Daemonology Read online

  When Mortarion made his move, it was surprisingly quick.

  He whirled, his gauntlet flashing out, catching the frail lord by the neck and gripping tight. Malcador struggled for breath, looking up into the mask of sudden hatred now looming over him. The primarch still bore the stench of Barbarus upon his armour.

  ‘Trust?’ Mortarion hissed. ‘I see your foulness before me, as plain as the sun. You are a sorcerer, old man, and the stink of it makes me wish to vomit.’

  For once, Malcador struggled for the right words. He could have used his art to defend himself, but that would only enrage the primarch further. There was so much subtlety at stake – the nature of the psyker, the proper use of the human mind – but such arguments were hard to formulate with a gene-forged fist around one’s throat.

  Then Mortarion let go as suddenly as he had grasped him and snorted contemptuously as Malcador only barely found his feet.

  ‘You must think me stupid,’ he snarled. ‘A peasant of Barbarus, not fit to walk the same paths as my illustrious brothers. But I see through you, old man. I see what you are, and I tell you this – I will never serve in your Crusade while there are witches among us.’

  Mortarion’s toxin-spoiled voice shook with fervour, but Malcador composed himself. At one time or another, all of the primarchs had exerted their strength in his presence. They seemed to enjoy demonstrating their physical prowess over him, as if perpetually resentful of his privileged place at their father’s side. He had gotten used to letting the slights pass.

  ‘Do you… really mean… that?’ Malcador managed to ask, and Mortarion’s glower was all the confirmation he needed. ‘Very well. I had hoped to show you this later… when matters were at a greater stage of readiness… but perhaps now will serve.’

  He brushed down his robes, trying not to show just how much Mortarion’s choking grip had pained him, and gestured towards a pair of mahogany doors that led to a chamber normally off-limits to all but himself and the Emperor.

  ‘After you. I think you will find this… interesting.’

  The primarch’s chamber aboard the Endurance was cluttered and claustrophobic. Lermenta let her eyes run across it, taking in the piles of old equipment scattered across the black pressed-metal floor. Perhaps once it had been a finely appointed space, decked with fine items more in keeping with a private retreat of an Emperor’s son, though now it looked more like the domain of a mind teetering on the edge of insanity. Rolls of crumpled parchment spilled across collections of ephemera from a thousand worlds – stuffed xenos heads, astrolabes, divination boards made of rosewood and iron, leather-bound manuals on numerology, or knapped-flint knives of all sizes tied with lengths of twine.

  The floor had been etched with concentric circles, each marked with a different rune. Iron lozenges, also marked with sigils, hung on chains from the arched ceiling, twisting gently under the dim light of flickering torches. The air was close and as hot as blood.

  Lermenta was shackled tightly by her wrists, neck and ankles, bound to an iron frame that stood at the far end of the ramshackle chamber, facing in towards the circles.

  She had to twist her head to catch a glimpse of Mortarion. An eye-shaped viewportal stood over to her left, taking up nearly the entire height of the outward-facing chamber wall. Terathalion could be seen through the armourglass, still glowing brightly in the void and betraying little of its ongoing pain. Mortarion stood before the portal, breathing deeply, watching the planet die. Every so often he would twitch, or his gauntlets would clench, or his rebreather would emit a faint choke of expelled air. He had been standing there for over an hour. Since the Legion menials had pinned her to the frame and left the two of them alone in the chamber, he had said nothing.

  ‘So, you did that all just to find me?’ asked Lermenta, growing tired of the enforced silence.

  Mortarion turned upon her slowly. His every movement was deliberate, as though weighed down by a terrible weariness. Up close, Lermenta could see barely-healed wounds beneath the shadow of his cowl.

  What could wound him? What could even scratch him?

  ‘Not all of it,’ he rasped throatily, his rebreather clicking as it filtered his words. ‘It is good to destroy a world. It purifies the soul.’

  Lermenta raised an eyebrow. The primarch’s voice sounded strangely febrile.

