The Omnibus - John French

by Warhammer 40K

  +I know what this is,+ I said, and there was laughter in my thought-voice. Even now, with all that has happened and all that I am, the foolishness of those words makes me shiver. +I know what you are.+

  The wolf paused. I could see the blood-clotted fur on its back rise into serrated spikes. The snake laughed, and the moth buzzed its wings. I did not respond. I was sure, so sure that I understood.

  +The bloody wolf, which represents destruction from within. The serpent, which is the temptation to turn aside. The spectre of the grave, which is the fear of failure. You are my weaknesses come to pull me back to the dark. The seeker of truth must face you all if he is to ascend, but you are nothing more than reflections, and I do not fear you.+

  ‘Is that what you seek?’ said a voice. It was quiet, but it shook with different sounds, as though stitched together from many voices. The wolf went still, and the serpent hissed but did not move. The rotting moth buzzed backwards. The hunched creature at the edge of the circle turned and looked at me. It had the head of an eagle, a crow and a vulture stacked one above the other. Its eyes burned gas-flame blue. ‘Is the truth why you are here?’ It paused, savouring its next word. ‘Magnus.’ The words chilled me. The creature should not know my name. It should not know me. ‘Oh, but how could I not know you, my son?’ it said.

  +No,+ I said. +You are not my father.+

  The four creatures laughed with a crackle of bones and a rustle of feathers. Their shadows grew, crawling towards me. Their hunger was all around me, pressing close, churning like waves against my mind. Then, suddenly – so suddenly that I felt their absence as a cold shock – they were gone. I was alone, surround by nothing but silence.

  Where had they gone? Why had they gone? The answer came, clear out of the silence. They had fled. And that meant that the silence was a lie.

  I was not alone.

  I felt it then: the presence in the emptiness, vast and so bright that I could not see it.

  +Why are you here?+ I asked. When the answer came it echoed through my being.

  +I have been searching for you,+ it said, +my son.+

  I open the idea of my mouth to answer, but the memory is gone and I am falling again, trying to remember if I answered, or if in that moment I was, for the first time, afraid.

  The memory has gone but it has given me part of myself.

  I am a son.

  A son…

  I remember earth. The earth was red, it rose in dry ribbons on the wind. He stood before me, his armour powdered by dust and marked by fire. His brothers stood beside him: Amon with his head bowed, Tolbek, his face blanked by shock, and the others. My sons. My defiant sons. My murderous children. So clever, so gifted and so blind.

  Ahriman stared back at me. He knew what he had done; I could see the truth haloing him like black smoke around a flame. He had defied me, he had wielded the fire of the gods to remake the present, and he had failed.

  I turned and looked at what my son had left of my Legion. Thousands of blank eyes stared back at me from the helms of motionless suits of armour. I could see the soul caught in each one, held like smoke in a bottle, drowning in oblivion, dead yet not gone.

  Rage. Even now the memory shakes me. Our anger is not the anger of mortals. It is the lightning bolt which breaks the high tower – the hammer blow which shakes the heavens.

  I looked back to Ahriman, to my son, the best of my sons. We spoke, but the words held no meaning. There could be only one answer for what he had done.

  +Banishment.+ I spoke the word, and the word remade the world.

  Ahriman was gone.

  My son is gone. I remain. Falling. It is he that is calling me, back to the world of mud and flesh. I see his face as I fall from the cradle of gods. Was it a memory of what has been, or is it yet to come? Is there a difference?

  I am not what I was. I am not even a fraction of what I was.

  I am the broken son of a false god.

  I am dust.

  I am time scattering from the hand to be blown on the wind of fate.

  I am the whisperings of the dead, forever cascading into the grave.

  I am the king of all I see.

  I open my eye. Reality screams around me as it rushes and tumbles past. Time surrounds me, scattering and gathering me. Once I would have thought this power, but it is not; it is a prison.

