A long shiverspear was slung at the figure’s shoulder and one bloodied gauntlet clenched a tri-bladed throwing weapon. Ahriman needed no seersight to know immobility was anathema to the thing bound to this armour.
‘What is this place?’ he asked.
‘A reminder that not all who seek knowledge ought to find it,’ said Temelucha.
Ahriman tapped his heqa staff against the crystal, and he felt the enraged spirit within hunger for his death.
‘This is eldar,’ he said.
‘It is,’ agreed Temelucha. ‘A soul-eating revenant from the earliest age of their doom. Its witch-kin masters led it here to destroy the Iron Oculus. They failed.’
‘And you killed them?’
‘What lives within that armour can never truly die.’
Ahriman had studied the eldar myth cycles enough to know their warrior-gods were fated to return when needed most.
He leaned in to the crystal prison and said, ‘Your race is dying and you will not save them.’
The spirit of the armour strained against its wards, but the warp craft of the Tartaruchi rendered its fury impotent. With Temelucha at his side, Ahriman followed a spiralling path towards the centre of the Silver Pavilion, keeping one eye on his fellow Thousand Sons as they too drew inwards.
The shifting arrangement of exhibits changed with every step he took. Previously visible artefacts vanished from sight and others appeared in their place.
As Ahriman stepped into the pavilion’s centre, he stopped beside the fleshless remains of a fossilised greenskin with a monstrously swollen, hydrocephalic skull.
‘How do you come by these exhibits?’ he asked.
Temelucha clasped her hands before her.
‘The Silver Pavilion contains more secrets than even we know,’ she said. ‘My predecessor believed that what it chooses to reveal are swept from places within the Great Ocean where past and future collide. She told me that no two souls will see the same thing.’
Her words rang false, but before he could ask more, his steps brought him to the heart of the Silver Pavilion.
Shimmering rainbows of light cascaded from an octagonal shaft rising into the tower he had seen from outside. A pair of screw-stairs – one translucent crystal, the other obsidian – offered ascent, entwined in a double helix.
‘The Iron Oculus awaits at the summit,’ said Temelucha. ‘But only you and I may climb the twin stairs.’
‘We go alone?’
‘Like all who come here.’
Ahriman looked back at his Legion brothers, the yokai and the robed adepts of the Tartaruchi. His warriors knew what to do, and little would be served by disputing the issue of his lone ascent to the bound oracle.
He nodded to Menkaura and Sobek. His Practicus returned the nod, his body thrumming with barely suppressed tension.
Ahriman approached the corkscrewing stairs.
Each step was engraved with golden lettering, but where the words on the platform below were virtually illegible, these were phosphor-bright and easily read. Another Prosperine echo. This time of the paved approach to the Palace of Wisdom in the heart of lost Tizca. The marble slabs leading to the palace had been engraved with aphorisms from the Great Library’s most lauded contributors.
The first crystal step read: The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk.
Ahriman grinned mirthlessly as he read the obsidian step: From the errors of others, a wise man corrects his own.
‘Choose your path, Ahzek Ahriman,’ said Temelucha. ‘And choose wisely.’
Ahriman looked up into the falling borealis of light.
And chose obsidian.
Each step brought fresh words of wisdom. After the fourth step Ahriman stopped reading them. They were nothing he did not already know. The museum faded from sight as he climbed, but he had expected as much, suspecting this would be a metaphorical ascent as much as a literal one.
Infinite space unfolded in angles unknown to geometry and curvatures beyond the wit of calculus to solve. A trillion galaxies orbited him, smears of diamond dust on velvet amid rivers of light spun from earlier epochs of existence.
This was the workings of the universe laid bare, the secret face of all creation that some called gods, but which the Thousand Sons called aether. It was vast and empty, yet behind the veil of stars, Ahriman felt the reptilian gaze of a vast and malign consciousness. A pagan soul might claim to feel the eye of the gods upon him, but not Ahzek Ahriman. Not any more.
His only anchor to solidity was the steps, plunging below him to unimaginable depths and rising to dizzying heights. None of it was real, at least in the mundane sense, but anything a mind could perceive would, in effect, be real, no matter how much the physical world might disagree.
