He turned to face Sejanus. ‘These are some of my brothers, but where are the others? Where am I?’
‘I do not know,’ replied Sejanus. ‘I have walked this place many times, but have never yet seen your likeness.’
‘I am his chosen regent!’ cried Horus. ‘I fought on a thousand battlefields for him. The blood of my warriors is on his hands, and he ignores me like I don’t exist?’
‘The Emperor has forsaken you, Warmaster,’ urged Sejanus. ‘Soon he will turn his back on his people to win his place amongst the gods. He cares only for himself and his power and glory. We were all deceived. We have no place in his grand scheme, and when the time comes, he will spurn us all and ascend to godhood. While we were fighting war after war in his name, he was secretly building his power in the warp.’
The droning chant of the official – a priest, realized Horus – continued as the pilgrims maintained the slow procession around their god, and Sejanus’s words hammered against his skull.
‘This can’t be true,’ whispered Horus.
‘What does a being of the Emperor’s magnitude do after he has conquered the galaxy? What is left for him but godhood? What use has he for those whom he leaves behind?’
‘No!’ shouted Horus, stepping from the plinth and smashing the droning priest to the ground. The augmented preacher hybrid was torn from the pulpit and lay screaming in a pool of blood and oil. His cries were carried across the plaza by the trumpets of the floating infants, though none of the crowd seemed inclined to help him.
Horus set off into the crowded plaza in a blind fury, leaving Sejanus behind on the plinth of statues. Once again, the crowd parted before his headlong dash, as unresponsive to his leaving as they had been to his arrival. Within moments he reached the edge of the plaza and made his way down the nearest of the arterial boulevards. People filled the street, but they ignored him as he pushed his way through them, each face turned in rapture to an image of the Emperor.
Without Sejanus beside him, Horus realized that he was completely alone. He heard the howl of a distant wolf, its cry once again sounding as though it called out to him. He stopped in the centre of a crowded street, listening for the wolf howl again, but it was silenced as suddenly as it had come.
The crowds flowed around him as he listened, and Horus saw that once again, no one paid him the slightest bit of attention. Not since Horus had parted from his father and brothers had he felt so isolated. Suddenly he felt the pain of being confronted with the scale of his own vanity and pride as he realized how much he thrived on the adoration of those around him.
On every face, he saw the same blind devotion as he had witnessed in those that circled the statues, a beloved reverence for a man he called father. Didn’t these people realize the victories that had won their freedom had been won with Horus’s blood?
It should be Horus’s statue surrounded by his brother primarchs, not the Emperor’s!
Horus seized the nearest devotee and shook him violently by the shoulders, shouting, ‘He is not a god! He is not a god!’
The pilgrim’s neck snapped with an audible crack and Horus felt the bones of the man’s shoulders splinter beneath his iron grip. Horrified, he dropped the dead man and ran deeper into the labyrinth of the shrine world, taking turns at random, as he sought to lose himself in its crowded streets.
Each fevered change of direction took him along thronged avenues of worshippers and marvels dedicated to the glory of the God-Emperor: thoroughfares where every cobblestone was inscribed with prayer, kilometre high ossuaries of gold plated bones, and forests of marble columns, with unnumbered saints depicted upon them.
Random demagogues roamed the streets, one fanatically mortifying his flesh with prayer whips while another held up two squares of orange cloth by the corners and screamed that he would not wear them. Horus could make no sense of any of it.
Vast prayer ships drifted over this part of the shrine city, monstrously bloated zeppelins with sweeping brass sails and enormous prop-driven motors. Long prayer banners hung from their fat silver hulls, and hymns blared from hanging loudspeakers shaped like ebony skulls.
Horus passed a great mausoleum where flocks of ivory-skinned angels with brass-feathered wings flew from dark archways and descended into the crowds gathered in front of the building. The solemn angels swooped over the wailing masses, occasionally gathering to pluck some ecstatic soul from the pilgrims, and cries of adoration and praise followed each supplicant as he was carried through the dread portals of the mausoleum.
