Incarnation - John French Read online

  ‘Credulous fools,’ muttered Ninkurra, as she guided one of her hawks lower over the scene. The creatures were psyber-bonded – their eyes and will hers.

  The pilgrim throng was swaying like the crops that had stood where they now walked. Whooping prayers lifted into the air. Inside the tent of glass, the priests were gathering around the altar box. She could see them sway as they sang their secret songs and swung incense smoke around the reliquary. From their point of view, her seeing this would be a blasphemy; she was not of the priesthood, and not initiated into the mysteries of the Emperor’s Eternal Light. The pilgrims who circled the tabernacle would have torn her apart if they had known that she could see a priest open the first leaf of the reliquary. They would have been even more incensed that she could see an acolyte at the back of the group pick his nose. A kilometre away from them, she snorted with laughter.

  ‘Something diverting?’ asked Memnon.

  ‘No,’ she said, still watching the priests, ‘not really, just… Don’t you sometimes think humanity is too petty for divinity? If we found the Emperor’s frozen tears someone would give them to a child as a toy.’

  ‘That is what defines the divine – that it is beyond us.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘I do.’

  Seen from above, the tabernacle itself was a mountain made of triangular sheets of glass, each one tethered to another, the smallest on the outside just a couple of metres tall, the largest over fifty metres in height. Its apex was a blade point thrust at the sun. Even though each sheet of glass was transparent, those stood on the outside could see only a handful of layers inside. Rainbows of blinding light scattered from its faces and edges, hiding the sanctuary at its core. Once the ceremony began, only a few of the pilgrims would be allowed inside. There was no straight way to the centre of the structure, just an ever-weaving path between sheets of reflection. If a pilgrim reached the sanctuary itself, they would be able to turn, and – thanks to the precise setting of each glass pane – see perfectly in every direction.

  She opened her true eyes and for a moment felt vertigo as the sight from her hawks clashed with the world in front of her. Then the two split and the hawk’s eye view receded to the back of her mind.

  ‘I see no indications of the prospect,’ she said.

  Memnon reached beneath his robes and withdrew a small box of bone. Ash tattoos marched down his cheeks in rows of tiny dots, each one faded to grey. His patchwork robes fluttered in the warm breeze. He alone was not dressed in pilgrim blue, but in the faded and torn cloth that he always wore. Ninkurra had often thought that he looked more like a beggar or an ascetic monk than an inquisitor. He looked young, at least young in the way that people judged such things, maybe no more than three decades to the eye. Ninkurra saw his lips move in silent prayer before he opened the lid of the box. He took a pinch of dust from within, and cast it into the air. The grey powder caught the breeze. Memnon watched it, face impassive, until it had dissolved into the wind. Ninkurra had no idea what he looked for, but she knew that he saw more than dust vanishing on the wind.

  ‘It is coming,’ he said at last. ‘Order the gunships to come in.’

  Ninkurra obeyed, transmitting the command with a thought.

  ‘I am reading low-grade atmospheric interference across multiple spectra.’ Geddon’s voice was a scratched patchwork of static and voice samples. The auspextra was sweating profusely under the sun’s glare. Sweat stuck her blue pilgrim’s robe to her hunched body. Bulbous curves of metal gleamed in the gaps between the lank cloth. The heat sinks of her signal and scanning arrays must have been cooking her, reflected Ninkurra. ‘Static and moisture levels are rising. Pressure inversion unfolding at one hundred metres above ground level.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Ninkurra, glancing back.

  ‘There is a storm coming,’ said Geddon.

  Ninkurra snorted. ‘It’s clear blue to beyond the horizon,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ said Memnon softly, and raised a hand to point up. ‘Look.’

  Ninkurra followed the line of his long finger. She squinted against the light, raising a hand to shield her eyes. Then she saw it – a smudge of white in the clear air. A gust of air tugged at her robe, and she was aware of the same wind pulling at her hawks as they turned above the tabernacle.

  ‘You may wish to bring your birds back,’ said Geddon. ‘All readings are spiking.’

