‘No. I merely came to check on its status. Take me to the grove.’
‘Come.’ Ramos turned and lumbered away. Fabius signalled for Savona and Saqqara to stay where they were, and followed. As he strode in the Noise Marine’s wake, the trees became more closely entwined, merging into a pale cathedral nave. They stretched upwards and bent towards one another, strangling the natural light and replacing it with a soft radiance. Wisps of pollen-light danced on the air, summoning distorted shadows. The wraithbone whispered in a familiar voice – or voices.
Fabius ignored them, for they were his own. They were his memories, his dreams, his forgotten desires, merging in a sibilant rustling. He looked up. Soft blisters full of murky serum clung to the branches above, and in each, a foetal shape floated. Strange fruit grew here, in the deepest grove of the garden.
‘Status,’ he asked softly.
Ramos followed his gaze. ‘They grow, as the garden grows. Some are restless, others sleep the sleep of the innocent.’
‘Good. That is as it should be.’ He ran his fingers over the closest tree. The tactile sensors built into his armour measured the flow of synaptic impulses passing through the wraithbone and into the slumbering foetuses. He felt a familiar itch at the base of his skull. The wraithbone he had implanted in his cerebrum was resonating with that around him, and the information stored in his cortical data-nodes was uploading to the grove.
He closed his eyes as the hum of voices grew louder and the itch became an ache and finally a stabbing pain. He cut the connection just before it became unbearable. It was best to regulate the flow of information. To drip-feed the as-yet-unformed minds, so that they might process it in their own ways.
‘These are different to the others,’ Ramos said.
‘Yes. A new breed for a new millennium.’
‘Will you haunt them, as you haunt the flesh you wear now?’
Fabius smiled. ‘No. No, when this flesh finally crumbles, I will crumble with it.’ He looked down at himself and smoothed a non-existent wrinkle in his coat. ‘My clones will stride forth unencumbered by my ghost. They will have my knowledge, but nothing else.’ He shrugged. ‘As inheritances go, they could do worse.’
‘You are dying,’ Ramos said, after a moment.
‘I am always dying.’
‘This is different. I can taste the death-song of your cells as they flare out one by one.’ Ramos looked at him. ‘Would you like to know what it sounds like? I can recreate it, if you wish.’ He lifted his hand, and Fabius saw an amplifier embedded in his palm. It throbbed, and a tinny sound, like the sigh of a small animal, rose from it.
‘No. My thanks, but no.’
Ramos closed his hand and lowered it. ‘I am correct, though. Your dying is different this time. There is an unusual weight to it.’
Fabius peered at him. ‘You are unusually perceptive, Ramos.’
Ramos gestured. ‘It is the garden. It teaches us, even as we teach it.’
‘So you have said before.’
‘So I will say again.’ Ramos tapped the side of his head. ‘I can hear the song of your soul in these trees, lieutenant commander. Why?’
Fabius was silent for a moment. ‘I am coming to the end of my story. Or at least this part of it. I have cheated death for many centuries, but now…’ He trailed off.
‘And when you are gone?’
‘I will continue. But it will not be me. Not as I am. And perhaps that is for the best.’ Fabius let out a slow breath. ‘I will not cast my shadow over my children’s future. I will not make the same mistakes again.’
‘I wondered why you had not moved against her.’
Fabius stiffened. ‘Who?’
‘Your pet. The Gland-child.’ Ramos’ bloodshot eyes narrowed shrewdly. ‘Once, you would have purged your treacherous creations root and branch. But now… you show mercy.’
‘Not mercy. Understanding.’ Fabius frowned. ‘Igori made her choice. And it was the only choice she could have made. I bear her no ill will for that.’
‘Your clones might.’
‘A possibility. As I said, she made her choice. And I have made mine.’
Ramos nodded approvingly. ‘As we have made ours. So long as this garden exists, you have our loyalty.’ He touched one of the trees, and cilia of wraithbone wrapped gently about his gauntlet.
