by John French
He should not have mentioned Astraeos. That had been a mistake. The daemon was bound here because it could not be allowed free and it could not be destroyed. It was a creature of raw hunger, but it was strong. Astraeos had bound the creature to him to help save Ahriman, and the two remained linked. Astraeos had never called on the daemon again, but as long as Astraeos lived so the daemon had to remain shackled. Kadin himself had shunned the daemon’s cage for years, but recently he had felt himself drawn to it, and so he had come once, and then again, and again. He came and talked to his dead brother.
‘I can’t remember the home world any more,’ he said at last. ‘I can’t even remember how it was destroyed. What does that mean, Cadar?’ He shook his head, and a double set of eyelids closed over his eyes. ‘I think I used to be able to remember before the dead station, before… I was changed. But sometimes I am not sure. Does that matter, brother? Does it even mean anything?’
He shook his head, and turned towards the silver door out of the chamber. The daemon hissed behind him. Kadin raised his machine hand and tapped the door. The sigils flared, and he felt heat itch around his skull. Then the sigils dimmed and the door opened. He paused, one foot on the other side of the threshold.
‘It’s going to get bad,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I don’t know why, but I think it’s going to get very bad.’ The daemon remained silent. Kadin nodded to himself, eyelids briefly closing over his green, slitted eyes. He stepped from the room and the silver door sealed behind him.
Maroth waited for him in the passage beyond. The broken and blind sorcerer was crouched on the floor, the tatters of his robes hanging over his dented armour. He raised his head as the door sealed.
‘The answers of silence are pleasing?’ chuckled Maroth. His hound-shaped helm tilted up as though to emphasise the question. Kadin did not bother to look at him or reply. Maroth always followed Kadin when he visited the daemon in its gaol, as though he liked to be close to it even if he was never allowed to see it.
Kadin walked away from the silver door. His vox-link popped and crackled back into life as the door receded into darkness behind him; things were happening. It was as though the whole fleet had woken from sleep while he was not looking.
‘The war on fate, it is beginning, is it not, yes?’ breathed Maroth, as he scrambled to follow.
‘Yes,’ said Kadin. ‘Yes, I am afraid it is.’
III
Conclave
The seer was blind, and old, and shuffled at the centre of her web of chains. Two steps into the chamber she stumbled, and hung for several seconds. She spat on the floor.
From her place on the lowest of the encircling tiers Iobel watched the thick yellow phlegm splatter on the flagstones. Candlelight glinted from the thick liquid. The seer gave a moan and tried to stand. Iobel blinked, and felt the muscles of her face tighten. The attendants holding the chains did not move, but just pulled the restraints tight, their slab muscles strained under their tattooed skin. The eye holes of their hoods did not turn towards their charge, in fact they did not move at all. The figures standing on the stone tiers shifted quietly, waiting. Eventually the seer found her balance and began to shuffle towards the centre of the chamber again.
‘This will be unpleasant,’ murmured Cavor, and Iobel could tell he was grinning. Across the chamber eyes flicked at Iobel and Cavor, then away. Without thinking she stabbed a mental rebuke at Cavor, only to feel the deadening effect of the null fields steal the thought. Instead she turned her head and favoured Cavor with a stare. Clad as she was in layered plasteel and leather, she was smaller than him by far. Dark hair folded and set by silver pins topped her pale face. She met the green glow of his bionic eyes with her own clouded, grey gaze. The rayed disk of the Solar cult tattooed on her left cheek twitched as she raised an eyebrow.
‘Sorry, my lady,’ said Cavor, and then tried a grin. The skin of his lips twisted to show the filed bronze of his teeth. The green light in his eyes widened. He took a step back, bandoliers of rounds and pistols clinking softly. Iobel gave a short shake of her head and turned away.
After a second of silence she heard Cavor step back to his appointed place.
I should have brought Linisa, she thought. Or even Horeg. The ex-gang boss might have the decorum of a dying grox, but at least without a tongue he would have been quiet. She pursed her lips as the seer came to a halt at the centre of the chamber.
