The Darkling Hours - Rachel Harrison Read online

  ‘You are beheld,’ the Sighted says with glee. ‘You will burn.’

  Fel fires his hellgun, hitting the Sighted’s mask dead centre and shattering it, but it is too late.

  The flare is already lit.

  ‘Shit ,’ Jeth says as the flare drops and the cavern lights, and everything is lost to fire and smoke.

  Fel is staggered by it. Momentarily blinded. Even with his respirator kit he finds he can’t breathe. Over the roar of the flames, Raine’s voice echoes in his head.

  Hold to what you know to be true.

  Fel realises that there is smoke and fire, but no heat. No pain. The fire isn’t real. He squeezes his eyes closed and takes another slow breath. When he opens his eyes again the cavern is empty. There are no barrels. No crates. Just a shadowed space where jagged crystals jut from every surface.

  ‘Are you with me, captain?’

  Fel looks at Raine. She is breathing hard, and blood is running from her nose, but her dark eyes are clear.

  ‘I’m with you,’ Fel says, with the taste of blood in his mouth.

  Around him, his Duskhounds are reeling. Fel helps Tyl pull Rol back to his feet. He is murmuring something about fire.

  Such well-made puppets.

  Fel snaps his rifle up and trains it on the source of the voice. He doesn’t know how he couldn’t see it before. The nest of shattered crystal on the far side of the cavern, arranged in a glittering spiral, and the Sighted witch, sitting in the centre of it. It is a pale thing, clad in blood-spattered silks, with crimson seeing stone eyes.

  Fel fires on the witch in a heartbeat, and his Duskhounds do the same. Raine’s bolt pistol bellows. Crystal dust and smoke fouls the air, but when it clears, the witch is nowhere to be seen.

  Fierce, too, the witch says. Much more so than your kin who came before .

  The voice comes from everywhere now. Fel can’t find the source of it. He backs into formation with his Duskhounds on instinct as the witch’s laughter echoes from the seeing stones set into the walls. Fel loses the nest again, as if it has passed out of sight. All that he can see now is the witch, reflected in the facets of the crystals, distorted and fractured and grinning with blackened, blunted teeth.

  Such strong cords you were given to move your limbs , the witch says. Your minds cut and shaped for killing.

  The reflections shift and change and a flock of identical ghosts take shape around them. The witch, repeated a hundred times over. He is as thin as springtime ice, with feathers threaded into his skin by the quills. Like the other Sighted, he has cut dozens of times and dates into his face and throat. Fate-marks. They bleed afresh as he smiles.

  Made never to question , the witch says. Only to blindly obey.

  The shadows around the witch’s reflections coil and unspool, lengthening and reaching for Fel and the others like hooked claws. The seeing stones in the walls burn even brighter. Fel’s nose starts bleeding.

  ‘The stones,’ he manages to say. ‘Break the stones.’

  His Duskhounds fire, and the cavern fills with light and crystal dust and angry shadows. The witch hisses and snarls like an animal.

  You might have been cut and shaped and strung with cord, but you are still mortal.

  Fel’s vision smears.

  You are still human.

  The smell of coalfires is overwhelming, despite Fel’s respirator kit.

  And just like the crystals, the witch hisses, finding the fear in you is just a matter of digging.

  The shadows boil towards Severina Raine like an angry tide, nearly knocking her from her feet. A whole host of fears snag at her, aiming to find purchase in her soul. Fire roars, scorching her skin. The thunder of guns echoes in her ears. Raine smells the stink of the dead. She glimpses teeth and claws glinting in the half-dark. Tastes blood. Around her, the Duskhounds stagger.

  ‘Deny it,’ Raine manages to say. ‘Hold to what you know to be true.’

  Fool.

  The word hits Raine hard, pinning her in place. The cavern and the crystals and the psyker’s many images smear through her pistol’s sights.

  Fear cannot be banished by the truth , the psyker says. Fear is truth.

  Raine fires her pistol on the closest image of the psyker, but it just blows away like smoke. The others all smile.

  ‘Fear means nothing when you have faith,’ Raine says.

  The psyker laughs and it sounds like breaking glass.

  We will see about that.

