War Without End Read online

  He must open the way.

  But there is no door. He has stood before the gates to the Temple of the Serpent Lodge, where Horus was given the truth. Those gates are majestic in size and power. They are masterpieces of art, their engraving of the serpent-entwined tree beyond anything the Davinites could accomplish today, and greater even than those of the Lodge of the Hound. No amount of pride can deny that it was right that that particular ritual should take place in the home of the Serpents. The gates might as well be the work of the gods themselves.

  Here, gripped by holy awe, Tsi Rekh has the sensation that the lodge might be a god. How should he presume to bend it to his will? He cannot even see how to reach the height of the temple. The pillars are too high and too smooth to scale.

  He moves forward, wary of the lethal light. His disciples fall into line behind him. He can feel the caress of edges against his limbs, against his throat. Hath Khri’s propitiation has been sufficient. They approach without harm. No other blood is drawn. For the moment, at least.

  As they walk through the ruins, Tsi Rekh feels the thrum of the structures’ ghosts. There are flickers of the earlier vision at the edge of his consciousness. With them arrives understanding: what is important is not what was destroyed, but the fact of its destruction. That is the gift that fell upon Davin. It is the gift that is now being renewed. The gift that is travelling the galaxy.

  The ruins end outside a circular space surrounding the Lodge of Echoes. There is nothing between this perimeter and the lodge except blackened stone. Tsi Rekh stops. He pulls his serpent-headed staff from the leather straps holding it to his back. He holds it high in response to the prickling he feels on the back of his neck. There are eyes nearby.

  They are not divine. They are human.

  One by one, from widely separated points along the edge of the ruins, come the other priests, and with them are their followers. The priests hold up their staffs too. There are different heads upon each: bear, hawk, crow, wild cat, hound, wolf, wyrm, rat…

  They are all here, all the lodges of Davin. The priests regard each other with hatred.

  We have all been drawn here, Tsi Rekh thinks. He wonders if Akshub visited every clan, whispering words of prophecy and fate. Were they all lies? Is there no destiny here for him? No echo that is his and his alone?

  Thrum and choir surround him, Mmmmmmmmmm… Aaaaaaaaaaa… and his fears vanish. He would not have been bred from childhood for a pointless game. He sweeps his eyes over his approaching rivals. He suppresses a smile, though a sharp lower canine pokes out from his lip. These others are not his peers. Some do not wear armour, and he towers a good head over most of them. His weapons transcend the crude blades he sees in the hands and hanging from the leather belts of these people who walk beneath the banners of lesser beasts. The priests’ staffs alone are the equal in workmanship to his own, but they are all holy relics, passed down through the millennia.

  Behind Tsi Rekh, there is the sound of weapons being drawn. He brings the tip of his staff down hard on the rock. The crack is sharp, startling. Its echoes do not vanish. The physical sound goes on too long, grows louder than the original noise, then is incorporated into the ocean of psychic whispering.

  ‘State your business here,’ Tsi Rekh commands.

  ‘State yours,’ says the priest of the Wild Cat. He steps forward as chief rival. His armour is as elaborate as Tsi Rekh’s. Crimson metal bands circle his torso and limbs. His pauldrons are horned. A great furred pelt hangs from his shoulders. The fingers of his right gauntlet extend into iron claws as long as his forearm. In his left hand is a curved, serrated blade. His boots, too, are clawed. He is ready to challenge, eager for battle. He believes himself superior to Tsi Rekh.

  What an illusion. What ignorance. He will be taught.

  They all should know. They all should know their place.

  ‘I am here to open the Lodge of Echoes, and to claim it in the name of the Lodge of the Hound,’ says Tsi Rekh.

  The priest of the Wild Cat glares. His mane of hair appears to bristle. Behind him, and to his right, stand followers of the Lodge of the Serpent. The new priestess, some acolyte of Akshub, wears armour of long, curved, warding spikes on her shoulders, and her robe is finer than the rags worn by her followers. Her face is unreadable. Tsi Rekh wonders if she knows about her mistress’s contact with the Lodge of the Hound. Does she know that the next phase of destiny has passed from her lodge? Is she foolish enough to think Akshub disloyal?

