The Crimson King

  Magnus walked around the image of the pyramid as it swung down to the base, where colossal angled beams of silvered adamantium met in a confluence of enormous bolts and steel bracing ties.

  Amon lifted the recreation of the pyramid into the air, turning it with graceful movements of his fingertips.

  ‘When any structure of great complexity is built, the most obsessively precise task must be the positioning and fixing of the vast girders that form the foundations of its frame. The margin of error involved in their positioning is minute. Any deviation at this stage, a hole drilled a few millimetres askew or an angle miscalculated by a fraction of a degree, will have dramatic consequences later.’

  The view zoomed up the height of the pyramid to where transverse tension bars offset the compressional forces produced by the main structural elements.

  ‘Five hundred metres up, those insignificant few millimetres have become a twenty-metre deviation. Small perturbations we miss or ignore, tiny flaws we regard as inconsequential… They have far-reaching consequences. As above, so below.’

  ‘No such thing happened with the Pyramid of Photep,’ pointed out Magnus. ‘It was perfect.’

  ‘It was,’ agreed Amon, allowing the image of the pyramid to collapse in on itself.

  ‘Then what purpose does this serve?’

  ‘Because I know what is happening to you,’ said Amon. ‘I know you are dying.’

  Five

  Saviour

  Rewriting the code

  The veil of grief

  The aether matter of Ahriman’s tower had reshaped its form in his absence. His power had raised a spiralling horn of white stone, but left to its own devices, the tower had become an ugly agglomeration of polyhedral impossibilities.

  Its interior was a twisted labyrinth of doors to nowhere, infinite pathways and endlessly tessellating chambers nesting within one another in defiance of perspective.

  Atop the tower’s highest chamber, Ahriman walked a slow circuit of its perimeter, scoring the walls with a black-bladed athame to inscribe the Sign of Thothmes. The wonder he hoped to work was to remain hidden for now.

  The raven cloak of his Fellowship mantled his shoulders, and he bore as many touchstones of prophecy as he possessed: a scarlet robe woven by the Mother Oracles of Iyalawo, agate from the Reflecting Caves, a wooden eye cut from the hull of a Levantine barque, the waxen seal of the Mirabilis Liber.

  The floor was polished basalt, cut with nine concentric circles. Robed in the hooded raiments of their Fellowships, Hathor Maat and Sanakht walked in opposition to one another, pouring lunar caustic into the circular grooves, innermost to outermost.

  At the centre of the warding circles stood a frosted stasis casket. Sobek remained just as Ahriman had last seen him on the Torquetum, terrified features frozen by Pavoni artes and held in that moment by the power of technology.

  Fresh from his work healing Menkaura, Apothecary Penthu knelt by a hinged panel in the casket’s side. Insulated cables linked his narthecium gauntlet to its inner workings.

  ‘It’s done,’ said Sanakht, wiping the last grains of powder from his palms. All nine circles glittered like diamond dust in the light of fires held within floating crystal thuribles.

  ‘You are sure?’ asked Ahriman, sheathing the athame.

  ‘It is but a simple ward circle,’ said Sanakht.

  ‘There can be no errors.’

  ‘Says the adept who broke his own ward circle,’ said Hathor Maat. ‘Remember how easily Astennu goaded you?’

  Ahriman nodded. The comment was fair. He had allowed a warrior corrupted by the flesh change to provoke him into an elementary error.

  ‘That will not happen again.’

  ‘It better not,’ said Hathor Maat. ‘Or I’ll have Sanakht here put his pretty swords through you.’

  Ahriman ignored the threat and turned to Penthu.

  ‘Apothecary?’

  Penthu toggled a final switch and nodded as a series of gem-lights changed from green to amber.

  ‘It is ready,’ he said, standing and turning to face Ahriman. ‘The integral medicae functions are primed to take over as soon as the field disengages, but I want you to know that I do not approve of this.’

  ‘You would rather we did this without you?’ asked Ahriman.

  ‘No. If you cannot halt what is happening to Sobek then I will see him ended with mercy instead of in the Pyrae’s fire.’

