Ahriman: Exile

by John French

  ‘Brother, there is something that we must speak of,’ called Astraeos.

  Kadin did not look at him but kept walking. ‘How nice that you still call me that.’

  ‘You are my brother, you always will be.’

  Kadin inclined his head, looked to Astraeos and then away with a thin smile on his lips.

  ‘Touching.’

  Maroth continued to chuckle, the sound chopping between speaker and vox, as if his armour itself were laughing.

  ‘Be silent,’ Astraeos spat. Maroth turned the muzzle of his helm from Astraeos to Kadin. Behind the faceplate Astraeos knew the broken sorcerer was grinning.

  ‘Nothing left, nothing left,’ purred Maroth. ‘Not his brothers, not his honour, not his soul.’ Maroth tapped the lenses of his helm. ‘Only one eye with which to see how much he has lost.’

  Astraeos moved at blink-fast speed. His foot stamped into Maroth’s chest with a crack of metal on ceramite. Maroth lifted from his feet and hit the passage wall, and Astraeos was on him before he could slide to the floor. Rage ran through Astraeos in a hot red cloud. All he could see was the wreck of his past, and the tatters of everything he had tried to preserve. He had failed; every time he had tried he had failed. Maroth spluttered, wet noises coming out in chopped lumps from his speaker-grille. Astraeos thought he was still laughing. He put his foot on Maroth’s chest as the sorcerer tried to rise.

  ‘Leave him,’ said Kadin. Astraeos kept his eyes fixed on Maroth, seeing the one who had transformed Cadar and taken his brothers’ eyes.

  ‘No, Ahriman promised,’ screamed Maroth, the words wet and mixed with broken teeth and blood.

  Astraeos roared and raised his foot to stamp down on Maroth. The image of Cadar’s body looking back at him with empty voids for eyes filled his mind.

  He paused, breathing hard. His ears were ringing with rage. He wanted to strike again, to feel that release of letting anger and muscle become one. He let out a long, shaking breath.

  ‘You are losing yourself, brother,’ said Astraeos, jerking his head at where Maroth lay. ‘You let him follow you like a dog. After what he was, what he did–’

  ‘No, Astraeos.’ Kadin’s voice was quiet, but it cut through Astraeos like a cold knife. ‘I lost myself long ago, as did you.’

  ‘No, we still–’

  ‘Have honour? Astraeos, you beggared that long ago. I am not what I was, and neither are you. Would Codicer Astraeos have done that?’ Kadin glanced to where Maroth was trying to pick himself up off the floor. ‘We are changed and changing. What we were is gone.’ Kadin paused. His rasping voice sounded tired. ‘We have Ahriman, and that is all. We are all dogs following at his feet.’

  Astraeos opened his mouth to reply, found he had no words. His rage had drained away. He felt suddenly empty, the feeling spreading out and through him.

  No, he thought. The emptiness that bubbled up inside him had been there since the ships of the Inquisition and the warriors in grey had fired on their home world. He tried not to look at his hands; he knew his fingers were shaking. What do I do? What am I now? What do I do?

  And then a new sensation hit Astraeos like a cold shadow passing over the sun, as if a light that he was not aware of had gone dark. His head twitched up, his eyes looking around for the source of the uncanny chill. He could hear the silence in his ears.

  ‘What was that?’ said Kadin. Astraeos looked at his brother. Kadin was looking up at the shadows at the edge of the corridor. Astraeos felt a shiver run across his skin.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Darkness, it is here.’ Maroth had pulled himself to his feet, his head rolling from side to side as he leant on the passage wall. Then he tipped his head up sharply at Astraeos. ‘Can’t you see it?’

  Astraeos blinked his helmet display to life, and opened a vox-channel.

  ‘Ahriman.’ Static was the only reply. He switched channels. ‘Mistress Carmenta.’

  Silence.

  Astraeos glanced at his brother. Kadin nodded. They began to run, unclamping weapons as they moved. Behind them Maroth followed, breathing curses to himself.

  Ahriman paused before the entrance to the bridge. He had felt something, something subtle and distant like a movement under the surface of dark water, or the quick hiding of a lamp beneath a cloth. He turned, his eyes moving across the shadows at the edge of the antechamber. Nothing, just a feeling. But everything was a sign, he had learned and thought that truth long ago.

