Images of battle clouded the crystal’s depths. Ahriman watched as a spear-hulled ship spun against the distant stars. Its engines fired in ragged blasts. Burning vapour seeped from fissures in its hull. It fired, ragged scatters of brightness spattering into the dead void, hitting nothing. A macro-warhead hit the dying ship. The view in the crystal blinked white as the warhead detonated. The ship tore into pieces, each one burning as it spun away into darkness like a torch tossed into a well.
Ahriman’s mind pulled the view back and vision within the sphere broadened. Las-fire latticed the blackness; the stars were lost amongst the detonations of torpedoes. He could trace the formations of ships moving together, cutting through the void to circle and kill their prey. The bright splash of a high-mass plasma explosion drew his eye for a second. Some would escape, there was no helping that. Fate would find them, he was sure.
Many of Amon’s assembled fleet had transferred their loyalty to Ahriman. Some had not. A handful of renegades and mongrel warbands had answered his call for fealty with cannon fire. Others had fled. Ahriman had sent one order: run them down.
Of such necessities are monsters made, he thought. But it was necessary; there would be blood and ruin before the end of the path they now walked. It was unfortunate: a waste, but one that they would recover from. Most of the warbands drawn to Amon’s flame had seen little issue with transferring their loyalty to another lord. Ahriman curled his lip.
Of the Thousand Sons, only two groups had refused to bend their knees to him. Calitiedies, lord of an order of sorcerers from half a dozen Legions, had run before any other. The Second Circle had not fired but had not responded to Ahriman’s call and had taken two dozen of his brothers beyond his reach. He had let them go, ordering the hunters to different targets.
Ahriman turned away from the crystal, and the image within the sphere clouded. Carmenta sat in the command throne, her flesh and augmetics hidden by a thick robe of red velvet. Her head was bowed, the light of her eyes dim within the cave of her cowl. Cables ran from the deck to slither over the throne and vanish within the robes. The cables buzzed with a teeth-aching purr. She had been there ever since they had disconnected her from the machine tower in the hangar bay. Even that had nearly killed her. That did not worry him – it was to be expected.
‘Mistress,’ he said clearly, and stepped to the base of the command throne. Her head came up slowly. Green light ignited beneath the cowl, growing slowly brighter. A drone of machine code came from her hidden mouth. She paused. Ahriman heard something rasp in her throat, and then she shivered.
‘You wish to tell me that I will live,’ said Carmenta, her voice a halting monotone.
‘Which speaks, the Titan Child or Carmenta?’
‘Which answers, Horkos or Ahriman?’
He laughed, then wondered if it was supposed to have been a joke.
‘My intention was humorous,’ said Carmenta as if following his thoughts. ‘It was a poor effort.’
He nodded, then reached up to pull the horned helm from his head. He took a breath, noted the odd scent of cinnamon in the air that seemed to follow the Cyrabor everywhere.
‘The Titan Child will be destroyed before we leave,’ he said carefully.
‘Before the fleet leaves,’ intoned Carmenta, the emphasis a sudden rise in volume. ‘What need do you have for one husk of a ship now?’
‘It is–’
‘A place of memory and discarded pasts.’ Carmenta raised her machine eyes to Ahriman’s gaze. ‘Let it burn.’
‘You will be the Sycorax now,’ said Ahriman, looking across the bridge as if to indicate the bronze and silver instruments, the soft movements of the machine-wrights. A clicking pulse of machine code breathed from Carmenta, and then she shook her head slowly.
‘No. The Sycorax will be me.’ She coughed a stream of numbers. ‘A fitting punishment.’
A pause hung in the air.
‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why forgive my betrayal?’
Ahriman gave a tired and crooked smile.
‘We must all hope that betrayal can be forgiven,’ he said and turned away.
After he had gone, and his footsteps had faded, Carmenta nodded once to herself. Her head lowered, the light in her eyes dimmed, and she began to mutter the dream song of her machine.
