Отрывок из "Аримана Неизменного":
"Ариман. Ариман никогда не меняется..."I
Sorcerers
+I am not here to break you,+ sent the Oathtaker, as he took another step closer to the lone figure at the chamber’s centre. Lightning flashed outside the ragged hole in the wall. The air was rancid, laden with the musk of rotting vegetation and stagnating water. +I am here because I need you, Memunim. I am here to accept your service.+
The Oathtaker stepped closer again. The polished bronze of his armour drank the gloom from the air, making him a shadow amongst shadows. The blue and green stones clasped in feathers and claws were also dark, as though they were eyes which had closed. Only the bright sapphire set in the blank faceplate of his helm shone. Its light was blue, and cold, and unwavering. His silver staff tapped out each step, the sound low yet clear even over the noise of distant battle and thunder.
Another flash of lightning, then another, the booms echoing in the space and the light showing the foetid land far below. Looking out from the hole in the wall it seemed that the chamber was high within a tower. It was not a tower, though; it was a ship. Its aft was buried in the swamp, its prow was a rusting minaret of armour and gun batteries. Fungus had bloomed across its bulk, swallowing kilometres of buttresses. Its spine was twisted so that it resembled a crooked finger beckoning to the grey clouds. Vast and rooting and all but deserted.
+I am your master now, sorcerer,+ sent the Oathtaker.
Memunim swayed and then caught himself. The high crest of his helm was an echo of the traditions of Prospero, but it was a dim resemblance. Carved serpents crawled over the crest and the faceplate twisted with teeth and crystal eyes. His robes were tattered, and still smouldering at the edges. The blood was concealed under the armour plates, but it was there, leaking from wounds and mouth. He was in a lot of pain.
+I will not submit to you,+ hissed Memunim.
+But you will,+ said the Oathtaker. +You are strong. You are strong, and you have honour. But not enough of either, and not enough to match the hate you try to drown in blood.+
A wall of force struck the Oathtaker without warning. One instant the warp had been still and the next it had become a blunt hammer. His will rose to meet it, but almost too late. He staggered. Splinters of light tumbled in the air. Memunim struck again, with a grunt of pain and effort.
The Oathtaker was ready this time. His mind met the wave of power with equal force for an instant, and then it collapsed into a single sharp point. The wave shattered. Actinic light exploded outwards. A note hung in the air, vibrating through bones, teeth and eyes. Behind the single eye of his helm, the Oathtaker tasted hot metal and burning hair. He lowered the staff, his shoulders relaxing. Memunim had fallen to the floor.
The Oathtaker crossed the last few steps, and looked down.
+You were born on the slopes of the Cattabar Mountains above Tizca,+ sent the Oathtaker, his thought voice calm. +The sun’s first light would rise above the sea and wake you before the rest of the house. Sometimes you would get up and go to sit on the ledge of your window and watch the sun march across Tizca. The wind from the sea would smell of salt and the dew mingling with dust. When the Legion–+
+Who are you?+ Anger bled from Memunim’s aura, coiling red and sharp black.
+When the Legion came for you, a rare storm had come across the mountains and rain danced on the stones of the streets and on the faces of the pyramids.+
Memunim was shaking.
+You cannot know–+
+Your mother was proud,+ the Oathtaker’s sending sliced on as he took another step forwards. +But your father did not want you to go. “How can I let him go?” he asked. “How can a father let his son walk into such a future?” You said–+
+How can you know?+ The thought was a roar of confusion and rage.
+You said that it was everything that you wanted. That he should be proud.+
The Oathtaker took another step and halted. Memunim’s aura was contracting, hardening. The Oathtaker inclined his head a fraction. The crystal eye in his helm was a cold blue star.
+Your birth father died ten years later, and he never saw you again. He never saw his world burn for the Legion he gave his son to, he never saw what you became.+
The roar split the warp. A creature rose from Memunim. In the Oathtaker’s sight it was a winged serpent made of red light and silver reflections. It was a thought form, a construct of will and power flung from the body of a psyker into the raw energy of the warp. It was power unshackled by flesh and matter, a shadow cast by the soul’s light, and it was utterly and completely dangerous. It dived at the Oathtaker.
