Ahriman: Sorcerer (9 page)

A tall man stood amongst the rubble, his mind shining in Sanakht’s awareness like a fire on a dark night. A spherical kine shield surrounded the man, glowing where debris had slammed into its surface. A coat of grey leather hung from his thin frame. An axe’s haft projected behind his head from where it was sheathed between his shoulder blades. Augmetic eyes shone from beneath the smooth skin of his scalp. A battle psyker.

Sanakht charged. A ball of lightning rose like a halo around the psyker’s skull. Sanakht threw the jackal sword. It blurred through the air, psy-fire clinging to its edges. The ball lightning catapulted from the psyker’s mind. Sanakht’s sword met the sphere, and a sheet of white light bleached the chamber. The human psyker reeled, and fell to his knees. The jackal sword was falling, its edge smoking. Sanakht caught it as he leapt into the air. The sword blazed at his touch. The human psyker was beneath him, still trying to rise. Sanakht descended, twin swords trailing fire and lightning above his head.

The psyker moved at the last instant, his mind hardening even as he spun to the side. The hooked axe was suddenly in the man’s hands, its edge oiled with warp light, its crystal cores shrieking with fury. Axe and swords met.

The force of the psyker’s mind slammed through Sanakht as the weapons kissed. Once Sanakht would have simply pushed his mind across that link and crushed the human psyker’s mind inside his skull. That, though, had been long ago, before the Rubric, before everything had changed. Now victory had to take a different, more mundane form.

Sanakht scissored his two swords through the psyker’s axe. Its core exploded. Metal and crystal fragments rang against Sanakht’s armour. The psyker screamed, his arms truncated stumps, his face a shredded lump of meat. He was strong, though. He tried to rise, tried to find balance in his mind even as it boiled with agony. Sanakht spun the hawk sword through the man’s neck. Behind him he felt the minds of Ahriman and his brothers rush past him into the rest of the citadel.

They were close, very close. All they had to do was reach Astraeos and–

A psychic cry rose up from beneath his feet, sharp with pain, bright with anguish.

Astraeos gasped and stumbled. The shockwave spilled across his mind, shrieking in dead voices as the storm broke and the Rubricae woke. Across the chamber men and woman reeled, and some fell. He suddenly smelled blood, vomit and faeces. He leapt up the stone tiers. Plasma screamed over his head. Iobel stood still, burst blood vessels blooming red across her eyeballs, her arm steady as she aimed at him.

+Ahriman,+ he shouted to the warp. Only the thunder roar of the storm answered him.

Behind him Cendrion leapt from the platform to the chamber floor with a crack of stone. Astraeos was a pace from Iobel. She began to step back, the pistol still raised, gas fuming from its vents.

+Cavor,+ Iobel’s mind roared, her thought faster than her muscles. Astraeos struck her just below the elbow, and Iobel’s arm shattered as she pulled the trigger. Plasma sprayed into the air. Astraeos looped his arm under hers.

The ground shook as Cendrion landed on the lower tiers and charged. Astraeos felt the warp take shape from the Grey Knight’s thoughts. Fire kindled and stabbed towards him. He focused his mind to meet the inferno.

The explosive round hit him from behind, and ripped away a bloody chunk from his thigh. Astraeos turned as he began to fall. Blood was pulsing down his legs. A las-bolt clipped his shoulder.

A figure stood three tiers above him. Astraeos had the impression of a sour face, and a whip-thin body beneath a ragged coat; that, and the silver of the guns in the man’s hands. Iobel twisted in his grasp, still conscious. He heard the gun cylinders turn, and the hammers cock. His mind flicked out to crush the rounds in the chambers.

The guns fired. Astraeos saw the tongues of flame lick from the muzzles. Slow, so slow. He tried to turn aside, to refocus his mind into a shield. Something hit him in the chest. It felt soft and warm. Blood misted in front of his eyes. He felt his control of the warp falter, and the processes of his mind slipped free. He began to fall again. He still could feel nothing. The second round hit an instant later, and blew the front of his skull away.

I am truly blind now,
he thought as he hit the stone tier. Still there was no pain. Just a sense that somewhere locked behind walls of pain suppression there was a world of blades and razor edges waiting for him.

+Ahriman.+ The sending was weak, almost a croak. His awareness was fading, his body and mind closing down to the barest essentials. Everything had become a slow surge of sound and movement behind a window of numbed pain. His will scattered into fragments. The warp crashed in. Memories and half-formed thoughts whirled in the tide.

It was never going to work.

Trust me, my friend.

He was on the ground, slumped on the blood-slick stone. He tried to rise, tried to focus his will. There was a centre of calm within his mind, a pool of utter control that would save him if he could reach it. He would be able to heal himself, to see, to fight. It was there, just there, he could feel it in his grasp…

His will slipped, and he felt the tangle of occult formulae bleeding out of his thoughts.

Now,
thought part of him.
Ahriman will come for me now. I do not end like this. As I came for him, he will come for me. He gave me his oath. He is my master, my brother.
He will–

Darkness came down across his mind like a closing gate.

Someone far away was screaming. As the dark took him he realised that he recognised the screaming voice. It was his.

