Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Warhammer 40,000

Prologue

Part One

I

II

III

IV

Part Two

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XI

XII

Part Three

XIII

XIV

XV

XVI

XVII

XVIII

XIX

XX

XXI

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Legal

warhammer 40,000

It is the 41st millennium. For more than a hundred centuries the Emperor has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Earth. He is the master of mankind by the will of the gods, and master of a million worlds by the might of his inexhaustible armies. He is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with power from the Dark Age of Technology. He is the Carrion Lord of the Imperium for whom a thousand souls are sacrificed every day, so that he may never truly die.

Yet even in his deathless state, the Emperor continues his eternal vigilance. Mighty battlefleets cross the daemon-infested miasma of the warp, the only route between distant stars, their way lit by the Astronomican, the psychic manifestation of the Emperor’s will. Vast armies give battle in his name on uncounted worlds. Greatest amongst His soldiers are the Adeptus Astartes, the Space Marines, bio-engineered super-warriors. Their comrades in arms are legion: the Imperial Guard and countless planetary defence forces, the ever-vigilant Inquisition and the tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from aliens, heretics, mutants - and worse.

To be a man in such times is to be one amongst untold billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars, only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the laughter of thirsting gods.

‘To talk of destiny and fate is foolish. Time, causality, the observer and the observed; we must treat our assumptions on all these matters with suspicion. We think of the past causing the future, but must that be so? Is fate created by trying to see it? What if we had not looked? Would matters have unfolded otherwise?’

– Ahzek Ahriman, from the precepts of the Corvidae

Prologue

Haakon Grey Storm moved up the frozen slope of the ridge. His armour had once been the blue-grey of glacial ice, but that had been long ago. Now it was the dull grey of battered metal. Dents and gouges wound across its plates like ropes of scar tissue, and flecks of paint clung to pits and grooves, hinting in bright fragments at the past of the warrior within. Haakon felt the armour creak as he crouched behind the lip of the ridge. Every small movement felt stiff against his skin, as if the battle plate were protesting at the cold. He paused and drew a deep breath of cold air. He wore no helm and the icy wind lifted the black hair from his face as he tilted his head back. The light of stars burning sun-bright in a clear blue sky met his yellow eyes. He let the breath out of his lungs.

He could smell the witch.

Slowly he unclamped the axe from his back. Its head spread in twin curves of polished metal, the golden bodies of dragons tangling across its faces. The leather-bound haft settled into his hand. He held the axe close to the throat, his thumb resting on the power field generator. Its edges glittered sharp against the crystal powder of the chemical snow.

Beyond the ridge the ground dropped away to a road of cold-cracked stone. The witch was approaching along that road. Haakon sniffed again. Her stink was strong even over the fumes that hung above the ice. Sweat, dried blood, and a scent like crushed roses and fresh faeces: the scent of the corruption, the scent of the warp. The warp changed everything it touched and once touched nothing was pure again. Not this world, not the stars shining in a sunlit sky, not Haakon himself. He had once asked a rune priest if he was changing, if the hunt through the worlds on the edge of the Eye had tainted him. The rune priest had not been able to answer, but Haakon knew the truth. He had changed. His sense of smell, always keen, now seemed to reach through matter to detect the flavours of the soul. It was as if his purpose had found an echo in the warp, the hunter’s desire answered with the means to find the prey. The warp had touched him. He was tainted and he always would be, but his purpose was pure, and that was enough.

The witch was close now, her scent growing stronger with each slow pulse of his hearts. She had guards with her, followers of her vile cult. He had their scents too. There were ten of them. He could smell the grease on their guns, and the edges on their knives. He began to move. Snow powder fell away from him as he padded forwards. He took a last breath and let its calm soak into his muscles. His mind and body became one, became a single blade-tip of focused intent. He was close now. Kill the witch, and the witch’s knowledge would lead him to the exile. He could smell the knowledge in her. She might have only glimpsed his ultimate prey once, but it was enough. The exile’s scent was on her, and he would follow it to the end. And then Fenris would have vengeance.

Haakon came over the top of the ridge in a leaping bound. For a paused heartbeat the scene was still beneath him: ten figures in a loose circle, silver masks in the shapes of reptile beasts glinting with polished light. At their centre a figure, hunched under a cloak of tanned skin. He could see the patterns of angular tattoos ripple across the cloak as a breeze caught its edge.

Then Haakon landed. Some of the guards turned and raised weapons. Some scattered. Two became crushed flesh beneath his boots. Haakon’s first axe-cut was lateral, from left to right, backhanded, his muscles uncoiling into the movement. Blood scattered through the air. Gunfire rang against his armour. He spun and cut down, opening a man from bronze collar to groin. Wet liquid sprayed Haakon’s face. He was not seeing what he was killing, not really. Each enemy was a brief blur of movement: an impression of dented armour, a face hidden by a beast mask, a lasweapon worked in bronze. The axe split a skull and pulped the meat inside. At his feet the blood was melting the chemical ice. Fumes rose around him. The stink of ruptured intestines coiled amidst the thickening fog. He cut again.

Something smacked into his right cheek. He felt his flesh burning, and then nothing, as his body numbed the injury. The witch stood, a bronze-cased laspistol in her hand, its barrel levelled at him. Her skin hung in grey sags from her gaunt skull, and the cloak of flayed faces did not hide the twisted body beneath. The arm holding the pistol shook. Haakon looked into her eyes; they were the yellow of fat. Haakon snarled, and the wound in his cheek opened like a second mouth. The witch’s finger tightened on the trigger.

Haakon’s foot slammed into the witch’s chest. The impact shattered her ribs and spun her through the air. The axe severed her neck as she fell back to the ground. Haakon paused, slow breaths sucking between his canines. Hacked meat and slick offal lay around him, heaped in piles, steaming into the cold air. His armour glistened, scarred grey hidden beneath crimson. For a moment his mind was free of the fatigue that had consumed him body and soul. For a moment he felt joy. Then the feeling drained from him, and the needs of the hunt returned like the ache of tired muscles. He must take what he came for now, before the dead flesh cooled.

He bent down and picked the witch’s head from the ground. Lank hair tangled in his fingers as he held it level with his own face. He closed his hand. The skull held its shape for a second, and then it cracked like an egg. Yellow sores and clotted black fluid riddled the flesh within. He brought the bloody mass to his teeth and bit down. The flesh was warm and tasted of memories. Impressions, ghost sensations and broken words filled his mind with every bite. He ate until the skull was an empty shell, and he had what he needed.

His skin prickled as he dropped the skull. There was someone behind him.

His axe was a razor blur as he turned.

‘It is I, brother,’ growled a voice.

Haakon held his blow, but did not lower the axe. A lone figure stood a blade-swing from his shoulder. It looked back at him with familiar blue eyes. Serpentine marks of aversion crawled across the figure’s grey armour, and thick rows of sharp teeth hung from the red pauldrons. In places the serpentine marks glowed with a pale light. Haakon knew the voice and the face that spoke. He knew that he should lower the axe, but part of him wanted to swing and watch the blood flow fresh into the snow.

‘Haakon,’ said the figure in grey. ‘Lower your weapon.’

Haakon did not lower the axe.

‘Oulf?’ said Haakon slowly. The name was thick on his tongue, as if the numbness of the hole in his cheek had spread to his jaw.

‘It is I,’ said the figure. Haakon shifted his grip on his axe.

‘You died on the world of sand and thirst,’ said Haakon.

‘No, brother,’ said the figure. ‘The kill has taken your mind. I did not die. Remember.’ Haakon’s gaze wavered, and he shook his head as if flies were buzzing over his skin. Oulf was dead; Haakon could remember the rune priest’s blood soaking into the white sand. But here he was standing alive before him…

‘No,’ said Haakon, swaying as he spoke. The witch’s blood memories still filled his head, clotting his thoughts with fading images. Perhaps Oulf was not dead? Perhaps that had been a dream. Perhaps the warp was taking his memory.

The figure that looked and spoke like Oulf moved past Haakon and picked up the witch’s empty skull.

‘What did she know?’ said the figure, looking into the witch’s lifeless eyes, and then to Haakon. ‘Did she know where to find the exile?’

Haakon closed his eyes. The wound on his cheek had begun to burn with pain. His head ached in dull throbs.

‘Haakon,’ said the figure carefully. ‘What did she know?’

‘She met him,’ said Haakon. His eyes were stinging and the words were heavy as they came from his mouth. ‘But she did not realise who he was. He was part of a warband…’ He breathed, trying to steady himself. The witch’s memory was fading in his mind: a glance across a battlefield, a chance glance back, a pair of sky-blue eyes.

‘What warband?’ said the figure, and stepped closer. Haakon shook his head again. ‘Brother, what warband? Where did she see him?’

Haakon’s eyes snapped open, and his hand gripped the haft of his axe.

‘You died,’ he said softly. ‘You died long ago, and I am alone.’ The axe came up fast, slicing at the figure that wore the face of Oulf. The figure stepped back faster than anything should move. Haakon cut again and the axe sliced into its chest. Smoke and black blood spilled from the cut. He could suddenly smell ash and burned flesh. The figure went down into a foetal crouch, and Haakon brought the axe around for a kill-stroke.

The figure’s face snapped upwards. A third eye burned red in the middle of its forehead. Haakon felt the air leave his lungs. He was burning from the inside. The ice, blood and sky were vanishing at the edge of his sight. He raised the axe but it was not there; there was just dust in his hand, and a sensation of falling. A wind was spiralling around him, and the world was dissolving into grains of dust.

Pain filled Haakon’s skull. The figure in front of him no longer looked like Oulf; it was an outline of black-edged fire. Two points of green light burned where its eyes had been. Haakon stepped forwards, a howl of rage and hate ripping from between his teeth. His hands dissolved into the cyclone wind as he reached for the figure’s eyes. Pain stabbed into his head again, and exploded in white brilliance inside his skull.

Haakon opened his eyes. He was still howling, the sound echoing around the chamber’s crystal-covered walls. He was lying on a stone table, angled so that his head was higher than his feet. Chains held him at the wrist, throat and ankle. His armour was gone, and spiralling marks in blue ink covered his skin. Gore and bile ran down his chin and chest in thick rivulets.

‘You will tell me what you learned from the witch.’ A figure walked into view. Its skin was golden, its eyes green without white or pupil. Silver scarabs, birds and jackal-headed half-men crawled across the red lacquer of its armour. Strips of closely written parchment fluttered from the pauldrons as it stepped forwards, a black glass knife in its hand. Behind it two suits of armour stood immobile, their eyes shining with ghost light from high-crested helms.

A sorcerer, thought Haakon. His muscles bunched against the restraints. The sorcerer looked down at Haakon and shook his head. ‘You will tell me,’ said the sorcerer, and Haakon felt the soft words shake his thoughts. He stared back and spat. The acid in the blood-laced phlegm sizzled on the sorcerer’s chestplate.

‘You cannot stop us,’ growled Haakon. ‘My brothers will find him and then we will come for the rest of you. We will hunt you until you tire, and when you are weak we will split you open and feed your hearts to the crows.’ Haakon was breathing heavily, his muscles straining against the chains. The sorcerer shook his head as if in sympathy.

‘You will not find him, wolf. Nor will any of your breed.’ The sorcerer paused, looking at the point of the black glass dagger in his hand. ‘You will not find him because we will find him first. We who were his brothers will find him.’ He looked up from the dagger, and Haakon saw something in those blank green eyes that made him bare his fangs. ‘His fate is ours, not yours.’

‘You lie.’

‘I do not lie. Your prey is our prey, and the greater cause is ours. You dogs hate us all, but we, we Brothers of Dust, we were his brothers, his followers, his friends. He deceived us, destroyed us and forced us into exile.’ The sorcerer put the point of the dagger to Haakon’s throat. ‘You will give me what I need to find Ahriman. I will not allow you to deny me.’

‘The dark tides will swallow you, and the ice will freeze over your corpse,’ snarled Haakon, his muscles bunching against the point of the dagger. Blood welled up and trickled down his neck.

‘You are resistant to our craft, your kind always were. But I do not need to break your mind.’ The sorcerer shook his head slowly. ‘I must thank you for reminding me that there are other, less refined paths to knowledge.’

Haakon’s pupils went wide and he roared as he realised what was going to happen. He was still roaring as the dagger punched into his neck. The sorcerer sawed the blade across Haakon’s throat just under the jaw. Blood ran in a red sheet over the stone table. Haakon kept roaring as the sorcerer reached into the grinning wound and pulled the soft white gland from his neck.

For a second, the sorcerer looked at the blood-covered meat in his hand. The gland was a progenoid, the root of the genetic miracle that had created the Space Marines. They held blood memory more surely than a human’s brain. Slowly the sorcerer tipped his head back, opened his mouth and ate the gland. As they had for Haakon, memories unfolded in the sorcerer’s mind like blood tipped into clear water. For a moment he swayed. Then his mind found what it sought: the memory of another blood feast, of the warm flesh from the witch’s skull between Haakon’s jaws. The sorcerer’s mind reached out and grasped the memory as it formed.

‘Har…’ The sorcerer’s mouth struggled to form the word as it solidified in his mind. ‘Harrowing,’ he said, and spat a thick splatter of blood onto the floor. It was what he needed. It was a name, and names held power. With this name he could track its bearers through the aether, and that would take him a step closer to finding his quarry, his prey, as Haakon would have said. He would send word to his master and the rest of the Brotherhood of Dust. The trail of the exile was clear, and they moved a step closer to their end.

On the stone table Haakon twitched, alive despite his slit throat. The sorcerer drew his sword, and looked into Haakon’s eyes.

‘Thank you, Haakon Grey Storm.’ He raised the sword above his head. ‘Our brotherhood thanks you,’ said the sorcerer, and brought the sword down on Haakon’s neck.

Part One

FATE’S EMISSARY

I

The Harrowing

Please don’t take her. I am weak, but please don’t take her from me.

The deck shook beneath Carmenta’s feet as she hurried through the silence of the Titan Child.

I am too weak, she thought. I deserve this, but please let me return to my child. The deck shook again. She stumbled, hit a bare metal wall and slid to the floor. Her polished brass hands shook as she tried to pull herself up. The deck bucked and sent her sprawling. She lay for a second, watching data scroll across her green-tinted vision: the Titan Child was taking damage. Half of the outer belly compartments were open to the void. Fires were burning along the spinal weapon decks. Had she been on the bridge, linked to the ship, she would have felt each injury as if it were to her own body. Instead she watched the Titan Child’s pain in a screed of impersonal data. Even then, she felt a ghost of pain in her torso as she assimilated the information.

She is bleeding, and alone. For a second she thought she felt tears run from her eyes, but her eyes had gone long ago. When separated from the ship she looked at the world through two lenses of luminous green crystal. More data scrolled across her vision. The enemy ship was close, bearing down on them like a jackal on a wounded animal.

I am going to lose you, the thought echoed through her mind. I should not have left you. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am weak. I deserve this.

Another part of her mind, a part that still ran with mechanical coolness, processed the data. The attacker was moving into boarding range. Their troops would be inside the hull within twenty-eight minutes.

I must get to the bridge. She extended the mechadendrites from her back and clawed her way up the passage wall until she was standing. The cybernetic tentacles whined as she steadied herself. Something warm and wet was running down the flesh of her neck. She brought her brass hand up and ran it across her skin. Sensors in her fingers tasted the liquid: blood and oil. She moved her hand up, and found the crack running down the red lacquered ceramic of her right cheek. She felt no pain, but then the nerves in what remained of her face were long dead. This is how a half-machine must weep, she thought.

She took a breath, the air sucking into her lungs with a clicking of clockwork. It was an old flesh-bound habit, a sign that she was tired. She was tired, tired of running, tired of the life of an outcast. It had not been a good life. Too many lies and betrayals had marked her path. Part of her wanted to shut down, to let the ship die, and herself with it. She shut the thought down instead, with a snarl of anger.

You will not kill us, she shouted to herself. You will not end this, not now. You will not take her from me.

She dropped her hands and took an unsteady step. Sharp pain ran up her spine. She felt so tired, and a dull grey cloud was choking her senses. She had to keep moving, she had to reach the bridge. For a second she wondered where Astraeos was. She had tried to raise him but the comms link had failed. It was irrelevant anyway; if the enemy got aboard, four Space Marines would not be enough.

Slowly Carmenta began to limp down the passage, her ragged black robe trailing in her wake.

Ahzek Ahriman watched from the Blood Crescent’s bridge as scabs of cooling armour peeled away from the silent ship’s hull. The image flickered on the cracked screen, before snapping back into focus. Dozens more screens hung beside it, each showing an equally imperfect picture of the ship they were closing on. The screens gave almost the only light on the bridge, making the vast vaulted space seem small, like a cave shrunk to the sphere of light cast by a single fire. A curtain of bruise-coloured gas clouds hung across darkness in the background of each screen, and a black rift ran through those clouds like a slit pupil in a snake’s eye. The stars around its edge shone with a dimmed, angry light. As he watched the ship he could not help but feel his eyes drawn to stare into that gulf that hung in the distance. Many had given it names, but only one persisted: the Eye of Terror.

They had found the ship by chance on the edge of an uncharted system, the energy of the warp still clinging to its hull. They had been cautious at first and fired a long-range salvo into the silent ship’s flank. No answering salvo had come, no shields had ignited, and the ship’s engines had remained cool. She was a warrior, a six-kilometre-long finger of granite and steel. Gun batteries nested along her flanks and jutted from her spine. But her guns had remained silent, as if she had lost the will to fight. The ship was alive, though; the Blood Crescent’s sensors could see the brightness of her reactors still beating within her hull. They had fired one more salvo before they approached. No reply had come, and the Harrowing’s hunger for the kill had begun to grow.

Machine-rigged beasts bellowed as they walked up and down the lines of slaves chained to the ship’s control systems. Here and there Space Marines of the Harrowing clustered in circles around spiked altars raised in crude iron from the bridge’s floor. They called themselves ‘initiates’, as if they had gained something by their allegiance to savagery. They were a mongrel force, the colours of a dozen forsaken identities lost under flaking layers of rust and dried blood. Strings of human teeth and finger bones rattled against their armour as they moved in time with their growled chants.

Blood pooled on the deck in places, and he heard the screams as the Harrowing impaled sacrifices on their iron altars. A few paces in front of him Ahriman noticed one of the initiates grinning in anticipation. The Space Marine had iron hooks for teeth. The other initiates started to howl. Once, Ahriman would have felt sickened by what these Space Marines had become. Now, watching them, he felt nothing. Was he so different after all? Was he any less of a slave and betrayer than they were?

‘Horkos.’ The word pulled Ahriman from his thoughts. The voice was deep, a gut-rumbling purr edged with contempt. It fitted the speaker perfectly. As Ahriman looked up he saw Gzrel stalking towards him. The lord of the Harrowing clicked and wheezed with every step, and his face was a dry mask of skin sunk into the collar of his rust-red armour. The noise on the bridge grew as the Harrowing shouted their lord’s name.

Behind Gzrel came his court. He liked to collect sorcerers, weighing and valuing them as others might jewels. There was Xiatsis in his mirror-fronted helm; Cottadaron, his body and armour so melded that he shambled; and, of course, Maroth. The Harrowing’s self-styled soothsayer gave a lipless smile as his hands stroked the flayed skin covering his chestplate. Maroth was Gzrel’s High Magister, a title that might once have made Ahriman laugh at the presumption. There was, however, nothing amusing about Maroth.

Ahriman knelt as Gzrel halted in front of him. His armour ground and hissed as he bent his knees. It, like everything else, fitted what he had become. Studded pauldrons covered his shoulders and a mottled grey tabard hung from his torso. He held a beak-snouted helm in the crook of his arm, its surface scorched black. He had taken it, still smoking, from a burned corpse, and never repainted it. In the Imperium that mark of helm had a designation: Corvus, the crow. A black crow helm for a carrion warrior, he had thought when he first held it in his hand. It was the only piece of symbolism he allowed himself, and only then to remind him of what he had been and what he had become.

‘I have an honour for you, Horkos.’ Red steam breathed from funnels on Gzrel’s back in time with his words.

‘My lord,’ said Ahriman, looking at the deck. Once armies had bowed to him, and primarchs had heeded his word. But that was a past he had broken with his own hand. Now he was nothing more than a shadow cast by the light of his memory. So Ahriman, once Chief Librarian of the Thousand Sons, answered to a false name and knelt to an unworthy lord.

‘See,’ said Gzrel, and Ahriman could tell that the lord was gesturing to his other sorcerers. ‘So submissive, so pliant to the hand.’ Ahriman could see the bladed tips of Gzrel’s fingers flexing on the edge of his sight. ‘I could not bend you to meekness so easily, could I, Maroth?’

‘Not so easily, my lord,’ purred Maroth. Gzrel chuckled.

Maroth means to kill him, thought Ahriman. Not now, but soon, he plans to take Gzrel’s life and then his throne. Ahriman could read the soothsayer’s intent as if he had shouted it to the chamber. None of the other sorcerers seemed to notice. Had Maroth already turned them, or could they simply not see what Ahriman could?

‘But not you, Horkos. You take what falls from my hand and lick my fingers.’ Gzrel paused, and raised Ahriman’s chin with a bladed digit. ‘Do you think your meekness pleases me? I thought you might rise to better, but no. You are a whipped dog among wolves, Horkos.’

‘Yes, my lord.’ Ahriman did not meet Gzrel’s eyes. He would have to flee soon. There would be no place for him under Maroth’s rule, except as a skull hanging from a champion’s armour. Once he could have stopped Maroth, could have taken the Harrowing from Gzrel and taught them the limits of their knowledge. It would be a simple matter for Ahriman. But he was not Ahriman. He was Horkos: the penitent, the exile. He would have to flee, and find another place to shelter. He was not even sure if he could wield the powers that had once been as much a part of him as his own flesh. It was as if a part of his soul had shrunk to a wasted shell.

Perhaps that is why they do not see me for what I am, thought Ahriman. He had not used his powers to their full extent for many years, lifetimes to some; at first it had been a denial, but now he wondered if they had died as the memory of Ahriman died. He could still feel and touch the warp, but it was an ember remaining as the sign of a smothered blaze. They do not see transcendent power because it is not there. The shell of my weakness hides my past; they see only a half-broken creature, and do not ask what it once was.

‘Yet, I keep you,’ said Gzrel. ‘Why do I keep you, Horkos?’

‘For my service, lord,’ replied Ahriman. Even through his helmet seals he could smell the offal and iron reek that gathered around his lord.

‘For your service,’ repeated Gzrel carefully. ‘And now I give you the honour of paying me with that coin. We have prey, and you are to help me take it.’ Gzrel paused. ‘You will be part of the opening assault. You will join Karoz’s pack in the first wave.’

Ahriman thought of Karoz, of the Harrowing champion chained in one of Maroth’s cells, mewling to himself, unable to remove his armour. Maroth had seeded something in Karoz’s soul, something that was eating him from within. Ahriman glanced at Maroth. The soothsayer smiled back.

My fate is to die in this battle, thought Ahriman.

‘A great honour,’ said Maroth. The soothsayer’s aura was red with malice in Ahriman’s eyes.

‘Thank you, my lord.’

Gzrel let go of Ahriman’s chin.

‘I give this honour to you, Horkos. Repay my kindness well.’ Gzrel turned and walked away through the parting ranks of slaves and the clamour of the Harrowing readying for war.

‘I will, my lord,’ said Ahriman, but no one was there to hear.

‘We have to find her. We owe her that. Our oaths still stand.’ Astraeos looked at each of his brothers in turn. They stood in a loose circle at a junction of five passages close to the Titan Child’s engine decks. The light was so scarce Astraeos’s eyes saw the three warriors as monochrome statues, their bronze armour reduced to grey, the lines and scars of their faces valleys of shadow. They stared back, their eyes moon-white discs of light. Kadin shook his head, and looked away. Thidias kept his face impassive. Cadar looked like he was stopping himself from saying something. Astraeos noticed Thidias’s hand move to brush the scarred ceramite where the aquila had once spread its wings across his chest.

Break one oath and the rest crumble, thought Astraeos. He remembered Hadar, the old Chaplain, speaking those words. ‘The hearts of warriors hold as one,’ he had said, ‘or they break one splinter at a time.’ The Chaplain had died in the fires of treachery a year later.

They are lost, thought Astraeos as he stared at the last of his Chapter. And I am no Chaplain. I do not know how to lead them out of the dark. He opened his mouth to speak, but the deck heaved, and the metal walls rang like a struck bell. Rust fell from the ceiling, spicing the air with a gritty iron tang.

‘The witch has finally killed us,’ snarled Kadin.

‘Another hit, lower port towards the bow,’ said Cadar. Thidias nodded.

‘Low yield. Whoever it is they are just testing, seeing if we are as dead as we seem.’ Thidias paused. ‘They will board the ship to take it.’

They all looked back to Astraeos.

They look to me, he thought, but I have no answers. Inside he muttered his own curse on Carmenta. The tech-witch must have left the bridge after they exited the warp. She had left them defenceless, floating in the void on the edge of an unknown star system. After the first strike he had tried to reach her. Static had filled the vox, and when he tried to reach into the warp, a wind that had seemed to laugh had been his only answer. Kadin was right, she had killed them, but she still held their oaths.

‘We make for the bridge,’ said Astraeos. ‘If the mistress is still alive that is where she will go.’ He clamped his helmet over his head, and his eyes lit with the familiar glow of tactical and environmental data. He reached over his shoulder and drew his sword. The crystal at the blade’s core sang in his mind at the touch. For a second he felt a deep, familiar stillness as he connected with the blade. This remains true at least, he thought.

‘And if whoever is out there targets the bridge as a beachhead?’ asked Cadar. Astraeos looked at them again. They all had their weapons drawn, bolters held loose in their hands, the blunt snouts of their helmets hiding their faces. For a second it was possible to remember what they had all once been.

‘Then we die with one oath unbroken, brother.’

Thirty of the Harrowing filled the boarding torpedo’s cramped compartment. Ahriman could smell a reek of rotten meat and sweat. He checked the fill of his boltgun, and clamped it to his thigh. He looked up. Locked to the walls by snaking cables, the Harrowing stared back at him with glowing eyes. Fresh-spilled blood glistened on the armour of some, tar-black in the pulsing red light. At the far end of the compartment hunched slave beasts growled and tugged at their iron collars and chains. Larger than a Space Marine, each of the beasts had once been one of the Harrowing’s slaves before mutation had twisted their bodies. Maroth’s cruelty had wrought further changes. Jagged tattoos crawled over their sweat-slick skin, and Ahriman thought he could see their muscles and bones changing shape even as he looked at them. Their presence made him want to put a bolt shell into each of them.

