by Dan Abnett
‘So it symbolises genetics?’ I asked.
Alace Quatorze shrugged.
‘I believe it is more about inheritance. The inheritance and transmission of anything that is valuable from one generation to the next: genetics, information, data, lore. In other parts of the tradition, the grail represented the secret knowledge of the architects, which was passed down through their brotherhoods. In the most ancient days, the skills of an architect were most precious. They were the masons, the ones who understood how to build monuments, who understood how to build houses for god.’
‘A maison dieu,’ I said.
She laughed.
‘A Maze Undue indeed,’ she said with a delighted flash of her eyes. ‘I congratulate you on your knowledge of Old Franc. The construction of temples is our oldest act of faith, and those who knew the skills to perform such a task were immensely valued. A temple-er passed his learning in secret to novitiates in his circle. Of course…’
She trailed off, thoughtful.
‘Of course what?’ snapped Lightburn, betraying the fact that he had been more interested than his attitude suggested. I supposed that a man who had once lived in a temple, and had his life determined by it, would be intrigued by this talk.
Alace Quatorze turned to look at the Curst.
‘I was going to say that even in this context, burdener, the concept of “architect” may be allegorical,’ she said. ‘We may not literally be talking about men who could build temples. We might be referring to makers. Makers of life. Architects of the cosmos. We may be talking about those rare beings who are building some great design beyond the scale of mortal man.’
‘The God-Emperor would be one such architect, then?’ I said.
‘Yes,’ she replied. ‘And the sacred primarchs, His erstwhile sons, they schemed in such ways too, for better or worse. In a way, they both sought His grail, and were His grails.’
‘What about this context?’ I asked.
‘Grail lore is rich here in the Angelus Sub,’ she said. ‘Just think of this world’s name. Sancour. “Sacred heart” in Old Franc. This world has always been the sacred heart of the Yellow King’s ambitions.’
‘How?’ I asked.
‘He fights a battle here, on behalf of mankind. An eternal war. A eudaemonic war. A war of good daemons.’
‘“We build angels to face down the dark”,’ I said, remembering Lupan’s words.
‘We always have done. We build angels, or we harness daemons. Either way, we take power from the divine and turn it against the source. The Orphaeus of old myth was a musician and a magician. With the power of his music, his song, his very words, he was able to conquer heaven and hell. He took ownership of divine properties and turned them against the divine. By extension, we may surmise that our Orphaeus is learning the properties of the warp, the very empyrean, in order to use them against the warp.’
She looked at me to read my expression.
‘Of course, that is simply theory. But you can appreciate why such an Orphaeus would want a school of pariahs for such work.’
‘As defences to keep him safe from the thing he is trying to master,’ I said.
‘The only natural defence known to humankind,’ she replied. ‘You would be front-line troops in his eudaemonic war. You would be his good daemons.’
‘It is the purpose of the Holy Inquisition to protect mankind from the influence of the warp,’ I said. ‘I see now that sometimes it must take great risks to do that effectively. It must know its archenemy. It must learn to control the very flame that it wishes to extinguish.’
I got up and poured a glass of water for myself. Shadrake was still drawing me, but his head was nodding. All the drink had made him very drowsy. Alace Quatorze and Renner Lightburn were the only two really listening. I realised that we had been side-tracked. I had not got to the part where Judika had been hurt. Quickly, I told them about the efforts made to sell me to the elders of the Ecclesiarchy. I told them of the visit to the brass reading room.
‘The confessor, Hodi, seemed to know about the King and the programme,’ I said. ‘That surprised me.’
‘Do not be surprised,’ Alace Quatorze replied. ‘The Church is a shadow under everything. It knows far more than it ever admits, and behind its regal bearing lurks an entity capable of immense intrigue.’
‘It certainly has dark secrets to hide,’ I said. I told her about the tests I had been subjected to, the assay of Enuncia.
She seemed astonished. Her reaction was, for the first time, extreme.
