The Omnibus - John French Read online

  ‘You did not believe we should follow this course,’ said Kadin. He could feel his lips curling back from his teeth. He turned back and pointed down at Thidias. ‘I saw it. Do not lie to me.’

  Thidias did not move, but Kadin felt something change, as if his brother’s stillness had hardened.

  ‘Ahriman stole our oaths, Thidias. He is a trickster and a thief of loyalty.’

  ‘The matter is decided,’ said Thidias, and there was ice in his voice.

  ‘Three, brother.’ Kadin nodded as he spoke, and his hand ran across the scoured chestplate of his armour. ‘Three out of a thousand. That is the fate our honour and words bought us.’ Thidias did not move, his true eye and glowing augmetic a blank mirror to Kadin’s stare. After a second, Kadin licked his lips and spoke. ‘You, of all of us, must see what will happen if we allow ourselves to follow–’

  ‘To follow the only things that are left to us,’ said Thidias.

  ‘If we trust Ahriman, it will destroy us!’ roared Kadin.

  Thidias laughed, a loud cold laugh that filled the small chamber like a roll of thunder. Kadin froze as if struck.

  ‘No, my brother.’ Thidias shook his head, and there was no laughter in his voice. ‘We were destroyed a long time ago. We became nothing the moment we did not die in the pyre of our home world. We are enemies to everything we fought for.’ Thidias stood, and turned to set the bolter back on a wall bracket. Kadin stared at him, not knowing what to say. ‘There is nothing left of what we were, not truly. You want to break our vows, to flee again, but it will not save us, brother.’

  Kadin’s mouth opened, but no words came.

  ‘We were born in the dark, but knew the light of the sun.’ Thidias’s voice stopped Kadin with his hand on the hatch. ‘Now we are falling, and the sun is a vanishing memory.’ Thidias paused, and Kadin turned back. His brother stood facing away, his right hand still resting on the case of the bolter in its bracket. For an eyeblink he remembered Thidias standing on the highest spire of the fortress-monastery, his cloak rippling in the wind as the night sky above burned with the fires of judgement. ‘I will never see that sun again,’ said Thidias, his voice low, ‘but I would die remembering that I knew its light for a time.’

  Kadin looked away after a long minute, and left in silence.

  Ahriman found Maroth lying curled in the dark before the door, his helmet sealed in place, the tatters of his skin cloak pale with frost. He had not been looking for the broken sorcerer, he had not even been intending to come to the bound daemon’s cell, but his feet had led him as if something hollow in his soul had drawn him into the quiet and the dark. When he had realised he was close to where Maroth had kept the bound daemon, he had almost turned back. Then he had heard the sound, a low murmur of pain carried to his mind as if by a breeze. For a second he had stood still, his mind straining to catch another scrap of the psychic noise. The sound came again, and he had followed it to find Maroth lying at the threshold of his creature’s prison.

  Ahriman moved forwards and bent down next to Maroth.

  ‘I came back to it,’ said Maroth, his voice wet and lisping across the inter-armour vox. ‘I came, but I cannot see it.’

  Ahriman starred into the red glow of Maroth’s eyepieces. Behind the glowing crystal there were no eyes, just the two ragged pits that Astraeos had left. Ahriman thought of the kilometres of corridors and passages he had walked to reach this point.

  ‘How did you find your way here?’

  Maroth shook his head and pulled back, as if trying to shrug away the question. Ahriman began to extend his mind towards Maroth.

  The growl filled Ahriman’s mind. He reeled back. It felt as if a mouth had opened on the inside of his skull. He could hear grating teeth, and feel the heat of a bloody breath on the skin of his thoughts. His mind snapped shut, his psychic senses recoiling back behind walls of will.

  The sound was all around him now, rumbling louder. It was not a growl, he realised. It was a chuckle, the laugh of a predator at the sight of its prey. Ahriman looked to the rune-marked hatch above Maroth’s curled form. Maroth twitched and made a sound like a frightened animal but Ahriman did not even look at him. The lock on the hatch was shattered, and a sliver of darkness showed at its edge. The blood hammering in his ears suddenly seemed touched by ice.

