by John French
The Sycorax pushed free from the hole she had punched between the real and unreal, and settled into the vacuum. She was truly vast. At her forgotten birth she had been one of the greatest ships of her age, and her time in the Eye had only added to her bulk. Seen from above she resembled a spear blade, its edge waved and curled like a rippling flame. A city of spires and domes glittered on her back, and her belly hung with inverted towers. The muzzles of her guns were as wide as hab-blocks. The citadel of her bridge was a mountain of glinting metal and pinpricks of light. Arcs of lightning crawled across the tops of her towers as the power which had guided her dissipated.
More ships appeared, tearing the sheet of stars into tatters as they left the warp. Some had once been ships of the Thousand Sons, but most had been made for different masters. Some had been captured, and made to serve Ahriman’s brothers. Others served the herd of warriors and sorcerers that had been drawn to follow the Exile. There were the three sister ships of Zelalsen the Wanderer, their hulls crawling with growths of bronze and bone, trailing luminous smears of light as they slid through the dark. The Pyromonarch, Gilgamos’s split-hulled barque, coasted to station beside squadrons of gunboats clad with sapphire-stained brass.
Even the smallest of ships held the population of a small city, and the largest swarmed with life. Thousands laboured on each vessel. Many of those souls had never known another life, had been born into the dark, and had only ever known the metal growl of the beast they lived within. Strange creatures stalked the dark of many ships, things that might have once been flesh, or might have walked from nightmare. In the deep holds of each ship masked prophets, redeemers, oracles, machine abominations, and petty kings rose and fell, and went unnoticed by the Space Marines who called themselves lords of realms they never saw and had no care for.
The fire-darkened Word of Hermes was the last to emerge from the warp, the spear tip of its prow trailing lightning from its re-entry to reality. Together, the assembled fleet settled into position around the Sycorax, and waited.
At the summit of a spiral-sided tower above the Sycorax’s bridge, Silvanus Yeshar vomited. His head was pounding, and his flesh felt as though he had been boiled in oil. Vision echoes of the warp lingered inside his skull, like neon bruises. The fading sound of screams still rang in his ears. He took a deep breath, almost vomited again and then managed to steady the sense of being spun around while not moving. He was fairly sure he was lying on the floor. He could feel and smell his vomit pooling around the side of his face. Slowly he pushed himself up to his knees, and wiped his hand across his face. He began to open his mundane eyes.
+Silvanus,+ growled Astraeos’s thought voice inside his skull.
Multi-coloured stars exploded inside his head. He screamed, as the pain rushed out to every corner of his awareness. After a moment the screaming just ran out, and the pain began to fade back to a dull ache.
‘Yes,’ he croaked.
+You are alive,+ sent Astraeos.
‘Yes, thank you for your concern.’
‘Concern?’
Silvanus shook his head. The bare lines of the pyramidal chamber were forming slowly around him. He scrambled to tie the strip of blue silk back over his third eye, then looked up. A giant in sapphire-blue war-plate looked down at him, its eyes an impassive green in a blunt helm. A swirl of gold marked the helm’s faceplate beneath the left eye, like the memory of a molten tear. A golden serpent coiled on the shoulder guard, its jaws eating its own tail. Silvanus shivered despite the fever heat in his flesh.
‘You are correct,’ he nodded. ‘I am alive.’
+It was successful.+
Successful, thought Silvanus as he blinked away the fading smudges at the edge of his sight. Successful in that they had found the Antilline Abyss. Successful in that the Circle had managed to burn through the storm spill at the Eye’s edge. Successful in that Ahriman had managed to guide Silvanus, and through him the fleet, to this place. Wherever this place was; Silvanus was not even sure how they had got here. It had felt more like a dream than a navigation, following a path that was not his own. Of course, that was true; it had been Ahriman’s. He had just been an eye, an additional sense organ grafted into Ahriman’s awareness.
+Ahriman wishes you to be there when it comes to planetfall.+
Silvanus shook his head, holding his hands against his eyes. When he took them away, he noticed again that the fingers looked longer, the skin more translucent and clammy. It was getting worse and worse. He looked at his hands for a long moment.