Fabius looked at him in puzzlement. ‘As reassuring as I find that declaration, I am curious as to the wording. Do you know something I don’t?’
‘There are… whispers. Snatches of voices, speaking of things we do not understand. Like the sound of a storm brewing in the distance, but coming closer with every passing moment.’
‘And what do these whispers say?’
‘Listen for yourself.’ Ramos held out his hand, and a flurry of sound emerged from the mouth-like vox-grilles built into his vambrace. Most of it was gibberish – sound and fury, signifying nothing. But amidst the noise was something that might have been singing. Such a song as he had only heard once before, though he could not recall where.
‘What is it?’
Ramos’ eyes were alight with joy. ‘The ur-song. The Shattersong. Something sings it in the depths of time, in moments yet to come. Do you recognise the voice?’
Fabius shook his head. His mouth was suddenly dry and his hearts thudded in his chest. He felt something that might have been a prickle of fear at the base of his spine. ‘No,’ he whispered. ‘I do not know it.’
‘But you do, brother.’ Ramos leaned close. ‘For it is yours.’
Fabius turned away, stomach churning. He closed his eyes. ‘I am… going on a pilgrimage. Do you understand?’
‘Yes. This part of the song has been a long time coming.’ Ramos stepped back. ‘Is that why you came? To tell us goodbye?’
‘No. I require something from you.’
Ramos inclined his head. ‘We owe you much, Clonelord. More than we can repay in this lifetime. That is why we are content to stand beside you, even as the edge of the abyss crumbles beneath us.’ His amplifiers gave a soft whine. ‘The Kakophoni are at your service. Speak – and we shall act.’
Fabius looked at him. Ramos was not a friend – not exactly. Nor was he a servant. At best, they were fellow travellers. And yet, the Kakophoni were more than that. They were among his first creations, devised before Fulgrim had started down the crooked path that had led them all into damnation.
‘Half of your number is to join me on Belial IV. The others are to stay with Key and the garden. Protect it, if the worst should occur.’
‘You think that it might?’
‘I do not know. But I must act accordingly.’
Ramos made to reply but paused. ‘Something is coming.’
Fabius looked around. ‘What?’
‘Something is watching us. Can you feel it?’ Ramos flexed his hands, filling the air with distortion. ‘Witchery. It tastes of witchery.’
‘Well. This is an event for the ages.’
The voice filled the grove like sour thunder. Fabius spun, teeth bared. Ramos growled and lifted his hands. A hulking figure stood looking up at the trees, clad in the night-black Terminator armour that had become as much a symbol as the claw he wielded. Said claw shimmered slightly as he gestured with it.
‘Ezekyle,’ Fabius said.
‘Fabius,’ Abaddon replied. He turned. His face was much as Fabius remembered – bleached of colour and life. A waxen mask, stretched over some black shard of night.
‘How did you get a holo-projection all this way?’ Fabius said.
Abaddon’s mouth was an ugly line. ‘A dozen of my best witches are working very hard to ensure that we can have this talk. This place is quite well shielded from prying eyes.’
Fabius snorted. ‘Sorcery? Have you lost yourself to superstition then, Ezekyle?’
‘Is that what you
call it? Precise terminology was never among my skills.’
‘No. Your talents always ran to the bloodier end of the spectrum, as I recall.’ Fabius studied the sorcerous image of the man who’d nearly killed him.
‘The look on your face when I butchered that meat-puppet of yours is a memory I still cherish.’ He shook his head. ‘I was surprised when I received your gift. It was… unexpected, given all that has passed between us.’
‘Times change.’
‘We don’t.’ Abaddon looked at him. ‘That is our strength, and our weakness.’
‘More one than the other, I think.’
‘Perhaps.’ Abaddon was silent for a moment. The air seemed to curdle around him. The trees leaned away, and their whispers had fallen deathly silent. The grove seemed to be holding its breath. ‘Well?’ he said finally.
‘Well what?’
‘Aren’t you going to kneel?’
Fabius stared at him. ‘I do not beg. I will not kneel.’
