‘The words of the Crimson King.’ Sanakht broke the silence, his voice dry with awe. ‘You are seeking our father’s secrets…’
‘Yes.’ Ahriman nodded, his face grim as his eyes moved between the empty spaces in the circle. ‘That is what four lives bought. The Rubric failed, but its seeds came from our father’s work, from the Book of Magnus.’ Ahriman paused, and when his voice returned it was lower, edged with sadness. ‘But what if there was a flaw in that work, an error which tainted all we built on it? In the source we may find the flaw, and from the flaw we may find a cure. Sanakht is correct – there is always a price, and we have only begun to pay for what we have done, and what we will still do. We do not bow to fate, not now, not ever again. Tell me which of you would not pay for such freedom?’
Silence was his only answer.
Hemellion did not look up as he moved through the
Sycorax
. It was best not to look at the others that walked the metal city; he had learnt that truth within hours of being brought aboard.
The first time he was set free he had tried to run. The silver chains around his ankles had turned his strides into a limp, but he had run until his lungs were burning. As he scrambled through the bronze and iron caves he had found a tall figure robed in saffron and yellow, its face hidden by a hood. He had called for help, for a way out of this iron city. The saffron-robed figure had ignored him. He had hobbled after it, calling, and had grasped its robe. At that moment he had realised that he had made a mistake. He had pulled his hand back, but it was too late. The figure had turned. Hemellion had looked up into the shadow of the hood before he could stop himself.
He had woken later, his clothes matted in his own vomit and blood, head and ears ringing, face resting against the crystal view of stars glimmering in the distance. That was how his new master had found him.
‘You will not try to run again,’ Sanakht had said, and he had been right. In that view of the stars Hemellion had found another truth; there was no escape from the iron city besides death.
The silver chains jangled as he quickened his step past a group of yellow-swathed Cyrabor. The machine-wrights hissed and clicked in his wake like cogwork birds. No one ever tried to stop him; some even bowed as he passed by, as though the scarlet of his robes were a mark of favour rather than slavery.
Scarlet,
he thought, the colour of the slave serfs; of those who were permitted into the close presence of the Thousand Sons to tend their armour, clean their weapons, and do their bidding. The white robes of the acolytes were a higher honour, but when Hemellion thought about the withered men and women, some of them drooling with madness, crawling with the witch-touch, he was pleased it was an honour he could never obtain. For him it had been six months since he had left his dead world and gone up into the city in the sky, six months of learning a new life and unlearning an old one. How long had passed in the realm he had left, though? He could not know. Sanakht, his master, had explained the paradox of time in the warp to Hemellion once, but it had been an explanation that seemed closer to insanity rather than truth. He had not asked to have it explained further.
He stopped before he reached the passage leading to his master’s chamber, sucking breath through his teeth. He ran a hand over his shaven scalp, and it came away slick with sweat. It had taken him two hours to come from the lower passages to this place. On Vohal he could have walked from one side of the largest city to the other in half an hour. His sense of scale was one of the most minor of things that had changed since he had seen his world die.
He felt the hate rise up inside him as he tried to catch his breath. They had taken everything that he knew, had made it nothing without a thought. They had not even put his people to the sword. They had just killed everything that could support life, and let nature wield the scythe. A whole world had died in the dust, children crying in thirst, old women eating the dry earth from hunger. He had been there when the last well had run dry, and the desperate had tried to storm his fortress walls. The Thousand Sons had created a hell, but from the moment he had looked up into Ahriman’s eyes, Hemellion had known that it had not been for malice. No, it had been as part of a process. That truth had kept him alive, had kept the hate beating in his heart as they had shaved his head, robed him in scarlet and told him that he would serve the murderers of his world until he died.
I will see them dead
.
I will see them die in the ruin of their star city. I will find a way.
He looked about him, suddenly aware of the hate in his thoughts. He pushed the emotion down, waiting until his heartbeat slowed and his thoughts were calm. They were witch-kind, all of them. They could see his thoughts, and if he was not careful they would smell the treachery in him. He turned a corner and limped towards the entrance to Sanakht’s chamber.