Horus saw death venerated in the coloured glass of every window, celebrated in the carvings on every door, and revered in the funereal dirges that echoed from the trumpets of winged children who giggled as they circled like birds of prey. Flapping banners of bone clattered, and the wind whistled through the eye sockets of skulls set into shrine caskets on bronze poles. Morbidity hung like a shroud upon this world, and Horus could not reconcile the dark, gothic solemnity of this new religion with the dynamic force of truth, reason and confidence that had driven the Great Crusade into the stars.
High temples and grim shrines passed him in a blur: cenobites and preachers haranguing the pilgrims from every street corner to the peal of doomsayers’ bells. Everywhere Horus looked, he saw walls adorned with frescoes, paintings and bas relief works of familiar faces – his brothers and the Emperor himself.
Why was there no representation of Horus?
It was as if he had never existed. He sank to his knees, raising his fists to the sky.
‘Father, why have you forsaken me?’
THE VENGEFUL SPIRIT felt empty to Loken, and he knew it was more than simply the absence of people. The solid, reassuring presence of the Warmaster, so long taken for granted, was achingly absent without him on board. The halls of the ship were emptier, more hollow, as though it were a weapon stripped of its ammunition – once powerful, but now simply inert metal.
Though portions of the ship were still filled with people, huddled in small groups and holding hands around groups of candles, there was an emptiness to the place that left Loken feeling similarly hollowed out.
Each group he passed swarmed around him, the normal respect for an Astartes warrior forgotten in their desperation to know the fate of the Warmaster. Was he dead? Was he alive? Had the Emperor reached out from Terra to save his beloved son?
Loken angrily brushed each group off, pushing through them without answering their questions as he made his way to Archive Chamber Three. He knew Sindermann would be there – he was always there these days – researching and poring over his books like a man possessed. Loken needed answers about the serpent lodge, and he needed them now.
Time was of the essence and he’d already made one stop at the medical deck in order to hand over the anathame to Apothecary Vaddon.
‘Be very careful, apothecary,’ warned Loken, reverently placing the wooden casket on the steel operating slab between them. ‘This is a kinebrach weapon called an anathame. It was forged from a sentient xeno metal and is utterly lethal. I believe it to be the source of the Warmaster’s malady. Do what you need to do to find out what happened, but do it quickly.’
Vaddon had nodded, dumbfounded that Loken had returned with something he could actually use. He lifted the anathame by its golden studded pommel and placed it within a spectrographic chamber.
‘I can’t promise anything, Captain Loken,’ said Vaddon, ‘but I will do whatever is in my power to find you an answer.’
‘That’s all I ask, but the sooner the better; and tell no one that you have this weapon.’
Vaddon nodded and turned to his work, leaving Loken to find Kyril Sindermann in the archives of the mighty ship. The helplessness that had seized him earlier vanished now that he had a purpose. He was actively trying to save the Warmaster, and that knowledge gave him fresh hope that there might yet be a way to bring him back unharmed in body and spirit.
As always, the archives were quiet, but now there was a deeper sense of desolation
. Loken strained to hear anything at all, finally catching the scratching of a quill-pen from deeper in the stacks of books. Swiftly he made his way towards the sound, knowing before he reached the source that it was his old mentor. Only Kyril Sindermann scratched at the page with such intense pen strokes.
Sure enough, Loken found Sindermann sitting at his usual table and upon seeing him, Loken knew with absolute certainty that he had not left this place since last they had spoken. Bottles of water and discarded food packs lay scattered around the table, and the haggard Sindermann now sported a growth of fine white hair on his cheeks and chin.
‘Garviel,’ said Sindermann without looking up. ‘You came back. Is the Warmaster dead?’
‘No,’ replied Loken. ‘At least I don’t think so. Not yet anyway.’
Sindermann looked up from his books, the haphazard piles of which were now threatening to topple onto the floor.
‘You don’t think so?’
‘I haven’t seen him since I saw him on the apothecaries’ slab,’ confessed Loken.
