by Dan Abnett
‘I’ll keep asking until you tell me.’
+Very well. Things have changed. I can feel it. The storm’s shifting. The magnitude of power has increased. The daemon is on the move, coming closer. I can feel him closing in. He’s entered the house. We’ve only got a few minutes left. Can’t you smell him?+
‘Then this is all a waste of time,’ said Molotch.
The end door of the solar burst open and Culzean scrambled in, his void shield still flickering around him. It was close to failure. He began to ransack the drawers at the far end of the room. His shield blinked out.
Culzean turned, suddenly aware he was not alone. He snatched out an auto-snub and aimed it at Molotch and Ravenor.
‘Don’t be so silly,’ Ravenor said.
‘He’s coming! He’s coming!’ Culzean cried. ‘He’s right behind me! He killed my poor Leyla!’
Molotch flicked his right arm. Culzean’s pistol flew out of his hand and tumbled in the air. Molotch caught it, and shot Culzean through the belly. Culzean crashed back into the chest of drawers, and fell down clutching his abdomen. His face went white. There was a look of speechless surprise on his face.
+Was that really necessary?+
‘You have no idea,’ said Molotch.
Culzean was bleeding out. His agony was tangible, and pressed down on Ravenor’s mind like a dead weight. Ravenor was quite sure Molotch had gone for a belly wound because he knew it was an excruciating, lingering way to die.+Culzean, is there anything we can do?+
Culzean groaned and coughed up blood. ‘Help me. A doctor…’
+I meant about the daemon.+
The door behind him flew open. Angharad landed like a cat in front of Molotch and sliced the end off his pistol. She was about to gut him. Ravenor threw her back against the wall with psychic force.
+No, Angharad. Leave him.+
‘He is the devil!’ she sneered.
+There are worse devils abroad tonight.+
Angharad glared at Molotch.
+We will need him if we want to survive.+
Molotch bent over Culzean. ‘Orfeo? Orfeo, listen. What were you looking for when you came in here?’
‘Something. Anything.’ Culzean swallowed hard. ‘I wondered if there was something I’d forgotten, something I’d overlooked.’
‘Is there? What have you got left? Any shining weapons? Any talismans or incantations that might be efficacious?’
Culzean shook his head. ‘Nothing, nothing. I have a few rites of banishment, but I’m certain none would be suitable.’
‘Because this isn’t the right time or place?’ Ravenor asked. ‘Show us anyway.’
Culzean gestured weakly at a nearby book case. ‘Third shelf, in the green box.’
Molotch rose, slid the box off the shelf, and opened it. He pulled out a thick sheaf of old parchments bound with a cord.
‘Banishment rites,’ Culzean murmured, pain etched across his face, ‘all very old, and from a number of sources. The Hech’ell Deportation is the most complete and the most reliable. I’ve used it before. It works.’
+But?+
‘It won’t work here. None of them will.’
Molotch was speed-reading the crumbling parchments. ‘He’s right. It’s like I told you. To cast out a daemon, one must choose the right place and time. One must find a location where the walls between dimensions are tissue-thin, a rift or fissure, a place of weakness. There are only a few such places in the entire cosmos and Elmingard isn’t one of them. Any banishment rites we try here are a waste of effort.’
He was about to say something else but his voice cut off. Something flickered and blinked in the corner of the solar. It manifested, just a hazy shimmer, like smoke in sunlight.
It was Carl Thonius.
THIRTEEN
THONIUS FLICKERED IN and out of reality. He seemed to be moving too fast, like a speeded up pict sequence.
I told you told you told you
Ravenor, Molotch and Angharad backed slowly towards the terrace doors. The room’s lights dimmed and flashed in time to the lightning. Sprawled near to the manifested spectre, Culzean whimpered and tried to drag himself away.
‘Slyte…’ whispered Molotch.
+No. Slyte’s still out there, coming closer. This is an aberration. A random psychic effect, just an echo.+
Gideon Gideon Gid Gideon
+Carl?+
Help me help me help meee
+Throne! Carl?+
The spectre sat down on one of the solar’s armchairs. Its form continued to jump and flicker as if it was running at the wrong speed, and repeated and overlapped.
Gideon, please. It it hurts hurts. It hurts. Help me.
