The next opened the door to a fogbound marsh. It was humid, and the air was bad. So was the standing water. Thread-thin worms writhed in the mire, pulsing their wretched mouths and firing millivolt electrical impulses that prickled at the travellers' legs as they waded around.
The door opened and closed behind them again. A vast rift valley of yellow rock, gouged out under a selpic blue sky, spread out in front of them. The valley was ten kilometres wide, and four or five deep. It was achingly hot, and the heat was dry. The air smelled like metal.
"Leave this place quickly," Ravenor said. His chair systems were reading a blaze of solar radiation.
Next, a small coral atoll in the middle of a choppy ocean washed violet by small, wobbling jellyfish in vast profusion. There was no other land in sight. The sky was a pink haze. A booming sound kept echoing out across the distance. Very far away, indistinct in the haze, some great, basking shape rose from the sea and rolled slowly back in.
"Next," said Nayl.
Next was a dark, black forest, bitter and damp. The air hinted at advanced decay, and the merest pricks of white sky penetrated the thick, black fronds of the trees. They moved a little way from the door, hoping to see signs of habitation or perhaps a trail. Odd sounds knocked and chirruped in the darkness. Tiny black flies began to buzz around them. Angharad brushed them away from her face. They were very small, like fleas.
In a few seconds, the clouds of them had become unbearably thick, blackening exposed skin and swirling into nostrils, ears and eyes.
"Exit!" Ravenor ordered. Iosob struggled with the key, moaning through tightly pursed lips as she tried to shake off the flies.
Ravenor summoned a little of what was left of his will and let it wash out, sweeping the flies away for a second.
The door opened.
Here, a bone yard, a windy, cold desert of blue-grey dust. The chasing wind fanned horsetails of loose dust off the tops of dunes. The vast, dry bones of long dead animals covered the landscape as far as they could see, tumbled in disarticulated heaps, half submerged in the dust. These animals had been giants. The sky was a mottled brown, and the las-fire streaks of shooting stars, all descending at the same forty-five degree angle, flickered across it like sparks off a grinding wheel. Ravenor's three companions crunched out amongst the bone waste, spitting phlegm black with dead flies out of their mouths.
"Open the door again," said Angharad, humourlessly.
Iosob obeyed, and they came into a city. It was a frigid, bare place of cyclopean blocks under a yellow sky dominated by a ringed gas giant. There was little doubt at all that the city was not of human construction.
"Have you seen anything like this before?" Nayl asked. Sound had a strange, hollow echo to it. The cold air held a sweet tang, like sugar.
"No," said Ravenor. They wandered the area around the door for five minutes.
"It's been dead a long time, hasn't it?" asked Angharad.
"No," said Ravenor. "I can feel something here, a presence."
Nayl raised his gun.
"It's far away," said Ravenor, "but I can feel it. It's not human." He turned his chair. "Open the door again, please, Iosob. I don't think we're safe here."
As they went through the door, Nayl wondered quite what Ravenor had felt to make him so sure of that.
The next place was an arid plain, cracked and shrunken like sun-damaged skin. Weird succulent plant growth, like sprouts of brain tissue, formed forests on either side of the parched plain. A few kilometres away, the rusted, buckled shell of some colossal machine lay derelict on the ground. It looked like part of a starship, but what kind they couldn't tell. There was no time to debate or investigate. The atmosphere was barely breathable. Nausea enveloped them, and they started to gasp and choke.
It seemed to take forever for the key to turn.
"Throne!" Nayl exclaimed as they made their next exit. "Be careful! Watch your step!"
The door had opened onto a narrow platform of rough-hewn, untreated wood. It was part of a massive, and not altogether reliable-looking, matrix of scaffolding erected around a huge, decaying ouslite tower. They were close to the top, in bright midday sunlight and fresh wind, and the platform was a thousand metres above the hazy sprawl of a huge city. Hundreds of dirty smoke trails rose from the city roofscape.
The platform swayed as they moved gingerly out across it. Iosob held onto a scaffold cross-member and refused to look down. She shut her eyes.
