The Outcast Dead by Graham McNeill
‘Ghota? Is he one of Babu Dhakal’s men?’
‘He is that,’ agrees Antioch. ‘Big son of a bitch, almost as big as the men you’re after. And if you don’t mind me saying, I don’t think you want to find them. Even though there’s only five of them left alive, I reckon you don’t have enough men to put them down.’
‘Five?’ says Nagasena.
‘Ghota killed the white haired one,’ says Antioch, and Nagasena shares an uneasy look with Saturnalia. The unspoken question hangs between them like a guilty secret. What kind of mortal could kill a Space Marine?
‘Where are they now?’ demands Golovko. ‘Where did they go after you aided the escape of traitors?’
‘Ah, now I’ve been helpful to you, but I don’t think I want to tell you anything else,’ says Antioch. ‘Doesn’t seem right.’
‘We are servants of the Imperium,’ says Saturnalia, looming over the fragile chirurgeon, who looks up at him like a child defying his father.
‘That’s as maybe, but at least they were honest,’ says Antioch.
Nagasena steps between Antioch and Golovko before the man can strike him. He beckons to Adept Hiriko and says, ‘Can you find what you need in his mind?’
Hiriko steps gingerly over the wreckage towards Antioch. The man looks at her warily, but says nothing as she places her hands either side of his head.
‘What’s she doing?’ asks Antioch.
‘Nothing for you to worry about,’ Nagasena assures him.
The chirurgeon is not reassured and looks at her suspiciously, a nervous glint in his eye.
‘What is she?’ he asks.
‘I am a neurolocutor,’ says Hiriko by way of explanation. ‘Now be still or this will hurt.’
Antioch stiffens in expectation of pain as Hiriko closes her eyes.
What might the mind of a man in a qash stupor be like? Will it even be possible to lift anything of use from him, or will his mind be like a fortress with its gates lying open and every door left unlocked?
Hiriko does not move for almost a minute, then lets out a powerful exhalation as her hands slip from Antioch’s head. Her eyes are glassy and Nagasena wonders if the effects of the qash have passed into her mind.
‘Oh,’ she says, shaking her head.
‘Did you get anything?’ asks Nagasena.
She nods, still purging the after-effects of delving into Antioch’s mind. The man is fearful now, and Nagasena sees that Hiriko has rid him of the qash haze. Forced to face reality without the comforting curtain of the resin to hide behind, the world is a frightening place.
‘They are going to a place called the Temple of Woe,’ says Hiriko.
‘Do you know where that is?’ Golovko asks her.
Hiriko looks into Antioch’s eyes. ‘Yes. It’s east of here, I know the way now.’
‘Then we don’t need this traitor anymore,’ growls Golovko.
Before Nagasena can stop him, the Black Sentinel draws his pistol and puts a bullet through Antioch’s head.
TWENTY
Colours and Hues
The End of Everything Good
Kill Team
WHEN KAI WOKE, it was to a surprising lack of pain and an almost overwhelming sensation of relief. He lifted his head, feeling hard edges of metal digging into his belly. The world around him shone with contours of light and shadow, psychic emanations and dead space. It painted a clear portrait of the buildings, streets and space around him, a representation of the world as clear and vivid as any perceived by those with their birth eyes.
‘Stop,’ he said, his voice hoarse and parched. ‘Stop, please. Put me down.’
The juggernaut upon which he was being carried halted, and rough hands lifted him carefully to the ground. A giant clad in burnished plates of metal stood before him, a warrior of enormous proportions made even larger by the crude plates of sheet steel strapped to his enormous frame and the sharp lines of pistols tucked into his belt. A faint golden haze clung to him, like wisps of cloud caught by the trailing wings of an aircraft.
The image sparked a memory of his dreamspace, but the substance of it drifted just beyond reach, though he was sure that something of vital importance had occurred there. He had a vague recollection of a regicide board and a hooded opponent, but he could not yet grasp its meaning.