+Carl, it’s too late.+
Oh, it hurts. I can I can beat this, I can.
+No, Carl, you can’t.+
Gideon, I can. If you you you help me. You owe me me owe me owe me. I’ve been working with you with you all the way. I stopped Molotch at Petropolis. I did that. Did that. Did that. Me, Gideon. I made Kara made Kara Kara well again. I saved you from the creatures behind the door. Behind the door.
+Carl, I realise what you’ve done. I realise what you’ve tried to accomplish, but it’s too late. You cannot be saved. The daemon has consumed you.+
The spectre blinked and fluttered in front of them. Blow flies began to collect on the insides of the window panes.
Don’t say say that, Gideon. Help me beat this. Help me me. When Slyte took me, I thought I thought it was the end the end. But then I realised. I could control it. I could I could I could control it. I could master it. Give give me that chance. Imagine imagine what we could do then, you and me. For the ordos. For the Imperium. For the Imperium. For the Imperium. I could show you how the warp works. The warp warp the warp.
‘He’s just a phantom! A lie!’ Culzean screeched.
I’m not not not.
‘We’re witnessing the last remains of Carl’s being, driven by his will.’ said Ravenor. ‘We are witnessing an act of formidable determination.’
Gideon.
Ravenor hovered forwards and approached the jumping, bleached out image.
+Carl? If I could help you, I would. Courage such as yours should not go unrewarded, but I cannot help you. You are gone. You were gone the moment Slyte flowed into you. The idea that you can master an entity like Slyte is the sort of misguided radicalism you and I used to scoff at. Your logic has been altered by the corruption inside you. Slyte is feeding you excuses and false hopes to wear you down. What you’re talking about cannot be countenanced by the Inquisition. It cannot be countenanced by any rational person. It cannot be countenanced by me.+
Nooo! no no
+Carl. I’m sorry.+
Noooooooo!
THE SPECTRE LOSES form and control. It quivers, shaking as if caught in a violent earth tremor. I feel the scalding fury of the psi-force inside it. The windows of the solar rattle and panes crack. The swirls of blow flies cascade into the air like soot. The buzzing is everywhere. Culzean screams in undignified terror as books and other totemic objects clatter off the shelves, and pieces of parchment take flight like paper streamers in a parade.
They remind me of the Great Triumph on Thracian Primaris where I was mutilated. I am back there, for a moment, walking in the procession, paper streamers and petals showering down around me. Spatian Gate looms above me through the blizzard of tickertape.
That was a kind of damnation, one that I have never really come to terms with and never will. What awaits us here, tonight, is a more complete kind of damnation.
I call out to Carl, apologising and placating. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry,’ over and over again. Carl’s anguished spectre vibrates itself into smoke with a wild frenzy, the last shreds of it burning and discorporating into a thin sludge of acrid mist.
Once he is gone, the solar becalms and falls silent, apart from the buzz of the flies. Outside, the storm rages on, and we can hear other sounds in its cacophony. First, a purring roa
r, that comes and goes with the incessant thunder, and then an immense grinding sound, as if the hog’s back peaks are writhing against one another.
‘We’ve no choice but to flee,’ says Molotch.
+I doubt Slyte will let us go. Even if we escaped this rock, where would we run to? Slyte’s reach will be considerable.+
Molotch looks at me. I can tell his mind is still racing. I can also tell it is churning nothing but frustration and helplessness.
Angharad turns, raising her sword. Figures are grouped behind us in the terrace doors, framed by the flapping drapes. Belknap and Kara support the wounded Maud Plyton between them.
‘Ravenor?’ Belknap utters in surprise.
‘Oh gods!’ Plyton gasps. Her mind is a seething knot of pain, but I feel her intense relief through it. The unexpected sight of me gives her hope for a moment.
‘It’s good to see you, all three of you,’ I say.
A bow-wave of almost unbearable emotion swamps my mind. Kara runs forwards, leaving Belknap to support Plyton, and falls across the front of my chair, hugging it tightly. She is weeping.
+Kara.+
‘You’re alive!’
+Kara.+
She is inconsolable. I try to soothe her, but someone has hurt her. Someone has imprisoned her and tortured her. My poor Kara. There are so many things in her mind: grief, joy, relief, surprise, love, shame. She believed me to be dead and she can barely deal with the fact that I am not.
