‘May I ask... what you intend to do?’
‘That’s just it,’ said Orfeo Culzean with a winning smile. ‘I can do anything I want. Anything at all. With Molotch as an ally, I might have taken down a government or seized control of a world. But with Slyte... oh, Leyla. The whole Imperium is mine. Start dreaming. I’ll soon be able to grant you any heart’s desire.’
‘Right now,’ she replied, ‘I’d settle for being somewhere else. What about Ravenor and his people?’
‘Slyte will destroy them, at my order. I’d like you to contact the Divine Fratery later tonight. I’ve kept a line of communication open with Frater Stefoy. They will want to know of Slyte’s birth. They may wish to come and worship him. Encourage them. The Fratery, with their long-standing knowledge of Slyte, will be useful to have around, an added guarantee. Now, can we proceed?’
They left the northern wing and stepped out into the storm. Tzabo’s men lit lamp packs. Rain swirled into their faces as they struggled up the track to the astronomer’s tower. Incandescent lightning boomed like atomic blasts overhead in the murk.
The ragged tower formed an ominous black shape through the sheeting rain. They soldiered on, their clothes drenched, arms raised to protect their faces. Culzean reignited his void shield for cover against the elemental fury, and the rain sizzled and steamed off its field.
Then the rain stopped, and there was utter calm.
They stopped outside the tower’s base, steam rising off their soaked clothing. There was shocking peace and silence.
‘Eye of the storm?’ Culzean suggested, with a nervous laugh.
Slade looked back down the track. Ten yards away, the rain was falling. It was falling like a monsoon deluge all across the black silhouette of Elmingard. Lightning jagged the sky. They could hear none of it.
‘This is, this is...’ one of Tzabo’s men said, raising his weapon.
‘Oh, Throne,’ said Tzabo, looking up. The sky directly above the tower was bare of clouds. The black weight of the thunderhead hung over the mountains, but had swirled and parted to form a deep chimney of clear air over the astronomer’s broken edifice. Alien stars glittered high above. They were moving, circling like fireflies, forming and re-forming constellations and the spirals of unknown galaxies.
‘Let’s go back,’ said Slade, her voice hollow in the still air. ‘Orfeo, please.’
‘It’s just the binding,’ Culzean told her. ‘Our savants have done their work. This area is becalmed because of the rites they have performed. Slyte is bound.’
‘What’s that stink?’ asked Tzabo. A noxious odour oozed out of the black tower, a charnel air.
Slade moved forwards, her weapon aimed. Culzean followed her. They stepped through the doorway into the base of the tower. Rainwater dripped down from the upper levels. Scraps of torn parchment, sodden and limp, littered the floor.
Slade saw the stone block she’d shackled Thonius to an hour before. The remnants of the chain trailed from it, broken and bent.
‘Orfeo?’
‘What?’
‘Orfeo, look.’
The walls around them were decorated with something dark and sticky. It took them a moment to comprehend what they were looking at. Culzean’s savants were dead. Their pulverised meat and bones were smeared in a thin, clotting layer onto stone all around the tower. Blood ran down and congealed at the base of the walls.
‘Leyla?’ Culzean whispered.
She grabbed his hand and dragged him back out of the tower. Tzabo and his men were waiting there.
‘We’re leaving,’ she told them.
‘Sir?’
‘She’s right,’ mumbled Culzean, trying to think straight. ‘She’s right, Tzabo. We’re leaving.’
So soon?
They turned.
Something that had once been Carl Thonius stood in the doorway of the tower. He was naked, his clothes burnt off him. A ghastly red light radiated from the core of his being, illuminating him from within. His skin had become transparent and his skeletal structure was revealed like a medicae’s scan. His right arm was fleshless from the middle of the upper half. What remained was a scorched bone limb that ended in vast, black talons.
Culzean, he said. When his mouth opened, they could see flames dancing inside.
‘Slyte?’ stammered Orfeo Culzean. ‘Slyte, I command you–’
‘Don’t be such an idiot!’ Slade cried.
