The sensory overload was too much.
He fled, as if he could somehow outrun the barrage of noise and light. His mind buckled under the weight of so much input. The fragile synaptic network within his meat brain was incapable of enduring this unending torrent of information.
I will spare you this burden, my son, said the voice of his sire in his skull.
Father? Is this how you see the world?+ asked Ahriman.
A measure of it.
How can you stand it? How can anyone contain such power without letting it control them?+
You want to know why, if I had such power, would I not wield it?
Yes…+ Ahriman gasped.
Godly power is at my fingertips every day, the ability to create and destroy in the same breath… To own such singular power and not use it is the greatest strength of all.
I do not have your strength,+ said Ahriman.
My mind’s architecture is not yours, agreed Magnus, his voice already fading to a ghostly whisper. My sons were never meant to see as I do. If you will let me, I will take what was not meant for you to see.
Yes,+ begged Ahriman. +Take it. Take it from me, please!+
Instantly, the onslaught faded and Ahriman let out a gasping, drowning-man’s breath. His chest heaved with the exertion of bearing a spirit far greater than his own, as comforting filters veiled his eyes from vistas not meant for mortals.
Even as it was killing him, tears spilled down his face at the thought that this connection to his father was over.
‘Ahriman?’ said a voice at his shoulder, and he recoiled at the ugliness of its sounds, the grunting bovine cadences of its vocalisation. Even that began to fade, and a knife of grief stabbed into his heart at its loss.
Ahriman felt the presence of Sanakht, Hathor Maat and Tolbek standing behind him. He tasted ash and metal as Aforgomon took a step towards him.
‘Get away from me, daemon,’ snapped Ahriman, looking around him. A grey fog smeared his vision, his eyes transitioning from seeing everything to almost nothing. All that was certain was that he was no longer in the library of King Kadmus.
‘Where are we?’ he asked, his own voice no less ugly than that of his brothers.
‘Back where we started,’ said Sanakht. ‘In the Hall of Extinction.’
‘The Reckoner?’ asked Ahriman.
‘Gone,’ answered Hathor Maat. ‘If he was ever truly here.’
Ahriman forced himself to stand, using his heqa staff for balance. He felt its power, and elation surged through him as he saw it was no longer ebon-black, but ivory-white.
Every one of them could sense the power it contained.
‘You succeeded,’ said Aforgomon with undisguised anticipation.
‘The shard of Magnus…’ said Hathor Maat, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘Throne, we did it. We actually did it!’
‘Yes,’ said Ahriman, feeling the inhuman potential of what he now bore. ‘We did.’
‘It’s about time something went right for us,’ snarled Tolbek, turning back towards the entrance. ‘Now let’s get off this bloody rock and be on our way.’
The gunship filled with the reek of blood and burned metal as the wounded Gierlothnir Helblind flew the Stormbird through the atmosphere towards the Doramaar. Its troop compartment bore the dead of the Mechanicum, the ruin of their mission and also their prize. Sister Caesaria’s life was pouring out of her, and Yasu Nagasena remained unconscious with a fist-sized swelling upon his right temple.
Olgyr Widdowsyn tended them as best he could, battling to stabilise bodies, the mortal workings of which he had only the most rudimentary knowledge.
Promus could spare the wounded none of his attention.
He and Bödvar Bjarki fought a different battle.
Bjarki pressed both his hands down on Lemuel Gaumon’s right shoulder as the man thrashed beneath him. Promus held the remembrancer’s other shoulder, and both warriors required their entire weight to pin him down.
Menkaura sat astride Lemuel, one hand holding his throat, the other cutting bloody runes into the skin of his bare chest with the tip of a combat dagger. Standing behind him was Svafnir Rackwulf, the muzzle of his bolt pistol pressed against the sorcerer’s neck. With Sister Caesaria’s life hanging in the balance, a bolt to the head was the only real threat they had.
‘Hold him still, damn you!’ yelled Menkaura. ‘The binding invocatus must be precise or they will not hold!’
