Ahriman: Exile (15 page)

Slowly, almost delicately, a creature pulled itself from beyond. It paused, crouching on the lip of reality, its head swaying from side to side. Armour plates shimmered with an oily rainbow of colours as it moved. Bulbous organic growths had sprouted across its body, like rust blooming on iron left in lightless water. Pale spines ran down the jump pack that hung from its shoulders.

Ahriman had heard of such creatures, Space Marines lost to the warp and the sharpness of their blades. If they had a name for themselves none knew it, but to those who knew how to call them, they were named warp talons.

It flexed its knife-blade claws. Pale green fire ignited in the jets on its back. It looked at Ahriman with red eyes and leapt, dragging a caul of the storm vapour in its wake. Behind it four more wounds began to rip wide.

A cliff of pitted iron appeared out of the fog. The lips of blast doors opened wide to greet them. The shuttle’s engines roared and its hull snapped back into solidity, closing off the vision of the storm beyond.

And then the shuttle rang like a gong, and spun. Ahriman tumbled from his feet as the world turned over. Sparks showered around him as a flake of the hull peeled back. The creature looked down at Ahriman for a second, and then pounced.

The claws met Ahriman’s kine-shield with a burst of light and a sound like a lightning strike. The creature sprang back, hooking its hands and feet to the opposite wall. It hissed. Ahriman felt the shuttle tumbling around him. He could hear the noise of more claws raking the outside of the hull.

The creature leapt at him. Ahriman’s mind burned. A white-hot beam flashed from his eyes to meet its assault; it shrieked, and Ahriman felt the warp twist out of his grasp. Surprise was still forming in his mind when the claws met his stomach. They punched though his armour and into the soft flesh beneath. He had long enough to think that it felt cold, like swallowing ice. Then the bulk of the creature rammed into him and slammed him to the deck.

The shuttle spun and he felt his skin press against the inside of his armour as g-force tried to pull him away from the floor. The creature punched its free claw and hooked feet into the deck, pinning him in place. He looked up at it. The creature’s red eyepieces were looking back at him. It was so close he could see the fumes venting from slits in the snout of its helm.

I will not die here
, he thought. He sank his mind into his body, forcing calm through his nerves and muscle. It felt like plunging into water. He could feel the claws in his guts. He saw the arrangement of molecules, bone and muscle fibre spin symbolically before his mind’s eye, and changed what he saw with a thought.

His skin tingled and went numb. In his guts the blood stopped flowing, organs began to harden, bone became like metal. He felt his hearts stop. Above him the creature’s face split, a wide wet crack running across its faceplate. Ahriman could see sharp teeth in the red ruin of a mouth.

‘Alive,’ the creature hissed. ‘Alive. Yes.’ It licked its teeth with a black tongue. ‘Not whole. No.’ It pulled back, and tried to pull its claws from Ahriman’s guts. He did not even feel it. There was just the icy rush as the warp spun through his blood and bone. The creature howled and tried to rip its claws free. They held firm, as if it they were locked inside stone. Behind the faceplate of his helm Ahriman smiled. He did not have long; he could not maintain the alteration to the substance of his body indefinitely.

The creature opened its mouth to roar again. Ahriman struck upwards, his fingers splayed as they punched into the open maw. The creature reeled. Ahriman closed his hand, his armoured grip digging into the soft meat of the creature’s throat. He split his mind into two streams of thought; one half continued to breathe stone and steel into his flesh, while the second began to burn. The creature thrashed, glowing cracks running across its armour from its mouth. Ahriman felt his mind brush against what remained of the creature’s soul; it felt withered and rotten, like blood turned to black jelly in a dead heart. Out of the corner of his eye Ahriman saw the toothed blast door loom into view. He did not have time to move before the impact.

Astraeos was ten paces into the hangar bay when the shuttle clipped the blast doors. He saw the scene unfold in delicate slowness, as he and his brothers ran forwards. The shuttle flipped over, its stabiliser fins shearing off. Shreds of armour plating spun in all directions. Fuel sprayed in its wake, burning for an instant in the cloud of air from the ruptured cabin. A large chunk shapes fling themselves from the shuttle just before the impact. They had been Space Marines once. Astraeos could see the lines of power armour under layers of growth like polluted coral. Green jets of flame pushed them up into the darkness above. A third fell away with the rest of the wreckage, its body scattering globules of black fluid as it fell to the deck.

