Scions of the Emperor Read online

  'I answer your summons, my lord.'

  'Brother Massak,' Dorn intoned, giving him a measuring look. 'I have need of your unique skills.'

  'I stand ready.'

  His gene-father was silent for a long moment. He seemed troubled.

  'In any other circumstance, you would not be here. But there is danger here… Its origin is unclear to me, but your insight will not be so clouded.' The primarch told him of the explosion, the dead survey crew, and weapons hidden in the walls of the corridor.

  Massak's head bobbed in a shallow nod as he took this in, and the Librarian couldn't stop himself from reaching up to gesture at the inactive psychic hood affixed to his power armour, and the force sword sheathed at his hip.

  'I will confess, sire, that I did not expect this, nor to be given my weapons and wargear.'

  Dorn held up a hand. 'This is not the day,' said the primarch, anticipating Massak's question before he uttered it. The legionary's heart sank as his master went on. 'The moment you hope for is not yet at hand, my son. But there is danger here, in this place. Of the kind you and your kindred are best suited to understand.' Dorn pointed at the minaret. 'You will walk with me. You will tell me all that your preternatural senses reveal to you. Know that this is not a decision I have taken lightly, or in haste. This defiance of my father's commands has been forced upon me.' Then his primarch said the words that left Massak both elated and filled with dread. 'For this day, I grant you respite from the Decree of Nikaea. Put your talents at my command once more.'

  'Your will,' whispered Massak, and a flood of ghostly potency shot through him. The crystalline matrices of his psychic hood hummed, and the warrior felt renewed, alive, empowered. He was a blinded man suddenly given sight once more, his ephemeral talents surging back from the dormant state they had languished in for so long. Massak took in a breath, centring himself.

  Immediately, a flood of psychic after-images buffeted the Librarian's sensorium. He felt the current of fear and awe in the humans standing in the courtyard, as the motes of their commonplace life-forces orbited around Dorn's fiery, potent self. Massak moved past these surface perturbations to the resonant echo of the death-howls that still hummed in the places where the survey crew had perished.

  Dorn entered the corridor and Massak fell in step at his side. At any other time, the warrior would have been proud to be in such circumstances, but not now, not here. The air was filled with foreboding as much as the reek of murder.

  He cast his gaze over the bodies and the blood, seeing the shape of them through the veil of the real and into the shadow realm of the immaterium, which seethed like an invisible ocean beneath the physical world.

  The men and women of the work gang had died fast - or rather, their corporeal forms had. Their psionic essences, what idolatrists might have called their souls, were still in the process of slowly being torn apart. The psi-weapons that had stripped their energy from their crude matter were cruel and potent things. It struck Massak that the devices were overpowered for such simple targets as ordinary humans, and gravely he relayed this to his gene-father.

  Dorn gave a grunt of assent. 'Are there more?'

  Massak could sense them as they progressed along the corridor. 'Aye, lord. I fear, if anything, more potent than those already deployed. Waiting for a trigger.' And there was something else, a peculiar telepathic mark in the making of these things that Massak knew but could not place.

  A signature, he decided. The psychic fingerprint of the one who seeded the weapons in this place.

  'Awaken them,' ordered Dorn, bringing his bolter and his chainblade to the ready.

  Massak drew his own sword and reached inside himself for the sleeping lightning he knew lurked in his bones. The crystals in his psychic hood flashed white and the Librarian cast out his hand, releasing a bolt of energy along the corridor's length.

  The lightning flickered and bounced from wall to floor to ceiling, and in each place it touched, stone burned away to reveal more hidden wards that seethed with arcane power. Shrieking, protean globes of pure madness erupted from their hiding places and swarmed them.

  'Advance!' snarled Dorn, and he sprinted into the mass, meeting the attack with an incredible, focused ferocity.

  Massak put aside his desire to merely stand by and watch the primarch at his art, and fought his quarter of the brief engagement. Swords screamed, bolts thundered, and the warriors beat down the mindless kill-forms, obliterating every one of them.

  When it was done, Dorn marched on, and Massak tarried behind him. The Librarian went to each origin point for the psi-forms and ran his force sword through the glyphs carved there, rendering them unable to regenerate. As he caught up to his master, Massak heard the rumble of his words cutting through the air.

