Staring out the main viewscreen of the control chamber, Uldreth watched as the Eternal Star, a brilliant fiery wing in the darkness, stabilised suddenly and then dropped its speed to almost nothing. In immediate response, the Avenging Sword cut its engines and came to a near-halt, instantly matching the velocity of the startling Wraithship as though the two ships were organically fused.
It does not matter who was right, Uldreth. It only matters what we do about our mistakes. Pride is the affliction of our kind, Avenger, and it defines your own calling. Enact vengeance for your errors, but do not visit it upon yourself. Your conscience is clear, since you are here revealing the very future that you professed to deny. We are judged by our actions, and yours have already done you credit—beyond our emotions we can find the truth of ourselves. Macha’s tone was deep and insistent; Uldreth had heard it before, and he resented its patronising undertones. He was not some simple courtier that would be cowed by the words of the farseer; he had known her before she had become embroiled in the greatness and awe of her position. He knew her. She had no need to patronise him. And yet her words soothed his troubled mind and brought a measure of calm to his anxiety. Part of him snarled at the fact that she could affect him so much, despite his resistance and his consciousness of what she attempted.
I am sorry, Macha. I should not have doubted you, he replied.
You are wrong, Uldreth Avenger: it is your place to doubt and your duty to question. Without challenges and tests, the complacency of our people grows into a tyranny of its own. You should not apologise for saving us from ourselves.
But my doubts brought us so perilously close to disaster, he thought back.
Yet your pride did not prevent you from coming to my aid.
You knew that I could not desert you, Macha. Despite the circumstances, Uldreth could not hide the genuine affection in his tone.
Yes, I knew it. Macha had affection too, but its nature seemed maternal and condescending and it infuriated Uldreth, who instantly regretted his moment of weakness. There was silence.
Whatever the past, muttered Uldreth dismissively, the enemy is defeated now.
We should not find our conclusions so frivolously, Uldreth of the Dire Avengers, Macha replied. Victory and defeat are not such convenient categories in the myriad nodes of the future. Even the Old Ones could not find victory in their wars against the ancient enemy. They found only a momentary peace. I fear that we have found even less than that. The Yngir do not ascend without contingencies—there may be ripples in time and space that we have not yet seen. There may have been ripples even before the ascension. Perhaps those are what Taldeer saw in the Lorn system. Perhaps, my reproach-ridden Avenger, you were yet right to send the Tempest of Blades to Lorn. We both know what lies just under the surface of that ancient, exodite world.
The descent down the cliff face to the valley floor was a simple matter, but finding a route that kept me continuously hidden from any eyes above me was harder. There were numerous ledges and overhangs, and I dropped beneath them as rapidly as I could. I was learning the limits of my physiology as I went, and I soon discovered that my body could withstand long drops and that my arms could catch my weight even after a fall of a dozen metres.
From time to time, when I thought that I had missed a ledge, or that I had caught myself too late and that I would tear my shoulder out of joint, I felt the electric pulse of an unknown energy gather strength in my body, reinforcing my shoulder or guiding my weight suddenly onto a shelf. In my mind, I muttered words of thanks and litanies of power, praising the Great Father and the Emperor for my body, armour and mind.
Once I had reached the valley floor, I turned and inspected the townscape that filled the basin. It was even more unusual than it had appeared from the top of the cliff. The buildings around the circumference were low-rise and wide, sweeping around the outskirts of the city in both directions. They seemed to be made of stone, but it was as though each had been carved out of a single piece.
The doorways and window-holes had been cut out of the unbroken lines of the walls, and there were no joints between the walls and ceilings, nor between the walls and the ground. Each aspect of the buildings flowed naturally into the next, as though the shapes had emerged out of the rocky landscape all by themselves.
I made a mental note about the skill of the architects that had designed and built these structures: If they have mastered buildings in this way, what would their skill have produced as weaponry?
