Horusian Wars: Resurrection

by John French

  ‘I have seen enough,’ said Covenant. ‘There is much here that needs to be considered, but that can wait until we are aboard ship and under way. Magos, make what records you can. Enna, set charges to bring the roof down. We will bury this place.’

  ‘You cannot go,’ said the hermit, twisting from Josef’s grip with surprising speed. Enna raised her las-carbine, but Covenant raised a hand and her trigger finger froze. ‘You cannot go,’ repeated the man, shaking his head, stick-thin limbs spread as though to block their path. ‘You have seen the way of revelation and are unshriven. You must kneel at the throne. You must ask the dead to let you pass back to the light.’

  Severita twitched, as though suppressing the instinct to strike the man.

  ‘The throne?’ asked Josef softly. ‘The Emperor’s throne?’

  The man let one arm drop and pointed with a long finger at the object at the distant centre of the room, the object Enna had presumed was a broken pillar.

  ‘The dead king,’ he said. ‘He awaits us.’

  The throne rose from the floor on a stepped plinth of black stone. Its legs, back and arms were bone. Not the large bones of animals, but the jumbled fragments of a mass grave fused together. Shattered skulls, vertebrae, femurs, teeth and scapulae. Eagles and serpents clawed and slithered in bas-relief across its surface. Black soot filled the recesses between every feather and scale. A halo of crystal jutted from the high back, circling the space beneath like a crown waiting for an absent monarch. Except the throne was not empty.

  The corpse had slumped into the embrace of the throne, like a drunk passed out after a feast. The processes of decay had been halted by the chem-laden air, but they still had stiffened the flesh, paled the skin and begun to bloat its stomach. Blood caked its heavy black robe. The fletching of three silver bolts projected from its chest, throat and left eye. High gothic script circled the visible parts of the shafts. The left hand clutched a rosary of finger bones. The head hung to one side, open lips dribbling a dried river of blood down its cheek. Its features were distorted by death, but still recognisable as those that had looked across the floor of the conclave chamber before the world tore itself apart. It was the face of Inquisitor Goldoran Talicto.

  The hermit had folded to the floor at the foot of the throne, and was muttering prayers into the smooth stones.

  ‘It cannot be him,’ said Josef. Covenant was staring at the corpse on the throne. ‘It’s a trick,’ continued Josef, feeling the shock overcome the control he normally had over his tongue. ‘He was at the conclave. He spoke. It was him, from the pict records, from…’

  ‘Is that cadaver the individual that we have been hunting?’ asked Glavius-4-Rho. The magos was scanning the surroundings with slender washes of green light. ‘Its face matches the pict and scan records you have on him to within ninety-nine-point-four per cent likelihood of a positive match.’ The tech-priest cocked his head, cogs whirring. ‘I am no high initiate of the mysteries of the biologis, but that specimen is not fresh. Even allowing for the effect of the toxins in the atmosphere, and factoring in the time that I estimate since the spirits of this place’s machines were quieted, it must have been, oh… half a decade since expiration. That is strange, is it not?’

  ‘Thank you, Glavius-4-Rho,’ said Covenant softly, without looking around.

  Josef took a step further forward, eyes returning to the silver feathers and quarrel shafts. He recognised their type as soon as he focused his mind and eyes on them. They were witch slayers, blessed silver engraved with litanies of detestation. They were weapons of the Inquisition.

  ‘But that makes no sense…’ breathed Josef. ‘We have been hunting him since Niamarin – that was four years ago. Even accounting for time in the warp… we saw him, at the conclave. We all saw him. We–’

  ‘We saw something,’ said Covenant, and Josef could sense the control in the softness of his master’s voice. ‘Did we see Talicto? Faces can be forged. Voices matched. Lives can be broken, rebuilt. Identity counterfeited. And that is what the Renewed do, is it not? Remake the living into something else?’

  ‘Or this could be a trick,’ said Josef. ‘This could be a counterfeit.’

