'I intend to question the archeoxenologist, Malahite, directly. I am sure he can furnish us with additional intelligence. Just as I am sure he lacks the capacity to resist displayed by his aristo master Urisel/
Rorken stopped pacing and clapped his gloved hands together with a decisive smack. Startled, the cherubs flew up into the air and began mobbing around the high ceiling. 'Course will be laid for 56-Izar at once/ said Lord Rorken, ignoring their lisping squawk. 'Bring me your findings without delay/
Naval security had imprisoned Girolamo Malahite in the secure wing of the battleship's medicae facility. The injury I had given him had been treated, but no effort had been made to equip him with a prosthetic limb. I was looking forward to opening his secrets.
I passed through the coldly lit infirmary, and checked on Fischig. He was still unconscious, though a physician told me his condition was stable. The chastener lay on a plastic-tented cot, wired into wheezing life-supporting pumps and gurgling circulators, his damaged form masked by dressings, anointing charms and metal bone-clamps.
From the infirmary, I passed down an unheated main companionway, showed my identification to the duty guards, and entered the forbidding secure wing. I was at a second checkpoint, at the entrance to the gloomy cell block itself, when I heard screaming ringing from a cell beyond.
I pushed past the guards and, with them at my heels, reached the greasy iron shutters of the cell.
'Open it!' I barked, and one of the guards fumbled with his ring of electronic keys. 'Quickly, man!'
The cell shutter whirred open and locked into its open setting. Konrad Molitor and his three hooded acolytes turned to face me, outraged at the interruption. Their surgically gloved hands were wet with pink froth.
Behind them, Girolamo Malahite lay whimpering on a horizontal metal cage strung on chains from the ceiling. He was naked, and almost every centimetre of skin had been peeled from his flesh.
'Fetch surgeons and physicians. And summon Lord Rorken. Now!' I told the cell guards. 'Would you care to explain what you are doing here?' I said to Molitor.
He would, I think, have preferred not to answer me, and his trio of retainers looked set to grapple with me and hurl me from the cell.
But the muzzle of my autopistol was pressed flat against Konrad Moli-tor's perspiring brow and none of them dared move.
'I am conducting an interview with the prisoner...' he began.
'Malahite is my prisoner/
'He is in the custody of the Inquisition, Brother Eisenhorn...'
'He is my prisoner, Molitor! Inquisitorial protocol permits me the right to question him first!'
Molitor tried to back away, but I kept the pressure of the gun firm against his cranium. There was no mistaking the fury in his eyes at this treatment, but he contained it, realising provocation was the last thing I needed.
'I, I was concerned for your health, brother/ he began, trying to mollify, 'the injuries you have suffered, your fatigue. Malahite had to be interrogated with all speed, and thought I would ease your burden by commencing the-'
'Commencing? You've all but killed him! I don't believe your excuse for a moment, Molitor. If you'd truly intended to help me, you would have asked permission. You wanted his secrets for yourself/
'A damn lie!' he spat.
I cocked the pistol with my thumb. In the confines of the iron cell, the click was loud and threatening. 'Indeed? Then share what you have learned so far/
He hesitated. 'He proved resilient. We have learned little from him/
Boots clattered down the cell bay outside and the guards returned with two green robed fleet surgeons and a quartet of medicae orderlies.
Throne of Terra!' one of the surgeons cried, seeing the rained man on the rack.
'Do what you can, doctor. Stabilise him.'
The physicians hurried to work, calling for tools, apparatus and cold dressings. Malahite whimpered again.
'Threatening an Imperial inquisitor with deadly force is a capital crime,' said one of the hooded acolytes, edging forward.
'Lord Rorken will be displeased,' said another.
'Put away your weapon and our master will co-operate/ the third added.
Tell your sycophants to be silent,' I told Molitor.
'Please, Inquisitor Eisenhorn.' The third acolyte spoke again, his soft voice issuing from the shadows of his cowl. This is an unfortunate mistake. We will make reparations. Put away your weapon.'
