Incarnation - John French Read online

  Perhaps the face had fallen from the walls of the monastery, or perhaps it had been taken by zealous pilgrims, eager to touch a token of the divine. Either way, the truth had been forgotten together with the shrine. Time had weathered its features to soft shadows of eyes, nose and lips. Acia thought of a human face pushed against the other side of a sheet of fabric. Man or woman, saint or angel; its origin was lost under the green mould and lichen which crawled over its cheeks. It looked like nothing. There were thousands of such shrines all over the drift, built from bits of detritus: gaudy saints, flickering prayer lamps and iron branches hung with threads. Even if she had noticed it when she had looked down, Acia would not have paused, let alone halted her flight. But a stray gleam of fading light had caught glow, and she had looked, and she had seen.

  The stone face was weeping bright and bloody tears.

  ‘What–’ began the other girl, who had dropped down into the gap behind Acia.

  ‘It’s water,’ said Acia, and reached out her right hand to the stone face.

  ‘Don’t!’ yelped the other girl, but Acia’s fingers had already touched the liquid on the stone cheeks. It was cold and wet, and smelled of iron when she sniffed it. She turned and held her fingers up, frowning. There were other children on the edge of the roofs above, now. A few of them were dropping down into the gap with Acia and the girl.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ said the girl. Acia was still looking at the liquid on her fingers. Still frowning, she looked up at the girl. ‘You shouldn’t have done that. It’s a sign, it’s holy, you shouldn’t have touched it.’ And Acia looked back at the stone face and saw that the shining runnels of tears were drying up.

  An older boy’s voice called from further back. ‘Emperor’s blessing, it’s a miracle.’

  And from the quiet there were now voices rising up to fill the small space, and she could hear the shouts of adults coming across the roof.

  ‘Crying, it was crying blood…’

  ‘The girl touched it, she touched it…’

  ‘’S a blessing…’

  Acia shrank back, leaving the older girl standing in front of the stone head.

  ‘It’s a sign,’ came a voice from amongst the gathering crowd. They were looking at her and the other girl with eyes that reminded her of a hungry dog uncertain whether to bite or whimper.

  She could not move. She wanted to move. She wanted to run.

  Cold pain lanced up her right arm. She gasped, then looked down and saw that her fist had locked tight. Blood was welling from where her nails had dug into the skin.

  ‘It’s a sign!’

  Then the crowd snapped into focus, and she felt the rise and roar of emotion in those around her, anger and joy reaching for hysteria. The eyes of the nearest were blinking in the low light, flicking between Acia and the older girl.

  She ran, ducking past those nearby, and swung up onto the roofs and away, through the growing crowd. She ran and ran, and for a while she thought that someone was running after her, keeping pace behind her as she sprinted through the tangled alleys of the drift. But when she looked back there was no one there, no hint of red amongst the washed-out grey and drab.

  People were moving the way she had come, and she heard the words that some called to each other.

  ‘Emperor’s tears…’

  ‘The sacred springs weep…’

  ‘Miracle…’

  And on she ran, until she reached the hovel that she called home and found her grandfather, still asleep and shivering next to the dimming fire.

  She found an edge of the blanket and pulled herself under its meagre warmth. She closed her eyes, and tried not to think about why she had run, about the way that the water weeping from the stone face had felt when she first touched it, the way, for an instant it had made her think of a single, long scream of pain.

  THREE

  ‘Are you certain you want to do this?’ asked Josef.

  Covenant did not look up from the candle he was lighting, but the sensor pod mounted on his shoulder twitched up. The pod was a sphere of brass and brushed steel small enough to be held in a hand. A dozen jewel-like lenses refocused on Josef with a murmur of gears. It had been a gift from Glavius-4-Rho. The magos had presented it to Covenant in silence after Serapho, and then gone back to whatever it was that he did with his time. For some reason Josef found the addition unsettling. Like so much else recently.

  ‘You will remain for the reading,’ said Covenant. The candle wick flared, golden light growing into a narrow blade above the white tallow.

