Ahriman: Sorcerer (3 page)

He has promised salvation to his Legion
, thought Astraeos.
What else can he do but try to understand what went wrong, to see if there was an error that could have been corrected.

‘There is something I must ask of you.’ Ahriman looked around again. Astraeos held the cold blue gaze.

‘Ask,’ he said.

Ignis stepped from the gloom of the gunship into the bright light of the
Sycorax
’s hangar bay. He paused at the bottom of the ramp. It had been a long time since he had been on board the ship, and longer still since he had breathed her air or walked her decks. Centuries had passed for him and in that time he knew that he had changed, but it seemed both time and change had touched the
Sycorax
more deeply. Blooms of verdigris crusted the recesses of plates and rivets. Geometric reliefs in bronze and lapis crawled over the decks and walls. Some of them looked as though they had grown from the ship’s bones. Figures in billowing yellow robes moved on the margins of the hangar, clicking with machine noise. All of them seemed to either be skeletal and tall, or bloated and squat. They were watching him. He could feel their eyes and curiosity prickle his mind.

Ignis began to count and calculate as he watched. The numbers and geometries of this situation were not good, but then what should he expect given what this ship was, and who commanded it? He turned his head, and saw the other craft in the hangar bay. Gunships, assault boats and shuttles of every mark he knew, and several that he did not, lay on the tarnished bronze deck. Groups of warriors hung close to each craft. Most were Space Marines, but each group was as different as the craft that had brought them. There was a warlord and his entourage, their armour glistening with an oily rainbow sheen, their helms curling with crowns of carved horn. There were others shrouded in grey, standing in a perfect circle, hands resting on the hilts of bared swords. There was a cohort in off-white battleplate, the eyepieces of each warrior weeping silver without ceasing. They all noticed him at last. Eyes turned slowly, a few weapons were touched. He watched questions and pride flicker in the auras of each.

And well they might look,
Ignis thought. They were the leaders, emissaries, and chosen of the warbands that Ahriman had drawn to him or inherited from Amon’s Brotherhood of Dust. Here they waited to see the sorcerer lord who led them all, but Ahriman had left them like dogs waiting outside a feasting hall. Slighted pride and petty superiority foamed close to the surface of the watching warriors. All of them wanted favour, or fortune, or secrets. Ignis could read the desire in them without having to sense it in their thoughts. Each of them wanted to rise higher in their own schemes, but all believed that only the Thousand Sons could ever hope for Ahriman’s true favour. They hated that, as much as they feared the sorcerers and their Rubricae warriors.

And into this pattern of discord Ignis had walked; a lone figure, a newcomer to the sorcerer lord’s court. He could feel the aggression seeping into the air as his eyes skimmed the vast chamber. Even in his furnace-orange Terminator plate, he was a weakling in their eyes, another lost warrior drawn to the flame of power.

A hulking warrior in pearl-white battleplate broke from a cluster of identically armoured figures. Ignis watched the warrior out of the corner of his eye. He sighed inwardly. It was always going to be like this, and it was only going to get worse. He had not wanted to come, he really had not.

The white-armoured warrior was five strides away now. He had a hook-headed sword in his left hand. Symbols spidered the blade. Ignis wondered if the warrior really knew what they meant, or why they did precisely nothing.

The warrior halted two and seven-eighteenths of its blade length from Ignis. A vein twitched in Ignis’s temple as he noted the imprecision of the distance. He really should not have come.

‘I am Augustonar, first blade of the hundred that serve Iconis of the Broken Gate.’

Ignis let a breath out slowly, but did not look at Augustonar. The warrior tilted his helm, waiting.

‘My lord, whose word lives in eternity, wishes to know your name.’

Ignis flicked his eyes upwards. He could feel familiar minds in the vast structure of the ship, but all of them were distant.

My brothers,
he thought. Then he frowned, sending the black electoos on his face into a dance of reforming patterns.
Brothers
– he had not used that word in a long time.

Augustonar’s voice growled out again.

‘I am Aug–’

‘You are Augustonar, first blade of a mongrel set of traitors, culled from a Legion of credulous scum.’ He looked directly at Augustonar. The warrior’s aura was a red blur of rage. ‘I am sorry – do these facts offend?’