‘Atharva?’ said Kai, as the cold reality of this world intruded.
‘Yes,’ said the giant. ‘You gave me cause for concern. I did not know if you would live.’
‘I’m not sure I did,’ moaned Kai as he stood on unsteady legs, amazed he could remain upright after so fraught a journey. ‘I feel like one of you has punched me in the face.’
‘That is not too far from the truth,’ admitted Atharva, looking over at the heavily armoured form of Asubha. The Outcast Dead had changed since last Kai last saw them. Armoured in beaten iron breastplates, curved pauldrons and archaic helms, they looked like the barbarian warriors of pre-Unity, the bloodthirsty tribesmen who had ruled Old Earth before the coming of the Emperor. Subha even carried a wooden shield.
Kai had always known his fellow escapees were warriors, but to see them garbed for war was a stark reminder that they were only his protectors because it aligned with their purposes. Should that change, he would be of no more use to them.
‘Where did you get the armour and weapons?’ he asked, seeing the strange array of pistols and blades they carried, enough to equip three times their number.
‘Some very stupid people got in our way,’ said Asubha. ‘But they are dead now.’
Ghosts of light limned each warrior against the darker, iron blacks, steel greys and umber brickwork of the background. He knew them all by their colours and hues: Tagore, Subha and Asubha in angry reds, purples and killing silver, Atharva in gold, ivory and crimson, and Severian shrouded in stormcloud grey and mist. Kai saw Argentus Kiron and Gythua, propped up against a landslip of rock, the last traces of their auras bleeding into the air like warmth from a cooling corpse.
‘We lost Gythua and Kiron,’ said Subha with very real pain. ‘They had one big bastard who knew how to fight.’
‘And we beat him like a whipped cur,’ said Tagore.
‘But he’ll be back,’ said Asubha. ‘Someone like that won’t give up.’
‘So next time we kill him properly,’ snarled Tagore with bared teeth. Kai saw the aura around his skull flare with a shimmer of cold iron, like the yoke of a hound’s master pulling taut. Tagore’s muscles bunched and swelled in anticipation of violence, but the World Eater exhaled loudly and turned away before his control slipped away.
‘Where are we?’ asked Kai, extending his senses.
‘Still in the Petitioner’s City,’ said Atharva. ‘But we are almost at its eastern edge.’
Kai nodded slowly. From the background buzz of thoughts and life, he had known they were still in the Petitioner’s City. Though the pain in his head was intense, it was manageable and he felt curiously liberated at employing his blindsight instead of expensive augmentations. It had been so long since he had used his psychic abilities to navigate and understand the world around him.
The mountains towered above Kai, so vast it seemed as though there was no end to them. Though the peaks were not alive, they had accumulated a wealth of emotion and experience from those who had clambered over their rocky flanks in the painful epochs since they had been thrust from the bottom of an ancient seabed. A haze of permanence hung over the mountains, split by the searing torrent of psychic energy that speared from the hollow mountain to the farthest reaches of the galaxy. Now that the threat of being sent to its nightmarish depths was gone, Kai found its presence curiously reassuring, like the half-heard voice of an old and trusted friend.
Deeper in the city, the air was a heady mixture of sweat, boiling fats, rotten meat, spices and perfumes, but here it was clean, and the winds coming down from the high ranges were refreshing rather than chilling.
Tagore lifted Gythua’s body and slung it over one shoulder, w
‘Come on,’ said Atharva. ‘It is just a little farther.’
‘What is?’ said Kai.
‘The Temple of Woe,’ said Atharva.
THE TEMPLE OF Woe turned out to be something altogether less sinister that its ominous name had suggested. Built from what looked like a thousand mismatched pieces of variegated marble, it was a formidable structure that rose high above its nearest neighbours. Situated towards the end of a narrowing canyon, its façade was graced with numerous handsome statues depicting weeping angels, mothers holding their stillborn children and skeletal harbingers of death.