  ‘Which is to your credit, but I do not believe it will come to that,’ said Ahriman.

  Penthu grunted, and unholstered his bolt pistol anyway.

  ‘Sanakht? Hathor Maat?’ said Ahriman. ‘Ready?’

  ‘I am,’ replied the swordsman, standing directly in front of Sobek’s casket.

  ‘Let’s get this done,’ said Hathor Maat, taking up position to Sanakht’s left and rolling his shoulders as though about to go into battle.

  Ahriman stood to Sanakht’s right, his thought processes becoming more fluid and abstract as he sought to push past now and perceive yet to be.

  ‘Both of you move your minds into the second enumeration,’ said Sanakht, a mist of power gathering behind his eyes and sighing from his lips.

  ‘Not the third?’ asked Ahriman.

  ‘No, the second allows transfer of thought at near-instantaneous speeds. It is my understanding this needs to be swift, yes?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ agreed Ahriman. ‘Speed is vital. Hathor Maat, you must follow my visions immediately.’

  ‘Show me the way and I’ll guide Sobek back to us.’

  The silver of the circles took on a shimmering, undersea quality as all three adepts drew the power of the Great Ocean into their bodies.

  ‘Apothecary,’ said Ahriman. ‘Disengage the stasis field.’

  Penthu pressed a combination of gene-locks on the casket’s side, and the field vanished. Preserved air from the Torquetum gusted outwards, bearing Sobek’s last breath. Hathor Maat grunted as the burden of restraining his hyper-evolution now fell to him.

  Sobek’s eyes snapped open, wide with fear.

  ‘Ahriman!’ he cried. ‘It’s here. Stop…’

  Blue ice webbed the floor. The carven sigils on the walls burned with Hathor Maat’s expended power.

  ‘Hurry,’ said the Pavoni adept through gritted teeth.

  ‘Do it,’ said Ahriman. ‘Conjoin.’

  Sanakht lifted his arms and placed a palm on Ahriman and Hathor Maat’s shoulders, a conduit between Corvidae seersight and Pavoni biomancy. Ahriman drew in a frozen breath at the chill of Athanaean power, like razor steel sheathed in ice. Shadows slithered on the walls, things from beyond sensing the gathering power within. The Sign of Thothmes would keep them out for now, but not indefinitely.

  ‘Quickly. Open your thoughts,’ said Sanakht, his voice like clear water slipping over time-smoothed stone. ‘I am the key and the gate, the end and the beginning, the twisting path where two minds become one.’

  Ahriman felt the infinite complexity of his brothers’ minds join with his own, the ordered precision of Sanakht’s and the maze of ever-shifting perspectives that was Hathor Maat’s. The Pavoni had a changeling mind of innumerable facets, already slipping its moorings as it prepared to do battle with the flesh change.

  ‘We are one,’ said Sanakht.

  It felt like leaping from a cliff.

  Letting go of the present and casting his mind into the future was to abandon certitude and plunge into an infinite ocean with only the slenderest tether to guide him home.

  All too easy to be carried far from familiar shores by the Great Ocean’s onrushing tides, beguiled by the prospect of witnessing futures so far distant that the anchor of the present was ripped away.

  And a mind untethered could never return to its body.

  Ahriman moved his mind into Sobek’s flesh, feeling the screaming am
bition of his body straining at the bounds of Hathor Maat’s power. His own flesh responded, eager to cast off the stolid nature of its own rigid form. He savagely quashed its hunger for change, following the billions of potentials branching out from the genetic anarchy of Sobek’s anatomy. Every change produced millions of possibilities, and these multiplied at a geometric rate every second.

  In some futures, the changes caused Sobek to bloat with tumours, flesh splitting and new limbs exploding from the morass of warp-infused meat. Others saw him assume variations on a specific form: avian, winged and yet somehow reptilian.

  Ahriman discarded scores of futures in every heartbeat, shifting his focus as it became clear each ended with Sobek’s death. Hundreds of potential futures flashed through his mind, each a screaming nightmare of bulging veins, organs exploding and flesh reshaping in ever more horrific ways.

