Luther: First of the Fallen, page 10
‘If it is in my power, it shall be so,’ I swore, and meant every word of it.
And that was the last time I saw Erebus of the Word Bearers.
It was more than forty years before my path crossed that of Calas. Four decades during which I expected the return of the Lion, but he never came. Half the lifetime of a normal mortal spent in banishment on my own world, and the canker of my punishment gnawed at me every day.
A lot happened, far too much to tell all of it here. Each day widened the division between me and my gain-brother. My own plans evolved and yet never came to fruition. I had thought perhaps the conspiracy of Erebus and the others had been unmasked, their treachery expunged from the Legions.
Thirty years after Zaramund, I learned that Horus had turned on the Emperor. That was when I knew that Erebus and the powers he served had not been idle for so long.
I also had spent my time deepening my knowledge and power, but I had held back from the final commitment, never quite certain if my transgression would be uncovered. I also confess a certain reluctance to step so far over the line. Among the books that had been gifted me by the Chaplain were two that delved into the nature of the warp and its relationship to our world. Framed by his annotated text and with the aid of the Lupus volumes, I pieced together certain sorcerous rituals.
Not until I heard of Horus’ fall and the massacre at Isstvan did I conclude that the time had come to solidify my new allegiance. I felt certain that the forces of the Warmaster would come to Caliban within weeks, months perhaps, and wanted to be ready not only with troops but also something deeper. I shared this with no other, not even Zahariel or Astelan, for I was not sure they would continue in their support for me if they understood that I was engaging more archaic powers to our aid.
As seems necessary, it was midnight on the longest night of Caliban when I began the ritual. I had assembled the accoutrements required, piece by piece so as not to arouse suspicion. Some I had crafted for myself. Aldurukh had grown greatly following the rise of the Lion and myself, and greater still following compliance, but was now a half-empty shell of its former glories. Whole wings and towers had been abandoned, stables and mews boarded up. The oldest chambers, those that had been carved from the mountain bedrock at the heart of the Angelicasta, had been the first to fall into disuse. Crafthouses that had not heard the ring of hammer for two generations gave me the perfect venue for my endeavours, where the armourers, silversmiths and candlemakers had once laboured.
I had not yet fashioned my secure library, but I moved my quarters to a suite more spacious and extensive so that I could use one of the chambers for keeping my growing collection. It also happened that this older tower gave passage by secret means to my crucibles and smithy.
I set all out in accordance with the diagrams I had painstakingly drawn into the margins and binding leaves of my books, for I dared not commit my thoughts to paper that might somehow be parted from me. With fingers stained by red ink as I prepared the summoning, I used salt and calf fat to draw out the octagon and the symbols around its circumference, anointing each cardinal point with a droplet of my own life fluid.
As I did so, I spoke the words assembled stanza by stanza from across five different volumes. Here the Lupus books had been most useful, for one had contained a translator of sorts, a lexicon of intonation that matched many of the archaic terms with ancient Calibanite pronunciations. As a student of lore I had already learned the older tongue, but had not realised it shared many similarities to the language of sorcery.
Candles I lit and placed in lead sticks, the wax bound in nets I had intricately woven myself from hairlike threads of silver. Other preparations were more mundane but no less secure – the locking of the doors and the heavy drapes across the windows.
I did not know what to expect. My mind drifted back to tales from the Wandered – dispossessed knights and adventurers, vagabonds that moved from settlement to settlement offering a sword arm or tongue, whichever provided best payment. Witches and quest beasts in caves, and brave knights that rode out to them. But also stories of the nephilla, and the wicked conjurers that called them to curse the heroes of the tales.
The greatest of the storytellers would throw spark powder into the firepit and dazzle us with the flashes of colour while the sorcerers chanted their vile spells.
It did not occur to me that I had become the evil wizard, or was aspiring to. I was still the lord slighted by a rival from a foreign power, struggling for freedom against an overbearing king. Usurped, such protagonists are invariably sent into the wilderness, either to die by beast or elements, or by the hand of the king’s henchmen. In either style, the heroine or hero escapes their execution and returns with allies to overthrow the usurpers.
Caught between the fever of excitement and the sickness of apprehension, I began.
I had hardened myself to the very high probability of failure. Until my encounter with Calas and Erebus, a small part of me had harboured the suspicion that the works from the Lupus library were pure fabrication. They certainly contained erudite passages, but the drawings of vast crumbling manses and ravening dog-lizards had at times seemed more the product of a febrile imagination than scholarly pursuit. At my lowest moments, my confidence drained by the interminable nature of my exile, I sometimes toyed with the idea of hurling those books into the furnace, condemning them to the flames as fanciful tales of fiction.
I had not succumbed, but the probability of tapping into the nephillic powers on my first attempt, through means jury-rigged together from disparate sources, seemed remote. I placed the bar of success low, hoping to receive some sign, just a flicker or ambience that showed the slightest thinning of the veil between our realm and the world of the nephilla.
So I chanted and paced, walking the circuit as I scattered bone ash as offering into the octogram, one eye on the conjuration I had written, the other searching the symbols, the candles, the air itself for the smallest notion of the otherworldly.
