Ahriman: Exile by John French

in a high vaulted chamber in the Titan Child ’s jutting bridge tower. Perhaps it had once been a forum or gathering hall, but the Harrowing had made it a throne room. Candles of human tallow burned at the foot of the walls, dribbling melted pools of fat across the black stone floor. The light they cast was spluttering, smoke-edged, and stank of cooking meat. The dead hung from the ceiling on hooks and rusted chains: dried corpses, their skin shrunk over screaming skulls; fresh heads still thick with clotted blood and flies; pale torsos, their limbs and heads severed by neat cuts. The symbol of a fang-lipped chalice covered the floor, hacked into the stone with heavy blows. At the far end of the chamber sat the throne. Raised on tiers of black iron, it had been the command seat of an Imperial warship but its systems had been stripped and its metal frame draped with tanned hides of a dozen species. Skulls of those same species lined the plinth it sat on, their yellowed domes spattered with script and arcane patterns.
    Ahriman entered from a side door, and Gzrel flicked a bladed finger to indicate a place at the foot of the throne. The lord was nervous and tension hung in the air like the static before the arrival of a storm.
    ‘Come and stand with us, Horkos,’ Gzrel growled, and fumes coughed from his armour. The rest were already there. Xiatsis and Cottadaron stood one step below Gzrel, flanking the approach to their lord. Two champions also stood next to the throne, their chainblades resting point-down at their feet. Maroth stood beside Gzrel, one step down so that he could lean across the massive arm of the throne to whisper in his lord’s ear. Ahriman was the last and the least of Gzrel’s circle and so stood the furthest from the lord.
    Gzrel nodded, satisfaction and impatience gliding over his features. All his vassals were in place, a blunt show of power and majesty to the unknown emissary.
    ‘Be aware of any trickery,’ growled Gzrel. ‘This emissary is a sorcerer.’
    ‘And he knew we were here,’ said Maroth. ‘That concerns me, my lord.’
    ‘Did they come for us, or is it a chance meeting?’ croaked Cottadaron.
    ‘We must learn the answers from this audience,’ said Gzrel, and raised a clawed hand to the two Harrowing that flanked the bronze doors.
    Ahriman was suddenly aware of a presence beyond those doors, a presence that burned in the warp like a bound star. It had a shape and structure, an outline formed by disciplines that were as familiar to him as his own hands.
    The guards were moving to the doors, their movements dream-slow to Ahriman’s eyes. He blinked…
    …A raven rising from a plain of dust, red drops falling from its feathers, its wings swallowing the sunlight…
    The doors were opening. He looked down at his hands, the vision still swimming through his mind. A sickly warmth was spreading through his body, prickling his skin, filling his mouth with the taste of nausea.
    No , he thought, and the word was a desperate scream in his head. I am not that man. I failed. He wanted to run but he could not move. He looked up, as the high doors swung wide…
    …The raven turned on the wind, looking at him with sapphire eyes…
    A figure stepped through the door. He wore robes the white of dried bone, his armour deep red and silver-edged. Green eyes shone from a mask of bronze beneath a striped crest of crimson and white. A sword hung at his waist. Two figures followed the first. Their armour, too, was red and silver. Lapis and ivory spiralled over the casings of the boltguns held across their chests. They moved with machine-like precision, stopping a pace behind the emissary and becoming utterly still. Ahriman heard a low whispering, like words spoken just out of hearing.
    Ahriman felt ice run across his skin. He knew the armour, the craft that had gone into its making, and the symbolism that had guided the maker’s hand. The emissary was a sorcerer of the Thousand Sons, and his two