Fabius Bile: Clonelord Page 14

  ‘And this is all you could find? A few dozen old friends?’ Fabius laughed, but the sound was forced. Eidolon was lying. But why, and about what? He pushed the question aside. ‘No wonder you sent ­Flavius to strong-arm me, if this is the best you could do.’

  ‘Fulgrim once conquered a world with but six of us,’ Alkenex said. ‘What might we do with a hundred? Even if one of them is you.’

  Fabius glanced at him. ‘It was seven, and I hesitate to consider it. But Eidolon is not Fulgrim and I have no interest in playing soldier.’ He looked around. ‘Perfection. You say that word as if it has any meaning for you beyond indulgence.’ He looked back at Eidolon. ‘What perfection do you seek?’

  ‘The only kind that matters. The natural state of the universe is entropy, and we are one with that entropy. We follow it to its ultimate end. With every act of excess, we further break down the bonds between what is and what could be, between the imperfect and the perfect. With every exquisite sensation, we add more heat to the phoenix’s nest. Birth, death and rebirth – that is nature of this universe.’ Eidolon looked around, a crooked smile rippling across his lumpen features. ‘We are the sparks of time’s cleansing flame, brother. We are the all-consuming fire. And only in that fire can perfection be found.’

  A raucous cheer went up at these words. Even among decadents such as these, faith was the strongest vice. The need to be a part of something greater was an addiction as insidious as any other. And harder to shake than most.

  Fabius watched his brothers cheer their own destruction, and spat on the ground. Silence fell at the gesture. Eidolon alone seemed amused. He studied Fabius for a moment, as if preserving him for posterity. Then, he laughed. ‘Always so quick to dampen the blaze of enthusiasm, eh, Fabius?’

  ‘What you call enthusiasm, I call stupidity.’ Fabius looked up at the hateful gazes glaring down at him. ‘Never have I seen cattle so enamoured of the slaughter. You shame Lorgar’s fanatics with your fervour for meaningless rhetoric.’

  ‘Better fervour than dead-eyed resignation,’ a voice called down. ‘Better to take joy in the last moment than to wallow in misery for eternity.’

  ‘Funny words coming from you, swordsman – aye, I recognise your voice from here, Eternal One. No, no, keep your mask on. I have no wish to see that patchwork countenance of yours.’ He looked around. ‘Eternity, he says. As if I am not the only one among you for whom death is an abiding concern. Your last moments stretch unbearably long, brothers. I have no doubt that I will perish – and gladly – long before the least of you.’

  ‘Only you would take pride in such imperfection, Clonelord,’ another voice echoed down. Inhuman and rasping, like something with alien vocal cords, attempting to approximate human speech. Nonetheless, another familiar voice, another old friend turned enemy. Then, that was what they all were, in some sense. ‘Only you would cast your weakness in our faces, as if it were a strength.’

  ‘And why not?’ Fabius turned. ‘My weakness is strength. I have true purpose, unlike you fools. Look at yourselves – were you truly so bedazzled by Fulgrim as all that? Are we like Angron’s murder-dogs now, ready to hurl ourselves on his pyre without hesitation? Are we Horus’ whelps, bereft without our father to hold our hands?’

  ‘Fulgrim is the Phoenician, and we are his sons,’ Eidolon said lazily.

  ‘And we made do quite well without him for a long time.’ Fabius looked up at the Lord Commander Primus. ‘Are you so eager to lose your head to one of his tantrums a second time, Eidolon?’

  Eidolon touched his throat, the look of sly contemplation sliding from his face. Even now, the thought of his death held a power over him. Fabius smiled. ‘Yes, how long will you keep it this time, do you think? And without me there to sew it back on…’

  ‘I have kept it long enough. Fulgrim sleeps, but he will stir soon enough. And when he spreads his wings, the galaxy will burn. All that is imperfect will be reduced to ash and forgotten in the blazing world to come.’ Eidolon stood. ‘That may well include you and that carnival of monsters you travel with, Fabius. Unless your common sense reasserts itself soon.’

  ‘Is that it? Is that why I’m here, so that you can deliver some vague warning and an even vaguer threat? If I’d wanted that, I would have stayed with the Harlequins.’

  ‘Warnings and threats? No. Too late for those, I think.’ Eidolon pushed himself to his feet and swung his thunder hammer out so that it pointed towards Fabius. ‘No, Fabius – this is to be your gauntlet.’

