The Unremembered Empire Read online

  The planners had built the gardens to be appropriately noble and quietly sorrowful. The grey-leaved canopy turned even the day’s bold light into a kind of dusk. The flagstones, the commemoration walls, and the entrances to the crypts were all of Saramanthian bluestone. The water lying in the long, oblong, black-reeded pools was as dark as veils. The silver shivers of ghost carp moved under the silent mirrors of the water. The lilies drifting on the surface of the pools were grey, like tear-stained handkerchiefs.

  Mirrors…

  A breeze hissed through the trees around him. John tensed. Ripples radiated across the surfaces of the pools. He was aware of the distant bombast of trumpets, war horns and cheering in the distance, but it felt as though the volume had suddenly been turned down.

  John’s eyeballs prickled. His mouth dried. A pulse began to tap in his temple.

  ‘Please don’t do this now,’ he said, quietly but firmly. The Cabal was trying to summon him. They were trying to establish a psychic communion, most likely using one of the pools nearby as a flecting surface.

  They were trying to keep track of him. They would want to be sure he was staying true to the task they had given him.

  He swallowed hard. The breeze hissed again, rustling grey leaves. The heavy object in his carrybag trembled slightly, as if sensitive to the immaterial stirrings around him.

  Please.+

  This time he spoke with his mind, not his mouth.

  Please, I’m tired. I’ve only just got here and I’m at my wits’ end. Let me get safe and rest. Come to me later when I can take the burden of a communion. Please.+

  The breeze stirred. Who would it be? Gahet, he of the Old Kind, most probably, but John suspected the unsympathetic persistence of Slau Dha, the eldar autarch.

  Please.+

  He turned and resumed walking, but his skin was still prickling. The faraway sounds of the parade had become so muffled that John felt as though he was underwater.

  He glanced at the pool next to him, involuntarily. The surface had frozen, like dark glass, scrying glass. Below the surface, silvered fish had stilled, suspended, tail-fins mid-stroke.

  A shadow fell across the flecting surface, and it wasn’t his. He flinched as he saw the dark, rising crest of an eldar war-helm, the impossibly tall, attenuated figure, a scarecrow-god, the dimensions of its slim, long-boned form running the whole length of the pool.

  ‘I said not now!’ John spat.

  He turned, tearing his eyes away from the shadow and striding down the flagstoned path away from the pool. There was a buzzing in his hindbrain. The leaves hissed.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ he growled over his shoulder. ‘Leave me alone!’

  He left the gardens and entered the oddly quiet streets. Everyone in the deme was lining the Avenue of Heroes. His head stung from the attempted communion, and his hands were shaking.

  They had to be careful. The Cabal had to be more careful than that. From his reviews, in the guise of Teo Lusulk, of Civitas security, John knew that the XIII had reinstated their Librarius on a world-wide protocol. There was also a formidable contingent of the Astra Telepathica on the planet. Psykana techniques would be interlacing the defences. A raw conduit like the one Slau Dha had attempted to forge in the gardens might well be detected.

  Detection by the Librarius would make his work very much more problematic, and would probably end his life. This life, anyway. He was tired of dying.

  Shaking, he saw a fairly grand tavern on the corner of the next emptied street. Lights burned inside. It was an up-scale place for senatorial officers and the political echelons of the Civitas. The whole neighbourhood adjoining the Memorial Gardens was elegant and well-to-do.

  He went inside. The place was a grand salon of gilded ormulu and chandeliers, with rows of tables under the high, frescoed ceiling and in booths along each wall. It was empty, aside from a few waiting staff and servitor units, and they saw to him quickly.

  John took a table in one of the booths, the nearest he could find, and sank back into its comparative privacy. The seats were high backed and upholstered in leather, and the booth was formed from panels of coloured glass that rose from the tops of the seat backs to form partitions. At the back of the booth, the wall above the seats was a large crystal mirror in which John could watch the foot traffic coming in and out of the tavern without drawing attention to himself.

