At times, he would dream of another time and another world – empty skies of pale green, a dusty plain stretching away towards gauzy horizons, a child running in terror from the iron ships hanging in the grit-blown air. Even now, after a routine action, while recuperating in Courvain’s medical bays, he might remember the nights he had endured in the schola, stinging from the welts left by the instructors’ electro-whips, his lips bloody from constant recitation of battle-doctrine. He could revisit himself as an adolescent sometimes, crying angrily into the thin sheets of his cot, fists balled against the bolsters, exhausted, broken. All that psycho-training had left its mark, bludgeoning out the weaker elements, leaving only what was necessary for his vocation. Like so many others in the service of the Throne, he had been forged, hard-tempered, then re-made.
Courvain, for one of Revus’ experience, might have been considered a less than optimal posting. Another man in his position might have agitated hard for promotion, for transfer to a personal detachment in a more prestigious location, or even command of an active-duty regiment in some branch of the mainstream Militarum. Revus, though, knew what Crowl offered. Some inquisitors were sadists, treating their troops as expendable resources. Others were flamboyant mavericks, swaggering around the Imperium’s possessions like temporal lords and holding sway over fiefs in the name of none but themselves. Crowl was simpler to understand. He cared little for the outward ostentation of his office, but maintained an orderly, active programme of investigation. He had high expectations of those in his service, but was solicitous over their wellbeing. That engendered loyalty in excess of that guaranteed by standard indoctrination alone. For those who served long enough, it inculcated something close to devotion.
And yet, it was still possible to have one’s faith shaken; to be exposed, even briefly, to a wider world. For a very short time, down in those lightless pits, Revus had fought alongside Custodians. They had barely noticed him, in all likelihood, and his own contribution to the encounter under the walls had been little better than nominal, and yet, still, he had served alongside them. A man might live for a hundred years and never see such a sight. He might tell stories of it with every detail perfectly represented, and none would believe him.
Now, in the shadows of the citadel’s interior, Revus stood on the edge of the training square, his linen jerkin soaked with sweat. He tried to recall how they had moved, how they had handled those crackling staves. Perhaps there was something to learn from it, however imperfectly or clumsily. There was always room for improvement, to become a better servant of the Throne, and it was hard to imagine more exalted role models.
But in truth, there was no emulating such paragons, not even by degree. They were as far above him as he was above the wretched and disease-blighted masses of the underhives. Already the experience had begun to seem like a dream, a too-vivid vision provoked by fever. Back in Courvain, all was dark again, all was stained and old. They had been like shards of gold in an imagined sunrise, fleeting, seen from a distance, a reminder of another possible world of myth and forgetfulness.
He pushed himself from the wall, flexing his aching arms. The baton was greasy in his grip. In the centre of the training square was a padded column two metres high, a static opponent of limited use for honing his skills. It would make him stronger though.
The overhead lumens flickered as he padded on to the mat, rehearsing the litanies of manual combat, the same ones he had been taught in the schola and had used ever since. The sodium tubes above him shook as he thudded the baton home, swinging heavily, panting and throwing sweat from his forehead. As he worked, as he pummelled and struck, he had the golden giants in his mind’s eye the whole time, those titans of combat whose movements had been so fast as to be nearly impossible to follow.
There was so much to do still. So far to go before he reached the limit of his potential and the absolute satisfaction of what the Throne could demand. Once they had been seen, they could never be forgotten, and could only remain there, visions, goading him towards greater accomplishment.
There would never be fighting like it again. If he had never lived to see another day, it would still have all been worth it, just for that.
‘Again, now,’ he murmured to himself, getting ready for another bout. ‘Faster this time. More accurate.’
The lumens pulsed, as if in readiness. Sweat ran in thin trails down his flushed skin.
He hefted the baton, and started again.
Now Terra was her home.
Spinoza’s time on the Throneworld had been so short. She had seen many planets in her time and each had left their mark, though none had claimed her so completely as this one. She had ingested its poisons and breathed its soot-heavy atmosphere. She had observed the blush fade from her skin, to be replaced by the grey pallor that all wore here. She had already been swallowed up, enveloped and weighted down, until there was nothing left but this place, this endless city, this press of thousands upon thousands of souls, all of them clamouring for something, anything.
Now she stared at herself in her small mirror above her personal hygiene station, lit on all sides by unforgiving lumen strips. She saw the harder edge to her jaw, the deeper lines around her eyes. Her hair, which had always been a pale blonde, was now bleached almost entirely white. Terra’s mark had been made, and the process could only continue.
