‘We go through,’ Macharius said. ‘Now.’
He was already stepping into the portal. Drake was following. There was nothing else to do but accompany them. I took a long step into cool strangeness.
Chapter Twenty-Four
‘What is this place?’ Macharius asked. We stood on the far side of the portal, watching the remainder of our force very slowly enter the gate. Each slight movement seemed to take minutes. There was a moment of strangeness when they passed through to our side. Their limbs blurred as if their motions were speeding up, and then, to all intents and purposes, they looked normal.
‘I think it may be something the eldar built, a pathway into the beyond.’
‘Why would the eldar who stole it bring the Fist of Russ here?’
Drake paused. An odd expression flickered across his face. ‘This is a roadway through infinity. The eldar use them to pass through space.’
‘You saw that in Bael’s mind?’ Macharius said.
Drake nodded. ‘This one was a sacred path once, and it leads to something awesome. Or at least that is what I assume.’
‘Or what he wanted you to assume. Is it possible he could have projected false memories into your mind?’
‘Certainly,’ said Drake. ‘I am sure such was his intention. The eldar are clever and deceptive, and I do not trust anything I saw in his thoughts, but it is all we have to go on.’
Macharius laughed. ‘There are only two ways we can go, forwards or back.’
‘I can sense the presence of the Fist here,’ said Drake. ‘I know which way they went. There is something odd, though, a sense of a presence I do not like.’
Looking at the nearby statues I saw that one of them had been marked. It showed a crude rune in a similar style to those emblazoned on Grimnar’s armour. Just some lines quickly scratched with a blade. It took me a moment to realise what it was, then I pointed it out to Macharius.
‘The Space Wolf is leaving us a trail,’ said Macharius. ‘Let’s move out.’
‘Leaving us a trail or making sure he could find his own way back,’ Anton muttered, so low that only I could hear him. To tell the truth it did not matter. It was still reassuring. At least we had something to go on and a path back if we survived.
We moved along the path, a company of men in green tunics, along with several squads of Drake’s storm troopers. I was wondering whether we should send back for reinforcements.
From what I had seen of the eldar, six of them might be able to take us, particularly if they understood this environment and we did not. Macharius did not wait though, and he knew his business.
Of course, there was the distortion of time that passing through the gate caused. By the time help was summoned from outside, days might have passed in here. We had no option but to race ahead if we were ever going to catch up with the xenos and retrieve the Fist of Russ.
The place that we moved through was the spookiest I had ever seen. The air was close and still and oddly perfumed. My skin tingled as I marched as if it had been exposed to some strange drug. Drake’s hazard monitors told us there were no chemical or biological agents present, but it was possible that they had malfunctioned, or whatever was there was too subtle for them to detect. It was not a reassuring thought.
The way ahead seemed to be some sort of tunnel. Massive arches inscribed with odd xenos runes held the ceiling in place. There were times when that vanished, though, and we caught sight of odd vistas. Sometimes through crystal we saw the strange stars of alien skies. Sometimes we saw huge shifting masses of colour that reminded me of chemical cloud formations in the skies of hive-worlds I had visited. The path was wide enough for multiple battle tanks to pass abreast. I wondered who had built it and why.
The thought occurred to me that perhaps the Valley of the Ancients was not a sacred temple site, or at least not just one. Perhaps it was the terminus for this pathway. Perhaps the whole structure was intended to anchor the path in our reality. I pushed the thought to one side and moved closer to Macharius and Drake.
The inquisitor looked particularly queasy and I cannot say I blamed him. There was something in the strangeness of our surroundings that was getting on my nerves. Given his power and his sensitivity it must have been a thousand times worse for him.
I noticed that many of the great statues that lined the roadway had been defaced. In places, it looked as if they had fused or melted under the impact of gigantic las-beams. In other places they were oddly altered. Their features had a lewd look to them. Some of them had multiple arms which ended in claws. Others had… exaggerated physical features. The clean lines that had been the mark of so many of the statues outside were disturbed. There was something about these ones that suggested the crazed uncleanness of the followers of Chaos.
So far we’d had no problem following the right trail because there was only one. We had only two directions in which to go, forwards or back towards the exit. I began to notice that in places the stonework seemed eaten away and strange pools of multicoloured light were visible in the gaps. These swirled and shimmered in ways that hurt the eye. At times the clouds swept forwards and billowed flat as if they were pressed against a wall of glass so translucent as to be invisible. When we passed these gaps, I felt nauseous and afraid. It was as if an oppressive presence waited just out of sight, ready to pounce, and its mere closeness was enough to set my nerves to jangling.
‘I like this not,’ said Drake. ‘We are close to Chaos. This is a place where the Ruinous Powers have made their will felt.’
‘That does not bode well for our quest,’ said Macharius.
‘I am starting to feel as if nothing does,’ said Drake. ‘Perhaps this was all a mistake.’
‘Come, my friend, now is not the time for such talk, not when we are so close to finding what we seek. Just think, we will soon have one of the Imperium’s most sacred relics in our possession.’
‘I wonder whether its time here has contaminated it. I sense evil in this place.’
‘Surely a relic of such holiness could not be tainted, even by the Ruinous Powers?’
‘There is nothing that Chaos cannot turn to its purposes, nothing. So I was taught. So I believe. It is why we must be eternally vigilant, with ourselves most of all.’
Macharius looked around at our surroundings. If he were daunted by being cut off from our world within the toils of this ancient, alien place he gave no sign of it. ‘We will do what needs to be done,’ he said.
It occurred to me then that we were very far from home, and that there was a very real chance that we would never return. Less than an hour before I had been celebrating an unexpected victory. Now I was almost sick with fear of the unknown. I wondered if the eldar had known about this or whether they were as surprised by it as we were.
This is a strange and terrible place. It is not at all what I expected. The evil that destroyed my ancestors has touched this webway. All of the signs point to one thing. They created this vault thinking that it would preserve them from the power that was devouring their very souls. Instead, it looks as though they entombed themselves within it. There was no escape for them, here or any other place. The only question that remains is whether the evil that destroyed them still lurks within or whether, lacking anything else to devour, it perished from lack of prey.
My followers are nervous. They do not know why we are here. They think that we are fleeing from a battle that could easily have been won. They think that I am afraid of the Space Marines and what they might do to us. So far none of them have had the courage to say anything, but I can tell that it is only a matter of time. Sileria, in particular, blames me for the loss of Bael. It seems they were, as I suspected, lovers. Well, he was no great loss, and I doubt whether she will be either.