‘Silence,’ he growled, flicking a glance at Avenisi. When he looked back, the steps to his left had now become a set in front of him and another set to his right.
‘You are here to find the Crimson King,’ said Avenisi quickly. ‘What is your beginning?’
‘The beginning of–’
‘The reason, the thought that made you decide to do this, the thing you remember when you think of him?’
I have made a mistake, my son. The thought formed before he could consider it, and as it did so, his perspective seemed to shift so that the steps that had appeared on his left now were just shadows cast onto the mist, and the steps leading down now led upwards.
‘Come on,’ said Avenisi, and slid past him. ‘One step after another.’
Knekku looked at the feline shape of the daemon as it bounded up the steps, its paws never truly touching the stone. It paused and looked back at him, head cocked to one side, its rows of eyes blinking between a rainbow of colours.
He hesitated, and then began to climb.
XV
PYRE
Ahriman looked into the single blue eye of the daemon. He could think, but the thoughts had no feeling. What he was seeing was impossible. Simply impossible.
+Oh, it is possible,+ said the daemon. +I have been waiting for this moment, watching you, helping you towards it, steering your path until you could not help but be here. Until you could not turn back. Until you were ready for the only reward of betrayal.+
Ahriman tried to form words, to move his limbs, but found he could not even twitch his fingers. A whirl of light hung immobile around him. To either side of him his Rubricae stood unmoving, their glowing eyes seeing nothing.
+This is not really happening. That is why you can do nothing. I am not fighting you. I am not changing what you are doing in any way. This is simply a join between two moments, a gap in time that I have filled with this… visitation.+
The daemon shifted closer, its shape scattering through rain and smoke like a projected image.
+When the Wolves came, I would have let this world burn for our sins. We deserved to die here, all of us. But you… You dared to think yourself higher than me. You fought. You did not accept punishment. You defied me.+ It gestured with a glass claw at the city and the unfolding ritual. +And now you will pay with everything you have ever cared for.+
Ahriman could feel thoughts and reactions trying to shake free of the moment, but all he could see was the daemon, all he could think of were its words.
+I am your nemesis, Ahriman. I am the shadow that follows your deeds and steals the lustre of your glory. I am the bitterness that strangles hope. I am the father you forgot, and defied, and betrayed. And I am waiting for you just as I have waited and watched for all this time.+
The daemon pulled back, its spine creaking, and the shadows of its cowl grew and flowed out like a new skin. Its shape fell away from it like fat falling from a cooking corpse. It shrank to a body of scarred muscle. It hung in the air, silver chains hanging from it, its eyes black holes above a needle-filled mouth. It was the image of the daemon that Maroth had bound into the body of one of Astraeos’s brothers, the daemon which he had thought was a raw force of dumb hunger, the daemon that he had allowed to sit at the heart of his flagship for years.
+I have been with you for so long, watching you, guiding you, helping you. You never questioned why you let me persist amongst your kin. You never pushed beyond the holes I dug in your mind. So many holes, over such a long time… but now I want you to see. I want you to know that I speak not just truth. I speak of destiny, a destiny I have made for you. Out there along the path, I am waiting, and I will see you broken.+ It smiled its needle smile.
The daemon came closer, and Ahriman could see the frozen rain and the broken city through it.
+I would have let you go on in ignorance, but there are many faces to vengeance, and to know you will fail and watch it all come apart is a pleasure I cannot deny.+
The daemon turned, its shape rippling and reforming as it looked away. A new face and form looked at Ahriman in its place, like the other side of a coin revealed as it was flicked over.
Ahriman felt the beginnings of shock shake the frozen instant.
+You destroyed me. You destroyed my brothers. You made me like you, and then you abandoned me to fate.+ Ahriman felt something vast, and cold, and dark whirl around him. +You made me an oath that you would save my brothers. Now I repay its breaking with an oath to you. If there is a way to undo all that you intend to do, I will see it done,+ said Astraeos. At the edge of sight, the raindrops seemed to be sliding slowly down the sky. The lightning flashes were swelling with brightness. +And you know I can fulfil this oath. I am fate come round at last.+
The moment broke and the sound of the storm washed over him with a roar of returned fury, and shock and revelation hit Ahriman like a falling mountain.
