Warden of the Blade Read online

  He dressed without hurry. There was nothing furtive or shameful in the mission before him. He donned his vestments, though not the chains of office. He left off anything that would make a noise as he walked. He hesitated about taking his sceptre. It was iron, and seven feet high. Topped with a massive skull, it was heavy. He was used to marking his steps with it, the clang of metal on stone both a call to worship and a knell of condemnation. Walking with its tip raised would be an additional strain. He deliberated a few moments longer, then took up the sceptre. What he was about to do was divinely ordained. His actions would be ceremonial. He should carry the sign of his office before him.

  He opened the state room door. The corridor beyond was empty. The lume torches lining the walls seemed dimmer than earlier. The shadows pooling between them were deeper. They were waiting for him. The ship felt silent. Rannoch knew there were hundreds of crew members working their shifts. Yet he sensed the Envoy of Discipline open to him. The quest, the empty hall, the shadows, Rannoch’s accidental foresight in not bringing a retinue – these were all omens. Everywhere he looked, Rannoch saw the fates aligning to guide him on his path.

  He wondered how it had taken him so long to see what he must do.

  Rannoch moved down the hall. His steps were light, soundless. The sceptre weighed nothing. Instead, it pulled him along through the ship, as if it too were being summoned by the mask.

  Rannoch descended the levels of the superstructure. He flew down and down the stairs, his robes flapping like wings. He suppressed a laugh of delight, and he smiled, giddy with the joy of his mission. He encountered no one on the staircases, and in a few minutes he had reached the vault’s deck. He raced along the wide, arched corridor towards the midsection of the hull. He was not winded from his run down the stairs. His energy was limitless. He could sprint indefinitely if the mask was at the end of his journey. Everything was possible, because he was the instrument of the Emperor’s will. He was not acting on his own desire. He was obeying destiny.

  The shadows were thick along this corridor too. When Rannoch moved into them, away from the lume torches, they embraced him and concealed him. They surrounded him with the very fabric of mystery. He was consumed with wonder. He rejoiced that his life should have been blessed to reach this pass.

  A crewman appeared at an intersection a hundred yards farther on. The man turned into the hall, heading in the cardinal’s direction.

  Rannoch felt no anxiety.

  He had spent his life in the church. He had been on battlefields, though not for decades, and even then he had been at the rear of the lines. He had never been involved in any action himself.

  But I know what to do, he thought, and almost giggled.

  For a brief moment he wondered why he had thought of battle. He was not at war. There were no enemies here. At the very worst, Cragg and her crew were simply a little too cautious in their faith. No, he was not at war. Yet he reacted to the approaching crewman as if he were a foe.

  Rannoch evaded. There was an alcove two steps back. The shadows within were profound. He could barely see the shrine it held. The cardinal withdrew into the alcove. There was just enough room for him between the shrine and the wall. His movements were graceful. He flowed. His journey through the ship was a dance. Every step was choreographed. Nothing was separate. All the moments, from leaving his bed to the joyous conclusion still awaiting him, were an indivisible whole. Nothing as trivial as one man choosing the wrong corridor at the wrong moment could break that whole.

  Rannoch smiled in the shadows. His vestments were still more darkness. No one could possibly see him. He was concealed by the power of the Emperor. Yet why should he hide? Why was he dancing with the shadows? Why did he not just order Cragg to turn the mask over to his care? Because this was the wisdom of the Emperor. Because Cragg would be blind enough to resist. Perhaps she wished to keep the mask to herself. If so, he was at war after all. The crew might be misguided enough to constitute a real enemy.

  Most of all, Rannoch became one with the shadows because he could. They were his allies. They were his gift. They called to him, and he answered. They were propelling him towards the mask, and who was he to deny them?

  The crewman walked past.

  You cannot see me, Rannoch thought.

  The man did not even glance at the alcove.

  Rannoch shook with silent laughter. He felt sorry for the crewman. He had played a part, small though it was, in the sacred dance, and would never know. Rannoch waited until the man had turned off into another passageway. Then he left the alcove.

