Divination - John French Read online

  Fire and blood blurred her sight. To her left she could see a clutch of her troopers, already fewer than they were seconds before. They were shooting, but they had stopped moving, their fire ragged. Beyond them, deeper in the churning press, were Severita and Covenant. Severita’s sword was a spinning blur orbiting her as she stepped and ducked and cut, never pausing, each movement a slice that severed limbs and bisected bodies. Covenant carved his path at her side, the great sword a sheet of lightning in his hands as it cut, and cut. The psycannon on his shoulder was spinning and firing, punching figures from their feet behind the inquisitor as he cut down those in front of him. It was a sight to light the dark of despair, two warriors moving amidst a tide of horror as death reached for them. It was also about to end.

  Fog was rising in the room, pink with the spray of blood, shivering with the surge of noise ripping from the throats of the dying. Ianthe saw the fog coil across the skin of the dead and flow up the steps of the throne. Something was happening, something that she could feel buzzing on the edge of sight and hissing in her ear. A heat-haze blur was shaking the air. The smell of cinnamon and burnt hair reached her nose through her breath mask. She swayed. The sound of the screams was softening, soothing her into acquiescence.

  There was nothing to do...

  The future just required her to let it happen...

  For once in her life there was no weight to bear, no duty or responsibility...

  All she needed to do was be...

  Ianthe... Ianthe... Ianthe...+ breathed a voice that was everywhere.

  Laughter, soft but brittle, itched in her awareness. The carnival of violence around her had slowed. Blades traced lazy arcs through limbs. Blood-drops fell like jewels. Skin and bone parted.

  She raised her eyes to the throne. The figure on it was a blurred haze, like an image painted in smeared pigment. As she watched, a form detached itself from the enthroned figure, pulling shape to itself as it stepped down towards the floor. It moved slowly, languidly, its limbs sheathed in iridescent skin, its eyes black pools beneath a billowing mane of violet hair. The figure’s face turned towards Ianthe and its eyes seemed to swallow the world.

  Ianthe... You poor, wronged child...+ The voice purred in her skull. +How much has been taken from you...+ And the world was falling backwards and the memories of lives she had forgotten she had lived were dancing in front of her...

  ...She was coming through a rusted door, gun in hand, and the space beyond was a pit writhing with worms that looked at her with slit-pupil eyes... And Covenant was calling to her to shoot, and she was beside him firing until the charge pack in her gun was dry...

  ...She was standing on a stone platform beneath a sky of bruised light. Balls of lightning were falling from the heavens, and the cannon on Covenant’s shoulder was swivelling and firing, punching glowing rounds up at the corposant, and she could see the tangle of arms and mouths thrashing in the balls of flame...

  ...She was standing with Josef in the ruins of a violated city. His old eyes turned from the walls that still ran with ectoplasm and blood, and he began to say something...

  ...And now she was standing in the throne room again.

  Curtains of light hung across the space, shifting between colours. The image was strobing, pulsing between colours and blinding monochrome.

  The sinuous figure was at the foot of the steps to the throne, movements flowing between the shutter-blinks of light. Claws of red chitin grew from its arms, the edges blurring to black smoke as they peeled a path through the whirl of bodies. It was beautiful and vile, like a song sung from a strangled throat.

  Covenant was cutting his way towards the creature, bodies falling before him, Severita at his side, sword weaving circles around his cuts.

  Ianthe froze, watching the scene play out, and realised that she had seen this before, this clash of man and daemon. She had faced and survived this many times. She was not the soldier she thought, she was not even sure if she had ever been.

  Josef was shouting somewhere close behind her, and one of her squad was falling, his hands ripping at his visor to get to the flesh beneath. Another looked at her, head rotating with serene slowness, gun muzzle rising to rest under his chin.

  ‘No...’ she began as his finger closed on the trigger. The las-bolt burned through his head and blew the top of his skull off.

