I study my surroundings. They reveal the obsession of my distant forebears with complex carvings. Thousands of masks have been embossed on the wall; each one of them shows the expression on the face of a forgotten god. It is difficult to tell whether they represent the thousand moods of a dozen gods or the dozen moods of a thousand feeble deities. All I can see are faces that show simpering joy, witless grief, dubious happiness and on and on. I block out the distraction.
Outside my chamber I hear a faint sound, slightly worrying, like a body falling. I draw my weapon just in case. It is not possible that an enemy could have reached me here, but perhaps there is a traitor within the ranks of my own guards. It would not be the first time such a thing has happened to an eldar commander.
I look outside and I see a fallen body indeed. The head is twisted at an odd angle that tells me the neck has been broken. I look around for Bael and see that he is not there. He should be. He was in charge of this detachment.
I step outside, ready to strike in any direction. The corridor is empty, although in the distance at either end I can see a guard. I raise my hand and each of them responds in turn.
I walk over to one and ask if he has seen Bael. He says no. It is the same at the other end of the corridor. It is not possible for Bael to have vanished without them seeing him, or is it?
I walk back along the corridor, this time keeping my eyes on the ceiling, and I notice at one point that there is an opening there, some sort of ventilation system. I spring up and inspect it, and I see that it has been recently removed.
Someone has been here. Someone has entered the very heart of our position without being noticed and managed to kidnap one of my own officers without the sentries seeing it. I realise it can only be one of the Space Wolves that has done this.
I call the sentries and tell them to keep watch. I tell them to be particularly careful in checking the ceilings for ventilation access hatches. I move my command position again, thinking about how worryingly close I came to being captured myself. It seems that these vermin are more dangerous than I had thought.
Chapter Twenty-Two
The door swung open and Grimnar walked into Macharius’s command bunker. He was casually dragging what I assumed was an eldar corpse by the neck. Then I realised it was more than that.
‘I have a prisoner for you to interrogate,’ he said, looking at Drake. My eyes widened. He had not only come back alive from a labyrinth haunted by xenos, he had brought one of them with him.
‘Very good,’ said Macharius. The xenos lay limply, but I remembered the other one that had been faking back on the spacecraft. I held my shotgun ready, feeling jumpy as a felid that had lapped up Frenzon in its milk. Anton and Ivan looked just as nervous. The Undertaker looked blankly on.
I took another look at the eldar. Its armour was rent in various places and spattered with dark stuff that could only be blood. It had been stripped of all obvious weapons, but still I could not help but think it was dangerous. A creature so swift and deadly could never be considered harmless.
Drake licked his lips. A cold smile flickered across his face. There was something else there as well, an expression I can only describe as nervous as well as cruel.
Good, I thought, remembering what the eldar had done to our soldiers. Let’s see how they endure suffering. Drake was an inquisitor, trained to get answers in all sorts of ways, some of them very nasty. Normally I would have done a lot to avoid seeing him at work but, like I said, the eldar brought out the worst in us. A small daemon of violence and cruelty sat on my shoulder and whispered that anything done to this creature was justified. I felt obscurely ashamed. I would have liked to think better of myself.
‘Take it to my sanctum,’ Drake said. ‘I want it stripped, scanned and chained down.’
‘I want to be there,’ said Macharius. ‘I have some questions myself.’
He gestured for us to follow. Drake shrugged. With no effort whatsoever, Grimnar dragged the armoured xenos along the floor. It’s slithering made an odd sound on the stone, as if a jewelled serpent were scraping against a rock.
Drake had converted a small antechamber into something that was halfway between a study and an alchemical lab. Divinatory engines sat on either side of a long table. Chains of the sort normally used for manacling deserters were brought. Grimnar tore off the xenos’s armour and removed its helmet. He was not gentle about the way he broke the seals.
The eldar lay on the table. Its face was oddly sensitive and beautiful. With its eyes closed it was as serene as one of the statues of the gods out there in the valley. The connection between the creatures we fought and the original temple builders was obvious. The prisoner had the same lobeless, pointed ears and the same almond-shaped eyes. Its cheekbones were high. Its lips were thin.
Drake opened a padded case full of vials and syringes. He considered them for a while then shook his head, dismissing them. Possibly he doubted the effects of truth serums intended for humans on the alien form before him. Perhaps he feared they might prove fatal before he could get his answers. He shut his case again and looked at Grimnar, then Macharius, then us.
‘Be ready for anything,’ he said. The Space Wolf nodded.
‘Is there danger to you?’ Macharius asked.
‘There is always some possibility of spiritual contamination when dealing with xenos,’ said Drake. ‘But I am an inquisitor. I can cope.’
I wondered if he was as confident as he sounded. He rolled up his sleeves, laved his hands in water and strode forwards, placing his fingers on the temples of the eldar. For a long moment, nothing happened, then I noticed a faint nimbus of light played around each of Drake’s fingertips. The chamber seemed to grow colder, and I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck begin to rise.
Suddenly, the eldar sat upright, moving easily against the weight of its chains. I brought the shotgun up, and Anton and Ivan placed themselves between the xenos and Macharius. The eldar’s eyes were open now and it had lost all the serenity that being unconscious had given its appearance. Its eyes were lilac and commanding. Its expression was shockingly evil. Just looking at its countenance made me want to back away.
Drake’s hands remained in contact with the xenos’s head. It stared into the middle distance, a grimace of frustration twisted its features. The expression was mirrored on Drake’s face. Some sort of spiritual struggle was clearly under way.
For a moment I wondered whether the inquisitor had bitten off more than he could chew. Perhaps the mind of the eldar was too powerful and too wicked for him. Perhaps rather than Drake being the dominant partner, he would end up being corrupted or having his mind broken. As the thought occurred to me I turned my head slightly, and as if by accident brought the shotgun to bear on him. No one else seemed to notice, save perhaps Grimnar. They were too caught up in the unfolding drama.
‘What is your name?’ Drake asked. His voice was as harsh as stone grinding on stone, and it sounded as though he were simply vocalising the last of a series of statements that had already flickered between his mind and that of the eldar.
The eldar made an effort to resist him. Muscles spasmed, tendons became visible in its neck. Its face twitched. Its eyes went wide. It was trying to clamp its lips shut, to bite down on its tongue, to stop itself breathing.
‘What is your name?’ Drake repeated. His patient tone was at odds with the strain written on his own face. ‘You will tell me, you know. It is only a matter of time.’