Augustonar lunged forwards.

Credence came out of the dark hold of the gunship behind Ignis with a thump of extending pistons. The automaton made the deck in a single stride, weapons arming as it straightened to its full height. The orange lacquer of its body plating gleamed in the stablights. Geometric patterns etched down to the black metal spiralled across its every inch in lines no thicker than a blade edge. It was an echo of the colour and marks on Ignis’s own Terminator armour; not identical, of course, never that.

Credence hit Augustonar across the shoulder with a machine-clamp hand. The warrior lifted from the deck and slammed down ten paces away.

Ignis watched Augustonar try to rise.

The automaton coughed a stream of machine code.

‘No, the threat still seems to be present,’ said Ignis.

Behind Augustonar, the rest of the white-armoured warriors surged forwards. The cannon on Credence’s back rotated towards them.

Ignis closed his eyes. It was inevitable that it would come to this; the patterns and alignments would not allow for anything else.

+Enough!+ The telepathic shout snapped Ignis’s eyes open. He was in time to see the first three white warriors fall, the weapons of each tumbling from their hands. The rest halted.

A figure stood in front of Ignis. His armour was the blue of a sea beneath a noon sun. He had a sword in each hand, one sheathed in a crackling power field, the other in pale ghost light. Two jackal heads snarled in opposite directions from the high crest of his helm, and when he turned to look over his shoulder at Ignis the blank silver of his faceplate glinted beneath green eyepieces.

Ignis met the stare, feeling surprise roll through his mind. Credence rotated towards him, and clattered a query.

‘No,’ said Ignis. He paused, as he tried to select words. ‘No, it is not… a threat.’

The swordsman glanced back at the white-armoured warriors, who were backing away.

+Sanakht,+ sent Ignis. Credence clattered as the swordsman stepped closer. Ignis could see Sanakht’s aura harden with control, but there was something wrong with it, as though it was a flame cast by a broken lamp. +It has been a long time.+

Sanakht just stared at him, then turned away. +Not long enough perhaps,+ sent Ignis as Sanakht strode away across the deck.

Credence’s gun mount tilted upwards with a hiss of releasing pistons. The automaton gave a low rattle of questioning binaric.

‘That,’ said Ignis carefully, ‘is the first of my brothers I have seen in eight hundred years.’

Sanakht sheathed his swords as he walked from the hangar deck. The power sword with the hawk pommel went across his left hip close to his right hand, the jackal-capped force sword across his right. His fingers tingled as he broke the connection to the blade’s psychoactive core. Around him slaves, servitors and machine-wrights made way and lowered their gazes. He felt the breath held unreleased in his lungs.

Ignis had seen the weakness in him; it had been there, clear in the bastard’s eyes.

He had last seen Ignis on the Planet of the Sorcerers, staring at the circle of Ahriman’s surviving cabal from the cordon of those who had not been part of the Rubric conspiracy. Sanakht could remember looking between eyes filled with shock and anger, and amongst those looks there had been Ignis’s cold gaze. The Master of Ruin had not looked shocked, merely curious. Sanakht had been barely conscious, his broken soul leaking strength into the aether, but that cold, calculating stare had penetrated into his awareness, and had followed him through the centuries.

You are crippled,
it had said.
You are nothing.

Sanakht let out his held breath, and pushed his mind out into the aether. Behind the mirror plate of his helm, his face twitched at the effort.

+He is here,+ he sent.

+Alone?+ It was Astraeos who answered, the sending thick with raw power. Sanakht blinked. So Ahriman was still secluded.

+Yes, apart from an automaton bodyguard.+

+You are escorting him to the citadel?+

+He can make his own way,+ snapped Sanakht. +He is here. That is enough.+ He broke the mental link. A mote of pain pulsed at the corner of his eyes. He shook himself, careful to make sure that his discomfort did not show. All use of his abilities took effort. What once would have been like breathing to him, was now a matter of deliberate focus.