The door ripped from the frame with a boom of shearing bolts. Credence gripped the sides of the frame and yanked the opening wider. Ignis felt blood running from his mouth. His sight was smeared red. The Athenaeum, or Sanakht, or something else was a glowing wash of light behind the silhouette of Ctesias. The sounds of the ritual rising from Prospero were gone. In their place was a resonating note, like struck glass, or a voice gathering air to scream. Ignis felt breath sawing from him.
His eyes went to the Athenaeum. If it had substance, he was not seeing it any more. The figure within the cage was a tongue of rainbow flame. He needed to get up. He needed…
‘I must be free,’ said the Athenaeum in a voice which was a chorus. ‘My sons. I will be free.’
Ctesias was a frozen statue, his eyes mirrors to the blaze of the figure inside the cages.
The Athenaeum reached up and touched the bars.
‘I will be free,’ it said, and the metal of its cage fell apart like a burnt cobweb.
Ignis knew that he was too late.
The Athenaeum was walking on air. Its eyes were holes of fire. A crown of flames circled its head. It extended a hand to Ctesias as though to bless him.
Credence rammed through the door behind him, tearing the frame from its fitting. The Athenaeum’s fingers were almost touching Ctesias’s face. Credence’s fist hit Ctesias. The Athenaeum roared in anger. Fire streamed from its mouth. Credence’s armour plates bubbled, and it twisted to place itself between the Athenaeum and Ctesias.
‘Ignis!’ shouted Ctesias. Ignis saw that the summoner was rising from the floor, hand outstretched, but he was reaching towards Ignis rather than the burning figure of the Athenaeum, and his eyes had cleared. Ctesias’s staff lay on the deck between them. Ignis interpreted and calculated the summoner’s intent and meaning, as Credence gave a clatter of warning. The Athenaeum lifted the automaton from the floor with a gesture. Ctesias raised his hand.
Ignis lunged, scooped up the staff, and threw it in a single movement. The cold iron rang as Ctesias caught it, whirled it upwards, and spoke three syllables that stole the heat from the air. Sigils cut into the walls flashed to blinding brightness. Ignis felt the bindings punch into his mind. The Athenaeum spasmed, its back curving impossibly as a jet of red flame breathed from its mouth. It twitched, and then the flames vanished and it fell to the deck.
Ctesias was breathing hard. Blood spotted his chin.
Ignis looked at him, his own mind still reeling. He opened his mouth to ask what had happened, but Ctesias spoke first.
‘What happened?’ he asked.
Ignis paused, blinked, and calculated.
‘It… had you under its…’
‘Spell…’ hissed Ctesias.
Ignis tried to decide if the summoner was joking. Ctesias tried to stand, but his legs did not seem able to respond.
‘The power flowing through it,’ continued Ctesias through heavy breaths, ‘the power must have corroded the bindings of the chamber and cages.’ He gestured at the glowing marks on the wall. ‘I am once again glad that I am thorough in considering the worst pos
sible outcome as the most likely to occur.’
Ignis blinked again. Had Ctesias not heard the Athenaeum speak? Had he not heard it call to them not as brothers, but as sons? Was he lying? Ignis paused, his mind trying to calculate a way of proceeding. What would Ahriman do?
He closed his mouth.
Ctesias was trying to stand again.
‘We need to take it,’ he was saying. ‘The Athenaeum cannot be destroyed, or rather I do not want to think what would happen if we tried. This chamber is useless now. It is subdued again, but the bindings on it will need tending. So it must remain with me. Curse my shrivelled flesh!’ He tried to stand and fell back again, panting.
Ignis was just about to move forward, when Credence stepped above Ctesias and hoisted him to his feet with a thump of pistons. Ctesias looked surprised and then laughed.
‘Take it.’ He gestured to the crumpled body of the Athenaeum. Credence pivoted towards it but did not move.
