoured soldiers advancing… The beams and shot-rounds threading the gloom… The blur of Aksinya as she tried to rise and face the figures coming through the other hatch…
And then she saw the shadow. It was standing in the open blast doors that the second squad of troopers had just poured through. It was still. Upright. A freeze-frame on a pict-stream.
The ringing in her head was building, and all she could think of was the message she carried in her memory, and the smell of wet fur and blood and frost.
The troopers were still advancing, their fingers squeezing back on triggers as the passing instants blinked in time with the alert lights.
Red, black…
Red, black…
Red, black…
Red.
The shadow was behind them.
Black.
And now the shadow was next to them, and Mersadie could hear the siren-scream in her head beating with the blink of seconds.
Red.
Blood sprayed out. The troopers were turning, and the shadow was amongst them, moving in jerks like a broken pict-feed.
Black.
Aksinya was still on the floor by the hatch, her pistol frozen in her hand. There was red frost climbing the walls. Bodies flying back, broken, pulped.
Red.
The shadow was standing still now, washed in gore, its head turning to Mersadie, and she could see the face within shadow, eyes stained red in the black-veined skull of Sub-mistress Koln.
‘We are here for you,’ said the thing and it reached out fingers that stretched into shadows through the air, and all Mersadie could think of was running in dreams through dark woods and the howls rising behind her. ‘We are the–’
The las-blast ripped the side of Koln’s skull off. The shadow-wrapped body jerked back. Mersadie fired again, and again, stepping forwards as the thing staggered and the blasts ripped through it. It juddered, flesh and blood shuddering as it fell.
She stood over it, still, panting, the charge pack depletion light blinking red on the pistol in her hand. The only sound was the patter of blood falling to the deck from the ceiling above.
∞
Snow boils from the black sky as the old man begins to climb the mountain. Ice-caked fur and black rags wrap his body. The wind strikes him, and he staggers, half falling. His hands plunge into the snow.
Cold.
Burning cold.
Beyond fire, beyond water.
He gasps, and for a moment the snow is not snow, but every moment of pain ever suffered: the wail of a mother beside a small bundle, the last thought of a man dying before his time, the touch of a knife. Cold, sharp, burning…
He pushes himself up.
At his back he hears the cry of wolves. He stops, turns. The light of the burning torch in his hand ripples out in the gusting wind. His eyes catch the light of the fire as he looks back down the slope at the forest. The trees have grown upwards, bare branches reaching to catch the wind. Eyes look back at him, red, green and fever-yellow. In the distance, still visible above and beyond the tops of the trees, he can see the lights of the tower he has left to make this journey. The wind gusts and the wolves come with it, forming from darkness and frost as they leap. He swings the torch. The wolves’ jaws are wide, broken fangs in rotten gums. Molten brass scatters from iron teeth, blue fire from black glass claws. The torch strikes the first wolf–
Flash of lightning.
Shattered night.
Burning snow.
The wolves fall back, cries shaking gales of snow from the sky.
The old man runs up the side of the mountain, legs sinking into the drifts, hands grasping at ice-skinned rock. The howls rise again. The opening to the cave is so close, just there, between the stones. Another step, another push of will and he will reach its sanctuary. Claws reach for him. He can feel their breath at his back. He turns, and throws the burning torch high. A jagged pillar of lightning catches it and strikes down. White light drowns the mountainside. The shadows of wolves melt into the ground but more are already coming. He leaps for the stone doorway into the mountain, and…
Quiet. The smell of stone and earth. Stillness.
The cave stretches down in front of him. Rough steps have been hacked into the floor. Seams of crystal glitter in raw stone walls. The sound of water dripping onto rock touches his ears. A glow of fire seeps up the steps as he descends. A square door waits at the bottom. He pauses on the threshold, then steps through.
The cave is small but has been enlarged, first with stone axes, and then with tools of bronze and iron. The light comes from burning wicks set in a bowl of clear oil. Stone benches line the walls either side of the door. The seats are smooth, worn by time and those who have come here. Channels run down the floor from where a lump of raw crystal rises. Symbols crawl over the crystal: a half-man half-equine, water falling from a cup, a figure with the head of a bull.
The man in black rags and fur stops.
Another man, swathed in golden robes, sits on one of the benches. He holds a staff in his hand, and a folded plait of laurel leaves and silver thread sits on his head. He looks young.
The two look at each other for a long moment. Then the old man in the frost-covered fur shakes himself, and pulls the cloak from his back. The black tunic beneath is tattered and stained by sweat. The muscles on his arms are withered cords, his shoulders hunched by age, his scalp bare of hair and liver-spotted. Golden rings gleam on his fingers: a ram’s head, a rayed sun, a grey opal.
‘Hello, old friend,’ says the young man in gold.
The old man in black rags nods, and comes forwards. For a second his step falters. His eyes shut with pain. The rock of the cave creaks. A spill of dust falls from the ceiling. The man in gold looks up, and then back at the man in black as he lowers himself onto the bench opposite.
‘Here,’ says the young man, holding out a wooden bowl. ‘Bread and salt and meat.’