+Silvanus.+
‘Yes, I heard.’ He got to his feet, swayed and then took a step, but had to stop to steady himself. Astraeos just watched. Silvanus felt a stab of annoyance as he trembled under the cold green gaze. ‘Tell me, Astraeos, why are you here?’
+I watch over you, Navigator.+
Silvanus snorted, and wiped a trailing string of sick and spit from his chin. He was angry, the navigation had been… a nightmare, and he felt as though part of the warp’s fury had soaked into him as they had passed through it.
‘The Circle of Ahriman’s closest lieutenants is formed, and you are sent to watch me?’ He shook his head. ‘An honour rather than an insult, I am sure. Tell me, why does Ahriman keep others close, and send you away? He gathered eighty-one slave acolytes for each stage of the passage here. Eighty-one, to aid him and the Circle, but you are sent to watch over me while human witches lend their strength to him. You are called his lieutenant, but is any other lieutenant so favoured with scorn?’
Astraeos was perfectly still. The skin-itching hum of the blue power armour was the only sound.
+You should rest, Navigator.+ The telepathic words were brittle-sharp, and sent a stinging blizzard across Silvanus’s scalp. He bit off a bark of pain.
‘Just speak with your voice, for Terra’s sake!’
The armoured hand was around Silvanus’s throat before he could breathe in. Astraeos lifted him from the floor. He gasped, his own fingers scrabbling at the hand locked around his neck. His lungs were empty. Beneath him his legs and feet thrashed the air. Panic flooded him, overwhelming every thought and instinct. He had to break free, had to breathe. His eyes blurred, washing out of focus. He felt his nails and skin rip as they pulled at the ceramite digits. He could not breathe, he could not get free. His vision fogged to black at the edges. At the end of the narrowing tunnel of sight the green eyes of Astraeos’s helm watched him with still indifference.
The fingers suddenly opened, and he fell to the floor. He lay sucking in air, feeling the relief at still being alive flood over him. Astraeos looked down at him, and then turned and walked from the chamber.
‘So,’ said Izdubar. ‘The first son of the Crimson King lives.’ He paused as though measuring the weight of his words.
Iobel was not looking at Izdubar; she was watching the muscled attendants drag the dead seer from the chamber. A wet, red trail smeared the grey stone floor behind them.
‘Unpleasant indeed,’ muttered Cavor from behind her. Above them the aperture in the domed ceiling ground shut. A scowl flickered across Iobel’s face as she looked back to Izdubar. His expression was grave, but she thought she saw something else flickering in his eyes. Excitement? Anticipation? Triumph?
‘Yes, Ahzek Ahriman lives, and this psychic impression tells us much more,’ said Erionas, and smiled with his eyes closed. ‘Its meaning–’
‘Does it really mean anything?’ The voice was acidic and came from a sour-faced girl in a red bodyglove and black velvet cloak on one of the higher tiers. Izdubar looked at her. Everyone looked at her. The girl looked around, and gave an open-handed shrug. ‘Come now, the warp is littered with patterns of thought, dead dreams, and storms of lost meaning. This prophecy could mean nothing.’
‘It means something,’ said Malkira. The old crone’s voice cut the air like broken glass. ‘Of that there is no doubt.’
‘Then you had better tell us what and how.’ The sour-faced girl met Malkira’s cold gaze with h
er own.
‘Ahriman?’ said a dry voice on the other side of the chamber. Iobel turned to look at the speaker. His eyes were sunken dots in a fat and age-folded face. Worn robes of purple and silver silk hid his bulk, and rings glittered from a heavy hand as he gestured stiffly to Izdubar. ‘Ahriman is not a name or formulaic that I have encountered before. What does it signify?’
‘Not what, but who,’ snapped Erionas. ‘Ahriman was a son of the Fifteenth Legion, a traitor from the great time of betrayal, a son of one of the fallen fathers of the Imperium.’
