by John French
Cyrus moved out of the shadowed arch of the entrance, armour purring with every movement. He had his storm bolter in his right fist, its twin mouths pointed at the hunchbacked old man. The blue surface of his armour was charred and streaked with drying fluids. He looked like a revenant dragged from a death pyre.
‘It is Cyrus.’ The Librarian’s voice was a low growl. Colophon twitched towards him, his liver-spotted hands clutching the top of his cane. Bathed in the monochrome tint of Cyrus’s helmet display he looked scared. No, he looked terrified.
‘The Inquisition is coming,’ Colophon stammered. ‘They will hammer this place to nothing and all of us with it. We should g–’
‘Why did you deceive me?’ Cyrus kept his distance from the old man, walking a slow circle around Colophon’s green-robed form. The single targeting rune in his helmet display was an unresolved amber, pulsing over the old man.
‘I have not deceived you.’ Colophon stayed where he was, speaking to the air rather than following Cyrus’s movements. Cyrus carried on, discarding Colophon’s reply without thought.
‘The signal, it has been puzzling me ever since we got here. How could it be sent when we were cut off as soon as the attack began? I am not as adept as you at astropathic transmission, but I touched the warp and felt that we were isolated as you said.’
Colophon drew his green robes around him as if against a chill wind. ‘I don’t understand what you are saying.’ He shook his head and took a few steps towards the door of the chamber. ‘We should go. We could escape on your ship, we–’
‘But the signal did get sent. It drew me here, drew the Inquisition here no doubt.’ Cyrus gave a humourless laugh. ‘Temporal distortion; you suggested it to me, and I did not consider an alternative.’ The old man opened his mouth as if to say something, but Cyrus kept speaking, suspicion and anger making his voice a low rumble of restrained threat. ‘You sent the signal, Colophon. You brought me here, and you have brought the final execution of the Inquisition down on this place.’
Colophon shook his head, shock and anger on his face.
‘You are mad, my friend,’ Colophon spluttered. ‘You do not–’
‘But how could you veil the warp with pain that even I could feel? And why would you lure people here like playing pieces only to destroy them?’ Cyrus drew his sword. ‘There is one creature that could do such things, that could watch from within while its kin came from beyond…’
Colophon flinched back as the sword kindled with cold light. ‘I am–’
‘A creature that could seem to be flesh and blood.’ Cyrus felt the weight of the sword in his hand, its power icy in echo of his fury. ‘Tell me, astropath, if I cut you, how will you bleed?’
‘I…’
‘Fateweaver.’ Cyrus said the name and Colophon flinched as if struck. Inside Cyrus’s helm the threat rune turned red. He took a step forwards, his voice a low rumble of menace. ‘Is that a name you recognise?’
‘I am only an astropath,’ wailed Colophon.
Cyrus thought of all the worlds that had been dragged down into the mire of the warp, of the pyre smell of dead Kataris. He felt a fool, he had been manipulated. His visions and his ideals had been turned against him. He did not know why a daemon would play such a game; he did not want to know. The creature in front of him was alone and bound in human flesh that he could destroy. His finger began to squeeze on the storm bolter trigger; his sword glowed brighter in his hand.
His finger froze on the trigger. He could not move his limbs, sweat prickled his skin and he could feel the crystals of his psychic hood become ice-cold as they fought against the psychic power that held him. It had enveloped him so quickly that he had not even sensed its touch.
‘You truly are a fool, Space Marine.’ The voice came from behind him, the contempt in its tone ringing clear in the still air.
‘I am sorry,’ said Colophon, the lie spread across his face in a smile. Cyrus heard steps and the clicking of a staff draw nearer. He tried to call on his own power, but the influence focused on him was like a flexing coil that shifted and tightened even as he pushed against it.
‘He is not the daemon you call Fateweaver, at least not wholly,’ said the mocking voice, now just behind his back. The willow-thin form of Hekate stepped out in front of him. Her eyes glittered brightly and the winged jewel in her staff pulsed with cold radiance. She stood beside Colophon, the old man appearing all the more bent and vulture-like by her side. ‘The daemon has two heads, Space Marine,’ she said, and smiled.
