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Taller than Canis Vertex, the identical colossi that stood at the end of the valley were, like the mountain they inhabited, enormous beyond imagining. Soaring, graceful and threatening, they were mighty bipedal constructions that resembled an impossibly slender humanoid form. Crafted from something that resembled porcelain or ceramic the colour of bone, they were manufactured as though moulded from one enormous block.

Their heads were like sinuous helmets studded with glittering gems, and graceful spines flared from their shoulders like angelic wings. These guardians were prepared for war. One arm ended in a mighty fist, the other in an elongated, lance-like weapon, its slim barrel gracefully fluted and hung with faded banners.

‘Sweet Mother of the Abyss,’ said Phosis T’kar at the sight of them.

Ahriman felt the calm he had established within him crumble when confronted by such powerful icons of war. Like gods of battle, the towering creations rendered everything in the valley inconsequential. He saw the same grace and aesthetic in these guardians as he had seen in the valley’s formation. Whoever had willed this mountain into existence had also crafted these guardians to watch over it.

‘What are they?’ asked Hathor Maat.

‘I don’t know,’ said Ahriman. ‘Xenos Titans?’

‘They have the look of eldar about them,’ said Phosis T’kar.

Ahriman agreed. Two decades ago, the Thousand Sons had detected a fleet of eldar vessels on the edge of the Perdus Anomaly. The encounter had been cordial, both forces passing on their way without violence, but Ahriman had never forgotten the elegance of the eldar ships and the ease with which they navigated the stars.

‘They must be war engines,’ said Hathor Maat. ‘Khalophis would kill to see this.’

That was certainly true. Khalophis was Pyrae, and a warmongering student of conflict in all its most brutal forms. If an enemy was to be wiped from the battlefield with overwhelming firepower, it was to Khalophis the Thousand Sons turned.

‘I’m sure he would,’ said Ahriman, dragging his eyes from the titanic war machines. The valley was filled with Aghoru tribesmen, all bearing burning brands or battering their palms bloody on tribal drums.

Phosis T’kar held his bolt pistol at his side, but Ahriman could see his urge to use it was strong. Hathor Maat held his heqa staff at the ready. Warriors who had faced the Dominus Liminus and achieved the rank of adept could release devastating bursts of aetheric energy through their staffs, but here it was no more than a symbol of rank.

‘Hold to the Enumerations,’ he whispered. ‘There is to be no killing unless I give the word.’

Perhaps a thousand men and women in hooded robes and reflective masks filled the valley, surrounding a great altar of basalt that stood before a yawning cave mouth set in the cliff between the towering guardians.

Ahriman immediately saw that this cave was no deliberately crafted entrance to the mountain. An earthquake had ripped it open and the blackness of it seemed darker than the depths of space.

‘What’s going on here?’ demanded Phosis T’kar.

‘I do not know,’ said Ahriman, advancing cautiously through the Aghoru, seeing the crimson plates of the Sekhmet’s armour reflected in their masks. The chanting ceased and the drumming diminished until the valley was utterly silent.

‘Why are they watching?’ hissed Hathor Maat. ‘Why don’t they move?’

‘They’re waiting to see what we do,’ replied Ahriman.

It was impossible to read the Aghoru behind their masks, but he didn’t think there was any hostile intent. The mirror-masked tribesmen simply watched as Ahriman led the Sekhmet through the crowds towards the basalt altar. Its smooth black surface gleamed in the last of the day’s light, like the still waters of a motionless black pool.

Tokens lay strewn across the altar’s surface, bracelets, earrings, dolls of woven reeds and bead necklaces; the personal effects of scores of people. Ahriman saw footprints in the dust leading from the altar to the black tear in the mountainside. Whoever had made them had gone back and forth many times.

He knelt beside the tracks as Phosis T’kar and Hathor Maat approached the altar.

‘What are these?’ wondered Phosis T’kar.

‘Offerings?’ ventured Hathor Maat, lifting a neck torque of copper and onyx, and examining the workmanship with disdain.

‘To what?’ asked Phosis T’kar ‘I didn’t read of any practices of the Aghoru like this.’

‘Nor I, but how else do you explain it?’

‘Yatiri told us the Mountain is a place of the dead,’ said Ahriman, tracing the outline of a print clearly made by someone of far greater stature than any mortal or Astartes.

‘Perhaps this is a rite of memorial,’ said Phosis T’kar.

‘You could be right,’ conceded Hathor Maat, ‘but then where are the dead?’

‘They’re in the Mountain,’ said Ahriman, backing away from the cave as the drums began once again. He rejoined his warriors, planting his staff in the dusty ground.

As one, the Aghoru turned their mirrored masks towards the end of the valley, chanting in unison and moving forwards with short, shuffling steps, the butts of their falarica thumping on the ground in time with every beat of the drums.

‘Mandala,’ ordered Ahriman, and the Sekhmet formed a circle around the altar. Auto-loaders clattered and power fists crackled as energy fields engaged.

‘Permission to open fire?’ requested Hathor Maat, aiming his bolt pistol at the mask of the nearest Aghoru tribesman.

‘No,’ said Ahriman, turning to face the darkness of the cave mouth as wind-blown ash gusted from the depths of the Mountain. ‘This isn’t for us.’

Bleak despair tainted the wind, the dust and memory of a billion corpses decayed to powder and forgotten in the lightless depths of the world.

A shape emerged from the cave, wreathed in swirling ash: hulking, crimson and gold and monstrous.

Three

Magnus
The Sanctum
You must teach him

He couldn’t focus on it. Impressions were all Lemuel could make out: skin that shone as though fire flowed in its veins, mighty wings of feathers and golden plates. A mane of copper hair, ash-stained and wild, billowed around the being’s head, its face appearing as an inconstant swirl of liquid light and flesh, as though no bone formed the basis for its foundations, but something altogether more dynamic and vital.

Lemuel felt sick to his stomach at the sight, yet was unable to tear his gaze from this towering being.

Wait… Was it towering?

With each second, it seemed as though the apparition’s shape changed without him even being aware of it. Without seeming to vary from one second to the next, the being was alternately a giant, a man, a god, or a being of radiant light and a million eyes.

‘What is it?’ asked Lemuel, the words little more than a whisper. ‘What have they done?’