  The cavern falls completely dark. Fel’s optics don’t touch it. He can hear his Duskhounds shouting for him, but he can’t see them.

  ‘Hold your ground,’ Fel says. ‘Remember it isn’t real.’

  Several sets of coalfire eyes bloom around Fel and he hears a snarl that sounds like logs breaking as they burn. Fel keeps his rifle braced as his mother’s words echo around him, spoken in the witch’s sing-song, mocking voice.

  Beware the darkling hours, my son,

  For that is when the duskhounds come.

  ‘I am not afraid of death,’ Andren Fel says, as the shadowed hounds circle closer, baring their teeth.

  Perhaps not your own , the witch says.

  And the hounds lunge past him.

  Fel tries to turn and draw sight on them, but something in the shadows snags him and holds him still. His rifle hisses and locks when he tries to fire it. His Duskhounds are shouting again. Cursing. Screaming. Fel catches sight of them by flashes of lasfire and the glow of coals.

  Tyl is caught in the jaws of one of the hounds.

  Do you want it to stop?

  Rol is a ragged mess, trying to drag himself to help Tyl.

  Do you want it to stop?

  Myre is crawling, leaving a painted line of blood along the stone.

  Do you want it to stop?

  Jeth is lying still and silent, his carapace torn open.

  Do you want it to stop?

  Fel hears Raine cry out. The last of the hounds has her by the throat, worrying and tearing. There is so much blood. Fel tries to get to her, but the shadows refuse to let go, pulling him to his knees.

  ‘Severina ,’ he says.

  Raine sees Andren Fel go to his knees with a crash of armour plates. Over the howling of Iota, she hears him say her name, an agonised rasp. Raine blinks and tries to move towards him, but her limbs are frozen. She can do nothing but watch the Duskhounds suffer. Watch Fel suffer. The Sighted psyker laughs and his many reflections clap their hands together. It sounds like thunder rolling.

  See, he says. Fear is truth.

  He smiles widely.

  But you already know that, don’t you, Severina Raine? That is why you have locked away your fears, deep inside.

  Raine blinks, and on the backs of her eyelids, she sees a cell door, closed and bolted. A heavy quiet falls and Raine can no longer hear the Duskhounds suffering, or even the howling of Iota.

  All that remains is the ticking of the timepiece in her pocket.

  It grows louder as a figure steps from between the psyker’s repeated images and approaches Raine. No, not a figure. A ghost. One clad in commissariat black with her hand outstretched. She is tawny-skinned and scarred, with eyes as dark as ocean stones. It is like looking into a mirror.

  But then, it always was, when Raine looked at her sister.

  Try as he might, Fel can’t find the words of the evensong. He can’t distance himself from the stink of blood and the screams. From his Duskhounds breathing their last, and Raine, bleeding out on the stone.

  Do you want it to stop?

  Fel fights and struggles but the shadows twist tighter and his heart is beating out of time. The words are a roar that surround him.

  Do you want it to stop?

  ‘You are not my sister,’ Raine says. ‘Lucia is dead.’

  She is, isn’t she?

  A bloodstain blooms on Lucia’s tunic, then, spreading slowly from her heart outwards. Lucia’s dark eyes turn glassy and blank, but she still walks closer. Her bootsteps sound like gun
shots.

  And tell me, Severina Raine, why is that?

  Raine’s heart burns. Blood trickles down the back of her throat. Lucia is almost close enough to touch her. Close enough for the barrel of Raine’s pistol to press against her chest, right at the heart of that dark circle of blood.

  What was it that killed your sister?

  Fel can only watch Raine struggle in the hound’s jaws and the pool of blood growing around her, black as a starless sky.

  Do you want it to stop?

  He takes a breath, and the word takes shape. The answer that will end the trial.

  But then he catches Raine’s eyes.

  Fel knows the depths and darkness of those eyes. In these shadows, they should be like the spaces between stars.

  ‘This isn’t real,’ Fel slurs.

  The timepiece in Raine’s pocket is deafening.

  Say it.

  Raine can’t see anything, save for Lucia’s face.

  SAY. IT.

  ‘My sister is dead because she failed,’ Raine says.