  Nereid watched Saliktris stride down the steps, his coat whipping in the wind rushing through the shattered windows. Most of her musicians and courtiers lay bloody on the floor, while the few that remained clawed desperately at the brutes cutting through them. She could see those invaders now, dark shadows, like the tattered silhouettes of men, their eyes burning, bellowing as they hacked the beauty of her world to ruin.

  Then Saliktris began his dance. Sharpness glinted at the edge of his arms. The court of musicians parted before him, and the major-domo was a blur as he met her enemies, edge to edge.

  The daemon – for that was what it was, Ianthe realised – slashed through a silk-wrapped mutant and its pincer claw snapped down towards Covenant in a languid blur. The psycannon on his shoulder pivoted and fired. Rounds burned through the air, and the daemon spun, and Covenant was cutting and cutting, and the daemon swayed and pivoted around each shot and cut as though it were all a dance, as though every step and turn was part of a pattern. As Ianthe watched, Josef waded to Covenant’s side, hammer battering aside clawing limbs.

  ‘I shall not fear,’ she heard his voice booming out the prayer over the cacophony. ‘I shall be fury. I shall be fire.’

  ‘Get up,’ the voice made her flinch, and then she realised it was her own, and she was rising from where she had slid to the floor amid the blood and filth. ‘Get up, now!’ And she was on her feet, gun in her hands. If there were still any of her squad alive, they might have been with her, but if they were, she did not see them. She fired, pouring las-bolts into a tall mutant with no eyes and a needle-fanged mouth. It shrieked, falling in a tangle of hook-bladed limbs. She kicked past it, boots sinking into blood-soaked fur.

  To her right the daemon leapt, pivoted in mid-air, and lashed a pincer at Covenant’s head. His sword met the blow. Chitin and lightning-shrouded steel met with a howl. The daemon flipped over Covenant, a scorpion tail growing from its back as it arched through the air. The sting stabbed down. Severita’s sword spun high, edge bright, and the tip of the daemon’s tail was falling away in a spray of ectoplasm. The daemon landed, twirling like a spill of silk in the wind, and Ianthe could feel its laughter shuddering through her thoughts.

  Blood was rising from the floor, flowing into globules and spiralling into red ropes, congealing into sculptures of flesh and chitin and claws. Josef was beside Covenant and Severita now, the trio at the centre of the circle of creatures birthing into being from the blood of the dead and the screams of the living. Covenant’s psycannon blasted a cluster of creatures to a shower of black slime, and then dry-cycled on an empty breech. The chorus of congealing daemons stepped forward, skin spreading across their limbs. Colours and light were running and swirling at the edge of Ianthe’s vision. A warm fog of cloying scent poured down her throat, and she gagged inside her mask.

  She was at the foot of the steps leading to the throne. Above her the bloated figure on the silver chair gazed at the slaughter. Gossamer strands of light billowed through the air around the throne.

  Ianthe mounted the steps.

  Nereid turned and looked at the figure climbing the steps towards her. Ashes fell from its tread. Red eyes burned in its iron face. Her household guards were finally there, ringing the remaining intruders, but this other one had risen from the slaughter and reached the foot of the throne. It would not matter though, not now.

  Saliktris would remove these... creatures, and then everything would return to how it was. Yes... to how it was when she woke. But at that moment she saw Saliktris seem to slow, his endless dance stuttering, a
s though he were tiring. And the tallest of the invaders stepped forward and hacked down, blade screaming. Saliktris pivoted aside, but only just fast enough to escape the edge, and the swordsman cut again and again, and her guard that had ringed the three were shrinking back. Nereid screamed at them, but they didn’t listen. And then the swordsman slashed his sword down, and Saliktris did not sway aside, and the sword split the major-domo from collarbone to groin.

  Pain flared in Nereid’s chest, expanding into a burning sheet of agony. The world blinked out of existence, and the pain ran out to the edge of her being. Agony burned her thoughts, and she saw again her father fall, her dagger ripping free of his back. She felt the silk of the throne as she sat on it for the first time as spire mistress. She tasted the sweet dream of being able to live in a world that existed for her and for her alone.