  ‘If that is your will, lord.’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘Is the Black Priest not attending?’

  Covenant glanced up, eyes hard and dark.

  ‘He will not be,’ said Covenant. ‘Astropath Epicles will aid me.’

  Josef nodded, and turned away from the sensor pod’s jewelled stare.

  The chamber was called an observatory, but the apparatus for observing the stars was long gone, leaving just bolt points on the metal deck. He supposed that Cleander had put it to some other use, a starlit boudoir, perhaps, or a place to privately try to outdrink his melancholy. Now it had been stripped of everything but a circular, stone table set beneath the domed, crystal ceiling. Covenant stood beside the table and closed a box of obsidian that lay in front of him, bracketed by the newly lit candles. Flame-light winked from the polished volcanic glass.

  ‘There are…’ he coughed, and turned away as he felt the spasm in his chest. ‘There are other ways of gaining knowledge. Mylasa has barely begun her interrogation of Enna. She may know–’

  ‘Not enough,’ said Covenant. ‘She may find much, or she may find nothing. I cannot allow myself to be blind.’

  Josef suppressed another cough.

  ‘This, though… you have not attempted anything like this since Argento.’

  ‘You will stay,’ said Covenant, his voice low but carrying an edge. ‘You will observe. You will offer your insight once it is done.’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ said Josef, and lapsed into silence.

  The doors opened a second later, black iron inlaid with silver stars hinging wide. Josef felt his skin prickle under his robes an instant before he heard Epicles’ shuffling steps. The astropath came through the doors leaning on the chromed arm of a servitor. He had been tall, Josef thought, maybe even strong, but that height and strength had been withered and folded so that he stood only a little taller than Josef. Wrinkled skin covered the face that sat above the shoulders. Wisps of ash-grey hair hung from his scalp. His eyes were empty, the sockets filled with golden plugs.

  ‘I was asleep,’ said the old man, his tone clipped and acid-edged.

  Old man… thought Josef. He is younger than me, in all likelihood, but then I am old too.

  ‘You always say that you can’t sleep,’ said Josef, ‘that your gift stole it as well as your sight.’

  ‘How tiresomely accurate your memory is, Khoriv. Maybe this was the first occasion in all the decades since I gave my sight to the Emperor that sleep returned. Maybe I have been lying all these years, and tuck myself up each night and enjoy a cosy set of improving dreams for eight hours without fail. Or, maybe, I just don’t like being disturbed at what passes for midnight even on a void wreck like this.’

  Josef raised an eyebrow, and tried to control his smile.

  ‘It is good to know that you continue in good health,’ he said.

  ‘Good health? I am dying, have been since birth. You and this conversation, though, are making the prospect decidedly more appealing.’

  ‘Are you prepared?’ Covenant’s question seemed like a knife cut. Epicles let out a long breath.

  ‘I am ready, Lord Covenant. I serve you now as I always have.’ He shivered, and turned from Josef towards Covenant and the stone table. ‘I will not attempt to counsel you against this. I am sure that Khoriv already has said all that could have moved you. He is an old fool, but sometimes those are the best kind.’

&nb
sp; ‘It must be done.’

  ‘As you will it, lord.’ He turned his withered face and gold-filled sockets to Khoriv. ‘I tried.’ Then he limped to the table across from Covenant.

  ‘You have them?’ asked Epicles.

  Covenant opened the obsidian box on the table top, and removed a small parcel wrapped in black velvet. It was an inch high and the width of a human hand. Epicles turned his head as though listening to something, and then nodded.

  ‘They are purified?’

  ‘They are.’

  Epicles turned his head again, and if it was not for the gold plugs in the astropath’s eye sockets, Josef would have sworn that the old man was looking directly at Covenant.

  ‘You are shriven?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Epicles nodded.

  ‘Very well.’

  ‘Seal the doors,’ said Covenant. Josef turned and keyed the door control. The doors closed and locked with a boom of piston bolts driving home. The lights in the chamber went out.