A Rubricae stood to either side of the sealed doors. Green corpse light burned in their eyes beneath high-crested helms. Hemellion averted his gaze as he approached the entrance. He did not look into the Rubricae’s eyes; even being close to them made him feel dizzy. He had only to wait a heartbeat before the doors split open, and pulled back into the bronze walls.
The chamber beyond the doors would have been large if it had not been for the figure standing at its far end. Even without armour Sanakht made the room feel small. Flocks of golden birds rose across the sky blue of his robes. His face was thin, and reminded Hemellion of a youth just grown to manhood, his features unmarked by scars, ash-blond hair cut short against the dome of his scalp. He held a curled parchment in his hands, and more parchment lay scattered across the chamber, heaped in corners and hiding the black stone of the floor.
Hemellion bowed slowly.
As kings and warlords once did to me,
said a whisper in his mind.
Sanakht tilted the parchment so that the light of the hovering glow-globes fell across it from a different angle. Hemellion waited, still bowed.
‘Fill two cups,’ said Sanakht after a long moment. Hemellion straightened from his bow. A silver jug and a trio of silver cups sat on a stone plinth at the side of the chamber. Most often his master called on him to clean his armour, or to take some artefact to another part of the ship. Sometimes Sanakht called Hemellion, and then dismissed him as soon as he arrived. But the legionary had never asked Hemellion to fill cups before.
Sanakht looked up. The parchment dropped from his fingers and fluttered to the scroll-strewn floor. Hemellion met his master’s gaze, and quickly looked down. Red blotches covered the white of Sanakht’s right eye, and the pupil was a ragged hole, like a broken yolk in a bloody egg. The left eye was clouded white. The corner of Sanakht’s mouth twitched, but if it was in humour it did not show on the rest of his face.
Hemellion shuffled to the silver jug and filled two cups. The liquid that came from the jug was a red so dark that it looked like clotted blood. Hemellion carried both cups back to Sanakht, and held them up.
Sanakht laughed, the sound so sudden and deep that Hemellion almost dropped the cups. The legionary reached down and took one cup.
‘Sit,’ said Sanakht. Hemellion looked at the cup still in his hand, and then back up at the demigod. ‘Sit.’
Hemellion looked around before folding slowly to the floor. A second later Sanakht mirrored the movement.
Like a tiger curling up under a tree
, thought Hemellion. Sanakht’s mouth twitched again. He raised the cup to his mouth and took a delicate mouthful.
‘Drink,’ said Sanakht, and tilted his cup.
Hemellion looked down at his own cup. Slowly he raised it to his lips and drank a sip. The liquid was thick on his tongue and tasted of hot sun and spice. He coughed, blinked, and glanced back up. He could feel sweat prickling his skin. Something that would have been a smile on a human cracked Sanakht’s face.
‘Unpleasant, is it not – having your will bound to another?’ said Sanakht, his voice low and measured. ‘Having another creature command you?’
‘It is…’
‘I know this,’ said Sanakht. ‘And I know that you know this, Hemellion, King of Vohal.’
Hemellion watched his own reflection in the still surface of his cup. He was trying to think of something to say. He felt as though he had walked into a dream made from a child’s story; the man talking to the smiling serpent.
‘I…’ He felt his mouth go dry as he tried to speak.
‘Do you know why Ahriman gave you to me?’
Hemellion shook his head without looking up. In fact he was not sure why he was having this conversation.
‘He gave you to me because he thought that of all my brothers I am the one who needs another serf. The others can break apart their armour with a thought, remake the atoms in the air, unmake the light that meets their eyes. I…’ Hemellion looked up. Sanakht was turning the cup in his hand, watching the liquid cling to the silver. ‘I cannot. Not without great effort, not any more.’ He looked back at Hemellion with the cracked pupil of his eye. ‘I am
of the Circle
, but I am a child by comparison to my brothers. In battle their minds carry me. A brother in name but not in kind. When they use their hands it is because they choose to. I need serfs to carry my scrolls and clean my armour, not because it is my right, but because otherwise I would have to do it with my own hands.’
Hemellion looked down from Sanakht’s face, and took another sip from his cup. A fire spread through his chest. He felt soft tongues of warmth run through his thoughts.