  ‘It is possible,’ said Covenant, voice so calm that it sent ice over Josef’s skin. ‘But counterfeit or no, someone killed him, and killed him with blessed silver. A weapon intended to kill a witch.’ His finger tapped the silver crossbow bolts, and then pointed at the halo of crystals above the back of the throne. ‘That is a psy-array of some kind. Those are matrix conductive crystals. We knew Talicto was a psyker, though he hid the fact from others. His killer knew, too.’

  ‘The king has never risen,’ said the hermit, ‘but he speaks still.’

  Covenant turned his gaze on the man, his psycannon counter-rotating at the same time to point at the corpse on the throne.

  ‘Speaks?’

  The hermit nodded.

  ‘But it is not wise,’ he said. ‘The dead should not be woken. It is not for the unshriven.’

  ‘When does he speak?’ asked Covenant. The hermit began to shake his head, and stepped away. Covenant took a step and put a hand on the man’s shoulder. Their eyes met. ‘Show me,’ he said, his voice low.

  The hermit nodded, and turned to the throne. Josef noticed that the man was shaking. He took a step closer to the throne, eyes fixed on the floor. He looked back, and Covenant’s gaze met his. With trembling steps he climbed until he was kneeling just before the enthroned corpse. Slowly – lips twitching with babbled prayers – he reached up and placed a finger on the throne.

  ‘I am going to die,’ said a voice that came from the air all around them.

  Josef felt cold prickle over his skin. The lights dimmed and stuttered. Pale light glowed in the crystal halo above Talicto’s corpse.

  ‘I am going to die,’ said the voice, ‘and I will die, and see my work undone.’

  The hermit’s hand fell from the throne, and he scrambled back whimpering, shaking.

  ‘The dead will not let you pass now…’ he moaned. ‘Not now that the dead king speaks.’

  ‘Witchcraft…’ hissed Severita.

  Covenant mounted the steps to the throne.

  ‘Lord…’ began Josef, the cold of the psychic manifestation clinging to his skin.

  ‘Truth,’ said Covenant. He reached the top of the steps and paused, looking down at the yellow skin and shrivelled eyes of Talicto. ‘We need truth, even if it comes from the grave.’ Covenant reached out, and Josef could feel the pressure wave of building psychic power as his master touched the throne.

  Cold light flickered through the crystal halo above the throne. The sound of machines spinning to wakefulness keened in the distance. The light spread down the cables linked to the throne and plinth, and a high buzz rose through the floor and into the air, before sound flattened into silence across the chamber. Josef felt the hairs rise on his skin. The breath left his lungs as though he had been struck and his eyes watered as he tried to focus. Covenant was a frozen figure, the tip of his gauntleted finger touching the blazing halo of crystals above the throne. The throne shone. Threads of red light ran through the cracks in the bones. The corpse of Talicto twitched, and then burst into flames. The hermit wailed, and scampered away towards the entrance to the chamber. Josef did not move to catch him. He could not. His eyes were locked on what was manifesting before him. Black smoke poured from the corpse’s mouth. Its eyes were boiling in its sockets. Then both fire and lightning vanished.

  Pitch darkness enclosed Josef. He was suddenly aware of the air dragging in and out of his lungs and the hammering of his heart.

  ‘Hubris…’ the word echoed through the air, seeming to come from all around. ‘An excess of pride that dooms the bearer to a fatal level of confidence.’

  Josef recognised the voice from the few pict- and audio-captures they had obtained over the years, and from that last mom
ent of the conclave on Ero before the massacre began.

  ‘We all believe that we are immune to it,’ said the voice of Inquisitor Goldoran Talicto. ‘We all believe that we will not fall victim to the blindness that comes from being certain that we are right, and that we know more than others.’

  Form and shape flickered through the dark, like glowing mist teased into false solidity. The pale light flowed over the floor, into the sarcophagi, and across the metal slabs. Human figures lay on the slabs, sketched in ghostlight, held in place by silver shackles. The image blurred for a second and then sharpened. And Josef saw the figure on the throne move. An image of Talicto, spun from shadow and pale radiance, rose from where his corpse remained slumped between the throne’s arms. His form was translucent, a gauze of mist and light. Darkness filled the pits of his eyes and the hollows of his cheeks. The long robes hanging from his shoulders swayed as he took a step down to the floor. For a second Josef thought that the image was going to stop and turn to talk to Covenant, or them, but it moved onwards, eyes focused on empty space. The links of a rosary of human finger bones clacked through Talicto’s left hand.