  Then it was gone, and a hole gaped within her soul, pulling in warmth and brightness, leaving just the feeling of shivering flesh, and the smell of spoiled meat and ashes.

  The sound of the wind blowing through broken grass brought the moans of pain to her ears. She could feel the wetness of blood and drool on her chin. She did not want to look up. She did not want to open her eyes; she knew what she would see.

  In the end it had just become too much: the demands of authority, the decisions, the relentless indifference of the Administratum as they demanded more and more and the glory of her throne became a vice to crush her.

  The voice of her dreams had seemed like a release then. She had given that joy a name and a face, and the dream had remade her world. It had become golden again.

  Shouts, gunfire, sounded nearby but she did not move. Her breath was a heavy wheeze in her throat. She heard a crunch of broken crystal nearby.

  ‘Look at me,’ said a voice above her, firm but ragged with effort. Nereid stirred, raised her head, and opened her eyes.

  A soldier stood before the throne, her grey armour sprayed with blood, her face hidden by a breath mask, her eyes a blank visor. Nereid dropped her gaze to the lasgun in the soldier’s hands. The barrel was steady.

  ‘I...’ began Nereid. ‘I just wanted to be–’

  Ianthe pulled the trigger. The las-blast burned through the spire mistress’ head. Blood and charred brain sprayed the soiled upholstery of the throne. The bloated figure slumped, silken bulk settling with a gurgle, its last words lost.

  Ianthe let her aim drop. Her limbs began to shake. A sound on the steps made her turn. Covenant stood behind her, sword deactivated. Josef stood with him. Blood and slime covered both of them. Behind them Severita was moving through the heaped dead, pausing to fire a bolt into a twitching corpse. A few of Ianthe’s squad were still alive, kneeling or lying on the ground, shaking as though they had been pulled from freezing water. Except that they were not her squad, not really.

  ‘My lord,’ she said, and bowed her head.

  The after-echo of what she had seen throbbed in her mind. Coloured lights were bubbling in her eyes. She felt as though she were going to be sick.

  ‘You have served well, lieutenant,’ said Covenant, and his voice was as familiar as an old friend’s.

  ‘I always endeavour to, lord.’

  ‘You remember,’ said Josef.

  She looked up at the preacher, and the blur of dozens of memories of his face filled her mind.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  A shriek of thrusters cut through the thin air as a black-hulled lighter dropped into sight beyond the shattered windows. They all turned to look as it pivoted in mid-air, its rear ramp hinging open to touch the window edge. A figure drifted out of the gloom of the gunship’s compartment. Withered limbs and tattered black robes hung beneath it. Loops of metal pipes hung snaked around the shrunken flesh of its head, crackling with worms of greasy light. Ianthe knew who it was, and knew that they had met in the past, over and over again.

  Covenant looked at the hovering psyker.

  ‘Begin the purge,’ he said. ‘Everyone who had a connection with the spire mistress in the last years is to be culled. Issue an extermination order to the arbitrators under my authority. No mercy or exceptions.’

  The psyker’s head dipped in its machine setting.

  And these?+ said a voice that crackled in Ianthe’s skull.

  Covenant looked at the troopers from Ianthe’s squad who lay scattered across the carnage-daubed room. One was kneeling in a pool of blood and severed limbs, head rolling from side to side, eyes fixed as though in wonder on the empty air. Another stood, eyes closed, swaying in place like a reed in a wind. The rest did not move, and if they lived, the world was not something that they saw any more.

  ‘If they will survive, cleanse their minds,’ said Covenant. ‘For the rest... they have earned peace.’ The psyker tilted in mid-air, in what must have been a bow, and then pivoted to face Ianthe; the question asked by the gesture unspoken but ringing in Ianthe’s mind as though shouted. She bowed her head. She knew what was coming; after all, had she not lived this moment many times before?

