by John French
The fire washed over Amon, soaking into his body like water into sand. Ahriman raised his sword and paced forwards. He could feel the path of the blow, every feint, every intention. He cut down. Amon’s staff spun in the air, the serpentine sun at its tip scything towards his legs. Ahriman’s sword met the blow, and he felt the muscles tear in his shoulders. Half-clotted blood spat from the wound in his side, and silver-edged pain shot up his spine. He turned his wrists, let the staff slide past, and spun his sword to cut again.
Amon stepped back, spinning his staff. A razor of invisible force sliced from Amon’s mind, and opened a bloody line across Ahriman’s arms. Suddenly his hands were sticky with his own blood. More blood blossomed across the fabric of his robe. He whirled forwards, his movement, blade and mind folding together to one point. Staff and sword met in a blink of supernova-bright light. Ahriman stumbled, and his mind opened for a second.
Amon’s mind leapt from his body and battered into Ahriman’s mind before he could recover. It was a thundercloud of raw energy, lit from within by veins of red fire. Ahriman fell, his sword sliding from his grip. Amon’s mind tumbled through Ahriman’s consciousness, raking lines of fire in its wake. White heat ran along Ahriman’s nerves and filled his head. He was burning from inside, body and soul. Bright, cold pain stabbed in his chest. He tasted silver on his tongue and felt sharp edges slice towards his hearts. Had he risked too much? Would he fail even now?
Fire uncoiled from Amon’s limbs where he stood above Ahriman. The light in the hangar darkened. Amon grew taller, and taller, an outline in heat and black oblivion. He rose to his feet and then into the air. Ahriman could taste burning meat in his mouth. His tongue was blistering, his veins were clotting with red ice. He looked up at the burning outline of Amon.
+You will be as you have made us.+ Amon’s voice filled Ahriman’s mind. +Dust.+
His body shaking, Ahriman shook his head slowly.
+The Rubric.+ Ahriman’s voice was clear and cold. +You were right about the Rubric. It is a part of all Thousand Sons now. It is bound into our beings.+ Amon went still, and Ahriman saw that he finally understood. +The Rubric runs through us all, linking us, sustaining us.+ Amon tried to pull his mind back from Ahriman’s, but could not. +And its power is in my hand.+
The final words of the Rubric, old before mankind had dreamed, sprang from Ahriman’s lips. Amon heard them, and was screaming even as he burned brighter and brighter. Ahriman no longer saw the hangar, just a black void, and the ghost impression of Amon outlined in golden light. Glowing cords connected them together, binding them closer as Amon writhed.
+‘Amon,’+ said Ahriman with tongue and thought.
Amon’s shriek rose through the air, higher and higher.
+No. No, you cannot.+ Amon’s voice rang in Ahriman’s head. A gale was rising, spiralling into a cyclone around the glowing form of Amon.
White light flared around Amon. Ahriman felt his brother’s last breath as his flesh became dust, like a peal of thunder on a desert horizon.
Amon’s armour came apart, each component pulling away from the other, spilling grey dust into the turning wind.
The vortex enveloped Ahriman and lifted him from the ground. The separate pieces of Amon’s armour orbited Ahriman, aligning over his splayed body. Then, one plate at a time, they slid into place over Ahriman’s flesh. Finally Amon’s horned helm slipped over Ahriman’s skull. He saw the world bathed in data and overlaid with auras bleeding from the warp. He floated down to the floor.
Every eye was on him, both living and dead. The minds of the living sorcerers were teetering on the edge of indecision. The dead simply waited.
He felt his tongue move in his mouth, the settling beat of his hearts, the slight shifting of his muscles. He closed his eyes for a second.
Now it is done, he thought. Now there is only one way, and that way is forward.
Ahriman raised his hands. Flames leapt from the floor. Red lacquer peeled from the armour of every Rubricae and sorcerer. The tatters of paint spun in the flames. Polished silver armour plate reflected the fire for a long moment, shimmering like the surface of burning oil. Then the flames flickered blue, and the silver armour became polished sapphire. Ahriman looked across the ranks of blue armour. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he heard a raven call.
Slowly, he knelt and bowed his head.
‘I am sorry, my brothers.’ He looked up. The slits of his helm flared with cold light. ‘Now we begin again.’
