Sound vanished. Sensation became a shrinking list: air in lungs, thoughts circling his mind, blood drumming through veins, hearts beating, silver sharp in his chest.
Silver.
‘It is time.’ The voice was not his own. Ahriman did not recognise it, but he knew that he should know it. He had heard it before. It had always been there.
‘I do not want to die,’ he said.
‘You do not want to live either,’ said the voice.
The taste of air was vanishing. He could not feel the wet thrum of blood in his body. His hearts and the shrill stab of silver were the same now.
Drum– thump. Drum-thump…
Silver.
Silver in his hearts.
Silver cutting through the thread of his life. There was not much of it, just a handful of razor-edged shards. Not enough to make a knife, nor mould a coin to pay a ferryman. Enough, though, just enough.
The silver had come from Terra, and been smelted by blind smiths, and kissed by the psykers before they were given to the Golden Throne. His mind could not touch it. All his power simply slid from it. Everything he knew of its origin he knew from the mind of the person who had shot him with a bolt-round capped with that silver.
He thought of Iobel, of that first brief, and ultimately fatal, meeting. He saw the muzzle flash of her bolter and felt the wet thump as the round passed through a joint in his armour and exploded in his chest. He felt the blood pouring from a thousand tears in his flesh.
Drum– thump. Drum-thump…
‘You won’t be able to remove them all,’ he had said to Carmenta, now long gone to her grave in the void. ‘Two of them are hooked into the flesh next to my hearts. Seal the wound.’
In a sense he had been killed then, with one shot.
An eon ago.
A lifetime ago.
He felt all the will he had expended to keep the silver from his hearts finally fall away.
Drum– thump. Drum-thump…
His hearts beat, and their rhythm and the rhythm of his thoughts, were all there was.
This is all there is. When all the mysteries are broken, and all the fire of existence tamed, it is just this, a circle of red running through flesh, waiting to end.
Drum– thump. Drum-thump…
Out beyond this quiet realm the Rubric wrapped him, body and soul. It did not need him any more. His will was done. All that was needed from him now was this one last instant.
It ends here, he willed.
The silver cut. His hearts beat once more each…
Drum– thump. Drum-thump.
…and then not again.
XXIII
SAVIOUR
One moment of time, narrow enough to cut, wide enough to smother the rest of existence.
A column of light rose from the surface of the Planet of the Sorcerers. It split as it rose. Branches of pulsing neon spread across the sky, and struck down. Shafts of light transfixed sorcerers in mid-stride. Rubricae froze as brilliance engulfed them. The living became silent. Haloes of ragged smoke burst from the ghostly legions. The seams of their armour glowed, flowing golden script surfacing on their plate. Seals broke. Dust poured out, and spiralled into the light. Voices came with them, louder than the roll of thunder and the scream of guns. The Rubricae howled and their voices were the storm calls of a Legion dying without end.
The mutants and humans close to the Thousand Sons fell, their life draining from them in a second. The hordes of lesser daemons hissed and growled and clawed over each other to get away. Most failed and were pulled apart by the vortices growing over each of the Thousand Sons. The fires of battle and the cries of the dying stuttered, the stride of destruction paused.
On his disc Ctesias felt the last syllable of the summoning name catch, and then the fire blasted his soul apart from within.
Knekku felt it just before the Rubric struck and began to turn. Time stopped. His sight inverted light and dark. And the fire rose through him and blazed on to touch Sar’iq and pin him to the air.
On the Word of Hermes Ignis lay still as his body flared blinding white.
The universe stuttered.
And then – like a judgement thrown from the heavens – the Monolith tore from the warp.
The space hulk punched into existence, tearing through reality like a bullet shot at a sheet of silk. A wave of warp energy rode outwards. Ships, silver towers and daemons turned over, half-sliding out of existence. Warring interpretations of physics tore hulls and bodies apart, and sent shreds of stone, metal, and flesh down towards the planet’s surface. The debris burned with a thousand colours as it fell. The Monolith itself struck the upper atmosphere and sent a bow wave of burning air and lightning hammering down into the ships holding position over the City of Towers. The Word of Hermes pitched and skidded across the sky. The Last Truth broke down its spine. The spirits bound into the warship’s hull flooded out and blasted apart in the shockwave of the warp breach.