  Sweat streamed from him, but he barely felt it. To seek one future amongst a potentially infinite number was a feat to tax even the greatest of the Corvidae. Since coming to this world, he had not found a cure, but the blood-toll of his researches had shown him definitive markers beyond which even transhuman physiology expired. Ahriman discarded such futures instantly, exploring those that offered fractionally more hope. Each blood and pain-filled death he had witnessed taught its own lesson in suffering, lessons that might yet save Sobek.

  And if one could be saved, all could be saved.

  Give me something to work with,+ sent Hathor Maat.

  I can find nothing,+ he replied.

  Futures branched and divided faster than he could follow. He viewed as many as he could, knowing it would never be enough.

  There must be something!+

  Every change I see kills him.+

  I can’t hold it back much longer!+ said Hathor Maat. +Just find the best you can.+

  The tiniest misstep will have enormous ramifications I cannot predict.+

  He dies either way, so just choose, damn you!+

  Ahriman steeled himself to make hard choices. He had eliminated millions of potential futures, but that still left him with a bewildering number of possibilities. Left with no other recourse, he calculated the odds of each option and sent Maat the alterations to Sobek’s genetic structure that offered the best chance of survival.

  I see it!+ said Hathor Maat.

  Biomantic power surged from Hathor Maat’s mind, plunging into the deepest elements of Sobek’s physiology, breaking apart cells and the very building blocks of existence.

  Held fast by the casket’s restraints, Sobek thrashed in agony as Hathor Maat’s power ripped through him. The Pavoni artes were tearing him to pieces before rebuilding him from his core. Ahriman felt the soul-breaking agonies of his Practicus and shut them away in the deepest recesses of his psyche.

  To feel what Sobek was feeling would be too much to bear.

  Stop this!+ cried Apothecary Penthu. +You’re killing him!+

  We’re saving him!+ roared Hathor Maat.

  Ahriman, end this!+ demanded Penthu.

  No. We stop when it is done,+ said Ahriman.

  The fates were changing according to his foresight, and repercussive pain raced around his body as the seismic shifts in Sobek’s physiology echoed within his own flesh.

  I am ending this,+ said Penthu, raising his pistol to Sobek’s forehead.

  Ahriman’s hand shot out and the bolt pistol instantly disassembled itself into its component parts. Shells, slides, magazine, cheek plates, muzzle and trigger guard clattered to the basalt floor.

  We stop when it is done,+ repeated Ahriman.

  Damn you and your arrogance, Ahzek!+

  Ahriman ignored the Apothecary’s fury. It was a distraction and he had no time for distractions. With every alteration Hathor Maat made, fresh branching possibilities opened up and he soared as the morass of futures that ended in horrific death for Sobek dropped exponentially.

  It’s working!+ he cried.

  Sobek howled in pain, his body spasming with agonies of the damned. The casket’s medicae systems shrieked with alarms. Biohazard warning symbols appeared on every one of its slates.

  Don’t stop!+ replied Hathor Maat, the strain evident in his mind as it began to buckle under the pressure of rewriting the Emperor’s code of life itself. Hathor Maat exulted in his power as it reshaped Sobek and shut down every aberrant avenue of unnatural evolution.

  Human beings had been altering the evolution of lower species for millennia, but never with instantaneous results. Early artificial selection had domesticated wild beasts and plants since time immemorial, yet this was surely the greatest example of humanity’s ingenuity.

  Sobek’s fate was becoming more certain with every passing moment. Ahriman strained at the limits of his power, and Sanakht’s arms trembled with the effort of maintaining the telepathic bridge. Maat was triumphant, knowing that none before him had ever accomplished so magnificent a feat.

  The biomancy of the Pavoni was a wondrous gift, but its boons were usually fleeting. The natural tendency of life was to maintain its form and function. Life resisted change not its own, but this… this was the irrevocable altering of the most complex living form imaginable: gene-code authored by the Emperor of Mankind.

  Who but the Thousand Sons dared tamper with the blueprints of His creations?

  Despite the pain of Sobek’s rebirth, Ahriman grinned.

  Hathor Maat was going to be insufferable after this.

