[Tome of Fire 02] - Firedrake

by Nick Kyme - (ebook by Undead)

  “This is your calling, Dak’ir. For good or ill,” he said at last.

  Dak’ir looked up from securing his vambraces. The armour serfs had entered silently and worked swiftly. Mumbled intonation accompanied every affixed piece of battle-plate. Ash from the brazier cradle anointed every section in a veneer of white.

  “Good or ill?”

  Pyriel smiled, but there was no warmth to it. “Only Vulkan can know all ends, Salamander. Who can tell where our purpose will lead us?”

  “Mine leads me to Moribar,” Dak’ir replied, his tone betraying a hint of belligerence.

  “Are you so keen to go back to that place?”

  When he’d handed the force sword, Draugen, to Dak’ir he’d shared a mote of the vision the Lexicanum had witnessed upon breaching the gate of fire. Sense memory fooled the Codicier that he could still smell grave dust on the hot air in the solitorium. A grey world, full of shades and old stone lingered at the edge of his subconscious like a wraith. The creeping spectre of the sepulchre world shadowed all members of the 3rd and those warriors who fought with them.

  “No,” said Dak’ir. “I never wanted to go back, but it is my path nonetheless. It is at the heart of this somehow.”

  “Even before he was captain, Ko’tan Kadai cast a long shadow.”

  Dak’ir’s gaze alighted on the ground as if seeking meaning out of the darkness.

  “He led us into battle that day, to return with our wayward brothers…”

  “Except Nihilan was too far from our captain’s reach,” Pyriel interjected. He remembered the Dragon Warrior sorcerer from long before Moribar. The signs of his eventual defection were there to see, but it is hard to look at a brother as anything else but kin. Pyriel had learned the truth. He had learned it too late, before Vel’cona or Elysius could do anything about it. Nihilan had already fled to Ushorak and the Black Dragon’s new order. His focus returned to Dak’ir.

  “You couldn’t have affected the outcome of what happened in the crematoria—you need to know that, brother.”

  Dak’ir exhaled deeply, levelling his gaze. He was armoured again and accepted Draugen from his brander-priest, T’sek. All that remained was his battle-helm.

  “It doesn’t matter, Pyriel. It was what it was. All the lines of fate spin from that nodal point. At Moribar we’ll find the core, where all the threads begin and maybe end.”

  “Regardless, a return to Moribar will stir many memories and emotions. You are psychically awakened now, Dak’ir. But you must also be prepared for that. It will be an onslaught at first, more intense than you have ever experienced—”

  “I am ready, master. And have progressed greatly since the burning.”

  “Let us hope so,” Pyriel replied, before muttering, “or all of Moribar will burn in the funerary fires.”

  “Lord…” Bowed before his master, lowly T’sek proffered Dak’ir’s helm in both hands.

  “Thank you, T’sek. You have the patience of Vulkan,” Dak’ir reciprocated the brander-priest’s genuflection before taking his battle-helm.

  According to the Lexicanum’s request, it had been fashioned with a section of silver plate down the left side. It resembled a human face and Dak’ir had instructed it should echo his scarred visage as closely as possible.

  Pyriel found it intriguing, but nothing more. If Dak’ir wanted a reminder of the battle in the Aura Hieron Temple, site of Kadai’s death and his own maiming, then so be it. Salamanders bore their burdens stoically—this was no different.

  The solitorium gate opened at Pyriel’s order, spilling a red oval of light down upon them from above. The grinding of gears heralded the activation of a lifter-plate, which provided sure and steady egress from the oubliette. Their heads arched towards an imaginary crimson sky, Pyriel and Dak’ir closed their eyes and left the solitorium.

  Beyond the gate the rest of the Chapter Bastion beckoned. This was Hesiod, one of the Sanctuary Cities of Nocturne. Here, in the dark halls of its Chapter Bastion, the Salamanders could gather and train. Many of the Fire-born lived outside of its coal-black walls amongst the people. Here, they would inspire with their example, learn humility and self-sacrifice from those who lived it every day of their lives. Some in the Chapter, those of vaunted rank or with closed minds, believed that to associate with the human populace was to encourage their weaknesses to grow in the Astartes; that by living amongst the native Nocturneans they were somehow brought low when their purpose was to elevate. Tu’Shan, Regent and Chapter Master, did not hold that view.

