by C. L. Werner
‘Then you must give the order for an astropathic distress call to be given,’ Yadav insisted.
Anger flared up in Murdan’s eyes. ‘No, we won’t. Lubentina has survived because of its faith in the Emperor and the protection of His Warmason. We will not cast aside our faith because of fear.’
‘It is not faithlessness to use every tool the God-Emperor has given us,’ Yadav said.
‘The subject isn’t open to debate,’ Murdan declared, cutting off the palatine’s argument.
Yadav bowed to the Cardinal-Governor. ‘I will pray that you find enlightenment,’ he said as he withdrew from Murdan’s presence.
The moment the gilded doors at the end of the corridor closed behind Yadav, Murdan waved the commander of his bodyguard to his side. ‘Keep a watch on him, Jayant,’ he said. ‘I am concerned that the palatine may do something reckless.’
Jayant nodded his understanding. ‘If he should try to go to the astropath and send the distress call on his own?’
Murdan’s gaze was as cold as ceramite when he answered the guard’s question. ‘If he sets so much as one foot upon the Jade Stair you will kill him.’
Very little of the obsidian floor was visible as Trishala descended towards the narthex. Clusters of petitioners were everywhere, milling about the chamber in dazed bands, their faces blank, their gaze confused. After fleeing their homes, after the turmoil of the Chastened Road and the other approaches to the cathedral, they seemed at a loss now that they’d reached the sanctuary they’d been seeking. Acolytes moved among them, trying to ease the worst of their fears and instil some manner of discipline. Members of the frateris militia did their best to direct the crowds by channelling them away from antechambers and other dead ends. Deacons and even higher members of the Ecclesiarchy led small groups in prayer or delivered quick sermons to comfort the refugees who stopped them at every step.
Uncomfortable memories rose up; the image of her parents wearing just such vacant expressions when they’d finally reached the security shelter. These weren’t petitioners or pilgrims now, they were just like the cowering masses in that shelter on Primorus. Displaced refugees retreating to whatever safety they could find. The difference here was that they had more than rockcrete and plasteel to guard them. They had the Order of the Sombre Vow.
They had Trishala.
She ignored the hope she saw on the faces of the refugees as they parted before her on the stairway. She gave no notice to the words of gratitude and adoration the crowds spoke to her. Trishala had no patience for emotionality. Let Kashibai think defending these people was some noble honour; the truth was they were a burden. They would complicate any defence of the cathedral a thousandfold. Even more if they kept clumping together in confused mobs and impeding the already sluggish and disordered flow of people coming in from the plaza.
Trishala marched across the narthex, making towards the gigantic doorway. There were a dozen Battle Sisters at the entrance. The pretence of an honour guard had been cast aside and all of them were arrayed in their black combat armour, boltguns at their sides. She could see Kashibai standing at one doorway, motioning to the crowds outside with gestures not unlike those of some road-prefect directing traffic. The Sisters had assumed the mundane chore after the frateris militia had proven incapable of restraining the masses. It seemed even Kashibai was out of her element. Her efforts were proving inefficient, with entire groups slipping around her.
Starting forwards to reprimand Kashibai for not taking a firmer hand in imposing order upon the refugees, Trishala froze in her steps. Something she’d caught out of the corner of her eye, a flash of skin that struck her with a feeling of wrongness. She spun around, thrusting her way through a crowd too slow to part for her. Ahead she saw the figure that had caught her attention, a little man in a heavy brown coat. He appeared unaware of her interest, making no effort to hurry away. His calm veneer, however, was too deliberate. While the people around him were at least making an effort to move out of Trishala’s way, the man in the brown coat gave her no notice at all.
Reaching out, Trishala caught hold of the man’s collar. Tugging on the garment she turned him around to face her. His features were heavy, even a bit dull in their expression. Nothing about that face bespoke a mutant taint, but as Trishala pulled on the coat the sleeve was drawn back. Once again she saw the flash of purplish skin that had caught her eye. It had a rubbery, poreless texture, more like the skin of a mollusc than anything human.
