Ahriman: Exile

by John French

  ‘There is no need for this,’ he said as he turned into a wide tunnel of rivet-covered plates. There were marks from gunfire on the wall, and bolter casings on the floor, but they were as old and cold as the rest of the station. ‘There is no threat sign because there is nothing here.’

  ‘We are to patrol,’ replied Thidias, and Kadin could almost see him shrug. ‘Astraeos willed it of us.’

  ‘The sorcerer willed it,’ sneered Kadin. In front of him the passage stretched away beyond the limit of his sight. He switched to infra-vision and the corridor became a black space of perfect cold. He turned, looked down, and saw his footsteps as patches of green fading to blue. The vox clicked.

  The vox clicked, but only static filled Kadin’s ear.

  ‘Returning to main route,’ said Thidias abruptly. Alone in the darkness Kadin shook his head.

  ‘Acknowledged. Proceeding on approach tunnel sweep.’ Kadin cut the vox and turned to start down the waiting passage. He stopped, his limbs and armour locked into sudden stillness.

  Patches of heat dappled the passage floor in front of him, their edges bleeding to yellow and green. They led away into the cold dark of the passage he had been about to walk down. The most distant mark was already merging into the icy black. The nearest patch was bright red with fresh heat. It was right in front of him, and had a shape that was recognisable even in the blurred outline of a heat trace.

  It was a footprint.

  Kadin paused and then blinked his display back to bleached green.

  Two eyes looked back at him from an inch in front of his face.

  Kadin fired, and the flare of his bolter drowned the sight of glass-black eyes and pale skin. He stepped back, fired again. Static boiled up across his helmet’s display. Something was moving beyond the fog of distortion, something pale, with spindle limbs. He fired a burst, layering fire in a blind pattern.

  His helmet display snapped back into focus, bright and clear. There was nothing in front of him. He opened a vox-channel.

  A voice screamed in his ears. His fingers clenched on his bolter. He drew breath to shout.

  Silence.

  The passage was dark and empty in front of him. He blinked to infra-vision. Cold blackness. He looked down at his hands. The muzzle of his bolter glowed yellow-white from its recent use. He looked up.

  Darkness. Complete darkness: the darkness of the caves of his human childhood. Somehow he knew that if he looked down again he would not see his weapon, even though he could still feel its weight in his hands.

  There was no passage in front of him. He was alone. In his chest his hearts were beating in a forgotten rhythm.

  Slowly, Kadin turned and looked behind him.

  Ahriman breathed slowly as the chant rose in his mind. He was utterly still, his hands raised at his sides, palms open. His eyes were closed but he could sense Astraeos standing on the other side of the spinning offering bowl. Witch-light was fuming from their hands, pooling in their palms and arcing across their armour.

  As Ahriman’s mind wove through the chants he felt Astraeos follow him, his will singing a simpler harmony. He could feel the Librarian struggle, his breath labouring and his skin prickling with sweat. Ahriman had prepared him as best he could, but this was no song made of sound and words; it was a flowing river of meaning and connection, words blended with symbols, with colours and sensations, each triggered in precise metre at the speed of thought. Both Ahriman and Astraeos were creating the chant, but it also created itself, spiralling wider with every passing instant, spinning patterns of its own. If any living thing had stood within the choral chamber they would have felt it, heard it, and seen it swimming before their eyes in broken colours. It was the music of the spheres, the primordial language of creation and destruction, the roaring fire of existence. And it was silent.

  Ahriman felt the warp unfold into his mind like fire spreading through a dry forest. It flooded his sensations, overwhelming his sense of the physical. He was his flesh, the beat of his heart, the surge of his blood, but he was also the space around him, the stone walls of the chamber, and the flicker of the glow-globes. He felt the hard lines of reality soften as the laws holding the chamber together flexed in time with his pulse.

  Slowly Ahriman opened his eyes. Above them the glow-globes exploded in a sphere of sparks. Opposite him Astraeos was shaking where he stood.

