The Outcast Dead

by Graham McNeill

  Roxanne risked a glance at the faceless statue, unwilling to spare it more than a glance. Palladis had told her what he thought he’d seen there after Ghota’s men had been killed, and now she wondered what manner of presence might have fleetingly turned its gaze upon them. Roxanne knew from long experience that there were innumerable things that could be drawn to strong emotions, but she had never heard of them existing in this world.

  ‘I don’t think you should be looking at it like that,’ she said, turning his small face away with gentle pressure of her fingertips. He was resistant at first, but at last his head turned away.

  ‘They say that we’re all going to be dead soon,’ said Arik.

  ‘Who says?’

  The boy shrugged.

  ‘Who says that?’ pressed Roxanne. ‘Who’s been telling you that?’

  ‘I listen and I hear things,’ said Arik. ‘Too many people crowded in here not to hear what they’re saying.’

  ‘And what are they saying?’

  ‘That Horus is coming to kill us all. His fleets are on their way to Terra right now and he’s going to slaughter us all. Just like they say he did with the Iron Hands. He’s burning up all the worlds out in space, and folk are scared he’s going to do the same to us.’

  The boy began to cry softly, and Roxanne put her arm around him. She pulled him close and looked for Maya, but Arik’s mother was nowhere to be seen. She had spent a day and a night shrieking at the feet of the Vacant Angel, but Palladis had eventually led her away as the crowds of people flocking to the temple grew ever larger.

  Word of what had happened spread through the Petitioner’s City faster than news of a name being called to the inner precincts of the palace, and the curious, the desperate and the needy had flocked to the temple. Palladis had turned them away at first, but it quickly became a futile effort. Over three hundred people filled the temple, many with truthful grief to vent, others here simply to feel part of something bigger than themselves.

  Roxanne let the boy cry and tried to think of something hopeful to tell him.

  ‘The Warmaster is a long way away,’ she said. ‘It will take him a long time to get to Terra from Isstvan V, but the Emperor’s fleets will stop him long before he gets here.’

  Arik looked up, his face red and puffy with snot and tears.

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘I promise,’ said Roxanne. ‘Trust me, I know these things. I used to work on a starship, so I know how long it takes to get from one side of the galaxy to the other.’

  Arik smiled, and she tried to keep the truth of the matter from him. True, Isstvan was incredibly distant from Terra, but with fair tides and a steady course, the Warmaster’s forces could reach the heart of the Imperium within months.

  Not for the first time, Roxanne wondered what she was doing here, surrounded by people she didn’t know. For all its faults, her family had always drawn tight around its members, even the ones who – rightly or wrongly – were believed to have brought shame upon the good name of Castana. Even she had been brought into the bosom of the family in the wake of the loss of the Argo, albeit with the crushing power of imposed guilt.

  With Babu Dhakal’s inevitable retribution looming like an oncoming storm, she knew it would be far safer for her to leave this place. She wore a silver ring that could send a locator pulse to the Castana estates and have a skiff en route to her within minutes. Inside an hour she could be back in the gilded halls of her family’s sprawling Galician manor house, with its great libraries, portrait-hung galleries and luxurious appointments. Without even realising it, she was twirling the ring around her right index finger, her thumb hovering over the activation stud and the first code phrases forming in her mind.

  Roxanne took her thumb away from the ring, knowing that however much she might desire to flee, she would never abandon these people. No matter that Babu Dhakal’s thugs had given her no choice, it was her fault they would come and destroy this place and everyone in it. She could no more abandon these people to their fate than she could trick her heart into stopping beating.

  Arik reached up and wiped his nose and eyes with his sleeve. His eyes were swollen with tears, but he had found a place of calm within himself.

  ‘What did you used to do on a starship?’ he asked.

  Roxanne hesitated, not yet ready share her identity with the people around her. Like the blind astro-telepaths of the City of Sight, her people were vital to the continued existence of the Imperium, but were feared as much as they were needed. Like most misunderstood things, fear of their abilities had made them outcasts.