  No. No one is that mad. There can be no challenge to Akshub. Davin has never had a prophet of her like.

  A whisper echoes in the depth of his mind. Not since…

  Not since when? Why, for the first time in his life, does he believe there was another?

  Memory. A new one. Fresh. From the night before he set out, yet Akshub had buried it for him too. Uncovered now, words of prophecy: I am the opener of the ways. He is the walker of the ways. You will be the way.

  Knowledge without understanding, promises couched in riddles.

  Tsi Rekh swallows his impatience. Revelation will come. He smiles, taking pride in that certainty.

  The priest of the Wild Cat sees the smile as an insult. ‘The Lodge of Echoes is not for the likes of you,’ he says. ‘It has been promised to me.’

  ‘Who made you that promise?’

  ‘The gods granted me a vision.’

  Tsi Rekh continues to smile. Oh, the lesson that is about to descend upon this pretender! How weak a claim. Tsi Rekh is not here because of a dream shaped by his own desires. He is here by the command of the gods.

  But why are all the lodges here?

  He dismisses the question and the doubts. The answer doesn’t matter. Only the prophecy is important. Only his destiny. Unalterable and glorious.

  ‘Leave or die,’ he says, but the choice is a lie. He has already begun the attack.

  He does not move. His acolytes charge past him, hissing wrath. The followers of the Lodge of the Wild Cat rush to meet them, their priest remaining just as motionless. He and Tsi Rekh stare at each other. Between them, the butchery begins. The killing is an extension of their wills. Their underlings might as well have no volition of their own. They are their masters’ instruments as much as the weapons they hold.

  Blood splashes on the ground. People die in violence and hatred. And the light changes. It absorbs the blood. It shifts towards the crimson. It grows stronger. Patterns on the face of the Lodge of Echoes twist. Lines appear. The echoes grow louder, more eager. More death, more blood, and the lodge feeds. Tsi Rekh can feel the touch of the light upon his skin. It is cold, dry, and it grips like victory.

  Understanding. Revelation.

  He and the Wild Cat look at each other. Their antagonism evaporates. They know that they are instruments. They know what must happen. So do all the other priests. And so, thanks to their faith, do all the assembled acolytes. Without needing an order, they run to the slaughter. The priests step back to give them room and gather together at the edge of the ruins.

  In the empty ground before the lodge, hundreds of worshippers fall upon each other with blades, fists and teeth. The battle is savage. It must be. The massacre must be total and it must be bloody. This is not about victory. There is no attempt to triumph. There is only the need for pain, for the rending of flesh. Blood everywhere, slicking hands and faces and bodies. And all the time, joining in the exultant, gorging echoes, the songs of dark praise. The acolytes know that they have been blessed. They have lived this long to give their lives to the gods now, in this place, for this purpose. They bleed for this purpose. They will not live to see it fulfilled, but they die in the certainty that their sacrifice will lead to the deaths of entire worlds.

  If something greater did not await him, Tsi Rekh would envy them.

  The light is still dry, a caress of scales, but the air is humid, redolent with the heat of opened bodi
es, the stench of bowels, the slick of gore. The lodge feeds. From deep within its walls, something begins to sound, huge and earthshaking.

  Heartbeat, drumbeat, and the hammering of a fist upon a door.

  The lines on the wall lengthen and join. They outline an opening, one that has not existed since the lodge was completed and its sole occupant entered.

  Occupant.

  How does Tsi Rekh know this? Because as the door comes into being, and the slaughter reaches its completion, the visions and the echoes shout to him, teach him, seize him. His knees buckle. For a moment, he is not outside the lodge. He is not Tsi Rekh. He is inside, surrounded by the all the shapes and jaws and the gibbering of darkness. Inside, watching the door arrive. Inside, the walker of the ways, ecstatic as the great promise at last comes to pass.

  The beat of the lodge is in the special echo too – Tsi Rekh’s echo. The name so large it must be carved out of the spirit one sound at a time. A great hammering caesura strikes the choir.

