V
INTERSECTION
Silvanus coughed. The dust was everywhere, sucking into his mouth with every breath. He pulled the black silk of his robe closer around him. The wind glided through the fabric, its cold fingers touching his flesh. A shiver took him and his whole body trembled. He really had no idea why he was here. In fact he had no idea why any of them were here, but it was his own presence that troubled him most. He spat and tasted the gritty chemical taste of the dead world mixed with the scent of smoke. It had been called Vohal, and the figure sitting on the cracked stones of the tower top was called Hemellion, and was apparently its ruler.
Had been its ruler, corrected a voice in the back of Silvanus’s thoughts. The world the man had ruled was gone, and its people were dead or would be soon enough. Hemellion looked exhausted, and old, and broken. Dust coated his balding head, matted his beard, and had turned the colour of his rich clothes to dull brown. Ahriman stood above the broken king. His armour was blue, but the diffused light blurred it to aquamarine. Horns curled from the brows and cheeks of his helm, and thin pennants of cloth and parchment snapped in the wind. To his left, Kadin stood, the pistons of his limbs creaking as they clogged with dust. The warrior was bareheaded, the glossy scar tissue of his face set into a frown. The rest of the Circle stood around Ahriman. Sanakht was just behind his master, gleaming in polished blue plate; he seemed stooped even though he stood tall, his jackal-crested helm tucked under his arm, his face a carving of focused calm. Ignis stood further away, flanked by a hulking automaton which clicked to itself.
Silvanus did not like being so close to all of them at once. Their presences crackled against each other like storm clouds; his teeth were itching and he could taste ozone. That was never a good sign.
Hemellion looked up at the Space Marines. Silvanus saw green eyes glitter in hollowed sockets. There was still strength there, more strength than Silvanus would have believed anyone in such a position could possess at such a moment.
‘Why?’ said Hemellion through cracked lips.
Ahriman reached up and removed his helm with a hiss of releasing pressure. His blue eyes settled on the human. Silvanus’s teeth trembled. Hemellion’s stare did not waver. There was hate there, Silvanus saw, a hate that could overcome even the fear of standing at the feet of a demigod who had just destroyed your world and everything that you cared for.
Out beyond the walls of the stone fortress, the dry plains extended away to meet a horizon lost somewhere behind the clouds of dust. Now and then the cries of a starving animal drifted up to Silvanus’s ears from the distance. At least Silvanus hoped it was an animal. The defoliant-agent had done its work quickly, killing all the plant life and reducing it to dust. When the winds allowed the dust to settle the entire planet would be dry and stripped of life, a desert with the broken remains of its civilisation sticking up from the desolation like dry bones.
‘This is how fate is shaped,’ said Ahriman. His voice was low, calm, the voice of rationality, the voice of reason. Hemellion spat. Silvanus watched the dust-clogged saliva drool thickly down Ahriman’s armour. Part of him, a part he did not often listen to now, felt envy of the man’s defiance. Kadin made a noise that might have been a chuckle. Ahriman nodded carefully.
Silvanus looked away. Out beyond the tower’s parapet the rest of the fortress fell away. Fires burned in its broken stones, fires which flickered with green and blue-edged tongues. They had needed to take the fortress by force. It had not taken long, not for the forces that now waited beyond the walls, hidden by the murk. The billowing dust parted as he gazed beyond the parapet. Rank upon rank of motionless Rubricae stood on the plains around the fortress, the dust turning the green glow of their eyes to haloes. Static discharge crackled across their blue and gold battleplate. The clouds shifted and the Rubricae became smudges in the ochre gloom.
Silvanus still wondered why it had been necessary, why they were even here on the surface, why he was there standing amongst Ahriman’s inner circle. The rest of the planet was to be allowed to die slowly, but the might of Ahriman’s fleet had descended on this primitive fortress like an executioner’s axe.
Ahriman moved away from Hemellion, his armour purring as he turned to Sanakht.
