The Omnibus - John French

by Warhammer 40K

  ‘We are ready, is that it?’ said Silvanus, raising his voice above the clatter and clunk of the platform. Hemellion looked down, refolded the sleeves of his robes over his hands. The man was wearing gloves, Silvanus noted, rough black leather, worn at the palm. Why am I talking? wondered Silvanus. He does not want to talk, but I want him to so much that I am babbling like an idiot. He shook his head. You are an idiot, that is why, he said to himself. At the back of that thought, another voice wondered if it was because the man was the closest thing to a normal human being he had seen for a long time. ‘But why did Ahriman not come himself?’ he wondered out loud. ‘Or Sanakht?’

  Hemellion turned his head slightly, and looked at Silvanus. The expression on his face was the same as if he had been looking at a plate of spoiled meat. He looked away.

  The platform was moving faster now, the clatter of its cogged wheels and chains a single vibrating note. Cracked red lamps and dark openings flitted past. Silvanus thought he saw a cavern through one, a vast half-lit space filled with silent machines. He wondered if he had started the wrong way; he had seen Hemellion only once at a distance since the man had come on board.

  ‘You are Sanakht’s bondsman now, aren’t you?’ Silvanus called the question over the rattle of gears and rush of air. ‘Hemellion, yes?’

  ‘Slave.’ The word was so soft Silvanus almost did not realise Hemellion had spoken.

  ‘What?’

  Hemellion was looking into the tunnel in front of the platform. The wind ruffled the hood of his robe around his head.

  ‘I am a slave, as are you, as is every soul in this… prison.’

  Silvanus felt a lurch of elation, then a twinge of fear.

  ‘You should be careful of what you say.’

  ‘Why?’ Hemellion snorted. ‘They know.’

  ‘I–’

  ‘Witches, with sight to see through souls. That’s what they are. How can anything be hidden from them? They know what I think, and they don’t care. My thoughts are less than nothing to them.’

  Silvanus shook his head. He suddenly wished that he had not nudged the man into speaking.

  ‘Such words are dangerous.’

  Hemellion laughed, the sound loud enough to grate against the false wind. It was a nasty sound, cold and bitter.

  ‘Is that why you serve them so meekly? Because you are afraid of dying?’

  Silvanus’s skin prickled cold. He thought of the voices that scratched in his senses when the warp closed over the ship, the faces he saw in the twisting of its storms, faces he had known, faces he wished he could forget.

  ‘You don’t know what you are talking about.’

  ‘Oh no?’ Hemellion laughed again, throwing his head back, so that his hood fell away. He stopped laughing, and looked back down. His eyes were polished points of reflection in the stuttered light. Silvanus felt the instinct to run, but there was nowhere to go. Hemellion lunged for him, gripping layers of gauze and velvet. Silvanus flailed, but the veil and hood were ripped from his face. He fell trying to cover his head, braced for the blows he was sure would come.

  Hemellion stood above him, the crumpled mass of fabric hanging from his gloved hands, its edges snapping in the air. ‘Look at you,’ he said.

  Silvanus was suddenly aware of the folded skin of his face beneath his fingers, of the space where his nose and ears had been, of the red pupil which had formed when his left eye had become black from edge to edge.

  Hemellion let out a slow, controlled breath.

  ‘I see you… and the rest, and I know everything I need to know about what the rewards of this life will be.’ He let go of the fabric. It whipped away into the retreating distance. Silvanus felt himself rise and reach as though to catch it, but it was already a ghost vanishing out of sight. He slumped back to the floor.

  The platform was slowing, the flicker of lights steadying. They stopped before a doorway. It was larger than the one they had entered through, its frame thicker and unadorned, the metal of its surface darkened with a film of grease and dust. As the door opened, Hemellion stepped towards it.

  ‘Why live, then?’ Silvanus called, hearing the anger and hurt in his voice. ‘Why not put a knife through your throat, and be free?’

  Hemellion looked at him. Silvanus thought he saw puzzlement form on the man’s face, but then it was gone, as though wiped away. Hemellion turned and walked from the platform.