He couldn’t look away, knowing on some primal level that the fire that burned in this being’s heart was dangerous, perhaps the most dangerous thing in the world. Lemuel wanted to touch it, though he knew he would be burned to ashes were he to get too close.

Kallista screamed, and the spell was broken.

Lemuel dropped to his knees and vomited, the contents of his stomach spilling down the rock face. His heaving breath flowed like milky smoke from his mouth, and he stared in amazement at his stomach’s contents, the spattered mass glittering as though the potential of what it had once been longed to reconstitute itself. The air seethed with ambition, as though a power that not even the deadstones could contain flexed its muscles.

The moment passed and Lemuel’s vomit was just vomit, his breath invisible and without form. He could not take his eyes from the inchoate being below, his previously overwhelmed senses now firmly rooted in the mundane reality of the world. Tears spilled down his cheeks, and he wiped his face with his sleeve.

Kallista sobbed uncontrollably, shaking as though in the midst of a seizure. Her hands clawed the ground, scratching her nails bloody as though she were desperately writing something in the dust.

‘Must come out,’ she wept. ‘Can’t stay inside. Fire must come out or it’ll burn me up.’

She looked up at Lemuel, silently imploring him to help. Before he could move, her eyes rolled back in their sockets and she slumped forward. Lemuel wanted to go to her aid, but his limbs were useless. Beside Kallista, Camille remained upright, her face blanched beneath her tan. Her entire body shook, and her jaw hung open in awed wonder.

‘He’s beautiful… So very beautiful,’ she said, hesitantly lifting her picter and clicking off shots of the monstrous being.

Lemuel spat a mouthful of acrid bile and shook his head.

‘No,’ he said. ‘He’s a monster.’

She turned, and Lemuel was shocked at her anger. ‘How can you say that? Look at him.’

Lemuel screwed his eyes shut, only gradually opening them once again to look upon this incredible figure. He still saw the light shining in its heart, but where before it had been beguilingly dangerous, it was now soothing and hypnotic.

Like a badly tuned picter suddenly brought into focus, the being’s true form was revealed: a broad-shouldered giant in exquisite battle-plate of gold, bronze and leather. Sheathed at his side were his weapons, a curved sword with an obsidian haft and golden blade, and a heavy pistol of terrifying proportions.

Though the warrior was hundreds of metres below him, Lemuel saw him as clearly as a vivid memory or the brightest image conjured by his imagination.

He smiled, now seeing the beauty Camille saw.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how I didn’t see it before.’

A billowing mantle of golden feathers floated at the being’s shoulders, hung with thuribles and trailing parchments fixed with wax seals. Great ebony horns curled up from his breastplate, matching the two that sprang from his shoulders. A pale tabard decorated with a blazing sun motif hung at his belt, and a heavy book, bound in thick red hide, was strung about his armour on golden chains.

Lemuel’s eyes were drawn to the book, its unknown contents rich with the promise of knowledge and the secret workings of the universe. A golden hasp was secured with a lock fashioned from lead. Lemuel would have traded his entire wealth and even his very soul to open that book and peer into its depths.

He felt a hand on his arm and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. Camille hugged him, overcome with wonder and love, and Lemuel took pleasure in the embrace.

‘I never thought to see him this close,’ said Camille.

Lemuel didn’t answer, watching as two figures followed the being from the cave. One was an Aghoru tribesman in a glittering mask and orange robe, the other a thin man wearing an ash-stained robe of a remembrancer. They were irrelevant. The majestic being of light was all that mattered.

As though hearing his thoughts, the warrior looked up at him.

He wore a golden helmet, plumed with a mane of scarlet hair, his face wise beyond understanding, like a tribal elder or venerable sage.

Camille was right. He was beautiful, perfect and beautiful.

Still embracing, Lemuel and Camille sank to their knees.

Lemuel stared back at the magnificent being, only now seeing that a single flaw marred his perfection. A golden eye, flecked with iridescent colours without name, blinked and Lemuel saw that the warrior looked out at the world through this eye alone. Where his other eye should have been was smooth and unblemished, as if no eye had ever sat there.

‘Magnus the Red,’ said Lemuel. ‘The Crimson King.’

Aghoru’s sun had finally set, though the sky still glowed faintly with its light. Night did not last long here, but it provided a merciful respite from the intense heat of the day. Ahriman carried his golden deshret helmet in the crook of his arm as he made his way towards his primarch’s pavilion. His connection to the secret powers of the universe had established itself the moment he had led the Sekhmet past the deadstones. Aaetpio’s light had welcomed him, and the presence of the Tutelary was as refreshing as a cool glass of water in the desert.

Ahriman’s relief at the sight of Magnus emerging from the cave was matched only by the recognition of the disappointment in his eyes. The magnificent primarch glared down at the circle of warriors gathered around the altar, and then shook his head. Even denied the use of his enhanced acuity in the Mountain, Ahriman had felt his master’s enormous presence, a power that transcended whatever wards were woven into the stones of the Mountain.

Magnus marched past them, not even bothering to further acknowledge their presence. The masked tribesman, who Ahriman knew must be Yatiri, walked alongside the primarch, and Mahavastu Kallimakus, Magnus’s personal scribe, trotted after them, whispering words into a slender wand that were then transcribed by a clattering quill unit attached to his belt.

‘This was a mistake,’ said Hathor Maat. ‘We shouldn’t have come here.’

Ahriman rounded angrily on him, saying, ‘You were only too keen to march when I suggested it.’

‘It was better than sitting about doing nothing, but I did say that the primarch told us to wait,’ Maat said with a shrug.

Ahriman had wanted to lash out at Hathor Maat, feeling his self-control faltering in the face of the Pavoni’s smug arrogance. That he was right only made it worse.

He knew he should have trusted Magnus’s judgement, but he had doubted. At best it would probably mean a public apology to Yatiri, at worst potential exclusion from the Rehahti, the inner coven of the Thousand Sons chosen by Magnus to address whatever issues were currently concerning the Legion.

Its members were ever-changing, and inclusion within the Rehahti was dependent on many things, not least an Astartes’s standing within the Legion. The cults of the Thousand Sons vied for prominence and a place in the primarch’s inner circle, knowing that to bask in his radiance would only enhance their powers.

