Ahriman: Unchanged

by John French

  You are slower than the first time,+ laughed Sar’iq.

  Knekku’s will slammed out. Sar’iq’s armour crumpled as he lifted into the air. The warrior spun through with the force of the impact. Knekku watched his brother’s body tumble, and felt a crack open in Sar’iq’s mental defences. Knekku stabbed his thoughts into Sar’iq’s mind, and split them into a storm of splinters. Thousands of sensations tore into the walls of Sar’iq’s control.

  Sar’iq landed on the tower floor. The stone cracked beneath him. Knekku lashed the blade of his spear down. The tines of Sar’iq’s sword caught the strike. Knekku pulled the blow back, but Sar’iq’s mind was buzzing through the forked sword, locking it and the spear together. Sar’iq rose, spun and the movement yanked Knekku off his feet. Now it was him who was falling. Knekku stabbed again at Sar’iq’s mind.

  There was a slow beat of time.

  And then Sar’iq’s will clamped down like a pair of jaws. Pain flashed through Knekku. Colours exploded in front of his eyes, bright stars of sapphire and ruby. Fire ran down his nerves. His muscles were hardening, his blood tingling on the edge of boiling. He hit the floor. Armour damage runes blinked back at him from his helmet display as stone and ceramite cracked. He tried to rise, but his muscles were locked. Sar’iq stood above him, green fire racing between the tines of his forked sword.

  Done?+ The question held the echo of a smile.

  Done,+ replied Knekku, and the pain and paralysis fell from him instantly. He rose. His spear was still in his hand. He glanced at the cracks running through the jade from the point where he had hit the ground. He gestured and the stone flowed back into mirror-pool smoothness.

  Your actions were predictable to any that knows you,+ sent Sar’iq.

  Knekku nodded. Sar’iq was of course right. That was why he had led so many of the Crimson King’s warriors in the never-ceasing battles within the Eye. Knekku supposed he should have been grateful that Sar’iq had kept to a single shape for their bout.

  Something is eating your mind and stealing your strength, Knekku,+ sent Sar’iq. +Tell me what it is.+

  Knekku turned away to look up above the tower. The last of the nine suns shimmered at the edge of the horizon, pulling long shadows as it dipped lower and lower. The sky had cleared, the caul of aetheric energy thinning into a dome of bruised blue. The wind rose as the sky darken­ed, bringing with it the sounds from the forest of towers and the black mountains beyond. Floating silver towers skimmed the last of the light as they drifted above the city. Distant voices and low avian calls touched Knekku’s ears and mind, but they were faint, the noises of a world quieting as the day slid into darkness.

  For an instant he thought of the light failing over the seas of Prospero, staining the wave tops red and gold. He had watched those seas when he had been a boy, in the few years he had known his birth father. He could not even remember that father’s name, but he remembered the sound of the boat when they rode the tide back from the seas. And he remembered the sun fleeing the sky the last time they had come from the sea and seen Tizca. The next day his birth father had gone to sea alone, and never come back. There had been years after that, years he could not remember and had been pleased to sacrifice as the price for becoming one of the Legion, for becoming one of the Thousand Sons. But the memory of that sunset and the absence that followed it remained.

  Tell me, brother,+ sent Sar’iq again.

  When did you last see our father?+ Knekku sent, keeping his eyes on the red distance.

  Not since our summons.+

  Nor I.+

  A king comes and goes as he pleases,+ sent Sar’iq.

  Yes,+ sent Knekku, and looked from the horizon to his brother. +But why has he gone?+

  Put it from your mind. He sees further than any, and knows more than can be known. If he is not here then it is because it suits his purposes.+

  Knekku nodded, but the gesture was slow and doubtful.

  And if it is for another reason?+

  There can be no other reason. He sees. He knows.+

  Knekku nodded. The last sun was a sliver on the edge of the world. The blue fled the sky, and for an instant the towers caught the last rays and both heaven and earth were crimson.

  No one saw it happen.

