Divination - John French

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘There is always a choice.’

  ‘Information or execution?’

  Covenant shook his head.

  ‘Execution is kindness in this universe, Duke von Castellan, and you know nothing that I want to know.’

  ‘So?’ Cleander had said, raising his eyebrow. ‘That is supposed to be your threat? You should work on your technique.’

  ‘You are not a coward, and you are not unintelligent, so please do not insult my intelligence by saying that you don’t understand what I am saying.’

  ‘Obliteration...’ Cleander had said at last.

  ‘For you,’ said Covenant, ‘and for your family, and everyone you ever knew and cared for. Those that are not found will be hunted for all time without hope of forgiveness.’

  ‘You can’t do that. No one can do that.’

  ‘I can, and you know that I can,’ said Covenant.

  ‘If I am the man you say I am, then you should know that I don’t care about anyone else.’

  ‘But you do.’

  Cleander had not replied for a long moment, and then nodded once at the inquisitor.

  ‘What is the other choice?’

  Hands gripped his back and hauled him out of the dark. He broke the surface of the water, gasped for air, and vomited. Water and bile poured from his mouth as he coughed and heaved air into his lungs.

  ‘You are alive,’ said Koleg from above him.

  ‘Your...’ Cleander vomited again. ‘Your observations are as insightful as ever.’

  ‘It was intended to reassure you.’

  ‘Good...’ gasped Cleander. The world in front of his eyes was smeared with grey and pain. ‘Good...’

  He rolled over and tried to sit up. The chamber was quiet. Flames still crawled over the heaped corpses, and a layer of smoke was gathering beneath the roof and flowing through the archways into the spaces beyond. The pool of water stirred with the waves from Cleander’s exit, but it was just water, its surface reflecting the devastation in rippled fragments. A corpse floated close to the edge of the pool, its head waving on its broken neck.

  ‘Where is the... monster?’ he asked.

  ‘The host creature fell when you broke the neck of the thing in the pool,’ said Koleg. He pointed at the far side of the pool where a heap of skin lay on the wet stone like a discarded coat.

  Koleg shifted his weight, and Cleander noticed that the soldier was holding his right arm against his body. His scorched mask and visor hung around his neck, and glossy burns marked the side of his face. Not for the first time, Cleander wondered if the alterations made to Koleg’s brain removed pain or just the man’s ability to feel the emotion of being in pain. He felt his own hands begin to tremble.

  ‘It was as Covenant expected,’ said Koleg, nodding at the floating corpse in the pool. ‘Another warp conduit and symbiotic possession, just like on Agresis.’

  ‘Yes, yes... just like it,’ said Cleander, not really listening. His limbs felt numb and his head was swimming. ‘Help me up.’ Koleg reached down with his good arm. Cleander gripped the arm and pulled himself up with a stream of swearing. He swayed on his feet, looked around the floor, frowning. ‘Where is my gun?’ Koleg held it up. Cleander nodded, took it, and began to limp towards the arch that led to the stairs.

  ‘Where are you going?’ called Koleg. ‘This area will need to be cleansed.’

  ‘Someone else’s problem, someone else’s job. I am going to find a place where the transmitter will be able to reach our lord and master, and then...’ he trailed off, pausing, blinking. He thought of the reflection he had glimpsed in the surface of the pool before he had touched its surface: a man with dark hair and beard, his skin marked by time and scarred by blades, one eye a pit, the other a flicker of black under his own gaze. ‘Then I am going to drink more than is necessary, and then, I guess, I am going to wait to hear where I will next serve my penance.’

  He limped on to the arch, before turning and looking back. Koleg stood where he had been before, face unreadable in the light of the cooling fire.

  ‘Are you coming?’ asked Cleander. After a second Koleg gave a nod and followed him.

  IX

  Gul turned his head, blinking at the sunlight. Blue sky curved in a dome above him. The chair beneath him was carved from driftwood. Slabs of smooth stone ran away from him until they met the sea. Waves lapped against the stone edge, sending spray into the air to cool the warm breeze. Beyond that, the sea was a wide band of deeper blue beneath the sky. He knew where he was, knew that if he looked behind him he would see the tower of Solar Truth rising from the land like a shard of broken glass. He also did not know how he could be there. It had been three decades since he had last been in this place, since he had left his home to follow his faith. He turned to look behind him.