‘Enuncia. So that’s what the Church is up to: the language of Creation. The primal language of Chaos, of making and unmaking. Do you remember the words they had you say?’
I shook my head, for I did not.
‘It is a very cunning idea,’ she said, ‘to use pariahs in this way. As a delivery mechanism for Enuncia. A pariah is untainted and cannot alter the power of the word. They could begin to build a primer: a grimoire.’
‘A grimoire?’ I asked.
‘The word,’ she said, ‘is very closely related to the meaning of “grammar”. I am speaking of a magical grammar, which will allow them to use the words of magic to reshape reality and oppose the warp. Consider even the meaning of the word “spell”. In the beginning was the word, Padua my dear, and the language of the word was the language of knowledge, and knowledge was the precious secret kept within the grail.’
She glanced back at me.
‘Are you sure you can’t remember any of the words?’
‘Quite sure,’ I replied.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Lightburn.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing.’ For a moment, I thought I had heard something outside.
‘No matter how one might otherwise justify the esoteric and unorthodox activities of the Ecclesiarchy,’ I said to Alace Quatorze, ‘there is no doubting their inherent and diabolic corruption.’ I told her about the mediators, about the monstrous Scarpac and his kin of the host.
She blanched at the thought of it.
‘Traitor Marines,’ she whispered. ‘From your description, I have no doubt they were of the Seventeenth Legion. They were the Word Bearers of old Colchis. Blessed mercy save us that monsters of that kind should be here on Sancour. You’re right. The Ecclesiarchy must be damned and thrice-mad to consort with such creatures. No wonder the city is in peril. No wonder the institutions of the Holy Inquisition, such as the Maze Undue, have been attacked and annihilated. The Archenemy is here. Imperial rule is clearly failing.’
It was a grim notion. It was something I had been imagining for several days, and to hear someone else voice it made me chill.
I started to tell them the rest, about the appearance of the thought-form that had called itself a grael, and about the battle that had followed, during which, I presumed, Judika had been hurt.
But I was suddenly distracted. I had heard something: the laughter of children. It had come from just outside.
At least twice in the last handful of days, traumatic events had been preceded by such a sound. Just before the attack on the Maze Undue I had heard the laughter of children, and it had chilled me. Again, in the commune. And in the confusion of the brass reading room, I could not be sure that the laughter of children had not echoed somewhere in the background.
‘Are there children here?’ I asked sharply.
Alace Quatorze looked stunned.
‘Children?’ she said.
‘Are there children here?’ I repeated firmly.
‘I–’ she began. She shook her head in disbelief. ‘How could you know? We were so discreet.’
‘Are there children here, Mamzel Quatorze?’ I said again.
She looked almost dismayed in her surprise.
‘One,’ she admitted. ‘Only one of the children. I do not understand how you could know that. Did someone tell you?’
‘I can hear them,’ I said. ‘I can hear it.’
She rose. She looked aghast.
&nb
sp; ‘Please. Please, Padua. We must be very careful. We cannot upset the children.’
‘I think we should see them,’ said Judika.
He had risen to his feet. He still looked pale and ill, and stood in an uncomfortable pose, as though his ribs hurt.
But his eyes glowed with quiet fury.
‘You should sit–’ Alace Quatorze began.
‘No,’ he snapped.
‘We thought you were sleeping, Jude,’ I said.
‘I was drifting in and out,’ he said, his gaze not wavering from her. ‘I heard what you said. You’ve questioned her well, Beta. An interrogator would be proud. By offering her information of your own, you’ve got her to give up a great deal about herself.’
I knew I had. Alace Quatorze had clearly been so hungry for information, she had spoken unguardedly.
‘Of course,’ Judika said, ‘you haven’t asked her the most important question of all.’
‘I have not,’ I agreed. ‘I was just getting to it.’
Alace Quatorze looked quite put out. She began to look from me to Jude and back.