  He peeled off a portion of his mind. His hand shifted on the grip of his sword. He waited, but there was nothing. He turned back to the doors and pressed his hand against the opening seal. The doors ground back into the walls. He froze.

  Darkness. Complete darkness waited for him beyond the doors. No wink of system lights, not even the smallest kernel of luminescence from a servitor’s eye. He felt something, the tiniest imperfection in his thought processes. He had missed something. No, he had seen something out of the corner of his eye, something that was bending light and shadow around it, something that was hiding just out of sight. Suddenly he was very aware of how tired he was, and of the psychically toxic silver lodged in his chest.

  The hairs on his arms rose, and static prickled up his spine.

  He sensed the telekinetic wave an instant before it broke and lifted him from his feet. The darkness vanished, as if a curtain had been ripped back to reveal the sun. Suddenly he could feel the presence of other minds all around him. They burned bright, and power howled around them like hurricane winds.

  Sensations and emotions blurred as he turned through the air: heat, cold, anger, the heaviness of his own body, the gravity pulling it down, the threat icons flashing in his eyes, the tension of his fingers still gripping his sword, the spiralling gold patterns inlaid into the floor. He felt the fingers of another mind ramming into his thoughts, pulling apart his calm like a knife parting threads. He was scrabbling in a swamp of panic and then, and then…

  His mind froze, it became crystal, each thought, sensation, and emotion held still as he spun through the air.

  Amon’s forces were on the Titan Child. There were at least three psykers. They were powerful. There were Rubricae too, twenty-four of them. He sensed all of this in the space of a slow heartbeat.

  He hit the floor. Full reality snapped back into place. He rolled to his feet and his sword came up to meet a downward cut at his head. Light flared where the two blades met. He saw red armour, bone robes and a golden helm with a sun-disc crest. Power blazed from behind the golden helm, touching his mind like the heat of the sun. He shifted, turned the enemy’s blade, and cut down at the golden helm.

  It was not there. The warrior was past his guard, turning so fast that Ahriman could not predict the movement. He began to react, but too slowly. The blow sliced across his shoulder. Ceramite glowed yellow where the blade cut. The sword whipped back.

  Ahriman stepped back as the golden-headed sorcerer cut again. The glowing point of the sword screamed as it scored a line across his chest, the cut going wide. Ahriman stamped forwards, and his kick rammed the sorcerer into the air. His mind was still reeling, trying to shape his will into power as the warp boiled around him. He could taste silver and iron.

  On the edge of sight two other figures in robes paced forwards. Their movements seemed slow, almost casual. One was raising a staff. Lightning forked through the air. Ahriman felt it an instant before he saw the flash. The lightning shattered inches from his body. Blinding arcs earthed in the floor. Ahriman felt the shield he had raised tremble as the lightning crawled across its glowing surface.

  He felt for the point of calm in the middle of the storm of his mind, found it, and suddenly everything seemed quiet and slow. The golden-helmed sorcerer was still turning in the air behind him. He would hit the floor in less than a second. In front of him the sorcerer with the staff and the cobra-crested helm was in mid-step, his aura flowing from crystal blue to muddy red as he struggled to refocus his own power. To his left another sorcerer
was one stride into a charge, a curved khopesh held low in both hands. Beyond them he could see the Rubricae. They encircled the room, their boltguns aimed inwards but silent, their eyes watching, waiting.

  Ahriman dropped his invisible shield and the lightning wreathed him, climbing up his body. The sorcerer with the staff was shaking, trying to shut off the power that was flowing through him. Ahriman drew the lightning into himself, absorbing it and radiating it outwards. A blinding flash filled the chamber. The three sorcerers stumbled.

  Ahriman’s mind rose from his body. His thought form was a creature of pure psychic energy, a vast black-winged bird with two heads, its eyes pinprick windows into a furnace. The physical chamber slid to a dim outline as he left his fleshly body behind.

  The three sorcerers shimmered and then their minds leapt into the air, their thought forms trailing cloaks of light and shadow. They changed as they ascended into the warp; translucent wings unfolding from predatory bodies, mouths opening, fangs glowing like the death of stars. They were mockeries of the lost angels of legend, formed from fury and power.

