[Tome of Fire 02] - Firedrake Read online

  It was surprisingly cold inside. The gate of fire seemed to emanate no heat. Dak’ir’s instincts told him the unreality of this place was trying to fool him. Bending down, with a half-glance at Kessarghoth to make sure the drake was still sleeping, he picked up a fist-sized rock and tossed it into the flames.

  A short flash presaged its atomisation into a cloud of particulate ash.

  Dak’ir thought about erecting a kine shield to safeguard his passage through the gate, but something suggested to him that would not be enough. He wore the metal-shaper’s garb for a reason.

  Then he noticed the chain. Several of its links passed through the gate of fire. Whatever substance they were forged from appeared to be impervious to the flames. But they also held the creature in thrall, feeding several smaller chains that bound its mouth and claws. The angle of the larger chain suggested it was taut already, that Kessarghoth had reached the end of its limits and could come no further.

  Like all Nocturneans and, by extension, all Salamanders, Dak’ir possessed a keen forgesmith’s eye. As he appraised the links that made up the drake’s mighty chain, he realised that one of them could be fashioned into a form of shield. With that braced against the infernal flames he could breach the gate and survive.

  But to forge such a thing he would need to break the chain and release Kessarghoth. Dak’ir stepped towards the nearest of the links and raised his hammer.

  The first blow rang out like a dull clarion, its report echoing around the mountain.

  Still the drake slumbered.

  A second and third had the same effect.

  Kessarghoth did not stir.

  Soon, Dak’ir found a steady rhythm and pounded at the joint in the link until it broke apart in two halves. The eldritch metal was hot, hot enough to reshape with his hammer. Finding a flat-headed rock, Dak’ir went to work levelling the link and then reforging its curved surface into a huge shield that would protect his entire body.

  He had given up on Kessarghoth now. The ancient had slept for thousands of years. It would take more than the hammering of a lowly Nocturnean metal-shaper to rouse it.

  Or so he thought.

  Upon the last blow, his hammerhead still glowing red-hot, Dak’ir heard the drake stir at last.

  Blinking back millennia of hibernation, the dust of ages veneering its body shaken free as it flexed old but strong muscles, Kessarghoth drew to its full height and bellowed.

  The chains snaring the drake’s mouth snapped like kindling, as if removing the one link in its bondage was enough to weaken the rest. As it shambled forwards, lashing the air with a leathery pink tongue, it shrugged off the other chains binding it. Kessarghoth’s eyes narrowed to yellow slits as it regarded its prey. It hissed then roared at Dak’ir again, its ululating cry shaking the mountainside. The displaced earth cascaded in a miniature avalanche, as if fleeing from the beast’s fury.

  The cave was not far, but the drake now blocked it with its bulky body. Hefting the shield in one hand, the hammer in the other, Dak’ir advanced.

  For they shall know no fear…

  Except he was not a Space Marine in this place and the monster before him was not an enemy of mankind, it was a denizen of primordial myth, a fable told to Nocturnean children to ensure they obeyed their elders.

  In Vulkan’s name, Dak’ir could think of no strategy to defeat it.

  Kessarghoth was fast. Its serpentine head shot out like a scaled dart and with the force of a seismic hammer. Dak’ir rolled, caught off guard but relying on his Astartes survival instincts to save him.

  Jogging to its blind side, he tried to manoeuvre the beast away from the cave in the hope he could race by it and to salvation beyond. But the drake was wily with age and not to be fooled. It turned where it squatted, stout legs bunched as they crabbed in a half circle so it was facing its prey again.

  It wasn’t hard to see the tenacity of his Chapter in that beast. Ferocious intelligence flared in its eyes, the bestial echo of his battle-brothers.

  One of you resides within all of us, he thought, backing off across the plateau again. Flames lighted Nocturne’s sky. A chunk of fiery star-rock smashed into the mountain, tearing away a piece of Dak’ir’s platform and preventing further retreat. The hell-storm in the red heavens was worsening. Time was against him.

  Kessarghoth sucked in its breath. A sagging pouch in its gullet filled with volatile liquid before it unleashed it in a stream of fire. The blaze rolled off Dak’ir’s shield, against which he had to brace his entire body lest the force of the blast pitch him off the mountain to his doom on the crags below.

