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A Realm of Chaos

‘What about this?’ the archivist says. Her voice makes Sindermann start so much, he drops the book.

‘Are you all right?’ she asks.

‘Yes,’ he replies, trying to slow his breathing. It’s just words, just a random recurrence of words. A fluke. A psychological trick. He was looking for synchronous magic. Of course it would shake him when it seemed to appear. ‘Yes. Of course,’ he says, steadying himself. ‘What were you saying?’

‘My hand just landed on this one, sir,’ she says. She is holding up a book to show him, a small volume, of evident age. The binding is so worn, he can barely read the spine. He leans in and squints.

‘A Primer of Enuncia,’ he reads. ‘I don’t know what that is.’

‘Look at this!’ Mauer calls. She hurries past them lugging a large and heavy folio, and sets it down on the nearest reading table. Sindermann and the archivist go to join her.

Mauer is turning the pages. The folio is large, and contains, loose-leafed, old sheets of parchment and what look like maps.

‘The name caught my eye,’ she says, untying the ribbon closure. ‘Regno Kao.’

‘A Realm of Chaos,’ says the archivist.

‘Which reminds me,’ Sindermann says to her. ‘I was going to ask if you have a translation device.’

‘I do,’ she says, summoning a psyber-skull from its niche. ‘But the name is written there, on that label beneath the original title.’

She points. Sindermann feels stupid. His anxiety is undermining his usual diligence and precision.

‘Keep up, old man,’ Mauer snorts. She opens the folio, and starts to rifle through the sheets inside.

‘Look at that,’ says Sindermann, stopping her from turning another page. ‘Is that a map? A city?’

‘No, a labyrinth,’ says Mauer.

‘Or both,’ says Loken, suddenly behind them, looking over their shoulders. ‘What does that say, the legend?’

‘Urbs Ineleuctabilis,’ says Mauer, sounding it out. The archivist has beckoned in the psyber-skull, a device formed, it seems, from a canine skull fused to a simian one, then bound in gold and brass. It hovers, buzzing, over the table and passes a quick bar of red light across the chart.

<The Inevitable City,> it declares, speaking in a monotone smear of noise that is simply sampled sounds edited to simulate words.

The four of them stare down at the chart for a moment.

‘It’s nothing,’ Mauer decides. Her urgent, impatient mind has already dismissed it. ‘Some old myth. Let’s get back to work.’

‘It looks like the Palace,’ says Sindermann.

‘It doesn’t,’ says Mauer. ‘It’s just some old fantasy. Some nonsense.’

‘Something led you to it, Mauer,’ Sindermann says.

She scowls. ‘Well, I don’t entirely subscribe to your search methodology anyway, Sindermann. “Let chance guide you”? Honestly, I’ll humour you, but it’s a suspect and frankly bullshit approach. We should be more rigorous, maybe consult the data-catalogue–’

‘It does look like the Palace,’ says Loken in a quiet voice. ‘I mean, it doesn’t and it does. Some aspects are entirely wrong–’

‘Please,’ says Mauer. ‘Not you as well. I think we’ve become too suggestible. We’re seeing patterns and connections where none exist. There’s a word for that–’

<Apophenia,> the psyber-skull whirs, <Pareidolia.>

‘Whatever,’ she snaps. ‘Let’s get to a more systematic–’

‘Look again, boetharch,’ says Loken. ‘This map shows a location of convoluted madness. Agreed. But the double-helical shape? Like the notation for infinity? And see, where the gates are marked? And the principal structures? They echo the layout of the Zone Imperialis.’

‘No–’ says Mauer.

‘I have spent hours in these last few months studying diagrammatics of the Palace Dominions,’ says Loken. ‘Tactical schematics, combat assessments… I tell you, the comparison is uncanny. This could be a plan of the Palace, made by a child… or an unsettled mind…’

‘All cities look alike,’ says Mauer. ‘In their basic components–’

‘All cats look alike in the dark,’ says Sindermann, trying to ease the tension between the two.

‘Not helpful,’ says Mauer, shooting him a look. She points to the map. ‘I’m familiar with maps of the Dominions too, Astartes. Yes, there are a few points of correspondence. But there are far more discrepancies. If that’s the Sanctum, what’s that? Or that? What’s that structure? If that’s the Lion’s Gate, what is that? Please, can we move on?’

