The Crimson King Page 11

  Well, not every warband.

  Ninety-three Legion warriors fell back beneath the archway of the Pyramid of Photep. Ahzek Ahriman’s pitiful little cabal led them, fighting to reach Amon and the Scarab Occult. Others joined with Ahriman – Memunim’s and Kiu’s Raptora squads as well as that of young Nycteus.

  ‘Ah, so this is how it begins,’ mused Ignis.

  Conjoined abominations of wolves and legionaries surrounded them. Flame-shot smoke geysered from the dust, daemons of dust given form by Tizca’s endless nightmare. They howled with incinerating breath, Space Wolves in armour of ash bearing axes of fused obsidian.

  ‘Now you wear your true faces,’ sneered Ahriman, his staff weaving deadly patterns of evocatus. Vivid after-images scorched the air as he struck each monster down. The daemons aped the warriors of Fenris, but did not fight with anything approaching their cunning.

  Sanakht gave battle at Ahriman’s side, his swords cleaving ashen armour with every blow. Tolbek laughed as he fought, revelling in his heightened powers. Ash and dust these creatures might be, but Pyrae fire seared even ash to vapour. Menkaura and Hathor Maat fought back to back. An unlikely pairing, but effective.

  Spars of light and shadow swayed across the shattered ruins within the Pyramid of Photep, dunes of rubble and steel, lakes of broken glass and scraps of burning pages spinning in vortices of flame. Scattered bands of Thousand Sons legionaries fought beneath the pyramid’s rusted spars in diminishing mandalas. Ahriman saw the warriors of Memunim and silent Kiu, Nycteus and Ignis.

  Too few…

  ‘We should not have entered the pyramid,’ said Sanakht, his jackal sword aflame with killing light. ‘We are cut off from the Thunderhawk.’

  Ahriman swayed aside from a tearing strike that sparked from his pauldron. A fist of kine power shattered the crude wolf’s head and the daemonic animus shrieked as it died. In the flames of its doom Ahriman tasted insight.

  ‘The gunship is not our way out,’ he said.

  ‘No? Then what is?’ demanded Hathor Maat, burn scars on his face already healing.

  ‘They are,’ said Ahriman.

  Aether fire blazed from the bladed polearms of the Scarab Occult Terminators. With Amon at their head, they fought in a wedge towards a mound of heaped rubble directly beneath the great pyramid’s apex.

  The primarch’s equerry bore his bladed staff in one hand, a fluted plasma pistol in the other. His every movement was balletic, every killing strike made in the sure and certain knowledge of its lethality.

  ‘Your seersight is not so blunted,’ whispered Ahriman.

  ‘What are they doing?’ said Hathor Maat, as the Terminators formed a defensive circle around Amon, like pagan warriors in a tribal shield-wall.

  ‘No,’ whispered Ahriman. ‘Do not make us live this again.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ demanded Tolbek. ‘Live what again?’

  Before Ahriman could answer, a deafening roar split the air. Its power shook the upper reaches of the gutted pyramid, and the daemonic Space Wolves paused in their assault. As one they threw back their heads to loose an answering howl.

  The arched entrance to the Pyramid of Photep exploded as a towering monster smashed its way inside. Taller than a Knight warrior of the Mechanicum, its body smoked as though fresh struck in a forge. Armour once frost-grey was now black as pitch and hung with skulls, lit from within by a molten heart.

  A titanic Wolf King and murderous executioner.

  Tizca’s ghosts remembered Leman Russ all too well.

  Though he and Magnus had planned for this, Amon’s heart sank at the sight of the daemonic Wolf King. Standing atop the rubble at the geomantic heart of the pyramid, his flesh sang with the effort of reciting the dizzying formulae of invocatus Magnus had shown him.

  Baying daemons of dust surrounded the beleaguered Thousand Sons, borrowing likenesses they did not comprehend. Amon hated them almost as much as the warriors whose form they stole. They hurled themselves at the Scarab Occult, but the mandala was unbreakable – a ring of blades and aether fire.

  Amon was not surprised to see Ahriman and his cabal fighting within the pyramid. The fate of the wayward Chief Librarian had always been entwined with that of the primarch.