Reapers skulked in alcoves, while mourners worked in polished granite clustered around biers of fallen heroes and ouslite pallbearers took the dead to their final rest. Any one of the rival Masonic guilds that had raised the glory of the palace would have dismissed its haphazard beauty with a glance, but it possessed a grandeur and welcoming air the greatest structures of the palace could only dream of.
The road leading towards the temple was festooned with offerings, children’s dolls, picts of smiling men and women, wreaths of silken flowers and scraps of paper embossed with poetic eulogies and heartfelt farewells. Hundred of people knelt in supplication, gathered in weeping groups around drum fires placed along the length of the wide road that led towards heavy iron doors that led within. Oil-burning lanterns hanging from the outside of the temple cast flickering shadows that made the statues dance.
‘What is this place?’ said Subha.
‘A place of remembrance and farewell,’ said Kai.
He felt a tremendous surge of emotion as his blindsight took in the full panoply of conflicting auras that swirled around, within and through the building. Enormous sadness washed over him as the weight of grief that filled the street threatened to overwhelm him.
‘So much loss,’ he said. ‘The sadness and pain, it’s too much. I don’t think I can stand it.’
‘Steel yourself, Kai,’ said Atharva. ‘Grief and guilt are powerful emotions. You know this all too well. You have held yours at bay long enough for this to present no problem.’
‘No, there’s something else,’ he whispered. ‘There’s something in there that’s more powerful that any guilt I’ve ever known…’
Atharva leaned in close, so that only Kai could hear his next words.
‘Say nothing of it,’ warned Atharva. ‘Our lives will depend on it.’
Without explanation, Atharva followed Severian into the canyon, and Kai felt the hostile gazes of the mourners turn on them. Their anger was matched by their fear, and though every one of them looked like they wanted to hurl some missile or shout an obscenity, none dared move or open their mouth. There was recognition in their anger, but surely that was impossible.
‘Whoever those men were you killed, I think they were known here,’ he said.
‘I think you might be right,’ agreed Atharva as the shutter doors to the Temple of Woe opened with a squeal of rusting bearings. A tall man with wild grey hair and a face that spoke of a life lived in the open emerged from the building. His aura was so choked with guilt that Kai drew up in shock to see someone burdened with a heavier share than his own.
Kai became acutely aware of the hundreds of people pressing in around them. They had been afraid of them before, but they drew strength from this man, and their anger was building moment by moment. The Outcast Dead were powerful, but could they kill so many without being overwhelmed? More to the point, could they stop the mob from killing him?
‘Get out of here,’ said the man. ‘Didn’t you learn anything the last time you came here?’
‘We are here for the dead,’ said Asubha. ‘We were told this was a place to bring fallen warriors.’
‘You are not welcome here,’ said the man. ‘If you’re looking for the men you left here, you can tell the Babu they went into the fires, same as all the others.’
Tagore said, ‘You will stand aside or you will die,’ and Kai felt the pulsing waves of belligerence surrounding the World Eater sergeant. His anger was a wild dog, kept in check by only the slenderest of threads, and the device in his skull frayed that thread with every angry beat of its mechanical heart.
Atharva stepped forward, and placed his hand on Tagore’s shoulder. Atharva’s golden light bled into the killing red surrounding the World Eater, and the taut aggression of his posture eased a fraction.
‘We are not here for killing,’ said Atharva, altering his voice so that everyone gathered in the canyon could hear him. Its cadence and tone conveyed a calming effect that diminished the anger radiating from the gathered people. ‘And we are not Dhakal’s men. We took this armour and these weapons from Ghota’s thugs when they attacked us without provocation.’
‘Ghota is dead?’
‘No,’ said Atharva. ‘He fled like the coward he is.’
Kai felt the subtle psychic manipulations Atharva was employing, amazed at the power of the Thousand Sons warrior. Like most people, Kai had heard the rumours concerning the Legion of Magnus, but to see him so casually wield such abilities was astounding.
The grey-haired man took a closer look at the Outcast Dead and his eyes widened as he recognised them for what they were.