  On the Word of Hermes, half-machine crew hurried on clanking legs. The engines hummed and crackled with power. The ship’s cyborg sentinels stood in their wall niches, waiting for a signal to wake them fully, waiting to slip free of the pain of their last flesh and become the killing engines they were, waiting as they had waited before, without end, and without the ability to hope. In their sanctums, sorcerers wove their dreams, or sat without sleeping, muttering their secrets to the dark. Deep within the superstructure – where light was the dull glow from heat vents, and where the residue of over-filtered air sat in still, dark pools – creatures which had been human scuttled across the walls on fleshmetal hooks, and thought of nothing but the next taste of blood.

  None of them had eyes to see into the Chamber of Cages. Not even Ignis, sitting in the ship’s iron crucible of a bridge, saw the shadow of what happened pass across his inner eye.

  In its cage the Athenaeum became quiet and still. The fire died in its eyes and its words dried up. It sat within its layer­ed cages, panting as though exhausted.

  It twisted its head, suddenly breathing harder. Blood began to run from its empty eye sockets.

  ‘I must be free…’ it said. ‘My sons, where are my sons?’ It tried to rise to its feet, but its limbs collapsed. The sphere cage rang, and smoke sizzled into the air as a scream rang out. ‘Where are you? I must be free. I am not… I am not…’

  It crouched on the platform, body heaving with sawing breaths. Its flesh began to shake, and the inner sphere began to tremble in sympathy. Lightning wormed across the bars. Lines of red heat split its skin.

  ‘Don’t leave me here! You cannot leave me here! You cannot!’

  It arched its head back with a crack of bone. The cages clanged as they trembled one after another. Luminescence wept from the sigils cut into the cold iron and pure silver.

  ‘I must be free!’ it shouted. Smoke choked the air as frost coated every surface. ‘I will find a way. I must find a way.’

  The cages were bowing, bolts and sigils creaking.

  The sound of running feet and shouts echoed in the corridor outside the hatch. The Word of Hermes was no longer sleeping; every living thing on board could feel the pressure building in its heart.

  ‘My sons, where are my sons?’ called the Athenaeum.

  The hatch seals began to whir open, shrieking against the thickening ice.

  ‘Why…?’ called the Athenaeum.

  The hatch crashed open. Ctesias bounded through, staff in hand, eyes sweeping across the ice and lightning fading to nothing on the cage.

  ‘Why can’t I see…?’ the Athenaeum croaked as its tongue twisted in its mouth. Ctesias stared at it. The fires lit in its eyes, and it folded back to the bottom of the cage. ‘Why am I lost in this labyrinth?’ it managed, and then the babble of words came up from its throat and began to drone into the stillness.

  Ignis came through the open hatch as Ctesias was still staring at the figure in the cage.

  ‘A problem,’ he stated, eyes moving across the chamber.

  Ctesias shook his head.

  ‘An anomaly.’

  ‘What kind of anomaly?’

  ‘I…’ Ctesias frowned. ‘I do not know.’

  ‘You have been waiting.’

  Ahriman looked up from the dry leaves rattling across the stone flags of the courtyard. The face looking down at him was a grey smudge in the air, edges and mouth and nose defined by thin shadows. The rest of her shape was a watercolour blur painted against the details of the palace behind her. Through her he could still see towers, bridges and minarets biting into the overcast sk
y.

  ‘I was not sure you would come,’ he said.

  ‘The great Ahzek Ahriman, unsure?’ Selandra Iobel gave a cold laugh as she settled at the opposite end of the stone bench on which he sat. ‘I am flattered.’

  ‘I am glad you came,’ he said.

  ‘The only person you can talk to is the memory of an enemy, is that it?’ The laughter crackled through her voice. ‘Is there any further for you to fall?’

  Silence formed after the question. Ahriman watched as a spiral of wind caught the dry leaves and pulled them into the air.

  ‘I want to ask you something,’ he said at last.

  ‘There is nothing that I can tell you. Everything I knew, you know.’