  The ashen Wolf King charged through the Thousand Sons, its blade of cinders and night sweeping before it in flaming arcs, the immaterium made solid. Battleplate was useless before it and no kine shield could resist its power.

  Thousand Sons were smashed aside like children, no match for the daemon’s monstrous form. It howled as it slew, aether powers dissipating against its blazing flanks. With every step it took, its smouldering face grew ever more bestial, losing all semblance of humanity.

  ‘Rally to me, sons of Magnus!’ shouted Amon, feeling the last locks of the invocatus snap open. Power flowed through his veins in a river of dark elixir, burning like phosphex yet colder than liqnite.

  Amon slammed his heqa staff down on the altar of debris.

  The ground exploded beneath him, and incandescent spears of light pierced his body. Amon screamed as unimaginable power filled him, the power of fire and pain.

  And at its heart were eyes, the primarch’s endless eyes.

  He could not move; the light pinned him in place. He heard Magnus in his head, asking the question he had posed at their first meeting in the Rose City of the Nabataeans.

  ‘Will you die for me, my friend?’

  Amon gave the same answer he had given all those years ago.

  ‘Willingly.’

  For one last fleeting moment he was simply Amon. A warrior, a faithful son.

  The next he was a vessel of the Crimson King.

  Ahriman saw Amon burning in the fire of the Great Ocean, swelling, growing and bloating as unimaginable power filled him. The equerry’s form was lost as another, mightier form was birthed like a new star.

  It exploded into the air, angelic and terrible.

  Deepest gold and vivid red, its beautiful face bore a single eye and a shock of wild hair.

  ‘Magnus…’ breathed Ahriman.

  This was the primarch at his zenith, the Crimson King in all his glory. From a time when all the Imperium had venerated his exalted name and deeds.

  An exemplar to humans and transhumans alike.

  Light blazed from Magnus, and where it struck the daemon wolves, it burned them like images scorched from picter emulsion. From dust they had come, and to dust they returned, howling in frustration and pain.

  The burning effigy of Leman Russ saw its once and future nemesis, and the pyramid shook with its primal fury. Ahriman’s body burned with remembrance of this battle, grief and guilt stabbing with blades sharper than any forged by Vulkan’s sons. He felt the ice of the black rain, the horror of the wolves-that-were-not-wolves unleashed by Russ.

  The avatars of Magnus and Russ threw themselves at one another – one a being of polluted ash and dust, the other an angel of illumination.

  The seismic impact hurled every warrior to the ground and sent a thunderous shock wave through the ruined pyramid. Vast girders moaned as its structural lattice buckled all along its height. Metres-thick bolts and welded supports broke loose to fall in a lethal steel rain.

  Ahriman rolled as a girder punched through the ground like a spear thrown by an angry god. He threw out a kine shield. Thunderous impacts flared. Falling steelwork ricocheted to either side. Repercussive agonies numbed his arm and sent arcing pain through his skull.

  He looked up to see the pyramid’s structure sway and bend, unbreakable beams snapping like kindling. Its collapse was now a certainty.

  We have to get out of here,+ cried Sanakht, his mind shouting the words as he channelled kine power through his blades to deflect falling debris.

  No,+ returned Ahriman over the deafening roar of splitting steel and the violence of the battling primarchs.r />
  The whole damn place is coming down!+ yelled Tolbek, the air above him hazed with plasmic heat that turned every piece of falling steel instantly to vapour.

  This is why we are here,+ said Ahriman, hating that this was the real reason the Thousand Sons had been summoned to Tizca. Not to hear Amon’s grim pronouncement, but to bear witness to their greatest shame. To learn how to make their sire whole again.

  The sword of Leman Russ clove Magnus’ side and star-bright radiance blazed from the wound. In return, Magnus plunged his fist into Russ’ chest. Volcanic heat bloomed and the Wolf King’s bellow was one of abject torment.

  They flew upwards, tens of metres, then hundreds.

  Like beasts they tore at one another, entwined in swirling loops of burning dust and radiant veils of light. It became impossible to separate the combatants, individual forms lost in the hurricane of light and dark. Booming impacts and forking blasts of lightning sheared from the seething battle.

