Ahriman: Exile

by John French

  ‘I wish you had been right,’ said Ahriman, after a long pause. Ahriman suddenly could not remember what his brother had said next. ‘I have reached the end. It would have been better if we had never begun… If I had never begun. It’s over now at last.’

  ‘No.’

  Ahriman’s head snapped around. Ohrmuzd was looking at him, wide blue eyes laughing as the rain ran down his face.

  ‘What did you say?’ The rain was swallowing the sound of his voice. A sheet of lightning turned the world white for an instant.

  ‘No, Ahzek.’ Ohrmuzd smiled, and then laughed into the storm. ‘It’s not over yet.’ Ahriman felt the ground tremble. He could not see through the rain. The thunder shook him.

  His head came up, and his eyes opened to the darkness as the cell shook again. Above him the chains holding him chimed as they rattled together. His heart was hammering. A metallic shriek was pushing into his ears. The floor and walls were glowing, the runes and marks etched into the stone blazing too bright to look at. The shackles around his ankles and feet were burning into his skin. The noise soared higher and higher. He could feel pressure inside and outside of his skull.

  The door exploded in a shower of molten metal. Ahriman felt the warp meet his mind like a flood tide. His head was spinning as he saw a figure stride through the glowing wound that had been the door. The figure wore red armour and his helm was that of a Thousand Son, and he held a sword in each hand: one a curved khopesh, the other a straight blade wound with golden serpents. Ahriman recognised him; the way the figure moved marked him as clearly as if he had shouted his name.

  +Ahriman,+ sent Astraeos as he paced forwards. Behind him the bound daemon floated, its form rippling with dark cords of unlight. The shapes of two Rubricae filled the door like stone sentinels. Their armour was soot-black. Ahriman felt a knot of ice bunch in his chest. Astraeos raised his sword, and cut down. Ahriman could see the arc of the blade, could feel the power in the cut, the total focus that burned along its edge. The chains above Ahriman’s head parted and he fell to the floor. He looked up as Astraeos removed his helm and looked down.

  Ahriman looked to the daemon hovering above. It had grown long needle blades of bone from its fingers. Blood dripped from the talon tips. The bound daemon was smiling its shark smile.

  ‘What have you done?’ breathed Ahriman. Astraeos sheathed his sword, a grim smile twisting his scarred face for an instant.

  ‘Fulfilled my oaths,’ he said.’

  They ran down corridors lined in silver and lapis, past banners covered in the languages of mankind’s long past. Lights pulsed on and off. They ran through blackness, then brightness. Ahriman’s bare feet rang on the deck as he ran, the chains still hanging from his wrists and ankles clattering in his wake. Blood trickled down his side from the lips of the ragged shell wound. Astraeos was moving in front of him, bolt pistol tracking every pulsing shadow. The daemon followed them, its presence crackling over the walls in arcs of black energy. He could hear it hissing in his thoughts. There were other presences in his mind; he could feel them probing towards them in the warp, running after them like hounds.

  My brothers, he thought. I am running again.

  Doors and hatches opened at their approach, and sealed again after they passed. Sometimes they would not open and Astraeos would mutter and start in a new direction.

  The Librarian’s thoughts were cold, aligned on their path but spread across a dozen mental processes that spun like interlocking devices . At another time Ahriman would have been proud. Now, his thoughts were numb.

  Why do I run? What am I running to preserve? A life lived on the margins, persisting without any purpose other than to draw the next breath?

  They ran into a wide-mouthed passage, its pipe-clad ceiling reaching far above their heads. A toothed door opened to greet them at the passage end. The air was thin, the pressure and oxygen levels low. His hearts surged to compensate, but he could feel his steps faltering. Sharp, jagged pains filled his chest and his breaths were wet with blood.

  Their hunters were close behind them, now; he could feel them converging on their position.

  +‘Ahriman.’+ The shout was both sound and psychic sending. He felt an armoured hand close on his arm. He turned and met Astraeos’s gaze. ‘Move,’ growled Astraeos, and pulled him, but he resisted.

  They are my brothers. Ahriman stopped in the middle of the passage. Astraeos turned to look back at him, and the bound daemon drifted to a halt. Ahriman looked down at the shackles around his wrists. Symbols spiralled across the loops of metal, half melted and distorted but still visible.

