Mark of Calth

by Edited by Laurie Goulding

  She becomes one of them. She endures trials of fire and passes through agony. She begins to realise that before now she knew nothing of the price of revelation. She stares into flame pits and braziers of bright coals until the light burns into her retinas, until she is going blind.

  She begins to wish she had never started down this path.

  You are never far from her, ever in her hand as she weeps from the burns that cover her skin. You are all she has left; the only comfort that you can offer her is a swift death. But she endures, and at last the fire speaks to her.

  She becomes one of the fire’s children. She knows the name of the fire though she can never speak it and live. She knows how to read truth in shadows, and nine runes which can turn the night to day. It is not enough. The more she knows the more she realises that there is a secret being kept from her, a secret greater than all the rest – an ultimate truth hidden amongst the smoke-stained tunnels of Tharn. It eats at her, growing fat on the obsession, until she can bear it no longer and goes in search of it for herself.

  In the gloom of the shrine tunnels she moves less by sight and more by touch and smell. Her pulse is a rising rhythm in her ears. For months she has been venturing deeper and deeper into the shrine, but this is the farthest she has ever come. A breeze stirs the woven fabric which hangs across the doorway in front of her. You slip into her hand without her thinking why. Still half blind, she steps forward and pulls the edge of the curtain aside.

  Darkness fills what remains of her sight. She can feel cool air upon her cheek, like the touch of falling night. She takes a step forward, her hand feeling the rough masonry of the wall. The space she has entered is vast; its size and quiet stillness press in upon her like a closed hand. The stone floor is cold and smooth beneath her bare feet. Her steps falter as she walks forward. The sound of her breath and heartbeat echoes back to her. Step by step, she moves into the dark, her arms stretched out in front of her.

  The sharp edge of the dais catches her knee. She yelps and stumbles, her hands flying out to cushion her fall. You fall from her fingers, tumbling away into the blackness.

  You meet a waiting hand, and fold into its grasp.

  Magritte goes very still. She heard something, a brief sound like the whirring of clockwork and the hum of static. She turns her head, straining in the darkness for any thread of noise to follow. The silence envelops her again. She reaches out and feels the edge of the dais. Its stone is smooth but textured with engraved patterns.

  No. Not patterns. Words.

  Something primal inside her urges her to flee now, but she knows that she has come too far and paid too high a price. She moves around the edge of the circular dais, before climbing up onto it and crawling forwards slowly. She thinks she can smell machine oil, incense and iron.

  Something brushes against her face. She flinches back, hands rising as if to ward off an attack that does not come.

  She is trembling. The sound of her own breathing and heartbeat is deafening. An image appears before her – two pools of darkness in a pale circle. She gasps, then forces herself to calmness once more. Fear falls away from her thoughts. Her vision clears as if she is seeing with something other than her damaged eyes. The image resolves slowly, as though the darkness is draining away from its shape like liquid. It takes her a second to recognise what she is seeing.

  It is a skull, yellowed and polished by time. She reaches out and touches it, feeling the empty holes of its eyes and its broken teeth. Hair-fine script runs over its crown in spirals. The image in her eyes grows, and she sees that the skull is not alone. It is one of many worked together into a shape that looms above her, rising up in a throne of human bones. A shape made of shadows and blurred night sits on the throne. She cannot see its eyes, but she knows that it is looking down at her.

  ‘You have come far,’ says a low, resonant voice.

  Magritte bows low. She thinks that she has succeeded, that she has found what she has spent so long searching for. This is the truth that sits at the heart of the fire cult; this is what they have kept hidden from her. Exultation flows through her, roaring through her veins and nerves in a hot wave. It feels good, it feels like revelation.

  In her triumph she has forgotten to wonder where you have gone.

  ‘Who are you?’ she asks.

  ‘We are truth and retribution. We are revelation and dust. We are the future.’ The voice is a bass rumble, like a tiger forming human words.

  Magritte feels fear uncoil in her guts and roll up her spine. Sweat is pouring down her spine. She can barely breathe. Somehow she forms the words that she has been following all her life.

