Ahriman: Sorcerer (16 page)

‘You remember how to speak, you remember that this is a servo-skull, but you do not remember what you are.’ He smiled, showing silver teeth. ‘What else do you remember, Astraeos?’

Astraeos compulsively tried to close his eyes. Shutters closed over the servo-skull’s eye-lenses in response. Static-laced blackness replaced the sight of the chamber.

‘I remember the day the ships came. They came through the grey sky, bigger than the towers, bigger than anything. They took the light away. I knew they were coming for me, even before the hailers started calling, I knew. I hid, but they found me. People I knew helped them, told them where the strange child liked to hide. When I woke I was in a different place. There was screaming and pain, and darkness and more light than I had ever seen. It stayed that way for a long time. Then I remember being taken to another place where there was more pain. There were questions. There were tests…’

His voice ran out. In his mind he saw men and women in tight buckled masks pulling him on a chain. There had been machines, and screams that went through the walls and into his dreams. It went on and on, but never the same twice. Only the memory of fear and pain was the same.

‘Can you remember more?’

‘Yes,’ he said, slowly. The memories were coming faster now, the mist shredding as he ran through his past. ‘I remember another ship, and this time I was alone. The room was silver. It was cold. Then the next thing I remember was a giant made of black armour. He had a skull for a face and red eyes. There was a second giant, but he wore blue, and his… his eyes. I felt them on the inside of my skull. They said…’

‘His brain output is fluctuating,’ said the tech-priest from close by, voice rising in volume over the sudden chiming of machines.

The memory stopped. The images snagged and juddered. Astraeos wanted to scream and did not know why. He just knew that something in this memory, something which had been with him there all along in the dark, and light, and pain, was trying to live again. He recognised it then. It was terror, it was the memory of a child’s terror trying to manifest in a mind that could no longer understand it, that was no longer human.

In his mind’s eye, the Space Marine in blue was staring at him with eyes like polished ice. The one in the skull helm was reaching down, raising Astraeos’s face to look into the skull’s stare. The fingers of the gauntlet were worn, their touch cold.

‘They said…’ He heard the words come from his lips again. Everything was becoming slow, and soft, and dark.

‘Yes? What did they say, Astraeos?’

‘Excessive brain activity. Secondary bleeding inside skull. Subject losing consciousness.’

The darkness grew around him and the image of the two Space Marines pulled away, becoming an image seen through a pinprick in a sheet of oblivion.

He felt his mouth open, and his tongue form halting words.

‘They said I would become an angel.’

The fortress was grown of ice. Its walls rose in a ring of turquoise and white blade edges. At its centre a lone landing pad sat like a coin dropped onto a frozen lake. Gun turrets surrounded the pad, their barrels swathed in white fabric and their shapes hidden by pale nets. Looking down at the fortress from the lighter’s windows, Iobel had thought the surface structure looked like a crown of clouded crystal. Now, shivering despite her fur-lined cloak and thermal bodyglove, she thought it looked nothing like a crown, and more like one of the most desolate places she had ever seen.

‘Beautiful,’ muttered Cavor, through chattering teeth. The nihilator’s shoulders were hunched beneath his thick crimson coat, his head sunk so deep into the black fur collar that he looked like a troglodyte. Beside them the lighter’s engines began to rise in pitch as it prepared to lift off again. It would return when they were done; nothing lingered on the polar ice longer than it had to. Iobel found herself thinking fondly of the lighter’s machine-scented warmth.

The planet that they stood on was called AV-213. Tucked away on the frayed edges of the Halo Margins, its equatorial belt was a strip of foetid jungle bound by dry deserts which stretched to the planet’s bloated polar caps. People could have lived there, could have scraped some form of life out of the dirt and clung onto it, but they did not. Only a few members of the Inquisition knew of the planet, and a small circle within the Ordo Malleus kept it that way. AV-213 was one of the quiet and forgotten places used by those who fought the enemies that humanity could not know existed. Iobel knew that much, but what waited for her here she did not know.

