The Outcast Dead

Within this tower, Yasu Nagasena stands before a wooden stretching frame, upon which is a rectangle of white silk held in place with silver pins. Cho Oyu is the old name for this mountain, words in a language that has long since been assimilated into a tongue that in turn has been outgrown and forgotten. The migou say it means the Turquoise Goddess, and though the poetry of that name appeals to Nagasena, he prefers the sound of the dead words.

  The tower overlooks the Imperial Palace and affords a spectacular view of the hollow mountain to the east. Nagasena does not look at the hollow mountain. It is an ugly thing, a necessary thing, but he never paints it, even when he paints the landscapes of the east.

  Nagasena dips his brush into a pot of blue dye and applies it lightly within the boundary lines he has previously applied to prevent the colour bleeding into the material. Painting in the freehand mo-shui style, he lays depths of sky to the fabric and nods to himself as he watches the colour flow.

  He is tired. He has been painting since dawn, but he wants to finish this picture today. He feels he might never finish it if he does not do so today. His bones ache from standing so long. Nagasena knows he has seen too many winters to indulge in such foolishness, but he still climbs the seventy-two steps to the tower’s uppermost chamber every day.

  ‘Well, are you coming in or not?’ asks Nagasena without turning. ‘You are distracting me just standing there.’

  ‘Apologies, master,’ says Kartono, moving from the doorway to stand at his master’s right shoulder. ‘And to think some of the servants believe your hearing is going.’

  Nagasena snorts in amusement. ‘It keeps them on their toes, and you would be amazed what insights you pick up when people think you cannot hear them.’

  They stand in silence for some moments, Kartono intuitively recognising it will be for Nagasena to decide when to speak. Kartono keeps his eyes averted from the painting, knowing that Nagasena detests people looking at incomplete works. One should only look upon art when it is complete is one of his favourite sayings.

  Instead, Kartono stares over Nagasena’s shoulder through the wide openings in the walls. Nagasena designed the chamber at the top of the tower specifically for painting, and the width of the world is laid before him.

  Shutters on each wall keep the wind out, and even when Nagasena does not paint, he often climbs the many steps to enjoy the views over the landscape when he needs a place of serenity. At present, the northern and easternmost shutters are thrown open and the Imperial palace is spread out in all its glory.

  Gilded roofs, jagged spires and mighty towers jostle for space, and the vast city-palace heaves with motion like a living thing. Supplicants, servants, soldiers and scribes fill its vast districts with life and noise. Smoke rises from the cook fires of the Petitioner’s City, but the air is clearer than Nagasena remembers it. He tastes the fragrances brought to the palace on the wind like travellers from far off lands.

  ‘What do you see?’ asks Nagasena, pointing to the window.

  ‘I see the palace,’ replies Kartono. ‘And it is a fine sight. Robust and healthy, full of life.’

  ‘And beyond the city?’

  ‘More mountains and a world rebuilt. The sky is clear, like a spring stream, and there are clouds like the breath of giants around the peaks of Dhaulagiri.’

  ‘Describe the mountain,’ commands Nagasena.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just do it, please.’

  Kartono shrugs and turns his gaze upon the mountain, its tall, rugged flanks shining like silver in the sunlight. ‘It gleams like a polished shield rising from the landscape, and I think I can see the high peaks of the Gangkhar Puensum behind it.’

  ‘You can see Gangkhar Puensum?’

  ‘Yes, I think so. Why?’

  ‘It is a bad omen, my friend. The migou legends say that when Pangu, the ancestor of their race died, his head turned into Gangkhar Puensum and that it is the emperor of all mountains. The ancient migou kings would climb its slopes to petition the gods and seek the blessings of heaven. So far none have ever reached its summit, and the migou say this is why they remain bonded as virtual slaves.’

  ‘Migou kings? The migou have no kings or ancestors,’ points out Kartono. ‘They are a gene-forged race of labourer creatures. They have no past to have had any kings.’

  ‘That is as maybe,’ answers Nagasena. ‘You know that and I know that, but do the migou, I wonder? Have they invented a fictitious history and mythical past to justify their place in the world? Does it make it easier to bear a life of servitude if you believe it is the will of the gods?’