The old man takes the bowl with a nod and begins to eat. The man in gold lifts his own bowl, and takes small mouthfuls, never taking his eyes from his companion.
‘I am sorry to call you here,’ says the man in gold when there are only crumbs in the old man’s bowl, ‘but we need to speak.’ The man in black wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. His eyes are black depths in the weathered skin of his face. ‘Things are pressing in and in,’ continues the young man. ‘So far the attack has been as we would expect. But there is something else, something that is outside of that…’
The man in gold begins to lay cards down on the stone bench between the bowls. The cards are old and the images on them faded: a figure in a dark cloak, its face turned away, climbing towards a high tower; a wolf-headed man with a bundle of swords hidden beneath a cloak; a wheel of stars turning around a darkening moon… Card after card, the pattern growing with each one placed.
‘You see,’ says the man in gold. ‘It changes, but the core of a pattern is always there, a growing resonance in the warp, like notes rising and harmonising, or pieces being placed on a board, or a weapon being assembled bit by bit… I can’t see what it is, only its shadow, but it is there. Behind the night and the bloodshed, it is there.’ The man in black is still looking down at the cards. ‘There are other things, too. Factors that are out of place. The timing of the assault, for instance. It began at midwinter, in the pit of the cosmic nadir. And the order of things… The position of the planets is particular at this moment. It is a rare conjunction that has not occurred since… well, since before the last darkness. We have always presumed that the timing of the assault is driven by haste, but what if it is something else? What if
it is something m–’
‘Yes,’ says the man in black. He stands. For a second the light of the oil flames cast his shadow on the wall, and for an eye-blink it is not the shadow of an old man, but of a figure on a throne, his hands gripping its arms, his head held straight. ‘It is there, under the surface, beyond the edge of night. I can… feel it growing.’
‘What is it?’ asks the young man. ‘What are they doing?’
The man in black is still for a second, his eyes distant. It has cost him much to send part of himself here, to this meeting of minds in one of the last sanctuaries that remain. Far off, and only a thought away, is the crushing dark, held back moment to moment, a flood tide halted on the shore’s edge by will alone.
‘I cannot see,’ says the Emperor, furs shifting over His aged frame. ‘Not within, nor beyond the edge of Night. The present is darkness and the future a horizon. There is only the struggle.’
Malcador, young and clad in gold, is still for a moment and then nods once, his face a mask that cannot hide his worry.
‘The others know,’ says Malcador at last. ‘The Khan, the Angel, the commanders… Rogal, in particular. The actions of the enemy don’t add up, and they see that there is a gap, a shadow in their understanding.’
‘That is what they are there to do,’ says the Emperor, picking up the furs from which the ice and frost has barely thawed. ‘To be tooth and claw, to fight and not to yield. The rest is yours to mind – to shield them so that they can be what they need to be.’
The Emperors turns for the door.
‘Can we still win this?’ asks Malcador.
‘That is not the question you are really asking,’ says the Emperor, turning His head but still facing away.
Malcador gives a sad smile, and nods to concede the point.
‘Farewell,’ says the Emperor, pulling on His cloak of fur, and turning for the small door out into the night and winter.
Malcador stays where he is, looking at the black space beyond the crude arch of stone. After a moment that in reality lasts no more than the span of a thought, he looks back at the pattern of cards laid out on the stone bench beside him. Then he reaches down and picks up the image of the high tower shattering beneath a thunderbolt.
‘Can we survive this? Can anything?’ he asks, and closes his eyes.
The idea and the image of the cave folds out of being, and the howling dark rushes in to claim the place it left.
Solatarium
I am here
Battlefield of time
Battle-barge Ankhtowe, Supra-Solar Gulf
Ahzek Ahriman, Chief Librarian of the Thousand Sons Legion, watched as blood formed in the crystal sphere. Crimson puffed into being within its polished depths, swirled and then ran to the edge of the orb. Cold light gathered around it, and Ahriman heard the melody in his mind change as notes and harmonies shifted. He watched the orb for another second as it spun on through the space above him.
Does that fall within the necessary conjunction?+ Ahriman spoke in thought.
It does,+ croaked Menkaura’s thought-reply. Ahriman could feel fatigue bleeding out of the sending. He understood why. To be in this chamber was to feel and hear the flow of the immaterium without break or moderation. It was a solatarium like those once used by long-dead scholars to predict the movements of the heavenly bodies across Terra’s skies. In those devices, stone and glass spheres had turned around a crystal simulacrum of the sun. In this chamber the same basic principle applied, but there the similarity ended. Just as the telescopes of ancient astronomers concentrated the light of the heavens, so did this chamber draw the infinite resonance of the warp down to the point where its patterns were visible.