‘No, I didn’t think you would,’ he replied. ‘I’d heard you’d become little more than a ghost haunting a selection of clone carcasses. I gave it little credence at the time, but looking at you now… well, it seems the rumours were true.’ He gestured with the claw. ‘This grove is a… cancer. I would be doing the universe a favour if I excised it – and you.’
‘But you won’t, will you?’
‘No.’
Fabius bit back a surge of anger as he met Abaddon’s cold gaze. He wanted nothing more than to smash Torment into the warmaster’s face, and disrupt that spiteful tranquillity once and for all. To pay him back in kind for all that he’d done. But he strangled his anger. Melusine had told him what he must do. And for the good of all that he had built, he would do it.
‘You are useful,’ Abaddon continued. ‘And I never throw away useful things without cause. Without your skills it is entirely likely that we would not have recovered from the Legion Wars. That I have an army is thanks in part to you.’ He gestured to the ground. ‘Kneel, Fabius, and I will help you.’
Fabius hesitated. ‘Does Skalagrim still live?’
‘Does it matter?’ Abaddon did not smile. ‘Kneel, Clonelord. Kneel, Manflayer.’
‘Where is Pleasure’s Pilgrim?’ Fabius asked, hoping to delay the moment for as long as possible. From the look on his face, Abaddon knew exactly what he was doing.
The warmaster shook his head. ‘If only you could see what the gods have in store for you, Fabius. It might even make a soul as black and as tough as yours quiver. It might be enough to make you listen…’
‘Don’t pretend you know anything about my fate, Ezekyle. Whatever it is that whispers to you in the night is no more a god than I am, and even less a seer.’
Abaddon was silent for a moment. ‘The gods speak to me, Fabius, whether you believe it or not. They tell me things. They promise me things. I ignore them, save when it suits me to listen.’ He looked at Fabius. ‘We are more alike than you think. And that is why I tell you this – do not accept whatever bargain they offer to you. Walk unflinching into the fires of your extermination, even as our brothers did at Isstvan. Choose freedom.’
Fabius stared at him. ‘And what of my children? What of my legacy?’
‘It will die with you,’ Abaddon said bluntly. ‘If the xenos don’t kill them, I will. But better death than whatever the gods have planned for you.’
‘Your consideration touches me.’
‘It is not consideration, Fabius, it is pity. I know your fate, and it is one you well deserve, though even I would not wish it on you.’ Abaddon gestured sharply. ‘But I know you and I know that you won’t listen. Surrender isn’t in you. You’re a survivor. When the galaxy burns you will be left sitting in the ashes, still playing the fool for the gods – or whatever comes after. So, I will tell you what you wish to know, because the gods have asked it of me and because you and they deserve each other.’
‘Enough prevarication, Ezekyle,’ Fabius said. ‘You have wasted enough of my time. Tell me what I want to know so that we can be done with this farce.’
Abaddon seemed to swell and a subtle change came over his features – as if something else were looking out through the other man’s eyes. Ezekyle Abaddon was not the man he had been, all those many centuries ago. He was not simply some barbarian warlord or scrambling would-be potentate.
Maybe he never had been.
‘What you seek is in the wilderness of the Eye,’ Abaddon said in a voice as deep as thunder. ‘Where even daemons fear to tread. Worlds of pristine madness – primal and hungry.’ He raised his talon and sketched a sigil on the air.
Fabius flinched back as the sigil leapt from the confines of the projection and shot towards him. He felt an impact somewhere above his eyes and cried out. Torment fell from his grasp and he sank to one knee, clutching at his head. Pain blazed through him, and for a moment he feared that his skull would burst.
In his mind’s eye, he saw a world, hanging in the void. A small world, as such things were judged. A speck among the stars.
Abaddon’s voice hammered at him. ‘You will find Pleasure’s Pilgrim there. He will lead you to Fulgrim’s bower.’
‘What? Who is…’
‘You knew him as Narvo Quin.’
Fabius forced his eyes open and met Abaddon’s pitiless, black gaze. ‘Impossible.’