As the power of the aether waxed and waned, so too did the mystical abilities of the cults. Invisible currents inimical to one discipline would boost the powers of another, and portents of the Great Ocean’s ever-changing tides were read and interpreted by the Legion’s geomancers with obsessive detail. At present the Pyrae was in the ascendance, while Ahriman’s cult, the Corvidae, was at its lowest ebb for nearly fifty years. For centuries, the Corvidae had been pre-eminent within the ranks of the Thousand Sons, but over the last few decades, their power to read the twisting paths of the future had diminished until their seers could barely penetrate the shallows of things to come.

The currents of the Great Ocean were swelling and boisterous, the geomancers warning of a great storm building within its depths, though they could see nothing of its source. The subtle currents were obscured by the raging tides that empowered the more bellicose disciplines, ringing in the blood of those whose mastery only stretched to the lower echelons.

It was galling that reckless firebrands like Khalophis and Auramagma strutted like lords while the hidden seers and sorcerers who had guided the Thousand Sons since their inception were forced to the sidelines. Yet there was nothing Ahriman could do, save try every day to re-establish his connection to the distant shores of the future.

He put such thoughts aside, rising through the Enumerations to calm himself and enter a contemplative state. The pavilion of Magnus loomed ahead of him, a grand, three-cornered pyramid of polarised glass and gold that shimmered in the evening’s glow like a half-buried diamond. Opaque from the outside, transparent on the inside, it was the perfect embodiment of the leader of the Thousand Sons.

Three Terminators of the Scarab Occult stood at each corner. Each carried a bladed sekhem staff, and their storm bolters were held tightly across the jade and amber scarab design on their breastplates.

Brother Amsu stood at the entrance to the pavilion, holding a rippling banner of scarlet and ivory. Ahriman’s pride at the sight of the banner was tempered by the fact that he had incurred his primarch’s displeasure by taking the Sekhmet into the Mountain.

Ahriman stopped before Amsu and allowed him to read his aetheric aura, confirming his identity more completely than any gene-scanner or molecular-reader ever could.

‘Brother Ahriman,’ said Amsu, ‘welcome to the Rehahti. Lord Magnus is expecting you.’

The inside of the pavilion would have surprised most people with its austerity. Given the suspicions that had surrounded the Thousand Sons since their earliest days, those mortals lucky enough to be granted an audience with Magnus the Red always expected his chambers to be hung with esoteric symbols, arcane apparatus and paraphernalia of the occult.

Instead, the walls were rippling glass, the floor pale marble quarried from the ventral mountains of Prospero. Carefully positioned black tiles veined with gold formed a repeating geometric spiral that coiled out from the centre.

The Captains of Fellowship stood upon the spiral, their distance from the centre but one indication of their standing within the Rehahti. Ahriman walked calmly along the dark portions, past the assembled warriors, to his place upon it. Beneath the crystal apex of the pyramid a golden disc in the shape of a radiating sun met the terminations of both black and white tiles, the heart of the gathering.

Magnus the Red stood upon the golden sun.

The Primarch of the Thousand Sons was a magnificent warrior and scholar beyond compare, yet his outward mien was that of a man faintly embarrassed by his pre-eminence amongst equals. Ahriman knew it was a façade, albeit a necessary one, for who could stand face to face with a being whose intellect and treasury of knowledge rendered all other accomplishments meaningless?

His skin was the colour of molten copper, the plates of his armour beaten gold and hard-baked leather, his mail a fine mesh of blackened adamant. The magisterial scarlet plume of his helmet spilled around the curling horns of his armour, and his mighty cloak of feathers was like a waterfall of bright plumage belonging to some vainglorious bird of prey. Partially hidden within that cloak was a thick tome, bound in the same, stipple-textured hide as that on Ahriman’s pistol grip. It came from the body of a psychneuein, a vicious psychic predator of Prospero that had all but wiped out the planet’s previous civilisation in ages past.

The primarch’s expression was impossible to read, but Ahriman took solace in the fact that his position had not yet fallen to the outer reaches of the spiral. Magnus’s eye glittered with colour, its hue never fixed and always changing, though for this gathering it had assumed an emerald aspect with flecks of violet in its iris.

Phosis T’kar stood near Ahriman to his right, with Khalophis on the spiral across from him. Hathor Maat was behind him and to his left, while Uthizzar was to his right and at the furthest extent of the spiral. A warrior’s standing was not simply measured by his proximity to the centre of the spiral, but by myriad other indicators: the position of the warrior next to him, behind him and across from him. Who was obscured, who was visible, the arc of distance between his position and the sun disc, all played their part in the dance of supremacy. Each member’s position interacted subtly with the other, creating a web of hierarchy that only Magnus could fathom.

Ahriman could not read the aetheric auras of his fellow captains, and he felt Aaetpio’s absence keenly. He had not summoned Aaetpio to the meeting, for it would be overwhelmed in the face of the primarch’s power. Magnus himself had no Tutelary, for what could a fragment of the Primordial Creator teach one who had stared into its depths and mastered its every nuance?

Magnus nodded as Ahriman took his place on the spiral and Brother Amon stepped from the shadows of the pyramid to pull the golden doors shut. Ahriman had not seen or sensed Amon’s presence, but few ever did. Equerry to Magnus and Captain of the Ninth Fellowship, Amon trained the ‘Hidden Ones’, the Scout Auxilia of the Thousand Sons.

‘The Sanctum awaits the Symbol of Thothmes,’ announced Amon, the crimson of his armour seeming to blend with the shadows that gathered around the edges of the pyramid.

Magnus nodded and lifted his golden khopesh from his belt. A flick of his thumb, and the haft extended with a smooth hiss, transforming the sickle-sword into a long-bladed polearm. Magnus rapped the staff on the sun disc, tracing an intricate, twisting shape on the ground.

Ahriman pursed his lips together as the world went dim and the interior of the pyramid was shielded from outside eyes. To be cut off from the aether was unpleasant, but now no one could eavesdrop within the pyramid by any means, be they technological or psychic.

Magnus had once boasted that not even the Emperor himself could penetrate the invisible veil cast around the Rehahti by the Symbol of Thothmes.