Another jumped too late. A chunk of the shuttle’s wing spun towards it faster than it could move, and mashed it into two ragged portions.

He is dead.
The thought slipped into his mind with a cold certainty. The largest piece of debris was skidding across the deck in a slew of sparks. Part of his mind identified it as a section of the passenger compartment. It looked like a Titan had stamped on it. Nothing could be alive inside that.

Above them the two surviving creatures turned and dived. Kadin and Thidias knelt, raised their bolters as one and fired. Explosions burst in the air, trailing the foremost creature as it spun and jinked downwards. It shrieked as it dived, its true voice mingled with the scream of its hungering soul.

A stride ahead of his brothers Astraeos drew his sword and ran towards the wreckage. The second creature crashed into the twisted fuselage and began to tear through the metal plating as if trying to dig down to something buried within.

Astraeos heard a cry from behind him, and glanced over his shoulder. The first creature was climbing back into the air on a column of white-green fire. Kadin thrashed in its claws. Thidias was on the ground, the muzzle of his bolter twitching as he searched for a clear shot. Astraeos’s stride faltered.

The creature holding Kadin flew higher, dark liquid drizzling in their wake. He could see Kadin’s bolter still gripped in his flailing hands. The creature shrieked and Astraeos could taste the hunter’s joy in the sound. As he watched, Kadin twisted, and rammed the muzzle of his bolter between his body and the creature. The bolter roared. Shell casings showered down to the deck. Then a juddering line of explosions broke from the creature’s back. It dropped Kadin an instant before the green fire at its back became a rolling sphere of heat. He did not see Kadin hit the floor.

In front of Astraeos the surviving creature gave a howl of triumph. He snapped his eyes back to it as the distance closed. It had shredded the remains of the shuttle, and was crouching amongst the wreckage. In the wash of gunfire its black armour glistened with spatters of machine oil and blood. Something was moving at its feet. He saw a hand reaching up as if trying to ward the creature off.

The creature unfolded to its full height. It had been a Space Marine once, Astraeos could see that now, but its armour looked like polluted coral. It splayed its arms wide. The claws of its fingers were the white of bone. Its angular head tilted back and Astraeos heard the silent howl of triumph in his mind.

The creature noticed him an instant before the tip of Astraeos’s blade pierced through its left eye and punched from the back of its head. Astraeos felt the impact jerk up his arm, and snapped his mind into the blade’s core. The creature’s head and upper torso exploded in a web of crawling lightning. The remains slumped onto the wreckage, and twitched until the last electrical arcs vanished.

Astraeos unfastened his helmet. The outer doors were sealed but the atmosphere was still thin. He curled his lip. The corpse at his feet was fuming a scent of charred meat and spoilt fruit. He turned his head to where Ahriman struggled amidst the twisted wreckage; impossibly alive, his armour torn but with no sign of blood or wounds. He bent down to pull the twisted spars of metal aside and then paused.

‘When you are out of this, I think it is the time for some answers.’

VIII

Rubric

Ahriman looked up. They were all staring at him. Thidias stood by the wall, his hands across his chest, his weapons locked to the thighplates of his armour. Carmenta stood in the corner, a still shadow in her ragged black robe. Kadin sat on a thick pipe, watching Ahriman out of the side of his eyes. A purple bruise and swollen flesh covered much of Kadin’s face and the broken bones beneath made him look even less human than normal. Astraeos stood at the circular hatch of Ahriman’s chamber. Ahriman could not shake the feeling of being on trial. In a sense, of course, he was.

They are angry
, thought Ahriman,
and at some deep level they are afraid of what I have pulled them into
.

Only Carmenta’s mind was calm. In fact it was blank to a worrying degree, almost as if part of her thinking had shut down.
The ship is eating her humanity,
he thought
.
At times she was more human than any tech-priest he had ever met, but then would become withdrawn, or confused. He looked back to the three Space Marines. They were all lost and damaged creatures but he needed them, and their trust would not tolerate anything less than the truth. He swallowed and found his throat dry. He had not expected it to be like this.

He turned away from them, feeling the coarse weave of his patchwork robe rub against his skin as he moved. After the battle and crash his armour would require long hours of repair before he could wear it again, but his flesh had been almost untouched when they peeled the armour from him. ‘Like stone,’ Carmenta had said. There were patches that were still cold and numb, but it would pass.

