The Omnibus - John French Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Warhammer 40,000

  Introduction

  All is Dust

  Ahriman: Exile

  Prologue

  Part One

  I – The Harrowing

  II – Titan Child

  III – Visitation

  IV – Oaths

  Part Two

  V – Sons of Dust

  VI – Memory’s Ashes

  VII – Oracle

  VIII – Rubric

  IX – Dead Space

  X – Summoning

  XI – Warp Breach

  XII – Change

  Part Three

  XIII – Clockwork

  XIV – Taken

  XV – Secrets

  XVI – Gathering

  XVII – Darkness

  XVIII – Names

  XIX – Peace

  XX – Every Weapon

  XXI – Remade

  Epilogue

  The Tale of Ctesias

  I – The Dead Oracle

  II – Fortune’s Fool

  III – Hounds of Wrath

  IV – The First Prince

  V – Gates of Ruin

  Ahriman: Sorcerer

  Prologue

  Part One

  I – Dreams

  II – Brotherhood

  III – Conclave

  IV – World Murder

  V – Intersection

  VI – Circle

  Part Two

  VII – Loyalty

  VIII – Mindscape

  IX – Storm Calm

  X – Recall

  XI – Land of Lies

  XII – Broken

  XIII – Blades

  XIV – Claws

  XV – Connection

  Part Three

  XVI – Apollonia

  XVII – Patterns

  XVIII – Revelation

  XIX – Awakening

  XX – Sorcery

  XXI – Storm Break

  Epilogue

  Hand of Dust

  King of Ashes

  Ahriman: Unchanged

  Prologue

  Part One

  I – Sorcerers

  II – Spoken and Unspoken

  III – By Your Will

  IV – Control

  V – Absence

  VI – Preliminal

  VII – Synchronicity

  Part Two

  VIII – Transitions

  IX – Voices

  X – Conversations

  XI – Prospero

  XII – Gateways

  XIII – Ghosts

  XIV – Perspectives

  XV – Pyre

  XVI – Labyrinth

  Part Three

  XVII – Returned

  XVIII – Unleashed

  XIX – Shards

  XX – Ritual War

  XXI – Beginnings

  XXII – Losses

  XXIII – Saviour

  XXIV – Reforged

  XXV – Failure

  XXVI – Rubricae

  Epilogue – A Final Beginning

  About the Author

  A Black Library Publication

  WARHAMMER 40,000

  It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

  Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Astra Militarum and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants – and worse.

  To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

  INTRODUCTION

  The book you are holding is one story. That sounds obvious, right? I mean, it’s a trilogy of books about the same character bound together; of course it’s one story. So what am I talking about?

  Ahriman of the Thousand Sons is a character driven by guilt to try and fix the mistakes he committed in the past. In particular he is set on finding a way to save his Legion, the Thousand Sons, from the corrupting influence of Chaos. In this goal he is willing to do anything, including using the powers of Chaos, sacrificing countless lives and betraying those who might have thought him a brother or friend. His first attempt to save the Thousand Sons was a vast ritual called the Rubric. It went disastrously wrong, resulting in most of the Thousand Sons being turned from flesh into sealed suits of armour animated by the vestige spirits of those that wore them. Since then he has been trying to find a way to overturn that mistake.

  When I began writing Exile I knew that if it went well that I wanted to write a trilogy. That was not just because books come in threes, but because I wanted to tell a big story, a story that was too big to fit in one book. I have always imagined Ahriman as moving through a series of grand projects in his quest for salvation, each one based on an idea of how he could achieve his ultimate goal. Recasting the rubric, manipulating time, capturing souls and giving them new bodies: he has probably tried all of these things over the millennia, and with each attempt he has to gather more power and knowledge to make them work, and even if they fail each grand endeavour will leave both Ahriman and the universe changed. This is the story of the first of those great endeavours, of how Ahriman pulled himself up from despair, and his first attempt to undo the effects of the Rubric and save his Legion.

  The demands of a trilogy mean that the story I wanted to tell was sliced up into three books, which conveniently mirror the set-up, struggle and finale structure of classic stories. The only problem was that the strands that linked the three books might not be clear, because of the gap between the books being released. So, when it comes to this omnibus edition you really are getting the story as I intended: all together, from start to finish in one place.

  This edition also let me draw together all of the other stories that I wrote about Ahriman, and place them together next to the main narrative. In particular the series of short stories told by the daemonologist, Ctesias fills in the details of how Ahriman and his followers find a way out of the Eye of Terror between Exile and Sorcerer. It also adds something that you don’t get by reading the novels on their own. Reading Exile it is easy to think of Ahriman as a good-bad-guy, a misunderstood anti-hero who is on the wrong side of history’s judgement. Ctesias’ viewpoint is an antidote to that. He does not like or trust Ahriman, and is not taken in by his ideals. Seeing Ahriman from that point of view before you go into Sorcerer and then Unchanged, should give you another way of seeing Ahriman’s actions in those books. Is he an anti-hero, or just out an
d out evil? Is he in command of the power he wields, or just a deluded slave to the Dark Gods of Chaos? Is he an idealist or a hypocrite?