+Now,+ sent the Oathtaker. The thought form was almost on him, its mouth a wide slit of fire and daggers. He stared back at it.
A flat boom of silence filled the chamber. Two shapes sketched in starlight fell on Memunim’s thought form and ripped it from the warp. Frost flashed across the chamber’s floor and ceiling, then exploded into black flame. Memunim was on his knees. Blood oozed from the seals of his helm. He was alive, though. The Oathtaker watched the pain pulse and fracture in Memunim’s mind.
He turned his head and looked at the figures who had stepped into being from nowhere. The sapphire scales of Zurcos’s battleplate scattered the dim light as he drifted forwards, his robes of rags and tatters dancing to an invisible wind. Calitiedies came more slowly, his sceptre lit with chained fire, his bolter drawn. Fatigue from manifesting thought forms pulsed in their auras. Nine Rubricae walked behind them, their red and bone armour smoking from their transition into reality.
+He is ready?+ asked Zurcos, his thought voice a hiss of static and dry sand.
The Oathtaker looked at Memunim still trying to find the strength to rise.
+Yes.+
+Has he sworn it?+ asked Calitiedies.
The Oathtaker did not reply, but extended a hand, palm upwards, fingers open. Memunim rose into the air. His mind and will struggled, until the Oathtaker tightened his grip. Memunim’s helmet released and floated free with a series of clicks and a hiss of pressure. Burn scars and stitch marks covered the face beneath. Half-clotted blood ran from his eyes, mouth, and ears.
+No one…+ began Memunim. +No one could know such things about me.+
+But I do. I know you better than the birth father who never saw you become a warrior. You are strong but you are weak. You wonder what happened to the dream which led you here, and you look at yourself and see a creature clinging to the shadows, and keeping the company of crows. You want to be more again but cannot see how. You want to follow the light, not survive in the shadows.+ Memunim turned his head. The Oathtaker met his flickering gaze. +I know you, Memunim, and because of that I know that you will give me what I came here for.+
+…service…+ Memunim’s thought was a blur of fading consciousness.
Zurcos laughed. The sound joined the distant noise of gunfire and battle, from far down at the tower’s foot.
+I will give you more than you can dream. From you I will take the only thing that matters: your oath.+
The silence in the chamber was complete. Even the warp hushed to a low sway of potential.
+You asked who I am,+ sent the Oathtaker as he stepped forward. His will twitched and his own helm slid from his head. He was close enough that he could see his own face in Memunim’s suddenly wide eyes: a face of smooth skin without scar or expression, a mouth set in a hard line, and above that mouth a pair of eyes which were not eyes at all. Twin pools of fire looked out at him from the reflection. He leaned forwards, feeling Memunim’s mind recoil from his proximity.
‘My name,’ he said, and the sound of his true voice made the sorcerer flinch with surprise. ‘My name is Astraeos.’
The whispers of daemons followed Ctesias from his sleep. He rubbed the wrinkled skin of his face, and spat. He could taste ash and sugar on his tongue, never a good sign. He picked the silver goblet up from the arm of the stone throne and drank the wine within in a single gulp. It did not help. The sweet burning taste was still in his mouth and would be for hours, and the whispers would take even longer to fade.
He stood slowly, joints cracking as they straightened. New knots had formed in his remaining muscles while he slept.
Slept. The thought almost made him laugh. He never slept unless he could help it, and when he did he never dreamed.
He looked at the armour hanging on the wall frame opposite the throne. Brass conduits linked it to slabs of machinery behind the walls, feeding its power cells and systems. His staff hung beside the armour, parchment and dried strips of skin hanging from it.
He stepped from the throne to the dais beneath it. His legs trembled as they transferred his weight, and the ash and sugar taste almost began a stream of bile from his stomachs.