  ‘Show me the truth,’ she says. ‘Show me, please.’

  The voice laughs, and the sound rolls through the dark like thunder over a broken tower. Magritte is suddenly certain that she was wrong, that her years of seeking secrets have led her down a path of folly, and that she does not want to know the truth she has asked to see.

  The figure stands from the throne with a machine whine. Magritte feels it in her teeth and across her skin. Oily heat washes over her skin. She smells the reek of promethium and burning incense oil. An eight-pointed wheel of fire hangs in the air above her, the blackened iron already glowing. Drops of burning liquid fall from the wheel and explode upon the grey stone of the throne’s dais. Her damaged sight is enough for her to see that the chamber around her is a half-sphere of smoke-darkened rock, but it is the figure that stands over her that holds her attention. He is huge, a humanoid monster encased in armour as grey as the stone upon which she stands. His face might once have been human, but genetic mysteries have blunted and broadened the features. Words run down his cheeks in inked rows, as if he is weeping knowledge.

  You sit in his armoured hand, your black point and sharp edge resting at his side.

  Magritte cannot breathe. What she is seeing is impossible, a paradox of truth and manifest reality. The figure is a Space Marine, a fanatical warrior of the Imperium.

  A Word Bearer.

  The Word Bearer nods slowly, and closes his eyes as if in solemn greeting, as though he were about to ask forgiveness. He has flames tattooed upon his eyelids.

  ‘What…’ begins Magritte. ‘What are you?’

  ‘The truth,’ says the Word Bearer. ‘The truth which will remake the Imperium.’ He moves before Magritte can scream. He yanks her into the air, his hand closing around her throat with a whine of servos. ‘But not yet.’

  You flash out, and open Magritte from throat to groin in a single cut. She takes several seconds to die, thrashing at the end of the Word Bearer’s arm, blood and gut fluids steaming to the floor beneath her kicking feet. You sit unmoving in the warrior’s other hand, your edge wet and bright in the firelight.

  When Magritte is dead, the Word Bearer sets her down at his feet, and kneels beside her corpse. You rise to the Word Bearer’s lips and kiss his mouth as he mutters a prayer. You leave a thin line of smeared red behind.

  He looks at you for a long while. His eyes see beyond the coating of blood and the beauty of your shape. You speak to his soul, whispering the truth of ages that he has never known. He knows what you are, what you were made for. He whispers your purpose to himself.

  ‘Athame,’ he says.

  Fifth

  Your bearer’s name is Anacreon. You have never known his like – not in the ancient past of your maker, nor in the path you have followed across the stars. Blood, broken faith and lost dreams have shaped him. He is a lost son with a newfound purpose; he is not unlike you, a weapon that will be turned against his maker. You are beautiful to him, as a blade can be only to a murderer.

  You kill for him. You kill in the name of powers that whisper on the edge of dreams. You know the touch of blessings at many hands: Kor Phaeron, Erebus, Sor Talgron. They speak names to you, names that Gog once whispered as you slept in his hand.

  Your sharpne
ss wakes. It is a shadow cast by the light of the souls you take. Your edge dreams of the cut, of the spilling of blood, and the parting of flesh. You have always been this way, within the blackness of your core, ever since you first came from the ground.

  This is not revelation. This is truth.

  You kill Anacreon on Riehol.

  The Chosen of Ashes descend from the burning sky like the answers to a prayer for vengeance. Their jump packs scream as they suck in the fume-laden air and breathe it out as blue flame. The ashes of dead worlds dust their grey armour. Beneath them, the Athenaeum Enclave is a swirl of fire. Scraps of charred parchment spin on the turning winds of firestorms. Soot covers the white domes and stone colonnades like charred skin over exposed bones. The sounds of screaming and panic rise from the condemned city along with the smoke.

  Anacreon fires his hand flamers when he is at roof height. Twin tongues of poured-iron orange reach down to the ground. The rest of the squad open fire a second later; then they all cut the thrust from their jump packs as one, falling through the inferno. Inside his armour, Anacreon blinks away temperature warning runes. The heat seeps through his armour. For a failing second he feels as though he is the fire, and they are one and the same.