Two decades had passed since she had set foot on Prospero, and in that time she had seemed to come no closer to real answers. She had tried, of course. She had bent all of her subtle arts to trying to find out the source of the Inquisitorial emblem left on the dead world. She had found only a suspicious absence of information. That had only convinced her to dig deeper; an absence of information was, after all, sometimes as significant as information itself. But two decades of investigation had yielded nothing, until, when she was almost at the point of turning back, a message had come. A mind-blanked courier had brought her a slip of parchment in a puzzle tube covered in Prosperine runes. Inside was a slip of parchment, and a wafer of explosive designed to detonate if anyone had forced the tube open. On the parchment had been the location of AV-213, a clearance code, and a single line of handwritten script: ‘the door to the truth stands open’.

The lighter’s ramp began to close, and its engines kicked ice dust into the air. The servitor pilot burbled a stream of machine code over the vox, and then it was lifting away. When it was ten metres above the pad, its thrusters fired. Iobel felt the blast of heat wash across her face, and was briefly grateful for the warmth. Then the lighter was gone, a pale speck rising into the cold blue sky. She looked down. They were alone, the expanse of the sky and ice pressing close around them. The wind gusted across the landing pad.

‘I don’t like this,’ said Cavor, turning to look around them. She heard a low click and knew that he had eased a set of pistols from the holsters beneath his coat. She said nothing, but clicked through channels on her vox-bead: a low hiss answered her from each channel. She stopped after a while and waited. If it had not been for the metal of the landing pad, and the covered gun emplacements, she would have thought they were in the wrong place.

‘Selandra Iobel.’ The voice came from so close that she felt her muscles tense. Cavor spun, guns rising. ‘Peace, Cavor,’ said the voice, strong but calm.

She turned more slowly than Cavor, careful not to seem hurried or surprised. A tall, thin man stood a few metres from them. He wore a quilted black bodyglove without mark or symbol. There was a square hole in the ice-covered ground just behind his feet. She nodded slowly, but did not smile. She was pleased to notice that Cavor had not lowered his guns.

‘Yes, and who are you?’ she replied. The thin man smiled.

‘I am glad you came,’ he said smoothly, and turned to Cavor. ‘You are as fast as your reputation, Cavor. What is your kill count now?’

‘Three hundred and thirty-three,’ said Cavor, keeping his guns steady. The thin man kept his expression fixed, the pleasant smile in place.

‘Another eighty-nine and you will be the apex of your clan, will you not?’ The man gave a cough of mirthless laughter. ‘At least you would be if you had not broken their first and second edicts.’

Cavor nodded, but Iobel could see the muscle twitch in his jaw. He never talked about why he had left his gun-clan, and she had thought that she alone knew the reasons. That this man knew as much as she about her own acolytes made her more than tempted to give the command word and see Cavor shoot the patronising bastard’s eyes out.

‘To answer your question, Iobel – I am Inquisitor Castus Izdubar, and it is very good to finally meet you.’

Iobel kept her face still, and her eyes cold, but felt the pulse of her blood rise in her veins. Izdubar, that was a name she knew, a name that was spoken in the circles of the Ordo Malleus with respect; and when it was spoken it was not as Inquisitor Izdubar, but Lord Inquisitor Izdubar, Convenor of the Ephisian Conclave, Watcher of the Cadian Marches.

Izdubar nodded slowly, as though in acknowledgement of her thoughts.

‘I think you have something of mine, do you not?’ he said and reached out with a gloved hand. Iobel nodded stiffly, and fumbled the Inquisitorial symbol she had found on Prospero from around her neck. She felt Cavor’s thoughts tense with readiness as she placed the symbol in Izdubar’s hand. Izdubar looked at the symbol, tilting it slowly so that the blue gem at its centre caught the light.

‘We should get inside,’ he said. ‘Once the sun sets it gets even colder.’ He turned and moved towards the open hatch in the ground.

‘Why am I here?’ she asked before he had taken a step. He turned back, glanced at Cavor’s still levelled pistols, and then back to Iobel.

‘For answers, Iobel. Isn’t that why you went to Prospero, why you have searched out all you can find about the Thousand Sons, and why you have been looking for us for the last two decades? Well, now we are here, and so are the beginnings of answers.’

‘Who are
we
?’ she said, without moving.

‘A circle of a few who have seen what you have, and who have walked down the same paths in search of the only weapon which can cut our enemies – knowledge.’

‘And what is here?’ she said, flicking her eyes across the ice-bound landing pad.

