Ahriman: Sorcerer

by John French

  Ahriman took that from you.

  Ahriman took that from me. The sorcerer had made him a king of dust. He should have died there, in the dust of his world. He had failed his people; he had failed them all. What is a king if he rules only the bones of the dead?

  You lived for a reason, said the voice, but Hemellion was not listening now. He did not need to listen. His mind was already a narrowing point of fury. He was not feeling the deck beneath his steps. You lived for vengeance.

  He was at the foot of the throne now.

  My world, my land, my people…

  He climbed one step higher. Carmenta sat unmoving on her throne, her form hidden beneath robes and cables.

  My realm is ashes and dust…

  He was beside the throne. Carmenta stirred, but did not raise her head.

  As his realm will be…

  He pulled the blade from beneath his robes. Carmenta quivered again. He leant closer. Her hood-framed face jerked up. Two glass lens eyes flared with light and recognition.

  ‘Hemellion?’ croaked a voice that sounded so human.

  XVIII

  Revelation

  The Sycorax went dark. Her engines spluttered then cut out. Her guns went silent. The arc of her course twisted as thrusters fired at random. Night fell in her hull, flowing down through the kilometres of passages and chambers like a cascade of black water. In the deep engine spaces hundreds of eyes that had never seen the light of stars looked upwards as their world turned black. Gunfire became strobing light in the passages and chambers as gun-servitors and thrall warriors opened up on each other. Lightning ran across every surface, cackling with a madman’s glee.

  In a deep and forgotten corridor an armoured figure in a hound-shaped helm raised his head as the feeble light cut out. Beyond the open door behind him, the pale, mutated body thrashed in its web of chains. The sigils worked into the silver chains and shackles pulsed with a dull blue light. It was trying to scream, but the only sound to come from its mouth was a rattling hiss. The flesh host held within the chamber had served it as needed, had kept part of its essence anchored in reality close to where it needed to be. But now that flesh was a limitation, and so it had taken Maroth’s skin and bone as its own. The wards and spells woven into the chamber, which had been its home but never its prison, needed a soul to hold. So it had exchanged places with Maroth, one soul for another. Maroth’s essence and mind now thrashed and hissed from the body held in the web of chains, while his body became a vessel. That would not last; Maroth’s body would burn out with change in time, but it did not need it to last for long.

  The figure in the hound-shaped helm gazed back. The chained creature thrashed more wildly. Then the figure raised a hand and the silver doors closed. Flames flared from the torches lining the corridor. A trembling ran through the deck. Night filled the Sycorax, and beyond it all the pieces moved as they should, unknowing and blind. Things were almost at the point that it required. It just needed to wait now. Once when it had lived it might have indulged in hope at such a point, but hope was only needed when faced with uncertainty, and though matters still had to run their course the mortals involved were nothing if not predictable. What they imagined made them unique simply made their choices certain.

  No, everything would proceed as it needed to.

  The figure began to walk. The blue flames blinked out in its wake, and the shadows crawled beneath its steps.

  The darkness closed over Sanakht and Ahriman when they saw the doors.

  The doorway was circular, an open mouth stopped with a plug of copper and silver. Faces circled its centre. Rags of silver covered the sculpted eyes and mouths. Intricate designs spiralled out from that centre. Sanakht recognised them – they were a mirror of those that had once closed a door on dead Prospero. They were the marks that had guarded the sanctum of Magnus the Red. The warp dispersed as the recognition filled his mind.

  The blankness began on the edge of his thoughts, and moved inwards like night falling across a sun-drenched land. The sensation of the warp flowing around him vanished. Chill clutched at his skin. He stopped in his tracks.

  In front of him Ahriman tumbled from the air to the floor. The Rubricae kept moving, and then one joint after another locked. Juddering, they turned their heads towards Sanakht. The lights in their eyes dimmed, spluttered, and went out. The dead suits of armour looked down at him.

  They must be screaming, but I cannot hear them any more.

  Silence closed around him. His breath and the beat of his hearts rang inside his helmet. He took a step towards Ahriman, aware of the buzz of his armour. He could hear running feet close by. He wondered how much time he had. He thought of all the years, the slow centuries, the dead and lost heaped in the desolation of his past. He thought of Khayon, of Amon, of all the rest. His hand went to his power sword. The steel whispered free. Ahriman was pulling himself slowly from the floor. The sorcerer seemed shrunken, as though he had withered while staying the same size.