‘Are we all assembled?’ demanded Ahriman, speaking as the Legion’s Chief Librarian. On Prospero, gatherings of the Rehahti would be conducted in aetheric speech, but here the Thousand Sons were forced to rely on the crudity of language.

‘I am Ahzek Ahriman of the Corvidae,’ he said. ‘If you would be heard, then speak your true name. Who comes to this Rehahti?’

‘I come, Phosis T’kar, Magister Templi of the Raptora.’

‘I come, Khalophis, Magister Templi of the Pyrae.’

‘I come, Hathor Maat, Magister Templi of the Pavoni.’

‘I come, Uthizzar, Magister Templi of the Athanaeans.’

Ahriman nodded as the Captains of the Thousand Sons recited their names. Only Uthizzar hesitated. The young Adept Minor had only recently ascended to the role of Magister Templi, and Ahriman could not look at him without feeling the sorrow of Apophis’s death.

‘We are all assembled,’ he said.

‘We are alone,’ confirmed Amon.

Magnus nodded and looked each of his captains in the eye before speaking.

‘I am disappointed in you, my sons,’ he said, his voice a rich baritone laden with subtle layers of meaning. These were the first words Ahriman had heard from his primarch since leaving the Mountain, and though they were of censure, they were still welcome.

‘This world has much to teach us, and you jeopardise that by venturing onto a holy site of the Aghoru. I told you to await my return. Why did you disobey me?’

Ahriman felt the eyes of the captains on him and held himself straighter.

‘I ordered it, my lord,’ he said. ‘The decision to march into the valley was mine.’

‘I know,’ said Magnus, with the barest hint of a smile. ‘If anyone was going to defy me, it would be you, eh, Ahzek?’

Ahriman nodded, unsure whether he was to be reprimanded or lauded.

‘Well, you set foot on the Mountain,’ said Magnus. ‘What did you make of it?’

‘My lord?’

‘What did you feel?’

‘Nothing, my lord,’ said Ahriman. ‘I felt nothing.’

‘Exactly,’ said Magnus, stepping from the sun disc and following the white spiral out from the centre of the pyramid. ‘You felt nothing. Now you know how mortals feel, trapped in their silent, dull world, disconnected from their birthright as an evolving race.’

‘Birthright?’ asked Hathor Maat. ‘What birthright?’

Magnus rounded on him, his eye transformed into a flickering blue orb, alive with motion.

‘The right to explore this brilliant, dazzling galaxy and all its wonders with their eyes open to its glory,’ said Magnus. ‘What is a life lived in the shadows, a life where all the shining wonders of the world are half-glimpsed phantasms?’

Magnus stopped next to Ahriman and placed a hand on his shoulder. The hand was that of a giant, yet he looked up at a face that was only slightly larger than his own, the features sculpted as if from molten metal, the single eye green once more. Ahriman felt the immense, unknowable power of his primarch, understanding that he stood before a living sun, the power of creation and destruction bound within its beauteous form.

Magnus’s body was not so much flesh and blood, but energy and will bound together by the ancient science of the Emperor. Ahriman had studied the substance of the Great Ocean with the aid of some of the Legion’s foremost seers, yet the power that filled his primarch was as alien to him as a starship was to a primitive savage.

‘The Aghoru live on a world swept by aetheric winds, yet they remain untouched by its presence,’ said Magnus, walking back towards the sun disc at the centre of the pyramid. His khopesh staff spun in his grip, tracing patterns Ahriman recognised as sigils of evocation that would summon a host of Tutelaries if made beyond the inert air of the Sanctum.

‘They come to this mountain every year, this place of pilgrimage, to bring the bodies of their dead to their final rest. They carry them into the holy valley and place them in the mouth of the Mountain, and each time they return, the bodies of the previous year are gone, “eaten” by the Mountain. We all feel that the walls that separate this world from the aether are thin here. The essence of the Great Ocean presses in, yet the Aghoru remain unaffected by its presence. Why should that be? I do not know, but when I solve that mystery we will be one step closer to helping our brothers draw closer to the light at the heart of the universe. There is power in that mountain, great power, yet it is somehow contained, and the Aghoru are oblivious to it except as energy that devours the dead. I only hope that Yatiri forgives your trespass into their holy place, for without his peoples’ help we may never unlock the secrets of this world.’

The primarch’s enthusiasm for the task was infectious, and the shame Ahriman felt at jeopardising Magnus’s great work was like a crushing weight upon his shoulders.

‘I will make whatever reparations need to be made, my lord,’ said Ahriman. ‘The Sekhmet marched at my order and I will explain that to Yatiri.’

‘That will not be necessary,’ said Magnus, once again taking his place at the centre of the pyramid. ‘I have another task for you all.’

‘Anything, my lord,’ said Phosis T’kar, and the rest joined his affirmation.

Magnus smiled and said, ‘As always, my sons, you are a delight to me. The Aghoru are not the only ones who can feel that this world is special. The remembrancers we selected to join our Expedition, they know it too, even if they do not consciously realise it. You are to make them welcome, befriend them and study them. We have kept them at a distance long enough; it is time for them to see that we have mellowed to their presence. In any case, I believe the Emperor will soon make their presence mandatory and send thousands more out to join the fleets. Before such an edict becomes law, don the mask of friend, of grudging admirer, whatever it takes to gain their confidence. Study the effects of this world on them and record your findings in your grimoires. As we study this world, we must also study its effect on mortals and ourselves. Do you understand this task?’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said Hathor Maat, the words echoed by the rest of the captains until only Ahriman was left to speak.

He felt the primarch’s eyes upon him, and offered a curt bow, saying, ‘I understand, my lord.’

‘Then this Rehahti is over,’ said Magnus, rapping his staff on the sun disc. Light streamed out from the centre, bathing the assembled captains in radiance. The Symbol of Thothmes was undone, and Ahriman felt the wellspring of the aether wash through his flesh.

Amon opened the pyramid’s doors, and Ahriman bowed to the primarch. As the captains made their way outside, Magnus said, ‘Ahzek, a moment if you please.’

Ahriman paused, and then walked to the centre of the pyramid, ready to face his punishment. The primarch sheathed his khopesh, the haft now returned to its original proportions. Magnus looked down at him, and his glittering green eye narrowed as he appraised his Chief Librarian.

‘Something troubles you, my friend. What is it?’

