Ahriman: Unchanged

by John French

  ‘The Rubric. Is there another way it can work?’

  ‘…light tunnels the labyrinth waits there is no time in the labyrinth everything has already happened…’

  Ahriman shook his head and turned. He did not know why he had come to the chamber to ask the question again. His fleet was preparing, and the ritual had already been begun by him speaking his intent. He had come, though, pulled by hope that the answer would be different.

  ‘The Rubric…’ the voice said behind him. He turned back from the door, snake fast, at its sound. The Athenaeum sat at the bottom of its spherical cage, hugging itself with twitching limbs. Red coals smouldered in its eye sockets. The skin over its bones was blackened and dry. ‘The Rubric…’ The words cracked like burning logs, and the Athenaeum began to crumble as it spoke. ‘The Rubric is a circle, no part ending, no part lesser, no part greater, all in one, one in all, life to life, death to death, dust to dust…’

  Ahriman listened until it had ended and the Athenaeum was a pile of desiccated bones and scraps of skin. It had happened just as it had happened before, and its words had been the same. He watched the heap at the bottom of the cage until it caught light, and began to burn. The shadow of a curled body formed within the flames after a few seconds. The fire died and the Athenaeum sat there once more and continued to babble. Ahriman waited for a heartbeat, then walked from the room. Helio Isidorus followed, a silent companion to his circling thoughts.

  ‘The same answer as before,’ Ahriman said to himself. ‘There is no other way.’

  The names of the Rubricae coiled around Ignis, pulling at the thread of his thoughts with cold fingers. The syllables rattled through him, each one forming and then vanishing as his mind leapt to the next. On and on, like rounds rattling through a rotor cannon. His eyes were closed, but in his mind he was rising through a web of pale mist. Balls of corpse light flared around him as the names breathed from his mind. Dry fingers pulled at his skin, and sound echoed back as the void swallowed the names. They might have been voices. Sometimes he thought he heard his own name. Sometimes the sounds were just shreds of noise, fragments of sorrow, or confusion, or anger brushing him with dry bone fingers.

  He kept on speaking names. He could do that. The act of recitation had a simple, mechanical purity to it that would have appealed to him – that was, if it had not been for the feeling that he was dancing across a film of ice covering a depthless pool. He did not like that, not at all. It lacked precision.

  Beside him Gaumata’s molten presence was close, ghosting through the litany of names. The pyromancer’s mind pulsed, bleeding the sensation of burning and the taste of smoke as he wove amongst the ghost sea. Ignis could feel that Gaumata was following his own, more complex path, braiding his name and the names of Rubricae together in great chains. Together they were preparing the Rubricae to be guided in battle. The minds of many of Ahriman’s living followers would be needed elsewhere, and so the host of the dead would need to be controlled by fewer of them. This coiling and linking of names was preparation for that need.

  And preparation for the Rubric.

  Ignis watched the pattern of the next syllable in his mind. A small fragment of his awareness broke off to watch Gaumata’s gleaming path.

  Cold ice slammed into Ignis. He could feel hands on his face, squeezing at his eyes. Dust was scraping over his skin, coiling like a strangling snake. He felt his focus slip. The litany of names choked off in his mind. The void of mist and light was gone. Two glowing pits in a dry skull face pressed against his mind’s eye. A mouth cracked open between teeth of cold starlight. He tried to pull away but the sand and dust were all around him, pulling him down. The cold wheels of logic in his thoughts spun on, telling him that he had made a mistake, that his chances of survival were vanishing into a void.

  The corpse mouth was still opening before him, the void within towering around him. He could see faces looking at him from out of the blackness. His skin was burning, peeling back from bones that were crumbling to ash, and he was screaming and screaming for his brothers to help him, to make it stop, but his voice was pulling from him like a rope, and he could hear his name being called, and with it thousands and thousands more, and all he could hear was screaming as the idea of him crumbled, and there was just light… and he did not know who he was… or what he was… and he was still screaming as a cage of metal closed over him, and…

  Heat and pain exploded through Ignis. He felt talons punch into his consciousness. He rammed his will against the strangling embrace and tried to force the burning shards out of his thoughts.

