Саймон Спуриэр - Lord of the Night

'There,' she announced with a nod, pointing towards a secondary tower that rose parallel to the central spire, connected at its apex by a narrow glass bridge. 'That's the palace treasury.'

'How do you know?' Sahaal hissed, fingers kneading together eagerly. There could be no mistakes. No oversights.

She'd seemed to bristle, as if annoyed that he still was unable to trust her. 'His collection's famous,' she said. 'Ask anyone in the hive.'

Sahaal had glanced at the pilot, cringing uselessly to one side. If the man had felt at all inclined to disagree he'd hidden it well, and thus convinced Sahaal had nodded his approval at the condemnitor. 'Do it,' he'd said.

Chianni had locked the steering column in position and pushed the pilot back into his seat. The revelation of what was to occur had stolen over the man in crippling increments, and even when the hivewall loomed like some steely god in the viewing port, even when the febrile light of the clouded sky was extinguished by the city's bulk, even when the impart was scant seconds away, still the pilot could not summon a scream.

Sahaal thought it a pity. Nothing soothed his adrenaline like a wail of terror.

He'd ridden out the impact without injury and now, as smoke belched from rained machines and light poured through countless rents in the vessel's shattered sides, he lifted himself to his feet and brandished his claws. He could feel it.

He could feel the Corona Nox, like a beacon lighting his senses.

Oh, my master... I can feel it! It is so close!

He remembered how it had been to awake upon the Umbrea Insidior , that rage-borne half-awareness, slaughtering thieves across the ruined vessel's shanks like a wolf, aware only that it had been taken . For aeons he had sat dormant at the heart of the warp, imprisoned within the cage that the hated eldar had constructed around him, and in all that time the presence of the Corona had given him strength. He had come to feel it as if it were a part of him, a strange connection that seared his psyche and drew a cord between his soul and the item itself. Weeks ago, when it was stolen, he had awoken in the certain knowledge that it was gone, as if a sound that he had heard his whole life — but never noticed — had suddenly fallen silent.

And now... ?

In another ruined vessel, clambering once more through crippled decks, hungry once more for bloodshed and justice, now he could feel it again.

Now he was close .

He left Chianni where she lay — forgotten, beneath his attention — and raced to retrieve it.

At the craft's outer shell a strange process of segueing had occurred: the chasm-wound inflicted upon the hive seeming to knot with the craft that had caused it. In all directions torn sheet metal was bent and buckled, molten steel glistened and solidified in weird formations, cables and hiveducts twisted around hull sensoria like the tentacles of anemones, and everywhere the first gatherings of snow, probing hungrily at the city's injury, was scattered across the devastation. Illuminators flickered and failed, or else burned brightly with whatever electrical surges the crash had precipitated.

Picking his stealthy way through smoky chambers, Sahaal found it hard to say where the shuttle ended and the hive began. He stepped from a torn bulkhead imaging the outer hull of the shuttle to be nearby, only to find himself confronted by soot-charred tapestries and gold leaf pillars. As if infected somehow by a blemish of crudity, the palace gathered its splendour to itself and sulked, disgusted at the invasive entry. Sahaal scuttled across shattered flagstones and crumpled mosaics, following the pull of his heart, the strange magnetism of the Corona. The shuttle had buried itself across three levels of the tower, and at the head of the furrow it had ploughed into the structure Sahaal could stare into each separate room as if in cross-section, amused at the contrast between mangled entry-wound and untouched opulence.

There was little doubt where he would find his prize. The uppermost of the three exposed interiors was a storage chamber, gloomily lit and utterly ruined. The charred bodies of dormant servitors leaned from recharge booths and gagged on singed tongues, dead eyes lolling in sockets. The second level was a private chamber: gaudily decorated and flamboyantly furnished. A regal bed occupied the centre of the devastated zone, pairs of winged cherubim-drones clinging to its canopy like bats. Evidently a spout of fuel had doused the suite's interior, and now every exquisite tapestry was a blackened sheet, every gold-leaf insignia was a puddle of shimmering slag, every luxurious carpet smouldered like a burning forest.

But the third level, the endless gallery of tedious exhibits and pompous wealth, clipped by the craft's entry — the corner of its ceiling neatly dissected to allow him entry — that was a different affair. From amongst its endless parades of useless treasures the Corona whispered to him, reached out to caress his spirit, promising him all that he had ever dreamed. He slipped into the room's cavernous belly like a lizard: scuttling along a wall, pausing every few moments with reptile precision to cock his head, listening, watching.

Was he disappointed, he reflected, that the thief was not present? Had he hoped, in his secret heart — still burning with the blue-tinged flame of unfocused insult — to catch the culprit red-handed? Had he yearned to bathe in the bastard's blood?

No... No, he could see inside himself now. The mutterings of Chaos were gone. He was stronger than that. Whatever damage his pride had suffered was irrelevant.

The Corona was his.

He found it at the room's centre, placed on a plinth like some common librium artefact, and his twin hearts felt as if they might burst with joy.

The package was unopened. The skeletal emblem of his Legion — the winged skull — remained sealed, its cryptic secrets unexposed. He reached out trembling hands and, as if fearing the prize might be a dream ~ a cruel hologram trick — settled them upon the box's shell, testing its solidity.

He sighed, awash with relief. He twisted the fresco pattern here and here , then placed fingers at the skull's eyes and tapped twice.

' Ultio ,' he said, eyes closed. ' Ultio et timor. '

Vengeance and fear.

Something inside the package chattered. A mechanical clatter shuddered through it, pins meshing together like a shark's teeth, vocal recognition engines awaking, and with the slowness that came from a hundred centuries' inertia tiny diaphragms opened within the skull's eyes, flooding them with red light.

The seal broke.

The box opened.

And Zso Sahaal, Talonmaster, heir to the throne of the Night Lords Legion — the chosen of Konrad Curze — lifted from its dust-dry innards the Corona Nox.

It was a crown, of sorts. A black circlet of mercurial metal, polished and undecorated, burning with an eerie non-light. To either side of its tapered ring there rose tall horns, needle-straight and jagged-edged, like twin sabre-blades dipped in oil.

But most stunning of all, beyond the simple elegance and curious captivation of the thing, set into the crown's frontispiece and suspended upon the wearer's forehead on a platinum mounting, stood a jewel.

A perfect teardrop of ruby-red, its face was uncut by diamond facets or inelegant designs. Smooth and unblemished, it had about it the look of an organic creation, as if not cut from the earth but grown, planted and fostered to glorious life in some secret crystal garden. And despite the dismal lighting of the gallery, despite the shadow cast by Sahaal's colossal body, it burned . It burned with an inner light. It burned with a radiance that was unconfined by sight alone, that broke the boundaries of luminosity, that flooded out the visual spectrum and dazzled Sahaal without even passing his eyes.