  He limped past her, coming to rest at the epicentre of the rune-circles. He folded his arms and regarded her. ‘For a long time,’ he said, ‘I believed what my new father told me. I told myself that you were a myth.’

  ‘Well, you can see that’s not true.’

  ‘I see a mortal woman.’ Mortarion said. ‘I could snap your neck with my fingertips.’

  ‘Such a charmer.’

  Mortarion advanced towards her, his tortured face looking oddly distracted. He stared at her like a man might stare at a newly discovered tumour.

  ‘How long were you down there with them?’

  ‘Twenty-five years,’ she replied.

  ‘And the mortal you consumed?’

  ‘I forget. I can’t ask her anymore – she quickly lost her mind.’

  ‘Why were you sent?’

  ‘I was not sent,’ Lermenta snapped. ‘I chose it. There were priceless things down there and now you have destroyed them all. Your brother Magnus will be angry, when he returns.’

  ‘Do not speak to me of my brothers. Any of them.’

  Mortarion was studying her intently. Close up, Lermenta could smell the chemical tang of his armour-systems, the ripe edge to his extruded breath. She could see the minuscule darts of his pupils, and the faint hidden spasms around his mouth.

  ‘You are foul to me,’ he pronounced at last.

  Lermenta bowed as much as her bonds would let her. ‘Yet you are nothing less than astonishing to me. I am full of admiration. Truthfully, I did not expect to endure long enough to see you at such… quarters.’

  The flattery made no impact – Mortarion’s psyche was so inured to disdain that he could no longer see anything other than veiled contempt. Lermenta could almost hear that paranoia echoing in his mind, pursuing him, dragging at his mighty, wounded soul.

  ‘My brothers are already using your kind,’ Mortarion told her. ‘They tell me Lorgar willingly infects his warriors. And there is Fulgrim.’ Mortarion shuddered. ‘I wonder at it. The hypocrisy.’

  ‘You should not. They have seen the order of nature and accepted it.’

  Mortarion smiled joylessly behind the rebreather. He turned, gesturing to the collection of esoterica in his chambers. ‘These are wards,’ he said. ‘Protections against the dark. Sorcery is a cancer. We must guard against it. Push it back.’ He shuffled over to one of the scrolls and idly traced a finger over the text. ‘The ancient Terrans believed in one god. Infinite. Omnipotent. That gave them a conundrum – how to describe perfection? What words could possibly suffice?’

  Mortarion crumpled the parchment in his fist. His fingers were almost trembling.

  ‘All they allowed themselves was the via negativa – to speak of what their god was not like. And when they had exhausted all the things that were not true, what remained in the blind spot was his nature.’ He looked back at her, and the evident loathing returned. ‘I surround myself with all that is not the warp, for it is hateful to me. Whatever remains is corruption. I seek it out. I destroy it.’

  ‘And yet,’ said Lermenta, ‘of all that world’s souls, you chose to preserve me.’

  Mortarion’s right eyelid twitched. ‘For now.’

  ‘Why?’

  He drew close again, and it was all Lermenta could do not to shrink back in her bonds. ‘I am surrounded by the damned,’ he said. ‘Jaghatai was right – I am on my own with them. The aether stains everything. But I will understand it. And I will overcome it.’

  ‘Oh, for pity. Nothing can overcome it.’

  The pr
imarch loomed over her, and his shadowed face boiled with an old, old resentment. ‘All things can be overcome,’ he hissed. ‘Your final task, daemon, is to show me how.’

  Malcador ushered Mortarion into a narrow chamber. The only furniture was a long, low table draped in black silk. When the doors were closed behind them, the room sank into a velvety darkness.

  Malcador gestured with his index finger and a hololith emerged over the table, tiny points of light glinting like diamonds in the air. It was a tri-map of the galactic sector.

  ‘It took us a long time to find a suitable location,’ Malcador said, as the display gradually zoomed in. ‘A very long time.’

  He watched as Mortarion’s shrewd, suspicious eyes took in every detail – the inbound ship trajectory markers and the manifest logs that flickered in scrolling lists.

