The Crimson King

by Graham McNeill

  Lastly, Jambik Sosruko was Lady Veleda’s protector, an ochre-skinned giant clad in furs and twisted iron rings. A gene-stock migou from Nei Monggol, his dexterity and cognitive capacity had been augmented with a bulky synaptic crown, making him the very image of a savage king from ancient days.

  The staterooms of the Arethusa were spacious, but two Space Marines and an ogre made it small. The walls and ceiling were polished marble and chromed steel, shimmering with hololithic representations of industrial schematics. A gleaming ouslite table of veined black ran the length of the room like a toppled monolith.

  A cold space, but a functional one. A Mechanicum one.

  An escort of gold-armoured Thallaxi had met Nagasena and his retinue in one of the upper embarkation decks. The vaulted, industrial space was noisy and dense with groaning lifter rigs and maniples of battle-automata, standing like the entombed statues of the First Thearch of the Dragon Lands.

  The Thallaxi led them through a series of enamelled corridors stencilled in Lingua-technis to the upper staterooms where the masters of the Arethusa waited.

  A host of biologis thralls kept to the far wall of the stateroom. One stood conspicuously apart from Uexküll’s medicae detail – a slight figure draped in scarlet robes and fitted with a mask of whirring loupes. Glancing nervously at Promus, his fingers clacked and ratcheted like an aexactor’s counting machine.

  Magos Zygman Videns. Statistical Prognosticator.

  ‘Why are you here, Nagasena?’ said Promus, finally breaking the silence.

  ‘Always so direct, Dio,’ said Nagasena, adjusting the sword at his hip, a long, elegantly curved blade housed in a scabbard of lacquered wood, jade and mother-of-pearl. Its name was Shoujiki, which meant ‘honesty’ in a long-dead language.

  ‘These are direct times.’

  ‘Indeed they are,’ said Nagasena, gesturing to the fragrant coils of steam rising from the pot, ‘but not so direct as to absolve us of common courtesies.’

  Promus shook his head. ‘I have no time for your rituals.’

  Nagasena leaned forwards and when he spoke his tone was freighted with authority. ‘Then make time.’

  Promus and Uexküll understood from whence came that authority and Nagasena reached over to pour the tea. First into the cups before his hosts, then into his own and that of Lady Veleda. Uexküll would not drink, of course, but not to offer him refreshment would be an unforgivable breach of etiquette. Nagasena waited for Promus to lift his cup before taking a drink himself.

  ‘It is good,’ said Promus. ‘Very good.’

  ‘It should be,’ said Nagasena. ‘It is a blend synthesised by Lady Veleda from a fragment of the Kissa Yōjōki.’

  ‘I understood that text to be lost,’ said Promus.

  ‘It was long thought to have been burned in Narthan Dume’s Night of Unremembering, yes,’ agreed Nagasena.

  ‘How is it you obtained a copy?’ asked Uexküll.

  ‘Conservatory teams,’ said Lady Veleda in her broken Gothic. ‘Working on fringes of Boeotian war-theatre. Uncover partial copy before Yeselti finally exhaust Emperor’s patience.’

  She grinned at Promus and said, ‘Pages brought to Malcador before your kind take field. Lucky for us. Legions not kind to the past.’

  Promus grunted and replaced his cup on the tabletop. ‘You have nothing more vital to do than resurrecting lost teas?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Nagasena. ‘But sometimes the means to restore body and soul must be indulged. After Nikaea, you of all people should understand the concept of balance. A mind cannot focus on death all the time.’

  ‘Clearly you have not been keeping abreast of the campaigns waged by Horus and his fellow traitors,’ said Promus.

  ‘You are entirely wrong in that assumption,’ said Nagasena.

  ‘Is it news you bring?’ asked Uexküll. ‘Does the Emperor move against the Warmaster?’

  ‘He does,’ said Nagasena, unwilling to speak of the mission to the Vengeful Spirit and what it had cost.

  ‘But that is not why you are here,’ said Promus. ‘Is it?’

  ‘No. I require your assistance in another matter.’

  ‘What matter?’