‘It looks as though maps have been interlocked or overlaid,’ says Sindermann. ‘The diagrams of two cities, superimposed. Perhaps more than two–’

‘Where are you getting this from, Kyril?’ Mauer asks. ‘There’s no scale, no measurement, no definition. There’s no evidence this was even drawn as a proportional representation–’

‘What if this is…’ Sindermann pauses. ‘What if this somehow depicts what the Palace is becoming? The intrusions of the warp? The superimposition of other places or times? The realignment and distortion Garviel was describing?’

‘How would any of that feature on an old map?’ Mauer snaps.

‘When was this composed?’ Loken asks the archivist.

‘There is no date or origin for the work, sir,’ she replies. ‘Except some alleged provenance that it was part of “The Book of Chaos Foreseen”. Nothing can be verified.’

‘What of the text here, along the edge?’ Loken asks.

The archivist touches the psyber-skull gently, and it bobs over the section Loken is indicating. The bar of red light slides slowly across the faded brown ink of the old cursive penmanship.

<Yette knowe this is the true and everlasting place of madeness and lyes that concealeth all truth within its manifold streetes and fyne gates, which hath stoode since before time was and will stand throughe time and unto beyonde all time, eternal, and is withoute anye time, for it was builded in the Darke, and in the everlasting Darke remaines. It standeth foreverr beyonde all mortal sight, as beyonde a mirror upon the other side, seen only in visions and the most fytfulle dreams, subjecte to constant motion of currents and ethereal tides, and is the House of Ruin and insanity both, for within it dwelleth the four who haunt the dark, and besides them, many other vacant thrones and diverse spirits of revenge and ruination. It lyeth but a mere lifetime’s journey from Calastar, yet therein its walls and turrets join, by masons’ craft, to the walls and turrets of that impossible city, and so too but a moment’s eternity from the City of Duste, and also close by Uigebealach, whiche it is and is not, and thereby it is and is not alle things and places thereafter and before, freed from alle reason–>

‘Enough,’ says Loken.

<–and upon the Daye of Dayes it will become so all thinges, and its gates will devour all the Works of Man, and also Man, and all the angels and stars betimes, and the mighty works of Man will be as nothinge and despaire, and all peoples forgot and all empires unremembered, and all who look upon it, as throughe one great Eye, shalle say I weep now at the inevitable triumph of its Ruin, for ruin it is and ruin it brings–>

‘Enough.’

The psyber-skull falls silent. The bar of red light winks out.

The Dark King

Oll feels himself sag, the hope and determination that has fuelled him, thus far, now draining away. The exhaustion he has kept at bay for so long sweeps in like a tide. The air around him shimmers, dazzling with motes and filaments of light thrown, like cinders, from the immolating Throne. He hears the creak and shiver of the vast chamber’s huge arches tensing in the outflow of raw power. He hears the pure song of the astrotelepaths running through the tumult like a single thread.

‘It is me or no one,’ Vulkan says to him. ‘Is there anything you wish to say?’

Oll shakes his head.

‘Then I cannot vouch for your purpose or presence,’ says Vulkan, ‘a(chǎn)nd I believe you are nothing more than a distraction. Besides, I am sorry to say, I suspect your motives.’

Raja has brought him the crate, and is holding it open. Vulkan inspects the objects within. Arcane aeldari instruments, a ball of twine, a handmade tarot…

‘Can you explain this?’ Vulkan asks. He is holding up the athame.

‘Just a stone knife, my lord,’ says Oll quietly.

‘I know stone and I know rock,’ says Vulkan, ‘I know all the elements of the mineral realm. It is that, yes, but it is more besides. An ugly thing with a deep shadow.’

‘It struck me, my lord,’ says Hassan, ‘a(chǎn)s an artefact of particular evil.’

Vulkan drops the athame back into the negation crate, as though unwilling to hold it for long. He takes out Leetu’s old deck, and starts turning the cards, one by one.

‘My lord,’ says Hassan. ‘I noted that a particular card features in this set.’

‘Indeed?’ muses Vulkan. He stops. He’s found it.

‘Indeed so,’ Hassan replies. ‘I discovered it at the random turn of a card–’

Vulkan holds the card up.

‘Is it a symbol you know?’ he asks them. ‘A concept? Do you understand some greater meaning? The name of it shivers on the lips of the enemy and echoes down the colonnades of the webway.’