‘The Fifteenth are gone,’ said the old man, his voice a slow creak of sipped breaths. ‘Swallowed by the Eye. If any survive, then…’
‘They are not all gone,’ said Iobel, and felt the eyes of the assembly swivel to her. She felt her mind sting as it sensed the thoughts of the assembled inquisitors point at her, assess her, judge her. ‘Not all of the Fifteenth are gone, perhaps not even most. The signs are there, in the warp and those that touch it – a girl born on Marius Nine with one eye blue and one white, a girl who screams of the Crimson King before she dies in the Black Ships, the accounts of the attacks on Cadia nine centuries ago, the tales told by the Wolves of Fenris when they believe they are not heard. The signs are there, but each age forgets more, and becomes a little more blind. Perhaps one day we will not remember or recognise the truth at all.’
‘Poetic,’ croaked Malkira. ‘But true.’
Izdubar cut through the silence before it could form.
‘There is more than that even, but Iobel speaks the truth.’ Izdubar flicked a glance at Iobel, and she could read the message in that glance without needing to see his thoughts. Do not mention the Athenaeum, said that look. Do not speak of what we have both seen. He turned his eyes back to the others and carried on smoothly. ‘The Fifteenth lives, and now we know that Ahriman, who was once its greatest son, lives too.’
‘Very well,’ said the sour-faced girl, ‘but without more we are floundering in prophecy and symbolism.’
Iobel noticed the twitch of a smile at the edge of Izdubar’s cold eyes.
‘You are right, we do not know what these words may mean, or how they may play out, or even if there is a way of preventing what they do tell us. But discovering such things is what we do, is it not? What we exist for?’
He knows what comes next, thought Iobel, and felt a shiver scuttle across her skin, the early guess now a certainty. He had just set the stage for the final piece of evidence, the last fact that they had brought to the conclave. You knew what we would say, and what evidence we brought. You always were the showman, Izdubar. It’s all been an introduction, a setting of the stage. This is not our moment – it is yours.
‘But we have one more thing,’ said Iobel, feeling as she said it as though she had spoken a line on cue. The grinding of stone and machinery filled the chamber again. ‘We have the means to find answers.’
The floor of the chamber started to break apart. The flagstones cracked along hidden lines and hinged downwards. A circular shaft yawned wide. Red-orange light glowed in the unseen depths. Iobel blinked as the null fields snapped back into force again. The chamber became dark to her mind, the warp and the whispers of minds held back beyond a barrier of silence. A whine of engines and a clatter of gears echoed from the gloom beneath.
A circular platform as wide as a battle tank ascended from the shaft. A vertical black casket rose from the centre of the platform, fuming steam and wisps of energy. A warrior stood beside the casket. The light rippled across the silver of his armour. Blue light burned in the eyepieces of his plough-fronted helm. Bronze amulets in the shape of swords, lions and eagles hung from chains beside parchments crowded with script. The warrior held a sword as tall as a man, its tip resting point down.
Iobel found she could not look away from the silver-clad warrior. He was utterly still, as only something carved from stone or cast in metal should be. Her eyes stayed fixed on him, her pulse racing despite her fighting it down. She had seen the warrior before, but those previous encounters did not stop her reaction. The silver-clad figure was not human; it was a weapon from ages past, created to face the enemies that no others could. The very existence of such a creature was a secret that would have killed all those in the chamber had they not been on the left hand of the Emperor. It was a son of Titan, a Grey Knight.
The platform stopped when it was level with the floor. The Grey Knight remained silent and unmoving. Izdubar inclined his head.
The Grey Knight reached up and unsealed his helm. A tight-fitting leather caul framed the broad features beneath. Dark eyes glittered above a mouth set in a line. Flesh-bonded silver wire spiralled across iron-black skin, gleaming like the lost tracks of tears. Iobel’s first thought was that it was the face of a troubled king remade as a demigod. The Grey Knight knelt on one knee, but did not bow his head.
‘Sires,’ he said.
‘Cendrion,’ said Iobel with a nod.
The Grey Knight called Cendrion stood, and turned to the black casket at the centre of the platform. It stood taller than him, and was a little wider. The oily shell of a shield surrounded it, distorting its dimensions. Cables linked to sockets in the casket’s black surface snaked down into the platform. Transparent tubes sucked and bubbled with viscous liquid: arterial red, neon blue, polluted yellow. Two hunched tech-priests lurked behind and to the sides of the platform, the green light of their machine eyes glowing in the caves of their cowls. Machines ringed the casket’s base, thrumming with a low bass note. Iobel’s teeth ached as she looked at them: null-generators, shrouding the casket in a second layer of psychic deadness.