‘The story of the men in the cave,’ said Ahriman. ‘The one you told me when I was your Neophyte.’

‘I know the one,’ said Magnus. ‘What of it?’

‘If I remember correctly, that story shows that it is futile to share the truth of what we know with those who have too narrow a view of the horizon. How are we to illuminate our fellows when their vision is so limited?’

‘We do not,’ said Magnus, turning Ahriman and walking him across the spiral towards the pyramid’s open doors. ‘At least not at first.’

‘I do not understand.’

‘We do not bring the light to humanity; we bring them to the light,’ said Magnus. ‘We learn how to lift mankind’s consciousness to a higher state of being so that he can recognise the light for himself.’

Ahriman felt the force of the primarch’s passion, and wished he felt it too. ‘Trying to explain the truth of the aether to mortals is like trying to describe the meaning of the colour yellow to a blind man. They do not want to see it. They fear it.’

‘Small steps, Ahzek, small steps,’ said Magnus patiently. ‘Mankind is already crawling towards psychic awareness, but he must walk before he can run. We will help him.’

‘You have great faith in humanity,’ said Ahriman as they reached the doors. ‘They wanted to destroy us once. They may again.’

Magnus shook his head. ‘Trust them a little more, my son. Trust me.’

‘I trust you, my lord,’ promised Ahriman. ‘My life is yours.’

‘And I value that, my son, believe me,’ said Magnus, ‘but I am set on this course, and I need you with me, Ahzek. The others look up to you, and where you lead, others will follow.’

‘As you wish, my lord,’ said Ahriman with a respectful bow.

‘Now, as far as studying the remembrancers goes, I want you to pay close attention to Lemuel Gaumon, he interests me.’

‘Gaumon? The aetheric reader?’

‘Yes, that’s the one. He has some power, learned from the writings of the Nordafrik Sangoma by the feel of it,’ said Magnus. ‘He believes he hides this power from us, and has taken his first, faltering steps towards its proper use. I wish you to mentor him. Draw out his abilities and determine how best he may use them without danger to himself or others. If we can do it for him, we can do it for others.’

‘That will not be easy; he does not have the mastery of the Enumerations.’

‘That is why you must teach him,’ said Magnus.

Four

The sound of judgement
Shadow dancers
Summoned

Fires seared the horizon as the planet burned. The skies bucked and heaved with pressure, kaleidoscopic lighting blazing across the heavens with unnatural fire. Screaming shards of glass fell in glittering torrents, the streets ran with molten gold, and once proud avenues of glorious statuary were brought to ruin by the thunder of explosions and the howls of killers.

Predators stalked the ruins of the beautiful city, a glorious representation of paradise rendered on earthly soil. Towering wonders of glass and silver and gold burned around her, the air filled with a billion fluttering scraps of scorched papers like grotesque confetti. The taste of blood filled her senses, and though she had never seen this place before she mourned its destruction.

Such perfect geometry, such pleasing aesthetics… who could ever wish harm to so perfect a refuge? Soaring silver towers sagged in the heat of the fires, broken glass falling from their high windows and pyramidion-capped summits like shimmering tears. Firelight danced in the glass, each reflecting a great, golden eye that wept tears of red.

She wanted to stop the madness, to halt the bloodletting before it was too late to save the city from complete destruction. It was already too late. Its fate had been sealed long before the first bomb had landed or the first invader set foot within its gilded palaces, marble-flagged processionals or glorious parks.

The city was doomed, and nothing could change its fate.

Yet even as the thought formed, she knew that wasn’t true.

The city could be saved.

With that thought, the clouds dispersed and the wondrous blue of the sky was revealed. Glorious sunbeams painted the mountains in gold, and the scent of wildflowers replaced the stink of ash and scorched meat and metal. Once again, the silver towers reached up to the heavens, and shimmering, monumental pyramids of glass loomed over her, glittering with the promise of a bright and incredible future.

She walked the streets of the city, alone and without form, relishing the chance to savour its beauty without interruption. Hot spices, rich fragrances and exotic scents were carried on a soft breeze, suggestive of human life, but no matter how hard she looked, there was no sign of the city’s inhabitants.

Undaunted, she continued her exploration, finding new wonders and raptures at every turn. Golden statues of hawk-headed figures lined one boulevard of marble libraries and museums, a thousand scented date palms another. Silver lions, hundreds of metres tall, reared at the entrance to a pyramid so huge it was more mountain than architecture.

Mighty carved columns topped with capitals shaped like curling scrolls formed enormous processional avenues down which entire armies could walk abreast. She wandered parks of incredible beauty nestled alongside the artifice of human hands, the two blending so seamlessly that it was impossible to discern where one began and the other ended.

Everywhere she looked, she saw perfection of line and shape, a harmony that could only have come about by the seamless fusion of knowledge and talent. This was perfection; this was everything humanity aspired to achieve.

This was bliss, though she knew it was not real, for nothing created by Man was perfect.

Everything had a flaw, no matter how small.

As with any paradise, this could not last.

She heard a mournful cry in the far distance, a sound so faint as to be almost inaudible.

Carried from the frozen bleakness of an ice-locked future, the cry was joined by another, the sounds echoing from the sides of the pyramids and lingering like a curse in the deserted streets. It resonated within a withered, atrophied part of her mind – a forgotten, primal remnant from a time when man was prey, simply an upstart hominid with ambitions beyond those of other mammals.

It was the sound of fangs like swords, claws and hunters older than Man.

It was the sound of judgement.

Her heart thudding in her chest, Kallista Eris jackknifed upright in her cot bed, drenched in sweat, the haunting cries fading from her mind. The dream of the unknown city faded like mist from her thoughts, fleeting glimpses of shimmering towers, silver-skinned pyramids and majestic parklands all that remained of her magnificent vision.

She groaned and lifted a hand to her head, a pounding headache pressing against the inner surfaces of her skull. She swung her legs from the bed, pressing a palm to her temple as she felt its intensity grow.

‘No,’ she moaned. ‘Not again. Not now.’

She rose from the bed, moving to the footlocker at its base on unsteady legs. If she could reach the bottle of sakau before the fire in her brain erupted, she could spare herself a night of pain and horror.