The chamber was the deepest in a fortress which sat under a blue sky, in the centre of a desert on a world that had been dead for centuries. The fortress was a spike of stone built into a mountain, which jutted from the dry plains like a rotten fang. Iobel had seen it from the lander as she had descended from orbit, and had walked through the dust-cloaked halls and passages on the way to the council chamber. It looked as though it had been made by human hands, but you could never be sure. Timeworn gargoyles had watched her pass, and the stones had last seen the tread of feet long ago.
But of course it was not deserted – the servants of the Inquisition had claimed the dead fortress for this conclave. Thick trunks of cable snaked down the sides of corridors, and vanished down openings in the floor. Glow-globes hovered close to the high ceilings, suspensor fields buzzing in the dry air. Hooded serfs moved in tight groups, and soldiers in gloss-red armour walked the walls under the spitting light of void shields. And everywhere the hot wind blew, and the dust rattled across the floor stones.
In the sky above, over a dozen warships glinted like stars. Some had brought Iobel and her peers, but most simply hung still above the fortress like guards mounted over an open grave. It was not a permanent occupation, but a place selected for its isolation and made temporarily strong.
If she was being honest she would have said that she felt the whole thing rather daunting. She had attended a conclave once before at the side of her mentor, but that had been on Luna, in sight of hallowed Terra. It had been a grand gathering filled with a sense of coming to the centre of things, of ascension. On this dead and dry world, it felt like coming to the margins and looking over the edge into the drop beyond.
In truth Cavor was right, what was to come would be unpleasant; there was no avoiding that fact. But then what else were the duties of an inquisitor but an unpleasant necessity? Iobel glanced at the two other inquisitors who stood beside her with their attendants. Erionas shifted but did not meet her eyes. He was tall, his face smooth, hairless and its features so bland that they looked as though they had been pressed from a mould. He wore a grey bodyglove, and cables extended away from his spine to the trio of hooded followers who stood behind him. The old crone Malkira was still, her chromed exoskeleton whining with a gum-aching purr. Before the seer had entered, the eyes of every one of the figures in the higher tiers had been watching the three of them, judging, assessing, calculating…
That is what you get for calling a grand conclave of your peers, but what choice did we have?
They had journeyed into the Eye of Terror and returned bearing knowledge, and that knowledge was beyond the power of the three of them alone to address. The seer held a portion of it. She was the last of the astropaths they had taken with them to sift the Eye for truth, and what she had seen was burned into her mind. That fragment of knowledge, and what had happened as they had tried to leave the Eye, was why they were here, in a forgotten fortress on a dead world.
The seer stopped at the centre of the chamber. She swayed, and the chains clinked. The chamber doors closed. Quiet filled the gloom, and then a rustle of fabric and whispers rose from the audience. A figure stood on one of the higher tiers. Silence fell again. He was thin, and clad in an unadorned black robe with a pale face, which reminded her of a sharpened axe head. His name was Inquisitor Izdubar, and he was the other reason they were here.
No, not just Inquisitor Izdubar. Lord Inquisitor Izdubar. The silence in the chamber as he looked around him left no doubt as to that status.
‘Still looks young,’ Cavor had muttered when he had first seen Izdubar t
ake his place in the chamber. That was true as well, of course, but if anyone knew how old the lord inquisitor was, Iobel was not one of them. He had always looked the same, even when they had first met. It had been a decade since she had last seen him on Sardunas, and he had not seemed to age a day, except perhaps in the stillness of his eyes. She was grateful that he had come, but the weight of his name meant this was now his conclave, and by standing now he had just gathered it into his hand. Part of her wondered how much he already knew; he always had a habit of knowing more than you thought.
Slowly he moved his eyes to Iobel.
‘So,’ he said, his voice soft, ‘what do you bring to us?’
Just like that. No ritual phrasing, no high booming oratory, just a question.
Erionas spoke from beside Iobel, his monotone voice rising in the still quiet.
‘We return from the Eye, with matters of profound and broad importance.’
‘Enough to draw us all here? I would hope nothing less.’ Izdubar smiled a brittle smile. ‘What did you see?’
