Luther: First of the Fallen, page 3
‘You have proven your weakness already,’ it said with a scowl. ‘You have your answer, let me be!’
‘I am not weak,’ I replied, and it was then that I committed the grave offence of listening to my ego. ‘The verse was about me? You call me traitor to my own cause?’
‘The architect knows best the flaws in his plans,’ Ezqurol replied. ‘The chain breaks at its weakest point. The ambition you harbour will devour you, mortal.’
‘I lead for Caliban,’ I declared, and in my rash mood I raised my fist, and in doing so my foot parted the outer ward of the binding hexes.
Ezqurol needed no further invite and hurled itself at me, a bolt of blue flame that surged up my leg, escaping the ring of containment.
Afire with sorcerous energy, I fell backwards, my shout held fast by the thick walls. Ezqurol formed into a semblance of its usual self, dancing upon my chest, singeing its footprints into my robe and flesh while it cackled a song of victory.
I swept out an arm but my warding limb passed through it with just a flutter of its fiery body.
‘Free!’ it screeched in my face, setting fingers of cerulean flame around my throat.
But I was not without a measure of sorcerous ability. The teachings of the Imperium would have you believe that it requires a freak of birth to make one a psyker, but my readings had revealed the lie of that. With practice and rite, one can open doors to strengthen the mind and access the powers that some can wield by mutation.
I summoned that energy now, cladding my fists in wreaths of lightning as I struck again, flinging the nephilla across the library. It exploded like a grenade against the ward-inscribed bookcase, wailing as it fell to the floor.
Quick as a cat it found its feet and this time, rather than attack me, it sought to escape. It threw itself at the walls as though to pass the material barrier, but found in a flash and bang that they were barred in the immortal plane also. In desperation it bounded to the ceiling, and scrambled above me moaning as runes burned its hands and feet with sanctuary force.
I turned and cornered it as it rebounded from the door charms, its fiery form laced through with tendrils of black and red as it flailed across the room.
I let streams of lightning rip from my fingertips, but it darted forward as quick as a las-blast, leaping for the lectern that held the spell which had bound it. I curbed my power for fear that destroying the tome might break what remained of the spell tying Ezqurol to the chamber.
The pages fluttered before it, its sparking eyes scanning the text, as I raced across the room. The fiend gave a triumphant cry just as my fingers, anointed with black fire, gripped its flaming limb and heaved it away. It rammed fingertips of fire into my face, blinding me, and in pain I cried out the words of unbinding I had committed to memory, while I hurled the creature back to the centre of the pentangle-bonds.
I heard a crack like thunder and the air smelt fresh and bright as in the aftermath of an electrical storm.
It took some time for my sight to recover, and my vision was still blurred when the occasion came for the council to next convene. While I donned my armour and hooded robe to conceal my wounds I pondered why the creature and its master had tried to undermine me. With the Lion defeated and Caliban free, did they fear I would turn from them? Or perhaps it was a final test of my resolve.
I would not be tricked. There would be no hesitation or discord.
‘Starfire,’ I announced when all were gathered again in the Hall of Arthorus. ‘Starfire is the word that will set the sky of Caliban alight.’
‘I once thought you the greatest of us,’ whispered Farith. ‘None of us could be the Lion, just as a hen will never be an eagle. But you were raised a mortal like me, a paragon that could be emulated, a measure that could be matched. Yet you were the worst of us, and forgot everything you had been in one moment of vanity.’
‘Vanity?’ Luther shook his head. ‘Is it vanity to recognise injustice? Was I vain to hope there could be a better future for my world?’
‘Vanity clouded your hearing, when the nephilla spoke truth perhaps for the only time. You were the traitor, Luther. It has never been about Caliban, it was always about you. I have seen the powers of the warp so closely these last years, but I remained strong. I rejected them. Nothing good comes of their patronage, but you accepted it all the same. You needed it because you knew you were weak and when you failed them, they took it all from you. Your army, your knowledge. Your soul…?’