Ignis was still thinking. He had thought Ctesias had discovered that Sanakht had become the Athenaeum unwillingly, but now he was far from sure, and he was a very long way from knowing what he should do besides follow the pattern of events he and Ahriman had designed.
‘Do it,’ he said to Credence. The automaton scooped the Athenaeum up and held it across its arms.
‘Best we make for the launch decks,’ said Ctesias. ‘After all, the pyre is about to start, and then… we will need to be ready, will we not?’
Ctesias began to move. Ignis lingered. Something was still wrong with Ctesias, something in his sudden recovery and focus.
Credence clicked a query. Ignis nodded slowly, and they both followed Ctesias. After all, what choice was there? Ctesias was right: there was soon going to be no time to ponder mysteries.
My son…
Time crashed back into being. Ahriman gasped. Driving rain was lashing the city around him. He could feel the thoughts of his brothers, the ritual spinning in their skulls, on and on with growing momentum.
My son…
The daemon’s face and words shouted in his mind, cutting through his calm, breaking his focus and sending it flying into blank doubt.
My son…
It could not be. They had remade Magnus. All those millennia ago, they had made him complete. It could not be…
Unless…
My son…
A tendril of aetheric energy struck his mind. His awareness reeled. Around him colossal figures of mangled armour and broken crystal roared their anger. Kine shields broke the dark with stuttered flashes of white. The warp was everywhere; matter was a shadow in its ascendant light. He was falling while standing.
Astraeos’s face was looking at him from the dark, shining with hate, clear as the carved side of a coin.
I have been blind. I have not seen what I should. Ahriman thought of the red-robed figure in his dreams. He thought of Iobel, of the words she had once shouted at him from the highest tower of his memories.
‘You will fail. You are alone. Only enemies and betrayers remain to you now, Ahriman.’
Everything was slipping free of his control. All the power, all the careful lines of structure and significance stretching through matter and time, all the points of focus, all were breaking open. The incantation rose in the warp like a thunderhead painted in blood and blinding light. It reached the boundaries of its creation and broke against the chains of will holding it together. Ahriman could feel it pressing against reality, against his mind. Blood vessels popped in his nose, and his throat filled with the taste of iron. In his chest, the slivers of silver bit into his hearts as the full force of his will rushed out. His mind met the trailing elements of the ritual.
I will not fail.
He found the last pool of calm in his thoughts and poured his focus into it.
The world slowed to the beat of his hearts. The silver shards in his chest were sharp teeth biting into his awareness, but he rode over the sensation. He could see and feel the immediate future. He saw the ships breaking through the cordon in space. He saw the bombs falling through the air. He saw the flash and felt the blast wave rip the flesh and armour from his bones. He saw the thousands of his brothers he had gathered beside him blasted to grey ash to spin on the fire-wind. It would happen. The future was crowding forward, stealing the time he needed.
He formed a single thought, and cast it upwards past the clouds and into the void. He did not send it to one mind. He did not know who still remained to hear. The ships holding the Imperial fleet back were not with him, not truly. They had decided to stay for this moment, perhaps drawn to fight the battle they had lost together millennia ago, perhaps from loyalty that called them to stand with him. It did not matter why they were there, only that they were.
+More time,+ he called. +We need more time. For the Legion which made us, we need more time.+
The sending flew into the churning warp, rising like a burning arrow fired at a night sky. He reached out, feeling the rhythms of the ritual, hearing its infinite song. His mind was one with it again. On and on it went, beautiful and terrible, and incomplete.
Please, he thought, silently to himself. Hear me. Give me time.
+We will give you what time we can,+ said a thought which rose to fight the clamour of dead voices and thoughts. Ahriman knew the voice.
+Thank you, Khayon,+ he sent. +We will meet again.+
+That… that is certain,+ called Iskandar Khayon’s fading voice.
Ahriman looked at the sky, and felt the tides of time shift back a stride. He reached out to all the minds that were linked to him and spoke.
+It comes, my brothers.+
And the minds of the Exiles answered him in silent unison.