He glanced at the armour, and then at the twelve paces of stone paving separating him from it. He closed his eyes.
‘This is really not worth the trouble,’ he sighed, and flicked his fingers. Codes of force pulled the armour and staff from the wall. Cables disconnected and it spun up and into the air. Ctesias raised his thin arms as though waiting for an embrace. The armour slotted over him piece by piece. His staff came to his hand last of all. It cackled as his fingers closed over it. The faces cast into its cold iron and silver length twisted and grinned at him. He ignored it, focusing instead on the feeling of strength the armour gave him.
In truth he was not weak, at least not in mortal terms. He could break a human’s arm with a single blow, and fight for days without feeling true fatigue. Strength was relative, though, and for a warrior of the Thousand Sons, he was a withered, almost broken creature. At least in body. His mind was another matter.
He rolled his shoulders and listened to the fibre bundles purr as they followed the movement. It felt reassuring. Whenever he had to move around the Word of Hermes, or any of the other ships of Ahriman’s small fleet, he preferred to do so encased in war-plate. Gilgamos, Kiu, Gaumata and the others of Ahriman’s inner circle often wore robes when battle was not imminent. Ignis did not, of course, and was rarely seen out of his fire-orange Terminator plate. Ctesias grinned at the thought that of all his Legion brothers, he shared a point of concordance with the Master of Ruin.
He did not resent his own weakness. It had been his choice, one of the many things he had spent to learn the names of the daemons which now sat in his memory waiting for him to set them free. That knowledge was greater than the strength of muscle and bone. Yet, even so, he preferred to go amongst his brothers with his armour to fill the space that wasted flesh had left in his bearing. Everything had a price, and he had never been blind to that fact. He served Ahriman for the same reason that the knowledge he bore had cost him in body and soul; it was a price for a reward, or a penance for a past misdeed. As with everything, it depended on how you looked at it.
He nodded to himself and licked his lips. It would be soon. Ahriman would call them soon, and then… and then he would have to perform his function.
‘And then what?’ he said aloud to himself, and listened to the dry rasp of his own voice. ‘What will Ahriman do with you once he is done?’
He shook his head. The question had no useful answer, and he did not have time. He wanted to go to the Athenaeum again before the summons came.
With a creak of muscles and a whir of armour he walked from his chamber.
+Helio Isidorus,+ sent Ahriman. A pulse of will as delicate as a silk thread ran through the name. The Rubricae remained on the iron dais, the blue armour a dead weight, the light in its eyes gone. Ahriman waited, allowing his own mind a measure of rest.
Patience isthe first virtue of wisdom, he thought to himself.
Still the Rubricae did not move. The bowls of flame above the altar were drinking the last of their oil. The warp had settled back into its wild flow, shaking off the order he had imposed. The symbols which had flowed across the Rubricae’s armour like leaves on water had sunk back beneath its surface.
He refocused his mind, letting the quiet of the chamber seep into him. The space was one of the Word of Hermes’s smaller forges. Vast crucibles and pneumatic hammers lurked in the shadows nearby, silent and cold. The altar he had used was in fact an anvil slab. On its smooth top metals were once beaten to sheets, and weapons given their shape. It had served his needs, though.
+Helio Isidorus,+ he called again.
Light grew in the Rubricae’s eyes. Ahriman breathed, and pulled again with his will.
The Rubricae rose from the dais. It shed motes of silver light as it moved. It straightened, and turned its crystal eyes on Ahriman. He heard a voice too distant to understand, but loud enough to hear. For a moment he thought it was calling his name.
A door clanked open behind him, and the buzz of servos driving heavy armour stole the silence.
+A success?+ sent Ignis, and Ahriman’s mind filled with a sensation of hard edges and ticking cogwork.
+A success,+ answered Ahriman without turning.
Ignis stalked into the chamber, his automaton bodyguard clanking in his wake. The machine was called Credence, and it followed Ignis everywhere.