  The hatch swung outwards, the darkness within opening wide. The presence of the creature hit him in a wave of sensations: the taste of blood, the pain of ice burning flesh, the black of water in caves that have never been touched by the sun. Psychic fingers pawed across his thoughts, their touch like memories of nightmares, trying to pull him down into pain and blankness.

  He forced his mind to stillness. The effort made him shiver, but the whispers faded, and the clammy presence became a weak scratching. His sword was in his hand without him realising he had drawn it, its runes blazing with cold light.

  ‘It did nothing,’ cried Maroth over the vox. ‘I came back to it, but I cannot see it.’

  How did he find his way here with no eyes? The question echoed in his mind even through the rising tide of sensations flowing from the open hatch.

  ‘He wanted to see,’ cackled Maroth. ‘I told him what I had done to his brother, and he wanted to see it more than he wanted my blood. He saw for me, he led me and I him: his eyes were my eyes.’

  Something moved in the yawning space beyond the hatch. Ahriman brought his mind into the sword, his will shaping to the blade’s edge. He stepped forwards and into the blackness. The dark folded over him. For a second he saw nothing; then shapes coalesced in the dark, lines and texture forming in the glow of his sword. The bound daemon was there. He could taste its presence without needing to look at it.

  Astraeos stood looking up at the creature which wore the skin of his brother. He was armoured and a grille-mouthed helm hid his face. A bolter was clamped to his thighplate, and a sword hung in a knotworked leather scabbard at his waist. His hands were empty and hung at his sides, the fingers relaxed and open. Ahriman did not lower his sword.

  ‘Astraeos?’ said Ahriman into the vox.

  Astraeos’s head turned to face Ahriman. In the darkness, the glow of his eyepieces seemed like holes cut in the night. Above him, the daemon bound into Cadar’s flesh twitched in its web of chains.

  +You knew of this,+ sent Astraeos, and his thought voice was like the low, dangerous growl of a wolf. +You knew, and you kept it from me?+

  Ahriman’s mind was arcing, tumbling through possibilities, extending his psychic senses as far as he dared to feel the shape of Astraeos’s mind, to see if there was something else where his soul had been. After a slow beat of his heart, he let out a breath and spoke into the vox.

  +Yes.+ It was all he could say. +Maroth created it, but I kept it and I did not tell you of it.+

  +What is it?+

  +A daemon of a kind. Powerful, but its power is like the hunger of a starved predator, it thirsts only for destruction. The flesh is a host, a vessel for its bottled soul.+

  +Cadar…+

  +He is dead,+ sent Ahriman. +He was dead before this was done. I hope he was, at least.+

  +There must be something of him left inside.+

  Ahriman shook his head.

  +Nothing that will want to live again.+

  Astraeos looked up at the creature, and Ahriman followed his gaze. It was looking at them with silent malevolence.

  +There must be a way.+

  Ahriman felt something cold circle his spine, and remembered the dead eyes of the Rubricae looking at him from out of the spreading flames in the throne room.

  ‘This is no longer your brother. It is just a creature, just a weapon.’

  Astraeos moved before Ahriman could form a thought. Astraeos was behind him, pulling him off his feet so that his weight hung on his neck above the edge of Astraeos’s sword. He felt Astraeos’s mind tighten around him, the force of his telekinetic grip raising sparks from their armour. Ahriman went still, shutting off his mind.

  +Is
that why you kept him?+ growled Astraeos, his thoughts biting into Ahriman’s psyche. +So that you had a weapon if we turned on you and your powers failed?+

  Why did I not tell him? thought Ahriman. Why did I not tell Carmenta to cleave this portion of the ship’s hull off, and let it spin away into the void? His thoughts scrambled for answers. Nothing. It was as if he had not thought once about the creature since Maroth had first shown it to him, as if his mind had avoided the memory like water flowing around a stone. As if he had forgotten.

  Astraeos tensed, and the blade-edge dug into Ahriman’s neck joint: he heard the hiss of escaping air. Ahriman’s thoughts spun apart, then snapped back together. He blinked. He could kill Astraeos, even now, even with the sword at his throat, but then he would have lost an ally who might yet be his again.

