Control.
No, not nothing. He was the son of Magnus, and servant of the Crimson King. He was loyal to the last. He was the protector of this domain.
Control.
He turned from the creature looming above him. He did not know why it was there. It did not matter why.
Control.
Ahriman was there, a statue chained to a tree of lightning.
Knekku leapt, spear tip turning to the sky.
‘For you, my father,’ he said in silence. ‘For you, my king.’
The lightning of the Rubric touched Knekku’s spear tip at the instant that his momentum crashed him into Ahriman. Arcs of white light leapt up the haft of the spear. And Ahriman was falling, and Knekku was at the heart of the Rubric, and the incantation was clawing through him as it earthed into his soul.
Ahriman fell.
And fell.
And fell.
The world became small suddenly, as though time had been crumpled into a ball.
No, he cried, but he had no voice. There was just the receding sound of thousands of voices growing fainter, and a well of darkness extending below him.
No.
No.
Above him he saw a light flare.
The ocean of names and power engulfed Knekku. The Rubric had found its fulcrum, had found its price, and it was him. He felt the power, felt the fire of gods as blood in his hands, and time as the last breath in his mouth.
Control is everything.
‘What do you wish?’ a voice seemed to say, and he thought he saw the universe laid out before him like the land seen from a high tower of an impossible fortress. He saw what Ahriman could have done, saw what could have been and what could be again. He was the sacrifice to bring renewal. He had taken that place from Ahriman, and so, now, the Rubric was his. It was for him to choose how it would end.
‘No,’ said a voice, and he thought he saw Ahriman falling away beneath him, reaching up, despair on his face.
‘It has to end, Ahriman,’ Knekku called. ‘This is a circle that must be broken.’
‘No!’ called Ahriman, as the dark grew and he became smaller. ‘Please. This is the fate of our Legion. It is not yours to choose.’
‘No, it is not.’ He paused, feeling the last speck of his will fade as he died. ‘Nor is it yours.’
XXIV
REFORGED
The Rubric ended in a thunderclap. The shockwave spilled across reality and through the warp beyond. Armies fell to the ground. Daemons were blasted into shadows, and then the shadows crumpled to nothing. War engines fell from the sky in flocks. Dust and debris ripped from the ground, shards of metal and rock falling without sound. Doombreed was the last to tumble back into un-being, howling with unspent rage, its harvest of skulls clattering against its armour.
After the shockwave came the silence, settling like a smothering blanket on the devastation. On the surface of the Planet of the Sorcerers, a rolling wave of dust and smoke swallowed sounds and shapes. The summits of the rearing towers projected from the cloud like the masts of drowned sailing ships. The armies of mortals and machines lay in heaps, the dead indistinguishable from the insensible. Amongst the leaning trunks of towers, a wounded Titan rocked in the cascade of rubble that had engulfed it. The daemon that had lived within the god-machine had been blasted from its metal host, and the machine’s last, corrupted systems could only twitch its limbs and call out in broken static. Ghost forms drifted through the void. The ships and flying towers lay like stunned fish, rolling slowly over in an invisible surge.
Within the tainted reality of the Eye of Terror, the wave was visible as a shimmering curtain of pulsing light. Daemons trapped within its current howled and fought to break free only to be dragged down and dissolved into froth. Far beyond the Eye, dreamers on distant worlds woke from nightmares of falling towers. In the halls of Terra, the Apex Astropath of the Silent Mountain blinked back blood-tinted tears. On far Macragge, the hand of the Chief Librarian of the Ultramarines trembled suddenly as it drew a card from the Emperor’s Tarot.
And while the wave of paradox rolled on, down amongst the dust and ruins at its epicentre, the first figures began to rise.
Dust filled Ctesias’s world, edge to edge, up to down, hiding ground and sky. He rolled through the air. He felt things strike him, registered pain, but it was distant, something happening to a version of him just next door to the him that was having the thought. Silence flowed over him. The body of the Athenaeum spun away from him, limbs slack, eyes dark.
And Ctesias realised that he had stopped talking. The name of the Crimson King was complete. He had spoken it. He had summoned him.