  Somewhere inside he is hiding something, thought Silvanus as he pulled himself to his feet and stepped towards the door. Hemellion stopped, turning his head, face puzzled.

  ‘What was that?’ he asked.

  ‘I didn’t say anything,’ said Silvanus. After a second Hemellion shrugged and walked on.

  +You called, mistress.+ Ahriman’s voice came to Carmenta out of the buzzing of the ship. Part of her found it reassuring to hear him. Part of her wondered why.

  ‘You are returned from your dreams,’ she said, and tried to make her voice sound strong even though she knew that he would sense the truth. She was talking through the ship’s mind interface units, thinking words which were transmitted into the systems of the ship. In a sense she was talking to the ship, or to herself, depending on how one chose to look at things. But she knew that Ahriman was there, his mind brushing the machine’s systems, so she was actually talking to him.

  +You realised I was back before I could announce myself.+

  ‘You are surprised?’ She paused and felt tiredness bleed through her. ‘I can feel the ship, every rivet, every straining link of power and force. I can feel every soul breathe the air I exhale. There is a fire a kilometre down in the lower bilge levels. A fuel-flooded chamber was opened by a bilge gang. They lit a torch. Ten are dead. One is still screaming. There is a crypto-shunt linked to the forward sensor arrays that sings a song of pain to me, and always will, because no one can reach it without cutting through three metres of armour. I see all this and feel more. So yes, I noticed you return.’

  +It hurts to see so much, doesn’t it?+

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and paused ‘I am going, Ahriman. I do not know if I will last another battle. The ship is taking more of me. It’s better now – when we are out of the warp. But when we cross back, when it wakes for battle… I did not understand why the Mechanicus called me a heretic all those years ago – now I know that they were right. One mind cannot harness a machine this powerful. There are other voices in here with me, all the time. They are getting stronger and I am getting weaker. Soon I will be gone, and they will remain.’

  +You are stronger than that, mistress. You always were.+

  She laughed, the thought sound ringing like breaking glass.

  ‘Liar. You always were.’

  +You cannot be certain what will happen.+

  ‘For you to say such a thing? I can. I can feel it, Ahriman. I am not like you – I don’t need to see the future to know its course. The Sycorax will take me, or…’ She paused, and Ahriman sensed a focusing of thoughts and will. ‘Everything ends, one way or another.’

  +I have never believed in futures I do not make.+

  ‘Of course not.’ There was laughter in her thoughts again. ‘You trust too much, and too little. You know almost everything but overlook what you do not understand. Your eyes see far but miss the cliff at your feet.’

  +Was that a rebuke?+

  ‘No,’ she said, and he felt the shrug without needing to see it. ‘No, it was a farewell. That is why I called you, while I could, while I am still able. We are about to pass beyond and then into the crucible of battle, and everything has an end.’

  She thought she felt an echo of uncertainty, as though Ahriman had formed a mental message only to leave it unsent, like a word lost in an open mouth.

  ‘Good luck, my friend,’ she said.

  ‘Are you ready, Navigator?’ asked Ahriman.

  Silvanus looked around and swallowed. Eyes looked at him from every part of the chamber. Some were human eyes, or at least eyes of things that looked like humans
, the dull ghost-light glow of the Rubricae’s eye-lenses, or the crystal glitter from within the Cyrabor’s masks. This was not what he had expected, but he should have realised that they were waiting to go somewhere, and wherever that was they would have to return to the warp. But even if he had been prepared he would not have expected this.

  The vaulted chamber had the signs that it might once have been a place of gathering. A single platform wound up the inside of its five walls. Corroded balconies hung from its tiered roof, and its floor was a gentle bowl of worn stone. Cyan and orange rust blooms bulged from the walls, and formed jagged stalactites amongst the slumping balconies. Figures crowded the chamber, standing at the sides, lining the winding platform from floor to ceiling. At a glance many seemed to be the white-robed thralls, but others were hunched and twisted creatures bound in chains and watched over by masked guards. A crystal sphere floated in the centre of the chamber. Silvanus recognised it as a duplicate of that on the Sycorax’s bridge. Other small globes hung in the air around it, like stilled planets in a vast orrery. Silvanus dropped his gaze as soon as he looked at the spheres. He had a sudden urge to close his eyes and never open them again.