‘You will have to see.’ Izdubar turned and began to descend the steps into the ground. Iobel glanced at Cavor. The nihilator was watching Izdubar’s retreating back, his face utterly still, his augmetic eyes glowing with cold light. She paused, blinked and shook her head. She had the sudden sense that she had been here before. She opened her mouth to speak.

‘We follow?’ asked Cavor. She nodded slowly, still uncertain. Cavor watched her, still not moving.

‘Yes,’ she said at last. ‘We follow.’

She shook herself and stepped through the hatch. Behind her Cavor lowered his pistols, the light in his eyes shifting from green to blue, then he followed the inquisitors beneath the ice.

XI

Land of Lies

‘He is lying,’ said a voice. It was a dull voice, washed of emotion, as though the speaker thought greater expression wasteful.

Astraeos tried to open his eyes, and then remembered that he had no true eyes any more. His head still ached, just as it had since he had first woken, but his thoughts felt clear. Memories of before he had fallen unconscious snapped into focus. He knew other things now, though he was not sure why. He knew from the sound of the voices that the chamber extended far beyond the pool of light around him. He knew that besides damage to his skull, his body was trying to heal deep burns to his back and legs. He knew that there were charged and readied power weapons within twenty paces of where he lay. He knew all this and he knew that he was here because the Inquisition said he was a traitor. It could not be true, he knew that, but then why would they have taken him? Why would they have questions?

‘No, no I don’t think he is,’ said another voice. It was the voice of the inquisitor, Astraeos realised. ‘Damage often leaves part of the structure of the mind standing while the rest is buried or swept away. And before you say it, Erionas, I am not going to ask Cendrion to go into his mind. I want what might remain inside, and I want it without further damage.’

‘This costs time.’ Another voice, female this time, the words rattling in an old and damaged throat.

‘I am aware of what it costs,’ said the inquisitor. ‘Cendrion looked into his mind once, and said that it was like a half-collapsed building. We can reach the deepest layer, but we must be careful or it will collapse again. If this fails there are other methods, but with each of them we diminish the chances of success. That is what we want here, isn’t it, to find what Ahriman intends?’

‘He is awake,’ said the machine voice of the tech-priest. Astraeos heard the crinkle of fabric as people turned, then the sound of steps as they came closer.

‘Let him see,’ said the inquisitor.

Light suddenly filled his sight, and he saw the inquisitor standing beside his body.

‘I am no traitor,’ said Astraeos, and then coughed. His body jerked against the restraints, and he tasted wet iron in his throat.

The inquisitor’s face showed no response.

‘What do you remember?’

Astraeos paused. He could see more now, things opening up in front of his mind’s eye like the features of a dark room before a lamp beam. He paused. He did not know how he came to be here, but he knew that he was not a traitor. He was an angel of death; he had been forged to serve the Imperium mind, body and soul. What could he remember that could undo that purpose?

‘Tell us,’ said the inquisitor.

I must answer. Only the heretic refuses to speak the truth. They will see that I am true, they must see.

He told them what he could. He told them of the world that had remade him. Much of it was a fog of confusion at first. Details emerged, and then sank back into the murk of his mind when they were on the tip of his tongue. He talked until he could not remember why he was talking. He told them of the land beneath the mountains, of the echoing dark, and the sound of his heart beating to itself. His brothers came from that underworld, children taken from the people who lived out of the light of the sun. He told them of the towers of the fortress rising towards the sun which burned without end in the cobalt sky.

As he spoke more came to him, images and truths coming to his mind and lips with sudden clarity. It was as though his mind was a ball of unravelling thread. He remembered the Three Towers of Truth, at the summit of which each aspirant swore their great oaths. He remembered the feeling of his bolt pistol in his hand, the names of all its other bearers carved into its grip. He remembered the first time he killed, and the first time he smelled the red offal stink of a battlefield. He remembered the feeling of armour. He remembered that he had become a Space Marine.

Astraeos had fallen quiet. He could taste metal in his mouth, and his skull ached to the core. The servo-skull that had become his eyes twitched to look at the figures that stood behind the thin man. There were three of them, bent under ragged robes covered in symbols stitched in golden thread. They had always been there, but now they were closer, as though they shuffled a step nearer each time he remembered a new detail. Astraeos did not like them. Something about them made him wish he could shoot them.

‘Yes?’ said the thin-faced man.