  Epicles had placed his hands on the stone table. His servitor had taken a step backwards and become still.

  The flames of the candles grew.

  The air was taut. Warmth spread over Josef’s skin. He blinked, eyes suddenly watering.

  Covenant reached out his left hand and peeled the velvet back from what it hid.

  Memnon was the last to join the gathering of three beside the lightless pool. He had other names and titles – inquisitor, pilgrim, proclaimer – but here he was the name that had chosen him when he found his calling. He was the Wanderer, just as those that he came to meet were the High Priest and the Sorceress. That was their place in the order of what would be. He did not hurry his approach, and the two that waited for him did not move to offer him greeting. When he reached the edge of the pool he stopped. The other two looked at him. The Sorceress’ face was a pale shadow behind her veil. She shivered as she turned towards him, and he heard the click of fine gears. Black and red silk hung from her in folds that hid the metal recently grafted to her flesh. Silver coins clinked on her veil’s hem. Beside her the High Priest stood unmoving, hands gripping a hammer that rested head-down on the rough stone floor.

  ‘It is done,’ stated the Sorceress. ‘You were successful.’

  The Wanderer shrugged and turned to look down at the pool. The light of his candle shone back at him from the black mirrored surface. In the near dark, the multi-coloured tatters of his robes looked grey.

  ‘The Legion of the Arch-traitor had hidden traditions of meeting beside water that reflected the light of the moon.’ A drop of water dripped from the fingers of rock above, sending ripples across the black water as it struck. ‘Or at least that is what the Iates fragments said. They gathered in fours, we in three and with this flame taking the place of their moon. And before that, when mankind was still chained to its cradle, there were said to be those that gathered beneath the earth to bathe in the lost rivers and so forget all that they had done.’

  ‘Ridiculous,’ said the Sorceress, ‘and irrelevant. Did you succeed?’

  ‘Irrelevant? You think the truth irrelevant?’

  The Sorceress’ veiled head twitched. Gears clicked.

  ‘Ten thousand years have passed since the great betrayal alone. No truth survives that long.’

  ‘But it does. I know it. I know it for a certainty. The truth is not a set of facts written down. It takes many forms. It changes its expression, but it endures. Nothing is small, nothing alone in the wheel of time. We should remember that.’

  ‘The question, brother Wanderer,’ said the High Priest. ‘Our sister’s question still stands.’

  ‘The prospect on Arda was removed before full manifestation,’ he said. ‘It was a true prospect, stronger than the last, but not yet at the point of incarnation. The prophecy remains unfulfilled.’ He paused, turning away and bending down beside the pool of water. He touched its surface and watched the ripples flow out. He brought his hand to his mouth and touched a drop of liquid to his lips. It tasted of earth and salt tears. ‘The water continues to rise behind the dam.’

  ‘The final incarnation will not come yet,’ said the Sorceress. ‘It is too soon. Time and fate have not yet aligned. Keep cutting them down and one will come. It must.’

  ‘There is the other matter,’ said Memnon, looking up at the Sorceress. ‘Covenant. Your agent failed in her task.’

  ‘He is dangerous,’ she said with a shrug.

  ‘Aren’t we all?’ he asked. ‘He knows too much. And now he has someone in his grasp who may be able to tell him more. Who was your assassin?’

  ‘The agent is one of the Renewed,’ said the Sorceress, ‘a kill-girl from Iago. Her shell personae is called Enna Gyrid, but beneath that she is just a gang killer – she knows nothing. What? You think I would send someone who was more than a weapon into the arms of a potential threat?’

  Memnon held his face expressionless.

  ‘And if he uses a telepath to pull her mind open, what will he find?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said the Sorceress. ‘The Renewed carry only what is given to them after they come from the water.’

  ‘So you say, sister. Your faith in the Renewed’s ways–’

  ‘My faith is not open to discussion.’

  ‘Your faith is strong,’ said Memnon, still looking at the fading ripples on the water. ‘I do not dispute it.’