The thing’s mouth opened. It kept opening. It stretched and distended like a snake’s jaw, far wider than any human mouth could ever open. Then it exhaled with a dull, buzzing roar. A wave of wretched vapour streamed out of its maw and engulfed them. Tzabo’s men recoiled, gasping and vomiting. All of the silver buttons on their smart blue outfits tarnished and went black. Two of them fell down, overcome with nausea.
Gagging, Slade raised her weapon. ‘Run!’ she gasped. ‘Run, Orfeo!’
She started to fire. Tzabo and his remaining men added their firepower to hers. Their las shots bounced off the daemonic figure, but Slade’s special loads had been aimed low, into the soil at its feet. They burst on impact, releasing their contents from their bondage in the specially engraved shells.
Gibbering warp-forms bloomed like unholy flowers, sprouting from the earth. Hooktors and clawbrils and other hideous sub-daemons that Culzean had painstakingly captured and imprisoned over the years manifested as they were released, and struck at Slyte in mindless wrath.
Cackling, Slyte dismembered them, shredding their bodies like wet sacks, spraying ichor and pus in all directions. His black talons ripped through their writhing masses and reduced them to dissolving ectoplasmic sludge.
Slyte stepped forwards through the last of the warp-things. He made a barking sound, like a dog-fox, and the ground split. Insectile vermin, glittering black, some the size of lobsters or small felines, poured out of the ground in a frenetic, clicking flood.
‘Run!’ Slade screamed.
Culzean started to run. The insects enveloped him, burning and falling away as the void shield threw them back.
Tzabo and his men were engulfed. The seething mass of chittering bodies covered them from head to toe, and stripped them of clothing and meat. Bare skeletons, crawling with black things, collapsed onto the ground and disarticulated. Tzabo was the last to fall. He turned his gun on himself and blew off his own head.
The air was full of flies, buzzing and swarming.
Culzean ran. Slade ran after him, wailing. There were things on her, on her arms and her legs, biting and scurrying.
‘Orfeo!’
‘Leyla! Protect me!’
She turned, loyal to the end, clapped a fresh clip into her weapon, and faced the burning daemon striding after them. She started to fire.
Culzean ran on regardless. He heard Leyla Slade shrieking, and shuddered when that shrieking cut off abruptly.
He kept running.
In the heart of Elmingard, Siskind and the others heard awful roaring and baying coming from outside. A dire stink suddenly permeated the place.
‘That’s it,’ Siskind told Ornales. ‘We’re leaving.’
The rest of Culzean’s staff and employees were already fleeing. Tables and chairs were overturned in their efforts to exit. There was screaming and shouting. The noises echoed down the hallways.
‘Is the flier locked?’ Siskind asked his first mate as they hurried along.
‘It’ll only open to our voice prints,’ Ornales assured him. ‘What in hell is happening?’
Siskind drew his laspistol. ‘I have no idea and no wish to know,’ he said. A man slammed into them. The silver buttons of his blue wool clothing had turned black. Siskind saw how every metal surface in the place was tarnished and soiled. The air had gone bad. The stink was everywhere.
‘Take me with you! Take me with you, shipmaster!’ the man pleaded. Siskind shot him.
‘This is madness!’ he growled.
Ornales said nothing, but drew his own weapon.
They reached
a stairwell that led down into the southern terraces. Scullery boys and domestics ran past them, trying to find a place of refuge. Siskind and Ornales started down the steps.
Plyton appeared on the staircase below them, hauling Kara Swole. She cried out as she saw Siskind.
Siskind started shooting. Plyton dropped Kara and fired her shotgun. The blast took Ornales in the chest and hurled him back up the stairs. He landed, limp, and rolled back down a step or two.
Siskind kept firing. He hit Plyton in the right hip and the left shoulder, and spun her back down the staircase. She screeched in pain as she bounced off the wall and fell on her face. Leaping down two steps at a time, Siskind came to a halt over Kara’s body.
She looked up at him, blankly.
‘Kara!’ Plyton yelled in pain, doubled up and writhing at the base of the stairs. Siskind pointed his hand weapon at Kara Swole.
The first las-shot blew out his spine. The second chopped the back off his head as cleanly as an axe blow. Siskind staggered, gaping, smoke streaming out of his mouth. Blood poured down the back of his expensive coat of Vitrian glass.