Luther stared at his interrogator, eyes brimming with moisture. All of it was true, and the verse of Ezqurol returned to him, but this time the words were like sparkling diamonds of clarity. His lips moved almost silently as he spoke them again.
‘Repent too late, the damage done…’ With trembling hand, he reached out to Farith. ‘I am sorry.’
‘You have slain the only one whose forgiveness might release you,’ Farith growled. ‘“The lie to which your sons have striven will forever remain the unforgiven.” You were warned but did not listen. Deaf to both mortal and immortal, your fate was sealed.’
‘Wait!’ cried Luther as Farith turned away. ‘There is still time to learn. We are not yet doomed. Listen to me!’
The Paladin did not look back, and as the door swung shut Luther saw the glitter of red eyes in the dark.
TALE OF THE BEAST
Reality jarred, the last resounding thud of the door ending suddenly, and in the room before Luther stood another man. He was dressed in similar garb to Farith, darker of skin and hair. A scar twisted the left side of his upper lip, giving him a permanent sneer, and bionics pierced the same side of his scalp, metal glinting amid the short hair. He smelt of gun oil and incense.
The door was open behind him when moments before it had been slammed shut.
‘What…?’ Luther struggled as his senses crammed full of information like a starving man coming upon a feast.
Not only were his senses strained, his mind fluttered with strange images too. Memories? He certainly experienced flashes of the past. Faces from a previous life. Some he recognised, many he did not. Visions of Aldurukh and green forests whirled together.
But it was more than recollections that filled his thoughts. There were scenes he knew had not yet come to pass. Alien structures and abominable monsters stuttered through his broken mind, each a fresh horror. Blood spatters and the howl of mad warriors, the stench of rotting death and crash of tumbling walls. But that was Aldurukh again, was it not? Like the sacred spiral, symbol of Caliban and the centre of the Order’s training, his tumultuous thought processes circled themselves again and again.
He started to speak, forcing himself to focus on the Space Marine in the chamber with him, even as his visitor turned back towards the door.
‘Where is–’
The legionary disappeared and the door was closed again.
It creaked open and the man stepped through. His hair was longer, chin and cheeks stubbled with darkness. The dislocation made Luther dizzy and he hung his head in his hands, trying to stop the cell from spinning. His fingers traced the creases in his face, trying to recognise himself through touch alone. The former Grand Master of the Order rubbed his eyes and looked up, half expecting the stranger to have disappeared. He had not, but stood as he had done before, arms folded, glaring at his captive.
This time Luther did not struggle against the fluctuating barrage of memories and visions. He rode them, allowing them to wash around him, to carry him to their destination. It might have been moments or hours, it was impossible for Luther to tell, when the surge of conflicting plateaux finished their segues into each other.
‘Luther.’
He looked up at mention of his name. There was something familiar about the man, despite his sudden change in appearance. Luther rubbed his chin in thought and it came to him. A name. A youth of the Order. No, of the Dark Angels. One of the last recruits that had been sent to the Lion before Zaramund and the true exile.
‘Castagon?’
The Space Marine stiffened and his eyes narrowed.
‘My name is Puriel now. Castagon is no more. I am Supreme Grand Master of the Dark Angels.’
‘Where is Farith?’
‘Dead.’ Again the Space Marine’s demeanour betrayed his unease. ‘Dead for some thirty years.’
‘A good death, I hope. With honour. In battle.’
‘Slain by a traitor,’ growled Puriel. ‘One of your traitors, in fact.’
Luther rubbed at his brow, troubled by the assertion.
‘The Order is no more. Farith said that Caliban was destroyed. My warriors were taken by the storm.’
‘They were, but they were not slain by it. They survived the devastation.’ Puriel unfolded his arms and flexed his fingers. ‘Their confessions have been informative. Still, there is much we can learn only from the architects of the treachery. You were their leader. You took them along the path of corruption.’