He rubbed a hand across his face. His mind still ached and he needed rest, but Astraeos would not wait for his answers.

‘My name is Ahzek Ahriman,’ he began.

‘So you have told us,’ said Astraeos. Ahriman ignored the interruption.

‘I was once Chief Librarian of the Thousand Sons Legion. I fought at the side of primarchs and witnessed the Emperor during the Great Crusade. We were betrayed, and betrayed the Imperium in turn.’

‘Those were not agents of the Imperium that came for you,’ muttered Kadin.

‘No. They were sent by one of my brothers.’

‘Why?’ It was Thidias who asked, his voice devoid of emotion. Ahriman glanced at him.

‘The creatures he sent hunt through the warp. Perhaps they caught my scent. Perhaps the one I went to meet on the moon betrayed me. ’

‘That is not what I asked,’ said Thidias. The calm accusation in the words almost forced a smile from Ahriman’s lips.

‘If you want to understand, then you will have to see for yourself,’ said Ahriman.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Kadin, and glanced at Astraeos.

‘I can project my memory into your minds. You can see for yourself how this began.’

Kadin looked ready to protest.

‘Very well,’ said Astraeos. Ahriman looked to Carmenta.

‘Mistress?’ She said nothing.

‘I will not go into your minds. I will just show you a part of mine.’ He shrugged. ‘The answers are there if you want to see.’ After a long pause Carmenta gave a single stiff nod. Thidias inclined his head when Ahriman glanced at him. Kadin looked at his two brothers, spat, but then nodded.

‘Very well,’ said Ahriman, and closed his eyes. He could still see his chamber, its image traced in perfect detail in his mind’s eye. Slowly the details of walls, lights and pipes dimmed, then gave way to black. He saw the images of Carmenta, Thidias, Kadin and Astraeos look around in surprise. ‘Come,’ he said, then turned and began to walk down a tunnel towards a long-sealed door in his place of memory. ‘See it with my eyes.’

The palace grew towards the blue sky, its marble warm in the sun, its spires shining white against the cobalt-blue dome of the heavens. Ahriman walked up the steps and through the doors. He could feel the presence of the others following him but he did not look around. He had not allowed them to speak; here in his mind they would be mute witnesses, but their thoughts scraped against the quiet, and tremors of their surprise and wonder shook the palace’s halls. No one had ever entered his memory palace before, and the knowledge that there were other minds walking with him through the cool shadows of his past made him feel strange, as if he had no skin. The breeze blowing through the open windows carried a hint of smoke, and he wondered what that might signify for what he was about to do.

The stone door with the silver ring resisted his touch, and it ground across the floor as he dragged it open. Stepping within he felt the eyes of the others roam across the shelves of marble jars until they reached the window and the view of the Planet of the Sorcerers beyond. Their minds went quiet one by one as they saw the towers and the nine suns turning through the sky.

Ahriman stepped to the book which lay on the plinth at the room’s centre. Careful not to look at the words within, he opened it; the pages felt hot, as if they were burning.

‘It is here for you to see,’ said Ahriman.

Their presence drew closer, circling on the edge of his sight. Ahriman looked down. The book’s pages turned as if caught by a gale; symbols and words blurred and coiled across the parchment. The chamber vanished. Images and sensations folded around him, and then flicked past. The others were with him, seeing what he had seen, feeling the past brush them as it rushed by.

He saw Amon standing on the summit of a tower, and beyond him more towers extended away in a forest of night-tarnished silver and sapphire.

‘Are we sure?’ Amon had said. ‘Is there no other way?’

‘None,’ Ahriman had replied.

He saw again the cabal expand in countless pacts and secret bonds. He saw more of the Thousand Sons become creatures of endlessly mutable forms. He saw the moment when all was ready, when the final components had aligned, and there was no barrier remaining between him and the completion of his great work, his Rubric.

‘It is time, brother,’ Amon had said. Ahriman felt the memory of the final breath he had taken at that moment. It tasted of smoke, rich with incense and the dry, metallic flavour of the wind blowing from the surrounding plains.