+What was that?+ Ahriman heard Sanakht’s voice rise out of the sea of thoughts. +Ahriman?+

Ahriman did not answer. He had felt it too. A shift in the warp, like a wind suddenly changing direction. He could see the whole design in his mind like a cage of spun glass, each filament a connection between the real and the warp. Each one and a thousand more had created this moment, had brought them here, and had raised the Rubricae from the ground. And it was slipping out of control. The vital beacon of Astraeos’s mind had blinked out like a snuffed candle. And they were running out of time. He could feel uncertain futures branching ahead of him with every step.

This must not fail. I must not fail.

They were one level above where they needed to be. They would break through to the conclave chamber in one hundred and thirty-five seconds, but that would be too late.

He felt time unravel around his mind like fraying rope. The glowing storm pattern fractured. Ahriman poured more of his will into it. The minds of his brothers shuddered as he drew on them.

He felt all sense fall away. Everything became distant, just another pattern spinning through the quiet stillness. He could see the possibilities of the next nanosecond, multiply and collapse. He saw the Rubricae climbing over the walls, the molten stone squashing beneath their feet. He saw Astraeos fall. He saw a figure of fire waiting at the end of a billion branching futures. He was the storm, the still point around which the warp turned.

He straightened, felt his muscles relax as he lowered his weapons to his side. Sanakht and the rest of the Circle moved closer, though he had given them no command. Their wills were his will, all their power his. The chamber vanished.

High above them a thunderhead of force broke from the summit of the fortress, staining the cloud of the storm red.

The stone floor beneath Ahriman’s feet became a void into nothing. He fell, he and his eight brothers with him, like angels from a burning heaven.

‘Mistress.’

Iobel tried to focus on the voice, but there was blood in her eyes, and her thoughts felt soft and unfocused. She felt hands begin to lift a weight pinning her legs. She blinked, and looked up. Cavor knelt above her. His mouth twitched to show his broken-toothed smile. Behind him the silver mountain of Cendrion was turning, his head tilted upwards to the domed ceiling. At his feet lay the body of Astraeos. Blood was pumping from what had been the Space Marine’s face. She could hear shouting, running feet, the sounds of panic.

‘Stay still, mistress,’ said Cavor. She frowned. Her head hurt a lot. She rolled onto her front, pushed herself to her knees. Purple and black spots bloomed in her vision. The ground felt like it was spinni–

…A web of light and colour spinning into a storm, growing, filling her sight. Ashes and ice and…
The vision snapped from her awareness.

She bit off a yell of pain, blinked away the afterglow of the image.

She felt hands trying to steady her. She flicked them away and stood, her teeth gritted. Smoke was bubbling through the chamber. All around her people were moving. Thunder and gunfire rolled overhead. Cavor was at her side, chromed guns drawn, his head twitching. She could see shapes moving through the smoke, clusters of people with weapons drawn.

‘Did you see that?’ she said, feeling her mouth struggle to form each word.

‘Mistress?’

…A web drawing tighter, each strand a line of fire in the night…

She was breathing hard, sweat prickling her cold skin.

No one was moving. Her eyes flickered over them.
Can’t they feel it? Can’t they–

…The web drew around her, drawing tighter, and she was alone with just the sound of her own rising pulse…

She blinked and found Cendrion’s silver-grey eyes on hers.

+Inquisitor?+ he sent, but his voice was distant as though he was moving away from her, as though she was falling. She could feel herself shaking now.

+Can’t… you… see… it?+ she sent. Cendrion’s brow flickered. Then he looked up, and then back at her. He nodded once as though in apology. His mind punched into hers. It was like being stabbed by a crystal knife.

…black stillness, and beyond the stars spinning in a blur…

+Run,+ he sent, as his mind withdrew. He raised his sword: its edge was suddenly burning. He looked upwards as thunder echoed through the castle’s stones. +Run. Now!+

Iobel took a step, her hand moving to draw the hand cannon from her second holster.

The ceiling vanished. Her vision flashed white, each person and object becoming a black shadow. It was still, silent, like the image of an explosion burned onto the retina before the eye could close.

Figures of shadow stood around her, looming taller and taller, their edges blurred, their shapes without depth. Iobel realised that she could not feel her own heartbeat.

+Iobel.+ The voice was all around her, holding her in place.

A shriek rang through the chamber. A tongue of white flame cut through the growing dark. One of the shadows was falling, its shape twisting and shrinking like a burning scrap of paper. Colour and shape blinked back into place. She was at the centre of a circle of giants armoured in sapphire blue. She had an impression of blood flicking across white silk robes, of a figure falling with a whine of armour. Cendrion was there, moving faster than she could track. She saw his sword rise and come down.

One of the blue warriors moved to meet him, slashing out with a blade-tipped staff. Cendrion sidestepped the blow, and cut down. Another sapphire warrior fell. She felt the force holding her weaken. Other shapes moved in the glowing cloud of dust. She dipped her gun in her good hand.

She saw him then, one figure amongst the ring of warriors. His armour was silver-edged blue, and his eyepieces glowed red beneath his horn-topped helm. He nodded once as though in greeting.

+Now,+ called a voice in her head. +It must be now or the alignment will pass.+

Cendrion was a pace away, his sword a sheet of blinding light.

+What of Astraeos?+ said another voice.

Iobel raised her gun, until the muzzle was pointing at the red eyes. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

+Now.+

The world vanished, and there was just the rushing of a storm wind and the spinning of stars.

VII

Loyalty