by Rob Sanders
With the Crimson Consul still listening through the wraithbone door and his back to the Harlequin Shadowseer, he neither saw his attacker appear nor witnessed the elegant sword swipes that criss-crossed his pack and back armour. The blade cut through each of his calves – ceramite, muscle and bone, as though they were nothing.
The Crimson Consul stifled a wail and both Quesada and the Deathwatch heavy bolter answered the call. A storm of explosive death flew at the alien attacker, only for the creature to vanish in a spectral shower. The bolt-rounds blasted into the doorway and the mauled back of the Crimson Consul, one blowing the side of his helmet and its contents over the wraithbone wall.
It all happened so fast, there was little time for the inquisitor or Space Marine in the chamber to register the shock of disbelief. A dark, hulking shadow appeared above the kneeling Scythes of the Emperor warrior. Whereas the Shadowseer had been lithe and predatory, the second ghost was thicker set and radiated power and presence. Also, in contrast to its colourful Harlequin compatriot, the figure was broader, all black carapace and flowing folds of leather. It had a ribcage-style breastplate and a mask fashioned in the broad, beaming grin of a maniacal skull; a Death Jester.
The Scythes of the Emperor Space Marine tumbled to one side, rolling off his Chapter shoulder plate and onto his back, the bulk of the heavy bolter brought around to face his materialised attacker. The Death Jester’s movements spoke of solidity instead of the dancer’s grace of the Shadowseer – its murderous agility manifested in the way it swung the blade that decorated the end of his elongated shrieker cannon. The wicked attachment smashed through the heavy bolter, ripping both the weapon and the bionic arm clutching it from the body of the battle-brother.
The Scythes of the Emperor battle-brother’s reaction was instantaneous. He kicked out at the Harlequin, but the figure was gone – a black mist dissipating to nothingness. The Space Marine got to his feet, slipping a little in the blood gushing from his empty shoulder socket. Bent double like a wounded animal, the Adeptus Astartes tore his bolt pistol from its holster. His enemy had reappeared some distance away – the cannon now aimed squarely at the blood-splattered Space Marine. The horrific whine of the weapon filled the shrine chamber as the cannon spat a single shot at the battle-brother from the Scythes of the Emperor. The round found its mark through the Space Marine’s ruined shoulder. Another kind of screech echoed around the chamber; pressure was building, seals were giving and armour cracked. It did more than crack. It expanded, then exploded under the biological force of what the terrible weapon had done to the Space Marine’s genetically-enhanced body. The power armour shattered and rained ceramite gore covered fragments in all directions, leaving a bloody haze where the Space Marine had been.
Behind Czevak and Klute appeared a third phantasmal presence. A spindly Harlequin warrior that wore a gargoylesque helmet-mask, sporting a furious, pink plume that not only made the eldar appear even taller but was also suggestive of some sort of rank. The leader materialised in mid-charge, trailed by a blur of past moments, holding a willowy pair of plasma pistols. Klute gasped as the Great Harlequin flicked his wrists, one after another, sending bright balls of fuchsia-coloured firepower at them. Like tiny suns, the plasma blasts banished the shadows from their path – a path that curved in a bending arc and sailed around Klute and the High Inquisitor. The balls slammed into Quesada beyond. The Deathwatch captain cried out in pain and frustration. His power armour sparked and smoked where the plasma had seared into him. With his face a mask of contortion and ugly vengeance, the Aurora Chapter Marine brought up his bolter. Czevak and Klute were still between Quesada and his attacker but the captain didn’t register their existence.
Klute knew he had to act but in the milliseconds preceding could not come up with anything more inventive than roughly pushing the fragile Czevak out of the battle-brother’s line of sight. A stream of fire passed between them. The captain found that the Great Harlequin was not only an expert at bending his plasma bolts but also his gangling body. Lifting his arm, the eldar allowed the Space Marine’s barrage to pass beneath him, the bolt-rounds punching harmlessly through the material of his flowing coat. As the Space Marine’s second clip ran dry he, threw the weapon at the charging Great Harlequin and snapped his bolt pistol into a firing position.