  It was over quickly, tendrils of smoke and steam evaporating off the metal as Dak’ir launched into a run directly at the drake.

  A second meteor crashed into the plateau, obliterating where the Salamander had been standing. Chunks of the mountain fell away in slow motion to be sundered in the lava lakes below. Rocks cracked and grumbled as if the world was breaking and Dak’ir stood upon the last splinter of creation.

  With the earth trembling beneath his feet, Dak’ir swept under Kessarghoth’s bite. Flecks of acidic drool burned his skin as they splashed him but he ignored them. Stepping inside the reach of the drake’s claws and dropping his hammer, Dak’ir used his forward momentum to scale Kessarghoth’s grizzled hide. Its thorny carapace provided ready handholds, its spiny back the means to propel up and over the broad bank of muscle in its haunches.

  The drake turned, snapping wildly, hissing and bellowing in frustration.

  Dak’ir hung on with one hand, the other desperately gripping his shield. It was like riding a skiff on the Acerbian Sea during geyser-tide. Tail thrashing, Kessarghoth stomped back and forth hoping to dislodge the insect on its back.

  Dropping to his knees, Dak’ir slid the shield over his head as the drake belched another stream of liquid flame. Though the plume wreathed its back, lighting tiny fires in the nooks of its ancient body, Kessarghoth didn’t cry out.

  It was mad.

  This tenacious creature scratched at its hide but Dak’ir weaved away from its questing claws, refusing to furnish its hungering belly with flesh.

  The cliff edge was looming. In its blind rage to throw Dak’ir off and devour him, the drake had moved away from the cave mouth and closer to the precipice’s edge. A blow from Kessarghoth’s flanged tail, harder than a power fist, almost unseated the Salamander. His shield arm rang painfully with the glancing blow but he hung on still.

  With a deep, earthy basso the ragged fringe of the broken plateau finally gave way against the thrashing drake. At first, the beast didn’t realise what was happening. Its bellowing stopped momentarily when one of its hind legs fell backwards into the growing void behind it. Then it lost footing in its other rear leg.

  Now the drake panicked, releasing a high-pitched shriek, its eyes widening even as it knew its doom was inevitable.

  Hate-filled eyes cursed Dak’ir as he let go at last and ran up Kessarghoth’s neck before vaulting off its head onto solid ground below. He turned to watch it fall. Such a noble beast, so venerable and magnificent. Someone should witness its death. Though it was a manifestation of psychic unreality, the drake’s death was a profound moment. Dak’ir vowed he would mark it, that the deed would not go unremembered. With scarification he would honour Kessarghoth.

  But honour would have to wait. The gate of fire was before him.

  He would have only once chance to pass through the flame. With Vulkan’s name on his lips, Dak’ir raced at the burning oval. Less than a metre away, the strange cold of the cave chilling his bare skin, he lowered the shield and roared.

  The moment of passage stretched into minutes then hours then years. A dark world loomed large in his vision. Tombs lined its ossuary roads. Sepulchres ringed its grey vales. Bones filled its endless catacombs. It was a dead world, a world he knew with harsh clarity. The scent of grave dust and old burning ravaged his olfactory senses. Cold, thin hands like talons seized his body. Parchment skin brushed his f
ace. Gossamer strands of congealed dust bound his arm like rough silk. It called to him, this place of death and desolation. It had always called. For four decades it had dominated his thoughts until a moment of unique trauma had quashed it beneath a veil of guilt. But now that burden had been lifted. In the endless desert, he had met those fears and overcome them. The old wounds had resurfaced again, hard scar-tissue reopened with a ragged knife of remembrance. Its blade was cold; the sibilance as it sliced into Dak’ir’s mind spoke a single word like a death rattle…

  Moribar…

  He thrust open his eyes, a feverish sweat chilling his skin, and saw Pyriel alone in a chamber beneath the labyrinthine depths of Mount Deathfire.

  The Codicier wore his psychic hood without battle-helm. Spiral scarification edged over the lip of his blue gorget. A faint, almost imperceptible smile played at the corners of his mouth.

  Pyriel had an unremarkable face. A thick shaven line of white hair divided his smooth shorn pate into two equal black hemispheres like an arrow that came to a sharp point between his eyes.

