Traitor by Deed

by Ben Counter

  The rest of Squad Phraates emerged from the dust behind Cyvon. Brother Sasan’s shoulder guards were studded with shuriken discs from the Dire Avengers on the walls. Brother Arasmyn’s armour was black with his blood against the purple, and an ugly chainblade wound ran from his shoulder deep across his torso, cutting through ceramite into flesh. Manuch’s bolt rifle hung in a wrecked mess from his shoulder, and he fought now with a bolt pistol in one hand and a combat knife in the other.

  ‘Oxyath is gone?’ said Sasan. ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘I saw him, brother,’ replied Cyvon. ‘He is lost. We shall be his revenge.’

  The rest of the strike force were emerging from the chaos of the laser strike. Quhya and Tiridates ran across the wreckage, heading for another archway leading into the tomb. Cyvon could hear the purring of aeldari grav-tanks, and he knew the enemy were not done yet. Their counter-attack against the Soul Drinkers had been blunted, but that was not their main objective. They wanted what was inside the tomb, and they were within already.

  Cyvon led the way through the arch. Inside the tomb was cool and dark, in sudden contrast to the desert outside. He emerged into the main nave, where the glass sarcophagus of Saint Innokens lay surrounded by rings of pews where pilgrims could sit and contemplate the dead saint. A pulpit loomed over the sarcophagus, from which a preacher could inspire the faithful with tales of the saint’s visions and sacrifices. Golden panels around the walls of the nave were engraved with illustrations of the revelations granted to Innokens by the Emperor – planets boiling away as stars exploded; hosts of daemons falling before the Emperor’s sword; the armies of mankind marching to a final, endless war. One panel showed a ragged scar across the galaxy, the omen that Innokens had claimed heralded its doom.

  Knots of exhausted Imperial citizens were huddled among the pews for shelter from the battle outside. Many of them were wounded militia taken down from the walls to be treated, or to spend their last moments in this holy place. Others were the old or infirm, whose role in the fight had been to pray before the altar for deliverance from the heretics outside. They looked at Cyvon and the other Soul Drinkers with open-mouthed amazement.

  ‘Then these are the end times,’ said one, an old man with a heavily bandaged arm and the tattered robes of a pilgrim. ‘We are delivered, in our final moments. They are death, and they are among us!’

  Hands reached out to touch Cyvon’s armour as he passed by the pilgrims. He approached the sarcophagus and saw the drawn, dried-out face of Saint Innokens. It was the colour of hard, polished wood, and spoke of a life of deprivation and self-denial. Innokens wore simple white funeral robes, and clutched a small battered book in his bony hands.

  Cyvon turned to the old man who had spoken. ‘Where is the Lyre?’ he asked.

  Before the man could reply, Cyvon spotted movement at the far side of the nave. A Space Marine’s peripheral vision was preternatural and he had an impression of black robes, loose bandages and long pale hair. An instinct told him to follow and he vaulted over the pew in front of him, leaving the old pilgrim confused in his wake.

  The fugitive was running towards a side shrine leading off from the nave. As Cyvon ran, the sound of breaking stone and crunching wood flooded the nave as an aeldari grav-tank burst through the wall, riding on a shimmering field of anti-grav energy that pushed the debris ahead of it.

  ‘No quarter!’ yelled First Sergeant Tiridates, erupting into the nave opposite the aeldari intrusion. His Intercessor squad ran alongside him as Tiridates smashed heedlessly through the pews and scattered the pilgrims ahead of him. Stheno was in the first wave, too, carrying a plasma gun and firing as he sprinted. The rest of the strike force charged into the pews, mirrored by the Striking Scorpions and Howling Banshees that flooded in through the breach opened by the tank.

  Bolter fire streaked across the nave. Shuriken catapults and multi-lasers fired back, filling the Tomb of Innokens with a deadly multicoloured hail. Cyvon was aware of Brother Manuch falling with a smoking hole in one power-armoured greave. A Howling Banshee somersaulted to the floor, an arm blown off by a bolter impact.

  Shrapnel pinged off Cyvon’s armour. He kept going, leaving the battle to Quhya and Tiridates. Raw instinct told him his objective was fleeing to the back of the nave.