  ‘No, you merely think it makes me blind, whereas your faith grants you only insight.’

  ‘I do not need faith in this,’ he said, and looked up at her veiled face. ‘I know what is true.’

  ‘Enough,’ said the High Priest. ‘The prospect and the next progression in our endeavour is the matter that we are here to discuss.’ The Sorceress was still for moment and then nodded assent. ‘Where does the next prospect rise, brother?’ the High Priest continued.

  ‘Let us see,’ said Memnon the Wanderer.

  He let his thoughts settle, and then breathed a syllable into the air that sent frost falling from his breath. The Sorceress swayed as the sound echoed and folded into the dark. The box of bone was in his hand. The ash within glittered silver under the light of the lone candle. He kept his eyes on the surface of the water as he poured the dust onto it.

  Coldness fell like a hammer. Josef shivered beneath his robes. The candlelight had grown and then frozen. The stars beyond the crystal dome had become hard and bright. Epicles was utterly still, his hands on the stone table top. Frost was forming in the wisps of his hair and growing on his silk-covered shoulders.

  ‘The spirit moves,’ said Epicles.

  Covenant looked down at the stack of cards sitting on the square of black velvet. Each card was a wafer of psychoactive crystal. Eagle wings and serpents beat and coiled across the back of the topmost card, the design moving like slivers of gold leaf floating on water.

  ‘Divine Master of Mankind,’ said Covenant, his voice loud in the stillness, ‘grace us with revelation.’

  He reached out and touched the tarot deck.

  Variations of such decks had been used for millennia to foretell the future, interpret the will of the God-Emperor, or for other divinatory purposes. The status of their use was ill-defined at best. Suspicion clustered around them, and fear clung to those who used them openly. They reeked of the warp, of the ineffable, of doorways from the light into dark. But great heroes of the Imperium had used them, and to many they were as holy as they were profane. There were many types and variations: the Wolarii deck, the bone card decks of the three priests of Exorandis, the Calixian tarot, the Solar deck, on and on, in countless variations but common purpose. The tarot cards that sat on the stone table had been crafted on Terra itself by the psych smiths of the Lightless Towers. The crystal cards had been dusted with ash from the Golden Throne, and blessed with the rain water that fell within the Palace itself. They had belonged to Argento, Covenant’s dead master and mentor, and before him to a line of inquisitors that reached back to the Age of Apostasy. They were one of the mo
st sacred things Josef had ever encountered.

  He also found them utterly terrifying.

  He thought of the meeting with the Black Priest, Hesh.

  ‘You ask the impossible,’ Hesh had said.

  ‘Nothing is impossible,’ Covenant had replied. ‘It is merely an act of will. You will help me understand what our enemies intend. You have seen records that we have not, have considered their beliefs and nature. You have the knowledge. Now perform your function.’

  Hesh’s eyes had flickered across Covenant’s expressionless face. Then the Black Priest had let out a breath, and began to talk.

  ‘Horusianism has found many expressions over the millennia. Make no mistake, it is a disease that the Inquisition was born with. There are fragments of reports that talk of Horusian inquisitors experimenting with the material used to create the Adeptus Astartes, of trying to create demigod bodies that would draw and trap the powers of Chaos – like a bottle filled with honey to trap insects. Others attempted to exorcise those possessed by exalted daemons, believing that once banished, the powers of Chaos could hold no sway over a soul.’

  ‘Vile,’ Covenant had said. Hesh had nodded.

  ‘But each time Horusianism emerges, the idea takes a different shape, the poison a different taste. If the Horusian ideal has risen again, its delusions could take any form.’

  ‘But the words of the psyker, the prophecy that sparked Lord Vult’s concern. They were specific,’ Viola had said.

  ‘Not specific in meaning. They had resonance with the doctrines of Catullus Van.’

  ‘And those doctrines were?’ Covenant had asked.

  ‘You are reaching beyond what is known or certain, lord, perhaps beyond what is even wise.’