The metal frame of the torpedo creaked. Ahriman could hear the rattle of chains lifting them into the launching breech. The torpedo rang like a gong as the breech closed behind them. He wondered whether they would survive the brief run through the void to the target. For a second he could feel the answer opening in his mind, like something glimpsed through a crack in a closed door. Then he slammed it shut with a snarl of will. All the predictions of the past, all the lore he had learned, had been a lie which brought him nothing but ashes.

Ahriman blinked. He had felt something shift in the warp around him, something vast, like a shark gliding through dark water. He realised he was shivering inside his armour. Suddenly he wanted to be out of the close, red-lit space of the boarding torpedo. He looked around at the rest of the Harrowing. They were still, frozen in mid-movement. He felt a chill spread across his skin. The warp was screaming around him, roaring and churning like a cyclone. Frost was spreading across the compartment. Karoz was staring at him, his eyepieces glowing blue in his horned helm. The Harrowing warrior was pushing against his restraints, hands clenching and unclenching on the grip of a chainglaive. Runnels of thick, blood-spotted mucus seeped from the snout of his helm.

+Ahriman.+ The voice was distant, like a shout echoing down a cave to its lightless depths. Ahriman felt cold. He could not move. Silence filled the inside of the torpedo. The pulsing red light had frozen. Every one of the Harrowing was utterly still, all except Karoz.

‘Who are you?’ he asked, and regretted the question as soon as he had spoken.

Something chuckled with Karoz’s voice inside his mind. Ahriman could feel his heart rate rising uncontrollably.

+Fate, Ahriman,+ said the distant voice. The light in Karoz’s eyes was the blue of a new-born sun. +I am fate come round at last.+

Then total darkness and the weightless sensation of gliding through the void.

The boarding torpedo hit the Titan Child close to its spine. The melta-charge at its tip fired, turning armour to slag just before impact. The torpedo hit the molten hole and rammed through the outer hull and into the ship’s guts. Ahriman’s vision swam for a second as his ears filled with the shriek of shearing metal.

I am fate come round at last. The words sounded again and again in his mind. The sound stopped, and he braced himself against the snake-like restraints. Assault doors unfolded at the torpedo’s tip like an iron flower. Smoke flooded into the compartment as the restraints whipped back into the walls. The mutants moved first, ripping free in a shower of chain links. They sprinted away, clawed feet shaking the deck as they ran. Karoz and his pack followed. The growl of revving chainblades filled the air. Ahriman paused, trying to calm his mind, then followed.

A chamber spread out before his eyes. He could see vast drums wound with chains extending to the ceiling far above. The torpedo had punctured one of the chamber’s walls, flinging the semi-molten remains of the ship’s hull across the floor. Fires burned amongst hummocks of wreckage. There were corpses, too: servitors scrabbling on broken mechanical legs.

The Harrowing pack was moving ahead of him, firing into the smoke. Ahriman followed, his bolter covering angles in precise arcs. He forced his mind into a pattern of calm and extended his senses through the warp. As ever, the once so easy act made him feel sick. He allowed his mind to flow down ducts and passages, like a light reaching out into the darkness, building an image of the ship around him. The boarding torpedo had struck true; they were close to the bridge, as intended. Others had struck further down the hull, spilling the rest of the first wave into the deeper spaces of the ship. He pulled his attention back to his immediate surroundings.

+Horkos,+ Maroth’s thoughts breathed into Ahriman’s. +Our lord wishes to know your cadre’s disposition.+

+Beachhead achieved three decks below the bridge. No significant resistance at present, but likely to increase closer to target.+

+Advance.+

Ahriman paused, his mind unsure of what it had just heard. For a moment while Maroth had spoken, he had thought he had heard another voice whisper in his thoughts. For a moment, he thought it had told him to turn back.

+Horkos!+ The thought shouted into his mind.

+It will be done,+ replied Ahriman. A crude thought form of contempt and disgust was Maroth’s only reply.

Ahriman did not give the order to the warriors with him; they were already scrambling over debris towards half-glimpsed doorways. He remembered the mind whisper telling him to turn back. Ahriman shook his head and ran after the howls of the pack.

Carmenta stopped running. The beast turned its head towards her. Its shoulders bunched and she saw muscle gather across the ribs of its torso. The doors to the bridge waited in the distance, at the far end of the half-kilometre-long antechamber. She had been running towards the doors when the beast had walked out in front of her. It had paced slowly into the centre of the chamber, broken chains rattling behind it.

Where its face should have been, a blank plate of metal stared at her. A spiked iron collar circled its neck. It straightened to twice her height. Tattoos writhed across its body, changing shape and colour. Her vision pixellated as she looked at the patterns. The beast’s body began to quiver. Carmenta thought that it looked as if it were trying to scream.

It brought a shaking limb up to its masked face. Its hand opened with a clatter of sharp edges. Slowly, almost delicately, it pulled its clawed fingers down its faceplate. Deep scratches wept blood. Carmenta glanced behind her. She could see other figures sprinting down the wide passage towards them. Guttural howls filled the air as gunfire lit the long chamber. Explosions blossomed on the deck by her feet. She felt shrapnel patter off the metal of her limbs.

She looked back at the beast. In her mind, something changed. She felt suddenly calm, rational, as if the panic of before had belonged to another person. This was it. It was over, finally. She would not reach the bridge. She heard a cry inside her to keep running, to reach her ship, to reach her child. Part of her was screaming at herself, cursing herself for weakness, but she remained still. It was as if the panicked need to reunite with the ship belonged to someone else, as if a door in her mind had closed on the voice of another mind trapped within. Listening to the shouts inside half of her skull, she felt relief that it was all over, that she would be free of the Titan Child at last.

The beast charged. It made no sound, but she imagined it howling as its steps sang on the metal floor.

You have killed us, said a voice in her head. She felt her arms trembling. She could feel something within her willing her feet to run. She held still. You have killed us both, screamed the voice.

No, she thought to herself. I will be free now. She drew a breath to speak. Her voice was one of the few things she had never wanted replaced by machine components. Her father had said she had a beautiful voice. It was the only thing she could remember him saying.

‘Thank you,’ she said to the beast as it charged to meet her.

Lightning struck the beast as it reached for Carmenta. It touched the tips of the beast’s fingers and leapt up its arm. The beast stumbled, caged in jagged lines so bright that Carmenta’s eyes had to dim to near blackness. Its skin blistered and peeled. Its metal mask glowed, flesh cooking around its edge. It swung its arms as if trying to swat away a swarm of stinging insects. Three explosive shells hit it at the same moment and pulled the muscle from its torso. The next volley hammered through its faceplate and turned its head to bone splinters and red vapour. It collapsed, its muscles shivering to stillness as its blood spread.

She looked to her side where a passage mouth opened. Astraeos was striding towards her, his three brothers following in his wake. Glowing cables and crystal nodes haloed his face. Frost covered the shoulders of his armour and ran down his arm to the tip of his sword. His brothers were still firing, hammering volleys into figures approaching across the chamber. She could see fatigue on his blunt face, and the drop of blood crusting at the corner of his mouth. He was muttering. A veil of cold light shimmered in front of him. Beside Astraeos his brothers had locked into firing postures, lacing the approach with bolter fire.

‘Go,’ called Astraeos. Fatigue and effort edged his voice. She looked to him; his eyes remained on the spectral veil of energy at the tip of his sword and the closing shapes beyond.

She thought of his face when she had first seen it: coated in ice, the aura of the stasis field leaching all colour from his skin. It had been an impulse to take the survivors from the wreck of their ship, and a risk to release them. They could have tried to take the ship from her, but Astraeos and his three brothers had rewarded her whim with an oath. She never asked what doom they fled from, and they had kept their oath. In her life it was one of the few promises to her that remained unbroken.

‘Go,’ shouted Astraeos again. ‘There are others coming. I can sense them getting closer. If you cannot do something, then there is no way out of this.’

She felt her mouth open to say that it was over, that there was no way back. Then her vision fizzed with static and a screaming wave of panic flooded her mind.

I cannot fail, she thought. I will not let us die. Not now. Somewhere behind the rolling wave of emotion another voice cried in denied anger. She did not listen to it. She began to run towards the bridge.

Something struck Ahriman’s shoulder and exploded. He was falling, his head filled with a high-pitched whine. His armour rang as he hit the floor. The helmet systems cut out, leaving him in darkness with the sound of his own breath. He could feel blood, thick and sticky, rolling down the inside of his right arm. Sound crackled in his ear and the noise of the battle returned. Somewhere close to him Karoz was howling. There was another burst of fire, a familiar sound of a serrated stream of detonations.

Bolt-rounds. Ahriman extended his mind, and felt the psyches of their attackers burning like an iron-shackled sun. Space Marines, he thought. Not the Harrowing, but the minds of true Space Marines. Maroth has his wish; I will die here.

And why not let it end here? He had fled and hidden, falling into darkness for a lifetime since his banishment, and for what? He had nothing beside the dust of his ideals, and the shell of his life. He should have let himself fade to nothing long before now.

I am fate, come round at last. The words echoed in his mind, and he suddenly felt cold, as if he had looked into a dark doorway and seen eyes staring back.

His helmet display cut back in, strobing with the flash of gunfire. Damage icons glowed red at the corners of his sight. He picked himself up from the deck and looked at the unfolding battle. A long chamber extended in front of and above him. Bronze plating covered its walls and ceiling, stained by verdigris. Starlight shone down in thin ropes from narrow windows high above. Twenty of the Harrowing and their slave beasts were advancing towards the high doors at the far end of the chamber. Fire bloomed around their silhouettes. In the distance he could see the muzzle flash of bolters. As Ahriman watched, a cluster of rounds hit one of the Harrowing. The warrior fell, his chestplate cracked open, his hearts beating blood into the air.

Karoz let out a howl from the middle of the pack, and bounded forwards. Explosions traced his steps but the champion did not slow. Black coils of living smoke rose from his armour as he moved. Ahriman could taste the iron reek of it through his helmet seals. A Space Marine crouched behind the corpse of a dead slave beast, still firing as the champion charged. The rounds opened Karoz’s chest in a spray of meat and armour.

Karoz did not stop. The Space Marine was still firing when Karoz leapt over the slave beast’s corpse and cut downwards. The Space Marine swayed to one side and the chainglaive’s teeth sprayed sparks from the deck. Blood fell from Karoz, smoking in the air. He straightened, and Ahriman could see his lacerated hearts still beating in the wet cavity of his chest. He reached up and peeled off his helm, and the face beneath had too many eyes and mouths for anything born a human.

The Space Marine took a slow step back, dropping his bolter, and drew a blade from his waist. Karoz laughed with all the mouths of his changed face. He raised the glaive in mocking salute. The Space Marine lunged. Karoz punched the tip of the glaive into the Space Marine’s breastplate and rammed it forwards until the chain teeth chewed through the warrior’s chest.

A flare of light hit Karoz from the side. It was so bright that it scored into Ahriman’s retinas and mind. Psy-fire. Karoz reeled, his armour and the skin of his face dribbling to the deck like tar. Ahriman looked again at the Space Marines, opened his senses and saw what he had missed before. A psyker, a battle psyker, with a mind so focused that it was like a blade. How had he not seen it before? It reminded him of something, something he had lost long ago. Something was about to happen, something that he could feel press against his mind even as he tried to shut it out. He started forwards.

In front of him, Karoz’s pack charged after their champion. The psyker facing Karoz drew a blade and sliced Karoz from throat to hip. Ahriman could taste that blow: cold wind and bitter iron. The Harrowing initiate fell. The two remaining Space Marines flanked the psyker, firing into the charging pack. Two more of the Harrowing fell. Ahriman was a dozen paces away. He could feel it now, a rising beat in the warp like a monstrous heart pounding to life.

Then Karoz stood. He lifted from the deck, as if pulled by strings. Black fluid fell from him in thick ropes. A mouth opened in the charred lump of his head. It grinned with needle teeth. Something pink and mucus-covered twitched in the open wound of his chest. An eye blinked open on the pulsing heart. Its iris was the blue of a noon sky.

The creature that had been Karoz roared and a thousand mouths and eyes opened across its body. Its shadow spread across the floor, eating the thin starlight, as Karoz towered towards the ceiling. Ahriman felt the physical details of the chamber blur, as if fading into the background behind a growing fire. He could see frost clotting the blood on the deck. Some of the Harrowing kept running, but more dropped to the deck, their bodies spasming. Then the shadow met them and swallowed them down without a cry. The daemon that had been Karoz loomed over the chamber. Beneath it the light of the psyker’s sword guttered out like a blown candle. He saw the psyker’s face, pale, surrounded by a psy-hood, his failing blade still gripped in his hand.

The daemon turned towards Ahriman and looked at him with a thousand eyes.

‘Ahriman,’ it said, in a voice of whispers and laughter.

No, cried a voice inside his mind. But the voice fell away as power rushed through him, carrying the colours of memories. He could smell the dust of the plain beneath the Tower of Magnus, could see his brothers in a thousand flickering glimpses: their flesh bursting from their armour, their bodies dissolving into liquid and hardening into nightmare. He saw Ohrmuzd, his true brother, lost long ago. Then he saw a face, a face he did not know, a face in a horned helm with eyes that burned like dying stars.

Ahriman’s hand was rising, light dancing on his fingers. His mind ascended through patterns he had tried to forget.

The daemon reached towards Ahriman.

+No.+ A tongue of white flame burst from Ahriman’s hand. Dead words and occult formulae flickered at the fire’s edges like the flutter of wings. It cut through the daemon in a single bright line. For a second the daemon reeled, and then the flames leapt across its shadowed body. It shrieked and cried in voices from Ahriman’s memory: Ohrmuzd, Lemuel, Amon. The shrieks rose higher and higher as the shadow dissolved with a sound like the chuckle of wind blowing across a plain of dust.

II

Titan Child

Ahriman smelt what they had done to the prisoner before he saw it with his eyes. The stink of blood and raw meat had met his nose as soon as the cell door had opened. They had hung the prisoner by his skin. A wire-covered lamp soaked his dangling body in yellow light. Rusted hooks punctured his back and arms and the skin of his hands was gone. The exposed flesh wept pale fluid as it tried to heal. A bloodshot eye fixed on Ahriman as he stepped into the cell. They had taken the other eye, he noted. Blood streaked the right cheek under the empty eye socket, and two wounds clotted on the prisoner’s forehead. Ahriman saw two metal studs glinting on the spattered floor.

Gzrel had given the prisoner and his brother Space Marines to Maroth. Clearly the soothsayer had decided to try and break the Space Marine’s body before he started on his will. No doubt the skin of the prisoner’s hands now hung from Maroth’s armour.

‘Why did you come?’ asked the prisoner, his voice a rasping growl. For a moment Ahriman did not reply. Why had he come? Gzrel had been reluctant to let Ahriman near his latest prize, but Ahriman had persisted and Gzrel had relented. That had taken subtlety and was not without danger. Why had he taken that risk? He had thought it was to find out what the prisoner recalled of the battle. Looking into the Space Marine’s maimed and bloody face, he wondered if he had another motive.

‘What do you remember?’ asked Ahriman. After the daemonic manifestation Gzrel and the rest of the Harrowing had descended on them. Some of the survivors of Karoz’s pack had told of the shadow that had taken the champion, and of the fire that had banished it. Gzrel had presumed that it had been the prisoner who had burned the daemon. That feat had impressed the lord of the Harrowing; he had decided to keep the prisoner and his brothers. He had asked the Space Marines to kneel to him, but they had remained unbowed. That defiance had led the prisoner to this chamber, and cost him an eye.

The prisoner curled his lip, pale teeth glinting from bloodstained flesh.

‘I remember my brother dying. I remember his chest splitting. I remember the stink of the warp. I remember a shadow.’ Ahriman saw a glint in the prisoner’s eye; his aura was fury-bright, rage and power chained behind fraying will. ‘I remember, sorcerer.’

Ahriman nodded.

He knows, thought Ahriman. He saw and knows what I truly am. He had not brought a weapon, but that would not stop him silencing the prisoner. His fingers twitched, and he felt the thought find an echo in the warp. It would be so easy. No, he thought. His mind relaxed, and the warp settled.

‘My lord wishes your service. He senses great power in you.’

‘Is that why you are here, sorcerer?’ Again Ahriman heard the hate in the words.

‘I serve my lord,’ said Ahriman. ‘You are a psyker, trained for battle and destruction. He has a taste for the oaths of psykers, and you intrigue him much.’

The prisoner stirred his bared muscles and the chains clinked. Fresh blood ran from where the hooks looped through the skin.

‘Your lord is a slave to lies and ignorance.’ Red-flecked spit came out with the words. ‘My oath is my own, and I will not give it to him.’

‘There are worse things.’

‘Are there? To you, sorcerer, perhaps. You fear the truth, I see that without needing to see your face or hear you say it. I do not fear truth, though it will kill me.’

Words I would once have said myself, thought Ahriman. ‘Yet you live.’

The prisoner heaved up a bloody laugh, which shook the chains. ‘Yes, I live. Your lie bought me that. Do you wish thanks for it?’

Ahriman was silent for a moment, and then he reached up and pulled his helmet from his head. Blue eyes set in a face of smooth olive skin met the prisoner’s single eye and gouged socket.

‘My lord believes you are powerful, and you are,’ said Ahriman. Without his helm his voice was soft and resonant.

‘I am no traitor, and I will not serve your lord.’

‘You are no traitor, yet this is an outcast Imperial ship,’ said Ahriman, ‘and you have the mark of one who has already broken oaths.’ It was true the Titan Child at first glance was not a rotten renegade like the Blood Crescent, but it was no lost loyalist either.

‘I broke no oaths.’

‘But you are here, an outcast from the Imperium that created you. Is there a difference?’ asked Ahriman. The prisoner spat, the red-flecked phlegm hissing as it ate into the metal floor.

‘To you, sorcerer, maybe not.’ The prisoner let his head loll to his chest, his eyelids closed. Ahriman nodded; he would get nothing more. He turned and walked to the cell door, his hand rising to rap on the dark metal. He paused and turned back to look at the prisoner.

‘I am sorry for your brother,’ said Ahriman. ‘The other two live, though for how long I cannot say.’

The prisoner looked up. Ahriman saw the hard angles of his aura blur for a second before it snapped back into its diamond-like lines. The prisoner gave a small nod.

‘What is your name, sorcerer?’

Ahriman looked down at the black helm in his hand. Perhaps there were some that might still remember his name, but he was not Ahriman, and he would not be again.

‘I am Horkos,’ he said.

The prisoner gave a laugh that turned into a racking cough. ‘Another lie. Do not worry. You saved my life. That is a bond I would not have, but one I will honour. I will not break your lie.’ The prisoner paused and took a breath. ‘My name is Astraeos, sorcerer, and I place my silence on your conscience.’

Ahriman did not reply, and left the prisoner hanging in the gloom.

The Harrowing were making the Titan Child their own. Ahriman’s path back to his quarters led almost the entire six-kilometre length of the ship. With every step and turn he saw another sign of the Harrowing’s fangs sinking deeper into the vessel. They had struggled to wake the Titan Child’s systems, but that had not stopped them marking their claim to its soul. Servitors and whipped slave gangs had cleared the slaughter done by the battle, but only so that the Harrowing could replace it with more. The stink of charring flesh and soot was thick on the air. On the open decks and wider passageways Ahriman came across packs of the Harrowing clustered around crude braziers and heaped fires of corpses. Flesh burned on those fires, and the Harrowing howled beside them as the fat and skin boiled and smoke spread in greasy clouds. They shouted guttural chants and poured dark liquid on the deck in libation.

Ahriman skirted the baying packs, walking on the edge of the firelight, closing his ears to the howls and his eyes to the shapes which coiled in the pyre smoke. He changed his route through the ship, avoiding the hangar and cargo spaces where the Harrowing gathered. He wanted to clear his mind, to consider his words with Astraeos, to understand the half-formed inferences and fears that clustered on the margins of his thoughts. The mental disciplines that once were so much a part of him would have given him swift clarity, but they were tools he could not wield again. He would try and find quiet, and perhaps in that he would find peace.

Peace eluded him. Even in the side passages and walkways he saw the signs of the Titan Child’s changing fortune. It seemed to have no truly living human crew, only servitors, and the Harrowing had marked all those that he saw. Those which still had human faces had been flayed of skin, so that they grinned at Ahriman with wet faces of sinew. Those without true faces had skins hammered over their visors so that their eye-sensors gazed from stretched eye-holes and gaping mouths. They had brought slaves from the Blood Crescent, too. They shambled past in long lines, pus weeping from the brands on their grey skin. Most had laboured on the Blood Crescent for their entire lives. Crammed into living spaces, breathing pollution-fogged air, never seeing the light of a true sun, they existed to toil. It was a pitiful life and one that would grow no lighter on the Titan Child. Already the mutant overseers stalked the walkways and lower decks, their beaten armour glistening with blood and hung with the skin of those who had in some way displeased their masters.

Ahriman had seen such things many times, as if there were a limit to the imagination of atrocity. It was a truth he had observed time and time again in the fate of those who fell to the powers of the warp. The lowest and most basic natures surfaced first and most strongly, like impurities rising to the white-hot surface of a smelting crucible.

And what of me? he thought, as he hurried through a column-lined hold. Pyres burned here too and chants cackled through the air. I have fallen as far as these wretches, further perhaps; how can I consider myself unchanged? I am no better than them; their spirits run with rage, mine with pride. We are the same, only the path of our fall was different.

‘Did you like my work?’ The voice purred from the shadows. Ahriman stopped, realising that he had allowed his awareness of where he was to wander. Maroth stepped out from beside a metal-sided column. The soothsayer was showing his filed teeth, but no one would have called the expression a smile. One of his hands rested on the pommel of a sheathed sword, the other ran a string of knucklebones through his fingers. The bones clicked against the armour of his gauntlet. Ahriman could smell power on him, rank and thick like the breath of a daemon.

‘Your work?’ said Ahriman, though he knew that Maroth meant Astraeos. The soothsayer smiled and again the bones clicked through his fingers.

‘I ate the eye,’ he said. ‘Did you know, Horkos, it was once thought that to eat an eye would grant wisdom?’ He shrugged, the tanned skins across his shoulders flapping against the plates of his armour. ‘We will have to see. Perhaps you should try the other, if we take it from him?’

Ahriman remained silent, his head bowed in respect.

The eating of an eye does not grant wisdom, you fool, he thought. The sacrificer of an eye is the one who gains the boon, not the taker.

‘Of the other two captives… Well, if they do not bow to us then perhaps we can see what more than one eye will do.’

Once I would have taught you the depths of your ignorance. The thought snarled inside Ahriman’s mind, and he had to struggle to suppress it. He was Horkos, the oathbreaker, the lowest of renegades; he did not have such thoughts.

‘Yes, master,’ he said. Maroth chuckled, the sound like the rattle of dry scales.

‘Good. Come with me. There is something else I wish you to appreciate.’

Darkness folded around Ahriman as he followed Maroth. After a few minutes Ahriman could tell they were making for the outer hull, as the passages got narrower and colder, and the blast doors thicker. Eventually the thin air gave way to hard vacuum, and they had to don their helmets. Ships like the Titan Child let parts of their outer hull drain of heat and atmosphere. Like layers of dead skin, these void-cold sections provided a buffer against damage and drew no power.

It was as they walked down a lightless passage towards a sealed door that he felt his skin prickle and smelt an impossible copper tang in the helmet’s air. He stopped, his eyes fixed on the door ahead. There was something behind that door, something that radiated malevolence and hunger like heat from a forge.

‘You feel it?’ said Maroth, turning to look back at Ahriman. The front of Maroth’s helm was shaped into the muzzle of a hound, its eyes glowing in the gloom. Behind the hound’s snarl Ahriman was sure Maroth was smiling.

‘What is it?’ asked Ahriman, without moving. He had begun to close off portions of his mind, armouring his spirit with passive layers of protection.

‘Come and see,’ said Maroth, and stepped towards a closed door. It was small, and reinforced with thick spars of metal. In the red light of Maroth’s eyes the surface of the door sparkled. Smeared marks covered it: eyes, spirals, toothed letters and hooked lines, all daubed in dark frozen liquid. To Ahriman they were little more than childish scrawl. Maroth raised a hand, activated the lock, and pulled the door open.

Behind the door there was darkness so complete that it looked like a hole leading to oblivion. Ahriman could smell rotten flesh and dank water, the stench filling his mouth and nose though there was no air to convey it. Maroth looked back at him, raised a beckoning hand and stepped through. Ahriman paused. Every part of his being was screaming to run, to turn away from the waiting door, but he could not, he had to follow. Maroth would not let him escape this revelation. He stepped forwards and through the door.

Blackness. For a second he could see nothing except the icons pulsing on the edge of his helmet display. Then shapes appeared, outlined in pale light though there was no light. He saw Maroth, the soothsayer’s face turned towards him, eyes dim coals in an iron hound face. The other shape floated in space, its splayed limbs tethered by a web of chains to unseen walls. Rags covered its body, though he could still see the bulk of muscle and definition of a Space Marine’s frame. The skin of its face and hands was death-white and hairless. Crude stitches walked across its chest, closing a ragged fissure in muscle and bone. Strips of tanned skin hung from pins in its flesh, each crawling with burned marks that twisted as the eye caught them. Ahriman tasted bile in his mouth. The suspended figure stared back at him with black holes that had been eyes.

‘Is it not magnificent?’ said Maroth, the transmission of his voice edged with static. The creature turned its head and fixed its empty eyes on the soothsayer.

Run. Run now, you fool. The thought screamed in Ahriman’s head. The creature opened its mouth in a grin that went too wide and showed too many teeth. A black tongue ran across the glinting needle-sharp points. It hissed: a noise that should have been impossible in the airless chamber.

‘The Space Marine that Karoz killed,’ breathed Ahriman.

‘Its name was Cadar, I think. Yes. It was grievously injured, but its final thread of life had not been cut when it came to me. Very strong.’ Maroth nodded as if in approval. ‘The near-dead flesh made a pleasing vessel.’

