Hand Of Abaddon, page 10
‘To what, though?’
Behethramog.
Herek felt certain it was a place, their final destination and goal. He had heard the name in the cuneiform runes, scratched by a madman’s hand onto the map. Kurgos still awaited his answer.
‘To an ending, to what has been promised.’
To be chosen.
To become one of the Hand, perhaps, or something greater? Either way, it was a form of apotheosis that he sought. Herek knew he must have faith, and that the whims of the Dark Gods were never transparent. His patron had promised him glory, and had he not fulfilled his part of the bargain thus far?
The chirurgeon frowned, his hideous features made even more distorted. ‘You still trust it, the other? I know it only speaks to you, Graeyl, but unlike Clortho I have never placed my faith in the word of daemons.’
‘They, Vassago, not it. And I trust them because there is no other choice.’
‘The captain of the Ruin and Lord of Corsairs always has a choice, Graeyl.’
Herek’s expression darkened but he gave nothing of his true thoughts away. ‘Our patron remains absent,’ he confirmed instead. ‘I have made the ritual six times and every time there is nothing.’
‘A symptom of your burden perhaps?’
‘I don’t think it’s the susurration. And they gave it to me, why would it place the patron beyond my reach? This is something else, some ploy I’m not seeing. Perhaps we are meant to triumph alone. It doesn’t matter. We have our map, our heading…’ He turned his attention to a silent figure in the room. ‘And our compass.’
The Navigator was naked but for the spiked and eyeless helm encasing its head and bent over on its knees as if in penitence. Bloody wounds raked its back, lit by a shaft of twilight from above.
‘Are you ready for another foray, soul mariner?’
Its eerie voice resonated from behind its helm as it arched its head towards the light.
‘I serve your will, lord. Let me ply the Devil’s Road and cross the Straits of Lunacy. At the Burned Spire to the Threefold Wytch and the Abyssal Nadir… It is beauty and horror, and yet there is yearning in me for more. For the further truths hidden by the Great Ocean…’ It bowed then, as low to the floor as possible, practically folded over, its skeletal limbs contorting, and whispered, ‘It will be dangeroussss…’
Herek replied with disdain. ‘When is it not?’
He shared another look with Kurgos, who had begun to re-examine the princeps’ corpse. A scalpel pulled back a flap of skin, exposing a rune. Not one made by mortal hands.
‘I have the distinct impression,’ he said, ‘that we are being hunted by more than just men.’
Chapter Ten
led into darkness
ghouls
i am but an acolyte
Yheng could not shake the sense of being hunted. Even though she knew this part of the fortress and had been here on one of her several excursions, she could not help her growing paranoia. Perhaps it was the prospect of war between the Hand, despite Augury’s intervention. Their timely proclamation had cooled heads but left Tenebrus sullen. He had dismissed Yheng immediately afterwards, to see to his own machinations, no doubt.
And so she had ventured out, but the creeping disquiet had followed, it seemed. Several times she had stopped and turned at half-glimpsed movement or a sound but found nothing on her heels.
She chastised herself for her weakness. If something did trail her, and gods knew she had heard creatures in the deep nooks of the fortress, it would regret doing so.
Her long robes flared in her wake as Yheng strode deliberately, head raised to let her disdain be known. Her staff’s ferrule thudded as it struck the floor, the small blue flame at its forked tip wavering and flickering as her pace increased. Colder here in this lower deep, a bone-gnawing chill that her powers could not soften. She had taken to wearing a thick cloak, the same night-black as her acolyte’s attire. The silver piercings in her eyebrows and the chains embedded in her scalp chimed sharply with each step. The jewels cut into her flesh flashed as they caught the ambient light. They gave her a fiercer aspect, made her more predatory.
