Ragnar risked a glance at Sven and returned his companion’s wide grin with one of his own. He could hardly believe it. It was over and they had won. The inquisitors and Gul raced over. Karah reached out, indicating he should give the talisman to her. Seeing the zealous glow burning in her eyes, he felt oddly reluctant to do so for a moment — but nonetheless he gave it to her. She smiled, and there was little human in the smile.
“It is ours,” she said. “Now we must get to Aerius and complete our quest.”
Somehow, the words sounded desperately ominous. Ragnar felt a shiver pass through him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Light of Truth shimmered out of the Immaterium in the outer reaches of the Aerius system. Ragnar felt a surge of pride and hope. Soon their quest would be over. They had brought back the Talisman of Lykos as they had intended. During the voyage from the hulk, Inquisitor Isaan had managed to reassemble its three parts to create a unified whole.
Ragnar risked a glance across the command deck at her and was suddenly uneasy. Despite her tanned features, she looked pale and drawn, as if the glittering emerald amulet on her neck was draining her of her very life force. Her face was gaunt, and there were flecks of grey in her hair that had not been there short weeks before. The amulet, now a single stone of wondrous beauty, pulsed on its chain at her throat. There was something about its eerie alien loveliness that set the hairs on the back of his neck rising. He wondered if he was the only one who felt this way. His battle-brothers seemed to be showing no signs of sharing his unease, and he had not discussed it with any of them.
He wondered what would happen next. A strange silence had descended. The ship’s astropaths had not been able to contact their counterparts on the planet. This was not a good sign. Only death could silence an astropath totally.
The others were watching expectantly the holo-pit set into the centre of the bridge. Now that they were within hailing distance of Aerius they would soon be able to speak directly with the surface of the planet, rather than communicate via astropath. Ragnar wondered what they would learn.
“My lord inquisitor, we are within hailing distance,” Chief Initiate Vosper announced finally, after what had seemed like hours of waiting.
“Emperor be praised,” Inquisitor Sternberg replied. “See if you can make contact with the governor’s palace.”
“It shall be so, my lord.” The man gestured to his minions, and the technical plainsong intensified as the crew moved sliders on their control altars. Ragnar saw Vosper pull two gargoyle-headed levers forward and suddenly there was a flickering light in the holo-pit.
Suddenly they were looking at the Imperial governor. It was a shocking sight. The man must once have been tall and powerful and impressive looking, that much was obvious. He leaned back on a throne carved to represent the double-headed Imperial eagle; its eyes were diamonds and it rested on a dais of marble. The man’s armour looked as if it had been intended for a much larger warrior. His cheeks were sunken, the bones were evident on the hands which clutched the throne’s armrests. A feverish light burned in the man’s eyes.
“Inquisitor Sternberg!” he croaked. “Is that you?”
“Secretary Karmiakal! Where is Governor Tal?”
“Tal… Tal is dead, my lord. Most of his cabinet are dead as well. They have all succumbed to the plague that ravages our world.”
Sternberg looked shocked and then overcome with grief. “You are the acting governor then?”
“I have that honour. Was your quest… successful?” There was a note of desperation in the man’s voice that was truly pathetic, Ragnar thought.
“Aye, we have the talisman with us.”
“Then you must bring it down to us. It is our last hope. This dreadful disease has infected over fifty per cent of the population. The death toll is enormous. Bodies choke our streets, too many for the mortuary wagons to take away.”
“We will do what we can,” said the inquisitor. “I will bring my shuttle down at once. Please ask the Administratum to grant us immediate landing clearance.”
“It shall be so, inquisitor. Although I doubt that there are enough people left alive manning the aerial defences to cause you any trouble, even if you attempted to land without clearance.”
The figure in the globe flickered and vanished, leaving the folk on the bridge to glance at each other in appalled silence.
“We must go at once,” said Sternberg. “It seems we have arrived not a moment too soon.”