Cyrus felt as if he was falling, assumptions and truths trailing behind him in tatters.
Colophon was shaking his head as if in sorrow, the wrinkled folds of his thin neck trembling. ‘It will be all right, friend,’ the astropath said, and Cyrus felt the complete falsity in the words.
Hekate blinked slowly and walked closer to Cyrus so that she could look up at him.
‘You will die soon, Space Marine.’ She nodded carefully. ‘But first you must come and see.’ She smiled and the world spun into fragments.
Cyrus was falling, disconnected sensations flicking through him: the taste of spiced wine; the brush of a feather on skin; pain; the face of his father, hollow and broken; the reek of corpses; colours flowing without form or pattern; the sound of the sea throwing stones at a cliff. All surfaced and faded faster than he could grasp. He wanted to cry out but he had no mouth.
The world flickered into being around him.
He sat on the top of a parapet of warm stone under a sky of clear blue. Looking down he saw a tower wall that descended to a settlement. The low dun stone buildings clustered around the tower’s base like young suckling at a mother. Smoke rose from chimneys, scented with flavours of cooking meat and spice. Beyond the frayed edges of the settlement a plain stretched to the sky’s base, its surface rippling as a warm wind stirred the green sea of crops.
The sun was warm on his face, the fabric of a white and blue tunic soft against his skin. He clenched his fist, felt the muscles and bones bunch.
‘Quite real,’ said a voice next to him, and he looked up with a start. Ochre robes swathed the figure that sat next to him, its hunched form hidden by the fabric that stirred and twitched in the wind. Within the shadow of the hood Cyrus thought he saw glimmers of blue, like distant stars in a night sky. For a moment he thought of pitching the robed figure from the parapet, of watching it fall to a pulped ruin on the ground below.
He looked at the hooded figure and shook his head. ‘Which head speaks? The one that tells the truth or the one that lies?’
The robed figure chuckled. ‘Very good, Space Marine. You begin to perceive truly. A little late it is true but–’
‘Where have you brought me, daemon? I will not bend my knee to your kind.’
The figure laughed. To Cyrus it sounded like the cry of carrion birds across a dead land.
‘I am not here to corrupt you, Space Marine. I have claimed greater souls than yours, and you flatter yourself to think that you could resist if I tried. Corruption is not my intent. I am here to illuminate you, so that you can understand what has happened and what has led you to where you are.’
‘Why?’ he growled.
‘Does a friend and fellow traveller need a reason to grant a gift? A last gift.’
Cyrus thought he could hear the tones of Colophon’s voice in the words.
The figure raised a wide, yellow sleeve as a limb with too many joints extended to point down into the town with a taloned finger. ‘Look,’ it said.
Cyrus looked. Amongst the figures moving through the streets, two walked next to each other. One was a tall woman wrapped in dark cloths, a sour expression on her face. Beside her, a man with a bent back limped to keep up, a worn wooden pole clutched in his wrinkled hands.
‘You,’ said Cyrus.
‘Yes, my two faces.’
‘Where is this place?’
‘When, might be a better question. You know it, though you may not recognise it.’ Cyrus felt
suddenly cold despite the sun.
‘Kataris,’ breathed Cyrus.
Beside him the figure gave a clicking laugh.‘Very good.’ It pointed to the clear sky. ‘Watch.’
A crack opened in the sky. Its edges were silver-white and within it was black. The sky darkened, purple and red clouds spreading like a bruise across pale skin. In the town below, people had begun to look up and the screaming started. Amongst the panic the tall woman and limping man pressed on towards the tower’s base. Out on the plains, fires had begun to kindle and, amongst the smoke, shapes slithered and loped towards the settlement. Sirens began to wail.
‘You caused this,’ Cyrus growled. ‘You summoned your kin to this world and killed it.’
‘Perhaps I caused its extinction. In a broad sense that might be true.’ The figure paused. ‘But I did not summon my kin here. Not intentionally at least.’ It turned its hooded head, the shadowed face twisting further than a neck should allow. ‘See.’