  ‘But we are not immune to pride,’ said the ghost image, ‘nor its poison.’

  The ghost image shimmered as Talicto stepped from the plinth onto the floor. Other figures came into focus at the circumference of the space around the throne. They all wore tattered rags, but their faces were unmasked. There were men and women, young and old – their faces those of scribes, of forge workers, of soldiers and servants, of the tide of humanity that moved in the background but was never seen for itself. Josef flinched aside as a translucent figure appeared next to him, but the ghost figure’s presence was as insubstantial as a warm breath on a winter’s night.

  Talicto paused and turned full circle. As the shadows of the inquisitor’s eyes passed over Josef it was as though he were really there, meeting his gaze before moving on. Covenant stepped from the plinth, psycannon rotating to stay aimed at the corpse on the throne. Severita shifted, sword drawn and poised, eyes locked on the image of Talicto.

  ‘I am talking to you,’ he said. ‘Whoever you are that has been hunting me in the shadows. If you have come this far it is either because I have permitted it, or I have made an error and am dead. I will not say that either possibility is likely, but perhaps from where you stand it looks different.’

  Talicto smiled, and the shadows rearranged into something that was both human and utterly terrifying.

  ‘I know you,’ said the voice of Talicto. ‘I know you are there. I have known you are there for some time now. It took me time to notice your presence, I will grant you that, but I saw your shadow at my back. I felt you watching. And since I have noticed that you three were there, I have taken care to watch you even as you watch me. The Triumvirate… the sorceress, the wanderer and the high priest. Three scions of the Horusian legacy, three shadows searching for salvation. Yes, I know you.’

  Josef’s mouth was dry as he watched the image of Talicto pause.

  ‘You are powerful but misguided,’ he said. ‘Just as there are those of our Ordos who believe that we can only triumph through ignorance while calling it purity, so are you three harnessed to just as large a lie. The warp is a weapon that must be wielded, a poison that must be studied for it to be unmade. I have devoted my service to the Emperor to do just that. I have turned the daemons of Chaos on each other. I have paid for knowledge that could destroy or save billions. I have mastered powers that would make me a heretic in the eyes of our peers.’ Talicto shook his head, and closed his eyes for a second. When they opened again Josef felt a jolt of shock at the expression on the image of the gaunt face. There was weariness and rage in his face, and when he spoke the words shook with anger. ‘But through all that I have done, I have never had the arrogance to believe the warp is anything but a tool.’

  The shadow of Talicto shivered.

  ‘The warp is fire. It is the deep ocean. It is the wind, and the slow grinding of stone. Believe that you are stronger than it and it will break you, drown you, burn you to ashes, and fling you to the sky.’ He paused, glancing at the bone rosary in his hand, still for the moment as though waiting for fresh prayers to count. ‘Yet you do not see that, do you? You do not see the limit of what you are playing with, nor the lie of what you believe.’

  Silence formed and ticked over in seconds. Josef could barely breathe. Of all the things that he had imagined as they had tracked down the abominations and cults created by Talicto, he had never seen the man as anything but a shadow cast by his acts. But here was the shadow and it was not a monster. It was a man, looking for the words to match his emotions.

  ‘The warp is not salvation, you fools,’ said Talicto’s voice at last, and the words were low. ‘You look on the legend of Horus and see an opportunity wasted. You think that you can make a dark messiah to enslave the warp to save mankind…’ A dry crackling noise filled the air in place of the voice.

  Laughter, Josef realised. Cold and mirthless laughter.

  ‘To save mankind… Not to help it triumph. Not to buy us a few more grains of time as the last fall, but to save it…’ Talicto gave a single shake of his head. ‘You would feed humanity its own heart to save it from starvation.