‘It should be destroyed,’ said Kadin as they watched the silver doors shut on the bound daemon. The screaming faces of gargoyles carved in high relief covered the doors, their cheeks and eyes incised with runes. A cluster of blue-robed acolytes began to mutter, and the runes began to glow and crawl across the silver, sealing the daemon’s power within.
‘It can’t be,’ said Astraeos. He watched as the final ward burned with amber light. He wanted to turn away but he kept watching the door. He had watched as the daemon was bound and its cell sealed, and felt its presence shrink in his mind. The connection was still there, it would always be there. He understood that. ‘We are bound together, it and I. Entwined. And somewhere inside its shell Cadar might still linger.’
Kadin shook his head and turned away from the door. The sound of pistons and gears briefly broke the quiet of the narrow passage. Kadin’s armour was still blackened and gouged. He had refused to recolour it. Astraeos thought that it looked like the cracked surface of skin. His own armour was blue, and he held a high-crested helm in the crook of his arm. A snake of fire coiled on his shoulder.
‘Was it worth it?’ asked Kadin. Astraeos said nothing, but also turned away from the door. They began to walk, their strides out of rhythm, under the yellow flames of the glass oil lamps which hung from the passage’s ceiling.
At its end, they passed through a small door back into the rest of the ship. They moved through corridors and chambers filled with strange faces and stranger voices, carrying their silence with them until they came to a viewport set into the hull of the ship like a vast eye watching the stars. They stopped. Beyond the crystal the Eye of Terror looked back at them, its bruised glare unblinking.
‘What now?’ asked Kadin after a long moment. Astraeos did not look away from the Eye. He thought of what Ahriman had told him, of what came next.
‘War, Kadin,’ said Astraeos and let out a long breath. ‘A war against fate.’
Maroth hurried through the corridors of the Sycorax. His armour hissed in time with his heavy muttering breaths. Sometimes he had to stop and feel his way by touch, or by sniffing through the muzzle of his helm. He passed scribes, initiate acolytes, warrior slaves and machine-wrights. Many looked at him but none challenged him or allowed their eyes to meet the sightless holes in his helm. The creature, for it could be no Space Marine, had Lord Ahriman’s mark upon it and its life belonged to Ahriman alone.
When he found the passage and door he sought, he gave a small whimper of pleasure. A passing cluster of yellow-swathed serfs hurried out of sight. Only when they were far beyond seeing or hearing did Maroth raise his hand to the door and mutter. It was a small door, deliberately unobtrusive, but if any had seen him undo the wards bound into it, they would have done more than wonder. The orange light of oil lamps lit the narrow passage beyond.
With the door resealed behind him, Maroth straightened and began to walk. His movements were silent. If there had been anyone to see in this utterly silent corridor, they would have noticed that his shape seemed to bleed into the shadow, and that the flames grew and burned the green-blue of glacial ice as he passed.
At the silver door he stopped, and made a sound like the hoot of a night bird. The gargoyles worked into the door snarled with silent anger, and runes in their eyes burned with blue light before settling to contented inactivity. He raised a hand and pushed the door open.
His master was waiting for him, bound in chains, the husk of its physical form as pale as white marble. It smiled at him. It always smiled. The door sealed behind Maroth. He looked up at a face that had once belonged to a mortal named Cadar. He would have laughed, but he rarely laughed truly. He did not really see the point.
> ‘Our endeavour succeeded,’ said his master, its voice like the crackling of ice across lightless water.
‘Yes,’ Maroth replied. ‘Yes it did, sire.’
THE TALE OF CTESIAS
I
THE DEAD ORACLE
‘To leave is to arrive.
To arrive is to leave.’
– words inscribed within the Temple of the Corvidae
These words are not written to be read. They are written so that something will remain, so that I may still remember something of my life when memory fades and flesh becomes dust. It has not been a kind life. I do not say that from resentment – the universe is a cruel cradle. Kindness, happiness, contentment, these are the lies that we wrap ourselves into as we stagger through the hungering night. We are nothing but candles burning down to darkness. This is the truth. To believe anything else is to be blind.
I lived, though. I cut a path through existence, one breath, and one heartbeat, at a time. When I look back from the gate of oblivion, I would see the road behind me. I would know how I lived. And so I write that I may remember.
