“Perhaps,” replied Gabriel as Jonas and Corallis vaulted down into the pit to investigate the arch over the tunnel, leaving the captain alone with Sturnn and Taldeer. “Have you set up cordons around all of these sites?”
“No, captain. We do not have either the time, the resources or the inclination to do so. This is the only site that we are defending.”
“Why this one?”
“Because of the titan, captain. Even to a lowly general in the Imperial Guard, a titan guarding an eldar artefact seemed unusual. I notified Inquisitor Tsensheer of the Ordo Xenos, and then established the cordon while we awaited his arrival. I have had dealings with Tsensheer before,” Sturnn added significantly. “He is a good man with a strong and far-reaching interest in these things.”
The mention of the Ordo Xenos made Gabriel flinch slightly; he had bad memories of a Xenos inquisitor, Mordecai Toth, on Tartarus, and he did not need to think about the events of that troublesome campaign now. “I am sure he is, general. And has your inquisitor arrived yet?”
The general watched Gabriel’s reaction carefully, noting the discomfort that lingered just below his features. “No, captain. He is not here yet. We expect him imminently.”
“I see,” replied Gabriel, relieved. “You were right to guard this site in preference to the others,” he continued, his mind snapping back to Rahe’s Paradise, where an Adeptus Astartes outpost had been constructed over the remains of an eldar facility. “The significance of an Imperial guard over this site should not be underestimated. You were right, also, to summon the inquisitor.”
“Thank you, captain.” Sturnn’s tone suggested that he didn’t feel as though he needed the approval of the Space Marine.
“Nonetheless, general, I’m sure that you will permit us to investigate this before Inquisitor Tsensheer arrives.” Gabriel nodded down towards the figures of Jonas and Corallis, who had already uncovered the rest of the archway around the tunnel and were busy translating the ancient eldar text that spidered across it.
“I am not sure—”
Before Sturnn could finish his objection, Gabriel stepped off the lip of the crater, skidding and jumping down its sheer sides, cradling the farseer in his arms.
The tunnel was straight and direct. Its sides curved smoothly into a perfectly formed tube through the ice, and a pale eerie light suffused through the passageway. I have been here before, Gabriel.
Taldeer used the captain’s name as though she knew him well. The effect was destabilising at first, but Gabriel was quickly getting used to the presumptuous manner of the aliens. Long ago, before the ice. This world was verdant and brilliant. A pearl in the ancient eldar empire.
The farseer’s thoughts were weak and wispy, like breaths of smoke in Gabriel’s mind. As she muttered, the captain carried her through the tunnel and emerged into the cavernous ice-chamber of which Sturnn had spoken. The floor was polished to a sheen, as though it was cleaned and maintained every day. The huge domed ceiling was similarly pristine; the pale blue ice was unblemished, uncracked and unmarked, even after thousands of years of neglect.
This is the place, Gabriel. This is the location of the portal.
As her thoughts formed in his head, Taldeer struggled out of his arms and stood on her own feet on the ice.
“Jonas. What do you make of this place?” asked Gabriel.
As he surveyed the echoing bubble of ice, Gabriel could see nothing of significance. He wondered whether the eldar witch was too sick to really understand what she was doing, and whether the gruff, military-minded Sturnn was actually right about this place.
The Librarian was gazing around the chamber with wonder written over his face. He was clearly awed by something invisible to Gabriel. “It’s amazing Gabriel.” His eyes twinkled with wonder. “It’s amazing.”
A gentle melody flowed into the ice-cave. It was quiet at first—little more than a whispered and melancholy song. But the acoustics of the chamber turned the notes back on themselves, boosting them, shifting them and enhancing them, bringing echoes into harmony with themselves. The solitary voice of Taldeer rapidly built into a chorus, as though the cave were filled with eldar seers, each chanting and singing with exquisite beauty. After a matter of seconds, the ice itself hummed and resounded with the ineffable, alien music.
Stand back.