Temelucha climbed the crystal stairs, and they wove around one another like dancers at the first notes of music.
Or gladiators in the opening moments of a deathmatch.
The second image was potent, the rising influence of the Pyrae not entirely robbing him of seersight. Ahriman veiled the thought, risking a glance towards Temelucha. Had she caught his flash of insight? It did not appear so.
Ahriman kept climbing, watching the dance of stars from their gravity-wrought births to their explosive endings. He saw firefly sparks of what must be space-faring civilisations spread and contract in the blink of an eye, dead and forgotten even as he noticed them. Galaxy-wide wars blazed between ancient gods and their immortal enemies, leaving bleeding scars on the fabric of space-time. A thousand empires rose and fell before the collapse of the molecular cloud that gave rise to the solar system.
‘All is dust,’ said Temelucha, barely more than a whisper.
‘Is that what this is?’ asked Ahriman, raising his hand to the natural beauty of the stars. ‘A lesson in the entropic nature of existence, that all things decay to their ending?’
‘Nothing so trite,’ replied Temelucha, a hint of genuine remorse in her tone.
‘Then what?’
‘Call it a future echo of a warning that will go unheeded.’
Ahriman tapped his shoulder guard where a raven’s head was carved within the serpentine halo of his Legion iconography.
‘First Principles of the Corvidae,’ he said. ‘The past is carved in stone, the future an endlessly branching river.’
‘No,’ said Temelucha. ‘It is not.’
Ahriman paused in his ascent and locked eyes with the mistress of the Tartaruchi.
‘This coming from one who stands sentinel over an oracle?’
Temelucha reached across and placed her palm over the Corvidae raven’s head. The light of the universe faded and the sense of being observed by inhuman intelligences was now entirely absent.
The awful silence of non-existence enveloped them both.
‘I have only moments, Ahzek Ahriman,’ said Temelucha, with what he could only interpret as fear of discovery. ‘You should not have come here. Leave now and never return.’
‘I cannot do that,’ he said, puzzled by her urgency. ‘The Crimson King has spoken and I must obey.’
‘It will not always be so,’ said Temelucha. ‘One day you will face him as an enemy.’
‘You have seen such a future?’
‘It is one of many the Iron Oculus has shown us.’
‘Then it is irrelevant,’ said Ahriman, losing patience with Temelucha. ‘Such “future echoes” are meaningless without context. End this charade. Bring me to your oracle and we will see if it even deserves such a title.’
‘As you wish,’ said Temelucha, and the starlight bloomed like trillions of unblinking eyes.
‘All is dust,’ repeated Temelucha. ‘Remember that when all about you is ash and despair.’
Two
The oracle
Yokai
The curse
Lucius paced the pillared chamber, caring little for the wonders on display. Here and there a weapon caught his eye, but even the best were too alien or too inelegant for his tastes. His flesh was restless, his eyes ceaselessly roaming the pavilion’s interior.
Usually he had perfect awareness of his environment, but the elastic dimensions of the pavilion’s interior made it difficult to form an exact map of his surroundings. He followed an apparently random path through the museum’s exhibits, pausing now and then to examine an item. Menkaura, Tolbek and Hathor Maat were doing the same, but their interest was genuine. Sobek hadn’t moved since Ahriman left, yet Lucius sensed vibrations running through him, as though he were a plucked string tuned too tightly.
Lucius grinned, the web of self-inflicted scars turning it into a rictus leer as he saw Sanakht approach – the warrior whose death he’d sought on the Planet of the Sorcerers.
‘You have no appreciation for these artefacts,’ said Sanakht, ‘so what are you doing?’
The warrior of the Thousand Sons was a sublime bladesman, a killer like him, and Lucius slipped his fingers towards his sword. Sanakht saw the movement and cocked his head.
He touched crosswise fingertips to the pommels of his own weapons and said, ‘You and I will cross blades again, son of Fulgrim, but it will not be here.’
‘Lucky for you,’ said Lucius. ‘If it wasn’t for Ahriman I’d have taken your head.’
Sanakht didn’t rise to the bait.