Ahriman could see it; the Space Marine’s body was a sleeve of flesh, its spirit scooped out, and its form a mask of skin. A daemon coiled in the husk that remained, its essence night-black, oozing hunger and malevolence. It was not intelligent; it was pure instinct and desire. The bindings Maroth had placed on it pinned it in place like an insect to a table. He had misjudged the soothsayer; he was ignorant and crude, but he had acquired and applied lore Ahriman did not believe him capable of grasping. The fruit of that achievement was an abomination.

He looked away from the creature and saw that Maroth was watching him.

‘It is mine, and answers to me alone,’ said Maroth.

He wanted me to see this, Ahriman thought, to see the power he commands. It is not enough that he wields it; others must witness it and be awed. He bowed low, knowing it was what was expected. Above him the creature hissed. This will be the weapon he uses to destroy Gzrel and take the Harrowing. Did he bring me here to test its potency? Am I to be its first victim?

Maroth let Ahriman kneel for a long moment.

‘Rise, Horkos.’

Ahriman stood and looked into Maroth’s red eyes. No, he thought. I am his first ally.

‘Now you see,’ said Maroth, and turned to leave. Behind him Ahriman followed, feeling the empty gaze of the creature on the back of his skull.

Ahriman returned to his new quarters alone. Gzrel had given the space to him, but it was as much a calculated insult as a reward for service. At once vast and cramped, it was not so much a chamber as a void left in the structure of the ship. One wall towered into the darkness above, its surface covered with rivets and weld seams. The other walls met it at different angles and heights. Pipes ran through the space as if hurrying to other more vital areas. Some were as tall as a man, others no thicker than a finger; they snaked in bundles across the floor and spanned the space like vines. Thick, red-edged light oozed from the flames he had lit in bowls of machine oil. The room reeked of warm metal, oil smoke and stagnant air. Grey grease and dust covered the floor in a thick layer, muffling the sounds of his steps as he walked through the circular hatch. He looked up, his eyes reaching into the gloom beyond the tangled canopy of pipes. Air, coolant, fuel, water and waste, all rushing through this forgotten fissure in a ship that stretched to six kilometres and could house thirty thousand souls. He stood at the heart of the ship, yet in a forgotten place. It was supposed to be a mark of his place within the Harrowing, but the isolation was almost pleasing.

He closed the hatch and turned, the barest hint of fatigue in his movements. His head ached, the presence of the bound creature lingering like a bruise on his mind. He thought for a moment of Astraeos; would he keep his silence?

If he told Gzrel… The lord of the Harrowing would not believe him.

Perhaps.

It would have been better to silence him.

He shook his head again. He needed to think, to reflect, and to remember.

Quietly he began to speak the formulae, feeling the syllables resonate in his mouth, tasting the subtle shifts in the aether around him. He walked as he whispered, his feet tracing a spiralling pattern with his steps. He had already placed the lamps in the correct positions and left them burning to prepare the way. Anyone looking at them would not have realised their significance. The pattern they formed, the steps he took and the focus of his mind built a structure within the warp that would close the chamber to all observation. The ritual pulled on memories from a place inside him that he had long ago walled off, but he needed privacy.

The air took on a dense, charged quality; the chamber swam in front of his eyes, and he could hear a sound like sand skittering over dry stone. Then with a final step and a final word the chamber snapped back into focus and silence fell.

He nodded to himself, as if to fix the conviction in place, and turned to a sealed chest that stood in a corner. The smell of dust filled his nose as he opened the pressed metal lid. Within lay skeins of pale fabric layered over bulky objects, their shapes lost beneath the material like buildings under thick winter snow. He pulled the fabric out, and looked at what lay beneath.

It was not much. Anyone looking at them would have thought them battered trinkets taken from a battlefield or burned temple. There was a hook-topped rod, its surface blackened and blistered, its shaft splintered; a carved scarab the size of a human hand, its polished stone chipped and worn; a fragment of polished metal in the shape of an oak leaf. Beside them lay the helmet, the faceplate looking up at Ahriman with blank eyes. It was red. A plate of tarnished bronze extended from above the eyeline to beneath the chin, forming a plough-like muzzle broken by two red crystal eyes. Two flowing lines of black lacquer extended beneath the left eye like tracks of tears. A forked bronze crest rose from the forehead. It was grimy and battered, as if it had been pulled off after battle and left to fade under a layer of dust.

Ahriman looked down at the face of the helmet for a second, then reached in and lifted it out of the chest. He held it, staring into its dirt-clouded eyes. He had wondered many times why he kept it and the other flotsam of another life. It was a risk; there might be some who remembered the Thousand Sons, who might recognise the helm, the scarab and the broken rod. There might even be some who remembered the name Ahriman. More, it was a reminder to himself of who he had been, and what he had done.

That, of course, was also why he kept them.

He was an exile many times over, a betrayer and destroyer of everything that had given his existence meaning. The Thousand Sons Legion had broken the decree of the Emperor against the use of psychic powers. They had done so believing they served the Imperium that had created them, and for that transgression their home world had burned. A few had survived, plucked out of the inferno by the will of their primarch, Magnus the Red. But it had been the power of daemons that had saved them, and the world they had fled to was deep in the Eye of Terror. On that world of dust reality and the power of the warp mingled and blurred. The barrier between wish and truth had vanished. Magnus, having ascended to something beyond flesh, had called their new home the Planet of the Sorcerers. The occult powers of the Thousand Sons had flourished, but so had the mutation and corruption of their flesh.

The Thousand Sons had begun to devolve into creatures of inhuman form, the instability of their genetic heritage given new potency by the powers of the warp. Armour had become flesh which blinked with lidless eyes. Hands and limbs dissolved into claws or boneless tentacles. Minds of refined thought and purpose became cauldrons of insanity, boiling with storms made of waking dreams. Some had seen it as a blessing, as a gift from the Great Powers which dwelt within the warp, or as a stage in their evolution towards demigodhood. Ahriman had seen the change for what it was: the slow death of everything they had been and the denial of everything they had aspired to be.

In his flame-lit chambers, Ahriman could see his Legion brothers as if they were standing in front of him. He had tried to save them. He found others that agreed that their Legion was on the brink of destruction. Together they had formed a cabal, and begun their work hidden from the eye of Magnus. Amongst the conspirators had been the most powerful psykers from a Legion of warlocks. Their end, as was always the way of the Thousand Sons, was to overthrow darkness with knowledge. Under Ahriman’s guidance they had created a cure for the mutation which was consuming the Legion. They had called it the Rubric.

The Rubric. He ran the phrase around his mind. A monolith to hubris.

He had believed it would work, that it would undo the change that was destroying his Legion. Instead he had simply destroyed his brothers with his own hand. Some had survived. The others had become spirit and dust bound inside their armour, little more than automata, echoes remaining to remind him of his own failure. They had become the Rubricae. Magnus had banished Ahriman and his cabal from the Planet of the Sorcerers. From that moment he was no longer a Thousand Son, no longer Ahzek Ahriman. He was nothing, a ghost living out his penance on the margins of hell.

He had not seen any of his brothers since, though he had heard tales of sorcerers or warlords that could only be Thousand Sons. He knew of only one who might still live, and then only in the loosest sense. He might be the last, the rest fallen to battle or madness, or worse. Looking into the face of the dust-covered helm Ahriman shuddered. One day he would die, and time would finally bury his existence.

No. He thought of the daemon speaking his name as it loomed above him. No. I am not free yet. Something remembers that I exist. Something is coming for me after all this time.

He was not breathing. Inside his armour his skin suddenly prickled with cold. He let the helmet drop from his hand back into the chest and stood. Something was coming. The warp was millpond-still, but he knew. The certainty was like the touch of a hand on his back in the dark. Something had found him, something in the great ocean of the warp. It was coming for him. He thought of the Planet of the Sorcerers, of the light of the ninth sun spilling across his open grimoires, of the presence behind him that should not have been there. The memory formed in his mind. No, not that, he thought, and the thought iced his breath into cold mist. Frost had formed on his fingertips.

I am fate come round at last. He started, looking round the chamber. His eyes flicked between the twisting pipes and the coiling shadows cast by the oil flames. Nothing.

‘Speak.’ His voice was thin, and the space seemed to swallow the word. ‘By the bindings upon this place, I command you to speak.’

Silence.

The flames seemed to flutter and dim. The sound of the ship, so like a heart, grew louder in his ears. He took a step back. He was muttering, the phrases coming to his lips from the depths of memory. All thought about the past, penitence and punishment faded. He was in the grip of an instinct more ancient than any legend or lore, the instinct of a man in a forest alone with the darkness and the sound of wolves.

The wheel handle on the circular entrance hatch began to turn. He could hear something scratching on the metal of the hatch.

Let me return to dust, he thought. Let me drift to the bottom and fade to nothing. Let that be my fate. But another voice, clear and cynically precise, spoke in his mind: Yet you still cling to life. Have you ever considered why?

The wheel handle stopped turning. The hatch began to open, grating on unoiled hinges. His hands and body were still, the chained storms of aetheric energy foaming about him, waiting to be unleashed.

‘You are the one they call Horkos?’ The voice was female and came from a slot in a cracked mask of red lacquer. Ahriman was silent, watching the figure that stepped through the hatch. She was tall and moved with a precise smoothness that reminded him of a pair of callipers tracing arcs across parchment. A hooded robe of ragged black fabric covered her form, dragging on the floor as she stepped closer. Mechadendrites attached to her back released the hatch’s outer handle and coiled to her back like metal-scaled snakes. Her eyes were glowing green augmetics.

‘I have been sent by your master,’ she said, and he could not miss the bitterness in the words. Still he did not move. Shape and form were no binding on those who knew the mysteries of the warp, or the creatures it spawned. ‘He sent me to summon you to his presence.’

She stepped closer, and now he realised that she wore no mask; the cracked red lacquer was her face. He also saw the collar of beaten iron circling her neck. Jagged runes ran across its surface, their shapes shadowed by the blood that had dried in their recesses. It was a slave collar, sealed around the neck while still hot. The runes were Maroth’s work, crude channels for pain and coercion. He let his mind brush hers, felt the hard lines of implanted logic and the rage simmering beneath.

‘I was sent to bring you,’ she said. There was a note of defiance in her voice. She would be no easy slave for the Harrowing. There was an imperious poise to her, a quality that made him fancy that he could see a glimmer of scorn in her artificial gaze. She was no tech-priest of Mars, though, he could tell that at a glance. She was something else, another outcast or renegade. Fragmented facts assembled in his mind and he realised what she was, at least in part.

‘You are the tech-priest, Carmenta. This was your ship, was it not?’ She did not reply. At her back her mechadendrites spasmed briefly, as if responding to a suddenly repressed impulse. ‘You should be careful,’ he said as he bent down to repack and seal the crate. ‘Gzrel does not like defiance that does not serve him. He likes his slaves broken and obedient.’

‘I see why you survived so long.’ He almost laughed, but instead shook his head and picked up his black beak-fronted helm. Most humans looked on Space Marines with awe and fear; she showed no such reaction. Amongst creatures like Gzrel and his Harrowing, any other response was dangerous. She would learn, or die before she did.

‘Do you know why my lord summons me?’ he asked as he walked to the open hatch.

‘Another ship has found us,’ she said. He almost stopped in surprise. If the ship had come from the warp then he should have felt the psychic bow wave as it ripped back into reality. Also there were no alarms, no shaking of the Titan Child as it fired its weapons. When ships met in these regions the outcome was always written in blood.

Carmenta filled the silence, as if sensing part of his questions. ‘It is a warship,’ she said.

Gzrel must be nervous, he thought. The Harrowing were still struggling to wake the Titan Child, even with its former mistress as a slave, and the Blood Crescent was a carrion thief rather than a warrior. Gzrel would not want to risk his prize in a fight he could not be sure of winning.

‘The ship has hailed us and requested that they send an emissary to speak with your lord,’ continued Carmenta.

‘They wish to treat with us?’

‘They say they are seeking something and are willing to give great rewards if aided.’ Ahriman felt suddenly chill, but could not say why.

‘He has called us to discuss whether to receive this emissary, then?’ he asked as he stepped through the hatch after Carmenta. She made a low sound that might have been a laugh.

‘No. Your lord has agreed. The emissary is already here.’

For a moment Ahriman thought he heard a chuckle fading in the gloom of his chamber before the hatch clanged shut.

III

Visitation

They were waiting for Ahriman. Gzrel had decided to meet the emissary 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 followers were not living warriors but Rubricae. Not alive, but denied death, they were ghost-driven shells. Seeing the blank stare of their helmet eyes Ahriman felt his world blink to blackness…

…The chamber vanished and for a heartbeat he saw again the raven flying in a burning sky. The raven’s cries laughed in his ears. ‘I am fate, Ahriman. I am the turning of stars, and the death of time…’

Ahriman stilled his breath, fighting to keep his mind clear. His gaze locked on the trio. Inside his mind he could feel the presence of the emissary gliding over the chamber, tasting each mind for intent and type. He forced his mind to ascend through levels of control and focus, cooling his surface thoughts to a meaningless static. He felt the emissary’s mind touch his, and almost cried out; it was seeing the face of a friend thought long dead.

Tolbek. The name sprang into his mind, and now as he looked again he recognised the subtle details of posture and stance. An adept of the Pyrae in the long-broken traditions of Prospero, Tolbek had been one of the first to join Ahriman’s cabal. Tolbek had played his part in the Rubric that destroyed their Legion and shared in their banishment. Ahriman had not seen him since.

He is alive. The thought rose in his mind with a rush of emotion. I am not alone. Inside his helm his mouth opened and words began to form on his tongue.

But why is he here? How is he here? The questions were suddenly sharp splinters in his thoughts, and his words died in his throat. He blinked and the image came again…

…An unkindness of ravens spiralling around him, their cries rising louder and louder…

Ahriman tried to remain still, as his mind screamed. He was breathing hard. The vision had slipped into his mind like a razor. He had not experienced anything like it since his exile. And it was not over. He could feel pressure building inside his head. He heard snatches of voices, and vague images smudged his sight.

‘I come with greetings.’ Tolbek’s voice was deep and resonant, filled with authority, but Ahriman heard the edge of contempt in the tone. Gzrel must have heard it too, or noted the absence of title and obeisance. The lord of the Harrowing stirred, the blades of his claws clicking on the throne’s arms.

‘From whom do you come?’ asked Gzrel.

‘I speak for the Brotherhood of Dust,’ said Tolbek, and Ahriman glanced up to see Maroth whispering frantically in Gzrel’s ear.

‘A name I do not know,’ said Gzrel. Ahriman’s mind was racing, drawing together possibilities, memories and fears. He thought of the glowing eyes of Karoz, of the snatches of vision glimpsed in the taking of the Titan Child. He had spent lifetimes of mortal men hiding from what he had been, not knowing what became of his brothers. Now the past had found him and he could feel its threat as if it were a sword above his head.

Why not let it fall? Why not let fate end here? he thought.

Because you do not believe in that fate, Ahriman, said a voice in his mind, and he could not tell if it was his own.

‘If you can help us find what we seek then the rewards will be great,’ said Tolbek.

‘What could you reward me with?’ Gzrel gestured to his throne and attendants.

‘Things you could not grasp in your dreams,’ said Tolbek softly, and Ahriman could see the hunger in Gzrel at the words.

‘What is it that you seek?’ said Gzrel, and Ahriman felt the answer appear in his mind with complete certainty. It was not a trick of prophecy or a truth seized from the warp, but he knew, and the truth was a cold hand around his hearts.

‘We seek a sorcerer,’ said Tolbek.

Without considering why, Ahriman brought his mind to a point of complete focus. He felt calm, the old battle calm that he had not felt for a lifetime of exile. He felt the warp align with his thoughts. Long ago, in a time that seemed so far removed from the present as to seem a dream, he had learned the Spiral of the Corvidae. It was a discipline of future prediction, physical precision and mental control as much as it was of the blade. It was an art of killing.

Beside him Gzrel chuckled and gestured again at his attendants.

‘Of those I have enough, but they serve me alone.’

Ahriman drew the warp to him, subtly aligning thought in patterns he had believed forgotten. He felt doors he had sealed off in his mind open. It felt like the first breath after coming to the surface of a deep sea.

No, he thought. No, I will not. But he did not stop. Senses he had kept closed opened, denied powers and possibilities sprang into his mind. He felt the warp overlay his perceptions.

Stop now before it is too late. He heard the warning in his own voice.

‘We seek the sorcerer called Ahriman,’ said Tolbek. Ahriman felt his mind register his name. His senses were alive, seeing the small movements of Tolbek’s fingers on the pommel of his sword, hearing the dull roar of the warp around him like the pounding of ocean waves.

‘For what?’ asked Gzrel, a dangerous smile splitting his face. Ahriman’s eyes settled on Tolbek, seeing his physical form overlaid with his aetheric aura. Power, a lot of power, held back like water behind a dam. Tolbek remained silent for a heartbeat; Ahriman saw his aura flicker.

‘For the settling of fates and tallies of betrayal,’ said Tolbek. Gzrel nodded slowly, Maroth whispering in his ear. Ahriman could feel the minds of the others in the room: Gzrel bloated with hunger, Maroth a tangled mess of fear and pride, the other two Harrowing sorcerers murky lumps of exaggerated emotion and vestigial power. He noted each.

‘What can you tell us of him?’ It was Maroth that spoke, his rasping voice ringing hollow in the gloom-filled air. Tolbek fixed the soothsayer with an emerald stare.

‘I see that you have nothing I seek.’ Tolbek turned and took a step towards the door.

‘I have many sorcerers in my service,’ called Gzrel, and Ahriman could hear the desire and the angered pride in the lord’s voice. ‘Perhaps you would hear the rewards that your service would earn from me.’

‘Do not be foolish,’ said Tolbek, half turning to look at Gzrel. ‘I have searched across the stars and void. I have spoken with those who would grind you to nothing with a thought. You do not have what I need, and so I go.’

A lie, thought Ahriman. He could feel Tolbek’s mind unfolding into the ship, tasting minds, searching. He fought to make his mind a mirror, his thoughts blank.

…The flicker of black feathers, and a red sun rolling through a starless sky…

Gzrel was rising from his throne. Chainblades spun to life in the hands of the guards by the door. Ahriman felt a sudden surge in the warp, a ragged wind coiling around Maroth as the soothsayer muttered guttural phrases. A second later Xiatsis and Cottadaron were also the centre of growing spirals of invisible power. Tolbek was still and silent, but to Ahriman’s eyes he was a towering shape of diamond and spreading flame. The floor began to glow around Tolbek. The candles melted to pools of pale liquid. Ahriman could feel his hearts beat inside his chest. The vision pressed against his mind. An impression of a red sun and black wings flicked across his sight. He fought the image down. His head felt like it was about to explode.

‘Do not let your pride guide you down a path you could not return from,’ said Tolbek and his voice was the soft roar of an inferno. ‘Have your sorcerers look down those future tracks – if they can. They will tell you that this meeting has ended in your favour.’ Maroth’s enchantment vanished from his lips; he was shaking, and sweat beaded on his face. He was afraid; Ahriman could tell that without looking at him. Gzrel remained standing, his fingers flexing, but he said nothing. The firestorm around Tolbek faded from the warp. The floor cracked as the stone began to cool.

Ahriman kept his gaze steady on Tolbek. He held his mind in the poised focus of battle readiness. An image of Tolbek standing on the plains of the red planet flashed in front of his mind. He remembered Tolbek turning to him as the dust settled under the rising sun. In that remembered moment there had been fear in Tolbek’s eyes.

Tolbek paused, and then turned to look at Ahriman. The beaked front of Ahriman’s black helm hid his face, but he felt Tolbek’s gaze as if it were the barrel of a gun.

‘You,’ said Tolbek.

He knows, thought Ahriman, and felt a stab of hatred and suspicion bloom from Tolbek and then vanish as it was suppressed.

‘What is your name, crow helm?’ The question hung in the air. Gzrel was turning to look at Ahriman, words forming on his lips. Maroth was watching Tolbek, his hand moving towards his weapons. Above them the chains stirred and clinked. Ahriman could feel the warp become suddenly still and calm.

+Brother,+ sent Ahriman.

+It is truly you,+ replied Tolbek, and Ahriman felt the surprise in the sending.

+Why have you come?+

Ahriman felt Tolbek’s mind harden, his thoughts hiding behind walls of protection.

+You must come with me.+

+To what end?+

Tolbek did not reply. Ahriman could see a glimmer of the truth through the fortress of Tolbek’s mind. There was anger, and sorrow, and bitterness. The emotions blazed like multi-coloured lights and tasted like ashes.

+I will not go with you,+ he sent. +I am not what I was and I will never allow myself to be again.+

+That choice is not yours.+

‘I am sorry, brother,’ said Ahriman.

The flame leapt from Tolbek’s hand. Ahriman froze as shock washed through him in a cold wave. For a fraction of a heartbeat he could not believe the suddenness of Tolbek’s attack.

He is my brother, he thought, and felt the warp coiling around him, held taut, waiting for his will to give it form. It was like regaining feeling in a forgotten limb. There will be no way back after this, he thought, and felt paths of cause and effect skitter at the edge of his awareness: the old divinations of the Corvidae, so long sealed off, returning like insects drawn to light.

Ahriman was still as the fire reached for him.

He raised a hand.

Tolbek was moving, his blade in his hand, its edge blinding bright.

The flame hit Ahriman’s palm and exploded outwards.

Ahriman’s mind was a still point at the centre of a storm. Beside him Xiatsis raised his hand, energy flowing to the gesture. Ahriman felt the threat and shifted the shape of his thoughts. Xiatsis came off the floor and split apart into armour fragments and tatters of flesh. One of the Harrowing initiates beside Gzrel had taken a step towards Ahriman, the teeth of his chainsword starting to spin. With a thought Ahriman flung the bloody cloud of bone splinters at the champion. A shard found an eyepiece and the champion went down, his chainsword shrieking to life in his dead man’s grip.

Tolbek had taken two paces towards Ahriman, fire still spraying from his hand. Ahriman’s mind reached across the warp, grasped the flame and pulled with his will. It felt like sinking his teeth into soft meat. Tolbek cried out in surprise and pain. The fire curled around Ahriman, spinning in a cyclone, turning faster and faster, roaring as it fed on the chamber’s air.

Ahriman wanted to laugh. He had refused this power for so long, had feared the doors it opened and the future it would draw him to, but now fate had found him and fear vanished. The sensation of battle and power surged through him in euphoric waves. He felt the aether respond to his mind, forming to his emotions and intellect. He could see the next few moments playing out in exact detail: the gasp of air from Maroth’s lips, Tolbek’s sword rising, the blood of the door guards bright on the floor. And through it all he could see his actions sliding through these moments like a razor slicing flesh. How could he have ever put this aside? The years of fear and doubt shrank in his mind as he soared above them on a god’s wings. The pressure in his head exploded and for a blink the chamber vanished…

… and the raven laughed, and the ground spiralled beneath him as he rose into the red sun…

Reality blinked back into place. Tolbek was charging, sword rising in a glowing crescent. At the chamber door the two Harrowing guards had started forwards. Maroth gasped, shaking where he stood, and Ahriman could taste the fear fuming from him in black clouds. Ahriman reshaped his thoughts and the fire storm enveloped Tolbek. Tolbek was burning, his robes charring, his armour glowing with heat. Tolbek spoke a word and the flame sucked into his body like water draining into sand.

Gzrel was fast, despite his bulk. His claws reached for Ahriman, lightning coating their tips. Ahriman turned to look at Gzrel and the claws sparked across a wall of invisible force.

The Harrowing initiate on Gzrel’s right began to move, his thoughts a feral babble of instinct and rage. A part of Ahriman’s mind locked around the champion’s thoughts and squeezed. The champion began to spasm…

…‘Higher, higher,’ called the raven, and he could feel the heat of the red sun on his body as the ground vanished beneath him…

One of the Harrowing by the door fired. The bolt-round skimmed Tolbek’s shoulder and exploded. He did not stop moving. Ahriman heard the telepathic command flick from Tolbek’s mind, and saw the light in the eyes of the two Rubricae flicker. They turned towards the door and fired. The bolt shells glowed as they burrowed through the air and hit the Harrowing guard. Suddenly there was blood splattering the floor. The guard screamed, blue flames spreading across his body from his shattered chest. The Rubricae fired again and fire swallowed the second guard’s head. Ahriman could feel the hunger in the flames as they burned the guards to grey ash.

Gzrel’s claws raked across Ahriman’s kine-shield, each blow shaking the sorcerer’s focus. He turned and looked at Gzrel, seeing the pulsing blood flowing beneath armour and flesh. Warp-twisted molecules spun in the dark liquid. Ahriman broke their bonds with a thought. Gzrel began to shake, then to howl. He scrabbled at the air, claws trailing blue sparks. His face bloated, black blood boiling from his mouth. The vents in his armour coughed and vomited foul liquid. The flesh sloughed from his face, but his skull continued to scream as he fell.

Cottadaron finally reacted. The twisted sorcerer sent a forked tongue of black lightning from his hand which cut through Ahriman’s kine-shield with a detonation of unlight. Pain bored into him, running up his nerves and across his skin. For an instant his focus almost slipped. He had misjudged Cottadaron; he would not make that mistake twice. Just behind Cottadaron the remaining Harrowing initiate was convulsing on the floor. Ahriman still held the warrior’s mind in his own, and he willed the other to rise. The effort made him shake and he felt a cry rising to his own lips. The champion came to his feet, swayed, and cut Cottadaron’s head from his shoulders. Ahriman ripped his mind out of the champion’s, and then the lifeless body was falling.

Tolbek took another pace closer, and all Ahriman could see was red, the red of death, the red of a bloated sun…

…the sun filled the sky. The ground was a memory forgotten beneath his feet. The raven was a silhouette of shadows against the sun. ‘Look,’ said the raven…

Tolbek was three strides from Ahriman, footsteps scattering blood drops from the floor. The sword in his hand was blue with heat. Arcs of lightning crackled across his scorched armour.

Ahriman was dimly aware of Maroth, still alive, cowering behind the throne. He reached out with his own mind, felt the soothsayer’s psyche like a cracked sphere in his mind’s grip. He squeezed and somewhere he heard Maroth shriek.

Pain filled Ahriman, sudden and bright. It felt as if a door long shut in his soul were straining at its locks. Images of raven feathers and dying suns pressed into his mind, trying to pull him back. He shut them out. Raised his hands with palms open, waiting for Tolbek…

…the surface of the red sun cracked, and flowed, and he realised that themolten fire was a sea of faces, and that each one was screaming…

The sword shimmered as it cut down towards Ahriman’s head.