  +Open your eyes,+ sent Ahriman. Behind the lenses of his helm Astraeos’s eyes opened. +Ready?+

  Astraeos nodded once, and the strain of that movement bled across the psychic link to light stars of pain behind Ahriman’s eyes. Ahriman looked down at his right hand, flexed the fingers and extended it above the spinning bronze bowl. The blue gauntlet unlocked and peeled away from his hand, the sections pulled by telekinetic fingers. The flesh of his hand bleached white as it met the airless cold. Alarms began to ring in Ahriman’s ears. He focused on the athame in his left hand. His thoughts flattened like a mirror, reflecting the rising storm of aetheric energy with calm indifference.

  Blood. It always comes to blood, he thought. That was the way of things, and always had been. He heard Astraeos moan. Around him, storm winds smeared the choral chamber’s features. A candle kindled close to him, its flame flickering impossibly in the vacuum. Then another lit, and another. Frost began to form on his left arm, creeping up from the athame. At the edge of the room the servitors began to twitch and spasm. Thick sparks arced across their bodies. Somewhere, at the edge of hearing, Ahriman could hear the chattering of crows. The flesh of his bare hand was blue with cold. He could smell ozone and incense. +Now,+ he thought, and stabbed the athame into his bare palm.

  Blood bubbled into the air. It formed spheres of deep red, gloss-sheened in the candlelight. There was no pain, just a numb ache. Everything had become silent and still, as if a wall of crystal had descended around him. There was just the blood, spurting out under its own pressure. In the long-dead rituals of wizards and mystics this moment had many names. It was a moment of balance, of supreme control. His lips split as he spoke the name, dredging its syllables from an oubliette of memory. The sound left his mouth and the hanging spheres of blood began to spin together. The last phrase came from his mouth with a sound like cracking cartilage. He heard Astraeos scream.

  ‘You are summoned,’ roared Ahriman, and the words echoed in the airless gloom. Around the chamber flames leapt from the floating bowls. Smoke and sound filled the room. He could hear screaming, the screaming of the dying as they were lowered into the pyre of his memory. The floating mass of blood began to burn. The bronze bowl was glowing, shedding its covering of hoar frost in viscous dribbles that fell towards ceiling and floor. Then the bowl fell and the blood fell with it, splashed against the bronze, exploded back up, and froze.

  Ahriman stepped back, and drew his sword. Astraeos was staggering, his hand scrabbling for his own blade. The candle flames leapt higher, molten wax falling upwards. The light caught the shape of the frozen blood spray and cast it against the blackened chamber walls. Ahriman glanced at the shadows and froze. The silhouettes of feathered wings and overlong limbs spread and danced across the walls.

  In front of him the frozen blood was spreading like the branches of a growing tree. It pulsed as it grew, discolouring and charring as it flowed into the shape of veins, muscle and bone. Shoulders formed. Arms. Hands. A head. A mouth opened in the glistening meat, and moaned with the pain of its birth. The sound of a beating heart shook the chamber. Skin spread across the raw flesh of the body. At last the figure stood tall, its hands by its sides, its bare flesh rippling as details resolved. Eyelids formed and closed over hidden eyes. Hair grew from its scalp to fall to its shoulders in a dark wave. It smiled, showing white teeth, and opened its eyes. They were the yellow of amber, the pupils black holes.

  ‘Ahriman,’ breathed the figure, and its voice rattled with the sound of dead winds and dry bones.

  Across Carmenta’s back, sensor arrays turned as she circled the station. Her weapons and engines
were aching, the tension from being held in a state of readiness bleeding into the rest of her being. She kept circling, listening for signals, watching for movement.

  Nothing. There was nothing. Again she cycled through augur settings, sifting for the energy markers of Ahriman, Astraeos and their entourage. They had vanished from her senses as soon as the gunship had entered the station. She could not even raise the gunship. She could launch another vehicle, servitor driven, bonded by a close mind-link. No, she would not do that; Ahriman had been clear.

  ‘Wait,’ he had said. ‘If the matter goes awry, you will know.’ But she had waited and the more she waited the more she wondered if the silence could roar any louder. Should she launch another shuttle? Should she flee, or fire?

  No; she would obey. She would wait in silence.

  ‘Mistress.’ The voice reached her as a thought. She pulled part of herself back from watching the station, and formed her voice into something digestible by a human mind.

  ‘Egion,’ she said. The Navigator had stayed awake, ready to guide her if they needed to flee.