The voice was strangely confident, and in speaking for Molitor, displayed surprising authority. But no more than Aemos or Midas would have done for me should the situation have been reversed.
Take your assistants and get out, Molitor. We will continue this once I have spoken with Lord Rorken.'
The four of them left swiftly, and I holstered my weapon.
The chief physician came over to me, shaking his head. This man is dead, sir.'
At Lord Rorken's request, the warship's senior ecclesiarch provided a great chapel amidships for our use. I think the shipboard curia was impressed by the Lord Inquisitor's fury.
We had little time to repair the damage done by the incident, even though the medicae had placed Malahite's lamentable corpse in a stasis field.
Lord Rorken wanted to conduct the matter himself, but realised he was duty bound to offer me the opportunity first. To have denied me would have compounded Molitor's insult, even if Rorken was Lord Inquisitor.
I told Rorken I welcomed the task, adding that my working knowledge of the entire case made me the best candidate.
We assembled in the chapel. It was a long hall of fluted columns and mosaic flooring. Stained glass windows depicting the triumphs of the Emperor were backlit by the empyrean vortex outside the ship. The chamber rumbled with the through-deck vibration of the Saint Scythus's churning drive.
The facing ranks of pews and the raised stalls to either side were filling with Inquisitorial staff and ecclesiarchs. All my 'brothers' were in attendance, even Molitor, who I knew would not be able to stay away.
I walked with Lowink down the length of the nave to the raised plinth where Malahite lay in stasis. Astropaths, nearly thirty of them, drawn from the ship's complement and the inquisitorial delegation, had assembled behind it. Hooded, misshapen, some borne along on wheeled mechanical frames or carried on litters by dour servitors, they hissed and murmured among themselves. Lowink went to brief them. He seemed to relish this moment of superiority over astropaths who normally outranked him.
Lowink had not the power to manage this rite alone; his resources were enough for only the simplest psychometric audits. But his knowledge of my abilities and practises made him vital in orchestrating their efforts.
I looked at Malahite, flayed and pathetic in the shimmering envelope of stasis. Grotesquely, he reminded me of the God-Emperor himself, resting for eternity in the great stasis field of the golden throne, preserved until the end of time from the death Horus had tried to bestow upon him.
Lowink nodded to me. The astropathic choir was ready.
I looked around and found Endor's face in the congregation. He had placed himself near Molitor and had promised to watch the bastard closely for me. Schongard sat near the back, disassociating himself from his fellow radical's transgression.
I saw Brother-Captain Cynewolf and two of his awe-inspiring fellow Space Marines take their place behind the altar screen. All of them were in full armour and carried storm bolters. They weren't here for the show. They were here as a safeguard.
'Proceed, brother/ Lord Rorken said from his raised seat.
The choir began to nurse the folds of the warp apart with their swelling adoration. Psychic cold swept through the vault, and some in the congregation moaned, either in fear or with involuntary empathic vibration.
Commodus Voke, helped from his seat by the baleful Heldane, shuffled forward to join me. As a concession to Lord Rorken for allowing me this honour, I had agreed that the veteran inquisitor could partake of the auto-seance at my side. The risk was
great, after all. Two minds were better than one, and in truth, it would be good to have the old reptile's mental power at close hand.
'Lower the stasis field/ I said. The moaning of the astropaths grew louder. As the translucent field died away, Voke and I reached out ungloved hands and touched the oozing, skinless face.
The veil of the warp drew back. I looked as if down a pillar of smoke, ghost white, which rushed up around me. In my ears, the harrowing screams of infinity and the billion billion souls castaway therein.
Blue light, streaked with storm-fires. A sound that mingled seismic rambling and the ethereal plainsong of long decayed temples. A smell of woodsmoke, incense, saltwater, blood...
A cosmic emptiness so massive and ever-lasting, my mind numbed as I raced across it. It was gone in a blink, just fast enough to prevent the sheer scale taking my sanity with it.
