Sheer pain, Lex would welcome. Pain, he could convert into adoration of Dorn.
Not this impious prying, this intimate invasion.
A black-nailed finger traced the puckers on Lex’s forehead from which he had torn out his service studs.
‘You would seem to be a deserter,’ said his tormentor, his daemonic tattoos pulsing. ‘A runaway traitor. You have found your new family, deserter! Yet your hormones reek of loathing for us. They stink of loyalty to your wretched primarch and to that thing on Earth. How can this be, how can this be? Let us see, let us see.’
The voice became hypnotically sing-song. ‘All is change, all is mutation and alteration. We shall mutate you and initiate you, so that your soul shall conform to the semblance of a renegade. You shall become one of us – a lesser one throughout the next few centuries, yet one nonetheless. Capable of serving our master, Tzeentch, and of being rewarded with attributes, and of aspiring to potent sorcery. Oh yessss—’
D
URING STAGES IN
Lex’s novitiate as a future Space Marine he had been initiated dauntingly enough – by a feast of foul excremental unfood and by other formidable ceremonies.
The forced rite of initiation which took place like a ravishment within that Chaos vessel was execrable and almost unspeakable. How could Lex obliterate from memory the Kiss of Corruption, the Communion with Chaos, the Prayer of Perfidy, the spells and the invocations? And all the while he was experiencing the slither of tendrils within his spinal sockets. These invaded his nervous system, generating nauseating visions of the fragility of the cosmos, of the feebleness of reality which daemonic fingers sought to unpluck and reknit, with such vile success.
Lex in torment saw the whole cosmos burst forth from a mere bubble in the energy-warp. A sparrow’s fart the universe was! That fart inflated suddenly. It caught fire and exploded outward. Gas became matter. Space ballooned to accommodate the gush. Matter became the stars and worlds of a billion galaxies. All was mere froth upon the surging unseen ocean of the warp. Finally the pull of the warp would drag all galaxies and all space back together again, abolishing this temporary interruption which was the whole of space and time, and all of struggling suffering life.
The lusts and rages of life caused terrible entities to coalesce in the warp, and to give rise to sub-entities, to daemons and sub-daemons. Daemons clawed at reality to try to drag it and its denizens back into the warp prematurely. Tzeentch and his daemonic lieutenants especially sought to twist the future of the cosmos askew. Tzeentch would triumph.
The Emperor on Terra was no more than a guttering candle in malevolent darkness. The radiance of Rogal Dorn and other primarchs were pathetic glimmers.
What of the shining path which Jaq sought? What of the good light which might be awakened by benevolence and compassion and self-sacrifice arising universally? A sparrow might as well fart into a hurricane. The spirit of the Numen slumbered, unaware of itself except in dreamlike spasms.
Oh, do tell your tormenting initiators that the name of your Chapter is the Imperial Fists! Oh, do hand over the Book of Fate to the worshippers of Tzeentch! Oh, do join them joyfully in the disruption of this futile cosmos, and be rewarded.
All along Lex’s nerves, and in his mind, potent daemonry squirmed like an invasion by tiny ants which were really all one collective manifold beast.
‘Which Chapter did you desert?’ Lex heard.
He gibbered. His mouth frothed. His very soul was being drowned in vileness, and revived, and drowned again. Soon it would no longer be his soul, but Tzeentch’s property; and he would be a willing puppet.
‘Which Chapter?’
As he opened his lips to reply, his left hand tore free from the gauntlet which held it. His left hand rose as if to stifle him, to throttle him. That was the hand on the bones of which were inscribed the names of Biff Tundrish and Yeremi Valence of Necromunda, and of the Imperial Fists...
Lex seemed to hear from afar in the sea of souls the voices of Biff and Yeri crying out to him to resist – no, to let them resist on his behalf, to let them be his strength and his salvation. Yeri particularly had always yearned to protect Lex, hadn’t he?
Let Biff and Yeri be his own protective daemons who would lurk within; who would snatch his soul back to safety even though it seemed to be lost to Tzeentch. The inscriptions hidden upon the bones of that left hand were the most potent sorcerous runes. By virtue of those runes, his left hand clasped Rogal Dorn’s own hand through the intermediary of his dead comrades. Though he fell, they would raise him in the final moment.
Sweating and shuddering, Lex submitted to the Chaos Marines.