  ‘I helped to make sure it reached where it was supposed to go,’ said Roxanne.

  ‘That’s why you wear that bandanna under your hood,’ said Arik.

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Roxanne, suddenly wary.

  ‘You’re one of them Navigators, ain’t you?’

  Roxanne’s head jerked up and she looked around to see who had heard the boy’s question. If anyone was listening, they gave no sign of it. She lowered her head towards Arik and whispered to him.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am, but you can’t tell anyone. People don’t really understand what we are and how we do what we do. That makes them afraid, and frightened people can do terrible things to the things that frighten them.’

  Arik smiled through his tears. ‘You don’t have to worry about that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Everyone knows what you are,’ he said. ‘They’ve known ever since you came here. My dad told me what you were a while ago. Even before you went to get the medicine for me.’

  Roxanne was astonished. ‘People know what I am?’

  ‘Yeah, I heard people talking about it weeks ago.’

  She sat back on the bench and let the weight of secrecy fall away from her. All her life she had been taught that the common man feared her and would seek to persecute her if given the chance. The words of one small boy and the actions of the people around her had given the lie to that notion in one fell swoop, and the sudden lightness of being that filled her was like an elixir of purest light poured into her veins.

  She looked at the plain, unassuming, ordinary faces that surrounded her, seeing them now for the wonderful, powerful and determined individuals they were. She was accepted amongst them simply because she was here, not through any familial connection, trade agreement or covenant of service.

  ‘Is it true you’ve got another eye under that bandanna?’

  Roxanne nodded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can I see it?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid you can’t, Arik.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It can be dangerous,’ explained Roxanne.

  ‘I hear you can kill people with it.’

  Roxanne ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘You shouldn’t believe all you hear about Navigators, Arik. Yes, people can get hurt by looking at it, but that’s why I keep it covered up. I don’t want to hurt anyone.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Arik, but shrugged off his disappointment to ask, ‘But you can see the future, right? With your hidden eye, I mean?’

  ‘I’m afraid not,’ replied Roxanne. ‘We just guide starships, that’s all.’

  Arik nodded, as though he fully understood the complexities and nuances to being one of a caste that was both shunned and required for the Imperium to function. A group that was both powerful and wealthy, yet could never take a rightful place amongst the people they served.

  A sudden thought occurred to Roxanne, and she said, ‘Does Palladis realise that everyone knows?’

  ‘Nah, he thinks he’s the only one,’ said Arik. ‘I think losing his boys must’ve rattled some of the marbles loose in his head. He don’t trust anyone.’

  ‘I think you might be right,’ whispered Roxanne. ‘You’re a clever boy, Arik, do you know that?’

  ‘That’s what my mum always tells me,’ he said with a proud smile.

  She pulled Arik close and gave him a kiss on the forehead.

 
‘You have no idea how precious a gift you have just given me,’ she said.

  He looked confused, but nodded with a child’s seriousness.

  ‘Here, let me give you something in return,’ said Roxanne, tugging at her finger and placing something in the centre of his palm. She closed his fingers over it before anyone could see what she’d given him.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Arik.

  Roxanne smiled. ‘It’s a magic ring,’ she said.

  THE WHITE SANDS of the Rub’ al Khali rose and fell in endless dunes beyond the walls of the fortress of Arzashkun. Kai wandered the empty ramparts and deserted towers with a pleasant aimlessness to his steps. The sands beyond the walls were silent and dusted by a warm sirocco that carried a pleasing scent of roasted meat, mulled wine and exotic perfumes.

  He trailed his fingers over the silver-gold battlements, letting the peace and emptiness of his surroundings calm him. Nothing moved in the sands, no shadowy hunters or buried memories threatening to burst to the surface, for Kai was merely dreaming. His metacognitive powers were developed enough that he could understand he was dreaming and shape his surroundings to a degree beyond most sleepers.

