False Gods

Blood pooled beneath the corpse, trickling into chan­nels cut in the floor before draining into a sinkhole at the centre of the circle. Erebus knew that there was always blood, it was rich with life and surged with the power of the gods. What better way was there of tapping into that power than with the vital substance that carried their blessing?

'Is it done?' asked Erebus.

Akshub nodded, lifting the long knife that had cut the heart from the corpse. 'It is. The power of the Ones Who Dwell Beyond is with us, though we must be swift,’

'Why must we hurry Akshub?' he asked, placing his hand upon his sword. 'This must be done right or all our lives are forfeit.'

'I know this,’ said the priestess. 'There is another pres­ence near, a one-eyed ghost who walks between worlds and seeks to return the son to his father,’

'Magnus, you old snake,’ chuckled Erebus, looking up towards the chamber's roof. You won't stop us. You're too far away and Horus is too far gone. I have seen to that,’

'Who do you speak with?' asked Akshub.

The one-eyed ghost. You said there was another pres­ence near,’

'Near, yes,’ said Akshub, 'but not here,’

Tired of the old priestess's cryptic answers, Erebus snapped, 'Then where is he?'

Akshub reached up and tapped her head with the flat of her blade. 'He speaks to the son, though he cannot yet reach him fully. I can feel the ghost crawling around the temple, trying to break the magic keeping his full power out.' 'What?' cried Erebus.

'He will not succeed,’ said Akshub, walking towards him with the knife outstretched. We have spirit-walked in the realm beyond for thousands of years and his knowledge is a paltry thing next to ours.' 'For your sake, it had better be, Akshub,’ She smiled and held the knife out. 'Your threats mean nothing here, warrior. I could boil the blood in your veins with a word, or rip your body inside out with a thought. You need me to send your soul into the world beyond, but how will you return if I am dead? Your soul will remain adrift in the void forever, and you are not so full of anger that you do not fear such a fate,’

Erebus did not like the sudden authority in her voice, but he knew she was right and decided he would kill her once her purpose was served. He swallowed his anger and said, 'Then let us begin,’

Very well,’ nodded the priestess, as Tsepha came for­ward and anointed Erebus's face with crystalline antimony. 'Is this for the veil?'

'Yes,’ said Akshub. It will confound his senses and he will not see your likeness. He will see a face familiar and beloved to him,’

Erebus smiled at the delicious irony of the thought, and closed his eyes as Tsepha daubed his eyelids and cheeks with the stinging, silver-white powder.

The spell that will allow your passage to the void requires one last thing,’ said Akshub.

'What last thing?' asked Erebus, suddenly suspicious. Your death,’ said Akshub, slashing her knife across his throat.

Horus opened his eyes, smiling as he saw blue sky above him. Pink and orange tinged clouds drifted slowly across his vision, peaceful and relaxing. He watched them for a few moments and then sat up, feeling wet dew beneath his palms as he pushed himself upright. He saw that he was fully armoured in his frost white plate, and as he surveyed his surroundings, he lifted his hand to his face, smelling the sweet scent on the grass and the crystal freshness of the air.

A vista of unsurpassed beauty lay before him, tower­ing snow-capped mountains draped in a shawl of pine and fir, magnificent swathes of emerald green forests as far as the eye could see and a wide river of foaming, icy water. Hundreds of shaggy coated herbivores grazed on the plain and wide pinioned birds circled noisily overhead. Horus sat on the low slopes of the foothills at the base of the mountains, the sun warm­ing his face and the grass wondrously soft beneath him.

'To hell with this,’ he said as he got to his feet. 'I know I'm not dead, so what's going on?'

Once again, no one answered him, though this time he had expected an answer. The world still smelled sweet and fragrant, but with the memory of his iden­tity came the knowledge of its falsehood. None of this was real, not the mountains or the river or the forests that covered the landscape, though there was some­thing oddly familiar to it.

He remembered the dark, iron backdrop that lay behind this illusion and found that if he willed it, he could see the suggestion of that nightmarish vision behind the beauty of the world laid out before him.

Horus remembered thinking – a lifetime ago, it seemed – that perhaps this place might have been some netherworld between heaven and hell, but now laughed at the idea. He had long ago accepted the principle that the universe was simply matter, and that which was not matter was nothing. The universe was everything, and therefore nothing could exist beyond it.

Horus had the wit to see why some ancient theologian had claimed that the warp was, in fact, hell. He under­stood the reasoning, but he knew that the Empyrean was no metaphysical dimension; it was simply an echo of the material world, where random vortices of energy and strange breeds of malign xenos creatures made their homes.

As pleasing an axiom as that was, it still didn't answer the question of where he was.

How had he come to mis place? His last memory was of speaking to Petronella Vivar in the apothecarion, telling her of his life, his hopes, his disappointments and his fears for the galaxy – conscious that he had told her those incendiary things as his valediction.

He couldn't change that, but he would damn well get to the bottom of what was happening to him now. Was it a fever dream brought on by whatever had wounded him? Had Temba's sword been poisoned? He dismissed that thought immediately; no poison could lay him low. Surveying his surroundings, he could see no sign of the wolves that had chased him through the dark forests, but suddenly remembered a familiar form that had ghosted behind the face of the pack leader. For the briefest instant, it had looked like Magnus, but surely he was back on Prospero licking his wounds after the Council of Nikaeal?

Something had happened to Horus on Davin's moon, but he had no idea what. His shoulder ached and he rotated it within his armour to loosen the muscle, but

the motion served only to further aggravate it. Horus set off in the direction of the river once more, still thirsty despite knowing that he walked in an illusory realm.

Cresting the rise that then began to slope gently down towards the river, Horus pulled up sharply as he saw something startling: an armoured Astartes warrior float­ing face down in the water. Wedged in the shallows of the riverbank, the body rose and fell with the swell of the water, and Horus swiftly made his way towards it.

He splashed into the river and gripped the edges of the figure's shoulder guards, turning the body over with a heavy splash.

Horus gasped, seeing that the man was alive, and that it was someone he knew.

A beautiful man was how Loken had described him, a beautiful man who had been adored by all who knew him. The noblest hero of the Great Crusade had been another of his epithets.

Hastur Sejanus.

Loken marched away from the temple, angry at what his brothers had done and furious with himself: he should have known that Erebus would have had plans beyond the simple murder of the Warmaster.

His veins surged with the need to do violence, but Ere­bus was not here, and no one could tell Loken where he was. Torgaddon and Vipus marched alongside him, and even through his anger, Loken could sense his friends' astonishment at what had happened before the great gate of the Delphos.