With a crack like lightning the ashes took fire, the scattered flakes lighting again as though returning to the flame that had consumed them. They whirled in a wind I could not feel outside of the octogrammatic wards, spinning faster and faster until they formed a shape. A humanoid shape, the tip of the head about level with my waist. Two embers became the spark of eyes.
It had worked!
In my shock and joy, I stopped the incantation, thinking it complete. I had, after all, summoned a nephilla into the octogram. By any measure, even if it dissipated immediately, it was an unalloyed victory.
What I had not realised was that the last stanzas of my verse were the binding spell. Having brought forth the creature, my lapse into silence meant that I failed to contain it to my will…
This thing of fire stood for some time in the daubed symbols, glaring at me with furrowed flame for a brow. Then it smiled and reached out a fire-tipped finger, as though prodding at the air. It advanced a step, finger still extended. I watched, fascinated by this display, until its hand reached the outer limit of the octogram.
I expected a hum, or sparks, or some kind of glowing aura to manifest.
Instead, the nephilla took another step, the boards of the floor smoking beneath its fiery tread where within the confines of the summoning zone they had not.
I realised then my oversight, and panic gripped me.
The words spilled from my lips for I had practised them much and, though I had kept the paper handy for reading, knew them by rote.
‘Too late,’ the creature said with a voice like the crackle of a pyre. ‘You cannot contain that which is already free. You might as well chain moonlight, foolish mortal.’
I admit that I started to spout nonsense, condemning the nephilla back to the dark glade, calling upon such spirits of Caliban that I could remember to protect me. All of it was to no effect as the apparition walked calmly across the chamber to stand before me.
It bowed.
I stared in disbelief, agog at this expression of subordination.
‘You have called and answer has been given,’ the creature said to me, dripping fire to the boards like sparks from a collapsing log in the grate. In the moment my mind went to a ludicrous place and I found myself thinking that it had been wise to remove the rug, or we would have both been engulfed in the inferno.
The words of the nephilla finally sunk in and I recalled the conversation three decades earlier.
‘Know thee of Erebus?’ I said, amazed that the words of the summoned thing were so alike to those of the Word Bearer.
‘Slow you have been in coming to us,’ it replied. I thought then that it had not answered the question but I was so astounded, and more than a little pleased at what I had accomplished, that the ramifications of what it said did not occur to me.
‘I wish to know of what passes beyond this world,’ I said, thinking of the nephillic plane and the spirits within. The creature took me literally though, as it would often do if given the chance by imprecise questioning.
‘The galaxy burns,’ it told me, grinning, a tongue of fire licking across needle teeth of blue steel. ‘The time of the Emperor draws to a close. The time of the Great Powers returns. All will be consumed and reborn in the fires of destiny.’
It withdrew, walking back into the circle to stand at the centre like a dutiful destrier on a show ground. I had a thousand questions both practical and philosophical, but before I could utter the first syllable of interrogation the apparition guttered and disappeared, becoming a cloud of ash motes that fell to a grey layer within the octogram.
I laughed. I laughed hard, from relief and joy. I had done it. I had harnessed a power equal to the Lion and the Emperor. Greater, if the claims of the nephilla were to be true.
My thoughts passed back to the Knights of Lupus and how they had tried to release the same potential but had lacked the wisdom to do so. They had shackled the Great Beasts to their will and allowed the spirits of Caliban to sketch their realm in their dreams, but they had never succeeded in crossing the veil. Had they done so, they would have been paramount on Caliban and not the Order.
My gaze settled on the book that Erebus had given me, and I considered the words of the apparition. It seemed as though both Word Bearer and nephilla had been awaiting my ritual, like an elder loitering close to the door when a favoured grandchild is due to visit, eager to welcome them inside.
It did not occur to me that the power had not been mine. I had opened a door that was held ajar from within. I thought myself grand for succeeding at my first attempt, when the reality was that I had achieved nothing except self-delusion.
So it is with nephilla and their masters, especially the Architect of Fate. The balance of power is never certain and lies are so easily cloaked in the lightest truth. From that first encounter to the last on the eve of Caliban’s death, I thought I was in control and forged a path for Caliban and the Order. In truth, I was waylaid long ago by a false map and led like a fool into the most treacherous depths, from which I never freed myself.
It is always the way when dealing with the powers of the warp. Your first steps always seem to be in the right direction, but you will never know at what point you started following their road, because after a time you forget there was a destination at all, and all that remains is the journey.
Zapherael looked unconvinced and Luther sighed.
‘The powers that seek to corral and corrupt us ask a simple question – what do you want?’ said the former Grand Master. ‘It may be complicated or simple, but we each have a desire within us that can be exploited. All of us. Even you.’
‘You are the arch-corrupter!’ Zapherael became very animated, flexing his fingers, spittle flying from his lips. ‘You would spin this web of deception to misdirect us. You try to tell me the wrong thing, but couched in your lies is the truth. I know you placed your deceit in the thoughts of Morderan, lies he was forced to extinguish before they consumed him. The powers we face are long in their plots, seeding disaster generations before their wicked fruits ripen. Even as they tore the traitors from us they left you to sow discord on their behalf.’