  Fabius stared up at him. ‘You cannot be serious,’ he said contemptuously.

  Eidolon smiled. ‘It is what is demanded, before you can re-join us. You must face a test of worthiness, and a punishment for dereliction of duty. That is our way, Fabius. All will be forgiven… if you survive.’

  ‘Forgiven? I need no forgiveness.’ Fabius found himself shouting. ‘And certainly not from fools like you.’ He turned in a tight circle, hand dropping to his needler. He froze as Alkenex signalled and his warriors raised their weapons. The amphitheatre erupted in shouts and bellows. Fabius tensed, prepared to signal for a rush of stimulants. If he could get past them and out into the city, he might be able to escape and signal the Vesalius.

  ‘Give me an excuse, Spider,’ Alkenex said, one hand on the hilt of his sword.

  ‘Peace, Prefect Flavius,’ Eidolon called down. He raised his hammer. ‘All of you, be silent. A fiend does walk abroad, and it is to him that this onerous duty falls.’ Eidolon swept out a welcoming hand. ‘Let us greet him with all due ceremony and joy.’

  Fabius turned as someone – something – new entered the arena. A troop of mutants, their eyelids and mouths sewn shut, and their bodies hidden by heavy robes, shuffled into view, hauling something behind them. It drifted into the light amid a web of chains. One by one, the mutants released the chains they held and retreated back into the dark as their prisoner continued to float forward.

  ‘What is this?’ Fabius said, hand still resting on his needler.

  ‘Some say he is the last of the old lodges left. The last priest of Davin.’ Eidolon gave a ghastly smile. ‘Or he was. What he is now is a matter of some debate, among those given to such wearisome indulgences. For the moment, however, he is ours. You should feel honoured, my brother. I went to no small effort to acquire a fitting judge for you…’

  The withered, wizened thing in its cloak of chains had been a man, once. Or perhaps a woman. After a certain point, it became hard to tell, short of an autopsy. It – he – looked as if he had been stretched out of proportion, every limb and digit dragged to twice its own length. A great cage, bent in the shape of a bull’s head – or a goat’s – rested on the too-wide shoulders, imprisoning the stretched, flattened skull. It hung suspended from nothing, the ends of its many chains hovering above it, like the heads of a hydra. The chains did not rattle or clink. It was as if the thing drank in all sound, all light.

  ‘All hope,’ the newcomer said, through cracked and threadbare lips. His paper-thin eyelids peeled back, revealing eyes empty of colour and vitality. ‘And why not?’ he murmured. ‘What is there new to see, under all the suns? What was shall be again, and what is shall inevitably end.’

  With agonising slowness, he brought his skeletal hands together, in a parody of prayer. The chains loosened and fell, link by link, to the ground, throwing up a cloud of dust. ‘Perhaps you will show me something new.’ He laughed, a dry rustling sound, like dead leaves caught in a breeze.

  Fabius looked up at Eidolon. ‘Is this… individual to be my executioner?’

  Eidolon chuckled. ‘Only if the gods are not on your side.’ His smile threatened to split his lumpen features. ‘Then, you don’t believe in gods, do you?’

  Fabius grimaced. The withered thing had drawn closer while he was distracted. Floating as if he weighed no more than a feather. ‘Keep your distance, or take your chances,’ Fabius said softly. ‘I’ll not
die as meekly as that.’

  ‘Perfection, Fabius,’ the creature said, in a voice like sand rasping against stone. ‘That is your vice. A scalpel-bright yearning… Ah. It makes me ache to feel it. Eidolon promised me a banquet of perfection, and he has truly delivered.’

  ‘And who are you then? Name yourself.’

  ‘I am the whetstone of desire. I am the asker of questions. I am the Quaestor.’

  ‘I have never heard of you.’

  ‘Of course you have,’ the Quaestor said. ‘We have met many times. And will meet again, before the last sun sets and the galaxy goes dark forevermore. I was with you, in the temples of the Laer, and I sat at your elbow as you raised up the first children of your genius from the nutrient soup. That you could not see me is no matter – I was there, and I saw you.’

