Dipping a finger into the geyser of blood, Erebus swiftly drew an eight-pointed star upon the dying man’s forehead, though the meaning of the symbol was lost on Sor Talgron. Then, the First Chaplain hurled the old man away from him, sending him crashing down the stairs that he had just helped the old man climb. The priest’s body tumbled and flopped end over end. It came to rest halfway at the foot of the stairs, a broken, lifeless marionette, blood pooling beneath it, arms and legs bent unnaturally.
Before the shocked worshippers of Forty-seven Sixteen could react, the entirety of the First Company began firing. The sound was deafening, blotting out the screams. Bolters and autocannons were swung methodically from left and right, mowing down unarmoured men, women and children indiscriminately. Heavy flamers spewed their volatile liquid fire down into the packed masses.
Ammunition was expended, and the First Company Terminators calmly reloaded, slamming fresh magazines into place, replacing drums of high-calibre rounds, threading fresh belts through arming chambers and replacing empty canisters of promethium with fresh ones. Then they simply continued firing.
‘Do you trust me, Sor Talgron?’ said Lorgar, his breath hot against the captain’s face. Shocked and horrified by the scale of the brutal massacre, Sor Talgron was unable to answer.
‘Do you trust me?’ the Urizen said, more fiercely, his voice quivering with such intensity of feeling that Sol Talgron felt that his legs would surely have given way beneath him had he not been supported.
The captain of Thirty-fourth Company turned his face towards the impassioned, golden face of his primarch, lord and mentor. He nodded his head slightly.
‘Then believe me when I say that this is necessary,’ said Lorgar, his voice full of righteous fury.
‘The Emperor, in His wisdom, has driven us to this point,’ said Lorgar. ‘This is His will. This is His mercy. The blood of these innocents is on His hands.’
The deafening roar of the slaughter slowly died. At a barked order from Kor Phaeron, the Terminators of First Company began descending the tiers, inspecting the kills and executing those who had, miraculously, survived their concentrated fire.
‘I need to know who I can trust,’ said Lorgar, his voice filled with such intensity that Sor Talgron knew fear – real fear – such that an Astartes should never know. ‘I need to know that my sons would follow me where I must go. Can I trust you, Word Bearer?’
‘Yes,’ said Sor Talgron, his throat cracked and dry.
‘Would you walk into hell itself alongside me if I asked it?’ asked Lorgar.
Sor Talgron made no immediate response. Slowly, he nodded his head.
Lorgar stared at him intently, and he felt his soul shrivel beneath the penetrating gaze. In that moment Sor Talgron felt certain that Lorgar was going to kill him then and there.
‘Please, my lord,’ gasped Sor Talgron. ‘I would follow you. I swear it. No matter what.’
The intensity suddenly left Lorgar’s face, washed away as if it had never been. How could he ever have thought the Urizen meant him harm, he thought? He almost laughed out loud, the notion was so ludicrous.
‘You asked me before what the great work I am scribing was,’ said Lorgar, his tone casual and light. ‘For now, I am calling it the Book of Lorgar.’
The primarch of the Word Bearers released his grip on Sor Talgron. Lorgar’s golden lips turned into a smile, and despite everything, Sor Talgron could not help but feel his heart lift.
Lorgar laughed softly to himself.
‘Such hubris, I know,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to read it.’
Lorgar looked him directly, his eyes flashing.
‘What do you remember of the old beliefs of Colchis, Sor Talgron?’
The Voice
(James Swallow)
In silence, only truth remains.
But to find it; ah, there is the task. For, one must ask herself, what place is truly silent? Where can the absolute stillness of tranquillity be found?
The question was a common one placed to novices at the very start of their induction, and it was a rare aspirant who showed the wisdom to come even close to the correct answer.
Many would look to the stars, through the portals of the great ebon-hulled craft they found themselves aboard, and they would point to the void. Out there, they would say. In the airless dark, there is silence. No atmosphere to carry the vibrations of sound, no passage there for voice nor song nor shout nor scream. The void is silence, they would say.
And they would be corrected. For even where there is no air to breathe, there is still clamour, the… chaos, as it were. Even there, broadcast across wavelengths that unaugmented humans could not perceive, there was the riot of cosmic radiation and the constant rumble of the universe’s great stellar engines as it turned and aged. Even darkness itself had a sound, if one had the ears with which to hear it.
So then. The question again. Where is silence?
Here. Leilani Mollitas mouthed the words, her voice stilled. It is here, within me. She touched her chest with both hands, palms flat and blades of fingers extended, thumbs crossed in the shape of the great Aquila. Inside her thoughts, behind her closed eyes, beyond the rush of blood in her veins, the novice strained to listen and find the tranquillity of self; for it was only within the human heart that the absolute purity of silence could be found, the peace that only the mute could know.
A frown grew upon her pale, pleasant face. She could not reach it. Even as that thought formed in Leilani’s mind, she knew she was lost to the moment. The perfect embrace of serenity faded from her and she allowed a breath to escape her lips.
In the flat hush of the sanctum the noise of her exhalation was like the rush of a wave breaking against a shore, and she felt her cheeks colour slightly. Her eyes snapped open and she blinked, displeased with herself.
Her mentor stood a few feet away, observing her with the same perpetually watchful air that was the very meter of her character. The other woman moved her head slightly, the top-knot of purple-black hair about her otherwise shorn scalp shifting to pool on the shoulders of her golden battle-bodice. Below the flexible duty armour, reinforced red thigh-boots and studded gloves covered her limbs, with more plate metal for her sleeves and a snake-skin of dense mail as leggings. Tabards hung free from her waist and she was without weapons, her helmet or the finery of her furred combat cloak.
Amendera Kendel of the Storm Dagger cadre, Oblivion Knight and Sister of Silence, stood before her without a sound. Her amber eyes betrayed a teacher’s concern for a promising student.
Leilani smothered her startled reaction quickly. She had thought herself alone in the Black Ship’s meditation chamber, utterly unaware of the other woman’s arrival. The girl could not help but wonder how long Kendel had been there, how long she had been studying her as she tried and failed to find her inner focus. By contrast, the novice was dressed only in her mail undersuit and the lightweight hooded robe of an unvowed aspirant. Leilani raised her bare hands and began to sign, but her mistress halted her with a short shake of the head. Instead the woman held the tips of two fingers to her chin. Give voice, commanded the gesture.
The novice’s lips thinned. She longed for the day when words would no longer pass from her mouth, but as she had just demonstrated, it would not be today. At this moment, Novice-Sister Leilani Mollitas felt further away from taking the Oath of Tranquillity than she ever had before.