by John French
Blood and pain and terror spilled into the warp and flowed inwards, cascading down through the patterns of old rituals and beliefs like the waters of a broken dam. It was all Ahriman could do to hold his thoughts steady in the enumerations. He felt the War Oath strike the Ring of Luna, saw the fire billow across the moon’s surface. He tasted blood. Across his connection with Menkaura he saw the symbols of the Solar System slow in their orbits. Blood was filling the crystal sphere marked with the Lunar sigil. The other spheres were glowing with flame and shadow.
Everything had been for this. The assaults planned by Perturabo, the strike of the fleets deep in-system – all had taken ground, killed, weakened defences. But more than that, they had formed this alignment, this moment of ritual power written in the planets and stars.
Now,+ he sent. And in the caverns of the comet shrine, the Word Bearers who remained put their knives to the throats of the psykers chained to the floor. And as the mortals’ death screams poured into the warp, the torrent they formed met the flood-tide already surging in.
Ahriman withdrew his mind, and had a second to feel his breath gasp ice from his lungs as the gunship accelerated away.
The comet vanished.
Time blinked.
Night fell to blinding light.
Sound.
Voices.
Night.
Across the Solar System, every being felt a tremor in their soul, like something stood behind them but inhaling through their mouths.
Then the sun went dark.
Trust the messenger
The man beside you
Fane of rebirth
The Phalanx, Inner System Gulf
The grey ship docked with the Phalanx as it broke Terran orbit. Huscarls surrounded Mersadie and Loken as they crossed the docking limb. All around them the Phalanx trembled as it pushed into open space and towards its enemy.
Mersadie recognised some of the sights they passed, statues of heroes, images inlaid in stone, floors of black-and-white marble. She had been here before, years ago, after they had fled Isstvan on the Eisenstein. She remembered walking through the…
Vengeful Spirit, Maggard and the soldiers all around her. The sound of the ship, the silence that followed them as they went further. Something was wrong. She was…
…walking through the Phalanx, Loken at her side, a wall of Imperial Fists around her.
‘Dorn…’ she said, feeling the word rise from within. She felt disconnected. Something deep in her mind was screaming that it was almost too late, that she was almost out of time. There were things moving in the root of her memory and mind, vast unseen gears turning. ‘I must reach Dorn…’ Her feet were still moving. A buzzing had started in her head that might have been static or water falling down onto rock or wind blowing through a dry valley filled with skulls…
‘We are almost there,’ replied Loken.
‘Why?’ asked Su-Kassen. She was almost running to keep up with Dorn as he strode into his sanctum. Glow-globes lit as he crossed the black marble floor. ‘What can a remembrancer have to tell us?’
Archamus and a squad of Huscarls spread through the room, feet ringing on the floor. Dorn stopped, and turned to look at her. His gaze almost made her stumble. His eyes were dark mirrors in a face of carved stone.
‘Because once before messengers came to me in the ship. They told me the truth that we all now live – that the Warmaster was a betrayer. I did not believe them then, I did not want to hear…’
Su-Kassen thought she saw something then, something in the deep distance of his eyes, something she could not place in a being like Rogal Dorn.
‘It is not often that we get to learn from the mistakes of the past,’ said Dorn. ‘Mersadie Oliton showed me the truth. Here, in this room…’ He turned his head to look at a point in open space, as though something moved in the still air. ‘She showed me what she had seen… and that changed everything.’ He looked back at Su-Kassen.
She could feel herself frowning, a doubt forming on her lips.
A shrill alarm rang out.
Su-Kassen gasped.
Blackness, a feeling of nausea, a sound of screaming.
She blinked and put a holo-monocle to her eye. Light flooded her vision as alert information poured onto the display.
Cold flooded her.
‘Lord Praetorian,’ she said, staring at the tactical data as the sound of alarms rose to a clamour. ‘Something is happening in the inner system…’
Static was suddenly washing through the vox-link. The holo-monocle shorted out. She stumbled back.
