Read Ahriman: Sorcerer for Free Online Page B

tight groups, and soldiers in gloss-red armour walked the walls under the spitting light of void shields. And everywhere the hot wind blew, and the dust rattled across the floor stones.
    In the sky above, over a dozen warships glinted like stars. Some had brought Iobel and her peers, but most simply hung still above the fortress like guards mounted over an open grave. It was not a permanent occupation, but a place selected for its isolation and made temporarily strong.
    If she was being honest she would have said that she felt the whole thing rather daunting. She had attended a conclave once before at the side of her mentor, but that had been on Luna, in sight of hallowed Terra. It had been a grand gathering filled with a sense of coming to the centre of things, of ascension. On this dead and dry world, it felt like coming to the margins and looking over the edge into the drop beyond.
    In truth Cavor was right, what was to come would be unpleasant; there was no avoiding that fact. But then what else were the duties of an inquisitor but an unpleasant necessity? Iobel glanced at the two other inquisitors who stood beside her with their attendants. Erionas shifted but did not meet her eyes. He was tall, his face smooth, hairless and its features so bland that they looked as though they had been pressed from a mould. He wore a grey bodyglove, and cables extended away from his spine to the trio of hooded followers who stood behind him. The old crone Malkira was still, her chromed exoskeleton whining with a gum-aching purr. Before the seer had entered, the eyes of every one of the figures in the higher tiers had been watching the three of them, judging, assessing, calculating…
    That is what you get for calling a grand conclave of your peers , but what choice did we have?
    They had journeyed into the Eye of Terror and returned bearing knowledge, and that knowledge was beyond the power of the three of them alone to address. The seer held a portion of it. She was the last of the astropaths they had taken with them to sift the Eye for truth, and what she had seen was burned into her mind. That fragment of knowledge, and what had happened as they had tried to leave the Eye, was why they were here, in a forgotten fortress on a dead world.
    The seer stopped at the centre of the chamber. She swayed, and the chains clinked. The chamber doors closed. Quiet filled the gloom, and then a rustle of fabric and whispers rose from the audience. A figure stood on one of the higher tiers. Silence fell again. He was thin, and clad in an unadorned black robe with a pale face, which reminded her of a sharpened axe head. His name was Inquisitor Izdubar, and he was the other reason they were here.
    No, not just Inquisitor Izdubar. Lord Inquisitor Izdubar. The silence in the chamber as he looked around him left no doubt as to that status.
    ‘Still looks young,’ Cavor had muttered when he had first seen Izdubar take his place in the chamber. That was true as well, of course, but if anyone knew how old the lord inquisitor was, Iobel was not one of them. He had always looked the same, even when they had first met. It had been a decade since she had last seen him on Sardunas, and he had not seemed to age a day, except perhaps in the stillness of his eyes. She was grateful that he had come, but the weight of his name meant this was now his conclave, and by standing now he had just gathered it into his hand. Part of her wondered how much he already knew; he always had a habit of knowing more than you thought.
    Slowly he moved his eyes to Iobel.
    ‘So,’ he said, his voice soft, ‘what do you bring to us?’
    Just like that. No ritual phrasing, no high booming oratory, just a question.
    Erionas spoke from beside Iobel, his monotone voice rising in the still quiet.
    ‘We return from the Eye, with matters of profound and broad importance.’
    ‘Enough to draw us all here? I would hope nothing less.’ Izdubar smiled a brittle smile. ‘What did you