Ahriman: Unchanged

by John French

  He did not move, but kept looking at the books. Each of them was the record of a vision of a place which those who knew of it called the Labyrinth. From the dreams of prophets to the words babbled by tortured daemons, all he could find lay a few steps away from him.

  His hand twitched as though about to rise and pull one of the texts through the air to him.

  The Labyrinth was something that few of his kind had not heard of, but most did not speak of it, and if they expended energy in the pursuit of its secrets they kept it to themselves. He had heard of it only from the mouths of daemons, and never pursued it. Until now.

  The Labyrinth was said to be everywhere at once and to have never existed. Its corridors were made of crystal which reflected every truth and lie. It was the warp, and it was also a real place which could be walked just like the labyrinths built to confuse mortals. It was both metaphor and reality. Everything and everyone that ever had existed was inside the Labyrinth. And if Magnus could be found anywhere, he could be found within it.

  No, he thought. He should not look further. He had spent too much time already prying through obscure knowledge, and he could spend no more. Magnus was his master and his king. If he was not with them it was for reasons that had to be respected.

  Yes. What else could be the case? The Crimson King was unbounded in insight and power. Yes, that was the truth.

  Yes.

  But…

  But what if he was not gone by choice? Knekku remembered the sense of fatigue that had edged the Crimson King’s presence when he had manifested on his tower. What if something was weakening him? What if he was lost on the Great Ocean?

  Knekku had begun to step away, but could not.

  What if his father needed him? His eye caught a silver athame resting beside the pages of an open book on which a diagram of ritual markings squirmed in black and red ink. He hesitated. In the Labyrinth there would be answers.

  He took a step forwards, and the pages rustled with static.

  Knekku?+ Sar’iq’s sending cut into his mind, and halted his next step.

  My brother,+ he replied, forcing down and obliterating the anger which had risen before he could stop it.

  Your master, Knekku. Not your brother. Not while we are at war.+

  You have my apologies, master.+ The sudden rebuke told Knekku that Sar’iq had noticed the delays in Knekku’s tasks. But if he knew, or guessed, why, Knekku could not tell. He had hidden his research into the Labyrinth from eyes and minds beside his own, but secrets were not easily kept on the Planet of the Sorcerers.

  You have unleashed our watchers into the tides?+

  The task is approaching completion.+

  You will complete it without delay, and then join us to raise more of the towers into the sky.+

  Knekku turned away from the grimoires, and closed his eyes for a second.

  Control…

  Yes… my master.+

  I can free you.+

  The Oathtaker’s voice spoke in Memunim’s mind. Unconsciousness fell away from him. His head came up, and the movement dug the teeth of the collar into his neck. Pain shot through him. Instinctively his mind reached out for the aether. White agony bored into him, pulling his mind down into his flesh. His muscles were convulsing, breath sawing from between his teeth. He tried to call power to his thoughts, but the pain grew, and he felt the warp fleeing from his grasp. He blinked and the cell came into focus.

  He hung by chains bound to his wrists and neck by rough metal shackles. They had taken one of his eyes, and flayed the skin from his hands. The runes cut into the dark metal glowed hot red on the edge of his mind’s eye. Rust and crusted blood mottled the narrow walls. A single yellow light shone from within a cage above him, and foul-smelling liquid pooled around the clogged grate in the floor beneath him.

  The Oathtaker stood just inside the sealed door.

  ‘I… will… not… serve,’ said Memunim, his jaw struggling to form the words. The Oathtaker stepped closer. The sickly yellow light gleamed on bronze armour, oily shadows catching in the claws, wings and talons worked into its surface. The single blue gem set into the centre of the Oathtaker’s blank helm shone.

  Memunim curled his lip, and spat. The clot of acid-phlegm and blood hissed into steam just above the surface of the bronze armour. He felt something grind in his chest, and dropped his eyes.

  Do not think you are alone, Memunim,+ sent the Oathtaker. +You are not alone. Just as you are now, so once was I.+

  The words surprised Memunim, and he glanced up before he could help himself. Since he had been taken from the tower there had been pain. That did not bother him, not even when they had taken his left eye, or peeled the skin from his hands. He was a creature built in body and mind to overcome more pain than a knife could bring.