+Kara, it’s all right. Kara, who did this to you?+
She clutches my chair tighter, her tears leaking out over the metal casing. ‘I’m sorry!’ she wails. ‘I’m sorry!’
+Hush, Kara. It will be all right. Who did this to you?+
I reach into her unguarded, fragile mind to see, to soothe. Culzean had a hand in this. Behind him, I see an older memory of Siskind and Worna, and blanch at the inhuman desecrations they performed.
+I will find Siskind, 1 promise, Kara, and I will—+
I stop. Behind the toxic memories of Siskind and the brute Worna, other figures lurk: Carl, and Kara herself.
I read her deepest secret self, the white hot centre of her torment.
+Oh, Kara.+
‘I’m sorry, Gideon!’
‘What is she talking about?’ Belknap demands. His love and concern for her burn like a molten ingot in mind space. He sets Plyton down on a couch and comes over. ‘Kara? Ravenor? What?’
‘I knew it was Carl! I knew it, and I hid it!’ she wails.
‘Carl blocked your memories,’ I say. ‘I can see the scars.’
She looks up at me. ‘Before that. I knew. I knew and I hid it. He made me promise not to tell you. He made me promise not to tell anyone. He just needed time—’ She wails again and becomes incoherent.
‘What is she saying?’ Belknap asks me.
‘When did you know?’ I ask. ‘Kara, when did you know?’
‘Eustis Majoris. At the Sacristy.’
‘She was there,’ says Molotch softly. ‘She must have seen it all.’
‘Why did you hide it? Why didn’t you tell me?’ I ask.
‘I owed him so much,’ she murmurs. ‘He cured my… I was dying. He cured me. He saved me. He begged me to keep his secret for just a few months, to give him time to study, to find a way to beat it. I couldn’t say no. He saved me. What kind of daemon does that?’
‘The cunning kind,’ I reply, ‘and that’s the only kind there is.’
‘But—’ she begins.
‘You knew?’ asks Belknap.
‘What?’
‘You knew? You knew Thonius was the daemon and you covered for him?’
Belknap takes a step back from us. He is a man of strong, simple emotions. What I read in him now is revulsion and betrayal. It is painful, and total. Everything he is thinking and feeling is driven by his focused devotion to the holy God-Emperor. It is the cruellest and ugliest emotion I believe I have ever read, made crueller and uglier because it is sincere.
‘He saved me!’ Kara stammers, looking up at Belknap with tear-reddened eyes.
‘A daemon saved you?’ he replies. For a moment, I fear he is going to strike her. I take no chances. I shove him back with my mind and make him sit down on the couch beside Maud.
‘Sit down,’ I instruct him. ‘I will deal with this.’
‘But she—’
‘Sit down, Belknap, and shut up!’
‘I’d do as he suggests, if I were you,’ says Molotch. A smile curls his asymmetric lips. Even now, despite the dire circumstances, he can’t stop himself from enjoying the ruin this whole affair has reduced my people to.
‘And why the frig would anyone ever listen to anything you have to say, Molotch?’
Eight needle-sharp kine-blades hover in a spread, less than a finger’s length from Molotch’s pale face. He swallows. The solar’s end door is open, and Nayl stands there, aiming his autopistol down the length of the chamber at Molotch. Nayl is battered and hurt, one eye half-closed and swollen. Patience stands beside him, murderous concentration on her face.
‘Oh look,’ says Molotch, with fake enthusiasm. ‘They’re all here.’
+Let him be.+
‘Gideon?’ Kys questions, hesitantly.
+Let him be! Harlon, put away your gun!+
‘What’s he doing here?’ Kys asks.
I pull her kine-blades away from Molotch’s face and discard them on the floor.+The same as us, trying to live until tomorrow. We have pooled our resources.+
‘I hope the frig you know what you’re doing,’ says Kys.
She hurries to Kara and holds her, peeling her off my chair. Nayl crosses to Angharad and they embrace, kissing.
‘So,’ says Plyton from the couch, with an enforced brightness to mask her pain, ‘we got a plan yet?’
‘No,’ Molotch and I answer together.