Abaddon smiled, teeth sharp and dangerous.
‘This is the Eye of Terror, Fabius. Impossible is just a state of mind.’
Chapter Seventeen
Pilgrim
Beasts scattered as the gunship touched down, sending up a cloud of superheated snow. Butcher-Bird shrilled an electronic challenge and its autocannons thundered, pulping any creature too slow to vacate the landing zone. The air stank of ozone and blood as Fabius and the others descended the ramp. He looked down at one of the mangled corpses. Not a daemon, but an animal of some sort.
‘The lions of Caliban,’ Bellephus grunted. He gestured, and his men fanned out, taking up positions around the gunship.
Fabius glanced at him. ‘What?’
‘Caliban. I heard there were great beasts there, once upon a time. Warp-tainted monsters that had once been animals.’ Bellephus knelt and fished a fang from the gory mass.
Fabius grunted. Most daemon worlds didn’t have anything remotely resembling a natural cycle. Animals were often little more than aggressive figments, much like the lands they inhabited. But these seemed real enough, however twisted.
‘Not going to take samples?’ Savona asked.
‘I’m not here for samples.’
‘I still say Narvo Quin is dead,’ Bellephus said.
‘He did indeed die,’ Fabius said. ‘Then I brought him back. Even as I brought back Eidolon and a thousand others in the centuries since. Eidolon was the first. The prototype. With Quin, I refined the process.’
‘I hope he’s grateful,’ Savona said, studying the horizon.
‘The last we spoke, he was not.’
She laughed. ‘You make enemies the way a gambler incurs debts, old man.’
Fabius ignored her and strode across the pristine snows. Trees surrounded the landing zone – tall, dark pines. Their trunks bled black sap that stretched through the snow like veins. In the distance, tall peaks cut the pale clouds like fangs.
The planet was nothing but mountains and forests. The roots of the hills were set in a black sea full of dark ice floes that crashed and crunched, sending up a rumble like distant thunder. Scans had shown life of some sort in the sea, but Fabius had little interest in determining what kind. There were cities as well, or the ruins of such, floating above the tallest peaks, chained to the summits by great brass links. The chains were overgrown and verdant, each immense link sporting a small forest of its own.
Part of him longed to study the ruins, to see what sort of people might
once have called this place home. But he had more important matters to attend to. He walked a short distance from the gunship and activated his armour’s vox.
‘Narvo Quin,’ he called out. His vox-amplified voice boomed across the windswept peaks. ‘I know you are here, Quin. My ship detected your biometric signature in this area. Come out. I wish to speak as brothers.’
It was silent, save for the wind. Fabius waited impatiently, wondering if he’d made an error. Biometric readings could be faked, after all. He’d done it himself, more than once. Overhead, a flock of suns began their journey across the sky.
‘Fabius,’ Savona said, as she joined him. ‘There. Look.’
Something – someone – stood at the edge of the clearing. They started forward, moving warily across the snow.
‘Is it him?’ Savona asked.
Fabius nodded. ‘Yes, I’d know that build anywhere. And that face.’
The legionary was stocky and shorter than average. The Emperor’s Children tended to follow the Vitruvian pattern – tall and well proportioned. This one was built more like a gun turret. He wore no battleplate, only heavy furs that shimmered eerily in the strange light of the falling suns. But the power axe he clutched in one hand looked well cared for. The blade crackled with a pallid light as its wielder gestured.
‘You should leave.’
‘Is that any way to talk to an old comrade in arms?’ Fabius said, as he removed his helm. ‘Or maybe your isolation has caused your manners to degrade.’ Up-close, Narvo Quin looked much as Fabius recalled. Plain, rather than handsome, with a face like a puzzle made of scars, and eyes that were as flat and sharp as blades.
‘It is because we are old comrades that I give you the chance, Spider.’
‘Please refrain from using that epithet, Narvo. I do not care for it.’
‘And I do not care to be disturbed in my meditations. Why are you here?’
‘To talk.’
‘So talk.’
Manflayer - Josh Reynolds Page 26