  ‘I would never use it as a weapon,’ said Ahriman. ‘It must never be free.’ Red atmosphere warnings lit in his eyes. Air and heat were venting around the edge of Astraeos’s blade like blood from a wound. ‘But if there is a way to undo what has been done to your brother I will find it. You have my oath.’

  For a long moment nothing moved in the chamber, other than the gas hissing from the neck of Ahriman’s armour and the bound daemon’s chains flexing as if in rhythm with a slow-beating heart.

  Ahriman felt Astraeos’s blade come away from his neck, and his grip relax. Ahriman straightened.

  +Hope,+ sent Astraeos. Ahriman could feel anger seeping between the gaps in Astraeos’s mind. +The cruellest poison.+

  Ahriman watched Astraeos turn and walk from the chamber in silence. After his silhouette had vanished, Ahriman looked up at the bound daemon, his eyes running across the lengths of chains and grey flesh up to the face that was still so like Astraeos’s. The creature stared back, a smile pulling at the corner of its mouth. It licked its lips. Ahriman turned after a long moment and walked after Astraeos.

  Kadin and Thidias looked at Astraeos as he entered the fighting chamber. The coals had dimmed to red cinders in their black metal cages, and the glow-globes lit along the roof’s apex had spread cold light to the chamber’s corners.

  ‘Brother?’ said Thidias, looking up from a sheet of vellum spread over the floor. His hand held a silver-feathered quill, its tip wet and black. Astraeos could see Cadar’s name looping through the rows of verse on the parchment. He felt the skin of his face stiffen under Thidias’s gaze; he felt as if the old warrior were looking into him, as if what he had seen and said was screaming from his soul.

  ‘Brother?’ said Thidias again, the question softer, edged with concern. Kadin had been working his way down the length of the chamber, cutting the air with a deactivated chainsword.

  They can see it in me; they can see the truth boiling to the surface, thought Astraeos. Cadar’s face, smiling at him with razor teeth, flashed through his mind, and he remembered the dead black of the empty eyes. He felt the anger and pain surge through him with the rising beat of his hearts. If I am going to tell them, it has to be now. I have to tell them. He felt his mouth open and his tongue curl to form words.

  But they will not understand, said a voice in his head. They will not understand why you let the broken sorcerer live, why you hold to the thread of hope that Ahriman will keep his word.

  Kadin stared at him for a second and then shook his head and turned away, raising his chainsword to begin his pattern of cuts again. Thidias stood, his gaze not moving from Astraeos’s face.

  ‘What has happened?’ said Thidias, taking a step forwards.

  They must see. I must tell them. They are the last of my brothers.

  But what if they think that there is no way of saving Cadar? asked his other voice. What if they say that Cadar’s remains should be purified by fire? What if they reject Ahriman’s promise?

  He looked down at the parchment spread on the floor. Cadar’s life spread across it, his deeds, his virtues and a few of his failings: everything that made him.

  Astraeos closed his mouth. He felt his face become calm, the beat of his hearts slowing, as if a mask of ice had formed over his skin and slipped into his veins. He felt his head shake and a hard-edged voice came from his mouth.

  ‘Maroth is not to be harmed, and Ahriman’s word is to be followed in all things without question.’

  Thidias glanced at Kadin, a frown on his face. Kadin’s chainsword gave a final whisper as it cut the air, and he became still. They were both looking at Astraeos now; he could feel their confusion, and something else, another emotion buried deep under the surface thoughts of both.

  ‘This matter was settled.’ Thidias said carefully, looking back at Astraeos. ‘The blades have already spoken.’

  ‘You will swear this here and now,’ said Astraeos, and he could hear the cold iron in his own voice.

  ‘Brother…’ began Thidias.

  ‘Swear it.’ Astraeos’s voice rang through the long chamber. Kadin and Thidias watched him for a second, and then knelt. Astraeos heard the sounds that came from their mouths, but the words seemed to fade as he looked at their bowed heads. In his mind, the daemon was smiling at him with Cadar’s face.