The mountains shake. Elmingard shudders. A roar comes out of the night, so loud and throaty it bruises our souls. It is part scream, part wail, part howl, part bellow, a drawn-out ululation of huge volume that blots out the fury of the storm.
It is the roar of a predator, the voice of a billion billion-year-old predator that has just woken, and realised it is hungry.
FOURTEEN
KARA ROSE TO her feet, breaking Kys’s embrace. She wiped her cheeks. She dared not glance at Belknap for fear of seeing the look in his eyes.
‘Get out of here,’ she said. ‘Get everyone out of here, Gideon.’
‘Kara—’
‘Get out of here while you still can, all of you. I’ll—’
‘You’ll do what?’ Ravenor asked.
‘I’ll hold him back, as long as I can.’
‘How?’ asked Kys.
‘I’ll talk to him. I’ll talk to Carl. He trusts me. I can slow him down.’
‘No,’ said Ravenor. ‘I’ve already spoken to him. Carl is trying his best, but he’s lost to us. Any tenuous control he once had has gone. He’s dead and Slyte is in control. In full control.’
‘Gideon is correct,’ mumbled Culzean, propped up against the foot of the chest of drawers, his life’s collection of precious papers littered around him, scorched. ‘I’ve seen Slyte. Like a mockery of Thonius, using his form, twisting it. Such power, such radiance.’ He brushed flies away from his face. His skin had taken on the pallor of a corpse. He was sitting in a puddle of his own blood.
‘That wasn’t Slyte,’ sneered Molotch. ‘That was just Slyte’s way in, his harbinger, like a limb extended through a door. Thonius, powers rest his soul, is Slyte’s conduit. What we saw in the Sacristy that night, Orfeo, and what you undoubtedly witnessed tonight, was just the tip of the iceberg. You know what an iceberg is, don’t you Orfeo?’
‘Of course.’
‘Thonius is just the gate. The rest is coming through.’
The awful, primordial roar shook the room again. The flies billowed up.
‘Listen,’ said Molotch, almost enraptured by the sounds of the warp. ‘Here it comes.’
/>
‘Let me try, Gideon,’ said Kara. ‘Please, let me try to talk to him.’
‘No, Kara,’ Ravenor replied.
‘Please! Let me—’
Without warning, she went into some kind of shock, and collapsed across the front of his chair, her limbs spasming. Kys tried to hold her steady. Despite himself, Belknap rose to help.
‘I’ve got her,’ Kys told him.
Gideon, Kara’s mouth said.
Kys pulled back, unnerved. Kara rose, her eyes closed. Ravenor knew at once that someone, something, was waring her.
Gideon. Please. This is my last chance.
‘There is no last chance, Carl,’ Ravenor said. ‘I’ve explained this to you. Let Kara go.’
Oh, please, you don’t understand. Kara’s mouth moved slackly, as if language was an alien, unfamiliar material passing through it. The blow flies settled on her face in increasing numbers, and scurried in and out of her mouth. They covered her eyes like scabs. I only have a few moments left. I’m hanging on by my fingertips. He’s eating me, Gideon, he’s eating me up I
‘I can’t help you, Carl.’
You bastard! You bastard! Kara Swole’s mouth cried. All the years I served you, and this is how you repay me? Save me! Save me!
‘For Throne’s sake!’ cried Nayl. ‘Do something!’
‘Can’t you help him, Gideon?’ demanded Patience Kys. ‘Please!’
‘I can’t,’ said Ravenor simply. ‘I can’t and I shouldn’t, and I won’t.’
Everyone stared at him, even Molotch.
Then kill it! Kill me! Banish it! Banish it! Give me peace!
Kara Swole swayed. Crawling flies covered her from head to toe.
‘We can’t banish it. We haven’t the means, and this location is not right for—’
Don’t be such an idiot! Of course you have the means! You brought a hole in the warp here with you! You can make this the right time and place!
Ravenor paused. Revelation seeped through him. He looked at Thonius’s unwilling avatar in grief and gratitude.+Oh Carl. The things you know.+
Manic laughter filled the air. As one, the flies lifted off Kara and she fell heavily onto the solar floor.
‘Help her, Patience,’ Ravenor voxsponded. He turned to Molotch.+The door. He means the door, Zygmunt. We can make our own damn rift!+