  Everything a Salamander needed was in the Chapter Bastion. Apothecarion and gymnasia provided for the body; solitoria and oratoriums for the spirit; lectorums and librariums for the mind. Armouriums contained weapons and battle-cages for training. The refectories offered repast and a place to convene. They were seldom used. Serfs and brander-priests trod these lonely corridors. The Salamanders were out in the Sanctuaries and beyond, on the plains and the deserts; plying the seas and ranging the mountains. Nomadic and solitary was how many of the Fire-born lived their lives away from the fires of battle, yearning again to return to the anvil of war and be tested. But they loved their people dearly. No other Chapter, Tu’Shan was sure, had such a close link to its charges as the sons of Vulkan. It was something the Regent took great pride in and reminded his warrior brothers of regularly.

  Only the forges, the hot and smoke-shrouded catacombs below the rocky foundations of the Chapter Bastions, saw frequent use. Here, the Salamanders practised their art. Here, they expressed their craft and lore over anvils and the heat of burning coals. Not all fashioned weapons; some wrought artefacts of such beauty even the greatest artisans of Terra and Ultramar would weep at the thought of them being cloistered away beneath the earth, never to be seen or appreciated. It was the Promethean way. For a Salamander, even a native Nocturnean, it was the act that was most important. Adoration, acclaim and appreciation did not feature in such a pragmatic mindset.

  The lifter-plate alighted in an alcove appended to a long corridor. The way was lit by dulcetly burning brazier pans that lent the air the redolence of smoke. Near deserted by all but the most diligent of serfs and servitors, the two Librarians walked together in silence. Their heavy footfalls echoed loudly through empty corridors, barren temples and relic halls. In short order they reached the Bastion’s north gate, which led them out into Hesiod City itself.

  The arctic winter that seized Nocturne threw a pall of frozen white through the shimmering void shield surrounding the towers, elevated roadways, hab-stacks, fabricated reservoirs, mining installations and all the many structures of the city.

  Hesiod was thronged with people. Its lower highways, as seen from the lofty plateau of dark granite where Pyriel and Dak’ir were standing, were jammed with bustling citizens. These were the refugees of the outer regions, seeking solace within the city’s high walls and the protection of its void shield generators until the Time of Trial had ended. The harvest would follow, when all the miners, prospectors, geologists and archaeologists would set out with crews of labour-serfs, servitors and pack-beasts to reap Nocturne’s bounty. Fresh veins of ore, minerals and rare gem-stones were often revealed in the wake of their mother planet’s wrath. Such boons were a massive economical boost to Nocturne’s fortunes. Without them, the planet would face ruination of an entirely different kind and one that could not be forestalled by stout walls and implacable void shields.

  Without the Sanctuaries, though, Nocturne would not survive. Regions of tectonic stability were discovered millennia ago by the first settlers of the world.

  These sacred sites were conquered by its tribal kings and mapped out by its earth shamans. They were as enduring now, the iron bastions and shielded metropolises, as they ever were when they’d been crude settlements of wood and stone.

  Pyriel and Dak’ir stopped to survey the crowds. Rationing lines stretched far down a narrow road, the sanctum-guard doing their best to marshal it. Here and there, Salamanders appeared amongst the masse
s, their voices commanding authority and their presence assuring calm in all around them. On Nocturne, respect went both ways. It was not an easy time for anyone, but better that than enduring the cold and ice beyond the Sanctuary barrier.

  Dak’ir wanted to descend to the lower levels and help them. He felt humanity’s plight deeper than many of his brothers. His kinship to mortals was a subject of much debate amongst some quarters; in others, it was deemed an aberration.

  “Despite our mother’s wrath, they endure,” Pyriel’s voice came from behind him.

  Dak’ir gripped a dark balustrade as he stared out across the crowds. “How many failed to make it, do you think? Reach the Sanctuary, I mean.”