  Down the rest of the corridor now, flying past torches, doorways, hall intersections, tapestries and more shrines. The details of the ship blurred, became insubstantial, and that was right, that was true. There was only one object with weight on this vessel. The mask was more real than the Envoy of Discipline. It had power. Its perfection alone made its presence stronger than anything Rannoch had ever beheld.

  Even now, when he had not yet reached the mask, its image was becoming more sharply defined in his memory. His growing proximity was reversing the work of time, rolling back the seconds since Cragg had shut the lid of the chest.

  Rannoch stopped running. He stood before the door of the vault. He placed his hand on the brass handle. Would the door be locked? Of course it would not. Not to him. He pulled, and the door opened. The hinges whined. The door scraped against the flagstones of the deck. The sounds were loud in the empty corridor. Rannoch was unconcerned. No one would hear. That was impermissible.

  He entered the vault and made straight for the chest. He slowed down as he approached it. The solemnity of the moment impressed itself upon him. He tapped the floor with his sceptre once more. He became a procession of one. In his head, he heard the hymns of rejoicing, sung by choirs millions strong. They were the voices of renewed faith that would soon be shaking the firmament of Sandava II.

  He leaned his sceptre against the table and placed both hands on the chest. Was the metal warm to the touch? Could he feel the gaze of the mask piercing the final barrier between them? He believed he did. Rannoch murmured his thanks. He opened the clasps, his heart pounding harder and harder with each release.

  He raised the lid.

  He had not turned on the lume-strips of the vault. The weak light came from the passageway. Even in the gloom, the mask was resplendent. Its gold blazed, and the jewels flowed into one another, joined by the complexity of their refractions. He stared into the eye sockets. Seen through them, the darkness of the chest ceased to be a mundane space. Instead, it was the limitless depths of sacred mysteries.

  Rannoch lifted the mask free of its stand. He dared to let his hands profane the relic. He cupped the edges of the face. He stared at the perfection, its beauty so far beyond his memory, it was like seeing the mask for the first time. The sublime stabbed his heart with agonised, ecstatic woe.

  The moment was the most precious one of his life. And it was cut short.

  ‘Your eminence?’ said a voice behind him.

  Rannoch turned, still holding the mask. The crewman he had seen earlier stood in the entrance to the vault.

  So, the cardinal thought. He has a larger part to play after all.

  ‘Your pardon, your eminence,’ the man said, ‘but…’

  ‘What is your name?’ Rannoch interrupted. It was right that he should know. Nothing of this great day should be forgotten.

  ‘Vance, your eminence. Kyler Vance.’

  ‘Please approach, Vance,’ Rannoch said. ‘You may be of some assistance.’ He let go of the mask with his right hand, but clutched it all the more firmly with his left.

  Vance walked down the aisle. His features were in shadow, but Rannoch could read confusion in the uncertainty of his gait. He drew near, and Rannoch could see his frown.

  ‘I’m sorry for intruding,’ Vance said. ‘I mean no disrespect, but I hope you underst
and my duties…’

  ‘Of course, of course.’ Rannoch waved off his apologies. ‘I will never condemn a man for doing his duty.’ He observed the way Vance was looking at his left hand. The man’s frown was deepening. He looked very unhappy about what he clearly felt he would have to do next. Vance was torn between his responsibilities and the impossibility of confronting a cardinal of the Adeptus Ministorum.

  Rannoch took pity on him. He resolved Vance’s dilemma.

  Grace. Everything was grace. The mask was grace made of gold. Rannoch was in a state of grace. His movements were yet another form of grace. With his right hand, he made a gesture of blessing. In the same motion, he seized his sceptre and slammed its skull down on Vance’s head. The man’s forehead cracked open like an eggshell. Blood splashed up into Rannoch’s face. Vance fell. His legs twitched, his boots rattling against the floor. Then he was still. Dark blood pooled across the flagstones, glistening faintly in the gloom. Rannoch watched it spread. Soon it surrounded the corpse. It flowed about his feet and beneath the table. It lapped against the shelves.

