She lifted her head, still trembling, and then managed to get to her knees. She wiped the sick from her mouth, the flare wafting madly in her shaking grip. She held it as steady as she could, pointing it at the abomination and looking at it even though she knew the nightmare would forever haunt her afterwards.
The man hung upside down, attached to a thick iron ‘X’ like a tank trap that kept him in a cruciform position. Wire bound his ankles, wrists and neck. Someone had taken a blade to his eyelids, and his dead gaze bored into her. The flesh around his chest and abdomen had been neatly cut, and the skin flayed and pulled away from his body. He glistened, the frost upon his exposed bones turned red and shiny. The ragged flesh had been stitched to his hands and the two translucent flaps reminded Gedd of wings.
A sacrifice. An offering.
It resembled a perverse homage to the aquila, only in reverse. Purity seals nailed to his ribcage gently fluttered in the air like rotting feathers. The man had been a priest, one of the Ecclesiarchy.
Out of the corner of her eye, Gedd saw the silhouette of a second figure. It turned slowly on a length of chain, its limbs wrapped in razor wire. Beaten, battered, adorned with savage cuts, the eyes had been–
‘Holy Emperor…’ Gedd sobbed.
Then a third figure, vast and distended, writhing with parasites and a fourth bound with studded leather, its skin peeled away to reveal–
Tears blurring her vision, she looked away.
Gedd cast aside the dead flare as she began to weaken, the terror pushing her down. Bile rose up in her throat, hot and acerbic. She vomited again and saw something black and vaguely resembling a feather amongst her leavings. She had to get away, to get out. She would die if she stayed. Gedd crawled. Indistinct chattering worried at the edge of her hearing like the rapid snapping of many beaks or the clack-clack of bird talons.
She found the strength to rise, pushing up onto her heels and staggering at first before she ran, teeth gritted, into the snow and the night.
Chapter Fifteen
City of Vorganthian, Kobor, within Terra’s light
He turned off the hololith, plunging the room into a penumbral twilight. Shrouded by shadows, he shut his eyes and asked for the strength to continue.
Ylax Orn sighed, weary. His bones ached, his skin felt as thin as parchment.
‘Have you ever served a cause?’ he asked. ‘I have. I still do. It was not always so. I used to be envious of the other priests of my order, the ones who had found purpose. For the longest time I looked for my own. I gave up my vestments and became a missionary, hoping I would find my path that way. Spread the creed, I thought – bring the faithless back to His light. I thought this was my purpose, my cause.’
Orn gave a sad shake of the head.
‘I searched, across worlds, across the void. I travelled on freighters and with rogue traders. I even fought at the side of the Astra Militarum. But I remained unfulfilled. I cannot describe to you how utterly demoralising that is, to seek and seek, and to not know why.
‘I actually don’t know how old I am. After the first century I stopped counting. It didn’t seem meaningful to weigh the significance of my life in years. Then I found illumination and everything I knew and understood, everything I believed was possible… It all changed.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’ rasped a frightened voice from behind him.
‘Because I want you to understand why this matters.’
Orn leaned forwards and there was a sharp but diminutive flare of light. A candle flame flickered into life, easing back the darkness. Its light fell across the spines of books, and scrolls bound with leather twine.
‘History, ancestry, origins,’ he said. ‘These volumes, every scrap of parchment in this library was compiled over many years. Some are extremely old.’ Orn stepped around the pedestal where he had lit the candle and gently traced his fingers down the spine of one of the books.
‘What does any of this have to do with me?’
‘It’s blood,’ answered Orn. ‘His blood. I needed a means of reaching Him. That is my cause, my purpose. It has been difficult, I won’t lie.’ He looked up as if an answer would present itself in the grimy vaults above, but all he saw was dirty glass and shadows. ‘I have done regrettable things. I had begun to doubt.’
‘Please… let me go,’ rasped the voice.
‘I wandered, alone and in search of death,’ said Orn, as if he hadn’t heard. ‘I left behind a battlefield of the dead as the very night seemed to split open and a ragged wound tore across the black. As the burning rain began, I sought refuge in an old, abandoned chapel. I intended to die there but His will demanded a different fate for me. I found the Cage. It was just lying there, as if waiting to be discovered. And though back then I had no idea of what it actually was, I knew it was significant. And so it proved. It became my salvation.’
‘I don’t understand any of this.’
‘You will.’
‘What you do want of me? I have archival duties that must be attended to. I have scrolls that–’
Orn turned to regard a man stooped behind him. He was thin-faced and pale, studious-looking, and wore long tan robes. The two guards from the rigging platform stood in the shadows close by.
‘I need your blood, or specifically, your bloodline. You have been exceptionally difficult to find. So many records, so many falsehoods and dead ends.’ Orn smiled. ‘Psychic resonance,’ he said.
‘W-what?’
‘It leaves a mark in the ether, the little candle flames of our souls, the anima that the ravenous beyond do so hunger for. It’s unique, like a fingerprint. Yours is particularly old and rarefied.’
The man protested. ‘I am not a wyrd.’
‘Would you even know if you were? Your ancestry is deeply buried. I needed a…’ He paused, seeking the word. ‘A trigger, a way to tease it out. I narrowed it down to this city, but finding one amongst billions? I discovered a better way than dusty ancient records and enlisted a dubious ally to obtain what I needed. The trigger.’
‘Please…’ said the man, wincing. ‘Something is wrong. My heads hurts.’
‘Pain is necessary, I’m afraid.’
The man’s eyes widened, his pupils dilating. ‘I can feel it… in my mind.’
‘Yes, it’s brutish.’
‘What is it? Am I insane? Is all of this–’
‘You are awake, you are sane and the voice you can hear, that bestial voice, it is very, very old and it is stirring your psychic resonance.’
If the man thought anything about that he kept it hidden behind a mask of abject terror.
Orn seemed not to notice. He gestured to the man’s belongings sitting on a table beside him, a lectorum-bible and the tools of a scribe.
‘A census-taker,’ he murmured, turning a few of the pages and glancing absently over the names carefully inscribed within. ‘How the ordinary and the mundane can give root to the exceptional and the unique.’
‘Please…’ said the man, his voice a reedy croak, ‘let me go. I have broken no laws, I am a loyal servant of Terra.’
‘Yes,’ said Orn, his attention back on the man, ‘yes, you are. And you will serve. Rejoice, I have given you purpose. Fitting that you will give your life for Him as He once did for you. Tell me,’ Orn continued as the man was led out of the library by his minders, ‘have you ever heard of the Sigillites?’
Only when the man turned and saw the cage of black iron beyond, did he begin to scream.
Chapter Sixteen