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The Oath in Darkness – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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The Oath in Darkness

David Annandale

‘Do you think she knows what she’s doing?’ Lorn Rekkendus asked.

‘It’s a bit late to be wondering that, isn’t it?’ said Harant Dalkan.

‘That is not an answer.’ Lorn was not going to be put off by Dalkan’s deflection. He couldn’t blame her. He had been asking himself the same question. It had become far more urgent since they had all arrived at Precipice. The plan, which had seemed a glorious crusade in the abstract, a mission commanded by holy visions, looked like an act of madness now that they were actually in orbit over the Blackstone Fortress. The reality of the thing was far beyond any conception of it. No one should speak of the Blackstone Fortress without having seen it. Dalkan regretted that he had come to this understanding too late.

They were in Dalkan’s prayer cell aboard the Sanctified Journey, the Rekkendus yacht moored to Precipice. He had prayed more than usual for the Emperor’s guidance since arriving. If he had known its true nature before coming, Dalkan wondered, would he have agreed to Buria’s plan at all? Precipice was a foul place. It was beyond heretical. Humans and xenos coexisted in a cauldron of competing agendas. The clamour of trade, scheming and conflict was overwhelming. It was even louder to the ear of the soul. Every breath Dalkan took here felt like an offence against the Emperor.

Did Buria Rekkendus know what she was doing? Dalkan wished he knew.

‘I believe she does,’ he said to Lorn.

Buria’s younger sister frowned. She saw through to his camouflaged doubt as surely as if she had pierced him with her third eye. ‘I am not young,’ she said. ‘I have not been for quite some time. I know very well that when I hear someone assert something by saying I believe, then they are trying to convince themselves of the truth of that statement at least as much as they are trying to convince me.’

Dalkan was silent for a moment, acknowledging the truth of her accusation. Then he said, ‘I have believed in your sister’s judgement for as long as I have been confessor to your house. I have never had any reason to doubt that judgement before.’

This was true. Rekkendus was a proud house of the Navis Nobilite. The service of its Navigators to the Imperium had been exemplary for centuries. Buria’s reign at the head of the family had been singularly successful. It was marked by a combination of rigorous discipline and a willingness to take brave risks in the name of the house and of the Emperor.

‘This is not the first time Buria has taken a radical initiative,’ Dalkan said. ‘She has always been right in the past.’

‘She has,’ Lorn agreed. ‘That is why I have gone along with her plan this far. But she has never attempted anything quite like this.’

‘We knew that before coming here. You knew that before coming here.’

Lorn nodded. ‘But we have yet to do anything irrevocable. We can still turn back. We haven’t yet descended to the Blackstone Fortress. But she has gone now to meet with our guide. The point of no return is fast approaching.’

‘Have you spoken to Viktur about this?’

‘Delicately.’

That went without saying. Buria’s son was impulsive, and he lost his temper easily. He had a habit of making fraught situations worse than they needed to be.

‘His view has not changed,’ Lorn went on. ‘His only concern is that our house achieve ascendancy over House Locarno. He would likely be here even without my sister’s visions.’

Buria was the most powerful Navigator of the three. Her connections with the warp were profound, and Dalkan worried about the long term. House Rekkendus could ill afford to lose her. Viktur was not fit to lead yet, and Lorn was too cautious. Buria spoke and prayed with Dalkan every day. He watched over her spiritual health. It was her physical well-being that worried him. But it was the depth to which she could interface with the warp that had led to the revelations she had experienced, and that had brought them to the Blackstone Fortress. Within the monster, there was a ship. Buria did not know its name or its precise provenance. It was a Navigator’s vessel, though. That, she knew beyond any doubt. It called to her. It shone, it pulsed, it sang with the power of the artefacts within. Something of enormous value to the Navis Nobilite had been lost an age ago.

Finding the ship and salvaging what lay within would be a colossal victory. It would be a triumph for the house. Dalkan didn’t think Viktur could see much further than that. But to seize something so powerful that it reached across the void to Buria, even from within so dark and malevolent a prison, would mean extraordinary things could be done for the Imperium.

Buria understood that. If Dalkan could help in any way in the recovery, it was his duty to do so. Buria had made it very clear she did not expect him to come on this mission.

But I must, he had told her. If you go and do not return, I will have to live wondering if there was anything I could have done to help.

‘So we are committed, then,’ said Lorn.

‘I am.’

‘Then so am I.’

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A Black Library Publication

First published in the Warhammer 40,000 anthology Vaults of Obsidian in Great Britain in 2019.
This eBook edition published in 2020 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd, Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

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Cover illustration by Paul Dainton.

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