Warden of the Blade Read online

  Five brothers had died in the struggle to capture and neutralise the Grimoire. The mining concessions of the moon had been put to the torch. A hundred thousand citizens of the Imperium had died. Crowe did not view such a purge lightly, but nor did he question its necessity.

  As long as the book was imprisoned, every death on that moon had been for a great purpose.

  Crowe examined the stasis field and the seal on the casket. He watched the flow of the warp. It was untroubled. The Grimoire was inert as stone. Crowe murmured a psalm of anathema and a prayer of thanks. Then he moved on to answer a summons. In the kingdom of purity and ruin, he was heading for the darkest sanctuary.

  Crowe made his way through the chambers, his journey a ritual. He nodded solemnly to his brother Purifiers as he walked. They moved with the same deliberate pace. A brother who passed through these sacred spaces of captured horror was oath-bound to be active in the maintaining of the eternal locks.

  Crowe left the primary chambers behind. He followed a long corridor that sloped down even further beneath the surface of Titan. He was heading for the prison of the worst relic. There were no brothers standing watch on the route. It was too dangerous even for Purifiers to remain in proximity to this evil. The prison had only one living guard.

  Runes covered the walls, ceiling and marble floor of the passageway. Silver and gold glowed with the strength of the wards they formed. Daemonkind would burn to nothing before these signs. And still this barrier was a poor attempt to contain the relic. There was only one way to hold the Black Blade of Antwyr, and that way had the name of a man.

  Garran Crowe had come to speak with Castellan Merrat Gavallan.

  Who is this who comes? Ah. I know you, Purifier. Do you know me? You think you do. I think you do not. Will you prove me wrong? Come then. Choose a destiny of power.

  The voice reached down the hall for Crowe. It made no sound. It spoke in Crowe’s mind, scratching at the edges of his soul. Yet it seemed to travel a physical distance and crawl along the walls and ceiling. It crouched in the vault, an arachnid presence, ready to leap upon him.

  Crowe had heard the voice before. It worked its way into his consciousness whenever he was in the presence of Castellan Gavallan. Its attack felt stronger today, though. More directed.

  Your coming has a purpose, said the Blade of Antwyr. Fulfil it!

  The brotherhood champion of the Purifiers was seated at his desk when Crowe reached the door of his chamber. The circular space was a meditation cell and an archive. The desk in the centre was a massive slab of granite. It was an altar in shape if not in function, though it had been blessed and prayed over, and was sanctified every day with holy oils. It needed to be a sacred object in its own right to withstand the unclean knowledge that would lie on its surface. Gavallan sat with the entrance to his right. He faced a shrine to the Emperor. Incense lamps burned on either side of the silver-and-iron winged skull. Above the shrine, wreathed by the coils of incense, the Blade of Antwyr was fastened to the wall. The black sword was sheathed. Chains crossed and re-crossed the relic. Somehow, the Blade seemed to be straining against its bonds.

  The rest of the wall space around the chamber was composed of rows of niches, reaching fifty feet to the shallow dome of the ceiling. Inside the niches were reams of vellum. Gavallan had more sheets stacked on the desk. He was writing, and had almost filled another page when Crowe arrived. He looked up, his stylus pausing.

  Strike! Antwyr screamed in Crowe’s head. Free me and the galaxy is yours!

  Crowe glanced at the sword, then back at Gavallan. The castellan was watching him carefully.

  ‘The Blade is calling to you,’ Gavallan said.

  Crowe nodded. ‘It is.’ When he did not do as Antwyr commanded, the Blade began cursing him. Crowe pushed the stream of blasphemies to the back of his mind. He focused his attention on Gavallan.

  He had rarely spoken to the champion. When not in battle, Gavallan was sequestered in this chamber, and all others were forbidden to venture here without specific orders. It was rarer still for Crowe to see Gavallan without his armour. The castellan was robed in vestments of solemn grey. The warrior before Crowe was engaged in combat of a spiritual nature.

  And he was exhausted.

  When had Crowe last seen Gavallan’s face? He wasn’t sure. Years, perhaps. The strain of his duty had been evident in Gavallan’s features then, but now a profound shadow had fallen over him. He was pale as tallow and there was a yellow tint around his eyes and lips. His skin was too tight, pulled into the hollows of his bald skull by the strain of endless watchfulness. Gavallan’s war never ceased. The Blade never rested, so neither could he. But the Blade did not need rest.