  Above the tabernacle the patch of cloud was growing, expanding up and out, darkening. She could hear the voices of pilgrims rising in puzzlement. Through the eyes of her hawks, she saw the black dots of the gunships rise from above the horizon. Even the voices of the priests in the tabernacle were faltering. The outer layers of glass shook in the rising wind.

  ‘Readings across all parameters are reaching paradox,’ rasped Geddon. The hawks spiralled down out of the darkening sky. Ninkurra could feel it now – metal on her tongue, static shivering on the inside of her skin. The mass of pilgrims were looking up at the thunderhead darkening the air above them. Some were crying out, some were already running.

  ‘We have targets locked and weapons live,’ said a voice in Ninkurra’s vox-bead.

  The gunships were visible now. The sound of engines growled across the distance.

  ‘Do you have a triangulation?’ asked Memnon, calmly.

  ‘No, lord,’ shouted Geddon, her fingers clacking the keys of the controls that took the place of her left arm. ‘Phenomenon and paradox traces are changing too rapidly. The prospect is not clear.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Memnon. ‘Gunships into gyre pattern. Nothing that runs lives.’ He began to walk down the gentle slope towards the tabernacle and the crowd of pilgrims. ‘We will need to identify the prospect directly. There is not much time.’

  The hawks on Ninkurra’s shoulders took to the air with shrill cries as she followed him.

  Lightning flashed inside the cloud above them. Thunder rolled.

  ‘Come,’ said Memnon. ‘We must be pilgrims now.’

  The Black Priest walked in silence through the Dionysia. Midnight robes billowed in his wake. Vials of holy water and silver aquilae hung from his waist, and a heavy ‘I’ set with a rayed skull hung around his neck. Two void-armoured troopers in pressure helms followed him, their shot-cannons held low but ready. If the priest was disturbed by their presence he did not show it. No muscle twitched under the pattern of tattoos which covered his face, and his hands hung loose beside the pommel of his sword and the butt of his pistol. The guards had let him keep both. It was a sign of trust, but Viola could not help thinking that it, like the threat of the troopers, held little sway on the priest’s mind.

  ‘They make them from priests who have seen the truth of the warp,’ Josef had said when she had talked of the meeting.

  ‘Make them?’ she had asked, arching an eyebrow above her chrome-clouded left eye.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong, they are taught and trained, too – litanies of castigation, rites of exorcism, myth and knowledge that would earn a death penalty across the Imperium – they learn it all. A Black Priest is never a fool and often as clever as they come.’ Josef had smiled. ‘Some of them might be even cleverer than you.’

  She had shrugged away the jibe.

  ‘That’s just education, unusual but not–’

  ‘Once they get past that they are tested. Every lie and heresy a daemon can utter is thrown at them. They pass through hunger and thirst, pain and torment, and all the while they hear lies, and truths that are worse than lies. Those who get that far are marked with verses of the books of detestation. The tops of their heads are opened and the inside of their skulls etched with sigils of protection. Only then are they sent out to those of the Inquisition that want them.’ Josef had paused and shivered. ‘So, yes, they are made, just like you would make a sword, and you have to treat them as if that’s what they are – things with sharp edges made to do harm.’

  The Black Priest stopped a pace from Viola. The door at her bac
k remained closed. She met his gaze. His eyes were pale grey, she noticed.

  ‘I am Viola von Castellan. I bid you welcome to the Dionysia.’

  ‘I know who you are,’ said the Black Priest.

  ‘And I you, but there is a politeness to observing the form of things, don’t you think?’

  He moved his head to look at the door behind her and then back.

  ‘Hesh,’ he said. ‘That is my name.’

  Viola fought to keep the frown from her face.

  ‘My master will see you.’

  She blinked her left eye and the door opened. Hesh waited for a second and then stepped through. Viola followed, sealing the door with another blink.

  The space beyond was small, barely five paces across, but its stone walls extended up and up until they met a crystal dome that let in the light of the stars outside the ship. Candles burned on iron brackets. Covenant stood opposite the door, clad in the plain grey robe of an adept. Josef waited behind him, the head of his hammer on the floor between his feet, his hands resting on the top of the haft.

  ‘You are Covenant?’ asked Hesh.