‘The Angels of Death,’ said the man. ‘You have come at last.’
THE DIMLY-LIT halls of the cryptaesthesians were unpleasant at the best of times, and the Choirmaster’s senses were vibrating like a badly-struck tuning fork. He disliked coming down here, but Evander Gregoras had ignored his every summons and there was work to be done that required him to forego the study of his precious Pattern.
A trio of Black Sentinels had accompanied him ever since the psychic intrusion of Magnus, though he could not decide whether Golovko had assigned them to protect him or to kill him in the event of another attack. Probably both, he thought.
Black walls of bare stone passed him, feeling like they were pressing in on him with every step he took deeper into the lair of the cryptaesthesians. His head ached from the aftermath of a particularly difficult communion, a garbled message that claimed to be from an astropath attached to the XIX Legion, but had no synesthesia codes verifying its truth. The message spoke of the death of Primarch Corax, and Nemo desperately wanted to believe it was false, a piece of deliberate misinformation designed to demoralise the forces loyal to the Emperor. Though the message had the ring of truth to it, he had chosen not to pass it to the Conduit for fear of the damage it might wreak.
Nor was this the only piece of bad news. Rumours had come from the Eastern Fringe of a cowardly ambush sprung on the XIII Legion around Calth, and two score astropaths had gone mad attempting to make contact with the sanguinary Legions of the Blood Angels. What monstrous fate had befallen the scions of Baal, and why could no word penetrate the Signus Cluster without dreams of madness and slaughter afflicting those who made such attempts?
The astropaths of the City of Sight could not cope with the demands the palace was placing upon them. They had reached breaking point, and the Choirmaster needed the cryptaesthesians of Evander Gregoras to take their places in the choirs if the entire network was to be saved. Sifting the psychic debris or hunting for hidden truths in the background noise of the universe would have to wait.
At last they came to the correct doorway, and the Choirmaster rapped his thin knuckles on the shutter, careful to avoid damaging his ring from the Fourth Dominion. He waited, but no answer was forthcoming, and he frowned. He could feel the presence of Gregoras’s mind beyond the door, and could hear the sounds of paper tearing.
‘Evander!’ he shouted, though he hated to raise his voice. ‘Open the door, I have to speak with you.’
The sounds within the cryptaesthesian’s chamber stopped for a moment then began again, more vigorously than before.
Clearly, Gregoras wasn’t about to answer, and the Choirmaster nodded to the sergeant of the Black Sentinels.
‘Open it,’ he said, irritated that the master of the City of Sight could not open every door in his city without the say so of the Black Sentinels. No door was barred to them, and the sergeant waved a data-wand in front of the locking pad. The door slid open, and Nemo stepped into Gregoras’s chambers with a shocked expression as he saw the disarray within.
The nature of the cryptaesthesians work made them gloomy and introspective, but given to eccentric behavioural quirks. Gregoras was a cantankerous bastard, but he was the best there was at sifting the Bleed, and thus Nemo had tolerated his obsession with the Pattern. He had seen the work Gregoras had done, but where the cryptaesthesian saw order and meaning, Nemo saw only chaos and happenstance. That work had filled these chambers, every square inch of wall covered with unintelligible script, every shelf bowing under the weight of books, data-retrieval cogitators, statistical compilers, maps, plotters and devices he had devised for the purposes of translating the heartbeat of the universe.
All of it was gone.
Evander sat on a high backed chair in the centre of the room with a book resting on his lap. One hand pressed down on the cover, as though trying to keep its pages from flying open. The other hung at his side, holding a quill that dripped ink to the floor. The Choirmaster took a hesitant step into the chamber, feeling the pressure of an overwhelming psychic presence in the room that had nothing to do with Gregoras or his own powers.
‘Evander,’ hissed the Choirmaster. ‘Your eyes…’
The cryptaesthesian’s cheeks were streaked with impossible tears, and the traceries of light that filled his body shone from his eyes in a glittering sheen of organic tissue.