by Ian Watson
Oh, he had experienced the luminous path. He had witnessed Lex’s Finger of Glory glowing. Doubt must always remain.
Lex appeared to be racked by mixed emotions. Might Rogal Dorn lend scaffolding to his soul! Let not that scaffold be a gibbet of dishonour, a gallows for an unwitting traitor.
Grimm seemed deeply dour, as if somewhere along the route his soul had deserted him.
Had they not arrived where no one else had ever arrived? Let not doubt subvert this sacred moment.
Jaq and Lex and Rakel knelt in the centre of this four-fold junction bathed in the blue light of the alien webway. Only Grimm stayed standing, defiant of piety, lacking grace.
Jaq prayed aloud to Him-on-Earth, and to the Numen, to the Luminous Path.
He turned to Rakel. Appropriate words would not come. ‘You are asking me to accept my own death,’ Rakel murmured. Fleetingly she glanced at Grimm.
Frustration coursed through Jaq. ‘What have you told her?’ he cried at the dwarf.
‘Nothing!’ howled Grimm. ‘I swear by my absent ancestors, nothing!’
‘I did strive,’ said Rakel in a shaking voice. ‘I strove so hard. Please give me oblivion before such nightmares as tyranids seize me. Or Chaos, or other honors.’
‘Indeed,’ Jaq said softly. All was well, after all. ‘The real Meh’lindi wished for oblivion too,’ he told her. ‘She denied oblivion to herself.’ Rakel was weeping. ‘Now you wish to drag her back into horror and suffering! You see, I understand your desire,’ she said quietly.
‘You great soul,’ exclaimed Jaq, in wonder. He experienced a surge of exalted rapture. This must augur well for what was surely so soon to happen.
‘You great soul...’
Yet not a soul as great as that of Meh’lindi, who must soon supplant this woman from her altered body.
‘I need Meh’lindi, do you see, Rakel? I need her! I need her by my side – to cope with Lucifer Princip.’
‘Oh you needed her,’ was Rakel’s reply, ‘before we ever heard of Lucifer Princip. I do accept my destiny. I accept! Send me into darkness to save my eyes from seeing any more abominations such as I already saw. I cannot face any future. All futures are fearful and foul.’
‘All, apart from the Shining Path, which your sacrifice will help kindle. Oh, Emperor of All,’ cried Jaq, ‘forgive me! Perceive that this is... the way.’
Rakel wept. Yet she also nodded in affirmation. And her affirmation was at the same time the negation of her self – in favour of another, whom she so exactly resembled, even to the very tattoos, courtesy of polymorphine.
Lex was deeply moved. ‘Companion,’ he said to her. He scratched at his itching left hand as if to scour away the line of life from his palm.
Jaq began to remove the Assassin card.
As before, unbidden, that other card sprang free. The card of Tzeentch shed its wrapping. It fell face up upon the webway floor. The daemonic countenance leered up at Jaq. He almost panicked. Hastily he slapped the Assassin card down upon the Daemon. The card depicting Meh’lindi but also mirroring Rakel trumped the Daemon card.
Had he not triumphed over Tzeentch in the mansion? Had he not ousted a minion of the Great Conspirator? Had he not overcome Slaaneshi temptations? Jaq felt not lust but pure adoration for this idol of flesh close by him, soon to be reanimated.
‘Let us rejoice,’ he declared.
Rakel sobbed. ‘I rejoice in oblivion.’
Those could have been Meh’lindi’s very own words. Already Rakel was not merely Meh’lindi in body but partly so, it seemed, in speech.
Jaq gestured to Lex for the assassin’s sash. Lex unwound the red fabric, exposing his ravaged eye-socket. Dangling stole-like, Jaq draped the sash around Rakel’s neck as if preparatory to a garotting.
‘Stare at the Assassin card,’ Jaq instructed Rakel. ‘Stare deep into the eyes. Lose yourself in the eyes. Sink into those. You are going into the Sea of Souls to help stir a mighty spirit to consciousness by becoming part of that spirit through your willing self-sacrifice.
‘Spiritum tuum,’ he continued solemnly in the hieratic tongue, ‘Ipacem dimitto. Meh’lindi meum, a morte ad vitam novam revocatio.’