Helio Isidorus twitched at the approaching pair, and then moved with sudden speed, picking up and aiming a boltgun before Ahriman’s will froze it in place. Credence had raised its own fists. The gun on its back armed with a metal cough.
‘Hold!’ snapped Ignis, and the automaton became still. For a second the two guardians faced each other, weapons readied. ‘Desist,’ said Ignis. Ahriman pulsed his will to Helio Isidorus. The Rubricae lowered its boltgun, and shifted back into utterly still readiness.
+That Rubricae seems unusually aggressive,+ sent Ignis, as he crossed the last distance to Ahriman’s side.
+His name is Helio Isidorus,+ replied Ahriman. +You should remember him. He shared three campaigns with you.+
+I try not to remember the dead. It is a waste of thought.+
Helio Isidorus moved back, and settled into statue-like stillness.
Ignis stepped up to the altar, and extended a silvered talon from his left gauntlet. He tapped the altar. The talon blade rang with a high, clear note.
+You learned what you needed from this latest dissection?+
Dissection. Ahriman felt a pulse of anger at the word, but suppressed it. In Ignis’s literal universe of symbolic resonance and numerology, what better word was there for what Ahriman had done? He had forced Helio Isidorus’s spirit down, and down, until it was a murmur in a dead shell of armour. Then he had pulled the power that animated the suit to the surface and examined it like a chirurgeon teasing through intestines. He had done it before. Hundreds of times before. He did not like it, but the Rubricae returned to their normal state once he had finished. Yes, dissection was as good a name for it as any. He just did not like the word’s callous edge.
Ahriman swallowed the taste of anger. He was always more prone to emotion after these rituals.
+It will not be done again. I have learned and confirmed all that is needed.+
+For the second Rubric,+ stated Ignis.
+Yes,+ replied Ahriman, and felt his thoughts pause. Something was not right. Ignis was a creature of straight lines and measured paths, but his presence and the shape of his thoughts were disrupted, as though they were following unfamiliar patterns.
+Will it work?+ asked Ignis, turning to look directly at Ahriman.
+The Rubric?+
+Yes.+
Ahriman nodded slowly.
+Of course, you were not one of us when I… when the Cabal cast the Rubric for the first time. You did not see the steps to its conclusion. You only saw the result.+
+Am I one of you now?+
+Do you care how I answer?+
+No.+
Ahriman watched Ignis’s utterly still features as the electoos blurred across them.
What must it be for such a mind as his to have doubt?
He nodded slowly.
+It will not be the same as the first Rubric,+ he sent carefully. +The subject is the same. The outcome is the same that we originally intended, but it will not be the same. Too much has changed.+
He blinked, and felt a wave of fatigue pull at his thoughts. Perhaps the ritual had taken more out of him than he had realised? He felt his fingertips begin to tremble. Pain licked his hearts, and he tasted silver. His hand went to his chest before he realised it was moving. He thought of the sharp shards of silver slowly eating into his hearts whenever his focus slipped from keeping them locked in place. The shards had come from a bolt-round fired by an inquisitor called Iobel, and they remained with him, unable to be removed by surgery or sorcery.
No, he thought. Not yet. Not yet. His will hardened, and the pain in his chest faded. He could still taste silver when he looked back up.
Ignis was watching him, silent and unmoving.
+I knew less when I cast it the first time.+ He paused his thoughts as he dabbed at the blood on his lips. A bitter smile twitched his mouth as his fingers came away marked red. +The power I wielded then was… naïve. And the curse on our Legion was more straightforward. Our brothers were flesh – drowning in mutation, but flesh nonetheless. Now we are dealing with spirit, and dust, and echoes of being. The cure cannot be exactly the same because the point we start from is not the same. And there are other considerations.+
He gestured to Ignis, and then at the ship and everything beyond it. +We are fewer than the Cabal were, and now we will have to enact it while fighting a battle against Magnus and our brothers that serve him.+ He paused, his own thoughts turning through all the possibilities, uncertainties, and factors. Complexity branched into paradox, and slid out of sight into a grey haze. He sighed. +What we will cast will be the Rubric because it is grown of the same seed, and has the same purpose, but it is a sibling to the first, not its child.+
Ignis waited for nine seconds, then tilted his head, and blinked once.
