[Dawn of War 03] - Tempest

by C. S. Goto - (ebook by Undead)

  An unspoken question hung in the air.

  “It is Rhamah?” Zhaphel broke the moment of silence and gave voice to the idea that was lingering in all the minds of the Librarians of the Order Psykana.

  “It is possible,” confirmed Corallis, rising to his feet. “Whoever they are, they all went into the city.”

  The picture fizzed and then died into black, but Macha left her eyes fixed on the blank screen for a few more seconds. Her mind was racing and her spirit was ill at ease. For a moment she had thought that there was hope: the mon-keigh captain that had appeared on the screen had looked just like Gabriel. She had been sure that it was him, and had struggled to understand why his mind had become so closed to her. But then she had realised that it was not Gabriel at all—this “Ulantus” was a quite different creature. Although she had always known that the primitive mammals displayed certain amounts of individuality, she had become accustomed to seeing them as an undistinguished mass of animals.

  Except for Gabriel. He had been different from the start. The farseer had seen the distant echoes of his mind reflected in myriad futures, and she could hear its clumsy resonance in many lines of the past. Gabriel and his Blood Ravens had a significance that was not shared by others of his species. Now that Macha had finally realised how to recognise and differentiate between the mon-keigh warriors, she found that Gabriel had already vanished into the warp with Taldeer—with Taldeer!

  That young seer could not know the significance of the mammal that she accompanied. She had not been there on Rahe’s Paradise. She had not even witnessed the events on Tartarus. Whilst her soul was pure enough, her mind was not yet fully formed. For her, Gabriel was little more than another generic mon-keigh: either she would underestimate him and suffer the consequences, or she would glimpse his potential and bring an even worse fate upon herself.

  Finally turning away from the viewscreen, Macha folded herself back into her meditation posture on the podium in her chambers. Around her, she could feel the pulses of anxiety and readiness that flashed around the wraithbone infrastructure of her cruiser. Nothing happened aboard the Eternal Star without its echo or feedback reaching the mind of the farseer in her chamber.

  She nodded inwardly, satisfied that her crew were alert to the possible dangers represented by the massive but cumbersome Astartes battle-barge that loomed in space directly before them. They knew that the humans could outgun them, especially at this range, but they also knew how to prevent the situation from deteriorating to the point when a point-blank exchange would become necessary.

  For her part, Macha infused the Star with calm—she did not believe that this Ulantus would want another battle. His mind was exhausted with anger and accusations, but they were not levelled at the Sons of Asuryan. If she had read his alien features correctly, Macha believed that the captain’s ire was directed towards Gabriel himself, which she found mysterious and impossible to fathom.

  Even though she knew that the mon-keigh found the eldar enigmatic and difficult to understand, Macha often found herself amused by the irony of the fact that she found those simple mammals so very difficult to comprehend as well. Their base emotions and primitive urges had been abandoned by the children of Isha many millennia before. Gazing into their volatile, vulgar and violent souls was like gazing back in time, to the very origins of the eldar species, when the Old Ones had first called them into being.

  Without touching them, with merely a movement of her glittering, emerald eyes, Macha cast her rune-stones out before her and closed her eyes. In the darkness behind her eyelids, she could see the image of the stones as they began to levitate off the shining wraithbone surface and spiral into a vortex. They spun faster and faster, dragging the air in the chamber into a whirl as they began to glow with an unearthly green. The farseer could feel the disturbance they caused in the material and immaterial space of her circular chamber as they flashed past her face, aspiring for the apex of the sweeping, convex ceiling.

  Something jabbed into her mind, jogging her concentration suddenly like a single raindrop into a desert. A flicker of feedback from the Eternal Star splashed into her thoughts: one of the sensor arrays had picked up a disturbance in the local star. A sunspot had appeared without warning, and great fountains of radioactive solar flares had been discharged, spouting out of the yellow inferno like eruptions.