  “Thousands, ten of thousands,” offered Pyriel. “How can we be certain? I’d suggest Master Argos could provide us with a more accurate calculation.” The Epistolary came to stand beside his brother, echoing Dak’ir’s stance by holding onto the balustrade. “But ask yourself this, how many survived by virtue of its aegis? How many more would have perished in Hesiod’s absence?” He smoothed the stone beneath his armoured fingertips. “Like the people, our city endures. Seven havens across the entire planet and still Nocturneans endure. I find their humble spirit emboldening, Dak’ir. So should you. It’s an example of our people’s fortitude, self-reliance and determination to survive.”

  “And yet all I see is their suffering, master.” Dak’ir turned away. “So fragile, this world and its people. Why does it feel like a dactyl egg seized by a vice? The Time of Trial comes and the vice is cinched a little tighter, one half turn of the lever. I can see the force of its iron grip webbing the egg’s surface, Pyriel. I fear for Nocturne’s continued endurance.”

  Pyriel faced him. “What would you have us do? Uproot to another world? This is the beating heart of our people. Its blood, their blood, is the hot magma below its fragile crust. We could no sooner leave this place than excise a Fire-born’s organs and expect him to live.” Overcome by passion for just a moment, the Librarian’s eyes flashed cerulean blue. “It is part of us, Dak’ir. One cannot exist without the other.”

  Dak’ir’s body language suggested his demeanour hadn’t changed.

  Clapping a hand upon his shoulder, Pyriel added, “These dark omens, the vision of Moribar and all the half-buried memories there have unsettled you—that is all, brother.” He slapped the hard granite of the balustrade. “Hesiod has never been breached. Despite our volatile mother’s wrath, it continues to stand. None of the Sanctuaries have ever been sundered, Dak’ir. For millennia they have stood, in one form or another. I think they will endure still.”

  Meeting his master’s gaze, Dak’ir sounded grim, “Then why do I dream about the breaking of the world? Why did I witness Nocturne’s destruction in my vision? It feels like a strand of prophecy is slowly coming to pass and there is nothing we can do to avert it.”

  Reminded of the deciphered words on the armour recovered from Scoria, Pyriel didn’t answer at first. Dak’ir’s insight, his awareness, his close communion with fate and his inevitable part in it alarmed the Epistolary more than he cared to admit.

  “No one can know what will pass, Dak’ir. No one. If it is fate that Nocturne will face jeopardy the likes of which it has never known, the sort of peril that would see it destroyed, then we will confront that trial. It is Vulkan’s way—the Promethean Creed tells us this. You know that.”

  It was no use. A dark mood had stolen upon the Lexicanum. He wouldn’t be swayed.

  “Pragmatism won’t save us, master,” said Dak’ir, turning and walking away.

  Pyriel followed a moment later, crossing the rest of the way over the bridge and to the docking pad beyond. A gunship waited for them there, and a pilot to ferry them.

  Brother Loc’tar waited for them by the open embarkation ramp. He wasn’t alone.

  “Master Argos,” said Pyriel as he approached the gun-ship and the two warriors standing beside it.

  Loc’tar was wearing his power armour, the icon of the 4th, Captain Dac’tyr’s company, emblazoned on his left shoulder pad. He wasn’t wearing his battle-helm. Instead he held it in the crook of his arm. Across his right eye an icon of a dactyl in flight was seared into the meat of his flesh. Only pilots were permitted facial scarification before the rest of their bodies bore the legacy of their deeds. Many of Dac’tyr’s warriors carried the dactyl’s sigil. The company captain himself carried it, only its tail was longer, its wingspan greater and more magnificent. Master of the Fleet, Lord of the Burning Sky, was the honorific it conveyed.

  Argos was no pilot, though. He was Forgemaster, one of a triumvirate unique to the Salamanders Chapter. He too went unhooded, his facial augmetics there for all to see. A steel plate emblazoned with the icon of a snarling salamander sheathed half of the Techmarine’s face. The other half was decorated with honour scars, all testaments to his veterancy and deeds in the name of the Chapter. A cold light filled the artificial iris of his bionic eye but somehow still possessed the burning fervour of his other human one.

  A hulking servo-harness, replete with tools and other bionic appendages, sat upon his back. It gave the Forgemaster bulk and presence, not that he needed it. Like all of the Techmarines whose secret covenant with the Martian Priesthood was known only to them and the other servants of the Cog, Argos had a slightly aloof, unknowable aura.

