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

his mind. The hum of the machines washed through him, and above it the clicking and hooting of the Cyrabor calling to each other, the mingled sounds rising and falling like the break and retreat of waves on a seashore. Above him the sphere of crystal hung like a great pearl of night.
    He closed his eyes, and dipped his awareness into the web of telepathic voices stretched across his fleet. All had arrived, all were ready. They were a fusion of disparate renegades, traitors and outcasts, bound to his will by oaths, by hope, by the desire for power. Some were his brothers by blood, Thousand Sons like himself. Others were simple warrior bands whose only loyalty was to the promise of power. Of these he trusted few, liked even fewer, and found most vile, but they were a distasteful necessity; for what was to come he would need every weapon no matter the hand that wielded it.
    ‘Overkill,’ the voiced rasped behind him, its human tones riddled with static.
    He did not answer, but watched the Cyrabor machine-wrights scurry through the bridge, yellow robes rippling around their bloated or spindle-thin frames. The image in the crystal sphere dissolved into blackness. Behind him his ears picked up the whisper of fabric as the figure on the great brass command throne turned her head. Metal-sheathed cables clinked as they shifted against each other. He heard the click-hiss as air sucked into metal lungs.
    ‘Are you ready, mistress?’ he asked.
    ‘Have you told them what you intend?’ asked Carmenta, electronic clicks wheezing between each word.
    ‘No,’ said Ahriman. ‘Not all of it, not yet.’ He turned to look at her. The green light of her eyes gleamed from the cracked red lacquer of her face. Crimson velvet swathed her, and cables swarmed over her like strangling vines. The brass and brushed plasteel of the throne rose around her like the setting for a queen of a forgotten age.
    ‘Do you tell any of us the whole truth, Ahriman?’
    He watched her but did not reply.
    She looks smaller . Every time I see her she always seems smaller.
    ‘You should trust them,’ said Carmenta. ‘At the least you should trust Astraeos.’
    Ahriman shook his head.
    ‘That would be unwise,’ he said.
    ‘Trust, Ahriman. It is the only thing you do not have, and cannot buy or take by force.’
    ‘I trusted you,’ he said, and let the words hang in the heavy air.
    ‘You did,’ said Carmenta, and her machine gaze was steady under Ahriman’s blue eyes. ‘And we know where that led us. So why is it that you tell me things you keep from those bound to you by oaths and blood?’
    ‘It is necessary.’
    ‘Necessary that you keep secrets from them, or necessary that you tell some of those secrets to a dying traitor?’
    ‘You are not dying,’ he said.
    A cough of distortion and clicking code came from Carmenta’s hood.
    ‘A good lie. The Sycorax is older than I am – older, stronger, and an unkind child. As much as I have made it mine, it has taken from me, and it takes more with each passing cycle. One day I will be gone.’ She seemed to nod, and breathed a stream of machine code to herself. ‘But of course you know this – you are Ahriman.’
    He did not answer. She was right; he did know. He could feel the shape of her mind changing, breaking apart into islands of awareness and madness. Damaged long ago by the attempt to become one with a machine the size of a warship, the bond with the Sycorax was now pulling the old cracks wide. The ship was not only vast, but had grown ancient swimming the tides of the Eye of Terror. The warp was in its bones, chuckling in the fires of its reactors and whispering in its data links. Its spirit was corrosive and pernicious. Carmenta could not leave the embrace of the Sycorax , not now, but every day she lost a little more of herself. Sometimes – times like this moment – she would seem as she had once been, but more often she would not respond at all, or if she did it was only to look at him in