Epilogue
The bridge of the Sycorax was quiet for all its vastness, a place of soft, mechanical clicks and the whispered commands of the Cyrabor machine-wrights. The seer crystal floated at the centre of the bridge’s nave, a sphere as wide as Ahriman was tall. It sang in Ahriman’s mind, like a glass bell struck by a silver hammer.
Images of battle clouded the crystal’s depths. Ahriman watched as a spear-hulled ship spun against the distant stars. Its engines fired in ragged blasts. Burning vapour seeped from fissures in its hull. It fired, ragged scatters of brightness spattering into the dead void, hitting nothing. A macro-warhead hit the dying ship. The view in the crystal blinked white as the warhead detonated. The ship tore into pieces, each one burning as it spun away into darkness like a torch tossed into a well.
Ahriman’s mind pulled the view back and vision within the sphere broadened. Las-fire latticed the blackness; the stars were lost amongst the detonations of torpedoes. He could trace the formations of ships moving together, cutting through the void to circle and kill their prey. The bright splash of a high-mass plasma explosion drew his eye for a second. Some would escape, there was no helping that. Fate would find them, he was sure.
Many of Amon’s assembled fleet had transferred their loyalty to Ahriman. Some had not. A handful of renegades and mongrel warbands had answered his call for fealty with cannon fire. Others had fled. Ahriman had sent one order: run them down.
Of such necessities are monsters made, he thought. But it was necessary; there would be blood and ruin before the end of the path they now walked. It was unfortunate: a waste, but one that they would recover from. Most of the warbands drawn to Amon’s flame had seen little issue with transferring their loyalty to another lord. Ahriman curled his lip.
Of the Thousand Sons only two groups had refused to bend their knees to him. Calitiedies, lord of an order of sorcerers from half a dozen Legions, had run before any other. The Second Circle had not fired but had not responded to Ahriman’s call and had taken two dozen of his brothers beyond his reach. He had let them go, ordering the hunters to different targets.
Ahriman turned away from the crystal, and the image within the sphere clouded. Carmenta sat in the command throne, her flesh and augmetics hidden by a thick robe of red velvet. Her head was bowed, the light of her eyes dim within the cave of her cowl. Cables ran from the deck to slither over the throne and vanish within the robes. The cables buzzed with a teeth-aching purr. She had been there ever since they had disconnected her from the machine tower in the hangar bay. Even that had nearly killed her. That did not worry him – it was to be expected.
‘Mistress,’ he said clearly, and stepped to the base of the command throne. Her head came up slowly. Green light ignited beneath the cowl, growing slowly brighter. A drone of machine code came from her hidden mouth. She paused. Ahriman heard something rasp in her throat, and then she shivered.
‘You wish to tell me that I will live,’ said Carmenta, her voice a halting monotone.
‘Which speaks, the Titan Child or Carmenta?’
‘Which answers, Horkos or Ahriman?’
He laughed, then wondered if it was supposed to have been a joke.
‘My intention was humorous,’ said Carmenta as if following his thoughts. ‘It was a poor effort.’
He nodded, then reached up to pull the horned helm from his head. He took a breath, noted the odd scent of cinnamon in the air that seemed to follow the Cyrabor everywhere.
‘The Titan Child will be destroyed
before we leave,’ he said carefully.
‘Before the fleet leaves,’ intoned Carmenta, the emphasis a sudden rise in volume. ‘What need do you have for one husk of a ship now?’
‘It is–’
‘A place of memory, and discarded pasts.’ Carmenta raised her machine eyes to Ahriman’s gaze. ‘Let it burn.’
‘You will be the Sycorax now,’ said Ahriman, looking across the bridge as if to indicate the bronze and silver instruments, the soft movements of the machine-wrights. A clicking pulse of machine code breathed from Carmenta, and then she shook her head slowly.
‘No. The Sycorax will be me.’ She coughed a stream of numbers. ‘A fitting punishment.’
A pause hung in the air.
‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why forgive my betrayal?’
Ahriman gave a tired and crooked smile.
‘We must all hope that betrayal can be forgiven,’ he said and turned away.
After he had gone, and his footsteps had faded, Carmenta nodded once to herself. Her head lowered, the light in her eyes dimmed, and she began to mutter the dream song of her machine.
‘It should be destroyed,’ said Kadin as they watched the silver doors shut on the bound daemon. The screaming faces of gargoyles carved in high relief covered the doors, their cheeks and eyes incised with runes. A cluster of blue-robed acolytes began to mutter, and the runes began to glow and crawl across the silver, sealing the daemon’s power within.
