Magnus the Red: Master of Prospero Read online

  Athanaean.

  The name felt new to him, yet spoke of ancient learnings, of a time when wizened academics pored over many quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore. Atharva was well aware of the mystical significance of names, and this one held a power all its own. The cult's teachings - and those of the Corvidae, the Pavoni and the rest - granted him power he had never dreamed possible. They had allowed him to achieve things all but unknown in the days before Prospero.

  Before the Legion's rebirth.

  He eased the barriers within his mind, allowing the Great Ocean to seep into his flesh. It flowed into his body like water pouring along a complex series of aqueducts, directed and shaped by the mental thought-forms of the third Enumeration.

  He thrilled to the sense of the unknown becoming known, of the unseen and unwritten possibilities now being revealed. A tantalising image formed in his mind, a fleeting glimpse of a dreaming city at the top of the world, its spires molten as the world burned around it.

  Was this Zharrukin's doom?

  'What are you doing?' asked a muffled voice behind him, and the moment was gone. The flames fell away from his sight and he quelled the build-up of power within him, sighing as the mundane reality of the world reasserted itself.

  'Thinking,' he said, opening the fingers of his gauntlet and letting the winds howling through the city blow the dust away.

  Atharva wiped the last of it from his palm and turned as he rose to his full height in the centre of the windswept thoroughfare. The crimson of his bulky war-plate reflected the tortured light of the sky, making it shimmer as if with a veneer of oil.

  An elegantly proportioned woman with charcoal-black skin stood before him, tightly wrapped in a brightly coloured robe of interlocking geometric patterns. He'd assumed her attire was ceremonial when they'd first met, but he had since learned it was culturally significant, indicating scholarly status within the peoples of the equatorial regions.

  Behind her, a Legion Stormbird and two Cervantes-class transporters sat sheltered from the oncoming storm in the lee of a debris cliff. Their engines thrummed with noise and power, spooling up in readiness for launch.

  'Conservator Ashkali,' he said. 'What can I do for you?'

  'Niko,' she said. 'I think we've explored these old ruins long enough to dispense with formalities, don't you?'

  'As you say,' he replied, both of them knowing he would never refer to her by her first name Niko Ashkali was Morningstar's senior conservator: a Terran by birth, but a native at heart. She led the excavations in and around the ruins of Zharrukin, and she had proven to be a thorough and perceptive academic. Her steel-grey hair was bound up in a patterned headscarf and the glare goggles of a rebreather obscured her features.

  She pulled up her goggles, revealing startlingly green eyes set in deeply lined sockets. She shielded her gaze from the billowing dust and pointed to the sky.

  'We have to evacuate the dig site,' she said, her voice muted by the dust-filter covering her mouth. 'Meterologicus says the magna-storm is at least an hour out, which probably means it'll hit us in ten minutes.'

  Atharva lifted his gaze to the mountains in the east. The flaring detonations of a colossal magnetic storm marched over their summits. It was impossible to tell which way the planet's unpredictable weather systems would hurl them.

  'The storm front is moving down to sweep across the plains,' he said. 'It will likely pass Zharrukin.'

  'Or it could just as easily change course,' replied Ashkali. 'If it hits us, it's going to tear through this place in a blizzard of rogue magnetics and lightning. Anyone still here is going to die.'

  Atharva was loath to leave Zharrukin, but to stay would be to risk the lives of the conservator's staff of archaeotechs and all they had unearthed thus far.

  'You are correct,' he said. 'Prepare for departure.'

  'What of your master? Is he still out there?'

  Atharva hesitated before answering.

  'He is. Get your people back to their ships.'

  Ashkali hesitated before nodding and speaking into her rebreather's integral vox to issue the recall order. Atharva turned and walked back to the Stormbird and did the same, though he sent the order to his warriors via telepathic pulse. Within forty-five seconds, legionaries in crimson war-plate emerged from various areas of the ruins. Each was trailed by a bulk-servitor hauling the fruits of their excavations.

  They boarded the Stormbird without a word, securing their findings in the hold before strapping themselves into the contoured benches along the gunship's inner hull.