‘He comes with us,’ said Ahriman, and nodded at Hemellion. ‘He may hate us, but his mind is strong, and he will serve.’
‘Master?’ said Sanakht, his dry paper voice an echo of the wind.
‘He lives. He has earned that much.’
Sanakht must have nodded, or spoken in thoughts, because Silvanus heard no reply.
We kill a world for a king who will now be a slave, thought Silvanus. Is that what we did this for? He paused, suddenly aware that he had thought of the sorcerers and the fleet, and their chattels, not as they, not as traitors who were different from him, but as we, as something of which he was a part.
Ahriman turned to face Silvanus. The Navigator felt his hairless skin prickle. He did not look up at his master.
‘Ask your question, Silvanus,’ said Ahriman, his voice low and resonant. ‘They all wish to know as well, so ask.’
Silvanus swallowed in his dry throat.
‘Why am I here?’
‘So that you can be here, so that you can touch this place, breathe the air of its death. So you can find your way back.’
Silvanus shivered again.
‘My way back?’ he said and looked up at Ahriman. Clear blue eyes looked back at him without blinking.
‘Yes,’ said Ahriman. ‘We will leave here soon, but we will return. It may be many years, but we will return. You are our eye into the warp, so you must see clearly where I guide you.’ He looked away from Silvanus, his gaze passing over Ignis, Sanakht, and the other sorcerers. ‘Let this place touch your mind, hold its memory clear inside you so that you can stand here again by closing your eyes. We must all be ready to return.’
‘Return?’ Silvanus realised he had spoken a second too late. The gaze of every eye on the tower top turned to him. Even the bitter gaze of Hemellion was locked on him. ‘Return for what? Why are we here? Why have we stripped this world of life to then return?’
A hint of a smile formed and faded on Ahriman’s face. It was the most terrifying thing Silvanus had ever seen. The clouds of dust were shifting, the winds pulling the drab curtain back again. The Rubricae still stood there, but now all of them were staring up at the fortress.
‘In time this place will change. Others will find it, and their hands will remake the fortress we stand on. Then, in that future, one person will come here. Her name will be Iobel, and she will have something I need. This is what I have been seeking – a point of intersection in the threads of time, a point where I can be certain where she will be. We are not here for what this place is now – we are here for what it will be.’
Silvanus followed Ahriman’s gaze down to the plains at the foot of the fortress. Drifting dust was burying the Rubricae. Already their feet and shins were beneath the surface, as though swallowed by a rising tide. The light in their eyes was dimming.
‘Sleep, my brothers,’ said Ahriman softly. ‘Sleep in dust, and wait.’
Astraeos felt the Grey Knight’s fingers touch his skin, and a sun exploded in his soul. The tiered chamber vanished. He was blind to everything except the light that was burning inside him. Somewhere far away he screamed. He tried to close his mind off, to contain the star forming in his thoughts. For a second his will held, hardening over his mind. Then the light grew, and his will broke apart. The light was blue with soul fire; he felt his surface thoughts peeling away like charred skin. Memories surfaced, fragments of time spooling backwards through his mind’s eye.
‘…we are here for what it will be,’ said Ahriman on a dustblown tower.
The wind rattled against his armour.
‘This is how fate is made.’
Dust swirled around the waiting dead.
‘Why?’ asked a man through cracked lips.
He tightened his g
rip, and the Navigator’s face began to bulge and gasp for air.
‘Why does Ahriman keep Sanakht so close, and send you away?’
‘I watch over you,’ he had said.
‘Tell me, Astraeos, why are you here?’
Stillness filled him, sudden and complete. He sat with Ahriman on the floor of a high tower. He looked around. The floor was lapis, the roof bronze. Silver sigils spiralled across the floor. It was very quiet.
‘I am sorry, my friend,’ said Ahriman. He wore a pale blue robe and his head was bare. ‘There must be something to draw the inquisitors together, a cause to create the future. They will be seeking me, and only answers will make them gather to learn the truth. That gathering must happen. You understand why it must be you?’