  ‘The Sigillite requires us to travel to the orbital gaol of Kamiti Sona and interrogate three prisoners.’

  ‘Kamiti Sona?’ said Promus, a look of distaste crossing his pronounced features. ‘No. I think not.’

  Nagasena sighed and took a drink of his tea, an invigorating ryokucha, said to enhance the rejuvenating properties of the five vital organs. He used the pause to gather his thoughts and choose his next words carefully.

  ‘These are no ordinary prisoners,’ he said.

  ‘Legion?’ asked Promus.

  ‘Mortals, but ones of especial significance,’ said Nagasena.

  ‘Why do you require the Arethusa?’ asked Uexküll, the gibbet-harness hissing as he gestured to Antaka Cyvaan and Jambik Sosruko. ‘You have a ship and warriors of your own.’

  ‘The mechanistic nature of Arethusa’s fighting forces makes it a singularly suitable choice for this mission.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because the Sigillite believes we will not be the only ones seeking to learn what these prisoners know.’

  ‘Who else might be looking?’

  ‘Survivors of the Fifteenth Legion,’ said Nagasena.

  Promus grunted mirthlessly. ‘The Thousand Sons are dead. The Wolf King saw to that.’

  ‘Leman Russ was thorough, but it seems the Crimson King escaped his final judgement.’

  ‘How could you possibly know that?’ demanded Promus.

  ‘Malcador assures me the information comes from an unimpeachable source,’ said Nagasena, who had asked that selfsame question and received a similarly nebulous answer.

  ‘An unimpeachable source? That is all you will give us?’

  ‘It is all I know,’ said Nagasena.

  ‘Malcador and his secrets will be the death of us all,’ said Promus, shaking his head. ‘Very well, Yasu, tell me more of these prisoners. Who are they exactly?’

  ‘I am given to understand they were once remembrancers,’ said Nagasena. ‘Their vessel was taken as it fled Prospero’s destruction.’

  ‘If they were fleeing Prospero then they are servants of the Crimson King,’ snapped Promus. ‘What do you think they know?’

  ‘I do not know for certain, something relating to the nature of Primarch Magnus would be my guess,’ said Nagasena. ‘That the sons of the Crimson King desire this too is surely reason to reach these prisoners first, yes?’

  Magos Uexküll leaned forwards. ‘Malcador intends to finish what the Wolf King began.’

  ‘You may be right,’ said Nagasena.

  ‘Then you will need more than cybernetic warriors,’ said Promus, standing and leaning with his fists pressed down on the table. ‘Men of iron whose courage is forged upon the anvil will not be enough.’

  Nagasena nodded. ‘That is why I brought men of ice.’

  Eight

  The Orrery

  Kamiti Sona

  Equivalent exchange

  Pain was a warrior’s boon companion, the inevitable consequence of a violent life. Amon had tasted pain before, had known the agony of flesh torn by claw and blade, fire and shot. But the pain of his body rebuilding itself from the inside was a new and unwelcome sensation.

  Hathor Maat had promised he would feel no pain, but Hathor Maat lied.

  Amon could feel every splintered fragment and grinding motion of bone within his spine as the Pavoni regrew his shattered skeletal architecture. No chemical or psychic balm could dull the searing fire within him, a white-hot rod of iron rammed from the base of his neck to his pelvis.

  Tension wracked his body, pain crackling around regrown nerves like an electric current. He told himself pain was good, that
pain was his body waking up to the fact it could feel.

  He no longer thought of the Pavoni adepts as healers, but excruciators. They trailed his golden support throne like sycophants as he willed it from his Stormbird.

  Febrile aether winds circled the Obsidian Tower, chattering with machinations as the gunship leapt back into the air. The summit of the primarch’s tower was no longer an enflamed spike but a flattened disc of glossy black stone, as though a scything blade had hacked away its spire with a single blow. The revealed surface was cut with intersecting lines and sigils Amon did not recognise – mystic arrangements that sent involuntary muscular spasms around his ruined body.

  Magnus was waiting for him, kneeling with his back to him and clad in the robes of a Magister Templi of the Fellowships.