The remembrancer’s body burned furnace-hot, and was slicked with sweat and blood. His ruddy skin squirmed with motion as the spirit Menkaura had trapped fought to free itself. The thing within Lemuel roared obscenities and chewed his lips to shredded meat. He spat blood in the Wolf’s face, laughing as he cursed his mother and father.
‘The spirit of our enemy is bound,’ snarled Bjarki. ‘Why are we not killing this thing?’
‘Because we need him,’ shot back Menkaura.
A growl built in Bjarki’s throat. ‘Why should I trust the word of a traitor?’
‘Because I am the only reason you yet live,’ snapped Menkaura as Lemuel bucked beneath them like a grox-mare in heat. His lips drew back in a rictus grin, and bloodied spittle flew from his stretched mouth. Menkaura leaned in close and spoke unintelligibly profane words that scraped along Promus’ spine like rusted razors.
‘What in the Allfather’s name are you doing?’ yelled Bjarki.
‘Saving us!’ retorted Menkaura.
‘Let him work, Bjarki,’ said Promus through gritted teeth.
It went against everything he had been taught to let Menkaura perform such an abominable ritual, but what choice did they have? What was one more sin to be added to his tally?
Bjarki bared his fangs, veins bulging at his neck and forehead. Fury blazed from him, and he glared at Promus as though he blamed him personally for the slaughter on the mountain.
‘Listen to your friend,’ snapped Menkaura, twisting the blade in Lemuel’s chest and drawing an inhuman screech of anger from somewhere deep inside him. ‘Now be silent and let me finish this before the soul-shard can escape!’
‘When this is done I will kill you, sorcerer,’ promised Bjarki. ‘This is evil knowledge. It is maleficarum!’
‘My evil knowledge will save us all.’
Bjarki growled, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘And you dare ask why the Wolves were loosed…’
Promus saw Menkaura control his resentment only with the greatest effort. For the briefest second, he almost admired the warrior’s restraint.
‘One day you will be glad of what I know,’ said Menkaura.
‘That day will never come,’ said Bjarki as the sorcerer made a final cut in Lemuel’s abdomen and the man instantaneously went limp beneath them. A final breath, like the death rattle of a corpse, escaped his bloodied lips.
‘Is it done?’ asked Promus.
Menkaura nodded and reversed his grip on the combat knife, extending it towards him. Promus warily released Lemuel’s shoulder and glanced over at Bjarki. The Space Wolf nodded and snatched the knife from Menkaura’s hand. He rose swiftly and pulled Menkaura to his feet, pushing him up against the gunship’s fuselage. He pressed the tip of the blade under the enemy legionary’s jaw, ready to drive it up into his brain.
‘Bjarki!’ cried Promus. ‘No!’
‘Give me one reason why I let him live!’
‘I can help you find the other shards before my brother legionaries,’ said Menkaura.
Bjarki shook his head. ‘You will betray us. The first chance you get you will feed us to the wights of the Underverse.’
‘Then go ahead and kill me,’ said Menkaura. ‘Please. You will be sparing me a life of endless sorrow and pain.’
‘Bjarki, don’t,’ said Promus, his hand sliding towards his own blade. Blood ran down the skin of Menkaura’s neck as the
blade bit flesh.
‘Release him!’ shouted Promus. ‘Now!’
For a moment, he thought the Wolf would ignore his order and drive the blade up into the vault of Menkaura’s skull.
The moment stretched.
Bjarki threw back his head and loosed an ululating howl that echoed mournfully throughout the gunship. He hurled the blade aside and gripped Menkaura’s shoulders, as though to embrace a brother. Instead, he slammed his forehead into the centre of Menkaura’s face. The Thousand Sons legionary slid down the fuselage to the deck, his face a bloody mask.
‘Svafnir Rackwulf,’ he said, pointing at the slumped warrior. ‘Keep that spear of yours jammed hard against his chest. If he so much as whispers, drive it home as you would into the heart of a hrosshvalur.’
Sickness that was not sickness but something far worse cramped Hathor Maat’s belly as he lurched along the darkened corridor below the waterline of the Osiris Panthea. Spending so long beyond the Black Ship’s protective Geller field had been foolish, and the flesh change was intensifying its assault on his form.