The thought pushed through the music into the minds of each of the Space Marines, making them step back away from the centre of the cavern. As they did so, cracks of light flashed through the ice-dome, riddling the massive curving ceiling with intricate patterns of energy. Runes wrote themselves across the dome, appearing and vanishing as though written in the sands of a wind-swept desert. Then the runes ran into images and pictures. Maps and star-charts spiralled around the vast cavernous chamber, searing through the ice in flashes of blue and green.
Abruptly, the images blinked out, leaving the cave empty and cold once again. But Taldeer’s chorus continued to ring out. After a few moments, columns of electric blue started to rise up around the domed roof, each aspiring towards the apex of the dome. As the columns converged, power trickled down from the apex in a gentle shower of warp energy. The trickle became a stream and then a torrent. In a matter of seconds, the whole hall was a storm of warp fire, swirling like a tempest.
The polished ice of the walls and floor acted like mirrors, reflecting the maelstrom off to infinity in all directions, until the Space Marines felt their balance failing, standing in the heart of an infinite warp storm. In the centre of the floor, a structure started to appear through the rain. It was an arch, a giant gate that stretched almost to the ceiling. The archway was inscribed with burning runes, and the whole structure flickered and spat as though it was struggling to find resolution.
Taldeer’s voice reached new heights amidst the tumult. Tearing his eyes away from the spectacle that was raging before him, Gabriel stole a glance at the farseer. He could see her strength failing and her skin beginning to shrivel. The effort was killing her, but her eyes blazed with concentration and determination, all thoughts for her own survival vanished.
It’s no good. The eldar’s thoughts were breathless and exhausted. The portal is ruined. Your stupid Sturnn has destroyed it. It reeks of mon-keigh, as though you had ripped it from its very moorings. The Yngir need not complete their Great Work, if you will complete it for them, human!
The effort was finally too much, and Taldeer collapsed down to the ice. The chorus of echoes continued for a few seconds after the singing stopped, but then a gradual silence unfurled itself into the cavern. The warp fire flickered and blinked out of existence, and the ghostly, incomplete portal itself remained for only a second. At exactly the instant that the portal vanished, a solitary figure walked directly out of its centre, stepping into the freezing air of the cave and striding down a flight of invisible steps to the polished ground.
The eldar warrior was unlike any that Gabriel had seen before, and instinctively the three Space Marines reached for their weapons.
Taldeer’s eyes widened in shock and fear, and she struggled to drag her body back over the ice, pulling herself away from the newcomer as though repulsed by his very presence.
Karebennian!
The word slammed into Gabriel’s mind, and he could sense the terror that flooded out of Taldeer. In response, Gabriel braced his bolter and took aim. The eldar Solitaire cocked its head to one side, as though curious about what the Space Marine was going to do. Unphased, Gabriel squeezed the trigger and let a volley of bolter shells fly.
No! Taldeer’s protest came too late.
With a smooth and incredible movement, the Solitaire spun around the shells, letting one pass to his left, another to his right, and he bent backwards under the last, letting it flash over his face and impact into the ice-wall behind him. Finishing the spin with a flourish that resembled a bow, Karebennian grinned at the prostrate farseer. He paused for a moment, as though letting the drama of his entrance seep into the consciousness of his audie
nce, then he produced two long-bladed weapons. One in each hand, he started to dance with them. He vaulted and flipped, spun and spiralled, sometimes flashing into a multicoloured blur, at other times falling into abject stillness. In the ice-mirrors of the cave, the solitary Harlequin appeared as a troupe of thousands; the farseer and the Space Marines looked on, captivated.
CHAPTER SIX: HERESY
A sensation of stony cold pounded against the back of my head, making my eyes squint even before I opened them. The dull, monotonous ache of a concussion resounded in my brain, muddling my thoughts as my senses gradually swam back into coherence. Before any other thought, my hand swept up to my shoulder, searching for the metallic comfort of a hilt: Vairocanum. My sword was exactly where it should be, strapped into its holster across my back, but the instant of relief was immediately followed by a wave of confusion.