  Ashkali's people took longer to return, hurrying back to their waiting transports with barely disguised panic. The storm was getting worse, the sky flickering with radioactive sunspots and boiling atmospheric superstorms.

  In the face of the worsening conditions, the conservator directed the evacuation with clipped efficiency, ensuring everything they had discovered was inventoried on her bronzed data-slate.

  Phosis T'kar was the last to board, and the lieutenant paused as he reached Atharva. Dust caked the grooves of his armour and his aura was bellicose, his mind that of a scholar who attacks a work with brute-force reasoning. His methodology wasn't pretty, but it got results.

  'Where is he?' he asked.

  'He is not here,' replied Atharva, watching the storm descend on the far reaches of Zharrukin.

  'That's not what I asked.'

  'I know.'

  'He should be here.'

  'Yes, indeed he should.'

  'Then where is he?'

  Atharva did not answer, lifting his gaze to the mountains as the storm struck the earth beyond the edge of the city. Raging plumes of lightning-shot dust and debris were hurled hundreds of metres into the air, arcing over the city. A mushroom cloud of fire erupted from its shattered outskirts. Another swiftly followed, rubble lifted high by twisting currents of air and torsioning magnetics. A harsh, metallic-tasting wind blew hard from the mountains, making the mechanics of his war-plate hum in protest.

  'We should be in the air,' said Phosis T'kar.

  'He will be here. And if he is not, this storm will not trouble him.'

  'You can't know that. What do any of us really know about him? What he can do or what he can endure? We barely know him.'

  Atharva did not answer. That Phosis T'kar was right made him only more reluctant to admit to his ignorance. The Stormbird vibrated with potential, the pilot keeping it on the ground with a light touch, ready to lift off in an instant.

  'Give the order,' said Phosis T'kar.

  'Not yet.'

  The tallest spires of Zharrukin swayed and groaned, the reinforcement within the stone tearing as alternating fields of powerful magnetics twisted them. Stone and steel peeled from buildings and spun away into the storm as searing winds buffeted the gunship. Dust raged within the Stormbird's troop compartment, swirling in vortices of geomantic significance.

  The vox-bead in his helmet chirruped: an incoming message from Mistress Ashkali.

  'Master Atharva! We must take off. Right now!'

  He nodded and said, 'Go. Get out of here. We will be right behind you.'

  'See that you are!'

  The two Cervantes-class transports lifted into the air on plumes of jetfire, swaying and lurching wildly, as if the storm winds actively sought to prevent their escape. The first craft took off in the lee of a shattered structure that sheltered it from the worst of the winds. The pilot feathered the engines and Atharva lost sight of it as rusted-ochre clouds closed in.

  The second craft was not so lucky.

  It twisted as a magnetic squall pulled its starboard wing down and buckled the metal of its hull. Ultra-rapid polarity shifts swung it around like a leaf in a hurricane. It flipped over onto its side, hurtling towards the ground and certain destruction.

  Atharva slammed his mind into the second Enumeration.

  Raw kine energy flowed through him.

  He gripped the faltering transport with his power.

  +
Help me!+ he cried, the words blurted in a psychic shout. Phosis T'kar was at his side an instant later, hands extended as he too unleashed his power. Atharva's lieutenant was a practitioner of the kinetic arts, and his sigil of the Raptora cult glittered in the flickering lightning.

  Together they halted the transport's tumbling fall.

  Atharva and Phosis T'kar rolled their wrists in perfect concert, moulding the kine power to their will. The transport mimicked their movements, rotating like a designer's schematic being haptically manipulated. Its engines flared as the pilot fed every scrap of power to them.

  +Release!+ said Atharva.

  He and Phosis T'kar relinquished their hold on the transport.

  It shot skywards like a stone from a sling.

  Bone-deep repercussive pain surged through Atharva's flesh, pain he would endure tenfold later. He let out a charged breath and stepped from the Stormbird's ramp. He read Phosis T'kar's confusion. 'What are you doing?' asked his lieutenant. 'Get back on board.' 'Return to Calaena immediately,' replied Atharva through bloodied teeth. 'Assist the Fourth Legion elements in the evacuation. I will rejoin you when I can.'

