Ahriman: Exile (33 page)

A wide balcony extended away from him to meet a view of dry desert, and a sky divided between clear blue and a layer of ochre storm cloud. A boy sat at the edge of the balcony, swinging his legs into the warm air, his hair stirring in a sudden gust of wind. He was tossing stones into the air, catching them without looking at them. Occasionally the boy would close his eyes, and a stone would halt in its fall to hang in the air. He looked no more than ten, but there was a seriousness to his face that made him seem older as soon as he looked up at Ahriman. The boy’s eyes were bright blue. He smiled.

‘Hello, Ahzek,’ he said, and the stone suspended in the air in front of him dropped into his palm. Ahriman smiled.

‘Ohrmuzd,’ said Ahriman, and watched as the memory of his true brother turned away, closed his eyes and tossed another stone into the air. It hung, the black water-polished ovoid turning slowly in front of Ohrmuzd’s closed eyes.

Ahriman sat by his brother. He had no armour, he realised; just a pale blue tunic that was the echo of the one Ohrmuzd had worn in this memory. He looked at his twin. The lines of the young face were the mirror of his own. He had remembered every gesture and syllable of this moment since it had first unfolded. At the time he had wondered why. Later, with Ohrmuzd gone, he had thought he knew why. Now, as he gazed at his twin again, he knew he had been wrong before.

‘Stop it,’ said Ohrmuzd without opening his eyes. ‘You are distracting me.’

‘Sorry,’ said Ahriman, and looked towards the horizon. The dirty yellow cloud had grown, eating up the blue of the sky. A fork of lightning flashed at the cloud’s edge. A warm wind swirled over Ahriman’s skin, and he could smell the storm charge in the air. He frowned.

‘There was no storm,’ said Ahriman.

‘What?’ said Ohrmuzd, a note of irritation in his voice.

‘There should be no storm. This is the memory of the day before we were sent as aspirants to the Fifteenth Legion. There was no storm that day.’

Ohrmuzd shrugged. His face was smooth, unmarked by any of the many changes that would come in the years to follow. Ahriman felt his lips form a weak smile; he was in a sense looking at his own face; they had been almost indistinguishable except for perhaps a tendency for Ahriman’s forehead to crease when he was in thought, or worried. He had been worried that day; all the dire possibilities of what was about to happen to them had crowded his thoughts, so that he could do nothing but roll them over and over and over in his mind. Ohrmuzd had known, he had always known.

‘It will be all right, Az,’ said Ohrmuzd. Ahriman blinked, then stared at his brother as he had in his memory. He had said something, too, some frightened little question. ‘Stop that,’ Ohrmuzd had replied. ‘You always have to think the worst, don’t you?’

‘I am sorry,’ said Ahriman, and knew that he had said the same in the past.

‘And stop saying sorry.’ Ohrmuzd had opened his eyes and let the floating stone fall into his palm. ‘Can’t you just be excited? Think of what we might become, what we might learn, what we might do.’ He gave Ahriman a sharp look. ‘Have you been dreaming again?’

He had, of course. He had always dreamed and even when he was a child those dreams had had a tendency to come true. Ohrmuzd sighed. ‘They are not necessarily true, you know.’ His voice dipped the way it always had when he had found an opportunity to impart serious knowledge. ‘To talk of fate is foolishness.’

‘You never could resist quoting to show off,’ Ahriman chuckled.

‘Fate is for us to choose, to make our own. If we are destined for a particular future it is because we have chosen that end.’ Ohrmuzd gave the solemn nod of a clever child pronouncing truth. Then he grinned. ‘Anyway, we will be all right.’ He glanced at Ahriman and there was fierceness in his eyes. ‘I will make sure it is all right, Az.’

Ahriman said nothing. He looked away from his brother, back to the storm that had rolled over the view like a curtain. The blue sky was gone, and the light had a shrouded, dirty quality. Rain began to fall, first a few drops, then more, until water was trailing out of the sky and streams rolled down the faces of the dunes. Ahriman breathed in. There had been no storm that day, but the air still smelled of the storms that he remembered.