  You are not alone,+ sent the Oathtaker again. Memunim stared back. For a second the Oathtaker’s words had tugged at something within him, but it was nothing, just more posturing. He was going to die. He knew it, and now that the inevitable had come around at last he found the thought almost a relief.

  One more beat of blood,+ continued the Oathtaker, +one more second of the future becoming the past. Eventually living is just habit.+

  The Oathtaker – who had said in the ruined tower that his name was Astraeos – reached up and pulled the helm from his head. The face beneath was different than when he had last shown it. Scars twisted the cheeks. The fire which had blazed from his eyes was gone, and the left eye socket was an empty pit. It was the face of a warrior who had endured much and wore that past on his skin.

  ‘You were a warrior son of Prospero,’ said the Oathtaker, his true voice low and steady. ‘You saw your home world burn. You were there when everything you had was destroyed by the Imperium which created you. You endured, clinging on to existence, while watching your brothers fall one by one. You clung on, waiting, one half of your soul knowing that no salvation would come, the other half searching for it. You allowed yourself to believe that there was a way to save your brothers, to save yourself. You trusted and let that trust become loyalty, become hope.’

  With the words memories surfaced: grey wolves running across the fire-drowned ruins of Tizca, the towers of the Planet of the Sorcerers beneath its warp-bloated suns, the light of the Rubric searing through twisted flesh, and then the silence as his dead brothers walked from the clouds of dust.

  ‘Tell me, Memunim, where did the hope Ahriman gave you lead?’

  Memunim held the Oathtaker’s gaze. Memories flickered past in snatches of darkness and bloodshed, each moment an instant of a life that he no longer understood. The sensation of the past was more real now than the pain of his flayed hands, or the barbs digging into his neck from the collar. He had believed in Ahriman, he had believed that the Legion could have a future, and that the lever of knowledge could turn over the order of the universe. He had believed, and followed, and helped murder the future he had been promised.

  ‘You are not alone,’ said the Oathtaker, and Memunim blinked as he refocused on the face in front of him. It had changed again. It was a face that he felt he knew, a face that fitted in somewhere between memory and dream.

  ‘Who…’ he began, and heard that the defiance had gone from his words. ‘Who are you?’

  The Oathtaker smiled, and there was pity, and weariness, and the coldness of a knife edge in the expression.

  ‘You know who I am,’ he said.

  Memunim shivered.

  ‘You sound like him,’ he said, his breath dry on his tongue. ‘You sound like Ahriman.’

  For a second Memunim thought he saw a spark of fire in the Oathtaker’s empty eye socket. When he spoke, his voice was calm and level.

  ‘Where you are now, Memunim, is at the end of a path you have walked which has led you nowhere.’ He nodded, and stepped back. ‘But there are other paths, and other ends that you can
serve.’

  Memunim shook his head. He wanted to stop talking. He wanted the pain to rise so that he could go back to the darkness, so that he could forget.

  ‘You have already offered me my dreams, but I will not follow dreams, not again.’

  ‘I cannot offer hope. That is lost to us both, but I can offer you a different dream.’

  Memunim hesitated. He could turn aside now. He could go into the cool dark of the night, where his memories might remain, but where he would not have to own them.

  The Oathtaker was watching him. Shadows had crept over his face, pooling in the socket of his missing eye, pulling the gleam of his armour into dull bronze. The staff in his hand was no longer silver but polished bone and twisted ebony.

  Memunim thought of Ahriman, of that last moment on the Planet of the Sorcerers when they had stood amongst the newly made Rubricae, the moment when Magnus had come for them. He had thought that Ahriman would kneel and ask forgiveness, for how could he not? Yet Ahriman had stood unbowed, and said that he was satisfied. Memunim remembered the instant before Magnus had scattered the Cabal to the stars.

  ‘What dream remains to me?’ he asked.

  The Oathtaker’s staff was a sheet of blue fire as it spun. The chains holding Memunim sheared, and the barbed collar fell from him. He landed on the floor. The warp flooded in as it met his thoughts.