  She put the thoughts aside. The sensors of the Eternal Star were interlaced into the capillaries of space itself: they picked up any and all shifts in the material realm. The ancient vessel was organically fused with the space through which it sailed, just as it was effectively an extension of Macha’s own being. It served to mediate her experience of the world. Had the solar flares failed to make their presence felt in the farseer’s mind, then there would have been something wrong.

  With a last effort of concentration, Macha flicked open her eyes and sent the runes scattering through the space before her. They snapped suddenly into motionlessness, as though some kind of stasis field were suddenly activated to freeze their movement. Some of them hung suspended in the air, while others lay prone on the wraithbone deck. Some of them glowed green with energy and life, while others were dull and without lustre.

  Cocking her head slightly, Macha inspected the patterns, mentally discarding the dead stones and those that had clattered impotently to the ground. If the runes themselves had no power, then the futures they emblemised in the present lacked all potency; this was not the time for her to be worried about the most unlikely of eventualities.

  Rillietann. Vaul. Cegorach. Arebennian.

  The runic symbols for the ancient words glistened and revolved slowly. As Macha let her mind rest on each of them, they started to swirl and swim, intermingling and mixing with each other in complex patterns that it had taken her centuries to master. It was as though they were dancing for her, enacting one of the great mythic cycles: in the elegant and smooth motions, Macha saw the unfolding of the Myth of the Birth of Fear—only the tragic hero Lanthrilaq was missing from the scene.

  As she watched the display, letting the movements and ideas slip easily into her consciousness, two more stones started to shimmer and click against the wraithbone deck where they had lain dead. They vibrated rapidly, as though willing themselves back into life, until one of them burst into green and flew up into the spiralling pattern of the other runes.

  Mon-keigh.

  Macha raised an uneasy eyebrow. It was highly unusual for stones that had fallen dormant in the casting to return into the formation. Although the runes always formed a multi-dimensional pattern, often spread through a discreet period of time, it was nearly always the case that all the active stones were active from the start. A late comer was a disruption—it was an unwelcome fate.

  Just as she had processed the intrusion of the humans into the ancient mythical cycle, the second regenerating stone sprang up into the pattern. It burned more brightly than all the others, flaring and colliding with the other stones as though seeking to eradicate them all or drive them from the ritual space.

  Shafts of physical pain stabbed into Macha’s eyes as she watched the new stone burn and crash, scattering the others out of her concentration and sending them skidding and clattering to the ground. After a few seconds, only it and the mon-keigh remained. It flashed before her eyes and then stopped in space, spinning on its vertical axis like a gyroscope, burning its runic symbol into the farseer’s pupils.

  Yngir.

  Macha’s eyes widened.

  Farseer! Uldreth’s mind was angled and sharp; his thoughts carried an edge of urgency.

  Disoriented for a moment, Macha’s mind raced and tumbled. She struggled to drag her thoughts out of the runic future and return them to the present. Finally, snapping her eyes shut, she heard the last of the runes sizzle and then drop to the ground. When she opened them again, all of the stones lay motionless and dormant before her knees. She sighed heavily.

  Yes, Uldreth Avenger, she replied at last. You are concerned about
the activity in the star? You are right—the yngir are returning. The mon-keigh were presumptuous in their claims to have killed them. Their energy is reforming, and the star will give them birth once again.

  How long do we have, Macha, asked Uldreth?

  The farseer looked down at the stones. They were cracked and shattered, some of them beyond recognition. The mon-keigh rune was chipped, and a single crack ran through the middle of it, as though splitting it into two. Only the Yngir remained undamaged.

  Not long enough, my Avenger. Not long enough. We should inform the mon-keigh. They will not be aware of these developments. They may yet be of use in all this.

  As the squad of Blood Ravens emerged out of the labyrinth of rock formations that surrounded the unusual and circular stone city, Gabriel drew his Space Marines to a halt. The outskirts of the settlement were comprised of low-rise, stone dwellings, standing in sharp contrast with the massive cliffs that defined the circumference of the city, but the roofline steadily heightened towards the city centre, giving the impression of town planning around a conical theme. Many of the roofs actually sloped to match the gradient. The effect was truly breathtaking, making the city appear as though it had been cut down into the ground rather than built up out of it.

