by Dan Abnett
I tapped the word 'daesumnor' into the pad. The lock cycled and the door opened.
A clean, warm, well-ventilated staircase, significantly newer than the main structures of the estate, took me down into the cellar system. There was a caged lamp every three metres down the wall. By the chart and my estimation, I was some ten metres underground, moving beneath the east wing. I removed my hood to hear better.
'Daesumnor' opened another hatch, and I entered a long hall with hatch-doors along one side. One stood open, and I could hear voices and smell smoke.
I edged along, and skirted the hatch so I could peer in.
'... secured with two weeks,' a voice was saying.
'Said that month ago!' another snorted. "What's the matter, you trying to inflate your fee?'
The room was some kind of lounge or study. Books and slates were racked with archive-like precision in wooden stacks along the walls. Soft light glowed from pendant lamps, and also from a number of sealed, glass-topped caskets in front of the shelving. They reminded me of the protective, controlled environment units Imperial libraries used to display especially ancient and valuable texts.
The room was carpeted, and as I craned round, I could see four men sitting around a low table in throne-like armchairs. One had his back to me, but from the folds of his coat falling over the chair's arm, I was certain it was Urisel Glaw. Facing him, sitting back in his chair, was the ship master, Gorgone Locke. The other two I didn't know, but I had a feeling they'd both been at the dinner. They all had glasses of liquor and one of the unknown men was using a water-pipe to inhale obscura. Various objects lay on the table between them, some wrapped in velvet, others unwrapped and displayed. They looked like stone tablets, old relics of some sort.
'I'm just trying to explain the delay, Glaw/ Locke said. 'They're a difficult enough culture to deal with at the best of times.'
That's why we pay you,' Glaw said with a scoffing laugh. He leaned forward and toyed with one of the tablets.
'But we won't stand much further delay. We've invested a great deal in this matter. Time, funds, resources. It's meant holding back or cancelling other enterprises, some of them very special to us.'
"You will not be disappointed, lord,' said the man with the narco-pipe. He was dressed simply in black, a slightly built, bald individual with watery blue eyes. 'The archaeoxenan provenance of these items speaks for itself. The saruthi are serious about their offer.'
Urisel started to reply and got to his feet. I ducked into cover and then moved away down the hall. Eyclone's code opened the door at the end and I crept through into a wide, circular vault. Two more hatches of regular pattern led off to either side. Ahead of me was a larger archway protected by a force screen instead of a door.
I backed into hiding alongside this opening as someone cancelled the force screen from inside. A figure stepped out, turning to raise the screen again. It was Kowitz.
I took him from behind, an arm locked around his throat to silence him, another hand pinning his right arm. He gurgled and struggled. I twisted him round and slammed his head against the doorframe.
Kowitz went limp. I dragged him in through the open force-portal. A control on the inner wall raised the screen again.
The chamber was long with a low ceiling. The climate-controlled air was dry. I realised it was a chapel of sorts, a stone-floored, rectangular nave leading to a shape that seemed to me an altar. The room was otherwise
bare of features, even seats or pews. Light glowed from recessed lamps in the roof. Leaving Kowitz on the floor, I strode down the length of the chapel and took a closer look at the altar.
It was two metres high, black, fashioned from a single piece of obsidian. The glassy stone seemed to glow with an internal light. On top of it was a jewelled prayer box about thirty centimetres square. I lifted the lid carefully with the blade of my knife-tool. In a bed of velvet lay an intricate sphere. It looked like a jagged lump of quartz, the size of a clenched fist, inlaid with gold circuits and complex woven wires, like an oversized uncut gemstone in a bizarre, ornate setting.
I spun around at a sound from behind me.
Kowitz, blood dripping from his dented forehead, stood pointing a laspistol at me. His face was pale, angry, confused.
'Step away from the Pontius, scum/ he said.
ELEVEN
Revelations. The noble sport. Pacification 505.
