by Ian Watson
‘I cannot,’ he snarled, ‘submit to sentimentality. Not when the cabal still sows its hydra! Not when Illuminati conspire! Yet I shall treasure the sash and the stone for ever... And now,’ he cried, ‘to rob the Black Library!’
With what main motive, though? With devout or with profane intention? With Him-on-Earth in mind? Or in Meh’lindi’s honour, as a demented requiem?
WITHIN, THE LIBRARY was much as had been revealed to Azul in his agony-vision. Maybe this was why these intruders perceived the Black Library to be thus, rather than otherwise.
The entire fabric of the library was psychoactive. Wrought of webway substance, it configured itself to what Azul expected to see; as Jaq could sense now with his psychic faculty. Azul had been vouchsafed a visionary initiation, albeit not by any Harlequins. Alternative parallel libraries might have presented themselves to the uninitiated. There might have been libraries where the books were of solid stone. Or where they were of sheets of furnace-hot metal.
Serried ranks of great rune-chased tomes of parchment and everplastic and thin adamantium and stiff silk – libers and eldritch leabhars and bibloi and codices and volumens – were bound in brass and wraithbone and leather and in what might have been daemon-hide. Filigree cages wrought of adamantium held certain volumes.
Books glowed with their own occult light while the surroundings were of stygian ebony and jet. Texts might be perused by this intrinsic illumination. Tomes seemed almost radioactive, as if whoever touched them might risk contracting rot of the fingers.
In places the dust of millennia lay along neglected expanses, and the glow was smothered. Such volumes, once revered, must later have been deemed to contain nothing but errors and foolishness. Conceivably some vital document might be hidden under dust. Black corridors and halls and naves receded, harbouring cells and scriptories and descents to crypts. Embellishments were everywhere – scrolling volutes and latticework and arching spandrels, cusps and entablatures and friezes – but only darkly visible. Ceilings of inky mosaic loomed now, zeniths of night and obscurity.
Lights of libers glimmered in the sooty depths and distances.
DARK SHAPES BEGAN to move within the library. Negative auras. Silhouettes. The place was at once deserted yet occupied. Those presences were out of phase – as if Azul’s rune distanced the figures from this precise moment in time. What were they? Great Harlequins?
Those presences had been alerted by the intrusion into this secret place. They could not fully appear. They were almost here and now – but not quite. Each moment in time seemed sliced into subdivisions. Several timestreams flowed simultaneously, superimposed upon one another. Within one time-stream Jaq and his companions forged further into the library. Within another time-stream the custodians of the library strove in vain to prevent them. Custodians were merely shadows through which one could walk.
A Great Harlequin blocked their way. The figure barely possessed the substance of a cobweb – which parted, then reformed. Once, they glimpsed a robed and bearded inquisitor, who was blindfolded. Some exceptionally privileged member of the Ordo Malleus! Evidently human, he was being escorted by shimmering Harlequins. Inquisitor and escort were a time-mirage from some earlier era.
So it was true that Harlequins and inquisitors shared – or had shared – a common bond in daemonic research. Secret inquisitors had previously visited this place, with vigilant alien escorts who controlled what such visitors saw.
Unlike Jaq, whom no one controlled...
‘The rune in your eye led us here,’ Jaq murmured to Azul. ‘That rune seems able to trick time itself in certain ways, at least here in webway. Time is sliced and respliced.’
If the engraved warp-eye could trick time, could it help Jaq later to find a certain crossroads? Hardly, when its tropism, its whole bias, was towards this library and towards a certain book within.
‘WE’RE HERE,’ BREATHED Azul. ‘This is it. My eye recognizes it.’ Inside an arabesque cage, upon an ebon podium, lay a bulky volume. The binding was encrusted by gems a-glitter with the inner light of the book; with sapphires and emeralds, topaz and tourmaline.
Diamonds picked out runic lettering which must surely spell Rhana Dandra.
Harlequin-shadows flitted, agitated and vehement. These silhouette-figures were no impediment.
Petrov had navigated to his one and only possible destination. Now he rested his hands upon either side of the cage to gather his strength. Then he heaved. Whether the cage had previously been sealed by wizardry or tech, or by both, the lid arose now, unlocked by his shrouded rune-gaze.