  ‘Shut the door,’ Gavallan said.

  Crowe did. The heavy door scraped against the flagstones. It closed with a booming clang. Gavallan gestured to the manuscript before him. Crowe walked to the desk and examined the vellum sheets. What he saw was a frothing litany of curses. There were promises of pain, blood and retribution. There were fantasies of a universe on fire. There were names – hundreds of names – of planets and systems, a catalogue that covered pages in Gavallan’s precise, flowing handwriting. The entries ended in a pronouncement of doom. There was a burst of invective directed at Gavallan, and then the names began again.

  ‘Do you know what this is?’ Gavallan asked.

  ‘The words of the Blade,’ said Crowe.

  ‘Yes. It is my task to record everything it says.’ He swept his arm to take in the niches of the chamber. ‘This archive is devoted solely to that end. Perhaps one day Antwyr will err, and reveal a weakness. It has not been my privilege to see that day. Nor was it for the castellans who came before me.’ He tilted his head back, gazing at the uppermost rows. ‘Centuries, Brother Garran. We have been transcribing this foulness for centuries. What you see here is my handiwork. Entire vaults are filled with these obscenities.’

  ‘These names,’ Crowe said, running his eye over the list. He picked one at random. ‘Does Sandava have any significance?’

  ‘Not to the history of the Blade, insofar as we know it. But there are three millennia unaccounted for between its disappearance during the Occlusiad and its capture on Tethys. There may be meaning there. There may not.’ Gavallan’s tone was both frustrated and resigned. ‘I set down the words,’ he said, giving the weight of unwavering commitment to his words. ‘The Prognosticars parse them. We work in hope.’

  Crowe was still looking at the names. ‘It would be strange if these worlds were chosen entirely at random. The hatred directed at them is precise.’

  ‘Do you see a pattern?’ Gavallan asked.

  ‘Not at first glance, no.’

  Gavallan stood. ‘Will you sit, brother? Examine them more closely. I would be glad of your thoughts.’

  Crowe took his place at the desk. He began to make his way through the scores of names, stopping at each one to either situate the world in his mind, or note it down to seek out on star-charts later. Every so often he raised his head to see Gavallan standing before the black sword, his fists clenched. Antwyr’s curses scraped away in the back of Crowe’s mind. He ignored them.

  He lost track of time. When he had finished going through the lists, he said, ‘I see no threads here. Sandava and Dierna are in the same subsector, but that is as close as I can see to any sort of connection.’ He looked up. Gavallan had his back to the sword now and was watching him. There was renewed fire in the castellan’s eyes.

  ‘How long do you think you’ve been here?’ Gavallan asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Crowe.

  ‘The night has passed. Dawn has come.’ Gavallan’s smile was one of grim triumph.

  At first Crowe did not see the significance of the passage of time. Then he looked at the sword on the wall. He still heard its frustrated snarling. The implications of his prolonged stay in the castellan’s presence reg
istered. ‘The Blade…’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Gavallan. ‘No other brother has borne being in such close proximity to it for so long. Certainly not without having to devote all of his energies to combating its will.’

  Crowe stood. ‘I have not yet asked why you wished to see me,’ he said.

  ‘And now you don’t have to,’ said Gavallan.

  Perhaps not. But as Crowe perceived his fate taking shape, he knew the questions needed to be voiced. It was the form of inquiring and receiving an answer that was necessary, like the call and response of ritual. ‘My interpretation of these texts was superfluous, then,’ he said. ‘It was my ability to examine them in this chamber that mattered.’

  ‘To a degree, that is true,’ said Gavallan. ‘Your insight is welcome, but I did not expect you to succeed where no one has.’

  Antwyr’s voice was suddenly loud in Crowe’s head. You have been deceived! Will you let yourself be used in this way? Destroy him. Seize the fates. Carve the galaxy into the image of your desire.

  At the same moment, Gavallan winced.

  ‘The Blade rages,’ said Crowe.