  Having said all that, the thing that most pleases me about this omnibus is that I could put the short story ‘All is Dust’ at the beginning, as the first thing you read. Although short, it shows you what it is like to be one of the Rubricae created by Ahriman’s Rubric, what remains of them, and, hopefully, shows you the tragedy of what Ahriman did. ‘All is Dust’ is emotional context for everything that follows. It also has a very particular and important place in the conclusion of the trilogy. I wrote ‘All is Dust’ at the same time as Exile, and very carefully and casually included the name of the Rubricae at the centre of the story as Helio Isidorus. That name crops up a few times in the main narrative, and then one last time, right at the end (no, that’s not a spoiler, you will see what I mean when you get there). Bringing everything full circle and being able to put that story in its proper place feels right.

  This is one story, the first story of Ahriman’s path to ultimate damnation or redemption. I hope you enjoy walking it with him.

  John French

  November, 2016

  ALL IS DUST

  Only dust remains. Dust and emptiness. I do not know what I am. I had a name, but it is gone. I am nothing. I am locked in darkness, tumbling without end through broken memories.

  I remember blue. The blue was sky, slashed red by fire. I could smell smoke. There were pyramids on the horizon. Fire leapt from cracks in their sides.

  The dead were a slick carpet on the ground. The warrior stood amongst the corpses, his grey armour spattered, his mouth open like a dog panting for air. His pupils were black bullet holes in amber irises.

  Blood pumped in my veins, roaring in my ears. I was running, firing as I moved, churning the dead into bloody mud with each step. The gun in my hands shook with a thunder-rhythm.

  The grey warrior snarled and leapt to meet me. Rounds hit the ground around him, raising red craters in dead flesh behind his feet. He had an axe, its head a chest-wide span of black iron, its cutting edge curved like a skull’s smile. I remember it singing in the air. The axe hit me in the side. It cut deep.

  I remember the pain, star bright, and ice cold. I bled, red liquid running over red armour, over gold, red drooling onto the ground. I looked up as the warrior pulled his axe back. Blood fell from the blade edge. It glittered in the sun, crimson against the blue sky.

  I put him down then, I shot him until he was broken armour and folds of meat. I killed him before death could take me. I remember that I felt anger and joy at that moment, but I do not know why.

  The memory fades. I am alone again. I have a shape. It is a shape like that of a man, but I am hollow. I am just the outline. I have hands, but cannot touch. I have no mouth, but I have been screaming since I began my fall. I want to breathe, but I cannot. I cannot remember what it is to breathe; only what it is to drown in an abyss, to sink without hitting the bottom.

  Time passes. I can feel it passing, like wind burying a statue in sand.

  I had a name once. It is an echo, fading but never vanishing, forever beyond hearing. I was once flesh, but that is gone.

  +Helio Isidorus.+

  The voice comes to me out of the black night. I know the name, but I do not remember why.

  I remember fire. It was white, the stark white of a sun’s heart. It roared from a black sky and remade me.

  I fell to my hands and knees. The ground beneath me was red dust, the colour of rust, the colour of dried blood. Pain, hotter and sharper than any wound, filled me. I could not see; the fire took my eyes first, and then it took my tongue before I could scream.

  Inside my armour my muscles bunched, straining against metal. The fire burned through me, blistering my skin. I felt mouths open across my body, a thousand mouths each with razor teeth, each babbling a plea for the pain to stop. The fire pulled through my body like hands through wet clay.

  I was suffocating, as if sinking in sand. The acid touch of panic burnt my flesh. I could not breathe. I could not move.

  Everything stopped. It is like a razor drawn through the memory, a hard line severing me from everything that came before.

  I felt nothing.

  I stood slowly, the dust spilling from my armour. I begin to walk, one slow step at a time. A dull haze shrouds the world. Beside me, other shapes move. They are lumbering figures, like walking statues. Somewhere in the distance I can see a cluster of figures. Golden light outlines their shapes. They stand as if waiting. I walk towards them, towards the light. I cannot remember my name.

  The memory breaks, and I spin on through the empty dark.

  +Helio Isidorus.+ It is a dream voice shouting from the darkness.

  I can see light. It is distant, like a moon glimpsed from beneath the waves. The light is getting brighter and closer. I am rising out of the dark. Hands that I cannot see are pulling me. I can feel fingers gripping flesh that I do not have. I try to stop. I cannot stop. The light is getting brighter and brighter; it is a sun that I cannot look away from.

  +Helio Isidorus,+ the dream voice says again. I am drowning but I cannot breathe. I thrash my arms. Cold metal holds me still. I am a swirl of dust rattling in a skin of metal.