Another blink. Flares of red. Colliding galaxies, catching fire. Souls like comets furrowing the immaterium. Voices of god-monsters calling from behind the flimsy backdrop of space.
* * *
Blink. Oceanic blackness. Another snatch of plainsong.
Blink. Stellar nurseries, fulsome with embryonic suns.
Blink. Cold light, eons old.
Blink.
'Gregor?'
I looked around and saw Commodus Voke. I had not recognised his voice at first. It seemed to have been softened, as if the event had humbled him. We stood on a slope of green shale, under a pair of suns that radiated enormous heat. Desiccated mountains lined the horizon, looming like fortresses.
We moved across the clinking shale towards the sound of the excavator. An ancient monotask, its pistons slimy with oil, dug into the side of a rock face with shovel-bladed limbs. It gouted steam and smoke from its boiler stack and excreted rock waste down a rear conveyor belt into heaps of glittering spoil.
We moved past it, and past other excavations in the rock face where smaller servitors brushed and polished fragments from the exposed strata and laid them carefully on find-trays.
Malahite stood watching them work. He was younger here, youthful almost, tanned and fit by the suns and the work. He wore shorts and loose fatigues, his skin streaked with dust.
'I thought you'd come,' he said.
'Will you co-operate?' I asked him.
'I've little time to talk/ he said, bending down to examine items that a servitor had just placed on a tray. 'There's work to do. A great deal to uncover before the rains come in a week or so.'
He knew who we were, but still he could not quite divorce himself from the reality around him.
There's plenty of time to talk.'
Malahite straightened up. 'I suppose you're right. Do you know where this is?'
'No.'
He paused. 'A fringe world. Now I come to think of it, I've forgotten its name myself. I am happiest here, I think. This is where it starts for me. My first great recovery, the dig that makes my name and reputation as an archaeoxenologist/
'It is later events we wish to speak of/ said Voke.
Malahite nodded, untied his bandanna and wiped the sweat from his cheeks. 'But this is where it begins. I will be celebrated for these finds, feted in high circles. Invited by the noble and famous House of Glaw to dine with them and enter their service as a prospector. Urisel Glaw himself will recruit me, and offer me a lucrative stipend to work for him.'
'And where will that lead?' I asked. Tell us about the saruthi.'
He bristled and turned away. Why? What can you offer me? Nothing! You have destroyed me!'
*We have means, Malahite. Things can be easier for you. The House of Glaw has doomed you to an unthinkable fate.'
He caught my eye, curious intent. "You can save me? Even now?'
Yes/
He paused and then picked up one of the trays. It was suddenly full of the chipped octagonal tiles from the Damask site. They had an empire, you know/ he said, sorting through the tiles, showing some to us. The pieces meant nothing. The history is here, inscribed pictographically. Our eyes do not read it though. The saruthi have no optical or auditory functions. Smell and taste, the two combined in fact, are their primary senses. They can detect the flavours of reality, even those of dimensional space. The angles of time/
'How?'
He shrugged. The Necroteuch. It warped them. Their empire was small, no more than forty worlds, and very old by the time the book came into their possession. Carried by humans, fleeing persecution on Terra in the very earliest days. Thanks to their taste-based sensory apparatus, they derived from the Necroteuch more than a simple human eye could read. From that first taste, the profound lore of the Necroteuch passed through their culture like wildfire, like a pathogen, transforming and twisting, investing them with great power. It led to war, civil war, which collapsed their empire, leaving worlds burned out or abandoned, contracting their territory to the far-flung fragment we know today/
They are corrupted - as a species, I mean?' asked Voke.
Malahite nodded. 'Oh, there's no saving them, inquisitor. They are precisely the sort of xenos filth you people teach us to fear and despise. I have encountered several alien races in my career, and found most to be utterly undeserving of the hatred that the Inquisition and the church reserves for anything that is not human. You are blinkered fools. You would kill everything because it is not like you. But in this case, you are right. The contagion of the Necroteuch has overwhelmed the saruthi. Never mind that they are xenos, they are a Chaos breed/
He shivered, as if a chill wind was picking up but the suns continued to beat relentlessly.