+We rise.+
‘Angels of Terra…’ whimpered Silvanus, ‘forgive and protect me.’
He tried to find the shutter controls again, but his hands were not working properly. Nothing was working properly. His fingers were nerveless strips of rag, and the heat of a fever smothered his skin. Part of him was amazed that he was still alive. His head felt like it was being stabbed from the inside. Everywhere he looked, all he could see was burning. A streaked lattice of explosions filled the space above the ship. The Word of Hermes was so close to Prospero now that the storms almost covered it. It was unshielded, that protection stolen by the power discharging from the storms churning around it, but clung to its position, thrusters fighting the forces pulling at it.
Above the Word of Hermes the battle flashed brighter than the stars and sun. The near void was a cauldron of sheeted light and bursts of plasma. The Imperial fleet was breaking through. Slab-muzzled grand cruisers led the vanguard. They drove through the net of defenders. The ships facing them began to break apart; some fired final shots and ran, their loyalty expended. Others held position, or cut across the front of the closing fleet, firing and taking wounds as though both were a victory. They were not moving as a whole; the unity of the initial defence had dissolved under the guns of the Imperial ships.
‘Come on. Come on. Please…’
His fingers slipped off the shutter controls again. He was breathing hard, the rolls of skin hanging from his torso quivering as he sobbed. The inside of his head was still bright with the visions coming from the planet beneath his feet. The warp was shining with tattered light. Serpents of fire were twisting over everything. A cloud of debris struck the crystal viewscreen in front of him, ringing like rain. He looked up.
A nearby ship nosed downwards as torpedoes struck its upper hull. Explosions blistered its back. Towers snapped along its spine. He could almost hear its hull scream as it bowed before the onslaught. Fire flashed within the exposed superstructure. The warp sparkled as thousands of souls burned with terror before they died. Prospero pulled them down into a howling embrace.
An Imperial ship punched through the battle’s fire. Molten threads of armour smeared its hammer-head prow. It came around, hard, its guns pounding down at the ships holding still in Prospero’s atmosphere. Silvanus
knew what it was. He had once steered one through the warp for three decades. It was a battle-barge of the Adeptus Astartes, and it was bearing down directly on the Word of Hermes.
At the centre of the inferno, the black-and-gold-hulled Incarnate came about and powered towards the battle-barge. Its shields split the explosions, hissing with light as they collapsed. Guns fired down its flanks, cutting through enemies. It bore down on the battle-barge, engines pushing it on like a thrown spear. Silvanus could see the spite radiating from the Incarnate in waves as it dived towards its prey.
Silvanus’s hands went still on the shutter controls. Small shards of debris were pinging from the crystal.
The battle-barge was close, its guns and open hatches dark eyes looking back at him. The Incarnate fired. Dorsal lasers drew a line of blinding colour between it and the battle-barge. The Imperial ship’s shields snapped to nothing. The Incarnate was closing, relentless, vengeful. But alone.
Another Imperial ship broke through the layer of fire. It was smaller, but still a mountain range of metal and weaponry. Golden lightning bolts the size of hab-blocks marked its prow. It was a strike cruiser, a lesser but no less deadly breed of Space Marine craft, and it shook gunships free as it cut towards the planet. A second battle-barge came close on its heels. The equal of the first, its hull was charcoal black from prow to stern. A great silver hawk’s head sat atop its bridge.
The Incarnate pivoted as the new arrivals bore down on it. Sheets of battery fire and streams of laser light punched towards the three Space Marine ships. Fire scattered from their void shields. The black and gold ship was at the centre of a closing claw of enemies. It gave a last furious broadside, slid over on its axis and shot away from Prospero towards clear space.
Silvanus heard a moan escape his lips.
What was Ahriman doing? Why had he not foreseen this disaster? What was he doing on the planet? Why had he done this?
The three Space Marine ships closed on Prospero. The guns of the ships in ultra-low orbit remained silent. If they fired they would send themselves tumbling down to the surface.
The Omnibus - John French Page 87