‘What?’ she asked. ‘What?’
‘The real question, Mamzel Quatorze,’ I said, ‘is how you come to be so astonishingly well informed?’
Her face became tight and pinched. She was angry.
‘You have no idea who you are dealing with,’ she said.
‘Precisely,’ replied Judika. ‘That’s why we’re asking.’
‘I shall summon my servants. They will–’
Lightburn drew his Lammark Combination Thousander. It made a loud, metallic clack as he thumbed back the hammer.
‘I’m suggesting that wouldn’t be such a dandy idea,’ he said.
Shadrake suddenly became alert. His exclamation of alarm woke Lucrea. The burdener swiftly switched his aim to cover the artist.
‘Sit back down, you arse,’ he said. Shadrake obliged very rapidly.
‘Let’s see this child,’ said Judika.
‘You don’t want to do that!’ Alace Quatorze exclaimed. ‘Throne of Terra, are you mad? The children–’
‘Let’s see him,’ I repeated. ‘Then you can explain your business, and who you are, the source of your knowledge, and your intentions towards us.’
‘You do not want to disturb any of the children,’ Alace Quatorze said.
‘You really bloody don’t,’ agreed Shadrake in a heartfelt stammer.
I heard the laughter again, as if it was coming from just outside. The chill knifed at me once more.
‘I don’t believe we have any choice,’ I said. ‘Show us.’
Alace Quatorze took up a vermeil candelabrum and nervously led us out into the hall. She carried the light raised in one hand, and the hem of her long dress lifted in the other. We all followed. Judika and I came behind her. Judika had a laspistol aimed at Mamzel Quatorze, and I was helping him to walk. I had not even picked up the cutro I had borrowed at the basilica.
Behind us came the anxious Shadrake and the bemused Lucrea. Renner Lightburn followed, covering and herding them both.
Feverfugue was dark. It was late. A few servants appeared, drawn by the activity, and Judika told Mamzel Quatorze to dismiss them in no uncertain terms.
She told them to go back, and they did.
We walked along a hall where the floorboards squeaked under our weight. Lucrea kept talking, asking questions, until Lightburn told her to be quiet.
It was unnaturally dark. Outside the ancient pile, night had swaddled the black trees and created a veil of complete blackness. We could hear twigs and branches scratching at the roof and window panes as the night wind off the marshes stirred the invisible trees. It sounded like rats scuttling. It sounded like children, running around in an upstairs room.
We reached a pair of double doors. The candlelight showed the age of them, the worn brass of the handles, the touch-rubbed patina around the finger-plate.
‘Open it,’ said Judika. The strain of standing was making him cough again. I winced every time I heard that hard static-crackle.
‘Constant?’ Alace Quatorze asked. Lightburn allowed the drunken artist to come forwards. He pulled a heavy key from his coat pocket, and opened the doors. We went in.
‘The aula magna,’ she said.
It was a large hall. I imagine it had once been a banqueting room, or a formal dining hall, but most of the furniture, especially the main table, had been cleared out. This was where the family displayed their original Shadrakes.
The paintings hung on every wall. Alace Quatorze had Lucrea hurry around and light all the candles in the room off her candelabrum. Gradually, as the light grew brighter, we saw the painted insanity of the works around us.
I cannot describe the pictures. I do not want to, but even if I did, I would not have the right words. They were of reality distorted by his glass. They were flesh and blood, but rendered as meat, as fluid, as smoke. Grey figures, dark and smooth as slate, coiled and writhed. Their anatomies did not operate in fully human ways, though they seemed human. They seemed primordial, like organic forms locked in some orgy of mindless congress, writhing in the smoke and ooze of an elementally wracked, new-born world.
But they also seemed to be places and people that I knew, like memories I could not pin down. I think they were pictures of the world we know as seen from a world we do not. They were images of lust and greed, avarice and appetite, desires manifested as solid things as we never see them.
And I am thankful that we never do.