Grimm was shivering. Lex covered the ruin of his eye with his left palm, the better to keep vigil throughout a rite as macabre as any he had endured in the fortress-monastery of the Imperial Fists.
The semblance of Meh’lindi in the Assassin card was squirming.
‘At this place,’ Jaq intoned, ‘where time twists, by the power and the grace—’
SHUDDERING, RAKEL SLUMPED forward. She squirmed. She twisted and flexed. She writhed as if in agony. And from the writhing woman’s lips a cry of defiance and assertion tore: ‘Me, Lindi!’
That was the shriek of identity of a savage feral girl taken from her jungle world to be trained by the Officio Assassinorum. That was the cry which had given rise to her Imperial name, of Meh’lindi.
Jaq gloried immeasurably.
Meh’lindi uncurled. Briefly her hands explored her midriff, where the harpoon of the Phoenix Lady had transfixed her, twisting her guts as on a winch.
‘Me, Lindeeee!’ she screeched.
She rolled. She sprang to her feet. Her eyes were glazed with frenzy. One hand was a fist. The other was slanted, a chopper. Those eyes! She didn’t seem to recognize Jaq at all. Was she even seeing him?
Nor, as she flicked her glance, was she truly seeing Lex, or Grimm. ‘Die, Phoenix Lords!’ Meh’lindi screamed – and launched herself ferociously at Jaq.
EIGHTEEN
Illumination
COULD SHE BE mistaking Jaq because he wore a commissar’s scorched and bloodstained greatcoat with high collar and golden epaulettes, and icons and honour braids upon the sleeves and breast? No! The name she had called him was Phoenix Lord. Jaq and Lex and Grimm as well. Phoenix Lords.
Those were the eldar hero-warriors who had no craftworld to call their own. They roamed the webway from world to world. Sometimes they disappeared for hundreds of years. They would heed a call of ultimate danger, and suddenly, devastatingly, they would reappear.
Lords? Immortal divinities, almost! Not persons in any ordinary sense!
In the distant past, each Phoenix Lord had been a warrior who had followed the path of war so utterly and absolutely that there was no turning back, ever, to the persons they had been before. If one of them died, his or her soul passed into the spirit stone within their armour. The armour itself would call another candidate to rekindle the same identity, phoenix-like – just as the ancient legendary bird arose anew from the flames of its nest.
It had been a Phoenix Lady, a Storm of Silence, who had speared Meh’lindi to death at the very entrance to the hidden Black Library of eldar secrets.
The resurrected Meh’lindi was mentally locked in those last lethal moments of ultimate combat. She was reliving her last battle. This had occurred elsewhere in the webway, close to the Black Library. Here at this crossroads of time-twist, that previous climactic event dominated her consciousness. The manner of her death monopolized her reincarnated psyche. And she fought. Meh’lindi fought her final fight all over again, like a soul condemned to a hell of agonizing repetition. Of intensifying repetition. All three figures were Phoenix Lords. The terrible triple-vision possessed her as surely as a daemon might possess a victim. Such were the energies of the webway, concentrated here, weaving tyrannical illusion.
She would not be a victim! She would not!
HER FIST SMASHED into Jaq’s chest under his heart.
The impact should have killed any unprotected enemy. But the mesh armour under Jaq’s greatcoat absorbed the bullet-like force of her blow. Aghast, he staggered back, shock scouring his soul.
She seemed to realize instantly about the armour. She was upon him, her hands seeking grips. She paused briefly so that the mesh armour might relax its stiffness. He stared appalled into her spellbound unseeing eyes.
‘Meh’lindi...’ he gasped. Still she did not know him.<
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With implacable force, applied smoothly, she hoisted and levered.
JAQ’S ELBOW SNAPPED. Pain lanced through him as if the very marrow of his bones was lava, boiling, spurting. Momentarily he shrieked.
In his agony, she pivoted him across her hips. Jaq crashed to the floor of the webway. The collision stiffened his armour for several tormenting seconds.
He had fallen heavily. A pang in his own hip must be from the monocle lens, crushed by his fall.
Meh’lindi swung; she leapt. The heel of her foot connected with Lex’s wrist – just as he was bringing the boltgun to bear from behind his back. The gun sprang loose from his hand.