  His hands were still shaking. One of the aproned serving staff brought him a jug of water and a beaker, and the large amasec he’d ordered as he’d walked in.

  ‘Will you dine, sir?’ the servant asked.

  Food was an excellent idea. John had been poorly nourished the last few weeks as it was, and a decent hit of carbs and protein would help smooth out the after-sting of Slau Dha’s approach.

  ‘Bread,’ he said. ‘Salt butter. Something gamey or some chops.’

  ‘We have a haunch of coilhorn deer.’

  ‘That will do. Some root vegetables.’

  The servant nodded.

  ‘Are you not watching the parade, sir?’ the servant asked.

  ‘Are you not?’ John snapped.

  The man shrugged.

  ‘I’m working, sir,’ he said.

  John nodded, and tried to warm up a smile.

  ‘Me too,’ he said. ‘Besides, when you’ve seen one Space Marine march past you, you’ve seen them all, haven’t you?’

  The servant laughed as if this was a reasonably funny observation, and went off to take the order to the kitchen. John poured a beaker of water. His damned hands were still trembling, but food would help take the edge off.

  So would the spirits. He raised the amasec. He needed to use two hands just to keep it steady.

  A sip. Warmth. Better. Better.

  He put the heavy glass down, felt the tension slip out of his wrists.

  There was a mark on the white tablecloth between his hands. A dot. A second dot appeared beside it.

  Spots of blood.

  His nose, his damned nose was bleeding!

  He shook out his napkin and wiped his face. He hoped no one had seen. He could move the water jug to cover the bloodspots. That damned Slau Dha had done a real number on him.

  John took another sip of amasec, relishing the way that its burn counteracted his nerves, and checked the mirror at the back of the booth again, half-expecting to see centurions of the Librarius bursting across the tavern threshold.

  Mirror. Oh, stupid! Oh so stupid! His anxiety had made him clumsy! Mirrors and glass and reflective giltwork all around him!

  Hotwire pain jabbed in his head through the base of his skull.

  ‘No! No!’ he gasped.

  A little dribble of blood came out of his right nostril, ran down his mouth and chin, and dappled the white linen. No hiding that.

  ‘Please!’

  The mirror above the booth-back frosted as though the room temperature had dropped forty degrees. John refused to look at it even though a force, a physical pull, was trying to tilt his face up by the chin to stare.

  ‘No! Not now! Leave me alone!’

  He forced himself to look down. He stared at his drink instead, the oily surface of the amasec, which was rippling because the hand clasping the heavy glass was trembling so hard. He looked at the constellation of dark blood-spots on the table cloth, marks that all the careful arrangement of beakers and jug could not hide.

  In the freshest of them, where the glossy blood had yet to soak into the linen, he saw reflections forming: a crested helm. John moaned. The amasec in his glass stopped rippling and froze. The glass frosted cold under his fingers. The crested helm reflection appeared in the amasec too.

  John groaned aloud, and closed his eyes.

  ‘Slau Dha, you f–’ he gasped.

  ‘Not Slau Dha.’

  There was silence. No sound at all except John�
��s stumbling breath. The voice had not been that of the cruel autarch, steel sharp and cold-edged.

  It had been as dark and dense as ebony.

  John opened his eyes.

  The entire tavern had suspended. The candle flames, frozen, radiated a cool blue light, and that light sparkled off the chandeliers, the sconces, the ormulu, the mirrors, the stacked shelves of clean glasses for wine and amasec. Daylight falling into the grand salon through the tavern’s handsome windows was stained blue too, as if by very diluted ink. John could see serving staff across the room, poses locked mid-gesture, mouths open in mid-exchange.

  Silver shoals of ghost carp hung, stilled, in the blue air above the tables.

  The eldar stood at his table. His lean frame in its form-fitting armour, combined with his crested helm and flowing robes, made him seem extravagantly tall and thin, like a gaunt spectre of death, or a skeletal giant.

  ‘Not Slau Dha,’ John murmured, surprised by the sound of his own voice. ‘You, again.’