  Rannoch looked down at his robes. They were spattered. Flecks of matter clung to the silk. He blinked at the fragments of Vance’s death, fascinated. He had commanded executions, but he had never killed with his own hand before. He crouched to examine the body more closely. A distant part of his mind wondered what he should do. He could not leave the corpse here. He could not wander the ship with a man’s blood on his person.

  He cocked his head, entranced by Vance’s crushed skull, seeing in it the shape of revelations, of great secrets spilling into the light. Without meaning to, he dropped his left hand. The mask touched the blood.

  Rannoch gasped. He jerked his hand up, horrified that he had marred the relic’s perfection. Only he hadn’t. The blood flowed into the lines and runes of the mask, and the crimson made the gold and the jewels shine even more brightly. The contours of the sacred face stood out, sharp as burning plasma. With tears of awe streaking his cheeks, Rannoch lowered the mask into the blood again.

  The miracle began. The blood ceased pooling. It rushed to the mask, pulled in by a gigantic thirst. The edges of the body started to foam. Vance lost definition. He sank into the floor, spreading out, becoming soft, then a slurry, then liquid. Blood and flesh and bone mixed and ran, becoming a tide of red and white and pink and black. Rannoch could see the colours clearly because light blazed from the mask; he was sitting at the centre of a dazzling aurora. Gold interwove with every shade of the spectrum. The display was art. It was a tapestry, a glorious extension of the mask’s being. It enveloped Rannoch. It transported him beyond sensation, beyond sense itself. He dropped the mask. His mouth was open, and he would have screamed in ecstasy, but even a scream was too little a thing; even that primal expression was overwhelmed.

  Time vanished in the storm of light and blood. Eternity touched Rannoch’s soul. It opened up to him, and took him in.

  And then everything stopped. Eternity cast Rannoch out. The mundane lie of time resumed. The light dimmed and vanished. The sob that shook Rannoch was so huge, it felt like he was expelling a boulder from his chest. He fell to his knees. He was on the verge of wailing in despair when his eyes dropped to the mask. It lay on the floor, imperturbable, perfect and still. Rannoch snatched it up again and stared at the beauty, calming himself with the physical fragment of transcendence.

  The floor was dry. There was no blood. There was no trace of the corpse. Even the stains on his vestments were gone.

  Rannoch picked up his sceptre and rose to his feet. He looked at the mask one more time, then concealed it in his robes. He closed the chest, latched it and walked to the exit. By the time he reached the corridor, his legs were steady again.

  He grabbed the door, and was about to close it when a whisper made him pause. He looked in the vault. It was shadowed and very dim. The source of its true light was with him now. The shadows were stirring. The whisper was a reptilian hiss. It grew louder. Soon there were sounds of tearing and of bubbling acid. Rannoch stared down the aisle. Where Vance had lain, the shadows were coming together. They twisted. The air frayed. There were movements that sought to form limbs, colours that threatened to become claws. The real was dissolving before Rannoch’s eyes.

  He could not contain this sight within the belief of sanctity. The death and dissolution of Vance was framed by beauty and destiny. This was different. This was a new excess, one that threatened to crack his cherished constructions of belief. Ice reached from the shadows. It seeped into his veins.

  He pulled the mask out. He looked at it again. Could he have been so terribly wrong? No, he realised. Perfect beauty gazed back at him. It filled his spirit and his mind. It left no room for thoughts of what might be happening in the vault. The world beyond the gold became trivial. Events lost meaning. They were ignorable, empty, insignificant. Without taking his eyes from the relic, he pushed the door closed. He looked up only when he heard the hollow boom. The vault was sealed. There was nothing happening inside. There was nothing there to disturb his understanding of the mask.

  He returned the relic to his robes and headed back to his state room.

  In a few hours, he would take his leave of Cragg and the Envoy of Discipline. He would return to Sandava II, bearing such a gift.

  Such a gift.

  ‘The threat,’ said Brother Trevas, ‘is to the Dierna System.’