‘What is your name?’ asked Astraeos. The ache in his head was getting worse. He wanted to blink, but had no eyes. Something was rising into his thoughts; he could feel it spilling into the edge of awareness like the first light of dawn.

The inquisitor stood back.

‘I am judgement, Astraeos.’

‘You say I am a traitor, but I can only remember service and sacrifice. There are battlefields on Carnius Seven, on Keed, on Maltrix that were watered with the blood of my brothers, blood that we shed for our oaths to the Imperium. How can that be if I am a traitor?’

‘What do you remember?’

The light of fresh memory came in a rush, pushing through the darkness, pressing against his mind’s eye.

‘I remember…’

He remembered ships. Ships sliding across the sky like stars set free.
Silver
. Their hulls had been silver grey, and they had arrived like ghosts. None had seen or sensed their coming, not the astropaths, not the other Librarians, not the system monitors. He had…

He looked up. Around him the fortress-monastery screamed. Sirens echoed through the halls and across the high parapets. The ground shook as blast doors slammed shut from the highest towers to the fortress depths. Void shields crackled into life, daubing the sky with static. The silver ships dropped lower. There were three of them, three jagged shapes glinting in the sun. The defence lasers began to fire. Columns of light burned into the heavens. The air was crackling with lightning. False winds spilled around Astraeos as the unleashed energy cooked the air.

Behind him a door peeled open. Astraeos turned, saw who walked onto the tower summit, and fell to one knee.

‘Rise,’ said Thidias. The Chapter Master’s face was unreadable. The burning light gleamed on his armour, and the ozone-laden winds spilled his red cloak behind him. Kadin stood at the front of Thidias’s honour guard, the banner in his hand stirring as he looked at Astraeos with hard eyes.

‘My lord,’ began Astraeos. ‘What–’

The ships above them fired. Lines of flame spread across the sky. The fortress roared back, pouring stuttering lines at the heavens, even as the fire from the ships reached towards the ground.

‘What is this?’ he shouted above the roar.

Thidias turned to him. His eyes were empty, as though what they had seen had burned away the soul behind them.

‘This is the Imperium we serve coming to destroy us,’ he said.

The memory flashed to nothing. Astraeos was shaking, his muscles bunching. Somewhere nearby something was shouting about neural overload. All Astraeos could see through the servo-skull’s eyes was the inquisitor looking at him, his face as calm and uncaring as an executioner’s blade.

‘Subdue him,’ said the inquisitor.

Cold spread from Astraeos’s chest. He could not feel his limbs. He forced his mouth open, feeling the muscles in his jaw begin to numb. The inquisitor was watching him, his head tilted slightly to one side as though considering a thought.

‘We were loyal!’ Astraeos screamed at the thin face.

And then there was just the numb cold, and the remembered light of fire spreading across a blue sky.

The armour lay at the centre of an adamantium slab. Thick loops of the metal circled its arms, chest, and legs. Layers of energy fields shimmered in the air around it. Iobel could feel the headache purr of active null generators. It was surprisingly warm in the underground fortress, and the crystal floor of the viewing chamber buzzed with heat and static.

Iobel shivered as she looked down through the crystal floor. The armour was black, as though it had been carved from coal. She would have thought that it had been burned if it had not been for the polished bronze that edged its plates and snaked across its shoulders and greaves. A high crest extended above the crown of its helm. The symbol of a baleful eye worked in beaten copper stared out from its chest. It had been the armour of a Space Marine, without a doubt, but this could only be a relic of those who had turned on the Emperor in ages past.

Iobel looked up from the view beneath her feet. She could hardly believe what she was seeing. Izdubar was still looking down, hands clasped behind his back, face almost serene.

‘Is this…?’ she began.

‘You have never seen one of them before, have you?’ said Izdubar softly. ‘Yes, this is one of the Thousand Sons of Magnus the Red. Or at least what remains of one. It is an abomination. Alive, after a fashion – animated by the energies of the warp, at once a body and a prison for the spirit within. Some call them the Rubricae. This one was taken during the incursion onto Vess. A dozen primaris-grade battle psykers died capturing it.’

‘The colours and emblems…’ began Iobel.

