by Dan Abnett
‘Dead suns,’ replied the Pontifex, rolling his eyes, unfocused. ‘I can smell them.’
‘She is here, Father.’
The Pontifex gurgled, and saliva popped at the corner of his mouth.
‘They have gills and webbed feet, but they play a sprightly jig!’ the Pontifex replied. He shook a little and chuckled to himself. ‘A sprightly jig.’
His face went grave. His eyes rolled and gazed at something behind us that was not there.
‘In the dark,’ he whispered. ‘Out there. In here.’
He looked at Hodi.
‘I have seen what the dark looks like when the light is on,’ he said. He reached up his left hand and clutched Hodi’s hand in it.
‘Don’t let them know it was me, Kleman,’ he hissed. ‘They keep notes. They whistle. Whistle. Like kettles. Wheeeeee! When the sun goes in, they caper about. They think I can’t see them, but I can.’
‘Yes, your holiness,’ said Hodi.
‘Wheeeeeeee!’
‘Is your name Kleman?’ I asked.
Hodi looked at me.
‘No,’ he said.
My voice had brought me to the Pontifex’s attention at last. His head wobbled as he tried to straighten it and focus on me.
‘Why is she taller than a mouse?’ he asked sharply, puzzled.
‘It… it is the Emperor’s will,’ said Hodi.
The Pontifex nodded.
‘Then… good,’ he said, satisfied. ‘Good. Can she be nothing or pass into nothing? Does she make a ripple when she drops into the pool? I… remember something else, but I forget what.’
‘We have made some preliminary examinations,’ said Hodi. ‘She is a blacksoul, we believe. A genetic carnate, perhaps of manipulated stock, but not an artificial. Not a simulation. The King knows his business.’
‘King ping ping ding,’ said the Pontifex. He was drooling on his silk chasuble.
‘We can begin the assay, if you like?’ Hodi suggested.
‘Pink worms in a heart that tries not to beat because you might understand what it taps out,’ the Pontifex said, patting his hands against the arms of his throne spasmodically. Each word was a huge effort to say, because he appeared to be trying to sing at the same time.
‘Confessor, the mediators,’ one of the priests coughed.
We looked around. Lamps had come on behind the screened wooden doors on the far side of the room, and three figures had entered the boxes, presumably from whatever room adjoined them on the other side of the wall. They were silhouettes against the mesh, humanoid shapes that gazed in at us but which we could not fully see.
I was quite sure that they were not human. Unless the lamps were causing some trick of light and shadow, they were simply far too big.
One of them spoke. The voice, as deep and cold as an ocean floor, came out through speakers built into the screened doors.
‘Displeasure is expressed,’ it said. ‘You have begun the consistory without us.’
‘Ding dong,’ sputtered the Pontifex. ‘Silly dilly dilly–’
He was growing agitated. His hands flapped and his head wobbled furiously. His eyes did not seem to be able to focus on anything. There was a sudden and foul scent that suggested he might have soiled himself. Two of the priests bustled forwards to inject something into his neck.
‘We have not begun,’ Hodi said, turning to face the screened doors. ‘We have simply assembled. The Pontifex has only just arrived and we were getting him settled. No business has been conducted, nor would it be conducted, without your presence.’
‘This small immature female is the one we have been summoned to examine?’ asked another, its voice even deeper than the first, if that were possible.
‘She is deserving of your attention,’ Hodi replied.
‘No,’ replied the first. ‘She is no blacksoul. Our measurements tell us that, even though she is limited. She is barely a blank, even. Your procurer has misled you.’
‘He should be executed,’ said the second.
‘I think a test is at least in order,’ said Hodi.
‘You waste our time and abuse our patience,’ said the third figure behind the screened doors.
‘Milk!’ the Pontifex suddenly cried out. ‘A thousand hundreds of silver eyes, all of them downcast! A word that means word.’