I dropped her. I could remember it clearly. In the misty and confused images of my short-term memory, the moment at which Vairocanum had slipped from my fingers and clattered to the ground shone like a beacon of certainty. She had been glowing intensely, as though surrounded by invisible but familiar energies. Then I dropped her. The pain of loss hit me suddenly, like an icy blade between my ribs. The memory swam: I had fallen almost straight afterwards, nauseous and staggering like a drunken youth. The kaleidoscoping lights had penetrated my brain, exciting neural nodes that I had thought long dormant, leaving me stunned and unable to function. It was as though I had succumbed to a fit. What could have done this to an Angel of Death?
Embrace your questions—they will bring you to power in the end.
My eyes snapped open instantly; those were not my thoughts. There was a silent and only half-repressed menace lurking in the words as they pressed into my mind, cold, heavy and non-negotiable. “Who are you?” I tried to roll away from the kneeling figure, reaching around for my sword as I turned. But pain lanced into my head, making my body lurch into rigidity, as though a massive electrical charge had been suddenly passed through my muscles. Vairocanum was only half-unsheathed when my fingers involuntarily released her once again. I slumped back onto my back, staring up at the face of death.
Rest.
There was no malice in the word, but it offered no space for doubts or questions. I would rest; it was simply a statement of what would happen, as though the mind from which the thought emerged was certain of what the future held for me.
Narrowing my eyes in an attempt to bring the face into proper focus, I nodded slightly, letting the looming figure think that I would not challenge his vision. No matter how hard I concentrated, however, I could not bring the face into focus—it remained blurred and ill-defined, as though it were not entirely present, or perhaps present in a different way from the rest of the warrior’s magnificently armoured body. The phantoms of the warrior’s face echoed those of the formidable sorcerer that I had seen emerging from the Thunderhawk in the desert. They have found me.
“You didn’t answer my question.”
I did not offer to give you answers, came the logical reply. I merely told you to embrace your questions.
“What use are questions without answers?”
You misunderstand the priorities, Son of Ahriman. Answers are of no use without questions, but questions are most helpful when we do not yet have their solutions.
Son of Ahriman? “What did you call me?” The name rang a distant and deep bell in my mind, but I could not resolve the memory.
Did you recognise yourself in what I said?
There was a note of satisfaction in the thought, I could tell.
I called you a Son of Ahriman. We are brothers, you and I.
There was the suggestion of a smile on the spectral face. It was the first time that I had seen the features of the face move, and a thick feeling of nausea rippled through my stomach. The warrior’s lips did not move as he spoke his thoughts into my head, and this flicker of emotion took me by surprise, making my eyes widen slightly.
“Brothers?” It was too incredible to believe.
Of course. How else can you explain our presence here? We were searching for you—you were lost to us. It has been many years since we have seen another brother.
As I stared up at the malformed and eerie face, it occurred to me that it was unbelievable to think that this warrior and I would be just coincidentally on this forsaken alien world at the same time. Inspecting his armour, I realised that it was not entirely dissimilar from my own: it was predominantly blue and covered in a series of esoteric, runic seals; it appeared to have been constructed out of the same materials, and its structure was broadly the same. It seemed clear that the designer of both had been trying to solve the same problems; it was not impossible to believe that they had been designed and built by the same people.
Do not fear the weapon, fear the soul of its wielder.
The maxim prodded into my thoughts from somewhere in my subconscious; it rang like a caution or a warning. The mysterious warrior’s ghostly face did not shift, but I could tell that he was peering through my eyes, trying to see into my thoughts. I had not seen my own face for a long time, and I could not remember what it looked like, but I remembered the blistering pain of sun-burn in the desert, and I could not imagine that this warrior’s face was affected by any natural forms of heat.