A sound bubbled up in her earpiece, rustling, laughing, saying something that sounded like words.
‘…is all around you… the only name you will hear…’
‘Lord…’ she began.
‘Bring the ship to full alert,’ said Dorn, and began striding for the doors.
Mersadie stumbled. The floor of the passage met her hand as she caught herself. Lights popped and bubbled in her eyes. Voices and memories tumbled over each other in her skull.
‘Take the iterator and the remembrancer back to their quarters,’ said Maloghurst…
Maggard shoving her through a door…
‘Euphrati, what is wrong? You never talked like–’
‘You need to understand, Mersadie.’
‘I understand you have a story,’ she said. The wolf stood before her, the white fur of its back silver beneath the moonlight. ‘A particularly entertaining one. I’d like to remember it, for posterity.’
The wolf turned, its teeth a smile of sorrow.
‘Which story?’
‘Horus killing the Emperor.’
‘Where…’ she managed, pushing herself up as Loken reached to help her. ‘Where are we?’
‘The Phalanx,’ he said. His eyes were dark, human, not the eyes of a wolf.
‘The Phalanx…’ she repeated, blinking, feeling the world turn around her.
The eyes of five Imperial Fists held on her, red in black-and-yellow helms.
‘The Phalanx, yes, of course. Rogal Dorn… There is not much time.’
‘Mersadie, it is all right…’
‘No… There is something else… I need… to see him.’
She forced her legs to move. Something was happening, something that she could feel but not understand.
There were doors opening in front of them…
On, on further through the night, through the passages of the Vengeful Spirit to a door…
‘What was that?’ she heard herself say, as the glow-globes flickered in their settings.
‘Something is happening,’ said Loken, but his voice seemed further away now, ‘system-wide anomalies. There is something wrong with the vox…’
She had been here before, in these corridors before, carrying memories… images spooled in her head… blood and betrayal and the truth… What had she forgotten?
The lights spluttered again. She could see a set of doors in front of her. She had been here before, with Keeler, with Garro.
‘What is that?’ growled one of the Imperial Fists. There was a noise, a hissing, like static, like the whisper of wind blowing through dry valleys. Like a voice…
Dorn’s sanctuary… the Phalanx… She had been here before…
The lights blinked red.
‘What is happening?’ asked Loken.
‘Full alert,’ replied one of the Huscarls. ‘Something is happening in the Inner System Gulf…’
The doors were opening in front of them…
‘We need to get you secured,’ said one of the Imperial Fists.
‘I need to see Lord Dorn…’ she mumbled. ‘I need to…’
‘There is someone speaking on the vox…’ said another of the Huscarls.
The shove of Maggard’s hand on her back, pushing
her through the door.
‘Greetings, Mersadie Oliton,’ said Maloghurst, looking up at her. His eyes were the eyes of a wolf…
Loken had stopped moving suddenly. She looked at him blinking.
‘It sounds like a voice,’ he said, ‘trying to break through the interference.’
The sound was hissing in her ears… rising and falling…
‘S… here…’
‘Dorn…’ she gasped, ‘I need to see Rogal Dorn now!’
‘Sam… is…’
‘That sound, that voice,’ he said. ‘I have heard that voice before…’
‘Sa… mu… is…’
Loken’s gun was in his hand. The Huscarls were moving, turning; shadows were spreading up the wall.
Everything was distant, like something happening on a pict screen hung just in front of her face. There was someone behind her. Just behind her. A shadow…
‘He is here.’
Loken snapped around to look at her.
‘What did you say?’
She shrugged, feeling more words coming to her tongue. Her muscles were moving but she was not moving them.
‘Samus is here,’ she said, and backhanded Loken into the wall. He struck it with a sound of shearing ceramite.
Mersadie looked at her hand. It was red.
Guns roared around her. Red fire. Blinking. Red on her hand.