  ‘The reliquary!’ gasped Cyvon into the squad vox as he ran. ‘The Lyre, brothers! The Lyre!’

  He skidded into the archway as a burst of multi-laser fire ripped into the wall behind him. Ahead was a door of studded bronze, with the image of Saint Innokens surrounded by warrior angels cast in deep relief. The door was swinging closed and Cyvon grabbed the edge of it to keep it from slamming shut all the way.

  Beside the door was a locking unit inside a carved wooden box. The box had been forced open and the mechanism inside smouldered and sparked. The fugitive had got inside, and from the dust that swirled in the draught from the door’s movement, they had been the only person to do so in a long time.

  Cyvon slipped through the door and into darkness. His sight adjusted to show a tight spiral staircase heading downwards. Automated guns, in ornate bronze casings with lens-eyed skulls as aiming units, hung in their mountings on the ceiling. Either they had failed from centuries of neglect, or the fugitive had a way of shutting them down as well as opening the door. The sounds of gunfire were dulled beyond the door and already it felt like the fight for the Tomb of Innokens was being fought miles away.

  Inquisitor Stheno arrived in the doorway, for he too had recognised the real objective in the Tomb of Innokens did not lie with the aeldari. ‘This place was void-sealed,’ he said, glancing at the broken lock. Such technology was rare and used only to protect the most valuable secrets from scanners and intruders. The inquisitor probably had plenty of his own secrets he kept behind such a barrier. ‘What is down here? Who breached it?’

  The reply did not come from Cyvon, but from below. He heard voices raised in song, in layers of overlapping music that seemed to wrap around him and immerse him in their sound. The music carried with it something that was not human, a quality that slid around inside his head and would not let itself be absorbed by his conscious mind.

  Cyvon followed the sound down the steps and emerged into a huge vaulted chamber, the ceiling almost lost in gloom, the only light cast in pools around relics presented like exhibits in a museum. The air was cold and bone dry, the better to preserve these ancient objects from the cruelty of time.

  He saw a skull plated in gold, with the Imperial aquila picked out on its forehead in diamonds and rubies. A dog-eared book held in a glass case, on a red velvet cushion. A set of tattered Ecclesiarchy robes, scorched and discoloured, on a turned wooden stand. The vault was divided by fluted columns and carved wooden screens, forming separate chambers of relics.

  SKULL OF SAINT INNOKENS AT THE CROSSROADS, read a brass plaque on the gilded skull’s platform. No explanation was given as to how that particular skull differed from the one on Saint Innokens’ corpse in the shrine above, nor how it came to be removed from him.

  BOOK OF DIVERSE PRAYERS, RECOVERED FROM THE RESTING PLACE AT THE DRY RIVER, read the plaque on the tattered pamphlet’s display case. The book was open to a page with faded words scrawled in a tormented hand.

  Relics of Saint Innokens’ life and his wanderings in the stony desert of Kepris. Writings, bones, implements of his survival. A canteen with the saint’s name scratched onto it with the point of a knife. A set of rosarius beads, well smoothed by worrying hands. A stained shawl in which Innokens had wrapped himself in the chill night. Hundreds of such items, the most mundane of them radiating holiness.

  Cyvon caught movement by one of the pillars and glimpsed the pilgrim he had chased inside – a woman, her blonde hair tangled and wild, her face streaked with grime.

  Beyond her, on a quilted velvet platform, was the Lyre of Innokens.

  It was an elegant curl of smooth and polished bone w
ith several oval gemstones set along its length, similar to those Cyvon had seen worn on the armour of the Swordwind’s aeldari. Silver wires ran between its two extremities forming the strings of an instrument. It had silver fittings to allow the instrument to be tuned, but they looked like later additions to the slender core of bone. The music Cyvon had followed emanated from the Lyre, and it grew in volume as if the relic knew he had noticed it.

  The woman had not been so ragged when Cyvon had last seen her, in the memory of a dead man. The handsome, sharp face, however, was unmistakeable. Beneath the pilgrim’s robes she wore the colours of House Yathe.

  ‘You will not take this from me!’ yelled Kalypsa Yathe – Yeceqath, the false prophetess, the Voice of All – as she raised her hand.