The Great Harlequin vanished into thin air but was simultaneously replaced by the appearance of another alien attacker. This one dropped into reality right next to the captain. A female of the race, the Harlequin trouper wore a half mask bearing a single, theatrical tear and a tail plume that reached down her back. She held up a tapered, tubular fist spike in one clenched gauntlet and a set of twin, razored riveblades in the other, assuming the appearance of a carnival-like scorpion. She was as fast as she was eye-catching, the riveblades coming straight down on the captain’s elbow, severing the Space Marine’s pistol, gauntlet and forearm. With a savage roar, Quesada went to reach for her, but the Harlequin moved with blinding speed and economy, sweeping underneath his expected animal lunge and smashing the captain in the face with a double-jointed, boot-heeled back-kick.
Out of his mind with pain, frustration and wrathful abandon, the Deathwatch Marine swung his elbow back at the dancing vision. By the time the battle-brother’s comparatively sluggish manoeuvre played through, the Harlequin had vaulted and back-flipped immediately above Quesada’s head and landed behind the captain. Then, with every muscle taut, driven and focused on the tip of her tubular fist spike, the slight creature drove the tapered end straight through the Space Marine’s pack, ceramite and all.
The wide-eyed captain was facing Klute and Czevak as he was stabbed from behind and the two men were privy to the Deathwatch captain’s spine-snapping end. Some kind of horrific monofilament wire-weapon had uncoiled inside the Space Marine’s body and, just as with his Excoriator brother, it proceeded to whip and lash around, liquefying bone, carapace and internal organs. Klute watched, sickened and entranced by the way the wire’s tip frantically needled out of the captain’s ruptured eyeball and face, until finally, as the wire retracted and blood and brain matter emptied from the Space Marine’s gaping mouth, the hulk toppled like a felled statue.
The Harlequin disappeared and Klute helped his master to his feet. Backing to the middle of the chamber the two men watched as the aliens played with their senses – shattering and re-materialising around the room in different configurations, closing on them slowly, the air empty and silent.
Saint Desdemondra – all but forgotten during the alien intrusion – started coughing up her lungs; still impaled in the wraithbone floor.
‘Hang in there, Joaqhuine,’ Klute called, clutching the arm of Czevak’s suspension suit and gently dragging him over to the Idolatress. Klute knew that their only chance was to get the Living Saint back to her immortal self. As his boot scraped her meltagun he hesitated, every instinct imploring him to grab the weapon.
‘Don’t be foolish, boy,’ Czevak told him. ‘You’ve seen what our guests are capable of.’
‘Somehow, I think we’re the guests,’ Klute replied shakily. ‘Besides, I thought you said they’d kill us.’
‘Events since then suggest otherwise,’ the ancient inquisitor said. Czevak stared at the fallen Saint. ‘Will she live?’
‘Doesn’t she always?’ the interrogator said.
As Klute reached Joaqhuine’s broken body, the eldar appeared in a group before them, each silently cradling their exotic weapons. Together they looked like a freakish circus: the gangly, plumed leader; the deadly dancer with her claws and helmet-tail; the grotesque skull-faced Death Jester and the eerie mirror-mask of the psyker-swordsman. They stood there for the longest time, simply studying the two men.
‘What!’ Klute erupted at the alien troupe. ‘What do you want?’
‘I don’t think they speak,’ Czevak interceded, before his interrogator’s unnerved explosion provoked the eldar. ‘Their medium is drama and dance, they speak through their performance.’
&
nbsp; ‘What the hell are they?’
‘They are so rarely seen, that I hardly dare guess,’ Czevak revealed, his voice dropping to a whisper. ‘But, by their dress and the way in which they dealt with humanity’s finest here – I believe that they are indeed Harlequins, a sub-sect of the eldar, the keepers of their knowledge and history and tellers of their epic story.’
‘You’ve seen them before?’
‘Once. On Iyanden. Farseer Iqbraesil was kind enough to acquaint me with their names and ways.’
As the ancient inquisitor spoke he cradled his head left and right as though studying the aliens where they stood. ‘As servants of a living deity they call the Laughing God, they are guardians of the Black Library of Chaos, an ancient, secret reliquary and repository of forbidden lore – containing everything that the eldar race has or will ever know about the Ruinous Powers.’