  “Stand, brother,” he said, clasping his force staff like a badge of ceremony. In many ways, in this moment, it was.

  Dak’ir had not realised he was kneeling. Penitence before his mentor seemed appropriate given the circumstances. He arose.

  Pyriel nodded, a sagely wisdom Dak’ir could not yet grasp filling his eyes. They burned cerulean blue as he psychically augmented his voice to a deep, prophetic rumble. If nothing else, the Codicier possessed a flair for the dramatic.

  “Welcome, Lexicanum,” he boomed, “to the vaunted ranks of the Librarius!”

  In his outstretched hand, the naked blade laid reverently across his forearm, was Dak’ir’s force sword. It was his, earned by right of fire trial.

  The Lexicanum took the proffered hilt. The exquisite haft, cross-hatched by veins of emerald, felt warm to the touch. All of Dak’ir’s fatigue and disorientation vanished in a pure instant of joining. This was his blade, tuned to his resonance and him to its. With clarity came remembrance and the irrefutable truth of what he’d witnessed passing through the gate of fire.

  Dread, like a cold metal fist, slammed into Dak’ir’s gut.

  “Moribar,” he said, his voice cracked with sudden urgency.

  A crack split the side of the mountain. Tiny rocks rolled down its rugged flank, shed snow broke apart and shuddered in their wake. Hot air escaped the gloom revealed inside the crack. A tempest of ice flurries was sent swirling with the sudden thermal updraft. Noises from concealed machines hummed and clanked, audible above the storm.

  From a fissure it grew to a chasm, in fact a gate, the entrance to a hidden route to Deathfire’s frost-shrouded heart.

  He’stan withdrew the Spear of Vulkan from an invisible cleft in the rock. It was a magnificent weapon, a piece of artifice from a long dead age, the last of its kind. An artefact of the primarch, Tu’Shan was not surprised it was more than a mere weapon.

  He entered the chamber ahead of the Forgefather, his drake cloak sweeping in his wake. A long passage led downwards. Ash and soot scented the warm breeze. It was good to be near the mountain again.

  The gate ground shut with a thud that echoed loudly in the abrupt silence.

  He’stan moved into step with his lord and the two Salamanders descended.

  At the end of the tunnel the subterranean depths branched off into several semi-naturally formed corridors and chambers.

  “This way,” muttered He’stan, intent on his mission.

  Tu’Shan followed without comment, stooping below a cluster of stalactites impeding his path. So deep were they that Nocturne’s blood ran all around them, free flowing and vital. Above, the world shivered in the grip of arctic winter; below, its vigorous geology stirred.

  So vast was the labyrinth below Mount Deathfire that two individuals could spend months abroad in its depths and never meet one another, never even witness a sign of another’s passing. Much of its subterranean darkness was uncharted. Only Vulkan had ever known its every shrouded corner, its every tunnel and chamber. Beasts slumbered in the lowest deeps, old creatures jealous of men and his dominance of the surface. The unique acoustics of the rock, the veins of phonolite and other aurally conductive minerals within its composition, allowed the plaintive wailing of such creatures to be heard far from their dwelling places by human Nocturneans. Few natives ever braved the mountain depths for that reason. It was the province of the Salamanders alone and so the way was deserted as He’stan and Tu’Shan traversed the gloom to an ancient door wrought of carved adamantium.

  “I have never seen this place before,” the Regent confessed, awed by the icon of Vulkan fashioned into the gate.

  “Nor have I,” He’stan replied.

  As one, the two legends of the Chapter sank to one knee and bowed.

  “Vulkan’s fire beats in my breast,” they intoned together, “he is my steel and I honour him with my loyalty and sacrifice.” It was a rare variation of the more common litany, used to express sentiments of utter devotion and duty.

  They arose with perfect synchronicity, stalled before the immense gate.

  Tu’Shan had to arch his neck to see its apex, whilst He’stan stepped forwards to lay his gauntleted hand upon the metal. Beneath his battle-helm, he closed his eyes.

  “Fire surges through my veins, brother…” he breathed.