  Be still, you fool,+ hissed Gaumata.

  Ignis’s thoughts froze.

  The burning claws dug deeper into his mind.

  An abyss opened beneath him, calling him to fall, and fall, and fall without start or end. The claws ripped him up and away from the dark. Half-formed thoughts scattered after him. He thought he heard his name carried on a gust of dry, rattling wind.

  ‘Ignis…Ignis… Ignis…’

  He was lying on the floor, polished amber pressed against his bare face. He pushed himself up. His skin and skull were burning inside and out. The breath coming from his mouth formed white mist in the air.

  A foot of splayed metal toes and a shin of black-etched orange armour filled his sight as he raised his eyes from the floor. Something clicked with a sound of electronics and cogwork from above his field of sight.

  Credence, he thought, surprised by his own feeling of relief.

  ‘I am… alive,’ he said. The amber floor shook as Credence stepped away.

  No thanks to your own actions,+ came Gaumata’s sending.

  Ignis stood up. His armour hissed as though in protest, and the interface sockets on his spine needled shrill pain into his nerves. He looked at Gaumata. The pyromancer’s armour was the blue of deep water, edged with thick coils of gold. He wore no helm, but the broad features of his face sat beneath a crest of silver and bronze which rose like a frozen halo of fire above his skull. Fine silver wires linked crest and skull, and Ignis’s eyes caught the tick of sparks along them. Always a bad sign.

  I thought that you were a creature of precision, Ignis, not prone to distraction.+ Gaumata stared at him, his pupils black pinpricks in blood-red irises.

  I am unused to it,+ he sent flatly. +You have my thanks for your actions in preventing what might have occurred.+

  Gods, you are a bloodless reptile, Ignis,+ growled Gaumata, as he shook his heavy head. +You know, I sometimes thought that it was a shame they took fear from us. A little fear can be a valuable thing, but in your case any feeling at all might improve you.+

  Ignis blinked. Others had said something similar to this before. He had not understood then. He did not understand it now.

  I made an error in focus, and judgement. It will not occur again.+

  Gaumata snorted and turned to rest his hands on the rail of the platform. He looked down at the cavernous deck space beneath them. It was the ship’s largest muster deck, and though Ignis could see its farthest walls, a human would have struggled to see more than a distant blur.

  Beneath the platform immobile figures stood in ranks across the muster chamber floor, each a statue in sapphire and gold, each with a bolter held across its chest. Each looking into space with coldly luminous eyes. There were as many here as he had ever seen gathered in one place. It was a… legion was not the correct word. Legion had once meant something else, something now broken and discoloured by blood. He nodded to himself. It was not the correct word, but it would suffice.

  Gaumata’s eyes glittered as they scanned the expanse. He shook his head again, bit the edge of his lip, and twitched his mouth as though snarling at something someone had said. Ignis waited. He did not try to understand the pyromancer’s expressions. They, as always, seemed rather human. That did not make him comfortable. He let the silence deepen.

  At last Gaumat
a straightened.

  Do not lose focus, when dealing with the Rubricae. Do not think that this is just a process.+ Gaumata shook his head again, the fingers of his right hand flexing as red flame rolled around the digits. +The Rubricae do not respond because you call their name. Do you understand? They respond because their name is a thread that pulls what is left of them a little closer to the light. Pull too hard and they come too close. They remember too much, and they…+

  Become angry.+

  Become dangerous. Potentially, that is.+

  You believe that? That there is something left of them inside, something that can remember, something that can feel?+

  Yes. You do not?+

  Ignis looked down at the ranked Rubricae. He formed the name of a warrior he had not seen for almost a thousand years. One of the crested helms twitched upwards, and two pale motes of light stared up at him from behind crystal eyepieces.

  He looked back.