  The air shimmered before his gaze, as though he was looking through a heat haze. A smell of rain, steel and charring wood filled his nose then vanished, then returned again. Beneath the black silk bandanna, Silvanus’s third eye was throbbing.

  Beneath the floating spheres Ahriman stood. Focus radiated from him. Silvanus had to fight a sense of dizziness when he looked at him. He breathed in. The air tasted sour in his mouth.

  Everything was about to get much, much worse. He was certain of it.

  ‘Silvanus?’ Ahriman spoke again.

  ‘Lord Ahriman.’ He nodded and made himself cross the floor. Behind him Hemellion had dropped away, vanishing to whatever insignificant shadow was his appointed place. Silvanus wished he could have gone with him.

  ‘Once again we have a course to steer,’ said Ahriman. Silvanus glanced up at the watching eyes, at the thrall psykers swaying in their robes, or rocking in their chains.

  ‘A simple one?’ he said, before he could bite the words off.

  Ahriman said nothing, but tilted his horned helm to the side. Silvanus could not tell if Ahriman was looking at him or at the chamber.

  ‘Are you ready?’

  Silvanus came to a halt three paces from Ahriman, and bowed his head. Above him the vast crystal sphere seemed to press down on him. He was sweating. His velvet and silk robes clung to his shivering limbs.

  I must do this. It is what they keep me for. I cannot refuse. Hemellion’s words floated through his mind, heavy with scorn. Is that why you serve them so meekly? Because you are afraid of dying?

  ‘I am ready,’ he said, and looked up.

  The red eyes of Ahriman’s helm were like slits cut into a furnace. Behind Ahriman the eyes of hundreds looked down at him. He frowned, then tried to hide it. Where is Astraeos? Where is Sanakht, and Ignis? Are they not needed for this?

  +No,+ said Ahriman inside Silvanus’s skull. +It is I alone who will help you, and weave the path for you to follow.+

  Silvanus’s eyes twitched to the figures crowding the chamber’s wall. What are they here for, then? he wondered, and wished he had not.

  He looked back to Ahriman and nodded.

  The world vanished. He was floating through clouds of light and patches of dark. Patterns were forming, spirals and lines stretching between absences in the light. It was beautiful, like watching creation flower. Silvanus had no idea what he was looking at or what it meant.

  Follow the path, Navigator, he thought, then realised that the thought was not his own, and that somewhere he was reaching up and unwinding the silk from his forehead. The chamber was there, outlined in front of his eye in the flaring candle flames of hundreds of minds. As one, every psyker in the chamber screamed as their minds fused, and became a pyre. The crystal orb was a sun. The smaller spheres were spinning, changing colour and size. Silvanus looked into the crystal sphere. The patterns inside his mind spun, reconfigured and became a rushing tangle of threads.

  Out beyond the sphere of Silvanus’s awareness, the Sycorax and its fleet breached the skin of reality and slid behind the stars. Beneath the sphere, his third eye burning white in his skull, Silvanus saw the path and its end.

  +Follow,+ he said in Ahriman’s voice, and across the fleet sorcerers heard and obeyed.

  PART THREE

  LABYRINTH OF

  A LOST KING

  XVI

  APOLLONIA

  ‘Help us, Silvanus. Please, my son, help us.’

  The voice was real. Silvanus could hear its rasping tones tingle in his ears.

  Ropes of green, gold, and red liquid streamed past him, shattered, reformed, changed, swirled and tore. Black voids opened and closed in the kaleidoscope, like winking eyes. Sound screamed in his ears, stuttering like a looped recording, billowing like a storm wind, shrieking like glass shattering over and over again. And all the while he was racing forwards, accelerating, spinning like a seed caught in a gale.

  This was not the warp Silvanus knew. Before it had always appeared to him as creases of white and black lines, like an ever redrawn and folded sketch on parchment. This was a different warp, one seen and given shape by another mind. And there were the voices, which called to him from the edge of his sight.

