by Dan Abnett
‘Just walk, John Grammaticus,’ said the Space Marine. ‘Walk now, back into the desert. Back to wherever you came from. I’ll give you that one chance, because she wants me to. Walk now. This offer of mercy expires in a matter of seconds.’
‘I need to see her,’ said John, not moving.
‘You’re too dangerous,’ said the legionary.
‘For god’s sake,’ said John wearily. ‘You must know what’s happening. She must know. The hell descending on Earth. The hell overwhelming the Himalazia and tearing down everything that holds our civilisation up. Horus Lupercal is days away from destroying our species. And you think I’m dangerous?’
‘So why have you come?’
‘To stop it all,’ said John.
‘Horus? You can’t.’
‘Of course I can’t,’ John snapped. ‘He’s bloody Horus. No one can. I’m here to stop Him. Because He’s the only one who can end this abomination.’
‘That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,’ said the Space Marine. ‘Even coming from a man who’s spent his life making stupid decisions. How do you propose to stop Him?’
‘That,’ said John, ‘is why I need her help.’
* * *
The legionary walked him into the earth lodge, keeping the old bolt pistol aimed at the small of John’s back. They descended a flight of stone steps that had been bowed down by centuries of scuffing foot traffic. Above them, the last of the day’s light shone through the sheets of indigo cloth that had been stretched across the gaps where sections of the old rock roof had fallen in.
The steps led down into a wide chamber of irregular plan. Canopies of silk and dyed cotton had been raised on wooden poles to screen off the low, damp stone vault of the ceiling. It felt like entering a tent, the sanctuary tents of the PanAfrik nomads. Woven carpets, their patterns bright and intricate, had been rolled out to cover the uneven brick floor. There was some low wooden furniture, heaped cushions bound in soft hides and silk; a few candles burned on copper dishes. More candles, a few ailing lumen globes, glowed within brass lanterns that hung from the tented roof on chains.
As much as it felt like the interior of a nomad home, it also felt like a shrine. It reminded John of the temples of Mythrus he’d visited a few times in his days as a soldier of the Caucasian Levies, a thousand years before. The Mythraic creed, the old, informal soldiers’ religion, had still been a thing then, back when faiths still had a little life left in them. His comrades had tried to induct him, but he hadn’t taken to it. This place was more comfortable than those dark and secretive underground chapels, but it had the same provocative quality of silence and mystery, an air of captured grace.
The effigies added to the shrine-like feel. They were everywhere, occupying alcoves in the old stone walls, or hung from pegs. More Earth-mothers, eyeless, sack-breasted and bigger bellied; a Catheric icon of the Theokotos; ancient figurines of Cybele, Persephone, Proserpina and Prithvi in chipped faience or battered bronze; clay votives of the Spider Grandmother; odd idols of tricksters, messengers and fertility gods; a terracotta vase showing Ninhursag; an ivory charm of Di Mu; a fid spearing a ball of red thread; Nwt, painted on a clay tile, surrounded by stars; the Hittite trinity of nursing midwives Elutellura, Isirra and Tawara. So many he recognised, so many more he did not. None were copies or replicas. The newest of them was twenty-five thousand years old.
He picked up a little wooden carving of a Hopi trickster, and studied it. ‘I never took you for a person of faith,’ he said out loud, knowing she was close.
‘You never really knew me at all, John,’ she replied.
‘True,’ he agreed, looked around. She had appeared from behind the silk screens at the back of the room, as silent as ever.
Erda was tall, by any human standards. He’d forgotten that about her. She wore a simple, floor-length thob of indigo cotton, waxed to iridescence, that veiled her figure, except for the pull at her hips. A purple tesimest was knotted over her shoulder, and then wrapped across her head in a cowl. There had to be psy-refractors woven into it, perhaps a null cap, because he had no read on her famous mind at all. Her eyes were vivid light blue, her skin like polished rosewood. Even modestly shrouded, her beauty was evident. John was sure it would be obvious even if she was fully veiled in a niqab, Like only one or two beings he had met in his life, her beauty was a radiance that came out of her, like an aura. He couldn’t look at her for too long. What seemed in her beautiful reminded him too much of another numinous grace, and the memory of that made him queasy and nervous.