  ‘My lord,’ said Amon.

  Magnus rose to his full height and turned towards him.

  The distracted air the primarch had affected in Amon’s pyramid was entirely absent. This was the primarch as Amon had known and loved him in his prime. This was the Magnus who had conquered the mountain of Aghoru, who had stood before the Emperor of Mankind with honour at Nikaea.

  The urge to kneel was overwhelming, and Amon grunted in pain as his broken body tried to obey that ingrained imperative.

  ‘My son, my loyal equerry,’ said Magnus, coming forwards to lay a hand on Amon’s shoulder. ‘My friend.’

  ‘My lord,’ said Amon.

  ‘We begin anew today,’ said Magnus, moving to the cardinal points of the tower. As he moved from point to point, Amon began to see the underlying form of the rapture woven into the fabric of the tower. Its scope was breathtaking.

  ‘What are we beginning?’ said Amon, his support throne sliding through the air towards the centre of the tower.

  ‘You were right,’ said Magnus, balletic as he moved between each runic sigil, careful not to disturb the geomantic significance of their relationships to one another. ‘I cannot go on like this. I didn’t see it. Too caught up in the notion of preservation at any cost. But now I see what must be done.’

  Power was building in the tower, spreading upwards and flowing through every living soul within it. Amon could feel its immaterial stone trembling with aetheric resonances that set his teeth on edge. Spikes of pain shot up his back as the speed of the boneweaving within his spine increased.

  Seersight flickered at the edge of his vision, ghost images of futures unwritten: a city of black glass where a soul went to war with itself, a mantle unlooked for and a purpose forged in death, the endless horizon of a world-spanning ocean that made him ache with yearning…

  Though it pained him to turn from such sights after so long spent in darkness, he quelled the visions. Now demanded his attention. Now was where the future would be forged.

  ‘What is happening?’ he asked.

  ‘It is the power of new beginnings,’ said Magnus. ‘Potential churning in the aether as it seeks to be made real.’

  ‘What are we beginning?’ said Amon once again.

  ‘How long has it been since we flew the Great Ocean together, my friend?’

  ‘Not since before the Wolves murdered Prospero.’

  ‘Too long, Amon, too long,’ said Magnus, animated with manic energy at the prospect of whatever plan he had in mind yet stubbornly refused to divulge. ‘We once bestrode the stars like gods, you and I, remember? We were wanderers in space and time, brother explorers of the farthest shores. We beheld the births of galaxies and watched the dancers at the end of time gutter and die. We will do so again, my son – I have seen it.’

  The primarch’s energy was infectious, and Amon felt his heart quicken at the prospect of flying the Great Ocean with his father, unbound from this frail and decaying prison of ruined meat and bone.

  ‘Where do we fly?’ said Amon, rising through the enumerations, ready to loose his subtle body from his corporeal flesh.

  Magnus returned to Amon’s side and knelt before him.

  ‘Lorgar was right,’ he said. ‘You were right. To rebuild the lore of Prospero will kill me. It is killing me. But I believe there is another way.’

  ‘What other way?’

  ‘One you and I will create together,’ said Magnus, stepping back towards the centre of his mystical convergence. ‘At a place I will show you deep in the Great Ocean.’

  Amon blinked as he saw hundreds of figures surrounding them. Standing around the tower’s circumference were the scribes he had last seen in the recreation of the Hall of Amun-Re, the least of his father’s splintered soul-shards.

  Some burned brightly, others guttered like candle stubs. As one, they walked towards the centre of the tower and the whole from which they had been split. Some came with sure and confident strides, others with the limping gait of cripples.

  No longer were they hooded, and Amon felt his certainty falter at the sight of them. Every aspect of Magnus’ soul was exposed: his greatness, his spite, his nobility and his hubris. From the venal to the virtuous, the savage to the enlightened, no dark corner of his being remained unveiled.

  ‘Now you see me for who I truly am,’ said Magnus.

  Amon wanted to look away, to preserve the perfect ideal of the Crimson King, for what son ever desired to learn his father was less than the god he had dreamed?