  Mmmmmmmmmmmm…

  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa…

  D-D-D-D…

  Tsi Rekh, back in his own being, back outside, claps a hand to his head. The stuttering D, a short, sudden shatter, threatens to crack his skull in half. The name has a form. It is incomplete, but he can begin to pronounce it with his tongue. He dare not, for fear of angering the power. He will not insult it with a half-name.

  He blinks back the pain and rises to his feet again. He will stand as the door opens. Is he the only one to be afflicted? Are none of the other priests struggling? Perhaps they are. He cannot tell. He cannot look. His gaze is held by the lodge, by the formation of the door.

  By the opening of the way.

  The walker of the ways is coming.

  The door is complete. The pounding from the interior is also coming from the ground, from the air, from behind Tsi Rekh’s eyes. The pulse of the Lodge of Echoes and the battering against the walls of reality are one and the same.

  And now the glory. The door opens.

  The grind of stone, crackle of energy and a sigh from a bladed throat. Two massive slabs on the façade have come into being, and they open outwards. Echoes, long contained, fly out from the dark interior, louder than ever, crowing victory.

  A ramp emerges, stone deploying as though it were articulated metal. It stretches down to the blood-soaked earth. For a minute, there is nothing more, nothing except the ecstatic, mad choir of the echoes.

  Then a figure appears in the doorway.

  A silhouette first. Big. Ill-defined, infected by the shadows of the lodge. Now clearer, the truth of the form announcing itself. The declaration is fearsome. The walker is twice the size of the Davinites. It walks on two legs. One is thick, hoofed. The other is a jointed arachnid limb. The being’s syncopated gait should be clumsy, a broken limp, but it moves with grace and the suggestion of barely restrained speed. The torso wears a robe… No, Tsi Rekh realizes. That is no robe. It is flesh, this being’s own flesh. It hangs from the torso, sickly white, dropping away from exposed bones, transformed into a long sheet, marked by runes of blood and tattoos that blink and mutter. The exposed sections of skeleton look blackened by fire, but glint with coils of barbed iron. The arms have been denuded of all flesh and their joints have multiplied. They resemble long spinal columns, ending in long, elegant hands that gesture with the care of knives.

  The head.

  The face.

  Tsi Rekh revels in the debasement of the human. It is part of his life’s mission, but his throat goes dry before this sight. He has never seen the transformative art of disfigurement taken so far. There is no doubt that this being was once human – there is just enough recognisable in the face to mark the beginning of the walker’s journey. This wonder, this transcendence, was once as Tsi Rekh is now.

  Such a miracle.

  The face.

  The skull has grown, bulbous encrustations of bone swelling in many directions. A horn sprouts from just above the right cheekbone. It curves upward then branches into two, the extremities sharp enough to cut dreams. The lower jaw juts forwards, as long as Tsi Rekh’s forearm. Some of the teeth are still human. Others belong to an ancient carnivore. At the tip are a serpent’s fangs. The upper jaw starts wide but then narrows to a point. It is a black beak. Lips hang, torn, on either side of the jaws. All the flesh of the head is in tatters, strips and strings of muscle. The forehead, the bone masses and whorls mirroring the patterns on the lodge, is filled with eyes.

  The human is long gone, but it was there, once. Its banishment is a gift beyond measure.

  The miracle walks down the ramp, its gestures flowing. It will tangle all that is real in its dance. It stops midway and sweeps its many eyes over the priests. It pauses for a moment when it comes to Tsi Rekh.

  …blind another’s eyes another’s thought an immensity waiting at the other end of the way learn its name its name its name…

  New sound, new signification, after the hum, after the choir, after the stutter, the wail.

  Aaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiii…

  Tsi Rekh blinks. He sees again, in time for the next wonder.

  The being spreads its arms. It speaks. How can it speak, with that mouth that is not a mouth, those lips in two parts, with the serpentine tongue embedded with bone shards? It speaks because it must, because the time has come at last for its voice to be heard. It speaks with the echoes. The legion of voices and memories and crimes are one, the instrument of a single will. The voice booms. Tsi Rekh shakes. The air shakes. The mountain shakes.