"I don't like this," she said.
"Do we climb down?" asked Angharad, blithely standing on the edge and staring down, her hands on her hips. "There is life here. I can hear it. Bustle. There is movement in the streets. Teeming life. It looks like an Imperial city."
"I think we would regret doing that," said Ravenor. "It's teeming with life, all right, but I'm not reading human minds anywhere. I think this was an Imperial city once."
"So who's down there now?" asked Nayl. "And might they not at least have things like water and food?"
The towers and buildings nearest to them, none as tall as their vantage place, were also in bad repair and strung with complex networks of primitive scaffolding. It was hard to tell if the city was being repaired or dismantled by its new owners.
Angharad's keen eyes picked out figures moving on the scaffolding on a neighbouring tower, four hundred metres below them: labourers, at work.
"Ravenor is right. There's no point climbing down."
"What can you see?" Nayl asked.
"Orks," she replied mildly.
When the door opened next, it was into a black space. There was no light whatsoever, just cold, musty air.
"Gideon?" Nayl called out.
Ravenor ignited his chair's lamp systems. His power was alarmingly low, because the lamps did not blaze with their usual white intensity. The yellow glow revealed their surroundings: a stone chamber, rectangular, about the size of the Arethusa's secondary hold. Walls, floor and ceiling were made of the same, flush-fitting stone blocks, expertly built and, though there were no signs of wear or decay or even dust, very old.
"There's no door," said Angharad.
"Ah, you noticed that," said Nayl.
"I mean, no other door," she said. "Unless it is concealed."
"It isn't," Ravenor said. "I have scanned. The chamber is sealed and solid."
"Why would someone build it, then? For what purpose, if you can't get in and out of it?"
"Maybe they can," said Ravenor. "Maybe they have a teleport. Maybe they don't want to come in here. Maybe it's sealed to keep something in."
"But there's nothing in here except us," said Nayl. He looked at Ravenor sharply. "Is there?"
"I don't think so."
"Door!" Angharad declared.
"We could at least rest here for a few minutes," said Ravenor. "It has the merit of being free from the sort of health hazards we've found elsewhere."
They sat down beside his chair and stared at the door.
"Iosob," said Ravenor, after a while, "I've been thinking about the door. It's operating randomly, isn't it?"
She shrugged. "I do not know. That is not my function. But I think that's very likely."
"Without the House to anchor it, the door is cut loose, directionless?"
She shrugged again. "That is not-"
"-your function, I know. How old are you, Iosob?"
"Fourteen years."
"You were raised in the House?"
"I was raised by the family of housekeepers to be a housekeeper, as my mothers before me."
"And you're not psychically active in any way?"
"I don't believe I am. How would I know?"
Ravenor was already pretty certain. He had gently scanned her several times, and found no trace. Her mind, indeed, seemed a strangely lonely, unhappy place, empty of the usual buzz of thoughts. "None of the housekeepers were psykers, were they?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"Is that important?" Nayl asked.
"However the door
operates," Ravenor said, "it involves a strong psychic process. I don't know if the House was doing that, or someone we never met. The housekeepers are not active, because active psykers would have interfered with the door's operation. In fact, I think they were brought up under very particular circumstances, extensive ritual conditioning to keep their minds very... calm." He had been going to say "vacant", but didn't want to in front of Iosob.
"With the House gone," Ravenor said, "I was wondering if I could start to influence it. I was wondering if my mind could engage with it enough to guide us."
They got back on their feet.
Ravenor reached out and probed the door the way he would a living mind. He felt foolish doing it, for although the door had an undeniable background vibration of power, it was just a wooden door.
"Our most immediate concern is thirst," said Ravenor. "Open the door."
SEVEN
They stepped through into a blustery, fresh, cold wind. They were in a rocky foreshore, a strand of limestone with a crashing grey sea on one side and a range of low cliffs on the other. A low sky full of murky clouds was racing past at what seemed an abnormally fast rate. There was moisture in the wind, and the bluster was raising eddies of chasing spray off the wet rock.