‘What horrors have you done?’ Lightburn gasped. Even Lucrea seemed dismayed by the images. Shadrake looked pleased with himself, but embarrassed at the reaction.
‘I paint what I am allowed to see,’ he said.
‘Then you should not be allowed to see,’ the Curst declared.
‘It is what they want!’ Shadrake wailed.
‘Who?’ I asked. ‘The owners of Feverfugue?’
‘All of them,’ protested Shadrake.
‘Why have you brought us here?’ Judika asked. ‘To dismay us? Revolt us? Distract us?’
He aimed his weapon at Mamzel Quatorze’s head.
‘Show us this child!’
‘I will!’ she said. ‘He is through here! We had to come past the paintings to reach him.’
She looked at me sadly.
‘They soothe him,’ she added.
She walked to the end of the aula magna’s gallery, and opened another door. I heard her speak to someone.
Then I heard a reply.
A voice like soft music, a man’s voice.
‘But of course, Alace, show them in.’
I went to the door with Judika. Beyond Alace Quatorze, I saw a large anteroom. More pictures, the product of Shadrake’s madness, hung there. The room was lit by many, many tapers and glow-globes. The floor seemed to be covered in rose petals, thousands of discarded pink petals, which were scattered and piled in drifts like fallen blossom. There was a large basin on the floor, a ceramic bowl large enough to wash clothes in. It seemed to be full of black ink. Beside it was a very large chair, a high-backed throne of richly upholstered wood, with huge, raised arms. Two long, golden ribbons of silk hung over one of the arms, and curled down onto the petal-strewn floor.
A man sat in the chair. He was, it appeared, a very powerful man of impressive physique. He was, it also appeared, naked but for a loin cloth. His body, entirely hairless, was oiled as though he had just stepped from a bathing pool and been attended to by concubines. He had a goblet in one hand, and a book in the other, and was lounging in the throne in the most relaxed manner.
The pupils of his eyes were gold. He looked at us. He was already smiling, but the smile broadened at the sight of us to reveal perfect white teeth like pieces of alabaster. I felt Alace Quatorze shudder.
‘Are you the pariahs?’ he asked. His voice was soft and flowed like music. ‘It is such a pleasure to make your acquaintance. Such an infinite pleasure.’
‘What is this?’ Judika hissed. ‘
You said children! Who is this? There are no children here!’
‘There most certainly is,’ said the man. He rose to his feet, and put the book down. Only when he was standing did we realise how tall he was. He was inhumanly tall. He was larger than any mortal could ever be.
‘I am Teke,’ he said, smiling all the while.
CHAPTER 33
Which concerns an emergence or revelation
‘Don’t hurt them, smiling one,’ said Alace Quatorze.
‘Of course I won’t,’ said the giant. ‘You Glaws, always so very suspicious. Your father was the same, and his sire before him. Just because we were built for war, it doesn’t follow that we must always act with violence. I was relaxing. I was reading. I am in a gentle mood. Besides, these are the two you said you’d bring for me, are they not?’
‘I may have told them too much,’ said Alace Quatorze.
‘And I may have to punish you for that,’ said the thing called Teke. His smile remained, constant like a star. ‘So like a Glaw to get carried away with your own significance.’
A sweet smell was filling the room, the smell of petals, I supposed. It was oppressive, almost overpowering. Judika began to cough, and became quite helpless with it. The static crackle was worse than ever. I felt as though Jude was trying to do something – perhaps even attack the giant – but his hopeless cough was preventing him.
The giant, Teke, looked at him with a soulful expression, though his smile never wavered.
‘Oh you,’ he said sympathetically. ‘Poor you. What’s your name?’
Judika was coughing so badly he couldn’t answer.
‘Judika,’ I said, hoping to appease the creature. Teke was not in any way threatening, except for his scale and his unnerving smile.
‘It’s too late for poor Judika, isn’t it?’ he asked, looking at me. ‘Too late.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