The name of his Chapter? He could tell them that without blame, because it was the proudest of names.
The Book of Fate? He could betray that. They already knew it was nearby.
Who should they wickedly send to fetch it, and to kill or be killed, but this traitor, this new cadet kinsman in Chaos? ‘
That’s
his initiation test!’
‘In that house they’ll think he has escaped from us—’
‘Instead he will kill or concuss—’
How Lex relished the prospect of incapacitating the inquisitor with his bare hands. How he hoped to hand Jaq over to his new brothers in sorcery. How he relished the thought of swatting the impudent squat to death or tearing him limb from limb. As for Rakel, that sham – what fate would be best for her, to torment Jaq the most? To inject her again with polymorphine so that she would go into fatal agonizing flux – providing the visible dissolution of Jaq Draco’s stupid ambitions!
There was also the Death Jester, to serve up to these new elder brothers. Lex could relish these deeds and allow his hormones to riot, because his left hand enshrined his salvation. That hand was calm now. It feigned.
Chaos Marines were laughing. What if their new initiate were killed as soon as he returned to the mansion? Why, he would die utterly subverted – traitor to his Chapter of naive musclemen and to the ramshackle Imperium. Then the Princes of Chaos would overwhelm the mansion and seize prizes.
Lex himself was a prime prize – but a prize best enjoyed perhaps in the squandering of it.
‘H
E’S COMING FOR US
!’ bawled Grimm. He levelled
Emperor’s Peace
.
Jaq waved the force rod. ‘Don’t shoot till I’ve used this! I may purge him and cleanse him.’
‘That’s all very well for you to say. You’re wearing armour.’
At least Lex wasn’t wearing any Chaos armour.
‘I order you not to use the bolter. Otherwise I’ll kill you.’
‘Oh ancestors, maybe I’d rather be killed by you than by what’ll follow—’
By what would inevitably follow.
Whatever Jaq achieved with Lex would surely be futile. Suppose Jaq could restore the Space Marine to sanity, what price another pair of hands, however muscular, to fire another boltgun – against armoured Chaos Marines? Ultimately, against a plasma cannon? ‘Shall I free the Death Jester?’ cried Rakel.
What, and arm the Harlequin? Gamble that the Jester might temporarily ally himself with his captors so as to save the Book of Fate from being seized by the forces of Chaos?
What a trusting – or desperate – assumption that would be.
L
EX LOOMED IN
the vacant window frame. Promptly his left hand clutched that frame to slow him and hold him back.
His face was a mask of homicidal hatred. How he snarled at the hand. Relaxing its grip, the hand made a defiant fist – which then struck him brutally and dazzlingly on the chin.
‘He’s at war with himself!’
Urgently the hand gestured at Jaq not to use the force rod. Jaq refrained, temporarily at least. ‘He’s possessed, and he ain’t!’
The hand mimed opening a book. The hand pointed down in the direction of the basement. The hand urged going there. A nimbus of light glowed around the hand, leaving quasi-phosphorescent traces in the dusty air like blazons of a luminous route which should be followed.
How urgently Lex gestured.
This matter was urgent indeed if the renegades aboard the ship were observing – with mounting bewilderment – through oculi. ‘Basement’s the best place to be when a plasma cannon lets rip! That way we can be buried alive and roasted more slowly—’
The lambently glowing left hand – a whole hand rather than a mere Finger of Glory – reached out toward Jaq, not so as to interfere with his force rod, but to invite Jaq to clasp the hand with his free gauntlet. That hand was becoming translucent, as though it were an alabaster X-ray. Bones showed within, scrimshaw bones with words inscribed upon them, over and over elegantly and minutely in cursive script, words almost too small to read. There was no time for closer scrutiny.
As Jaq accepted the hand, light flickered around his borrowed armour, and once again it wore the guise of glorious red and gold. Would the renegades right now be watching something so inexplicable and occult that the mystery of it might deter them for a few more precious minutes? Might they imagine that Tzeentch was somehow manifesting himself within the mansion? That Tzeentch was causing such strange changes! Such a seemingly noble metamorphosis!
The hand assisted Jaq in his manoeuvring of the suit. The Hand of Glory led him.
‘Stay, Grimm, stay!’ ordered Jaq. ‘Rakel too. The renegades must see someone still up here or they might come to investigate.’