‘Then why are you here? It surely can’t be for a lesson on the principles and ethics of civilization. What’s happening?’
‘I don’t know,’ admitted Loken. ‘Something bad I think. I need your knowledge of… things esoteric, Kyril,’
‘Things esoteric?’ repeated Sindermann, putting down his quill. ‘Now I am intrigued.’
‘The Legion’s quiet order has taken the Warmaster to the Temple of the Serpent Lodge on Davin. They’ve placed him in a temple they call the Delphos and say that the “eternal spirits of dead things” will heal him.’
‘Serpent Lodge you say?’ asked Sindermann, plucking books seemingly at random from the cluttered piles on his desk. ‘Serpents… now that is interesting.’
‘What is?’
‘Serpents,’ repeated Sindermann. ‘Since the very beginnings of time, on every continent where humanity worshipped divinity, the serpent has been recognized and accepted as a god. From the steaming jungles of the Afrique islands to the icy wastes of Alba, serpents have been worshipped, feared and adored in equal measure. I believe that serpent mythology is probably the most widespread mythology known to mankind.’
‘Then how did it get to Davin?’ asked Loken.
‘It’s not difficult to understand,’ explained Sindermann. ‘You see, myths weren’t originally expressed in verbal or written form because language was deemed inadequate to convey the truth expressed in the stories. Myths move not with words, Garviel, but with storytellers and wherever you find people, no matter how primitive or how far they’ve been separated from the cradle of humanity, you’ll always find storytellers. Most of these myths were probably enacted, chanted, danced or sung, more often than not in hypnotic or hallucinatory states. It must have been quite a sight, but anyway, this method of retelling was said to allow the creative energies and relationships behind and beneath the natural world to be brought into the conscious realm. Ancient peoples believed that myths created a bridge from the metaphysical world to the physical one.’
Sindermann flicked through the pages of what looked like a new book encased in fresh red leather and turned the book so Loken could see.
‘Here, you see it here quite clearly.’
Loken looked at the pictures, seeing images of naked tribesmen dancing with long snake-topped poles as well as snakes and spirals painted onto primitive pottery. Other pictures showed vases with gigantic snakes winding over suns, moons and stars, while still more showed snakes appearing below growing plants or coiled above the bellies of pregnant women.
‘What am I looking at?’ he asked.
‘Artifacts recovered from a dozen different worlds during the Great Crusade,’ said Sindermann, jabbing his finger at the pictures. ‘Don’t you see? We carry our myths with us, Garviel, we don’t reinvent them.’
Sindermann turned the page to show yet more images of snakes and said, ‘Here the snake is the symbol of energy, spontaneous, creative energy… and of immortality.’
‘Immortality?’
‘Yes, in ancient times, men believed that the serpent’s ability to shed its skin and thus renew its youth made it privy to the secrets of death and rebirth. They saw the moon, waxing and waning, as the celestial body capable of this same ability, and of course, the lunar cycle has long associations with the life-creating rhythm of the female. The moon became the lord of the twin mysteries of birth and death, and the serpent was its earthly counterpart.’
‘The moon…’ said Loken.
‘Yes,’ continued Sindermann, now well into his flow. ‘In early rites of initiation where the aspirant was seen to die and be reborn, the moon was the goddess mother and the serpent the divine father. It’s not hard to see why the connection between the serpent and healing becomes a permanent facet of serpent worship.’
‘Is that what this is,’ breathed Loken. ‘A rite of initiation?’
Sindermann shrugged. ‘I couldn’t say, Garviel. I’d need to see more of it.’
‘Tell me,’ snarled Loken. ‘I need to hear all you know.’
Startled by the power of Loken’s urging, Sindermann reached for several more books, leafing through them as the 10th Company captain loomed over him.
‘Yes, yes…’ he muttered, flipping back and forth through the well-thumbed pages. ‘Yes, here it is. Ah… yes, a word for serpent in one of the lost languages of old Earth was “nahash”, which apparently means, “to guess”. It appears that it was then translated to mean a number of different things, depending on which etymological root you believe.’