  Fabius felt a flicker of unease as the pale gaze pierced him through. The chirurgeon twitched, as if it shared his uncertainty. The Quaestor’s smile was like a scalpel grating on bone, and he clapped again. The world seemed to shake. One by one, the sensor-feeds in Fabius’ armour went dark, and its confines became stifling. Quickly, he tore loose his helmet.

  The air felt still and heavy. Not from the expected atmospheric pressure, but instead – what? It was as if the world had somehow stopped in its rotation, and everything else had clattered to a sudden, irresistible halt. Fabius looked around. The red of the world had faded to a rusty haze, and the members of the Phoenix Conclave were as statues. Even Eidolon stood frozen, in mid-gloat, and Alkenex, still poised to spring. Fabius turned, his breath straining in his lungs and billowing like fog from between chapped lips. Sweat beaded and turned to ice on his face. He felt overtaxed, as if he’d run for days.

  ‘What have you done?’ he demanded. His words fell flat, the echo stifled at conception. ‘Some trick of witchery?’

  ‘Nothing so crude. Merely a moment, stretched to its utmost.’ The Quaestor floated closer. ‘To my perceptions, all time is thus. A collection of eternal moments, one bleeding into the next with infinite slowness.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘This is the moment of testing. The moment your hearts are weighed against the Phoenix’s feather. Are you not curious at the outcome?’

  ‘Not remotely. I know my worth, and I know my crimes. This court holds no jurisdiction over me.’ Fabius straightened, trying to slow his heart rate. His muscles strained against unknown pressures. It was as if he stood at the bottom of a vast ocean, and the weight of thousands of fathoms pressed down on him.

  ‘Its jurisdiction extends far beyond your ability to conceive, alchemist. You have committed crimes of such monstrous elegance that even the gods themselves grow uneasy. Look – see – they sit in judgement of you.’ A too-long finger drifted upwards, and Fabius followed the gesture. He looked up, and something looked down.

  It was not a face, for a face was a thing of limits and angles, and what he saw had neither. It stretched as far as his eyes could see, as if it were one with the whole of the sky and the firmament above. Things that might have been eyes, or distant moons or vast constellations of stars, looked down at him, and a gash in the atmosphere twisted like a lover’s smile. It studied him from an impossible distance, and he felt the sharp edge of its gaze cut through him, layer by layer. There was pain, in that gaze, and pleasure as well. Agony and ecstasy, inextricable and inseparable.

  With great effort, he tore his gaze away. ‘There is nothing there,’ he snarled, his teeth cracking against each other. His hearts stuttered, suddenly losing their rhythm. He pounded at his chest, as internal defibrillators sent a charge of electricity shrieking through him. The chirurgeon flooded his system with tranquillisers, and he tapped shakily at his vambrace. A secondary solution of mild stimulants joined the tranquillisers, stabilising him. He ignored the urge to look up. There was nothing there. Nothing at all. ‘There is nothing there,’ he said again, tasting blood. ‘There are no gods. Only cold stars and the void.’

  The pressure increased. Something whispered, deep within him. It scratched at the walls of his mind, trying to catch his attention. He ignored it. ‘No gods,’ he repeated. ‘Random confluence of celestial phenomena. Interdimensional disasters, echoing outwards through our perceptions. I think, therefore I am. They do not, so they are not.’ He met the Quaestor’s bland gaze unflinchingly. ‘Gods are for the weak. I am not weak.’

  The Quaestor nodded expectantly. ‘No.’ Then, after a moment, he said, ‘But you are ill.’ The words quavered on the air, and floating particles of dust congealed about them, making strange shapes. The Quaestor floated through them, dispersing them before they had a chance to become more distinct.

  ‘I am dying,’ Fabius said simply, steadying himself on the solid ground of undeniable fact. ‘Fruit rotting on a soured vine. If that is the limit of your awareness, I fear this will be a short trial.’

  The Quaestor’s loose features wrinkled unpleasantly. Fabius thought the entity was trying to smile. ‘Time is a construct of an organic mind.’

  Fabius arched an eyebrow. He dabbed at the blood on his lips. ‘I suspect that was not an invitation to debate.’

  ‘Your illness is also a construct.’

  ‘Explain,’ Fabius said flatly.

  ‘You have given it a name. A method. A desire. It is a Neverborn without a mind, and you are its cocoon.’ The Quaestor gestured idly, drawing several stones from the ground and causing them to crumble and splinter without touching them. The entity waved long fingers, and the debris spun in a slow, fractal pattern. ‘Or, it will be, in time.’

