False Gods

by Graham McNeill

  No one answered him, but then he hadn’t expected them to. Was this what happened when a person died? He dimly remembered someone teaching him of the ancient unbelief of ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’, meaningless words that promised rewards for obedience and punishment for wickedness.

  He took a deep breath, scenting the aroma of good earth: the fragrances of a world unchecked and untamed and of the living things that covered the landscape. He could taste the air and was amazed at its purity. Its crispness filled his lungs like sweet wine, but how had he come here and… where was here?

  He had been… where? He couldn’t remember. He knew his name was Horus, but beyond that, he knew only fragments and dim recollections that even now grew faint and insubstantial the more he tried to hold onto them.

  Deciding that he should try to find out more about his surroundings, he rose to his feet, wincing as his shoulder pulled tight, and he saw a spot of blood soak through the white woollen robes he found himself wearing. Hadn’t he been naked a second ago?

  Horus put it from his mind and laughed. ‘There might be no hell, but this feels like heaven right enough.’

  His throat was dry and he set off towards the river, feeling the softness of the grass through newly sandaled feet. He was further away than he thought, the journey taking him longer than expected, but he didn’t mind. The beauty of the landscape was worth savoring, and though something insistent nagged at the back of his mind, he ignored it and carried on.

  The mountains seemed to reach the very stars, their peaks lost in the clouds and belching noxious fumes into the air as he gazed up at them. Horus blinked; the afterimage of dark, smoke wreathed peaks of iron and cement burned onto his retinas like a spliced frame of harsh interference dropped into a mood window. He dismissed it as the newness of his surroundings, and headed across the swaying plains of tall grass, feeling the bones and waste of uncounted centuries of industry crunching beneath his feet.

  Horus felt ash in his throat, now needing a drink more than ever, the chemical stink growing worse with each step. He tasted benzene, chlorine, hydrochloric acid and vast amounts of carbon monoxide – lethal toxins to any but him it seemed – and briefly wondered how he knew these things. The river was just ahead and he splashed through the shallows, enjoying the biting cold as he reached down and scooped a handful of water into his cupped palms.

  The icy water burned his skin, molten slag dripping in caustic ropes between his fingers, and he let it splash back into the river, wiping his hands on his robe, which was now soot stained and torn. He looked up and saw that the glittering quartz mountains had become vast towers of brass and iron, wounding the sky with gateways like vast maws that could swallow and vomit forth entire armies. Streams of toxic filth poured from the towers and poisoned the river, the landscape around it withering and dying in an instant.

  Confused, Horus stumbled from the river, fighting to hold onto the verdant wilderness that had surrounded him and to hold back the vision of this bleak land of dark ruin and despair. He turned from the dark mountain: the cliff of deepest red and blackened iron, its top hidden in the high clouds above and its base girded with boulders and skulls.

  He fell to his knees, expecting the softness of the grass, but landing heavily on a fractured hardpan of ash and iron, swirling vortices of dust rising up in great storms.

  ‘What’s happening here?’ shouted Horus, rolling onto his back and screaming into a polluted sky striated with ugly bands of ochre and purple. He picked himself up and ran – ran as though his life depended on it. He ran across a landscape that flickered from one of aching beauty to that of a nightmare in the space of a heartbeat, his senses deceiving him from one second to another.

  Horus ran into the forest. The black trunks of the trees snapped before his furious charge, images of lashing branches, high towers of steel and glass, great ruins of mighty cathedrals and rotted palaces left to crumble under the weight of the ages dancing before his eyes.

  Bestial howls echoed across the landscape, and Horus paused in his mad scramble as the sound penetrated the fog in his head, the insistent nagging sensation in the back of his mind recognizing it as significant.

  The mournful howls echoed across the land, a chorus of voices reaching out to him, and Horus recognized them as wolf howls. He smiled at the sound, dropping to his knees and clutching his shoulder as fiery pain lanced through his arm and into his chest. With the pain came clarity and he held onto it, forcing the memories to come through force of will.

  Howling wolf voices came again, and he cried out to the heavens.