  Ahriman pushed himself to his feet, aether power pulsing from his fingers. He resisted the urge to wield it, sensing how immeasurably dangerous that would be.

  ‘All of you!’ he shouted. ‘The first enumeration only!’

  Hathor Maat staggered over to him, the side of his face puckered and bleeding with fresh burn scars. Pink skin was already reforming over the wet redness.

  ‘No,’ said Ahriman. ‘No powers. Not now.’

  ‘You want me to scar?’

  ‘I need you to live,’ snapped Ahriman, his eyes focused on the battle raging half a kilometre overhead. ‘The psychic pressure in here is immense, like fumes from a promethium well just waiting on a spark. Do you really want to be that spark?’

  ‘Ahzek is correct,’ said Ignis, marching through the dust without so much as a scratch on the hulking plates of his Terminator armour. ‘Every signifier tells me it would be most unwise to employ raptures at this time.’

  Ahriman looked beyond the psychic hurricane as the avatars of the primarchs fought to the death. Critical elements of the pyramid’s steelwork were being drawn into their battle, twisting an already weakened structure to the point of imminent collapse.

  ‘Ignis,’ said Ahriman. ‘What do you know?’

  ‘Only that we cannot leave when the potentials within the numerological auspices are so uncertain,’ said the Master of Ruin. ‘The question is, what do you know?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘Truly? You don’t feel it?’ said Ignis, genuinely surprised.

  ‘Feel what?’ demanded Ahriman. ‘I have no time for your riddles, Ignis.’

  ‘True, as the pyramid is going to collapse in precisely seventy-three point six seconds. But that is largely irrelevant,’ said Ignis, pointing to Ahriman’s belt with the barrel of his combi-bolter. ‘I was referring to your recent acquisition.’

  Ahriman looked down in disbelief.

  Chained at his waist and sealed with golden locks was a tome heavy with lore and mighty with secret knowledge. Its cover was burgundy with a subtle crimson hue, the spine edged in worn copper and flaked gold.

  ‘The Book of Magnus,’ said Ahriman, pressing a hand to the soft leather of its bindings. He had last seen this volume when Magnus ordered he return it to the Obsidian Tower. Just being close to it imbued him with clarity of insight he had forgotten was possible.

  The surviving Thousand Sons, bloody after the battle with the aether-wolves, gathered around him, line warriors and Scarab Occult both. With Amon gone, and Ahriman in possession of the primarch’s grimoire, they looked to him for guidance.

  ‘I know now why we are here,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ asked Hathor Maat.

  Ahriman looked up as the base of the pyramid flooded with light. ‘Not to witness the death of Magnus, but what came after…’

  The primarchs were falling like warring angels with no more strength to remain aloft. The fire and dust was gone, stripped from them by god-smiting blows and revealing the terrible hurts they had suffered.

  Magnus bled light from a dozen mortal wounds, his radiance stained with the foreknowledge of his imminent demise. Yet the dark Russ fared little better, its substance split apart to reveal the sick core of daemonic energies boiling within.

  The primarchs crashed to earth where Amon had brought forth the Crimson King from his own flesh. The impact shook the entire pyramid and raised a mushroom cloud of dust and debris. Ahriman felt the shock wave of their war batter his mind’s defences. Blood ran from his nose and ears.

  The benighted Wolf King was the first to rise. All pretence at imitating Leman Russ was forsaken, for this was a broken thing of daemonic fury. It reached down and plucked Magnus from the ruins, blackened claws tearing the meat of Magnus’ neck as it raised him high.

  Ahriman knew what must come next and raised a warning hand as the warriors of the Scarab Occult set their blades for a charge. He felt the build up of aether power in every warrior.

  ‘No!’ he cried. ‘This is not a second chance to save him!’

  He threw his arms out and froze the link to the Great Ocean in every warrior. They fell to their knees, wailing in frustration at their new-found powerlessness. Ahriman roared as their aether-light filled him, and the Book of Magnus thrummed as it drank in the desperation of the Thousand Sons.