‘There is no threat here. I would have seen it.’
‘There’s nothing obvious, agreed,’ said Lucius, rolling his shoulders in readiness. ‘Which only makes me more suspicious.’
Sanakht gestured to the yokai and the silent Tartaruchi at the foot of the twin screw-stairs, making it look like he was pointing out particularly impressive examples of weaponry.
‘You think the Tartaruchi are dangerous?’
‘Not to me,’ nodded Lucius, going along with the charade, ‘but the hundreds of robots outside might be.’
‘They are not robots.’
‘So I heard, but there’s nothing put together by men I can’t take apart.’ He snorted in derision. ‘They’re not even armed.’
The bloom of supernovae faded and Ahriman found himself within a subterranean cavern. The recreation of an oracular temple was complete down to sulphurous fumes drifting from fissures in the obsidian floor.
Like the dwelling place of the Sleeper of N’kai, it was red-litten by a thick column of volcanic fumes bleeding from a rune-encircled shaft at its centre.
At the edge of the shaft and silhouetted against its infernal glow were around thirty kneeling figures. The billowing fumes obscured their true number, and save for beaked masks that resembled those of the plague-doctors of Old Earth, they were naked. Sweat dripped from their emaciated bodies as the heat slowly roasted them alive.
‘Who are they?’ asked Ahriman.
‘The Dread Scribes,’ said Temelucha, and he saw each figure had an open book to its left and right, into which they wrote feverishly with a charcoal stylus in both hands. ‘Psy-vessels through which the Iron Oculus delivers its visions.’
‘And where is your mighty oracle?’ asked Ahriman.
I AM HERE.
The psy-contact was so sudden, so violent, it drove him to one knee. Instantly he threw up a kine shield and rose into the eighth enumeration, gathering his powers to fight. The words came amid a tide of shrieking voices, driven insane by the tyranny of endless isolation.
Ahriman lifted his head as the smoke rising from the shaft cleared and saw the Iron Oculus, a hulking sarcophagus suspended over the shaft on a number of blackened chains.
A brute effigy of a thing, it had been beaten into shape from patchwork scraps of sheet metal. Seams like stitches and riveted iron straps held it together – less a sarcophagus, more an instrument of torture from the darkest ages of persecution.
Ahriman sensed a loathsome conjoining within the iron cage, as though twin souls were alloyed together in one monstrous whole. Lunatic screams echoed in his skull, a torrent of voices desperate to be heard. The frantic scratching of the Dread Scribes rose to new heights. Frenzied hands transcribed the oracle’s visions like men possessed.
From deep despair he rises, a lost son and fallen father!
The warrior of two faces to lead the knights of shadow!
Hush! The Exile stands before us!
Not yet in banishment, but many roads from here divide.
Which path will he take?
We know! We know! Tell him, tell him!
The voices were maddening, speaking in a garbled rush, interleaved and yammering. Their words were nonsense, the ravings of bedlamites, and Ahriman paid them little heed.
AHRIMAN, LONG HAVE I AWAITED YOUR ARRIVAL.
The whirlwind of voices faded to little more than a rustling as the dominant soul wrestled the others to submission, like leaves scattered by autumn winds.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
I AM THE IRON OCULUS.
‘A name bestowed upon you by others,’ said Ahriman. ‘Tell me your true name.’
YOU BELIEVE YOU CAN LEARN IN AN INSTANT WHAT IT TOOK YOUR SIRE MILLENNIA TO PRISE FROM MY LIPS?
‘The Crimson King knows your name?’
NOT THE BY-BLOW FROM WHOM THE CRUDE MATTER OF YOUR FLESH WAS SPLICED… YOUR TRUE SIRE.
The creature sought to goad him with the insult, to anger him into rashness. Ahriman had treated with the blandishments, threats and snares of the neverborn many times and was beyond such blatant traps.
‘You mean the Emperor?’
THE IPSISSIMUS, YES. THE OATHBREAKER.
Another obvious barb, but even after Prospero, Nikaea and the revelation of the Emperor’s concealment of the Great Ocean’s true nature, it still rankled to hear a warp creature speak ill of the Imperium’s master.
