‘By your word.’
The Thunderhawk shuddered as it graced the landing platform.
‘I hear something,’ Cyrene said. She stood in the gunship’s loading bay, flanked by Xaphen and Torgal.
‘It’s the engines cycling down,’ said Torgal, knowing full well it wasn’t. He’d seen the view from the cockpit window as they came in on approach, and like the other Astartes, his enhanced hearing could clearly differentiate between engine whine-down and the sounds outside the hull.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No, it’s voices. I can hear voices.’
Argel Tal stood ahead of them, ready to hit the door release and lower the gang ramp. Malnor came from the cockpit, thudding his way down the crew ladder. He saluted Argel Tal as he took up position behind the Monarchian.
‘You might be disoriented, Cyrene.’ Argel Tal’s vox-voice almost made the words a threat. ‘Do not fear, you will be between the four of us at all times. Malnor behind, Torgal to the left, Xaphen to the right. I will lead the way. It is only a short journey to the monastic spire where you will be staying.’
‘What’s happening?’ she asked. All four warriors could hear her heart beating faster now, a wet drum behind her ribcage. ‘What’s going on?’
‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ said Xaphen. They were the last words he spoke before donning his own helm. ‘We will be with you.’
‘But–’
‘You will be fine,’ Argel Tal said, and thumped the door release.
Sunlight flooded into the loading bay. As did thousands of cheering voices.
‘It’s going to be a long day,’ said Torgal.
Torgal’s prediction proved correct.
Cyrene was shaken by the day’s events, no doubt about it, but the Astartes believed she’d held up well. Colchis was a world of peace and law, and the City of Grey Flowers respected its holy leaders above all. On more barbarous worlds, the Monarchian refugees might have been besieged by adoring crowds in celebrations that bordered on riots, but here they were cheered from the side of roads, with the petals of moon lilies cast onto the ground before them.
Upon first leaving the gunship, Cyrene had lifted a hand to her mouth, almost staggered by the wall of sound that rose to meet her. Xaphen lightly rested his gauntlet on her shoulder in reassurance. She’d heard Argel Tal, a few steps ahead of her, swearing in a language she didn’t understand.
And then they were walking.
In the bellicose good cheer, she lost the second of her senses. After growing used to perceiving the world around her by sound, to have everything washed away in the crowd’s noise was a frightening loss. Several times she reached a hand out, her fingertips brushing the cold metal of Argel Tal’s back-mounted power pack.
‘Are they near?’ she asked. The crowd sounded close, so very close.
‘They won’t touch you.’ She thought it was Torgal’s voice, but through the helm filters, she couldn’t be sure. ‘We are between you and the crowd, little mistress.’
Definitely Torgal. Only he called her that.
‘Will they not touch your armour?’ she asked. ‘For good luck?’
‘No. It’s against tradition.’ She was certain that was Xaphen, but he said nothing more.
The crowd continued to chant. Sometimes, her name. Sometimes, her title.
‘How many are there?’ asked Cyrene, her voice small.
‘Thousands,’ one of the Word Bearers said. In the clash of noise, it was difficult to tell where their voices were coming from.
‘We’re almost there.’ That was definitely Argel Tal. She recognised his accent, despite the helm.
The captain couldn’t entirely swallow his unease. It lingered, coppery and unwelcome, on the underside of his tongue. Target locks flitted from peasant to peasant as he scanned the crowd. Row upon row of celebrants, lining the street. So much for a meditative homecoming.
‘Sir,’ Malnor voxed. ‘Oath papers?’
‘Permission granted.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Malnor broke ranks, walking towards the crowd. The closest citizens knelt as he approached, and averted their eyes. Without ceremony, though with obvious care, the sergeant untied the parchment scroll bound to his right pauldron. He rolled it up into a scroll, and offered it to one of the kneeling peasants. An old man took it in hands that trembled. Whether they shook with emotion or palsy wasn’t clear, but the silver wetness in his eyes was testament to his devotion.
‘Thank you, great lord,’ the elder said, and pressed the gift to his forehead in thanks.