The Monolith’s psychic impact met the last moment of the Rubric like a tidal wave washing over an erupting volcano. Raw force and sculpted power met, blurred, sheared. The incantation faltered.
The Rubricae’s screaming haloes shrank, and they began to move, heads juddering, hands gripping empty air.
Knekku’s eyes snapped open and found the plain of glass speeding by beneath him.
Ctesias shuddered, and he had a second before the word in his mouth snapped free from his lips.
Ignis rolled as the Word of Hermes pitched, and gravity blinked. He struck a wall and fell back to the deck like a rag doll.
Within his sanctum Astraeos, the Oathtaker, host of the vengeance of Magnus, rose. His bronze armour flowed and shone with liquid heat. The crystal eye in his helm was a sun. The staff in his hand was a ragged splinter of flame haloed with darkness. A cloak of warp energy dragged shadows and screams after him, and a second shape walked with him. Its wings and claws were the edges of reflections and its eyes falling sparks. His armies rose with him, crying out in obedience and terror.
Daemons leapt from their perches on the Monolith’s surface and plunged down to embrace their prey. Assault craft poured from its flanks like insects shaken free of a hive. Warships broke from the surface of the agglomeration. Tendrils of flesh and ichor trailed from the wounds they left. They fired, ectoplasma scarring the sky. Burning shells the size of tanks ripped silver towers from the air. Beams of laser fire scored the backs of Ahriman’s warships. The Planet of the Sorcerers shook. Cracks shivered down the sides of its mountains and snaked across its plains. Its nine suns began to drift in their orbits. Chunks of land ripped free of the surface and flew into space.
Astraeos felt Ahriman’s Rubric waver even as it redrew reality. The daemon sharing his soul was a roar in his ears, a line like a blade edge cutting through every other sensation. Calitiedies, Memunim, and the rest of his sorcerers were staggering as the Rubric poured its soulfire through them. Astraeos yanked them back to awareness with a thought.
+It is now. The moment of retribution is here. Stand with me. Honour your oaths, and have vengeance.+
He raised his staff and brought it down. The substance of the Monolith vanished beneath them, and they were plummeting through sky and red-lit gloom.
Gaumata shrieked. The morning star fell from his hands. The air flashed. Black sky, silver lightning pinning him to the ground. Agony and brightness flowed through him. His flesh was molten sludge inside his skin. He could not move. He felt like an insect in an experiment jar, his thoughts the last beatings of wings against glass. It was working. The Rubric was within him. He was changing. Becoming. Shining.
The sky split. A hammer of metal and fire cracked the dome of the heavens. A tangled face of broken ships thrust down towards the earth. The power running through Gaumata sputtered. The shock sent him to his knees.
Shapes rained from above, drop-ships falling through legions of grinning daemons. He saw them but could not move to raise a weapon. The black sky blinked to silver
. Lightning flicked to dark cracks. The Rubricae around him were juddering in place.
Something thumped into the ground close beside him. Gaumata pushed himself to his feet. A daemon unfolded and bounced towards him. Its headless body was a trunk of pale flesh, like a toadstool upended and given life. Multi-coloured fire poured from the ends of three arms. Gaumata found enough will to slam a kine shield up in front of him. Heat and cold cut into his thoughts as his shield and the daemon’s fire fought against each other. The daemon spun, hissing in frustration. Gaumata dropped the shield and reached out with his will, pulling the fire from within the daemon’s flesh. It came apart in mid-bound. Flakes of charred skin fell from the air.
Gaumata looked around. The Rubricae were folding to the floor like puppets falling from snapped strings. More daemons were plunging from the sky, hitting the ground. Half a kilometre away a vast drop-ship landed in a cloud of smoke and dust. He reached out to the nearest Rubricae, calling their names by instinct. They juddered to their feet. Gaumata pulled them forward, and they began to move, guns rising weakly. His mind was spinning. He could feel the Rubric on the edge of consciousness, still present but receding, like waves drawing down a shore.