Further in towards the centre of the city, the buildings grew higher and more impressive, sculpting the skyline into a massive cone or pyramid, aspiring to the sky in the very heart and dropping away to ground-level at the edges. Looking up, however, I could see that the very highest structures in the downtown area were actually the same height as the cliffs that surrounded the town on all sides. There was nothing that stood proud of the valley; everything was contained and hidden in the circular basin. I marvelled at the genius of the urban design: A good defence is not to be seen, but better still is to be hidden in plain view.
The streets were empty and deserted, and yet they seemed pristine and perfect, as though people had been navigating them only hours or even minutes before. Something about the atmosphere in the city made it seem as though it had only recently been abandoned, if it had been abandoned at all.
For a moment, my mind flickered with memories of other towns that I had been in: they were deserted and evacuated. People’s belongings were left strewn in the streets and psychic wisps of pain hung around street corners; abandoned vehicles burned, overturned on the pavements, and others were crashed and exploded in the carelessness of haste; smoke, flames and cries riddled the town; the resonant, metallic thunder of siege engines rumbled through the ground.
But this city was different: an ancient and implacable calm hung in the air like an invisible, tranquilising cloud. A faint breeze drew itself through the streets like a wave of natural air-conditioning, presumably pulled into the town by the cracked rock formations of the surrounding cliffs and by the perfectly designed street plan of the city itself.
What manner of city is this? It was unlike any town that I had been in before.
Even as I paused to consider the city, the sparkle of myriad lights caught my attention once again. The multicoloured flutterings that I had seen around the sorcerer’s camp and again on the edge of the city had continued at irregular intervals through the streets. They flickered like a refraction spectrum, glittering against the pale stone walls, always just at the limit of my vision.
Darting into a narrow side-alley, I broke into a run. It was already clear to me that the lights were leading me (or were they luring me?) towards the centre of the town, so I swept through the complex of streets and alleys, endeavouring to emerge back in the main street ahead of the sparkling constellation.
The best way to avoid a trap is to spring one of your own.
Even the side-alleys were pristine and clean, as though they had just been sandblasted and white-washed. There were no obstacles for me to jump over or duck under, the alleys were just wide enough to accommodate my broad shoulders, and the run through the city was so simple that it aroused my suspicions. Why would a city so well designed for defence be so easy to navigate?
As I emerged out into the main street once again, I found the clutch of shimmering lights still ahead of me, as though I had not made up any ground at all. The lights flickered momentarily, as though beckoning to me or waiting for me to catch up, and then they were gone again.
I am not tracking these things; they are leading me somewhere. Thinking back to the way that the lights had intervened in front of the sorcerer’s Thunderhawk on the cliff-top, I decided to assume that whatever these lights were, their intentions were probably benign.
Trust is the preserve of the unwary.
Following the bizarre light formations through the widening streets and boulevards of the alien city, I quietly drew Vairocanum into my hands. No matter how benign the li
ght clusters might seem, I would not be taken unawares in this strange place.
The lights directed me through a twisting and circuitous path, taking me off the main thoroughfare and back onto it, circling around sections of breathtaking beauty and leading me through the plainest and least ostentatious of the streets.
The route was confusing and labyrinthine, and it took me some time to realise that we were heading gradually towards the centre of the city, in ever decreasing spirals. I wondered whether the tortuous route was designed to hide parts of the city from my eyes, but it also occurred to me that it might have been designed to protect me from the dangers that lie in wait in some sections of the town.
My mind could not settle in the alien atmosphere of the streets, and I found myself unable to determine the motives of whatever was leading me. Doubt was not something that sat comfortably in my thoughts, and I felt increasingly anxious as I drew closer to the heart of the city.
After an age of walking, I emerged into a wide plaza. The buildings on each side of the elliptical space soared into the sky, aspiring like spires. The speckle of lights had vanished about half an hour before, leaving me to wander the last few streets unguided and unmolested. And such streets they were: wide and sweeping like the great boulevards of Qulus Trine, the wealthy merchants’ world that was protected on all sides by massive orbital fortresses, manned by a private army but overseen by the Emperor’s gaze in the form of the Blood Ravens Eighth Company, whose glorious battle-barge Ominous Insight had made the Qulus system into its home.