Nearby stood a tall lectern as dark as coal, with outspread carved wings evocative of a Swooping Hawk aspect warrior. An ancient faded banner hung down the front of the lectern, depicting a scorpion above a field of bendy sable stripes. Jaq lifted out the heavy tome and laid it upon the ebon wings.
He opened the liber and turned the vellum pages.
These were covered with a diversity of illuminated rune-scripts, annotated and footnoted minutely. None could he read. Even as he glanced, a line of runes shifted, dissolving and reforming into a subtly different text. Aye, the future was multifold. The book was mutable. Its contents could alter. Carefully he closed the volume and stroked the jewels. Were any of these gems the spirit-stones of bygone eldar seers, embedded in the binding?
‘That’s a fortune in gems,’ muttered Azul. Was there avarice in his tone? 'There’s a fortune here.’
‘Huh,’ grunted Grimm, ‘well, it is a Book of Fate.’
Harlequin-silhouettes jostled like great fretful bats. Frantic shadows.
‘We may need a fortune,’ said Jaq. He activated his inquisitorial palm-tattoo then banished it dismissively. ‘I can scarcely draw upon Imperial funds ever again.’
‘Such a book,’ observed Lex, ‘may take years to decipher and master.’
Grimm spoke searchingly. ‘You big chaps live a long time, don’t you?’
‘Unless we’re killed! As my brothers have been killed coming here, their glands left unharvested like carrion for any crows of the webway!’
Lex calmed. The real implications of the squat’s question had broken upon him. ‘I shall continue to accompany you,’ he said. ‘You lack a strong protector now that your assassin is dead—’
‘Squats can look after themselves! Jaq’s no slouch at slaughtering, neither. But yeah, I guess we’d be obliged. Indebted. I guess.’
‘I welcome you, Lex,’ Jaq said with heartfelt emphasis.
‘I would be honoured.’ Lex nodded gravely.
‘Too much is left unresolved. A crusade is not complete until the angelus is rung at dusk in honour of Dorn.’ Plainly this was a potent metaphor to an Imperial Fist. ‘Am I deserting my Chapter if no means exists to rejoin it? My fists itch with a sense of obligation – towards yourself, for the sake of Him-on-Earth. Yet which is your true aim, I wonder, Jaq Draco? To serve Him? To investigate vile conspiracies and abort them? Or somehow to regain a lost—’ Lex sought for an unfamiliar word— ‘a lost concubine. No, a lover. A comrade.’
Jaq struggled to control himself. ‘Maybe,’ he faltered, ‘the quest for illumination and the quest for her will not prove too contradictory – for a sorcerer! Such as I must become!’
Grimm was agitated. ‘With this book you’ll be a sorcerer, right? A real one? You ain’t gonna fall in with that scheme of, um, you becoming possessed?’
‘I shall take Chaos itself in these hands,’ vowed Jaq – aye, in the hands which held the Book of Rhana Dandra, ‘and I shall bend it backwards till the spine of time snaps, if need be.’
‘Oh, my ancestors. I’d feel safer if we wrap that book.’
‘Until I find the luminous path again, the via luminosa—’
‘Let’s wrap the book, huh?’ In the carbon darkness of the library more silhouettes were looming.
‘Wrap?’ repeated Jaq. Had he been intending to bear the volume blatantly before him, a great glittering talisman? ‘Wrap it.’
A
squat did not willingly shed his trusty flak jacket, even to steal a Book of Dandruff. Lex, apart from webbing, was basically in the buff. This left Jaq’s torn robe, or Azul’s shimmery slippery garb...
All this while Azul had been eyeing the jewelled tome.
‘I’ll tuck it under my damask,’ the Navigator volunteered.
Grimm shook his head. ‘Jaq’s the psyker, not you.’
‘Is not a warp-eye a psychic organ?’
Such a plea fell on deaf ears – even though hearing was well restored since the final assault of the Phoenix Lady. ‘At least let me touch those stones for a moment before you hide them away out of sight!’
Once away from the Black Library, would the volume continue to emit light? Whether it did or didn’t, it would require shrouding to hide it from eyes covetous of the mere exterior of such a tome, encrusted as it was with a ransom opulent enough to buy from pirates the freedom of any planetary governor’s kidnapped daughter.
Azul’s fingers lingered on topaz and tourmaline. Almost sacramentally, he touched the ruby on his chin.