‘Must he be here?’ one of the shadows growled. ‘He is disruptive. His mind is addled. You test our tolerance fo–’
‘He can see,’ replied Hodi, cutting the deep voice short. ‘His mind is unfettered because he has been allowed to see, and his sight is all that guides us. If he was mad, or depraved, we would not hold him in any reverence, even within the arcane structures of the Ecclesiarchy. We do not tolerate him because he was once our noble lord. We worship him because he still is. He can see what we cannot. He is the greatest of us, and you should be ashamed that you do not appreciate his worth. Your master surely would have done. He would have coined for him a word all his own, to honour him.’
‘Do not presume–’ one of the shadows said.
‘Do not insult,’ Hodi replied. ‘You are here by our permission. You are here under our terms. You mediate only. Sometimes you forget yourselves.’
‘Test her then,’ said the first shadow. ‘Test her if you will. Prove that we are wrong. But she is a liar and a sham. This we already know.’
‘Indeed?’ asked Hodi.
‘She gave her name as Alizebeth Bequin,’ said the first shadow. ‘Alizebeth Bequin was a pariah untouchable who served the staff of the Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn. She was born on Bonaventure circa 210, and died on Durer in 386, over one hundred years ago.’
CHAPTER 25
Which concerns utterances
There was a pause. Hodi cleared his throat and said, ‘That is irrelevant. How many millions of individuals with that name are there in the Imperium?’
‘How many claim to be untouchables?’ asked the shadow.
‘We will conduct the assay,’ Hodi replied. The ecclesiarchs around us immediately began to prepare the room. Lecterns were moved and books put away. I saw Hodi catch one preacher by the sleeve as he went by and say, ‘Go and find Blackwards. Bring him to the foot of the staircase. Ask him what he has to say about this information. Ask him about provenance. Explain to him that the Church will take a dim view if he has used his emporium’s exceptional reputation to dupe us.’
The preacher nodded and hurried out. Hodi looked at me.
‘Do you have any comment to make?’ he asked.
‘Only that I know my own name,’ I replied.
Behind us, the Pontifex was becoming agitated. I heard him stammering. ‘Footsteps! Footsteps! One after another! Each one a century after the last! A slow walk! A slow walk into a dark place!’
‘He wants to speak to her,’ one of the ecclesiarchs said to Hodi. The confessor led me back to the Pontifex’s throne. The Pontifex was blinking frantically and swallowing hard, as if he had been dazzled by a bright light. His head lolled around, bunching the loose folds of his fat cheeks, and he looked at me. For the first time, he seemed to focus. For the first time he appeared to see me properly.
‘Daesumnor,’ he murmured sadly. ‘Daesumnor.’ He let out a little frail whine, a melancholy sound. ‘Alizebeth.’
‘Your holiness?’
‘You are condemned to… to walk in dark places. A long walk. They’re sorry for that.’
‘Where will I walk to?’
He didn’t show any signs of hearing me. His eyes rolled.
‘They think it’s an echo, just an echo of an old, vengeful spirit, but it’s not. It’s here. You’ll see. It is forever. It has endured. It’s as old as anything human can be, as old as the old man on the gold chair.’
I glanced at Hodi. His eyes, in the slits of his mask, betrayed worry.
‘I have seen your soul,’ the Pontifex whispered, dribbling again, his eyes bright. ‘It is no blacksoul. It is better and brighter. It is shining. I have seen it. Look! Look, there i
t is.’
Both Hodi and I turned to look where he pointed, then felt foolish.
‘We’re taxing him,’ Hodi told me.
‘Don’t!’ the Pontifex protested. ‘I have a list of things to tell her. Very important. Very very ferry cherry. Ooh! Tell him. Tell him this! Tell him Daesumnor hides behind the pictures, but that’s just a distraction.’
‘I don’t–’ I began.
‘He’ll know. Tell him about the crackle of the Eight. Tell him about that. Tell him that’s how to know where they’re inside. And tell him – Oooh, this is important too! – Tell him that the graels don’t matter. What matters is who commands the graels.’
‘Leave him, he’s getting tired,’ said Hodi.
‘Who should command them?’ I asked. I had an overwhelming sense that some terrible truth lay disguised behind his madness. He’d just used a word that I’d heard under very trying circumstances the night the Maze Undue fell: grael. I tried to prompt clarity from him by using some of the vocabulary I had heard in the last few hours.