  “I am surprised to see you here, brother,” Pyriel added, as he and Dak’ir came to stand before him.

  Argos’ voice was cold and metallic. It possessed a machine-like resonance devoid of emotion. His meaning was clear, however.

  “As am I to see you chartering a ship during the arctic tempest,” he said. “An atmospheric breach in these conditions is inadvisable, Brother-Librarian, so I have to assume you have good reason.” His gaze rested briefly upon Dak’ir. “Congratulations, brother.”

  “What for, my lord?”

  “For surviving.”

  Argos’ bluntness was the conversational equivalent of a hammer, but Dak’ir respected the Forgemaster’s frank and open candour. He nodded.

  His attention returned to Pyriel. “I assume this trip you’re planning is not part of the test?”

  “It is not.”

  “And that you are not going to disclose its nature to me, either.”

  There was, inevitably, a divide between brothers of the Technicarium and the Librarius. One dealt with the tangible, the tactile, what could be grasped and seized with one’s own hands; the other dealt with the ethereal, the abstract and the amorphous. It was science versus superstition and the two did not always make easy bedfellows.

  Master Vel’cona’s vociferous posturing on the subject did not help relations, either. The Chief of Librarians was often famously quoted regarding his thoughts on the limitations of science.

  I can pulp your flesh and snap your bones in less than a second, and without so much as lifting a finger. What is the power of technology compared to that?

  All who had ever heard it, Tu’Shan included, knew the good-natured fire behind it but it was incendiary nonetheless, particularly to the likes of Argos and the other two Forgemasters.

  “We follow the portents and tread the lines of fate where we can, brother. It is a journey that will take us off-world. Warpcraft is unpredictable, though,” Pyriel replied.

  “As I thought,” said Argos, stepping aside—not that he had ever intended stopping them. He waited until the two Librarians, master and student, were walking up the embarkation ramp before he spoke again.

  “To call it craft is a misnomer, brother. To call it craft suggests creation, permanence. Whereas, anything arising from your art is ephemeral at best.”

  Pyriel turned to object but the flare in the Forgemaster’s human eye warned him against it. “I have performed the machine rites on your gunship myself,” said Argos. “The Caldera will get you to your destination, tempest or no.”

  Pyriel nodded, entered the darkness of the troop hold and the ramp closed behind him with a hard clang.<
br />
  “Why didn’t you tell him where we were going, master?” asked Dak’ir as he strapped himself into his grav-harness. The Chamber Sanctuarine of the Caldera had room enough for thirty warriors so armed—with just two it felt positively desolate.

  Pyriel’s eyes glowed deep red in the gloom, the aftermath of his spat with Brother Argos.

  “Because I am still uncertain as to the validity of taking this journey, brother. And if I question it then what would the Forgemaster’s reaction be?”

  Dak’ir closed his eyes as the shuddering of the gun-ship’s imminent takeoff filled the hold with noise. In the darkness, he saw a vale of bones and a long ossuary road leading down into a heart of fire.

  Moribar.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I

  Remembrance

  A thin patina was forming on Nihilan’s armour where his body faced the ash storm. Seconds after leaving the Stormbird’s hold, he was almost as grey as the corpses buried beneath his feet.

  Scads of fat flakes bustled across a desolate plain, obscuring the forbidding tombs and cryptoria. They looked like fell shadows in the grey dust, old silhouettes punctuating older memories. The wind that bore them was a choking death rattle that whispered… Moribar.

  Heavy boots crunched into the bone of the ossuary road underfoot, interrupting Nihilan’s thoughts. Ramlek alighted beside him, mouth-grille frothing cinder and smoke.

  “Crematoria rain,” the Dragon Warrior sorcerer remarked to him, his cold eyes fixed on the bleached yellow plains ahead.

  “Eh?” grunted Ramlek, checking the load on his bolter and surveying the landing zone.

  Deserted, as planned.

  “The ash,” said Nihilan, catching a few flakes on his outstretched claws. “It’s called crematoria rain.”

  Ramlek stared back at his leader without discernible expression.

  Nihilan smiled thinly behind his draconic-faced battle-helm. “You really are a single-minded bastard, aren’t you, Ramlek.”