  Phosis T'kar shook his head and pressed his palm against the closing mechanism. 'I'm closing up, but we aren't leaving without you and the primarch.'

  Atharva saw the determination in Phosis T'kar's aura and knew that any argument he might make against this course of action would be futile.

  'Then I will attempt to be quick,' he said.

  Hurricanes of abrasive dust flensed the paint from his armour in silver streaks as he turned towards the city where his master awaited. If he is still alive.

  Could any being survive conditions so inimical to life?

  The clouds parted and a towering figure wreathed in multi-coloured fire emerged from the storm in answer.

  He was a giant in crimson and gold, a warrior and scholar in one. His golden war-plate had been crafted by the finest armourers of Terra, a masterpiece of curling horns, sculpted muscles, carved lions and the finest scriptwork. A kilt of leather hung to his knees, and a hook-bladed sword crafted from Prosperine silksteel was belted at his waist next to a colossal tome of psychic lore.

  +My lord,+ said Atharva, using his psychic voice.

  Magnus the Red was wrought from wrath and wonder, his face a protean blend of features that Atharva had never been able to entirely fix in his mind. A disconcerting attribute in a leader, one that would take some getting used to.

  Atharva wasn't sure he was there yet.

  The psychic fire of the primarch's magnificent aura kept the storm's fury at bay. Magnus might have been strolling through Tizca's sculpture gardens, for all the tempest affected him. A trio of servitors followed him, each hauling a high-sided grav-sled. +Cutting it a bit close, are you not?+ said Atharva.

  The primarch looked up, as if he hadn't noticed the storm at all. +I had not completed my work,+ replied Magnus.

  * * *

  Zharrukin fought to keep the Stormbird from escaping.

  Magnetic vortices shredded its belly and spiteful winds hammered the fuselage with flying debris. The gunship's engines burned blue-hot and its superstructure shrieked as if it were being torn apart.

  Atharva felt the ground fall away with a sickening lurch. His head slammed against a stanchion as the storm sought to crush them. The pilot fought with all his skill, but against some foes, there could be no victory.

  Blitzing winds howled into the Stormbird as a portion of the fuselage peeled away like foil. Sparks and explosions cascaded down the length of the gunship as rogue electromagnetic bursts fried circuitry and the control mechanisms worked into its structure. +We're losing power to the engines!+

  Shredded metal ripped from the side of the gunship as its nose dropped back to the ground. Phosis T'kar threw a kine shield over the breach and the noise of the wind fell away. The Stormbird heeled over, spun on its central axis, and Atharva watched the splintering ruins of Zharrukin racing up to meet them. Magnetic squalls ripped ancient buildings from their foundations and hurled them against one another like a child smashing toy bricks together. Then, an instant from impact, the gunship levelled out.

  The same kaleidoscopic fire that wreathed Magnus as he walked from the ruins burned beyond the breach.

  Atharva tore his gaze from the storm's inferno below to where Magnus stood at the prow of the gunship, one hand on his great book of lore. His aura blazed with a brilliant light, too radiant to look upon directly. It filled the interior of the gunship, a power of such magnitude that it made his own seem paltry.

  That their new leader was a master of the psychic arts had been obvious the moment Atharva had set eyes upon him.

  But this was exceptional.

  'Take us home, pilot,' said Magnus.

  * * *

  The Stormbird swiftly caught up to the lumbering Cervantes transports, and the pilot eased back on its thrust. Atharva sensed the gunship's unwillingness to slow, its hunter's name and hunter's heart reluctant to linger with such ungainly flyers.

  The fire beyond the breached fuselage faded as the gunship flew beyond the storm's reach, but Phosis T'kar maintained the kine shield all the way to the planetary capital of Calaena.

  The gunship circled the city, awaiting clearance to enter its dangerously overcrowded airspace. While Magnus spoke to the pilot, Atharva studied the city below as a man might study an overcrowded ant-farm.

