Prologue to Nikaea Read online

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  Prologue to Nikaea – David Annandale

  About the Author

  An Extract from ‘Born of Flame’

  A Black Library Publication

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  Prologue to Nikaea

  David Annandale

  The swirl of unreality pulled at him, its unlimited, terrifying promise seeking to pry his grip free from the materium. Malcador held fast, retaining a peripheral awareness of himself and his surroundings. He knew who he was. He had a sense of his body, though from a distance, as if his consciousness existed just to the side of that pale, angular, robed and hooded thing. He had, at the very edges of his perception, a sense of the chamber he was in, of its eight rune-covered walls. The warp wanted him to let go of all of that. He saw the dangers, but he did not look away. The task was too important, the questions too great, and the possibilities too immense for him to do otherwise.

  The Vortex Chamber was deep in the roots of the Imperial Palace’s Corona Spire. It was not the first space Malcador had constructed for his explorations of the immaterium. There had been an earlier one in the peak of the spire, but even with all the windows bricked up, Malcador had been too conscious of the exterior world. The air and sky and openness of the materium had been too close, the mere thickness of a wall away. They had been a distraction from the absolute discipline he needed to fathom and resist the warp. Deep underground, things were different. Rock enclosed the chamber, the chamber enclosed his body, his body enclosed his mind, and in this fully material prison, all the shackles on meditation fell away.

  The chamber was an octagon. The shape, he had found, opened up the vistas of the warp more readily. The hexagrammic engravings on the wall were a work in progress. Malcador had already learned many that facilitated his psychic journey, and others that bolstered his strength to return from it. But he was still scratching the surface of possible configurations.

  Malcador sat on a throne of basalt, threaded with gold and iron and brass. The inlay was also a developing project, gradually shaping the throne into the best tool for the task. The stone seat itself, though, was ancient. It was a relic from the deepest antiquity of the Age of Terra, a gift from the Emperor to aid Malcador in his work. When he placed himself within the hard embrace of the throne, Malcador felt the currents of the warp thrum through the being of the seat. Though it was carved from a massive block of the materium, in its nature it strained towards the threshold between the dimensions.

  There were no other furnishings in the chamber. The throne sat on a dais close to the north wall. A confusion of runes twisted across the floor of the Vortex Chamber, but they were invisible to Malcador in the depths of his contemplation. Instead, he saw only the warp. It appeared to him as a churning tunnel, an endless drop into the realm of madness and potential. Whether the floor truly vanished, or whether his journeys were entirely psychic, Malcador was not sure. The Vortex Chamber’s existence became liminal when he was at work, belonging neither to the materium nor the immaterium, but beholden to both.

  Malcador’s consciousness moved through the upheavals of the warp, searching and testing and wondering. The possibilities enticed him, and the storms made him wary. Everything he had experienced and learned since he had begun his study of the immaterium reinforced his contradictory impulses. There was so much power here, power that could be harnessed for the benefit of mankind and for the Emperor’s dream of the Imperium. There was danger, too, as he had always known. The question he wrestled with was whether the possibilities outweighed the risks. He still had no answer. The deeper he went, the more he brushed against immensities, and the further a definitive judgement seemed to race from his grasp.

  His mind flew through the clashing waves of unreality. The raging currents made him soar with exhilaration, while the shadows that stopped just short of taking on definite shape threatened with dark portent. Like a ship plunging through the atmosphere of a gas giant, he streaked through contortions of dreams.

  Though the concept of space was meaningless, there were correlations between nodules in the warp and specific points in the materium. When he pressed his mind close to these intersections of reality and Chaos, it seemed to him that if he pushed just a little harder, he would pierce through the veil once more and his consciousness would emerge from the empyrean in a different part of the galaxy.

  He never pushed. He did not want to discover what would happen if he split his mind and body so definitively in the materium. He had to learn whether the powers of the warp could be harnessed, and he had to know the limits of what could be risked. Some limits were clearly not to be crossed.