The exposed cultist didn’t waste time on protestations of innocence. Still with that dull look on his face, he drew a thick knife from under his coat and drove it towards Trishala’s belly.
The Sister Superior retained her hold on the hybrid’s other arm. The knife raked harmlessly against her armour while she twisted the prisoned limb around with her. There was a sickening pop as she forced it from its socket. The cultist crumpled forwards. A blow of her armoured fist against the back of his neck spilled him onto the floor, his malformed body twitching as his life ebbed away.
An awed silence had oppressed the refugees while Trishala swiftly dispatched the infiltrator, but now the narthex resounded with a raucous din of screams and cries. Such was the confusion of the moment, Trishala failed to discern that not all of those cries were of fear. Some of them were of fury.
Up on the stairway, a heavy-set labourer threw off his dust-slicker and ripped a fat-muzzled stub-pistol from his belt. A vicious grin split his face as he fired at Trishala, displaying teeth too sharp and numerous to belong to anything purely human. Across the hall other cultists were casting off their disguises to charge at her with a motley array of weaponry. Beneath the curiously angled pillar, a cultist in the robes of a pilgrim began blazing away with an autogun, indifferent to the refugees his shots ploughed through.
The bullets from the cultist on the stair spattered harmlessly from Trishala’s power armour. The shooter quickly realised his mistake, turning to flee up the stairs, climbing over the shivering bodies of frightened pilgrims. Before he could reach safety, she had her own pistol in her hand. Snapping off a burst, Trishala sent a shell exploding through the cultist’s back. The impact threw him over the side of the stairway and headlong to the obsidian floor below.
Trishala felt something slam against her side. Turning, she found herself holding the bleeding wreckage of a refugee who’d been struck by the autogun. Pushing the dying man aside she returned her attacker’s fire. While the cultist’s shots glanced off her armour, two shells from her pistol smashed into the false pilgrim and flung his body across the floor.
Other guns were barking out now. Kashibai and the Battle Sisters at the doors were firing at the cultists, cutting them down with controlled bursts. The flash of enemy guns illuminated the cultists in the dim light of the narthex, announcing their positions with every shot they fired. It was the masses of panicked refugees who forced the Sisters to restraint, thousands of terrified civilians scattering in every direction, screaming and shouting, seeking anywhere to hide from the violence that had abruptly exploded all around them. Despite their caution, it was impossible for every shot that left the bolters to strike an infiltrator as it sped across the narthex.
The exposed cultists were only one menace, however. Trishala raced across the hall to the doors. The panic inside the cathedral couldn’t be allowed to spread to those outside. Any instant they might stampede, trampling over each other in their maddened flight. The ones inside the narthex were starting to turn back to the doors, to escape the gun battle by retreating to the plaza.
‘Back!’ Trishala shouted, firing her bolt pistol into the ceiling. Her other hand drew the power sword from its scabbard, a crackling aura of light rippling about the blade as she swept it through the air. ‘Back!’ she roared. ‘You are subjects of the Imperium! Beneficiaries of the God-Emperor Himself! Comport yourselves as such, not like frightened animals!’
The combination of her wither
ing scorn and the imposing threat of her weapons had an immediate effect on the crowds. Trishala hadn’t calmed them. She’d shamed them.
‘You will control these people,’ Trishala hissed to Kashibai across a secured vox-channel. ‘I don’t care how pathetic, how pitiful they look. I don’t care how hurt or scared or tired they are. You will control them. From the first moment they step inside, we have to maintain order.’
Kashibai lowered her eyes, chastened by Trishala’s reprimand. ‘It will be done, Sister Superior.’
‘Be vigilant,’ Trishala warned, raising her voice, letting her words drift back to the crowds. ‘Look over everyone you let in. There may be more infiltrators among them.’
The admonition had the desired effect. She could hear the frightened murmurs passing among the refugees. They’d be policing themselves even more carefully than the Sisters at the door, looking for any hint that the man beside them might be something less than human. Such paranoia might not catch any of the cultists, but it might give them an incentive to change their plans about slipping into the cathedral.