  Though Arzashkun was his refuge from the dangerous presences of the immaterium, it was much more than that. It was a place where he could find peace and a measure of solace and isolation. No one else could come here, save by his express invitation to a shared dreamspace, and Kai revelled in the silence that filled every vaulted chamber and domed cupola of the ornately decorated structure.

  Kai descended the steps to the courtyard, his steps light and the black mood that had been his constant companion since the disaster on the Argo lightening by degrees. The fear was still there, lurking at the threshold of his perceptions, but he refused to acknowledge it. To remember was to feel, and to feel was to experience. Ten thousand deaths screaming in his head had unhinged his mind for a time, and he wasn’t entirely sure it had returned to him intact.

  Yet the few times he was able to escape to Arzashkun were where he could heal in private, where he could experience all the human mind could conjure without fear of dreadful memories and sympathetic terrors. Kai pushed open the doors to the main hall, and breathed in the aroma of scented lanterns and fresh growths. A circular pool glittered in the centre of the hall, its base tiled with a gold and scarlet lozenge pattern, and a silver fountain in the shape of a trident-bearing hero shimmered in the sunlight drifting down from a stained-glass dome.

  Palm fronds waved gently in the breeze from the opened door, and the scent of lemongrass and hookah smoke was strong. The air was redolent with the fragrances of distant kingdoms of long ago, and the connection with the past was a potent anchor to Kai in this realm of imagination and dreams. Had he wished, Kai could conjure anything his consciousness desired into being, but this was all he needed. Peace and solitude and an end to the thousands of voices that clamoured for his attention.

  Pillars of marble and nephrite supported the roof, and Kai wove a path through them as he made his way to the wide staircase that swept up to the cloisters above. Battle flags of crimson, emerald and gold hung from the graceful arches, honours won in battles no one now remembered. Strange how something so terrible and vital to the lives of thousands of people could so easily be forgotten. The men who had fought in these battles were naught but the sand of the Empty Quarter, but their lives had mattered once. No matter that the tide of history had ground each of them down to insignificant specks of grit, they had once been important, they had once made a difference.

  That the difference existed now only in a dream did not lessen their lives. Kai recalled them, even if it was a borrowed memory from a primarch’s writings. In time, he too would be forgotten, but instead of frightening Kai, the thought made him smile. To be forgotten in times like these would be a blessing. To be lauded by everyone, to be depended upon by so many would be a burden no one should ever have to bear.

  Kai wondered how people like Malcador, Lord Dorn or the Choirmaster stood it.

  He paused by at the bottom of the wide staircase, closing his eyes and letting the burbling sound of the fountain wash over him. His blindsight trembled and a breath of wind sighed across the skin of his face, as Kai inhaled the scents of a land long since consigned to history. Smell was one of the strongest senses in the dream landscapes, and the heady aroma of alinazik, habesh and mahlab transported Kai’s thoughts to an open-air souk, its thronged pathways filled with jostling, sweating bodies: chattering vendors, haggling customers and slit-mouthed cutpurses.

  Kai could taste the smoke of cookfires, the billowing clouds of hashish and the potent reek of papazkarasi as it was poured from clay ewers into pewter mugs nailed to drinking posts. So real was the sensation that Kai had to hold onto the carved balustrade to keep himself from sinking to his haunches at the aching sadness he felt.

  Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, and Kai wondered at how he could know these sounds and smells. This was no fantasy conjured from the depths of his imagination, these were sense-memories that belonged to a mind other than his own. These sensations had been dredged from the depths of a memory so ancient that it staggered Kai that any one mind could contain so much history.

  Kai gasped and opened his eyes. The world wavered as his grip on its solidity faltered for an instant. His breath came in sharp hikes, though he knew in this dreamspace he was not truly breathing. Kai’s body lay asleep on his cot bed, but certain laws still held true in the world of dreams as they did in the real world – though such a term was almost meaningless to one whose existence was lived in a world beyond the comprehension of most mortals.

