Read Online Ahriman: Sorcerer by John French - Free Book Online

eye. His face was lean, proud and strong even in sleep. He had been like this when they found him, caged in ice and locked in the wreckage of a ship drifting close to Cadia.
    Murmurs ran around the chamber, growing in volume.
    ‘What is he?’ asked the sour-faced girl. Izdubar remained silent, and just looked at the bound Space Marine.
    ‘Wake him,’ said Iobel. The murmuring faded to a hush.
    Cendrion nodded to the tech-priests. They bent to the machine with a sigh of clockwork. A few moments later the colour of the liquid in the tubes began to change. The bound figure stirred. His lips twitched, gums peeling back as muscles contracted. One of the tech-priests reached out with a hand of tarnished bronze, and tapped a control on the pillar’s side. The halo of cables jerked, sparks running over the black iron clamp as it dug into the prisoner’s skull. Muscles spasmed as blue sparks spread across bare flesh. A smell of ozone and cooking meat rose to Iobel’s nose.
    The figure’s one eye opened. His muscles became still as though at a command. Arcs of electricity continued to play over him. He did not make a sound. His head moved slowly, his one-eyed gaze holding on Cendrion for a long while before it moved to Izdubar, and then to Iobel.
    ‘You will answer me,’ said Izdubar in a level voice. The bound Space Marine just stared back. ‘Who do you serve?’
    ‘No one,’ said the Space Marine, and Iobel heard the hate rolling in the words.
    ‘But who did you serve? You have already told my comrades this, have you not? So, as you did before, tell us who you served.’
    The edge of the Space Marine’s mouth twitched. On another face, belonging to a different species, it might have been a smile. To Iobel it looked like a predator baring its teeth.
    ‘Ahriman,’ said the prisoner. A murmur of sound ran around the room. Iobel realised that she had been holding her breath. Izdubar looked up at the tiers of faces nodding in agreement, before turning back to the prisoner.
    ‘Tell us, what is your name?’
    ‘My name…’ said the prisoner, his jaw chewing the words slowly. Then he shook his head. The silver cables linked to his skull rattled. ‘My name is Astraeos.’

IV – World Murder
    IV
    World Murder
    Ahriman watched the fleet gather around the Sycorax . Engine fires and the dispersing energy of warp wake flickered across the depths of the crystal sphere which hung in the high dome of the Sycorax ’s bridge. He shifted the direction of his thought, and the view widened, pulling back until the Sycorax was just one island of light amongst many. Beyond them a single star burned bright against the distant void. It was not a large star, but seen from the edge of the system it was clear and bright.
    Like a candle, thought Ahriman. A lone flame to guide the lost through a storm-lashed night. His mind flickered and the crystal’s bound vision glided closer, until the star’s planets were dots of visible light, and it had become a disc of raw white. Or like a ghost light, dancing out of sight, leading the traveller to their grave.
    The bridge at the summit of the High Citadel was a pile of armour and architecture which rose like a mountain at the stern of the Sycorax . The bridge itself was half a kilometre long, its armoured shell clad in bronze and supported by spars and pillars of black metal. Blue-green light shimmered up the walls and across the floor, as though the chamber were far beneath the ocean. A swarm of crew filled the bridge, webbed into machine cages by fleshmetal cables, or muttering over consoles. These were the Cyrabor, a sect of machine-wrights bred in some warp-soaked corner of the Eye of Terror, who had taken the Sycorax as both their goddess and nest. The air smelt of cinnamon and machine oil, as it did everywhere that the machine-wrights went.
    He liked it here; of all the places that existed in the Sycorax , it was one of the few where he felt at peace without having to impose that state on