The telekinetic blow was unrefined and desperate, but it worked. Tolbek’s sword twitched to the side, and Ahriman felt Tolbek’s focus break. Ahriman moved forwards, his open hands clamping over Tolbek’s grip on the sword as he pivoted. Tolbek flipped through the air, and Ahriman caught the movement with his mind and slammed his brother into the floor. He stamped down on Tolbek’s chest and felt something crack. Tolbek’s sword was in his hand, its sigil-etched blade still crawling with fire. On the floor Tolbek tried to come to his feet. Ahriman hammered his mind into Tolbek’s, breaking wards and mental shields with raw power.

+Who sent you, brother? How did you find me?+ Tolbek’s mind slid out of his grasp. Ahriman could feel something forming in Tolbek’s mind, even as he bored deeper trying to find truth. He punched through walls of thoughts and cut through dream structures. He was angry, and the anger gave his power a vicious strength. Tolbek retreated, vanishing into the darkness of his unconscious, taking the truth with him. In the stopped-clock reality of the throne room the chase was a space between heartbeats.

+To dust returned, brother,+ called Tolbek’s voice, and suddenly Ahriman was drowning in a sea of ashes. Tolbek’s mind was immolating, pulling itself apart as it retreated from Ahriman’s telepathic invasion. Tolbek’s laugh was the howl of the inferno.

Ahriman barely had time to pull his mind back. Tolbek’s armour cracked, glowing lines running over its surface. Then it flared with eye-searing light and crumpled to molten slag and black powder. Ahriman shook, a bitter taste of bile and blood filling his mouth. He could feel the power he had wielded washing through him, draining through his mind, and the image of the raven and the red sun beat on him and he could not close it out. The barriers in his mind and soul shattered. His mind, so long blunted to the call of the future, flooded with sights of the impossible. The vision took him and he rose on raven wings into a sky the colour of blood.

‘Look, look, you must see,’ called the raven, and it was flying into the red sun, and Ahriman was following, his wings burning to smoke. He saw.

He saw a warrior robed in blue and armoured in gold and sapphire standing beneath a white sky. The warrior reached up and pulled his helm from his head. Ahriman felt the idea of a breath catch in his throat. The eyes that looked back at Ahriman were blue, and they were his own. The image smiled with his mouth.

+You see,+ said the warrior, but it was the raven’s voice that spoke.

‘I know you, daemon,’ growled Ahriman.

+Daemon,+ laughed the warrior, but Ahriman heard the sound in his mind. +Once you would have said that such a word was a sign of ignorance.+

‘I remember,’ he snarled. ‘Your lies will fail, as they did before.’

+Are you so sure?+ said the warrior, its chuckle the call of carrion. +You call me daemon, yet what do you know of such things?+ The image in front of Ahriman changed, the features melting, the crystal blue armour splintering and reforming as the flesh beneath burst into a new form. Wings spread from the creature’s shoulders, the feathers fluttering between colours. The body grew taller, its back bending into a hunch, the limbs splitting. Delicate claws extended from fingers, and the fragments of the sapphire armour flowed across the towering form. The head that looked back at Ahriman was a mass of eyes without a mouth.

+You see,+ said the creature. +You remember this path even though you shunned it.+

‘No. Never,’ said Ahriman, his voice a shaking whisper. ‘It is a lie.’ The creature laughed in his head and he felt rage. He had seen the truth of the warp and the daemons that called themselves gods. They were lies, lies and temptation, and the ruin of everything. They were corrupters of truth.

His Legion had fallen, his father had fallen. He would sink, he would become less than a slave, but he would not fall to the lie as he had before. His fist lashed out before he realised what he was doing. It struck the creature and cracks radiated from the impact. Mirrored splinters cascaded down in a rain of fragmented images. Ahriman raised his head to shout but he had no mouth, only eyes. The raven’s laugh filled his mind and he was spinning through space, his body broken into countless pieces of mirror.

He was standing above a plain of black glass. Beneath him a thousand figures knelt. Some still had features of humanity: a head above shoulders, a face with eyes and mouth. But most were shaped by nightmare. Drooling mouths opened and closed across bodies that were at once glass and flesh. Arms sprouted, clutched and withered. Hooting calls filled the air.

Ahriman had to look, his eyes moving from figure to figure, searching for what he knew must be there. When he found it he stared. The mark of the Thousand Sons was clear on the shoulders of every figure.

+Your brothers,+ said the crow voice from behind Ahriman. +Or are they your sons?+

Ahriman said nothing. His eyes were still fixed on the serpentine sun symbol etched onto the shoulder of one of the figures.

‘This is a lie,’ whispered Ahriman.

+Is it?+ said the voice behind him. +Time is not fixed, nor is flesh, nor is fate.+ The voice paused and Ahriman looked down. His hands were claws. A shiver passed through him and he felt the feathers of his wings rustle at his back. +You could rule over all this,+ said the voice. +You could cast down your father and undo what you have done.+

‘The Rubric…’

+Can be undone.+

‘No,’ said Ahriman. You cannot listen, he thought to himself. He had opened the door to powers he had long shunned and the warp and its lies had found him. This is a lie, I must not listen.

+Yes, all can be changed, even the fate you created for your brothers, but in the undoing…+ The voice trailed away, as Ahriman looked over the things that had been his brothers, his Legion.

‘No, better dust.’

+But this will be. Can you not see?+ asked the voice, and the world turned. He was standing amongst the creatures that had been his brothers. The wet stink of their flesh filled his gorge with bile. He felt his limbs distorting, bone softening to clay, flesh to slime. He tried to speak again, to call the vision a lie, to deny the daemon’s claim, but he had no mouth. He was less than a beast, less than dust.

+Others will act, Ahriman,+ said the crow voice in his head. Above him and his brothers a figure in bone robes and red armour stood on a pillar of jade. Horns rose from the red figure’s temples and jutted from the jaws of its helm. +Others will tread the paths you do not. It is fated.+ The voice paused, and the scene began to whirl into colour and fading sensation. +But who walks those paths, who is the master of fate and who its victim: that is unknown.+

He was shivering. Somewhere he was shivering, and blood was running from his mouth and nose.

+Fate has come for you, Ahriman, as you feared it would and knew it must.+ The crow’s voice became fainter, and he could feel the hard inner surface of his armour. He was lying on the floor of the throne room. He could taste acid and blood on his tongue, and a blinding pain throbbed behind his eyes.

+Remember,+ chuckled the raven’s voice, as blood spread across the throne room floor and ash fell as silent snow.

IV

Oaths

His dead brothers watched him. The two Rubricae were silent and still. Charred flakes of debris drifted down to cover the red of their armour. The light in their eyes had dimmed to pale green in their helms. Ahriman watched them as he stood, waiting for a movement, for a sign of awareness. There was none. He could hear the spirits trapped inside the armour, confused and half blind, searching for direction. Without Tolbek to guide them they were little more than statues.

He glanced around the chamber. Fresh blood was still seeping from heaps of hacked flesh and armour. The battle with Tolbek and the slaughter of Gzrel and his vassals had taken fewer than five beats of a human heart. He needed to make decisions and make them quickly. There were at least a hundred more of the Harrowing on the Titan Child, and many more on the Blood Crescent. It would not be long before they discovered what had happened to their lord, and when they did… There was also Tolbek’s ship hanging close in the void, its crew waiting for their master’s word.

The pain in Ahriman’s head was growing, and his muscles were shivering with the after-effects of the vision. He tried to focus. The memory of what he had seen and heard boiled through his thoughts. He pulled his helmet off and spat a gobbet of blood and bile onto the floor. The air tasted of corruption, charred meat and exposed guts. He was alone on a ship of enemies with more enemies waiting in the void; he was exhausted, his mind and spirit drained. The only advantage he had was that no one knew what had happened here. Not yet.

A low gurgling and a gasp made him turn. Ahriman tensed, suddenly aware of another living presence in the chamber. It was close to the tangle of armoured corpses heaped over the throne. He moved closer, trying to ready his exhausted mind. When he was a step away from the throne he saw the figure and remembered that he had not killed every member of the Harrowing in the chamber.

Maroth lay curled on the floor behind the throne. His face was streaked with tracks of blood that had run from his eyes. He had drawn his legs up under him, his gauntleted hands clasped to his chest. Ahriman stepped closer and Maroth’s head twitched up. A blood-rimmed eye met Ahriman’s gaze and Maroth let out a hissing yelp. Ahriman did not need to read the sorcerer’s tattered aura to tell that something had snapped inside him and what remained was fractured and broken.

Space Marines were creatures made from men but forged to be weapons. They were made to endure in mind and body what mortal men could not, but Maroth had cut away at that strength, selling himself for petty power and lies. He had sacrificed too much and not understood what he had given. Ahriman’s invasion of Maroth’s mind had snapped what strength remained, and he felt brief pity at what this demigod warrior had allowed himself to become.

Then he remembered the creature held in the Titan Child’s cold vaults, and the empty pit of Astraeos’s eye. He raised his hand, gathering strains of emotion to his will. Crackling blue light arced around his fingers. It would be a kindness. The power built, and he remembered the raven’s laughter and the vision the battle had induced in his mind. He hesitated.

Maroth snarled, but Ahriman could see the fear in the broken sorcerer’s eyes.

The energy crackled to nothing on Ahriman’s fingers. Maroth’s wide eyes blinked and he began to shake. After a second the shake became a low gurgling chuckle.

‘Get up,’ said Ahriman quietly. Maroth continued to laugh from the floor. Ahriman lifted his hand and extended a fraction of his will. Tolbek’s sigil-etched sword leapt from the floor to his hand. He caught it and suddenly its point was at Maroth’s neck. The last sorcerer of the Harrowing went still, the choked-off laugh spluttering in his throat. ‘You do not want to die,’ said Ahriman. ‘Now stand or I will take your eyes and give you to your nightmares.’

Maroth stood, somehow looking withered and hunched despite his armour. He kept his blood-rimmed eyes on Ahriman.

‘I can keep my eyes?’ he said, and there was a tremble of madness in the words.

‘I will not take them, and you will live,’ said Ahriman. He glanced towards the immobile Rubricae and the sealed doors to the chamber. ‘But now you will follow me and do as I command.’ Maroth looked as if he were about to sneer, as if a fragment of his pride had surfaced in his mind. Then he met Ahriman’s gaze again and gave a smile that showed his filed teeth; they were pink with blood.

‘Where are we going,’ Maroth hesitated, and his tongue flicked across his teeth, ‘master?’

‘I am not your master,’ said Ahriman, walking towards the chamber doors. ‘And we are going to take this ship.’

They moved quickly through the Titan Child. Ahriman walked behind Maroth, so that anyone looking would see him in his normal place. Maroth twitched and murmured as he walked, and Ahriman had to growl threats into his mind so that he moved with his usual imperiousness when they passed others of the Harrowing. Fatigue pulsed at Ahriman’s temples whenever he psychically nudged Maroth.

He glanced at the soothsayer as they passed through an access hatch into a deserted tunnel. Maroth had started to drool, his spit flecked with green bile and blood. Ahriman quickened his pace and pushed Maroth in front of him. He wondered whether anyone would think to enter the throne room. Most would be too terrified of displeasing Gzrel, but someone might wonder why Maroth walked the decks but his master was nowhere to be seen. Every moment made discovery by the rest of the Harrowing more likely, and when they did uncover what had happened there would be carnage. Some of the Harrowing would assume that Maroth had decided to oust Gzrel and try to revenge their dead lord. Others would assume the same but see the opportunity to seize power themselves. Factions would form in seconds and the blood would flow. Ahriman had seen it happen in many warbands. If Gzrel had died at any other time Ahriman doubted that any of the Harrowing would have survived at all.

They slowed when they reached the compartment of the ship Gzrel had made his gaol. The corridors and small rooms already reeked of faeces, open flesh and fear. There the Harrowing, and a clutch of hunched mutant slave masters, stood close to the sealed blast doors. Ahriman barked telepathic orders at Maroth and he approached them with his usual air of contempt. Ahriman followed, Tolbek’s sword held loose in his hand. The Harrowing growled words of respect and the slaves abased themselves as they passed.

At the entrance to the cells another of the Harrowing stood. Hagos was his name, remembered Ahriman. He was massively built, and his chainaxe rested at his feet, its motor silent. Unhelmed, Ahriman could see the chewed and twisted flesh of Hagos’s head; he had lost half of it to a rival’s teeth. He watched them come, and Ahriman could sense the caution in the gaze. Uncomplicated, reliable and brutally disciplined, Hagos was the only one Gzrel had trusted to guard this door. He was also mute, and had a mind like a lump of iron.

Ahriman felt Maroth’s mind jump suddenly, and the soothsayer staggered, a high-pitched whine escaping his lips. Ahriman went still. By the door, Hagos had brought his chainaxe up. The weapon’s teeth remained motionless.

Ahriman had no choice. He reached his mind out and enveloped Maroth’s crippled psyche. The effort made lights dance in front of his eyes and he had to fight down sharp pain. He straightened Maroth, pulling his mouth open and breathing words into his mind.

‘Do you dare threaten me?’ spat Maroth, and pointed to Hagos’s collapsed lump of a face. ‘I will flay the skin from you, and feed the rest to the nether creatures of the warp.’ Hagos lowered his chainaxe. Ahriman made Maroth spit at Hagos’s feet, and the guard bowed his head as they passed through the sealed hatch.

The chamber stank. Without his helmet Ahriman could taste the congealing blood and stagnant air. Astraeos looked up as they entered, and the pupil of his remaining eye narrowed to a pinprick of hate as he saw Maroth. Ahriman heard the hatch seal behind them and let go of his hold on Maroth’s mind. The soothsayer slumped to the floor, and began to mewl and twitch. Ahriman felt a wave of nausea and fatigue bubble up as he broke the link. There was a sweat on his skin and he had to take a deliberate breath to balance his thoughts.

Astraeos was looking at him, his expression stony and his mind a caution-clad fortress.

‘I can free you,’ said Ahriman. Astraeos was silent, his eye still fixed on Ahriman as if weighing the possibility of the offer being true.

‘How?’

‘The leaders of the Harrowing are dead,’ said Ahriman, and saw Astraeos’s eye flare with surprise.

‘At whose hand?’

‘Mine,’ said Ahriman. Astraeos shook his head, the chains holding him clinking at the movement.

‘You did not do that to free me.’

‘No.’ Ahriman held Astraeos’s gaze. ‘But I will free you.’

‘To what end?’ growled Astraeos and there was laughter in his voice. ‘To be another lord’s pet? To be yours?’

‘To save yourself, and your brothers,’ said Ahriman, and he watched Astraeos’s aura flare and churn with conflicting emotion. He hoped he had the measure of the renegade Librarian, and that this gambit would work. If it did not…

‘But what is the price, Horkos?’ snarled Astraeos, loading Ahriman’s false name with contempt.

‘You will give me your oath, and follow my word,’ said Ahriman levelly. Astraeos did laugh at that, a full snarling laugh that hacked from his lungs and shook the chains.

‘You say you have slain your masters, so you will have few allies and less time.’

‘I need this ship, and the Harrowing on board must die. For that I need you and your brothers.’ Ahriman could see Astraeos struggling to contain warring instincts. ‘I can give you more,’ he said, and paused. ‘I can give you vengeance.’

Astraeos gave him a long hard look, then spat on the floor.

‘My oath and the oaths of my brothers are not goods to be bartered for.’

Ahriman nodded slowly. He had thought it might come to this, that he would have to take this step. He did not want to; Astraeos’s loyalty and defiance were qualities he admired, but there was no choice.

‘Very well.’ Ahriman raised Tolbek’s sword. He could feel the crystal at its core sing in tune with his mind. A thought drove cold light down the blade’s edge. He raised the sword and Astraeos followed with his eye, defiance hardening his face to pale stone in the sword’s light.

Ahriman cut, the movement and his mind flowing as one. Astraeos fell to the floor. Maroth yelped from the corner at the sound of shearing metal.

‘Now you are free,’ said Ahriman, looking down at the figure at his feet.

‘Curse you,’ whispered Astraeos, anger making his voice shake. He remained on the floor, kneeling, with the remains of his chains hanging from his wrists. ‘Curse you to the end of all things.’ Ahriman nodded, swallowing a breath. The sword’s glow reflected from his eyes, and he turned towards the hatch.

‘Come,’ he said quietly. ‘I need your repayment for the life I give you.’ Astraeos did not move. He was breathing hard and Ahriman could feel the Librarian struggling to contain his rage.

‘You have my oath, sorcerer. But give me one thing in return for its theft.’ Astraeos looked up. ‘What is your name?’

‘My name is Ahzek Ahriman.’

Astraeos nodded, without emotion or recognition.

‘We will need the ship’s mistress. If this insanity is to work we need her,’ said Astraeos and turned back to Maroth. The soothsayer was a hunched and foetal shape, clad in armour and tanned skin. Maroth’s jaw twitched as if he were going to speak but he said nothing, his black eyes jumping at every movement.

‘You can have him,’ said Ahriman, glancing from Astraeos to Maroth. ‘You may not demand vengeance but I give it to you.’ Astraeos got to his feet and flexed the scabbed skin of his healing hands.

‘No! You said I would live,’ yelled Maroth as Astraeos stepped forwards.

‘I did. You will live, and I will not take your eyes.’ Ahriman looked at Astraeos. Maroth went still, and then smiled up as Astraeos’s shadow fell over him.

‘Your eye tasted of the dung you are, and those of your brothers too,’ hissed Maroth, and licked his teeth. ‘You are a brotherhood of the half-blind.’ He laughed. Astraeos’s sudden rage filled the room. He bent down, his bare hands reaching for Maroth’s head.

Ahriman turned to the door. He closed his eyes briefly, seeing the raven soaring against the red sun, and the robed figure looking down on a Legion that was less than dust. He had hoped for so long that it would fade to a memory and then to nothing. Perhaps he had kept himself alive to live that punishment. Now he had chosen a different path. Someone was hunting him and fate had him in its claw. He had to know who and why. There were choices and possibilities ahead of him; he saw that even through the daemon’s lies. ‘If you do not tread those paths, others will,’ the daemon had said. Daemons lied, but he felt the truth of those words as if he had always believed them. There was no choice.

He opened his eyes and pushed his will into Tolbek’s blade again. He rapped on the hatch and cut down into the space beyond as it opened. Behind him, Maroth screamed.

Carmenta stopped in the darkness and let the silence surround her. Slowly she extended a hand and placed it against one of the pipes that ran along the narrow passage wall. The pipe vibrated under the brass of her fingers.

Hush, she thought. I will find a way to return soon. I will. I promise.

She had been so close to linking with the ship when they took her. So close, another second and she could have purged them from her and reduced their ship to molten wreckage. Instead she had watched as the Harrowing tried to claim her ship. They had turned the decks and holds into entrail-littered caves filled with smoke and the cries of the dying. Their feral enginseers swarmed through her ship’s innards like rats. But for all their defilement they had not succeeded in wakening the Titan Child. The ship remained silent, its systems sleeping. Carmenta felt a brief sensation that might have been the memory of a smile. It would never waken for them, not without her, and they had yet to realise that fact. The Harrowing had forged the slave collar around her neck, but had accepted that she simply maintained the ship for Astraeos and his brothers. If they considered her at all it was only as a creature whose knowledge of their new prize might be useful. She was grateful for their stupidity. They had had the wit to seal and guard the bridge, though.

The clinking of metal on metal broke her thought. She looked around and then realised that her brass hand was shaking, the fingers rattling on the metal pipe. She snatched her hand away. The shaking was getting worse with every passing hour.

A squall of angry data blinked across her vision. She still had a link to the ship in a sense, a thin thread of crude data fed directly to her implants. Through this link she could feel the slow dreams of the Titan Child and feel its pain. Every crude attempt by the Harrowing to wake the ship had sent pain stabbing through her body. At first that connection had been comforting but now it seemed only to make the lack of true connection worse; it was enough for her to share its pain but not enough to soothe it. She was also not certain how clearly her mind was working.

Bright light bloomed in her skull. She stopped and steadied herself against the wall.

She could not focus her thoughts. For a split second she panicked, her mind and memory suddenly a blank void. Then processes of sensation and thought returned. She looked around herself. She was standing in a narrow, pipe-lined corridor.

Behind her cracked mask her face was aching. She wondered whether it was the ghostly sensation of a smile, but she could not remember why. She reached a hand out to the wall of the passage. The metal was quiet under her touch, and then shivered as somewhere a system protested. For a second she had a sense that she had done this before, but she could not remember and it did not matter. All that mattered was that someone was hurting her. Again the metal vibrated under the touch of her fingers.

They will die, she thought. All of them. I promise.

‘Mistress Carmenta.’ The voice crackled into her ear. She went still. The voice had spoken directly to her using the vox-system implanted into her cranium. The ciphers for that system were known by very few.

She registered and identified the voice. It was Astraeos, but that made no sense. The Harrowing had him chained in a cell, and his brothers with him.

‘Astraeos,’ she said, the word passing from mind to vox without leaving her lips. For a second she wondered if his voice was real, or just a ghost of sound caught in her memory. Static hissed in her head, and then the reply came.

‘We are free, and we will take back the ship.’

Silence and static returned, and then she heard laughter ringing over the vox and down the passage. It took another beat of her machine heart to realise that the laughter was hers.

They took the ship by murder rather than battle. The Harrowing were scattered through the Titan Child and they took those they found by swift bloodletting. They worked through the dark, Thidias and Kadin moving ahead of Ahriman and Astraeos. They had taken armour and weapons from the Harrowing after Ahriman and Astraeos had silenced the guards. The armour was mismatched, poorly maintained, and stank, but it worked. To a glance they were Harrowing initiates, but it was a disguise that would never stand more than one look. Just by looking at them Ahriman could tell the difference. Astraeos, Kadin, and Thidias might look like Harrowing but they did not move like them. There was a ragged intensity in every Harrowing gesture, as if every twitch were a suppressed blow. Astraeos and his brothers moved with precise discipline, every turn and gesture formed from practice and focus.

When they encountered Harrowing or their slaves Ahriman would whisper confusion into their minds. Thidias, Kadin and Astraeos would then come out of the shadows, moving like wolves running silent towards prey. The damage done to their bodies was still healing, but it took away none of their killing edge. They slew with combat knives, ramming the points through neck joints down into the chest or through eye sockets. Blood would splutter from the wounds as the trio pulled the convulsing corpses into the shadows. The three one-eyed brothers said nothing all the while, but Ahriman noticed that they paused for a second to scoop out the eyes of every Harrowing they killed. Twelve Harrowing and six slave masters had died that way by the time they reached the antechamber to the Titan Child’s bridge.

Scorches from Ahriman’s banishment of the daemon still marked the brass-inlaid floor. There were five Harrowing pacing in front of the high arched doors. Ahriman knew them. Like the gaoler Hagos, they were mute, their flesh chewed by scars and their minds of dull iron. Gzrel had never trusted most of his followers, and the mute brutes were the only ones he allowed to guard what he valued. Ahriman mused briefly that Gzrel’s arrogance had meant that he had never extended that guard to his own life.

Ahriman stepped towards the guards. The space in front of the doors to the bridge was a semicircle of black metal that crawled with spiralling patterns inlaid in brass. Its ceiling arched to a shadow dome of armourcrys. The stars beyond glowed dimly alongside the dirty light of the Great Eye, its shape and colour a curdling whirl against black. In the dim light the guards took a moment to see Ahriman. He had Tolbek’s sword in his hand, its crystal core quiet, but his mind and body ready. Fatigue pulsed through him, but he had used the time since breaking Astraeos from the cells to pull himself into a state of calm focus. He would pay later, he knew, but only if they survived.

The guards turned to look at him. Ahriman kept walking.

One of the guards must have sensed something was wrong because the chainsword in his hands growled to life. Ahriman could see doubt and brute instinct flicker amongst the guards’ minds. They began to move, closing to the side and behind him. He formed a thought, let it multiply and take form in the aether. After years of denying such power it almost made him lightheaded.

‘Open the doors,’ he said quietly. The head of the mute guard directly in front of him twitched in what might have been a denial.

The sound of revving chainblades filled the air. He felt time slow as if it were his own heartbeat. His mind was like mirror-still water. He breathed out and with that breath the sword lit in his hand.

The first blow came from the front, an overhead cut with a chainaxe aimed at Ahriman’s head. It was fast, but nowhere close to fast enough. Ahriman pivoted to the side. The chain teeth roared within an inch of his face. The tip of Ahriman’s sword punched through the guard’s neck. Bright red blood spat from the wound as he pulled the sword free to meet the next blow. He could see the fight unfolding in front of him, a net of possibilities and his own movements meshed perfectly together.

The sword in Ahriman’s hand shook as it met the turning teeth of a chainsword. He willed fury into the sword’s core, and felt the chainsword shear in two. He stepped and turned, slicing low to cut the leg from beneath one guard. A broad-headed axe hacked at his head but he was already moving. He did not need to see his enemies, he had watched each movement already. He kicked backwards, and felt his foot slam into a chest that he knew would be there. He cut to his left. The sword shuddered as it ended a life. A shape moved in front of him, the muzzle of a pistol rising. He took a step forwards and cut off the hand holding the weapon, turned back and rammed the point of the blade into the groin of a guard rising from the floor. He cut again, blind but still finding a join in the armour. He stepped to his right, and a blow missed him, and he gave a backhanded cut that parted a skull to red ruin, and…

…the webbed-strands of the future dissolved into the present. For a second he felt nothing, and then his hand began to shake. He blinked and the chamber drifted back into focus. He was kneeling; on the ground around him, the dead lay still. Astraeos was walking towards him, unease dancing in his eyes.

‘We need the tech-witch now,’ said Ahriman between deep breaths. ‘Will she come?’

‘She is here already,’ said Carmenta.

It was like returning to the embrace of the mother she had never known. The cradle of cables snaked around her, and lifted her from the deck of the bridge. Her awareness of her body faded. Mind-links opened her to the systems of her ship. She was dimly aware of gasping as the beat of the plasma reactors became her own, as her skin became asteroid-pitted iron, her gaze the sweep of sensors through the void. Her mind and instinct briefly rebelled, fighting the alien instincts and sensations of the Titan Child. Then they were one, the ship and its mistress, their wills and senses bound together. It was like dying and coming to life, like plunging into ice water only to find you could breathe. You were not supposed to control a starship like this; its spirit was too large and too powerful, the intellect of a controller too weak to do anything but break in the grasp of such a machine. Blasphemy, they had called it, the crowning sin in a life of sins. To Carmenta it was the most precious thing she had ever known.