  I will not run. Not again.

  He turned to look behind him.

  I will stand against fate, even if it destroys me.

  Thirty paces behind them a section of the wall glowed from orange to white. It bulged, like a blister forming on charring skin, and then blew outwards in a spray of molten metal.

  A dozen Rubricae advanced out of the glowing breach. They marched forwards slowly, their red armour appearing black in the low light. Ahriman felt his heartbeat filling his chest. He blinked, seeing them for a second under a red sun, emerging from a dust cloud. The Rubricae levelled their boltguns, twelve black circles looking at him like the eyes of the dead, like…

  …a red sun with a serpentine corona. A raven circling, its wings a black silhouette against the fire.

  ‘Your fate, Ahriman,’ said a voice that was made of the roar of the sun and the call of carrion. ‘Your fate come around at last. Your fate. Your choice…’

  His mind felt disconnected from his body, as if he were looking at what was happening from far away, from the other side of a memory.

  …the sun was getting larger. Its boiling red surface filled his mind’s eye. He could feel the sun’s heat, the fury of its core. He could see a distant speck that was the silhouette of a raven…

  ‘It was always this choice…’ called the raven.

  The Rubricae began to fire.

  Astraeos grunted as a dome of energy expanded around him and Ahriman. The shield blistered with impacts, multi-coloured fire spraying across its surface. Astraeos juddered, as if each round which hit the shield was a blow to his body.

  The bound daemon drifted forwards, and black lightning leapt from its eyes and hit a Rubricae. A flash filled the passage, turning light to shadow, and dark to bright white. Three Rubricae lay on the floor, dust spilling from rents in their armour. For a second the Rubricae’s fire slackened.

  A low shriek filled the passage, like broken glass grating together, like a gale howling through burned cities. On the floor the dust began to drain back into the Rubricae. Slowly, they stood, worms of green light crawling over the holes in their armour. They stepped forwards and began to fire. The daemon hissed like a cat and jerked backwards.

  Astraeos turned his face to Ahriman.

  ‘Run,’ croaked Astraeos. He was weeping blood.

  …the red sun filled his soul. His mind was blind. He could only hear the raven. ‘There is nothing that cannot be changed. Nothing that cannot be overturned by knowledge and the will to wield it. You know this; you have always known this…’

  Ahriman looked up; his movements slow, so slow. Beyond the dome of Astraeos’s shield the Rubricae were moving, walking in with slow purpose. Astraeos collapsed, his limbs twitching. There was a burned sugar stench in the thin air. One of the Rubricae stepped forwards, its weapon rising in one hand, the muzzle of its bolter a mouth waiting to speak a last greeting. It was one pace away from him.

  …a plain of dust beneath black glass mountains, a red sun rising to colour the dawn with blood. His brothers’ eyes looking at him, waiting.

  ‘You failed them,’ called the raven. ‘Is that the salvation you were looking for?’

  ‘Magnus,’ called Ahriman as he felt the raven’s wings beat around him. ‘Father, is it you?’

  ‘No,’ laughed the raven.

  ‘What are you?’

  ‘You know my name,’ cal
led the raven.

  Ahriman’s eyes stared back at the muzzle of the gun. His mind was clear. Everything was moving to a slow pulse. This was not the trained calm of battle, it was not the serenity of meditation, it was something else: a fulcrum moment, a blade-edge of time. He could feel the Rubricae’s finger begin to tighten on the trigger.

  ‘No,’ said Ahriman.

  The Rubricae’s finger tightened. It shifted forwards as if leaning into a wind. The muzzle was a finger-width from his eye.

  +No.+ The command pulsed out of him, washing across the encircling ranks. The Rubricae’s finger froze. Ahriman turned his head to look at the other Rubricae. They were completely still. He spoke their names in his mind, and heard their dead voices answer him.

  Astraeos looked up at him, fatigue bleeding off him in waves. Ahriman bent down and pulled him to his feet. Astraeos glanced at the dozen Rubricae.

  +What is this?+

  +A beginning,+ sent Ahriman.

  Kadin waited, his bolter cradled in his crude metal hands. It was quiet, but he knew better than to find that a good sign. He shifted on the tower of machinery and felt ice crack and fall from his armour as he moved. The hangar bay was void-cold and as dark as a tomb.

