[34]

227.738.M41

Spindle Island (east of Ostport)

13:40 Local Time

They called it an Astropathic Choir, but the psykers did not sing. They groaned and mumbled to themselves like the prayers of a person driven incoherent and weak with grief. I was terrified. I prayed without ceasing. Silently, because I did not wish to be misheard to speak a color, but with all my heart. First Mina's rite, then the Libera Nos, in the form common to Gaervalt:

Propitius esto, exaudi orationem nostram.

Ab omni malo, libera nos Domine.

Ab omni peccato, libera nos Domine.

A morte perpetua, libera nos Domine.

Propitius esto, exaudi nos Domine.

Ab insidiis xeno, libera nos Domine.

Ab omni mutatione diabolica, libera nos Domine.

Ab incursibus daemonum, libera nos Domine.

Propitius esto, exaudi nos Domine.​

Cold spilled out from the psykers. Chill mists wisped and curled through the once-warm air. The stone was glittering white with frost. Small snowflakes fell like sparks in the sunlight. It seems beautiful when I write of it, does it not? Such a sight should have been beautiful. It wasn't. It made me want to flee, or to burn it all to gas. To wash myself, to scrub and scrub until the memory of awful shapes too small to see would melt and wash away.

One after another, the psykers drifted upwards a few inches into the air.

In my repetition, the Libera Nos shrank to the fourth stanza, and then to the third line. Ab incursibus daemonum, libera nos Domine. From the incursion of the daemonic, o Lord, deliver us.

Tara said, "Gold!" But when I snapped my aim to the old woman's head, to me she seemed unchanged.

The psykers continued their work, their faces grim with concentration, locked in hidden battles of their own. Their chant did not grow or change, but I felt a heavy thumping and receding, like sound and pressure and motion all at once—like being near to an artillery company as it opened fire. I had no sense of time, but there had been only a few more repetitions of my fragmentary prayer when I heard, or thought I heard, the voice.

At the time, I thought I heard Gwen. I thought I heard,

"Your squad is in danger. Kill the psykers."

Though in my memory, the thought and the sound have come unglued from each other. It didn't sound like Gwen. It didn't sound like human speech at all.

For a second I was frozen, and then I tried to obey Grendel's command. I would release the bolter and raise my hands, drop to my knees and scream. I had rehearsed it in my mind.

My bolter wavered, but did not fall. My hands twitched, but did not release. My arms began to shake. My knees buckled, but I could not kneel or fall.

"Do it," I thought I heard. I no longer heard Gwen, but the words were still speech to me then, not the incoherent groaning of an inhuman, unliving thing. "Command it."

I screamed—in my mind, in my heart, I was already screaming. But the sound that came from my lips was a soft keening, barely audible even to me. There were icy fingers gripping the back of my neck and crawling up the sides of my head, under my armor and my helmet. I screamed again and it was louder, but still nothing more than a choked mewling sob.

A great force yanked me back, pulling me off of my feet. I heard the hissing steel sound of the cable attached to my backpack and felt the jarring impacts through my armor as I slid and skidded over the stone.

I found myself speaking my prayer aloud, tucking my head, cradling my bolter to protect it from impacts. I don't remember passing under the curtain ring, or arriving at the beach. I was just lying on the rocky beach with my helmet off, still praying. I saw a priest kneeling with a silver Aquila, one hand outstretched.

There was a heavy boot trapping my bolter to my chest. I looked up the boot to its owner and saw Inquisitor Grendel. He had a psyocculum in his left hand, a strange machine like a picter with too many spikes. In his right hand, he had his bolt pistol leveled at my head.

I tried to accept death. If I had become a tool of the Eternal Enemy, then this, too, was mercy.

I found my place in the prayer and let it end itself. "Propitius esto, exaudi nos Domine." In mercy, Lord, hear our prayer.

Grendel watched me for a long moment over the barrel of his gun.

He said: "Marisa, swift and without thought: name a childhood friend, your patron saint, and your duty."

"Sariah. Mina. To serve the Emperor with all that I am."

He stared into the machine-display in his left hand. He slipped his finger from the trigger and lowered the pistol. He nodded to the priest. "Attend her."

The priest drew closer, kneeling at my side. His face seemed almost as horrified as I felt. He hesitated from touching me and glanced up at the Inquisitor.

Grendel nodded, holstered his gun, and stepped back. "She is undefiled. Attacked, nothing more. Give the girl your blessing and such comfort as you see fit. Then haste back to your work."