‘I am not one of you.’
Ahriman’s face remained as still as stone.
‘They will try to take secrets from you, first by crude methods, but then they will try to take them from your mind.’ Ahriman paused, and drew a slow breath. ‘They might even have the strength to do it.’
Astraeos did not move. Part of him knew that he could not, that this was not real – it was a memory of something that had already happened, sealed off and buried within his mind.
‘You must keep a part of yourself separate from the rest, a part that they cannot reach unless your entire mind falls, a fortress hidden from the rest of your thoughts. I will be there, this memory will be there. Remember then what must happen. You will not have long, perhaps a fraction of a second.’
‘How can you be sure that Iobel will be there when this happens? How can you be sure that any of it will intersect as you predict?’
Ahriman gave a tired smile.
‘I can’t.’
The memory began to fade, the lines of the chamber blurring.
‘Remember you will have an instant,’ said Ahriman’s voice, its tones seeming to reach from a long way away. ‘Remember, Astraeos.’
Astraeos’s eye opened. Cendrion stood before him. Ice sheathed the Grey Knight’s arm from fingers to shoulder. Silver-blue fire crackled and flickered over the stretched fingers. The world was slow, separate, like the crash of water beyond glass. Cendrion’s hand began to close. Astraeos felt the power boring into him change.
You will have an instant…
His thought form leapt into the air. It had the shape of a tattered eagle with feathers of smoke and red flame. The warp broke into storm winds that shrieked past him. The eagle soared through the chamber, searching the souls of the figures gathered there. Some were moving, reaching for weapons. He could feel the shock flicker down the pathways in their minds. Slow, so slow. He saw Iobel’s mind haloed in an aura of confused red. He dived towards her, claws extending.
Iobel’s mind flared to white as it tried to form a defence. It was a strong mind, but it was not strong enough. His claws met aetheric flesh, and his mind ripped into hers.
Iobel. He tasted the name; it tasted like forged steel and fire. It was her, without doubt. The one they needed.
The crowd on the stone tiers rose, weapon breeches swallowing rounds, blades scraping free, shouts forming in a hundred throats. Cendrion’s sword was rising. Astraeos could feel the distant beats of his hearts.
Time, there was not enough time. Astraeos ripped free from Iobel’s mind. The Grey Knight’s thoughts blazed even as his body moved, so slow but faster than an eyeblink.
Cendrion’s mind form roared into the aether as he charged forwards. Lion-bodied and reptile-winged, it was the echo of myths from mankind’s past. Silver fire fell away from its scaled wings as its jaws opened wide. The two thought forms collided. Ice flashed into existence across the platform. Astraeos’s claws raked Cendrion’s flanks, scattering smoking blood into the warp. Aetheric teeth ripped into his mind. He could hear voices, a choir of voices singing deep within the Grey Knight’s soul. It was beautiful, and terrible, like rage turned to bitter grief. They tumbled together, falling through nothingness, jaws and claws raking at each other. Cendrion fastened his jaws around Astraeos’s mind and bit down.
The chamber and platform were a distant tableau moving with stopped-clock slowness. Only Cendrion’s sword was clear, a bright line in Astraeos’s sight as it cut towards a body he was only distantly aware of.
I am going to fail. I am not strong enough, not for this, not against a creature like this. They had not predicted that such a warrior would be here.
Astraeos felt his thought form tear under Cendrion’s aetheric jaws. He bit back, but his strength was failing. Cendrion’s thought form was all around him, jaws closing, claws hooked deep.
I cannot… he gasped to himself. I cannot fail. If I fail I end here, it all ends here. He thought of Thidias, dead in the cold void, of Cadar grinning with the hunger of a daemon, of the skies burning above his home world so long ago. The silver warriors had come from that sky, the inferno staining their armour black and crimson. All my dead brothers, he thought. All my murdered pasts end here. In the real world he felt the heat of Cendrion’s blade. It was a finger span from his neck, slicing in fast. This is it – the last stretched moment of a life of broken oaths and failed revenge.