Cyrus turned, realising that it had never occurred to him to look behind them.
It was not a tower they sat on; it was a landing platform. Behind them, the hulls of lighters and heavy lifters baked in the sun. People were already rushing amongst them attaching fuel hoses; the whine of engines was rising to a shriek.
Fights were breaking out amongst those trying to get away. Cyrus saw a man in the robes of a prefect shot in the face when he tried to stop the ramp of a lifter closing. Others were simply battered aside by those that were stronger than them. The man and woman moved amongst the confusion, seemingly unseen by others. Cyrus watched as they ducked into the hold space of a lighter. A moment later it rose into the sky, heading for one of the few ships clustered around the planet. Others followed, the noise of their engines lost amongst the screams of the settlement and the first howls of the daemons.
‘You fled?’ Cyrus looked at the figure beside him.
‘Yes, Space Marine. I fled.’
‘Why?’
‘Because my kin did not come to this pitiful place for the clutch of worthless souls that breathed its air.’ The figure turned its hooded head back to the settlement. Blood was already flowing through its streets. ‘They came for me.’
‘For you?’
‘Yes, for me. I have many enemies amongst my kind. Some are my enemies because I laid them low or humiliated them. And then of course there is jealousy: jealousy of the power I had, jealousy of my favour in the eternal court of change.’ The figure shrugged. ‘We are daemons, fragments of the will of greater beings made of lies and hate. Our grudges are never simple, merely eternal.’ Cyrus saw the implication of what the thing was saying.
‘You were hiding.’
‘Well done, friend,’ said the figure in Colophon’s voice.
‘Why?’ said Cyrus. The world around him faded, its dying screams becoming distant murmurs of horror.
‘That question again,’ came the daemon’s voice from the fading world.
Cyrus could see nothing, He was falling again.
‘Because I am blind, Space Marine,’ said the daemon, its voice becoming faint and distant. Cyrus felt something like feathers brush his skin in the blackness. ‘Because I am blind.’
Cyrus opened his eyes and saw the world of his birth. The daemon stood next to him as he watched the Black Ships come to the skies of his childhood. Its yellow robe fluttered in the wind, the cowl hanging down its hunched back. Its hands clutched the fabric around its tall form, the gesture reminding Cyrus of Colophon pulling his green robes closer around him. It had two heads on long, feathered necks. Each was like the skinless skull of a vulture. Azure blue eyes, without iris or pupil, stared at him from each head.
‘The past,’ said one head in a voice that sounded like Hekate’s. The other was looking up at the dark silhouettes of the spacecraft drifting in low orbit. ‘Your past, Space Marine. The world that made you before it burned. I can see this because this is the past. These are dead and unchanging moments in the flow of time.’
The daemon shivered and the world changed, moving through images like cards dealt from a pack.
Here the command chamber of the Aethon, Cyrus watching the shape of an astropath turning in cold green light.
Here warships danced amongst lines of fire and spinning debris, their engines roaring as they turned before the ramming prows of spear-shaped warships. They turned too slowly and died, debris dribbling out of their broken hulls.
‘The past,’ came the daemon’s voice as Cyrus blinked from one moment to another. ‘All this is past. I am a weaver of fate, an oracle who sees all the paths of the future. That is my power, my advantage over my rivals and the thing that once kept me out of their jealous reach.’
Here Phobos, his sword held above him, the death lament on his lips.
‘But now I am blind, the future is lost to me. I cannot see past the present. This dead past is all that I can see.’
And here Space Marines in blue armour moved through rooms covered in rust brown dust. They have rearing dragons on their shoulder plates.
But I have seen this, he thinks as he watches. I have seen this and it is not the past. It is the future.
The daemon continued, ignorant to Cyrus’s realisation.
‘While I am blind I cannot stand against my kin and so they hunt me across your worlds.’