  ‘What’s happening to me?’

  The trees around him exploded with motion and a hundred-strong pack of wolves sprang from the undergrowth, surrounding him, with their teeth bared and eyes wide. Foam gathered around exposed fangs and each wolf bore a strange brand upon its fur, that of a black, double-headed eagle. Horus clutched his shoulder, his arm numb and dead as though it was no longer part of him.

  ‘Who are you?’ asked the closest wolf. Horus blinked rapidly as its image fizzled like static, and he saw curves of armour and a single, staring cyclopean eye.

  ‘I am Horus,’ he said.

  ‘Who are you?’ repeated the wolf.

  ‘I am Horus!’ he yelled. ‘What more do you want from me?’

  ‘I do not have much time, my brother,’ said the wolf as the pack began circling him. ‘You must remember before he comes for you. Who are you?’

  ‘I am Horus and if I am dead then leave me be!’ he screamed, surging to his feet and running onwards into the depths of the forest.

  The wolves followed him, loping alongside him and matching his steady pace as he lurched randomly through the twilight. Again and again, the wolves howled the same question until Horus lost all sense of direction and time.

  Horus ran blindly onwards until he finally emerged from the tree line above a wide, high-cliffed crater gouged in the landscape and filled with dark, still water.

  The sky above was black and starless, a moon of purest white shining like a diamond in the firmament. He blinked and raised a hand to ward his eyes against its brightness, looking out over the black waters of the crater, certain that some unspeakable horror lurked in its icy depths.

  Horus glanced behind him to see that the wolves had followed him from the trees, and he ran on as their howling followed him to the edge of the crater. Far below, the water lay still and flat like a black mirror, and the image of the moon filled his vision.

  The wolves howled again, and Horus felt the yawning depths of the water calling out to him with an inevitable attraction. He saw the moon and heard the company of wolves give voice to one last howled question before he hurled himself into the void.

  He fell through the air, his vision tumbling and his memory spinning.

  The moon, the wolves, Lupercal.

  Luna… Wolves…

  Everything snapped into place and he cried out, ‘I am Horus of the Luna Wolves, Warmaster and regent of the Emperor and I am alive!’

  Horus struck the water and it exploded like shards of black glass.

  FLICKERING LIGHT FILLED the chamber with a cold glow, the cracked stone walls limned with crawling webs of frost, and the breath of the cultists feathering in the air. Akshub had painted a circle with eight sharp points around its circumference, on the flagstones in quicklime. The mutilated corpse of one of the Davinite priestess’s acolytes lay spread-eagled at its centre.

  Erebus watched carefully as the priestess’s lodge thralls spread around the circle, ensuring that every stage of the ritual was enacted with meticulous care. To fail now, after he had invested so much effort in bringing the Warmaster to this point, would be disastrous, although Erebus knew that his part in the Warmaster’s downfall was but one of a million events set in motion thousands of years ago.

  This fulcrum point in time was the culmination of billions of seemingly unrelated chains of circumstance that had led to this backwater world that no one had ever heard of.

/>   Erebus knew that that was all about to change. Davin would soon become a place of legend.

  The secret chamber in the heart of the Delphos was hidden from prying eyes by potent magic and sophisticated technology received from disaffected Mechanicum adepts, who welcomed the knowledge the Word Bearers could give them – knowledge that had been forbidden to them by the Emperor.

  Akshub knelt and cut the heart from the dead acolyte, the lodge priestess expertly removing the still warm organ from its former owner’s chest. She took a bite before handing it to Tsepha, her surviving acolyte.

  They passed the heart around the circle, each of the cultists taking a bite of the rich red meat. Erebus took the ghastly remains of the heart as it was passed to him. He wolfed down the last of it, feeling the blood run down his chin and tasting the final memories of the betrayed acolyte as the treacherous blade had ended her life. That betrayal had been offered unto the Architect of Fate, this bloody feast to the Blood God, and the unlovely coupling of the doomed acolyte with a diseased swine had called upon the power of the Dark Prince and the Lord of Decay.