I saw hell made real, she thought. Memories opened in her mind, scratching against the emotional dams she had built around them. I saw nightmares walking the spaces between stars. I saw reality torn open, and carrion swarm to its blood. I saw the doom that awaits us all if we fail. That is what I saw, what I still see when I can sleep.
They had gone into the Eye of Terror, where the physical realm and the warp overlapped, and the laws of reality danced to the laughter of madness. They had found what they sought and more, and returned alive… barely. Another great outpouring from the Eye was coming, they all knew it. It waited there just beyond the horizon of the future. The old seer, who stood weeping in silence before them, was the last of their psychic auspices who had survived to tell of what else they had found.
‘The mission was a limited-duration operation,’ said Erionas, his voice clipped and clear. ‘Psycho-synthesised impressions were taken from a volume that extended at least into the tertiary zone of reality breakdown. The quantity of data was considerable despite losses among the auspices. We–’
‘Of course such a mission gathered much of extraordinary value.’ Izdubar broke through the monologue with another smile. ‘But even such learning would not cause you to call us all here.’ He glanced around the chamber, leaving the statement hanging between an accusation and a question.
‘We found the remains of a war,’ said Iobel.
‘Yes?’ asked Izdubar, turning his gaze back to her.
‘A war that had scarred the warp itself.’
‘Such things are–’
‘Something was, or will be born out of it. A storm that will come for us.’ She laid emphasis on the word storm, and saw a flicker in Izdubar’s eyes.
‘The Despoiler…’ began a voice from a lower tier.
‘No,’ said Iobel. ‘The name carried on the aether was that of another.’ She looked at Izdubar. He met her gaze, his face impassive and unreadable. He must know already. He would not be here otherwise. And besides us three, he is the only one who will know what the name of the storm means. She gestured towards the seer at the centre of the web of chains. ‘Hear for yourself.’
Izdubar held her gaze for a second longer and then nodded.
‘Light,’ she said. The word was soft, but it carried up the stone tiers with complete clarity. A second later a low grinding filled Iobel’s ears and she felt the stone beneath her feet tremble. Iobel braced herself. She, like the half-dead seer held in the web of chains, was a psyker. Ever since she had entered the fortress, null fields had shut the warp out from her mind, blunting her ability. It was uncomfortable, but so would be the sudden return of her psychic senses.
A crescent of light appeared at the apex of the chamber’s domed roof. Every eye in the chamber turned upwards. The crescent became a widening smile of sky. The Eye of Terror looked down through the open hole, visible even in the noon light.
The seer twisted in her chains, hiding her blind eyes in her hands. She began to moan.
The null fields vanished.
The warp flowed back into Iobel’s senses, fragments of thoughts and sensations carried on it like driftwood on a floodtide. She gritted her teeth as the psychic reality of the chamber settled in her awareness. She was not powerful, not in the sense of some that she had met, but even so she heard surface thoughts and emotions bleeding from the minds around her. There was curiosity, excitement, fear even, all focused on what would happen next, on why they were here. Only Izdubar’s mind stood clear and calm.
The old seer began to unbend, spine popping as she straightened. Her hands fell away from her face. The soiled emerald of her robes hung sheer against her skeletal body. Her head turned upwards, lank hair falling away from her face. Empty eyes met the rays of the sun. Her mouth opened a crack. Air rattled from her lips. And then, as though it was nothing, as though she was a fallen flower lifted by a breeze, she floated into the air. The web of chains clinked, and the masked attendants tensed.
Iobel waited, half watching with her eyes, half feeling the invisible tide of the warp spiral through the chamber. It pulled at her thoughts. Sweat began to bead Iobel’s forehead, and ran into her eyes. Heat was spreading through her flesh. A taste of lightning and metal ran across her tongue.
Izdubar was silent and utterly still, his eyes focused on the seer. The silence extended beat by beat.
The seer spoke.
+Ah-zek-mag-nus-oh-there-wyrd-make-kall-is-ta-er-is…+
It was a whisper at first, a low murmur of sound that rose out of the waiting quiet, overlapping and echoing. Iobel strained to hear, and then realised that she was hearing the same sounds twice, once with her mind and once with her ears.