  ‘Yes.’

  Hesh bowed his head.

  ‘You brought me here because you wish to know something. I submitted because I would know how my lord died.’

  ‘The circumstances of Lord Vult’s death were presented by my lord inquisitor to a conclave of his peers,’ said Viola, moving to stand behind Covenant.

  ‘Falsehoods,’ said Hesh.

  ‘You call my lord a liar?’ asked Viola.

  ‘All inquisitors are liars,’ said Hesh.

  ‘For the truth will destroy us all,’ said Covenant. Hesh looked at Covenant. Their gazes locked.

  ‘True,’ said Hesh.

  ‘You will address him as lord,’ growled Josef. Covenant gave a small turn of his head and Josef went still and silent.

  ‘You served Vult for five decades,’ said Covenant, ‘you held his proxy during the purges of Lamish, and turned down the calling to be invested as an inquisitor in your own right, did you not?’

  Hesh nodded once. Covenant returned the gesture.

  ‘He is gone, but I have need of you,’ said Covenant.

  ‘I was my master’s servant, not yours.’

  Covenant’s gaze did not shift, but Viola saw the twitch next to his temple.

  ‘You are anything I decide you are,’ said Covenant softly.

  Hesh’s face was a mask, his pale eyes moving across Covenant’s young features. Then he nodded.

  ‘How may I serve?’

  Covenant looked at him for a long moment.

  ‘What do you know of Horusians?’ he asked at last.

  They were on the edge of the crowd of pilgrims when the lightning struck. Ninkurra felt it before she saw it. White light drowned her mind for an instant. She stumbled and fell. The hawks clinging to her shoulders shrieked. Above her a finger of light uncoiled from the black sky and struck down. Light and shadow reversed. White to black. Black to white. Blue to blood red.

  ‘Throne’s tears,’ grunted Ninkurra, and pushed herself up from the ground. Lights bubbled in her eyes. The psy-connection to her hawks had vanished. Voices washed through her skull. She could feel the telepathic bow wave break against the psy-engrams trained into her psyche. The crowd of pilgrims lay strewn on the flattened corn stalks, a sea of blue fabric. Memnon had not fallen but even he had stumbled to one knee. In front of them the lightning bolt shone, frozen, a blinding column connecting earth and sky. At its heart a lone figure stood, pinned in place by light.

  It had not been one of the priests. It had not even been one of the pilgrims deemed worthy enough to reach the inner sections of the tabernacle. It was just a man, old enough to know that life is neither as cruel nor kind as it seems to the young, young enough to make the pilgrimage on foot from whatever farm compound he lived in. Perhaps he had been having dreams: dreams of great cities of rotting stone and lights that never faded; visions of great battles in times that were already the dust of history. Perhaps he had seen nothing in his sleep but had felt the fire behind his eyes, and wondered at the taste of ashes in his mouth when he woke. Perhaps there had been no signs, and the moment the lightning fell came without any warning. Who he was and how he had come there would never be known, and did not matter, because in that instant the secret power of the universe had reached down and touched him.

  Saints, rogue psykers, holy instruments or witches – the difference was not one that Ninkurra had ever tried to understand. Memnon had always said that the difference was only clear after it no longer mattered. She could see why. In moments like the one unfolding in front of her eyes it did not matter whether the power earthing itself in reality was divine or profane. It was just dangerous.

  ‘Gunships, in now!’ she shouted. ‘Full kill pattern.’

  The figure at the core of the lightning twitched, and the field of pilgrims rose as though pulled by strings. Memnon had stood too, but he was no longer her concern. She was not here to protect him. She was here to kill by his will.

  The gunships were coming in fast, engines roaring. Ninkurra shrugged the shard-blade from her back as she ran. A man in pilgrim blue blocked her, staggering, blood running from stigmata on his throat. He reached for her. The shard-blade unfolded from its haft as she swung. The pilgrim fell, and there was blood in the air and blood scattering in her wake. She felt her connection to her two hawks return. Their sight filled her mind. She drew her pistol. It armed at her touch.