  Fabius watched the spinning stones, trying to ignore how much their shape reminded them of what watched him from above. ‘How much time?’

  ‘Eons. Moments. Time is a–’

  ‘Construct, yes, you said. You are lying. The blight is nothing more than a collection of cellular abnormalities.’

  ‘It is more than that.’

  ‘It is not. I have been studying it for the better part of ten thousand years.’

  ‘And you are no closer to divining its origins than you were at the beginning of your studies.’ The Quaestor was close enough now that Fabius could detect the eldritch stink radiating from his gaping pores – like the smell of a plasma-scorched hull plate, mingled with the odour of rancid milk.

  ‘It is complex – evolving–’

  ‘The sickness in you is deeper than bone. Deeper than blood and bile.’ The Quaestor circled him slowly, the tips of his feet tracing abominable sigils in the dust of the dead city, broken stones floating about him like an asteroid belt. ‘It bites at the roots of you. Gnaws at your heart’s last gleaming. It is the fire of your ending, and the light of your beginning.’

  ‘Pretty words, to describe an overly industrious cancer cell. To quote a long-dead scrivener – my life, a tragedy, and its hero, the conquering worm.’ Fabius followed the Quaestor with his eyes. It was better than looking up, though not by much. ‘There is nothing deeper than blood and bone. We are meat, and what comes after meat. Nothing more.’

  ‘And what is the motive force of meat?’ the Quaestor asked, stretched limbs twitching. ‘What drives the cogwheels of thought and desire? If meat dances, where then does the song originate from?’

  ‘I know the answer you want,’ Fabius said. His eyes rolled in their drooping sockets and his wide mouth rippled. It might have been an expression of humour. ‘It is the same answer your sort always wants. But it is a lie.’

  ‘What is a lie, but truth’s shadow?’

  Fabius laughed, but the sound was weak in the unnatural silence. ‘More words. Meaningless ones at that. Then, I expected nothing more from a warp-addled creature like yourself.’ Even as he said it, the Quaestor was surging towards him with impossible swiftness. Long fingers caressed his features. Fabius tensed, Torment snarling in his grip, demanding to be put to use. But he restrained himself. Fought the urge to strike. Something told
him it would do no good.

  ‘I was with you aboard Lugganath, as well,’ the Quaestor said softly. ‘I saw all that you saw. Your destiny is a fractal of impossible complexity. The shadows of empires past, and those yet to be, seek to simplify that pattern, for their own ends. You, and those like you, are nothing more than weapons, aimed at the future.’ The Quaestor leaned close, eyes blazing like twin suns. ‘The only question is – which future? By whose hand will you be aimed?’

  Fabius blinked. The Quaestor now floated some distance away, a faint smile on the sagging face. The world had resumed its normal course. Sound and light sped up, bruising his senses. He felt a weight on his hearts and clutched at his chest-plate. He risked a quick glance. The sky was red and empty, of all save clouds and dust. The Quaestor spoke.

  ‘How long will you persist, Fabius?’

  ‘Until my work is done.’ The answer came automatically. Instinctively.

  The answer hung on the air for a moment, before fading. The Quaestor’s smile widened. It looked up, pallid gaze roaming across the assembled sons of Fulgrim. ‘I have asked. He has answered. I find no guilt in him. The trial is at an end.’

  A great uproar followed these words. Shouts of disbelief and cries of anger. They had come to see him punished, and it seemed that desire was to be unfulfilled. Fabius felt no satisfaction. He yearned to smash the Quaestor’s smug face, to batter the daemon-thing into bloody ­tatters. Its words pulsed through him, reducing him. He wanted to silence it. Instead, he forced the anger down. There was a time and a place to give vent to such emotions. And here and now was not it.

  ‘The Quaestor has spoken,’ Eidolon said, his voice carrying across the ruin. ‘And his judgement is final. Lieutenant Commander Fabius is hereby absolved of his crimes against the Legion. Any who wish to challenge him must be of equal or superior rank. And that isn’t anyone here, save me.’ He grinned crookedly, empty gaze sweeping over his assembled chieftains and warlords. He crooked a finger towards Fabius and turned. ‘Come, brother. It has been too long since last we spoke, legionary to legionary.’