False Gods

Karkasy could see that the Astartes's wide-featured face was earnest and serious, his skull shaved and covered with intricate scriptwork. One shoulder guard of his armour was draped in heavy parchment, rich with illuminated letters, while the other bore the distinctive icon of a book with a flame burning in its centre. Though he knew it symbolised enlightenment springing forth from the word, Karkasy instinctively disliked it.

It spoke to his poet's soul of the Death of Knowledge, a terrible time in the history of ancient Terra when madmen and demagogues burned books, libraries and wordsmiths for fear of the ideas they might spread with their artistry. By Karkasy's way of thinking, such symbols belonged to heathens and philistines, not Astartes charged with expanding the frontiers of knowledge, progress and enlightenment.

He smiled to himself at this delicious heresy, wondering if he could work it into a poem without Captain Loken realising, but even as the rebellious thought surfaced, he quashed it. Karkasy knew that his patron was showing his work to the increasingly reclusive Kyril Sinderma

In that case, Karkasy would quickly find himself on the next bulk hauler on its way back to Terra, regardless of his Astartes sponsorship.

'So who's that?' he asked Keeler, returning his attention to the new arrival as Tsi Rekh stopped his chanting and bowed towards the newcomer. The warrior in turn raised his long staff in greeting.

Keeler gave him a sidelong glance, looking at him as though he had suddenly sprouted another head.

'Are you serious?' she hissed.

'Never more so, my dear, who is he?'

'That,' she said proudly, snapping off another pict of the Astartes warrior, 'is Erebus, First Chaplain of the Word Bearers.'

And suddenly, with complete clarity, Ignace Karkasy knew why Captain Loken had wanted him here.

Stepping onto the dusty hardpan of Davin, Karkasy had been reminded of the oppressive heat of Sixty-Three Nineteen. Moving clear of the propwash of the shuttle's atmospheric rotors, he'd half run, half stumbled from beneath its deafening roar with his exquisitely tailored robes flapping around him.

Captain Loken had been waiting for him, resplendent in his armour of pale green and apparently untroubled by the heat or the swirling vortices of dust.

'Thank you for coming at such short notice, Ignace.'

'Not at all, sir,' said Karkasy, shouting over the noise of the shuttle's engines as it lifted off the ground. 'I'm honoured, and not a little surprised, if I'm honest.'

'Don't be. I told you I wanted someone familiar with the truth, didn't I?'

'Yes, sir, indeed you did, sir,' beamed Karkasy. 'Is that why I'm here now?'

'In a ma

'I think so. What do you want to me to listen to?'

'Not what, but who.'

'Very well. Who do you want me to listen to?'

'Someone I don't trust,' said Loken.

THREE

A sheet of glass

A man of fine character

Hidden words

On the day before making planetfall to the surface of Davin, Loken sought out Kyril Sinderma

Loken travelled through yet another dizzyingly tall lane of manuscripts and leather bound tomes with names like Canticles of the Omniastran Dogma, Meditations on the Elegiac Hero and Thoughts and Memories of Old Night. None of them was familiar, and he began to despair of ever finding Sinderma

Sinderma

'More bad poetry?' asked Loken from a respectful distance.

Sinderma

'Garviel,' said Sinderma

'Were you expecting someone else?'

'No. No, not at all. I seldom encounter others in this part of the archive. The subject matter is a little lurid for most of the serious scholars.'

Loken moved around the table and sca

'I must confess to have taken a liking to the old texts,' explained Sinderma

'I have finished reading it, Kyril,' said Loken, placing the book before Sinderma

'And?'

'As you say, it's bloody, garish and sometimes given to flights of fantasy…'

'But?'

'But I can't help thinking that you had an ulterior motive in giving me this book.'

'Ulterior motive? No, Garviel, I assure you there was no such subterfuge,' said Sinderma

'Are you sure? There are passages in there that I think have more than a hint of truth to them.'

'Come now, Garviel, surely you can't believe that,' scoffed Sinderma

'The murengon,' stated Loken. 'Anult Keyser's final battle against the Nordafrik conclaves.'

Sinderma

'I can see from your eyes that you already know what I'm going to say.'

'No, Garviel, I don't. I know the passage you speak of and, while it's certainly an exciting read, I hardly think you can take its prose too literally.'

'I agree,' nodded Loken. 'All the talk of the sky splitting like silk and the mountains toppling is clearly nonsense, but it talks of men becoming daemons and turning on their fellows.'

'Ah… now I see. You think that this is another clue as to what happened to Xavyer Jubal?'

'Don't you?' asked Loken, turning one of the yellowed parchments around to point at a fanged daemon figure clothed in fur with curling ram's horns and a bloody, skull-stamped axe.

'Jubal turned into a daemon and tried to kill me! Just as happened to Anult Keyser himself. One of his generals, a man called Wilhym Mardol, became a daemon and killed him. Doesn't that sound familiar?'

Sinderma

Loken realised that the venerable iterator was exhausted.

'I'm sorry, Kyril,' he said, also sitting back. 'I didn't come here to pick a fight with you.'

Sinderma

'It's alright, Garviel, it's good that you have questions, it shows you are learning that there is often more to the truth than what we see at first. I'm sure the Warmaster values that aspect of you. How is the commander?'