Malnor had another oath paper bound to the shin of his armour. He removed this next, and offered it to a woman who quietly wept.
‘Bless you,’ she whispered, and touched the scroll to her forehead, just as the old man had done.
‘From the fires of righteousness,’ Malnor intoned, ‘unto the blood of purity. We bring the Word of Lorgar.’
‘By your word,’ the nearby peasants chorused.
Malnor nodded his helmed head in acknowledgement, and walked back to join his brothers.
‘What happened?’ Cyrene asked. ‘Why did we stop?’
‘It’s considered a blessing to be offered the oath papers from our armour,’ said Argel Tal. A few minutes later, Argel Tal paused the march again to give one of his parchments to a young mother holding a baby. She pressed the scroll to her infant’s forehead, then her own.
‘What is your name, warrior?’ she asked, needing to crane her neck to look up at him.
‘Argel Tal.’
‘Argel Tal,’ she repeated. ‘My son will carry that name from this day forward.’
Insofar as it was possible for a walking suit of battle armour to look humble, the captain did so now. ‘I’m honoured,’ he said, and added ‘Be well,’ before rejoining the march.
Torgal glanced down at the frail figure of Cyrene. ‘Would you like my oath scroll, little mistress?’ he offered.
‘I don’t read very much anymore,’ she smiled, bright and sincere. ‘But thank you, Torgal.’
After the short march through streets she couldn’t see, Cyrene had spent the rest of the day in one of the Covenant’s temples. Argel Tal and his officers remained with her as she was interviewed and questioned by overeager priests. Instead of being given a seat, she was guided to recline on a long couch, made almost princely by too many cushions. It had the opposite effect of the intended one, leaving her shuffling to get comfortable no matter how she reclined. In the end, she just sat up straight, treating it like a chair.
‘What was the last thing you saw?’ one priest asked.
‘Describe the fire that rained from the sky,’ pressed another.
‘Describe the city’s towers falling.’
As the questions went on, she wondered just how many inquisitors were sat before her. The room was cold, and the faint echo when people spoke suggested a large chamber. A background hum pervaded everything, a thrum that set her teeth on edge – it was one thing to recognise the active buzz of Astartes armour, but another entirely to get used to it.
‘Do you hate the Emperor?’ one of the priests asked.
‘What happened in the months after the city fell?’ asked another.
‘Did you kill any of your abusers?’
‘How did you escape?’
‘Would you serve the Covenant as a high priestess?’
‘Why did you refuse the Legion’s offer of new eyes?’
The answer to this last question intrigued her interrogators a great deal. Cyrene touched her closed eyes as she replied.
‘On my world, there is a belief that the eyes were windows to the soul.’
They answered her words with muttering unintended for her ears. ‘How quaint,’ one of them replied. ‘Do you fear your soul would quit your body through hollow eye sockets? Is that it?’
‘No,’ said Cyrene. ‘Not that.’
‘Please enlighten us, Blessed Lady.’
She shifted in discomfort yet again, and st
ill blushed each time they used the title. ‘It was said that those who wore false eyes would never move beyond this life to paradise beyond. Our mortis-priests always preached that they could see the trapped souls of the lost and the damned in the false eyes of servitors.’
There was silence, for a time.
‘And you believe,’ one of the priests said, ‘that your spirit would be sealed within your corpse if you surrendered your natural eyes?’
She shivered to hear it put like that. ‘I don’t know what I believe. But I will wait until they heal. There’s still a chance they might.’
‘Enough,’ a voice boomed, edged by vox-crackle. ‘You are making her uncomfortable, and I have given my word to the Urizen that she will be taken to the Spire Temple at midnight.’
‘But there’s still time for–’
‘With respect: be silent, priest,’ Argel Tal stepped closer to her, and she felt her gums itching at the drone of his armour. ‘Come, Cyrene. The primarch awaits.’
‘May the Blessed Lady return tomorrow?’ one priest piped up as they were leaving.
None of the Astartes answered.