She tried to take a step, put her hand out and fell…
A thin hand caught her arm, steadied her.
‘That’s it. You are all right. I have you.’
She blinked. Nilus was standing next to her, holding her arm and shoulder, looking at her with black eyes in a pale, pale face. The face of a friend. The rest of the world had become blurred, a tableau through which something was moving faster than sight, clawed and furred and toothed. Slowly – oh so slowly – the yellow-armoured warriors were coming apart.
Red… The world was bright and dark and red.
‘But you were not here…’ she said, looking at the face of the Navigator standing just next to her. There was blood on his face she noticed, splattered right across him, bright and dripping.
Nilus shrugged, smiled, and now he looked nothing like a human, and nothing like a friend.
‘I am always here,’ he said. ‘I am the man beside you.’
Inner System Gulf
The comet shrine blazed back into being. Light poured out of the point where it had vanished. Lightning leaped across the gulfs of space, brighter than the vanished sunlight. Every soul asleep under the light of the sun woke with a cry. Every person awake, from Space Marine to child, felt the touch of knives on their skin.
A vortex of energy poured into the hole punched through reality by the comet. Circling daemons were caught by the hurricane force and were unmade. The storm narrowed, became a point, became a blade. It dragged through the skin of reality, ripping back along the arc that the comet shrine had passed in the last decades. The lips of the wound peeled back. The light of paradox spilled out, bubbling, flowing, curdling the dark across tens of millions of kilometres. The warp breach gaped, drooling half-formed matter, a bloody smile opening in the dark.
For an instant, it was the only thing that moved. Stars and planets were still in the face of this violation. The black sun hung in a bleached sky, a mute and cold disc.
Then the slit tore wide. Matter vomited into being. Half-formed ideas of teeth and limbs, of beasts and mouths tumbled over each other, writhing as they dissolved and coagulated.
The sun blazed back to light, screaming.
Across Terra, every person looking at the sky could see it: a burning wound across the night, or a scar of midnight in the daylight.
Through it came ships from the realm beyond, dragging cloaks of insects and shadow. Winged creatures circled them, flying like birds in the gale of etheric energy. Bolts of lightning leapt from the wound, strobing across space. And here were the vessels that had been absent from the weeks of war already waged. Here was the Conqueror, its white hull red with smoking gore. Here were the ships of the World Eaters, their murder cries echoing from the vox, and the voice of every legionary. Angron stood on the hull of his capital ship, a vast and ragged shadow axe raised to the sunlight, roaring his fury at the circle of Terra. There were the ships of the Emperor’s Children, fuming musk and grey dust from jewel-crusted hulls. In the guts of the Pride of the Emperor, Fulgrim coiled and looked out through the eyes of every soul in his fleet, and laughed with delight.
And there – following the rest, like the chariot of a king come in triumph – came the Vengeful Spirit. Warships flanked it. Daemons flew as its heralds. High on its hull, on the fortress that it bore upon its back, Horus, Warmaster, First Son of the Emperor, Chosen Champion of the Dark Gods, looked out at Terra. The seat of his father’s empire glimmered beyond the prow of his ship. Shadow bled from him, and the daemons that held to the shadows of his court hissed and bowed their heads as the light of the sun touched his face.
The ships poured from the rift, spreading out in a swarm of glinting lights. A hundred, a thousand, ten times a thousand, more and more that had been waiting in the warp for the way to open to the heart of the Solar System. Even if Horus’ forces had used both the Elysian and Khthonic Gates, it would have taken such a force days to translate back into reality. Now they swam from the warp into the gulfs of the inner system, not an army or a fleet, but a host sent by the will of gods and the art of mortals.
The ships clustered and divided as their engines caught on the cold vacuum and turned them towards Mars and Luna and the small orb of Terra all alone in the dark.
Horus watched, and then gave a single nod.
‘Begin,’ he said.
