Ahriman: Sorcerer by John French Read Free Book Online Page B

glowing with heat. The ice was thickening across her body.
    Izdubar stared at the seer for a long moment, and then nodded slowly.
    ‘May the Emperor reward your service.’
    His hand moved so fast that Iobel only saw the pistol in the instant before the shot rang out.
    The seer fell. The chains rang as they caught her weight. She hung at the centre of the web, limbs slack and hair falling over her face. Ice began to fall off her body. The chains creaked as they cooled to a dull red. A dribble of blood began to splatter the floor under her feet. Izdubar’s hand dropped to his side, and the pistol vanished back beneath his robe. For a second there was no sound beside the slow patter of blood on stone.
    The Sycorax pushed free from the hole she had punched between the real and unreal, and settled into the vacuum. She was truly vast. At her forgotten birth she had been one of the greatest ships of her age, and her time in the Eye had only added to her bulk. Seen from above she resembled a spear blade, its edge waved and curled like a rippling flame. A city of spires and domes glittered on her back, and her belly hung with inverted towers. The muzzles of her guns were as wide as hab-blocks. The citadel of her bridge was a mountain of glinting metal and pinpricks of light. Arcs of lightning crawled across the tops of her towers as the power which had guided her dissipated.
    More ships appeared, tearing the sheet of stars into tatters as they left the warp. Some had once been ships of the Thousand Sons, but most had been made for different masters. Some had been captured, and made to serve Ahriman’s brothers. Others served the herd of warriors and sorcerers that had been drawn to follow the Exile. There were the three sister ships of Zelalsen the Wanderer, their hulls crawling with growths of bronze and bone, trailing luminous smears of light as they slid through the dark. The Pyromonarch , Gilgamos’s split-hulled barque, coasted to station beside squadrons of gunboats clad with sapphire-stained brass.
    Even the smallest of ships held the population of a small city, and the largest swarmed with life. Thousands laboured on each vessel. Many of those souls had never known another life, had been born into the dark, and had only ever known the metal growl of the beast they lived within. Strange creatures stalked the dark of many ships, things that might have once been flesh, or might have walked from nightmare. In the deep holds of each ship masked prophets, redeemers, oracles, machine abominations, and petty kings rose and fell, and went unnoticed by the Space Marines who called themselves lords of realms they never saw and had no care for.
    The fire-darkened Word of Hermes was the last to emerge from the warp, the spear tip of its prow trailing lightning from its re-entry to reality. Together, the assembled fleet settled into position around the Sycorax , and waited.
    At the summit of a spiral-sided tower above the Sycorax ’s bridge, Silvanus Yeshar vomited. His head was pounding, and his flesh felt as though he had been boiled in oil. Vision echoes of the warp lingered inside his skull, like neon bruises. The fading sound of screams still rang in his ears. He took a deep breath, almost vomited again and then managed to steady the sense of being spun around while not moving. He was fairly sure he was lying on the floor. He could feel and smell his vomit pooling around the side of his face. Slowly he pushed himself up to his knees, and wiped his hand across his face. He began to open his mundane eyes.
    +Silvanus,+ growled Astraeos’s thought voice inside his skull.
    Multi-coloured stars exploded inside his head. He screamed, as the pain rushed out to every corner of his awareness. After a moment the screaming just ran out, and the pain began to fade back to a dull ache.
    ‘Yes,’ he croaked.
    +You are alive,+ sent Astraeos.
    ‘Yes, thank you for your concern.’
    ‘Concern?’
    Silvanus shook his head. The bare lines of the