And there were differences in our armour as well: his was a slightly darker blue, and was touched with gold. It had a fiery serpent etched into one of the massive shoulder guards; and behind his head was a tall crest that stood nearly half a metre proud of his shoulders. My own armour was paler blue, although still with lines of gold, and it was bedecked with glorious wings on the shoulder guard. There was no crest framing my face.
“I will keep that question in mind, friend. Since it seems that questions are more useful than answers at this point.” I pushed myself up into a sitting position and stared at the warrior that knelt implacably at my side.
As you say. The face grinned, as though unable to contain its glee.
The events on the planet’s surface swam through Gabriel’s mind as he knelt in quiet contemplation before the altar in the chapel of the Litany of Fury, letting the atmosphere of reverence and stillness flow over him. He needed the space for thinking, and he needed a little emotional stability. The last few months and years had drawn him thin, like a ghost of his former self.
No matter how many times he told himself that these doubts and pains had no place in the mind of a Space Marine captain, his thoughts kept falling back into the basic and inalienable humanity of his condition. He was simply unsure that he could cope with the responsibility of killing entire planets, watching his family fry, and putting his own friends to the sword. Nobody, not even a Blood Ravens captain, should have to do these things. Prathios used to tell him that the Emperor was really the guardian of his soul, sending out lances of immaculate brilliance from the Astronomican to show him truth and radiance in the darkness. Without Prathios, Gabriel found these ideas increasingly hard to stomach: did the benevolence of the Emperor really excuse him from responsibility for his own actions? He was one of the Emperor’s Angels of Death, but he was still Gabriel.
The captain had no way to understand the events that had unfolded down on the surface of Lorn V. Part of his soul screamed out to him that it was a blessing that the eldar portal had been destroyed—the deceitful and manipulative aliens were not to be trusted.
He, of all people, was well aware of the machinations and subtlety of the elegant race. He knew that Ulantus would consider the matter finished: the necron had been defeated and the eldar were dead. It was the perfect conclusion to a trying battle. But the universe contained more complicated problems than merely life and death. It was not simply light and darkness. There were shades of grey and spectrums of colour spread out between the infinite stars.
If Taldeer was right about the consequences of the portal’s destruction, then Gabriel had a responsibility to act on that knowledge. By the grace of the Great Father, he was
a Blood Raven, if he could not act on new knowledge, then he was a traitor to himself and his forebears: knowledge is power. He had to consider the source of the information, of course, but he had learned something of the ways of the eldar and their connections with the necron on Rahe’s Paradise. In his heart, he believed Taldeer. He believed her with the kind of certainty that he had once believed in the immaculate light of the Astronomican. He simply knew that she was right about this.
Staring up at the awesome images of the Great Father Vidya above the altar, Gabriel felt his soul shiver. What would he have done in my position, wondered Gabriel, his eyes beseeching the icon for an answer. In the ancient texts, those supposedly penned by the Great Father himself, there could be found detailed treatises on the nature of knowledge and the various merits accumulated in its pursuit. However, as far as Gabriel could remember, Vidya never went so far as to concede that the good could be served from heretical sources.
Nonetheless, these grey areas, and the colourful extravagance represented so perfectly by the eldar Harlequin on Lorn, were of little concern to Vidya. For him, there was only the light of knowledge itself and then the dark of ignorance. His work and his example offered little in the way of guidance or comfort to Gabriel. Would following the pleas of the eldar witch mean betraying the Emperor and the Imperium? Was Gabriel right to believe that there was a greater good to be done than the defence of Lorn against the aliens? Was this battle over, or just beginning?
“If only Prathios were here,” muttered the captain, talking to himself in the darkness. “He would know the right words.”
Hanging his head in a moment of despair, Gabriel’s thoughts shifted to his one-time friend and battle-brother, Librarian Isador Akios. The two of them had been through so much together, even performing in the Blood Trials together on Cyrene, all those long years before.
[Dawn of War 03] - Tempest Page 12
