by John French
Silvanus heard a moan, twisted to look around him, and then realised that the sound had come from his own mouth. The cold was burning his lungs. He coughed, and felt the bile rise in his throat. He vomited, dropping to his hands and knees, retching even after the contents of his stomach were glistening on the deck.
He heard a sound like air clicking through pipes. He looked up, swallowing the sour taste in his mouth. A faint light looked back at him from the pits of Carmenta’s eyes. He could not move, he could only stare back. The fingers of her hand twitched, scattering black drops into the pool beneath. The light in her eyes pulsed, and he heard the clicking suck of her breath again.
He stood slowly, keeping his eyes on hers. Her hand was just in reach. He stretched up. His glove brushed her fingers. He opened his mouth.
Carmenta spasmed. Blood showered down. The nest of cables shook. Across the bridge, dead servitors jerked in their seats as their augmetics sparked. Screens flashed to life with static. Silvanus could smell hot metal and burning wire. A wet shriek shook the stale air as Carmenta screamed. Silvanus thumbed his suit’s vox, shouting into whatever channel was open.
‘Help me, anyone. Help me.’ After five seconds Carmenta went still and the blood began to drip again.
XIX
Peace
Ahriman blinked as the light fell across his face. A door had opened. He could see a figure silhouetted against the brightness. He raised his head and squinted.
The small movement set chains clinking above him. They had bound him, he realised. Adamantine manacles circled his forearms and ankles. Thick chains led from his wrists to the ceiling above, held taut by his weight. More chains linked his ankles to the heavy loops in the white marble floor. They had removed his armour, of course, leaving him with a sleeveless tunic of rough fabric. His muscles ached, and his mind felt numb. The unhealed wound in the side of his chest wept pink fluid. Somewhere out beyond the cell the warp swirled like an ocean held back beyond glass. Null field generators buzzed beneath the floor and wards wove through the cell, etched into every stone and every link of chain. The cell was lightless and silent to the power of the warp. In here, he was just flesh and bone.
The door closed behind the figure, and the chamber was black again. Ahriman heard a measured breath. A glow blossomed in the dark as a candle lit and its flame grew. Light caught the edges of the candle bearer’s armour and spread shadows across a smooth face.
‘There,’ said Amon. ‘We will have light at least.’
Ahriman met Amon’s eyes, and they seemed almost black.
‘I will not help you,’ said Ahriman. Amon’s mouth formed a weak smile. He walked to the side of the chamber, and placed the candle in a holder. He moved around the room lighting more candles until pools of light broke the shadows. Ahriman watched as Amon lit a final candle to the right of the chamber’s only door.
‘Do you remember the light of Prospero?’ Amon paused, his eyes fixed on the flame as it grew. ‘The sun catching the pyramids, the dawn light crawling across land and sea. Sometimes I think I will never see such light again.’ He turned and looked at Ahriman, the sad smile still in place. ‘But then perhaps it is just memory.’ Ahriman remained silent as he remembered a city shining under a bright sky, and the flanks of the pyramids turning to sheets of sunlight.
‘For a long time I thought of returning there, of trying to see what remained.’ Amon nodded as he walked closer to Ahriman, and then shook his head. ‘Strange, isn’t it? We were created as warriors, to be apart from humanity. Where does sentimentality fit into that?’ He stopped, a pace away from Ahriman. ‘But then I realised that the light existed only in my memory. If I touched the ashes, and saw the storm-broken sky, the memory would vanish. Then what would remain of Prospero?’
Ahriman held Amon’s gaze.
‘The past cannot be changed, brother,’ said Ahriman softly. Amon looked away to the light at the edge of the room.
‘This is how it ends. You know that, don’t you?’
‘Brother, what you intend–’
‘What I intend?’ Amon shook his head. ‘You think that you see clearly.’ He gave a low laugh. ‘Your failings do not change, Ahriman. We are a dead Legion. What remains are just echoes, and the twitchings of corpses. Is that what you dreamed of? Is that why you led us to defy our father?’
Ahriman looked into Amon’s face.
‘I was wrong.’