The arguments sprang to mind again: the fight for freedom, from the tyranny of the Emperor. Caliban debased and consumed by a rapacious Imperium. Generations of children indentured to serve an indifferent lord or taken away to die in wars not of their making.
Excuses. Excuses for his weakness.
‘The past is dead. You cannot resurrect it.’ Luther stood up, causing Puriel to retreat a step, fists rising slightly. The leader of the Order checked his stride so that he did not approach, and clasped his hands behind his back, offering no threat to the Dark Angel. ‘If there is a lesson to be learned, it is that all things end. And that the ambitions of mortals are nothing compared to the games of the gods.’
‘Silence!’ Puriel’s hands rose further, knuckles whitening with the tightness of the clench. ‘Do not speak your blasphemies to me.’
‘Blasphemy?’ Luther laughed. ‘When did truth become blasphemy? If you want to learn from me, you will have to be prepared–’
‘I am not a student and you are no teacher!’ snapped Puriel. He took two quick paces and his fist flew, catching Luther on the cheek even as he raised his hands to defend himself. Though augmented, he was no legionary and the blow knocked him sprawling over the chair, landing hard on the stone floor. ‘This is not a lesson, it is a confession, you traitorous cur!’
Luther raised tentative fingers to his face, prodding gently at his cheek. Pain shot through him, the bone fractured from the blow. He dared not get up, seeing pure hate in the gaze of his punisher. Puriel’s chest heaved with deep breaths, massive shoulders flexing beneath his robe, like a bull readying to charge again.
‘Only the Lion can hear my confession,’ said Luther, sitting up. ‘I made no oaths to you, Puriel. You have no right to stand as my judge.’
‘Have I not?’ The Supreme Grand Master grimaced. ‘It was your command that slew thousands of my battle-brothers.’
Luther said nothing else, refusing to accept the man’s accusation with a defence. Puriel regarded him with a baleful stare for some time before withdrawing to the door.
‘We will get to the truth, Luther. You and I will speak again.’
Luther started to rise, but before the door closed the scene shunted again. Puriel appeared briefly at the open door, looking intent, and then vanished before reappearing inside the room once more, the door firmly shut behind him. Each shift was accompanied by a sense of decompression, the sharp pain in Luther’s cheek and a hiss in his ears.
Thoroughly disorientated, he slumped down on the floor, temples throbbing.
‘You testified to Master Farith that you could see the future,’ said Puriel. He seemed more relaxed than before. His hair was short again, face clean-shaven. Luther started to piece together what was happening. Each jump was a time-shift of some kind.
‘The future? I can barely keep my thoughts in the present…’
‘So it is a falsehood.’
‘I am no arbiter of truth any more,’ lamented Luther. ‘My mind is adrift, fractured from the flow of time it seems. There are gaps, memories, visions…’
Luther lapsed into miserable silence, feeling wretched and displaced. Only the pain of his cheek felt real: a pain that was as raw as the moment Puriel had struck him, though obviously some time had passed since the blow had landed.
He pondered this for several minutes while Puriel watched him in silence, eyes never straying from his captive.
‘Time is passing for you, but not for me,’ Luther whispered.
‘Stasis,’ replied Puriel. ‘This cell is timelocked by the Watchers in the Dark. Death from old age and infirmity will not free you from your debt to us, Luther. Only when all of your followers have been caught and cleansed will we allow you to die.’
‘We? For whom do you speak? The Imperium? The Emperor?’
Puriel crouched, coming down to Luther’s eye level.
‘You are dead to the universe, but for me and the Watchers. Like the Lion, you perished in the catastrophe that befell Caliban when traitors of Horus tried to seize our home world.’
‘I was never a slave of Horus!’ Luther pushed to his feet and Puriel rose with him. ‘That is a lie!’