Trishala lowered her voice again as she conferred with Kashibai over the vox. ‘Remain here. I’ll instruct the Ecclesiarchy to have some acolytes dispose of these bodies. Then I must arrange patrols to conduct a thorough search for any others that have got into the cathedral.’ She sheathed her sword and nodded at the nearest of the dead cultists.
‘We can’t assume these were the first enemy to slip inside,’ Trishala said. ‘But it is your duty to make certain they’re the last.’
Jayant kept at a discreet distance as he followed Palatine Yadav through the halls of the Sovereign Spire. After several hours, he’d just begun to think that Murdan was wrong about his suspicion of the priest. Yadav had spent some time down in the lower levels of the tower, conferring with the monks and confessors who were attending the large numbers of injured being brought into the government compound. Then the palatine had sequestered himself in one of the many chapels that were situated about the spire’s central hub. Jayant had spied on Yadav but it seemed to him the priest was meditating rather than plotting.
Now Jayant realised he’d been mistaken to think Yadav’s visit to the chapel was so innocent. The palatine had gone there to screw up his courage, resign himself to the course of action he’d decided upon. When he left the chapel Yadav took a circuitous, seemingly rambling route through the tower. Always the course took him higher, always it led him nearer to the Jade Stair and the Crystal Turret wherein the astropath Rakesh was sequestered.
The astropath was regarded as a revolting presence by the Cardinal-Governor’s staff and servants. The psychic mutant was useful, even essential to Vadok, but that didn’t make him less loathsome to pure humans. Very few servants lingered in the vicinity of the Crystal Turret or even the hallway leading to the Jade Stair. When Jayant followed Yadav into the corridor, there was only a single servant about, a young woman in the surcoat of a sanitation-vassal using a synth-fibre duster to brush dirt from the wainscoting that adorned the walls.
Jayant eased past the servant after giving her a look of such venomous intensity that she quickly turned away. She was smart enough to keep quiet, but too stupid to go away. He debated whether he should kill her now or wait until after he’d dealt with Yadav. Either way he wasn’t going to leave a witness around. The people of Lubentina would endure many things from their Cardinal-Governor, but even they were liable to get upset over the death of the palatine. Jayant didn’t intend to act unless it was certain he had to. There was just a chance that Yadav might still turn back.
That chance vanished when the palatine suddenly quickened his pace. Jayant cursed under his breath. He didn’t like to kill a priest. Sliding the vibro-knife secreted in his sleeve down into his hand, the guard started forwards to overcome Yadav before he could climb the stair.
Jayant started forwards, but he took only a few steps before all the strength drained out of him. There was a burning sensation spreading from his back and out through his chest. Awkwardly he reached a hand up behind his shoulders and tugged a slender needle of glass out of his skin. His eyes couldn’t quite focus on the thing as he held it to his face, but it seemed to him there was some odd smell to it.
The guard slumped onto his side. Jayant could see Yadav far off down the hall as the palatine started up the Jade Stair, but he was powerless to stop the priest. It was all he could do to draw breath into his lungs. Part of his brain was screaming at him that he was dying, but the rest of his awareness was too numb to care. He didn’t even react when the servant woman crouched down and pulled the needle from his grip. Dimly he wondered who she was and why she’d shot him.
The killer stared back at Jayant, favouring the dying man with a cold smile. Jayant thought she had too many teeth in her face. It was his last thought before he sank into the darkness.
Darkness evaporated as coruscating whorls of warp-light blazed into brilliance. The prismatic illumination pulsated from the sockets of gilded skulls soldered to titanium walls, as though drawing sustenance from the spirits of the vanquished dead.