  And that is what you fear the most, isn’t it, Severina Raine? Failure. You are afraid of sharing your sister’s fate.

  Raine’s pistol shakes in her hands.

  But it is unavoidable, the psyker says. You will fail, just as she did. Your faith will break. Your fate is written into your blood. That is the truth. Your truth.

  Raine’s mind is alight. Her vision failing. There is blood in her mouth and a tremor on her limbs.

  You should end it, the psyker says. For yourself and your puppet hounds. It would be a mercy.

  ‘End it,’ Raine says, through chattering teeth. ‘Yes, I will end it.’

  And her fingers curl tight around her pistol’s trigger. Penance bucks in her hands. Blood hits her face. Lucia’s blood, that might as well be her own. It is as cold as ocean spray. Her sister’s image blows away like fog, and the psyker screams in rage, one hundred times over.

  The shadows release Andren Fel, and he manages to get back to his feet. His Duskhounds are down, but alive. The witch’s fractal reflections have become an angry storm, billowing around Raine like a flock of carrion birds.

  ‘The nest ,’ Raine says, with effort.

  Fel remembers the last words of the evensong.

  Keep within the light as the fire burns,

  Until the morning sun returns.

  He has to make a fire.

  He has to burn it.

  But he can’t see it from where he is standing. Fel remembers the way it vanished, as if passing out of sight. Hidden, like the knotwood homes of the fae in the old stories. They said you could only find them if you knew how to look. If you knew where to stand.

  With his vision dazzling, and blood running from his nose, Fel staggers forwards through the witch’s shrieking reflections until he reaches the place where he was standing before, and the shape of the cavern seems to change, revealing the nest. A heap of crystals, slick with witch’s blood. Fel takes a charge from his belt, primes it and throws it into the crystal nest. It detonates with a blazing red light and a scream. Fel is thrown against the cavern wall hard enough to crack his armour. The witch’s reflections shatter like glass until only one remains. A pale thing, clad in blood-spattered silks.

  And then Raine’s pistol bellows.

  The Sighted psyker puts one pale, thin hand to the bloodstain spreading across his chest. Feathers fall to the ground, snapped at the quills.

  Fool , he says again, but weaker this time. You will see. You will fail. Your faith will break.

  ‘No. I refuse your so-called truth. I will not fail.’ Raine fires again, and the psyker staggers backwards and falls, landing in the dust that’s left of his nest of crystals. ‘My faith cannot be broken.’

  You will see , the psyker says, in a weak, blood-clotted voice. A shadow grows, even in the firelight. You will not survive it. Death follows close by.

  ‘Not mine,’ Raine says between breaths. ‘Yours.’

  And she fires the last round in her pistol’s magazine.

  Severina Raine stands on the landing platform, looking up, as Jova’s Valkyrie descends through the darkness and the smoke. It casts a long shadow that grows to swallow them up. Only the Duskhounds’ red eye-lenses light the gloom. The storm troopers are silent. There have been few words exchanged save for orders and answers since leaving the witch’s cavern. The Valkyrie touches down on the landing platform, turbojets roaring, and the ramp lowers to the deck with a sound like a tolling bell. Dust kicks into the air in spirals. It billows in the push and pull of the mine-pit’s breathing, and for a moment, Raine catches something like a shape in the dust.

  Teeth, and eyes.

  ‘Ready?’

  She looks away from the falling dust at the sound of Fel’s voice. He is standing at the foot of the Valkyrie’s ramp, his black armour turned blood-red by the combat lighting.

  ‘Let’s go,’ Raine says.

  And she follows him up the ramp, with Iota’s howling echoing after her.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Rachel Harrison is the author of the Warhammer 40,000 novel Honourbound , and the short stories ‘Execution’, ‘Trials’, ‘Fire and Thunder’, ‘A Company of Shadows’ and ‘The Darkling Hours’, featuring the character Commissar Severina Raine. She has also written the short story ‘Dirty Dealings’ for Necromunda, as well as a number of other Warhammer 40,000 short stories including ‘The Third War’ and ‘Dishonoured’.

  An extract from Honourbound .

