by Various
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Nothing at all.’
Farouk unstrapped himself then and clambered over to the crate. He looked inside and saw what Hassan had seen.
‘Ah,’ he said.
Inside the crate was a huge hunk of rock, granite perhaps, just like the thousands that riddled the semi-desert around the compound, filthy with storm-blown grime and cracked along one edge. It filled most of the crate interior: heavy enough to be plausible, perhaps the weight of a dismantled Rapier platform. It was slightly tapered at one end, otherwise blocky and crude. It might once have been a building block, discarded among the rubble of some old demolition site and left to wear away in the desert wind.
Farouk didn’t say anything else for a long time. ‘They knew we were coming,’ he remarked eventually.
Hassan nodded. ‘Duped. From the beginning.’
‘We got the right bunker?’
‘We did.’
‘You sure?’ asked Farouk. ‘Perhaps–’
‘We got the right bunker!’ shouted Hassan.
Farouk shrunk back. No one else spoke. The lifter’s engines thudded away angrily.
‘So what are you going to do?’ asked Farouk.
Hassan drew in a long, weary breath. ‘What do you recommend?’ he asked sardonically. He looked over to the embarkation ramp. ‘I should cast it loose. Throw it out, send it back to the desert where it came from.’
His chin slumped against his chest.
‘Seriously?’ asked Farouk.
Hassan smiled grimly, and shook his head. ‘Don’t worry. We were told to bring it back, so we’ll do just that.’
‘There’ll be a reckoning for this,’ sighed Farouk.
Hassan leaned back against the cargo bay wall, feeling a powerful headache coming on. ‘Oh, I know that,’ he said. ‘But from who? Who ordered it?’
The lifter continued onwards, hastening them towards the consequences of failure.
‘I guess we’ll find out soon enough,’ he said.
‘A stone,’ said the Sigillite.
‘Yes, lord,’ said Hassan, feeling his cheeks flush. ‘They made fools of us.’
‘I see.’
The Sigillite turned back to the doorway. Locks clunked open. The great spiked door swung inwards, rasping on its hinges. Malcador raised a long, bony finger and a soft glow of lumen strips bloomed up from floor level.
‘Come,’ he said.
The chamber beyond was small in comparison to the others he’d seen – only a hundred metres in length, perhaps, with a low ceiling and rough, unfinished walls. Box-like cases stood at regular intervals. Each was a different size and shape, mounted on pedestals of marble. Some were as tall as he was, some were no larger than his fist. Every case was dark, glinting smoothly like cut crystal.
‘Before Unity, before Strife,’ said Malcador, moving between the cases like an old hunched ghost, ‘we built these walls. We built them to last. Only later did other men raise their spires around and above them, burying our secrets beneath their own.’ His voice was proud and wistful. ‘This is the last Repository of the Sigillites. We are watched by unsleeping guardians and ringed with ancient wards against ruin. Here are kept the most dangerous and powerful creations of our species. You should feel privileged, Khalid. Not many men have seen these things.’
As the Sigillite walked, he gestured to some of the cases. Their glass surfaces lit up, exposing the objects held within. Hassan caught glimpses of them as they passed by.
‘It still makes me proud, on occasion,’ the Sigillite went on. ‘The Palace is His, of course – it always has been. But it was built atop a much older structure. The cradle of my Order. These are the last foundations of the original fortress, preserved in the depths, a relic of another age. I remember it how it was, as so few now do. Only those who linger, who endure as the ages cycle by, but we are a scattered fraternity.’
Hassan saw a long curved sword engraved with flowing script. He saw books, their metal covers thick with the patina of ages, locked closed and bound with chains. He saw suits of armour hung from iron frames – some were of impossibly old design, plates of polished steel interleaved with linked-mesh chain. Others looked more modern, like the bulky, half-dismantled power armour of the Legiones Astartes.
The Sigillite paused before one in particular. ‘The very first,’ he said, thoughtfully. ‘Such a simple principle, compared to those that came later. But so very effective.’