  Ahriman’s raven thought form roared and dived towards the glowing angels. The thought forms met in a supernova of colour and light. The crystal dome above the chamber shattered. Frost formed on every surface. Ahriman felt claws and teeth rake his thought form, scoring lines through his wings. This was battle fought with the mind alone, the thought forms no more than projections into the warp, but that made it no less dangerous. In the physical realm he began to bleed inside his armour.

  His claws closed on one of the angelic thought forms. It writhed in his grasp, shifting shape; now serpentine, now scaled and bloated with flesh. Ahriman gripped tighter and soared upwards, the sorcerer’s thought form held in his claws. Golden droplets of aetheric blood tumbled in their wake. Somewhere in the physical world he passed through the hull of the Titan Child. Stars and the engine fires of warships were dim impressions on the edge of his awareness.

  +Quiet, my brother,+ he whispered, and squeezed. His claws sank into the thought form’s flesh. It screamed as its body split open. Ahriman let go. The thought form fell from his claws. It shattered as it fell, its substance breaking into luminous tatters. Ahriman’s thought form reached the top of his climb and rolled over into a dive. The beaks of his twin heads closed on the remains of the dissolving thought form.

  Feelings and memories flooded Ahriman’s mind as aetheric blood filled his mouth. Kiu, that was this sorcerer’s name. Kiu, acolyte of the Raptora. Kiu, so silent unless spoken to, now screaming with all his mind and soul. He spat Kiu’s shrivelling thought form out. In the chamber far below, the serpent-crested sorcerer fell to the floor.

  The other two thought forms were rising to meet him. Ahriman roared and the roar became flame. The thought forms twisted aside. One had taken the body of a feline predator; two sets of wings spread from its back, and its fur flickered between the colours of snow and jet. The other coiled through the air, its long body glistening with blue and golden scales, its wings sheets of translucent skin. Ahriman spread his wings and met them, claws first. They tumbled together. He felt teeth rip his flesh and feathers away. Somewhere, where he had real flesh, new wounds opened. Pain billowed through him. He lashed out blindly as he felt himself weaken. He was falling now, not diving, tumbling in a savage embrace with his enemies, focus and power bleeding from him with every instant.

  No, he thought. I will not end like this, not at the hands of my brothers. He gave in to the pain, let it surge into his consciousness. The raven shape of his thought form began to burn. Black feathers kindled to bright flame. His thought form cracked, blazing lines opening across its shape. And all the while the pain rose, burning away all other thoughts and sensations.

  The sorcerers’ thought forms howled. Their skin peeled away. Ethereal flesh charred black and began to dissolve. They bit and clawed deeper as they burned, scrabbling at Ahriman’s thought form even as it cracked with heat.

  White brightness filled Ahriman’s mind. He was losing himself, his mind dissipating into the warp as it consumed itself. He could feel his name start to drift just beyond memory, as the vortex of sensation dragged him into its embrace. He would become a dimming light, alone and unremembered. He had to end the fight; he had to end it now.

  His will cut through the pain. His thought form’s bird body melted, and became a glowing sphere. The thought forms wrapped around it shrieked as their claws and teeth sank into the molten surface. Then the sphere uncoiled. Glowing lengths of scaled flesh wrapped around the thought forms. Ahriman felt them claw and struggle as his thought form constricted tighter and tighter.

  Their movements grew weaker as the mind of each sorcerer pushed against his grasp. He gripped tighter, wrapping his will over their minds even as he felt fatigue wash through him. He had sustained his projection in the warp for no more than a second of real time, but even that had cost him. Blackness crept across the edges of his thoughts like night falling after day. The two thought forms trembled, twisted one last time and went still.

  The exhaustion came in a thick cloud. It boiled up from within, dragging him down like the waves of a dark ocean. His will wavered. The pain and fatigue were enfolding him, cutting away his awareness of the warp. His thought form began to fade; the serpent sphere broke apart, unravelling like a knot of burning rope. Ahriman felt his consciousness flood into his body again.