‘The name, sir?’ Oll asks.

‘The Dark King,’ says Vulkan.

‘Wait–’ says Leetu, suddenly confused.

‘This name is spoken?’ asks Actae abruptly, interrupting him.

‘It is said repeatedly, almost as a refrain,’ says Vulkan. ‘Do you know it?’

‘Trust her not, lord,’ says Raja.

‘She will answer,’ says Vulkan. He looks at Actae, and bids her stand. Actae rises, and Katt gets to her feet at her side. ‘Do you know the name?’ Vulkan asks. ‘A true meaning?’

Actae tilts her blindfold head, as if struggling, either with pain or some mental battle.

‘Not as our word, in our language,’ she says. ‘But perhaps in the un-tongued languages of the immaterium. Do you mean to say “the Dark King”?’

To Oll, the words are exactly the same, its sound and phonetic value identical. But when the witch says it, the name suddenly has a sharp edge. Katt shivers at it, and Oll feels John wince.

‘It is the same phrase,’ says Hassan.

‘No,’ says Actae. ‘Names have power, and they are mutable. Meanings may shift and change. One thing becomes another. That phrase has a simple enough meaning for us. But in other places its meaning is quite different and specific.’

‘What places?’ Vulkan asks.

‘In the warp, sir. In the unresolved realms of possibility that only prophesy can see. In the day of days when time runs out. Oh, by the lights of the stars… it has been spoken?’

‘It has,’ says Vulkan. ‘The Sigillite and my father both, they said it represented an ending, and a death.’

‘And more,’ replies Actae. ‘The Dark King is more.’

Again, as she says it, Oll feels it cut the air, like a razor against soft skin.

‘Pity’s sake,’ murmurs John, ‘every time she says it…’

‘What?’ asks Oll.

‘I mean, I can hear what she’s saying, and I can see her damn lips move, but there is another meaning hidden inside the phrase. I hear echoes of aeldari, and other xenos lexicons. Like they all have the same words, or that many meanings have all converged on one sound.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Hassan snaps.

‘Listen to him,’ says Oll. ‘He is a logokine, and words to him are living things.’

‘Explain the meaning,’ says Hassan.

John shrugs helplessly. ‘I can’t… just with a sense of inevitability and… and extinction.’

Leetu has risen to his feet. ‘My lord primarch,’ he says softly, ‘that card was not part of my deck. I have owned those cards for years. They were a gift from my mistress. I know every one of them, front and back. I have never seen that card before. It was not in my deck when I came to this palace.’

Vulkan frowns at the card. ‘Yet it is clearly made by the same hand, to the same stylistic design, and of identical materials,’ he says. ‘Chosen? Have it examined by cartomancers and scryers. And you… Tell me what you know of it at once.’

‘Lord,’ says Actae, with some reluctance, ‘the Dark King is… it is the name first written in the time before man, and repeated ever since, unbidden, by the prophets of all species. It is a name symbolising the rising god to come.’

‘There are no gods!’ scoffs Raja.

‘You’re a fool,’ Actae tells him. ‘Before the fall of the aeldari, there was no fourth power of Chaos. The gods of Chaos breed and multiply, propagating like storms through the empyrean. They are born in turn, though they have all existed forever. Time has no meaning for them. The fall of the aeldari did not cause the birth of She Who Thirsts, merely her occurrence. So too with all other gods, be they foul entities of Chaos, or divine forces of sentient power.’

‘She Who Thirsts was born out of the death of an entire sentient culture,’ says John.

‘Such is the inevitable fate of all advanced, psychic species,’ says Actae. ‘And the Dark King is our fate. This war, my lord, is not one of loyalists against traitors. It is not about the conquest of Terra and mankind by Chaos. It is certainly not about a son at war with his father. This is the Triumph of Ruin. Horus and the Emperor have taken their conflict to such a pitch, that we are about to suffer the same fate as the cursed aeldari. The human race will die in birth-fire, consumed by blood-rage, pestilence, violent transmutation and blind desire. And from the grave-pyre of our civilisation, the broken galaxy will see Horus rising, absolute and complete, as a new, true and terrible god.’

She bows her head, shivering. At her side, Katt looks across at Oll with an expression of hopeless shock.

‘She’s telling the truth,’ she says.