‘Uh, boss...’ muttered Grimm.
Would the binding of the book prove to be an unbearable temptation to the bereft Navigator? Jaq appeared disconnected from such practical notions as the risk of pilfering, which might imperil the funding of his quest. He was almost ethereal in his own caress of the tome. (What was he now but one of the foremost thieves in the history of the galaxy?)
Petrov’s free hand was straying towards his black bandanna to forge a link between the desecrated black gem in his forehead and those jewels of the tome, some of which might be spirit stones.
Balancing the book upon his arm, Jaq pulled Meh’lindi’s speckled pebble from the neck of his robe. He compared that common stone with those jewels. In proximity to such occult gems might the pebble begin to scintillate with sparkles of her soul?
Lex had been noticing disconcerting symptoms in the Navigator. A Fist was a thinker, honed to notice and interpret and act upon betraying signs in hulks and hives, in natural jungles and in jungles of humanity.
As Azul’s hand brushed his bandanna, Lex raised his boltgun and fired.
RAAARK-CRUMP
Reverberations echoed through the inky book-lit labyrinth. Great bats seemed to flap their wings.
Azul lurched backwards against the now-empty lectern. Blood soaked his slithery robe. Briefly the scorpion banner gripped the Navigator, as if claiming him in its pincers. Then the lectern toppled backwards. Its outspread wings formed a stretcher for the dying man, soon to be a bier.
Jaq was aghast. Were it not for the burden of the book he might have jerked Emperor’s Mercy towards Lex.
Incoherently: ‘Azul’s eye. His eye! If he dies—’
How to use the rune again – should Jaq ever need to do so? Azul Petrov was dying, if not already dead. To Lex, in accusation: ‘You’re Firenze’s man!’
‘Nay—’
Before Jaq could commit a folly, Grimm seized a wrist. ‘No, he did good, boss! He did right! Petrov was gonna petrify us with his warp-eye.’
A wisp of propellant fume lazed in front of Lex’s gun. The giant nodded.
‘I fear Grimm’s right, Jaq.’
‘But—’
‘Those jewels were too much for him.’ Brusquely the little man booted the dying, or dead, Navigator. ‘Ain’t it so, Azul? Thought you’d snuff us all with your gorgon-gaze and walk backwards out of here with treasure for the future.’
Petrov’s chest was shattered underneath his bloodied robe. Thus no reply came. ‘His warp-eye!’
Lex said: ‘Such a hard gem does not decay. With our eyes closed tight we shall harvest it. We shall wrap it tightly in the bandanna.’
From inside his flak jacket Grimm produced a knife. He unfolded the blade and slapped it into Lex’s hand.
‘How can we ever use it without looking at it, though?’ Lex pondered. ‘Petrov’s eye may serve as an unexpected weapon to guard the book. The gem that kills the would-be thief. Of course I am no lapidary.’ He scowled at Grimm. ‘Yet it seems to me that if one shaves the eye at the rear it may make into a monoculus lens which can be worn.’
‘A lens forever showing the way back here, where I’m sure we’d be welcome!’
‘Perhaps the rune will have other uses?’
‘Oh yes, to a sorcerer!’
Jaq was shuddering. ‘Petrov was Fennix’s friend. More than that, perhaps. The rune-eye may prove to be a curse...’
‘Maybe the monoculus will attach to the living eye, warping your vision and killing anyone you see—’
Jaq grinned insanely. ‘Maybe it will protect me from a daemon, even though that daemon imagines it possesses my soul – until the day when I stare in a mirror!’
‘What do you reckon, Azul?’ Grimm kicked the Navigator again, but Petrov appeared to be entirely dead.
AND SO LEX performed the excision of the eye, the ophthalmectomy. He kept his own eyes shut tight, praying that with Petrov dead this stratagem would protect him as effectively as visor and calculator had protected him when the Navigator was alive. He operated delicately by finger-feel and point of knife.
Presently the engraved eye was wrapped securely in the black bandanna.
‘We can all look again.’
Lex offered the tiny bundle to Jaq. Jaq shook his head. ‘Keep it in one of your pouches, Grimm. We must trust one another.’
‘Yeah.’ The little man turned to Lex. ‘If we reach a world with astropaths in residence, you mustn’t coax one of those to send any messages regarding your whereabouts to that fortress-monastery of yours.’