  ‘Please…’ The voice came from the mouths of every pilgrim, a deafening whimper of pain. ‘Please… I can’t…’

  A gunship banked overhead, engines screaming. Its black hull blocked out the light.

  The column of lightning flared. The glass tabernacle exploded. Shards flew out. Bodies fell, torn apart, limbs and flesh split open. Ninkurra dived to the ground. A razor-edged sheet of glass skimmed her left shoulder. Numbness spread down her left side as the nerve shunts in her spine blocked the pain signal. She rolled back to her feet and jinked aside from another fragment.

  The explosion froze. Pieces of glass, drops of blood and scraps of skin halted in mid-air, and then began to float upwards as the cries became a deafening pulse of terror.

  ‘Oh no…’ hissed Ninkurra.

  The gunship above her opened up. Hard rounds whipped through the crowd.

  The crop stubble was burning. Black smoke smudged the air.

  A high, keening cry came from the mouths of the pilgrims.

  ‘So far…’ moaned the chorus of pain. ‘Can see… so far…’

  She ran forwards. A man swung across her path. He was missing half his head; skull and brain sliced clean away, but he was still moving, mouth still shouting.

  ‘I don’t want…’

  She kicked him aside. The gunship curved around in the air above her. Figures in crimson and black armour were dropping from its open hatches. More fire cut into the crowd as the door gunner of the second craft fired. Hot brass casings rattled as they hit the lip of the open door.

  A wall of bodies in front of her. She raised her pistol and fired three times. The executioner rounds barely had time to sniff their kill markers before they hit. Wet explosions tore a hole in the pilgrims, and then Ninkurra was through it. She was seeing with three sets of eyes: her own and those of the hawks spinning through the air above. She could see the prospect. He was standing in a circle of burning crop stubble. His hands were spread, palms open, head tilted back. Furnace light poured from his mouth and eyes. A golden nimbus pulsed about his shoulders.

  Ninkurra raised her pistol and fired. The round punched into the air and shrank, tumbling in slow motion as it became molten slag. A pilgrim grabbed at her. She took the grasping hands off at the wrist with a flick of the shard-blade, and tried to push forward. It was like trying to run into a gale.

  The sounds of gunfire and gunships faded…

  The feeling of her muscles dimmed…

  She was not moving…


  A trio of hard rounds whipped through the crowd behind her. She could see them move through the air, buzzing like heavy insects.

  +Daughter…+ said a voice in her skull that spoke and shook like the sound of thunder. +Daughter of man… why is this happening?+

  She tried to shut it out, tried to bury her thoughts behind the engrams imbedded in her psyche. But the pressure forcing its way inside her mind was immense, like a tidal wave pouring over a sea wall. She could feel it growing, too, raw power flowing out into being, unstoppable, wild, and filled with pain. There was just a scrap of her own will left, and she held on to it as the firetide of thoughts broke through her. She had faced moments close to this, but they had killed the prospect before its power fully manifested. She was about to see what would have happened if they had failed all those times before.

  +I can see so far…+ roared the thunder voice in her skull, +but… I…don’t want to… I don’t understand what…+

  Now, she willed.

  The psyber-hawks dived from the sky above. Their feathers burned as they fell. Her last instruction held them true, wings tucked, ash spilling from them. They struck the man as they died, claws cutting into flesh for an instant before they became flashes of light.

  It was only an instant, a stutter in unfolding time. But it was enough. Ninkurra raised her gun and fired once. The world shrieked, and then there was just the noise of burning corn and the chatter of distant gunfire.

  ‘The Horusians were the worst of what are called radicals,’ said Hesh. ‘Inquisitors who take the authority of the divine Emperor, and use it to follow their calling down paths that others would consider perversions of the ideals of the Imperium. Heretics, and betrayers of their office.’

  ‘But they are not called either heretics or betrayers,’ said Viola calmly, ‘they are called radicals.’

  ‘A kindness of language,’ growled Hesh.

  ‘A truth,’ said Viola. ‘They are inquisitors. None save the Emperor may gainsay them. If they believe something is right, who is to say that they are wrong? The Emperor cannot commit heresy or betray Himself, so how can those that walk in His name?’