A sharp spike of agony lanced into her brain, and she dropped to her knees, falling against the bed with a muted cry. Kallista screwed her eyes shut against the pain, white lights bursting like explosions behind her lids. Her stomach lurched and she fought to hold onto its contents as the interior of her tent spun around her. She felt the fire pouring into her, a tide of burning nightmares and blood.

The breath heaved in her lungs as she fought against this latest attack, and her hands clawed knots in her thin sheet. She clenched her teeth, hauling herself along the bed towards the footlocker. The pain felt like a bomb had detonated within her brain, a blooming fire that raced out along her dendrites and synapses to sear through the bone of her skull.

Kallista hauled open the lid of her footlocker, throwing aside items of clothing and personal effects in her desperation. Her bottle of sakau was hidden in a hollowed out copy of Fanfare to Unity, a dreadful piece of fawning sycophancy that no one would ask to borrow.

‘Please,’ she moaned, lifting the dog-eared copy of the book. She opened it and lifted out a green glass bottle, mostly full of a cloudy emulsion.

She pulled herself upright, her vision blurring at the edges with flickering lights, the telltale signs of the fire. Every muscle was trembling as she lurched across the tent to her writing table where the hes vase sat alongside her papers and writing implements.

Her hands spasmed with a spastic jerk, and the bottle fell from her hands.

‘Throne, no!’ cried Kallista as it bounced on the dirt floor, but, mercifully, didn’t break.

She bent down, but a wave of nausea and pain washed over her, and she knew it was too late for the sakau. There was only one way to let the fire out.

Kallista collapsed to the folding chair at the table, and her trembling hand snatched up a knife-sharpened pencil before dragging a sheet of scrap paper towards her. Scrawled notes regarding yesterday’s incredible expedition into the Mountain filled the top of the page.

She turned it over angrily as the fire in her brain blinded her, her eyes rolling back as its white heat seared through her body, its luminous light filling her every molecule with its power. Her mouth opened in a silent scream, jaw locked as her hand scratched across the page in manic, desperate sweeps.

The words poured out of Kallista Eris, but she neither saw nor knew them.

It was the heat that woke her.

Kallista opened her eyes slowly, the searing brightness of Aghoru’s sun filling her tent with yellow light and oppressive heat. She licked her dry lips, her mouth parched as though she hadn’t drunk in days.

She was asleep at her desk, a broken pencil still clutched in her hand, a sheaf of papers fanned around her head. Kallista groaned as she lifted her head from the table, dizzy and disoriented by the brightness of the sun and the dislocation of waking.

Gradually, her memory reordered itself, and she dimly recalled the half-remembered city of her dreams and its dreadful ending. The pain in her head was a dull ache, a mental bruise that left her dull and numb.

Kallista reached out and poured some water from the hes vase. It was gritty with wind-blown salt, but served to dispel the gumminess that had collected around her mouth.

Spots of water landed on the pages strewn across the desk, and she saw that they were completely covered in frantic writing. She rose awkwardly to her feet, her limbs still unsteady after their abuse during the night, and backed away from the desk.

Kallista sat on her bed, staring at the desk as though the papers and pencils were dangerous animals instead of the tools of her trade. She rubbed her eyes and ran a hand through her hair, sweeping it over her ears as she pondered what to do next.

Scores of sheets were filled with writing, and she swallowed, unsure whether she even wanted to look and see what this latest fugue state had produced. Most of the time it was illegible nonsense, meaningless doggerel. Kallista never knew what any of them meant, and if she was too late to extinguish the fire before it began with a soporific infusion of sakau, she ripped the papers to pieces.

Not so this time.

Kallista looked at the angular writing that was not hers, and the morning’s heat was replaced with a sudden chill.

One phrase was written on the crumpled papers, over and over and over, repeated on every sheet a thousand times.

Camille cleared the dust of ages from the smooth object buried in the earth with delicate sweeps of a fine brush. It was curved and polished, and showed no sign it had been hidden for thousands of years. She slowly chipped around the object, marvelling at its condition as more of it was revealed. It was pale cream and had survived without any corrosion or so much as a blemish.

It could have been buried yesterday.

More careful brushes revealed a bulbous protrusion further along its length, something that looked like a vox-unit. She had never seen such a design, for it appeared it had been moulded as one piece. She chipped away more of the earth, pleased to have found an artefact that was clearly of non-human origin.

She paused, thinking back to the titanic statues, recognising a similarity between the material of this object and the giants. For all she knew, this could be part of something just as vast. A ghost of apprehension made her shiver, though she was still wearing her gloves, and had been careful not to touch the find with her bare hands.

Camille stretched the muscles in her back and wiped her arm across her forehead. Even shaded from the direct rays of the sun, the heat was oppressive.

With more of the object revealed, she lifted her picter unit, clicking off a number of shots from differing angles and ranges. The camera had been a gift from her grandfather, an old Model K Seraph 9 he’d sourced from an Optik in the Byzant markets, who’d looted it from a prospector he’d killed in the Taurus Mountains around the Anatolian plateau, who in turn had purchased it in pre-Unity days from a shift overseer in a manufactory of the Urals, where it had been built by an assembly servitor who had once been a man called Hekton Afaez.

Camille looked around, holding her breath as she listened for sounds of anyone nearby. She could hear the repetitive bite of picks and shovels from her digging team of servitors, the gentle murmur of daily life from the nearby Aghoru settlement, and the ever-present hiss of salt crystals blown by the wind.

Satisfied she was alone, she pulled off one of her gloves, her ivory white hand in stark contrast to the dark tan of her arm. The skin was delicate and smooth, not the hand one might expect to see on someone who spent time digging in the earth.

Camille slowly lowered her hand to the half-buried object, gently laying it on top with a soft sigh of pleasure. A comfortable numbness soon reached her shoulder and chest. The feeling was not unpleasant, and she closed her eyes, surrendering to the new emotions that came to her.

She felt the thread of history that connected all things and the residue left by those who had touched them. The world around her was dark, but the object before her was illuminated as though by some internal light source.

It was a battle helmet, an exquisite artefact of fluid, graceful design, and it was unmistakably alien in the subtle wrongness of its proportions. It was old, very old; so old, in fact, that she had difficulty in grasping so distant an age of time.