With one last hesitation, the priest placed his hand on my forehead and spoke the ancient words of benediction. When he finished, we shared uncertain smiles. He bowed low to the Inquisitor and jogged back up the slope.

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The Inquisitor commanded me to stand if I could. I saw that I was near to a winch mechanism anchored into the rocks. I fumbled behind myself and unclasped the cable from my pack. I stood. My legs were weak, my balance gone. I almost fell. The Inquisitor steadied me with a hand until I could stand on my own. My ears rang and I felt faint, but I could stand.

"What did you see?" he said.

"Nothing. I thought I heard Gwen. A thing with Gwen's voice. But when I remember it now, it wasn't like Gwen at all. Not even like a woman. I... I'm not even sure that there were words. I thought she, it, wanted me to kill the psykers. To order the others to do it. Tara had just called Gold. But I didn't see what she saw. I couldn't move or scream or any of the things you said."

"Troubling. Deeply troubling. Not of you. For me and for my plan."

"My Sisters, are they—"

He gestured. They were there, coming down the slope at a run. Tara, Verity, and Hana clattered to a stop nearby.

"Unhurt, as you see," he said.

I asked, "Are we needed?"

"No. It is done. None of the psykers turned. None were slain. The ground will be stained for some days, but only as a psyocculum might see."

Something in my relief made me stagger again, but then Tara was beside me, supporting me.

"Am I damaged?" I asked him.

"No. You are recovering much faster than I did, the first time it happened to me."

I made the sign of the Aquila. He looked me over, glanced at the other three, and nodded.

"I may call on you in later years for the killing of daemons. Now, I have no further task for the four of you. Find a place out of the way. I ask that you pray and thank the Emperor on my behalf. Go."

❖ ❖ ❖

​

Tara said that she had seen horns as long as her arm growing from the gold-caped woman's head. I made certain that she got a blessing, too.

❖ ❖ ❖

​

I asked that we pass through a purification shower and receive shriving and a general blessing before we boarded the Arvus again. Unnecessary, perhaps. But I think we all felt a weight lifted.

On return to Velgrad, we attended an impromptu celebration of the liturgy. The six of us—all except for Mak'ti, whose tech-adept's vows required different devotions—joined many of Grendel's servants who had been at the island, and a few who had remained behind.

We all wanted to be active, to move, to fight, to banish lingering fears. As soon as we had finished, we would set up the simulated combat again and recapture the morning's joy. But even Castor and Adem felt that this should come first.

There was an aching beauty to it that I hope I can share.

The sacred space we used was the ruined Arsenal's little shrine. It was a blackened husk. The relics were gone, burned away like everything softer than stone. There was no roof, only twisted metal bars arching up against the blue and white of sky. The stained glass had melted, maybe, or shattered to dust and washed away with rain. Our incense could barely be smelled over the lingering reek of the month-old fire. But above the altar now hung little icons that we had all supplied, our own special saints, our own devotional tokens to the Emperor and to Earth.

Once, I had traveled to the cathedral of Saint Basilius in Novant Keep. That place, too, had been destroyed, once. Orks, not in the recent war, but three hundred years ago, had pulled down all its beauty, desecrated everything, made it a place of murder and abomination. Now the light shines in on clear mornings through a hundred stained-glass windows. The floor is all color and beauty, and the Emperor and His saints are cast in slowly moving color on the white stone floor where His people will soon be standing in their multitudes to pray. Nothing could be more different from our little charred box and its tiny icons on a blackened wall. But the feeling was the same.

After the service, we met Wessex. He told us the results of the afternoon's effort—that there was no detection at all. But that was expected; we were not to be dismayed, it was the good and hoped-for result. "No detection" meant that the Inquisitor could increase his certainty that there was no Webway gate. Nothing was ever certain, but it was close enough to act as if it was the truth.

We threw ourselves into the evening training. The forces tasked with fighting us seemed to have lost their morning's edge, or perhaps we were just more of a team than we had been before. But Castor and Adem would hear no barracks-room boasts tonight after all. We cut through them time and time again, almost without words, our two elements supporting each other as if this was our hundredth day together, not our first. For two hours straight, we painted cheerful ruin through the pink-and-yellow splattered wreckage of their pride. We went to sleep happy.

In my dreams, Gwen was alive—but in the morning, it only hurt for a little while.

We continued to train the same way the next day, although we had worked ourselves too hard and had to slow our pace.

Grendel and his spies and sages continued their own work. In the evening, Wessex showed us the next parts of the Inquisitor's plan.