  ‘Children of Davin,’ the being says. ‘Children of the gods. My children. I am Ghehashren.’

  Ghehashren. The night writhes beneath the force of the name. Ghehashren. The prophet who first brought the word of the gods to Davin. There was a Davin before his revelation and Tsi Rekh understands that this was the Davin in the dead fragments of dreams he saw before. And there was a Davin afterwards, the Davin that built the lodges as its last act before the great fall. Ghehashren is the father of all that Davin has become. His memory has sat enthroned in the Lodge of Echoes, governing all others. He is Davin’s beacon. He taught the people how to worship, and when the Lodge of Echoes was complete, he disappeared into it to walk the ways.

  Tsi Rekh knows all this now, because the prophet of the warp has returned, and with him has come clarity for his children. Before this moment the name was holy, its teachings followed, but its legends as vague as the echoes themselves. Now Ghehashren is here and all will be revealed. The time of prophecies is over. The time of their fulfilment has begun.

  Ghehashren leans back. He looks up at the sky as if to pronounce its doom. His arms embracing the whole world.

  And then he shouts. For the whole world.

  ‘Gather!’

  And Davin gathers. The summons is heard around the globe – not just as a stronger echo, not just as a voice in the soul, but as a sound. There is no escaping it. There is no disobeying it.

  And so the people come. They begin walking the very second the word reaches them. The migration of millions begins. The prophet has called.

  Ghehashren climbs to the outer rim of the peak. He carries with him the light from the lodge. It pulses and flows from him, a liquid illness, coating the mountainside. The realm of endless night becomes a beacon of diseased illumination. The prophet stands there, visible across the plain, and waits.

  The priests wait too, in silence. They will not speak until he gives them leave. All language belongs to Ghehashren. There is no meaning except that which he creates, and so they wait. They survive by eating the bodies of their acolytes.

  Seven days pass and then Ghehashren calls to them. They file out through the spiral path in the rock and take their places on the ledge below the father of Davin.

  As the seventh day ends, hundreds of thousands of worshippers throng the great plain, with more arriving all the time. Se
eing the multitudes, Ghehashren opens his mouth and teaches them, saying, ‘Blessed are the cruel, and the carriers of plague. Blessed are the driven, and the killers, and the defilers of order. Blessed are they who hunger and thirst, who rage and curse, who stand with me before the gods, for the death of the galaxy will be theirs!’

  The people cry out to the glory that stalks the peak. Their adulation is added to the echoes and Ghehashren thunders ever louder. Davin vibrates with his tones.

  But Tsi Rekh, through his awe, feels a lack. There is an echo missing. His echo. It is not a part of Ghehashren’s tapestry of meaning and it does not speak to the priest any longer. Absence. A fault in his soul. It has abandoned him at the penultimate moment, when it was about to grant him its full name, and so reveal his destiny. Where has it gone?

  Bereft…

  How did it go?

  The hum… How…

  No. He cannot even find that.

  There is Ghehashren’s sermon, and that is enough. It is more than enough.

  But still…

  Ghehashren says, ‘Think not that I am come to destroy the universe of law. Nor have I come to fulfil the prophecies. That is for you. You, my children, shall be that fulfilment. You will carry the flame to burn the galaxy. I have come to charge you with your great task. I have walked the ways of the gods, and you see my blessings. I have travelled between the stars, and touched the worlds of the enemy. Now you will follow in my footsteps. You have waited and served on this planet. That wait and service are at an end. Now is the time to leave the cradle of Davin and spread the truth of the gods. Now is the time of exodus!’

  He pauses. ‘You will travel. How will you travel? In the guise of sheep.’

  He brings his hands together. They compress space between them. He sinks his claws into the air. Tsi Rekh’s eyes widen as he bears witness to the tearing of the flesh of space. Ghehashren clenches his fists, and the vertebrae of those serpentine arms flex. He tears the real open.

  The rip shoots up, a wound of blood and flame. From within, a deeper night appears, the night of the void. The rip spreads wider as it reaches up. The low clouds are torn asunder. The sky peels back. The materium shrieks, and from the warp comes a fleet.