The Inquisition War
Page 86
Firmly Lex clenched his free hand into a fist – and Grimm may have thought that the Marine was going to strike him. But instead Lex smiled, contortedly. However far away Lex was from his fortress-monastery and from his battle brothers – and although he was half blind and near-naked – he remained an Imperial Fist.
‘Come, little comrade,’ he barked. ‘And redeem yourself by serving Him-on-Earth.’
RAAARK— FOR THE merest moment – pop – Jaq knew.
—SWOOSH—
Then the universe exploded.
BODILESS, HE WAS afloat within blue light. He was no longer a man, but only a point of view. From that point of view he looked down upon his corpse, lying ruined and defunct.
He looked down upon Lex, who was kneeling in prayer. He looked down upon Grimm who was trying in vain to cover the corpse’s shattered face.
An astonishing serenity filled Jaq’s soul, almost to overflowing. Tunnels of blue light led in four directions. He knew that by a mere act of will he might rush afar along any of these tunnels. Or he might simply accelerate his vision along one tunnel or another, as though he were going through an expanding telescope.
He did exactly this – and his vision overtook Meh’lindi. She was loping headlong like a hunted animal.
Stop, stop! He wished her to hear his voice. But she could not hear.
As his vision accompanied her, he perceived a scintillating aura about her – in a way that he had never perceived before. He realized that she had behaved as she behaved because she was in a trance of combat, mesmerized by her dying moment. She had been akin to a Phoenix Lord, possessed by the path of combat to the exclusion of personality. Her lethal rapture would surely abate as her intelligence asserted itself.
That aura of hers was so complex. Could it be that Rakel was not entirely evicted from her former body? Could it be that deep down Rakel still lingered? That, in a sense, Rakel possessed Meh’lindi? Not directly, as a daemon might possess a person. But present, nonetheless. Or that Meh’lindi’s spirit possessed Rakel’s body, daemon-like?
Yes, yes... Rakel was not entirely dead.
Meh’lindi would be volatile. She would be unstable. Pray that her fierce will would prevail!
He could not communicate with her. He could not contact her, however much he might wish to do so.
Therefore Jaq let his vision range far beyond Meh’lindi – until a blue tunnel reached its terminus, inside a cave a-sparkle with crystals. His vision could travel no further. It could not leave the webway.
ONCE MORE, HE was gazing calmly down upon his own corpse.
Grimm was grieving. He was mourning for himself as well as for Jaq. Such despairing hues polluted the little man’s aura, unseen by Jaq until now. Oh Grimm, Grimm! Grimm believed himself damned, because he had sworn a false sacred oath to Rakel. Yet he was wrong. For Rakel was not extinguished utterly.
If only Grimm knew. But there was no way that Jaq could inform the squat.
Four blue tunnels led away, branching and dividing into routes leading to anywhere in the webway – to everywhere in this vast network spanning the galaxy. The immensity of this vision exalted Jaq. And in his exaltation, he sensed presences. It seemed that the four tunnels corresponded, in some manner, to the eldar Phoenix Lords. Their transcendent identities intruded upon him. He understood their titles.
Maugan Ra, the Harvester of Souls.
Baharroth, the Cry of the Wind.
Jain Zar, the Storm of Silence.
Karandras, the Shadow Hunter.
They were such potent foes of Chaos.
And he realized that because he had died at this special crossroads, his spirit had not entered the Sea of Souls but had become attached to the webway instead. His vision could ride the webway – although his spirit could not leave it. By riding the webway, knowledge would suffuse him. He sensed, afar, the spirits of dead eldar seers. He might commune with those seers in a way impossible to any other member of the human race.
He would be more illuminated than any living human Illuminatus could ever be!
LEX AND GRIMM were trudging away from the place where Jaq’s corpse lay. Why hadn’t they taken the force rod with them? The precious force rod! Neither Lex nor Grimm were psykers. Neither could use the rod. In vain Jaq strove to call out to them, to reassure them that his spirit had survived. To explain about Meh’lindi. To encourage them. In vain.
Rapture filled him, at the promise of impending revelations. It was as if he was uniting with the Numen. He was becoming a tiny part of something wondrously noble, yet as diffuse as hydrogen atoms in the void, which would one day condense into a resplendent star.
If only he could commune with tormented humanity! The eldar could commune with the souls of the dead through spirit stones, through wraithbone, through the infinity circuit. Jaq’s personal Tarot card might have been a means of contact with the living. His Tarot card was long since destroyed, consigned to ashes scattered in space.
FOR A LONG WHILE, riding the webway, Jaq’s vision followed Lex and Grimm as they retraced the route back to Genost, back to the heretic, Princip. In his sublime transcendence Jaq was impotent to intervene.