  Cyvon was ready this time. The digital weapons on Yathe’s fingers launched crimson lances of superheated light that scored right through the column beside Cyvon. The laser fire ripped over his head and the Skull of Saint Innokens at the Crossroads clattered to the flagstones of the vault floor, sliced in two by the beam.

  Perhaps the digital weapons were a relic of House Yathe. Perhaps they had been gifted to her by the aeldari to help her achieve her goal, before they had decided to achieve that goal themselves. Either way, if her Uppermost Hand had possessed them, Cyvon knew the Voice of All would definitely have kept some for herself.

  Cyvon heard voices raised in song. The sound seemed to come from everywhere at once but he knew it was from the Lyre of Innokens, responding to Yathe’s touch as she grabbed it. She might have the relic in hand, but now she was trapped.

  When Cyvon looked up, Yathe and the Lyre of Innokens were gone. He heard her footsteps receding further into the vault. He could see no end to the chamber, and there were plenty of places for the Voice of All to hide.

  He ran in pursuit of her. Stheno yelled at him to wait, but Cyvon ignored the inquisitor. If he lost Kalypsa Yathe here he might never find her again. She and the aeldari might take everything they wanted from Kepris. They would win.

  Some of the relics were huge – an elaborate pipe organ almost as high as the vault ceiling, an ornate carriage in which the saint’s body had been transported to the tomb – and further divided the vaults into sections dedicated to particular phases of the saint’s life. One section was full of trappings from Innokens’ training in the schola pro­genium, and later the seminaries of the Adeptus Ministorum, with instructional books well thumbed with study and an ornamented cane that had once mortified the future Saint Innokens’ flesh. Another section was from his pilgrimages across the pathways of space, long before it was sundered by the Great Rift, when it was possible for a pilgrim to travel from one side of the galaxy to the other. A stained voidsuit hung beside a recreation of a cramped cabin with a bookcase of holy works and a prayer cushion in front of a tiny painted icon of the Emperor.

  Cyvon sought the fleeing Yathe through all of this cluttered holiness. When he could not see her, he followed the music. Yathe might have the advantage with so much cover to hide behind, but she could not silence the Lyre of Innokens.

  The song led past a pair of enormous hanging tapestries depicting Innokens’ suffering in the desert. Cyvon tore one of them down from its mountings on the ceiling and saw beyond it a larger section of the vault dominated by a summit of stone. It was the shorn-off peak of a mountaintop, with a temple built at the apex. Twin obelisks flanked a huge aquila wrought from bone with an altar in front of it. Kalypsa Yathe was struggling up the slope with the Lyre of Innokens in her hand.

  THE PAGAN ZENITH, read a plaque on a pillar near the peak of stone. SANCTIFIED BY THE SAINT. It must have been cut from some mountain and brought down to the vault, probably during the tomb’s construction, as a symbol of Innokens’ power to turn the profane into the holy.

  Yathe reached the altar and leaned against it, out of breath. Cyvon drew Oxyath’s plasma pistol, ready to put a bolt of liquid fire right through her torso.

  With a sudden crack, the ceiling of the vault gave way. Just beyond the peak a torrent of rubble and dust poured down from the shrine above. Yathe dived into the cover of the altar and was lost in the billow of dust, spoiling Cyvon’s aim. He ducked behind the pillar with the bronze plaque as chunks of masonry and shattered pews tumbled past him.

  From the newly opened hole in the vault ceiling descended the farseer, held aloft by his psychic power. Beside him was the Striking Scorpion exarch who had accompanied him when he spoke with Yathe at the laboratory, as Cyvon had seen in the dead man’s memories. A little of the farseer’s customary majesty had been rubbed away by the Soul Drinkers’ refusal to be defeated. His robes were still grimy and scorched from the orbital blast that had nearly killed him.

  When Yathe opened the void-sealed vault, the Lyre of Innokens’ song had suddenly become audible to whatever sensors the aeldari possessed to search for it. They knew where it was, and the farseer had blasted a new way into the vault to claim the relic in person.

  Kalypsa Yathe stood up from the rubble surrounding the altar as the dust cleared around her. ‘Give them back!’ she yelled at the farseer. ‘You gave your word!’ She held up the Lyre of Innokens, and its music rose in volume. ‘All who have died, all I have given up, was for you. You gave your word. Give my people back to me and this will be yours. You have won, farseer! You have won!’