  It will be our tomb, he thought. Amber target markers shifted as he glanced between the sealed entrances to the bay. Everything was a luminous cold green. Beside him Carmenta stirred. He looked down at where she lay. Cables snaked from beneath her robes to ducts in the tower top beneath their feet. She had been twitching every now and again ever since the hangar bay had gone dark. Silvanus squatted by her, his eyes closed behind the illuminated visor of his void suit. Every now and again the vox cut in for a second and Kadin could hear the man’s teeth chattering.

  ‘Be silent,’ he growled. The Navigator looked up at him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your teeth are making a noise.’

  ‘I am cold.’

  Kadin shrugged.

  ‘That is not my problem. Your noise is.’

  The Navigator looked like he was about to say something, then he nodded and clamped his teeth together. Five seconds later the man’s whole body started shaking. Kadin nodded and turned back to scanning the hangar deck.

  Light filled his eyes. A red glow was spreading across one of the sealed entrances like a blush spreading over a cheek. Kadin brought his bolter up. Target runes converged on the glowing red.

  ‘What is happening?’ asked Silvanus.

  Kadin said nothing. The door was glowing a poured-iron orange now.

  ‘What–’ began Silvanus. The door burst apart. Hot globules of metal spattered across the deck. Air rushed through the glowing breach into the vacuum of the hangar bay. It met the void’s cold and became a vast breath of white fog.

  Kadin started raking the opening with a dispersed pattern of fire. Shapes moved forwards through the explosions, heavy armoured shapes that moved with slow purpose. A red targeting rune spun above one of the shapes, and he put a trio of rounds into it. It reeled, then fell. His eyes flicked to the next and he fired again. Five had come through the breach and he could see more behind them. He could hold them at the breach for two minutes, he reckoned, then another three for them to cross the deck to the tower.

  Then Kadin saw the first figure he had put down rise from the floor. More came through the cooling breach. He could see red armour glistening like fresh blood. At that moment a second of the sealed entrances burst open.

  ‘What’s happening?’ screamed Silvanus.

  ‘We are getting ready to die,’ replied Kadin, as he fired another burst.

  Ahriman’s unarmoured skin bleached white in the cold as he strode onto the hangar deck. He could see gunfire spitting across the hangar from a tower of machinery. Astraeos followed on his left, his swords drawn and lit with cold fire. To his right Rubricae and sorcerers were spilling into the space from a hole melted through a blast door. Behind Ahriman his own Rubricae followed him in lockstep.

  Lines of fire crossed the darkness towards them, burning in a rainbow of colours. The bound daemon drifted above them, surrounded by a halo of sheet lightning. Bolts of darkness fell from it as it ascended. Fire rose to meet it, tearing through its lightning aura. It began to shriek, twisting like a broken-winged bird. Ahriman kept walking towards the centre of the hangar bay. Fire flicked towards him and he deflected it with a twitch of his thoughts. Power flowed through him and radiated outwards in a halo of blue flame. It was so simple, like being half blind and now able to see again.

  Ahriman could see Kadin now, standing on the gantry at the top of the machine tower, fire spitting from the barrel of his bolter. Carmenta lay on the floor behind Kadin. Cables crawled over her from where they spilled from access panels and data ducts. Silvanus crouched beside her; he had his eyes screwed shut.

  Ahriman stopped. He was at the centre of the hangar bay now, at the base of the tower from which Kadin was still firing. Ahriman’s dozen Rubricae formed a circle around him, facing outwards. A thought from Ahriman and they stopped firing. A metre beyond their circle explosions danced across an invisible barrier. Astraeos looked at Ahriman with a flicker of concern. The hangar was full of Amon’s forces, hundreds of Rubricae encircling them in an unbroken wall.

  +This will work?+

  Ahriman smiled.

  He looked at the army of Rubricae gathered in the hangar. He spoke their names, rolling them through the warp like the notes of a song. Other minds rose to oppose him, but he poured his will into the song of names. The warp felt like a river of fire as it flowed through him. The Rubricae stopped firing.

  Astraeos looked at Ahriman as if he had never really seen him before.