  ‘It’s the keepers of this place,’ said Sanakht, softly. Ahriman looked around. The vox clicked. Wet laboured breath filled Sanakht’s ears as Ahriman fought to speak. ‘They wait beyond that door. An order of untouchables to watch over the Athenaeum. We are close enough now that the warp is lost to us.’

  Ahriman was reeling where he stood, as though the floor beneath him was a wave-tossed deck.

  ‘Sanakht…’ rasped Ahriman. His hand rose towards the swordsman as though trying to reach something to hold onto. Sanakht did not move. Part of him could not believe that it had worked; that the misdirection and plans had brought him to this point. Ahriman drew a rattling breath to speak again. ‘San–’

  ‘Does it hurt?’ said Sanakht and the words echoed in the stillness. ‘To be without the warp again, to be just flesh? Is the silver eating your hearts yet – does it hurt, old friend?’ Ahriman shivered and tried to straighten. Effort screamed from every movement. Sanakht paced slowly forwards, his movements careful and controlled. ‘This was a secret the inquisitor witch never told you – that you would have to walk through the dark without the warp to reach the Athenaeum. But I knew.’ He stopped three paces from Ahriman. The power sword crackled to life in his hand. Cold, bound lightning made the gloom into dancing shadows. ‘You have done so much to get us here, to lead us into the next step of your design, but this moment is mine, not yours.’ He took another step closer. Ahriman’s breath was a ragged hiss on the vox. ‘Even now your fleet is being torn apart, your few allies are dead, or have turned against you.’

  In the tunnels behind them the glow of light which had followed them grew brighter.

  ‘Even our enemies are here,’ said Sanakht, glancing around at the light and then back to Ahriman. ‘This is the end, Ahriman. There is nothing beyond this, no dreams of salvation, no false hope.’

  Sanakht raised the power sword, its lightning crackling over the blank plate of Ahriman’s helm. With a flick the power field vanished. Sanakht held the deactivated sword for a second, and then tossed it at Ahriman’s feet. Slowly he drew his force sword, the lifeless steel remaining cold, its runes unlit. ‘I could never face you with the warp open to your call. But here, here on the threshold of our father’s secrets, this is just a sword, and you. You are just flesh.’

  Ahriman turned his head, and looked at the sword at his feet.

  ‘Why?’ he rasped.

  ‘Pick up the sword,’ said Sanakht.

  ‘The Legion–’

  ‘Is dead!’ roared Sanakht, rage sudden and bright in his skull. ‘Everything we believed was a lie, every decision was flawed. We are lost. We are damned, Ahriman.’

  Ahriman shook his head.

  ‘No, no, we can rise, my friend. We will rise again.’

  ‘Pick up the sword,’ said Sanakht, taut control in each word.

  Ahriman reached down, and gripped the hilt of Sanakht’s power sword. He straightened stiffly to full height.

  ‘Don’t do this, Sanakht,’ said Ahriman, his voice a dry
whisper. ‘There can be another way. This is a path you don’t have to choose.’

  ‘Light the sword,’ snarled Sanakht. Ahriman raised the power sword, and it shook in his grip. The lightning field unfurled down the blade. Sanakht raised his own sword in salute. The vox clicked as though Ahriman was about to say something.

  Sanakht unfolded in a blur of cuts. Ahriman moved back, sword rising to meet Sanakht’s and finding only air. Sanakht read the sorcerer’s movements, fast for a human, but slow for him, so, so slow. The sword was a flicker blur in his hand, each feint pulling Ahriman’s guard and footwork apart. Their swords did not even touch. Sanakht ducked a blow, spun and slammed a kick into Ahriman’s torso. The impact juddered up Sanakht’s leg as Ahriman lifted from his feet. Sanakht spun back and cut Ahriman as he fell: once, twice, three times. Blood sprayed through the dark, splashing the passage walls with a soft patter. The severed hand clattered to the floor a second later.

  Ahriman skidded across the smooth stone towards the sealed doors to the Athenaeum. Sanakht walked forwards, sword spinning in his grip. Behind him the growing glow filled the tunnel mouth.