  +Helio Isidorus,+ says the voice that is a thought.

  I know the name.

  +Helio Isidorus.+

  It is my name.

  I can see.

  The world is movement, and fire, and the roar of distant sounds. I am standing on a plain of leaping fire and melting snow. Beside me is a figure. He wears armour the blue of the desert sky, and his helm rises into a high crest of lapis and gold. Silk robes flutter around him, though there is no wind. Golden light glows from him, filling my eyes. He is more real than anything else I can see. It is his voice that called me from my sleep; I know this but do not know why. He turns and points. I step forwards. I have a weapon in my hands. I see an armoured warrior moving towards us. His armour is the grey of storm clouds. I fire. Blue trails of flame find the grey warrior, and he staggers to his knees before he burns. I am moving forwards, turning my eyes on the world around me. Other figures in blue armour advance beside me; we move as one.

  There are more grey warriors moving towards me. They are tall, but hunched with speed. I see axes, and swords, and grey armour painted with bright colours in jagged patterns. I see black pupils in wide yellow eyes. They shout as they come. I can hear them. I can understand them. They are screaming for vengeance.

  A blow strikes my shoulder. There is a cut in the metal of my armour, a dark gash through metal to the black void within. I feel nothing. The cut glows; it breeds green maggots of light, and then closes like a silenced mouth. I turn my head. I see a warrior pulling back his blade from another strike. His face is bare and his beard is wet and red with blood. A cut runs across his face from temple to cheek. I can see white bone in the open lips of the wound. He is a pace from me. I do not know how he got so close.

  I fire. My weapon is low and the rounds tear the warrior’s legs off in a blaze that burns even after he falls. His flesh begins to cook inside his armour.

  I take a pace forwards, stepping through the flames. I pause. Memories swirl in the darkness within my skin, rattling like sand against bronze. I watch the grey warrior burn, become ash, become dust. I know this should mean something, but in my memory there is only the emptiness that drowns all else. I am an outline held in a dream of falling, and this moment means nothing.

  AHRIMAN: EXILE

  ‘To talk of destiny and fate is foolish. Time, causality, the observer and the observed; we must treat our assumptions on all these matters with suspicion. We think of the past causing the future, but must that be so? Is fate created by trying to see it? What if we had not looked? Would matters have unfolded otherwise?’

  – Ahzek Ahriman, from the precepts of the Corvidae

  PROLOGUE

  Haakon Grey Storm moved up the frozen slope of the ridge. His armour ha
d once been the blue-grey of glacial ice, but that had been long ago. Now it was the dull grey of battered metal. Dents and gouges wound across its plates like ropes of scar tissue, and flecks of paint clung to pits and grooves, hinting in bright fragments at the past of the warrior within. Haakon felt the armour creak as he crouched behind the lip of the ridge. Every small movement felt stiff against his skin, as if the battle plate were protesting at the cold. He paused and drew a deep breath of cold air. He wore no helm, and the icy wind lifted the black hair from his face as he tilted his head back. The light of stars burning sun-bright in a clear blue sky met his yellow eyes. He let the breath out of his lungs.

  He could smell the witch.

  Slowly he unclamped the axe from his back. Its head spread in twin curves of polished metal, the golden bodies of dragons tangling across its faces. The leather-bound haft settled into his hand. He held the axe close to the throat, his thumb resting on the power field generator. Its edges glittered sharp against the crystal powder of the chemical snow.

  Beyond the ridge the ground dropped away to a road of cold-cracked stone. The witch was approaching along that road. Haakon sniffed again. Her stink was strong even over the fumes that hung above the ice. Sweat, dried blood, and a scent like crushed roses and fresh faeces: the scent of the corruption, the scent of the warp. The warp changed everything it touched, and once touched, nothing was pure again. Not this world, not the stars shining in a sunlit sky, not Haakon himself. He had once asked a rune priest if he was changing, if the hunt through the worlds on the edge of the Eye had tainted him. The rune priest had not been able to answer, but Haakon knew the truth. He had changed. His sense of smell, always keen, now seemed to reach through matter to detect the flavours of the soul. It was as if his purpose had found an echo in the warp, the hunter’s desire answered with the means to find the prey. The warp had touched him. He was tainted and he always would be, but his purpose was pure, and that was enough.

  The witch was close now, her scent growing stronger with each slow pulse of his hearts. She had guards with her, followers of her vile cult. He had their scents too. There were ten of them. He could smell the grease on their guns, and the edges on their knives. He began to move. Snow powder fell away from him as he padded forwards. He took a last breath and let its calm soak into his muscles. His mind and body became one, became a single blade-tip of focused intent. He was close now. Kill the witch, and the witch’s knowledge would lead him to the exile. He could smell the knowledge in her. She might have only glimpsed his ultimate prey once, but it was enough. The exile’s scent was on her, and he would follow it to the end. And then Fenris would have vengeance.