  'I know these rooms,' mused the primarch, as they reached the chamber before two great doors. 'I remember them… They were on the other side of the Palace.'

  'Is that possible?' said Massak. 'How could—?'

  His words became ashes in his mouth as a terrible silence gripped him.

  The Librarian was bombarded by psionic sensations. Not just the agony of the newly dead and the torture their spirits were enduring, not just the hateful echoes of the psi-forms, but the shadow of a gargantuan psychic presence. A mind of intricate, lethal magnificence, its passage invisibly marbling the walls where only one such as Massak would be able to perceive them.

  The full power of it was concentrated in the doors. To the right, a brass portico bore the numeral II, in the old way of scribing. To the left, an identical entrance rendered in steel was etched with the numeral XI. Massak beheld those ill-fated symbols and the genhanced blood in his veins ran cold.

  'The Second and the Eleventh.' He could barely say the words. It was forbidden to speak of them, by the censure of the Master of Mankind Himself. Every son of every Legion, be they loyalist or traitor, knew the rumours of the twin tragedies of these lost titans, the truth of their losses forever shrouded and unknowable.

  Once, the Emperor had forged twenty sons from aspects of his own being, Rogal Dorn one of the mightiest among them. But two primarchs had been struck from the rolls of honour long before the Warmaster's rebellion, each consumed by a catastrophe of such fell scope that few knew the full dimensions of it. Massak could only call upon rumour and half-truth for his knowledge, but as he looked up at his gene-father's face, he knew that Dorn held the bleak memory of that disaster deep in his hearts.

  'My brothers…' Massak's primarch put away his weapons and walked to the doors. Dorn reached out both hands, and placed the palms of his gauntlets on the metal. The psyker had rarely seen such reverence, such reluctance in the Fist's actions. 'If you were here now, what would be different?' Dorn asked the question to the cold, acidic air, as if he had forgotten that Massak was still with him. 'How would the course of this war be altered, if you stood with us? Or with them?' He shook his head. 'I wish I could know.' At length, Dorn withdrew his hands and glanced back at his warrior son. 'What will be said of them in the deep future, I wonder? Will they be remembered, Massak? Will we?'

  The question seemed to bring Dorn physical discomfort, and Massak watched the muscles harden in his lord's lantern jaw.

  'What is this place?' The Librarian forced out the utterance. 'The very air itself is heavy with psionic potency.'

  'These are the chambers of my lost kindred,' said Dorn. 'I have my own quarters within the Palace's domains, as do all my father's sons. They are rarely used, but maintained in case of need. Those of the traitors were sealed at the beginning of their treachery…' He paused, frowning as he looked back at the doors. 'But these… they should be elsewhere.'

  The creeping, inexorable growth of inevitability rose in Massak's mind, as his recollection connected the psionic spoor around them with a point of origin. He remembered. He knew the telepathic signature. He knew who it belonged to.

  Massak had stood in the presence of the author of this artifice, many years ago, during the Triumph at
Ullanor. The psychic aura was as potent and distinct now as it had been then, lingering in the ether as whispers of unearthly might.

  'The Sigillite,' whispered Massak. 'This is his work. The traps, the door; the seals. My lord, it is as clear to me as if he had cut his name into the walls!'

  'You are correct,' said Malcador, his robes rustling as he entered the anteroom from the corridor behind them. His black iron staff clanked against the bloodstained tiles of the floor. An icy, searing fury glittered in the old man's eyes, and Massak felt the colossal pressure of the Sigillite's mind crushing his in its grip. 'You should not be here, Rogal.'

  'I know this place,' Dorn countered. 'Or do I? The memory is hazy. It is indistinct. How is that possible!' The primarch shouted the last, his voice booming. 'My father made us with perfect recall! We forget nothing! And yet…' He gestured at the air.

  Malcador turned his gaze on Massak and nodded towards the corridor. 'Leave us. What will be spoken of you shall not hear.'

  The Librarian tried to open his mouth to protest, but he could not. Moving without his conscious control - struggling, failing to command his own flesh - Massak turned on his heel and marched away, down the corridor, towards the distant light.