  Something called to him. At first it was distant, undefined, but his mind reacted to the disturbance as something important, that needed to be known. He turned towards it. Soon thunder, unheard but felt, resonated throughout his being. A storm formed before him, one dense with the fusion of nonexistent colours. It crackled with possibility. Creation and destruction warred, and the storm grew larger. It stared at him, a whirling eye. It raged at him, a gaping maw. There was something important here, something huge and building up. Though he could not read its nature, he knew he must not ignore it.

  Malcador let the outer streams of the tempest draw him in closer. As he approached, the intensity of the vortex pained him. He could barely contemplate it. The currents hurled in a violent orbit. Meaning edged near him, but at the last moment he sensed the jaws opening to devour him and he pulled back.

  Do not ask what this is, he told himself, the effort of forming a coherent thought drawing him away from the ravenous centre of the storm. Seek where it is.

  That he could do with less risk. He could look for the touch of the materium, the link that connected the convulsion in the warp to its correlative in the real.

  He closed in again, skirting the edges of the cyclone of dreams. He did not face it directly. He tried to sense beyond it. He looked closer and farther. The tempest was gigantic. It roared with the potential of unrivalled cataclysm. Dense with secrets on the verge of being unveiled, it reached for him, invited him. It wanted him to be part of the dance. There were wonders here. He should see them. He should know them. He should be of them. Because soon everything would be swept up into revelation.

  Malcador did not know the nature of the truth that called to him, but he saw the monstrosity of its strength, and so he resisted. He struggled with all his psychic might to stay above the storm at the same time as he tried to perceive what lay beyond its centre. Somewhere, in an almost forgotten corner of reality, his body arced in the agony of the strain. The thread that tied him to himself, that kept his identity whole, stretched thinner, grew taut, thrummed. Malcador looked for a secret, and he looked away from secrets. The paradox grew teeth. It took on its own form in the warp. It grasped him, and surrounded him. In another heartbeat it would pull him in two and hurl his broken self into the maelstrom.

  But then what he needed was before him, a tiny glimpse beyond the storm, a fragment of a secret. He snatched at it, and with a cry he pulled away from the warp. What began as a psychic howl ended as a drawn-out groan from his body.

  Weak, on the edge of collapse, Malcador pushed himself up from the throne. The hexagrammic runes glowed an angry red, then faded like dying embers as the touch of the warp ebbed away. Malcador staggered from the Vortex Chamber, away from temptation and the dreams that lingered against the walls.

  He had what he needed. He had a name: Thawra.

  ‘There has been battle here,’ said Collatinus. The stern, patrician features of the Legio Custodes shield-captain were impassive, but Malcador saw the faint narrowing of his eyes as
he took in the state of the orbital regions around Thawra. They were standing on the bridge of the cruiser Sol Tenebris, watching the planet grow larger in the main viewport. The closer the ship approached, the clearer the extent of the damage became. The defence platforms were blackened ruins. Scores of merchant vessels were gutted and smashed, and floated by each other, tombstones scorched by fire.

  Malcador thought of the extent of the warp storm he had witnessed, and wondered if his voyage might be in vain. The tempest’s impact on the materium, either directly or indirectly, had been massive.

  But the auspex officers reported a normal degree of vox activity on the surface of Thawra. That was cause for optimism.

  ‘Open command channels,’ Collatinus ordered. The officers complied, and he hailed the government, if there still was one, of the world below. ‘Attention, citizens of Thawra, this is Shield-Captain Collatinus of the Legio Custodes, commanding the Sol Tenebris, escorting Malcador the Sigillite, First Lord of Terra. Greetings in the name of the Emperor. Acknowledge.’

  The hail was returned almost immediately. ‘Acknowledged, Sol Tenebris. This is the governor’s palace. Please stand by. Acting Governor Arkanasia is on her way.’

  ‘Acting governor,’ Collatinus muttered under his breath.