  Blood pooled beneath the corpse, trickling into channels cut in the floor before draining into a sinkhole at the centre of the circle. Erebus knew that there was always blood, it was rich with life and surged with the power of the gods. What better way was there of tapping into that power than with the vital substance that carried their blessing?

  ‘Is it done?’ asked Erebus.

  Akshub nodded, lifting the long knife that had cut the heart from the corpse. ‘It is. The power of the Ones Who Dwell Beyond is with us, though we must be swift.’

  ‘Why must we hurry, Akshub?’ he asked, placing his hand upon his sword. ‘This must be done right or all our lives are forfeit.’

  ‘I know this,’ said the priestess. ‘There is another presence near, a one-eyed ghost who walks between worlds and seeks to return the son to his father.’

  ‘Magnus, you old snake,’ chuckled Erebus, looking up towards the chamber’s roof. ‘You won’t stop us. You’re too far away and Horus is too far gone. I have seen to that.’

  ‘Who do you speak with?’ asked Akshub.

  ‘The one-eyed ghost. You said there was another presence near.’

  ‘Near, yes,’ said Akshub, ‘but not here.’

  Tired of the old priestess’s cryptic answers, Erebus snapped, ‘Then where is he?’

  Akshub reached up and tapped her head with the flat of her blade. ‘He speaks to the son, though he cannot yet reach him fully. I can feel the ghost crawling around the temple, trying to break the magic keeping his full power out.’

  ‘What?’ cried Erebus.

  ‘He will not succeed,’ said Akshub, walking towards him with the knife outstretched. ‘We have spirit-walked in the realm beyond for thousands of years and his knowledge is a paltry thing next to ours.’

  ‘For your sake, it had better be, Akshub.’

  She smiled and held the knife out. ‘Your threats mean nothing here, warrior. I could boil the blood in your veins with a word, or rip your body inside out with a thought. You need me to send your soul into the world beyond, but how will you return if I am dead? Your soul will remain adrift in the void forever, and you are not so full of anger that you do not fear such a fate.’

  Erebus did not like the sudden authority in her voice, but he knew she was right and decided he would kill her once her purpose was served. He swallowed his anger and said, ‘Then let us begin.’

  ‘Very well,’ nodded the priestess, as Tsepha came forward and anointed Erebus’s face with crystalline antimony. ‘Is this for the veil?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Akshub. ‘It will confound his senses and he will not see your likeness. He will see a face familiar and beloved to him.’

  Erebus smiled at the delicious irony of the thought, and closed his eyes as Tsepha daubed his eyelids and cheeks with the stinging, silver-white powder.

  ‘The spell that will allow your passage to the void requires one last thing,’ said Akshub.

  ‘What last thing?’ asked Erebus, suddenly suspicious. ‘Your death,’ said Akshub, slashing her knife across his throat.

  HORUS OPENED HIS eyes, smiling as he saw blue sky above him. Pink and orange tinged clouds drifted slowly across his vision, peaceful and relaxing. He watched them for a few moments and then sat up, feeling wet dew beneath his palms as he pushed himself upright. He saw that he was fully armoured in his frost white plate, and as he surveyed his surroundings, he lifted his hand to his face, smelling the sweet scent on the grass and the crystal freshness of the air.

  A vista of unsurpassed beauty lay before him, towering snow-capped mountains draped in a shawl of pine and fir, magnificent swathes of emerald green forests as far as the eye could see and a wide river of foaming, icy water. Hundreds of shaggy coated herbivores grazed on the plain and wide pinioned birds circled noisily overhead. Horus sat on the low slopes of the foothills at the base of the mountains, the sun warming his face and the grass wondrously soft beneath him.

  ‘To hell with this,’ he said as he got to his feet. ‘I know I’m not dead, so what’s going on?’

  Once again, no one answered him, though this time he had expected an answer. The world still smelled sweet and fragrant, but with the memory of his identity came the knowledge of its falsehood. None of this was real, not the mountains or the river or the forests that covered the landscape, though there was something oddly familiar to it.