+…cam-illes-hi-vani-ah-muz-emekh-he-ru-me-aph-ael-au-ri-es-fu-er-za-ra-mse-h-ett…+
The sound rose, rolling along with a rising rhythm. Beside her, Erionas had closed his eyes, light glowing through his eyelids.
‘Names,’ mouthed Erionas to himself, his head nodding in time with the wash of syllables.
+…hor-kos-haa-kon-oulf-ca-r-me-n-ta-gz-rel…+
Iobel knew the names. They were names she had found in dried scraps of lore, in what remained of a forgotten and secret history.
+…ph-o-sis-t-k-ar-ha-th-or-maa-t-u-th-iz-aar-kha-lo-ph-is-a-sh-ur-kai-dj-ed-hor-jai-k-el-ka-ra-ja-hn-ru-tat…+
The seer spoke the names in a continual flow without break or pause.
+…ra-ho-tep-ph-ae-l-to-ron-au-ra-ma-g-ma-an-khu-an-en…+
She frowned. She had heard this mind impression before, but each time the names were different, some added, some gone.
+…Xiatsis Cottadaron Maroth Karoz Kadin Thidias Cadar Ohrmuzd Lemuel Gaumon Amon Magnus Tolbek Hagos Egion Helio Isidorus Mabius Ro Pentheus Nycteus Memunim Menkaura…+
The seer was shouting now, spit flying up to meet the sunlight. The warp was singing, a chorus of whispers scratching against her will.
+…Amon Zebul Ketuel Silvanus Yeshar Jehoel Midrash Arvenus Kiu Zabaia Siamak Artaxerxes Calitiedies Iskandar Khayon Ignis Sycld Grimur Sanakht–+
The seer went silent. Her withered face twisted, creases forming and shifting around the empty sockets of her eyes. Her lips trembled as though she was trying to cry. She looked utterly terrified.
‘Nine suns,’ whimpered the seer, turning her head as though looking around her. ‘Nine suns above towers of silver and sapphire. It is here, it is all of us. It is burning. I am burning. It has fallen – the sun has fallen and the entire world is light.’ She paused and shook her head. ‘What have we done? Failure has no answer. There is dust, dust rising on the wind so that I cannot see. The eyes of the dead are all around me… Is this the redemption you sought?’
The seer hung her head, her shoulders shaking.
‘The swirl of stars. A figure burned onto the horizon. I am fate come round at last. I see lines of choice vanish into darkness, and I cannot see their ends. The broken king remade. Vortices of destruction that scream the names of
those who created them. The netherborn scavenging the remains of worlds split open like soft fruit.’ The seer stopped suddenly, her breath coming heavy, fuming with cold in the shaft of sunlight. Frost was spreading across her face from her mouth. ‘They rise,’ she breathed. ‘The dreams of enslaved worlds scream. The storm calls them. It stands on the horizon. It is the void defined by fire.’ The seer breathed out the last word, swayed, and her head lolled to her chest. Ice had crusted her robe now, and crawled across her skin.
‘And what is the storm’s name?’ said Izdubar. His voice was low, but its sound made Iobel flinch.
The seer did not answer.
‘Speak its name,’ said Izdubar, and the command cracked like a whip.
‘Ahriman,’ gasped the seer. ‘Ahriman.’ She was shaking, the web of chains holding her creaking and glowing with heat. The ice was thickening across her body.
Izdubar stared at the seer for a long moment, and then nodded slowly.
‘May the Emperor reward your service.’
His hand moved so fast that Iobel only saw the pistol in the instant before the shot rang out.
The seer fell. The chains rang as they caught her weight. She hung at the centre of the web, limbs slack and hair falling over her face. Ice began to fall off her body. The chains creaked as they cooled to a dull red. A dribble of blood began to splatter the floor under her feet. Izdubar’s hand dropped to his side, and the pistol vanished back beneath his robe. For a second there was no sound beside the slow patter of blood on stone.