  ‘It does always.’ Gavallan began to pace slowly back and forth before the relic. ‘The sword is my burden,’ he said. ‘It is mine alone, but it will, in time, be another’s. And then it will be his alone.’

  Unspoken but implied was the inevitability of the castellan’s death. Crowe saw greater significance in Gavallan’s exhaustion. His duty was draining him. It would do so until there was nothing left. Crowe wondered how close to the end Gavallan was. ‘You think I am fit to be your successor?’ he asked.

  Gavallan nodded. ‘This is not my conclusion alone. It is also that of the Grand Masters. The selection of a castellan is one of enormous moment. It is not done quickly. Your candidacy has been a process of years, Brother Garran.’

  Learning he had been under scrutiny without being conscious of it did not disturb Crowe. ‘I am honoured to be worthy of such notice,’ he said.

  ‘It was inevitable. I have seen the abominations of the immaterium burn at your approach. Your presence alone is a danger to them.’

  ‘I would wish nothing less. None of us would.’

  ‘That is true. But there is a gulf between wish and reality.’ Gavallan paused in his pacing. He looked at the sword as if there were, indeed, things he would wish to be different, even as he accepted their painful reality. ‘Do not underestimate what you are,’ he went on. ‘The purity of your faith is a great weapon.’

  Crowe bowed his head. Praise made him uneasy, but he would not insult Gavallan by rejecting it. That would be ostentatious false modesty. He despised such displays.

  ‘If I am chosen for this duty,’ he said, ‘then I will enter into it with thanks that I may serve the Emperor in this way.’

  Yes, said the sword. Bow and scrape. Cringe before this slave. Earn his confidence. Then strike when his back is turned.

  ‘This is a dark honour,’ Gavallan said. ‘At my death, you will inherit a duty that will destroy you.’

  ‘And I will fulfil it until that destruction. So I declare,’ Crowe said, looking at the shrine. ‘In the name of the Emperor, before Him and His saints, I swear to uphold this burden.’

  As Crowe finished speaking, Antwyr lashed his mind with a shriek of rage. The chamber resounded with a harsh, rattling clang. Crowe and Gavallan stared at the sword. It was motionless. Of course it was. But in the echoes of metal against stone, Crowe thought he perceived the vanishing traces of movement. Where the Blade of Antwyr hung on the wall, the warp boiled.

  The curses of the sword went on and on and on, a howling blast of promised vengeance, and the scrape, scrape, scrape of claws scrabbling to pierce Crowe’s will.

  I will not be your prisoner! Antwyr snarled. I am your future. I am the fate you would embrace.

  The captain of the Envoy of Discipline was waiting in the landing bay to greet Cardinal Beatus Rannoch as he disembarked from the shuttle. The journey from the surface of Sandava II had been a rough one. It was the season of storms in the agri world’s northern hemisphere. In the normal course of events, Rannoch appreciated the storms. They kept the land fertile, and Sandava II’s food exports were easily on the same scale as Sandava III’s industrial output. The storms were also spiritually valuable. Even the most unimaginative members of the congregation could see them as symbols of the Emperor’s wrath, especially once Rannoch’s sermons pointed their thoughts in that direction. The storms were good, necessary and holy.

  But they had taken the shuttle in their teeth and worried it. For much of the ascent, Rannoch had been convinced he was experiencing his final moments. Between his terror and his nausea, he had found the space for regret. This would be a poor death, an embarrassment to his legacy. He was no warrior, but he was a crusader. His end, when it came, should be in the active service of the Imperial Creed, not panicked and sick in transit.

  The shuttle had survived, though, and so had he. His ecclesiarchal robes hid the unsteadiness of his legs when he descended the steps from the passenger hold.

  ‘Cardinal.’ Captain Yaxinth Cragg bowed and took a knee. ‘You bless my ship with your presence.’

  ‘Please rise, captain,’ Rannoch said, pleased. He held out his hand, and Cragg kissed his ring of office before standing.

  She was tall, though not as tall as Rannoch. He knew no one on Sandava II who was his equal in height. Cragg was almost at eye-level with his chin, and that was rare enough. The captain was a veteran trader, her decades of experience weathering her face despite juvenat treatments. Her hair, a silvery grey, was braided and put up in a bun beneath her cap. There was, in the way she held herself, an air of pragmatic piety. Rannoch approved. His first impression of Cragg matched the reputation of the Envoy of Discipline. She was, he thought, someone who would understand what he needed.