This Jaq saw through a mist of pain. The mist blurred Meh’lindi’s motions. Lex was fending her off with a mighty arm. Her clawing fingers tore at his ruined eye. She feinted. She was going to try to blind Lex entirely. Instead, she somersaulted – and she stumbled, although she recovered swiftly. Grimm sprawled upon his back. He was swearing, so he was still alive.
It could only be Meh’lindi’s unfamiliarity with her new body – its lack of perfect training – which had saved the little man. She wasn’t quite as co-ordinated as she expected to be. This perplexed and incensed her.
Lex flexed potent muscles. He half-turned his head as if to avert his good eye. He hesitated. Meh’lindi’s hostility was inexplicable – unless she was mad. Unless she had returned from the Sea of Souls deranged and demented! Unless a daemon was in her body. Yet she cried out again: ‘Me, Lindi!’
She adopted a feral crouch, her hands splaying out.
And now the three hooded rings on her fingers caught her attention. The miniature weapons. The toxic needle gun. The flamer. The laser. In exasperation, she howled. Not to have noticed straight away! Not to have realized! To have been so bound up in sheer body. In limbs and spine and nerves!
Meh’lindi stabbed a finger towards Lex. Whirling, she stabbed another in Grimm’s direction. Swinging, she jerked a final finger at Jaq.
INSTINCTIVELY JAQ INTERPOSED his uninjured arm. Energy exploded upon his hand, which no armour nor even a gauntlet sheathed.
The shock wave stiffened the mesh upon his arm, all the way to his shoulder. Briefly his arm remained raised, like some crooked staff which might display regalia. The regalia consisted of scorched stubs of carpal bone to which blackened ribbons of flesh and gristle clung. The energy packet hadn’t amputated his palm and his fingers. It had vaporized his hand.
Pain hesitated... before surging into tyrannical existence. Even though Jaq’s hand no longer existed it seemed that it was being roasted. Tears started from his eyes. A greater grief moaned within him, all-gnawing. Despair consumed him. All hope was crushed. Not only his own proud tragic hopes! Hope for humanity too. Hope that the Imperium might endure. Hope that salvation might emerge.
MEH’LINDI GLANCED AT the giant Phoenix Lord who still stood upright and alive. At the dwarf Phoenix Lord who was recovering himself. She spared not a flicker of attention for the enemy whom her digital laser had disabled. Meh’lindi glared at her own betraying hand.
The miniature needle-gun had failed. The tiny flamer had failed. Neither had been loaded.
How could this be, how could this be? Why was her body imperfect, inaccurate? Around her neck – not around her waist! – was her assassin’s sash. She plucked it into her fist.
These Phoenix Lords were playing a terrible game with her. It was as if she must fight with a hand fled behind her back. Oh, this she could have done! Or else died, attempting to! Something more fundamental was at fault.
What could it be? How could she have no knowledge that two of the digital weapons were useless? How could it be that her body did not perfectly obey her will? Oh, she was trapped in a nightmare! She must fight or flee. She was Callidus. She was cunning. How short a time had passed. Before the giant or the dwarf could react, Meh’lindi fled at random along a blue misty tunnel of the webway.
She raced, her long legs pumping. An intimation of fatigue registered. She forced herself to maintain her pace. Were Phoenix Lords rushing after her, armed with weapons of wizardry? Her gulping breaths were not as rich as they ought to be. Fireflies seemed to flicker in her vision. The blue tunnel forked. At random she ran to the right.
JAQ WAS RUINED, in body and in soul. An arm, shattered. A hand, seared away. Agony flayed him. Tragedy scarified him. He might almost be partaking of the Emperor’s own illuminated anguish.
The Emperor would fail. The Imperium would fail. Its death throes would be so appalling that honour and nobility and faith and proud perseverance would be mere drops of water in a cauldron of boiling blood. No new god-child could possibly awaken then. Humanity would succumb. Out of its screaming downfall there would vomit forth a great new power of evil unimaginable. Chaos would surge to engulf reality.
Despair gnawed Jaq like some ichneumon parasite devouring his innards. He had committed heresy and betrayal. Meh’lindi’s resurrection had been an abomination. If only she had destroyed him completely!
Lex had vowed to do so, if necessity demanded. The captain had recovered his boltgun. With the stump of his wrist, Jaq thrust himself up, snarling as he did so. He must not cause any more ghastly heretical harm.