  ‘Again,’ the eldar replied from behind the beautifully terrifying visage of his helm.

  John’s latest mission for the Cabal had begun on a world called Traoris. He was sent there to acquire a weapon, and then to use it to–

  To betray his species more than he had ever betrayed it before.

  John had struggled with his conscience for a long time, but this had brought him to the brink. The acquisition of the weapon that lay wrapped up in his carrybag had been miserable, and the prospect of what he was supposed to do with it more miserable still.

  The one ray of hope had been an intercession that had taken place during the Traoris mission: a psykana communion visit from the very same eldar who manifested before him.

  John had not been told the being’s name, though he had suspicions, but he had been offered consolation, an alternative to following the Cabal’s plans.

  Not all eldar were of the same mind, it appeared. The Cabal wanted to sacrifice mankind to snuff the power of Chaos out. This nameless eldar lord opposed that thinking. He saw mankind not as a firebreak but as a true ally against the rise of the Archenemy. It seemed, and this notion troubled John more gravely than he cared to admit, that the eldar were at war with themselves over what to do about the human civil war.

  ‘You promised me hope,’ John said.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘On Traoris, you promised me hope. An alternative.’

  ‘I did,’ the towering figure replied.

  ‘But there was nothing,’ John complained. ‘You offered to place information in my mind, information that would make me understand things in new ways. You offered me a conduit for the transfer of new thoughts.’

  ‘I did.’

  John sneered. ‘There was only one thing true about it. You said the conduit would hurt, and it did. I learned nothing else, no new perspectives, no alternative thinking. I don’t know what you did to me, or why, but I was just being used again, wasn’t I?’

  ‘You learned a great deal, John Grammaticus, you just don’t know you did yet.’

  John laughed. He laughed a dirty, mocking laugh and shook his head. He looked up at the impossible silver fish frozen mid-stroke in the blue air, and the servants locked in an eternal conversation.

  ‘You know what, nameless lord?’ he said. ‘I am sick to death of you xenos-breeds and your enigmatic little un-meanings. Say what you say, plainly. Say something true. Or get the hell out of my head.’

  He snatched up the amasec to take another sip, but the solid reflection of the eldar still lay across the liquid, so he set it aside, untouched.

  ‘Think, John Grammaticus,’ said the eldar quietly. ‘Think, and you will recognise that you know much more than you knew you knew. Through the conduit, I placed data and ideas in your head, but they were too dangerous to be left in your surface thoughts. All the while you were on Traoris, or making your way here, there were any number of chances you might be read… by the notions of the warp, by your enemies, by the Dark Apostles, by your slave-masters the Cabal. They would each have killed you for thinking such thoughts, so I ensured they would not surface until the time was right.’

  ‘When will that be?’

  ‘When you are come to Macragge, in the realm of Ultramar.’

  ‘I’m here. I don’t know anything different.’

  ‘Don’t you? Think.’

  ‘Come on…’

  The eldar reached up and unclasped his war-helm. He set its sculptural form on the linen cloth beside the spots of John’s blood. His pale face, tinged blue in the psyk-light, was similarly sculptural, taut and high-boned. His long dark hair was bound up tight to fit beneath his helm, and there was a rune inscribed upon his forehead. There was nothing human about the intelligence in his dark eyes.

  Slowly, and with a dignity that seemed almost comical, he sat on the bench of the booth across from John. He was too tall and slender to fit the human space well. The long bones of his arms and legs just too long. Folding himself into the seat made him seem gangly, like an adolescent.

  Once seated, he spread his hands on the cloth, palms down. The fingers were as alarmingly long and slender as his limbs. Even sitting, he was taller than John.

  ‘Think what you know,’ the eldar said in his ebony voice. ‘Do you have the spear?’

  ‘Yes,’ John answered, realising he had shot an incriminating glance at the carrybag on the seat beside him. Not that the eldar would have been under any illusion that the weapon was anywhere else.

  ‘And you know what to do with it?’