  ‘That does not bode well for Governor Vasra,’ said Malcador. He turned to the scribe standing a respectful three steps behind him. ‘Who is Arkanasia?’ he asked.

  The scribe tapped at a data-slate, then said, ‘She is chief councillor.’ He read for another moment. ‘She has served in this position since Governor Vasra was installed.’

  ‘So the continuity of government has been preserved,’ said Collatinus. ‘That is a hopeful sign.’

  Malcador took the data-slate from the scribe and scrolled through the notes. ‘It seems Arkanasia was an early and energetic advocate of compliance on Thawra.’ That, too, was hopeful.

  A few moments later, the acting governor was on the vox. ‘First Lord Malcador,’ she said. ‘Thawra is honoured by your visit. I only regret that you find us in difficult circumstances.’

  ‘It is those circumstances that bring me here,’ said Malcador. ‘And what has become of Governor Vasra?’

  ‘She is dead, first lord. She died nobly, fighting for Thawra and its loyalty to the Emperor.’

  ‘What is the nature of the uprising?’ Collatinus asked.

  Arkanasia hesitated. ‘What happened is no simple matter,’ she said. ‘I will try to explain when I see you.’

  ‘The governor’s palace is secure?’

  ‘It is, shield-captain. The worst of our troubles are over.’

  Collatinus turned to Malcador, visibly reluctant to bring the Sigillite into a warzone.

  ‘I must know what has happened, shield-captain,’ Malcador said. ‘This is not a matter of choice.’

  Collatinus nodded. ‘Very well,’ he replied to Arkanasia. ‘Prepare for our arrival at the palace.’ He ended the vox-mission. ‘At the least, she sounds confident in her evaluation,’ he said to Malcador.

  ‘Let us hope her confidence is not misplaced.’

  ‘The uprising was a surprise,’ Arkanasia admitted a few hours later. She was a tall woman and very thin, the tendons standing out on her neck, suggestive of a lifetime of being held taut. A narrow brush of black hair ran down the centre of her scalp. Her eyes were guarded, but burned deeply. She was a psyker, the aura of her power as clear to Malcador as a violet sunrise.

  They were in the map hall of the palace. Each wall was given over to a single hemisphere of the planet, and covered by a relief chart six metres high and thirty metres long. Tactical maps took up long tables in the centre of the hall, with hololithic projectors marking troop dispositions and territory held. Only one region, about a hundred and sixty kilometres south of the capital, Statheros, was still red.

  ‘It spread very quickly,’ Arkanasia said, ‘and with considerable force.’

  ‘So we saw from the Sol Tenebris,’ Malcador said.

  Arkanasia nodded. ‘The rebels planned well. The uprising began in orbit, so we lost most of our communications in the first few hours.’

  ‘A well-armed and well-organised force, then,’ said Collatinus. ‘How was it possible a threat of this magnitude developed without being noticed?’

  ‘It should have been noticed,’ Arkanasia admitted. ‘And I believe that if anything similar happens again, it will be seen. We have learned from our mistakes, and from our victory, shield-captain. But it was the nature of the uprising that helped keep it hidden.’

  ‘You are being cryptic,’ said Malcador.

  ‘I crave your pardon, first lord. That was not my intent.’ She drew a breath. ‘The rebels are psykers,’ she said.

  ‘All of them?’ Malcador asked. So high a number could explain the warp storm, but only to a point. The tempest had been heavy with the possibility of events more massive than had already taken place.

  ‘Perhaps not all, but a high proportion, as best as we can determine.’

  Malcador looked at the troop movements outlined on the maps, and at the summaries of the cost of the war thus far displayed by a cluster of pict screens mounted above the far end of the table. ‘For them to have had the strength to cause an actual war, their numbers must have been high.’

  ‘They were. This has always been so on Thawra. The proportion of psykers in our population is much greater than the norm.’