A succession of images of that prosperous and vainglorious world cycled through my memory, triggered by the grandeur of my surroundings: I had been to Qulus Trine more than once, it seemed. But I had never been in a city like this before: there was no bustle of business and no pompous processions of wealth, not a single soul stirred through the gorgeous streets or in the windows and doors. It was like an imitation of a town, more like a ghost or a pristine memory than a real city.
On the far side of the piazza was a giant domed building. A tall, conical spire erupted out of the centre of its curving roof, with its tip pushing up amongst the tallest towers of the city, like a giant tree crowning the canopy of an immense forest. Following the line of the cone back down to the ground, I noticed that there was a dark opening in the front of the dome. It was positioned at the top of a flight of steps, which were proportioned almost perfectly for a humanoid to ascend them with ease. Somewhere in the shadows within, I thought that I saw the glittering of movement.
I sprang up the last of the steps and pressed myself against the frame of the arch which opened up into the cavernous interior of the massive dome. Edging inside, I found that the circumference of the circular hall was defined by a single, sweeping ambulatory, which was separated from the main domed space by a row of columns. It was akin to a large, domed cloister. The central space was completely empty, although a single beam of red sunlight lanced down from the apex of the dome, defining a circle in the very heart of the hall, like a droplet of blood. Judging from the position of the beam, I guessed that it was focussed directly down the entire height of the spire above. Such precision in the design and on such a scale—the architects of this place were clearly superior artists.
Scanning my eyes around the shadows that swept the edge of the hall, deepening behind each of the pillars, I could see no signs of movement or life. In fact, there was no sign that life had ever touched its magic fingers into this place. It was so quiet that I could hear the perfectly channelled and controlled breeze easing over the steps outside.
In such an atmosphere, I would not have been surprised to see the floor plume with dust as I stepped out towards the centre of the room. Yet there was not a speck of dust or dirt on the ground in the hall. It was immaculate, and I left no footprints. This was not simply a recently cleaned hall, it was a place that had never known dirt. What is dirt if not matter misplaced? Yet there is nothing misplaced in this city. The thought made me pause. If everything was so perfectly positioned, if nothing was out of place, then I had been engineered into this place at this time.
The realisation sent a sudden shiver through my spine. Now that the thought had occurred to me, it seemed so obvious that I couldn’t believe my own stupidity. As I unsheathed Vairocanum, I cursed the ease with which I had been distracted by the beauty and elegance of the city.
At exactly that moment, as though responding to the shift in my own mood, the patterns of light that had lured me into the domed hall started to flutter and flicker against the curving wall opposite the entrance. The moments of light were brighter than before, and their colours more vivid as they danced and flashed in intricate patterns. I lowered my sword out in front of me, holding it into a guard between myself and the swimming fragments of light. As I did so, the lights suddenly blurred and spread, multiplying around the hall until the walls of the entire ambulatory were ablaze with flecks of colour and motion.
Spinning on the spot and moving reflexively into the spotlight at the centre of the hall, I tried to keep myself equidistant from all the walls. In my hands, Vairocanum started to glow with renewed vigour and heat, spilling flecks and flashes of green light into the down-blast of blood red in which I had posed. The alien runes along the blade pulsed with life, as though coming alive in response to the threat that encircled us. With a flourish, I swept the sword into a circle around me, whipping it out and around my head in a spin.
Rather than deterring the light, this action seemed to urge the dancing fragments into greater frenzies of motion. The flecks moved faster and with more energy, burning brighter than ever. As I watched, a number of flushes of light congealed and brightened; they started to form into more solid and familiar shapes. The more I moved in the spotlight, the more intense and vivid became the motions of the light-shapes, until I began to recognise flashes of rapidly moving arms and catch glimpses of dancing legs. The shadowy ambulatories around the chamber were alive with spectres of light.