  ‘I know who I’m supposed to see killed with it, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘What else might you do?’ asked the eldar.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said John. ‘Sit here forever and talk riddles?’

  ‘Who am I?’ asked the eldar.

  ‘I don’t know. You never said,’ John replied. ‘I have no way… you–’

  He hesitated, swallowed hard, wished the damn reflection wasn’t in his drink so he could gulp it down.

  ‘Eldrad Ulthran, Farseer of Ulthwé Craftworld,’ he said in a very small voice.

  ‘Indeed. See, then, what you know?’

  ‘How did I know that?’

  ‘The conduit put it in your head on Traoris so that you would know it now. It is one of many ideas the conduit put in your head.’

  ‘Is this the truth?’ John asked.

  ‘What else might it be?’ Eldrad replied. His spider-leg fingers gestured to the rune-marks on his armour, his crested helm and his brow. ‘Are you a scholar of the path-signs and world-symbols of the eldar lexicon? Do you recognise the marks of Ulthwé?’

  ‘No,’ said John.

  ‘But you know them well enough now.’

  ‘What else do I know?’ asked John. He thought for a second and then held up his hand to mute any response. ‘Wait, if we’re dealing with truths, farseer, tell me this. Why have you come to me? Why have you made such ridiculous efforts to commune with me? If you passed ideas into my mind months ago on Traoris that would be secure until the very act of coming to Ultramar unpacked them, so I could know then… what the hell? What else have you got to tell me? This communion has placed us both in huge danger of being detected.’

  ‘It is a risk worth taking, when set against other risks, though I agree this conversation makes your position here more precarious by the second. The Ultramarines Librarius is already aware of a psykana event. Fortunately, in eight minutes’, time, this communion will be eclipsed by another, more powerful psykana event in the city, followed by a considerable crisis. Both will divert attention from you.’

  ‘If we haven’t got much time, speak fast. What do I need to know?’

  ‘Almost everything you know already. Now you are here on Macragge, the ideas will unlock. The “unpacking” process, as you referred to it, may take a day or more,
and ideas may come in strange orders, but do not be frustrated. It will give you all that you need.’

  Eldrad leaned forward.

  ‘I am here to warn you. That was my imperative. Since our communion on Traoris, I have foreseen new things, new dangers. It has been worth the effort forging this link just to make you aware of them.’

  ‘What dangers?’ asked John.

  ‘Two things,’ replied the Farseer. ‘The Cabal may be beginning to suspect that your resolve is not all that it might be. They may make an effort to reinforce your commitment.’

  ‘I’ve been expecting that. But thanks for the tip. What else?’

  ‘It may be connected to the first thing. Someone is hunting you, John Grammaticus.’

  ‘I see. Are they here, or–’

  ‘They are here, or will be soon.’

  ‘Good to know.’

  Eldrad nodded.

  ‘My departure is overdue,’ he said. ‘Yours too, John Grammaticus. Use the fade of this communion to slip away. Do not stay. Find a safe place and unpack your mind. Choose your path. We are bound together, human, in the target of your mission, and in the matter of Earth.’

  ‘You said that before. You don’t just mean “earth” as in soil, do you? You mean it literally but not just literally. You’re using the old meaning too, aren’t you? The old name for Terra?’

  There was no answer. Eldrad Ulthran was no longer there. John looked around. Time was still frozen. The silver fish still swam in the air. The servants‘ conversation was still paused.

  The light was still blue.

  But it would not remain so for long. John felt a prickle in his ears and a warmth in his spine. He could hear sounds returning, as though from far away. Ten, fifteen seconds and the aura would be gone.

  He looked at the table, at his blood spots on the cloth. The reflections had vanished at least.

  He picked up the amasec, sank it in one gulp, then snatched up his carrybag and left the tavern just before the blue light fled and noisy reality resumed.

  A little under eight minutes later, and just nine streets away from the tavern in Ceres Deme, physical reality failed briefly, and a mouth into the warp yawned open.