  Because of the sloping, conical design, the Blood Ravens could see the street plan reflected in the layout of the roofs, and they noticed immediately how the stone streets wound in intricate and complicated patterns, as though designed deliberately to confuse and disorientate an attacking force.

  “This place was all but invisible from the air,” muttered Corallis, his mind leaping back to the scene that he had seen from the plummeting Thunderhawk. “It just looked like an unusual rock formation.”

  “That is clearly the idea,” replied Korinth, scanning the townscape with admiration.

  “And yet you recognised it as a possible settlement, sergeant,” smiled Gabriel, unsurprised by the competence of his scout sergeant. It was not for nothing that Corallis had been elevated to his current rank directly out of the scout company.

  “Look at this place, Gabriel,” began Jonas as he unclasped his helmet and gazed at the vista before them. “Do you know where we are?”

  Gabriel saw the look of wonder on the Librarian’s face and recognised the spark of excitement that had appeared in the old veteran’s eyes.

  “You know this place, father?”

  “I have heard of places like this, Gabriel, but I never thought that I would live to see the day when I would walk in the streets of such a city. It makes the excavations on Rahe’s Paradise seem pathetic.”

  “Taldeer said that it was an ancient world of knowledge—she called it Arcadia,” nodded Gabriel, unclipping his own helmet to share the moment with his old friend. “She led me to believe that it contained… sensitive information.”

  Jonas shook his head and a smile crept across his face. “I suspect that is a masterful understatement.” He opened his mouth as though to speak again, but then closed it. A moment of silence hung between them.

  This is Arcadia. Zhaphel and Korinth showed no signs of having heard the thoughts of the father Librarian, but they were the only ones who could.

  Yes. They agreed.

  “I have heard of this place,” continued Jonas at length, without looking into Gabriel’s eyes. “The architecture is unmistakably eldar, as you can see. And the temple roofs,” he continued, pointing distinctly to the domed rooftops that punctuated the unusual skyline, “appear to indicate that they were built to honour the mythical Laughing God of the ancient ones. Do you know what that means, Gabriel?”

  The captain shook his head. “Tell me, father. Your knowledge is superior to mine.”

  “This is a Harlequin settlement—a world of knowledge that is hidden even from the eldar of the craftworlds. The Order Psykana have being searching for such a place for centuries; it is said that the Harlequins possess knowledge of rifts in the time-space continuum—they can travel both through time and space, utilising the timelessness of the warp. An influential thesis in our Order suggests that this knowledge will provide the key for the recovery of the Fated Fifth.”

  As he spoke, Zhaphel and Korinth turned to face Jonas, clearly surprised that the Librarian father was revealing so much, even to the Commander of the Watch.

  Gabriel nodded, accepting the wisdom of his old friend without questions or doubt. He had complete confidence in the old Librarian’s scholarship and erudition. “Is this the reason why the Chaos Marines would be interested in this place? Or why Taldeer would be so adamant that we should get here?”

  There was a pause. “I doubt it, captain, but it is possible.”

  “Other reasons?”

  “It seems likely that a lost eldar world of knowledge would house many technologies that could be used as weapons by the unscrupulous or undiscriminating. This is exactly the kind of place that traitors to the Emperor could find assistance in their dark quests. It seems unlikely that the degenerate Marines of a Chaos Legion would realise that there were things of even greater value here.”

  “Taldeer spoke of a sword.”

  Jonas looked at Gabriel, searching his eyes for a sign. “The Sword of Vaul, yes.”

  Korinth and Zhaphel shifted in visible unease. They had not expected the father Librarian to be so forthcoming to anyone outside the Order Psykana, not even to Captain Angelos.

  “It is a mythical blade. A rare and forbidden volume recovered from the ruins of one of the smaller Callidus Temples in the outskirts of the Orphean sector contains a record of the myth: The Fall of Lanthrilaq. Evidently, one of the Callidus heirosavants, Rafaellus Kneg, extracted the tale from a captured Harlequin mime called Yvraelle.”