  ‘Please…’

  The worst of them was the voice of his father.

  ‘Help us…’

  His father, a decade dead by the time Silvanus went into the Eye.

  ‘Can you hear us, my son?’

  The old man had withered away in darkness on Terra. In life Silvanus had met the man who had sired him twenty-one times. They had said that, in the end, Yanved Yeshar had died scrabbling in his own vomit, his bloated body unable to rise, his heart no longer able to beat. Yet here was his voice as clear as though he sat just behind Silvanus’s shoulder. Silvanus did not look around. He would not look around.

  A sphere of gloss blue and silver stars imploded in front of him. Expanding droplets scattered outwards. Silvanus dived, stretching himself to slide between two spheres which had started to burn with white and black fire. Somewhere, he knew the Sycorax had moved with him, its shielded bulk cutting through the squall. His path was the ship’s, he was the Navigator.

  A giggle bubbled up from somewhere out of sight. It felt soft, velvet and milk made into sound.

  ‘So long watching, but never listening,’ purred a slow voice, both deep and sharp. ‘Do you not want to listen now?’ Stars of silver spun around him. He could taste sweat and smell morning dew.

  So soft, so warm, a voice to drown in and never wish for air.

  ‘Do you not want to touch? Yes?’

  He felt his gaze waver. The colours changed faster. The floating spheres broke. Dribbles and strings of rainbow colour became vast cubes, which stacked and combined and broke, tessellated and reformed.

  What is happening? The thought screamed in his mind, and he wondered if somewhere he was shouting the question from a mouth he could no longer feel. Even in the Eye it had never been like this, it had never been…

  ‘What do you wish?’ The voice was the clatter of counting wheels, and the scratching of quills. ‘It can be yours.’ The voice cackled, now buzzing like a hive of insects. ‘It can beeeeee–’

  ‘Please, my son.’ His father’s voice broke through, louder than before. Silvanus could feel the tears in the old man’s words. ‘We watch you, son. We watch you as you dream and wake. Please help us…’

  Then the other voices were all around him, growing louder, blurring into one.

  ‘Help… Can be… Touch, yes..? Watch… Watch… Watch…’

  The way ahead was suddenly a canopy of dark leaves lit by twilight. He could hear howls behind him, chuckling on a wind that made the branches and leaves thrash as he spun towards them. He could feel breath behind him, could smell rank meat caught in sharp teeth.


  He wanted to turn to look behind him.

  He would turn, he would look.

  His gaze began to turn. At the edge of sight he saw yellow eyes glitter through the wind-tossed leaves.

  +Follow my voice.+ The words gripped Silvanus and yanked his gaze around. +It is I, Navigator. I am here. I am here beside you.+

  Ahriman. Before him the leaves parted to show a gap leading into the dark beyond. Behind him the howls rose, and the voices screamed and pleaded and laughed.

  +Follow my voice.+ The words were clear, like the ringing of a bell on a still night.

  ‘If we can just come with you…’ said his father.

  +Only my voice.+

  The twilight jungle was falling past him now, faster and faster, the path twisting but never fading.

  ‘We could be free…’ said a voice.

  +They are phantoms, Navigator.+

  ‘We could all be free…’

  How long have I been in here? Am I still navigating the ship or am I gone? Cold terror rose in him. Am I just one more voice trapped in the storm?

  +My voice is all that is real.+

  ‘We could help you…’

  And then the canopy of leaves fell away beneath him, and emptiness was all around him.

  +Now,+ commanded the voice of Ahriman, and Silvanus closed his eye. The warp vanished and he was flying through blessed blackness, the fading screams of his dead father following him into the welcome silence.

  The Sigillite’s Oath trembled as it cut through the warp. Nightmare claws clattered and sparked against its shield, and black currents pulled at its course, but it cut on, straight and true. In its empty strategium Brother-Captain Cendrion watched the image of the moon turn in the cone of cold light. It looked pitiful, a discarded bauble on the edge of greater things. The true planet which it circled was many, many times its size. A vast bloated sphere of gas, its violet surface swirled with white clouds, it owned the right to be called a planet, yet it was its child moon that gave the system its name.