FOR NOW YOU MAY CALL ME… AFORGOMON.
Ahriman flinched at the tearing syllables. Two of the Dread Scribes collapsed, blood pouring from their beaked masks.
‘That is not your true name.’
BUT IT FITS MY DESIGN TO WEAR IT FOR NOW.
‘I will learn your true name, daemon,’ promised Ahriman.
AH, I DO SO ENJOY HEARING THE OLD TITLES, said the Iron Oculus, and Ahriman felt its amusement like rusted hooks down his spine. IT PLEASES ME TO KNOW YOU CAN NO LONGER DENY THE TRUTH OF OUR NATURE.
‘I know full well what you are,’ said Ahriman.
Again he felt the bound creature’s mirth.
I DOUBT THAT VERY MUCH. YOU ARE A CUNNING ONE, AHZEK, BUT EVEN YOUR KNOWLEDGE HAS ITS LIMITS.
‘I know more than you think.’
COME, THERE IS NO SHAME IN ADMITTING TO IGNORANCE. IS NOT THE FIRST AXIOM OF WISDOM ADMITTING YOU KNOW NOTHING?
‘There is a wealth of difference between knowing nothing and not knowing enough,’ said Ahriman, drawing the aether into his flesh and feeling the savage exultation of its potential. ‘But I did not come here to debate the teachings of a dead man.’
Booming laughter filled the cavern. Smoke writhed from the cracks in the ground like serpents of temptation. The Dread Scribes ceased their writings in unison, turning their warp-lensed bird-masks upon Ahriman.
WE KNOW WHY YOU CAME, said the oracle. DOES SHE?
A surge of powerful aetheric discharge sparked behind Ahriman. His armour locked tight and a lethal blade of psychic fire appeared at his bare throat.
‘She does now,’ said Temelucha.
Menkaura stared at the ancient grimoire encased in the crystal cabinet with mounting excitement. Its leather binding had decayed to scraps, and the ancient pages were tissue-thin. The illuminated symbol on its frontispiece had faded to a ghost of its former brilliance, but the Enochian names of the angels within its overlaid geometric forms were unmistakable.
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‘Sigillum Dei Aemaeth,’ said Menkaura, suspecting he beheld the last surviving copy of Tractatus Astrologico Magicus. ‘The pure verities of the Queen’s Astrologer.’
He pressed a palm against the glass, feeling a faint tremor from the energy field keeping the grimoire from crumbling to dust. To examine such a tome without destroying it would require the greatest adepts of the Pavoni and Raptora weaving their most artful raptures.
‘Ah, Phosis T’kar, would that I had your skills,’ he mused, remembering the captain of the Second Fellowship as he had been, not the flesh-changed monster he had become.
Menkaura was Corvidae, and though schooled in the kine-artes of the Raptora, as were all who survived the Dominus Liminus, he had not the mastery required for so delicate a task.
After the doom of Prospero, few remained who did.
Instead, he rose into the fourth enumeration, freeing his subtle body from the shackles of its fleshy prison. Such a potent record of the magician’s deeds could yet yield secrets without physical examination. He eased his consciousness through the crystal, allowing it to blow the echoes of the grimoire to life like the dimmed embers of a fire. The imprinted essence of the dead magician rose from the grimoire like lake fog.
Menkaura felt the previous owner’s presence as a memory of ghosts, the sense of someone seen out of the corner of his eye. A practitioner of the arte, certainly, perhaps even the grimoire’s author. A seeker after knowledge, a warrior mystic like every brother of the Thousand Sons. Someone out of time, a walker between worlds, a man of triumph. Arrogant and so sure he could never fail. Menkaura shook his head at the man’s foolishness.
The Thousand Sons knew better than any that even the greatest could fall, and fall hard.
He gasped as he felt the stabbing fire of sympathetic pain, a repercussion from the past. Menkaura looked down and for a fleeting moment he saw the fiery kine-blade that had killed the magician jutting from the phantom ruin of his chest.
The long-dead magician’s disbelief warred with his pain, a child-like sense of outrage that he had been denied something.