‘So you have belief in these?’ he asked, looking down at the carving in his hands. ‘Any of them? All?’
‘No,’ said Erda. ‘Those are just mementos, John. Gods have come and gone. None have any lasting power or influence, and most cause nothing but harm.’
‘Ain’t that the truth?’ he replied, and put the carving back in its alcove carefully. ‘I’m grateful for the chance to talk to you,’ he said.
‘That’s not what this is,’ she replied. ‘I have admitted you because the al-kubra has rules of hospitality. The wastes are vast and harsh. Any traveller must be offered food and water, and a moment to rest, no matter the tribal or ideological differences between him and his host.’
‘That’s not what he said outside,’ said John, jerking a thumb towards the Space Marine.
‘Leetu was just doing his job,’ she replied.
‘Leetu – Leetu? Leetu can surely put his bolt pistol away now?’ John said.
‘No,’ said the legionary.
‘If it goes off, it could damage something very valuable,’ said John, gesturing at the precious effigies and figurines. ‘Like me.’
‘You are a dangerous soul, John,’ said Erda.
John Grammaticus meets Erda.
‘Not as much as I used to be, really,’ he said, shrugging. ‘Long story, but one thing led to another, and I’m on my last life. No more
perpetuity for me. It was fun while it lasted. No, that’s a lie.’ John sighed. ‘My point is, the big guy there could tackle me easily, with that Astartes speed and strength of his, and he’d break me, and I would not get up again. Ever. He doesn’t need the gun.’
Erda nodded very slightly. The Space Marine locked his weapon’s safety, and clamped it to his hip. She nodded again. Three figures came out from behind the silks, an old woman in a niqab, a girl and a teenage boy. They carried lidded bowls, cups and a stoneware pitcher on brass mesomphalos dishes. They set them down on the low tables, and left.
‘Food, water and a moment to rest,’ said Erda.
John sat down on the cushions, and lifted the lids from the black earthenware bowls. Tahricht, stewed apricots, fine bouchiar wafers with butter and honey, a glossy tajine of squab. His mouth watered. He hadn’t realised how hungry he was.
‘This is great,’ he said. ‘Very welcome. I’m not sure the last time I ate. I mean, how long ago or when. I-‘
Tears came to his eyes involuntarily. He’d been running on nothing but adrenaline and emptiness for too long. The relief was painful.
‘Sorry,’ he said, hurriedly wiping his eyes. ‘Sorry. That’s embarrassing.’
Erda squatted beside him, and poured water from the pitcher into one of the cups. She handed it to him. It was a small and delicate brown beaker, a kintsugi piece. Once broken, it had been repaired and healed with fine seams of lacquer and powdered gold.
‘Eat and drink,’ she said. He nodded, and did so.
Erda stood back up. The legionary was watching him. ‘He is a strange man,’ he said, speaking in a Hortsign battle cant from the Unification age.
‘Yes, I am,’ said John. Mouth full, he looked up, and grinned at the Space Marine.
‘You can’t disguise your words from him, Leetu,’ said Erda. ‘John is a logokinetic. He speaks and knows any language. He mindglosses. It is the only one of his gifts that he was born with.’
‘Like I said,’ said John, eating
with his fingers, ‘it’s about the only one I have left. The others were given, and are now gone. I’m not a Perpetual any more.’
‘You never were,’ said Erda.
‘Well, no. Technically, I was. A reincarnating immortal. Fun times.
I was one of your lot by default.’
‘By the manipulation of the xenos aeldari,’ said Li da. ‘Not one of us. You merely rhymed with us. And poorly.’
‘Well, Erda,’ said John, still chewing, a slight grin on his face, ‘if your kind ever rhymed, as you put it, with each other, it would have been a miracle. I didn’t rhyme with any of you, because there wasn’t a tune to match. Show me the rhyme, Erda, and I’ll sing along. But I don’t think there is one.’
She sniffed.
‘There is some truth to that statement,’ she admitted.
John smiled, and took a sip of water from the beaker. ‘Look at us, having that conversation after all.’
‘Not at all,’ she said.