"You found water," said Nayl. He nodded towards the breaking sea fifty metres away, "but unless that's freshwater..."
"It isn't," said Angharad. "You can taste the brine in the air."
She paused. "Step towards me slowly, Nayl."
"What?"
+Do as she says.+
Ten metres behind Nayl, what they had taken to be a slab of wet rock had stirred. It was an immense, pallid crocodilian creature with a long, slender snout. It had been basking on the foreshore in the ocean spray. It raised its broad body on four large flipper limbs, and slithered lazily down towards the water.
They looked around and saw there were a great number of the things, camouflaged into the grey limestone, basking in colonies all along the chilly shore. Some lay with their mouths wide open. They seemed languid, and not the least interested in the visitors.
"Think there's more than eighteen of them?" Nayl asked.
"W-why?" asked Iosob, gazing in some trepidation at the landscape of monsters.
Nayl patted his shotgun. He looked at Ravenor. "What do you think? Is this a near miss? Or did you get the door to find us water?"
"It's probably a coincidence." Ravenor replied. "Let's try again."
There was a soft, crumping boom of thunder, and it began to rain, a few large drops at first, and then a sustained, torrential downpour of monsoon proportions. They were all drenched in an instant.
"That's fresh!" Nayl shouted. He tilted his head back and opened his mouth. "Throne be, that's fresh!" Angharad and Iosob were already drinking in the rain. Iosob cupped her hands and lapped from them as they rapidly filled. With head tilted back, it was impossible not to drink down whole mouthfuls.
Ravenor opened the catchment vents on his chair and collected what water he could from the gulleys of the hull. Even a little would help restore the fluid balance of his support systems.
The rain stopped as quickly as it had begun. Nayl wiped his hand across his wet face and laughed out loud. "It was worth coming here after all," he said.
I settle my mind for another attempt. I am becoming increasingly fatigued. My concerns about my own deterioration are grave. I believe the support chair's damaged systems are shutting down, and without them, my life will become untenable. I have hidden this from the others, although I suspect Harlon has some idea.
I focus on the door, and on the key in Iosob's hand. I wish I understood the arcane mechanisms of the three-way door better, for blind meddling with such powerful artefacts is usually extremely inadvisable.
I try to connect anyway. I try to make the door, or some sentience beyond its physical substance, understand what I need from it. This time I concentrate my thoughts on memories on the Arethusa. If there is a place I could wish us to be, it is there.
I think of the Arethusa. I think of the year 404. Will it comprehend me? Will it be able to act upon that comprehension? I told it thirst, and it brought us to water, if only in the most tenuous sense.
"Open the door."
A warm, dusty wind blew into their faces. A hard sun beat down from a cloudless sky. The door stood in a thicket of odd, twisted thorn brush, hard as bone and twice as tall as a fully grown man. The brush was gnarled and wrinkled, powder grey on its bark, and its thorns were long and sharp.
"Is this what you were trying for?" Nayl asked.
"No," said Ravenor, gliding out of the doorway behind him. "Not at all."
"We take a look around?" asked Nayl. "Seeing as we're here?" They moved away from the door, following the dusty slope up through the tangled brush. The wind was only light, but the brush seemed to move and creak around them. "Not liking the plant life much," muttered Nayl.
"It's only plants," said Angharad. "Plants cannot kill you."
"Well, let me put the lie to that." Nayl began. "I was in this place once-"
"Shut up," said Ravenor. He was so weary, it was an effort even to be polite. Disappointment was suffocating him.
"What's that?" asked Angharad, pointing ahead of them. They could glimpse some structure, like a derrick or mast, rising from above the brush cover at the top of the slope.
"Let's find out," said Nayl. "Look, ahead of us, the thorn scrub thins out."
They advanced, toiling up the slope, ducking under the spiked boughs. The thorn thicket came to an abrupt halt in a ragged line. Beyond it, the rising land had been cleared for several hundred metres. The earth looked scorched, as if flamers had been used to burn back the resilient brush.
