The Path of Heaven Page 24

  ‘My lord–’ Taban started.

  ‘Maintain course.’

  The Khan never moved. Klaxons started to blare and a sensorium platform lost its bearings, collapsing into the underpit below in a shower of electric light.

  ‘My lord!’

  ‘Wait.’

  Just as he said it, just as the final consonant passed his lips, the flagship broke through. It surged forwards, no longer fighting the headwind, and its pent-up power hurled it clear into the empty void. One by one, the rest of the fleet did likewise, bursting from the clouds of glittering azure and leaving long trails behind them as they struggled to re-establish control. All across the Swordstorm’s bridge, menials rushed to stabilise the onward tilt. The deck-level slewed as the opposing pressures radically altered, and fresh warning chimes resounded.

  Behind them, stretching off in all directions, the vast wall of shifting plasma churned. It curved away into the darkness of space, an immense concave barrier. They were on the inside of a sphere – a colossal sphere, its far extremities lost beyond visual range. The enclosed volume might have been the size of an entire star system; both the chronos and the augurs were spinning wildly, giving no firm reading.

  ‘I have heard theories on this,’ murmured Veil, looking at the phenomenon with wide eyes. ‘A lham shock wave, supermassive, thinning real space.’ He turned back to the Khan. ‘This is an aftermath. Something has been released.’

  The Khan ignored him. ‘Full ahead. Keep shields raised.’

  The fleet picked up speed, clustering together, plasma drives glowing in the gathering dark. The walls of lightning-infused cloud slowly fell away behind them, and a starless abyss gaped ahead.

  ‘I can sense it,’ muttered Hjalvos, still agitated. She shuffled closer to the real-viewers, peering with her cloudy eyes. ‘I feel it like heat from a flame.’

  After what felt like hours, but might have been any length of time, a singular point of pale light appeared on the forward scopes. The point grew rapidly, swelling and spreading, until a second cloud-sphere appeared before them, wreathed in veins of lightning and illuminated from within by sporadic bursts.

  ‘Seven hundred kilometres diameter,’ reported Taban. ‘Heavy radiation levels over physical and sub-physical ranges. Aetheric readings are close to that of a warp rift.’

  ‘Full stop,’ ordered the Khan. ‘Send in another probe.’

  The fleet powered down to a halt, strung out in a wide arc before the lightning-flecked orb. More augur-probes shot out into the void, their marker-lights fading rapidly as they disappeared into the distance. Images returned via pict feed were shaken and fractured by the electrical storms. Underneath the clouds, the surface of the sphere seemed to be composed of massive crystals, rolling and bumping into one another in a grinding orbital procession. There were gaps between the crystalline edges, giving tantalising glimpses of something darker and less sharply defined beyond. An eerie blue light bathed everything, swimming like myriad spores across the stately movement of the crystals.

  ‘What are those?’ asked the Khan, speaking to the two Nobilite representatives.

  ‘I have never seen the like,’ said Hjalvos.

  ‘A consequence of competing energies,’ said Veil, speculatively. ‘Real space, stratum aetheris. A rift has been opened. You cannot penetrate that barrier – the active immaterium would rip your warp drives apart.’

  For the first time, the Khan turned to look at him. ‘What were your people doing here?’

  Veil shrank back, clutching at his ruined, bound hand. ‘I know not,’ he stammered. ‘Truly. I only interpret the signs.’

  The Khan looked back up at the unfolding images from the probes. The gaps between the crystals were wide, several hundred metres at their furthest extents. One by one, the augur feeds failed, just as the probes crossed the threshold. The last of them emitted a jumpy final feed showing a spectral image from beyond the barrier – a thin, dark outline, hazy from the blue sheen, extending down and down. Then nothing.

  ‘The danger is to the warp drives,’ the Khan said. ‘What of standard propulsion?’

  Veil looked uncertain. ‘I do not know. There is the lightning, as you see, but–’

  The Khan rose from his throne. Even as he moved, attendants made haste with his wargear – the dragon-helm, kin to the lesser helm Qin Xa had worn on Kalium, as well as the heavy tulwar blade the primarch had borne on Prospero. ‘This is what we came to discover. I will see it with my own eyes. Yesugei, sorcerer, you will come, as will you, ecumene.’