Hassan let his eyes wander across the other cases. ‘These are weapons,’ he said. ‘Tools of war.’
‘Some of them.’ Malcador started walking again, heading towards the far end of the chamber. ‘A species is defined by many things. As it lives, as it grows, it creates artefacts. It passes its genius into those things. They become a part of its soul, a living record of its psyche. We create. We fashion, we mould, we make. That is the essence of us, what sets us apart from the beasts, who cannot, and the gods, who do not deign to.’
The Sigillite gestured to a smaller cabinet on his left. It contained one of the chamber’s many books.
‘There was a time when that book governed the lives of trillions,’ he said. ‘None read it now, but its power still remains, locked deep in our unwaking minds. I have studied it many times. Were it not so dangerous, I would recommend you do the same.’ He smiled in the dark. ‘All is vanity, saith the preacher. Perhaps the greatest truth of all.’
Malcador finally halted before another large, square case. It was as tall as he was, though wider, and remained unlit and opaque.
‘If the Palace above us were destroyed, how much would be lost?’ he asked. ‘Many palaces have come and gone, many wars have been fought. But these things, they are the treasures of our kind. Without them, we are like children lost in the night. Cast adrift. Truly homeless.’
The casket before them blossomed into illumination, revealing its contents.
The stone from Gyptus stood there, but it had changed. The dust had been cleaned from it, leaving a smooth, polished sheen. Hassan could see words and glyphs on the flat surface, hundreds of them, all engraved in tight, dense lines.
‘Not a weapon,’ he said, finally understanding.
‘No, not a weapon,’ said the Sigillite. ‘They do not aim to destroy only our fortresses and our starships. They aim to destroy the things that make us what we are. They seek out every accomplishment and marker of success and throw them down, erasing the past, plunging us into forgetfulness.’ He gazed at the stone. ‘I am the custodian of such things. Dorn is more than capable of marshalling our physical defences – my task is the preservation of our species’ soul.’
Hassan drew closer to the glass. He could make out pictographic shapes near the top of the stone face, some of them similar to the ones he’d seen over the empty lintel.
‘What does it say?’ he asked.
The Sigillite smiled. ‘It is the record of an ancient conquest. Some ironies have been waiting for us for millennia.’ Malcador ran his fingertip along a line of text, reading out loud. ‘The Manifest God protects all those who are subject to his kingship – he being a god, the son of a god and a goddess, like Horus, son of Isis and Osiris, who protects his father. Like Horus, who protects his father. Appropriate, no?’
Hassan couldn’t raise a smile. ‘Then this was what you intended.’
The Sigillite nodded. ‘You did what was asked of you. This thing is what the ancients called the Rosetta Stone. I wished to have it. The enemy wished to have it. Your actions gave us one small victory to set against a tide of defeat. Worth having, I think, despite the cost.’
Hassan narrowed his eyes. ‘Why did they want it?’ he asked.
‘It is a symbol. It stands for the recovery of lost knowledge, for the continuity of civilisations. If they had taken it then they would have destroyed it. A trivial loss, you might think, set against the deaths of
billions to come, but I would have felt it.’ Malcador’s eyes never left the stone. They shone wetly in the dark, as if some great emotion pressed against his soul. ‘When this is over, should we be victorious, we will have need of these things. We shall remember the tools of enlightenment so we will never forget how close we skirted the barbarity of despotism. I will see to it. That shall be my task, as it has ever been my task – to keep us from forgetting.’
He turned to Hassan.
‘For what would we gain,’ asked the Sigillite, ‘should we win the war and yet lose sight of why we fought it? Enlightenment, Khalid. Progress. Ascension into something better. That is what we are struggling to preserve.’
Hassan turned his head away, looking back over the collection of objects. ‘You still have not told me what I am doing here,’ he said.
‘No, not yet,’ said the Sigillite, moving back towards the chamber entrance. ‘Come, I have one more thing to show you.’