Once outside, another crowd was waiting for her. She smiled in the direction of the noise, and offered the occasional wave, feeling her face burn with self-conscious doubt. First and foremost in her mind was the effort to keep her discomfort from showing. There would be no getting used to this. She knew she’d hate it until it either stopped of its own accord, or they left Colchis behind.
‘We didn’t have to leave,’ she said. ‘I could have answered more questions. Was I supposed to?’
Over the din of the crowd, she heard Argel Tal reply.
‘My apologies for using you as an excuse to leave,’ he said, ‘but it was too pointless to endure any longer. Questions that led nowhere, or were already answered in the Legion’s reports. Tedious bureaucracy, propagated by self-important men.’
‘Is that not blasphemy? Defying the will of the Covenant?’
‘No,’ said the captain. ‘It was a tactical retreat in the face of overwhelming boredom.’
She smiled at that, as the Word Bearers led her on.
Less than three minutes later, as Cyrene was drawing breath to comment on the warmth of the desert night’s wind, there was a crashing sound from above, the crash of a hundred windows smashing at once.
What she couldn’t see was all four of her warrior guides standing utterly still, staring up at the Spire Temple – that twisting tower of tanned stone, central in the city, taller than all else.
Around her, the crowd’s cheers soured into whispers and weeping. Two of the Astartes, she didn’t know which, began to chant prayers in monotone vox-voices, benedictions to the primarch.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
‘Move,’ Xaphen ordered. One of them gripped her elbow and forced her into a run. Their armour joints snarled with the change of pace.
‘What’s going on?’ she tried again. ‘What was that noise? An explosion?’
‘The primarch’s observatory on top of the central spire,’ he said. ‘Something is wrong.’
TEN
The Right to Lead a Legion
Empyrean
Misery
An hour before, Lorgar was leaning on the balcony’s railing, looking out over the city. The Spire Temple of the Covenant offered an unparalleled view of Vharadesh, and the primarch inhaled the scent of spice, flowers and sand as he watched the sun setting behind the horizon.
Magnus stood alongside him, still clad in the coat of black mail, his coppery skin burnished by occasional sweat trickles. Of the two brothers, Magnus was taller, and even in the years before losing his eye, he’d scarcely resembled their Imperial father. Lorgar was the image of the Emperor in an unknowable younger life – an immortal at thirty.
‘You have done great things here,’ Magnus said, also staring over the vista of Vharadesh. The spiralling towers, bedecked in sloping walkways, like twisted horns... The sea of red-walled homes... The great parks of moon lilies growing in unforgiving soil, ready to be spread over roads and balconies across the city...
‘I have seen Tizca,’ Lorgar’s smile was sincere, ‘and I am always honoured you can leave your City of Light, yet still praise my people’s work here.’
Magnus chuckled, avalanche-low. ‘To think such beauty could rise from riverside sand and bricks of compacted mud. The City of Grey Flowers is a haven for me, Lorgar. You have melded technology and antiquity with consummate skill. It puts me in mind of those first cities ever raised by mankind, in the deserts they were forced to call home.’
Lorgar laughed, shaking his head. ‘I’ve seen no such images in scrolls, brother.’
‘Nor have I,’ the one-eyed king smiled. ‘But in dreams. Meditations. In traversing the waves and depths of the Great Ocean.’
Lorgar’s smile fell a notch. Where his brothers were concerned, Magnus was highest in his affections, not only because he was the first of the family Lorgar had met, but because he was one of the few the Word Bearers lord could relate to. The others were, by varying degrees, feral simpletons, cold-hearted instruments of warfare, or vainglorious warlords.
Except for Horus, of course. It was impossible to hate Horus.
He loved Magnus as one of the few he could speak with, but he never believed himself his brother’s equal. Magnus’s psychic gifts were unrivalled – they’d often spoken of the things Magnus witnessed in his spiritual travels through the infinite. The past. The future. The hearts and minds of men.
‘Cairus,’ Magnus said, his voice softer now. ‘Alixandron. Babalun, most of all, for it possessed a great garden of hanging flowers akin to the one your city wears like a crown of silver blooms.’