  ‘This is very pleasant,’ said a voice in front of him.

  His head snapped around. A woman sat in front of him. At a glance she looked young. Red hair rose in the wind around a slim face. Her eyes were dark, her mouth tilted in a smirk. A silver carafe and two crystal goblets of amber wine sat on a stone table between them. He noticed that the goblet nearest the woman was almost empty, as though she had been drinking from it for a while. The green silk of her robe shimmered in the sunlight as she picked up the goblet and brought it to her lips.

  ‘Try it,’ she said. ‘It is worth it.’

  Gul frowned. Memories of the chapel on Dominicus Prime pushed into his thoughts, the flash of gunfire, and the sound of screams rose, but they seemed distant, unconnected to him and unimportant.

  He picked up the goblet and took a sip.

  ‘Where did you get this?’ he breathed. ‘They never let this vintage out of the arch-prior’s personal cellar.’

  ‘Oh, we have the means to get almost anything we like,’ said the woman. ‘But in this case I got it from you, Aristas.’ He looked up at the sound of his first name. The woman smiled, and gestured at the sea and sky around them. ‘Just like I got all of this from you.’

  Gul stared at her.

  ‘Who–?’

  ‘You can call me Mylasa,’ she said before he could finish the question. ‘Do you like it? It was one of the few places in your head that you remember with happiness. Seemed like a good place for you to have this moment. Shame it could not be longer, really.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I – or should I say we, because what is life but not being able to do anything without it being at someone else’s bidding – have just searched your mind, prior. I have stripped down all of the memories I could find, and where I needed your help, I have inflicted pain and nightmares on you until you told me – there I go again, of course I mean us – until you told us everything we needed to know.’

  Memories came into focus in his head.

  ‘Covenant...’ he breathed. ‘You are with the inquisitor.’

  ‘Yes,’ she nodded, and took a sip of her wine. ‘And before you ask, the pain and the screaming are over. We are done. You are done. I removed the memories of what I did. This is a... oh, I don’t know... a gift, a kindness to ease my torturer’s soul.’ Mylasa put her goblet down on the table, filled it again, and took a gulp, then sighed.

  ‘If you have inflicted pain on me, but I cannot remember it, then what is to be my true punishment?’

  ‘You are a heretic, prior, but you are not an evil man. There is actually a difference, but don’t tell anyone. You are just a fool and very unlucky.’ She looked over her shoulder at the waves rolling across the sea.

  ‘So the chapel, Lumn, Covenant, it all happened?’

  ‘Some time ago, in fact,’ said Mylasa. ‘It took a while to make sure that we had every detail of what you knew.’

  ‘The Tenth Path...’ he said. ‘I had no idea. I don’t even...’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But innocence proves nothing, as someone ver
y perceptive once pointed out. You were used, prior, and so you suffer.’

  ‘By the man who came to me before,’ he said, ‘by the man who claimed to be an inquisitor.’

  ‘Oh, he was an inquisitor,’ she said, and he noticed that the smirk had gone from her lips. ‘Inquisitor Goldoran Talicto, in fact – Scion of Gorgonate Collegium, Scourge of the Nine Stars of Nix.’

  ‘But...’

  ‘There are truths in the universe, prior, truths so big that to know them is death or madness. The first truth is that every whisper of ­daemons that thirst for souls and torment – those whispers are just a shadow of the greater truth. There are creatures that wish to enslave mankind, ­creatures so powerful that it is easiest to call them gods, and their ­avatars, daemons. To know this truth is to be condemned to death, prior.’

  Gul felt cold prickle his skin despite the warmth of the sun.

  ‘How can that be true?’

  Mylasa continued as though she had not heard his question. ‘The ­second great truth is that those who are meant to protect us from such forces are divided as much as they are united. And sometimes – once upon a blessed rare age – one of them falls to something worse than divergent opinion. They become a slave to their own view of ­mankind’s salvation.’