  Enjoyment is not part of his purpose, but this moment is the closest he comes to pleasure.

  He hits the centre of a paved courtyard, splintered flagstones rippling from the point of impact. He mutters a prayer and the words slow the beat of his twin hearts. He rises from a crouch, sweeping his flamer units around him in a spiral. His visor has dimmed to near-blackness. Around him his brothers land, and their arrival shakes the ground. They rise and walk forward, seemingly silent in the roaring flames.

  Incredibly, there are people still alive in the ruins of the library city. They see Anacreon and his brothers as black silhouettes coming out of the inferno. For an instant, they remember tales as old as mankind, tales of avenging angels sent by wrathful gods. Indeed, that is the point.

  Destruction is not enough – those that do not kneel to the truth must pay the price for their arrogance. This is Anacreon’s purpose, the true expression of his nature. He is an angel of righteous obliteration, a destroyer of civilisations. You are with him, resting in an adamantium sheath at his thigh. You have tasted the death of many worlds in his hand, and killed to bless the pyre of each.

  This is not just warfare, this is ritual. It is what you were made for. Today you will take life and touch ashes.

  The survivors begin to fire. Hard rounds ring from Anacreon’s armour, chipping away soot and paint. He continues to stride forwards.

  A pillar-fronted building stands before him. Smoke has smeared its white stone to dull grey. Explosions have peeled back its roof, but it is not burning. Not yet. Muzzle flashes stutter in the broken windows, and between the great columns.

  Anacreon stops ten paces from the building. The hand flamers in his fists gutter to blue pilot flames. His brothers halt to either side of him, and he clamps the hand flamers to his thighs and slowly reaches up to pull the helmet from his head. Hot ash and the stink of promethium fill the air which washes over his bared face. He looks up at the building, turning his tattooed head slowly, his eyes taking in every firing point in turn. Bullets and las-bolts churn the ground all around him.

  ‘Phosphex,’ says Anacreon softly.

  Xen steps forward, and kneels to detach the armoured canister from the small of his back. It is a black cylinder of brushed metal the size of a human head. Xen lifts the phosphex bomb carefully, like a mother cradling a newborn child.

  Arune Xen is apparently marked for greatness. The eye of Erebus has picked him out, and he is destined to rise high. Bearing a weapon of such complete, holy devastation is just one sign of that favour. Anacreon does not like Xen. He would not go so far as to say that he hates him; he just does not think that the favour shown to him is particularly merited. His dislike is not something he has chosen to share with anyone else – as recent events have demonstrated, that would be unwise.

  Xen bows his head over the black cylinder and Anacreon hears his voice on the vox, muttering a prayer. Then he twists the cylinder’s top and throws it through one of the building’s windows.

  An oily flash spills from within. The screaming starts a heartbeat later.

  Then comes the consuming fire. It crawls through the building like a swarm of insects. It spills over windows and spirals up pillars. It howls as it spreads, crackling with a pyromaniac’s glee. The building’s stone begins to deform like melting ice. Anacreon has to blink to keep the flame from staining his eyes. The gunfire stops and the only screams now are those of tortured stone shattering in the unimaginable heat.

  You pull from the sheath at Anacreon’s side. The city is dead, but one final death is needed, one last act of ritual murder.

  The old man is the only one left alive in the building. His eyes are weeping pus, and his skin is a red ruin. Robes that were once blue hide an aged body of thin flesh and stark bones. Anacreon drags him from the building before it collapses, and lowers his body to the paved street. The action is careful, almost delicate. The man gasps and vomits up foamy, soot-flecked blood.

  ‘We were... compliant...’ gasps the old man.

  Anacreon and his brothers say nothing. They merely look down at the man as he retches and clutches his chest.

  ‘We were compliant! We held to the... Imperial truth. We are true. We are innocent...’

  You move forward in Anacreon’s hand. He kneels. His voice is low, almost sorrowful.