  +It’s not over yet,+ sent Ahriman. He could feel the sorcerers who stood at the back of the ranks of Rubricae recoiling in shock at what had just happened. There were thirty-six of them. A good number and all were powerful, but not powerful enough.

  The air became heavy, laden with static and the scent of ozone. He felt the wills of the thirty-six sorcerers push into the warp. Huge pieces of wrecked machinery rose into the air as if pulled on invisible chains. Ahriman nodded to himself as if impressed.

  The pieces of wreckage hurtled towards him. His mind reached out and plunged into each piece of twisted metal. He felt their weight, their dimensions, and the spinning of their atoms. He formed a thought, and it caught in the warp like a spark set to kindling. The wreckage dissolved as it flew, falling to the deck as a rain of fine metallic sand.

  +Enough.+ The thought rang through the warp. Silence fell. A new presence had entered the vast chamber; it burned like a newborn star, shining with fury. +Ahriman.+ Amon’s thought voice rippled through the warp.

  Ahriman turned to look to where the thought voice had come from. The thousand luminous eyes of the Rubricae turned with him. They parted, forming a corridor to a high door at the far side of the hangar bay.

  +They are not slaves, you said,+ laughed Amon’s thought voice. +I thought your beliefs were stronger than this. A shame, they held a type of honour if nothing else.+

  Amon walked forwards. The tip of his staff clicked on the soot-covered floor in time with every step.

  +I cannot let you destroy our Legion,+ sent Ahriman, his voice rolling through every living mind in the chamber and far beyond. Throughout the Sycorax and the fleet of ships gathered in the void, they heard him. +You have fallen, Amon. You have allowed despair to blind you to hope. I understand this, I know why, but it is a path of lies. There is another way.+

  Above Ahriman the bound daemon shrieked, its scream spilling through the air as it descended like a comet. Amon raised his staff. Then there was a blur of white light, a sound like glass shattering, and the daemon was falling, smoke and frozen blood vapour trailing behind it. Beside Ahriman Astraeos fell as if struck by an axe. A wash of blood vomited from his mouth and Ahriman heard bones crack.

  Amon looked down, continued walking between the ranks of Rubricae. The silk of his robe rippled with each slow
stride.

  Ahriman turned at a low growl of pain. Astraeos was trying to rise from the deck. Blood had pooled in his eye sockets, and his hands and legs were scrabbling for purchase. Ahriman reached down and placed a bare hand on Astraeos’s shoulder.

  ‘Be still, my friend,’ he said quietly. ‘Be still. You have paid your oaths. I need no more of you now.’ He glanced to where Kadin crouched behind a bank of machinery, the still form of Carmenta at his feet. He looked back to Amon advancing towards him. ‘But I do need your sword,’ he said, and took the blade from Astraeos’s hand as he stood. The sword was unfamiliar in his hand, its serpent-etched blade a dull weight. He pulsed his mind into its crystal core. The golden serpents began to burn and writhe along the blade.

  Amon had stopped nine paces away. A nimbus of light played around the curved horns of Amon’s helm and the top of his staff. Ahriman felt the pressure building behind his eyes at the magnitude of power held in check within Amon.

  +You are unarmoured,+ sent Amon.

  +A minor impediment,+ replied Ahriman. The wound in his side was bleeding freely now, and he could feel the silver shards shift with every beat of his hearts.

  +I would have given you a good death, not the end you deserved, but a last gift from a friend.+ Ahriman felt the sorrowful smile bound into the thought.

  +It has to be like this,+ sent Ahriman, and raised Astraeos’s sword. The chains hanging from his wrists clinked. +It has to be. All power is ritual. And this is ritual, Amon. Fate decided by the sword at the centre of the circle, beneath the eyes of all.+

  +Always teaching,+ laughed Amon, a real laugh that cracked the still air.

  Ahriman levelled the sword with both hands. He flexed his fingers against the hide-bound grip. His mind was clear, no ritual patterns of thought, no architecture of power held on a trigger in his soul. Just the moment of waiting, extending in slow heartbeats.

  White fire shot from Amon’s eyes. Ahriman met it with a wall of force. The fire sprayed out in mid-air. Ahriman felt the fire surge against his mind, released the shield, swallowed the flame into his soul, and spat it back out.