  'How dare you, Sigillite.' In other times, Dorn would have shown decorum, he would have refused to allow himself to exhibit the ire that ran through him now like molten steel. But alone with the old man, there was no need for such an act of politesse. 'My sons are not playthings for you to toy with at a whim!'

  'He cannot be allowed to recollect what he has seen here. For the good of all, he'll need to forget.'

  Dorn's ire flared. 'You disrespect my Legion. You disrespect me!'

  'And the Imperial Fists have never disrespected the Regent of Terra.' Malcador's retort was sardonic.

  'I hold the office in high esteem,' Dorn countered.

  'But not the man?' Malcador gave a bitter chuckle, but in the next breath it was gone. 'You should not have entered the corridor, Rogal. I told you to stay away from these buildings!' He peered grimly at the blood on the walls. 'Now you know why. This intrusion must be undone. It will be edited from history as if it never occurred… I will attend to it.'

  'You lied to me about this place,' Dorn replied, frustration written across his aspect. 'Can you do nothing else, Malcador? Even in the simplest of your utterances, must there always be falsehood?' He jutted his chin at the seared remains. 'The deaths of these loyal Imperial subjects are added to your tally, not mine. But I doubt you would even notice them.'

  If there was regret in the old man, Dorn did not see it. The Sigillite did not answer his statement, and instead made one of his own.

  'I can imagine what is going through your mind at this moment. I have no need to read your thoughts. You wonder if I am a traitor… Not one like your brother Horus, grasping at naked power and fuelled by enmity, but a man out for himself. A schemer and player of games.'

  'In your mind, you are loyal,' Dorn growled. 'I do not doubt you can justify every bloody action you have ever taken. But you are some of those things.' He looked away. 'The Sigillite plays the galaxy as if it were his own private regicide board. This place? This is another shrouded gambit of yours, another buried secret. I know it.'

  'I am doing what you decided on!' Malcador's temper flared, and with it the plasmatic flames within the iron basket atop his staff crackled fiercely. 'I have only ever done what I was tasked to do!'

  'Another lie?' Dorn stared at the twinned doors as if he could see past them by sheer force of will. 'A half-truth, at best?'

  What would he find within those chambers if he entered? What answers would be gleaned, what guidance might be hidden inside? Some said that the tragedies of the lost primarchs were precursors to the schism the Imperium now faced. Could it be so?

  'I have never lied to you,' Malcador insisted. 'Kept things from you, yes. Directed your attention elsewhere, indeed. But there has always been truth in our dealings. Disbelieve me if you wish, but know this. Of all your kindred, Rogal, you are the one I admire the most.'

  'Don't flatter me,' he shot back. 'I care not for it. I want answers, old man! You sent Massak away, you have your privacy. Speak!'

  'This place is hidden for good reason. The legacy of the lost holds within it too many doubts, too many harsh truths that would do nothing but damage the balance of our precious Imperium. Now is not the time to pull upon those threads. Son of Inwit!'

  'If not now, when?' Dorn demanded. 'What if there is an answer in there, a way—'

  'A way to end the war?' Malcador shook his head. 'Those are the words of someone cursed with hope! I tell you now, there is nothing but grief behind those barriers.' He sighed. 'Perhaps, when the scales are balanced once more and Horus has been brought to heel, these questions can be asked. But only then!'

  'I knew them.' Dorn took another step towards the doors, silently reaching for deep memories of the two brothers. Not all the primarchs could say they had breathed the same air as the lost sons, but Dorn was one of the few. He had been with them, if only for a while.

  'Have you ever wondered why none speak of them?' the Sigillite replied. 'Of course, there is the censure over all who know of the lost never to talk openly of their existence. Still, in the absence of fact all men will speculate. But you do not. The primarchs never speak of their lost kinsmen in anything but the vaguest of terms. Have you ever wondered why that is?'

  'As you said, we are forbidden to do so.'

  'Even when you are beyond your father's sight? Even when no one would be aware of such a discussion? Ask yourself why your thoughts always slip over recall of the lost and pass by.' Malcador bowed his head. 'What were they called, Rogal?' The Sigillite seemed almost sorrowful as he asked him. 'Your vanished brethren. Tell me their names and their titles.'

