‘You make it sound simple,’ said Cartovandis.
‘It is far from it. Come.’
They followed. Cartovandis took up the rear, eyeing the shadows as they passed through the industrial district. He remembered Meroved as a fine warrior and an excellent tactician, and yet by his own admission he had uncovered the threat but failed to act. He had slowed with age, that much was obvious, but this sort of caution was unlike him. Cartovandis wondered what that meant.
‘What happened here, Meroved?’ he asked. ‘Where are the populace?’
‘They are here, though most fled the outskirts of the city to seek safety within.’
‘Safety from what?’ asked Adio.
‘It will be easier to show you.’
Around the next bend, Meroved’s gun-cutter was waiting, a boxy craft in gunmetal grey, its wings angled up like a predator-bird diving for prey. The turbines in its wings were already cycling, throwing intermittent slashes of light over a pair of stub-barrelled lascannons attached to the fuselage. A side hatch slid open. In the cockpit, Cartovandis saw a servitor making pre-flight checks.
He shared a look with Varogalant, who had dropped back, presumably so that he did not have to talk to either Meroved or his brother. Neither spoke, but the meaning in that look telegraphed itself. The old shield-captain was hiding something.
The gun-cutter swept in low over the Vorganth down-trans, kicking up grit and squalls of litter.
‘The worst of it happened a few days ago,’ said Meroved, and shuffled over to wrench open the gun-cutter’s side hatch.
He noticed Adio peering through the viewslits on the opposite side of the hull.
‘Are those… people?’
Even in the darkness, the Custodian could see as well as if it were day and with a sniper-sight’s focus.
‘Take a closer look…’ invited Meroved, clinging one-handed to the guiderail as the passage of air buffeted his cloak and revealed the flak-weave body armour underneath.
Cartovandis was closest and leaned over to look outside. His eyes widened.
‘How many?’ he asked as he met Meroved’s gaze.
‘Hundreds of thousands.’
Adio had joined them by the hatch, crouched down to get a better view.
The gun-cutter flew over a vast sea of humanity, seemingly frozen still, their clothes and hair stirred by the backwash coming off the engines. In the streets, hanging out of grav-cars, huddled in the lee of buildings. Everywhere.
‘What is wrong with them?’
Meroved opened the vox to the pilot.
‘Zatu. Reduce to three-quarters velocity.’
The gun-cutter slowed, the engine noise diminishing to a low burr.
‘Throne of Terra…’ Adio murmured.
Meroved followed his eye to the stricken masses hunched and prostrate on the ground. Labourers, scribes, functionaries, overseers, law-keepers or merchants – it did not matter who they were or what they did. A great leveller had made a mockery of station and influence. They each suffered the same and as one, everything that had preceded this moment was superficial and ultimately insignificant. Paralysed, emaciated, choking on their own drool, both living and dead had fallen where they had stood, some atop one another, others seized by palsy with fingers half clenched into claws and limbs trembling. Teeth chattered in some, the sound so loud it could actually be heard over the gun-cutter’s engines. Others had bitten out their tongues. Fire-blackened patches seared voids in the otherwise densely packed morass, the silhouette of a human form just visible at the heart of each.
A low hum emanated from the mass and as Adio’s eyes narrowed, Meroved knew the Custodian had realised why.
‘They are aware, and in agony.’
‘Pain beyond reason, all motor function interrupted, nerve endings stripped raw and exposed, synapses in spasm,’ said Meroved.
‘Has anyone been spared these effects?’
‘I have a few operatives still at large in the city, well hidden and protected by null-collars. For now.’ He pointed to a large scorched area of the down-trans. Several bodies, torn apart and festering, lay around it. ‘Psykers had it worst and were the first to feel its effects.’
‘We saw the Tower of Sight upon our arrival,’ said Cartovandis. ‘Astropaths on fire, leaping to their deaths.’
‘Preferable to being burned alive by warp flame,’ said Meroved. ‘The entire world has gone dark, not just this city. In the first few days, people tried to flee, those with means and those without, but the fear of contagion galvanised the other cities to defend their borders with tanks and troops. That smoke and fire on the horizon… They burned the bodies. They are still burning the bodies.’
‘It is the Cage.’
They were Varogalant’s first words since he had boarded the gun-cutter. He remained sat in his seat, uninterested in the crisis below.
‘It is a psychic amplifier, a relic of Old Night. Despots and tyrants used it to subdue populations and bend them to their will, to keep the people quiescent to work until death, to fight their wars without question – but in their hundreds, possibly even thousands and certainly not an entire world. This is beyond that, beyond what I know of the Cage, and I know everything that has been uncovered.’
‘There is something else,’ said Meroved as he shut the side hatch again and took his seat. ‘It is enhancing the strength of the Vexen Cage, making its effects much more wide-ranging and potent.’
‘In order to subdue a world?’ asked Cartovandis. ‘What use is a population unable to function?’
‘None, but I do not believe that is his goal.’
Adio raised an eyebrow. ‘His goal?’
Meroved then told them of everything he knew, of the man called Ylax Orn and the Cult of the Illuminated.
‘Heretics?’ said Cartovandis.
‘He claimed he was a servant of the Emperor and spoke of “the Awakening”.’
‘Well, that’s a little ominous,’ Adio cut in.
Cartovandis frowned. ‘And could mean anything. How many men who believed they were devout committed atrocity in the name of worship? The archives of ten thousand years of history are littered with them.’
‘He wants to give praise, a demonstration of his faith,’ said Adio, ‘here, on Kobor. How does any of this fit with what we know of the Vexen Cage and what it’s doing to the people?’
‘It doesn’t,’ said Meroved, ‘so it must be something else. The effect on the population is incidental, as appalling as I know that must sound.’
‘None of this matters if we do not find and secure the Cage,’ said Varogalant. ‘Tell us that you have at least found it.’
Meroved nodded.
‘An old library. It once held the city’s archives but has been condemned for decades. We are closing on its location as we speak.’ He got up and opened the gun-cutter’s weapons locker. The vibro-sword, bolt rifle and fusion pistol were within. He took all three, arming up as he spoke.
‘The Illuminated are more widespread than I first realised. Several of their nests had been put to the torch, but a few yet remain.’ He sighed, betraying a little of his weariness. ‘I have been blind…’ he said, and saw Cartovandis watching him intently.
You know, don’t you? You can see it.
Meroved recovered quickly, strapping Firebrand into its holster with a decisive snap.
‘They have boltholes throughout the city, and their influence runs deep, even though I believe they only have a few members.’