  He remembered the dark, iron backdrop that lay behind this illusion and found that if he willed it, he could see the suggestion of that nightmarish vision behind the beauty of the world laid out before him.

  Horus remembered thinking – a lifetime ago, it seemed – that perhaps this place might have been some netherworld between heaven and hell, but now laughed at the idea. He had long ago accepted the principle that the universe was simply matter, and that which was not matter was nothing. The universe was everything, and therefore nothing could exist beyond it.

  Horus had the wit to see why some ancient theologian had claimed that the warp was, in fact, hell. He understood the reasoning, but he knew that the Empyrean was no metaphysical dimension; it was simply an echo of the material world, where random vortices of energy and strange breeds of malign xenos creatures made their homes.

  As pleasing an axiom as that was, it still didn’t answer the question of where he was.

  How had he come to this place? His last memory was of speaking to Petronella Vivar in the apothecarion, telling her of his life, his hopes, his disappointments and his fears for the galaxy – conscious that he had told her those incendiary things as his valediction.

  He couldn’t change that, but he would damn well get to the bottom of what was happening to him now. Was it a fever dream brought on by whatever had wounded him? Had Temba’s sword been poisoned? He dismissed that thought immediately; no poison could lay him low. Surveying his surroundings, he could see no sign of the wolves that had chased him through the dark forests, but suddenly remembered a familiar form that had ghosted behind the face of the pack leader. For the briefest instant, it had looked like Magnus, but surely he was back on Prospero licking his wounds after the Council of Nikaea?

  Something had happened to Horus on Davin’s moon, but he had no idea what. His shoulder ached and he rotated it within his armour to loosen the muscle, but the motion served only to further aggravate it. Horus set off in the direction of the river once more, still thirsty despite knowing that he walked in an illusory realm.

  Cresting the rise that then began to slope gently down towards the river, Horus pulled up sharply as he saw something startling: an armoured Astartes warrior floating face down in the water. Wedged in the shallows of the riverbank, the body rose and fell with the swell of the water, and Horus swiftly made his way towards it.

  He splashed into the river and gripped the edges of the figure’s shoulder guards, turning the body over with a heavy splash.

  Horus gasped, seeing that the man wa
s alive, and that it was someone he knew.

  A beautiful man was how Loken had described him, a beautiful man who had been adored by all who knew him. The noblest hero of the Great Crusade had been another of his epithets.

  Hastur Sejanus.

  LOKEN MARCHED AWAY from the temple, angry at what his brothers had done and furious with himself: he should have known that Erebus would have had plans beyond the simple murder of the Warmaster.

  His veins surged with the need to do violence, but Erebus was not here, and no one could tell Loken where he was. Torgaddon and Vipus marched alongside him, and even through his anger, Loken could sense his friends’ astonishment at what had happened before the great gate of the Delphos.

  ‘Throne, what’s happening here?’ asked Vipus as they reached the top of the processional steps. ‘Garvi, what’s happening? Are the first captain and Little Horus our enemies now?’

  Loken shook his head. ‘No, Nero, they are our brothers, they are simply being used. As I think we all are.’

  ‘By Erebus?’ asked Torgaddon.

  ‘Erebus?’ said Vipus. ‘What has he got to do with this?’

  ‘Garviel thinks that Erebus is behind what’s happening to the Warmaster,’ said Torgaddon.

  Loken shot him an exasperated stare.

  ‘You’re joking?’

  ‘Not this time, Nero,’ said Torgaddon.

  ‘Tarik,’ snapped Loken. ‘Keep your voice down or everyone will hear.’

  ‘So what if they do, Garvi?’ hissed Torgaddon. ‘If Erebus is behind this, then everyone should know about it: we should expose him.’

  ‘And we will,’ promised Loken, watching as the pinpricks of vehicle headlights appeared at the mouth of the valley they had only recently flown up.

  ‘So what do we do?’ asked Vipus.

  That was the question, realized Loken. They needed more information before they could act, and they needed it now. He fought for calm so that he could think more clearly.

  Loken wanted answers, but he had to know what questions to ask first, and there was one man who had always been able to cut through his confusion and steer him in the right direction.