  Dorn tried to grasp that vague recollection, tried to frame the questions that gnawed at him, but once more his perfect eidetic recall failed him. He could only see the phantoms of those moments. Holding on to them was like trying to capture smoke between his fingers.

  'Their names were…' his mighty voice faltered. His brow creased in frustration. 'They were…'

  To his horror, Dorn realised that he did not know. The awareness was there; he could almost see the shape of the knowledge out on the far horizon of his thoughts. But it retreated from his every effort to see it clearly. Each time he attempted to frame a memory of the lost, it was like fighting a tidal wave. Everything else is clear, but they are ghosts in my mind.

  The Imperial Fist was experiencing an impossibility. Every known instant of his life was open to him, as if they were pages of a great book.

  But not those moments.

  'Something has been done to me.' The beginnings of a new fury built in his chest, boiling at the realisation of such an affront. 'You are behind this!' Dorn whirled, drawing his chainblade in a glittering arc of lethal metal, bringing it to aim at Malcador's wizened, cloak-wreathed form. 'You shrouded my memories! You invaded my mind… For that I should cut you down!'

  The Sigillite showed no reaction to the threat. 'Not just yours. Guilliman's, and the others who met them.' He let his words bed in. 'It is extremely difficult to extract a reminiscence,' Malcador went on. 'Even in an ordinary human. In a brain as complex and perfectly engineered as that of a primarch, the task becomes herculean. Imagine a tree in the earth, rising from a web of roots. How would one remove that without disturbing a single atom of the soil? Memory cannot be cut and patched like a mnemonic spool. It exists as a holographic thing, in multiple dimensions. But it can be adjusted.'

  'My father allowed that?' Dorn's sword did not waver.

  'He did not stop you.'

  'Stop me?' The primarch's eyes narrowed.

  Malcador slowly moved back, out of the ornate sword's killing arc. 'The… loss of the Second and the Eleventh was such a wound upon us, and it threatened the ideals at the heart of the Great Crusade. It would have ruined all that we had built in the drive to reunite
humanity, and drive off our enemies. Steps had to be taken.' He met Dorn's hard gaze. 'The legionaries they left behind, leaderless and forsaken, were too great a resource to be discarded out of hand. They did not share the fate of their fathers. You and Roboute argued in their favour, but you do not recall it.' Malcador nodded to himself. 'It fell to me to see that they were attuned to new circumstances.'

  'You robbed them of their memories.'

  'I granted them a mercy!' Malcador replied, his tone wounded. 'A second chance!'

  'What mercy is there in a lie?' Dorn thundered.

  'Ask yourself!' The Sigillite aimed the burning head of his staff in the primarch's direction. 'You wish to know the truth, Rogal? It is this - what I shrouded in you was done by your command! You told me to do it. You and Roboute conceived of the scheme and granted me permission!'

  Dorn's scowl deepened. 'I would never countenance such a thing.'

  'Untrue!' Malcador slammed the base of his staff into the floor, the crash of the metal punctuating the word. 'Such was the fate of the lost, that you willingly allowed it. To make safe that knowledge.'

  Another denial formed in Dorn's throat, but he held it there. He put aside his anger and looked upon the possibility with detachment, with the cold eye of the Praetorian.

  Would I have done such a thing? If the matter were grave enough, would I have been so pragmatic, so bloodless in my command?

  Dorn instinctively knew the answer. There was no doubt that he would.

  If the Imperium was put at risk, he would give his life for it. The cost of some memories, of a fraction of his honour, was indeed a price he would pay.

  Malcador approached him, leaving his staff where it stood. One bony, long-fingered hand emerged from the voluminous sleeve of his monastic robes, and the Sigillite reached up to hold it before Dorn's face. Faint sparks of eldritch light glistened there.

  'I will show you,' said the psyker. 'For this instant, I will let you remember. You will know why the lost must remain a mystery.'

  Dorn closed his eyes and a glacial fire erupted behind them. Deep within him, a shadow briefly dissipated, stealing the breath from his throat.