  At last he saw what he had been searching for since they had come to the Planet of the Sorcerers – a means to reverse the irreversible. Sobek’s fate was his own again, no longer dominated by rampant mutations and the agonies of horrific transformation. The branching fate lines were falling away like fragments of a shedding chrysalis.

  It is done,+ he sent to Hathor Maat.

  Sanakht dropped his arms, gripping the hilts of his swords as though taking strength from them.

  Ahriman flinched as the bridge linking him to Hathor Maat was broken. A curious mix of relief and regret settled upon him. Maat’s mind was not a place to linger any longer than necessary, but feeling power that could reshape life and govern its development was to know the reach of a god.

  An intoxicating feeling, the seductions of which were all too obvious. No wonder the bodies of the Pavoni were always in flux. No wonder they were all strutting peacocks.

  Hathor Maat let out a bray of exhausted laughter and sank to his knees, drained almost to destruction by their magnificent achievement.

  ‘We did it!’ he said, hoarse yet elated.

  Ahriman nodded and blinked away the monstrous after-images of fates that would never now come to pass, horrors beyond any he had seen staring into the depths of the Great Ocean or encountered on alien worlds.

  Sobek hung limp in the casket, his head low over his chest, his flesh waxen and glossy with oily sweat. Rasping breaths shuddered from his lungs and the veins in his neck squirmed like angry serpents. Even from several metres away, Ahriman felt transhuman heat radiating from his skin.

  ‘Apothecary?’ he said. ‘Is he right? Sobek lives?’

  Penthu’s narthecium had remained connected to the stasis casket’s medicae systems throughout, and his eyes darted back and forth as he processed vast swathes of information.

  ‘Every biometric is dangerously elevated, but yes, it appears you have managed to avoid killing him,’ said Penthu grudgingly.

  ‘Avoid killing him?’ said Hathor Maat. ‘Throne, we saved him! There’s no Apothecary alive could do what we just did.’

  ‘We don’t yet know what you did,’ said Penthu.

  ‘Then you would have let him die?’

  ‘I would not be so reckless with another’s life,’ snapped Penthu. ‘Not when the true cost remains to be seen.’

  ‘Then you are a coward,’ said Hathor Maat.

  ‘Enough,’ s
aid Ahriman. ‘We succeeded, let that stand as testament to our achievement. Let us–’

  Sobek’s head snapped up.

  ‘All… is… dust,’ he said.

  The last of the sigils on the wall exploded in a blizzard of aether-fire. The Great Ocean’s tides surged into the chamber with all the spite of a jealous lover come to claim their due.

  Sobek’s eyes bulged and his mouth stretched wide. Sinews snapped and cartilage cracked as breath roared from his throat with furnace heat.

  Ahriman spun Hathor Maat to face him.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘Nothing of my doing!’ said Hathor Maat, pulling away.

  Cherry-red light built behind Sobek’s eyes and the heat of burning flesh drove Penthu back. The casket rocked with Sobek’s convulsions as his face was seared black with internal fires. His screams were piteous, enduring beyond what should be possible. Bones fused and snapped in the heat of this new and terrible transfiguration. The searing fire in his eyes grew too bright to look upon.

  Sobek gave one last shrieking wail, a cry heard all across the Planet of the Sorcerers.

  The chamber fell silent, save for a soft rustling like sand through an hourglass.

  Ahriman looked up and despair touched him.

  Sobek was gone. All that remained was his armour, split and broken by the power that destroyed him. Dust poured from the cracks, and no crematorium had ever been so thorough in its destruction of a human body.

  Drifts of grey heaped around the armour’s boots as the dust spilled from the casket. Capricious winds stirred it, and Sobek’s presence in the world faded like a guilty whisper.

  ‘I do not understand,’ said Ahriman.

  ‘What is to understand?’ said Penthu. ‘You killed him.’

  ‘No, this was not his fate,’ said Ahriman, unwilling to admit defeat. ‘I would have seen it. I saw his flesh remade. I saw him returned to us.’

  Ahriman felt the vast presence within his tower an instant before it spoke.