‘No!’ Luther shook his head and fought the urge to advance, not wishing to come within striking distance of the angered Space Marine. ‘The lure always changes, but the trap does not. The hardest road, the long road, is the only way to avoid their grip. Perhaps you have already travelled too far along the short path. Damnation or death, you must choose one or the other.’
‘It is you that damned us to this perdition. Only our purity in exorcising the taint within our souls can deliver us from that act. Only the repentance of those that soiled the legacy of the Lion can expunge the curse.’ A crazed gleam entered the eye of Zapherael, causing Luther to flinch. ‘Do you repent, Luther the Deceiver? Do you abandon your dark works and break from the corrupt masters you serve?’
Luther looked at the Space Marine and saw the derangement within him. It was the nature of their inculcation that they followed the Dark Angels creed above and beyond all other concerns. He had seen his interviewers hardening, becoming something different to what he had known to be a legionary. Inflexible.
That which could not bend would eventually break.
‘Repent to me and I will release you,’ Zapherael promised in a fierce whisper. ‘Cleanse your soul and I shall return it to the void as a thing of purity.’
‘Not to you,’ Luther growled back, disgusted by the Dark Angel. He stopped short of voicing further argument, fearing it would become insult that would lead to physical retribution. This warrior was not a son of the Lion; his gain-brother would be appalled by such a display of ignorance and religiosity. ‘There is only one that can hear my confession. The only one that I have betrayed. You call my followers the Fallen but you are the ones that have besmirched the legacy of Caliban and the Lion!’
‘Traitor!’ rasped Zapherael as he left, the curses of Luther following swiftly until stasis and the mind-journey returned.
TALE OF THE JAWS
Zapherael returned many times to lambast Luther and demand he seek forgiveness for his crimes against the Dark Angels. With each visit, Luther’s resolve hardened, even as he started to lose himself amid the temporal stream again. His visions filled with images of the Lion – rather a giant warrior with a mane of blond hair and gleaming blade that he took to be the Lion – which convinced Luther that the primarch was still alive. He told Zapherael this fact, but rather than treat the news as the wondrous revelation it was, the Supreme Grand Master became even more angered.
‘Do not think to excuse your treachery with these lies!’ screamed the Space Marine when Luther once more refused to acknowledge Zapherael’s authority to hear his confession. ‘You slew the Lion and destroyed Caliban in revenge for the defeat of your master, Horus.’
No amount of argument would move Zapherael from this position, and he arrived the next time with several blades and hooks designed for the excruciation of flesh.
‘You think you can bleed the truth from me?’ Luther sneered.
‘I will bleed the impurity from you and only the truth will remain. Our Interrogator-Chaplains have learned much with your followers as specimens. They were Space Marines, you are not. When your flesh is aflame with the agony of your sins, you will see the truth and admit to me that you are thrice-cursed. You turned on the Lion, you turned your back on the Emperor, and you treated with the Dark Gods.’
He ignored Luther’s pleas for a more rational intercourse and instead bound him with chains; against his superhuman strength his prisoner’s much-diminished physique gave him no opposition. With his implements of torture, he began to cut and tear, but Luther fled the pain into his dreams, his mind separating from his body to drift the rivers of time.
Only occasionally did he return to consciousness, to find his wounds tended or fresh injuries inflicted, and always faced the demand to repent of what he had done. Zapherael’s delusion was contagious, passed on to the next to bear his title, and the next.
Sometimes bloodied, increasingly scarred, Luther’s mind moved back and forth without control between the spiritual agony of his dreamworld and the physical pain of reality. Whatever injuries were inflicted on his body played out as terrifying nightmares of destruction and death in his visions. They became more hallucinatory, merging specific memories with great vistas of suns drowning in blood and worlds afire with war. He heard the tolling of bells in worship and then alarm, and saw million-strong columns of rag-clad humans baying and wailing, slashing themselves with small knives and flogging their own backs as they screeched their confessions to uncaring priests.
Their pain became his pain, and his pain became the Imperium’s wails of agony as the wounds of Luther’s flesh seemed visited upon the expanse of humankind. Pyres burned around effigies of the Emperor, consuming the impure. Luther watched immense buildings raised up with crenellated spires and soaring buttresses. From their great halls rang the voices of tens of thousands in war-prayer. Starships rained down death from orbit, scouring cities so that vertiginous temples could be built out of their ruins.
Over and over, screaming faces demanded that he repent, but their shouts were lost amid the death cries of billions. A fever gripped the galaxy and the Dark Angels were caught up with the insanity.
Until there came a cessation of pain. The absence of sensation was more confusing than the turmoil of his broken dreams, until Luther awoke, in a foetal crouch at the corner of the cell. A sharp stinging drew his attention to salves on the cuts across his chest and arms, fresh stitches in the wounds upon his face and back.
The chains were gone but a shackle about his ankle kept him linked to a ring in the wall.
He stared at the ruddied flagstones, dyed with his spilt blood. Lifting numb hands he saw he had no fingernails. His tongue probed at cracked teeth.