  Commissar Severina Raine slides a fresh magazine into her bolt pistol with a hard click. She has replaced the eight-round magazine four times. Thirty-two shots fired.

  Six of them to execute her own troops.

  Raine has fought many wars on many fronts across the Bale Stars, and almost all of them have been against the Sighted, or their splinter cults. She has seen the way they turn worlds with whispers and false promises. The way they set workers against their masters, and guards against those that they are meant to protect. It’s what makes them dangerous. When you battle the Sighted, you battle the people of the Bale Stars too. Scribes and soldiers. Priests and peacekeepers. The poor, the downtrodden, the ambitious and the reckless. For some of those that serve with her, that knowledge is too much. For some it is just fear that means they find the trigger impossible to pull. No matter the reason, they will find themselves looking down the barrel of her pistol, Penance, in turn. Just like Penance, Raine is made for the act of judgement. For the instant before the strike of the hammer and the burst of flame. She understands what it means to pull the trigger, and what it makes her. She is not driven by anger, or malice. That would undermine her purpose, which is the same no matter the crime.

  To eliminate weakness.

  Raine crouches down and takes Jona Veer’s ident-tags from around his neck. They will not be sent back to Antar as with the honoured dead. They will be disposed of at the end of the fight on Laxus Secundus. His name will go with them, to be forgotten in time by everyone but her, because Raine never forgets the dead, honoured or not.

  ‘Commissar.’

  The voice belongs to Captain Yuri Hale. It’s rough-edged, like he is. The captain of Grey Company is tall, like most Antari. Three deep, severe scars run down the left side of his face from hairline to chin. The Antari call him lucky because he managed to keep his eye. They say he must have been graced with that luck by a white witch, or by fate itself. Raine doesn’t believe in luck. She believes that Yuri Hale survives the same way the rest of them do.

  By fighting for every breath.

  ‘More power spikes from the inner forge,’ he says.

  Raine puts Veer’s tags in her pocket, where they clatter against the others, then she gets to her feet and looks to the dust-caked screen on the auspex kit Hale is holding. When the regiment first entered the forges, more than six hours ago, it was registering soft spikes. Now the peaks are jagged, with the regularity of a great, slow heartbeat.

  ‘Whatever the Sigh
ted are doing in there, it’s burning hot,’ Hale says, and he frowns. ‘Kayd’s been picking up enemy vox too.’

  ‘On an open channel?’

  ‘Aye, it’s as if they don’t care if we hear it.’

  ‘Anything of use?’ Raine asks.

  Hale’s frown deepens, and it pulls at the scars on his face. ‘The words were Laxian. Kayd reckons they said something like “it draws near”.’

  Despite the arid heat of the forge, Raine feels a distinct chill at those words. The tactical briefing two days prior had been clear. The primary forge on Laxus Secundus is an invaluable asset, both tactically and logistically, and not just because of the super-heavy tanks built there, but because of what waits in the inner forges. High Command did not disclose the purpose of the machines that Raine and the Antari would find there, only that they must not fall into Sighted hands. That for the enemy to use them successfully would be catastrophic, not just for the battle inside the forges, but for the war effort across Laxus Secundus and the crusade front.

  ‘We are running out of time,’ Raine says.

  Hale nods. ‘And support too. Blue Company are pinned down on approach to the Beta Gate, and Gold have yet to reach the inner forges. I’m calling the push now, before the Sighted can send whatever draws near against us, or we lose everything we’ve bled for.’

  ‘Understood, captain,’ Raine says. ‘We will not fail.’

  Hale glances to where Jona Veer lies dead. Raine knows him well enough to see what he is feeling by the set of his shoulders, and the way his eyes narrow. Hale is disappointed. Ashamed, on the boy’s behalf. Raine also knows that, despite all of Veer’s failings, it is hard for Hale to accept judgement against one of his own.

  ‘Is there anything else?’ Raine says.

  Hale looks back to her. ‘No, commissar,’ he says. ‘Not a thing.’

  Then Hale gets to rounding up the Antari, voxing orders to the rest of his company pushing up through the machine halls. They have orders to fulfil, traitors to silence, and those machines to retake.

  And her judgements are something that Yuri Hale knows better than to question.