+A very precise answer…+ he began.
+…to a different question,+ finished Ahriman. +I am aware of both the question you asked and the answer I have given, Ignis.+ He turned away, gestured with a strand of will, and the last flames vanished in the bowls of oil. Cold shadows suddenly lay on the empty altar.
+I created the first Rubric from the work of Magnus,+ he sent. +I remember its every detail. I have gone back to the root of his work. I have looked into his knowledge and thoughts as they come from the Athenaeum. I have found the flaws in the original work, and created solutions for each. I have examined the nature of what happened to us and our brothers. I have rebuilt it, and then done it again and again. It will work, because this time it is built on knowledge that was not there before. It is flawless.+
+But untested?+
+It cannot be tested. To test it is to enact it, and to do that requires more than power. Every factor must be perfect. For that we need to go back to where the first Rubric was cast, and we need the power of a storm so great that it will scar the warp. We need to be at the foot of Magnus’s throne, in the dust of that world. Then, and only then, can we do this, only then will it work.+
+I know the alignments required.+
Ahriman nodded.
+I have never thanked you, Ignis,+ he said, and let a tired smile rise across his face. +For joining me in this, for all that you have done.+
+Flattery.+
+No. Sincerity.+
Ignis shook his head.
+I came to you when you needed someone who could progress your designs. I know the value of an outsider, someone whom no one else either likes or trusts. That value is high for one such as you.+
Ignis’s aura and thoughts had not shifted as he spoke. It was not a challenge, just a blunt statement of what he saw as fact.
This undertaking is not a quest for him, thought Ahriman. It is a problem. That is what holds him to me, not the goal, but the challenge and beauty of its… shape. At least that is what most of him believes.
+I know you do not share the dream, Ignis, but that does not stop you being a part of it.+
The Master of Ruin nodded, and the tattoos on his face became still.
+Just as Sanakht is now a part of it.+
Ahriman’s skin prickled, and he thought of the swordsman, so loyal for so long. Madness and bitterness had curdled that loyalty to betrayal. Ahriman had punished him by making him the living vessel for the Athenaeum of Kalimakus. In his mind he saw the fire of the Athenaeum flare as he thrust Sanakht into its embrace. Now he sat in the Chamber of Cages and spoke the secret thoughts of Magnus the Red. Only Ignis knew that Sanakht had not given himself to that fate willingly.
+Yes, he has played his part. He is gone, but mortality is not a span of time, it is a wave passing through the ocean of existence, and that does not end when our lives end.+
+Poetic,+ sent Ignis. +I never liked poetry.+
Ahriman moved, towards a door out of the chamber and his next task.
+We have a problem,+ sent Ignis, before Ahriman could take more than two steps.
+Yes?+ he said, and turned. The tiredness in his blood and bones felt suddenly fresh and insistent.
+With the Athenaeum,+ sent Ignis, and the lines across his face twitched. +And Ctesias.+ Ahriman waited. +He is suspicious,+ Ignis continued. +He seems to have become fixated on the Athenaeum. He spends all of the hours he is not muttering to the neverborn in the Chamber of Cages.+
+It was always a risk.+
Ignis raised an eyebrow.
+If he realises that Sanakht did not go willingly to the fire?+
+None of the others can know what was done,+ sent Ahriman, and began to walk to the door. He could still taste silver. That was not good.
+That is the second answer you have avoided giving me,+ called Ignis.
+The second?+ replied Ahriman without stopping.
+You intend to cast the Rubric for a second time. How can you be sure it will work?+
Ahriman paused, swallowing the taste of metal.
+It will work,+ he sent at last, and started walking again. +I am certain.+