  Calaena was a thriving trade hub built at the termination of the arrow-straight river valley that had its origins beyond Zharrukin. Here, the valley widened to form a vast bowl enclosed by high cliffs on three sides and by a bottle-green ocean on the fourth. Calaena's buildings were older than any other Atharva had seen in his travels from Terra: glorious, domed basilicas, rotating towers of phototropic glass, grand libraries and bustling commercial districts that welcomed vessels from off-world and ocean-going haulers from all across Morningstar.

  A convoluted web of transit routes, maglevs and curling arterials converged on Calaena from every direction, all monstrously overburdened by incoming traffic. Roadcars were nose to tail and thousands of the planet's inhabitants walked alongside the choked highways, refugees bearing all they owned in the hopes of securing swift passage off-world.

  The city itself was normally home to around seventy thousand souls, but with the planetary evacuation in full flow, its population had reached three quarters of a million and was growing larger every day.

  The skies of Calaena resembled an insect hive responding to an attack. Swarms of aircraft circled the outskirts of the city, a thousand more rising on intricately plotted flight paths from Vashti Eshkol's control tower on the edge of its offshore starport.

  Every ship capable of trans-orbital flight had been pressed into service ferrying Morningstar's population ships anchored in low orbit. Agri-barques now carried people instead of vats of protein gruel and gene-crops, while the stalls of livestock haulers were packed with men and women being taken to life rather than the slaughterman's maul.

  Accidents were far from uncommon, with desperate pilots racing into the sky in defiance of Vashti's orders. Most times they were quickly redirected with electromagnetic tethers or - in the case of one unsanctioned launch - shot down over the ocean by the starport's defence turrets to prevent a lethal cascade effect of collisions and crashes.

  At the centre of the starport was the Lux Ferem, a titanic mass-conveyor from a bygone age of space exploration, when it was expected that these star-faring leviathans would land and become part of a newly colonised planet's infrastructure. Lost arts of technology had powered supremely powerful repulsor generators worked into its thousand-metre hull, allowing a vessel that ought not to have been able to survive atmospheric breach to land and return to the stars.

  Its vast bulk vented heat as provosts and legionaries directed frightened civilians onto its embarkation ramps: sixty thousand already, and fifty thousand more yet to board.

  Newly constructed towers on the cliffs that enclo
sed the city were minimising the impact of rogue magnetics in the local area, but not even the technical genius of their construction could keep the area entirely stable. Each was a glaring eyesore, thought Atharva, a boxy, riveted thing of bare girders and yellow-and-black hazard stripes.

  The architects of these towers had made planetfall barely a month after the arrival of the Thousand Sons, but they had already made an indelible mark on Morningstar. The entirety of the westernmost cliff had been sculpted into a basalt-black citadel known as the Sharei Maveth, its full height reshaped into an impregnable bulwark, the rock within blasted, cut and burned into defensive galleries, wide parapets, firing steps and macro-cannon emplacements.

  It was towards this grim stronghold that the Stormbird angled its prow as its final approval to approach was granted - a narrow flight path threading the absurdly overcrowded skies. To deviate from the prescribed manoeuvres even a fraction would almost certainly result in a mid-air collision.

  Atharva craned his neck to study the Sharei Maveth as the gunship dropped down through the morass of aircraft. Its construction was mathematically precise and yet was not without a proud, martial beauty. Its towers were finished with decorative finials, its gun ports worked with functionless embellishments and its gates carved with frescoes that spoke of an artist's mind shackled by practicality.

  'My brother does so like to make a statement,' said Magnus, returning to the crew compartment.

  Atharva found the notion that his gene-sire had a single brother, let alone that he was now one of twelve, hard to comprehend. That an individual so singular counted so many others like him seemed absurd, as though a pantheon of demigods had chosen to abandon their divine abode and play a part in the affairs of mortals.

  Atharva had seen none of his father's brothers, but he had heard tell of their deeds. The legends of the primarchs were already spreading throughout the crusading fleets: tales of impossible odds overcome and heroic achievements that Atharva might have dismissed as garishly hyperbolic.

  But having seen his own primarch in action, he knew better.

  'He did all this in a single day?' asked Atharva.