‘Should the King command them?’ I asked. ‘Or the Eight?’
He shook his head so hard spittle flew and his cheeks wobbled. ‘The Eight are the Eight and who knows what they ate. They just do the bidding of the King. If the King commands them, I don’t know what we shall do with ourselves.’
‘Come away,’ said Hodi, dragging me back. ‘He will make himself ill.’
‘I want to–’
‘The assay must begin,’ Hodi snapped at me. ‘Do not be vexatious.’
‘Who is he?’ I called out to the Pontifex as I was led away. ‘Who is the he that I’m supposed to tell this to?’
Twitching in his throne, no longer looking at me, the Pontifex let out a long, hissing gurgle, like a release of steam under pressure. It sounded like a word. It sounded like, ‘Thorn!’
Hodi led me into the centre of the room, which had been cleared by the ecclesiarchs. A single brass lectern remained in position, facing the battered old altar down the length of the library chamber. Oddly, it reminded me of the shooting gallery in the drill of the Maze Undue.
‘Stand here,’ he said. I stood at the lectern, my back to the Pontifex’s throne. The strange screened doors and the shadows behind them were to my left. The ecclesiarchs formed a semi-circle behind me. I was not sure what they expected me to do. They made me wait while they fussed around. Some had data-slates and were making notes, others had produced measuring instruments and ticking, whirring cogitators of hand-held design. To my increasing consternation, junior servants of the basilica filed into the brass room carrying long metal shields. The shields were tall and oblong, like pavises or the riot shields sometimes carried by the city watch or the Arbites Magistratum. But these were made of copper, and had been baffled at the back with what looked like ballistic cloth. The servants erected the shields on metal floor stands in an arc in front of the ecclesiarchs, the shield fronts facing me.
‘What is that about?’ I asked Hodi. He did not reply.
Various lectionaries and breviaries were selected from the shelves around us, the caged doors being unlocked and opened for them to be reached. Hodi placed each work in turn on the lectern before me, indicated a passage, and told me to read.
I did as I was told.
Behind me, behind the shields, the ecclesiarchs in their ridiculous cone hats muttered and conferred, making marks upon their data-slates and measurements with their instruments. I heard murmurs of ambient temperatures, air pressure, and other almost meteorological aspects. Behind them, the Pontifex Urba sat in his throne, mewling like a restless child, and fidgeting with his hands.
To my right, the shadows lurked behind the mesh screens of the wooden doors.
Hodi stopped me a few lines into each passage, took the breviary away and replaced it with another. After perhaps twenty minutes of this, he seemed content, and had the servants put the books away in the caged shelves. The confessor went to confer with the ecclesiarchs behind the shields.
For the most part, I had not really understood what I had been reading. A few pieces of liturgy I knew, once the words of a famous canticle. Otherwise they seemed to have been obscure compositions of divinity. With two of the pieces, I did not even recognise the language, but just sounded them out phonetically.
Confessor Hodi returned to my side. He took hold of my chin with his hand and turned my head so he could look into my eyes. Then he pulled my mouth open so he could peer inside.
He let go.
‘Finished?’ I asked.
‘Any discomfort?’ he asked me.
‘Well, you pulling my face around wasn’t pleasant,’ I replied.
‘Any headaches? Increases in anxiety? Indigestion? Joint pain? Hot flushes? Stress?’
‘Stress?’ I asked him flatly. ‘Why in Terra’s name would I be experiencing any stress?’
‘She is too wilful,’ remarked one of the screened shadows. Its voice was as profound and lifeless as heat death, but I was past fear by then.
‘I don’t care a rat’s tail for your opinion,’ I said, looking directly at the screened panels. ‘You hide in the shadows. Nothing about you may be trusted.’
‘You do not want to behold us,’ said the second shadow.
‘Perhaps I do,’ I replied.
‘Shut up!’ Hodi snapped at me. ‘The mediators are– Don’t provoke them. Just don’t. Know your place.’