  The deal she had made, to hand over the Lyre in return for her people, was about to be concluded.

  ‘Yeceqath, the Voice of All,’ said the farseer, with a hint of mockery in the way he pronounced the name of the false prophet. ‘I will not say your achievements have been unimpressive. You almost fulfilled your vow to us. But then you faltered, and we were forced to intercede on your behalf. Aeldari lives were lost because of your failure. And still, you claim we owe you something.’

  ‘You gave your word,’ repeated Yathe. ‘If you want this, you will keep your promise. The Lyre is not on Kepris any more. It is in my hands. The power is mine. Give them back.’

  Cyvon stepped out from the pillar, plasma pistol thrumming in his hand.

  ‘Behind you,’ said the farseer.

  Cyvon fired. The bolt of plasma ripped up through the swirling dust, right towards the farseer’s heart. The Striking Scorpion reacted even faster than Cyvon had expected, diving in front of the farseer to take the full impact on his shoulder. The plasma blew his shoulder guard open and threw him back a step as the farseer conjured a shimmering shield of light in front of him. Where the farseer’s unarmoured body would have been bored through, the Scorpion’s heavy armour had just enough bulk to absorb the worst of the impact.

  The Striking Scorpion spoke a few words in the ­Aeldari tongue and retreated behind the psychic shield, his chain­s­word drawn.

  Cyvon cursed inwardly. His one shot had not missed, but it had failed to take out the farseer, the greatest threat on Kepris. The farseer rose again, past the ribs of the vault’s ceiling, lost among the pillars. His bodyguard went with him, trailing smoke and ashes from his burning wound.

  ‘You brought the Emperor’s angels down upon us!’ scolded the farseer. Cyvon could not judge where his voice was coming from, much less take aim at him. ‘Kalypsa Yathe, you have cost my people blood when you assured us the only dead would be human! Your failure forced us to intercede, and now I myself am endangered!’

  Yathe had run behind one of the obelisks when the shot was fired. She had the instincts of a survivor.

  Cyvon’s thoughts were racing. He could not beat the farseer, if it came to that. The xenos witch had killed Oxyath, the most potent weapon the Third Company had. The Striking Scorpion was one of the Biel-Tan Swordwind’s best warriors, trusted by the farseer to protect him. Cyvon doubted he could face the exarch either.

  But they were not the objective here. They were not what had driven Kepris to bloody heresy, profaned the Trail of Innokens, or brought the Soul Drinkers to the planet. Cyvon could not d
efeat the aeldari alone, but perhaps he did not have to.

  He ran from the cover of the pillar and sprinted through the rubble, charging up the slope towards the altar. He reached a fold in the rock and slid into it, knowing that Yathe would not be content to let him charge at her.

  Digital lasers duly shot over his head, scorching deep into the rock underfoot. Cyvon felt their heat.

  Cyvon had no idea of the capabilities of the alien-made digital weapons. Perhaps Yathe was out of ammunition. Perhaps she could go on firing forever.

  ‘You come to my world!’ she yelled down at him. ‘You kill my faithful!’ She fired again, and the laser sliced off a chunk of rock from just above Cyvon’s head. ‘The Adeptus Astartes, the heroes of the Imperium! Where was the Imperium when the xenos took House Yathe? When they stole my family?’

  Her anger was her weakness. Yathe had spent her life having everything her own way, and now it was all out of her control. That made her rash. That made her weak.

  Cyvon broke from cover and ran. Yathe ducked back behind the obelisk, as he had known she would, so he did not risk a shot that would miss and leave him vulnerable as the plasma pistol’s coils recharged. Instead he ran straight at the altar. The mountain peak was steep and his muscles strained to propel his armoured weight upwards.

  He heard several high pops and raw heat tore at Cyvon. He dived to the ground and rolled aside as a barrage of melta-blasts ripped through the rock. One of Yathe’s digital weapons was a miniaturised meltagun, designed to chew through armour and vaporise the flesh inside.

  Superheated stone boiled and burst. Cyvon’s senses flared red with sudden pain as a shard of rock drove deep into his right knee, through armour and the joint.