'Sometimes/ I told him, 'I think we work against each other. This comes out and, look! We all hold pieces to the same mystery. How might we have taken this enemy and his structure apart a month ago, two months, if we had exchanged information?'
Endor laughed. 'Are you questioning the working practices of the most lauded Inquisition, Gregor? Working practices laid down centuries ago? Are you questioning the motives of fellow members of our convocation?'
I knew he was joking, but my manner remained serious. 'I'm decrying a system where we don't even trust each other.'
We descended, under escort, into the depths of the prison block.
'What of Glaw?'
'Gives up nothing,' said Endor. 'What he's endured so far would have broken and cracked most men, or at least had them begging for death or trying to kill themselves. He persists, almost in good humour, almost arrogant, as if he expects to live.'
'He's right. We'll never sign his death notice while he has secrets.'
Voke's men were at work on Glaw in a foul-smelling, red-painted cell. Glaw was a ruin, kept alive by expertise that matched the skill used to torture him.
To unlock an answer from the mind of the heretic is the greatest duty of an inquisitor, and I will not shrink from any means, but this way was futile. Left to me, the physical torture would have stopped days before. One look showed that Urisel Glaw was resolved not to talk.
I would have left him alone, for weeks perhaps. Despite his agonies, our constant attention betrayed our desperation, and that gave him all the strength he needed to endure. Silence and isolation would have broken him.
Inquisitor Schongard stepped back from the table where Glaw was strapped and pulled off soiled surgical gloves. He was a broad man with thin brown hair and a chilling mask of black metal surgically fixed to his face. No one knew if this mask covered some grievous injury or was simply an affectation. Dark, unhealthy, bloodshot eyes regarded Endor and myself through the oblong slits in the metal.
'Brothers/ he whispered. His phlegmy voice never wavered from that low, hushed level. 'His resistance is quite the doughtiest I have seen. Voke and I agree that some monumental work has been done to his mind, allowing him to block out the manipulations. Psychic probes have been tried, but found wanting/
'Perhaps we should have the Astropathicus provide us with one of their primary class adepts/ said Voke from behind me.
'I don't think there's a mind block there at all/ I said. 'You would see traces of the conditioning. He'd most likely be screaming for us to stop now because he knows he cannot tell us the answer/
'Nonsense/ whispered Schongard. 'No raw mind could withstand this/
'I sometimes doubt whether my fellows know anything about human nature at all/ I said, mildly. This man is a fiend. This man is nobility. He has seen into the darkness we so fear, and he knows what power feels like. The promise of what lies at stake for him and his collaborators is enough to steel him/
I crossed to the table and looked down into Glaw's lidless eyes. Blood bubbled at his flayed lips as he smiled at me.
'He promised the overthrow of worlds, the annihilation of billions. He boasted of it. What the Glaws are after is so great, that none of this matters. Isn't that right, Urisel?'
He gurgled.
This is just a hardship/ I said, turning away from the heretic in disdain. 'He keeps going because he knows that what awaits him will make this all worthwhile/
Voke snorted. What could be so?'
'Eisenhorn sounds convincing to me/ said Endor. 'Glaw will protect his secrets no matter what we do, for those secrets will repay him a thousand fold/
Schongard's masked face shook dubiously. 'I am with brother Voke. What reward could be worth the prolonged ministrations of the Inquisition's finest fleshsmiths?'
I didn't answer. I didn't know the answer, in truth, but I had some notion of the scale.
And the thought of it froze my soul.
If I had harboured any doubts that the Glaws' authority had survived, they were dispelled in the course of the next week. Campaigns of explosive, toxic and psychic sabotage plagued the worlds of the sub-sector, as if all the secret, dark cells of evil hidden away within Imperial society were revealing themselves, risking discovery as they turned on their local populations, as if orchestrated by some ruling power. The likes of Lord Glaw and his accomplices had either escaped destruction or they were but part of an invisible ruling elite that now mobilised all the hidden offspring cabals on a double-dozen worlds into revolt.
There is another explanation/ Titus Endor said to me as we attended mass in the Imperial Cathedral of Dorsay. 'For all their power and influence, the Glaws were not the summit of their conspiratorial pyramid. There were yet others above them/
It was possible, but I had seen the Glaws' arrogance first hand. They were not ones to bow to another master. Not a human master, anyway.
The unrest had broken out on Gudrun too by then. A bombing campaign had stricken one town in the south, and an agricultural settlement
in the west had been exterminated by a neural toxin released into its water supply. Battlefleet Scarus was still struggling to recover from the self-inflicted blow against it, and Admiral Spatian had returned from his mission to reassemble the panicked fleet units empty handed. Captain Estrum's mobile group had simply vanished. I had exchanged messages with Madorthene, who told me that no one in battlefleet command now doubted mat the destruction of the
Then two massive hives of Thracian Primaris rose in open revolt. Thousands of workers, tainted by the corrupt touch of Chaos, took to the streets, burning, looting and executing. They displayed the obscene badges of Chaos openly.
The Lord Militant's plans for a crusade into the Ophidian sub-sector were now indefinitely postponed. Battlefleet Scarus left anchor and made best speed to suppress the Thracian uprising.
But that was only the first. Open revolt exploded through the suburbs of Sameter's capital city and, a day later, a civil war erupted on Hesperus. In both cases, the stain of Chaos was there.
This miserable, shocking period is referred to in Imperial histories as the Helican Schism. It lasted eight months, and millions died in open warfare across those three worlds, not to mention hundreds of lesser incidents on other planets, including Gudrun. The Lord Militant got his holy crusade, though I am sure he hardly expected to be waging it against the population of his own sub-sector.
The authorities, and even my worthy fellow inquisitors, seemed stunned to the point of inactivity by this unprecedented outbreak. The archenemy of mankind often acted openly and brutally, but this seemed to defy logic. Why, after what may have been centuries of careful, secret establishment, had the hidden cults risen as one, exposing themselves to the wrath of the Imperial military?
I believed the answer was the 'true matter'. Urisel Glaw's almost gleeful resistance to our methods convinced me. The archenemy was embarked upon something so momentous that it was prepared to sacrifice all of its secret forces throughout the sub-sector to keep the Imperium occupied.
I believed, with all conviction, that it would be better for planets to burn than for that 'true matter' to be accomplished.
Which is why I went to Damask.
THIRTEEN!
Damask.
North Qualm.
