Ahriman: Unchanged

by John French

  He did not resent his own weakness. It had been his choice, one of the many things he had spent to learn the names of the daemons which now sat in his memory waiting for him to set them free. That knowledge was greater than the strength of muscle and bone. Yet, even so, he preferred to go amongst his brothers with his armour to fill the space that wasted flesh had left in his bearing. Everything had a price, and he had never been blind to that fact. He served Ahriman for the same reason that the knowledge he bore had cost him in body and soul; it was a price for a reward, or a penance for a past misdeed. As with everything, it depended on how you looked at it.

  He nodded to himself and licked his lips. It would be soon. Ahriman would call them soon, and then… and then he would have to perform his function.

  ‘And then what?’ he said aloud to himself, and listened to the dry rasp of his own voice. ‘What will Ahriman do with you once he is done?’

  He shook his head. The question had no useful answer, and he did not have time. He wanted to go to the Athenaeum again before the summons came.

  With a creak of muscles and a whir of armour he walked from his chamber.

  Helio Isidorus,+ sent Ahriman. A pulse of will as delicate as a silk thread ran through the name. The Rubricae remained on the iron dais, the blue armour a dead weight, the light in its eyes gone. Ahriman waited, allowing his own mind a measure of rest.

  Patience is the first virtue of wisdom, he thought to himself.

  Still the Rubricae did not move. The bowls of flame above the altar were drinking the last of their oil. The warp had settled back into its wild flow, shaking off the order he had imposed. The symbols which had flowed across the Rubricae’s armour like leaves on water had sunk back beneath its surface.

  He refocused his mind, letting the quiet of the chamber seep into him. The space was one of the Word of Hermes’s smaller forges. Vast crucibles and pneumatic hammers lurked in the shadows nearby, silent and cold. The altar he had used was in fact an anvil slab. On its smooth top metals were once beaten to sheets, and weapons given their shape. It had served his needs, though.

  Helio Isidorus,+ he called again.

  Light grew in the Rubricae’s eyes. Ahriman breathed, and pulled again with his will.

  The Rubricae rose from the dais. It shed motes of silver light as it moved. It straightened, and turned its crystal eyes on Ahriman. He heard a voice too distant to understand, but loud enough to hear. For a moment he thought it was calling his name.

  A door clanked open behind him, and the buzz of servos driving heavy armour stole the silence.

  A success?+ sent Ignis, and Ahriman’s mind filled with a sensation of hard edges and ticking cogwork.

  A success,+ answered Ahriman without turning.

  Ignis stalked into the chamber, his automaton bodyguard clanking in his wake. The machine was called Credence, and it followed Ignis everywhere.

  Helio Isidorus twitched at the approaching pair, and then moved with sudden speed, picking up and aiming a boltgun before Ahriman’s will froze it in place. Credence had raised its own fists. The gun on its back armed with a metal cough.

  ‘Hold!’ snapped Ignis, and the automaton became still. For a second the two guardians faced each other, weapons readied. ‘Desist,’ said Ignis. Ahriman pulsed his will to Helio Isidorus. The Rubricae lowered its boltgun, and shifted back into utterly still readiness.

  That Rubricae seems unusually aggressive,+ sent Ignis, as he crossed the last distance to Ahriman’s side.

  His name is Helio Isidorus,+ replied Ahriman. +You should remember him. He shared three campaigns with you.+

  I try not to remember the dead. It is a waste of thought.+

  Helio Isidorus moved back, and settled into statue-like stillness.

  Ignis stepped up to the altar, and extended a silvered talon from his left gauntlet. He tapped the altar. The talon blade rang with a high, clear note.

  You learned what you needed from this latest dissection?+

  Dissection. Ahriman felt a pulse of anger at the word, but suppressed it. In Ignis’s literal universe of symbolic resonance and numerology, what better word was there for what Ahriman had done? He had forced Helio Isidorus’s spirit down, and down, until it was a murmur in a dead shell of armour. Then he had pulled the power that animated the suit to the surface and examined it like a chirurgeon teasing through intestines. He had done it before. Hundreds of times before. He did not like it, but the Rubricae returned to their normal state once he had finished. Yes, dissection was as good a name for it as any. He just did not like the word’s callous edge.