‘I wish you had been right,’ said Ahriman, after a long pause. Ahriman suddenly could not remember what his brother had said next. ‘I have reached the end. It would have been better if we had never begun… If
I
had never begun. It’s over now at last.’

‘No.’

Ahriman’s head snapped around. Ohrmuzd was looking at him, wide blue eyes laughing as the rain ran down his face.

‘What did you say?’ The rain was swallowing the sound of his voice. A sheet of lightning turned the world white for an instant.

‘No, Ahzek.’ Ohrmuzd smiled, and then laughed into the storm. ‘It’s not over yet.’ Ahriman felt the ground tremble. He could not see through the rain. The thunder shook him.

His head came up, and his eyes opened to the darkness as the cell shook again. Above him the chains holding him chimed as they rattled together. His heart was hammering. A metallic shriek was pushing into his ears. The floor and walls were glowing, the runes and marks etched into the stone blazing too bright to look at. The shackles around his ankles and feet were burning into his skin. The noise soared higher and higher. He could feel pressure inside and outside of his skull.

The door exploded in a shower of molten metal. Ahriman felt the warp meet his mind like a flood tide. His head was spinning as he saw a figure stride through the glowing wound that had been the door. The figure wore red armour and his helm was that of a Thousand Son, and he held a sword in each hand: one a curved khopesh, the other a straight blade wound with golden serpents. Ahriman recognised him; the way the figure moved marked him as clearly as if he had shouted his name.

+Ahriman,+ sent Astraeos as he paced forwards. Behind him the bound daemon floated, its form rippling with dark cords of unlight. The shapes of two Rubricae filled the door like stone sentinels. Their armour was soot-black. Ahriman felt a knot of ice bunch in his chest. Astraeos raised his sword, and cut down. Ahriman could see the arc of the blade, could feel the power in the cut, the total focus that burned along its edge. The chains above Ahriman’s head parted and he fell to the floor. He looked up as Astraeos removed his helm and looked down.

Ahriman looked to the daemon hovering above. It had grown long needle blades of bone from its fingers. Blood dripped from the talon tips. The bound daemon was smiling its shark smile.

‘What have you done?’ breathed Ahriman. Astraeos sheathed his sword, a grim smile twisting his scarred face for an instant.

‘Fulfilled my oaths,’ he said.’

They ran down corridors lined in silver and lapis, past banners covered in the languages of mankind’s long past. Lights pulsed on and off. They ran through blackness, then brightness. Ahriman’s bare feet rang on the deck as he ran, the chains still hanging from his wrists and ankles clattering in his wake. Blood trickled down his side from the lips of the ragged shell wound. Astraeos was moving in front of him, bolt pistol tracking every pulsing shadow. The daemon followed them, its presence crackling over the walls in arcs of black energy. He could hear it hissing in his thoughts. There were other presences in his mind; he could feel them probing towards them in the warp, running after them like hounds.

My brothers
, he thought.
I am running again.

Doors and hatches opened at their approach, and sealed again after they passed. Sometimes they would not open and Astraeos would mutter and start in a new direction.

The Librarian’s thoughts were cold, aligned on their path but spread across a dozen mental processes that spun like interlocking devices . At another time Ahriman would have been proud. Now, his thoughts were numb.

Why do I run? What am I running to preserve? A life lived on the margins, persisting without any purpose other than to draw the next breath?

They ran into a wide-mouthed passage, its pipe-clad ceiling reaching far above their heads. A toothed door opened to greet them at the passage end. The air was thin, the pressure and oxygen levels low. His hearts surged to compensate, but he could feel his steps faltering. Sharp, jagged pains filled his chest and his breaths were wet with blood.

Their hunters were close behind them, now; he could feel them converging on their position.

+‘Ahriman.’+ The shout was both sound and psychic sending. He felt an armoured hand close on his arm. He turned and met Astraeos’s gaze. ‘Move,’ growled Astraeos, and pulled him, but he resisted.

They are my brothers.
Ahriman stopped in the middle of the passage. Astraeos turned to look back at him, and the bound daemon drifted to a halt. Ahriman looked down at the shackles around his wrists. Symbols spiralled across the loops of metal, half melted and distorted but still visible.

I will not run. Not again.