‘You destroyed us, and your dream was flawed.’ Amon’s voice was measured, and Ahriman could barely hear the emotion running under the surface. ‘Perhaps you are right, perhaps there is no way to undo what the Rubric did, but that is not my intention, brother. I will not follow you into dreams. This is how we end, not how we are remade.’
Ahriman felt ice unfold in his guts and spread through him. He thought of the dead worlds he had seen waiting in the possible future.
They will become less than dust…
‘You cannot destroy the Legion,’ said Ahriman, hearing his own voice shake as he spoke.
‘But I will, brother. Perhaps you thought that I dreamed of restoration, or forgiveness at the hand of our father. Those are false hopes, and the path they lead us on is a path of lies. We are done. There is no going back, nor forgiveness for what we did, but there can be an end, and perhaps there will be peace in that. You have already destroyed us. I will redeem us in the only way that remains.’
‘The Rubric will preserve the Legion. Our brothers do not live but they cannot die.’ Above him the chains rattled as he spoke.
‘I will break the Rubric. I will turn it on itself.’ Amon nodded sadly. ‘You showed me that such grand change is possible, and if you can remake a Legion you can reduce it to less than dust.’
‘He will stop you,’ spat Ahriman.
‘Magnus?’ Amon laughed, and Ahriman’s gaze snapped back to his brother’s face. Amon was shaking his head in disbelief. ‘You have never in all these years thought that the Rubric came from his own work? Do you really believe that he did not know what we did? That part of him did not see the ruin he had brought us? Do you think that he does not long for an end?’
Ahriman felt as if Amon had struck him.
‘It will fail,’ he said, but he could feel the weakness in his own voice. Amon let out a long breath.
‘It will not,’ said Amon. ‘If I have to burn half of the Eye of Terror and raze the Planet of the Sorcerers to find the means, I will break your Rubric, and let our Legion die at last.’
‘Amon…’
‘I thought you might come to me in the end. I even goaded you to do it. If you survived my hunters I knew you would have to know why they had come for you.’ There was sorrow in his eyes, Ahriman realised, sorrow and pity. ‘Broken as you are, you are still Ahriman, master of the Corvidae, Chief Librarian of the Thousand Sons. Your pride is still strong enough to allow you to believe that you can somehow change what will happen, that your knowledge and insight is greater, that you can divert the course of fate. You say that you were wrong, that the Rubric was a mistake, but your arrogance still burns under the lies you tell yourself. You are unchanged, brother.’
‘Amon…’ Ahriman shook his head, even as his thoughts tumbled.
‘Why did you not use the Rubricae?’ asked Amon suddenly. ‘You could have tried to turn them against us when we came for you. Why didn’t you?’
Ahriman thought of the plain of dust, of Magnus pulling apart the walking statue that had been Artaxerxes. He remembered the ghost cries as the armour had come apart and then reknitted.
‘They are my brothers, not my slaves.’
‘They are the slaves you made them.’ Amon turned away and looked up to the gloom that hid the chamber’s ceiling. ‘You should have used them, that would have been honest at least, my friend. It would have shown that you understand what you are.’
The words seemed to prise off scabs that had formed in Ahriman’s mind. Amon was right. Ahriman had allowed himself to believe lies that had destroyed him once al
ready. He was nothing, a fading echo of failure.
‘Help me. Give me what you know of the Rubric,’ said Amon. ‘Give your brothers peace. You will see it end and then you may have your own peace.’
Fate, thought Ahriman. Fate come round at last.
‘Come.’ Ahriman felt Amon’s hand on his shoulder. ‘I forgive you. Help end what you began, brother. Give it to me.’
Ahriman thought of the towers of the Planet of the Sorcerers, of the hulking shapes walking out of the settling dust, of the dead light in their eyes. ‘I am sorry, my brothers,’ he had said.
Ahriman lifted his head. His eyes met Amon’s, sky-blue meeting night-black. He nodded once.
Amon opened his mouth, and words came out, long strings of syllables that seemed to resonate through the room. Ahriman felt the wards unpicking and the great ocean of the warp wash over him again. In his mind he thought he heard a laugh like the call of a murder of crows as his mind connected again to the great and secret power of the universe. Amon held his gaze. Ahriman felt his brother’s mind hovering all around him, waiting.