  Empty shells of armour spun with sorcery, he thought. Nothing more. He tilted the shape of his will. The Rubricae looking at him tilted its head to the side. You call them by their names, and they respond, they walk and fight, and watch, but who is to say that what drives them is even anything to do with what they were in life? Once we believed that we had angels on our shoulders, and they were daemons. How much easier is it to believe the same lie than the truth?

  He shrugged, allowing his thoughts to sink down under the comforting spiral of numbers and ratios and the symbolic geometry of all things.

  No,+ he sent. +I do not think they are anything more than they seem.+

  And what is that?+

  The dead.+

  So why are you with us, Ignis?+

  Always the same question,+ he replied, the sending flat and emotionless. +It is, I suppose, the rational thing to ask.+

  Gaumata waited while Ignis remained silent, looking down at the Rubricae. The formulae spun on in his mind, and he watched time spin fresh angles in his thoughts.

  After a long minute Gaumata shook his head, and a mental shrug pulsed from his mind.

  We need to complete the preparations. The Rubricae must be ready. We must be ready. We will ascend again and commence the bonding from the beginning.+

  Ignis nodded, and straightened. The lone Rubricae looking upwards dropped its gaze and was again a single statue amongst thousands.

  I will bear your advice in mind this time.+

  Gaumata shrugged.

  Do or don’t as you please. If you repeat your error I may not be able to save you. I may not choose to save you.+

  Again you are nothing if not rational.+

  Credence gave a blurt of machine code. Ignis met Gaumata’s red stare with a mind and face blank of emotion.

  Gaumata breathed out, and turned away with the slightest shake of his head. Ignis thought he caught the smell of burning and the heat of a flame brushing across his mind. A second later it was gone, and he felt Gaumata’s mind begin to reshape its thoughts as the pyromancer’s will branched out and began to pull the warp to it. The silent murmur of names began.

  Ignis glanced down one last time, and for a second his skin prickled inside his armour.

  Every Rubricae was looking up at them.

  He turned his own gaze away, and pushed his mind outwards. He and Gaumata spun towards the waiting presence of the Rubricae.

  If you believe that something still lives within them, brother, do you wonder if they want us to succeed?+ asked Ignis, as the dry presence of the dead touched his mind. +Have you wondered if they might not wish to return?+

  Gaumata did not answer, and after a moment the pair began to speak the names again and the darkness lit with a web of cold fire.

  …ih’hal’hrek, Ctesias intoned the fragment in his mind. Bile and the taste of spoiled meat filled his mouth, and the stone of the throne was cold against his skin. He coughed, and had to fight to keep from wiping his hand across his lips. His fingers twitched against his palm. His hand began to move on its own, crawling up his chest towards his face like a spider.

  He stopped it with a snap of will.

  He held his thoughts still for three seconds. He had to be careful. His hand moving while he spoke might seem to others to be a small thing, but he had lived nine centuries by knowing that small mistakes were the seeds of ruin.

  If he wiped his mouth now, then he might do it again the next time he had a similar sensation. From there it might become a habit. Every time he thought of eating meat he would wipe his lips. After a while the habit might change, might become a need to replace the scent with that of incense. That habit of replacing the smell of decay with sweet smoke would become compulsion, and then an obsession so strong, and so deeply buried in the psyche, that a particular smell and taste would drive him to burn everything he could touch.

  That was the power of the warp. No matter how small the connection, or how tiny the beginning, a daemon could use your own mind to destroy you. It might take millennia, but the legions of the warp had the patience of eternity.

  Ctesias felt his body still, his hearts steady, and the taste fade from his tongue. Very carefully he moved his focus to another compartment of his mind, and touched the memory within.

  …vel’rek’hul’scb’th’rx…

  The image of a head of split skin and rolling fat filled his mind. He saw broken horns, eyes of pus and blood, and a mouth which split wide above a glistening throat sac. He blanked the vision, and stilled the tremor in his spine.

  He let out another breath, and opened his eyes. The silver marks laid into the floor around the chair still glimmered with a green-blue ghost light. The candles he had set at each of the key points around the pattern had burned down to the last inches of tallow.