  He buckled his blade to his belt, and took the helm in both hands. ‘Jubal Ahn-ezen, you have the fleet. Ready it for war – we will not remain hidden for long, even here.’ He turned to Ilya. ‘You will be needed here too, szu. If we find him, I will contact you first.’

  Ilya nodded. She looked deeply wary of the visions playing out across the real-viewers.

  Then the Khan lifted the dragon-helm over his head. Once in place, his armour was complete – pearl-white, lined with gold and decorated with the icons of the Qo Empire of Chogoris.

  ‘Prepare the Stormbirds,’ he commanded. ‘We are going in.’

  Von Kalda extracted his hands from the entrails, shaking the gore from them before reaching for a cloth. The pressure in the chamber was stultifying.

  The menials around him made no sound. They were blind, these ones, and thus spared the sight of scattered body parts, the lumps of glistening fat, the stark protrusions of bone amid the slurry.

  They were fortunate. Even for him, even after coming so far, there was a grimness to this work.

  ‘Halev erub mac’jerella,’ he intoned, marking the floor with blood. The last of the runes was completed, the characters from a language spoken by no living mortal, preserved only in dreams. This was not knowledge from Fabius, nor from the primarch – these were things he had discovered himself, melding the arts of the fleshweaver and the arts of the aether-diviner.

  It made his head throb and his nightmares vivid, but the prize never disappeared. And now he had his orders – Eidolon had sanctioned it, and would be waiting.

  He looked up. The iron chamber was swimming with red blotches now, hanging in the air like puffs of smoke. Every soul that had died in exquisite agony had thinned the curtain a little more, pulling apart the matter of the universe, strand by strand.

  He hardly dared to peer behind the armourglass. Its surface was smoky, smeared with the desperate handprints of those he had eviscerated. A sooty substance curled and shifted within, shrouding everything on the far side.

  Von Kalda shuffled forwards, his boots crunching through the bones on the floor. As he neared the container, he intoned again.

  ‘Malamennagorastica. Hovija. Khzah’tel arif negassamar.’

  They were nonsense words, far too long and cumbersome for human purposes. Only the deep places could have spawned such a tongue, crafted by the infinite for its own indulgent purposes.

  He reached the glass and spread his palms out across its curved surface.

  ‘Gegammoror. Gegammororara. Shashak. Lethatak.’

  The eyes swam to the surface, startling him. He pulled back, but did not look away. Two violet orbs, almond-lidded, whiteless, swimming with pearlescent sub-colour.

  So you found the path, it told him.

  The voice was astonishing – a nightmare-whisper wrenched into waking but given no form of its own. Many voices were overlapped there, jostling with one another as if buried alive within some master rattle-bag of intelligence.

  Amid the smoke and filth, limbs emerged, cleaner than they had been before. The flesh was pale and vivid, unblemished with wounds. A long barbed whip flicked back and forth around lissom thighs. In the background, the claws still snapped, clicking rapidly, a language all of their own.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Von Kalda. ‘Just the beginnings. What do I call you?’
<
br />   Master. Mistress. Or Manushya-Rakshsasi. This is what I was called in the Age before Anathema.

  Von Kalda resisted the urge to look deeper into the murk. The violet eyes were unblinking, unsettling. It was almost overwhelmingly tempting to gaze into them, to prize out the hidden movements in their opaque innards.

  ‘I would ask you a question.’

  Ask, then.

  ‘My master seeks the Great Khan. To track him through the warp will take time, and every day wasted here delays us. Is his location known to you?’

  These things are known to me. What do you offer in return?

  ‘What do you wish for?’

  The daemon seemed to smile, and a long tongue flickered across a wide, needle-toothed mouth. You have read your spells and you have learned your rites. You know the ways of the dream. Give me something I desire.

  Von Kalda tore his eyes away from the shifting movement of the pale skin. It was harder, far harder, than he had thought. The musky aroma of old blood was mingled now with something else – a perfume of intoxication that slunk and crept around the entire chamber.