I was not born on Prospero. I was not born on Terra. My name is not the name I was first given. The soul I have is not the one I was born with. I was many things that I am no longer. I was a warrior. I was a scholar. I was a loyal son of a loyal son.
What am I now?
I am the universe’s spite poured into a vessel for its own amusement. I am a servant of many masters, a summoner and binder of creatures that neither live nor die. I am an old demi-god, withered by knowing, and weighed down by living. I am this tale’s teller. I am Ctesias, and this road that these words walk was mine.
There are many ways that I might start this journey, but I will begin with a return. I will begin with the Dead Oracle.
The daemon rose through the night before me.
I knew I was dreaming. I could feel the unreal substance of it around me, as light as warm wind, as cold as deep oceans. I knew that anything I saw, or heard, was not real, and that kindled something close to fear in me.
Perhaps that surprises you, but dreams are not what you think. They are not your mind scrabbling through the detritus of experience. They are not the universe babbling meaning to you as you slumber. They are the point at which your soul meets all the truths you cannot see. A dream is the most dangerous place that you can go, and you go ignorant and unarmed.
I am not ignorant, and in the land of the mind I am far from unarmed.
But as I looked at the daemon I knew that something was wrong. Very wrong.
I have not dreamed for a thousand years. It is not something I can risk. It is not something I thought I was capable of anymore. And this was not simply a dream. It was a manifestation.
The daemon’s shape formed as it moved, smudging depth and substance from smoke. Its body resembled a feathered lizard. Nine short legs broke its flattened bulk, each toe tipped with a mouth and tongue. Its head was a cluster of snapping jaws, and slitted, yellow eyes. I could hear voices, laughter and pleading just on the edge of hearing.
I knew the daemon. It had been my hand that had unleashed this creature upon the Silvered Host at Cvenis, and seeded its soul parasite into Taragrth Sune. It had many names amongst mortals – Chel’thek, The Dragon of the Hundredth Gate, The Speaker of Infinity – but only I knew its true name, and so only I held its chain of slavery. Given that, and where my body lay, its presence was more than just a problem. It was a sign.
‘You,’ I said, my voice heavy with false authority, ‘are not supposed to be here.’
The daemon’s mouths clacked open and shut.
‘But I am, little mage,’ it breathed. ‘I am here.’
‘I have your name,’ I said. ‘Your passing is at my sufferance. You rise into being at my will.’
It laughed with the sound of cracking cartilage.
‘Command me then, half-mortal. Bid me back to the dark. The chains rust, and fire pours upon the days as yet unborn. The chiming of the broken bells calls this doom. The Three will defy your exodus. They will drag you apart from within, and eat your carcasses as they cool.’ It grinned with a thousand mouths. ‘You are hunted. You and your master.’
‘I have no master.’
Its laughter clattered out again, its flesh shivering beneath copper feathers.
This is the way of daemons. Like predators of old Terra, they posture, growl and magnify their appearance to cover weakness. But, like the growl of the wolf and the snarl of the lion, it is bravado that breathes from between sharp teeth.
‘Everything has a master,’ it smiled a wide, sagging smile. ‘But you are not mine.’
It had gone snake-still. I had to act now.
It burst towards me.
I began to form the thing’s name, reaching into the compartments of my mind to unlock, and combine each fragment.
‘Sah-sul’na’gu…’
The syllables sprayed from my lips, but the daemon was already lunging at me, its body growing as it moved. Its skin tore, arms reaching from within its swelling form. Fingers stretched and became razors of bone.
‘…th’nul’gu’shun-ignal…’
The skin of the dream clogged and stretched as I spoke. Sounds of tearing skin and weeping cries stole the daemon’s roar.
‘…g’shu’theth…’
Un-words poured from me. They burned in the idea of air. The daemon’s body began to crumble, skin and meat hissing to slime. Flesh stripped from its reaching claw. The last component of its name unlocked in my mind.
‘…ul’suth’kal!’ I spat the last piece of it.
The daemon froze. Shivering in place, the edges shimmering to nothing.