  ‘Then there were the negotiations with Mars. I thought they’d be pleased to help, but there are always difficulties to unravel. But the work, I am happy to say, is now advanced.’

  The hololith continued to cycle in closer. A planet swam into focus, its surface wracked by tectonic faultlines.

  ‘Where is this place?’ asked Mortarion.

  ‘You tell me you will refuse to serve if psychic potential remains in the Legions,’ said Malcador, watching the view continue to expand. ‘I believe you. It has been at the forefront of the Emperor’s mind for many generations. There are complexities to overcome, but much of His labour has been expended on that very question. This is a part of it.’

  Mortarion gazed at the planetscape before them. There were rainy images of vast Mechanicum void-engines hanging in low orbit, and terraforming crawlers being lifted down through a volatile atmosphere. Other projections shimmered into life – a huge complex, rising out of a desolate landscape of volcanic ash, radiating out from a massive central arena.

  ‘Imagine it,’ said Malcador. ‘If a way could be found to remove the warp from the arteries of the Imperium. If the armies of humanity could travel without use of the Navigator gene. If the psykers could be withdrawn from the Legions, steadily and with caution. We have already begun to prepare for this day. It will not be easy, for there are powerful forces ranged against us, both within and without.’ Malcador arrested the zoom, hovering over the half-built arena. It was a colossal space, a palace in its own right, carved out of the volcanic wound of another world.

  ‘This is Nikaea, Mortarion. It is a world with a destiny, and you will have a part to play there.’

  Mortarion appeared to be caught between emotions – the perennial distrust, leavened by an undoubted curiosity.

  ‘What are you telling me?’ he asked, grudgingly.

  ‘That you are valued, Mortarion. You will be mighty, as strong as the bones of the earth, and a pillar of your Father’s vision.’ Malcador dared reach out to him, to rest a hand on the primarch’s colossal wrist. ‘Remain true to us, and He will give you this. You will speak there, to make your case before the eyes of the entire Imperium, to unburden yourself of the things that you now carry unaided. For now, we must perforce build an empire with forbidden tools. But a day will come when all these things are no longer necessary.’

  Mortarion’s eyes remained fixed upon the arena. It was as if he were already imagining himself standing there.

  For a long time, he said nothing. Then, slowly, his demeanour changed.

  ‘Tell me more,’ he said.

  ‘You are a fool,’ said Lermenta, interested to see how far she could push the primarch. She guessed that it would not be very far – he was already teetering on the precipice. She had heard of what had been done to him on Barbarus, and did not wonder at the monster that had been produced. In some ways, it was a miracle that he still had any sanity left at all.

  ‘I have learned many things,’ wheezed Mortarion, gesturing to the arcane objects strewn across the floor. ‘Your kind can be warded against. You can be bound. You can be used, like blades, and then sent back to the hells that spawned you.’

  Lermenta felt like laughing in his face. She had heard the same screeds from a thousand other mortals over the aeons, each one convinced that he alone had found a way to negotiate with the gods for no price at all.

  ‘Let me tell you of the empyrean,’ she said. ‘There are many great forces in the aether, and one of them has your name etched over his rusting throne. He is waiting, though not for very much longer. It matters not how many trinkets you rattle or wave – he will not be denied. He has claimed you.’

  ‘None have claimed me!’ snarled Mortarion. ‘Even my Father could not claim me! Me, who was guilty of patricide long before the seeds of treachery were sown in the Warmaster’s heart. I have seen them all off – the tyrants, the witches, the xenos filth. Only I remain – pure of it all, free of corruption.’

  ‘You do not look pure to me.’

  The primarch glowered. ‘I can compel you, daemon. I know the words, the numerical constants that bind you, dragging you from one form to another. I have studied these things. It is not witchery, but scientific reason.’

  Lermenta felt real contempt then. The damaged figure before her had no true knowledge, just false hopes and gleanings. Her own master’s favourite, Magnus – ah, now there was one who really understood the mysteries of the empyrean, and even he had been deceived.

  ‘You wish to know the truth?’ she asked.

  Mortarion came closer. ‘I will know the truth,’ he hissed.