"Look at that," said Nayl.
Clear of the scrub, they had a good view up the slope to the crown of the hill, where a drab, uninviting compound had been constructed. The compound was surrounded by a high security fence, and the summit of the hill had been entirely denuded of thorn brush within three hundred metres of the fence line. Inside the fence lay a complex of modular buildings surrounding several tall masts.
The masts were high gain vox antennae. The modular buildings were of a recognisably Imperial template.
"It's not home, but it's the best break we've had so far." Nayl murmured.
"We will approach?" asked Angharad.
"Yes," said Ravenor. "I'm reading human mind patterns, but they're oddly dulled. I can't fix numbers or much thought detail."
"Why?" asked Nayl.
"I'm... I'm having trouble concentrating," said Ravenor. "I'm sorry."
"Are you in pain, Gideon?" Nayl asked.
"Let that be my problem, Harlon." The chair moved forwards. They began to follow it up the cleared slope. A voice suddenly rang out, distorted by vox speakers, and stopped them in their tracks.
Three humans were trudging up the slope behind them from the brush. They were male, clad in dusty Guard-issue uniforms that had been heavily reinforced with chainmail and shielding plates. They wore heavy, full-visored helmets like pit fighters. The visor plates, like the shielding they wore, were scratched and shabby. All three of them were aiming heavy, dirty flamers.
"Stay where you are," ordered one of them. His voice crackled out of his helmet relay. He gestured with his flamer. "Where the hell did you come from?"
Nayl gestured honestly at the brush cover behind them.
"Some kind of joker?" asked another of the men.
"Where's your ship?" demanded the leader. "We didn't see any ship come in. Where did you set down?"
"We didn't come in a ship," said Ravenor through his voxponder. He was alarmed that he hadn't been forewarned of their approach, but much more alarmed that, now they were visible, he couldn't read their minds at all.
The men stared at Ravenor's chair.
"What is that?" asked the leader.
"A support chair," said Nayl.
"For a cripple?"
"Yes," said Ravenor.
br /> The trio circled around them. "Let's lose the shotgun," one told Nayl. Nayl tossed it into the dust obligingly.
"And the sword, you," another said to Angharad. The three men seemed particularly fascinated by the towering woman in her torn leather armour.
"I will not draw it, for I have no intention of harming you." Angharad replied clearly. "But I will not be divorced from Evisorex."
Iosob jumped and squealed as the leader of the trio fired his flamer at the ground in a roaring gale of heat. Burned dust billowed up from the vitrified scorch mark.
"Drop the bloody sword," the leader said.
"Do it." Nayl hissed sidelong at Angharad. "I understand your code, woman, but we've come too far - and I mean too very far - for you to screw this up."
With an expression on her face like she was sawing off her own arm, Angharad unbuckled the steel's long case and lowered it respectfully into the dust.
"Burn gang two chief to base," they heard the leader vox.
"Come back, BG3." the link crackled.
"Turn out a security squad to the main gates and meet us there. We're coming in. Tell the boss she won't believe what we've just found out here."
The room in the modular shelter was cool and quiet, air circulating through well-maintained vent systems. There was a steel table, and half a dozen folding chairs. Nayl sat down on one, and sighed, bone-tired. Iosob sat on the floor at his feet, and curled up.
Angharad paced. She was visibly agitated at having her steel taken from her against her will.
Ravenor lowered his chair onto the deck to conserve power, and rested. Watching him, Nayl was concerned for his master's wellbeing. Fluid had begun to leak from the gouges in the chair again, and this time it was running dark and unclear, as if dirt or biological waste was mixing with the chair's circulation system.
The trio of chainmailed troopers had led them up to the compound gates, one of them lugging the shotgun and the sword. A squad of regular Imperial Guard had assembled to meet them. They carried bull pup-format lasguns, and wore more standard combat fatigues, lacking the mail and plate armour of the flamer team. Nayl hadn't been able to recognise the regimental insignia.