  ‘I can see something, mistress,’ said Egion, in a voice that trembled as it formed in her head. Somewhere far away, where she was still flesh wrapped in cables, her skin prickled with cold.

  ‘What can you see?’ she said, pushing as much calm into the words as possible.

  ‘I can see it even when I close my eye,’ he said, and the thought carrying the voice was so weak that she could hardly hear its meaning. She realised that if he had been standing in front of her he would have been moaning.

  ‘Tell me what you can see,’ she said. A wash of emotion leaked across the mind-impulse link, a haze of awe and fear, like watching emotions play across someone’s face as they look at something just behind your shoulder.

  ‘Silence, mistress. I can see only silence.’

  ‘I do not understand, Egion.’

  ‘I looked, just once, and now it’s all I can see.’ His voice had begun to fade.

  ‘Egion–’

  ‘Silence, mistress, the warp is silent, it is dark and calm. It is never so. Never.’

  ‘Why–’

  ‘It is waiting, mistress,’ said Egion, his voice rising in forced strength. ‘I can see it, I can feel it. I know it. It is waiting.’

  The daemon wore his brother’s face, of course. Ahriman let out a long breath as he looked into Ohrmuzd’s countenance. It was the image of his true brother, not as he died, not even as he had lived as a warrior of the Thousand Sons, but as Ahriman remembered him: young, unchanged, human. But of course it was not Ohrmuzd, nor was it human.

  ‘I command and bind you to the purpose for which I called you,’ he said, and the daemon grinned at the words even though there was no air to carry the sound. ‘By these swords I hold you to this place and my will.’ Ahriman pointed the tip of his sword at the daemon. On the other side of the circle Astraeos mirrored the movement. The daemon flinched, then grinned and bowed its head.

  ‘It is good to see you again, brother,’ it said, its voice deep and resonant.

  ‘You are not my brother,’ said Ahriman, his voice level.

  ‘Oh, am I not?’ The daemon tipped its head to the side, and looked down at the floor. Ahriman could feel its presence testing the bindings like a thief probing a lock. It would not get free; he was certain of his work. He could command it to change its shape if he desired, but he would not; questioning such a creature was a dance of lies and wills.

  ‘You are a creature of the warp, a lie, a falsehood,’ he said, and sent a measure of his will at the daemon. The splinter of power pulsed through the chamber. The daemon fell as if whipped. Black cracks spread across its skin, and dribbled thick yellow fluid. It panted, curses spilling from its lips in a dozen tongues. It appeared to take a breath, and the cracks in its skin closed. It looked up at Ahriman, rubbing its jaw, an amused expression on its handsome face.

  ‘Would you like to see how Ohrmuzd died again?’

  Ahriman felt another shard of power crack from his mind before he could think. The daemon fell back to the ground, its skin flaking off. Beneath the skin was something that looked like the matted feathers of a dead crow. It pulled its knees to its chest, whimpering and weeping. Slowly the smooth skin closed, and it stood again, nodding as if in apology.

  ‘I am sorry. You have questions,’ said the daemon, looking at Ahriman. ‘You do, don’t you?’ It cocked its head. ‘That is why I am here, that is why you called me?’

  ‘By the nine hundred words I bind you to answer what I command,’ said Ahriman. The daemon laughed, a high false laugh.

  ‘So formal, Ahriman.’ The daemon turned to where Astraeos held his sword drawn, his body locked at readiness, then craned its head to look at Ahriman over its shoulder. ‘This is the apprentice? What fate will you doom him to, Ahriman? Or is this another attempt at redemption?’ It stretched its head back and seemed to breathe deeply through its nose. ‘How many mortals did you help burn here?’ It flicked its head back towards Astraeos. ‘You should ask him.’

  Ahriman saw Astraeos flinch, but the daemon was already turning back to Ahriman, grinning, delight dancing in its eyes. ‘Is that why you chose to come back? To wallow in sorrow for your sins?’

  Ahriman said nothing. The daemon shrugged.

  ‘I seek knowledge,’ said Ahriman. The daemon seemed to sigh. ‘I seek knowledge of Amon.’

  ‘Another whose trust you rewarded with betrayal,’ said the daemon, and it was no longer grinning but standing still, arms by its side, its face solemn.