He toppled over the stair rail and fell.
Belknap clattered down the staircase to reach Kara, slinging his lasrifle onto his shoulder. He grabbed her, and covered her face with kisses.
‘I thought I’d lost you,’ he whispered.
‘Pat, Patrik...’ she moaned. ‘Help Maud.’
He looked over her head at Plyton thrashing in anguish on the deck below.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Of course.’
Leaning out of the broken window, Lucius Worna fired his bolt pistol at Nayl on the cratered roof below. Nothing happened.
He glanced at his weapon. It was a trusty tool and had never malfunctioned before. He tried again. He realised that something was preventing his finger from squeezing the trigger.
He turned instinctively. A kineblade impaled him through one eye like an arrow. Two more struck into his chest.
Patience Kys walked towards him across the ruined dining hall, her skirt flowing.
‘There’s more where that came from,’ she promised.
Worna tried to fire at her. She lashed out with the full fury of her telekinesis and grabbed him around the neck, throttling him.
Worna choked.
Kys raised her arms like a sorcerer casting a spell and propelled him up off the floor and out through the window. Advancing, she lifted his struggling bulk up into the sky and suspended him there.
A bolt of lightning slammed into his metal-clad form. A second later, two more monumental lightning strikes hit him.
‘End of story?’ she asked sarcastically, her hands raised.
‘You... wish...’ Worna gasped, blood streaming out of his mouth.
Kys determinedly held the bounty hunter in the sky a little longer. Eight more forks of lightning slammed into Worna in rapid succession. His armoured carcass began to burn.
Once it was blazing like a torch, she hurled it away. It arced across the rooftops of Elmingard like a comet, leaving a trail of fire behind it.
Kys leaned out of the window. ‘Harlon?’ she yelled. ‘You alive down there? Harlon?’
Twelve
They hurried across the rose terrace into the solar. Ravenor led the way.
‘Of course, I knew it was Thonius all along,’ Molotch said.
+What?+
‘Oh, not at the time, but now... it all makes sense.’
+How?+
‘At Petropolis, Gideon. In the Sacristy. I came so close to my dreams.’
+I know you did.+
‘Gideon, you’d have enjoyed them too, admired them. Enuncia was so perfect, so clean.’
+Zygmunt...+
Molotch shrugged. ‘At the point of creation, I was interrupted by your people. Kara Swole and Carl Thonius. Of course, I dealt with them quickly. Then Slyte appeared.’
+Slyte was there?+
‘Yes, Gideon. Did you not realise what actually thwarted my efforts on Eustis Majoris? Slyte stopped me. Slyte hurt me. But for Slyte, I would have triumphed.’
+Holy Throne.+
‘The daemon just appeared, and I was too scared to think. Culzean and his woman helped me escape. But now it’s so obvious. Slyte was there because Thonius was there. Thonius was Slyte. He destroyed my plans for Enuncia.’
Ravenor’s chair coasted to a halt in the middle of the solar. Rain spattered in through the open doors behind them. +I thought it was me, Zygmunt. I thought I was the one who’d beaten you. Slyte takes the credit for that, does he?+
‘Rather, I think, Carl Thonius,’ Molotch replied. ‘Now let’s get on with this.’ He started to rummage through the crates Culzean had left stacked in the chamber. ‘Come along, Gideon.’
Molotch paused in his search and looked back at the support chair.
‘What’s the matter?’
+Nothing.+
‘You never told me how you found out,’ said Molotch.
+A nascent psyker called Zael. He knew it all. I have a feeling he left it too late to tell me.+
‘What’s the matter?’
+You keep asking me that, Zygmunt.+
‘I’ll keep asking until you tell me.’
+Very well. Things have changed. I can feel it. The storm’s shifting. The magnitude of power has increased. The daemon is on the move, coming closer. I can feel him closing in. He’s entered the house. We’ve only got a few minutes left. Can’t you smell him?+
‘Then this is all a waste of time,’ said Molotch.
The end door of the solar burst open and Culzean scrambled in, his void shield still flickering around him. It was close to failure. He began to ransack the drawers at the far end of the room. His shield blinked out.