  ‘And Inquisitor Talicto is one such–’

  ‘He used you to protect one of his projects. The Tenth Path were sheltering and nurturing a psyker that they had bonded to a host that acted as a conduit for the... things from the warp. It was crude, and luckily was largely a failure.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ he said.

  ‘We know, and we know everything that you did to protect the Tenth Path. Those details will help us to condemn Talicto in the sight of his peers.’ She raised her goblet as though in a toast. ‘You have served the Emperor well.’

  ‘Is that why you are talking to me?’ he asked. ‘As thanks from Covenant?’

  She laughed, covering her mouth as though choking on her wine.

  ‘No, I am doing this myself. Covenant would tell you none of this.’

  ‘But why tell me anything?’ he asked.

  ‘Because if you know secrets, sometimes it is good to tell someone who will never be able to break your trust.’

  Gul frowned. He was feeling dizzy. The sun was warm on his skin. He could smell the salt spray from the sea.

  ‘And what is this? A dream? An illusion?’

  Mylasa looked at him for a long moment, and then stood, turning away to face the sea.

  ‘Drink the wine,’ she said. ‘It is really very good.’

  X

  It is done,+ said Mylasa. Cleander flinched at the sound of the psyker’s thought-voice. He would really rather have not been there, but Covenant had insisted that they all gather in the cell where they had been keeping Prior Prefectus Gul in the weeks since Dominicus Prime.

  Cleander glanced at his sister on the other side of the room, but Viola was looking at Covenant, her face emotionless beneath the plaited ivory of her hair. Covenant himself stood at the foot of the slab, robed in grey. Josef stood next to him, the preacher’s face mottled with fading bruises, a servitor hovering above his shoulder, gently pulsing blood into his neck through transparent tubes. That Josef was alive at all was a miracle, but perhaps that was the benefit of piety. Koleg leant against the wall to the side, posture and face utterly unread­able. Severita knelt to the side of the prior, the hilt of her sword clasped between her hands, head bowed. The low sound of the ship’s engines rumbled through the quiet. They were all waiting, he realised.

  ‘He’s dead?’ asked Josef, eyes on the body of the prior ­shackled to the steel slab.

  Yes,+ replied Mylasa. Cleander looked at her reflexively, and then turned away, with a wince. Metal encircled the psyker’s neck and head. Bulbous tubes hissed steam into the air, and bundles of wires snaked between blisters of chrome. Her face sat in the mass of machinery like a strangled pearl. Withered limbs hung from the machinery like the mane of a jellyfish, hovering just above the ground. Static crackled around her in oily flashes.

  ‘One less for the edge of your sword, Severita,’ said Cle­ander, hearing the hollow sneer in his voice. The penitent sister did not bother to look up from her prayers. ‘Was he expecting another form of forgiveness, I wonder?’

  He died without pain, and with a memory of kinder times,+ said Mylasa. +In this age that is absolution enough.+

  ‘Something for us all to aspire to,’ snorted Cleander.

  ‘We have what we need,’ said Covenant. Every eye in the chamber moved to him. He was still looking at the body of the prior. ‘A conclave of war has been called on Ero. Talicto will be there. And there will be a reckoning.’ He looked up, eyes moving slowly over each of them around the slab, and then turned and walked away. The others followed after a second. Cleander lingered, looking down at the dead heretic.

  ‘A kindness...’ he muttered, and snorted. ‘I think I would rather take the cruelty of life.’ He shifted the eyepatch over his empty socket and walked away, leaving the dead to silence.

  THE KNAVE OF STARS

  ‘Smile and all smile with you.

  Weep and you weep alone.’

  – ancient Terran saying

  ‘They say you wish to be healed?’

  Cleander von Castellan raised his head and blinked. The dawn-flies had already laid a cluster of eggs in the corners of his left eye just under the patch, and his mouth felt like someone had been pouring acid into it as he slept. The man standing above him was thin, skin the colour of milk, wrapped in the patchwork rags of a priest of the Decagogue. The man did not smile, and Cleander doubted he was going to blink either.