  Ahriman stood, the blue fabric of his robes dragging on the stones as he turned to Iobel.

  ‘Will you walk with me?’

  For an instant she neither moved nor replied. Then she rose, and fell in next to him as he began to walk. They passed from the courtyard in silence. Corridors of carved stone and arched bronze led them away. In some passages the light of the sky – always a dull steel grey – fell through windows and skylights. In others the light came from burning torches, or oil lamps hung from the roof on brass chains. Doors lined every corridor and stair: narrow openings closed by blackened boards, towering arches housing double doors of iron and silver, simple frames for carved oak panels. No two doors were the same, and many were different if looked at more than once. Slivers of noise scratched at the doors from the other side. The corridors changed as they walked them. Walls reconfigured, carvings crumbled and grew like flowers, stairs unwound from flat floors or collapsed into nothing.

  The palace was a memory. Each room was a store of the past, each corridor, wing, and tower a grouping of knowledge. Every detail was a construction of imagination and intellect, none of it real, but all of it deliberately created. And the palace went on and on, growing ceaselessly, its edges sprawling in new wings and layers. It existed in Ahriman’s mind and the only part of it that he knew he could not control was the ghost memory of Iobel.

  ‘You have found how to keep me out of parts of your mind,’ said Iobel, pausing to rest a spectral hand against a door lacquered with blue- and gold-feathered birds. ‘Even here there are doors that will not open to me. I would almost say that you do not trust me.’

  ‘I do not. You are an enigma, a cyst of consciousness within my own mind that I cannot remove. You should not exist. In life you did everything you could to destroy me. So no, I do not trust you, inquisitor.’

  ‘Prudent.’

  She went silent, and they took several more steps. Before them a tiled arch framed a view of a marble bridge spanning the gap between two towers. The bridge had no railings or walls. Like much of the rest of the memory palace, it was a replacement conjured after the previous version had been largely destroyed. After Iobel had destroyed it. Part of him could not help but admire her for that.

  ‘How long until you go to Prospero?’ she asked as they stepped onto the bridge. Ahriman glanced at her, unable to hide the twinge of surprise. He had been very careful to keep his immediate plans out of reach of the revenant of the dead inquisitor. Or so he had thought.

  Iobel laughed, the sound dry and humourless.

  ‘You have closed doors to me, but your mind is my world, Ahriman. I can see the shape of even the secrets you hide from yourself. Sometimes I wonder if I am actually you, if the only difference between us is the belief that I am separate.’

  ‘Isn’t that the only difference between all minds?’

  Iobel’s shadow body shrugged.

  ‘Did you come here for philosophical discussion, or to ask me something?’

  They were almost at the middle of the bridge. Beneath it a canyon of carved stone and tarnished metal cut down into shadow. Ahriman stopped, and Iobel halted with him. The sky was still the leaden grey of a half-forgotten autumn. Far off, darker clouds stained the horizon. The wind pulled at his robes, and brushed the scent of coming rain over them.

  ‘Magnus knows I am coming,’ said Ahriman quietly.

  ‘That should not be a surprise,’ said Iobel. ‘He is a creature of the warp now, a daemon prince of Change. The warp’s currents are his blood and breath. Even the thought of what you intend will send ripples through the Great Ocean. He will be ready for you. You know that.’

  ‘My father will oppose me, just as he did before. He believes that the fate I sought to save our Legion from was not a curse. If he still feels anything, he hates that I defied him, he hates that I did not agree, that I saw and sought another path.’

  ‘Just as he did with the Emperor.’ Iobel nodded. ‘Just as you all did. That chain of defiance led you from one betrayal to another. Magnus will destroy you, but perhaps you will do him harm. He is beyond death, but even a creature such as he can be crippled, or weakened.’

  The dark crack of a smile spread across Iobel’s face.

  ‘The prospect pleases you,’ said Ahriman.

  ‘Pleases me?’ Iobel shook her head. ‘If I could do nothing else other than see you, your father and all your works made into ashes, I would end this ghost life more than satisfied. If I can bring that about I will. You and Magnus both deserve nothing but ruin, Ahriman.’