  ‘A brother came seeking me. His name was Tolbek. He came to drag me to Amon’s knees. I have sought the other exiles of my Legion but they are dead or with Amon.’ Ahriman paused, but the daemon did not move or speak. ‘Do you know of what I speak?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the daemon, and rolled its eyes. ‘Of course I know of what you speak. All we do is watch you, because your pitiful scrap of a Legion is our only concern.’

  ‘Why does he seek me? What does he intend?’

  The words seemed to hit the daemon like a physical blow. It shuddered, its whole body briefly losing its pure lines before settling again. Its chest heaved, and it spat black phlegm onto the floor.

  ‘I cannot say,’ said the daemon. Ahriman raised a hand, and his disgust forced the daemon to its knees.

  ‘You will tell me.’

  ‘I cannot say, because I do not know,’ whimpered the daemon.

  Ahriman extended his hand and formed a fist. The daemon crumpled with a sound of cracking bones and popping joints. It crouched on the ground, holding its head and rocking backwards and forwards.

  ‘It is hidden from my eyes, from the eyes of all our kind.’ The daemon looked up at him, speaking from behind fingers that pulled at its own skin. Black and yellow blood was running over its knuckles. ‘You should be flattered, Ahzek. For such powers to be bent to hide the truth from you, it is almost an honour.’ It smiled, its yellow eyes flicking up at Ahriman. ‘Almost.’

  Ahriman was about to speak, but the daemon spoke before he could.

  ‘But do you want to know why he hates you?’ Its cheeks twitched with seeming pleasure. ‘That I do know.’ Ahriman watched the daemon’s tongue flick over its teeth and lips.

  Because I destroyed them, and broke the hope I promised them, thought Ahriman. The daemon was nodding.

  ‘Because you were right,’ said the daemon. Ahriman felt ice slide down his spine. ‘Because you saw truly but failed. That is why.’

  For a second Ahriman could say nothing, and just stared back at the daemon’s yellow gaze. Then he shook himself and asked something that had occurred to him as he had watched the daemon manifest.

  ‘One of your kind came to me before Tolbek appeared,’ said Ahriman, remembering the image of a crow, and the light burning in Karoz’s eyes. ‘I am fate come round at last,’ it had said.

  ‘I know nothing of that.’

  Ahriman nodded. He had expected no other answer. The rela
tionship between the creatures of Chaos was as complex as it was fluid. There were countless daemons, each a fragment of the daemonic consciousnesses that some called the Gods of Chaos. The gods spawned daemons and swallowed them again at whim. Within the ranks of daemons there were creatures of greater and lesser power. There were creatures that hunted mortal souls like wolves, and had little intelligence beyond their instinct to hunt and devour. There were lesser servants, soldiers and attendants, that swarmed to their god’s will. Above them were the greater choirs, and the princes who had ascended from mortality in their god’s service. The daemon that stood before Ahriman was a princeling of the pantheon of Chaos, a creature that must once have been mortal but who had slipped the bonds of flesh. A fragment of its name learned long ago had allowed Ahriman to summon it, and bind it to answer him.

  ‘What is the path to finding the truth I seek?’ asked Ahriman.

  ‘A path of lies,’ said the daemon. It crouched, shoulders hunched, its back rising and falling as if it were struggling to breathe. Its skin looked pale and clammy, the muscle beneath wasted. Ahriman paused; through the binding he could feel the daemon’s essence twist like a fish pulled from water, dying in air it could not breathe.

  ‘From where can I learn the answer I seek?’ said Ahriman, and the daemon twitched at the question. It was trembling, its now bone-thin fingers pawing at its mouth. It is dissipating, thought Ahriman; its form and presence were draining from the physical world, back into the great ocean of the warp.

  ‘From Amon himself,’ it said. ‘No other can speak the answer you seek.’

  Of course, of course, but then what did I expect? That Amon would be less than the sorcerer and strategist that he was?

  ‘Where is he?’ The daemon snarled, showing teeth that were now black and rotting. ‘Tell me. You must tell me,’ said Ahriman.

  It shook its head. ‘I will show you,’ said the daemon, and extended a skeletal hand. Ahriman did not move. The daemon was bound to his will, but to touch it, to make a connection with it, would strain those shackles. It was a risk. ‘I cannot lie to you. You know that your binding does not allow me to utter falsehood.’