‘Oh ancestors...’
Rakel was gaping numbly at a pair of sorcerers about to leave that violated room.
H
OW THOSE TURQUOISE
eyes widened. How crazily the Jester grimaced at the sight of Lex and Jaq. Jaq, in that spuriously splendid armour. Jaq, led by Lex whose illuminated hand leaked phosphor streaks which lingered briefly in the air. How Marb’ailtor wrenched at his chains.
‘
Deamhan diabhal!
’ he uttered in dismay. The giant stank of daemonry – although his glowing hand seemed like a living torch which was keeping dark evil at bay. That resplendent armour was a phantasm. It was lustrous silk draped over razor blades. Something momentous had happened, and was still happening. What, what? Surely Death was about to jape the Jester – who would die in ignorance.
Lex and Jaq entirely ignored the captive eldar.
On the lectern the
Book of Rhana Dandra
lay open. With his glowing hand, Lex assaulted the tome. His shining fingers seemed to sink into the vellum as if it were dough. As he lifted his hand clear, did runes drip phosphorescently from his fingers? The runes on the page were writhing.
Marb’ailtor howled at the desecration.
With his Hand of Glory Lex gestured urgently at Jaq’s force rod, and then at himself. Lex’s other hand, his possessed hand, clamped itself upon Jaq’s shoulder pauldron. This contact caused the splendid semblance of red and gold to arc and flash and fade, stripping away that heroic illusion, revealing the renegade armour in its harsh angularity.
J
AQ UNDERSTOOD
. L
EX
was trying to expel the daemonry into Jaq himself, as lightning might arc through a conductor. Thus, to empower Jaq! Jaq pressed the force rod against Lex’s chest.
‘Yield up the evil in you! Let it pass into me!
Ego te exorcizo!
’ Jaq discharged his rod.
The flash threw Lex backwards ponderously, to crash into the door-jamb. Lex pivoted slowly. His fading fingers of Glory dragged four phosphorescent claw marks down the stone as slowly he slumped to the floor. He rolled over. His eyes were alert with a light of salvation as he gazed, still alive, towards Jaq.
Jaq reeled and might have fallen but for the corset of his armour. The rod fell from his gauntlet. He gripped the lectern to steady himself. He was gazing down upon shifting shimmering runes, flowing like spilled mercury.
What did he wish the book to tell him? What did he want it to yield? His fate, his future...
The location of the place where time could twist...
Or of a place where a soul could be redeemed from death...
A place of redemption, of deliverance.
A place in the warp from which the shining path originated. To arrive there might supercharge the dormant Numen. The Chaos Child might begin to awaken to divinity and to transfiguring power – and might even incarnate a fraction of itself in the illuminated mortal who visited its Chaos cradle.
Surely this was impossible, a megalomaniac fantasy! And yet... at that pivotal place to resurrect someone worthy from death might surely send a shining ripple through the whole fabric of the warp and the cosmos too...
Someone as worthy as Meh’lindi.
Yes, oh yes.
Personal passion and cosmic salvation might both be served. The Imperium might be saved and transfigured, along with Him-on-Earth. Oh to bring healing balm to that wounded God, to reconcile Him restoringly with the Child of Light.
How Jaq ached for Meh’lindi to be resurrected, reincarnated. She was like an amputated limb. Her ghostly presence persisted and persisted.
A haunting cackle lurked in his mind. Yet how his perception was enlarging. How shiningly he saw: a sentence descending circuitously down into the page. The sentence curled around and within itself like some burrowing silver worm. The initial word of that sentence served as a compressed code which now gave rise to a whole stretch of instructions. Instructions which were simple directions.
Cle
,
ceart
,
lar
: left, right, middle. Directions through the webway! Directions to Jaq’s destiny.
When the rune had appeared to Azul Petrov in his agony-vision, the rune which had revealed the hidden route to the Black Library, the starting point had been precisely where Petrov had happened to be at that particular time.
So it must be with this snaking sentence.
With the tip of a steel-clad finger, Jaq flipped up the hood from his lethal monocle.
Of a sudden the sentence was jagged and forked. No longer was it a sentence at all but an intricate network. What Jaq saw through the lens exemplified rather than described. A particular route through the network was luminously traced. Sometimes it returned upon itself. It crossed itself. Twice it cut over a major axis – those must be wraithship passages.