  ‘I am not my father.’

  ‘No, but you are much alike in pride, and vision, and ignorance. You both deserve to be forgotten.’

  Ahriman was watching the shapes of birds wheel above a distant range of towers.

  ‘I do not understand him, perhaps I never did.’

  ‘What does it matter, now? You are going back to the Planet of the Sorcerers. You are going to defy him again, perhaps even confront him. Understanding is not required for that, only ignorance and blindness.’ The shadow of a frown formed on the image of Iobel’s face. ‘Why are we talking of Magnus?’

  ‘I… saw him,’ said Ahriman, aware of the hesitation in his voice. ‘He came to me, and gave me a warning.’

  ‘You saw him?’

  Ahriman nodded, his eyes fixed on a point in the distance.

  ‘A scarred man in an old cloak.’

  ‘You have seen him before?’

  ‘Yes, but always in dreams.’

  Iobel’s outline darkened.

  ‘I think I understand now why you summoned me.’

  Ahriman glanced at her.

  ‘You say that I do not understand what I am,’ he said, ‘that I am blind to myself.’

  ‘Never was there a soul who saw more and perceived less.’

  ‘But you see clearly, inquisitor. Is that not what you always claimed?’ He flicked a glance at her, but her image appeared to be staring into the distance. ‘Even within my own mind you say that you have walked paths that I do not know.’

  Iobel’s shadow form flickered. The outline of her features hardened and darkened.

  ‘I will not help you,’ she said, her voice edged with iron. ‘I will never help you.’

  ‘Have you seen him, Iobel?’ he asked. ‘On those lost paths in my mind, have you seen my father?’

  For a long moment she said nothing, but hung silent before him, the gauze-thin edges of her form stirring as she looked at him.

  ‘No,’ she said at last, and turned and stepped from the bridge into the drop beneath. Ahriman watched as the grey shimmer of her outline spun on the rising wind, and then was lost in the shadows. He nodded once to himself, and then walked on across the bridge. Above him a growl of thunder stirred the darkening sky.

  VI

  Preliminal

  Ahriman’s fleet sat in stillness while the stars turned around it. There were ships which had been at war since before the creation of the Imperium of Man, and others which had been taken from conquered foes and given new names. At their heart, the three greatest ships formed a flat triangle: the Word of Hermes, Pyromonarch and Soul Jackal. Cliff h
ulls stretched kilometres from aft to stern. Weapons serrated their flanks, and cities of towers and domes rose from their spines. Yet for all their similarity, they were as different as their masters. The Word of Hermes was a black spearhead, its guns stacked in layered tiers down its flanks and ascending across the curve of its back. Pyromonarch was a split-hulled barque, resembling a vast trident head. Burning gas vented without ceasing from gargoyles dotting its hull. Soul Jackal glimmered with a cold light which clung to its silvered body.

  Within each, the slave crews worked without cease. Chained mutants hauled ammunition from ordnance holds. Creatures of flesh and metal skittered over obelisks of machinery, and hooded throngs gathered to pour blood and ashes onto the breeches of macro-weapons. Prayers were muttered and screamed in the dark spaces of the deep holds as the mortal dregs called to the gods to protect them from the future.

  On the flight decks of the Word of Hermes, cyborgs pulled aircraft into place with cold iron chains under the gaze of sorcerers. The machines twisted as they were dragged across the deck, mouths opening on their oil-sheened fuselages. Each had consumed flesh and blood when they had come from the binding chambers, but the daemons within still hungered. There would need to be more blood to quiet them, and more again before they were ready for war.

  Alone in the Chamber of Cages, Ahriman watched the Athenaeum and asked the question again.

  ‘Is there another way?’

  The Athenaeum looked at him.

  Was there accusation in the blank pits of light? Was there hate? Was there laughter?

  ‘…the tenth circle divides the first when the light of the fifth shines…’ the words babbled on.