This was no place to be trapped. I dug into my reserves of concentration, and without any physical movement, struck him clean between the eyes.
A psychic goad like that, especially at close range and with a clear line of sight, should have felled him like a force hammer. Kowitz didn't even blink.
'Don't make me repeat myself,' he said, raising the weapon so it pointed at my head.
The room was psychically shielded, it had to be. Either that or something was leeching psychic energies out of the very air.
There's been a misunderstanding, Kowitz,' I said. 'I went for a walk and must have taken a wrong turn.'
It was pretty lame, but I wanted to keep his responses engaged and his mind busy.
'I don't think so/ he hissed. He was groping behind himself with his free hand, trying to find the control panel for the entrance. There was an alarm stud on it.
I waited. At any second, he was going to glance round involuntarily to help his fumbling.
When the gesture came, I threw myself forward and down, pulling my autopistol.
He looked back with a cry and fired, but his aim was too high and the shot flared off the end wall.
From a prone stance, I punched two shots through his left collar bone, and threw him back against the force door, which crackled at the impact.
Kowitz collapsed face down on the floor and blood began to pool around him.
I reached the door control. An amber rune was flashing. The bastard had managed to press something. I hit the force door deactivator.
Nothing.
I punched 'daesumnor' into the key pad.
Nothing.
I realised I was in deep trouble.
I guessed that Kowitz had hit an alarm that locked everything out. That was what prevented me from opening the door.
Urisel Glaw and several of his house militia appeared outside the shimmering force door. I could see them peering in and shouting.
I backed from the doorway and snatched up Kowitz's laspistol. When the door opened, I would use both guns to take down anything that tried to get in.
Then something psychic, dark and monstrously powerful rushed into my mind from somewhere behind me and I blacked out.
A face was looking down at me as I came round. A handsome face with blank eyes. The face started to say something. Then it combusted and melted away, and I realised it was just a dream. And I awoke properly, into a world that was nothing but pain.
'Enough. Don't kill him,' said a voice. Another voice laughed, and a tremor of acute agony peeled through my forebrain, lungs and gut.
'Enough, I said! Locke!'
A mild, disappointed curse. The agony receded, and I was left with numbness and throbbing background pain.
I was spreadeagled, my wrists and ankles bitten by the manacles that locked me to a massive hardwood cross. They'd taken my equipment, harness, hood, earpiece, and everything else except the leggings of my bodyglove and my boots. What could only be dried blood caked my lips, mouth, chin and throat, and fresh blood still drooled from my nose.
I opened my eyes. A meaty fist was holding my inquisitorial rosette in front of my face.
'Recognise this, Eisenhorn?'
I spat blood.
'Thought you'd wile your way in among us and then produce this crest and make us all cower in fear?'
Urisel Glaw took the rosette away and peered down into my face.
'Doesn't work that way with the House of Glaw. We're not afraid of your kind.'
'Then you... are very foolish indeed/ I said.
He slammed my head back into the cross with an o
pen-palmed blow to my forehead.
"You think your friends are going to help you? We've rounded them all up. They're just down the cell-block yonder.'
'I'm perfectly serious,' I said. 'Others know I'm here. And you really don't want to be messing with a servant of the Inquisition, no matter how much at your mercy you think he is/
Glaw hunched down in front of me, his hands steepled. 'Don't worry. I don't underestimate the Inquisition. I'm just not afraid of it. Now, there are some questions I'd like answers to...'
He got up and moved back. I saw the filthy stone of the cell-chamber we were in, a double-locked hatch up in one corner at the head of a flight of stone steps. Lord Oberon Glaw and the obscura pipe-smoker from the library room stood at the foot of the steps, watching intently. The ship master, Gorgone Locke, sat astride a dirty wooden bench near by. He wore some strange apparatus on his right hand, a glove of segmented metal that ended each digit with a needle-like spike.
'You've got it wrong, Glaw. It's you who will provide the answers/
Urisel Glaw nodded to Locke, who got up and moved towards me, flexing the needle glove.
