Саймон Спуриэр - Lord of the Night

'Sword,' she said.

A bright sabre appeared in her palm. She nodded, unsurprised, and walked on, casting the blade away. It vanished before it landed.

She found the Night Lord, as she had known she would, at the peak of a plateau, ringed by a cauldron of rocky outcrops, set upon a cross of stone. Chains bound his arms to the rock, snaking between his ankles and his wrists, pinioning him like a butterfly upon a page. His armour and helm were gone. His claws had been taken from him.

For the first time, unconcealed by shadow or night, unmoving and unresisting, she saw him clearly. His skin was so pale as to be almost translucent, revealing along arms and legs every blue vein, every inner augmentation, every limpet-like crater where some ancient injury had marked his flesh. Across his shoulders and chest the skin was concealed, hidden behind an exterior layer of black plating that, in places, dipped beneath his flesh, intermingling with muscle cords and bony outcrops.

She had never seen so many scars in her life.

Most remarkable was his face. She had expected a countenance of malevolence. Of unrestrained and unrepentant evil. She had expected snarls and burning embers for eyes, a daemonic visage that brandished its corruption openly, like a festering wound.

Instead she found herself meeting the gaze of a troubled child. Oh, his face was that of a man — sallow and gaunt, perhaps, twisted by too many years of frowns and rages — but his eyes were an infant's. Impossibly old, and yet so full of bewilderment. They were the eyes of a youth that had never been allowed to grow old, that had been plucked from its humanity at an early age and never since allowed to return.

'Where is this?' the crucified man said, and if he retained any sense of trauma from the madness of the gallery room, or the rage that had gripped him at the moment the eldar warlock had attacked, he gave no sign of it. He seemed to Mita to be in shock, his voice monotone, his eyes unblinking.

He was a pathetic thing, she thought, spread-eagled before her.

'This is your mind,' she replied, unable to bring herself to hate him. 'A dream, if you like. You're trapped here.'

'And you?'

She shrugged. 'I don't know. Perhaps I'm trapped too.'

He considered this. For all the surrealism of the situation, for all the horror of finding oneself crucified and stripped of their armour, he seemed remarkably calm.

'The eldar did this?' he asked.

'In a way, yes... They made you do it to yourself.'

He nodded as if unsurprised. 'Yes. Yes, they've done it before. Though not to my mind.'

Mita frowned. 'Oh?'

A distant look stole the Night Lord's gaze. 'At the start,' he said. 'The assassin killed my master. She took the prize, s-so I followed. You see? I took it back from her, but the eldar came.'

'The prize? You mean the Corona Nox?'

'The Corona, yes... Yes, they tried to steal it, but I prevailed. I would not let them have it, witch, you understand? So they tricked me. They trapped me. My ship. All of us, deep in the warp.'

'What is the Corona Nox?' Mita asked, giving voice to the question that had tormented her so long.

For the first time since she entered this weird realm, his face creased in a frown, eyes dipping to meet hers. He looked as if her ignorance wounded him, deep within. 'You don't know?'

She shrugged. 'It... it looked like a crown!'

'Ha! Just a crown?' He shook his head, black eyes flashing. 'No, little witch, it's more than that. Fashioned by the Night Haunter himself, forged from the adamantium core of Nostramo, his birthworld. He wore it through all his life, and when he would have screamed with insanity and terror, it calmed him. When he would have listened to the whispers of the warp, it deafened him. When he burned with vengeance for the injuries his father wrought upon him, then it tasted his anger and stored it away. It's all that remains of my master, witch. Imbued with his divine essence, sealed with a perfect bloodstone. It is no mere crown. It is the captaincy of the Night Lords. He bequeathed it to me on the day he was murdered!'

Understanding came to Mita piece by piece, and with it came disbelief.

'But... but that's... Konrad Curze was killed millennia ago...'

His frown deepened. 'Ten millennia. One hundred centuries. I have been imprisoned a long time.'

And she knew as soon as she heard it that he spoke the truth. She sagged to her knees, astonished, overwhelmed by the ancientness of the creature before her.

He had been hating for aeons.

She knew she ought to destroy him, this atavistic relic of the Great Heresy. He was, after all, vulnerable before her. Naked, defenceless. Here, in this realm of psychic material, trapped within his own brain as if sealed inside-out, here she could crush him like a worm. In her mind's eye she imagined a weapon forming within her hand, and sure enough a cold weight sagged into existence, gathering solidity.

But his eyes...

So lonely. So wounded.

'Who are you?' he said, derailing her thoughts. 'Who do you serve?'

She swallowed and hid the gun behind her back, diverting her dangerous thoughts towards his question, relieved at the distraction. 'I am Mita Ashyn. Interrogator of the Divine Emperor's Holy Inquisition.'

'You serve this... this Kaustus? The one who has stolen my inheritance?'

'Yes. No... I did. Once. Not any more.'

'He rejected you, yes? Cast you aside.'

'It's not that simple, I—'

'It's always that simple.' He looked away. 'For the likes of us, at least.'

'What do you mean?'

'You know what I mean, little witch. Little mutant. Little abomination.'

She shook her head, forcing herself to calm, clearing her mind. 'You won't anger me, traitor,' she said.

The Night Lord tried to shrug, chains tightening across shoulders and arms, and returned his eyes to her face. 'I don't seek your anger,' he said, voice calm. 'Only your understanding. I ask you again: who do you serve?'

'I told you. I serve the Imperium.'

'But they hate you.'

'The Emperor does not! Ave Imperator! The Emperor loves all who give him praise!'

'Ha. You believe that, do you?'

The words formed in her head as if automatic: of course she believed it! Of course the Emperor loved her! And yet even in the confines of her mind, unspoken aloud, such dogma sounded empty, thoughtless, the recitals of a simpleton who knew no better.

Frustrated, angered by her inner turmoil, she raised the gun and aimed at the Night Lord's heart.

'I don't have to listen to you, traitor,' she said.

The quaver in her voice was impossible to conceal.

And oh, oh warpspit and piss, she did need to listen to it. She did need to hear what the beast had to say.

Why? Why did she feel so obliged?

A self-appointed test of her faith, perhaps?

Or perhaps just the comfort of knowing she was not alone in feeling such doubts...

The crucified beast gave no sign of fear at the gun's wavering attention.

'So,' he nodded, brows arching, 'you have the love of one being, out of countless billions? And that is enough?'

'More than enough! You'd understand if you hadn't turned from His light.'

He smiled, genuine warmth appearing on frozen features. 'And can there be an Emperor, without an Empire?'