  Ahriman’s eyes blazed, his seersight slamming through him and opening every one of his senses to the infinite scope of time. Innumerable histories yet to be written poured through him in a rush of incomprehensible imagery: legacies of betrayal and hope, eternities of war and suffering, the birth of all things and the ultimate doom of the universe.

  The Russ thing hauled Magnus over its head. The Crimson King was helpless in its grip. The moment stretched, and as Ahriman looked deep into Magnus’ eye, he saw acceptance.

  Find me. Restore me.+

  Russ slammed Magnus down across his knee.

  When Ahriman had first seen Magnus die it had been a barely glimpsed horror, a pain that cut deep, but mercifully quickly.

  Not so this time.

  Magnus’ back bent further than even a primarch’s could survive. Ahriman saw rather than heard his father’s spine break, all natural elasticity suddenly absent as the two halves of his body folded in to one another.

  Though he knew this was not truly his gene-sire, he still screamed with grief and anger. The body of the Crimson King shattered like a priceless statue cast down by unthinking savages. Blinding light blazed from its ruination.

  The very heart of Magnus was revealed, a crystalline lattice of impossibly complex geometric arrangements – wheeling kaleidoscopes of unblinking eyes, churning wheels and spirals of power woven together so densely that they were all but indivisible.

  The moment became Magnus’ death and apotheosis in one.

  His soul was broken into spinning shards of glass. Ahriman heard the Wolf King’s thwarted howl as his quarry escaped, ignorantly unaware of just how mortal a blow he had struck.

  Ahriman’s mind followed the thousands of shards as they tumbled away from their centre of spiritual gravity. Following the alchymical truth of like attracts like, the vast majority remained bound to the will of the Crimson King and were reforged atop the Obsidian Tower.

  But five hurtled far from their wellspring.

  Ahriman watched them spin away from Magnus’ broken form, carried beyond Prospero by dark design. He followed the shards until they vanished into the surging tides of the Great Ocean, imprinting the fleeting impressions they left in his mind.

  The forgotten library of a wandering king, its shelves groaning under the weight of ten thousand tomes inscribed in the Phoinikōn grammata.

  An inhuman gaol, aether-hostile and cold. A place unknown to him, but awash with pain and guilt. And a singular hatred.

  A god amongst mountains, hungry for souls and once guarded by titanic angels.
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  A place of judgement and betrayal.

  And lastly, a shining world at the heart of everything, once golden with great purpose, now fading as its dream died.

  Even as Ahriman lost sight of the five shards, he sensed purpose in their scattering: deep resonances to be unravelled and meanings to divine.

  I will find you,+ he swore. +And I will restore you.+

  No sooner had Ahriman made his vow than the stretched moment of Magnus’ breaking ended. Sound and pressure roared over him as cascading steelwork and glass crashed down like artillery strikes. He blinked away the images of frozen soul-shards spinning through space and time.

  A voice shouted in his mind.

  Ahzek! You need to go now!+

  Who was speaking? His mind was sluggish, denied the swiftness of thought afforded within the Great Ocean.

  Ignis?+

  Indeed,+ said the Master of Ruin. +By my reckoning, you have thirty-six seconds before you are buried under many thousands of tonnes of steel.+

  Where are you?+

  Already outside,+ replied Ignis. +Where you must be in twenty-seven seconds if you plan on living.+

  Ahriman nodded, still adjusting to the realignment of his senses. Both Russ and Magnus were gone, but the fury of their battle had destroyed what little structural integrity remained in the Pyramid of Photep.

  The warriors who had followed him into the pyramid were already moving to safety. Menkaura led them, using his limited seersight to plot a course through the tumbling debris. Sanakht carried a wounded warrior, and Ahriman was never more thankful the swordsman had sworn an oath of loyalty to him.

  Ignis was already beyond, and Memunim, Kiu and Nycteus forged a route from the pyramid, faltering kine shields keeping the worst of the barrage at bay.

  Only the Scarab Occult remained at Ahriman’s side and it took Ahriman a moment to understand why.

  ‘Amon,’ he said, seeing the broken body of the primarch’s equerry lying atop the heaped rubble at the pyramid’s centre.