  ‘You remember,’ said Covenant, ‘so you know the choice that faces you.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Death or to live and remember nothing – I remember, my lord.’ She paused and words came to her lips, like a prayer learned long ago. ‘To know that daemons exist is to invite corruption. To face them is to risk your own soul. To face them and live is to risk the souls of billions.’

  Josef bowed his head, and she heard him mutter something that might have been a prayer. The psyker was drifting closer, and Ianthe could feel its presence blurring the edge of her thoughts.

  Covenant held her gaze.

  ‘A risk,’ he said, carefully. ‘Or a burden to be carried.’

  Ianthe raised her head, blinking. Josef looked up at Covenant. Sparks flickered around the psyker. Amidst the blood and corpses, Severita turned to look towards them. Covenant kept his gaze on Ianthe. ‘You have served me for many years in a war that is for the survival of mankind. You will serve in this war again, but you can choose to do so armoured by ignorance, or by the strength of your soul.’

  Ianthe stared back at him for a second, and bowed her head before answering.

  ‘Do you know why we do what we do?’

  ‘You are the Inquisition.’

  ‘I am just a servant, as are you now. But do you know what we do in the service of the Inquisition?’

  ‘We protect mankind.’

  ‘Do you understand what that means?’

  ‘If we fail, so does the Imperium.’

  The sergeant flicked his eyes to the face across the table from him. Hard eyes met him, unblinking and piercing. The officer’s red and grey combat armour bore no mark of rank, but the weight of her gaze was enough to hold his questions behind his teeth. He had led his squad through two warzones, and seen the rest of his regiment vanish until there was only him and the few he led: a vagabond remnant of war.

  ‘You have a question, sergeant?’ she asked.

  He flinched.

  ‘I have not served the Inquisition before. I just wondered if this is how it always is?’

  Something flickered in the unblinking stillness of her eyes.

  ‘Tell me about your service before this,’ she said.

  ‘With respect, I have given you chapter and verse twice already,’ he said.

  She shrugged, and leaned forwards slightly.

  ‘Humour me,’ she said.

  THE SON OF SORROWS

  ‘Slaughter is harder than people imagine. With the right circumstances, it can occur spontaneously, but to bring it about deliberately is a most difficult matter. Still more difficult is effective terror. The human mind is prone to fear, but terror, the deep emotion that lingers in the bone and blood for generations – for that, the tools must be sharp, and their application finely judged.’

  – from an address to the High
Lords of Terra

  by Drakan Vangorich, 12th Grand Master

  of the Officio Assassinorum

  MISSION TIME STAMP 01:32:34

  ‘You.’

  Koleg did not look around.

  ‘You hear me?’

  Koleg kept his gaze on the temple front.

  ‘You need to move, friend-pilgrim.’

  Statues covered the temple, piled together and mortared in place, drowning in bright paint and gold leaf. Gargoyles leered up at the blink of discharge from the remembrance towers that rose above it. Gilded halos gleamed. Holy lips smiled red. Rain ran from the faces of the saints and the wings of the angels. They called it the city of tears for its rain.

  The drops splashed on his face and patterned on his coat. He saw the water pour from the edge of an angel’s wing. The stone feathers caught a flash of light from the electro-discharge. For a second they looked real…

  Oh-ho, ho-nooo…

  Which one did we know…

  Knowww… ho…

  ‘I am going to say it one more time. You need to–’

  ‘It needs to be an example,’ he said. ‘That’s what the order is.’

  He turned and looked at the warden. The man was fat. His red cloak of office was too small for him, and he held a shock rod in his right hand. The thumb was steady on the activation stud. There were debt and penance tattoos on the man’s chin and jaw, red and black dots amongst stubble.

  ‘You are not a part of this,’ said Koleg. ‘You should not be here.’

  He saw the pupils go wide in the warden’s eyes, but he did not back away.