  ‘Is seeing the mountain a bad omen?’ asks Kartono.

  ‘So the migou say.’

  ‘And since when do you consult omens?’ asks Kartono. ‘Such things are for the simple minded and the migou.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ says Nagasena, ‘but I have painted the landscape to seek guidance.’

  ‘Painted the landscape? Is that some new form of prognostication introduced by the remembrancers?’ laughs Kartono. ‘I confess I have not heard of it.’

  ‘Do not be flippant, Kartono,’ snaps Nagasena. ‘I will not stand for it.’

  ‘Apologies, master,’ says Kartono, instantly contrite. ‘But I find the idea of divining omens through painting… unusual in these times.’

  ‘That is because you do not paint, Kartono,’ points out Nagasena. ‘The ancient artists believed a spark of the divine moved in every artist. They believed it was sometimes possible to discern a portion of heaven’s scheme for mankind if one had eyes to see it. Jin Nong, the great artist of Zhou, was said to have painted the greatest picture in the world, and when he looked upon what he had wrought, he saw the will of heaven and went mad, for such things are not for mortals to know. He burned the painting, foreswore his previous life and became a hermit in the mountains, where he dwelled alone with his secrets. Those who desired a quick and easy route to wisdom would seek him out and beg him to teach them what he knew, but Jin Nong would always send such fools away. Eventually, a band of unscrupulous men captured Jin Nong and tortured him in an attempt to prise the secrets of the divine from him, but Jin Nong told them nothing and eventually his captors threw him from a cliff.’

  ‘Not a happy story,’ says Kartono. ‘I hope you do not plan on following Jin Nong’s footsteps?’

  ‘I am talented, Kartono, but I am not that talented,’ says Nagasena. ‘Anyway, the story does not end there.’

  ‘No? So what happened next?’

  ‘When Jin Nong’s soul departed his body, the gods interceded and allowed the artist his choice of existence for his next life on earth.’

  ‘He was reincarnated?’

  ‘So the legends say,’ replies Nagasena.

  ‘What did he choose to return as?’

  ‘Some say he reincarnated as pomegranate tree in the Lu Shong gardens, while others claim he came back as a cloud. Either way, he achieved the favour of Heaven, which is something to be proud of.’

  ‘I suppose it would be,’ says Kartono. ‘So… do you see anything in your painting?’

  ‘You tell me,’ answers Nagasena, stepping away from the stretcher frame.

  Kartono turns to look at the painting and Nagasena watches his eyes roam the colours and lines rendered there. Nagasena knows he has talent as an artist, and the landscape beyond the shutters is rendered on the silk with uncommon skill.

  He is not seeking approbation, but confirmation of something that has been troubling him all day.

  ‘Speak,’ commands Nagasena, when Kartono does not say anything. ‘And be honest.’

  Kartono nods and says, ‘The tops of the palace buildings gather like conspirators, and the mountains tower over everything. They cast a cold shadow over the land. I thought the peaks shone like silver, but you have painted them in the white of mourning. The clouds hang low and brood like dissatisfied children amid the heavy sky. I do not like this picture.’

  ‘Why not?’ asks Nagasena.

  ‘I sense threat from i
t, as if something malevolent lurks in the warp and weft of the silk.’

  Kartono looks up from the picture, frowning as he sees nothing of its content in the world beyond the windows of the tower. The sun shines golden on the mountains, and lazy clouds drift like wandering minstrels across an invitingly open blue sky.

  ‘You painted this today?’ asks Kartono.

  ‘I did,’ confirms Nagasena.

  ‘I do not see what you see, master.’

  ‘Nor would I expect you to. We all see with different eyes, and how we perceive the world around us is coloured by the landscape within our heart. You look on the world and see the optimism of a life spent away from hunting and killing, but I see…’

  ‘What? What do you see?’

  ‘Ah… I am an old man, Kartono, and my eyes grow dim,’ says Nagasena, suddenly reticent. ‘What do I know?’

  ‘Tell me what you see,’ pleads Kartono.

  Nagasena sighs and looks into the depths of the painting. ‘I see a time of darkness ahead for us. The world knows it and it is afraid of the bloodshed to come. I fear we are about to walk into the lair of a sleeping dragon and awaken the most terrible danger imaginable.’