Where… he began to think.
A looming shadow rose through the murk, swallowing the light, pressing up to the sky.
Sar’iq picked himself up off the ground. His wings were ragged and bleeding. Dust filled his throat as he breathed. Shapes moved on the far side of the swirling veil. His sword was a dead weight in his hand, his skin slimy with sweat. He had been fighting two enemies when the Rubric had blasted him to the ground. He could not see those he had been fighting, and he did not have the strength to search for them with his mind.
For a second he wondered where Knekku was, and where the armies that had been flooding across the plain behind them had gone.
Then he heard the roar. It was a roar of return, and triumph and rebirth. He stepped backwards. A black shadow was hurtling through the dust cloud, pushing it aside, rolling coils of static across the ground before it. He saw figures lying on the ground, some rising, some still and unmoving. Enemies or allies, he could not tell. He raised his sword.
The shadow was on him before he could move. The dust cloud parted as a figure of light and molten muscle strode into sight. Great horns curled from his chest, and a single eye shone from the centre of a head crowned by leaves of blue and white flame.
The figure paused. Sar’iq fell back to his knees. The eye of the Crimson King burned as it looked upon him.
+Rise, my warrior,+ and Sar’iq felt strength flow into his mind and limbs as he stood.
+Sire…+ he began, but the Crimson King was already moving past him, blurring like a tornado.
The dust slid across Ahriman’s sight as his eyes opened. The world was floating past above him. Silence rang in his ears. A breath passed through his lips. It tasted of metal, of spun sugar and bitter wine. His mind was a mirror of the dust haze above. Thoughts began to form.
The Rubric…
He remembered…
Another breath. He was alive…
He was alive.
His hand moved to his chest without him thinking and flinched away, fingers shaking. His hearts were beating, no sharp silver slicing deeper with each beat. He was whole. He was alive.
I have failed. The thought blinked through him. The feeling of life drained down to the pit of his mind. He closed his eyes. He felt numb. I have failed.
The sound of grinding armour pulled his eyes open. A figure loomed in the churning dust.
‘Ahriman,’ said the figure.
‘Ignis?’ he replied, squinting up. Static edged his helmet’s display.
The face of Ignis looked down at him. Tattooed lines flickered over his impassive features. He tilted his head, and extended a hand down to Ahriman.
‘Take my hand, Ahriman.’
Get up. Astraeos tried to obey but his body defied him. He could not see. The warp was a blank abyss, like a sea flattened to utter calm in an instant.
Get up, you fool! the daemon hissed.
Is that you? he asked, and tried to understand how to move his limbs. What is happening?
Move, if you want to live more than a second!
What is happening? Who am I? What am I?
You will be nothing if you do not obey! It is coming.
He found his legs in the blur of sensations and twisted to stand. He could feel something move over his skin. Armour?
His fingers felt wrong, too long,
too sharp.
Something was in his head, something coiling and black. What was it? Why was it there? Who was he?
He shook his head. He could see something in the distance: a light growing brighter and brighter.
Move! He felt his leg jerk as though yanked by a cable.
The light burst from the haze. Flames reached up as a figure of flowing muscle grew into being above him. There were other shapes in the distance behind the giant, but they were indistinct. He felt that he should run, should fight, but was not sure how. He could not remember why he was there. Something was moving at the back of his mind, burrowing deep, hissing.
+Come,+ said the Crimson King, and the voice was inside Astraeos and all around him. +You have lost. Do not cower behind the mortal’s skin.+
+Usurper!+ The word ripped from Astraeos’s mind before he realised what was happening. The wings on his back snapped out and yanked him into the air. He could feel pressure flowing through him from the warp. His bones were extending, talons growing to scythes, jaw distending as his mouth filled with glass fangs. And he was doing nothing, just feeling, as something within him threw his body at the Crimson King. Cold light lashed from Astraeos’s eyes. The Crimson King did not move as the light stabbed at his torso. Copper skin split, and golden blood spattered out.