  There are shapes in the tempest: faces, towers and plains of dust, possibilities waiting to be seen, to be made real. I can decide to make them real, or to make them fade. I can slip back into the dark silt of dreams that might not be dreams. I choose to let them become real. My throne builds itself from shadow. The boiling sky and dry red plain congeal and harden above and below me. I still have no form besides a jagged line of golden light which hangs above the throne like frozen lightning. Then the tower splits the ground beneath me, and thrusts me up into the air. Other towers shimmer into sight as I rise, a great forest of obsidian, silver and brass. I look, and see through the veils of matter, see the weave and flow of the aether beneath. It has been a long time since I have taken my throne, an age in which empires could die and be forgotten. For the half mortal creatures which dwell in the towers, though, I have been absent for no more than a turning of one of this planet’s nine suns.

  My remaining sons are waiting for me. They kneel, high-crested helms dipping, silk robes rustling in the wind. Each of them sees me differently. I know this, though I cannot know what it is that they see – that insight is denied me. Perhaps they see me as I was when I was half mortal: copper-skinned, red-maned, and crowned by horns. Perhaps they see only a shadow cast across my throne as though by a flickering fire. Perhaps they see something else.

  Knekku raises his head first, and the questions begin to form in his thoughts. What is my bidding?

  +The exiles are returning,+ I send. I feel their shock, their anger, and their hope. +He is returning, and war is coming with him.+

  AHRIMAN: UNCHANGED

  ‘The past is not ours to own. We think, because we can remember it, that it belongs to us, that we can go back to it, that we are the same person who lived those moments, breathed that air, and made those choices.

  We are not the same.

  We are a stranger living with memories that belong to someone else.

  And the past belongs to itself.’

  – Kallista Eris, from manuscript notes on

  the development of history, suppressed

  PROLOGUE

  Ahriman closed the book. Silence washed around him as the voices of his thoughts and memories faded. The dwindling light of candle flames greeted him when he raised his eyes. The sigils and lines drawn on the floor and walls whispered as his mind brushed them. The chamber was small, barely a cell. There was only one door, a rust-scabbed hatch with a wheel handle. He sat on the floor, legs crossed, back straight, white robe stained with sweat. Symbols spiralled out from him. The metal glinted when the flame light sputtered. Both candles had nearly burned out, and clods of wax hung from the base of their floating suspensor discs. He had entered the room for the last time eighty-one hours before, and once he left he would not return. For him this room, and the time within it, would never be repeated.

  He blinked slowly, and ran a hand across his scalp.

  ‘So,’ he said at last. ‘That is it. That is the answer.’ The words sounded redundant as soon as he spoke them, but he had felt the need to say something. He needed to mark this moment somehow.

  He looked down at the closed book sitting on the low table in front of him. It was as thick as the width of his palm. The binding was tanned hide stained black. The pages within were sheets of reed pulp, pressed, dried and cut to size. Soot and water had made the ink he had used to write every word and draw every symbol on those pages. The stains still clung to the fingers of his right hand.

  As an object the book was a simple thing, devoid of high artistry or flourish. It was just what it needed to be. He felt a tug of resentment at the journey that it represented. It had taken m
onths to fill its pages. Every step had taken long hours of listening to the Athenaeum babble its stream of revelation, and then weeks of analysis, composition and deduction. Those steps had taken place across the leaves of the book before him.

  Others would call it a grimoire, but it was not. It was a mystery unravelled piece by piece, page by page, mark by mark. He had not known what the end would be when he had begun. He had not known even if there would be an end. There had been, though. He had reached an answer at last.

  ‘I should have known,’ he said.

  He raised his hands and rubbed his eyes. In his chest, shards of silver shifted closer to his hearts as they beat on.

  The Rubric… The word turned in his skull.

  ‘Such a small and a great thing to have missed the first time.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘And no one can know. Not until the end. Trust… that was my mistake. Let them know some but not all. Let them wonder until it is too late.’

  He paused, and let the spoken words hang as a taste on his tongue.