  Tu’Shan pressed his own mighty palm against the metal. “There is power here.” He didn’t need to be a Librarian to realise it. “And I can feel an indentation in the surface. I will summon Master Vel’cona. He will know how to breach it.”

  He’stan opened his eyes and lowered his hand reluctantly. The Tome of Fire had guided him to this place. It had opened his eyes to the existence of the forgotten chamber. Vulkan’s hand had been at work in this deed. The Forgefather took great comfort in that. It was as if the primarch were still with them, if only in spirit and not flesh.

  “Vulkan’s Sigil, who bears it now, my lord?”

  “Chaplain Elysius is its custodian, but what relevance is that?”

  He’stan faced him and removed his battle-helm. His war-aged face had never looked so serious. The many honour-scars there seemed to shimmer in the crystal-refracted lava light.

  “It is the only thing that can open this gate. And make no mistake, Regent, we must open it.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  I

  Harbinger

  I am Death.

  Its shroud follows me like a shadow I cannot shrug off. I feel the cold of it reaching around my twin hearts like a forging clamp even as the font of rage within me boils.

  My father taught me to be thus. He taught with his blood and the genetic legacy of his mortal body. Why then do my brothers, warriors all, not feel as I do? Why does the guilt of my past deeds and lack of deeds haunt me like a spectre crouched on my shoulder?

  I am invulnerable. I am war incarnate. I am the anvil upon which my enemies break. But I am hollow, a shell filled with liquid fire. How long before it overtakes my fragile form and burns me down to ash?

  Tsu’gan opened his eyes. The branding rod had gone deep, a savage scoring in his right bicep that retraced his previous glories.

  He found his teeth gritted with a rime of blood from when he’d bitten his lip. It wasn’t pain that drove the Salamander to do this, but anger. Tsu’gan had hoped upon promotion to the 1st Company that he would re-find his purpose, quell the choler inside him. Induction to the Firedrakes, his isolation on Prometheus surrounded by relics of champions, fighting alongside the Chapter’s mightiest heroes had only intensified the flame within.

  It was as useful as it was debilitating. Unleashed on the battlefield, Tsu’gan’s battle rage made him formidable if reckless. His weakness had been noticed, however. Before, when he was brother-sergeant of 3rd Company, it had been Fugis who got closest to discovering his destructive masochism; now it was Praetor, veteran sergeant of the Firedrakes and Tu’Shan’s mailed fist in matters when th
e Regent was otherwise engaged, who watched him.

  Mercifully, Praetor’s duties were many and kept him busy. Tsu’gan had no reason to suspect the veteran sergeant’s interest was anything more than mild concern.

  The deaths of his battle-brothers bothered Tsu’gan greatly. Seeing heroes sundered, the other Firedrakes whom he regarded as invincible, shook his faith more deeply than he cared to admit. Only since Kadai had it been this way. He had idolised his former captain. His demise and the nature of it had left a crack of imperfection in Tsu’gan’s psyche. Like any wound that is left untended, it had festered and grown.

  He had accepted it; accepted death was part of his warrior calling, before that fateful moment. A strange divergence of destiny had begun after that mission. Tsu’gan was no psyker, but he felt the shifting of fate nonetheless. He had taken to reading scrolls of prophecy, absorbing the encrypted wisdom of his forebears. Admittance to the Pantheon Chamber and the Tome of Fire was not permitted but there was lore enough on Prometheus in its vault-chambers and reliquary-shrines to satisfy Tsu’gan’s appetite. His path was his own. He would not allow another to dictate it to him.

  Tsu’gan stood on a dais of burning coals. His bare feet smouldered, tendrils of smoke twisting through his toes, but he felt no discomfort. His body was inured to such things.

  I feel nothing…

  A drakescale loincloth preserved his dignity. This was the way of tribal Nocturne. Tradition was important to its peoples, so too to their superhuman guardians. Tsu’gan’s arms were held loosely by his sides as Maikar, his brander-priest, went to work. Only the clanking of the nearby votive-servitor, its cumbersome brazier cradle crackling with heat, invaded the sepulchral silence.

  There were no lights in the solitorium. He preferred the dark. It hid his thoughts, dampened them for a time. The flash of fire, glowing coals and the luminance of Maikar’s cybernetic implants provided the only light.