  Ahriman tried to rise again. Blood glossed his robes and armour. The stump of his right hand pulsed liquid into a growing pool. A razor line between the chest and lower torso plates was weeping thick, red runnels. Another wound grinned across Ahriman’s lower back. None of them were kill wounds, at least not ones that would kill fast.

  ‘Do you ever wonder why I saved you?’ asked Sanakht. ‘On Sortarius, when Khayon broke the pact, do you wonder why I stopped him?’

  ‘You…’ rasped Ahriman, ‘were loyal.’

  ‘I never believed in the Rubric, Ahriman. How could I believe in what I could not understand?’ Sanakht felt the smile form and fade on his face. He bent down, and released the seals of Ahriman’s helm. The face beneath was ashen pale, and gleaming with sweat. The pupils in Ahriman’s eyes grew and shrank as they tried to focus. Sanakht stared back. ‘But I believed in you.’

  Sanakht looked to where the power sword lay amongst the spreading pool of Ahriman’s blood. He picked it up and stood. He looked down at Ahriman.

  ‘Your life was mine from the moment I saved you,’ said Sanakht. ‘Every moment you have lived since then has been mine. The futures you dream of are not yours. They are mine, and they end here.’

  He dropped the sword next to Ahriman’s remaining hand.

  ‘Stand up. Take the sword.’

  Ahriman shook his head.

  ‘Sanakht…’

  ‘Stand up! Stand up, damn you. Take the sword.’

  ‘I knew,’ said Ahriman.

  Sanakht did not move. He could not move. Ahriman looked up at him, then closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘I have always known.’

  Sanakht felt the words punch through him. He stared at Ahriman, sword in hand, able to move but frozen. Ahriman coughed and blood wetted his lips. He looked again at Sanakht, and maybe there was supposed to be sorrow in those blue eyes, but Sanakht felt cold spread through his blood under their gaze. ‘I brought you here,’ said Ahriman. Behind Sanakht the glow of approaching light brightened in the tunnel mouth. ‘I brought you all here.’

  Ignis saw the Grey Knights unfold from the lightning of their teleportation. Five figures, their armour silver white and black shadow in the flash of light. He opened his mouth to give Credence a command, but too slow. The Grey Knights fired. His eyes saw the muzzle flare. A part of his brain that would never stop until he was dead read the angles of flight, and the heat pattern of the bolts igniting as they kissed the air. That same part of his brain began a calculation which would never complete but whose outcome was certain; he was going to end here.

  Credence’s fist hit Ignis and shot him through the air. The bolts exploded against the wall of the crucible behind where Ignis had stood. Ignis hit the floor. The Grey Knights charged, still firing. Credence turned its shoulder plates into the wall of fire. Explosions rang off its armour. Piston-driven legs tensed under the impacts, then stepped forward. The cannon on the automaton’s back opened up with a stuttering roar. Each shell was the size of a clenched fist, their sigil-etched tips heavy with explosives. A Grey Knight vanished as three shells reduced his head and torso to a tangle of ceramite splinters and pulped flesh. Credence shifted stance and the gun raked fire into two other Grey Knights. One fell, his legs blown from beneath him in a cloud of bone splinters and shrapnel. A third spun back, the left side of his body a ruin of silver and wet red. Twin jets of flame spat from Credence’s fists, and cooked the flesh of the dead warriors inside their broken armour. The surviving two Grey Knights did not hesitate. The air around their blades shimmered, keening with sharpness.

  Ignis pulled himself to standing and shrugged the lightning claws free from the backs of his fists. The blades lit with a whipcrack of static. Anger cut sharp in his mind. It was not supposed to have happened like this, it was so nearly perfect and now it might all become nothing.

  The two Grey Knights reached Credence. The automaton shuffled back, torso twisting to bring its weapons to bear. The Grey Knights spun their blades down and hacked into Credence’s leg pistons. Hydraulic fluid gushed out, and hissed to vapour on the Grey Knights blades. The automaton shuddered to its knees.

  Ignis charged towards the pair. One of them turned to meet him, its halberd a spinning blur. He could hear the warrior’s mind singing sharpness into the blade’s edge. The other Grey Knight raised his sword, point down, above Credence’s carapace. Ignis raised his claws as the halberd whipped towards him.