  Cragg led the way out of the loading bay. The corridor beyond was broad, high-vaulted and hung with rich tapestries. They depicted the spread of the Emperor’s light across the galaxy. The xenos and the heretic fell before the onslaught of truth. Faith, in the form of fiery beams, burned the unclean. The apostates held up their hands for mercy. Their faces were stretched by wide howls of despair, because they knew there would be no forgiveness. The forces of the Emperor marched behind the beams of truth. Ecclesiarchs, soldiers of the Astra Militarum, the Adeptus Astartes, even the humblest of serfs – together they were the unstoppable advance of the Imperium.

  Cragg set a leisurely pace so Rannoch could examine the tapestries. ‘These are magnificent,’ he said. ‘They are in exquisite condition. Are they reproductions?’

  ‘Some are,’ said Cragg. ‘Others are not. Can you tell the difference?’

  ‘I can’t,’ Rannoch admitted. ‘How did you acquire originals in such fine condition?’

  ‘They are my inheritance. They have been in my family for centuries.’

  ‘As has this trade?’

  ‘And this vessel. Exactly.’

  Rannoch was more and more impressed. He looked closely at the tapestries, pausing at the signs of wear in the weave. He pointed to a representation of Saint Celestine leading the people into battle against a vaguely formed darkness. The edges of the tapestry were faded. There was a musty, aged smell. ‘This isn’t a reproduction, surely?’

  ‘It is,’ said Cragg. ‘An old one, though. One of the first of this series to be made. About seven hundred years ago, I believe.’

  ‘Then it must have acquired a value of its own.’

  Cragg shrugged. ‘It is still not an original. But yes, it has a value. A spiritual one.’ She gazed at the saint’s rapt features. ‘The function of all these tapestries is to inspire and to instruct. If they do that, the question of authenticity is not very important.’

  Rannoch nodded. ‘I agree with you completely. Captain, your arrival in our system is fortunate indeed.’
Cragg understood what was at stake in her profession. That much was clear. She was committed to her purpose. Excellent. There were too many opportunities for fraud in her trade. Too many corrupt adventurers. Rannoch had dealt with his share. He had seen to the execution of more than a few.

  But he had heard nothing but glowing reports concerning the Envoy of Discipline. And everything he saw confirmed those reports.

  The Envoy was a missionary ship. Once a freighter, it had been repurposed by the Cragg family in the 40th millennium. Its original shape was recognisable, but it had been much altered over the centuries. The hull’s statuary had multiplied, many of the figures colossi, captured in marble in the act of striding forwards, pointing the way to judgement. The vessel’s journey was perpetual, spanning generations. Its mission was to bolster faith wherever it arrived, by whatever means necessary. Sometimes it transported wandering confessors, delivering firebrand zealotry to where it was most needed. Most frequently, though, it fanned the fires of belief with its cargo of relics and religious art. It engaged in the trade of sacred objects carefully, piously and with all due reverence. Some of its treasures were for temporary display only. The Envoy’s crew would bring the relics planetside for the faithful to witness. Billions of pilgrims would pour in from all corners of a world to gaze upon the bones of saints and the shields of martyrs. The visitation would last for a few weeks at most, adding urgency to the pilgrimages. Then the Envoy of Discipline would depart. It might return in a year. It might return in a hundred.

  Cragg took Rannoch up through the decks to the central hold of the ship. Rannoch gasped in joy when he set foot in the space. It was huge. It had long ago ceased to resemble a freighter’s hold. It was a gigantic reliquary the size of a cathedral’s nave. The light was rich, warm and subdued, though not so dark that it concealed the enormous ceiling fresco of the Golden Throne radiating its light across the galaxy. A hundred-strong choir stood on tiers at the forward end of the hold. The solemn hymn of the singers sounded across the space. Rannoch moved down the aisles between gilded display cases of jewelled fingers, jawbones on cushions of violet silk, hymnals of bronze, the sceptres of great ecclesiarchs and aspergilla fashioned from sacred femurs.