‘I shall not do so for ten years,’ vowed Lex. ‘Dorn be with me.’
Jaq laid down the book. He shed his torn robe. The squamous mesh armour beneath made him appear to be some lizard-man, mutated by Chaos.
He wrapped the liber in his robe, extinguishing its light. Grumpily Grimm eyed the fallen Navigator one last time. ‘Huh. Trail of corpses, that’s what.’
NO, NOT A complete trail.
Was this the same place as where they had entered the library? It seemed to be. Meh’lindi’s body had disappeared. Taken away as a trophy by the Phoenix Lady, along with the scalpel-lance? No blood smeared the area. Maybe this was another place.
To say goodbye to her once again might have been unbearable.
THROUGH THE WEBWAY many worlds lay before them, worlds where the eldar had established portals openly or secretly. Where to choose their hiding place? The choice was hardly theirs, where they might first emerge. Chance was their guide. Not Azul’s eye. Nor the Book of Rhana Dandra, indecipherable as yet.
Side by side, with weary steps, with weapons at the ready, from the Black Library Jaq Draco and a near-nude giant and a stocky dwarf took their lonely way.
Perhaps anguish was a closer companion to Jaq than either Grimm or Lex d’Arquebus.
CHAOS CHILD
CLASSIFICATION: Primary Level Intelligence
CLEARANCE: Granite
ENCRYPTION: Cryptox v.2.21
DATE: 093.M41
AUTHOR: Adept Prestre Rhan’hei. Adeptus Ministorum
SUBJECT: Intercepted communiqué
RECIPIENT DESIGNATE: Inquisitor Halfadru Memphos, assignum Ordo Xenos
My lord,
Subject to your instructions, I have been tailing Adept G— for fully nine weeks now. As you predicted, his palsy grows more and more severe, and his eyesight continues to deteriorate. It has been relatively easy for me to sift through his data-scrolls while his attention has been distracted. I have managed to lay my hands on a variety of items that will interest you (which can be collected from drop point Hyrax in five rotations) but felt I would risk sending you this one directly, as it is relatively succint, and will be of especial interest to you, given your interest in that exotic race, the eldar.
I hope that the latest batch of information will serve to fulfil my "obligations". In any case, my wife’s health is now so poor that she is not expected to l
ast more than a few days. Shortly, you will have no further hold over me; my own life means nothing to me. Believe me, if I never hear from you again I will die a happier man.
Rhan’hei
[Transcript begins:]
My great friend, I would need have words with you. I have foreseen events of import far beyond this place in time, events that furthermore may yet bring knowledge of such things as had previously been lost.
I am Athenys, of the craftworld [censored] of ill-favoured fortune. And thus I am of the kin of Farseer Eldrad Ulthran. His oft-related saga of the renegade human inquisitor known to us as Jaq [tr: dragon?] and his motley band of associates has, for so many generations, been regarded as without conclusion. His disappearance from the sacred and most secret Black Library, taking with him one of our most precious books offate, the [tr: tome?] of Rhana Dandra.
Some revolutions past, as I lay in my [tr: leafy glade?], contemplating the myriad waft and weft of the webway, contemplating all the possible futures which may yet choose to present themselves to our kind, my senses chanced upon a twisted trail. It was woven within such a [tr: confused ball of string?] of possibilities that my first thoughts were that it was somehow the trace, not of an event which was [tr: spiny-finned fish?] to come to pass, but of something that had never happened. How this??? [transmission failure periodic] before that terrible moment.
And yet... within it all, beating almost like a living heart, was the defiant energy-pattern of this Jaq [?]. By following the traces of this spirit within the webway and beyond, I could follow this lifeline to its very end, and reveal a conclusion to his saga. A conclusion, however, that may yet prove to be nothing more than a [tr: layer of low-lying cloud?] laid by the Great Enemy.
Knowing the great wrong that this human is said to have perpetrated upon all of our kind, I fervently believe I cannot just dismiss this [tr: carpenter’s boring tool?] as a mere fancy. All my senses tell me that this inquisitor and his deeds are little more than a myth, a??? [transmission failure] rather than any true reality. Yet my spirit insists to me that these deeds, so long hidden from us, may well have been acted out in such a fashion as I espied.