  ‘Let it be done,’ he said to the silence, and then stood and walked to the door. The book remained on the low table. Shielding barriers in the warp snapped as he broke the room’s protective charms with a thought. Awareness of the ship and the minds within it reached out to him, like welcoming hands. His senses became whole again.

  A simple thought formed in his mind and kindled in the warp. Flames leapt up from the book, blazing from red to blue heat in a second. Ash fountained into the air, and settled on his skin in a grey film.

  Ahriman pulled the door open, and stepped through without looking back.

  PART ONE

  SONS OF

  THE FATHER

  I

  SORCERERS

  +I am not here to break you,+ sent the Oathtaker, as he took another step closer to the lone figure at the chamber’s centre. Lightning flashed outside the ragged hole in the wall. The air was rancid, laden with the musk of rotting vegetation and stagnating water. +I am here because I need you, Memunim. I am here to accept your service.+

  The Oathtaker stepped closer again. The polished bronze of his armour drank the gloom from the air, making him a shadow amongst shadows. The blue and green stones clasped in feathers and claws were also dark, as though they were eyes which had closed. Only the bright sapphire set in the blank faceplate of his helm shone. Its light was blue, and cold, and unwavering. His silver staff tapped out each step, the sound low yet clear even over the noise of distant battle and thunder.

  Another flash of lightning, then another, the booms echoing in the space and the light showing the foetid land far below. Looking out from the hole in the wall it seemed that the chamber was high within a tower. It was not a tower, though; it was a ship. Its aft was buried in the swamp, its prow was a rusting minaret of armour and gun batteries. Fungus had bloomed across its bulk, swallowing kilometres of buttresses. Its spine was twisted so that it resembled a crooked finger beckoning to the grey clouds. Vast and rooting and all but deserted.

  +I am your master now, sorcerer,+ sent the Oathtaker.

  Memunim swayed and then caught himself. The high crest of his helm was an echo of the traditions of Prospero, but it was a dim resemblance. Carved serpents crawled over the crest and the faceplate twisted with teeth and crystal eyes. His robes were tattered, and still smouldering at the edges. The blood was concealed under the armour plates, but it was there, leaking from wounds and mouth. He was in a lot of pain.

  +I will not submit to you,+ hissed Memunim.

  +But you will,+ said the Oathtaker. +You are strong. You are strong, and you have honour. But not enough of either, and not enough to match the hate you try to drown in blood.+

  A wall of force struck the Oathtaker without warning. One instant the warp had been still and the next it had become a blunt hammer. His will rose to meet it, but almost too late. He staggered. Splinters of light tumbled in the air. Memunim struck again, with a grunt of pain and effort.

  The Oathtaker was ready this time. His mind met the wave of power with equal force for an instant, and then it collapsed into a single sharp point. The wave shattered. Actinic light exploded outwards. A note hung in the air, vibrating through bones, teeth and eyes. Behind the single eye of his helm, the Oathtaker tasted hot metal and burning hair. He lowered the staff, his shoulders relaxing. Memunim had fallen to the floor.

  The Oathtaker crossed the last few steps, and looked down.

  +You were born on the slopes of the Cattabar Mountains above Tizca,+ sent the Oathtaker, his thought voice calm. +The sun’s first light would rise above the sea and wake you before the rest of the house. Sometimes you would get up and go to sit on the ledge of your window and watch the sun march across Tizca. The wind from the sea would smell of salt and the dew mingling with dust. When the Legion–+

  +Who are you?+ Anger bled from Memunim’s aura, coiling red and sharp black.

  +When the Legion came for you, a rare storm had come across the mountains and rain danced on the stones of the streets and on the faces of the pyramids.+

  Memunim was shaking.

  +You cannot know–+

  +Your mother was proud,+ the Oathtaker’s sending sliced on as he took another step forwards. +But your father did not want you to go. “How can I let him go?” he asked. “How can a father let his son walk into such a future?” You said–+

  +How can you know?+ The thought was a roar of confusion and rage.