  He waited to move. It always paid to wait after such a practice. Unwanted mistakes or effects on the physical world might not be immediately apparent. Patience in this, as in all things, rewarded one with continued life.

  He watched the flames lick the molten candle wax. The substance of each had come from the flesh of dead thralls. The human psykers served in death as they had in life, as fuel, albeit of a different type.

  ‘Enough,’ he breathed, and felt the air rattle in his chest. ‘Enough… for now.’

  Nine hours. He had sat on the stone chair within the circles of candles for nine hours. He was sure that Ignis would have expressed scorn at the fact that he had not predicted the length of the meditation to within a second.

  It had been meditation, rather than a ritual, because the intent had not been to call anything into being, or cause any effect in the warp whatsoever. In fact the intent was the exact reverse. For nine hours he had moved through his memory, touching and checking each of the isolated compartments in his psyche. Each cell within his mind contained a fragment of a word, or in some cases, just a single syllable, or even just the pieces to make a syllable. Walls of mental strength separated each fragment. Woven together, the syllables would make a name: a true name of a daemon.

  Even hearing a part of such a name could break a mortal’s sanity. Even the name unspoken corroded the substance which held it. Written in a book, the paper would burn, and turn to living, screaming flesh. Cast in metal, that metal would rust, melt, take form and scuttle into shadows. Etched into a goblet the glass would shatter, and the fragments become clouds of sharp edges thirsting for blood. To speak one such name, to use it to summon, bind, or dismiss a daemon was to do something both terrible and extraordinary. Ctesias had done just that, and not just once, but many times. His mind held thousands of daemons’ true names, from petty creatures to the greater daemons from the highest circles of Ruin. His own soul was his grimoire, and his mind was the hand which turned the pages.

  ‘Move,’ he said to himself, and found the word dry on his tongue. He licked his lips, blinked, and sucked a sip of air. ‘Move. Strength is in the mind not the bod
y, so stand, you fossilised lump of dung.’ His own words almost made him laugh, but he coughed instead, thick fluid racking from his throat.

  He rose to his feet, the robe covering the lower half of his body clinging to him as fresh sweat beaded his flesh. He closed his eyes one last time. Tiny ghost impressions of the daemonic fragments he had touched clung to the edges of his thoughts. They would have to be purged before he left the candlelight.

  He readied his will, and then stopped, a wild fancy suddenly tugging at his thoughts. He felt the edges of his lips twitch. It would be pointless, an act of bravado seen by no one but himself. And such things were dangerous.

  He grinned, and clapped his hands once, and raised them above his head. His will rushed out, carrying the detritus of his meditation with it.

  A galaxy of images filled the air. He saw the snarling jaws of a three-headed hound, a great bull’s head with eyes of night, a flattened tangle of brass teeth and molten eyes, a tumbling mass of arms and mouths, a blunt stump of a body made from boils and chewed fat. On and on they went, a great spherical explosion of horror. He watched them as they flew out, the countless images becoming thin as they reached the edge of the candlelight.

  His smile faded as the candles dimmed and went out one by one.

  He nodded to himself and made for the chamber door, and what rest he could find.

  ‘It will be enough,’ he said to himself quietly. ‘I hope it will be enough.’

  VII

  Synchronicity

  The space hulk had no name before the Oathtaker gave it one. Perhaps the first ship, which had begun the agglomeration, had had a name, but that name had been lost to time and change. Churned and thrown through the warp by storm tides, that first lost ship had crashed into another wreck, and the two had become one. Eventually the warp had spat the fused ships out into the cold embrace of space. Asteroids and comet ice had slammed into the mass of wreckage, adding to her bulk. Then the warp had reached back into reality and pulled its child back into its tides. More dead ships had fused with her. The core of her creation had vanished, and a vast ball of detritus had remained. At last a current had snagged her and pulled her down into one of the dead seas of the Eye of Terror. There she had sat, until the Oathtaker had come for her. He had given her many things, and one of those was her first and only name. Monolith he called her, and with his gifts she changed again.