He sagged upon his knees. He forced himself to withstand. He knelt, self-condemned. He riveted Lex with a glare of homicidal, psychotic hatred.
And he blasphemed. How he blasphemed.
‘May the puny human Emperor shrivel! May the light of your primarch wink out like a candle! Glory to Tzeentch! Chi’khami’tzann Tsunoi!’
Jaq was evoking the greater daemons of Tzeentch, in their own language. He must have become possessed anew. Jaq bared his teeth in a bestial snarl. This time daemonry owned him utterly – so it seemed.
Lex steadied the boltgun. With Rogal Dorn’s name upon his lips, he fired at Jaq’s head. RAAARK—
A VIOLENT BLOW upon the vault of a skull might leave it intact. If the bolt had only struck a glancing blow a compression-wave would have been transmitted around the skull to the rigid base, which might fracture.
An explosion within the skull was another matter. It tore the great jigsaw pieces of the skull apart. And even though Jaq’s head had not entirely disintegrated, what had been knitted together since childhood was separated now. The frontal plate was divorced from the sundered parietal plates of the cranium, and those in turn from the occipital plate at the rear. Liquified pulp of brain had gushed out of its broken container.
GRIMM DID TRY to wrench enough of the commissar’s greatcoat loose so as to hide the sight. He quit. Lex had arisen from prayer. Bitterly Grimm exclaimed, ‘I didn’t think that a daemon could thrust its way through the walls of the webway!’
With his one intact eye, Lex scrutinized the corpse. Slowly he asked the little man, ‘What are you implying?’
Grimm babbled, ‘As I savvy it, the eldar don’t dare travel through the warp in ships the way we do – because they would attract daemons all too easily. That’s why they use the webway for travel. The webway acts as a banier to daemons. How did a daemon get into Jaq?’
‘Because of the unique nature of this crossroads!’
Grimm shook his head disbelievingly.
‘Because the daemon was still hiding inside him!’ declared Lex. ‘Ever since he exorcised me!’
‘Where would the daemon go to from here?’
‘I’m not responsible for the problems of daemons, abhuman!’
‘If there ever was a daemon—’
Lex clutched his boltgun as if it were the hand of a battle brother offering support. ‘Explain yourself!’
‘I think that Jaq despaired!’ cried Grimm. ‘He despaired utterly. Because of her!’ He jerked his head in the direction which Meh’lindi had taken. ‘It was insane to resurrect her. And she was insane.’
‘He despaired? Despite all vows?’
‘I know what despair is! I can recognize despair.’
Menacingly, Lex demanded: ‘How is that?’
Grimm sighed in grief. ‘I don’t want to say.’
‘You will say – or I will squeeze it out of you!’
Wretchedly Grimm confessed: ‘I swore to Rakel that she would live. That she wouldn’t be destroyed. I swore by my ancestors. I knew I was lying!’
‘What does that false oath signify to you?’
Dully, Grimm told him, ‘It’s as if you betray your primarch. A squat who perjures himself in this way will never sire any offspring. He’ll never become a living ancestor.’
Dread seemed to harrow the giant. ‘I have not... betrayed... my primarch,’ he insisted softly. ‘I have not... betrayed... my Chapter. Yet I have been led far astray. I must make amends. I must... redeem myself.’
The little man wrung his sturdy hairy hands. ‘Don’t do it by blinding your other eye! Don’t disable yourself!’
‘That would be blasphemy, you fool! We must return to Genost where those rebels rampage. We must find out all we can about their leader, Lucifer Princip. Surely my battle brothers will come to Genost on a crusade to purge the rebellion. In another year. Two years. Three. Space Wolves or Blood Angels or Ultramarines. It does not matter which.’
‘When I was trying to adjust Jaq’s coat... I felt in his pocket. The rune-lens is ruined.’
‘I can remember the route, abhuman! By Dorn, but it’s time to take that route, away from this place of failure!’
Grimm blew his nose in his hands. He wiped himself. He grimaced. Bleakly he said: ‘Back to Genost, eh? A pretty rainbow beckons fools onward constantly in hope of hidden gold. Just so does a black rainbow beckon us onward – towards death or madness!’
‘Nay,’ said Lex, ‘that is sacrilege. To succumb to despair is blasphemy.’