‘Translated to mean what?’ asked Loken. ‘Its first rendition is as either “enemy” or “adversary”, but it seems to be more popularly transliterated as “Seytan”.’
‘Seytan,’ said Loken. ‘I’ve heard that name before.’
‘We… ah, spoke of it at the Whisperheads,’ said Sindermann in a low voice, looking about him as though someone might be listening. ‘It was said to be a nightmarish force of deviltry cast down by a golden hero on Terra. As we now know, the Samus spirit was probably the local equivalent for the inhabitants of Sixty-Three Nineteen.’
‘Do you believe that?’ asked Loken. ‘That Samus was a spirit?’
‘Of some form, yes,’ said Sindermann honestly. ‘I believe that what I saw beneath the mountains was more than simply a xenos of some kind, no matter what the Warmaster says.’
‘And what about this serpent as Seytan?’
Sindermann, pleased to have a subject upon which he could illuminate, shook his head and said, ‘No. If you look closer, you see the word “serpent” has its origination in the Olympian root languages as “drakon”, the cosmic serpent that was seen as a symbol of Chaos.’
‘Chaos?’ cried Loken. ‘No!’
‘Yes,’ went on Sindermann, hesitantly pointing out a passage of text in yet another of his books. ‘It is this “chaos”, or “serpent”, which must be overcome to create order and maintain life in any meaningful way. This serpentine dragon was a creature of great power and its sacred years were times of great ambition and incredible risk. It’s said that events occurring in a year of the dragon are magnified threefold in intensity.’
Loken tried to hide his horror at Sindermann’s words, the ritual significance of the serpent and its place in mythology cementing his conviction that what was happening on Davin was horribly wrong. He looked down at the book before him and said, ‘What’s this?’
‘A passage from the Book of Atum,’ said Sindermann, as though afraid to tell him. ‘I only found it quite recently, I swear. I didn’t think anything of it, I still don’t really… After all, it’s just nonsense isn’t it?’
Loken forced himself to look at the book, feeling his heart grow heavy with each word he read from its yellowed pages.
I am Horus, forged of the Oldest Gods,
I am he who gave way to Khaos
I am that great destroyer of all.
I am he who did what seemed good to him,
And set doom in the palace of my will.
Mine is the fate of those who move along
This serpentine path.
‘I’m no student of poetry,’ snapped Loken. ‘What does it mean?’
‘It’s a prophecy,’ said Sindermann hesitantly. ‘It speaks of a time when the world returns to its original chaos and the hidden aspects of the supreme gods become the new serpent.’
‘I don’t have time for metaphors, Kyril,’ warned Loken.
‘At its most basic level,’ said Sindermann, ‘it speaks about the death of the universe.’
SEJANUS FOUND HIM on the steps of a vaulted basilica, its wide doorway flanked by tall skeletons wrapped in funeral robes and holding flaming censers out before them. Though darkness had fallen, the streets of the city still thronged with worshippers, each carrying a lit taper or lantern to light the way.
Horus looked up as Sejanus approached, thinking that the processions of light through the city would have seemed beautiful at any other time. The pageantry and pomp of the palanquins and altars being carried along the streets would previously have irritated him, were the procession in his honour, but now he craved them.
‘Have you seen all you need to see?’ asked Sejanus, sitting beside him on the steps.
‘Yes,’ replied Horus. ‘I wish to leave this place.’
‘We can leave whenever you want, just say the word,’ said Sejanus. ‘There is more you need to see anyway, and our time is not infinite. Your body is dying and you must make your choice before you are beyond the help of even the powers that dwell in the warp.’
‘This choice,’ asked Horus, ‘Does it involve what I think it does?’
‘Only you can decide that,’ said Sejanus as the doors to the basilica opened behind them.
Horus looked over his shoulder, seeing a familiar oblong of light where he would have expected to see a darkened vestibule.
‘Very well,’ he said, standing and turning towards the light. ‘So where are we going now?’
False Gods Page 23