Why had Ahriman brought Ignis, one-time Master of the Order of Ruin, to him? The question pulsed in Sanakht’s mind as he ascended back up through the
Sycorax
’s decks. The Order of Ruin had been the masters of the sacred numerology of destruction in the old, long dead structure of the Thousand Sons. By their arts the Legion had levelled cities, arrayed armies for sieges, and determined patterns of attack. They had always been a strange breed, and Ignis more so than any. He had not been part of Ahriman’s cabal, nor part of Amon’s Brotherhood of Dust, but he had also left the thrall of Magnus. He was an outcast by his own choosing, a breaker of fortresses and worlds with no loyalty to anything. Yet here he was, called by Ahriman to stand with them in whatever was to come.

And where are we going that we need his kind?
wondered Sanakht.

Kadin looked up into the daemon’s shark grin.

‘Can you hear me, brother?’ he said. The daemon hissed, and stirred in its web of chains. Kadin took a step back, his mechanical legs squealing as they cracked the ice from their joints. The chamber was small. White frost covered the silver of its eighty-one walls, ceilings, and floors. The glow of the sigils cut into every surface diluted the dark. The daemon hung at the chamber’s centre. Its flesh was moon white. The body of a Space Marine, which was now the creature’s host and prison, could still be glimpsed in its form, but only just. Its hands were sharp cradles of bone, and black quills had pushed from the skin of its torso. It looked at Kadin with eyes of glistening night.

‘I…’ began Kadin again, but the rest of the words drained from his mouth. He did not like coming here; it made him feel something he did not understand. However, he came anyway. The thing hanging in the chamber was not his brother any more, though it was as a brother that he talked to the creature. Cadar had died on the
Titan Child
many years ago, and even if a spark of his life had survived, the daemon bound into his flesh would have consumed it. At least that was what Ahriman said. Kadin hoped he was right. ‘We are still waiting,’ he said at last. ‘The fleet is ill at ease. Ahriman has said nothing of what he is doing, or where we will go next, or when. Astraeos and the rest of the Circle hold things together, but…’ He paused again. The daemon’s head had twitched around at the mention of Astraeos’s name. Its chains clinked, as though it had tensed against their grip. Kadin licked his lips.

He should not have mentioned Astraeos. That had been a mistake. The daemon was bound here because it could not be allowed free and it could not be destroyed. It was a creature of raw hunger, but it was strong. Astraeos had bound the creature to him to help save Ahriman, and the two remained linked. Astraeos had never called on the daemon again, but as long as Astraeos lived so the daemon had to remain shackled. Kadin himself had shunned the daemon’s cage for years, but recently he had felt himself drawn to it, and so he had come once, and then again, and again. He came and talked to his dead brother.

‘I can’t remember the home world any more,’ he said at last. ‘I can’t even remember how it was destroyed. What does that mean, Cadar?’ He shook his head, and a double set of eyelids closed over his eyes. ‘I think I used to be able to remember before the dead station, before… I was changed. But sometimes I am not sure. Does that matter, brother? Does it even mean anything?’

He shook his head, and turned towards the silver door out of the chamber. The daemon hissed behind him. Kadin raised his machine hand and tapped the door. The sigils flared, and he felt heat itch around his skull. Then the sigils dimmed and the door opened. He paused, one foot on the other side of the threshold.

‘It’s going to get bad,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘I don’t know why, but I think it’s going to get very bad.’ The daemon remained silent. Kadin nodded to himself, eyelids briefly closing over his green, slitted eyes. He stepped from the room and the silver door sealed behind him.

Maroth waited for him in the passage beyond. The broken and blind sorcerer was crouched on the floor, the tatters of his robes hanging over his dented armour. He raised his head as the door sealed.

‘The answers of silence are pleasing?’ chuckled Maroth. His hound-shaped helm tilted up as though to emphasise the question. Kadin did not bother to look at him or reply. Maroth always followed Kadin when he visited the daemon in its gaol, as though he liked to be close to it even if he was never allowed to see it.

Kadin walked away from the silver door. His vox-link popped and crackled back into life as the door receded into darkness behind him; things were happening. It was as though the whole fleet had woken from sleep while he was not looking.

‘The war on fate, it is beginning, is it not, yes?’ breathed Maroth, as he scrambled to follow.

‘Yes,’ said Kadin. ‘Yes, I am afraid it is.’

III

Conclave