+You are weak,+ said the Crimson King. +I always was weakest when driven by vengeance. You have nothing left, you have expended your strength, and that of your host. Your only hope is to yield, and become part of us again.+
Astraeos watched from within as he snarled and dived, claws flickering between ice and fire as they reached for the blue eye in the Crimson King’s face.
+And even if you do not yield,+ said the Crimson King, and raised a hand. The movement was slow, but so fast that Astraeos felt the strike before he saw it. The Crimson King punched through Astraeos’s armour and soul, and clamped his fist shut. +You are me, and I will not be defied.+
Time skipped a beat. Astraeos felt something writhe within him, felt its barbs dig deeper. Then the instant was gone, and the Crimson King ripped the daemon from him. Pain and anguish flashed through Astraeos, and he dropped, wings broken, blood running from eyes and ears and mouth.
The Crimson King brought his hand up to his lone eye. Something that looked like the shadow cast by a mass of thorns thrashed in his grasp. A burning mouth opened wide beneath the Crimson King’s eye. It closed on the essence of the daemon which had shared Astraeos’s soul. An eyelid closed over the burning eye. The Crimson King seemed to grow, stretching, its shadow swelling. The billowing dust flexed in the air as though the world breathed in. The eye opened. The red giant looked down at Astraeos.
He waited.
+You have my pity,+ said the Crimson King. Then he folded into the dust and was gone.
Astraeos lay on the ground, distorted limbs tangled, waiting for a death which did not come. Memory returned, all of it, one piece at a time.
He hunched over, head in his hands. His helmet was dissolving, and the blood running from his eyes fell between his fingers and onto the dust he knelt on.
The Changeling reached its hand towards Ahriman. The sorcerer was looking up at it.
‘Take my hand,’ it said, again, with Ignis’s voice.
Take it and everything ends for you now, intoned the Changeling to itself. Take it and claim your reward. Claim the peace of oblivion.
Ahriman did not move.
You have to take this gift without knowing, said the Changeling to itself. Just as you serve in ignorance, so your reward must be taken in ignorance. You have done enough, and our master is pleased. This is your reward. Take it.
‘How are you here, Ignis?’ asked Ahriman.
‘By a long path,’ replied the Changeling. Ahriman held still and then reached up to take the offered hand.
‘Where are the others?’
‘Does it matter?’
Ahriman’s fingers pulled back a fraction, his hand hesitating an inch from the Changeling’s grasp.
‘The Rubric…’ Ahriman began.
‘Is done.’
‘It failed,’ said Ahriman. ‘I failed.’ The Changeling heard the catch in the words, not just despair, but… almost a question. ‘Have I failed, Ignis? Where are the Rubricae? Do they survive? Are they… altered?’
The question seemed to catch on the wind.
And the Changeling felt a voice speak, a voice so vast that it was the sound of the falling dust, and the distant cries of the dying, and the crackle of fire on the other side of the void.
‘Leave him, my child,’ it said. ‘He still has dances to dance for me. Peace will not be his. Not yet.’
The Changeling dropped his hand, and stepped back. It felt hollow. It would take these memories from Ahriman’s life. He would never remember that this brief meeting had occurred. It supposed that it was a gift of a kind; just not the one it had come here originally to give.
Ahriman was staring at the Changeling.
For an instant the Changeling let its first face – its one true face – look back at Ahriman.
A single gasp of shock.
Then the dust pulled a veil between them, and the Changeling, and all memory that it had been there, was gone.
XXV
FAILURE
‘Take my hand,’ said a voice.
Ahriman looked up, blinking at the blur of static inside his helm. The dust was gusting around him. He was on his knees, his tattered robes fluttering around his armour. The Black Staff lay, half buried, by his side, cold and sullen. He blinked, but aching fog filled his skull and clouded his eyes.
‘Do you want to stay down there and die?’ said the voice, and this time Ahriman’s eyes found the speaker. Ctesias stood above him. The summoner was leaning on his own staff, one arm twisted unnaturally at his side. The robes and parchment strips had burned from his armour, and it was a ruin of gouged plating and exposed wires. His head was bare and he looked more like a walking cadaver than ever. ‘If you do, then you are going about the right way to make it happen.’