She had a choice now. She could either do what Rassilo had done and indulge in augmetics and rejuvenat to hide the damage, or adopt her master’s policy of letting the world do its worst. The latter was the more honest course and appealed to her innate sense of conventional piety, but the temptation to fight against the grime was still strong. There were things she could do, techniques she could adopt, all of which required coin, which she had enough of, and time, which she didn’t. It was most likely, then, that she would let it slide and gradually become one with this place, just another grey-skinned, dark-eyed cadaver stalking the labyrinths.
She splashed cold water over her face, rubbed the skin dry, and turned away from the mirror.
Her private chambers were set on the northern wall of the citadel, near the summit and only overhung by the topmost gun emplacements. Her sole view of the city outside was through a single set of narrow, reinforced windows. She could see towers crowding the night beyond, rank upon rank of them, each one surmounted by glowing marker lights and glittering from their thousands of tiny viewports. Palls of smoke from the incinerators and cathedral-furnaces rolled lazily across the darkness, snagging on the gothic turrets and spilling back down into the narrow canyons between.
The Palace itself was far to the north, a long way out of sight. Its grandeur might have been a world away from the crumbling mazes before her, and yet it never left her mind. She had come closer to it than she had ever dared to hope, albeit via buried ways that gave her little sight of the immense structures above. Since returning to Courvain, she had pondered little else – the ranks of statues forgotten in the deep dark, the foundations buried under centuries of accumulation, the smell of ancient dust in her nostrils, deposited in another age and only stirred again by their brief intrusion.
Crowl had gone further in, she knew. He had said nothing of what he’d seen, and she had learned better than to ask, but something had changed in him. He’d been brought out unconscious. When he’d finally stirred again, his first expression had been almost rapturous, as if he were still in the presence of something phenomenal, before he’d blinked, winced, and realised that it had gone. After that, there had been a change, some faint mark left on him. She could never quite put her finger on what it was – he remained dry, soft-spoken, occasionally sardonic – but an alteration had taken place.
Perhaps that was inevitable. You did not come so close to such powers without being changed by them. Even as Terra was moulding her, so the Palace, or what had taken place within it, had changed Crowl, and only time would tell where those changes would lead.
And then there was the heresy of it – the xenos, the monster, dredged up from the profane reaches of the void and delivered into the very precincts of holiness. The thought of it disgusted her beyond endurance, just as the memory of its many depravities still polluted her mind. She had seen foulness before, but never so close to the heart of what she had been charged to protect. It should never have got so far in. Now, whenever she closed her eyes to begin her devotions, she would see its hollowed-out face. Crowl said it was dead now, killed by the Custodian Navradaran, its body destroyed. She had to believe that. And yet, in the dark hours of the night, when she awoke, she would still catch it staring at her through the window, or back at her in the mirror, or from behind her altar, licking its dark tongue around its bone-pale lips.
Just visions. It was weakness to entertain them at all. To combat them, she read the catechisms aloud. She returned to the Pradjia rhythms again, clutching to their solidity and simplicity, trusting that, in time, faith would dispel such phantoms from her unconscious mind.
She donned her robes, pinning the rosette to her breast and adjusting the heavy fabric of her cassock. In the far corner of the chamber, hoisted on a metal rack and surrounded by ritual candles, was Argent, the modified crozius arcanum gifted her by the Space Marine Chaplain Erastus. Simply laying eyes on it made her fingers itch to grasp it, to take it out into the darkness and use it to tear the shadows apart. Physical violence was easy – it was pure, and it was sanctioned. Other forms of service, particularly those practised here, were harder.
A chime sounded, and a corresponding lumen-bead spread a soft blush of red across her wax-stamped purity seals.
‘Interrogator,’ came a thin voice over her private comm – Aneela’s, by the sound of it.
‘I am aware of the hour,’ Spinoza replied, pulling a cloak over her shoulders. ‘I shall be there presently.’
The link cut out. The candle flames fluttered in the hot air, sending their warm light flickering over Argent’s sacred outlines.
It had never been over. The short time for respite – a mere breath, a single heartbeat – had passed. Now it would all start again.
Click here to buy Vaults of Terra: The Hollow Mountain.
A Black Library Publication
First published in Great Britain in 2019.
This eBook edition published in 2019 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.
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Cover illustration by Kevin Chin.
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For Liz, here’s to long conversations in evening beer gardens, and to you continuing to come up with all my best ideas…
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