Then memory of the Rubric unfurled into him like the touch of lightning, spiralling into his thoughts like a storm rush. He had never desired the power of gods, but at that moment he saw every one of the Thousand Sons, a scatter of flickering soulflames laid out beneath him. He saw every strand of matter in their limbs and the colour of their souls. He became all of them. Every half-formed thought and sensation was his; he was Menkaura, suddenly blind to the tome open in front of him; he was Zebul, frozen as he lifted a blue crystal ball with a scale-covered hand; he was Ketuel, his eyes vanished into his flesh, a hundred tongues licking from the mouths that split his armour. He was the centre of a hurricane, the focus of a thousand stilled minds and arrested hearts. Their broken dreams, their hopes, their power lay in his hands like water snatched from a torrent. It extended on and on, a sensation without time, eternal and yet as delicate as a strand of glass.

Even in memory the moment almost overwhelmed Ahriman. For a second he was aware that far away his real body shivered and blood sweated from the corners of his eyes. Then it was past, and more moments came tumbling after.

He saw his brothers walking out of the dust clouds, first one, then another, then another, coalescing like corpses rising from silt-clogged water. Dust spilled from them as they moved, the embers of their souls burning within each, but nothing more. The memory was like ice coiling through Ahriman’s guts and up his spine.

‘What have we done?’ Amon had asked in a voice that cracked like dry earth.

Ahriman had said nothing. Failure has no answer.

The flicker of images settled like the dust falling gently from the dying wind. And there it was, an image held that blurred and changed as if even Ahriman’s memory could not contain it: a silhouette of a man outlined by fire, countless eyes spinning in golden light that sang with a thousand voices, a twisted cripple with quill-covered skin and blind pits for eyes.

‘Father,’ Ahriman had said, and the image resolved into that of a copper-skinned giant, clad in plates of bronze. Feathered wings spread from his thick shoulders, and his hands held an orb-topped staff. A mane of red hair fell from a frown-creased face from which a single blue eye stared. The air had smelled of burned blood and incense.

+Tell me, is this the salvation you sought?+ Magnus the Red had said.

‘I am satisfied,’ Ahriman had said, defiance making his voice hard. The image of Magnus had seemed to nod.

+You are the best of my sons, you always were,+ spoke Magnus, and the thought banished Ahriman into the stars like dust blown from an outstretched palm.

The chamber was silent after Ahriman opened his eyes. For a long moment the memory of Magnus lingered as a fading image before his eyes. Kadin shivered, a sheen of sweat glistening on his face. Thidias just looked at Ahriman and then turned away. Carmenta did not move, but shook her head, swaying slightly. Astraeos stared at Ahriman, his bionic eye seeming dim beside the brightness of his true eye. Ahriman gave a weak smile.

‘That is why,’ he said.

‘And the one who sent the hunters and emissaries?’ said Thidias, without looking at Ahriman.

‘Amon,’ said Ahriman. ‘I should have seen it before. Of all of those who joined my cabal he was the hardest to persuade.’ A sad smile flicked over Ahriman’s face. ‘Always loyal, always on the right side of any argument.’

He looked up at Astraeos, but the renegade Librarian still had not moved.

‘Why now?’ Ahriman looked around in surprise. Kadin was looking at him, a frown deepening the scars on his face. ‘After so long, why does he come for you now? Why not before? And why pursue the rest of those exiled with you?’

Ahriman nodded slowly.

‘I don’t know. At first I thought it was simple vengeance, but I should have known that it was not. Amon may want revenge, but his mind is too deep for such singlemindedness.’ He gave a weary smile. ‘Our Legion is not given to thinking on a small scale.’

‘So you will search for answers now?’

Ahriman felt the tension in the words. In truth he had not thought his next move through yet, but as he thought about the question he realised that there had only ever been one answer.

He nodded stiffly. Kadin stared at him for a long moment, and then walked to the hatch without looking back. Thidias followed a moment later. Astraeos gave Ahriman one last hard look before stepping through the hatch and pulling it shut after him.

‘Do you wish that you had never begun?’

Ahriman flinched at the sound of the voice. He had almost forgotten that Carmenta still stood in the corner of the room. She took a step forwards, her mechadendrites twitching at her robes as if they were the unconscious movements of nervous hands.

‘Do you?’ she said again.

Yes,
he thought.
I wish that I had never listened to the whispers of my heart. Some might have called those whispers hope, but it was arrogance. The arrogance of knowledge that believes that there can be no limit to what it encompasses, that cannot see the precipice at its feet.

‘I am not sure,’ he said at last.

Carmenta shook her head as if trying to clear a sound from her ears. For a moment he wondered if she was going to ask another question, but then she moved to the hatch and pulled it open to leave.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and left Ahriman looking after her in puzzlement.