‘I failed,’ said Ahriman. The words were the only ones his mouth could find to say.
Ctesias’s skin tightened over his skull.
‘Not the first time, but if you do not want it to be the last then we have to move now.’
Ahriman found a smile forming behind the mask of his helm.
He looked at Ctesias’s offered hand. The fingers were shaking with fatigue. He hesitated.
You have failed! screamed a voice in his skull.
He grasped the proffered hand.
‘Have I done enough to inspire loyalty in your mercenary soul, Ctesias?’
‘You were better when you were half dead,’ hissed Ctesias, and pulled Ahriman to his feet with a snarl of effort. They stood for an instant, and then Ahriman took an unsteady step. ‘You may want that,’ said Ctesias, and nodded to the Black Staff slowly sinking under accumulating dust. Ahriman looked at it, and then picked it up. Dust fell from its crest of horns.
‘Where…’ he began to ask. Ctesias was already moving away.
‘Anywhere that is not here.’
‘The Athenaeum…?’
Ctesias shook his head, but did not look at Ahriman. The dust was everywhere.
‘Gone, and we have to hope that we will not find what became of it.’
‘And the Rubricae?’
Ctesias did not answer for a second.
‘I have not looked for any of them,’ he said carefully.
‘Then we look for them now,’ said Ahriman, and felt the smallest spark of hope in his own thoughts.
Have I failed? It might have worked. Even with Knekku’s sacrifice it might…
‘If that is your will,’ said Ctesias, but Ahriman did not hear the words, or the lead in their tone. He was already walking through the red twilight, his senses searching.
They found Astraeos before they found any of the living or dead. The renegade Librarian knelt on the ground, his skin bare, his eyes em
pty pits. The wings and talons had melted from his body, and his armour lay about him in tarnished shreds. Ctesias saw him first, and his hand closed on Ahriman’s shoulder before he thought about what he was doing.
‘It is him,’ said Ctesias. ‘You should not…’
‘I think…,’ said Ahriman, carefully shrugging Ctesias’s hand away, ‘I think that there is nothing to fear here.’ He looked at the kneeling figure. ‘Not now.’
Ctesias wanted to say something, but could think of nothing.
‘Astraeos,’ said Ahriman and stepped closer to the motionless figure. ‘Brother?’
The head came up slowly, the empty eye sockets haloed with runnels of caked blood.
‘I was never your brother, Ahriman. That was just the first lie you convinced me of.’
‘I did not lie.’
Astraeos tilted his head back, mouth wide. A rattling roar came from his throat. It took a second for Ctesias to realise that it was laughter. It faded slowly, and Astraeos shook his head.
‘Do you even know what you have done?’
Ahriman reached up and pulled his own helm off. Shadows clung to the hollows of his face.
‘I thought you dead, Astraeos,’ said Ahriman. ‘That you had gone to the death you wanted at the hands of those who had wronged you. I thought you had found redemption in your own eyes.’
‘In my own eyes?’ Astraeos was shaking at the jest only he could see. Fresh blood marked his cheeks and lips. ‘In my own eyes.’
For a second the only sound was the hiss of the dust wind, and the fading rattle of laughter.
‘Why did you do… this?’ asked Ahriman eventually.
‘Why?’ Astraeos’s empty eye sockets fastened on them. ‘That you need to ask should tell you enough. You destroy and corrupt by existing, Ahriman. That you do not see that fact is the only condemnation I need speak.’
Ahriman shook his head.
‘I am sorry.’
Astraeos was still for a second, and then stood. Dust powdered his scarred flesh. He moved slowly, as though powered by will as much as strength.
‘I do not need your sorrow,’ he said, taking a step half into the enveloping cloud of dust. ‘I have the only comfort I need. I came here to see all you dreamed of broken. You came here to find salvation. We both are broken again, but I…’ He reached down to where the ground was hidden beneath the powdered caul. ‘I alone have what I came for.’
The Omnibus - John French Page 98