  He lay on the stone floor, his sword fallen by his side. Around him the Rubricae watched him stir but did not move. He tried to breathe, choked and found there was blood in his mouth. There was blood in his armour, too. He could feel it sticking to the inside of his body like a second skin. He rolled onto his side and began to stand up. Sympathetic slashes and bites in his sides and legs pulled open, and pain whipped through him. A fever haze rose through his body; he swayed. Frost covered the chamber and floor. Splinters of crystal from the shattered dome above mingled with the ice. Under the rime he could see Kiu and the other two sorcerers. They did not move.

  The Rubricae watched him as he stood, their eyes glowing green, unmoving. Whispers filled his ears, pushing through the fog of exhaustion. He turned, slowly, looking between the watching eyes. The Rubricae remained still. On the floor one of the sorcerers stirred. Ahriman reached down for his sword.

  Then he felt it, a ripple in the fabric of reality, like a stone dropped into a flat pool of water.

  He grasped his sword and stood again. His helmet display pulsed with injury warnings. He was still losing blood. His eyes dimmed and luminous worms twisted at the corners of his sight. He was tired, so tired. He took a breath and felt blood rise in his throat. Even as he tried to gather his will, it scattered. He looked up.

  A mote of golden light hung in the middle of the chamber. In his mind he could feel and hear the warp churning like water curling into a whirlpool. The mote of light expanded like a blown bubble. Stars and night swirled at its centre.

  Of course, he thought. He could see shapes, three indistinct humanoid outlines shimmering as if seen through a heat haze.

  I am a fool. I should have understood what was happening here. He tried to gather power to his will. He raised the sword. The sigils along the blade were dim. Around the edge of the chamber the Rubricae took a step forwards, their guns levelled.

  The sphere of stars swelled, and the shapes of the three figures grew clearer.

  He had failed, he had presumed, he had missed the most logical of reasons why Amon had not come himself while Ahriman was still strong. Because it would have been foolish, and Amon, apart from that one time when he had believed Ahriman, had never been foolish.

  The three figures were clear now: two wore flowing white robes and red armour. Curved horns rose from their helms to hold golden discs. The third figure wore blue silk robes over his armour. Horned skulls covered his shoulders, tapers of yellowed parchment spilled from the visible red plate, and he carried a staff of silver topped by the symbol of a serpentine sun. Horns rose from the crown,
temples and cheeks of his blank-fronted helm. The eyes that looked at Ahriman from behind the narrow eye-slit were red coals.

  The figures stepped from the swirl of colour and stars. Ahriman tried to take a step forwards, but his muscles would not respond. Blood foamed in his throat as he breathed. He stumbled, then collapsed to one knee. The three figures watched him, not coming any closer, not retreating. Ahriman kept his eyes fixed on the third of their number. He could feel the presence of all three newcomers, the hard control and power like sunlight trapped in a fist. But the third figure shone brighter than anything else in the room.

  +Amon,+ sent Ahriman, and the effort filled his eyes with nauseous swirls of colour. The figure in the horned helm nodded, and then turned to look at his companions.

  +Help him stand,+ sent Amon. A shiver ran through Ahriman. It had been a long time since he had heard that mind. He smiled despite himself.

  Amon’s two companions approached Ahriman from either side. Both wore khopesh swords at their waist and had pistols clamped to their thighs. Ahriman breathed, trying to gather power to his mind and balance the rhythms of his body. If he could focus he could knit his wounds back together, he could… he could…

  Hands gripped him and pulled him to his feet. His vision was clogging with shadows. He heard his sword clatter to the ground. He could not feel his hands. He could not feel anything. The world was folding in on itself. The winds of the aether seemed to be thick with swirling dust. Amon’s voice in his thoughts, calm and soft, followed him as he fell into the dust cloud in his mind.

  + It is good to see you, Ahriman.+

  Carmenta had watched with all her eyes. Internal scanners and pict lenses had seen Ahriman approach the doors to the bridge, then pause. Then there had been an explosion of light and static that grated across her senses. She had felt distortion and corrupted code boil through her as she glimpsed movements faster than she would have believed possible. Then there had been stillness, and the crackle of unnatural energy playing over her hull. An instant later one of Ahriman’s opponents had fallen to the floor, as if he were a puppet with his strings cut. Then the other two had followed. Finally she had watched Ahriman struggle to pull himself from the floor where he had sprawled.