He spun a wave of fire around him, and spat it at a cluster of bounding daemons. It blew them to black slime. The effort almost made him fall. He was drained. His limbs felt like they were separate from him.
It was not supposed to happen like this. The Rubric should have been in ascendance. The world should be changing…
Walls of debris rose as another drop-ship hit the surface. The flanks of the first split, and a blurred wave spilled from the dark within. The cries blended with the chorus of battle as the horde spilled forward.
Gaumata raised his hand, fingers glowing with heat, armour sweating ice.
And the force of the Rubric crashed through him again.
Knekku almost fell from the sky as the Rubric receded and surged back into force. Sar’iq tumbled, wings flailing, as the incantation ran through them. They caught themselves just before the ground, rose and climbed. The battle was behind them, the sky above a mass of iron and strobing light. It felt separate, as though they were alone. They were not alone. Behind them the living and the neverborn followed, cracked light and sickly swirls of colour in their wake. They were the human and mutant warriors, the summoned hordes and the daemon machines. They met the armies pouring from the sky, and the two blurred into a churning sea. Chunks of flaming debris cut the air beside them. Falling bodies and the cries of the dying rose and submerged in the boom of psychic discharge.
+Stay with me, brother,+ Knekku called to Sar’iq. His chest wound was oozing blood, and the Rubric was coursing through his flesh and his thoughts. +No matter what happens, stay with me.+
The epicentre of it all lay before them. A cluster of figures at the centre of spirals of bodies linked by cords of light and shadow. As he looked at it, he felt the air tighten and flicker. Boulders and pieces of buildings rose into the air as though flicked from a snapped sheet of cloth. From the agglomeration that had appeared in orbit, a comet fell directly downwards. Knekku could see figures within the falling ball of light, figures haloed and winged with brilliance.
Astraeos unfolded his mind and his thoughts became wings. First two and then a third, then a halo of shimmering feathers. Orange and pink heat spread from their edges as they cut the air. Daemons flew beside him, sliding in and out of existence at will, their shapes rings of feathered flame. His sorcerers fell with him, roped to him by thought. Fire and lightning spat from their eyes and hands. Acid fell as black rain from the clouds which formed in their wake. Screeds of las-fire and scythes of light reached up from the battlefield to embrace them. Astraeos shrugged it away. Across the surface of his mind the vengeance of Magnus the Red laughed, and he felt its whispers pouring into him, opening secrets, pulling the world to him and making it break before him.
Energy drained into him even as it lashed at him. He could feel his stray thoughts pulling chunks of masonry the size of tanks from the ruined city. Around him the threads of Ahriman’s Rubric flapped like a sail in a storm. He saw the incantation dance in the warp, saw its structure shiver as it struggled to remain whole. Its genius pattern filled his inner eye, and part of him marvelled at its majesty.
It is beautiful, he thought.
The ground loomed beneath. Spirals of figures covered it, some standing, some struggling to rise. These were Ahriman’s Rubricae and followers. Astraeos could see the Rubric warring inside them, pulling them apart as it flicked between destruction and miracle.
There, said the voice of vengeance in his thoughts. There he is.
And he saw the figure standing at the centre of the spirals. Two others stood beside him, weapons in their hands. Threads of lightning joined them to Ahriman. Scabs of soul-light broke from them as they struggled to move. The Rubric had them and was ripping them apart as it fought to stay whole. Only Ahriman was still, a single point of light at the centre of destruction.
You see, said his thoughts, I keep my oaths.
Astraeos hit the ground. The crust of fused glass shattered. Calitiedies, Zurcos, and Memunim landed a second later. They were struggling as the Rubric pulled them into its embrace, but he had strength enough for them as well. They rose, staff and sword and axes pale with witch-frost. Ahriman stood before them, the struggling Rubricae surrounded them. The two sorcerers beside Ahriman forced themselves forward. Astraeos knew their names; they were called Kiu and Gilgamos. He had known them once, long ago, when he had served Ahriman. They had been brothers to him, of sorts.
+Take them,+ he willed.