  It was a fast blow, beautifully fast, but its beauty was predictable. Ignis’s crossed claws caught the blade. Light exploded from the touch. Ignis ripped the claws apart and felt the halberd blade shear into fragments. He rammed the claws forwards and the tips punched deep through hard armour and into flesh. He wrenched them back. The Grey Knight fell. Ignis heard Credence give a blurt of machine code, and saw it try and twist to strike its executioner. The last Grey Knight stabbed down with his sword. Ignis roared as his claws sliced out. He was still roaring as he slashed again and again, and the Grey Knight became shreds of sinew and ceramite.

  He blinked. His orange armour was washed with blood. Red meat and silver fragments lay heaped at his feet, steaming and smoking into the reeking air.

  Credence gave a clatter of binaric.

  ‘No,’ said Ignis, breathing slowly. ‘That will not be necessary.’

  The automaton hissed static and slumped to the deck. Ignis let out a slow breath and nodded.

  Ignis shook himself. Alarms were blaring through the ship. He let his mind ripple out. There were more Grey Knights, more inside the hull of his ship cutting their way through to the engine decks and reactor levels. That was not good. That was decidedly outside of what should have been happening.

  +Ahriman?+ He shouted the question into the warp, but no reply came. He wondered what else had not gone as intended. He refocused his mind and saw that most of the pattern remained in the warp. The renegades were tearing themselves apart, their ambition, and spite, and treachery pouring into the Great Ocean as they bled and died under each other’s guns. Beyond it, under the star-pierced sheet of space, the storm rose in the warp. The pattern called to it in a voice of subtle numbers, invisible geometry, and inscrutable calculations. All it needed now was a final catalyst, a rod to call the lightning.

  As his mind touched the pattern it seemed to pull at him, demanding to be set free. But was it the right moment, he wondered. Was this the right or the wrong time? Then he shrugged.

  ‘As good as any,’ he said. The fire just needed one last spark to light it, one last moment of ritual and sacrifice. He nodded to himself. He reached his mind out to the ships that filled the void with their fire. Treacherous and vile each of them, but some would answer.

  +This is Master Ignis of the Word of Hermes. All who hear obey this command… +He paused. The moment gathered around him, awesome and terrible in potential, an atrocity waiting to become a re
velation. +Fire on the Sycorax.+

  ‘I knew,’ said Ahriman again. He could feel the blood pulsing out of him even as his body fought to clot it. Sanakht had cut well. Not so deep as to kill, but deep enough to bleed him of strength. The silver was there too, scattered through his chest, cutting deeper with every suck of breath and beat of blood. The pain was a muted scream held inside a wall of his will. Worse though was the presence of the deadening minds just behind the door to the Athenaeum. He felt so weak, as though his body had been cut in two. He buried both lights of agony deep down and continued to hold Sanakht’s stare as he spoke. ‘I knew what you planned. You are here because you chose this path, but I allowed you to walk it.’

  Sanakht was shaking his head.

  ‘No,’ breathed Sanakht. He was shaking now. ‘Not even you, not even you could–’

  ‘I made this moment, Sanakht. Your treachery is your own, but you walked here on a road I made for you to follow.’

  ‘No.’ Sanakht shook his head again. ‘You have no weapon left but lies. Your fleet is burning, Ahriman, your allies are dead, you bleed and will die with one more stroke of my sword.’

  ‘Then why do you hesitate, old friend?’ said Ahriman. ‘Think, how could I not know you would betray me, and if that is true, how could you succeed if I did not help you?’

  ‘Ignis–’

  ‘Is my creature, not yours. I knew of him, and Hemellion, and those whose loyalty could easily be transferred to another.’ Sanakht rocked back, and Ahriman heard the breath hiss from his lungs. ‘My fleet burns, but only with a fire that will consume the treacherous. It is a fire that will carry from this moment into the future. A storm is rising, Sanakht, and it rises at my command.’

  ‘Hemellion…’ Sanakht’s face was pale, drained of blood. ‘Kadin… Carmenta… the Sycorax…’

  Ahriman thought of the figure swathed in her red robes, flesh withering around the tubes binding her to the ship which ate her mind. He saw Kadin rise from the blood tank on chains.