She felt the familiar touch of servitor feedback, and the grumble of waking systems. The background hum of countless signals filled her thoughts. She saw her corridors, chambers and launch bays through a thousand machine eyes. Looking out through pict-capture lenses she saw the bridge around her, the tiered banks of servitors and cogitators wrapped in red-tinged shadow. She saw the one she had called Horkos standing and looking up at the knotted cradle of cables that held her body. Her human body, at least. He was a creature of lies. She flicked between views of his face. Emotionless, smooth-skinned and bright-eyed. He was dangerous, and a liar. Astraeos called him Ahriman, and he was not the weakling she had thought. She had watched him kill five Harrowing in a handful of seconds, As if he could hear what she thought, he tilted his head; but of course he could not hear her thoughts. He was a thing of flesh, and she… She was a goddess of iron.

She refocused on preparing herself, cleaving off parts of her mind to ready her systems. Slowly the output of her reactors began to rise. Power flushed into her field generators. She was nearly ready, and then she would be truly free. She watched the other two ships hanging close to her in the void. Their shackled spirits made her want to weep in sympathy and laugh in contempt. The Blood Crescent was a dying wolf, its insides rotting, its spirit reduced to base instincts. The ship that had brought the emissary was a blade-like presence. Its weapons and engines were already armed, she noticed. A blunt statement and challenge. So obvious, so arrogant. She spread her consciousness through her systems, preparing dozens of subtle and gross actions.

There was one final matter to address.

‘Egion,’ she said in a voice that was a pulse of data. ‘Egion, wake. It is time again.’ Within the sensations of data she felt another psyche unfold. It was not her but it connected to her, brushing her thoughts like a hand touching hers.

‘I dreamed, mistress,’ came the reply. To her the voice sounded like the boom of ocean waves against cliffs. ‘I dreamed we were becalmed and taken by enemies. I dreamed of blood, and death, and fire across the stars.’

‘It was no dream, and now we must flee,’ she said.

‘Flight again,’ came the voice, and it was fainter as if already tired of speaking.

‘Yes, and you must guide me again.’ She could not see Egion as they spoke, there were no sensors or pict-eyes in his tower, but she could imagine him as she had last seen him: a stretched body of grey flesh, suspended in a lattice of brass, tubes feeding his failing flesh. He had no true eyes any more, and a tube filled his mouth and plunged down his throat. He dreamed more and more, his sense of time and place failing every time she woke him. He was her Navigator, however, and he had never failed her before. He had led her through the warp with the wrathful Mechanicus at her heels. When the rip tides at the edge of the Great Eye had caught her, he had steered her through the storms.

‘Very well,’ he said, and she could feel the fatigue bleeding from him into the mind-impulse link.

‘Thank you,’ she said. Egion did not reply, but she felt his psyche connecting to the controls that he would use to guide the ship when it was in the warp.

Somewhere out in the world of flesh and air she took a breath. Weapons, shields and engines waited, ready for her will to guide them. Her forge fathers had made the Titan Child as a warship, and she now shuddered with anticipation. The power built, held in check by her will alone. She spent an instant watching the Harrowing within her, the slavers and the tech-wrights scrabbling at her systems. In the void the emissary vessel held station, a spear shape of red iron. The Blood Crescent flanked her, so close she could feel the ragged output of its reactors like hot breath on her skin.

Burn, she thought, and the thought became reality.

Lines of plasma spat from her flank. She felt its release like air screaming from her lungs as she howled her anger into the void. Blast doors shut throughout the hull, sealing the Harrowing and their slaves into holds and corridors. Her engines lit in eruptions of glowing gas.

The plasma hit the emissary ship’s shields in a wash of blue-hot energy. The Blood Crescent remained immobile as if shocked to dumb stillness. Carmenta released the signal she had prepared. It was an order screamed in simple code.

‘We are betrayed,’ it said.

For an instant after there was no response, and she wondered if the Harrowing on board the Blood Crescent had seen through the lie. Then the Blood Crescent began to fire, its batteries roaring at the emissary’s ship.

The Titan Child was already moving, sliding away from the Blood Crescent. The plasma ducts inside her vented, spewing gas into the chambers and spaces holding the Harrowing. Part of her mind watched them die, screaming within their melting armour. The Harrowing enginseers that were interfering with her systems died as one. Lightning whipped through them from her machinery, fusing bionics and cooking flesh. She felt joy at the deaths.

The emissary ship came around, ramming through the debris which spilled from its collapsing shields. The Blood Crescent pushed forwards, a scattered wave of torpedoes spitting from its prow. The Titan Child began to curve behind the Blood Crescent whilst still firing on the emissary ship. Carmenta watched as the Blood Crescent’s torpedoes hit the emissary ship in a line across its flank. The red iron hull twisted and bulged with explosions. It began to list, its course an uncontrolled spiral. The Blood Crescent began to shed assault pods and boarding craft in a growing swarm.

The Titan Child continued to fire on the listing emissary ship until it was sliding past the Blood Crescent’s engines. Carmenta switched fire with a thought. The rolling broadside collapsed the shield envelope over the Blood Crescent’s engines, and her turbolasers lanced into the engine vents. For a moment the Blood Crescent slid on, and then fire bloomed along the back third of its hull. It went into a spiral, shouting surprise and rage at the Titan Child. Carmenta was not listening; the rush of plasma filled her senses as the Titan Child boosted away.

Once the battle was a speck of fading energy against the stars she activated her warp engines. As the psychic energies embraced the Titan Child she allowed her focus to weaken. She felt Egion take control of their course, and let her thoughts become the dreaming hum of Geller fields and life-support systems. She was running again, but she was free and that was enough.

Part Two

PATH OF LIES

V

Sons of Dust

Clouds of psychic energy boiled around the Titan Child. Towering faces, fangs, claws and eyes formed for an instant before dissolving back into the surge. The Titan Child rode the tides, unable to break from them and fighting not to be pulled deeper into the storm’s heart. Wrapped in its sparking Geller field, its engines drove it on.

Kadin and Thidias argued with Astraeos as the storm raged beyond the hull of the ship. As was the way of their gene-ancestors, they argued with blades. It was the test of a leader, as it had been since the founding of their Chapter. The challenge was word to word, blade to blade, without armour and with only the challenged leader’s own mind and skill at arms to aid him. What use were words if they failed in battle, or if they came from one too weak to defend his beliefs?

Astraeos blocked the slash to his throat with his sword. The blades met with a scream of sharp edges, and he let Thidias’s combat knife grind down his sword to catch against his crossguard. Thidias hammered his other fist up under Astraeos’s arms and into his gut. The Librarian felt something crack. Thidias hit him twice more, each blow hitting the same point with hammer force. Astraeos could taste blood on his own breath. He slammed his forehead into Thidias’s face. Thidias staggered, recovered and rammed his weight forwards, trying to free his knife. Astraeos twisted his sword and the force flicked Thidias from his feet as he gripped the knife. He hit the metal floor then began to rise. Astraeos let the tip of his sword raise a droplet of blood from Thidias’s neck, and looked into his brother’s face. A cold grey eye looked back at him from beside a glowing indigo lens set in a moulded brass fitting.

‘Mine is the failing,’ said Thidias, his voice a low rasp. Blood trickled down the warrior’s face, following the old pattern of scars that crossed his lean features. Astraeos nodded slowly, and moved the sword tip from Thidias’s throat.

At the gloomy margins of the chamber Kadin gave a mirthless chuckle as he paced forwards. Like Astraeos and Thidias, Kadin wore a loose tabard of grey fabric, the exposed flesh of his arms flowing with muscle beneath a network of scars. He was younger than Astraeos, but the scar tissue that covered his skin made him seem weathered and old, like a tree that has survived many storms. His face was broad, his features lost under the glossy skin of burn tissue. Kadin held a short sword loose in his left hand, the edges of its broad blade glinting with fresh sharpness. It was a blade for fighting close, where you could see the fear and fury in an enemy’s eye, and smell his blood as he died. A green lens shone from Kadin’s left eye socket, its setting clicking as it narrowed its focus. Carmenta had given each of them a machine eye to replace those taken by Maroth. Astraeos had been strangely reluctant to accept, as if part of him wanted to leave the empty hole as a reminder.

Astraeos took a breath. They had been keeping the council of blades for six hours. The fighting chamber was a long, low-ceilinged hold crammed between the engine and weapon decks. Weapons and armour lined the walls; some had been smashed to ruin by the Harrowing, but some gleamed as new. Huge cages of coals burned at the hold corners, filling the hold with heat, smoke and a dim red light.

‘You wish for rest, brother,’ said Kadin. He might have been smiling, but old scars twisted his mouth and his voice was as cold as snowfall. Astraeos shook his head. Kadin nodded.

Kadin lunged, whip-fast. Astraeos was not even aware of raising his blade but somehow he deflected the blow. Kadin was already out and circling. Two more cuts lashed out, low and fast, and Astraeos had to step back as the broad blade slit the air where his leg had been.

‘You trust him?’ said Kadin as he circled. Astraeos watched his brother’s green eyes, one true and one false, ignoring the fluid movements of the blade in Kadin’s left hand.

‘No,’ said Astraeos, trying to focus on angles of cut as the words of the debate boiled through his mind. The image in his own new augmetic was almost perfect.

Almost. Kadin’s blow whipped across from the right and he barely caught the movement in time. He flinched back and the blade ripped open his right shoulder.

‘You gave him our oaths but you do not trust him,’ growled Kadin. Astraeos focused on Kadin’s constantly moving shape. His right arm felt slow and weak as he raised his sword.

‘He gave us our lives,’ Astraeos said levelly, and cut as he spoke. The blow would have opened Kadin from neck to thigh but he was already spinning past the descending sword. Blood ran down Astraeos’s right arm. He had not even seen the cut. If it had been battle he would have sensed the blow without needing to see it, but the council of blades denied him his powers as it denied him his armour. ‘He freed us. It is the way of things. Salvation demands loyalty.’ Kadin lunged, his face twisted into a wolf snarl. Astraeos flicked his sword out to parry, but the scarred warrior had switched the blade between his hands as he moved. The true cut opened a red grin across his left thigh. Numbness spread down Astraeos’s leg.

‘He is a sorcerer,’ spat Kadin, ‘a witch in the service of false powers, a renegade to his own oaths.’

‘And what are we, brother?’ said Astraeos. And what should I have done, brother? The question flicked through his mind, silent and unspoken. He gave me life, and I must repay that gift the only way I can. We are nothing without the oaths we swear. We are the last of a brotherhood all but destroyed because others broke their word while we kept ours.

‘We broke no oaths,’ said Kadin, and Astraeos could see anger in his brother’s eye.

‘And we will not now,’ said Astraeos, but there was no fire in his voice. His broad head had started to dip, and his shoulders slumped. Blood streaked his arm and leg. He looked like a wounded bear, its strength leaking from it as the wolf circled.

‘He is an outcast,’ said Kadin.

‘Are we so different?’ Astraeos tried to cut as he spoke but the blow was too slow and Kadin was already pivoting past the point to slice at Astraeos’s unwounded arm. Astraeos suddenly pivoted and cut low, the false fatigue vanishing from him in an eyeblink. The flat of Astraeos’s sword scythed Kadin’s legs from under him. Kadin fell, and felt the point of Astraeos’s sword prick his chest before he could rise.

‘The decision is mine,’ said Astraeos. Kadin nodded once and Astraeos looked up to where Thidias watched from the chamber’s edge. ‘Ahriman has our oath, and that binds us.’ But to what end, Ahriman? What do you flee and what are you hurrying to find?

‘And if he proves unworthy to bear our loyalty?’ said Kadin, but Astraeos had turned his back, and stalked to where his bronze armour hung from brackets on the wall. In the glow of the fire cages he could see where the emblems and honours had been ground from the dull surface.

‘This council is over, the blades have spoken,’ said Astraeos, as he hung the sword on the wall and took down the first plate of his armour.

‘What of the one who took our eyes?’ asked Kadin, rising from the floor. Astraeos put his hand to his right eye socket, felt the silver and black that held the pale crystal of his new eye. He thought of Maroth curled on the floor, blind, weeping blood. How could a Space Marine become such a broken creature? Maroth was no longer a human, no longer a warrior; he was a mewling creature too vicious and spiteful even to pity.

‘Ahriman holds the strings of his life,’ said Astraeos. Thidias glanced at Kadin but both remained silent. Astraeos did not look at them.

In truth he agreed with them. He knew nothing of Ahriman besides his power and that other renegades hunted him. Oaths did not require trust, though. That was a truth the Imperium had taught him. He began to armour himself, locking plates together, building a second skin of metal over his flesh. Once he would have had serfs to aid him, but they belonged to a past long dead. They were silent while the only sound was the scrape of ceramic and metal. Astraeos finally straightened, bronze-plated once again, and began to walk to the chamber’s sealed doors.

‘Where are we going?’ said Kadin from behind him.

I do not know, brother. I do not know where our oath will lead us. The thought formed in his mind but he left it unspoken as he walked from the chamber.

The throne chamber was silent and stank of decay and ashes. The candles had long burned to pools of fat, and the only light came from a cracked glow-globe held by a hunched servitor that stood just behind Ahriman. Gzrel’s corpse lay slumped across his throne. A grey fungus had sprouted from his flesh and armour, reducing him to a formless heap. A carpet of fine white stalks had spread across the other bodies. Ahriman thought he saw the long strands twitch and sway as the light fell on them.

Ahriman’s eyes lingered for a moment on the pile of soft ash at the floor’s centre. It still lay as it had fallen, the outline of a human form in grey powder. He thought of Tolbek and for a second he closed his eyes.

The guilt and anger had begun as the Titan Child dived into the warp. Perhaps it had been there before, blotted out by the drive for survival, numbed by the euphoria of wielding powers he had so long denied to himself. He had walked from the bridge and lost himself in the tangle of the ship’s passages, letting his mind play through what had happened, the vision, the emissary, what he had done and why. As the intoxication had failed the guilt had come, pouring into his thoughts like a black cloud. He had failed, he had been weak.

I should have let it play out, he thought. As he watched the servitor take more clicking steps into the chamber, the yellow light of the glow-globe clasped in its hand revealed more signs of violence and decay. The light reflected back from something amongst the ruin that glinted like polished crystal. He took a step closer, and bent down. Then he realised it was a pair of eyes, glassy and dead, staring from Gzrel’s fungus-masked face.

I am a sorcerer, he thought, looking into the eyes. The powers that I wield are the powers of daemons and cruel gods. There is no higher ideal, no redemption by knowledge. He let out a shaking breath. Anger rolled through him, feeding on his guilt and feeding it in turn. I have failed again, I am weak and I did not have the strength to let my fate take me. For an instant he thought of walking to an airlock and letting the storms swallow him.

He looked up from Gzrel’s empty stare into the eyes that he had been avoiding since he entered the chamber. The two Rubricae stood where they had been. He could feel the ghost essences within each suit of armour whispering at the edge of his mind. Anger hissed in those whispers, like shouts of frustrated rage caught and scattered by the wind. He stood and walked until he was standing in front of them, his eyes level with theirs.

Rubricae battle plate was deep crimson, edged in silver and hung with strips of papyrus. Ahriman’s eyes flicked over the armour of one, picking out small marks and signs that spoke of the warrior who had been the flesh within the metal. They were few, but enough for him to name who the Rubricae had been in life. With the name came a face, a tone of voice, and a memory of a quick laugh and wry smile. The Rubricae had been one amongst a Legion, but Ahriman could remember the names and faces of all his brothers.

He looked closer at the armour, looking with his mind as well as his eyes. Sigils snaked through the armour, in places etched into the ceramite, in others woven invisibly into the deep substance of every plate and join. To Ahriman they looked like chains of blue fire. From within the armour he felt the spirits thrash at their bindings, like caged predators smelling the blood of their captor.

Slowly, hesitantly, he raised his hand, and reached out with his armoured fingers. He touched one of the pauldrons.

A chill spread across his hand. Ahriman tried to pull his hand away, but not quickly enough. The Rubricae’s fist closed around his wrist. He felt the plates of his own armour buckle, and heat spread from the grip. The Rubricae’s eyes blazed at him. He tried to pull away, but it drew him close.

+Ahriman,+ hissed a voice in his mind. He could feel the pleading and anger in the voice, grating together like iron and stone.

‘I…’ He began to speak, but the grip grew tighter. The binding sigils on the Rubricae’s armour shone brighter and brighter. Ahriman’s arm was burning with heat as the ceramite under the Rubricae’s grip buckled. A second hand gripped his neck and lifted him off the floor. The iron fingers began to close slowly on his throat.

+Ahriman,+ said the voice again, and its whisper overwhelmed his thoughts.

He was drowning, he could not breathe, he could not feel, he was blind. He was tumbling through a universe of darkness and shadow, of glimpsed futures and broken memories. He could not remember where he had been, or why he had been. He remembered a figure in red armour, a blue sky streaked with purple as the sun set. There was battle, an axe slicing towards his head and he was twisting with the blow, ramming his own blade up under the beard of the warrior that would have killed him. There was blood so bright and vivid he thought he could feel it spatter his cheek.

The image faded.

Where had the image gone? What had it been? Was it a memory of his past? Had he been the killer or had he died, his blood glistening in the sun? He tried to remember the image to hold onto it, but… What image? There had been an image, a memory, it had been… But he could not grasp it again.

Darkness.

He tried to breathe, but could not. He was drowning and the darkness wrapped him tighter as he spun on, falling, falling without end.

Where was he? His name, what was his name? He wanted to shout, but he was drowning in the blind dark. His name…

‘I am Ahzek Ahriman.’ He felt the words heave from his own throat. The darkness blinked away, and he was looking back into glowing green eyes set in a high-crested helm. The fingers around his throat were still closing. He remembered an axe falling, and blood in the sun. He remembered searching for something to cling on to as he drowned in forgetfulness. He remembered reaching for his name.

He looked into the eyes of the Rubricae, and spoke the name of the warrior it had once been.

‘Helio Isidorus.’ The Rubricae went still, and Ahriman gasped in its grip. He understood; he had not just reduced his brothers to spirit and dust, he had shattered their identities. Over time the touch of the warp would have changed their flesh and dissolved their minds into madness, but Ahriman had broken everything they were and everything they had been at a single stroke. The armoured figures in front of him were shells around empty spaces, like a human silhouette scorched onto a wall by a bomb blast. These sons of the Rubric were worse than dead; their existence had been annihilated.

I did this, he thought. I thought I was saving them, and I did worse than destroy them. A black wall of emotion washed back through him. He had fallen and taken his brothers with him. Knowledge did not set the mind free, but chained it with pride and dragged it into darkness. He looked at the ashen remains of Tolbek on the deck.

Your brother’s fate is your fate, the daemon in the vision had said.

I have to know, he thought. He could have closed his eyes to the past and to the fate of what remained of his brothers, but not now. Something was reaching from Ahriman’s past to pull him into a future he did not want to see. He had to find out who and why. The decision was heavy with anger. Someone had forced him to this, and was twisting his fate. He would not submit to that.

He looked up at the Rubricae that held him, and willed it to release him as his mind spoke its name.

+Release me, Helio Isidorus. Release me, my brother.+

The arm let him down slowly, the fingers opening one after another. He looked at the second suit, his eyes taking in identifying details, his mind tasting the spirit within. It had remained immobile but he could feel its spirit pressing against its bindings. Its true name came to mind and he whispered it along with its brother’s.

+Helio Isidorus. Mabius Ro.+

Both suits turned towards him as one.

I will not bind them to me, he thought. They were once my brothers, and they will never be my slaves.

+Remain here,+ he sent. He backed to the bronze doors. The light-bearing servitor followed him with shambling steps. When he reached the door he raised a hand as if in farewell. Flame sprang from the corpses, spreading from one of the dead to another until the throne chamber was ablaze. The two Rubricae stood amongst the spreading flames, the red paint blistering and peeling from their armour. Ahriman stepped through the thick metal doors and placed his hands on either side, ready to push them shut on the burning room. He looked back at the two suits of armour that were becoming blackened statues amongst rising flame.

+Dream, my brothers,+ said Ahriman, as he pushed the doors closed. They stared at him unmoving as the doors sealed and the room became a furnace.

‘He will betray us.’ Kadin paused after the words, watching Thidias for any reaction. There was none. Thidias knelt over the disassembled components of his bolter, his lips moving in a silent stream of words, his eyes closed. He wore no armour, just a robe of ash-grey fabric, held at the waist by a knotted length of rope. The guts of his bolter glistened with fresh oil in the light of a half-burned candle which floated on a brass suspensor disc. The chamber was small, barely long enough for Kadin to have lain down in. Its ceiling was low and its hatch narrow. The paint and rust on the walls had been stripped back to the bare metal. Strips of parchment hung from rivets across the wall. There was no bed or pallet, just the hard metal of the floor and the wargear stacked in one corner. Kadin could smell gun oil and incense in the thickly circulating air. He shifted uncomfortably. He did not like Thidias’s chamber, it was like walking into a memory he would rather forget.

Thidias’s lips went still, and he opened his one good eye. The indigo lens of the bionic flickered and then shone bright and strong. Slowly he looked up at Kadin.

‘The blades have spoken, the matter is decided,’ said Thidias.

‘Astraeos–’

‘Leads us,’ said Thidias, his voice abruptly iron-hard. In the candlelight he suddenly looked old, as if the shadows pooled more deeply in his face. ‘Astraeos leads us, and I follow him as I swore to when he returned to take us from the fire.’ He paused. ‘As you swore, too.’

‘But you doubt this decision,’ said Kadin, his armour clicking as he gestured. ‘I saw it in the council.’

Thidias gave a small shrug and looked back down at the weapon parts laid out in front of him. Carefully he reached down and picked up a part, then another, his hands moving together in an accelerative rhythm as the boltgun formed in a stream of metallic clicks. The final catch snapped into place, and Thidias mouthed another litany of silent words over the weapon and placed it down. He looked up.

‘I questioned, as was my place,’ said Thidias, and shook his head. ‘There is nothing more to say, brother.’

Kadin spat, and turned away. He had never liked Thidias, not really. They were brothers, the last of a shrinking circle of brotherhood, but that was not enough.

‘You did not believe we should follow this course,’ said Kadin. He could feel his lips curling back from his teeth. He turned back and pointed down at Thidias. ‘I saw it. Do not lie to me, brother.’

Thidias did not move, but Kadin felt something change, as if his brother’s stillness had hardened.

‘Ahriman stole our oaths. He is a trickster and a thief of loyalty.’

‘The matter is decided,’ said Thidias, and there was ice in his voice.

‘Three, brother.’ Kadin nodded as he spoke, and his hand ran across the scoured chestplate of his armour. ‘Three out of a thousand. That is the fate our honour and words bought us.’ Thidias did not move, his true eye and glowing augmetic a blank mirror to Kadin’s stare. After a second Kadin licked his lips and spoke. ‘You of all of us must see what will happen if we allow ourselves to follow–’

‘To follow the only things that are left to us,’ said Thidias.

‘If we trust Ahriman, it will destroy us!’ roared Kadin.

Thidias laughed, a loud cold laugh that filled the small chamber like a roll of thunder. Kadin froze as if struck.

‘No, my brother.’ Thidias shook his head, and there was no laughter in his voice. ‘We were destroyed a long time ago. We became nothing the moment we did not die in the pyre of our home world. We are enemies to everything we fought for.’ Thidias stood, and turned to set the bolter back on a wall bracket. Kadin stared at him, not knowing what to say. ‘There is nothing left of what we were, not truly. You want to break our vows, to flee again, but it will not save us, brother.’

Kadin’s mouth opened, but no words came.

‘We were born in the dark, but knew the light of the sun.’ Thidias’s voice stopped Kadin with his hand on the hatch. ‘Now we are falling, and the sun is a vanishing memory.’ Thidias paused, and Kadin turned back. His brother stood facing away, his right hand still resting on the case of the bolter in its bracket. For an eyeblink he remembered Thidias standing on the highest spire of the fortress-monastery, his cloak rippling in the wind as the night sky above burned with the fires of judgement. ‘I will never see that sun again,’ said Thidias, his voice low, ‘but I would die remembering that I knew its light for a time.’

Kadin looked away after a long minute, and left in silence.

Ahriman found Maroth lying curled in the dark before the door, his helmet sealed in place, the tatters of his skin cloak pale with frost. He had not been looking for the broken sorcerer, he had not even been intending to come to the bound daemon’s cell, but his feet had led him as if something hollow in his soul had drawn him into the quiet and the dark. When he had realised he was close to where Maroth had kept the bound daemon he had almost turned back. Then he had heard the sound, a low murmur of pain carried to his mind as if by a breeze. For a second he had stood still, his mind straining to catch another scrap of the psychic noise. The sound came again, and he had followed it to find Maroth lying at the threshold of his creature’s prison.

Ahriman moved forwards and bent down next to Maroth.

‘I came back to it,’ said Maroth, his voice wet and lisping across the inter-armour vox. ‘I came, but I cannot see it.’

Ahriman starred into the red glow of Maroth’s eyepieces. Behind the glowing crystal there were no eyes, just the two ragged pits that Astraeos had left. Ahriman thought of the kilometres of corridors and passages he had walked to reach this point.

‘How did you find your way here?’

Maroth shook his head and pulled back, as if trying to shrug away the question. Ahriman began to extend his mind towards Maroth.

The growl filled Ahriman’s mind. He reeled back. It felt as if a mouth had opened on the inside of his skull. He could hear grating teeth, and feel the heat of a bloody breath on the skin of his thoughts. His mind snapped shut, his psychic senses recoiling back behind walls of will.

The sound was all around him now, rumbling louder. It was not a growl, he realised. It was a chuckle, the laugh of a predator at the sight of its prey. Ahriman looked to the rune-marked hatch above Maroth’s curled form. Maroth twitched and made a sound like a frightened animal but Ahriman did not even look at him. The lock on the hatch was shattered, and a sliver of darkness showed at its edge. The blood hammering in his ears suddenly seemed touched by ice.

The hatch swung outwards, the darkness within opening wide. The presence of the creature hit him in a wave of sensations: the taste of blood, the pain of ice burning flesh, the black of water in caves that have never been touched by the sun. Psychic fingers pawed across his thoughts, their touch like memories of nightmares, trying to pull him down into pain and blankness.