  Ahriman swallowed the taste of anger. He was always more prone to emotion after these rituals.

  It will not be done again. I have learned and confirmed all that is needed.+

  For the second Rubric,+ stated Ignis.

  Yes,+ replied Ahriman, and felt his thoughts pause. Something was not right. Ignis was a creature of straight lines and measured paths, but his presence and the shape of his thoughts were disrupted, as though they were following unfamiliar patterns.

  Will it work?+ asked Ignis, turning to look directly at Ahriman.

  The Rubric?+

  Yes.+

  Ahriman nodded slowly.

  Of course, you were not one of us when I… when the Cabal cast the Rubric for the first time. You did not see the steps to its conclusion. You only saw the result.+

  Am I one of you now?+

  Do you care how I answer?+

  No.+

  Ahriman watched Ignis’s utterly still features as the electoos blurred across them.

  What must it be for such a mind as his to have doubt?

  He nodded slowly.

  It will not be the same as the first Rubric,+ he sent carefully. +The subject is the same. The outcome is the same that we originally intended, but it will not be the same. Too much has changed.+

  He blinked, and felt a wave of fatigue pull at his thoughts. Perhaps the ritual had taken more out of him than he had realised? He felt his fingertips begin to tremble. Pain licked his hearts, and he tasted silver. His hand went to his chest before he realised it was moving. He thought of the sharp shards of silver slowly eating into his hearts whenever his focus slipped from keeping them locked in place. The shards had come from a bolt-round fired by an inquisitor called Iobel, and they remained with him, unable to be removed by surgery or sorcery.

  No, he thought. Not yet. Not yet. His will hardened, and the pain in his chest faded. He could still taste silver when he looked back up.

  Ignis was watching him, silent and unmoving.

  I knew less when I cast it the first time.+ He paused his thoughts as he dabbed at the blood on his lips. A bitter smile twitched his mouth as his fingers came away marked red. +The power I wielded then was… naïve. And the curse on our Legion was more straightforward. Our brothers were flesh – drowning in mutation, but flesh nonetheless. Now we are dealing with spirit, and dust, and echoes of being. The cure cannot be exactly the same because the point we start from is not the same. And there are other considerations.+

  He gestured to Ignis, and then at the ship and everything beyond it. +We are fewer than the Cabal were, and now we will have to enact it while fighting a battle against Magnus and our brothers that serve him.+ He paused, his own thoughts turning through all the possibilities, uncertainties, and factors. Complexity branched into paradox, and slid out of sight into a grey haze. He sighed. +What we will cast will be the Rubric because it is grown of the same seed, and has the same purpose, but it is a sibling to the first, not its child.+

  Ignis waited for nine seconds, then tilted his head, and blinked once.

  A very precise answer…+ he began.

  …to a different question,+ finished Ahriman. +I am aware of both the question you asked and the answer I have given, Ignis.+ He turned away, gestured with a strand of will, and t
he last flames vanished in the bowls of oil. Cold shadows suddenly lay on the empty altar.

  I created the first Rubric from the work of Magnus,+ he sent. +I remember its every detail. I have gone back to the root of his work. I have looked into his knowledge and thoughts as they come from the Athenaeum. I have found the flaws in the original work, and created solutions for each. I have examined the nature of what happened to us and our brothers. I have rebuilt it, and then done it again and again. It will work, because this time it is built on knowledge that was not there before. It is flawless.+

  But untested?+

  It cannot be tested. To test it is to enact it, and to do that requires more than power. Every factor must be perfect. For that we need to go back to where the first Rubric was cast, and we need the power of a storm so great that it will scar the warp. We need to be at the foot of Magnus’s throne, in the dust of that world. Then, and only then, can we do this, only then will it work.+

  I know the alignments required.+

  Ahriman nodded.