I shrugged. Hodi made a gesture, and a prayer drone hovered into place in front of us. Like the one I’d seen up in the basilica, it was fashioned from two mechanical cherubs holding a gilt-framed screen between them. They were made of copper and brass too. They muttered and ticked like aggravated insects as they hovered before me, holding the screen at eye level. Their tiny wings purred like miniature turbofans.
A portion of text appeared on the screen. It was not written in a language I knew, but it used characters I recognised. The screen flickered slightly, as if the projection unit was faulty or running slow.
‘Read that, please,’ Hodi said. This time he stepped back.
I began to read it out. It was weighty and difficult. Sounding the words phonetically was complex, and I wasn’t sure how well I was doing. It felt as though I was having to chew the words out of my mouth. I was pretty sure that whatever this prose was, it was stylistically florid and over-complex. It just seemed to be so freighted, as if meaning and import had been forced together to breaking point.
I kept reading, struggling with it, for a full three minutes. Then I heard a sound behind me. I stopped and turned in time to see one of the hooded ecclesiarchs rushing from the room, his hand clamped to his mouth. We heard him outside, retching and heaving, fluid spattering on the doorstep.
I frowned. Another of the ecclesiarchs had, at some point during my reading, been obliged to sit down on the floor behind the shields. He was breathing hard, his hands on his chest as though he was suffering heart palpitations. At least two others were leaning with their hands braced against the shield tops, also trying to recover their breath.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked.
Hodi looked at me. I could see a slight dark patch on his mask where his mouth was, as though moisture from his own laboured breathing had dampened it.
‘Do you feel quite well?’ he asked, his voice hoarse.
‘Yes, perfectly,’ I replied. ‘What just occurred?’
He ignored me and turned to his colleagues.
‘Composite your readings!’ he ordered. One of the ecclesiarchs started talking about ‘micro-changes’ and another of a ‘scale four temperature drop’. Another was reaching his hand up under his capirote. There was a bright stain on the white cloth of his mask. He had suffered a nose bleed.
‘I don’t understand,’ I said, but no one was listening to me. Then I noticed something. I stepped down from the lectern and walked the length of the crypt to the battered old altar. The prayer drone, wings buzzing, obediently followed me.
Hodi turned and saw me wa
lking towards the altar. He called out to me to come back, but I ignored him.
I knelt down and looked at the old relic. It had once been a very fine piece, an altarpiece of significant worth, beautifully decorated and inlaid. But age had abused it. It was battered and buckled, dented and scratched, as though it had been beaten with sledgehammers and struck with pickaxes. The surface was rutted and gouged, and the very form of it was misshapen. It was also discoloured and patched with scabs of rust.
What I had noticed from the vantage of the lectern was a large stain of verdigris on the right-hand side of the altar. I was sure it had not been there before. I wondered how it could have formed so rapidly. Close to, I noticed how what looked like ice crystals had formed along the top surface of the altarpiece.
‘Explain this!’ I called out.
‘Come back here!’ Hodi replied.
I reached up and grabbed the edge of the prayer drone’s screen, tilting it towards me. The wings of the cherubs beat noisily as they adjusted their hover.
I started to read again, slowly, a syllable at a time.
As I watched, with each syllable, the patch of verdigris grew larger. At one point, I stopped abruptly, and then restarted suddenly, and the growth matched the pace of my reading.
I stopped. I got up. I walked back towards Hodi, the prayer drone burbling lazily behind me. All the ecclesiarchs were looking at me.
‘What are you making me do?’ I asked. ‘What is happening here?’
‘Just do as we instruct you,’ replied the confessor.
‘What words are these?’ I demanded, pointing at the prayer drone. ‘What are they from?’
‘They are our words,’ said one of the shadows behind the screen.
‘They are words our lord wrote,’ said another.
‘Who is your lord?’ I asked.
‘You will not speak his name,’ said the third.
‘Then what is his book?’ I asked.
‘It is one book,’ said the first.
‘In many volumes,’ said the second.
‘Begun but never ending,’ said the third.
‘Take up your place here!’ Hodi snapped at me, pointing to the lectern.