The Lightning Tower - Enhanced Audio Edition by Dan Abnett

Author:Dan Abnett
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-09-02T00:00:00+00:00

SCENE 5: Malcador’s Chambers

[ATMOS: smaller chamber with faint electronic sounds in the background; all dialogue echoes]

[SFX: Dorn and Malcador enter the room, the mechanical door opening automatically; their footsteps are enclosed in the smaller space]

Malcador raised his hand and the lights in his chambers came on. Dorn looked around. He had never entered the Sigillite’s private apartments before. Ancient images hung on the walls: flaking, fragile things of wood, canvas and decomposing pigments, preserved in thin, blue fields of stasis; the smoke-pale portrait of a woman with the most curious smile; garish yellow flowers rendered in thick paint; the unflinching, rheumy gaze of an old fleshy man, cast in shadow, tobacco brown.

Along another wall hung old tattered banners showing the thunderbolt and lightning strike sigil of the pre-Unity armies. Suits of armour – perfect, glinting thunder armour – were mounted in shimmering suspension zones.

Malcador offered Dorn wine, which he refused, and a seat, which he accepted.

DORN: I have made a certain peace with myself.

...Dorn said.

DORN (cont’d): I understand what I am afraid of.

Malcador nodded. He had pulled back his cowl and the light shone on his long white hair. He sipped from his glass.

MALCADOR: Enlighten me.

DORN: I do not fear anyone. Not Horus, not Fulgrim, none of them. I fear the cause. I fear the root of their enmity.

MALCADOR: You fear what you don’t understand.

DORN: Exactly. I am at a loss to know what drives the Warmaster and his cohorts. It is an alien thing to me, quite defying translation. A strong defence relies on knowing what you are defending against. I can raise all the bulwarks and curtain walls and cannon-bastions I like, and I still won’t know what it is I’m fighting.

MALCADOR: Perceptive.

...said Malcador.

MALCADOR (cont’d): And true of us all. I fancy even the Emperor doesn’t fully understand what it is that drives Horus against us so furiously. Do you know what I think?

DORN: Tell me.

Malcador shrugged.

MALCADOR: I believe it is better that we don’t know. To understand it would be to understand insanity. Horus is quite mad. Chaos is inside him.

DORN: You say that as if Chaos is... a thing.

MALCADOR: It is. Does that surprise you? You’ve known the warp and seen its corrupting touch – that’s Chaos. It has touched humanity now, twisted our brightest and best. All we can do is remain true to ourselves and fend it off, deny it. Trying to understand it is a fool’s errand. It would claim us too.

DORN: I see.

MALCADOR: Don’t see, Rogal Dorn, and you will live longer. All you can do is acknowledge your fear. That’s all any of us can do. Recognise it for what it is: your pure, human sanity rocked by the sight of the warp’s infecting, suffocating madness.

DORN: Is this what the Emperor believes?

...asked Dorn.

MALCADOR: It’s what he knows. It’s what he knows he doesn’t know. Sometimes, my friend, there is salvation in ignorance.

Dorn sat still for a while. Malcador watched him, occasionally sipping from his glass.

DORN: Well, I thank you for your time, sir, said Dorn eventually.

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