‘What happened to change you so?’ The question slipped from his lips before he could stop it. He realised what he had done a second later. ‘I am sorry, I did not… I…’ The words dried in his throat.
Sanakht was just looking at him, eyes unblinking in a carven face. Hemellion felt his own flesh become very still, the adrenaline hammering in his veins telling him to run now, to run and not look back.
‘A fair question,’ said Sanakht, at last. ‘You were a king once, or as good as, a man used to questioning as he saw fit. I will not take that from you. A mind that sees and questions is worth more than the adoration of a million crawling fools.’ Hemellion felt the race of his pulse slow, but he still did not move or speak. ‘What changed me? Loyalty, Hemellion, loyalty made me like this.’ Sanakht took a longer drink from the cup. ‘All our kind were… on a path that would see us become monsters. Ahriman had a way of stopping it, a way to save all of our brothers. We, many of my brothers and I, were his cabal. We all agreed that we could not allow our Legion to fall any further.’ He paused, his gaze sharpening on a point somewhere in the distance. ‘But not all were with us. One of our brothers tried to stop us. He came for us, for Ahriman. Some died. Ahriman survived.’ Sanakht’s gaze dropped, his eyes seeming to pull back into his skull, the hollows of his face deepening. ‘And that had a cost.’
‘Where is he now?’ asked Hemellion. ‘The one who tried to stop Ahriman, what became of him?’
‘Khayon?’ Sanakht shivered, then shrugged. ‘He was remade in another way.’ Hemellion took a swig from his cup, allowing the liquid to steal a little more of his fear. Sanakht was watching the ripples settle to stillness on the surface of his own drink. ‘For a long time I thought the Eye had taken Ahriman, that he was gone. But Amon believed him alive, and we followed Amon. He was right – Ahriman lived, and now we follow Ahriman again. Now we give him our loyalty, and we trust that he can change us again. We are what we were once again, falling into the same abyss. Whatever he intends will fail, and even in failure it will have a price that he will pay without a thought.’
Hemellion went very still, his eyes watching Sanakht for a movement, for a sign that the treachery he had just spoken was a test. Somewhere, far off at the back of his thoughts, he remembered looking into Ahriman’s eyes, blue and cold as winter stars. ‘
Because this is how fate is made,’
the sorcerer had said. Sanakht looked up, and Hemellion thought he saw understanding mirrored back at him.
‘They were right,’ said Sanakht softly. ‘All those who tried to stop us: the Emperor, Khayon, Amon. We follow lies and pay the coins without thinking, believing that we are right, and that only we see clearly. Those who challenge us we condemn as ignorant, and we run on into darkness, trying to reach a false light. We are the heirs of blind kings, ruling a kingdom of ashes.’
Sanakht nodded back at Hemellion’s wide stare. The air in the chamber seemed heavy and still. He was suddenly aware of the taste of the liquor on his tongue, the smell of parchment, and the buzz of the glow-globes.
‘It must end,’ said Sanakht. ‘He must end.’
Hemellion felt the fires of hate kindle in his guts. They spread through him before he could stop them. He felt his heartbeat rise even as he tried to slow it. The corner of Sanakht’s mouth twisted, but the rest of his face remained as still as before.
‘This is not vengeance, Hemellion, not of the kind that you clutch close in the night.’
Cold spread across Hemellion’s skin. He thought of the dreams which filled his sleep, and the anger he hid inside.
‘How do…?’ he managed
‘Your thoughts are of little else. You try to control them, but the warp around you tastes of your hate for us.’
Hemellion felt as though he had been struck, as though all his sensations were not his own, as though he was falling without moving.
He knows
.
They know. This is a trap.
He thought of standing, but it was as though the connections between his mind and limbs had been severed.
Witch-touched,
said a voice within.
They see through thoughts, through stone, through flesh.
+No,+ said Sanakht, and his voice was within Hemellion’s skull, echoing through his thoughts. +This is no trap. I tell you this because I will need you. Because everyone must speak the truth to someone. You will have your vengeance. It will have a cost, but it will be yours in time – you have my word.+