Cendrion gestured. Steam vented as a wide crack formed in the black metal. The front of the casket broke into a hundred pieces which folded back into its sides. A figure lay within.
He was not human, but like the Grey Knight, he had begun as human. He was a Space Marine. Thick bands of silvered adamantine looped around his wrists, waist, ankles and neck. Stitch scars ran across his bare skin – faded with age, but still visible – telling the story of the process which had changed him from a child into a weapon. The marks of war were there too, twisting the flesh in knots and ridges. The skin of his hands was glossy, as though it had once been stripped away and regrown. A halo of black iron and silver cables circled his head. Iobel could see the dried blood from where it had been riveted to his skull. Old marks showed that this had been done many times before. Wires hung from the empty socket of a bionic eye. His face was lean, proud and strong even in sleep. He had been like this when they found him, caged in ice and locked in the wreckage of a ship drifting close to Cadia.
Murmurs ran around the chamber, growing in volume.
‘What is he?’ asked the sour-faced girl. Izdubar remained silent, and just looked at the bound Space Marine.
‘Wake him,’ said Iobel. The murmuring faded to a hush.
Cendrion nodded to the tech-priests. They bent to the machine with a sigh of clockwork. A few moments later the colour of the liquid in the tubes began to change. The bound figure stirred. His lips twitched, gums peeling back as muscles contracted. One of the tech-priests reached out with a hand of tarnished bronze, and tapped a control on the pillar’s side. The halo of cables jerked, sparks running over the black iron clamp as it dug into the prisoner’s skull. Muscles spasmed as blue sparks spread across bare flesh. A smell of ozone and cooking meat rose to Iobel’s nose.
The figure’s one eye opened. His muscles became still as though at a command. Arcs of electricity continued to play over him. He did not make a sound. His head moved slowly, his one-eyed gaze holding on Cendrion for a long while before it moved to Izdubar, and then to Iobel.
‘You will answer me,’ said Izdubar in a level voice. The bound Space Marine just stared back. ‘Who do you serve?’
‘No one,’ said the Space Marine, and Iobel heard the hate rolling in the words.
‘But who did you serve? You have already told my comrades this, have you not? So, as you did b
efore, tell us who you served.’
The edge of the Space Marine’s mouth twitched. On another face, belonging to a different species, it might have been a smile. To Iobel it looked like a predator baring its teeth.
‘Ahriman,’ said the prisoner. A murmur of sound ran around the room. Iobel realised that she had been holding her breath. Izdubar looked up at the tiers of faces nodding in agreement, before turning back to the prisoner.
‘Tell us, what is your name?’
‘My name…’ said the prisoner, his jaw chewing the words slowly. Then he shook his head. The silver cables linked to his skull rattled. ‘My name is Astraeos.’
IV
World Murder
Ahriman watched the fleet gather around the Sycorax. Engine fires and the dispersing energy of warp wake flickered across the depths of the crystal sphere which hung in the high dome of the Sycorax’s bridge. He shifted the direction of his thought, and the view widened, pulling back until the Sycorax was just one island of light amongst many. Beyond them a single star burned bright against the distant void. It was not a large star, but seen from the edge of the system it was clear and bright.
Like a candle, thought Ahriman. A lone flame to guide the lost through a storm-lashed night. His mind flickered and the crystal’s bound vision glided closer, until the star’s planets were dots of visible light, and it had become a disc of raw white. Or like a ghost light, dancing out of sight, leading the traveller to their grave.
The bridge at the summit of the High Citadel was a pile of armour and architecture which rose like a mountain at the stern of the Sycorax. The bridge itself was half a kilometre long, its armoured shell clad in bronze and supported by spars and pillars of black metal. Blue-green light shimmered up the walls and across the floor, as though the chamber were far beneath the ocean. A swarm of crew filled the bridge, webbed into machine cages by fleshmetal cables, or muttering over consoles. These were the Cyrabor, a sect of machine-wrights bred in some warp-soaked corner of the Eye of Terror, who had taken the Sycorax as both their goddess and nest. The air smelt of cinnamon and machine oil, as it did everywhere that the machine-wrights went.