  ‘Yes, you were.’

  ‘Then... why?’

  ‘Because of your innocence,’ says Anacreon. He extends his hand and gently touches the man’s scalp – the hair has burned away to reveal a faded tattoo of a double-headed eagle over the crown. The man is trembling, his hands wrapped around his chest as if for warmth. Anacreon leans forward and kisses the man’s forehead. ‘One day, humanity will understand.’

  You raise high above the old man, point down, ready to strike.

  A smile cracks the cooked meat of his ruined face. His hands open above his heart like a flower to reveal a dull-green sphere held close to his chest.

  Anacreon blinks once in surprise before the plasma sphere detonates. The blast lifts Anacreon from the ground, super-heating the air around them and obliterating meat, metal and stone alike.

  You fall from his hand as he crashes back down a moment later.

  Seconds pass before what is left of Anacreon tries to rise. His left arm and half of his torso are gone, hot worms of residual plasma still eating into ceramite and flesh. His face is hanging off his skull, the flesh seared all the way to the bone. His armour clatters like jammed cog-work.

  He sees you, and begins to crawl. He does not scream, though the pain is enough to overwhelm even a legionary.

  In spite of his superhuman resolve, it is Xen’s hand that closes over your hilt instead, lifting you into the air and shedding a thin layer of settled ash from your blade. Anacreon looks up at him.

  ‘Sacrifice…’ rasps Anacreon. His eyes flicker to you then up at the emerald indifference of Xen’s eye lenses.

  Xen nods – he understands. They came here as preparation, as a ritual step in a process which has been unfolding for four decades. There are no such things as minor details in such a scheme. Everything has significance. There must be a sacrifice here, a gift to the pyre. Xen knows this even if he does not know you. He kneels next to Anacreon. You glide to rest your edge against Anacreon’s throat, and his hand comes up to wrap around Xen’s.

  They both hold you. Anacreon takes a last breath and mutters a blessing that hangs in the air, darker than smoke, thinner than mist.

  You take his soul then.

  Beyond the membrane of reality, the shadow of your sharpness drinks deeply and shakes free of its dreams.

  Sixth

  You sp
in from Xen’s hand to the oil-sheened deck. Your handle hits the pitted metal and you bounce back into the air, before skittering to a halt.

  The two men do not move. They are both thin from hunger. Whip-scars cover their flesh, and needles pierce the skin of their arms, backs, and chests. They have been waiting for this moment. Through all the months of testing and trials by agony, it has been their one aim. There were others – men and women who had found the truth hiding behind the face of reality, souls who wanted more than mundane, fleeting power. They had all discovered answers and received blessings, but they wanted more.

  They wanted to ascend. They wanted to become majir.

  Now there are only two, standing at the centre of a circle of dim light in the hold of an unnamed starship. Both are ready.

  One of the men leaps forward with whip-crack speed. He is bald and his mouth is wide in his thin face. Steel-hooked teeth gleam in the darkness of his mouth. His name is Jukar, but it is not his real name; he shed that long ago. You slip from his fingers as they close. The other man’s kick takes Jukar in the gut. Jukar screams as his ribs crack, and another kick hammers into his side before he can move. He rolls and reaches out to you again. You brush his fingers, so tantalisingly close...

  The other man leaps onto Jukar like a cat, his lean muscles stark under thin skin. Jukar feels limbs wrap around him, and he gasps for air. Blood spatters as rusty pins rip free from pierced skin. Jukar tries to shrug his opponent off. The man clings tighter, working his arm around Jukar’s throat.

  Jukar screams and rolls again. The other man’s grip breaks, and Jukar twists free. Blood smears the floor as he scrambles across the deck towards you one last time. You find his hand. The other man comes forward again, but this time you rise to meet him.

  You slip through his skin and muscle until you meet a bone. The man staggers back. Your handle projects from the meat of his thigh. For a second there is no blood; then it seeps around your blade – first in a dribble, then in a red gush. Jukar is staring at the man, his hooked metal teeth forming a grin that is half triumphant and half shocked.