  I have never thanked you, Ignis,+ he said, and let a tired smile rise across his face. +For joining me in this, for all that you have done.+

  Flattery.+

  No. Sincerity.+

  Ignis shook his head.

  I came to you when you needed someone who could progress your designs. I know the value of an outsider, someone whom no one else either likes or trusts. That value is high for one such as you.+

  Ignis’s aura and thoughts had not shifted as he spoke. It was not a challenge, just a blunt statement of what he saw as fact.

  This undertaking is not a quest for him, thought Ahriman. It is a problem. That is what holds him to me, not the goal, but the challenge and beauty of its… shape. At least that is what most of him believes.

  I know you do not share the dream, Ignis, but that does not stop you being a part of it.+

  The Master of Ruin nodded, and the tattoos on his face became still.

  Just as Sanakht is now a part of it.+

  Ahriman’s skin prickled, and he thought of the swordsman, so loyal for so long. Madness and bitterness had curdled that loyalty to betrayal. Ahriman had punished him by making him the living vessel for the Athenaeum of Kalimakus. In his mind he saw the fire of the Athenaeum flare as he thrust Sanakht into its embrace. Now he sat in the Chamber of Cages and spoke the secret thoughts of Magnus the Red. Only Ignis knew that Sanakht had not given himself to that fate willingly.

  Yes, he has played his part. He is gone, but mortality is not a span of time, it is a wave passing through the ocean of existence, and that does not end when our lives end.+

  Poetic,+ sent Ignis. +I never liked poetry.+

  Ahriman moved, towards a door out of the chamber and his next task.

  We have a problem,+ sent Ignis, before Ahriman could take more than two steps.

  Yes?+ he said, and turned. The tiredness in his blood and bones felt suddenly fresh and insistent.

  With the Athenaeum,+ sent Ignis, and the lines across his face twitched. +And Ctesias.+ Ahriman waited. +He is suspicious,+ Ignis continued. +He seems to have become fixated on the Athenaeum. He spends all of the hours he is not muttering to the neverborn in the Chamber of Cages.+

  It was always a risk.+

  Ignis raised an eyebrow.

  If he realises that Sanakht did not go willingly to the fire?+

  None of the others can know what was done,+ sent Ahriman, and began to walk to the door. He could still taste silver. That was not good.

  That is the second answer you have avoided giving me,+ called Ignis.

  The second?+ replied Ahriman without stopping.

  You intend to cast the Rubric for a second time. How can you be sure it will work?+

  Ahriman paused, swallowing the taste of metal.

  It will work,+ he sent at last, and started walking again. +I am certain.+

  II

  Spoken and Unspoken

  ‘…rise… I cannot see…’

  The voice droned on, each word flat and emotionless.

  ‘…war is coming with him…’

  Ctesias listened and let the words roll over him without letting their meaning touch his thoughts. It was better that way. On reflection he would have preferred to be anywhere else. But he had chosen to come. So he stood and listened without listening.

  ‘…destruction is change…’

  He shifted his weight and felt his armour creak in sympathy with his bones as he moved. His face was closer to skull than flesh, and inked sigils spidered his brow, cheeks, and neck beneath a spill of white hair. When he breathed he could hear the click of cartilage in his chest. He felt his nerves ache and the tremor in his fingers. The room and the caged thing at its centre had that effect on him, but also drew him here again and again.

  ‘…ashes are the cradle of the future…’

  The space where he stood had become known as the Chamber of Cages. Its walls formed a cylinder of adamantium that Ctesias could cross in twelve strides. Its roof was a distant shadow. The floor was a single hatch closed by an iris of pitted metal. The only other way in and out was the small door set into the wall just behind where Ctesias stood. It had been a store for a torpedo warhead, but now it was a prison. A sphere of silver struts hung in the air at the chamber’s centre, and within that three more spheres, each smaller and more intricate. Blue tongues of flame lapped over the cages, filling the chamber with ripples of light. It felt like looking up at the sun from beneath the surface of an ocean.

  ‘…what would you tell him…?’