He forced his mind to stillness. The effort made him shiver, but the whispers faded, and the clammy presence became a weak scratching. His sword was in his hand without him realising he had drawn it, its runes blazing with cold light.

‘It did nothing,’ cried Maroth over the vox. ‘I came back to it, but I cannot see it.’

How did he find his way here with no eyes? The question echoed in his mind even through the rising tide of sensations flowing from the open hatch.

‘He wanted to see,’ cackled Maroth. ‘I told him what I had done to his brother, and he wanted to see it more than he wanted my blood. He saw for me, he led me and I him: his eyes were my eyes.’

Something moved in the yawning space beyond the hatch. Ahriman brought his mind into the sword, his will shaping to the blade’s edge. He stepped forwards and into the blackness. The dark folded over him. For a second he saw nothing; then shapes coalesced in the dark, lines and texture forming in the glow of his sword. The bound daemon was there. He could taste its presence without needing to look at it.

Astraeos stood looking up at the creature which wore the skin of his brother. He was armoured and a grille-mouthed helm hid his face. A bolter was clamped to his thighplate, and a sword hung in a knotworked leather scabbard at his waist. His hands were empty and hung at his sides, the fingers relaxed and open. Ahriman did not lower his sword.

‘Astraeos?’ said Ahriman into the vox.

Astraeos’s head turned to face Ahriman. In the darkness the glow of his eyepieces seemed like holes cut in the night. Above him the daemon bound into Cadar’s flesh twitched in its web of chains.

+You knew of this,+ sent Astraeos, and his thought voice was like the low, dangerous growl of a wolf. +You knew, and you kept it from me?+

Ahriman’s mind was arcing, tumbling through possibilities, extending his psychic senses as far as he dared to feel the shape of Astraeos’s mind, to see if there was something else where his soul had been. After a slow beat of his hearts, he let out a breath and spoke into the vox.

+Yes.+ It was all he could say. +Maroth created it, but I kept it and I did not tell you of it.+

+What is it?+

+A daemon of a kind. Powerful, but its power is like the hunger of a starved wolf, it thirsts only for destruction. The flesh is a host, a vessel for its bottled soul.+

+Cadar… +

+He is dead,+ sent Ahriman. +He was dead before this was done. I hope he was, at least.+

+There must be something of him left inside.+

Ahriman shook his head.

+ Nothing that will want to live again.+

Astraeos looked up at the creature, and Ahriman followed his gaze. It was looking at them with silent malevolence.

+There must be a way.+

Ahriman felt something cold circle his spine, and remembered the dead eyes of the Rubricae looking at him from out of the spreading flames in the throne room.

‘This is no longer your brother. It is just a creature, just a weapon.’

Astraeos moved before Ahriman could form a thought. Astraeos was behind him, pulling him off his feet so that his weight hung on his neck above the edge of Astraeos’s sword. He felt Astraeos’s mind tighten around him, the force of his telekinetic grip raising sparks from their armour. Ahriman went still, shutting off his mind.

+Is that why you kept him?+ growled Astraeos, his thoughts biting into Ahriman’s psyche. +So that you had a weapon if we turned on you and your powers failed?+

Why did I not tell him? thought Ahriman. Why did I not tell Carmenta to cleave this portion of the ship’s hull off, and let it spin away into the void? His thoughts scrambled for answers. Nothing. It was as if he had not thought once about the creature since Maroth had first shown it to him, as if his mind had avoided the memory like water flowing around a stone. As if he had forgotten.

Astraeos tensed, and the blade-edge dug into Ahriman’s neck joint and he heard the hiss of escaping air. Ahriman’s thoughts spun apart, then snapped back together. He blinked. He could kill Astraeos, even now, even with the sword at his throat, but then he would have lost an ally who might yet be his again.

‘I would never use it as a weapon,’ said Ahriman. ‘It must never be free.’ Red atmosphere warnings lit in his eyes. Air and heat were venting around the edge of Astraeos’s blade like blood from a wound. ‘But if there is a way to undo what has been done to your brother I will find it. You have my oath.’

For a long moment nothing moved in the chamber, other than the gas hissing from the neck of Ahriman’s armour and the bound daemon’s chains flexing as if in rhythm with a slow-beating heart.

Ahriman felt Astraeos’s blade come away from his neck, and his grip relax. Ahriman straightened.

+Hope,+ sent Astraeos. Ahriman could feel anger seeping between the gaps in Astraeos’s mind. +The cruellest poison.+

Ahriman watched Astraeos turn and walk from the chamber in silence. After his silhouette had vanished Ahriman looked up at the bound daemon, his eyes running up the lengths of chains and across the grey flesh up to the face that was still so like Astraeos’s. The creature stared back, a smile pulling at the corner of its mouth. It licked its lips. Ahriman turned after a long moment and walked after Astraeos.

Kadin and Thidias looked at Astraeos as he entered the fighting chamber. The coals had dimmed to red cinders in their black metal cages, and the light of the glow-globes lit along the roof’s apex had spread cold to the chamber’s corners.

‘Brother?’ said Thidias, looking up from a sheet of vellum spread over the floor. His hand held a silver-feathered quill, its tip wet and black. Astraeos could see Cadar’s name looping through the rows of verse on the parchment. He felt the skin of his face stiffen under Thidias’s gaze; he felt as if the old warrior were looking into him, as if what he had seen and said was screaming from his soul.

‘Brother?’ said Thidias again, the question softer, edged with concern. Kadin had been working his way down the length of the chamber, cutting the air with a deactivated chainsword.

They can see it in me; they can see the truth boiling to the surface, thought Astraeos. Cadar’s face, smiling at him with razor teeth, flashed through his mind, and he remembered the dead black of the empty eyes. He felt the anger and pain surge through him with the rising beat of his hearts. If I am going to tell them it has to be now. I have to tell them. He felt his mouth open and his tongue curl to form words.

But they will not understand, said a voice in his head. They will not understand why you let the broken sorcerer live, why you hold to the thread of hope that Ahriman will keep his word.

Kadin stared at him for a second and then shook his head and turned away, raising his chainsword to begin his pattern of cuts again. Thidias stood, his gaze not moving from Astraeos’s face.

‘What has happened?’ said Thidias, taking a step forwards.

They must see. I must tell them. They are the last of my brothers.

But what if they think that there is no way of saving Cadar? asked his other voice. What if they say that Cadar’s remains should be purified by fire? What if they reject Ahriman’s promise?

He looked down at the parchment spread on the floor, Cadar’s life spread across it, his deeds, his virtues and a few of his failings: everything that made him.

Astraeos closed his mouth. He felt his face become calm, the beat of his hearts slowing, as if a mask of ice had formed over his skin and slipped into his veins. He felt his head shake and a hard-edged voice came from his mouth.

‘Maroth is not to be harmed, and Ahriman’s word is to be followed in all things without question.’

Thidias glanced at Kadin, a frown on his face. Kadin’s chainsword gave a final whisper as it cut the air, and he became still. They were both looking at Astraeos now; he could feel their confusion, and something else, another emotion buried deep under the surface thoughts of both.

‘This matter was settled.’ Thidias said carefully, looking back at Astraeos. ‘The blades have already spoken.’

‘You will swear this here and now,’ said Astraeos, and he could hear the cold iron in his own voice.

‘Brother…’ began Thidias.

‘Swear it.’ Astraeos’s voice rang through the long chamber. Kadin and Thidias watched him for a second, and then knelt. Astraeos heard the sounds that came from their mouths, but the words seemed to fade as he looked at their bowed heads. In his mind the daemon was smiling at him with Cadar’s face.

She watched Ahriman as he entered through the round hatch. He had taken two steps before he looked at the corner where she waited. Had she made a noise? She thought she had been silent, but perhaps he could see and sense her in other ways. Perhaps he knew she would be here before he opened the hatch. She remained still even as his eyes fastened on her cracked face beneath the tattered hood of her robe.

She blinked, then realised he had moved from by the door. Then she remembered that she could not blink. Her optical systems must have briefly failed. When she separated from the Titan Child she often experienced malfunctions in her augmented components. Recently they had become worse and more frequent. He was looking at her; she processed the expression and identified it as puzzlement.

‘I see that you are not linked with your ship,’ he said. It was not what she had expected him to say. Humans, even Space Marines, did not react well to unexpected invasion of the spaces they saw as their own. She shook her head, then stopped the gesture.

‘Passing through the warp, it…’ She searched for a word but could find nothing that matched the fever-like sensation of being joined with the Titan Child as it rode the tides of the warp. Even the short periods of connection just after entering or before leaving the warp left her shaking or bleeding from her interface ports. ‘It is unpleasant,’ she finished.

‘It would be,’ he said, moving to fill and light a bowl of oil.

‘How–’ she began, but he chuckled humourlessly.

‘I see much that others cannot, and much that I do not wish to see.’ He waved his hand over the bowl of oil and flame licked up from the rippling surface. ‘What you do is an abomination to the spirit of such a vast machine. That is what your tech-priesthood would say, or at least it was when I knew them.’

‘They are not my priesthood,’ she spat. He glanced up at her, a quick flash of blue eyes, then he looked back to the flames that danced across the oil.

‘Of course not, otherwise you would not be slaving a warship to your will and travelling with a vagabond handful of renegades on the edge of the Great Eye.’ She heard a feline snarl, and then realised that it had come from her throat. Her mechadendrites had snapped out from her shoulders, rearing like snakes ready to strike.

What is happening? She felt detached as if she were watching herself from afar. She felt her limbs vibrating with rage, but she was calm. No, came a thought. Part of you is calm. Another part is in the grip of anger.

‘I wish you no harm, mistress,’ he said slowly. His voice was perfectly calm. ‘I do not want to know why you are a renegade. I have seen enough and can deduce the rest. I will not take the ship from you.’ He paused. ‘But you are walking a dangerous path, and trying to grasp power that might destroy you. A mind cannot exist as yours does, split between two realms, and survive whole. The flesh or the machine, one must win.’

I am strong enough, she thought.

‘I am strong enough,’ she said, and realised that she controlled herself again.

‘Perhaps.’ Ahriman shrugged. ‘I do not judge you, mistress. There are limits to my hypocrisy.’ He looked away, an expression she did not understand passing over his face. ‘You are right, though, you have no reason to trust me.’ He was silent for a moment, then reached out and ran his armoured fingers through the oil flames, his eyes fixed on them as they blackened and the chipped paint blistered. ‘I will never take your ship from you. I swear that to you.’

She believed him, but was not sure why. There was a weariness to his words and bearing that reminded her of something she could not quite place.

Perhaps you just want someone to trust, said a voice at the back of her thoughts. Perhaps it’s that you need to believe him.

‘I am sorry,’ she said, then paused. ‘Without you I would not have my ship back.’

He nodded, and looked as if he were uncertain what to say.

‘You were running, weren’t you?’ she asked suddenly. He looked up at her. ‘Then whatever it was that you were running from found you.’

‘Yes,’ he said, and she thought she recognised a tired human smile on his face.

‘And now? What are you going to do now?’

He shrugged.

‘I try to find out why.’

‘Why not keep running?’

He looked away, his mouth half open as if a reply had died on his lips.

‘Because I fear what might happen if I turn away again,’ he said at last. She looked at him for a long minute, the black-shrouded witch and the blue-eyed demigod.

‘I will take you where you need to go,’ she said at last. He bowed his head once.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

A chuckle bubbled from her throat. The sensation of it made her cold; she had not laughed for years and did not know why she did so now. ‘But where do you want to go? Do you even know where to start?’

‘Yes,’ he said, pausing to stare again into the fire. ‘I begin with the past.’

VI

Memory’s Ashes

Alone in his chambers Ahriman closed his eyes and fell back into his memory. The sensations of his body dimmed in his awareness. His heartbeat and breathing slowed to almost nothing. His thoughts dropped away and quiet blackness filled him.

‘Memory is a machine.’ Ahriman remembered Pentheus tapping his ivory cane on the floor to emphasise each syllable. The old scholar had loved the sound of his own voice even though it had been dry with age. Pentheus had given Ahriman and his true brother their first lessons in logic, philosophy and rhetoric when they were still boys on Terra. Ahriman and Ohrmuzd had called him a desert lizard, but never to his face, and they had taken every word of his lectures to heart. ‘Most people treat it like something that is fixed in quality,’ Pentheus had continued, wiping sweat from the wrinkles of his face. ‘They forget and consider it natural. They remember useless details and do not understand why. They miss the fact that they have neglected one of the greatest devices of the human mind. Memory is knowledge, and knowledge is power.’

Ahriman smiled at the recalled words, and began to walk to the palace of his own memory. At first it was like walking down a dark passageway, the light of the present growing dimmer in the distance. Then the darkness vanished and he was standing on white marble steps under a blue sky and bright sun.

He turned away and looked up. The palace unfolded towards the sky above him, its white walls glittering in the light. Towers rose from its tiered floors, and its painted wooden shutters had been thrown open to allow the wind to blow through its halls. The palace had never existed in reality, of course. It was a construct, built from millions of memories layered together: the steps were his memory of the ascent to the White Temple of the Ionus plateau, the sky’s colour and heat had been Prospero’s, and the wind had stirred the air of his childhood.

At his back, the sun’s heat prickled sweat from his skin. He wore no armour here, just the memory of a simple white robe. He took a step forwards, noting the warmth of the stone beneath his feet. Such details were important. Memory was built on more than images or words, it was a web of sensations linked to a point in time. Remember the smell of a place and you would see it. Remember the exact shade of a flower’s petals and you would recall the name of its species.

Ahriman walked up the steps to the palace doors, and pushed them open. The corridor beyond was cool. Mirror-lined shafts opened in the roof every few metres. Rugs of red, white and blue softened the floor under Ahriman’s feet as he stepped forwards. Doors lined the corridors on both sides. Each was different: some were grimy plasteel and looked like they should have belonged on a starship or inside a bunker, others were painted wood, or glass, or burnished metal. There were hundreds of doors in this corridor alone and tens of thousands more in the rest of the palace. Once it had grown in size with every day, new floors and rooms layering on top of his oldest and deepest recollections. Now his mind had added a thin layer of dust to every surface as a sign of his neglect.

As he walked down the corridor he reflected that the palace was another mark of hypocrisy. He had spent so long hiding and forgetting, but the palace still stood, the memories within preserved. In truth he had never considered dismantling it; though there were doors he had never opened since he had first sealed them.

Sounds filled his ears as he walked past each door. He heard voices of people long dead, snatches of conversations, and the muted rumble of battles. Part of him wanted to stop, to go through each door and relive the past contained within. He walked on.

The first door he sought was bare grey stone, unadorned except for a silver ring that hung from a loop. Ahriman looked at the door for a long time. It was the last door he had added to the palace. He took the ring in his hand and pulled. The door opened and he stepped into the space beyond.

The chamber was open to the sky. The light of two red suns touched Ahriman’s face and sweet, incense-perfumed air filled his lungs. Out beyond an arched window the towers of the Planet of the Sorcerers marched away to the horizon. Shelves ran the circumference of the room, rising from the floor to where the wall gave way to the sky. White marble jars stood in neat rows on the shelves. Polished jet beast-heads capped each jar, and gilded script ran down their sides. At the chamber’s centre a black-bound book lay on a silver and obsidian plinth.

For a long moment Ahriman did not move. Then he began looking along the shelves, his eyes taking in each name picked out in golden script. Once he had looked at every one, he came back to the first.

Nycteus, he read. As good a place to start as any. He reached out, picked up the jar and opened its lid. Fragments of sight and sound surrounded him, flickering like images fast-wound through a pict feed. First came the face, and he watched as it changed, ageing and scarring from the first moment he had met Nycteus as an aspirant to the last instant he had seen him. Then snatches of psychically exchanged thought, then times shared. He relived battles fought at the birth of the Imperium, and saw it fall into war while Nycteus stood beside him.

‘It must be done. I am with you, master,’ Nycteus had said as he bowed his head and joined the cabal. Then he saw his young adept friend bow in the dust beneath Magnus, and beg forgiveness for what they had done. Suddenly the memories became small fragments: a tale told by a renegade captain, a rumour of a sorcerer fighting alongside a warband of the Night Lords Legion, a name overheard in the slave stations of Naar.

Finally the memories ended and Ahriman looked to the rows of jars. Each one represented his memories of one of the Thousand Sons. Here they all lived in his mind, the past hoarded with any scraps he had chanced on during his years of exile. He had never examined the memories kept in each, only adding to them when he found a trace of what might have become of them. He supposed it had been a penance of sorts. After a long moment he moved on to the next.

When he was done he opened his eyes. He was trembling, but he had what he needed.

‘Nothing. Just like the others,’ said Astraeos.

Ahriman did not reply. A wind coiled through the broken tower, carrying the damp reek of rain. He turned around, allowing his eyes to take in the details while his mind soaked up what psychic traces lingered in the warp.

The tower was not a tower of course, but the description sufficed. It had been a starship. Half a kilometre long and formed like an arrowhead, it now thrust up from the surface of the dank moon. Perhaps the moon had pulled the ship into its crust, or maybe the moon had grown from the ship like an uncontrolled cancer. The walls had become floors, ceilings walls, and the whole remade by the touch of the wrap and the hands of those who called it home. Metre-thick blooms of turquoise rust submerged its buttresses and gunports. Pale curtains of fungus hung from its crenellations, glowing a sickly green in the perpetual gloom. The stranded ship’s spine had bent and twisted so that it looked like a crooked finger of coral growing from a weed-covered seabed.

The room they were in was the highest point of the tower. Looking at what remained of its structure Ahriman though it might have been a gathering chamber of sorts. Tiered steps ringed an open space whose floor was a wide circle of pitted copper. Rain fell in curtains across wide holes in the high walls. The gunship which had brought them from the Titan Child squatted on a wide ledge beyond one of the breaches. Thidias and Kadin moved amongst the wreckage, their boltguns held loose in their hands, eyes sweeping across the debris.

‘There was a battle,’ said Thidias, bending down to run a finger over the glassy edge of a tear in the wall. Ahriman nodded. He could feel the fading touch of death pooling in the warp around the tower. ‘No corpses, this time.’

‘They were burned to ash, and the rain washed it away,’ said Ahriman as his mind filtered through the psychic residue around them. The warp infected the tower as it did the dank moon, muddying his mind as he tried to pry meaning from his surroundings. He could taste the smoke of burning flesh, thick and greasy. A blurred image filled his mind’s eye: slow-moving figures in red armour and high-crested helmets. He twitched, and opened his eyes to look at the holes punched in the walls. The echo of the detonation had prickled heat across his skin. Hundreds of warriors had dwelt here, building their strength before plunging back into the heart of the Eye. They had all died in under an hour.

Ahriman extended his hand and fragments of midnight-blue armour rose from the rain-splattered floor. He concentrated, feeling the edge of each sliver. He waved his hand and the fragments slid together, forming the shell of a Space Marine breastplate. A bat-winged skull grinned at him from between the web of cracks.

‘Night Lords,’ said Ahriman. ‘Or a splinter of them.’ His hand dropped to his side and the breastplate crumbled back to shards and fell to the floor. He turned and began to reach his mind through the rest of the wreckage, feeling for a trace of his brother. It was there, like a dull ache under the psychic skin of the tower. His name had been Memunim. He had been an adept of the Raptora, and the Seal Keeper of the Fifth House of Prospero. He had never been a friend but he had been loyal when Ahriman knew him.

He was also the twelfth of his brothers that he had tracked down only to find them gone. What had Memunim become after the banishment? Had he fallen into the service of petty and vicious masters, or had his path been darker?

‘How many more?’ said Astraeos.

Ahriman looked at Astraeos. They held each other’s gaze for a long minute. He had known that it would come to this eventually. They had circled the edge of the Eye for months, riding the storm’s edge until the Titan Child trembled and Egion the Navigator had pleaded for rest. They had yet to find a single one of Ahriman’s brothers. Some of the rumours he had stored in his memory had proved false, others had led them true, but always they arrived to find either slaughter or those they sought gone. Astraeos had followed Ahriman’s commands without question, but with every week that passed on board the Titan Child the renegade’s frustration grew.

‘Until I find an answer,’ said Ahriman.

‘What answer?’ Astraeos gestured at the charred chamber and the rain blowing in through the holes in the wall. ‘There is nothing here to give any answers.’

Astraeos shook his head and turned away.

‘At least this one fought,’ said Thidias quietly. Ahriman looked towards him. Thidias caught the look and shrugged. ‘If it is the same hunters as came for you then they must have given the same choice. Come with us, or fight.’ Thidias bent to pick a spent bolt shell-case from the floor.

‘Come with us or burn,’ growled Kadin from beside a melted wound in the chamber wall.

Ahriman withdrew his psychic senses. There was nothing here that he had not seen in all the other places he had been in these last months. Each of his brother Thousand Sons had received emissaries as Gzrel had Tolbek, and had either accepted the emissary’s offer or fought. He suspected that many had been taken rather than killed, but he could not be sure. He walked to the largest of the wall breaches and looked out. Cold rain dappled his armour and ran down the creases of his face. They could spend a mortal lifetime tracking down each of his fellow exiles, but he had a feeling that they would only find more cold ashes.

You knew what you would find before you began, he thought. He thought of the rumour he had heard again and again over the years of his exile, the one step he had hoped to avoid. Do you not want answers?

Ahriman watched as cloaks of grey rain dragged across the pools of the surrounding swamp. Behind him Astraeos, Kadin and Thidias watched him in silence. He did not like the decision he had reached; it was the choice he had resisted ever since he had begun his search.

‘One more,’ said Ahriman, and turned to see the three renegades exchange glances. ‘One more journey. But this journey will be deeper into the Eye than we have been before.’ He looked at Astraeos. ‘And you will need to help me if we are to reach where we go alive.’

Astraeos’s face remained unreadable, but distaste rippled through his surface thoughts. Kadin and Thidias watched their brother in silence. Finally he bowed his head.

‘Come,’ said Ahriman, and moved to where the gunship crouched under the falling rain.

‘Who are they?’ called Thidias. When Ahriman turned to look back at him the grey-haired warrior shrugged. ‘These sorcerers you are looking for. Who are they?’

Ahriman paused. He would have to tell them something of the truth; only a thread of loyalty bound them together.

‘They are the brothers I betrayed,’ said Ahriman and turned away.

+Again,+ sent Ahriman. Astraeos blinked the sweat from his human eye. His head felt heavy and a pain spread through his forehead from the metal of his augmetic. Across from him Ahriman’s eyes stayed fixed on him, unblinking.

The chamber they occupied was a crystal- and brass-enclosed platform at the top of a tower high on the Titan Child’s spine. The only light was that of the stars and the angry, bruised-flesh glow of the Eye of Terror. They sat to either side of the floor’s centre. Circles traced in charcoal and oil surrounded them. Ahriman wore an off-white robe, Astraeos a grey tabard edged in crimson. They had not moved in nine days.

Astraeos let his gaze lock with Ahriman’s and let his mind form the image of a candle flame.

+Good,+ said Ahriman. Astraeos felt a stab of cold between his eyes. The image of the candle flame grew in his perception. +Now,+ sent Ahriman. The flame split and became two. Astraeos blinked and the two flames began to flicker, one dimming while the other brightened, then reversing. The flames split again. Now four flames each flickered to a different rhythm. Astraeos was not breathing, and the beat of blood was almost silent in his veins.

Suddenly the flames split again, and again and again until thousands of flames sparkled in his mind’s eye. Waves of rhythm flowed across the field of flames in increasingly rapid and complex patterns. Astraeos held the image firm in his thoughts. The patterns were not under his control, but that was not the lesson. He had to hold the image together as Ahriman changed it. They were learning to share their strengths, to become stronger by being of one mind. At least that was what Ahriman had said. Astraeos was still not sure that he believed him.

The flames were gone. In his mind’s eye there was only a field of golden thread that wove together forming images from smoke and light: a bird beating its wings, a scarab eating the disc of the sun, a jackal-headed man with nine arms, each holding a bright symbol. He could not feel his body now. The division between what his mind saw and imagined it saw had vanished, but he knew that if his concentration slipped the vision would shatter. He felt his mind stretch, as if the architecture of his soul were realigning. He had trained his mind and powers for war and strength, and trained others to do the same, but he had never known anything like this. It felt like burning, like the joy of breathing after suffocating, like laughter and tears.

The image vanished. Astraeos’s eyes opened. Rage flashed through him. He wanted the sensation back; he wanted to feel the universe singing to the tune of his will. Ahriman’s eyes did not move from his; they seemed to glow like sunlight catching ice. Coolness spread through Astraeos, and the euphoria drained from him, leaving a cold emptiness and a taste like iron on his tongue.

‘What are you doing to me?’ said Astraeos. The words felt thick in his mouth. Ahriman gave a small shake of his head, stood and walked to a vox-horn mounted by the chamber’s only door.

‘Mistress Carmenta,’ said Ahriman. ‘Please wake Egion and bring the ship to warp transit readiness.’ Her reply was short, and Ahriman turned to look back at Astraeos.

‘I have done what I said I would do. I have trained you so that our minds can work in concert,’ said Ahriman. ‘We are about to steer deeper into the Eye of Terror, following a broken path. I will need to be in communion with Egion as he guides the ship. For that I need you to lend me your strength.’

‘No,’ said Astraeos without moving. ‘No, you were doing something else as well.’

Ahriman stared at him for a long moment.

‘Your mind was built to be a fortress, but here…’ Ahriman gestured to the jagged pupil of the Eye of Terror. ‘Here the warp is everywhere. We breathe it. We touch it when we dream. Your mind will not withstand that, not over time, not as we pass deeper into the Eye. Your mental defences are no proof against it: they are too blunt, too simple. To survive where we must go you need to be able to ride the tide, not stand against it. What I am giving to you is only the beginning.’

‘I swore to obey you, not to become like you.’

‘You must, or you will fall.’ For a second Astraeos said nothing. He thought he believed Ahriman, and part of his soul ached to ascend to the heights it had touched under Ahriman’s tutoring.

‘Tell me,’ said Astraeos, his voice cold. ‘Did the brothers you betrayed believe you?’

Ahriman stared at him for a long minute. Astraeos’s gaze did not waver. Then Ahriman let out a slow, controlled breath and walked slowly to the chamber’s door.

‘We have a few hours before our journey begins,’ said Ahriman without looking back at Astraeos. ‘Rest. You will need it.’