Lorgar felt warmed by the image. The beauties of the past, rising again through human inspiration.
‘As I’ve told you before,’ he said, ‘it’s not my city. I had a hand in it, but I am not solely responsible for the wonders we see here.’
‘Always, this modesty.’ Magnus’s tone had the slightest edge of disapproval, perhaps hinting at a lecture soon to come. ‘You live your life for others, Lorgar. There is a line when selflessness becomes unhealthy. If all you do is to raise others from ignorance, when is there time for you to learn more yourself? If all you seek is a greater purpose in existence, where is the joy in your own life? Look to the future, but cherish the present.’
He nodded to his brother’s words, watching the sun set. Even as it darkened in the horizon’s clutch, it was still bright enough to pain mortal eyes. Lorgar was untroubled by such human concerns.
‘Another parade,’ he said, watching a distant street filled with revellers.
‘You sound melancholic,’ Magnus observed. ‘Your people are pleased you have come home, brother. Doesn’t that lift your spirits?’
‘In truth, it does. But that’s not a parade in my honour. It is for the refugees of Monarchia. I asked for the seven of them to be brought here after sunset. Judging by the crowd’s size, I would guess that’s the parade in honour of the Blessed Lady.’
Magnus leaned his huge hands on the balcony railing, as if leaning forward would bring the distant street into sharper focus.
‘Why is one of your refugees treasured above the others?’
‘It is the way of things,’ Lorgar inclined his head in the parade’s direction. ‘She is the only female, and I am told she possesses great beauty. Couple that with the fact she was the only one to actually witness Monarchia’s destruction. The orbital barrage blinded her. Such sacrifice appeals to the masses.’
Magnus’s patrician features hardened. ‘I hear Kor Phaeron’s calculations in your voice, brother. I have cautioned you before on heeding his words too closely, and too often. Bitterness burns within him.’
Lorgar shook his head. ‘He worries he isn’t worthy, that’s all. But you’re wrong – these refugees are nothing to do with Kor Phaeron, though I confess the Covenant dearly hungers to capitalise on their popularity. I requested t
heir presence here tonight, for I wished to meet them. No more, no less.’
Magnus was appeased. Silence stretched out between them. As with all close brothers, it was a comfortable quiet, as meaningful and worthy as the words they shared.
Only one matter remained raw.
‘How did it come to this?’ Magnus eventually asked. ‘I know of Colchis’s religious wars. I remember the day I arrived with Father, and you offered him a world devoted in worship. But we have fallen so far, and so fast. How did it come to this?’
Lorgar didn’t meet his brother’s eye. He continued to look down upon the city.
‘This whole world burned under a crusade I led almost two centuries ago. I dreamed of god’s arrival. I suffered hallucinations, visions, nightmares and trances. Night after night after night. Sometimes, I would wake at dawn to find blood running from my eyes and ears, and our father’s face burned into my mind. Of course, I was too young, too naive, to realise what I was. How could I know what psychic power boiled within me, seeking a release? I was not you, to know from birth how to control my sixth sense. I am not Russ, to be able to howl and have every wolf in the world howl with me. My powers always fired in fits and bursts, coming in feasts or famines. I was eight years old when I realised that some people had pleasant dreams instead of endless nightmares. Nothing could have shocked me more.’
Magnus remained silent. Despite all their talks, all their closeness, this was a tale he’d not heard from his brother’s lips before.
Lorgar closed his eyes and continued.
‘I waged a holy war in the name of a father who finally descended from above, saw the oceans of blood and tears shed in his name, and simply didn’t care. I wasted my youth hunched over scripture and religious codices, planning for the messiah’s coming, believing he would give meaning to all human life – meaning that thousands of human cultures are forever seeking. And I was wrong.’
‘The Emperor brought meaning,’ said Magnus. ‘Just not the meaning you hoped for.’
‘He brought as many questions as he did answers. Father is hollowed through, infested by secrets. I hate that about him. He is a creature incapable of trust.’
The First Heretic Page 13