He turned to look behind him.

I will stand against fate, even if it destroys me.

Thirty paces behind them a section of the wall glowed from orange to white. It bulged, like a blister forming on charring skin, and then blew outwards in a spray of molten metal.

A dozen Rubricae advanced out of the glowing breach. They marched forwards slowly, their red armour appearing black in the low light. Ahriman felt his heartbeat filling his chest. He blinked, seeing them for a second under a red sun, emerging from a dust cloud. The Rubricae levelled their boltguns, twelve black circles looking at him like the eyes of the dead, like…

…a red sun with a serpentine corona. A raven circling, its wings a black silhouette against the fire.

‘Your fate, Ahriman,’ said a voice that was made of the roar of the sun and the call of carrion. ‘Your fate come around at last. Your fate. Your choice…’

His mind felt disconnected from his body, as if he were looking at what was happening from far away, from the other side of a memory.

…the sun was getting larger. Its boiling red surface filled his mind’s eye. He could feel the sun’s heat, the fury of its core. He could see a distant speck that was the silhouette of a raven…

‘It was always this choice…’ called the raven.

The Rubricae began to fire.

Astraeos grunted as a dome of energy expanded around him and Ahriman. The shield blistered with impacts, multi-coloured fire spraying across its surface. Astraeos juddered, as if each round which hit the shield was a blow to his body.

The bound daemon drifted forwards, and black lightning leapt from its eyes and hit a Rubricae. A flash filled the passage, turning light to shadow, and dark to bright white. Three Rubricae lay on the floor, dust spilling from rents in their armour. For a second the Rubricae’s fire slackened.

A low shriek filled the passage, like broken glass grating together, like a gale howling through burned cities. On the floor the dust began to drain back into the Rubricae. Slowly, they stood, worms of green light crawling over the holes in their armour. They stepped forwards and began to fire. The daemon hissed like a cat and jerked backwards.

Astraeos turned his face to Ahriman.

‘Run,’ croaked Astraeos. He was weeping blood.

…the red sun filled his soul. His mind was blind. He could only hear the raven. ‘There is nothing that cannot be changed. Nothing that cannot be overturned by knowledge and the will to wield it. You know this; you have always known this…’

Ahriman looked up; his movements slow, so slow. Beyond the dome of Astraeos’s shield the Rubricae were moving, walking in with slow purpose. Astraeos collapsed, his limbs twitching. There was a burned sugar stench in the thin air. One of the Rubricae stepped forwards, its weapon rising in one hand, the muzzle of its bolter a mouth waiting to speak a last greeting. It was one pace away from him.

…a plain of dust beneath black glass mountains, a red sun rising to colour the dawn with blood. His brothers’ eyes looking at him, waiting.

‘You failed them,’ called the raven. ‘Is that the salvation you were looking for?’

‘Magnus,’ called Ahriman as he felt the raven’s wings beat around him. ‘Father, is it you?’

‘No,’ laughed the raven.

‘What are you?’

‘You know my name,’ called the raven.

Ahriman’s eyes stared back at the muzzle of the gun. His mind was clear. Everything was moving to a slow pulse. This was not the trained calm of battle, it was not the serenity of meditation, it was something else: a fulcrum moment, a blade-edge of time. He could feel the Rubricae’s finger begin to tighten on the trigger.

‘No,’ said Ahriman.

The Rubricae’s finger tightened. It shifted forwards as if leaning into a wind. The muzzle was a finger-width from his eye.

+No.+ The command pulsed out of him, washing across the encircling ranks. The Rubricae’s finger froze. Ahriman turned his head to look at the other Rubricae. They were completely still. He spoke their names in his mind, and heard their dead voices answer him.

Astraeos looked up at him, fatigue bleeding off him in waves. Ahriman bent down and pulled him to his feet. Astraeos glanced at the dozen Rubricae.

+What is this?+

+A beginning,+ sent Ahriman.

Kadin waited, his bolter cradled in his crude metal hands. It was quiet, but he knew better than to find that a good sign. He shifted on the tower of machinery and felt ice crack and fall from his armour as he moved. The hangar bay was void-cold and as dark as a tomb.