As one me inquisitors, Gul and the Space Wolves left the bridge and made their way to the shuttle bay.
Ragnar watched Aerius swell in the porthole of the shuttle. He was glad they had taken the spacecraft rather than the teleporter. Sternberg had not wished to risk a malfunction by that ancient and temperamental device at this late stage. Aerius was a smaller world than Fenris, that much was obvious, and the surface of its landmasses glittered darkly in the sun’s light. As the shuttle drove downwards into the atmosphere he realised exactly why. The entire surface of the continent at which they were aimed was sheathed in metal. The whole surface was one huge industrial city. The black clouds that obscured the sky below them were not natural, but the products of enormous factories. Chimneys as large as mountains spewed chemical pollutants into the sky.
Here and there he could see monstrous burning pits that looked like lakes of molten lava. He guessed, from the knowledge placed in his brain by the tutelary engines, that these were the waste products of the titanic factories for which Aerius was famous. As they came lower, individual details became visible, and the scale of what he was witnessing became almost too much to comprehend. They were passing over buildings the size of islands back on Fenris. There were thousands of them, in all shapes and sizes, mountainous structures so large that they could surely not be the work of man. They seemed, rather, the products of the imagination of insane gods. A growing sense of wonder filled him. Intellectually Ragnar had known the Imperium was capable of building on this scale. But it was one thing to know something was possible; it was quite another to see it for yourself.
The shuttle began to buck as it hit turbulence in the atmosphere. Ignoring the lurching and rolling, Ragnar pressed his nose against the porthole and continued to watch. He realised that what he had thought were rivers were massive roadways, threading their way between the skyscrapers which rose to dizzying heights above the ground.
“How many people do you think live down there?” Ragnar asked Sven.
“Too bloody many!” replied the Blood Claw. “But less than there were, because of the plague,” he added blackly.
“It is said that a million, million people lived on Aerius,” Inquisitor Sternberg said. He had obviously overheard Ragnar’s question. “No one knows for sure. The Ecclesiarchy have never been able to get more than a small percentage of them on the census rolls.”
“It must be a very bountiful world,” Ragnar said.
“Bountiful and terrible,” Sternberg replied. “It is one of the most productive Hive Worlds in the Imperium. Its manufactories supply over half the worlds of this sector. If it were lost it would be a terrible blow to the Imperium.”
“You don’t think that is even remotely a possibility though, do you?” Ragnar said.
“It is more than a possibility. With its defences so weakened, a determined invasion by orks or Chaos or any of the other blasphemous alien races could easily seize or destroy the great factory districts.”
“Then it’s a good thing we got here in time to save it,” Nils said with a smile.
“We haven’t saved it yet,” Karah Isaan cut in ominously.
The Black Pyramid was not quite as large as Ragnar had expected. True, by the standards of the villages he had grown up in it was huge, easily the size of a hill, but it was dwarfed by the towering structures that surrounded it. Even so, it was the most impressive building out of all those Ragnar could see. Its sides glittered like glass and the crystalline reflections of its dismal surroundings were vis
ible in its shimmering sides. More impressive still was the palpable aura of power that surrounded it. You could tell simply by looking at it that here was a building which held or concealed something of tremendous importance.
Ragnar watched the shuttle’s reflection grow in its side, and then stabilise as the craft first hovered, then began to descend. He felt relieved at the prospect of setting foot on solid ground after weeks cooped up aboard a starship. The shuttle shivered as its landing gear touched the metal-swathed ground.
“Well, we’re here at last,” said Nils.
The first thing Ragnar noticed when he set foot upon the ground was the number of corpses. Bodies filled the whole vast plaza before the pyramid. They lay everywhere, in various states of decomposition. It was only after a few horrifying moments that he realised that some of the bodies were not dead and rotting, but were still alive, albeit barely, in the grip of the terrible plague.