As they walked, the subterranean rumblings Hassan had heard earlier grew in frequency. It felt at times as if the entire floor were trembling, taut and fragile like a drumskin.
‘What is that?’ Hassan asked.
The Sigillite paused. ‘I told you,’ he said. ‘The war has started. You are close to the heart of it. You have heard myths of the Emperor being absent, that He has forgotten His people. It is not so. He will never forget. But He cannot withdraw, not now that the seal is broken.’
He pressed his lips together, his expression hardening.
‘In truth I have not yet learned to blame Horus,’ he said. ‘Until I see him again, changed by the powers that have consumed him, I may not be able to. But I do blame Magnus. Of all of them, he should have known better. We had so many hopes for Magnus.’ He shook his head bitterly and kept on walking. ‘So many hopes indeed.’
They went deeper, passing down spiral stairways cut from the living rock. The air began to smell of burning metal. They passed more of the Custodes, some of whom bore scorch-marks and deep rents on their glittering armour. The walls themselves trembled.
Eventually they entered another grand chamber, one that eclipsed all those that had come before. It soared up into the eternal darkness, lost in shadow. Massive censers hung on iron chains, their pans glowing with red coals and pungent with incense. More Custodians had gathered there, alongside the silent female warriors.
None of them held Hassan’s attention. He stared up at the central feature of the distant far wall: a pair of massive golden doors, each the height of a Warlord Titan, each covered in a dazzling tapestry of astrological and mythic icons, overlapping and interwoven in a riot of gilt imagery – a great panoply of serpents, wolves and angels.
The thunderous impacts came from beyond the doors. At times it seemed as if they were barely holding, despite their colossal size.
Hassan shrank back. The scale of what was taking place on the other side cowed him.
‘This is the outermost edge,’ said the Sigillite. ‘A dozen such doors stand between you and the horror, and still you feel it.’
‘I cannot go in there,’ Hassan whispered.
‘No, you cannot,’ said Malcador. His voice had become softer, imbued with a deep, primordial sadness. His withered face gazed up at the doors, and his eyes shone in the dark. ‘Even I cannot. These doors will not open until the end.’
Hassan couldn’t look away. The noises on the far side were horrific. He thought he caught echoes of unearthly screaming – the strangled discharge of terrible, inhuman energies.
‘No weapon you could have brought me would compare to those used in there,’ said the Sigillite. ‘No war has ever been more savage, and yet its existence will never be known. Whatever horrors are destined to take place in the material universe pale in comparison. You stand upon the threshold, captain. This is to be the true battle for the soul of humanity.’
Hassan tried to master himself. ‘And is… He in there?’
‘He is.’
Hassan shrank back. The thought, the very idea, of anything surviving in that unseen maelstrom seemed impossible. His imagination failed him. It was too immense to process.
‘You will never have to go through those doors, Khalid,’ said the Sigillite. ‘I only show you them so that you will understand.’
After a while, he turned away. Hassan followed him closely.
‘For now, I too remain on this side,’ said the Sigillite, ‘undertaking all that must be undertaken to preserve our species’ legacy. But a time will come when I must put these things away and make a choice. When that time comes, others will take on my work. So let me tell you why I really brought you here.’
The Sigillite looked at Hassan. His gaze was almost painful in its intensity.
‘I collect individuals as well as stones,’ he said. ‘I collect souls of integrity, capable of rebuilding what will surely be lost. Some are warriors, some masters of psychic potential, some merely mortals. They will all be needed. They are to be my Chosen, the kernel of greater things to come. I require disciples of the Repository, acolytes to guard the treasures when I cannot. I need souls to guard the flames of Enlightenment and fight the onset of ignorance. The eternal chain must not be broken, even if I am.’ The Sigillite stopped walking. ‘Will you join me, Khalid? Will you join this brotherhood?’
When the question came, Hassan surprised himself. He did not hesitate. Suddenly, it felt right, as if the question had been waiting for him all his life.