‘Marks of fealty to the one they call the Despoiler.’ Izdubar looked up from the crystal floor, and ran a hand over his scalp. Brief pain stabbed through Iobel’s head. Her eyes squeezed shut, and she gasped. The chamber jumped out of focus, then snapped back into clarity. Iobel blinked and breathed hard as she tried to focus on where she was. Izdubar didn’t seem to notice, but just carried on talking. ‘That is not why it is important. It is important because of what it means.’

Iobel’s head cleared as suddenly as it had clouded. She looked at Izdubar. He was looking at her as though he had just asked a question which required a reply. She felt as though she had just come back into a conversation that had continued without her realising. She hesitated, and then knew what she needed to say next.

‘On a world, long ago, a dying psyker spoke to me of Prospero. He said that he was the vengeance of the Sons of Prospero.’

‘Yes,’ said Izdubar. ‘On Carsona, was it not?’

Iobel felt surprise fill her face. Izdubar glanced at her, then back to the bound Rubricae.

‘I have been following your progress towards us since soon after your search began. We must be sure, you see.’ Iobel opened her mouth to speak, but Izdubar continued smoothly on. ‘The psyker who spoke those words to you was right. The will of one of the Thousand Sons had touched him. He and many more like him, in thousands of cults and psyker cells spread through the body of the Imperium, growing in its flesh like cancers. Fed by dreams, and manipulated from beyond by the sorcerers who are all that remain of the Thousand Sons.’

Iobel let out a snort of breath. Behind her Cavor stirred as though waiting for a command.

‘I have found the records, and seen the insides of heretics’ minds. What you have said is nothing that I have not learnt myself.’ She pointed down at the Rubricae beneath their feet. ‘This is just confirmation, not revelation.’

Izdubar laughed, the sound as sudden as it was brief.

‘
Revelation.
’ He rolled the word over his tongue. ‘I went searching for answers, just like you. For a long time I sifted through rumours, through myths left half forgotten, and lies still whispered in lost places. I learned much, but I always knew there was more. I could feel it, as though it waited around the next corner – a secret so large that its existence drew other secrets into its darkness. I found it at last, and I found that I was not the first. There were others of our kind watching me to see how far I would come on my own, to see if I was ready. I asked just as you asked, and as answer, or perhaps as punishment, they gave me knowledge.’ He reached into a pocket in his bodyglove and pulled out the Inquisitorial symbol with the blue gem at its centre. ‘Do you wish for answers, Iobel? The door to truth stands open. Walk through, or turn back now.’ He held out the symbol to Iobel.

Turn back!
The thought cut into her awareness, and the room swam in her eyes.
Turn back now!
Grey dust swirled across the edge of her sight. The sensation vanished.

The symbol sat on Izdubar’s hand, waiting.

She paused, and then reached out and picked it up. It felt warm in her hand.

Izdubar smiled sadly. The expression surprised her.

‘There is a room on a moon which orbits a far world around a nameless sun,’ he said. ‘It holds a record made by a man who was called Kalimakus. We call it his Athenaeum. It speaks of many things: of the past, of the future, of things that cannot be and the ways to find them. Besides those that keep it, only a few others have seen it.’ He let out a breath, and rubbed a hand over his left eye. ‘Only we of the Ordo Cyclopes have seen it.’

‘What is the Athenaeum?’ she said. At the back of her thoughts she wondered why it felt as though she had said those words before.

‘It is the thoughts of Magnus the Red,’ he said. Iobel stared at him. She could feel the shiver rise as bumps on her skin. ‘It is not just a record, it is a window. Kalimakus died long ago, but still his remembrance is being written, its lore dividing and multiplying without end. With every day that passes more words are added to it. Words that have told us what became of the Thousand Sons within the Eye of Terror, and given us glimpses of what they may yet become.’

‘How can you know it is true?’ Iobel’s voice sounded distant to her, the shock still rolling through her in waves.

Izdubar stepped back, and looked down through the crystal floor at the Rubricae beneath.

‘There is the proof, lying beneath our feet. The Athenaeum told us of how the Rubricae were born from the power and delusion of one called Ahriman.’

Ahriman…
The word echoed in Iobel’s mind.

Ahriman…

Ahriman…

‘But for centuries we were not sure, until we took this one and others. Until we could hold the proof of truth in our hands. Once that proof was found, then the rest of what the Athenaeum told us had the possibility of truth. That was when our war to prevent what it foretells truly began.’