  She watched Ahriman as he entered through the round hatch. He had taken two steps before he looked at the corner where she waited. Had she made a noise? She thought she had been silent, but perhaps he could see and sense her in other ways. Perhaps he knew she would be here before he opened the hatch. She remained still even as his eyes fastened on her cracked face beneath the tattered hood of her robe.

  She blinked, then realised he had moved from by the door. Then she remembered that she could not blink. Her optical systems must have briefly failed. When she separated from the Titan Child, she often experienced malfunctions in her augmented components. Recently, they had become worse and more frequent. He was looking at her; she processed the expression and identified it as puzzlement.

  ‘I see that you are not linked with your ship,’ he said. It was not what she had expected him to say. Humans, even Space Marines, did not react well to unexpected invasion of the spaces they saw as their own. She shook her head, then stopped the gesture.

  ‘Passing through the warp, it…’ She searched for a word but could find nothing that matched the fever-like sensation of being joined with the Titan Child as it rode the tides of the warp. Even the short periods of connection just after entering or before leaving the warp left her shaking or bleeding from her interface ports. ‘It is unpleasant,’ she finished.

  ‘It would be,’ he said, moving to fill and light a bowl of oil.

  ‘How–’ she began, but he chuckled humourlessly.

  ‘I see much that others cannot, and much that I do not wish to see.’ He waved his hand over the bowl of oil and flame licked up from the rippling surface. ‘What you do is an abomination to the spirit of such a vast machine. That is what your tech-priesthood would say, or at least it was when I knew them.’

  ‘They are not my priesthood,’ she spat. He glanced up at her, a quick flash of blue eyes, then he looked back to the flames that danced across the oil.

  ‘Of course not, otherwise you would not be slaving a warship to your will and travelling with a vagabond handful of renegades on the edge of the Great Eye.’ She heard a feline snarl, and then realised that it had come from her throat. Her mechadendrites had snapped out from her shoulders, rearing like snakes ready to strike.

  What is happening? She felt detached, as if she were watching herself from afar. She felt her limbs vibrating with rage, but she was calm. No, came a thought. Part of you is calm. Another part is in the grip of anger.

  ‘I wish you no harm, mistress,’ he said slowly. His voice was perfectly composed. ‘I do not want to know why you are a renegade. I have seen enough and can deduce the rest. I will not take the ship from you.’ He paused. ‘But you are walking a dangerous path, and trying to grasp power that might destroy you. A mind cannot exist as yours does, split between two realms, and survive whole. The flesh or the machine, one must win.’

  I am str
ong enough, she thought.

  ‘I am strong enough,’ she said, and realised that she controlled herself again.

  ‘Perhaps.’ Ahriman shrugged. ‘I do not judge you, mistress. There are limits to my hypocrisy.’ He looked away, an expression she did not understand passing over his face. ‘You are right, though, you have no reason to think I am strong enough.’ He was silent for a moment, then reached out and ran his armoured fingers through the oil flames, his eyes fixed on them as they blackened and the chipped paint blistered. ‘I will never take your ship from you. I swear that to you.’

  She believed him, but was not sure why. There was a weariness to his words and bearing that reminded her of something she could not quite place.

  Perhaps you just want someone to trust, said a voice at the back of her thoughts. Perhaps it’s that you need to believe him.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she said, then paused. ‘Without you I would not have my ship back.’

  He nodded, and looked as if he were uncertain what to say.

  ‘You were running, weren’t you?’ she asked suddenly. He looked up at her. ‘Then whatever it was that you were running from found you.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, and she thought she recognised a tired human smile on his face.

  ‘And now? What are you going to do now?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘I will try to find out why.’

  ‘Why not keep running?’

  He looked away, his mouth half open as if a reply had died on his lips.

  ‘Because I fear what might happen if I turn away again,’ he said at last. She looked at him for a long minute, the black-shrouded witch and the blue-eyed demigod.

  ‘I will take you where you need to go,’ she said at last. He bowed his head once.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  A chuckle bubbled from her throat. The sensation of it made her cold; she had not laughed for years and did not know why she did so now. ‘But where do you want to go? Do you even know where to start?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, pausing to stare again into the fire. ‘I begin with the past.’