He closed his eyes, reached back, unlocking rooms that he had long kept sealed in the corridors of his mind. The Rubric spilled out, unfolding in precise detail: every ritual, every source, every modification and moment of insight. It formed in his mind, a focused crystal of memory. He held it for an instant.
He could resist. Amon had undone the wards, his power was his again, he could fight, he could… He opened his eyes. Amon was looking at him, his face impassive. Let our Legion die at last…
Ahriman touched his brother’s mind. It felt warm, like the voice of a friend long missed. The memories flowed between them; it lasted an instant, but inside Ahriman felt he lived those long days of folly again. Then Amon closed his eyes and nodded. He turned away, muttering words and formulae. The candles went out and Ahriman felt the cage of wards form around him again, shutting out the sound of the warp until the chamber was silent. Amon reached the door, and it opened. Bright light spilled into the chamber again. Amon paused at the door, and then looked back at Ahriman.
‘Thank you,’ said Amon, and left Ahriman to the dark.
XX
Every Weapon
The renegades came to his call, eventually. Silvanus looked around when he heard their steps shudder across the deck. They strode onto the bridge, spattered in blood and caked in ash. There were five of them: first the one called Astraeos, followed by the half-machine Kadin and the hunched one called Maroth, and behind them in turn two Space Marines with high-crested helms and scorched black armour. He could see a glimmer of green light from under the soot caking their eyepieces. The purr of power armour vibrated through his bones. They stopped on the edge of the clotting pool of blood and oil, looking up at the nest of cables and wires. Silvanus met Astraeos’s eyes, glowing in his blunt-snouted helm. He felt a tremble run under his skin.
‘She is alive,’ he said and heard the dryness in his own throat as he spoke. ‘At least I think she is…’ Carmenta had stopped moving some time before, but Silvanus had held her dangling hand and tried to talk to her as the green light of her eyes dimmed and flickered. He had not known what to say. He noticed that Astraeos was looking at Carmenta’s blistered fingers. Silvanus looked away, and met the slit green eyes of Kadin. The renegade was staring at Silvanus the way a feline predator might look at possible prey. The one called Maroth giggled. Something about hearing a Space Marine make such a noise made Silvanus want to run as fast as he could.
‘Get her down,’ said Astraeos, his voice grinding from the grille of his helm. Kadin stepped forwards, and Silvanus saw the flash of a blade. The nest of cables split with a crackle of sparks. Carmenta’s body fell, then jerked to a halt above the deck and was held at the end of the cables that connected to her body. She swayed for a second, hanging like a broken puppet. A second cut of Kadin’s blade tumbled her to the deck before Silvanus could catch her. He scrabbled forwards, and cradled her head in his hands. Her robes were soaked in blood and clinging to her half-machine body.
‘She needs help,’ he gasped. ‘She–’
‘Is a traitor,’ said Astraeos. Silvanus looked up at the Space Marines. All of them were looking at him. Silvanus looked down at Carmenta. He had met her a handful of times since he had been pressed to serve as the Titan Child’s Navigator. He did not like her, but she clung to life with shallower breaths, and nothing deserved to fade into darkness without someone fighting to save it.
‘How is she a traitor?’ he said, trying to hide the shake in his voice. Astraeos said nothing, and Silvanus felt the blood hammering in his muscles telling him to run. Then the Space Marine gave the smallest of nods.
‘There were enemies on this ship, and we found one of their gunships in the hangar bays.’ He pointed at Carmenta. ‘She betrayed us. There is no other way they could have got on board.’
‘She is still alive.’
Astraeos shifted his gaze to Carmenta.
‘Where is Ahriman?’
‘Ahriman,’ gasped Carmenta, and tried to move, her feet scrabbling on the blood-slick deck. Astraeos knelt and leant his face down so that it was only centimetres from Carmenta and Silvanus.
‘Where is he?’
‘Ahriman,’ said Carmenta again, and her head twisted, jerking out of Silvanus’s grip as she slid to the deck.