  ‘I can show it to you.’

  ‘I destroyed a world to find you. Give me the knowledge.’

  Lermenta smiled sweetly. ‘Very well.’

  Exerting her power was trivially easy. Most of the wards and cantrips Mortarion had assembled to keep her in place were embarrassingly weak, and only one thing in the chamber had the power to really hurt her.

  ‘This is the truth.’

  Her bonds shattered. Her human shell peeled away, sloughing from her like a bloody cloak and revealing a glossy, insectoid true-form. She launched herself at the primarch, her jaws gaping obscenely wide, her claws raking.

  She took him by surprise. It was her only advantage and she pressed it, gouging at his grease-streaked armour and trying to gnaw at the flesh within.

  He hammered a heavy fist down, trying to take her head off, but she evaded him with ease. She punched a claw into his midriff, biting deep, eliciting a roar of pain.

  By the gods, she was enjoying this.

  His physical strength was enormous, but that would not help him, for she was a creature of anti-physics, shackled only by laws that he feared to invoke. She wounded him again, goading him like some huge taurodon, driving his anger deeper towards mania.

  ‘Banish!’ he roared as she laughed at him. ‘Go back!’

  His fists were flailing now, trying to latch on to her, to drag her down. She slipped through his fingers like an eel, bloodletting as she went, adding freshly scored lines to his already battered war-plate. The two of them rocked back towards the circle, and she felt the power of the wards overlap in the air, tearing at her flesh even as she ripped through them.

  ‘Do it!’ she taunted, slapping him across the face. ‘Do what you came to do!’

  He resisted, trying to tear her apart with his hands, still relying on the immeasurable strength in his post-human musculature.

  Lermenta spat at him, and the acidic spittle clogged in his eye.

  That did it.

  ‘Barbaroí!’ he roared, and the runes etched around the chamber flared into life. A hot wind suddenly howled from the centre of the circles, snatching at her revealed trueform and harrowing it. ‘Gharáz! Baghammon’echzhaza!’

  She couldn’t help but scream, though the pain was mingled with a cold satisfaction at what she had provoked.

  Mortarion kept up the chant, and now his fist-strikes, spiralling with warp-lightning, caused real damage. He smashed her back again
st the iron frame that had held her, and the blows drove into her carapaced stomach.

  ‘So it comes for you at last,’ she hissed through bloodied fangs, grinning. ‘You could not resist.’

  The glorious stink of learned sorcery and hedge-magick was now pungent and inescapable. It was within him, and he was using it, in spite of every protestation.

  ‘Never mock me,’ Mortarion growled, spraying spittle from the vents of his rebreather. ‘Heijammeka! Never goad me!’

  Lermenta sagged back against the wall, feeling her soul pulled back into the empyrean. The primarch was crunching her to pieces now, hammering furiously with his fists, pouring out all of his fury onto her broken physical shell. It was hard not to be awed by it – she was the first to see a fragment of what he would eventually become.

  Here, above the burning remains of Terathalion, was the future of the Death Lord being born.

  And so as she died, and her quintessential matter sucked itself back into the maw of the aether, she managed a mock salute. ‘Hail, Master of the Plague!’ she cried through the ruin of her jaws. ‘By the gods, you learn fast.’

  Then the mortal universe ripped away, and the warp came rushing over her like a tide.

  Mortarion stood over Lermenta’s crushed form, breathing heavily. He could smell the ichor upon his gauntlets. It wasn’t blood, however it stained just as richly.

  His hearts were beating as one, though the combat had sickened him. He wanted to vomit, to expel the curdling sickness that hung heavily in his stomach.

  But here was something else there, too. He remembered Malcador’s promises; the smooth words spoken, so it seemed, an age ago.

  A day will come when all these things are no longer necessary.

  The Sigillite had been wrong about that, either lying or mistaken. That day would never come now, and there was no point pretending otherwise. Perhaps all the old certainties would have to be overturned now, even the oldest, forged in the gas-clouds of the foundling world he had both loved and hated.

  He remembered, too, the words that he had spoken.