I turned faster and faster, trying to keep the whole of the perimeter under surveillance at the same time, but my motion only inspired even greater movements from the emerging figures. Stopping abruptly, I stepped out of the red spotlight and lurched forward towards the archway that led back out into the piazza outside.
As I took the steps, the light-forms whisked around the hall and collected in front of me, as though to block my route out. With Vairocanum in front of me, I held my ground as the light-forms advanced towards me, gradually resolving into more solid forms. After a couple of seconds, the blur of multicoloured light that had sheened over the archway, obscuring my view of the plaza outside, had transformed into three ranks of humanoid creatures. Each of them was dressed ostentatiously in fantastical colours, and each carried some kind of weapon—swords, staffs, whips and glaives.
They were inhumanly tall and elegant, and their faces were paler and more perfect than the city itself. Their eyes burned like distant stars, and their ears drew up into graceful points. And they moved. They moved perpetually and without apparent effort, dancing and drifting and swaying as though not entirely of this realm.
The relentless motion gave the fantastical troupe the air of the ocean, and I could feel its hypnotic effects on my mind, like an intoxicant or a sedative. Although I cut out with Vairocanum, lashing across in front of myself as I staggered backwards towards the spotlight of blood, my mind was already racing and confused and I struck nothing but air. Piercing and discombobulating sounds started to echo around the dome, and I realised instantly how lethal the acoustics in that hall could be. I stumbled back under the sudden sensory assault just as plumes of varicoloured gases exploded from grenades all around me, partially obscuring my view of the elegant, sickly, dancing aliens that closed in around me.
The scent of the gas conspired with the tumult of noise and the whirl of lights to confuse my senses utterly. In a matter of seconds, I felt Vairocanum fall from my hand, as though in slow motion, and then I lost my balance completely, fa
lling backward and crashing to the ground in the spotlight at the very centre of the theatre. Stunned and startled, I looked up into the blinding shaft of bloody light and lost consciousness. On the altar in the desert, in front of the open nose of the Thunderhawk, there shimmered an image of a book. It was laced with an eerie green-blue light and it oscillated gently, as though caught in a soft breeze. The squad of Prodigal Son Chaos Marines were fanned into a crescent around the altar, facing back in towards their gunship, and Ahriman himself stood before the altar, his arms outstretched to the triple red suns above, his eyes burning with warpfire.
Glaring up into the heavens as though defying the power of suns, the great sorcerer muttered a series of inaudible words. All around him, the rest of the Prodigal Sons leaned in slightly, trying to discern what their magnificent leader had said, but the wind dissolved the sounds and carried them out of ear-shot. Besides, Ahriman had not meant them to hear; there was not one amongst them who did not seek Ahriman’s power for his own.
In the distant past, Ahriman had sought the knowledge of the galaxy for himself and for his brothers; he had stood proudly at the side of Magnus himself, bathing in the swirling pools of information and knowledge unearthed by the misguided primarch and his Thousand Sons.
But there came a day when Ahriman’s knowledge challenged even that of Magnus, just as the power of Magnus had once rivalled even that of the False Emperor of Man: as prodigal sons are fated to overcome their fathers. The key was knowledge itself, and Ahriman had learned quickly that he should be more cautious than his old master about with whom he shared his knowledge: unlike Magnus, Ahriman would not be cast aside by one of his own Prodigal Sons. There was no Book of Ahriman to be stolen from him, as he had once acquired the Book of Magnus.
Even as they dispersed and evaporated, the words ascended into the sky, like puffs of smoke signalling to some far off power. The sky darkened noticeably, almost at once. With his gaze unbroken, Ahriman could see the triple stars deepen their colour and dim, as though responding to his commands. At the same time, the cloudless sky began to condense and vaporise. From horizon to horizon, the air started to swirl in a massive, slow vortex, as though the atmosphere itself were being unscrewed from the planet below. Wisps of purple and gold cirrus clouds started to appear, pulled into long, thin strips by the atmospheric motion.
[Dawn of War 03] - Tempest Page 10