‘Tell me,’ said Astraeos, and there was something cold and relentless in his voice.
‘Amon.’ Carmenta brought the word up with a wet cough of dirty blood. ‘Amon.’
Kadin stepped forwards, the knife still glinting in his fist.
‘End this,’ he snarled. Silvanus tensed.
‘No,’ said Astraeos. Kadin froze. Astraeos removed his helm. The face beneath was no more comforting than the blunt lines of the helm: the right eye was silver crystal, the left shadowed beneath a scarred brow. Something in the cast of the lean features made Silvanus think of an old wolf, tired yet still dangerous. Expressions flickered across those features like the deep surge of ocean waves. Silvanus felt a tingle across his skin, and smelled the sudden static charge in the air. Carmenta had stopped moving; her breath was low but measured, her gaze locked on Astraeos.
‘Ahriman will judge her betrayal for himself,’ said Astraeos, and straightened.
‘She is dying,’ said Silvanus.
‘Not yet,’ said Astraeos.
Silvanus felt Carmenta shift in his grip. Her feet scrabbled on the decking, then she rolled until she was on her hands and knees. He could hear her breath clicking and sucking out of her mechanical lungs. Slowly she stood. It was painful to watch, and she nearly fell twice. The first time Silvanus tried to catch her, but she batted his arm away. Finally she stood upright, her robes hanging off her in red-soaked tatters. Her mechadendrites dangled lifeless down her back. Her head came up last, and Silvanus saw the light in her eyes harden.
‘The. Flesh. Is. Weak,’ she croaked. ‘But. I. Am. Not. Flesh.’ She paused and took a breath that sucked with a sound that belied her words. ‘I. Am. Titan. Child.’
Silvanus shivered. The words were the base monotone of a machine.
Astraeos turned to look at Kadin.
‘We need her,’ he said. ‘Judgement will come later.’
‘Need her for what?’ asked Kadin.
‘To take the Sycorax.’
Maroth spluttered and laughed. Silvanus just looked at the Space Marine with his mouth wide open. He had seen the fleet around Amon’s capital ship, and the size of that one warship alone was terrifying.
‘How?’ growled Kadin.
‘With every weapon we have,’ said Astraeos.
‘Cadar.’
The name slipped from Astraeos’s mouth before he could stop himself. The dark filled his eye and beat against his mind as he looked at the bound daemon. The creature hung at the centre of its web of chains. Frost textured its bare skin white, and its empty eyes had been staring at Astraeos from the moment he entered the chamber. He heard Maroth f
all to his knees behind him. The broken sorcerer was muttering and mewling like a mother over a cub. Kadin had refused to come into the chamber.
‘Brother.’ Astraeos paused and swallowed in a dry throat, wondering if somewhere Cadar could hear him. ‘Forgive me.’
‘Don’t do this,’ Kadin had said.
Astraeos felt his heartbeats still to almost nothing, and calmness spread through his mind, a mirror reflecting the power of the warp. Ahriman’s teaching had never sat well with him; it had not fitted his soul, like a weapon made for another’s hand.
Until now. His mind rose through levels of focus, the possibility contained in those tiers of stillness unfolding before him. The creature in front of him was like a fold of cold starlight forced into skin. He could see and feel the shape of the bindings that ringed it, that held it in place. His mind touched those bindings. The bound daemon shook and the chains shivered.
‘By the bindings upon you, I call you to my service.’ The daemon grinned its needle grin. Links of chain began to part. Maroth was screaming over the vox.
‘You do not know what this choice is.’ Kadin had stood in front of Astraeos, his reptile green eyes unblinking.
‘I must,’ he had said. Kadin had closed his eyes and shook his head.
‘For an oath?’
‘For an oath.’
Kadin had looked him in the eye and then turned away.
‘Remember that, brother.’
‘I bind you to me.’ The words rang through the warp. The daemon’s head twisted from side to side, but its empty eyes stayed fixed on Astraeos. A feeling of red hunger spilled into Astraeos’s thoughts. He could taste blood on his own bared teeth.
‘I bind your existence to my soul.’ The frost was melting from the daemon’s body, the drops becoming crimson as they fell.