  This is why I needed to come here, Malcador thought. This is the crux of so many matters. He did not know if the vortex he had seen in the warp was caused by the psykers of Thawra, or if it was the reason for their multitude. He suspected it was possible both circumstances were true. The cause is not the issue. It is our response that matters. He thought again of all the possibilities, temptations and dangers he encountered in the warp. There is so much we could do, he thought. But if this is the price…

  Collatinus was still studying the record of troop movements. ‘It seems that once you managed to turn the tide against the rebels, you ended the worst of the crisis quickly.’

  ‘Thank you, shield-captain,’ Arkanasia was nodding vigorously, ‘but we could have ended things completely, and much sooner, too.’

  ‘Explain yourself,’ said Malcador. There was an undercurrent of barely contained excitement in the acting governor’s voice. He could read the passion erupting at the surface of her mind. What he wanted was for her to articulate that excitement, to give it explicit form and reveal what loomed behind it.

  ‘I mean no disrespect to the memory of Governor Vasra. Thawra has flourished under her leadership, and I would have followed her to my own death. But we disagreed on the prosecution of the war. I had the means to end it quickly, and she was reluctant to use them. I understand her reluctance, but I think it was wrong.’ She pointed to the map, where the arrows indicating the advances of loyalist forces suddenly became longer. ‘And I believe I have been proven correct. These advances began after her death.’

  ‘When you had a free hand,’ Collatinus said, his tone flat, unreadable.

  ‘Yes,’ said Arkanasia. She spoke to Malcador instead of the shield-captain. ‘I do not wish to sound vainglorious, but yes, that is correct.’ She was doing her best to maintain a solemn tone. The effort was only partly successful. Her eyes were growing brighter. She had more than an innovative strategy to disclose to him. She was bursting with a great truth. A revelation.

  ‘Tell me what you did,’ Malcador ordered, drawing out the shape created by her beliefs and actions.

  ‘We fought treachery with loyalty, and fire with fire. Psyker against psyker.’

  ‘That would require very rapid organisation,’ said Collatinus. ‘To find psykers, to train them, to coordinate the response. Unless there already was such a corps in existence…’ He trailed off when Arkanasia started nodding again.

  ‘You have created this c
orps?’ Malcador asked.

  ‘I have.’

  ‘In secret?’

  ‘No!’ Arkanasia sounded affronted. ‘It was done in consultation with Vasra and a select few of the other councillors.’

  ‘Ones who were psykers?’

  ‘Yes.’ Her gaze was defiant, ready to challenge anyone who doubted the psykers’ loyalty. Wondering how readily she would admit the truth, he bluntly put the question forward.

  ‘Are you one?

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was Vasra?’

  ‘No,’ said Arkanasia. ‘And it was important that she knew. Not just because she was governor. This corps must not be a secret organisation of psykers. The rebels are that. I think it may have been why they went wrong. I know there are risks, first lord. No one who has ever touched the warp can think there is no danger.’

  ‘One would hope not,’ Malcador said dryly.

  ‘But with care, first lord,’ Arkanasia went on, ‘with training, with discipline, think what such a force could do in the service of the Emperor. And we have proved this, here on Thawra.’ The light in her eyes was more than a reflection. Micro-lightning flickered around her pupils. ‘We live and die for the Emperor. This rebellion was a test. Perhaps He knew it would happen. All things are known to the Emperor. He–’

  Malcador interrupted her. He did not like the path down which her rhetoric was heading. It was enough, for the moment, that she had revealed her fanaticism and the form it had taken. ‘Who trained the psykers?’ he said.

  ‘I did, and the officers I selected.’

  ‘And who trained you?’

  ‘Governor Vasra watched over me.’

  ‘Yet Vasra did not want to use the psyker corps against the rebels.’

  ‘On that point, she was wrong. I will not pretend we have found a perfect model for the corps. But we have shown what can be done. First lord, I believe this is what must be done. It is what the Emperor wills.’

  Malcador stared back into her ecstatic gaze. ‘He has spoken to you, has He?’