  ‘I can no longer be riven,’ said Magnus, as the scribes closed the noose on him. ‘I can no longer deny the truth of my mortality. Ahriman will succeed and I will be one, or he will fail and I shall be nothing.’

  The first soul-shard reached Magnus and stepped into him, became part of him once again. The primarch threw back his head as, one by one, each of the star-bright shards walked into him. With every addition, Magnus grew taller, became more vital, more real.

  Piece by piece the Crimson King began his renewal.

  Soon, those fragments of his soul that had been swept to the Planet of the Sorcerers were brought within, and now Magnus stood as a warrior-god and scholar king, resplendent in battleplate of crimson and furs of dappled ermine. His skin shone with vitality, and but for the nimbus of pellucid light shimmering over his skin and a telling quality of dangerously vulnerable incompleteness, Amon would have sworn that the Magnus of old stood before him.

  ‘My lord,’ he said, unashamed tears coursing down his cheeks. ‘What do you require of me?’

  Magnus knelt before Amon and took his paralysed hands.

  ‘We will build the greatest library ever known, greater than anything conceived by Ashurbanipal or Ptolemy Soter. One unconfined by walls of stone or restrictive Euclidean geometries. Together we will craft a legacy to eclipse even mythic Akasha in its ambition. Will you help me build it?’

  ‘Yes,’ wept Amon. ‘I will.’

  ‘Then fly with me, my son,’ said Magnus, pouring his power into Amon. ‘And together we will craft the Orrery!’

  Bones creaked and sinews strained. New nerves burst into life and Amon threw his head back with a howl of agony.

  His subtle body lifted free, surging into the sky.

  And together they soared, father and son, their souls unbound and joyous as the Great Ocean opened up to them.

  Kamiti Sona.

  Promus had heard tales of it. Few among the Librarius had not. The truth or otherwise of its existence had never been openly acknowledged by the Silent Sisterhood, like a guilty secret between lovers, yet here they were approaching it. A psykana gaol, its whereabouts was known only to the highest ranked of the Sisterhood and the Emperor Himself. Its horrors went unrecorded and its inmates were gladly forgotten.

  Circling at the farthest extent of a backwater system with no name, it orbited a dying star once every two hundred and forty-three years. Even with encrypted coordinates provided by a self-erasing flesh-thrall branded with the mark of the White Talon cadre, they almost missed it.

  The Arethusa hung silent in the void alon
gside the Doramaar. Neither ship had been granted permission to dock with the facility, which had angered Promus until he saw Kamiti Sona through his Stormbird’s canopy.

  Almost no light illuminated the far reaches of the system, and at first he thought the prison had been constructed upon the remnants of a titanic asteroid. But as the distance between the Stormbird and prison shrank, Promus saw no natural forces of gravity, time or pressure had created this place.

  Kamiti Sona was city-sized debris from a cataclysmic explosion in an earlier epoch – an explosion that had set it adrift in the stars until Imperial might yoked and stabilised its orbit.

  Extrapolating the curvature of its upper surfaces, Promus guessed it had once been part of an impossibly vast sphere, a void station the size of a small moon. Its gnarled surfaces were a barely visible mix of black ice, geometric rock and angular steel. Metres of permafrost coated its upper surface, from which rose ruined spires of sepulchral towers and funerary structures of subtly inhuman dimensions.

  The corpse of something wrought by alien minds.

  Frosted spars of dark metal jutted from its broken flanks and fronds of drifting steelwork trailed from the base of the disembowelled structure.

  More than just a bleak place, it was a dead one too.

  Promus could read nothing from Kamiti Sona. No minds, no life, no sense that anything but frozen emptiness might be found within. Not unexpected for a gaol of the Silent Sisterhood, but still unsettling and discomfiting for a psyker.

  Potent wards were at work, null-arrays and blanking fields to keep high-psy-function prisoners contained. Prisoners presumably deemed too dangerous or too impossible to execute.

  Promus had no wish to set foot on Kamiti Sona, but the orders signed by Malcador bore the highest seal of authority.

  ‘Who are these prisoners? What do they know?’ he whispered, looking through the frosted glass on the canopy’s side.