  Kartono shakes his head. ‘You are speaking of Horus Lupercal. What have we to do with the rebel Warmaster? His army will be ashes by now. Ferrus Manus and the rest of Lord Dorn’s strike force will be celebrating victory even as we speak.’

  ‘I fear you are wrong, Kartono,’ says Nagasena. ‘I believe the Warmaster is a more terrible threat than anyone can imagine. And I believe that Lord Dorn has gravely underestimated how far his reach has spread.’

  Nagasena puts down his brush and makes his way from the tower. He descends its seventy-two steps and enters his rose garden, wishing he could spend more time here, but knowing that such a desire is impossible. Kartono follows him, and they move through the delicately proportioned and harmoniously appointed chambers of the villa like ghosts.

  ‘What are you planning?’ asks Kartono, as Nagasena enters his private chambers. Three walls are painted white, adorned with long silk hangings and ancient maps of long vanished lands, while the other is covered with shelves laden with rolled up scrolls and heavy textbooks. A narrow desk of dark walnut sits low in the centre of the room, and writing implements are arranged neatly on its polished surface.

  ‘I am preparing,’ answers Nagasena cryptically, running his hands over the one bare wall in the chamber in a series of complicated patterns.

  ‘Preparing for what?’

  The wall in front of Nagasena slides back to reveal a deep compartment filled with racked weapons and armour. Conversion generators, web-guns, long rifles, energy blades, digital lasers, plasma pistols, cestus gauntlets, shot-casters, fire-lances, photon-nets and stasis grenades. Implements of pursuit and capture.

  ‘For the hunt,’ says Nagasena.

  ‘Who are we hunting?’ asks Kartono, exasperation beginning to enter his voice.

  Nagasena smiles, but there is no warmth in it, for he knows the answer will only confound his friend further.

  ‘I do not know yet,’ says Nagasena.

  SIX

  Woe-weavers and Doomsayers

  Acceptance

  The Red Eye

  NEWS OF THE massacre on Isstvan V spread, as all bad news does, with gleeful rapidity, as if those who bore it took unseemly relish in passing it on. The effect on the populace of the palace was immediate and contradictory. In the worker habs of the Brahmaputra Plateau, riots broke out between those who railed against the notion of the Warmaster’s treachery and those who decried him as a faithless oath-breaker. In the precincts of Ter-Guar, ten thousand wailing women knelt before the towering fortress of the Eternity Gate and begged the Emperor to give the lie to the news.

  Woe-weavers and doomsayers roamed the streets, screeching of brother turned on brother as they wailed and gnashed their teeth with zealous frenzy. Panic swept through the palace like the dreaded Life-eater virus, leaving ashen hopes and broken dreams in its wake. Men wept openly before their wives and children, their faith in the infallibility of the Emperor shaken to the core. That Horus Lupercal could have betrayed his father was terrible beyond imagining, but to learn that so many of the Emperor’s sons had followed him into rebellion was more than many could bear.

  The people of Terra were waking up to a very different reality, one with which many of the globe’s inhabitants found themselves unable to cope. To have a dream so precious that its demise made life unbearable was the cold reality of the day following the news of the bloodshed on Isstvan V.

  Hundreds of inconsolable citizens of Terra threw themselves from the cliffs of the palace or quietly took blades to their necks and wrists in the cold confines of their homes. On the Merican plains of Jonasburg, the seven thousand men and women of a bio-weapons storage facility exposed themselves to a pernicious strain of the newly-developed gangshi virus and perished in the flames of automated decontamination procedures rather than live in a world where the Emperor could be betrayed.

  When word reached the Diemensland prison island, the inmates declared themselves loyal servants of the Warmaster and slaughtered their overseers. Regiments drawn from the Magyar Ossurites mustered in the Meganesian heartlands, but the battle to retake the island would take many bloody weeks.

  All over the globe, the solid certainty of the Imperium’s invincibility was crumbling, but worse was to come. As the sun reached its zenith above the hollow mountain and the shadows hid, word came that one of the Emperor’s sons had fallen on the sands of Isstvan V. Ferrus Manus, beloved gene-sire of the Iron Hands was dead, slain, it was said, by the hand of his most beloved brother.