  ‘Revenge,’ said Astraeos, looking down at him. ‘I will give you revenge.’

  Memunim paused for a long moment then closed his eyes, and bowed his head.

  ‘You have my oath,’ he said.

  Ahriman stopped at the centre of his chamber and listened. It was quiet. At least it was as quiet as a warship ever was. Air stirred through vents. Pipes and conduits hummed just behind the walls and floor. An echo of something deep and mechanical moving in the ship’s guts growled at the edge of hearing. It was the silence of the mind, though, that really struck him. All of those unspoken voices muttering on the edge of his awareness, all the thoughts and feelings screaming at him from other minds, all the colours and textures of desires and fears and hopes washing over him: all were silent here.

  The chamber was not large. He could have crossed it in six strides, and the ceiling was low enough that his head almost touched the bare metal. A pallet stood against the wall opposite the doors. Small ledges sat just below his eye line on the two other walls, beside empty racks for armour and weapons. In its past the room had been an arming chamber for a line officer of the Thousand Sons Legion, a sergeant perhaps. Now it was his.

  He moved over to where a plain wooden chest sat at the foot of the pallet. The smell of dry cedar filled his nose as he opened the lid and took the clay bowls, oil and fire tapers from within. The slow flicker of oil flames cut into the shadows as he filled and lit each bowl. He paused, letting his eyes touch every object in the room, while his mind noted the relative position of each of them. All was well.

  Removing his armour took longer. Without the power of his mind, or the hands of serfs, he had to peel it off himself, plate by plate, rivet by rivet. It took time. A process which would have been accomplished in a thought became a series of slow, mechanical steps. He let the rhythm of the task take him. His mind stilled. All of the patterns running through his thoughts stopped. The world became the snap and clink of metal and ceramite, and the heft of each plate in his hands.

  Occasionally he glanced towards the door. Helio Isidorus stood just inside the threshold and to the left, a sculpture in blue and gold armour. The lights in the Rubricae’s lenses were faint wisps of green. The incantations worked into the chamber smothered the Rubricae’s presence. It was still there, though. He could feel it watching him.

  He lifted his helm from the floor by its horns. He felt the nicks and chips press into the skin of his fingers. He set it on its stand. The dim flame light caught in the gloss red of the eye-lenses. He glanced at the Rubricae again as he bent down and picked up a segment of shoulder plating. Helio Isidorus stared back blankly.

  ‘Do you wish he could talk?’

  The armour clattered to the floor as Ahriman whirled, his hands sweeping up and arming his bolt pistol in a blur of fluid muscle. His mind raced out, ready to dissolve the wards around the room and pull the power of the warp in. Helio Isidorus had not moved. Ahriman held his breath and heartbeats still. He turned, the pistol tracking his gaze. Nothing. The full force of the warp still remained a dim surge beyond the intact wards. Nothing out of place or altered. He turned slowly back to the Rubricae.

  ‘Helio Isidorus?’ he said. The Rubricae did not respond. Ahriman did not let the muzzle of the bolt pistol drop.

  ‘He cannot speak,’ said a voice. Ahriman whipped around. His finger tightened on the trigger, and froze.

  A figure sat on the floor of the chamber. A red robe covered its shrunken body, and a ragged hood its head. It had one of the pieces of armour in its hands and was turning it over slowly. An impression of hunched muscles shifted under the red fabric. Ahriman glimpsed withered and scarred skin.

  His finger tensed on the pistol trigger.

  ‘He does not hear, either,’ said the figure. ‘Helio Isidorus is just an echo, the sound of a name caught in a bottle.’ The figure looked up, and the light pushed the shadows into the recesses of its face. A single bright blue eye flickered between Ahriman and the pistol in his hand. ‘But of course you know that, my son. Who knows a creature better than its creator?’

  Ahriman lowered the pistol, and shook his head. He had seen the figure before, in his dreams. In those dreams the figure had claimed to be his father, had claimed to be Magnus. The scarred face grinned back and spoke again.