The cold, deathly light revealed a space as macabre as the lamps themselves. Ghoulish talismans cut from the corpses of men, beasts and aliens dangled from cords of wire, chain and sinew. The horned scalp of a monster floated in a cauldron of blood, its essence maintained by the grisly runes etched into the sides of the vessel. A tapestry stitched together from the flayed skins of a dozen psykers stretched across one of the metal walls, every centimetre of the hideous hanging covered in bilious sigils of arcane potency. Upon a dais cut from a single immense gemstone, a chalice of ceramite rested, a cup hammered out of the armour of an infamous marauder whose very name was reckoned a blasphemy among those in the Imperium’s Ordo Hereticus who remembered it.
At the centre of the sinister chamber, poised in such manner that it stood at the very convergence of the blazing warp-light, was a morbid column of gold. Impressed up the front of the column was a shape, the body of a veritable giant. Jewels sparkled from the sculpted features of a cruelly handsome face, rings and circlets glittered from the arms folded across the figure’s broad chest, hands clasped about its shoulders. Tiny beads of bloodstone coursed down the sculpture’s breast, shifting about like crawling insects to create a succession of cabalistic symbols.
As the light fell upon the column, the crawling line of bloodstone became more agitated, the pattern of symbols they created changing faster and faster until at last the little beads winked out, consumed by their own frantic energy. Lustreless they fell from the golden column to clatter upon the plasteel floor.
An expectant silence brooded over the room. The wait wasn’t long. A tremendous agitation passed through the golden column. Like melting wax, the brilliant metal began to drip away, splashing to the floor in molten sheets. The image of the cruel giant didn’t vanish with the flowing gold, but instead stood exposed as a thing of flesh. The mighty chest expanded, a flicker of motion passed across the pale flesh of the face. Slowly the powerful hands relaxed their grip upon the broad shoulders.
Eyes colder than the warp-light that shone upon them snapped open. A grim smile lent a still more vicious quality to the cruel features. With the column melting away around him, the giant stepped away from his disintegrating sarcophagus.
Cornak advanced to the ceramite chalice. He dipped a finger into the cup, drawing from its depths a measure of ash, which he touched to each of his eyes. The sapphire hue of his pupils faded, retreating into a milky white. The limited vision of biology withdrew with the colour, supplanted by an ethereal telemetry that surpassed the frailties of flesh.
Cornak no longer gazed upon the macabre accoutrements of his sanctum or the walls of the ship that now housed them. His awareness had transcended such surroundings. The greater part of him had been drawn away, hurtling through the mysteries of the warp, projected into the presence of the Circle.
It wa
s no physical place, this realm in which the Circle conferred, but a shard of eternity itself, a fissure through which light and darkness merged to become nothingness. His senses were simultaneously beset by a blinding inundation of sights and a deafening thunder of sounds, while his mind shuddered from the perfect absence of all sight and sound. The paradox of infinity, which was at once everything and nothing. Even for a sorcerer of the Circle, it was an experience that threatened madness unless it was quickly restrained. Eldritch exercises, magical calculations fabricated by beings ancient before the first ancestors of man crawled from the slime of prehistoric seas, now became the focus of Cornak’s consciousness. He fixated upon the arcane passes, narrowing his awareness until it was distilled and restrained, funnelled towards a single moment and a single thought.
The shades of the other adepts of the Circle were all around him. There was nothing to see, nothing to hear, but they were there all the same. The connection that bound them together was such that it went beyond either flesh or spirit; through the nexus of the immaterium they’d melded themselves into something greater than their disparate parts. Individuality existed only as a facet, a component of the Circle, and when it was extinguished, that essence passed into the extant adepts, heightening their powers and faculties.
Future, past and present were all as one in this gathering place. Cornak saw scenes and images play across his mind. The scenes were always shifting, always in motion. They represented the experiences of the Circle, a record of what had happened, was happening, and what would happen. All events were in a state of flux, even the past wasn’t immutable, yet to the discerning mind there were patterns. From the confusion, portents and prophecies could be sifted. Clues of tomorrow and yesterday.
Cornak found a pattern amidst the bedlam of eternity. It was always difficult to distinguish the pattern that applied to a lone facet of the Circle, such was the mixture of their beings as they delved into the nexus. Here, however, he’d found a key. It was the name of a world.