Cyrus saw something move under the soft layer of dust, like a wave pushed across the surface of water by a shark. A shape is rising from the dust. He shouts but the blue armoured Space Marines do not hear. The shape becomes a figure. It rises from the floor slowly, features forming on its powdered surface. It is reaches towards the Space Marines. Cyrus can sense the death hunger of the figure. He shouts again and the mouth of the dust figure moves.
You die now, he says with a voice like sand blown on a dry wind. The Space Marines turn to look at him. He is reaching for them.
He looks at his hands.
They are made of dust.
His vision blinked out and Cyrus was falling through swirling starlight and rushing sensation.
They had returned to the astropathic chamber. Colophon and Hekate stood in front of him.
‘You, Cyrus Aurelius,’ said Hekate as Colophon nodded. ‘I cannot see past you. You are a block in my sight, the point I cannot see past. I never saw you coming here and I cannot see your future now, only your past.’
Cyrus tried to move his limbs but found that they were still locked in place.
‘I let you live until now,’ Hekate continued. ‘You had a purpose in keeping my kin at bay. You might even have won here. But now the Inquisition come and the daemons that hunt me are at my heels, and so I must run and hide again.’ She stepped back ‘So you must die.’
Hekate turned to walk away, but Colophon paused and smiled up at Cyrus.
‘Thank you for the ship that you have so helpfully ordered to run before the Inquisition’s fury. It was most kind of you.’ He patted Cyrus’s unmoving armour and limped after Hekate.
On the highest tier of the chamber silent figures in green robes stepped from the shadows. Warp light shone in their blind eyes. There were eighty-one of them: the survivors of the attack on the astropaths. But he understood then that they had not survived. Those that had resisted had died, those who survived had become bound to Fateweaver. Cyrus could hear a low chattering like the cries of birds and the swish of feathers. Frost was forming under their feet with every step they took down the stone tiers.
‘There is one thing you should know before the end, my friend,’ called Colophon from the doorway.
‘I sent no message,’ said Hekate, and both figures vanished from sight.
The astropaths closed on him. Skin flayed from their new forms as the power of the warp reshaped them. Claws extended from hands and feet. Bones snapped and reset in twisted positions. Fur and feathers spread across stretched flesh. Cyrus was at the centre of a circle of snarling creatures.
Cyrus felt the force holding him weaken. Straining with all his will he
felt his fingers move on the grip of his sword. His limbs trembled with effort, sweat coating him as he felt muscles shift. Threat runes swarmed his sight.
I have failed, he thinks. This is no longer the future, it is the present. I have failed and here I fall.
III
BOUND
The strike cruisers were the first to fire. Linear accelerators mounted along their spines spoke with one voice. Explosions blossomed off the station’s void shields, splashing against domes of energy that shimmered as they collapsed. On the strike cruisers’ flank the spear shape of the light cruiser turned on its axis, presenting a flank of macro batteries to the station. Bolts of plasma and explosive shells the size of battle tanks streaked across the void.
On board the smaller destroyers officers waited until the station’s shield envelope was on the edge of failing. As the blasts rippled over the last layers of shielding they launched torpedoes. Each carried a melta warhead. They were not intended to destroy but to cripple and burn. For the final killing blow they had other more exotic weapons to unleash.
The Sixth Hammer remained silent, like a king of old watching his young knights take the first blood. From his brass throne Inquisitor Lord Xerxes watched as the perfectly timed torpedo volley struck the station at the instant the last void shield collapsed. He nodded in brief satisfaction and raised his sceptre, its golden length worked with High Gothic script, its tip a leering daemon face of jade. He had killed many worlds and he preferred the final blows to fall at the simplest of commands.
‘Fire,’ he said, and The Sixth Hammer shook at his word.
Claws raked across Cyrus’s armour. Wild psychic energy lashed at him, slithering from clawed hands searching for weaknesses in his armour. Distorted faces filled his vision biting at him with pointed ivory teeth. He could hear them laughing and babbling in death-dry voices. His arm moved, lifting his storm bolter, dragging upwards as if pulling against tangling webs. Something sharp and serrated found a weak join in his armour. He began to bleed.
The deck quaked under his feet, trembling as if in time with distant thunder. The Inquisition had begun its bombardment.