  A flicker of movement caught his eye, and Kai looked up to the cloister in time to see a figure move out of sight. He stood dumbfounded for a moment, unable to believe what he’d just seen. Someone else in his dreamscape? Kai had heard fanciful tales of powerful psykers who were able to invade the dreams of sleepers and alter their mindscapes, but the last such cognoscynth was said to have died thousands of years ago.

  ‘Wait!’ cried Kai, turning and taking the stairs two at a time. He was out of breath by the time he reached the landing, and turned ninety degrees to mount the last flight of stairs. The terrazzo floor was patterned in a square-edged spiral motif, a maze with only one way in and out, and Kai rushed along the cloister towards where he had last seen the mysterious figure.

  Silken curtains bellied out from arched openings, carrying the beat of a distant drum that echoed like a heartbeat from another epoch of the world. Kai could see no musicians, and knew the sounds were as impossible as the sight of an intruder in his dreams. He ran along the cloister, leaving the sound of percussion in his wake, and passed through a curtained doorway into a chamber of light and verdant growth. Trees grew through the floor as though nature had reclaimed this fortress after thousands of years of neglect by man. Creeping vines hung like gilded wall hangings from the pilasters, and waving fronds garlanded the window openings.

  At the far end of the chamber a tall figure in long robes of white and gold stepped towards a doorway. Too distant to make out his features, his eyes were pools of great sorrow and infinite understanding of the price men pay for their dreams.

  ‘Stop!’ cried Kai. ‘Who are you, how can you be here?’

  The figure did not answer and stepped out of sight. Kai ran through the room, brushing drifting leaves and questing vines from his path as he fought towards the doorway through which the robed figure had passed. The scents of spices, fresh growths and old memory was strongest here, and Kai shouted out in triumph as he finally reached the doorway. The smell of salt water and hot stone came from beyond the door, and – now that he had reached it – Kai found himself strangely reluctant to pass through.

  Summoning up what little courage he possessed, Kai stepped over the threshold.

  He found himself on a balcony he had never known existed, high on the side of the central tower of the fortress. The sun was a burning eye of searing red, and a lake so vast
it better deserved to be called an ocean stretched out before him, wondrously blue and almost painful to look at. Birds flocked over the water, and small fishing boats bobbed close to the shore.

  The balcony was deserted, which was impossible, as there was no way the intruder could possibly have escaped. Save the door behind him, a drop of hundreds of metres was the only way off the balcony. Only the creator of the dreamspace had the power to alter the laws that governed the logic of a dream, and even then it was dangerous, so how this mysterious stranger had escaped Kai was beyond him.

  Kai walked to the edge of the balcony and rested his hands on the sun-warmed stone. He took a breath of the clean air, sharp and free of the chemical tang that pervaded every breath of the Terran atmosphere.

  ‘Where is this place?’ said Kai, knowing somehow that the man he had been chasing would hear him.

  A hand clamped his shoulder with a powerful grip. The touch was electric, and Kai had the sense that had he chosen to do so, the owner of this hand could break him into tiny pieces with a simple twist of his wrist.

  ‘It is Old Earth,’ said a voice at his ear. Soft, lyrical, but with a core of steel.

  ‘How?’ asked Kai, enthralled by the man’s voice.

  ‘The human mind is impossibly complex, even to one such as I,’ said the man, ‘but it is no great feat to share my memories with you.’

  ‘You’re really here?’ asked Kai. ‘I’m not imagining this?’

  ‘You are asking if I am really here? In a dream you created?’ said the man with a wry chuckle. ‘That’s one for the philosophers, eh? What is reality anyway? Is this any less real to you than your life in the Whispering Tower? Does fire in a dream not warm you just as well as one of timber and kindling?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said Kai. ‘Why are you here? With me, right now.’

  ‘I wanted to see you, to know more about you.’