Czevak stopped as the mirror-masked Shadowseer slipped a precious crystal from his gaudy attire and holding it mime-like in his open palm, leaned in as though blowing on it. The stone leapt from his glove and shot across the chamber, embedding itself in an imperceptible slot in the wall. A ghostly sheen haunted its way across the wraithbone walls. The structure was cracked with age and impact damage but that didn’t prevent each section of wall from becoming a living screen, each bearing a grim ornamental visage. The chamber was upside-down, and disconcertingly so were the projected figures that fixed Czevak with their deathless stares. Each was an eldar, impossibly old and hidden behind the long faceplate of the pointed helms favoured by their race. Runes danced across their robes. Precious stone and antique gilding decorated their armour and their eye-slits burned with jade. As they spoke, their voices had an elegance and grace, otherworldly and immediate. They all spoke together – but they spoke as one. As their alien tongue filled the chamber, Czevak mumbled a translation.
‘Bronislaw Czevak of the Orders Holy; of the fledgling Imperium; of humanity young. You will not find the answers you seek in this… dead place.’
Klute looked from the alien ancients, to the still figures of the Harlequin troupe, to his master – unbound excitement beaming through the years of his aged features.
‘What answers do I seek?’ the High Inquisitor asked boldly.
‘You test us, human?’
Czevak considered his response. ‘I test myself,’ he answered cryptically.
‘Unnecessarily. You wish to know the means by which your corpse Emperor is resurrected.’
‘Then it comes to pass,’ Czevak said, his voice trembling with his feeble heart.
‘Everything comes to pass, eventually, Resurrection Man. You trouble yourself with questions of the divine, like many of your short sighted kind, when you should be divining answers to your questions.
‘How can this be done?’ Czevak demanded.
‘By accepting what few among you have dared to long and longed to dare. An invitation to a place of dark answers, Bronislaw Czevak of the Holy Ordos. An old man of a young race, taking last breaths with questions heavy – take those last breaths with us, in the living Library of our ancestors. In the Black Library of Chaos you will think not on how your cadaverous god may help you through his resurrection, rather how you may help him through yours.’
‘My lord,’ Klute said softly. Czevak turned his blister-helmet and looked blankly on the young interrogator. Klute shook his head.
‘If I refuse?’
‘Such invitations are not refused, unworthy man. You will take your invitation and prevent another taking his, who exceeds even you in his human thirst for knowledge.’
Czevak allowed the cryptic references of the eldar to pass over him.
‘But if I am unworthy…’
‘You are, foolish human – have no doubt of that, but blind steps take you towards a worthy future. It is the word. It is written. The Library has spoken.’
An ancient vanished from a section of wraithbone only to be replaced by the other-dimensional radiance of what Klute could only assume was a warp portal.
‘Vespasi-Hann will escort you through the webway to our dark and hallowed halls,’ the eldar told Czevak and then stared, their jade eye-slits seeing straight through him. The mirror-masked Shadowseer came forward, theatrically indicating the portal and his intention that Czevak should move towards it.
As Klute felt his master pull away, he said urgently, ‘My lord, this is no invitation. This is kidnapping by any other name.’
Czevak laid one suited hand on his interrogator’s shoulder.
‘Raimus, you have been my doctor, my good apprentice and an undeserved friend. You got me to this point – and death could wait for me beyond that portal. But I’d exchange however many moments I have left, for one glimpse of the hallowed halls of the Black Library of Chaos. You understand…’
‘Then I’ll come with you,’ Klute said, coming forward himself, but the Shadowseer, Vespasi-Hann, brought up his hand in silent refutation.
‘Stay with Joaqhuine; see to it she lives to see eternity,’ the High Inquisitor soothed. Czevak patted his interrogator’s shoulder in feeble reassurance and stabbing his cane into the wraithbone floor, began moving towards the warp portal, flanked by his motley escort of Harlequin carnival killers.
‘Czevak,’ Klute called to his master. The ancient turned. ‘Wait.’ Klute took off his medicae satchel and rifling through the pack, took out a series of syringes. Grasping a tiny tube clasped to the shoulder of Czevak’s cryogenic suspension suit, Klute unclipped a valve and proceeded to inject the High Inquisitor with a swift succession of chemical cocktails.
‘Something for the journey?’ Czevak smiled.