  ‘I…’ he began, and licked his lips. Something had crusted his mouth, and his tongue felt heavy inside his teeth. ‘I…’ he tried again. ‘Healed… yes.’

  The priest stared at him for a long while. Behind the man, raindrops showered through the rotting wood of the shack. Cleander could see a chunk of grey sky that meant another morning (or was it noon?) had come to Panetha Varn.

  ‘You were a wealthy man,’ said the priest at last.

  ‘I… I still am,’ said Cleander.

  ‘Your hands can hold gold enough to ransom lords yet feel like they hold only lead.’

  ‘What? It’s a bit early for that level of wisdom, friend.’

  The priest tilted his head. Cleander was sure the man had yet to blink.

  ‘You have coin and jewel, yet have come here and sleep in the Rot-margins. You began by giving large offerings to the Stone Shrines but found nothing in what they gave you. You have been moving through the city from place to place. Everywhere you ask for aid, for how you may soothe the soul. You want to be healed, and have found no aid in anything that others have told or given to you.’

  ‘You seem very well informed,’ said Cleander, pushing himself up and shaking his head. He had fallen asleep curled under a pile of rotting cloth, his back against the shack’s mostly complete wall. Something had webbed another cluster of eggs to the topmost sheet of fabric. Each was the size of a fingertip and bright blue. He had not seen that type before, and for a moment wondered what fresh vermin the place had yet to show him. ‘Who are you? I am guessing a priest by the, ah… robes.’ He frowned at the priest’s patchwork garb.

  ‘I am of the followers of the Decagogue,’ said the man.

  ‘Never heard of them.’

  ‘You are lying – you have been looking for us.’

  ‘Well, I guess that’s me told,’ Cleander snorted, and began to shift the nest of rags off him. His clothes beneath were stained with mud and possibly vomit, the dark blue of his coat rumpled. Most of the gilded buttons had gone from its front and cuffs. The priest did not reply, but just stood waiting, rain from the holed roof dappling his shoulders.

  There were a lot of priests on Panetha Varn. Sometime
ago – a length notable only for its convenient distance from the present – a dying admiral had demanded to breathe his last breath with real, unrecycled air. His officers had dropped his ship out of the immaterium in the nearest system that could supply a planet with real air, and had conveyed their commander down to the planet’s sodden southern continent just as a ten-month-long season of rains began. Somehow, the deluge had not sped the admiral into the light of the Emperor’s embrace. Two days later he had risen from his sick bed, hale and ready to return to whatever war waited for him next.

  Inevitably that recovery had grown into a miracle, and with it the reputation of Panetha Varn as a place of healing. Cults and superstitions of many stripes had sprung up over the following centuries, as thick as the lurid green plants that blossomed in the swamps. Some held that the power to heal lay in the planet itself, in the soil and water, others that it was the water of the rain as it fell from the sky that cured ills. All agreed, though, that the place was blessed in the sight of the Emperor and that His hand moved there, be it in water, prayer, or the perfume reek of the swamps in bloom.

  The city that now stood on the site of the admiral’s failed death was a sprawl of wood and stone suspended above the green mire on stilts and piles. Shrines and cloisters crowded the spaces between wooden walkways and bridges. The oldest and largest shrines were made of stone, great piled blocks of crystal-flecked grey, and were called the Stone Shrines, with what Cleander could not help but view as an inevitable failure of imagination. New branches of the Imperial Creed rose and dwindled with the arrival and passing of the rains. There were cults who preached fasting, and others who gorged themselves on the flora and fauna of the land. Life-breathers, blood-balancers, soul-cleansers, revivers and bone-setters: all and more in myriad forms could be found without having to walk more than a hundred steps. Most, Cleander had found, seemed to wrap everything but the need for payment in the thickest clouds of mystery. There was one group though, priests led by a man just called the Decagogue, who did not hawk for followers like market traders. They were elusive, their faded patchwork robes rarely seen on the streets or bridges. But the whispers said that their ways could make any soul whole.