  “Mime? I thought that the mimes were incapable of speech,” interrupted Ephraim, taking an interest in the possibility of technical knowledge being revealed to them on this planet.

  “Yes, that is the standard, orthodox position,” agreed Jonas nodding. “It seems that the agents of the Callidus Temple suspected that this position was flawed, and they sought to test their theory. As it turns out, it transpired that they were right. By the end of the interrogation, Yvraelle had divulged details of a number of the mythic cycles over which the Harlequins appear to stand sentinel. One of them was the Fall of Lanthrilaq.”

  Tanthius leaned forward, bringing the massive bulk of the Terminator armour into close proximity. “Just tell us about the sword, Jonas. This is not the time for legends and myths. Just tell us about the sword so that we can get off this alien, forsaken rock.”

  “It is said that Lanthrilaq once bore a heavenly blade—one of the fabled Blade Wraiths constructed by the eldar smith-god, Vaul. Whilst the other blades were destroyed in the ancient battles with the necron, it is rumoured that Lanthrilaq’s blade fell shattered from his hand, never to be found.”

  “Never to be found? Then why should we believe that it is here?” Tanthius was growing impatient, standing on the edge of a tangibly real alien city and having to listen to children’s stories about eldar gods and their broken swords.

  Jonas glanced over towards Korinth and Zhaphel, as though looking for support, but they showed no signs of reaction.

  “We have reason to believe that brother Librarian Rhamah may have been drawn to the location of the last Sword of Vaul,” he conceded, as though confessing something terrible.

  There was a long silence as the others waited for Jonas to continue. As they waited, the first of the triple suns crested the horizon and sent a sudden, soft sheet of red light unfurling through the streets of the stone city, apparently flooding it with blood.

  “Brother Rhamah has an eldar blade of his own—the Vairocanum. It is an ancient and famous sword, once wielded by the Harlequin warlock Lavena the Joyful. But one day Lavena fell under the onslaught of a force more glorious than anything she had encountered before: the Great Father, Vidya himself—the Seeker of Truth—fell upon Lavena and clove her life force in two, ending the Harlequin raids of Qu
lus Trine. After his victory, Vidya gave the wealthy Qulus system to the Eighth Company and took Vairocanum as his own prize.”

  “Rhamah has the sword of Vidya himself?” Tanthius was stunned.

  “In a manner of speaking,” offered Korinth. If Jonas was going to reveal so much, he would at least seek to rectify any misunderstandings. “In fact, the Great Father never wielded Vairocanum. We are not sure why, and Vidya left no records to explain his reasons, as far as we know. Instead, he left the blade in trust to the Order Psykana.”

  “And we stood as its guardians for many centuries,” interjected Zhaphel, removing his helmet at last, letting his long grey hair fall loosely in front of his golden eyes. “It was held in the…” He trailed off, apparently unwilling to finish the sentence.

  “It was held in the Psykana Armorium, hidden in one of the psychically shielded subchambers of the Sanctorium Arcanum aboard the Litany of Fury,” said Jonas, meeting Gabriel’s eyes levelly and watching the reaction of the Commander of the Watch carefully.

  Gabriel raised an eyebrow at the mention of a secret armoury hidden in the bowels of his own battle-barge, but he said nothing to interrupt the father Librarian.

  “This armoury contains only force weapons, most of which have been procured throughout the ages by Blood Ravens Librarians in encounters with the eldar. Some, in fact, have been bequeathed to us voluntarily.”

  Gabriel shook his head. “Does Ulantus know about this place?” He smiled broadly at the sudden realisation that the straight-laced captain was currently in command of potentially the most heretical battle-barge in any Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes.

  The three Librarians exchanged glances. “No, captain,” answered Korinth firmly. “Ulantus knows nothing of this. Nobody except the initiated of the Order Psykana have ever been permitted this knowledge.”