Auric Gods

Chapter Twenty-Four City of Vorganthian, Kobor, within Terra’s light

Zatu was waiting for them in the gun-cutter when they emerged from the library with Meroved’s body. Cartovandis carried him and he almost appeared smaller in the Custodian’s arms, as if the piece of his soul that had sustained him and fortified him had fled with his passing. Adio and Varogalant formed an honour guard, and they walked up the hold’s ramp in solemn silence. From there, they flew to the observatory, where a woman called Ursula Gedd waited for them.

‘So he’s dead then,’ she said, regarding Meroved’s inert form. ‘I actually didn’t think your kind could die.’

Gedd had met them in the observatory’s arming chamber. She had resisted the urge to kneel, though she had felt a profound desire to do so. Her heart hammered to be so close to such beings, but her sadness at Meroved’s death had tempered that too. Grieving, even for so short an alliance, would have to wait. The Aegis had been summoned and Vorganthian might yet be saved.

It struck her that an onlooker might find the scene in the arming chamber mildly preposterous. A woman in the battered uniform and armour of a peacekeeper, standing before the body of a dead giant with his three solemn companions who looked like statues wrenched from some mythic age, hanging on her words.

‘Saint’s piss…’ she muttered, and instantly regretted the choice.

The leader, or at least she assumed he was in charge, frowned.

‘My apologies…’

‘Syr Cartovandis,’ he supplied. ‘We can die, Ursula Gedd. We are flesh and blood just the same as you.’

Gedd took them in with a glance, frowning. ‘I can hardly tell the difference.’

Gedd knew she should have more respect, but she had spent the last few weeks trying to survive with a sanity-eroding throbbing forever at the edge of her conscious mind. Dark grey rings had formed around her eyes, which had sunken a little in her skull on account of lack of rest and ready nourishment. She scratched at the rash on her neck, her nails digging under the metal clasp that encircled it. Her teeth itched. Her bones ached, but she was alive and that counted for something. She had also been given a purpose, and this is what her newfound allies waited on.

Another of the three, one with dark skin and an almost youthful appearance, if such beings could ever be considered as that, turned to Cartovandis.

‘This is Meroved’s companion?’

‘I am standing just here,’ she said.

The last of the three, and the only one in black armour but dark-skinned like the second, glared. She half imagined him taking up his massive spear and ending her for her impudence. She told herself it was fatigue, but it was more than that.

‘I only meant,’ said Gedd, heart thumping again as she fought down her rising dread, ‘that he put me here knowing you would come. He had hoped to be here himself, but I saw his wound. If anything could kill one of you, it would be a wound like that, I suppose.’

‘And what do you know of it?’ asked the one in black armour, his voice fierce.

Gedd gestured to Meroved’s body. ‘Only what he taught me.’

Cartovandis regarded her. ‘You are a curious mortal, Gedd.’

She laughed, despite herself. ‘It’s almost like he’s still here. I am barely holding myself together,’ she admitted.

Cartovandis continued as if Gedd had not spoken. That too felt familiar. ‘Meroved said you were watching, that you would know.’

She nodded. ‘Follow me…’

The one in black armour muttered something to the youthful one and they remained in the arming chamber.

‘There are tools here?’ the youthful one asked. ‘For us to prepare our weapons.’

From what she saw of them, Gedd thought their weapons looked pristine and indomitable but she replied that there were such tools and indicated where Meroved kept them.

‘Very well.’ The youthful one exchanged a furtive glance with Cartovandis and gave an almost imperceptible nod before he signalled for Gedd to carry on.

‘Is it possible?’ asked Varogalant once he was certain the female could no longer hear them. ‘The bloodline of the Sigillite… Is it possible?’

Adio considered it. He considered what it meant alongside everything else that Ylax Orn had spoken of.

‘He is a zealot.’

‘A devout adherent of the Emperor.’

‘One who has succumbed to madness,’ said Adio. ‘No ­psychic cry can reach Terra through blood and the warp. And yet?’

Varogalant understood at once. ‘There is little enough known about the Vexen Cage.’

Adio nodded. ‘He said “resurrection”.’

‘And how many cults who bear that name have been put to sword and flame, some of them by our order?’ Varogalant countered.

Adio considered that too.

‘Whatever is the truth,’ Varogalant continued, ‘it must not be allowed to come to pass. He must be stopped along with his depraved experiment. It’s madness. All of it.’

His expression darkened, as it often did when he thought of his duty.

Adio drew closer. ‘Do not bear the burden alone.’

‘To be a Shadowkeeper is to be alone,’ Varogalant replied. He met his brother’s gaze. ‘It was not my will to leave you on the field. It tortured me not knowing. And after what happened in the Dark Cells… I could not leave. I can never leave. It haunts me even here in this moment.’

‘It was a day of hard lessons,’ Adio replied, ‘but we are far from that day now.’

Varogalant nodded, and they clasped arms in the way of warriors and of brothers.

In the heart of the observatory, in Meroved’s lair as Gedd had often thought of it, the many pict screens and data-feeds still chattered even without a master to engage with them.

‘I do not think your comrades trust me,’ she said.

‘Some knowledge is best left unknown, especially for mortals.’ As Cartovandis settled in to the seat at the core of the machine, he gave Gedd a glance. ‘What did Meroved tell you of our enemy?’

‘Not much,’ Gedd admitted. ‘He said they called themselves the Cult of the Illuminated and that their beliefs are aberrant to the Imperial Creed.’

Cartovandis nodded, as if deciding that was an acceptable amount of knowledge for Gedd to possess. Gedd wondered what would have happened if he had made a different determination.

‘We thought them wiped out. Many, many years ago, but here they are again. Resurgent.’ His jaw clenched, Gedd saw it in the sharp line of his cheekbone.

‘You’re angry,’ she ventured, inwardly cursing herself for her boldness; it would likely get her killed. ‘That he’s dead. That it’s unfinished.’

To Gedd’s surprise, Cartovandis’ stern countenance turned thoughtful.

‘Unfinished?’

‘Whatever was between you,’ she said, and pointed to the screens and vox-casters, the last of which were silent now with no one left alive or physically or psychologically able to operate them. A strange un-noise emanated instead, the tendrils of some half-heard dream, scarcely remembered but which weighed upon the listener well into the hours of first light. ‘He spent most of his time where you are sitting now. He treated it as his calling.’

Cartovandis regarded the screens as if seeing them for the first time. He felt the ache in his own wounds and experienced a profound sense of empathy for his departed mentor. His frustration faded. He began to absorb. Everything.

‘I am the watchman in his stead,’ he uttered. ‘Show me what he meant for us to see, Gedd.’