'That is a strousine neural scourge. Our friend Mr Locke is quite an expert in its application. We were delighted when he volunteered to run this interrogation/
Locke grabbed me by the throat with his bare hand, twisted my head up and his gloved fist disappeared out of my field of view below.
A second later, and cold lances of pain threaded my lungs and heart, and my windpipe went into spasm. I began to choke.
'Educated man like you knows all about pressure points/ Locke said, conversationally. 'So do the strousii. But they like to do more than tap them - they like to burn them out. I studied with one of their sacred torturers for a year or so. This grip, for example, the one that's choking you. It's also paralysing your respiratory system, and stopping your heart/
I could barely hear him. Blood was dramming in my ears and explosive light and colour patterns were fogging my vision.
He withdrew his glove. The pain and choking stopped.
'Just like that, I can stop your heart. Burst your brain. Blind you. So play along/
With all the strength I could muster, I smiled and told him his sister had particularly commended my love-making skills over his.
The glove gripped my face and needles lanced into my cheeks. I blacked out again for a moment.
'... haven't killed him!' I heard Locke hiss as consciousness swam back. Dull pain oozed through my face.
'Look at him! Look at him! Where's that cocksure smile now, you little bastard?'
I didn't answer.
Locke leaned close so his brow pressed against mine and his eyes were all I could see. 'Needlework,' he snarled, his foul, obscura-flavoured breath swamping my gasping mouth. 'I just lanced a few points in your face. You'll never smile again/
I thought about telling him I didn't see a lot to smile about, but I didn't. Instead, I lunged forward and bit into his mouth.
His scream, transmitted by our contact, shook my jaws. Blood spurted. Fists struck repeatedly and desperately against my skull and neck. His long red hair came loose and the beaded ends whipped about my head. At last, he tore away, roaring. I retched out a mouthful of blood and a good fleshy lump of his lower lip.
His gloveless hand clamped around his torn mouth, Locke stumbled back, enraged, and then hurled himself at me. He kicked hard into my belly and hip, and punched me in the cheek so forcefully, it nearly snapped my spine apart.
Then I felt the needles stab in between my ribs on my left side, and breathless agony enfolded me.
Locke was screaming obscenities into my face. Once again, pain blacked me out.
I came back in a rush of excruciating discomfort and gasping breath as Urisel wrenched Locke off me and threw him across the cell.
'I want him alive!' Urisel bawled.
'Look what he did!' Locke complained incoherently through blood and torn lips.
'You should have been more careful/ said Oberon Glaw, stepping forward. He leaned down to study me, and I gazed back into his haughty, leonine face, bearded, powerful, commanding.
'He's halfway to death/ Oberon said with annoyance. 'I told you fools I wanted answers/
'Ask me yourself/1 gasped.
Lord Oberon raised his eyebrows and stared at me. 'What brought you to my house, inquisitor?'
The Pontius/ I replied. It was a gamble, and I wasn't hopeful, but there was always a chance that the very word might auto-slay them as it had done Saemon Crotes in the Sun-dome on Hubris. As I suspected, it didn't.
'You came from Hubris?'
'I stopped Eyclone's work there/
'It was aborted anyway/ Lord Oberon stepped back from me.
"What is the Pontius?' I asked, trying and failing to focus my will. The pain in my body was overpowering.
'If you don't know, I'm hardly going to tell you/ said Oberon Glaw.
He looked round at Urisel, Locke and the pipe-smoker.
'I don't think he knows anything about the true matter. But I want to be certain. Can you be trusted to work efficiently, Locke?'
Locke nodded. He approached me again, flexing the needle glove, and slid a needle into my head behind my ear.
My skull went numb. It became almost impossible to concentrate.
'My index needle is lancing right into your parieto-occipital sulcus/ Locke crooned in my ear, 'directly influencing your truth centre. You cannot lie, no matter what. What do you know of the true matter?'