A shape resolved in the darkness, her touch breathing life into the memory of the helmet’s long dead owner. Behind her fluttering eyelids, Camille saw the shadow of a woman, a dancer by the fluidity of her movements. She spun through the void like liquid, her body in constant motion between graceful leaps, her arms and fists sweeping out in what Camille realised were killing blows. This woman was not just a dancer, she was a warrior.

A word came to her, a name perhaps: Elenaria.

Camille watched, entranced by the subtle weave of the dancer’s body as it twisted like smoke on a windy day. The shadow woman left blurred after-images in the darkness, as though a phantom sisterhood followed in her wake. The more Camille watched, the more it seemed as though she watched thousands of women, all moving in the same dance, yet separated by fleeting moments in time.

The dancers slid through the air, and Camille was filled with aching sadness. Their every pirouette and graceful somersault gave voice to the sorrow and regret carried in their hearts like poison. She gasped as a potent mix of heightened emotions surged into her from the buried object, supreme pinnacles of ecstasy that were matched only by depths of utter misery.

A pair of glittering swords appeared in the dancer’s hands, ghostly blades that Camille had no doubt were as deadly as they were beautiful. The shadow woman spun through the air with a shriek of unimaginable fury, her swords incandescent as she somersaulted towards Camille.

With a gasp of disconnection, Camille snatched her hand from the object, her flesh pale and cold, trembling with the after-effects of powerful emotions. Her breath came in short hikes, and she looked down at the buried object with a mixture of fear and amazement.

Her flesh crawled with chills, and a feathered breath turned to vapour before her. The incongruous sight of breath on such a hot day made her laugh, the sound nervous and unconvincing.

‘So what is it?’ asked a man’s voice, startling her. She jumped in surprise.

‘Throne, Lemuel! Don’t sneak up on people like that!’

‘Sneak up?’ he asked, looking down into the trench. ‘Trust me, my dear, a man my size doesn’t sneak.’

She forced her face to smile, though the memory of the dancer’s sadness and fury was still etched in her features.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘You startled me.’

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s okay,’ said Camille, feeling her heart rate returning to normal. ‘I could use a break anyway. Here, help me out.’

Lemuel reached down into the trench with his arm extended, and she took hold of his meaty forearm as he took hold of her slender one.

‘Ready?’

‘Ready,’ she said.

Lemuel hauled her upwards, and she scrambled up the sides of the trench, hooking her knee over the edge and hauling herself the rest of the way.

‘Dignified, huh?’ said Camille, scooting onto her belly before pushing herself to her feet.

‘Like a dancer,’ said Lemuel, and Camille flinched.

‘So, what is it?’ asked Lemuel again, pointing at the buried object.

Camille looked down at the battle helmet, the violence of the woman’s shriek still echoing within her skull.

She shook her head.

‘I have no idea,’ she said.

The pit her servitors had dug on the outskirts of the Aghoru settlement was a hundred metres by sixty-five. Initial excavations had revealed a promising number of artefacts that were not of Aghoru or Imperial origin. Half of those servitors now stood in immobile ranks beneath a wide awning set up at the edge of the pit.

The idea of servitors needing to take breaks had amused Camille no end until Adept Spuler of the Mechanicum told her that he had been forced to decommission six of them due to heat exhaustion. Servitors didn’t feel fatigue or hunger or thirst, and so continued to work beyond the limits of endurance.

Still, they had achieved more in one day than Camille could have hoped for.

Her dig site lay to the east of an Aghoru settlement named Acaltepec, three hundred kilometres north of the Mountain, and this landscape was as lush as the salt flats were barren. The settlement’s name meant ‘water house’ in the local tongue, and Camille had come to understand that the term referred to the oval-shaped canoes used to fish the lake alongside which the sunken village was built.

The dwellings of the Aghoru were dug down into the earth, and provided shade from the sun and a near-constant temperature, making them surprisingly comfortable places to live in. Camille had been welcomed into Acaltepec’s homes, finding its people quiet and polite, the barrier of language easily crossed by small gestures of kindness and courtesy.

Camille’s servitors had dug into a series of structures that had long been abandoned. The best the lexicographers could approximate for the Aghoru’s explanation of why they had been abandoned was ‘bad dreams’. Adept Spuler had dismissed such claims as primitive superstition or a meaning lost in translation, but having touched the alien battle helm, Camille wasn’t so sure.

She had enjoyed her time on this world, relishing the relaxed, unhurried pace of life and the lack of history pressing in from every individual. She had no doubt that life was hard for the people of Aghoru, but for her it was a welcome break from the hectic life of a remembrancer of the 28th Expedition.

Masked tribesmen swatted droning insects in the shade of tall trees hung with bright purple fruit, while the women worked on the shoreline, fashioning long fishing spears. Even the children were masked, a sight that had unsettled Camille at first, but like most things, it became part of the scenery after a while.

Wild plants and fields of sun-ripened crops waved in the breeze, and Camille felt a peace she hadn’t known in a long time. There was history to this world, but it was buried deep, far deeper than any world she had set foot on before. She relished the sensation of enjoying a world simply for what she could see of it instead of feeling its history intruding on her every waking moment.

Lemuel knelt beside a long tarpaulin where the day’s finds had been laid out, and lifted a broken piece of something that resembled a glazed ceramic disc.

‘A regular treasure trove,’ said Lemuel dryly. ‘I can see why I came now.’

Camille smiled. ‘It is a treasure trove actually. The artefacts here aren’t human, I’m sure of that.’

‘Not human?’ asked Lemuel, rapping his knuckles against the flat edge of the disc. ‘Well, well, how interesting. So what are they then?’

‘I don’t know, but whoever they were, they died out tens of thousands of years ago.’

‘Really? This looks like it was made yesterday.’

‘Yeah, whatever it’s made of, it doesn’t seem to age.’

‘Then how do you know how old it is?’ asked Lemuel, staring right at her.

Did he know? No, how could he?

Camille hesitated. ‘The depth of the find and earned instinct I guess. I’ve spent long enough digging around the ruins of Terra to get a good instinct for how old things are.’

‘I suppose,’ he said, turning the disc over in his hands and looking at the edge where it was broken. ‘So what do you think this is made of? It’s smooth like porcelain, but it looks like an organic internal structure, like crystal or something.’