She sought the sentience she had felt in the black chamber, though had been unsuccessful thus far. The exhilaration of a little fear was worth it. Cleared the mind. Annoyingly, her head still ached, the regard of the gods heavy in her thoughts and just as unfathomable. The awe of it was yet to fade, and Yheng wondered briefly if she were still sane. No, she was master of her own mind and perceptions. This felt different though, like a shift, potentially seismic. It thrilled her. Ever since her recruitment to the ranks of the Cult of the Blade Unsheathed, the gods and their gifts had been an abstract concept. She had seen things in her apprenticeship to Tenebrus, and had considerable warp sorcery of her own, but what had happened to her in the black chamber was the first time she had personally experienced the sense of something greater. And her part in it.
Of being chosen.
She liked it. And craved more of it.
She wandered on, growing accustomed to the strangeness of the benighted corridors, accounting for it like one would accept sunlight or gravity. The halls looked old, the metal worn and corroded with rust. Deck plating thrummed beneath her feet and she wondered what engine was at work, and where. Surely, it must be powerful? Mist lay heavy over everything. It had depths, this hollow place, untold fathoms like an ocean trench, half-forgotten and seldom travelled.
Passing through a doorway, a vaulted arch of angular metal, she stopped. The pathway extended another few feet and then came to an abrupt halt, the way plunging down into darkness like a well at the edge of the universe. Had the mists not thinned, she felt sure she would have plummeted to her death. She snorted at the thought, convinced enough of her destiny that she would not meet such an ignominious end.
The shaft before her was wide, hexagonal, and the tiny veins of light that ran through it showed little of what lay below. Yheng had never been to this part of the fortress before, though she trod the same steps, took the same paths as she had previously. She must have got turned around somewhere or taken a wrong path. She glanced back over her shoulder but found only the same nondescript passageway, the mist thickening again. Had it changed too? A slight alteration to its direction. She couldn’t recall two branching corridors from its junction.
Irritated, she glanced ahead, half hoping it had changed too, but saw only the well before her, a faint breeze emanating up the shaft. The lightest sound came with the breeze, a murmur. Yheng stepped towards it, straining to hear.
Then another step, as the murmur grew louder.
Another, she almost had it now…
‘No further, Tharador Yheng,’ rasped the voice of Tenebrus.
Yheng opened her eyes, belatedly realising they were closed.
And snarled at the immense, gaping drop a few inches from where she had placed her feet. Another step and…
She calmly stepped back, and found the sorcerer a few paces behind her. He smiled, at once knowing and sinister.
‘I told you it was alive.’
Gods of the abyss, she would have liked to flay him in that moment, but she bowed as an acolyte would to a master. ‘You said it could feel, master.’
Tenebrus’ cobalt eyes narrowed in what might have been annoyance. She smiled inwardly at his irritation.
‘That I did. You have a good memory, Yheng, but little common sense.’
Her expression hardened as her hand tightened around her staff. ‘I appear to have been turned around,’ she confessed, the bile rising in her throat at needing his help.
‘You have. It brought you here, do you understand? It sought to take you, Yheng.’
Yheng scowled, briefly confused, and Tenebrus swept before her, a shadow given form. A bony arm snaked around her shoulder, sharp fingers biting through her clothes and into flesh. His touch… repellent and unwanted. His death, when the moment came, would be an unpleasant one, Yheng decided in that moment.
‘Observe…’ uttered Tenebrus.
Unfurling the fingers of his other hand, the sorcerer gestured to the changed corridor.
At first Yheng saw nothing, only a path she did not know, but then it began to move. Ever so subtly, near imperceptible. The second branch closed, sealing shut with silent finality. As she watched, fascinated, Yheng felt a cold dampness in her side. She touched it and brought back reddish fingers. She looked at Tenebrus.
‘Master, you appear to be bleeding.’
Perhaps that death she had envisaged for him wasn’t so far off after all.
‘Ah yes,’ Tenebrus sighed, ‘I had forgotten about that… I had an encounter before I found you.’
He gestured to the shadows.
Several pallid creatures appeared in the darkness then; blind, judging by the hollow perforations they had instead of eyes, nasal pits sucking at stale air.
‘What are they?’ she hissed, aware of the lethal drop behind them.