The second thing he noticed was the pyramid itself. It seemed much larger now than it had from the air. It had a sense of presence, of majesty, that dwarfed all of the much larger buildings around it. Of all the buildings in the area, it alone drew the eye. And yet there was something about it that made Ragnar feel very uneasy indeed. For all its glittering beauty, there was a sense of menace about the pyramid that made his hackles rise. All the misgivings he had felt way back on the Fang and which had haunted him occasionally on their trip, seemed to return redoubled.
He tried to tell himself that it was simply the presence of all these sick people that made his flesh crawl, but he knew it was not so. There was something about the pyramid itself that filled him with dread and made him want to shout a warning to the others. All his instincts rebelled as he contemplated it. He was surprised that the others did not feel the same way. It seemed so obvious to him.
Perhaps this was just another symptom of the malaise that had affected his mind ever since he was wounded. Perhaps he was seeing a threat where none existed. Surely this must be the case. Surely the others could not be so blind.
“Look at that,” he heard Nils breathe.
He glanced skyward in the direction his comrade was pointing and saw thousands of glittering contrails moving through the upper atmosphere, descending through a gap in the clouds. At first, he thought they were under some form of attack but then he realised that these were falling stars, so many of them that they were visible in daylight. The stars will fall, he thought. As the gap in the clouds widened, he caught sight of something else: a monstrous red comet, dragging a tail of greenish-yellow behind it lit up a fifth of the sky. Ragnar knew without having to be told that he looked upon the Balestar.
“What now?” he heard Hakon ask.
“We go in,” Sternberg replied sombrely. “The oracle was quite clear on that. To end the plague the talisman must be brought to the hidden chambers within the pyramid.”
“And where is the entrance?”
“We will find it,” Sternberg said grimly.
They had to step over the bodies of the dead as they approached the building. To Ragnar they looked almost like sacrificial victims offered up to some evil god. There was something deeply disturbing and offensive to his sense of lightness in the manner in which they simply lay there, sprawled out obscenely.
Even worse were the groaning half-dead who begged for water, or to be put out of their misery, as the newcomers approached. Ragnar tried to ignore their pleas, but they sank into his mind despite all his efforts.
He saw Gul bend and snap one’s neck with a chop of his hand. Then the huge warrior looked at all of the folk that lay around him, and then shrugged pathetically, as if overwhelmed by the sheer scale of what they were witnessing.
“Bloody cheerful place,” Sven muttered, as if sensing Ragnar’s mood and attempting to lighten it. He looked at Ragnar and smiled mockingly. “Are you sweating, Ragnar? I hope you are not coming down with a fever.”
Ragnar could tell from his scent that he was joking, but even so he wondered whether Sven had spotted something that he had not. Was he really sweating? A hand to his brow told him he was not. He let out a deep breath and tried to ignore the deep and offensive stench of pestilence that filled his nostrils.
The pyramid loomed larger in his sight. How were they going to get inside, Ragnar wondered? The prophecy had not exactly been specific on that subject. To tell the truth, he suddenly realised that he had no real idea of what they were supposed to be doing at all. Until now, he had simply been following others who presumably knew better than he did. It was like being a character in one of the old sagas. You did not question the wisdom of what the soothsayers said, you simply did it. Now, he was starting to wonder. What relevance could finding some mystical talisman, however powerful, have to combating death on this scale. The plague was a force that was invisible and yet omnipresent, and it was bringing a whole mighty world to its knees.
Ragnar felt his lips twist into a smile that might have been a snarl. It was a little late to be having such thoughts now, he realised. He wondered what was wrong with him. Why had his thoughts become so defeatist over the past few weeks? Perhaps it was because of his wounds, or perhaps it was because of some other external reason. But what? And why was he thinking this way now? What influences were at work here?
They were alongside the pyramid now, walking under its vast shadow. Ragnar could see his reflection mirrored in the black marbling of its side. His image seemed subtly distorted — thinner, weaker, its eyes feverish, its skin blotched as if with plague. For a moment the thought struck him that this was an omen; that he was looking at a picture of his future doom. He pushed the idea aside with a shiver. He noticed his flesh had started to itch. He fought down the urge to scratch and kept marching.