Ahriman walked the decks of the Titan Child alone. It had become a habit, he realised, a way of trying to release the pressures of worry. Its effectiveness was limited. Passages opened silently before him as his thoughts churned on. In places the darkness was absolute, in others the low arrhythmic pulse of a dying glow-globe lit his path. He passed lifeless servitors, slumped against walls or collapsed on the floor. An aura clung to everything he looked at, like a ragged layer of luminous green mist seeping from the edges of sight. It had a taste in his mind, as well: dust and grave soil. The passages went on; now narrow with rust-layered pipes running over walls, ceiling and floor, now wide and silent apart from a distant hum like a sleeping heartbeat.

It was his fault, of course. All of it. Ohrmuzd’s death, the banishment from the Planet of the Sorcerers, this doom that stalked him and his exiled brothers. He had set it all in motion without realising, the entire line of cause and effect that stretched back to before he had cast the Rubric. Intentions and ignorance of consequences did not matter. He would never escape it, and the only way of trying to solve anything was to pile another risk on the mistakes of the past. He would have to use more power to try and find answers, but then what?

No good can come from pursuing that question, he thought to himself, but knew that the thought was a weak protest. He had to know. His worry was just his mind accepting the inevitable.

All that I touch returns to dust, he thought. He had stopped noticing where he walked or what he saw. I am responsible. Not someone else, not a higher power, but me and me alone.

‘All heaped on the pyre of pride and left to become ash,’ he muttered to the shadows.

‘The truth,’ cackled a voice from behind him. ‘The truth, the truth. So easy to find, so difficult to hear.’

It was Maroth. The soothsayer shambled out of the shadows. His armour was hissing from lack of repair, and in places Ahriman could see something wet staining the dark battle plate. Maroth wore no helm, and his hands moved continually over the surface of his own face, long nails pinching his skin. He was babbling and crooning to himself as if he were comforting a child that was not there. Inside the crushed shell of his mind Maroth’s soul was rotting, but somehow, in all that had happened, he had survived.

Ahriman was about to turn away when Maroth sniffed, and turned his head from side to side.

‘Is that you, Horkos?’ The flesh around his empty eye sockets had flaked away to reveal yellow bone. ‘Yes. I see you. It is you. You will serve me, won’t you, when the time comes, when I take the Lordship. Yes?’ Maroth walked forwards, straightening himself, grinning a skull’s grin.

Ahriman considered saying something, then considered putting his sword through the creature’s neck. He shook his head and began to turn away.

‘It would be better to kill me, you know, Horkos. Yes?’ Ahriman shook his head. He had hoped the soothsayer dead many times over, but he would not murder something so pitiful.

‘Why not?’ called Maroth. ‘Is the delusion of nobility still so important to you that you must let me live because you promised?’ Maroth laughed, and kept laughing until the sound was a wet hacking from his throat. ‘Don’t you ever think of why you made such a promise, or how ridiculous it is? Your problem is pity. Pity combined with pride. What if I said that I want to die, that it would be a kindness?’

Ahriman took a stride forwards and pulled an inch of his blade from its scabbard.

‘Very good, very good.’ Maroth grinned wide. ‘Now all you have to do is cut. All you have to do is show that you are a betrayer and a liar.’

Ahriman shook his head and walked away. He had to clear his mind fully before he tried to guide the ship to the edge of the Imperium.

‘Be silent, and crawl away.’

‘See you again, my friend,’ laughed Maroth at Ahriman’s back.

‘Mistress, I cannot. Please. I cannot. Not again.’ There were tears in Egion’s voice. She did not like it any more than Egion, but Ahriman had told her it was the only way, and she believed him.

He won’t destroy us, she thought. He promised me.

‘Egion, my friend, you must. I have told Master Ahriman that we will go where he needs, and I cannot swim the Great Ocean without you.’

‘I have had dreams, mistress. Sometimes when I wake I think my dreams have followed me. Sometimes I think they are here with me, standing where I cannot see.’ His voice stopped and for a moment Carmenta felt his fear bleed over the link; it felt warm, like an overheating machine. ‘I don’t want to go further into the Eye. It’s wrong, mistress. Can’t you feel it? None of us should go any further.’ He was quiet for a long minute, and when his voice returned it sounded as if he were talking to himself as much as to her. ‘It’s thinner here. Reality is like gauze. I can see the stars when we are in the warp, and I see the warp even when I close my eyes now. I see it when I dream.’

Carmenta paused. She had no idea what Egion was talking about. In the Titan Child’s embrace she only felt the raw surge of power and the pulse of systems.

The dreams of the living are not those of machines, she thought.

‘You must do this, Egion. You must do this for me.’

A pulse of fatigue and fear shook the link, but after a moment he replied in a weak voice.

‘As you command, mistress.’

Six hours later the Titan Child slid into the warp. Its engines and Geller fields filled Carmenta’s mind as they drew almost all the power from her reactors. She shut down her links one by one until the slow, patient roar of her ship was the only sound in her head. It sounded comforting.

The last thing Carmenta heard before she cut the direct link to Egion was the Navigator muttering to himself.

‘Like fire,’ said the Navigator. ‘Like a million candles.’

VII

Oracle

‘It is beautiful,’ said Carmenta, her voice echoing from speakers high in the roof of the Titan Child’s bridge. Astraeos turned to look at the tangled lump of cables hanging above the command dais. He could see the tech-witch’s hand, limp and unmoving amongst the oiled metal coils. He wondered if she had meant to speak out loud. Sometimes he wondered whether she was entirely aware of what she did. He frowned. The bundle of cables twitched as he looked at it, as if she had sensed his gaze and flinched away. He turned and looked back at the bank of pict screens that formed a pillar which rose to the arched roof high above.

Images of space flowed across the screens, showing them all what Ahriman had led them to. Astraeos saw a sun; bright blue, it burned at the system’s heart with a cold radiance. Curtains of pale gas filled the void. They folded and shifted as the Titan Child cut through them. Occasionally Astraeos thought he saw the outline of a watching face or figure, then the angle or flow of light would change and it would vanish. Static bloomed in the image from his augmetic eye. His skin was prickling. Tinnitus rang in his ears, rising and fading. They were deeper inside the Eye of Terror than he had ever been before. He felt as if something were crawling under his skin, seeping into his blood and thoughts. Had it always been like this, even on the Eye’s edge? Had he become dead to the warp’s touch?

He realised that someone had spoken, and turned sharply. Ahriman stood behind him gazing at the screens, a frown making ridges on his smooth forehead.

‘What?’ he said. The ringing in his ears rose in pitch. Ahriman looked at him.

+Look,+ Ahriman’s thought spoke inside Astraeos’s skull. He flinched at the telepathic intrusion, and then followed Ahriman’s gaze as he turned to look at one of the largest screens. A planet loomed out of the spills of gas. Astraeos did not know how he had not seen it before. It was massive, its surface flowing with spirals of ochre yellow and dark red. He could see other planets looming close beyond it, bloated spheres in the mist. They were far too close together for them to be in stable orbits. The planet was getting larger and larger, and for a second he was not sure if it was swelling, or if they were moving closer.

We should not be moving that fast. He felt Ahriman chuckle in his thoughts, and slammed his mind shut with a snarl of will.

‘My apologies,’ said Ahriman. He turned and looked to Carmenta’s nest. ‘The moon, mistress. Bring us to a dead stop within shuttle range.’ Astraeos saw it then, a black sphere hanging above the yellow and red swirled surface of the planet, a lone moon orbiting its parent. He saw light glint where it touched the moon’s surface.

He stared at it.

He would go to it, he must go to it, he knew he must, as if the ringing within his ears were suddenly a voice, just on the edge of hearing, calling for him to come and see. Ahriman turned to leave the bridge and Astraeos moved to follow. Ahriman stopped and looked at the Librarian.

‘I need no bodyguard for this, Astraeos. I will go alone. No harm will come to me.’ Astraeos glanced at the crowded planets and the billows of gas. For a second he saw an eye, larger than a gas giant, the black moon forming its pupil. Then he shuddered and it was gone.

‘How can you be sure?’ he asked, but Ahriman gave no answer.

The shuttle settled onto the cavern floor in a whirl of venting gas. It was a small, blunt-winged and box-sided vehicle, its grey fuselage chipped and streaked with rust. In the small crew compartment Ahriman heard the servitor pilot blurt a string of code, and felt the vehicle frame shake as the seals unlocked and the rear hatch descended to reveal the gas-fogged world beyond. He stepped out. A dim blue light shone from within the fog. Atmosphere safety runes pulsed green for a second, blinked out, and then returned in unresolved amber.

The cavern floor was black and as smooth as polished glass. He could see reflections slide across it as he moved forwards. The whole moon was a black crystal orb hanging in space, its surface smooth and unbroken except for a kilometre-wide circular opening. The shuttle had descended into that opening, and had kept descending for over an hour. At least it had seemed an hour to Ahriman. He was not naive enough to believe that such things as time were absolute here.

He began to walk, his footsteps clicking on the black crystal. After a few moments the fog swallowed the shuttle behind him. Other shapes appeared in the thin light. He saw walls of the same black glass as the surface he walked on. White stone statues appeared from the fog. Some had their arms raised as if in greeting, others looked terrified. One appeared to be weeping. Carved images of eyes looked back at him, and he thought their stare followed him. The flow of the warp was so strong that he was not sure what he was seeing with his eyes, and what with his mind.

I am a pilgrim, he realised. As the ancients ascended the steps of Parnassus, so I come here hoping for a revelation.

‘History is the turning of a circle’, Magnus the Red had once said. ‘Nothing dies, not truly. The symbols of old change and are reborn, and the new paths turn out to be already well worn by time.’

After a while Ahriman realised that he must have passed into a tunnel. When he glimpsed walls they seemed closer and curved up to some point lost in the fog. He was also not alone.

He saw the first of them as he looked up into a break in the fog. The figure was walking on the ceiling. It was spindle-limbed, its legs back-jointed like those of a bird. Half-formed quills covered the skin visible between the plates of its sapphire armour. It carried a halberd, the blade polished to a silver edge.

Ahriman felt his hand go to the hilt of his sword without thinking. The creature stopped and bent its head back to look at him. Clusters of blue and yellow eyes glittered across its face. It did not move, and after a second he took his hand from his sword and walked on. He saw others: tall creatures with helms like long-beaked birds, hunched figures swathed in yellow robes, squat things in silver scale armour with many arms. Some followed him, trailing him through the mist, walking on the walls, or floor, or ceiling as they pleased. None approached him, nor spoke a word. He walked on for what felt like days, never knowing if he was closer to his goal. All the while the winds of the warp blew over him, carrying a taste of dry sand and lightning.

At last, when he had wondered if he was walking an eternal circle, he took a step and the fog vanished. He blinked. He stood at the base of a spherical chamber that could have swallowed a battle Titan. The light was stark and bright, but had no source and seemed to come from every angle. The black walls were featureless and mirror-smooth but reflected nothing. He could see no doors and when he turned there was no sign of how he had entered. The warp was utterly calm. That more than anything sent his hand back to his sword.

+There is no need for that.+ The voice filled Ahriman’s mind. He could feel the soothing notes in the sending, the surety, and amusement. Ahriman kept his hand on his sword.

+I come for answers.+ A wall of sound hit him, shaking his flesh inside his armour. He heard his own voice repeating his words in fading snatches.

‘Answers to questions…’

‘To questions…

‘Questions….

+Of course,+ said the voice in his head. There was something behind him, not a presence but an absence in his mind, like a shadow cast by something he could not see. He turned, his sword in his hand, fire flaring from the sigils worked into its blade. The light of it shone out, reflecting off the black mirror walls.

The sword burned in his grip, pain spiralling from his hand into his mind. He screamed and dropped the hilt. +I said there was no need for that,+ said the oracle.

‘I don’t like the look of that,’ said Thidias. Astraeos followed his brother’s gaze to the images of the pict screen. Both Thidias and Kadin had joined him on the bridge while they waited for Ahriman’s return from the black moon.

‘No,’ agreed Kadin. ‘That looks less than positive.’

Astraeos frowned at the screens. The clouds of gas that filled the void had thickened and darkened, their colour shifting from pale blue to a cloudy green. He looked away. His head had been aching since they had arrived at whatever this place was. Looking at the screen just made the pain behind his eyes worse.

‘Are you well, brother?’ asked Thidias. Astraeos nodded, but risked another look at the screens. The gas clouds were now so thick that he could not see planets or stars. Something felt fundamentally wrong.

‘Mistress,’ he called, and heard the dryness in his own voice. ‘Mistress Carmenta.’

Static filled a long pause, and then Carmenta’s voice crackled across the bridge.

‘Yes, Astraeos?’

‘Do you see the change in the void?’

‘I do, but my sensors are…’ Her voice trailed off. ‘Are functioning less than satisfactorily. I am going to bring us closer to the moon.’

Astraeos nodded. His head was swimming and he felt as if he was going to vomit. A vibrating note ran through the ship and the image on the screens began to shift slowly as the Titan Child closed on the moon.

‘Look,’ said Kadin. Astraeos looked and felt the pain in his head spread down his neck.

The clouds were billowing across the void, fattening in sickly green folds. Impossible green lightning lit them from within and flashed across their surface. Astraeos felt as if someone were trying to force a fist through the back of his skull. The pain in his head had become a keening cry. He saw shapes move beneath the clouds’ skin. They grew larger and then faded, like fish swimming closer to the surface only to dive into the depths again. Astraeos felt his knees buckle and hit the deck. He could not hear. Lights danced in front of his eye. The cry rose higher and louder in his head. He tried to shut it out, but it grew stronger. He felt someone pulling him to his feet.

‘I can hear them,’ he heard himself say. ‘They are calling. They have come for us.’

The oracle hung in the air in front of Ahriman, its arms held at its sides, its palms open. It wore armour that might once have been made for a Space Marine, but it had long since become something else. Its surface flowed like quicksilver. Ahriman could see reflections of things that were not there in the rippling surface: hooded figures, dying suns, reaching hands. Robes fluttered around the oracle in streams of fabric that changed colour as they moved. A blank bronze helm without holes for eyes, mouth, or nose hid its face. Small white and blue orbs revolved around the oracle like planets around a sun. Ahriman looked at one of the spheres, and saw the blue iris and black pupil of an eye staring back at him.

+Did you find it? Did you understand it?+ said the oracle. The thought voice was measured and uncoloured by emotion; it was almost musical. Ahriman shook his head, not understanding the questions, wondering whether he should.

‘Is it you, Menkaura?’ said Ahriman, his eyes moving across the oracle’s silvered form. He could feel the oracle’s psychic senses playing over his own thoughts. It would have been easier to talk in thought, but something made him shrink back from such contact with the being in front of him.

The oracle nodded its head once.

‘It has been a long time,’ said Ahriman.

+Since we saw each other? Since the banishment?+ Ahriman saw in his mind a sharp-faced young warrior in the robe of a Corvidae novitiate, then the Thousand Sons Epistolary in a serpent helm, then the hunched figure reading tomes by the light of the Planet of the Sorcerers’ nine suns. For a second he saw the face of his memories reflected in the silver surface of Menkaura’s armour. +Do I look so different to your eyes?+ said the oracle.

‘You have changed.’

+A matter of perspective.+

‘I have questions.’

+Who does not?+ The oracle turned as if looking away with its blind face, its orbiting eyes swivelling to keep their gaze on Ahriman. +There will be a cost, of course. A tribute.+

Ahriman was silent. Menkaura, the Oracle of Many Eyes: he had heard the name several times during his exile, coughed from the lips of sorcerers and mewled by the daemon-touched. He had always wondered and feared if the Menkaura the tales spoke of was his one-time brother. Now he knew, but the creature in front of him was no longer his brother, not in any true sense; it was something beyond mortal, something to be feared before it was trusted. I could have taken this path, he thought. I could have extended my mind across time, stretching to see everything, even things that have not yet been. I could have traded myself for such knowledge. He shivered, and felt the reassuring taste of air fill his lungs.

+Once I have answered you I will ask you one question of my own. You will answer with the truth. That is the price.+

Ahriman nodded once.

‘I will pay that tribute.’

The oracle turned back to him and floated to the ground. Its feet touched the smooth curve of the floor. It took two paces and stopped an arm’s reach away from Ahriman. The dropped sword lay on the floor between them.

+Ask and I will answer.+

Ahriman’s mouth opened but the question that came out was not the one he had intended.

‘What happened to you?’

The oracle’s laugh crinkled across Ahriman’s thoughts. He felt the weight of years that had passed as millennia, the millennia that had been lived as aeons.

+Time, my brother. Choices. Time and choices change all things. As you well know.+

Ahriman thought of the ninth sun rolling into the sky of the Planet of the Sorcerers, of the rest of the Legion surrounding him and his cabal in the dawn light. He had last seen Menkaura then, standing amongst those he had not trusted to be a part of his conspiracy.

‘I am sorry, for what I did to you, for what I did to all of you.’

The oracle tilted its featureless head.

+Are you sorry, or are you sorry that you failed?+ The oracle shook its head. +What I am is not your doing, Ahriman. Your sin is that you cannot see the limits of your power. Even in despair you gather all woes and faults to you, and claim more than is your due.+

‘I destroyed the Legion.’

+Did you? Was that your choice?+

‘It was no other’s.’

Again Ahriman felt the oracle’s chuckle shiver across his mind.

+Fate is a web that catches all, Ahriman. Each choice spawns thousands of possibilities, those possibilities birth more, until what began and what ends cannot be told so easily.+

Ahriman felt patterns form in his mind’s eye as he absorbed the message. He saw golden strands, thousands, tens of thousands, millions of strands burrowing through black time, overlapping and branching even as he watched. He felt his mind reel, then kindle with awe. It was magnificent. He was seeing the consequence of actions small and great, all connected, all tumbling like cards falling through air. It felt terrifying and beautiful. It felt like returning home. He plunged into the image, following strands of consequence, hungry to see ever finer connections. But even as he reached, the connections changed, broke, and multiplied. He spun on, unheeding of anything else. He must see, he must understand. As he spiralled through the golden web, he felt the brush of feathers and heard the laughter of ravens.

‘No!’ he shouted. The image dimmed until it was nothing but a lingering memory of a glowing web. The oracle nodded slowly.

+My fate could have been yours, my knowledge your curse. Perhaps if you had not enacted the Rubric, you would be as I am. Perhaps others would stand before you and ask what you see.+

‘You have fallen far.’

+We all fell, brother.+

‘I would not have made the same choices as you.’ The oracle shrugged, the gesture fluid and inhuman.

+But you did not come here to debate such matters.+

‘What will happen to our Legion?’

+Another question you did not come here to ask.+ Ahriman did not move, but held his gaze steady. After a second the oracle turned its head and looked up. The gesture was exactly as it would have been if it was looking into space while considering how to answer, and the movement of the featureless face made Ahriman’s skin crawl. +The Legion will die. It will become less than the dust. Those that remain will be as I am, creatures rather than the warriors we once were. Over time no one will remember us, we will become a memory covered over by time.+

‘That is what you see?’

+Isn’t it what you see?+ The oracle’s thought voice paused. +You were our seer, Ahriman. You were master of the Corvidae. You taught us all. What can I tell you that you could not grasp for yourself if you wished? Why did you not read the tides of the future yourself? Do you mistrust yourself so much that you dare not?+ The eyes had stopped orbiting the oracle. Each one hung in the air, stationary, looking at Ahriman. +Or have you looked and fear to see more?+

‘Answer me.’

+It is as I said. Or it might be. The future is a diamond, each possibility a facet to be perceived by a different eye. The Legion may end as I have said, or in countless other ways. It may survive, it may rise. You know this. You have seen some of it for yourself.+ Ahriman remembered the vision, the whispers of the crow. ‘Time is not fixed, nor is flesh, nor is fate,’ it had said.

‘An uncertain prophecy is worthless.’

+That is their nature, my teacher. You asked only because you wished me to deny the truth you already knew.+

‘No part of my teachings remains in you,’ said Ahriman, his voice flat and cold.

+No? But you are here nonetheless. Ask yourself what you truly wish to know: the truth, or the lie that forgives you your choices?+

‘A question is no answer.’

+You know that is a lie.+ The oracle fell quiet, and the two stared at each other as the moment extended in buzzing silence. +Come. Ask the real question you came to ask.+

‘Firing,’ called Carmenta, and the Titan Child shook. The screens flashed white and dissolved into pixellated snow in front of Astraeos’s eyes. The view an instant before had been the curdling clouds rushing out to envelop them. The white and yellow vapour had brushed against the hull of the Titan Child as if caressing it. Carmenta had started to fire a second later, even though there was no target.

‘Show us what is happening,’ shouted Kadin.

The bridge shook again. No reply came from Carmenta. Howling voices tore through Astraeos’s mind, opening flares of multi-coloured pain behind his eyes. He felt as if he wasas going to fall again. The cries in his head broke into discordant shrieking. He had tried to close them out, but his will was sand trying to hold the tide.

The tide. He remembered Ahriman’s cool gaze and the days of training. He remembered the feeling of calm, of rising through deeper and deeper stillness, his mind floating above the flood.

He was still standing. The deck was vibrating now with a steady drumbeat as the Titan Child fired its weapons again and again. The pict screens had come back into focus and Kadin and Thidias were staring at them. The flare of the Titan Child’s weapons lit the darkness, rolling in discordance with the lightning that crawled through the vapour. There were shapes visible amongst the clouds, like patches of moving shadow cast by creatures with wings and bodies made of knives. One swooped close to the pict-eyes, and Astraeos heard the shriek rise in his mind.

‘Why are they not attacking?’ said Thidias.

‘What?’ growled Astraeos, glancing at his brother. His head was clearer but it was taking all his effort to keep his mind shielded from the shrieks. Thidias did not look away from the screen. Beside him Kadin nodded.

‘Whatever they are, they are not friendly, but they are just watching us,’ muttered Kadin.

Astraeos glanced back to the screen.

‘What are they doing?’ asked Thidias.

The Titan Child gave a great shudder and the pict screen flashed as a broadside turned the clouds into neon orange sheets. A shriek tore through Astraeos’s head and he growled in pain. This time it felt like a tortured laugh. It sounded like contempt.

He felt cold. The shrieks in his head felt suddenly familiar. He knew what they were. He had heard men give such cries, and listened as predators howled them into the night as they stalked through the trees.

‘They are waiting,’ he said quietly. His mouth felt very dry. ‘They are waiting for their prey.’

‘I am hunted,’ said Ahriman softly.

+A truth both deep and shallow.+

‘Tolbek came seeking me, to kill me or drag me to another’s knees.’ Ahriman paused, but the oracle did not move or speak. ‘Who did he serve? Who is hunting me?’

+Many hunt you, Ahriman,+ said the oracle, shaking its head. +I turn over a rock on any world, and I find another who would hound you to your death.+

‘Who did Tolbek serve?’

+You know. You have known since before they came. You knew at the moment they came for you. You knew when you were banished who would come after you.+

‘No,’ said Ahriman, but he could hear the tremor in the word. In his mind a face appeared. Grave, serious, lined by doubt and worry, a face of a friend he had persuaded to follow him into ruin.

+Tolbek served Amon.+

‘Amon.’ The word clung to his tongue as it slid into his mind, and he could not be sure if he had spoken at first. The oracle nodded slowly.

+Who else? The hardest to persuade, the most doubting, the one most loyal to the primarch besides yourself. He followed you, believed you, allowed himself to dream as you did. That trust bought him the destruction of everything he held dearest. He burned his hopes because he trusted you.+

Ahriman found that he was looking at the sword that lay on the black floor. His eyes moved across the flame-winged bird forming the crossguard, the red stone set in its pommel. It had been Tolbek’s sword, a brother’s sword wielded against him. ‘Vengeance,’ he said quietly.

+I cannot see his mind or predict his goals, but he dreams still. You gave him that ability, the arrogance to set knowledge against the decrees of fate. He has drawn knowledge and power to himself. He will storm the Planet of the Sorcerers if he has to, and challenge the Court of Change.+

‘Why?’ said Ahriman. ‘What does he intend? Why does he need me if not for simple vengeance?’

+You will have to find that answer for yourself.+

‘Do you not know the answer?’ asked Ahriman, but the oracle continued as if it had not heard.

+There is a choice. The future is fractured. I see lines of choice vanish into darkness and I cannot see their ends. The final death of the Legion may come to pass. I can see the paths that lead to that outcome with greater clarity than any others. But there are other ends, and other paths.+ Ahriman looked up. At his back he heard a crow’s chuckling call echo in memory.

‘You know this? You have seen it?’

+It has been told to me.+

‘By whom?’

+I cannot say.+

‘Cannot, or will not?’

+Both.+ There was a finality to the thought, and the oracle began to rise into the air.

‘Wait,’ said Ahriman. ‘I have more questions.’

+No. Not yet.+

‘But there is another way, a way of saving the Legion?’

+Perhaps.+ In his mind Ahriman saw an image of Menkaura as a young novitiate looking up at him from the teaching circle, his handsome face split by a crooked smile. +All prophecy is the interaction of the probable and the paradoxical. All is uncertain even when it appears to have been fated.+

Ahriman smiled, in spite of himself. ‘My own words.’ In his mind the memory image of Menkaura smiled more widely. ‘Thank you for the reminder.’ Ahriman nodded and picked up the sword from the floor. He sheathed it, his mind turning with thoughts and possibilities. He had renounced the dreams that he had used to destroy the Thousand Sons. He could not go back, not now, no matter the cost.

But, came a voice out of the jostle of thought and emotion. But it was you that set this in motion. It did not end with the Rubric. Your curse lives on, and yet you dare not face it. You run and let your Legion die because you were wrong once.

The mist was rising about him, hiding the spherical chamber. He began to walk into it, allowing it to fold over him.

+My tribute, Ahriman.+ The oracle’s voice was clear in his head, but distant as if being carried from far away. +I will have my tribute.+ Ahriman turned and looked up to the ascending figure that had once been his brother and his pupil.

‘Ask your question,’ said Ahriman. The oracle continued to rise, its form seeming to dissolve in the thickening mist.

+Why did you not allow yourself to die after your banishment?+

Ahriman’s skin prickled. He thought of the lifetimes he had spent on the edge of the Eye of Terror, never allowing himself to be as he was, always waiting for death that never came but never running to meet it. He thought of what he had to do now.

Fate is made of paths not taken, he thought to himself.

‘Because I still dream of hope, old friend,’ he called into the mist as it took the last sight of the oracle. Then he turned and strode away.

‘The shuttle,’ called Carmenta. ‘It’s returning.’