What are their resources, their military capability?'
'I have no idea/ he said, shivering again. 'They abandoned their spaceship technology centuries ago. They had no further need of it. As I said, the Necroteuch had warped their sensory abilities. They became able to undo the angles of space and time, to move through dimensions. From world to world. They mastered the art of constructing spaces in four dimensions, environments that existed only at specific time-points/
'Like the one where the trade was meant to take place/
Yes. KCX-1288 was once part of their empire, ravaged in their civil war. They chose it for the meeting because it was remote from their main population centres. They built the tetrascape inside specifically for us/
'Tetrascape?'
'Forgive me. I coined the term. I thought I might use it in a learned paper one day. A tailored, four-dimensional environment. In that particular case, engineered with a human climate. We were their guests, you see.'
'How was the deal arranged?'
'Locke, the rogue trader. He was on a retainer to the House of Glaw, had been for years. A mercenary roaming the stars at the behest of the Glaws. He ventured into saruthi territory, and eventually made contact. Then he discovered the existence of the Necroteuch, and knew what it would be worth to his masters.'
And they agreed to trade?' I was becoming impatient. Time, surely, was running out.
He shuddered again. 'It's cold/ he said. 'Isn't it? Getting colder/
'They agreed to trade? Come on, Malahite! We can't help you if you delay/
'Yes... yes, they agreed. In exchange for the return of artefacts and treasures from worlds they had abandoned and no longer had access to/
'Wasn't the Necroteuch precious to them?'
'It was in their souls, in their minds, woven into their genetic code by then. The book itself was incidental/
And you were employed to excavate the materials that the Glaws intended to trade?'
'Of course. I was promised such power, you know...'
His voice tailed off. Beyond the distant mountains, the sky was growing dark. A strengthening breeze scattered loose shale around our feet.
'The rains?' he said. 'Surely not this early/
'Concentrate, Malahite, or you'll slip away! The Necroteuch is destroyed, the trade prevented, and House Glaw is shattered and defeated! So why are Locke and Dazzo leading their fleet into saruthi ter
ritory?'
What's that?' he asked sharply, holding up a hand for quiet. It was indeed colder now, and chasing clouds obscured the suns. A distant, plaintive threnody was just audible.
'What are they doing?' Voke spat.
He looked at us as if we were stupid. 'Repairing the damage you've done to their cause! The high and mighty masters of the Glaw cabal have masters of their own to please! Masters whose wrath defies thought! They must assuage them for the loss of the Necroteuch!'
I looked across at Voke. 'You mean the Children of the Emperor?' I asked Malahite.
'Of course I do! The Glaws couldn't do all this alone, even with their power and influence. They made a pact with that foul chapter for support and security, in return promising to share the Necroteuch with them. And now that's gone, the Children of the Emperor will be most displeased/
And how do they hope to avoid this displeasure and make amends?' Voke asked. Like me, he was becoming alarmed by the stain in the sky and the sound in the wind.
'By obtaining another Necroteuch/ I said, realising, answering for Malahite.
The archeoxenologist clapped his hands and smiled. 'Brains, at last! Just when I was giving up hope for you. Well done!'
There is another?' asked Voke with a stammer.
The saruthi happily traded back their human copy because they had their own/ I said, cursing myself for not seeing the obvious sense before.
'Well done again! Indeed they have, inquisitor/ Malahite was gleeful and smiling, though he was clearly shivering now, and desperate for warmth. 'It's a xenos transcription, of course, composed in their, I'd say language, but perhaps flavour is a better word. However, the arcane knowledge it contains is still the same. Dazzo and his masters will have the Necroteuch, despite the set-backs you have caused/
Lightning flashed, and the wind lifted walls of dust and storms of shale particles around us.