‘You know all about lies, Luther of the Cursed Tongue. Your lies damned the sons of the Lion and until that deceit can be expunged, we cannot know peace. So decreed the Council of Farith after the breaking of Caliban and so shall it be for a hundred generations, if necessary.’
Luther’s argument was cut off before it reached his lips, subsumed by a sudden image of thunder and fire.
A battle. A numberless horde of green-skinned creatures. Twin suns burned overhead. A river ran with blood, a bridge broken in its midst. The noise of battle and a fever heat struck Luther like a hammer, sending him reeling against the cell wall with a cry.
The vision stuttered back and forth with his immediate environs, overlapping and then replacing them, before moving further away as though falling down a hole, until Luther was alone with Puriel once again.
For a few seconds the Supreme Grand Master was a corpse in armour, glaring at Luther with dead eyes in a skull face.
‘The beast…’
‘What of the Beast?’ demanded Puriel. ‘What do you know of our war against the orks?’
Luther said nothing, unsure of anything except the sensation of reality blurring. The memory of the vision was quickly receding, but it brought to mind something far older, buried deep in his mind.
He looked at Puriel and saw something different in the Space Marine’s expression. Uncertainty. Luther smiled.
‘Let me tell you of beasts.’
Caliban is remembered for the forests, but it was more than simply covered with trees. Soaring mountain ranges touched the clouds, cut by deep valleys never reached by light of day. Kilometre-wide rivers twisted across the landscape like foaming serpents, sometimes narrowing to torrents so swift it would break a man’s bones to dare them, other times forming lakes so vast that their opposite shores were unknown to each other.
A beautiful world. Emerald Caliban.
A planet of dangerous moods too. Storms that would swell within the mountains and tumble down to the lowlands, bringing wind and rain so ferocious they would sweep away all but the oldest trees and sturdiest walls. Spring floods swallowed whole towns. Tremors in the ground would open chasms in minutes, devouring buildings that had stood for centuries. Blizzards buried forts and their defenders.
Yes, a land that refused to be tamed by human hand.
We had tried, of course. Since the Dark Age of Technology there had been colonists. Invaders, in truth, as opposed by hostile forces as any army that had set foot in a foreign nation.
Death world they called it, but it was a planet filled with life. Just not life that would mutely submit to the rule of interlopers from another world. One could not help but love and respect Caliban, which for generations had endured our presence.
No settlement greater than a few thousands of souls could survive, save for when great Aldurukh was raised and carved from the bedrock itself. We speak of villages and towns but they were in truth keeps and fortresses. Nobody lived beyond the walls. Not for long, at least. Exile was the greatest punishment our people feared, to be cast out to the uncaring wilderness beyond the illusion of safety our walls and towers gave us.
The first defence was against the ground and the elements, as I have said. Erosion was a foe more dangerous than any other, and more highly prized than war leaders were engineers and masons. King-artisans ruled some lands, hoarding the secrets of forebears who knew of strut and buttress, guarding for themselves vaults containing the secret equations that had once guided the first machines to build walls and roofs on this world. It was the work of the ancients, archeotech. Later I would learn another name for such technology from the servants of the Emperor and the agents of the Machine-God.
Standard template construct.
The engines no longer worked nor could be found, but we had designs that had survived Old Night, and even a handful that Mars and Terra had forgotten. Pillaged now, of course, along with everything else that existed before the arcologies of the Emperor.
Briar and root and branch were the next assailants to be considered. And the course of rivers, the spread of fen and flow of underground torrents. Active, the administrators called it. An active xenography.
Of course, we know better now, do we not? Alive, alien, guided. It was not simply hostile evolution to blame for the adversity of Caliban, but a purpose within that sought conflict, that actively opposed our presence whilst feeding upon it. It desired to topple our towers and break our walls even as it devoured our defiance and thrived on our stubbornness. Yet it would not simply execute us, for it desired to continue the wars between humans, and twixt us and it.