‘The true denizens of this place.’
They loped, knuckling across the ground, their skeletal frames rangy but tough. Hunched over, thick claws curling from long fingers, they found the sorcerer’s scent, lifted their heads and snarled. Needle teeth glinted wetly in the light, pinkish from where they had already tasted blood. A pack of six emerged entirely from the mist, the leader rising to its full extension and throwing back its head to bellow. A ululating cry, altogether too deep, too resonant.
‘It cries for flesh,’ said Tenebrus.
‘Then slay them, my lord,’ said Yheng, reaching for her own power.
‘I cannot.’
She too found her power absent. Something in this place was blunting it.
No… wait. She felt something new, a well of strength that was both alien and enticing at the same time. For a moment, Yheng almost tapped into it, but something prevented her going any further. The murmur… Trusting it, she hesitated.
Yheng risked a glance over her shoulder, the precipice nearing…
The creatures stalked towards them now, hissing back and forth as if coordinating their attack.
Again, Yheng suppressed the urge to defend herself. I could kill them all myself, she realised, but an instinct stayed her hand.
‘Stay still, Yheng,’ rasped Tenebrus as the shadows embraced her like an immense dark cloak. Uttering a cry, the creatures lunged, clambering off the walls and ceiling, and through the blackness that swirled around her Yheng saw different monsters, and realised they had ascended from the pit.
Mechanical aberrations, the sorcerer’s creatures now.
Clothed in ragged shadows, they were all blades and scythes. They fell upon the ghoulish predators with their own weapons, churning and rending, the arrow-sharp screeches of the wretches echoing strangely off the walls.
In a few moments it was done and the dismembered bodies of the ghouls lay scattered about. Several pieces had been flung into the pit.
Tenebrus breathed hard, his narrow frame heaving with the effort.
‘The wound is not severe,’ he said, referring to the blood leaking from his side. At a click of his tongue, the monstrous machines retreated back into the pit, slowly slinking down into shadow. ‘It is merely taxing in this place to call upon the ether. The stone, this blackstone. Noctilith. It can… disrupt the essence of the warp, nullify its potency. It’s why this place remains undiscovered by our enemies. For now. But it has certain hostile proclivities.’
And yet she had felt reserves of strength. Yheng glanced down at the butchered ghouls, their remains steaming in the cool air.
‘The sentience you spoke of, master.’
‘Yes… and no.’
She looked back at Tenebrus. The sorcerer had paled, his flesh even whiter than before, and waxen, as if feverish. She knew she had changed too, the darkening around her eyes, the pallor of her skin. She reached out to offer a steadying hand but was rebuffed with an impatient hiss. That stung, the barb of anger she already felt sharpening further.
‘I believe the Hand has all but served its purpose. The gathering has confirmed that. We came here to unite the shards. That mission has been successful. Each of us has followers, forces at our disposal. Internecine conflict was inevitable. It has caught up to us sooner than I anticipated. And you, Yheng, you have a part to play.’
A trill of alarm rippled through her as she realised Tenebrus had some awareness of what she had felt in the black chamber.
‘I am but an acolyte, your servant,’ she said, trying to deflect.
Tenebrus’ eyes narrowed, as if he peered into her soul. The touch of it sent ice down her spine and she shivered despite herself.
‘You are more than that, I think. And you have power. But we must be sure.’
Yheng wasn’t sure what Tenebrus meant by his last comment, but she did realise one thing.
‘Those creatures, they were sent for me? To harm or kill?’
‘It is possible. Maybe they were meant to capture and I was in their way, or perhaps it is something else. Much is obscured. I know only that there is a plan beyond what we, here, have achieved. To see it through, we have to survive what comes next. I take little reassurance from Augury’s words. They are not to be trusted. Few are. An ally may be found in the Wretched Prince, and I do not believe either of the Traitor Astartes are interested in any war they could fight here. The rest, though… I wonder,’ said Tenebrus, briefly wistful, ‘if this is what the Warmaster intended, that the covenant would devour itself.’ Then he turned his gaze back onto Yheng. ‘Tell me, Yheng, have you ever felt the regard of the gods? Their eye upon you?’