  ‘Is it not enough to aid the Warmaster in his victory?’ he ventured.

  The daemon laughed then, genuinely amused. The laugh, though, was horrifying – a high-pitched shriek of pure malice, leavened by no joy, stitched together by mortal screaming.

  Victory is for mortal minds. There is no victory for us. What is our goal? We have no goals. What is our peace? We have no peace. You already give us what we wish for, and we drink it in and thirst for more. Now all that remains is amusement. The eyes flashed greedily. So amuse me.

  ‘You will feast on the souls of the Khan’s sons,’ Von Kalda tried. ‘They are weary and hunted, and our forces outnumber them. I will feed them to you, one by one.’

  Try again.

  Von Kalda instantly thought back to the conversation with Konenos, and the object became clear. There were mutually reinforcing goals here, ways of accelerating that which had already been started. Other Legions had done it. Lorgar’s had been the first, as in so much else, but the predecents had been set elsewhere too.

  ‘There are other souls,’ he said, cautiously. ‘One in particular – one who would find union with the aether… hateful.’

  Good. That game appeals more.

  ‘It will take time. He is wary, and capable.’

  All the better.

  ‘Then you will give me what I want?’

  The whip snapped across the floor of the containment tube. In the chamber, blood-runes began to boil. A bargain made will hold you. These things, words, contracts, wishes in the dark – they reach out across the worlds.

  Von Kalda withdrew from the edge of the glass. His hearts were pumping.

  ‘I know it. I do not deceive you. Payment will be made.’

  The daemon smiled again, this time with some disdain, as if those words had been uttered in its presence too many times to count. As the blood-runes fizzed away, its warp-spawned outline faded again, melting into the plumes of smoke.

  Then we shall speak again, you and I.

  ‘And the destination?’ Von Kalda asked. ‘Just a word – that is all.’

  The daemon was almost gone, and fading fast. With its passing, a hot and humid wind shuffled through the chamber, rippling the puddles of human waste that swam ankle-deep.

  Catullus, it told him. The Warhawk stands there, halted before the Road to Hell.

  Then the image ripped away, leaving only scraps of curling darkness. The containment column fell silent, marked only by a patch of condensation where the daemon had pressed against the armourglass.

  Von Kalda stood motionless for a long time. For all his training, it was still a difficult thing to be in the presence of one of them. There would be others, too – the Soul-Severed demanded it, always pressuring, forcing the work to go faster, to take more risks.

  But that was yet to come. The first question, at least, had been answered.

  His breathing returned to normal. His secondary heart ceased beating. He shook himself down, turned and crunched his way back through the bones and the sinews.

  ‘My lord,’ he said over the secure vox, opening the link to Konenos. ‘I have progress to report. Acknowledge, please, then indicate where we may meet. There are things we need to discuss.’

  They took five of the heavy gunships, escorted up to the perimeter by two wings of void fighters. The Khan travelled in the lead vessel, accompanied by those of the keshig not taken by Jubal for the fleet-ordering. Namahi, the cadre’s second-in-command, led the detachment. Three other gunships carried squads of White Scars legionaries equipped with breacher gear.

  The fifth contained Yesugei and Arvida, alongside Veil in the rear chamber, and the last of the Tactical Space Marine complement – more than two hundred warriors in total. The journey was not long, but it was violent, rocked by the elemental forces unleashed within the sphere’s heart.

  Yesugei remained close to one of the viewports in the crew bay, watching the lurid edifice lurch closer. Azure light skipped and slid through the armourglass portal, playing across the surfaces inside the darkened interior.

  Next to him was Arvida. The sorcerer’s breathing was coarse.

  ‘If I ask you if all is well, my brother,’ Yesugei said quietly, ‘I believe I know what you will tell me.’

  Arvida did not reply. He seemed to be rocking very fractionally, as if steeling himself.

  ‘You will tell me yes, all is well,’ Yesugei went on. ‘You are weary, that is all. And who of us is not weary?’