'Nothing...' I stammered.
He jiggled the needle and pain ignited inside my head.
'What is your name?'
'Gregor Eisenhorn/
Where were you born?'
'DeKere's World/
Your first sexual conquest?'
'I was sixteen, a maid in the scholam...'
Your darkest fear?'
'The man with blank eyes!'
I blurted out the last. All were true, all involuntary, but that last one surprised even me.
Locke wasn't finished. He jiggled the needle, and pierced the back of my neck with others so that my body went into paralysis and ice flowed down my veins.
What do you know of the true matter?'
'Nothing!'
Without wanting to, I began to weep with the pain.
Gorgone Locke continued to question me for four hours... four hours that I know about. Beyond those I recall nothing.
I woke again, and found myself lying on a cold rockcrete floor. Lingering pain and fatigue filled every atom of my being. I could barely move. At that time in my life, I had never felt such an extremity of pain and despair. I had never felt so close to death.
'Lie still, Gregor... you're with friends...' That voice. Aemos.
I opened my eyes. Uber Aemos, my trusted savant, looked down at me with a soulful expression even his augmetic eyes couldn't hide. He was bruised about the face and his good robe was torn.
'Lay still, old friend/ he urged.
You know me, Aemos/1 said, and slowly sat up. It was quite a task. Various muscle groups refused to work, and I came close to vomiting.
I looked around blearily
I was lying on the floor of a circular rockcrete cell. There was a hatch on one side, and a cage-gated exit opposite it. Aemos was crouched near me, and Alizebeth Bequin, her gown ripped and dirty, hunched behind him, staring over at me with genuine concern. Away across the cell stood Hel-dane, arms folded, and behind him cowered the guilder Macheles and the four other Guild Sinesias envoys who had escorted us. All of them looked pale and hollow eyed as if they had been weeping. There was no sign of Betancore.
Aemos saw my look and said, 'Aegis insubstantial, before the deluge' in perfect Glossia.
Which meant Betancore had somehow avoided the sweep that had incarcerated all my other companions. A tiny fragment of good news.
I got up, mainly thanks to my determination and the support of Aemos and Bequin. I was still stripped down to my leg
gings and boots, and my torso, neck, arms and head were washed in my own blood and stippled with bruised micro-puncture wounds. Gorgone Locke had been thorough.
Gorgone Locke would pay.
"What do you know?' I asked them as my breath returned.
'We're as good as dead,' Heldane said frankly. 'No wonder my master leaves this kind of work to you suicidal radicals. I just wish I hadn't agreed to join you.'
Thank you for that, Heldane. Anyone else want to offer something less editorial?'
Aemos smiled. 'We're in a prison cell under the west wing, to the rear, almost under the woodlands. They burst into our quarters after you'd been gone three hours and seized us at gunpoint. I memorised a careful note of the route we were taking to this place, and have mentally compared it with Midas's map, so I'm fairly sure of our location/
'What the hell did they do to you?' Bequin asked, dabbing at wounds on my chest with a strip of cloth torn from her gown.
Wincing, I realised that was why her gown was so shredded. She had been mopping my wounds while I was unconscious. A pile of torn and blood-soaked scads of material nearby stood testament to her devotion.
They came here an hour ago and tossed you in with us. They didn't say anything,' Heldane added.
'Are you really an inquisitor, Sire Farchaval?' Macheles asked, stepping forward.
Yes, I am. My name is Eisenhorn.'
Macheles began to sob and his fellow envoys did the same.
We are dead. You have taken us to our deaths!'
I felt some pity for them. Guild Sinesias was rotten to the core, and these men were corrupt, but they were only in this predicament because I had duped them.
'Shut up!' Heldane told them.
He looked round at me, and slid a tiny something from the cuff of his body-glove. A small red capsule.
"What is it?'
'Admylladox, a ten gram dose. You look like you need it.'
'I don't use drugs,' I said.