Yheng froze at this sudden confirmation. Until then she had still clung to the hope that no one, barring Augury, had been aware of her experience in the black chamber. The sudden memory spurred unease. Once again, she struggled to fully bring the encounter to mind. It was dreamlike, fading like ice against the sun. The sorcerer had a way about him, though. A knowing. It was uncanny.
But Tenebrus was not infallible, and here Yheng had a strength seemingly denied to him.
‘I saw what you saw, my master,’ she lied, silken and with confidence, ‘the glory of the Dark Gods.’
‘You felt nothing?’ The furrowing of his brow suggested his frustration at not being able to see through Yheng’s lie. A warm sense of satisfaction grew in her.
‘Only awe, who would not?’ She frowned, her feigned ignorance flawless, the fortress she had raised around her mind without weakness. ‘The ritual… the sheer momentousness of it all. Humbling, my lord.’
‘And the screaming,’ hissed Tenebrus, shaking now. He coughed, blood flecking his pale skin, and a thin red rivulet trickled from one corner of his mouth. ‘Why were you screaming, Yheng?’
‘I was… overwhelmed,’ said Yheng, scrambling a little at the revelation that the scream had been real and not imagined. Her words to him were true, but obfuscated and reshaped to her purpose.
Tenebrus gave a sharp intake of breath, as if he had been about to press for more, but instead his hand went to his side. It came back drenched in crimson, and he gasped, ‘I may have been wrong… about the severity of my injuries…’ and sagged into a ragged heap.
As she looked down upon the sorcerer in his weakened state, Yheng experienced a moment’s indecision. She still had her ritual knives and knew enough of the rites to make an offering. Her hand even closed around a hilt… until she released it. Not here, not yet. Besides, he was still conscious and might have been trying to trick her.
She helped him instead. He was obscenely light; she lifted him easily so his arm was draped over her shoulder, supporting his weight, and faced off against the corridor as it changed again, blackstone moving to reveal the path she needed.
‘This place was not meant for the eyes of men…’ uttered Tenebrus as he leaned on Yheng and took them through another unexplored part of the fortress. Despite his injuries, he remained awake, but his breathing was laboured as they went together into the deeper darkness.
Through a corridor and across an expansive platform that eerily possessed no echo, the sound of their footfalls deadened, their breaths becoming still and flat, Tenebrus led them to a tall and lightless shaft that soared up into the vaults of this bizarre place. Creatures flocked in the vaults, flesh and mechanical, though Yheng could discern little more than that.
‘Do not trouble yourself,’ rasped Tenebrus, his voice faint. ‘They will not venture down here.’
A fissure in the facing wall became a crack then widened into a door, which the sorcerer bid her to take. They passed through the door and into another chamber, this one as foreign to Yheng as the last. Though she could not be sure, these looked like quarters the sorcerer had taken for himself. A few books and artefacts sat in niches or were simply piled in corners. A sigil daubed in ash and blood covered the entire floor, and when she stepped across its threshold Yheng felt her skin prickle.
‘A warding circle,’ said Tenebrus, as if reading her mind. ‘To keep out unwanted guests and unwanted minds…’
Detaching himself from her arm, he shuffled over to a black wooden box banded with dark iron and pulled forth a foul-smelling salve. He applied it to the elliptical wound in his side, which was darkly red and ringed with small puncture marks, and shuddered with relief. A vial of yellowish liquid was downed next, and Tenebrus’ pain visibly eased at its imbibing.
‘Better,’ he rasped.
Yheng had been sleeping wherever she might, praying to the Dark Gods that she would not wake to some horror bearing down on her. She had never been to these chambers before.
‘Why I am here, master?’ she asked, her eyes straying to a strange mural daubed on the wall in chalk and what might also be paint. She frowned, trying to make sense of the scratched images, but saw only slashes of darkness against grey.