  Yesugei looked back out at the void. The great sphere now filled most of the view forward, and the edges of its constituent crystals were becoming visible. They were massive elongated octahedrons, regular in form and size, their facets perfectly angled and regular, as if cut by a las-beam. The spectral glow that coiled inside them was like the aether itself, ever-changing, writhing within a glassy prison.

  ‘Perhaps is easier if I tell you what I know,’ Yesugei went on, his voice soft enough to keep the conversation between the two of them. ‘You are not a fool, but neither am I. You learn to put control on it, but you cannot keep it fully hidden. Your gene-father could not, so what hope you have? There is no shame. You have done well to keep it secret, so dormant, but is running away from you now.’

  Still Arvida did not respond. The rocking grew more intense.

  ‘It is the warp, yes?’ asked Yesugei. ‘It is worse, when you use your art. I encouraged you. If I caused you greater pain, then–’

  ‘You are not the cause.’ The sorcerer’s voice was hesitant. Somewhere behind his helm, his features must have been stiff with suppressed agony.

  Yesugei placed his hand on Arvida’s forearm. ‘What can I do?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Neither spoke for a while. The Stormbird flight neared the sphere’s perimeter, the craft buffeted as the first forks of lightning shot around and under them.

  ‘Is it obvious?’ asked Arvida at length.

  ‘I do not think so. You have been careful.’

  Arvida nodded stiffly. ‘It will be worse. In there.’

  ‘I know. You could have refused to go.’

  ‘No, I wish to see it. These are the places where the warp was studied. Who knows?’ Arvida sighed – a grating sound like filtering stones through a sieve. ‘Chasing down diminishing hopes, grasping at the last of them as they gutter out. There are days when I think your Shiban is right. Force the battle. Get it over with.’

  At the mention of Shiban, Yesugei felt a brief twinge of pain. ‘If moment comes,’ he said. ‘If you cannot control it…’

  ‘I remain the master.’

  ‘Very well. Then I trust you.’

  They neared the first of the apertures between crystals. The lead Stormbird angled away, pulling down across the fac
e of the sphere. Crystal facets the size of destroyers swam beneath it, bathed in pale light, turning slowly. What lay beyond was still invisible, lost in the haze of shimmering aether-residue.

  ‘We are all damaged now,’ said Arvida, watching the approach. ‘All but you.’

  Yesugei sat back against the curve of the hull. ‘No living thing is undamaged.’

  ‘Yet you still smile. You still believe.’

  ‘So do the rest. They need to remember, that is all. For now, all they see is slow defeat. They forget they have been... magnificent. They fight alone when all others are lost or manning walls far away. They come at enemy out of the glare of the sun. They have made him halt, turn back, come after us. They have forsaken the world they loved, have let it pass into ruin, all for this.’ Yesugei thought of Qin Xa then, from whom there had never been a murmur of unbelief. ‘They will remember, before the end. Other Legions have failed this test – they let their souls change.’

  ‘Other Legions.’

  ‘Forgive me, brother, I did not–’

  ‘No, you are right,’ said Arvida. ‘My kind might have learned from the path you teach.’

  ‘Ahriman and I discussed it, long ago,’ said Yesugei. ‘On Ullanor, and before. We were never of the same mind.’

  You are too cautious, the Thousand Sons Chief Librarian had said. Does anyone even know the gifts you have?

  ‘To teach the Path of Heaven,’ said Arvida, dryly. ‘To walk between worlds, never leaving a trace in either. To kick the fire over, never to build, never to delve. You practise your art like you practise your war.’

  Their Stormbird was following the first one in now, travelling in its wake on half-thrust, negotiating the great arcs of power that lashed and slapped around them. The atmosphere in the crew bay seemed hotter, or closer, or charged with some kind of energy. The refracted blue light was all-encompassing, overpowering the onboard lumens and making everything blur with soft cobalt shadows.

  ‘You were always greater than us,’ remarked Yesugei. ‘Even now your power greater than mine. Cure this… sickness, and yours might be the greatest power I ever know.’ He smiled. ‘There is weakness in limitation, as well as wisdom.’