  ‘I have opposed you since I first deduced your presence. If you thought I did not see your hand in the subversion of my own work, you are wrong. You infiltrated my cells on Dominicus Prime. You stole my research material from the Kerros’ spire. Perhaps it was you that engineered that idealistic youth Covenant to dog my efforts.’

  Josef looked at Covenant, but his master was a statue, his face a mask.

  ‘You want what I know, what I have acquired and learned, and you think it best to steal it rather than to ask. In that, at least, you have some wisdom. I do not know your faces, but I will see you destroyed. Even if I am gone to the judgement of the Emperor already, I will destroy you. You deserve that. If only for your hubris, you deserve that.’

  The shade-image of Talicto began to fade. The last expression on its face before it vanished was a grim, knowing smile.

  Twelve

  ‘Commander, we have a message from the astropathic chamber,’ said Ensign Luco, in the voice he used when he wanted only her to hear bad news. Kade Zecker turned her gaze from the view of Iago. The planet hung against the green bruise of space, its surface pale white streaked with orange and black.

  She rubbed her temple, but the ache hung there, behind her eyes. She nodded to the young officer to continue.

  ‘The astropaths say they have felt something,’ said Luco softly, ‘a ripple in the warp that could be a vessel emerging.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘They can’t be certain. If it was a ship it could have translated days ago or in the last hour. The only seer that could talk kept on hissing about etheric distortion.’

  Kade winced as the pain in her skull swelled briefly.

  ‘Only one could talk?’ she asked.

  Luco nodded.

  ‘They have been getting worse ever since we made passage from Ero. There is something… We are too close to the storm’s edge.’

  ‘What about the inquisitor’s witch?’ she asked, thinking of the floating thing of rags, withered limbs and chrome. ‘Does she have anything to say?’

  ‘I have not seen her,’ said Luco, and shivered. ‘She remains in her quarters, I believe and I… I did not wish to disturb… her.’

  Zecker nodded slowly. Ships were tumbling out of the night in her head, and the beam of a stab-light was moving up through silent dark air. It had been eight watches since she had slept. A large dose of grey market sedative had done nothing but move the colours around the ceiling of her quarters. She was riding an even larger dose of stimm to try to keep her sharp, but she was sure that she was going to miss something soon.

  ‘Commander?’ said Luco. She looked back at him. ‘The astropaths rep
ort…’

  She nodded.

  ‘Put the sensor watch on alert. Maintain battle readiness.’

  ‘As you command.’ He hesitated. ‘The inquisitor…’

  ‘I will inform him once he has returned from the surface.’

  ‘Aye, commander.’ Luco threw a salute and left Kade to the swirl of pain and unwelcome thoughts filling her skull.

  ‘What does this mean?’ asked Josef, eyes still locked unbelieving on the throne. Light was still flickering and flowing through the air like sparks cascading from a fire.

  Covenant looked as though he was going to say something when the air crackled again. The throne shone brighter. Ropes of light shivered through the air. Josef felt a wave of heat break across his face as a fresh vision unfolded from the throne. Where before the psychic echo had been ethereal but clear, now it was edged with blurred colour, like a moving image smeared in blood and heat.

  ‘You will not leave!’ The shout echoed around the chamber, as the thunder of the broken vision faded. Josef’s head jerked around. He saw the hermit standing on the steps before the distant door out of the chamber. The thin man was pointing at them, voice vibrating with terror and anger. ‘You have disturbed the sleep of the dead king. You cannot leave. His children wake!’

  On his throne, the corpse of Talicto writhed as cords of psychic force arced through the flesh. The rosary of finger bones began to clack in its dead fingers. The crystal halo above its head was blazing. A high keening note was rising through the air. The bone throne was glowing. White flame burst through Talicto’s corpse and stabbed towards the ceiling. Covenant stumbled back from where he had been standing. The air shimmered. The last lights blew in a shower of sparks. Pale flame-light poured shadow into the chamber.

  ‘They wake,’ screamed the hermit as he ran from the chamber. ‘They wake!’

  Covenant stepped towards the throne, the great sword sliding from the sheath on his back with a thunderclap of activation.