‘Come on,’ he said. The food and water is welcome, the chance to just sit the hell down. I’m grateful. But that’s not why you let me in. You’re intrigued, and you want to talk.’
‘I have not laughed in a long time, John,’ she replied. ‘I have not even heard the sound of laughter. I listened to what you said to Leetu. I have no wish to discuss it with you, but I let you in because I wanted to hear it from you. Directly. I wanted an excuse to laugh out loud.’ ‘Mmm. Tough crowd,’ he said. He picked up another wafer, then put it back, and wiped his hands. ‘I don’t think there’s much to laugh about. Not these days. It’s become a time quite devoid of laughter. You know what’s going on. Of course you do. It’s indescribably bad.’
‘You helped stoke that inferno, John.’
‘Yeah. I made things worse. I was used, in my defence. Had the shit manipulated out of me by the Cabal, by Alpharius’ bastards… There’s a long list, believe me. I was used. I could have resisted, I grant you. I didn’t. I’ll regret that to the end of my days, which isn’t going to be that far off. Now, I’m my own man. No one’s using me. I’m following my own path. Trying the best I can to salvage something. And my path’s brought me here.’
‘So this is redemption?’ she asked.
He shrugged. ‘If I gain some kind of absolution, great. That’s not why I’m doing it. I’m doing it because someone needs to do something. It’s probably too late, but someone needs to try. It should have been tried a long time ago. A long, long time ago. Back when there was still an iota of hope. Your kind. Your kind, Erda. That exclusive club. You should have done it. You should have got your heads out of your arses and started to rhyme. Worked together. The Perpetuals could have stopped this long before it ever started. But, oh no.’
He exhaled slowly, and took a sip of water. ‘You don’t accept I’m one of you,’ he said, ‘and maybe I’m not. I’m just a fake, an imitation, but don’t you feel a glimmer of shame that an artificial perpetual, a johnny-come-lately wannabe, is the only one trying? Doing what you lot should have done long before I was even born?’
‘I will kill him now,’ said Leetu in Hortsign.
‘Bloody have a go, big man,’ John snapped back in the same battle cant. He looked at Erda.
‘I tried,’ she said.
‘Yeah.’ John said gently. ‘Yeah, you did. Couldn’t get the numbers on your side, though, could you? But yes, you did. That’s why I came here. Tell me, lady, was it guilt that drove you to try? Like me?’
‘What do you mean, John?’
‘Well,’ he replied, sitting back on the plump cushions, ‘as you took great delight in pointing out, I’ve made things worse along the way Collaborated with the Cabal, brought the Alpha Legion into play for the explicit goal of ending mankind. There were reasons for that. The Cabal’s Acuity is very convincing. But anyway, I’m damned. Guilt fires me now. Guilt and anger at the part I played. So I’m guessing it drives you too. It’s what made you try.’
‘You think I’m driven by guilt?’ she asked.
‘You helped Him build it,’ said John. ‘You gave Him his damned children.’
‘I love my sons,’ she said. ‘All of them. Even now. When I saw how things would go, I tried to stop it. The inexorable slide. I tried to make Him see. But there was no reasoning with Him. There never has been.’
‘That’s an evasion,’ said John. ‘You saw the truth of it long before you tried to act. Centuries before. More than that, probably. You knew what He was like, right at the start of it. You went along with it, and helped Him build the murderers. You acted far too late.’
She stared at him.
‘Let us speak of evasions,’ she said. ‘You say you have freed yourself from the xenos Cabal, and that you walk your own path, but that’s a lie. You work for Eldrad Ulthran, farseer of Ulthwé. You are still in the thrall of xenosform.’
John sniggered. ‘You are well informed. But not accurately. I work with Eldrad, not for him. And I’m not the only one. Some of us are starting to rhyme, Erda. Maybe too little, too late, but we are.’
‘Like who?’ she asked.
‘Oll,’ he said.
‘Ollanius?’ She frowned. ‘Is he really still out there? No, he would never… He was always so adamant. He refused to get involved. I think he knew it was hopeless from the very first day. You’re lying again.’
‘I’m not,’ said John. ‘It took some persuasion. But I’m good at that And it look the burning of an entire world, and the destruction of the life he’d chosen. Not, before you ask, my doing.’