‘Let me see,’ she said, and Lemuel handed her the disc. His fingers brushed the skin above her glove and she felt a flicker of something pass between them, seeing a white-walled villa surrounded by sprawling orchards at the foot of a mountain with a wide, flat summit. An ebony-skinned woman with a sorrowful expression waved from a roof veranda.

‘Are you all right?’ asked Lemuel, and the moment passed.

Camille shook off the sadness of her vision.

‘I’m fine; it’s just the heat,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t look manufactured, does it?’

‘No,’ agreed Lemuel, standing up straight and brushing dust from his banyan. ‘Look at the lines running through it. They’re lines of growth. This wasn’t pressed in a mould or stamped by a machine. This material, whatever it is, grew and was shaped into this form. It reminds me of the work of a man I knew in Sangha back on Terra, Babechi his name was. He was a quiet man, but he could work wonders with things that grew, and where I came from, that was a rare gift. He called himself an arbosculptor, and he could grow trees and plants into shapes that were simply beautiful.’

Lemuel smiled, lost in reminiscence. ‘With just some pruning shears, timber boards, wire and tape, Babechi could take a sapling and turn it into a chair, a sculpture or an archway. Anything you wanted really. I had an entire orchard of cherry plum, crepe myrtle and poplar grown and shaped to resemble the grand dining chamber of Narthan Dume’s Palace of Phan Kaos for a charity dinner.’

Camille eyed Lemuel to see if he was joking, but he seemed completely serious.

‘Sounds extravagant,’ she said.

‘Oh, it was, ridiculously so,’ laughed Lemuel. ‘My wife pitched a fit when she found out how much it cost. She called me a hypocrite, but it was so very beautiful while it lasted.’

Camille saw a shadow flicker on Lemuel’s face at the mention of his wife, and wondered if she had been the woman in her vision. Intuition that had nothing to do with her gift kept her from asking.

‘I think it might be made of the same substance those giants are made of,’ she said. ‘What was it you called them, Syrbotae?’

‘Yes, Syrbotae,’ he said, ‘giants amongst men, like our grand host.’

Camille smiled, remembering that first sight of Magnus the Red as he emerged from the cave on the Mountain. What magnificent visions would fill her head were she to touch the Crimson King? The thought terrified and exhilarated her.

‘He was magnificent, wasn’t he?’

‘Impressive, yes,’ agreed Lemuel. ‘I think you might be right about that disc. It certainly looks like the same material, but I’d have a hard time believing anything that big could be grown.’

‘I suppose,’ she said. ‘Do you think the Aghoru would allow us to study the giants?’

‘I don’t know, maybe. You can ask.’

‘I think I will,’ said Camille. ‘I have a feeling there’s more to them than meets the eye.’

Camille looked back towards the Aghoru village as a personal speeder in the red and ivory of the Thousand Sons skimmed towards the dig site from the village. Wide and disc-shaped, the speeder floated low to the ground, leaving a puffed trail of ionised dust in its wake. Riding the speeder like a floating chariot of antiquity was a single Astartes warrior.

‘A friend of yours?’ asked Lemuel.

‘Yes, actually,’ replied Camille, as the skimmer drifted to a halt beside her and Lemuel.

The warrior removed his golden helmet, a gesture few others of the Legion bothered with, forgetting that mortals could not so easily tell them apart while they were clad in battle-plate.

His hair was a salt and pepper mix of grey and auburn, worn in long braids, and his face was deeply lined, as if his scholarly mien had somehow aged his ageless physiology. His skin had been pale when Camille had first met him, but like the rest of his battle-brothers, he was now the colour of burnt umber.

His armour was dusty from travel in the open, the small raven symbol faded and almost unnoticed in the centre of the serpentine star symbol of the Thousand Sons.

‘Good day, Mistress Shivani,’ said the Astartes, his voice hoary and brusque. ‘How go your excavations?’

‘Very well indeed, my Lord Anen,’ said Camille. ‘There are lots of new artefacts and almost as many wild theories to explain them. I’ve also found some more writings that might help us with the inscriptions on the deadstones.’

‘I look forward to studying them,’ said the warrior, and his sincerity was genuine.

The limited number of remembrancers attached to the 28th Expedition had met with resistance amongst the Legion of Magnus, but Ankhu Anen had been a rare exception. He had willingly travelled with Camille to various sites around the Mountain, both near and far, sharing her passion for the past and what could be learned from it.

His eyes moved to Lemuel, and Camille said, ‘This is my friend, Lemuel Gaumon, he’s helping me out with my wild theorising. Lemuel, this is Ankhu Anen.’

‘The Guardian of the Great Library,’ said Lemuel, extending his hand. ‘It is an honour to meet you at last. I’ve heard a lot about you.’

The Astartes slowly extended his hand and took Lemuel’s. Ankhu Anen’s gauntlet easily swallowed Lemuel’s hand, and Camille felt a flush of unease prickle her skin. A crackling tension fizzled between Lemuel and Ankhu Anen, as though the air between them had suddenly become charged with electricity.

‘Have you indeed?’ said Ankhu Anen. ‘I have, likewise, heard a great deal of you.’

‘You have?’ asked Lemuel, and Camille could tell he was surprised. ‘I didn’t think the Thousand Sons paid us poor remembrancers much mind.’

‘Just the ones that interest us,’ replied Anen.

‘I’m flattered,’ replied Lemuel, ‘Then might I ask if you have read any of my papers?’

‘No,’ said Ankhu Anen, as though to have done so would be a waste of time. ‘I have not.’

‘Oh,’ said Lemuel, crestfallen, ‘well, perhaps I might offer you a selection of my works to read sometime. Though I claim no great insight, you might find some sections of interest, particularly the passages detailing the growth of society after the compliance of Twenty-Eight Fifteen.’

‘Perhaps,’ said the Astartes, ‘but I am not here to gather reading material, I am here to bring you a summons.’

‘A summons? From whom?’ asked Lemuel.

Ankhu Anen smiled.

‘From Lord Ahriman,’ he said.

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To Evan. One down, nine hundred and ninety-nine to go.

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

First published in 2010
This edition published in 2014 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Cover and page 1 illustration by Neil Roberts.
Internal art by Tiernen Trevallion.

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