He pressed a hand to his belly, feeling the skin beneath ripple with ambition to change and grow into new and ever more horrific forms. The Great Ocean pressed in on the ship as it hurtled onwards, following a heading of the newly empowered Ahriman.
Hathor Maat groaned, pausing to lean against a wide bulkhead. Wanly glowing lumens stretched down the companionway, barely enough to light the symbols etched onto the shuttered doors of the prisoner holds to either side.
Sweat poured from him. He let out a breath that burned his throat. His skin was fevered with the roiling motion in his cells. Toxic bile rose in his gullet.
He bit back the urge to vomit and pressed on.
His steps became ever more irregular as the bones shifted within the meat of his body. Dizziness swamped him as sensory inputs formed at random across his body, eyes bursting like pustules on his neck and back. Taste organs formed at his fingertips and upon the soles of his feet.
He tried to count the number of shuttered doors he passed, but his mind burned with pain and the effort of holding back the genetic rebellion within his flesh. He had no idea how far he’d come.
Had he passed eight or nine?
Hathor Maat looked to see if he’d reached the right shutter, but gummed matter clogged his vision. He wiped the back of his hand over his eyes. It came away sticky with webbed residue. He rubbed his palm on his leg armour and exerted a measure of his Pavoni powers to gain clarity enough to examine the door.
Unmarked, save for the symbology of the Silent Sisterhood.
‘Yes,’ he said, his voice a wet, rasping slur utterly unlike his normal perfectly modulated tone. ‘This must be the tenth.’
He reached for the shutter release controls, but his legs gave way beneath him. He slid down the door, feeling the curse within him revel in the weakening of his power to hold it back. Had he not been an adept of the Pavoni, he would have succumbed to its aberrant evolution long before now.
Hathor Maat lifted an arm that was bending and cracking in unnatural ways, but the controls were too far out of reach. Acidic tears spilled down his cheeks, the skin melting beneath it all the way to bone.
‘No,’ he gurgled. ‘I can’t die like this.’
‘I’m told you won’t,’ said a voice behind him as hands reached down to haul him to his feet. ‘I think it still needs you.’
Hathor Maat squinted through his blurred vision to see the armoured form of the Emperor’s Children swordsman. His bone-white hair and psy-sculpted features looked down on him with a sardonic grin. Whether it was the fire in his brain or riot of his thoughts, he could not tell, but Hathor Maat thought he saw two twisting, sinuous forms within Lucius’ body.
‘Why… are… you here?’ he managed.
‘I’m here to keep you alive,’ said Lucius, opening the hatch and dragging him inside. Hathor Maat felt his back squirm with tumorous growths, spouting like fungi. He screamed in pain, his powers useless in the face of his rapid mutations.
‘Hold on,’ said Lucius. ‘All that you need is here.’
Hathor Maat squinted through the myriad images overlaying his mind. Like the previous nine compartments, this one was packed with at least a hundred damned souls. Cowed, starving, diseased and filthy from weeks of the Thousand Sons’ neglect.
‘Just as it showed you, remember?’ said Lucius.
Hathor Maat nodded, his mouth and tongue too grossly swollen and distended now to speak. Whether it was the nearness of his salvation or some last reserve of untapped resolve, he would never know, but Hathor Maat found the strength to lurch towards the terrified captives.
He dropped to his knees before an unmoving man whose body was malnourished to the point of being skeletal. He looked up at Hathor Maat with sympathy in his eyes.
The mortal’s pity infuriated him and he plunged his hands into the man’s stomach. Eye-tipped fingers pierced suddenly soft flesh and, voicing the alien words Aforgomon had taught him, Hathor Maat pushed.
The effects were instantaneous.
The man convulsed as his flesh bulged and stretched. Rampant growth all but turned him inside out in a heartbeat. A rain of aerosolised blood sprayed Hathor Maat as he felt the treachery within him diminish.
Reinvigorated, he moved on to another man, this one with enough fear-born strength to back away. Hathor Maat did not give him the chance and pushed yet more of his mutations out of his body. The man expired seconds later, vomiting a great gout of blood over Hathor Maat.