  Dierna. Gavallan’s transcription flashed before Crowe’s inner eye. Hearing the name so soon after reading it was an ill omen. He would consider that later, though. He focused on the immediate concerns. ‘What is the timeline?’ he asked the Prognosticar.

  ‘Imminent,’ Trevas answered. ‘If it has not already transpired.’

  They were in a briefing room just outside the Chambers of Purity. This sector of the Citadel was a bridge between the rest of the brotherhoods and the Purifiers. Here the guardians of the chambers could meet with the other Grey Knights while remaining near at hand to their duties. The room was a small one. It held a long stone table. The walls were adorned with the banners of reclaimed worlds. Crowe was here as the senior brother among the Purifiers. He spoke for the castellan, sparing Trevas the need to be exposed to the toxic presence of the Blade of Antwyr.

  ‘Imminent,’ Crowe repeated. It was not unusual for Prognosticars to foresee incursions years before they happened. If a crisis point had already been reached, that was cause for great concern.

  Trevas nodded, his face grave. ‘There was a sudden confluence in the immaterium. Even now, we cannot find the threads leading to it. The traces are broken and fragmentary, if they are present at all.’

  ‘And the threat is severe?’

  ‘It is. There is a storm of consequences radiating from Dierna. We cannot parse them. They are too many, too varied and too overlapping. If we hope even to see the nature of the wider danger, the threat must be stopped now, while we can localise it.’

  Crowe thought through the implications of what Trevas was describing. ‘A threat of this sort can hardly have arisen through chance,’ he said. ‘The Ruinous Powers revel in their schemes. How can their planning have left no sign in the warp?’

  ‘This is precisely what troubles us,’ said Trevas. ‘The best we can theorise is that a trap has been triggered.’

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘Something was prepared and then has lain in wait. If even its creators did not know when it would strike, there would be no trace of the plan.’

  ‘So we are dealing with the consequences of chance after all.’

  ‘Perhaps. Severe ones. If this is a trap, it is a potent one.’

  ‘It would have to be,’ Crowe mused. ‘Nothing trivial would be concealed so carefully.’

  ‘Our council agrees.’

  ‘As does Supreme Grand Master Draigo?’

  Trevas nodded. ‘That is why he is calling upon the Purifiers. The threa
t is great, highly concentrated and mobile.’

  ‘Mobile? A ship?’

  ‘We believe so. It is imperative it be stopped before it reaches the Dierna System.’

  Crowe agreed. There was little time, but there was also an opportunity. The situation presented two stark alternatives – a decapitating blow or a spreading infection. And the infection would lead to worse. If the Prognosticars could not read the consequences of failure, if they were too manifold and terrible, then they would extend far beyond the corruption of a single system. Dierna held only one inhabited planet: Dierna Primus, a hive world and one of little inherent strategic significance. One way or another, Dierna’s fall would be just the start.

  So Dierna must not fall.

  And he must speak with the castellan about the name.

  ‘Dierna,’ Gavallan repeated a short while later.

  ‘Yes,’ said Crowe.

  Gavallan looked at his desk, at the reams of his work there. At the endless record of the daemon sword’s words. ‘One of the two names you happened to read aloud.’

  ‘This cannot be chance,’ said Crowe.

  ‘I agree. Though learn from the doubt we must still face. There are so many systems named in that list, it is almost inevitable that some of them should come under attack eventually.’

  True, Crowe thought. But I only spoke two names, not a hundred.

  The sword was muttering. Its voice was not aggressive as it had been when Crowe had last been in this chamber. It was a grating lure instead. The words hovered at the very edge of intelligibility. They pulled at Crowe’s attention, a hook at the back of his mind, calling on him to turn his attention to the Blade, to seek to understand its words and so take them on board. Crowe held the voice back. He did not give in to the seduction of mystery. But when he paused before speaking again, the sword laughed in the darkness. The sound that was no sound was a low, snickering growl. It was no more pronounced than the muttering. It was barely heard, barely felt and all the more insidious.