‘It is my duty,’ he said. ‘I will do whatever you command.’
‘It is not an order, captain. Orders are for Warmasters and primarchs. I merely create possibilities. But I am glad.’
Malcador made as if to move away again, but Hassan stayed where he was.
‘Forgive me,’ he said, looking back over his shoulder to where the golden doors stood and trembled. ‘You said you had to make a choice. Might I… Can I ask–’
‘What it is?’ The Sigillite smiled, though the gesture was a bitter one, as if reflecting on a lifetime of squandered promise. ‘We all have our fears, Khalid,’ he added quietly.
Hassan gazed then at the man’s aged face. For the first time he did not feel the aura of tremendous power, nor the weight of arcane wisdom.
He saw frailty. He saw dread.
The Sigillite took a deep breath. ‘But nothing is certain. Hope remains. Hope always remains.’
Then he moved away, striding back into the catacombs, the butt of his staff clicking against the stone.
Hassan watched him go – the Regent of Terra, the master of the Imperium’s countless billions, and the hand of the Emperor’s vengeance.
And at that moment, to him at least, the Sigillite resembled none of those things. He seemed then to Khalid Hassan – formerly of the Fourth Clandestine Orta, now the Chosen of Malcador – nothing more than an old man, worn out by an eternity of service, stumbling into the dark.
Hassan felt a momentary stab of pity. Then he stirred himself, hurrying after the Sigillite, not looking back towards the sealed gateway into hell but heading up instead towards the gilded terraces of the Imperial Palace.
Up there it would be possible to forget the fractured screaming of the terrible battle that raged in the depths.
Up there, for a time at least, the sun still shone.
Wolf Hunt
Graham McNeill
Yasu Nagasena stands by a window of the square tower at the north-eastern corner of his mountain villa, letting the cold cut into his face. Built on the flanks of a mountain known as Cho Oyu, the villa has been his home for fifty years, and memories surround him like restless ghosts. Mournful winds from the far corners of the world sigh through the tower, each bearing the sound of pounding hammers, a billion migrant voices and the fear of an entire planet.
The mountains crowd this continent, rowdy giants standing shoulder to shoulder as they reach to t
he heavens. Sunlight spills over them in a golden tide, gleaming from the exposed quartz and feldspar.
The mountains are saying goodbye, giving him a last sight of their glory.
The villa occupies a fortuitous position, looking out over the Palace at the crown of the world. Through the windows, he can see its triumphal processionals, its high towers and its fresh-wrought defences. Beyond the Palace walls, the Petitioners’ City. Once a place of pilgrimage, now an overcrowded slum of people desperately seeking protection.
Nagasena turns from the window. The wooden stretching frame still sits here, undisturbed since he last let his heart bleed out through his brushstrokes. The silk is still strung to the frame, still taut and bearing his painted image of the Palace.
It no longer looks like the Palace visible through the windows.
The Emperor is remaking the galaxy, but Rogal Dorn is remaking the Palace.
Once it was a thing of beauty, but it is ugly now, the craft of the engineer pasted over the vision of the architect.
‘It is not a harmonious union, Lord Dorn,’ says Nagasena, surprising himself by speaking aloud.
He has spoken little since the end of his hunt for the escaped warriors of the Crusader Host. What began as a hunt ended in sanctioned murder, and he does not yet know whether the truth was served by its execution.
Nagasena hears the slap of sandals on the marbled stairs, accompanied by the heaving breath of Amita. She has maintained his household for as long as he has lived here, and is as robust and solid as the mountains.
Amita reaches the top of the tower, her skin ruddy from the climb and strands of grey-streaked hair hanging loose over her face. She frowns at Nagasena’s clothes – a lacquered breastplate of black and bronze, reinforced canvas leggings tucked into leather-faced boots. But something has changed within him since his return from the Petitioners’ City and she lets his improper attire pass without comment.
‘You asked to see me?’ she asks.