Exhilarated at his success, he crawled towards another victim. A shadow fell across him.
‘No, take this one,’ said Lucius, throwing a frightened adolescent next to him. ‘This one’s flesh is younger and more resilient than those others.’
Hathor Maat nodded and thrust both his hands into the weeping boy’s belly. He poured mutation after mutation into him until the gibbering, mewling flesh-sac was unrecognisable as having once been human.
‘More,’ said Hathor Maat. ‘I need more.’
The shutter slammed down. Once it had been a cargo hold. Now it was a charnel tomb. Nothing remained alive within.
Hathor Maat’s skin was radiant, smooth and vital. His body was that of a legionary in his prime, easily the equal of Fulgrim’s warrior. The strength filling him was like his memory of his first day as a legionary – where there was not a foe in the galaxy he could not personally defeat.
He took a deep breath and stretched his arms before him.
‘Throne, I feel alive!’ he said.
Lucius reached back and set the automatic expulsion controls on the hold. The whoosh of purging fire incinerating the hundreds of corpses within pushed the shutter outwards in its frame. A moment later, the shutter was sucked inwards as the ashen contents were vented into the void.
Hathor Maat turned his hands over before him, checking for any sign that even a sliver of the flesh change was still upon him. He found nothing and grinned.
‘I am beautiful again,’ he said.
‘You are,’ Lucius grudgingly agreed, ‘but you and I both know that beauty comes at a price.’
‘Anything.’
The swordsman let out a guttural bark of laughter.
‘It said that’s what you’d say,’ said Lucius. ‘Just be sure that when the time comes to pay, you don’t back away from that promise. You can’t escape this debt.’
‘Have no fear,’ said Hathor Maat with a sneer of withering scorn. ‘Whatever its damned price, I’ll pay it gladly.’
Lucius stepped closer to Hathor Maat.
‘That big damned book Ahriman carries around,’ he said.
‘The Book of Magnus? What of it?’ said Hathor Maat, taking a step back.
‘We’re going to change it,’ said Lucius.
Nineteen
Aoshun
In extremis
Yasu Nagasena did not like the Arethusa.
The vessel was cloaked in falsehoods, its purpose veiled as if ashamed. He had felt it the first time he came aboard, and felt it still. If anything, the feeling was stronger now.
Everything about this ship was cold and lifeless, its systems kept functional largely by a crew of automata and the bare minimum of mortal crewmen.
Neither Nagasena nor Promus wished to linger over Aghoru, so the Arethusa and Doramaar had remained only long enough to bombard the great mountain and utterly obliterate the Crimson King’s arena. Now both ships hung in low orbit around a nameless gas giant in a nearby subsector, bereft of a destination.
The source that had led them to Aghoru could no longer be safely consulted.
Not yet, at least.
A pair of weaponless automata escorted Nagasena from the embarkation deck, but he kept a wary eye on them nevertheless, his right hand never straying far from the grip of his volkite pistol. The cybernetics’ betrayal on Aghoru had cost them greatly, and despite Umwelt Uexküll’s assurance that he had purged every machine’s memory core, Nagasena knew that a thing that turned once could turn again.
Nagasena had transferred to the Arethusa at the request of Dio Promus. He did not know what the former Librarian of Ultramar wanted, but had no wish for any drama to play out before others, so had come alone.
At length, the twin automata brought him to a simple shuttered door on one of the vessel’s upper decks. They halted to either side and took up flanking positions like silent praetorians.
The shutter rose and Promus gave a curt bow of welcome, dressed in a simple training robe.
‘Yasu,’ he said, stepping back. ‘Thank you for coming.’
Nagasena returned the bow and entered a moderately sized stateroom. Its furnishings were minimal and practical, as would be expected of a warrior wrought by Ultramar.
A simple cot-bed that looked as though it had never been used, a series of cloth-covered workbenches, a reading desk and plotting tables had all been pushed to the walls. A simple calisthenics mat filled the centre of the room, and the broken machine limbs of at least half a dozen shattered sparring servitors lay heaped in the corner of the room.
The Crimson King Page 33