Culzean turned, suddenly aware he was not alone. He snatched out an auto-snub and aimed it at Molotch and Ravenor.
‘Don’t be so silly,’ Ravenor said.
‘He’s coming! He’s coming!’ Culzean cried. ‘He’s right behind me! He killed my poor Leyla!’
Molotch flicked his right arm. Culzean’s pistol flew out of his hand and tumbled in the air. Molotch caught it, and shot Culzean through the belly. Culzean crashed back into the chest of drawers, and fell down clutching his abdomen. His face went white. There was a look of speechless surprise on his face.
+Was that really necessary?+
‘You have no idea,’ said Molotch.
Culzean was bleeding out. His agony was tangible, and pressed down on Ravenor’s mind like a dead weight. Ravenor was quite sure Molotch had gone for a belly wound because he knew it was an excruciating, lingering way to die. +Culzean, is there anything we can do?+
Culzean groaned and coughed up blood. ‘Help me. A doctor...’
+I meant about the daemon.+
The door behind him flew open. Angharad landed like a cat in front of Molotch and sliced the end off his pistol. She was about to gut him. Ravenor threw her back against the wall with psychic force.
+No, Angharad. Leave him.+
‘He is the devil!’ she sneered.
+There are worse devils abroad tonight.+
Angharad glared at Molotch.
+We will need him if we want to survive.+
Molotch bent over Culzean. ‘Orfeo? Orfeo, listen. What were you looking for when you came in here?’
‘Something. Anything.’ Culzean swallowed hard. ‘I wondered if there was something I’d forgotten, something I’d overlooked.’
‘Is there? What have you got left? Any shining weapons? Any talismans or incantations that might be efficacious?’
Culzean shook his head. ‘Nothing, nothing. I have a few rites of banishment, but I’m certain none would be suitable.’
‘Because this isn’t the right time or place?’ Ravenor asked. ‘Show us anyway.’
Culzean gestured weakly at a nearby book case. ‘Third shelf, in the green box.’
Molotch rose, slid the box off the shelf, and opened it. He pulled out a thick sheaf of old parchment
s bound with a cord.
‘Banishment rites,’ Culzean murmured, pain etched across his face, ‘all very old, and from a number of sources. The Hech’ell Deportation is the most complete and the most reliable. I’ve used it before. It works.’
+But?+
‘It won’t work here. None of them will.’
Molotch was speed-reading the crumbling parchments. ‘He’s right. It’s like I told you. To cast out a daemon, one must choose the right place and time. One must find a location where the walls between dimensions are tissue-thin, a rift or fissure, a place of weakness. There are only a few such places in the entire cosmos and Elmingard isn’t one of them. Any banishment rites we try here are a waste of effort.’
He was about to say something else but his voice cut off. Something flickered and blinked in the corner of the solar. It manifested, just a hazy shimmer, like smoke in sunlight.
It was Carl Thonius.
Thirteen
Thonius flickered in and out of reality. He seemed to be moving too fast, like a speeded up pict sequence.
I told you told you told you
Ravenor, Molotch and Angharad backed slowly towards the terrace doors. The room’s lights dimmed and flashed in time to the lightning. Sprawled near to the manifested spectre, Culzean whimpered and tried to drag himself away.
‘Slyte...’ whispered Molotch.
+No. Slyte’s still out there, coming closer. This is an aberration. A random psychic effect, just an echo.+
Gideon Gideon Gid Gideon
+Carl?+
Help me help me help meee
+Throne! Carl?+
The spectre sat down on one of the solar’s armchairs. Its form continued to jump and flicker as if it was running at the wrong speed, and repeated and overlapped.
Gideon, please. It it hurts hurts. It hurts. Help me.
+Carl, it’s too late.+
Oh, it hurts. I can I can beat this, I can.
+No, Carl, you can’t.+
Gideon, I can. If you you you help me. You owe me me owe me owe me. I’ve been working with you with you all the way. I stopped Molotch at Petropolis. I did that. Did that. Did that. Me, Gideon. I made Kara made Kara Kara well again. I saved you from the creatures behind the door. Behind the door.