The Warp
‘I am a remembrancer. I am recording his experiences for posterity.’
‘Remembrance… A strange idea to take to the stars, I have always thought.’
‘I don’t understand.’ She thought of looking around but Maloghurst’s gaze held her. ‘I thought I was to be returned to my quarters.’
‘Tell me,’ said Maloghurst, his power armour buzzing as he shifted. ‘Does he trust you?’
‘What?’
‘Does Captain Loken trust you?’
‘I… I don’t–’
‘He favours you, talks to you, shares his remembrances with you. I think that he trusts you a great deal, Mersadie Oliton.’
The equerry to the Warmaster had smiled, and unwilled she began to turn to run. A hand on her shoulder stopped her dead. Heavy fingers squeezed with the promise of bone-breaking force.
‘You see, Mistress Oliton,’ said Maloghurst. ‘We do not trust him, at all… And we need to be sure. We need to know what he hides from us. We need to know which way he will choose. I have my suspicions as to that, but the Warmaster wants to be certain.’ He nodded, smiled. ‘Loken was a favoured son after all. You can forgive a father wishing to give his son every chance, and so you are going to help us see Captain Loken clearly.’
Mersadie could not move. There was something behind her.
A shadow, breath on the back of her neck.
‘You remembrancers wanted to see the Great Crusade…’ continued Maloghurst. He turned aside and she could see a low stone table, just behind him. Candles burned above it. The smell of scorched human hair filled her nose. There were objects on the table: a silver knife, a brass bowl filled with water, a pile of finger bones, a silver coin and a human eye, still leaking fluid onto the cold stone, looking up at her with a grey-flecked gaze.
‘You wanted to know the truth, to look into all the places where your curiosity took you…’ said Maloghurst. His fingers traced a sign in the air.
She tried to move but could not. The shape Maloghurst had drawn burned red, bleeding in her sight.
‘Well now you will do just that, Mistress Oliton. You wil
l see, and we will look through your eyes…’
He reached down, picked up the knife. The rune burning in the air glowed. Everything was going black, rushing past like the embers of a fire pulled apart by a gale. Hot breath prickled on the back of her head. A hand touched her shoulder. She felt the tips of claws.
Maloghurst was very close now, looming above her, the buzz of his armour aching in her teeth, a rank incense smell coiling from him. And now he was stepping towards her, knife rising to her face, to her left eye…
He slowed, his movements blurring like a pict capture run at one-tenth speed.
‘You see…’ growled a voice from behind her. ‘The eyes… windows to the soul… and what were you but a set of eyes watching the world.’ The tip and edge of the silver knife filled her sight. It was all she could see. ‘You never know what use things will be…’ Mersadie tried to draw breath. The scream in her throat burned but did not sound. ‘All they wanted was to see what you saw, to know what you knew, to use your insight…’ A chuckle through sharp teeth. ‘So limited, but the seed was planted, the bridge and link made. And the warp remembers…’
‘I…’ began Mersadie. ‘I was used…’
A laugh now, a full, high laugh that might have been Nilus, or Keeler, or Loken, or the howl of wolves in a winter-shrouded forest.
And the image of Maloghurst, the knife and the stone table vanished.
A view across the mountains of Terra blinked into being behind high windows. A breeze was sliding through a half-opened door to the enclosed garden beyond. The thin curtains stirred. The polished wood floor was warm beneath Mersadie’s feet.
‘Nothing like being back home,’ said a voice behind her. She turned, half expecting not to be able to move.
The face of Euphrati Keeler looked up at her. Coloured tiles and beads lay on the floor around her, some broken, some ground to dust. There was blood on Keeler’s grey robe, a wet, bright splatter from forehead to fingers. She was picking her teeth with a piece of broken glass.
‘You were never Keeler,’ said Mersadie.
‘No,’ said the bloody face of Keeler. ‘But you wanted to believe so much that it made it an easy choice of what face to wear.’