Kiu raised his sword. A bladed wave of force ripped out from its tip. Zurcos raised his hands and ripped Kiu’s sword from being. Gilgamos spun to stand before Ahriman, his shape a shadow. Calitiedies walked forward, and the ground broke with his steps. Shards of glass flew upwards like daggers. Kiu closed his fist and the glass became dust. Memunim ran forwards, a black disc forming before him. Gilgamos appeared in front of him, blinking into solidity, and hacked down. Memunim’s shield met the blow. Light and sound vanished, and then crashed back again. Calitiedies was chanting. The air thickened. Shimmers of heat cloaked Kiu, and then vanished as the power was pulled away. Hundreds of layers of force and thought formed and fled as the Thousand Sons’ minds met and sheared against each other.
Astraeos felt it all, but watched none of it. His single inner eye stayed fixed on Ahriman, frozen in place. Astraeos walked forward, sliding through the battle like a knife, his wings dragging on the splintered ground, his armour shining with the snap of reflection as the Rubric bleached the darkness and stole the light again.
He is fighting to hold on to the Rubric, said the voice of his thoughts. He won’t let go. It’s breaking, but he knows it will work, that it can be complete, that he is almost there, that he has almost succeeded.
Astraeos raised a hand, and touched Ahriman’s faceplate. He could feel the cyclone of sorcery just beneath. Ahriman was still there: almost dead but still on the threshold of life, the last second of his existence draining into the Rubric.
+I am here, old friend,+ he sent. At his back he felt the force and heat of the battle stir his feathers. +I know that you can hear me. I am here, and I want you to know that I have taken from you everything you ever dreamed of and sacrificed for. Your Rubric ends now, Ahriman, at the moment when it could have succeeded. Your hearts are dead in your chest, but you are still here, caught between the desire and the goal. Break from it, bring yourself back from the brink and defend yourself, and it fails. Do nothing and I will rip your mind and soul apart as the last threads of hope fall from your fingers. You will die not in sacrifice, but in failure.+ He reached a single bladed finger up under Ahriman’s chin. +Choose,+ sent Astraeos, and in his soul the daemon of vengeance laughed.
The disc beneath Knekku’s feet hit the squall of psychic power around Ahriman. It screeched as competing forces ripped through it. A towering spiral of po
wer tore through the air. A creature stood before Ahriman, armoured in bronze, its back cloaked with wings, its hand at Ahriman’s throat. Knekku dived towards them. The disc screamed and split in two. Scales of stone and flesh and metal flew behind him. He leapt. His remaining heart was hammering in his chest. His will and soul and being poured into the core of his spear. The bronze-clad figure was a haloed presence, its power utterly focused on Ahriman.
The melee surrounding the two figures paused as the combatants turned their minds towards him. Sar’iq dived amongst them, ghost images flowing around him, skeins of force deflecting fire and lightning. Ahriman and the daemon were there, just beneath Knekku, their presence mountains of light in the dark of the warp. He landed, rolled, and sliced down with his spear. The spear blade sliced the tip from the daemon’s claw.
Astraeos staggered. A wave of psychic force clawed up his arm. Armour curled away from flesh, and sloughed to the ground. The daemon within him shrieked as thoughts and memories filled the gap between their fused souls.
A tower under a blue sky.
A red cloak rippling in the wind.
A dank cell filled with the smell of blood and the clank of chains.
‘I will take your eye,’ said a bitter voice from the dark, ‘for wisdom, you understand.’
And a sorcerer was before him with a spear like a frozen thunderbolt. The daemon within shouted a name.
Knekku!
Black blood fell from his severed talons even as they regrew.
Knekku watched as the creature recoiled. The instant hesitated on the edge of the future. Black veins were writhing up the creature’s bronze armour. Its wings beat against the smoke-filled air. It shook… and lunged forwards.
Knekku spun the spear, turning with the momentum of his first blow, but he knew that he was dead. He had nothing left. His will had been in the blow he had struck. He was spent. He was nothing now. Avenisi flung itself at the creature, scorpion tail lashing, shrieking in the language of daemons. The creature swatted the familiar from the air with a backhanded blow. Avenisi fell, its broken body bursting into flames.
The Omnibus - John French Page 97