A constellation of spheres and discs turned in the space above him, its outer elements spinning wide enough to almost touch the curved walls. The whole chamber was a sphere itself, eighty-one cubits in diameter, cut by telekinesis from a single block of jade. No living hand had ever touched its surface, or polluted it with memory. The spheres and coins of the solatarium at its centre moved on psychic currents. Most represented the physical Solar System, but others, principles no less real but ultimately intangible, spun beside them: Strength Ascendant, the Justice of Winter, the Crow’s Flight. The smaller spheres and discs were made of rock, metal and bone taken from the planets, moons and void bodies that lay within the light of Sol. Each planet was a sphere of crystal formed in the warp by will alone and brought into reality by sacrifice. When the final component had been set in place, the resonance had created a delicate shriek that had killed the last of the eighty-one psychic craftsmen who had made it. Since then, the sound of its turning had ached through Ahriman’s mind even when he was not in the chamber. It had been a vile price to pay, but there would be worse yet. Of that he was certain.
Ahriman and Ignis floated through the arrangement on silver discs. Both of them would leave as soon as this reading was complete. Out beyond its curved walls, the Ankhtowe plunged on towards its goal, moved by the half-lost science of machines. But in here, as the Sea of Souls fled past, they were standing still, looking out upon a growing hurricane. Only Menkaura would remain in the solatarium throughout the ritual. The War-Augur sat on his own disc, which hung upside down, relative to Ahriman, next to the golden sphere of the sun. Tarnish had spread across the silver of the disc, and Menkaura looked ragged and half-dead. The lacquer had peeled from his armour, and rust scabbed its plates. His head was bare, and the empty sockets of his eyes glowed with ghost-light and wept pus.
The sound of a diamond quill tip scratching on glass broke the quiet. Ahriman looked over to where Ignis was marking a line of calculations on a sheet of obsidian. The Master of the Order of Ruin looked up, the geometric tattoos on his face sliding into a new pattern. Ahriman sent a whisper of query by thought. In the solatarium chamber every thought was a shout, every sending a scream.
The progress overall is within the calculations supplied by the primarch of the Fourth and his warsmiths,+ replied Ignis. +There are errors in the specifics that will need to be compensated for in the numeration of the final formulation.+
That is what happens when plans touch reality,+ sent Ahriman. +Things fall apart.+
Ignis blinked, the patterns reforming again on his face as he considered the statement.
In some cases,+ he replied, and then went back to his calculations and the diamond quill’s scratching whine. Ahriman watched Ignis for a second and then let his sight move back to the spheres. His eyes moved between them, noting the path and details of each. Emotions and visions from across the gulf of space yanked at his thoughts as he did so.
The face of a human pressed into a crawlspace, trying to make themselves small as giants in midnight-blue armour stalked past, their vox-speakers screaming the cries of those who had already been found; a powerless ship drifting through the dark, those within clinging to their last, shallow breaths as the air ran out; a warship tumbling over and over, blazing like a torch as its death fires fed on the fuel within its drives–
Ahriman cut the visions away with a pulse of will and steadied his mind in the thought patterns of the ninth enumeration. He felt a breath briefly frost the inside of his helm. To observe the solatarium was not just to see it with your eyes, but to be part of it – to feel it turning as it tried to pull you into its whirlpool embrace.
You are discomforted,+ stated Ignis.
Ahriman did not answer, but looked at Menkaura and opened his thoughts to send them.
It can still be undone,+ said Menkaura, sending the answer to the question Ahriman was about to ask. +The balance of resonances in the arrangement is such that… it is not certain. Everything is blindness and dust on the wind…+
Ahriman felt another question rise in his mind and then let it fall. Ever since Menkaura had taken on the penance of watching the Configuration, his thoughts and words had strayed into prophecy, as though his mind and will
were kites dragged by storm winds into distant lands of perception. For all his skill of foresight and mastery of the occult, Ahriman found that he was disturbed by what was happening to his brother.
Come,+ he sent to Ignis, and turned his silver disc with a flick of will. It floated down to the lone opening cut in the chamber wall. His eyes flashed across a blue-and-white-spun sphere as he turned, and he–
Blue and white stones in his hand, rounded by water, their faces dancing with patterns of herons and serpents…
The fire and blood light of the sun setting through Terra’s haze of pollution, the smell of the dust and the static tang of a building storm…
The clack as Ormuzd placed three stones into the recesses of the old, wooden board and smiled up at him…
‘What is it, brother? Can’t think what move to make?’ asked his twin.
Ahriman pulled his senses back and the vision drained from his sight. Menkaura was looking down at him from the other side of the turning orbs and discs. The eyeless seer had his head cocked to the side, and Ahriman could feel the mind behind the empty sockets regarding him.
It is a cruel thing to return home and find it changed, but not as changed as we are.+ Menkaura’s words lingered as an echo in Ahriman’s skull as he let his disc sink through the opening in the chamber wall.
Ahriman pulled the helm from his head as soon as he was outside the solatarium. Around him, the Ankhtowe hummed with the familiar sounds of a ship under power: the buzz of power conduits, and the rumble of distant engines. It felt reassuringly real. He took a breath and reached out with his mind, skimming over the thoughts of his brothers and crew. All was well. Their small fleet was still on course and unseen. They had left the great flock of Abaddon’s armada and the Mechanicum fleet far behind. Now they were few again, all but alone in the night, heading for a distant speck of light. He sent a brief thought to touch the psychic bonds between him and the Word Bearers that rode at their sides. He did not linger over the contact, and he came away with the taste of ashes on his tongue.