They were at the exact centre of the pyramid’s west wall now. He noticed that Karah’s eyes were closed and that a nimbus of power played round her head. Tendrils of force ran from it to the amulet and then back again. Questing fingers of power reached out from her and flowed over the pyramid’s side. As they did so, lines of eldritch fire sprang into being, revealing a complex pattern in the curious runic script of the eldar. For a moment the symbol blazed bright as the sun, and the sight of it burned its way into Ragnar’s brain. There was something ominous about it that set his nerves on edge, as if it were shrieking a warning that he did not understand.
He wanted to go forward and tell the others to stop, that they were disturbing something best left well alone. He wanted to but he could not. He realised that like the others he was caught up by the simple momentum of their quest. He had no reason to stop them, and they had no reason to listen. All he had were his forebodings and what were they when weighed against the chance to save billions of lives?
Even as he watched the shimmering symbol vanished, and with it went part of the wall of the pyramid. It simply vanished like mist, leaving a gap in the stonework that revealed the maw of a great dark tunnel. Despite himself, Ragnar was impressed by the magic, and he felt a small surge of excitement. Whatever they were doing, they were making progress. They had pierced the wall of a structure that had proved invulnerable for millennia.
Inquisitor Sternberg produced a glowglobe from a deep pocket in his cloak and they advanced into the gloom. The walls of the pyramid’s interior were not made from the same mystical substance as its outer walls. They appeared to be carved from pure granite, and seemed much older than the external walls. It appeared that they were within the remains of a much older site.
The walls were inlaid with frescoes and scrollwork bearing more eldar symbols, and for the first time Ragnar wished that he could read that arcane language. He felt that he might learn at least part of the great secret that was concealed within this structure. What was this place, he wondered? Was it some vast tomb built to protect the corpse of some ancient eldar king? Judging from what he had seen on the space hulk he decided that this was unlikely, but how could he know for sure? He had no idea how typical the eldar on that hulk were of their race in genera
l. He doubted that they would have built anything as crude as this. And then again, didn’t the eldar shun the surface of worlds, and hadn’t they done so since mankind had first encountered them? Was this something from the distant past, from the time before the eldar had abandoned planetary surfaces? Now he truly wished he could understand the writings on the wall.
All around him he felt the swirl of mystical forces. Instinctively he rose on the balls of his feet, ready to meet any threat. Even as he did so, he knew it was a futile gesture. The builders of this complex would not resort to anything so crude as traps and deadfalls and guardians. The things that protected the pyramid would be far subtler. Spells, curses, pure psychic force was what they could expect here, and these were things he was not really equipped to deal with. These were matters for Rune Priests, not simple warriors. For all his inexperience, poor Lars might have been better prepared for this than he. He had at least spent time with the Chapter’s mystic masters.
Was that why he was dead, Ragnar suddenly wondered? Was there a huge pattern of events at work here of which he had caught only the faintest glimpse? Was this all part of some immense plot, on a scale which he could not begin to comprehend? Had the appearance of the falling stars, and their quest and the death of his comrade all been part of the web of some vast scheme? He shook his head. He was imagining things. This gloomy place was starting to get to him.
At the edge of his vision, he thought he saw a host of shadowy inhuman figures gathering. He had seen their likeness before. They looked like eldar.
“Be very still,” Karah said in a voice that carried eerily in the echoing corridor. “Be very still if you value your lives.”
Ragnar could see no threat but her tone and her scent warned him that she was serious, so he froze on the spot. He stretched his senses to their limits and still could detect nothing. So he waited. Karah raised her hands and the amulet blazed bright once more. As she did so, more lines of fire became evident. They shimmered into being in the air before them, millions and millions of beams all criss-crossing in an intricate web of light. At her gesture they blazed brighter and brighter — and then suddenly faded.