+No.+ The word roared from his mind as he ripped his thought form free. Chunks of emotion and tattered thoughts tumbled in his wake. He could feel wounds open on his body as his mind bled into the warp. But he was free.
+Ahriman,+ his soul screamed.
He slammed back into his body. His kine shield snapped into existence just before the sword struck. Light sheeted through the chamber. Shouts cut the air. Astraeos split his will into pieces and called the warp. It answered.
The metal of the bindings around his body exploded in a shower of liquid metal. A wave of telekinetic power ripped out from him. Cendrion staggered, recovered and cut again. His silver armour glowed, sucking the invisible force into its core and dissipating it into the warp. His sword spun up and cut down. Astraeos ducked. The blade sliced into the empty casket in a shower of sparks. Someone was shouting for the null shields to be activated. Gunfire began to hiss through the air. Screams and babbling roared at the edges of Astraeos’s mind. He ran for the edge of the platform, blood sheeting down his skin from the stigmatic wounds in his flesh.
The Grey Knight moved just as fast. His hand came up, the barrels of his storm bolter wide open. Astraeos reached the edge of the platform and leapt. Rounds hammered after him. He hit the lowest stone tier and bounded up. A burst of shells turned the spot where he had landed to rock dust and spinning fragments. A figure in a red cloak swung a mace at him. He swerved, rammed his shoulder into the figure and heard bones crunch. Above and around him a hundred weapons and eyes turned towards him. His mind became fire. He roared. A sphere of white heat exploded outwards from him. Figures vanished, became ash, became heaps of cooking bone and fat, became shadows flash burned onto the grey stone. He leaped on, feeling his skin burn. He could hear voices talking to him in the flames. At the edge of sight figures were rising, half blind, weapons aiming.
Behind him Cendrion’s mind was expanding and reshaping. Astraeos could feel its heat and brilliance burn into the back of his skull. He leapt up another tier of stone. Hard rounds whipped around him. He was almost across the chamber, the ashes of the dead rising from his running feet. A round hit him in the shoulder. He staggered.
A human jumped down in front of him, layered plasteel armour ringing at the impact. The human raised a fork-headed spear. Astraeos rammed his will forwards and the human pitched into the air with a crack of shattering bone. He took another step. The chamber around him was a cauldron of movement and sound, people scrambling, drawing weapons, shouting. Somewhere beyond the sealed doors an alarm was screaming. Above him Iobel looked down from the higher tier. Blood was running from her eyes, nose and mouth. She raised a pistol, its fluted barrel fuming blue light.
The air went ice cold. The warp was suddenly calm, flat, like a frozen lake surface. On the platform Cendrion had paused, his head turning as though try
ing to hear a distant sound. Astraeos felt the blood thump once in his veins. Somewhere, far off yet just behind him, he heard the call of an unkindness of ravens.
VI
CIRCLE
Cradled in the iron of her machine, Carmenta looked towards Vohal’s star. Ahriman’s fleet surrounded her, clinging close around the bulk of the Sycorax like pilot fish around a leviathan. They had dropped from the warp far beyond the system’s edge, fired their engines once, and then cut power and become almost invisible. For four months they had drifted through the night in silence, wrapped in cold, sipping energy from their reactors. Now they were within the outer boundaries of the system, and she could see the planet of Vohal as a disc of dirty yellow hung against the black. It had been two years since she had helped kill it; at least two years as she had lived them. Ahriman said that longer would have passed for Vohal and the Imperium, much longer. The planet had changed in that time, desolation settling over it as though it had never lived. As she looked at it, she saw that other things had changed too.
Squadrons of Imperial warships lay scattered all the way to the system edge. Any ships wishing to reach the dead planet would have to pass through this corridor of guns. It would take the Sycorax and the rest of the fleet days to reach the planet, and every second of that would be a battle. But they did not need to reach the planet; they just needed to be closer.
The Omnibus - John French Page 48