‘Which world?’ she asked.
‘Calth,’ he replied. He saw the look on her face. ‘Lorgar razed it. Shattered the jewel of Ultramar. Oll escaped because Oll is Oll. I’ve been guiding him along. He’s come around to the idea, at long last, that someone needs to make a stand.’
John reached into his jacket pocket. He saw Leetu flex for his bolt pistol, and made a show of doing it slowly. He took out a slim pair of ornate wraithbone scissors on a ribbon.
‘Eldrad gave me these,’ John said, showing the object to them both. ‘He freed me from Cabal control. He rejects their strategy entirely. Sacrificing the human species as a firewall against Chaos? Despite what’s at stake, that’s savage even by aeldari standards. He believes mankind can be helped. We can survive – in fact, we have the right to survive – if we can be taught how to fight and resist the Primordial Annihilator. But we’re young and we’re new and we’re woefully ignorant, and there’s one big problem about us – the person we follow. He can’t be reasoned with. You said it yourself. He thinks He knows everything, and He’s wrong. His ambition is wonderful, but His arrogance is a mortal flaw of tragic proportions. Tell me you don’t know that.’
‘I know that,’ she said.
‘So,’ said John. He put the scissors down on the low table. ‘Someone has to make Him listen to reason, while there’s still time. Mankind can survive. Mankind can save the galaxy rather than damn it forever. Hell, mankind might even ascend to a state of grace, and become greater than any species yet. We have potential, and Eldrad sees that. We have the potential the aeldari have lost. But there’s very little time left to reverse things. And He, acting like the god He insists He isn’t, is in the way. So… It’s time to act.’
‘Are those… scissors… intended to kill Him?’ asked Leetu.
‘Shit, no,’ said John. ‘I don’t think they could. They’re my pass port. Eldrad gave them to me so I could get around. Move between moments. Snip and sidestep my way through the immaterium. It’s not a great way of travelling, and it can be very hit and miss, but it got me here. Actually, I took a lot of wrong turns, and I missed the first time. Ended up about eight months ahead of now. By then, it was too late. Way too late. So trust me, I know of what I speak. We have a very small window left.’
He picked up the scissors again.
‘These should show you the seriousness of the intent here,’ he said. ‘Even the aeldari seldom empl
oy these. The causal risks are terrifying. They don’t like to use them, let alone give one to a mon-keigh savage. Oll’s travelling by similar means. His artefact isn’t aeldari made. It’s an athame of god knows what kind of provenance. But it does the trick. Anyway, you know that already.’
‘What do you mean, John?’
John gestured to the lodge around him.
‘I know this was all just testing,’ he said. ‘Sounding me out. You needed to be sure I was on the level, that I wasn’t some Neverborn, wearing a human disguise. So you can bring Oll out now, and we can get started.’
‘Ollanius isn’t here, John.’
‘We haven’t got time for any more games,’ said John.
‘I am telling you, John, Ollanius is not here,’ said Erda. ‘I haven’t seen him in a thousand years.’
John rose sharply, bumping the table so hard the pots rattled.
‘No, no, no,’ he muttered. ‘He has to be. We agreed to meet here. We wanted to talk to you and get you on side, so this seemed like the best place to rendezvous. He should already be here.’
‘He’s not.’
‘He has to be. He should have got here at least a week ahead of me, Probably more, because of the diversion I was forced to make.’
‘Ollanius is not here, John,’ said Erda. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Oh shit,’ he said. He sat down again hard. ‘Oh shit. I thought he’d make it.’
‘Might he have been intercepted?’ asked the legionary.
‘Yes, he might,’ said John bitterly. ‘As you can imagine, there are quite a few interested parties, keen to stop us executing this scheme. The Cabal, the damned traitor host, the warp itself… just for starters. Not really a bunch of adversaries you want to go up against. So, yes. There were forces trying to intercept us both.’
He looked at Erda.
‘You should go,’ he said.
‘I’m not going anywhere, John.’
‘Look, this is clearly unravelling fast. If they’ve got Oll, they’re probably on me too. I might have led them here.’