  ‘You are wondering how I can be here, outside of your dreams, aren’t you?’ The figure tossed the piece of armour it had been examining onto the floor. It landed with a metallic clang. ‘How I can be moving in this physical realm?’

  ‘Unless this is the dream,’ said Ahriman, ‘and I have crossed into it without noticing.’

  ‘A valid possibility. Or I could be a waking hallucination brought on by mental strain, or psychic fatigue. Or I could be a voice of some part of your mind that has become separated from the main channel of your thoughts. After all, your inquisitor is something like that, is she not?’

  ‘No matter the cause, you are not here. You are not Magnus. You are not my father. You are not real.’

  ‘Yet still we are talking.’

  Ahriman shook his head, and closed his eyes. He turned and made for the door, his mind reaching out to dissolve the wards and open the room to the full current of the warp.

  ‘Do you not want to know why I am here?’ asked the figure.

  ‘I want nothing that you can give me,’ said Ahriman.

  ‘Not even a warning?’

  Ahriman stopped. The door was just a pace away. To his right Helio Isidorus stood facing back into the room. For a second Ahriman thought the light in the Rubricae’s eyepieces grew.

  ‘If he could hear, what would you say to him?’ asked the figure from just behind Ahriman. ‘What would you tell him of what is to come? Would you tell him that it will be over soon? Would you tell him that after all this time he is going back to the beginning of it all? Would you tell him of what it might cost?’ The figure raised its right arm. The sleeve fell back to expose a hand. Slowly the figure reached up to Helio Isidorus.

  Ahriman’s hand closed on the figure’s wrist just before its fingers could touch the Rubricae’s faceplate.

  A long instant grew, and then the figure looked at where Ahriman’s fingers encircled its own wrist. A solid wrist.

  Ahriman released his grip and stepped back. Shock and revulsion flooded through him like a pressure wave, tingling along his nerves and fizzing in his blood. He reached for the idea that if this was a dream or illusion, then every part of it could seem real and yet not be real, but all he could think of was the touch of
wrinkled skin in his grasp.

  ‘I am here to tell you something that you do not yet know,’ said the figure. ‘I am here to warn you, Ahriman.’

  Ahriman shook his head. His hearts were sudden thunder in his chest, as though only now catching up to the last few minutes.

  ‘Magnus would not help me. If he knew what I intend he would do everything in his power to destroy me.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the figure. ‘Yes. He would.’

  Ahriman looked back into the single blue eye beneath the frayed red hood. He felt words coming to his tongue, but before they could form, the figure spoke again.

  ‘Something is coming, my son. Something I cannot see, something you have not seen. Something you have overlooked.’

  ‘What…?’ began Ahriman, but the figure shook its head and stepped back.

  ‘It is getting closer, but its path began long ago. I can see its shadow but not its shape.’

  Ahriman blinked. There was sweat in his eyes, sweat pouring from him. His limbs were shaking. The figure was stepping further away, and the oil flames were going out one by one.

  ‘Why?’ called Ahriman. ‘Why would you come here to warn me if you know what I intend?’

  ‘You are my son,’ said the hooded figure.

  Ahriman blinked, and when his eyes opened again he was standing before his half-filled armour rack, under Helio Isidorus’s unwavering gaze. At the edges of his sight the oil flames still burned.

  V

  Absence

  Are you ready?+

  Knekku glanced over to where Sar’iq stood. The other warrior wore his armour, but had removed his helm, and raised his forked sword.

  Knekku nodded once.

  Sar’iq spun forward, fire exploding from him in a spiral. Knekku’s mind flicked out and shattered the illusion. Shards of mental force tumbled through his mind’s eye. Sar’iq was still standing where he had been. Knekku thrust, the tip of his spear flashing to blue with heat. The image of Sar’iq collapsed into mist. Knekku felt the other warrior’s sword descend out of thin air as Sar’iq’s body formed from the dust. Knekku spun back, his mind reforming as his spear caught the blow. The force slammed down his arm. A silent, black explosion ripped across the tower top as the power within both weapons kissed. The blow slid down the spear haft towards the ground.