  Ctesias tried to look at the body in the cages as little as possible. It was human, but magnified in stature and then redrawn by delirium. Its features jumped between the human and the monstrous, like pages of drawings flicked until they blurred together: a head of a bird, horns, scales, feathers, tails, fire, thorns, dry leaves, dead eyes, claws, fangs, bubbles of skin, ruby eyes, smoke and heat haze, a young warrior with hope and sorrow in his eyes.

  ‘Ctesias?’

  His name brought Ctesias’s eyes up suddenly. The figure in the cage was not a blur of images any more and his voice sounded alive, and confused, and terrified. ‘Ctesias. Where am I? What is happening?’

  Ctesias swallowed. He had never liked Sanakht. No, that was not right; he had loathed the swordsman with an intensity that he reserved for only one other amongst his Legion brothers. But what Sanakht had become, what he had done to himself, sent echoes of emotions through Ctesias that he could not puzzle out.

  ‘You…’ he began. In the chamber he had to use his mundane voice, and as the word formed he found his mouth dry. ‘You are with us, Sanakht. You are with your brothers, on a ship.’

  ‘I… cannot remember. I cannot remember…’

  ‘You…’ he began again, then paused. Why was he speaking to the thing in the cage? He shook his head. ‘You gave yourself to the fire of knowledge, brother. You took on the burden of being the voice of the Athenaeum. The warp speaks through you now. You see and tell our father’s thoughts and all he knows and sees.’

  ‘I cannot remember…’ The figure in the cage shook its head, blinking. He looked just as Sanakht had done when he lived, before he had gone down to the moon of Apollonia with Ahriman, before he had become a conduit through which the secrets of Magnus poured like water from a cracked chalice.

  ‘You will not remember,’ said Ctesias carefully. He did not know why he was talking. There was no use to it. Sanakht was gone; what was speaking to him now was just an impression left by what had been. He licked his lips. ‘There is nothing for you to remember.’

  The figure – who looked so real and so alive – shivered.

  ‘Fire.’ He was suddenly breathing hard, eyes darting around him, blindly, panicked. ‘I can feel fire, Ctesias.’

  Ctesias found himself taking a step towards the cage.

&n
bsp; ‘I cannot see,’ said the figure.

  ‘This is not real, brother. You are gone. You are feeling nothing.’

  ‘I cannot see you,’ said Sanakht, his voice ringing with confusion and agony. ‘What is happening? Please. What is happening? I–’ His voice stopped, but his mouth kept fighting to form words, and then words vomited from him, spilling out in red smoke as his skin and flesh blinked to flakes of ash. ‘I can see its shadow but not its shape. Help me. He is coming and war is coming with him. Please brother you were the best of my sons is revenge enough payment for the loss of salvation…’

  ‘Sanakht?’

  The flow of words stopped and his eyes fastened on Ctesias. They were wide with terror and shock. Around them his form bubbled through every shape of nightmare.

  ‘I…’

  Sanakht’s mouth forced the words out as his body twisted and flowed.

  ‘…am…’

  Sanakht pressed against the silver bars of the inner cage. Blue fire crawled over his writhing flesh.

  ‘…burning.’

  ‘Sanakht!’ Ctesias shouted, but the figure in the cage had slumped back, its head lolling to its chest. Ctesias was breathing hard. His blood was hammering through his withered flesh. ‘Sanakht?’ he called, but a drone of endless words was the only reply.

  ‘He still speaks.’

  Ctesias turned at the sound of the voice. He had missed the sound of the hatch opening. Ignis stepped through, his armour buzzing as he moved. Credence loomed just beyond the door, lacquered orange plates flexing as though the automaton was unhappy at not being able to enter.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ctesias. ‘He still speaks.’

  ‘I was voicing a statement,’ said Ignis, his tone flat. ‘The fact that the Athenaeum is still speaking is manifestly obvious. There was no need for you to confirm it.’

  Ctesias closed his eyes and let out a slow breath.

  ‘Then why say anything?’

  ‘No other conversational opening presented itself.’ Ignis looked up at the layered cages holding the figure of what had once been Sanakht. ‘Your bindings still hold.’