  +You said that it was everything that you wanted. That he should be proud.+

  The Oathtaker took another step and halted. Memunim’s aura was contracting, hardening. The Oathtaker inclined his head a fraction. The crystal eye in his helm was a cold blue star.

  +Your birth father died ten years later, and he never saw you again. He never saw his world burn for the Legion he gave his son to, he never saw what you became.+

  The roar split the warp. A creature rose from Memunim. In the Oathtaker’s sight it was a winged serpent made of red light and silver reflections. It was a thought form, a construct of will and power flung from the body of a psyker into the raw energy of the warp. It was power unshackled by flesh and matter, a shadow cast by the soul’s light, and it was utterly and completely dangerous. It dived at the Oathtaker.

  +Now,+ sent the Oathtaker. The thought form was almost on him, its mouth a wide slit of fire and daggers. He stared back at it.

  A flat boom of silence filled the chamber. Two shapes sketched in starlight fell on Memunim’s thought form and ripped it from the warp. Frost flashed across the chamber’s floor and ceiling, then exploded into black flame. Memunim was on his knees. Blood oozed from the seals of his helm. He was alive, though. The Oathtaker watched the pain pulse and fracture in Memunim’s mind.

  He turned his head and looked at the figures who had stepped into being from nowhere. The sapphire scales of Zurcos’s battleplate scattered the dim light as he drifted forwards, his robes of rags and tatters dancing to an invisible wind. Calitiedies came more slowly, his sceptre lit with chained fire, his bolter drawn. Fatigue from manifesting thought forms pulsed in their auras. Nine Rubricae walked behind them, their red and bone armour smoking from their transition into reality.

  +He is ready?+ asked Zurcos, his thought voice a hiss of static and dry sand.

  The Oathtaker looked at Memunim still trying to find the strength to rise.

  +Yes.+

  +Has he sworn it?+ asked Calitiedies.

  The Oathtaker did not reply, but extended a hand, palm upwards, fingers open. Memunim rose into the air. His mind and will struggled, until the Oathtaker tightened his grip. Memunim’s helmet released and floated free with a series of clicks and a hiss of pressure. Burn scars and stitch marks covered the face beneath. Half-clotted blood ran from his eyes, mouth, and ears.

  +No one…+ began Memunim. +No one could know such things about me.+

  +But I do. I know you better than the birth father who never saw you become a warrior. You are strong but you are weak. You wonder w
hat happened to the dream which led you here, and you look at yourself and see a creature clinging to the shadows, and keeping the company of crows. You want to be more again but cannot see how. You want to follow the light, not survive in the shadows.+ Memunim turned his head. The Oathtaker met his flickering gaze. +I know you, Memunim, and because of that I know that you will give me what I came here for.+

  +…service…+ Memunim’s thought was a blur of fading consciousness.

  Zurcos laughed. The sound joined the distant noise of gunfire and battle, from far down at the tower’s foot.

  +I will give you more than you can dream. From you I will take the only thing that matters: your oath.+

  The silence in the chamber was complete. Even the warp hushed to a low sway of potential.

  +You asked who I am,+ sent the Oathtaker as he stepped forward. His will twitched and his own helm slid from his head. He was close enough that he could see his own face in Memunim’s suddenly wide eyes: a face of smooth skin without scar or expression, a mouth set in a hard line, and above that mouth a pair of eyes which were not eyes at all. Twin pools of fire looked out at him from the reflection. He leaned forwards, feeling Memunim’s mind recoil from his proximity.

  ‘My name,’ he said, and the sound of his true voice made the sorcerer flinch with surprise. ‘My name is Astraeos.’

  The whispers of daemons followed Ctesias from his sleep. He rubbed the wrinkled skin of his face, and spat. He could taste ash and sugar on his tongue, never a good sign. He picked the silver goblet up from the arm of the stone throne and drank the wine within in a single gulp. It did not help. The sweet burning taste was still in his mouth and would be for hours, and the whispers would take even longer to fade.