  It was impossible to believe, ridiculous. That a demi-god could be slain was preposterous, the lunatic notion of a delusional fool. Yet as the hours passed and fragments of information eked from the City of Sight, it became harder to deny the truth of Ferrus Manus’s death. People tore out their hair and mortified their flesh in bloody honour of the Emperor’s fallen son. Vulkan too was rumoured to be dead, though no one could yet say for sure whether this was true or fevered speculation. Yet even as cold facts spread into the global consciousness, they came on a tide of wild rumour and manic embellishment that grew with every retelling.

  Some tales spoke of the Warmaster’s fleet breaching the outer perimeter of the solar system, while others had his warships on the verge of entering Terra’s orbit. False prophets arose on every continent, spreading a credo of falsehoods and misinformation until Imperial Arbitrators or gold-armoured warriors of the Legio Custodes silenced them. As more and more lies spread across the world, suspicions began to form in the minds of Terra’s leaders that not all were the result of panic and the mutational power of rumour and distance, but of deliberate misinformation by agents of the Warmaster.

  The cryptaesthesians passed word to the Legio Custodes of numerous messages sent to Terra with concealed subtexts, hidden encryptions and suspicious routings. Acting on such information, the Custodians made numerous arrests, all of which only fanned the flames of unrest. The notion of the enemy within turned brother upon brother, neighbours into potential spies, and any word of dissent marked a man out as a traitor.

  In such a climate of fear, the people of Terra turned to whatever gave them comfort. To some it was the solace of loved ones, to others it was the oblivion promised by alcohol or narcotics. Some swaddled themselves in hope that the Imperium was strong enough to weather this terrible storm, placing their faith in the Emperor’s wisdom and the power of his remaining armies.

  Others’ faith in the Emperor was of a radically different stripe, and the clandestine churches of the Lectitio Divinitatus grew from small gatherings of like-minded individuals to massed congregations that met in secret basements, echoing warehouses and other such unremembered spaces.

  In time of turmoil, the human mind seeks solace wherever it can, and never more so than in times of war. For it was clear to everyone on Terra that the Warmaster’s treach
ery was no longer simply an isolated rebellion.

  It was nothing less than galactic civil war.

  THE TEMPLE HAD never been busier, which was ironic given that it was likely to be razed to the ground sometime soon. Ghota had not returned, but Roxanne knew it was only a matter of time. She wondered if she could have done anything different, if there was something she could have done that might have avoided this inevitable doom. No, she had been defending herself, and were it not for her unique abilities then she would have suffered a lingering, degrading and painful death.

  Roxanne had come to the temple believing that she deserved such a fate, but time and distance had given her a perspective on what had happened aboard the Argo. It hadn’t been her fault, despite what her father and brothers kept telling her. The vessel had been commissioned at the outset of the Great Crusade and the demands of war had kept it from its regularly scheduled maintenance refits. With such inherently unstable technology as Geller Fields, it had only been a matter of time until disaster struck.

  She swallowed hard as a mouthful of bile rose in her throat at the memories of being trapped in her crystal dome, protected and left to wonder what had become of the crew, but knowing full well what their fate had been.

  Roxanne rubbed the heels of her palms against her eyes and took a deep breath.

  ‘Calm is the way that the eye sees,’ she said. ‘The storm parts before me and the swells of the ocean rise to meet me in glorious concord.’

  ‘Talking to yourself is a sign of madness,’ said a voice at her shoulders. ‘That’s what my dad always said.’

  Roxanne looked down and saw the tiny and lost features of Maya’s eldest surviving son.

  ‘Arik,’ she said. ‘Your father was a clever man. I think he was onto something.’

  ‘Are you mad?’ asked the boy.

  Roxanne considered the question seriously. She wasn’t sure she knew the answer.

  ‘I think we all go a little mad sometimes,’ replied Roxanne, sitting next to Arik on a wooden bench. ‘But it’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘I though I was going mad when my brothers died,’ said Arik, staring at the Vacant Angel at the end of the building. ‘I kept seeing faces on that statue, but mum kept telling me I was making it up and that I was being stupid.’