Qruze could feel the bitterness in the man’s words. In the wake of the news of Horus’s betrayal many things had changed in the Imperium. One of these changes had been the removal of official backing for the remembrancers. With a stroke of a pen the remembrancers had been no more.
Better that than what could have become of them, thought Qruze. The image of men and woman dying under the guns of his former brothers flicked across his mind. An age ago, but no time at all, he thought. He blinked and the cell snapped back into sharp reality.
‘But you did not obey,’ said Dorn.
‘I was angry,’ spat Voss. ‘I was the father of the Order of Remembrancers. I had witnessed the centuries of the Great Crusade since it began on Terra. I had looked on demigods and the scattering of blood amongst the stars that has been the birth of the Imperium.’ He raised his hand as if gesturing to stars and planets above them. ‘I made those events real to minds that will never see them. I bound them in words so that those wars will echo into the future. In millennia to come there will be children who listen, or read, and will feel the weight of these times in my words.’ He snorted. ‘We remembrancers served illumination and truth, not the whim of a council of bureaucrats.’ Voss shook his head, his lip curled for a moment and then he blinked.
‘Askarid was with me,’ he said quietly. ‘She said that it was an impossible idea, dangerous and driven by ego. A pilgrimage of hubris, she called it.’ He smiled and closed his eyes for a moment, floating in lost happiness.
Qruze knew the name Askarid Sha, illuminator and calligraphist. She had lettered Voss’s work into scrolls and tomes as beautiful as his words.
‘Your collaborator?’ asked Qruze, the question slipping out of his lips. Dorn shot him a hard look.
‘Yes, she was my collaborator, in every sense.’ Voss sighed and looked at the dregs of tea in his cup. ‘We argued, for days,’ he said quietly. ‘We argued until it was clear that I was not going to change my mind. I knew it was possible to get to Isstvan V. I had contacts throughout the fleets, on both sides of the war. I knew I could do it.’
Voss paused, staring into space as if someone stood there looking back at him from a lost past. Dorn said nothing, but waited. After a few moments Voss spoke, a catch in his voice.
‘Askarid came with me, even though I think she feared how it would end.’
‘And how did it end?’ asked Dorn. Voss looked back at the primarch, his eyes still wide with memory.
‘Isn’t that what you are here to decide, Rogal Dorn?’
‘HE WAS RIGHT, about the Edict of Dissolution,’ said Dorn. Voss had asked to sleep and Dorn had permitted it. He and Qruze had returned to the dome of crystal beneath the starfield. Qruze could feel the leaden mood of the primarch as he stood looking at the stars.
‘The end of the remembrancers?’ said Qruze, raising an eyebrow and looking up at Dorn. ‘You think that they should be allowed to wander through this war? Recording our shame in paintings and songs?’ There was a pause. Qruze expected another growl of rebuke but Dorn showed no emotion other than in the slow breath exhaling from his nose.
‘I had my doubts when the Council ratified the edict,’ said Dorn. ‘The position as presented at the time was perfectly logical. We are at war with ourselves; we do not know how far the treachery of my brother spreads. This is not a time to allow a menagerie of artists to walk freely amongst our forces. This is not a war to be reflected in poetry. I understand that…’
‘But beyond logic, you had doubts,’ said Qruze. He felt that he suddenly understood why Rogal Dorn, Praetorian of Terra, had come to see an old remembrancer in a prison cell.
‘Not doubts, sorrow.’ Dorn turned, pointing out at the stars beyond the crystal glass. ‘We went out into those stars to wage war for a future of enlightenment. We took the best artists with us so that they could reflect that truth. Now our battles go unremembered and unrecorded. What does that tell us?’ Dorn let his hand fall.
‘It is a practicality of the situation we face. The survival of the truth that we fought for makes demands that must be met,’ said Qruze.
‘Demands that must be wrapped in silence and shadow? Deeds done that must remain unremembered and unjudged?’ Dorn began to walk away from the glass, his steps raising dust from the floor.
‘Survival or obliteration: that will be history’s judgement on us,’ said the grey warrior.
Dorn turned to stare at Qruze, the ghost of anger on his face. ‘And the only way is for the Imperium to become a cruel machine of iron, and blood?’ said the primarch in a hard-edged whisper.
‘The future will have a price,’ said Qruze, not moving from the viewport. Dorn was silent. For an instant Qruze thought he saw a flicker of despair in the primarch’s eyes. Behind him the planets of the Solar System glittered as cold points of light beyond the towers of the nameless fortress.
‘What will we become, Iacton Qruze? What will the future allow us to be?’ said Dorn, and walked away without looking back.
‘WHEN WE REACHED Isstvan V the massacre was complete,’ continued Voss. ‘I never got the chance to see the surface, but the void around it sparkled with debris. I watched it drift past the viewport of my stateroom, fragments still cooling, fires feeding on oxygen trapped in wrecks.’
Dorn nodded, his face unreadable as he listened to the remembrancer’s story. Something had changed in the primarch after they returned from the observation deck. It was as if he had begun to wall something up inside him. It reminded Qruze of the gates of a citadel grinding shut before the advance of an enemy. If Voss noticed he did not show it.
‘They came for us, the Sons of Horus. It was not until I saw them that I began to think that I had misunderstood this civil war.’ Voss glanced at Qruze and the old warrior felt an ice-cold touch in his guts. ‘Metal, sea green metal, edged with bronze and covered with red slit eyes. Some had dried blood flaking from their armour. There were heads hanging on chains and by bunches of hair. They reeked of iron and blood. They said to come with them. Only one person asked why. I wish I could remember her name, but at the time I just wanted her to be quiet. One of them walked over to her and pulled her arms from her body, and left her screaming on the floor. We went with them after that.’ Voss paused, his eyes unfocused as if seeing the woman die again in her own blood.
Qruze found his hands had clenched, angry questions surging through his mind. Which one had it been? Which one of his former brothers had done that deed? One that he knew? One he had liked? He thought of the moment when he had learnt the truth about the men he had called brothers. The past can still wound us, he thought. He let out a quiet breath, releasing the pain. He must listen. For now, that was what he was here to do.
‘There were many remembrancers with you?’ asked Dorn.
‘Yes,’ said Voss with a shiver. ‘I had persuaded a number of others to come with me. Other remembrancers who agreed we had a duty to show the truth of this darkening age. Twenty-one came with me. There were others too, taken from the ships of the Legions who had only just showed their allegiance.’ Voss licked his lips, his eyes wandering again.
‘What happened to them?’ said Dorn.
‘We were taken to the audience chamber on the Vengeful Spirit. I had seen it once before, a long time before.’ Voss made a small shake of his head. ‘It was not the same place. The viewport still looked out on the stars like a vast eye and the walls still tapered to darkness above. But things hung from the ceiling on chains, dried mutilated things, that I did not want to look at. Ragged banners, splattered with dark stains, covered the metal walls. It was hot, like the inside of a cave beside a fire pit. The air stank of hot metal and raw meat. I could see the Sons of Horus standing at the edge of the room, still, waiting. And at the centre of it all was Horus.