‘Inoculatia, my lord. These should protect you from a host of infectious diseases – the eldar are particularly susceptible to Paratyphis, Quyme’s Disease and pneumonic fevers – all fatal to humans. The only vaccine I’ve given you for a non-lethal pathogen is the meme-virus, but I have to tell you that the cryonic cooling of your suspension suit will likely inhibit the immune system response.’
‘So,’ Czevak said low and slowly, ‘you may have just infected me with a meme-virus?’ Czevak was familiar with the pathogen and the way it was supposed to afflict the infected with a cognitive data addiction. Victims not only experienced a constant, unquenchable thirst for knowledge but also the memory capacity to store such a torrent of information – both significant and trivial. To the infected, there was little distinction between the two.
‘I’m afraid so my lord. A particularly powerful one. I hope you can find it in yourself to forgive me.’
The High Inquisitor smiled acknowledgement. He was just about to enter the largest repository of forbidden lore in the galaxy, infected with a pathological agent that would trebly enhance his graphic memory and already voracious thirst for knowledge.
‘Goodbye, Raimus.’
Bronislaw Czevak turned and disappeared through the warp gate into oblivion, leaving Klute alone with the dead and the undying.
Solus
ACT I, CANTO I
Archeodeck, Rogue trader Malescaythe, The Eye of Terror
Enter INQUISITOR RAIMUS KLUTE, alone
It was the Feast of the Forty Hierarchs – the last day of the Dantian Octave. Raimus Klute cast rheumy eyes across the archeodeck of the Malescaythe. He was tired and rubbed his temples between finger and thumb before running both through his greying moustache in a long-learned, unconscious action that could almost qualify as a nervous twitch. Heliotide was already upon them and Captain Torres was doing her level best to create some sense of a festive atmosphere, despite their dismal surroundings. She’d had sweetmeats and minced pastries distributed as well as authorising an extra ration of spiced gin for the crew. A number of off-watch petty officers and booming crewmen had taken to singing canticles in one corner of the hangar as they warmed themselves by the idling thrusters of a freight skiff. Hark the Pyromartyr Cleanses lifted Klute’s spirits, as once it had on Gehenndra 4-17, until he realised that if the Pyromartyr had continu
ed his good works unto this day then Klute and his compatriots would very much constitute the Pyromartyr’s heretical prey.
Torqhuil certainly would. The Relictor Space Marine had joined the inquisitor for prayers that morning on the archeodeck, before their brief but horrific visit to Iblisyph. Down on one ceramite knee, the young Techmarine still towered over the inquisitor, the cybernetic rig of servo-arms and mechadendrites craning from the Adeptus Astartes’ pack making him appear even larger, if that were possible. As they said their benedictions, earlier that day, with the deep onyx of Torqhuil’s bowed, shaven head gleaming in the dreadlight of the Eye, Klute had given thanks to the Emperor. Without Torqhuil to share his credence and Torres’s efforts to keep a tiny slice of the Imperium alive amongst their damned surroundings, the inquisitor was certain that he would have lost his mind.
Klute had chartered the Malescaythe under Inquisitorial decree and had brought Reinette Torres to the Eye of Terror. Torqhuil, he’d found there. On the nightworld of Alpha-Glau their paths and purposes had crossed over the cursed Casque of King Kuanscrall. The actual Casque turned out to be nothing more than an ancient myth and therefore useless to both of them.
Formerly known as the Fire Claws, the Relictors Space Marines and their shameful quest were well known to Klute’s ordo, however. Before the inquisitor had left the true path himself he had briefly been part of a Privy Conclave advising the infamous Inquisitor Cyarro and the Grey Knights Chapter on a little known race called the lophiformes, for whom a small cell of Relictors were trading mercenary duties for Chaos artefacts and information.
Initially, the Relictors had been given the solemn duty of guarding the frontiers of the Eye of Terror – a task to which they were well suited, known as a particularly stoic Chapter and seemingly resilient to the corruption of the warp. Both of these assumptions turned out to be erroneous, however, as the Relictors’ passion to destroy Chaos took them to that dark place – that realisation that perhaps the relics and weapons of evil were double-edged swords that could indeed be turned upon their depraved wielders, a dark path that some of Klute’s brother inquisitors believed him to have taken.