‘It can’t be,’ said Astraeos. He watched as the final ward burned with amber light. He wanted to turn away but he kept watching the door. He had watched as the daemon was bound and its cell sealed, and felt its presence shrink in his mind. The connection was still there, it would always be there. He understood that. ‘We are bound together, it and I. Entwined. And somewhere inside its shell Cadar might still linger.’
Kadin shook his head and turned away from the door. The sound of pistons and gears briefly broke the quiet of the narrow passage. Kadin’s armour was still blackened and gouged. He had refused to recolour it. Astraeos thought that it looked like the cracked surface of skin. His own armour was blue, and he held a high-crested helm in the crook of his arm. A snake of fire coiled on his shoulder.
‘Was it worth it?’ asked Kadin. Astraeos said nothing, but also turned away from the door. They began to walk, their strides out of rhythm, under the yellow flames of the glass oil lamps which hung from the passage’s ceiling.
At its end, they passed through a small door back into the rest of the ship. They moved through corridors and chambers filled with strange faces and stranger voices, carrying their silence with them until they came to a viewport set into the hull of the ship like a vast eye watching the stars. They stopped. Beyond the crystal the Eye of Terror looked back at them, its bruised glare unblinking.
‘What now?’ said Kadin after a long moment. Astraeos did not look away from the Eye. He thought of what Ahriman had told him, of what came next.
‘War, Kadin,’ said Astraeos and let out a long breath. ‘A war against fate.’
Maroth hurried through the corridors of the Sycorax. His armour hissed in time with his heavy muttering breaths. Sometimes he had to stop and feel his way by touch, or by sniffing through the muzzle of his helm. He passed scribes, initiate acolytes, warrior slaves and machine-wrights. Many looked at him but none challenged him or allowed their eyes to meet the sightless holes in his helm. The creature, for it could be no Space Marine, had Lord Ahriman’s mark upon it and its life belonged to Ahriman alone.
When he found the passage and door he sought, he gave a small whimper of pleasure. A passing cluster of yellow-swathed serfs hurried out of sight. Only when they were far beyond seeing or hearing did Maroth raise his hand to the door and mutter. It was a small door, deliberately unobtrusive, but if any had seen him undo the wards bound into it they would have done more than wonder. The orange light of oil lamps lit the narrow passage beyond.
With the door resealed behind him Maroth straightened and began to walk. His movements were silent. If there had been anyone to see in this utterly silent corridor they would have noticed that his shape seemed to bleed into the shadow, and that the flames grew and burned the green-blue of glacial ice as he passed.
At the silver door he stopped and made a sound like the hoot of a night bird. The gargoyles worked into the door snarled with silent anger, and runes in their eyes burned with blue light before settling to contented inactivity. He raised a hand and pushed the door open.
His master was waiting for him, bound in chains, the husk of its physical form as pale as white marble. It smiled at him. It always smiled. The door sealed behind Maroth. He looked up at a face that had once belonged to a mortal named Cadar. He would have laughed, but he rarely laughed truly. He did not really see the point.
‘Our endeavour succeeded,’ said his master, its voice like the crackling of ice across lightless water.
‘Yes,’ Maroth replied. ‘Yes it did, sire.’
Acknowledgements
A book is always more than the writer. Behind the words on the page are a host of people who, knowingly or unknowingly, nudge, cajole or just flat out push the story over the border between dream and reality. This book is no different:
To Liz, for making sure I reached the end and did not get lost on the way.
To Christian Dunn, because a book is always as much the editor as the writer.
To Graham McNeill, for providing mighty shoulders for me to stand on.
To Ead Brown, Colin Goodwin, Trevor Larkin, Andy Smillie, and Chris Wraight, for their encouragement and feedback.
To all of the others who helped in ways large and small.
Thank you.
About the author
John French is a writer and freelance games designer from Nottingham. His work for Black Library includes a number of short stories, the novellas Fateweaver and The Crimson Fist and the forthcoming novel Ahriman: Exile. He also works on the Warhammer 40,000 role playing games. When he is not thinking of ways that dark and corrupting beings can destroy reality and space, John enjoys making it so with his own Traitor Legions on the gaming table.
For Henry French
A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION
Published in 2012 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK
Cover illustration by Fares Maese
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