‘You.’ The daemon’s voice hissed from its dissolving throat. ‘Are. Weak.’
‘Not yet,’ I said, and thrust it back into oblivion.
I woke to the smell of burning flesh. It was my own. Thick ropes of oily smoke climbed above where the silvered manacles held my limbs in place. The alchemical feeds that had been dripping false sleep into my veins had melted, and hung in blackened tangles from the brass armatures above me.
I tried to move my head. Some of the skin of my neck ripped away as I moved – it had fused to the metal loop beneath my chin. I could feel my flesh struggling to blot out the pain. Other warriors of the Adeptus Astartes would have shrugged off such sensations, but not me.
I was old even then, and my flesh had withered on my bones. The strength of muscle and blood is just one thing that I have given up as payment for power. I could still wield a sword, though I preferred a staff, and I could shatter a skull between my fingers. But these are small things for our kind. They do not undo the truth that then, as now, my skin was a wrinkled mask over a frame of thinned bones and spindly limbs. Lank, white hair hung from the shrivelled root of my head. My pale eyes were just as they were when I was born, but fragments of emerald and gold had replaced my teeth. A kaleidoscope of inked sigils covered me from head to foot, hiding the scars beneath letters and pictograms from long dead languages. In body, as in soul, I was a memorial to my own mistakes.
The room in which I hung, bound to a frame of silver and cold iron, was a cell. Warding marks and patterns were cut into its narrow walls and floor. Most of the wards had bled outwards, like wax blasted by a fusion torch. I knew the meaning of each symbol, and knew that they should have stopped the daemon manifesting in my dream, just as they had stopped me summoning aid from the warp. They, and the silver manacles, and the alchemically created coma, were supposed to hold me until I agreed to serve Amon, or until another end was found for me. I had refused to serve and so had lain, chained in sleep, in the heart of the ship Sycorax.
Now the chains had fallen and I was awake.
I moved my head again, and this time the pain came clear and bright. I let out a hissing breath.
‘Brother,’ said a voice from just out of sight.
I froze. I knew the voice, but its presence was an impossibility. It simply could not be.
/>
I was very still. The pain of my burned limbs and the stink of the room said this was no dream, but such is the subtlety to truly great lies – they appear more real than reality, more true than truth.
‘Ctesias,’ said the impossible voice. And then, just as impossibly, he stepped into sight.
The first thing I noticed was that he had not changed. His face was just as it had been: blue eyes set in a proud face, features held so still that he appeared always to be listening to something just out of hearing. So many of our kind are touched and twisted by the winds of the Eye that to see one so untouched by mutation is almost disturbing.
‘Ahriman,’ I breathed.
He nodded.
My eyes shifted over his silver-blue robes, azure armour, and the horned helm held in the crook of his left arm. I recognised both armour and helm – I had last seen them worn by Amon, my jailer, and their change of ownership could only mean one thing.
‘So,’ I said, ‘Amon is no more.’
‘Our brother…’ began Ahriman, but I could already hear the sorrowful words he was going to voice without hearing them.
‘Please spare me whatever you think you need to say.’ I looked into his cold gaze. The pain from my burns was needle-shrill. I ignored it. ‘I do not grieve for him. He was a fool, as are you, Ahzek.’
His flat calm face did not twitch, but he looked as if he was going to reply. I saved him the effort.
‘You have either come to free me, or to ask for service,’ I said. ‘Or you are salving your conscience before you add me to the tally of our dead brothers.’
Understand that I am not a creature of emotions. My blood does not rise and fall with talk of brotherhood, of honour or heritage. My days of loyalty, of feeling bound and compelled by kinship, ended long ago. I am a creature of the true universe – my bonds are bonds bought and paid for, my loyalty to nothing more than the expansion of my own ability to persist from one moment to the next. Ahriman knew that. He could scarcely have forgotten.
After a long moment, he nodded. The wards and manacles holding me flared with fresh fire, and I felt the touch of his mind ghost over me. It was pure agony. I made sure that the renewed pain did not touch my face. To show weakness is to invite enslavement.
The Omnibus - John French Page 31