The bridge was silent. Kadin glanced at Astraeos. Thidias stood watching the screens that now showed just the roiling mass of sickly cloud outside the hull. The shrieks had vanished from Astraeos’s mind a second before Carmenta spoke.

‘Where is it?’ he asked.

‘It’s just broken the surface of the moon.’

Astraeos was already moving. Kadin and Thidias followed a second later.

The warp rose up to meet Ahriman. One second his mind was still and floating amidst the glassy calm of the oracle’s moon and the next he was reeling as waves of energy broke over him. The walls of the shuttle compartment shimmered and became translucent. Pale clouds boiled around him like milk curdling as it poured into bile. High shrieks filled his ears and stabbed into his thoughts. The image of the shuttle he sat in stuttered between solidity and transparency. He saw something amongst the clouds, something that was gliding on the storm winds.

Dark silhouettes appeared in the churning fog. The shrieking was all around him now, filling his mind and ears. He released his harness, and unfolded to his feet. The floor of the compartment felt solid beneath him, but he could see through the metal as if it were glass.

One of the shadow shapes swooped close. It reached towards him; he could see the shadow of its claws the instant before they punched through the skin of reality. Red and green light wept from the wound as the claws slashed it wide. Ahriman could see light and colour swirling in the space beyond the hole which hung in the rushing clouds. The shrieking was a single high, discordant note. Ahriman felt the hairs on his skin rise as if pulled by static.

Slowly, almost delicately, a creature pulled itself from beyond. It paused, crouching on the lip of reality, its head swaying from side to side. Armour plates shimmered with an oily rainbow of colours as it moved. Bulbous organic growths had sprouted across its body, like rust blooming on iron left in lightless water. Pale spines ran down the jump pack that hung from its shoulders.

Ahriman had heard of such creatures, Space Marines lost to the warp and the sharpness of their blades. If they had a name for themselves none knew it, but to those who knew how to call them, they were named warp talons.

It flexed its knife-blade claws. Pale green fire ignited in the jets on its back. It looked at Ahriman with red eyes and leapt, dragging a caul of the storm vapour in its wake. Behind it four more wounds began to rip wide.

A cliff of pitted iron appeared out of the fog. The lips of blast doors opened wide to greet them. The shuttle’s engines roared and its hull snapped back into solidity, closing off the vision of the storm beyond.

And then the shuttle rang like a gong, and spun. Ahriman tumbled from his feet as the world turned over. Sparks showered around him as a flake of the hull peeled back. The creature looked down at Ahriman for a second, and then pounced.

The claws met Ahriman’s kine-shield with a burst of light and a sound like a lightning strike. The creature sprang back, hooking its hands and feet to the opposite wall. It hissed. Ahriman felt the shuttle tumbling around him. He could hear the noise of more claws raking the outside of the hull.

The creature leapt at him. Ahriman’s mind burned. A white-hot beam flashed from his eyes to meet its assault; it shrieked, and Ahriman felt the warp twist out of his grasp. Surprise was still forming in his mind when the claws met his stomach. They punched though his armour and into the soft flesh beneath. He had long enough to think that it felt cold, like swallowing ice. Then the bulk of the creature rammed into him and slammed him to the deck.

The shuttle spun and he felt his skin press against the inside of his armour as g-force tried to pull him away from the floor. The creature punched its free claw and hooked feet into the deck, pinning him in place. He looked up at it. The creature’s red eyepieces were looking back at him. It was so close he could see the fumes venting from slits in the snout of its helm.

I will not die here, he thought. He sank his mind into his body, forcing calm through his nerves and muscle. It felt like plunging into water. He could feel the claws in his guts. He saw the arrangement of molecules, bone and muscle fibre spin symbolically before his mind’s eye, and changed what he saw with a thought.

His skin tingled and went numb. In his guts the blood stopped flowing, organs began to harden, bone became like metal. He felt his hearts stop. Above him the creature’s face split, a wide wet crack running across its faceplate. Ahriman could see sharp teeth in the red ruin of a mouth.

‘Alive,’ the creature hissed. ‘Alive. Yes.’ It licked its teeth with a black tongue. ‘Not whole. No.’ It pulled back, and tried to pull its claws from Ahriman’s guts. He did not even feel it. There was just the icy rush as the warp spun through his blood and bone. The creature howled and tried to rip its claws free. They held firm, as if it they were locked inside stone. Behind the faceplate of his helm Ahriman smiled. He did not have long; he could not maintain the alteration to the substance of his body indefinitely.

The creature opened its mouth to roar again. Ahriman struck upwards, his fingers splayed as they punched into the open maw. The creature reeled. Ahriman closed his hand, his armoured grip digging into the soft meat of the creature’s throat. He split his mind into two streams of thought; one half continued to breathe stone and steel into his flesh, while the second began to burn. The creature thrashed, glowing cracks running across its armour from its mouth. Ahriman felt his mind brush against what remained of the creature’s soul; it felt withered and rotten, like blood turned to black jelly in a dead heart. Out of the corner of his eye Ahriman saw the toothed blast door loom into view. He did not have time to move before the impact.

Astraeos was ten paces into the hangar bay when the shuttle clipped the blast doors. He saw the scene unfold in delicate slowness, as he and his brothers ran forwards. The shuttle flipped over, its stabiliser fins shearing off. Shreds of armour plating spun in all directions. Fuel sprayed in its wake, burning for an instant in the cloud of air from the ruptured cabin. A large chunk shapes fling themselves from the shuttle just before the impact. They had been Space Marines once. Astraeos could see the lines of power armour under layers of growth like polluted coral. Green jets of flame pushed them up into the darkness above. A third fell away with the rest of the wreckage, its body scattering globules of black fluid as it fell to the deck.

Another jumped too late. A chunk of the shuttle’s wing spun towards it faster than it could move, and mashed it into two ragged portions.

He is dead. The thought slipped into his mind with a cold certainty. The largest piece of debris was skidding across the deck in a slew of sparks. Part of his mind identified it as a section of the passenger compartment. It looked like a Titan had stamped on it. Nothing could be alive inside that.

Above them the two surviving creatures turned and dived. Kadin and Thidias knelt, raised their bolters as one and fired. Explosions burst in the air, trailing the foremost creature as it spun and jinked downwards. It shrieked as it dived, its true voice mingled with the scream of its hungering soul.

A stride ahead of his brothers Astraeos drew his sword and ran towards the wreckage. The second creature crashed into the twisted fuselage and began to tear through the metal plating as if trying to dig down to something buried within.

Astraeos heard a cry from behind him, and glanced over his shoulder. The first creature was climbing back into the air on a column of white-green fire. Kadin thrashed in its claws. Thidias was on the ground, the muzzle of his bolter twitching as he searched for a clear shot. Astraeos’s stride faltered.

The creature holding Kadin flew higher, dark liquid drizzling in their wake. He could see Kadin’s bolter still gripped in his flailing hands. The creature shrieked and Astraeos could taste the hunter’s joy in the sound. As he watched, Kadin twisted, and rammed the muzzle of his bolter between his body and the creature. The bolter roared. Shell casings showered down to the deck. Then a juddering line of explosions broke from the creature’s back. It dropped Kadin an instant before the green fire at its back became a rolling sphere of heat. He did not see Kadin hit the floor.

In front of Astraeos the surviving creature gave a howl of triumph. He snapped his eyes back to it as the distance closed. It had shredded the remains of the shuttle, and was crouching amongst the wreckage. In the wash of gunfire its black armour glistened with spatters of machine oil and blood. Something was moving at its feet. He saw a hand reaching up as if trying to ward the creature off.

The creature unfolded to its full height. It had been a Space Marine once, Astraeos could see that now, but its armour looked like polluted coral. It splayed its arms wide. The claws of its fingers were the white of bone. Its angular head tilted back and Astraeos heard the silent howl of triumph in his mind.

The creature noticed him an instant before the tip of Astraeos’s blade pierced through its left eye and punched from the back of its head. Astraeos felt the impact jerk up his arm, and snapped his mind into the blade’s core. The creature’s head and upper torso exploded in a web of crawling lightning. The remains slumped onto the wreckage, and twitched until the last electrical arcs vanished.

Astraeos unfastened his helmet. The outer doors were sealed but the atmosphere was still thin. He curled his lip. The corpse at his feet was fuming a scent of charred meat and spoilt fruit. He turned his head to where Ahriman struggled amidst the twisted wreckage; impossibly alive, his armour torn but with no sign of blood or wounds. He bent down to pull the twisted spars of metal aside and then paused.

‘When you are out of this, I think it is the time for some answers.’

VIII

Rubric

Ahriman looked up. They were all staring at him. Thidias stood by the wall, his hands across his chest, his weapons locked to the thighplates of his armour. Carmenta stood in the corner, a still shadow in her ragged black robe. Kadin sat on a thick pipe, watching Ahriman out of the side of his eyes. A purple bruise and swollen flesh covered much of Kadin’s face and the broken bones beneath made him look even less human than normal. Astraeos stood at the circular hatch of Ahriman’s chamber. Ahriman could not shake the feeling of being on trial. In a sense, of course, he was.

They are angry, thought Ahriman, and at some deep level they are afraid of what I have pulled them into.

Only Carmenta’s mind was calm. In fact it was blank to a worrying degree, almost as if part of her thinking had shut down. The ship is eating her humanity, he thought. At times she was more human than any tech-priest he had ever met, but then would become withdrawn, or confused. He looked back to the three Space Marines. They were all lost and damaged creatures but he needed them, and their trust would not tolerate anything less than the truth. He swallowed and found his throat dry. He had not expected it to be like this.

He turned away from them, feeling the coarse weave of his patchwork robe rub against his skin as he moved. After the battle and crash his armour would require long hours of repair before he could wear it again, but his flesh had been almost untouched when they peeled the armour from him. ‘Like stone,’ Carmenta had said. There were patches that were still cold and numb, but it would pass.

He rubbed a hand across his face. His mind still ached and he needed rest, but Astraeos would not wait for his answers.

‘My name is Ahzek Ahriman,’ he began.

‘So you have told us,’ said Astraeos. Ahriman ignored the interruption.

‘I was once Chief Librarian of the Thousand Sons Legion. I fought at the side of primarchs and witnessed the Emperor during the Great Crusade. We were betrayed, and betrayed the Imperium in turn.’

‘Those were not agents of the Imperium that came for you,’ muttered Kadin.

‘No. They were sent by one of my brothers.’

‘Why?’ It was Thidias who asked, his voice devoid of emotion. Ahriman glanced at him.

‘The creatures he sent hunt through the warp. Perhaps they caught my scent. Perhaps the one I went to meet on the moon betrayed me. ’

‘That is not what I asked,’ said Thidias. The calm accusation in the words almost forced a smile from Ahriman’s lips.

‘If you want to understand, then you will have to see for yourself,’ said Ahriman.

‘What do you mean?’ asked Kadin, and glanced at Astraeos.

‘I can project my memory into your minds. You can see for yourself how this began.’

Kadin looked ready to protest.

‘Very well,’ said Astraeos. Ahriman looked to Carmenta.

‘Mistress?’ She said nothing.

‘I will not go into your minds. I will just show you a part of mine.’ He shrugged. ‘The answers are there if you want to see.’ After a long pause Carmenta gave a single stiff nod. Thidias inclined his head when Ahriman glanced at him. Kadin looked at his two brothers, spat, but then nodded.

‘Very well,’ said Ahriman, and closed his eyes. He could still see his chamber, its image traced in perfect detail in his mind’s eye. Slowly the details of walls, lights and pipes dimmed, then gave way to black. He saw the images of Carmenta, Thidias, Kadin and Astraeos look around in surprise. ‘Come,’ he said, then turned and began to walk down a tunnel towards a long-sealed door in his place of memory. ‘See it with my eyes.’

The palace grew towards the blue sky, its marble warm in the sun, its spires shining white against the cobalt-blue dome of the heavens. Ahriman walked up the steps and through the doors. He could feel the presence of the others following him but he did not look around. He had not allowed them to speak; here in his mind they would be mute witnesses, but their thoughts scraped against the quiet, and tremors of their surprise and wonder shook the palace’s halls. No one had ever entered his memory palace before, and the knowledge that there were other minds walking with him through the cool shadows of his past made him feel strange, as if he had no skin. The breeze blowing through the open windows carried a hint of smoke, and he wondered what that might signify for what he was about to do.

The stone door with the silver ring resisted his touch, and it ground across the floor as he dragged it open. Stepping within he felt the eyes of the others roam across the shelves of marble jars until they reached the window and the view of the Planet of the Sorcerers beyond. Their minds went quiet one by one as they saw the towers and the nine suns turning through the sky.

Ahriman stepped to the book which lay on the plinth at the room’s centre. Careful not to look at the words within, he opened it; the pages felt hot, as if they were burning.

‘It is here for you to see,’ said Ahriman.

Their presence drew closer, circling on the edge of his sight. Ahriman looked down. The book’s pages turned as if caught by a gale; symbols and words blurred and coiled across the parchment. The chamber vanished. Images and sensations folded around him, and then flicked past. The others were with him, seeing what he had seen, feeling the past brush them as it rushed by.

He saw Amon standing on the summit of a tower, and beyond him more towers extended away in a forest of night-tarnished silver and sapphire.

‘Are we sure?’ Amon had said. ‘Is there no other way?’

‘None,’ Ahriman had replied.

He saw again the cabal expand in countless pacts and secret bonds. He saw more of the Thousand Sons become creatures of endlessly mutable forms. He saw the moment when all was ready, when the final components had aligned, and there was no barrier remaining between him and the completion of his great work, his Rubric.

‘It is time, brother,’ Amon had said. Ahriman felt the memory of the final breath he had taken at that moment. It tasted of smoke, rich with incense and the dry, metallic flavour of the wind blowing from the surrounding plains.

Then memory of the Rubric unfurled into him like the touch of lightning, spiralling into his thoughts like a storm rush. He had never desired the power of gods, but at that moment he saw every one of the Thousand Sons, a scatter of flickering soulflames laid out beneath him. He saw every strand of matter in their limbs and the colour of their souls. He became all of them. Every half-formed thought and sensation was his; he was Menkaura, suddenly blind to the tome open in front of him; he was Zebul, frozen as he lifted a blue crystal ball with a scale-covered hand; he was Ketuel, his eyes vanished into his flesh, a hundred tongues licking from the mouths that split his armour. He was the centre of a hurricane, the focus of a thousand stilled minds and arrested hearts. Their broken dreams, their hopes, their power lay in his hands like water snatched from a torrent. It extended on and on, a sensation without time, eternal and yet as delicate as a strand of glass.

Even in memory the moment almost overwhelmed Ahriman. For a second he was aware that far away his real body shivered and blood sweated from the corners of his eyes. Then it was past, and more moments came tumbling after.

He saw his brothers walking out of the dust clouds, first one, then another, then another, coalescing like corpses rising from silt-clogged water. Dust spilled from them as they moved, the embers of their souls burning within each, but nothing more. The memory was like ice coiling through Ahriman’s guts and up his spine.

‘What have we done?’ Amon had asked in a voice that cracked like dry earth.

Ahriman had said nothing. Failure has no answer.

The flicker of images settled like the dust falling gently from the dying wind. And there it was, an image held that blurred and changed as if even Ahriman’s memory could not contain it: a silhouette of a man outlined by fire, countless eyes spinning in golden light that sang with a thousand voices, a twisted cripple with quill-covered skin and blind pits for eyes.

‘Father,’ Ahriman had said, and the image resolved into that of a copper-skinned giant, clad in plates of bronze. Feathered wings spread from his thick shoulders, and his hands held an orb-topped staff. A mane of red hair fell from a frown-creased face from which a single blue eye stared. The air had smelled of burned blood and incense.

+Tell me, is this the salvation you sought?+ Magnus the Red had said.

‘I am satisfied,’ Ahriman had said, defiance making his voice hard. The image of Magnus had seemed to nod.

+You are the best of my sons, you always were,+ spoke Magnus, and the thought banished Ahriman into the stars like dust blown from an outstretched palm.

The chamber was silent after Ahriman opened his eyes. For a long moment the memory of Magnus lingered as a fading image before his eyes. Kadin shivered, a sheen of sweat glistening on his face. Thidias just looked at Ahriman and then turned away. Carmenta did not move, but shook her head, swaying slightly. Astraeos stared at Ahriman, his bionic eye seeming dim beside the brightness of his true eye. Ahriman gave a weak smile.

‘That is why,’ he said.

‘And the one who sent the hunters and emissaries?’ said Thidias, without looking at Ahriman.

‘Amon,’ said Ahriman. ‘I should have seen it before. Of all of those who joined my cabal he was the hardest to persuade.’ A sad smile flicked over Ahriman’s face. ‘Always loyal, always on the right side of any argument.’

He looked up at Astraeos, but the renegade Librarian still had not moved.

‘Why now?’ Ahriman looked around in surprise. Kadin was looking at him, a frown deepening the scars on his face. ‘After so long, why does he come for you now? Why not before? And why pursue the rest of those exiled with you?’

Ahriman nodded slowly.

‘I don’t know. At first I thought it was simple vengeance, but I should have known that it was not. Amon may want revenge, but his mind is too deep for such singlemindedness.’ He gave a weary smile. ‘Our Legion is not given to thinking on a small scale.’

‘So you will search for answers now?’

Ahriman felt the tension in the words. In truth he had not thought his next move through yet, but as he thought about the question he realised that there had only ever been one answer.

He nodded stiffly. Kadin stared at him for a long moment, and then walked to the hatch without looking back. Thidias followed a moment later. Astraeos gave Ahriman one last hard look before stepping through the hatch and pulling it shut after him.

‘Do you wish that you had never begun?’

Ahriman flinched at the sound of the voice. He had almost forgotten that Carmenta still stood in the corner of the room. She took a step forwards, her mechadendrites twitching at her robes as if they were the unconscious movements of nervous hands.

‘Do you?’ she said again.

Yes, he thought. I wish that I had never listened to the whispers of my heart. Some might have called those whispers hope, but it was arrogance. The arrogance of knowledge that believes that there can be no limit to what it encompasses, that cannot see the precipice at its feet.

‘I am not sure,’ he said at last.

Carmenta shook her head as if trying to clear a sound from her ears. For a moment he wondered if she was going to ask another question, but then she moved to the hatch and pulled it open to leave.

‘Thank you,’ she said, and left Ahriman looking after her in puzzlement.

IX

Dead Space

Ahriman found himself at the door of the lightless cell as the Titan Child ran blind. He had walked the decks for hours. Clusters of servitors had slunk out of his path as he passed through the machine decks, their ink-black eyes reflecting luminous green in his helmet display as they watched him pass. He had walked through the shuttered corridors that ran along the spine of the ship, and seen nothing but the dust glimmering in the light of his eyepieces as it fell softly to the ground. He had been looking for Maroth, trying to discover if the broken soothsayer still lived, or if he had curled up and expired in a lightless hole. His search had begun on a whim, a meaningless task to help him make his decision, but he had found no sign of Maroth and his decision still weighed on his mind.

Why now? Why does he come for you now? The questions had rolled endlessly through his thoughts ever since Kadin had spoken them. There had to be a reason why other exiles had been taken or killed. He remembered Tolbek telling him to come with him, and the creature hissing ‘Alive. Yes’. Amon wanted Ahriman taken alive.

He remembered the feeling of claws sawing into his guts. Alive at least in mind, if not whole in body.

He had considered possibilities, but all seemed meaningless without genuine information. ‘Speculation is fantasy,’ Magnus had once said to him. ‘Knowledge does not encompass doubt.’ Ahriman had only speculation, and one means of obtaining knowledge: the warp. It was that cold conclusion that had hardened as he walked through the echoing ship, and found himself in the frozen dark outside the crude warded door. For a second he wondered if his worries had guided his steps. The thought made him want to shiver, but did not stop him stepping through the door.

The bound daemon was already staring at him when he stepped into the chamber. Ahriman had the feeling that it had been watching him even before he entered. Its body had a clammy look to it but the chains and bindings were in still place.

‘Cadar,’ said Ahriman, the words sounding hollow inside his helm.

The daemon smiled, and made a sound like bones rattling in a dying man’s chest. Ahriman could feel his skin become cold, as if numbed by ice.

He had not meant to come here, but an obvious possibility now occurred to him.

‘I seek an answer,’ said Ahriman. There was no air to transmit the sound but the bound daemon heard, of that he was certain. It tilted its head from side to side. ‘Will you answer?’ The creature went still. Ahriman could feel its hunger beating at the bindings that held it in place.

+Feed.+

Ahriman heard the word in his mind and ears at the same time. A hot iron taste filled his mouth and throat, and he felt a need to bite, to rend and gorge. The creature ground its teeth, and Ahriman realised he was mirroring the movement. He brought thought wards crashing down on the intruding instincts, and forced his will into his voice.

‘By the bindings placed on you in this place, I call you to answer.’

The creature thrashed as if he had struck it. Thick layers of ice began to run down the chains holding it in place. It snarled, its black tongue flicking in and out of its mouth. Ahriman felt its frustrated rage, and knew that no answer would come. It was a spirit of hunger, its power bent only to feasting on mortal flesh, its nature devoid of the intellect to know what he needed to know. Ahriman had suspected as much. Maroth’s bindings were powerful but crude, and his skill unequal to catching a more devious daemon.

Ahriman turned to leave, feeling the bound daemon’s hunger still chewing at his mental defences. He would have to do what he had hoped to avoid more than anything else. As he stepped from the chamber the daemon-husk hissed to itself and watched the door as it closed.

Blackness surrounded the dead station. Astraeos watched its shape resolve bit by bit, like an ancient wreck revealed by a beam of light in the ocean depths. Starlight, weak and curdled to the colour of pus, caught the edges of the station’s bulk and snagged on its spires. It was an irregular half-sphere, towers and domes covering its flat upper surface while masts and sensor blisters hung in thick forests from its curved underbelly.

Astraeos blinked rapidly and the image became a single window at the corner of his helmet display. The gunmetal cave of the craft’s troop compartment filled his eyes. To his right the loading ramp hung open, the shuffling shapes of servitors clacking across the deck as they performed final checks. To his left, more void-suited servitors sat in silent rows on either side of the dull metal chests that filled the compartment’s floor. Kadin and Thidias sat across from him. The eyes of their helmets looked at him but he knew they were watching the image of the dead station.

It had taken them weeks to get out here. In his amniotic cocoon Egion the Navigator had ridden the Titan Child to the edge of the Eye, its Geller field envelope creaking like a sail in a high wind. Now they waited in the guts of their one remaining gunship and watched the feed from the Titan Child’s sensors. He looked at his two brothers; there was an unseeing, stiff quality about them, as if they were empty armour. He had not told them why they had come to this scrap of dead space, of course. Ahriman had told Astraeos when they broke from the warp, but Astraeos had said nothing to Kadin or Thidias.

Is that because of how you think they could react, said the doubting voice in his head, or because if you say it out loud it will become true? He remembered Cadar hanging in a web of chains, a daemon grinning from his empty eyes. This is how it begins. One lie grown on another until you cannot remember the truth. But still he said nothing.

He flicked his eye back to the waiting image of the station, blinked and it filled his view again. Tens of thousands of souls had once dwelled here, but they were long dead and the derelict hulk was silent, dark and cold. It was difficult to judge its size from an image but the numbers and scales that twitched at the edges of the screen told him that the station was over fifty kilometres in diameter. In comparison the Titan Child was like a fish drifting towards the corpse of a leviathan. They were approaching the station on minimal power. Linked to her ship, Mistress Carmenta was holding the ship’s power in reserve, poised to become speed or weapons fire if needed. Watching the station draw closer, Astraeos could not shake the feeling that they were intruders into the realm of a sleeping beast.

‘It is deserted?’ said Kadin over the vox.

‘So it seems,’ said Astraeos, keeping his eyes on the luminous image of the station.

‘It was Imperial,’ said Thidias, quietly, from just beside Astraeos. ‘And it died by force; look at the plasma burns on the lower sections.’ Astraeos had already noticed the characteristic blistering and smooth ripple burns on some of the station’s armour. Ship-killing plasma weaponry had fired on the station, and there were other signs: tumbled and broken towers, ragged holes that must have been at least a hundred metres wide, still clouds of debris that caught the starlight like crystal sand. Astraeos did not need the battle signs to know that the station was a dead shell; he knew it with a leaden certainty he could not explain.

‘Something of this size must have taken some killing,’ said Thidias. ‘Defence batteries, shield generators, it has enough to hold off a battleship.’

‘Not enough, though,’ growled Kadin, and turned away from the image on the screen to look at Astraeos. ‘Why have we come here?’

‘It was an astropathic relay station,’ said Astraeos. His eyes had fixed on a statue that rose from the back of the station: an angel, its wings spread against the stars, its hands reaching into the darkness. Its bronze skin was uncorroded, its form whole. But it was the face that drew his gaze. Someone had bored its eyes out with plasma blasts. Without thinking, Astraeos brought his hand up to the eyepiece above his own lost eye. ‘Hundreds of astropaths sifted the immaterium here, catching messages and spitting them back out. Then the Eye swelled, and swallowed it.’

‘Why seek such a place?’ said Kadin, his voice thick with contempt. ‘And how did he know it was here?’

‘Because I helped destroy it.’ Ahriman walked up the ramp and ducked into the gunship’s compartment. His armour was still the same battered plate he had worn serving the Harrowing, but now it was blue. The old battle damage was still visible beneath the fresh lacquering. A tabard of pale fabric hung from his torso, and his face was bare, the ambient light of the gunship’s hold darkening his smooth skin to the hue of polished wood. ‘I was here when this place died. I saw its crew killed and its astropaths burned alive in pyres.’ He paused and looked at Kadin. ‘Their screams still hang in the warp here. All those messages and minds wore the barrier between worlds thin.’

‘Is that why we came here?’ spat Kadin, and Astraeos could feel the aggression fuming from his brother.

‘It is also a long way from anything else,’ said Ahriman, his voice calm. Astraeos could feel control radiating from Ahriman like cold from frosted steel. He sat beside Astraeos and locked a mag-harness around his torso. With a wheeze of pistons and pressuring air the loading ramp began to close. The frame of the gunship began to shiver as its engines caught.

‘Why?’ said Kadin, his voice low but loaded within soft aggression.

‘Because of what I must do.’

Carmenta watched the gunship slip from her flank. Somewhere she breathed and twitched in her cradle of cables.

No, she thought, not my flank, the ship’s flank. The shuttle was exiting from the Titan Child, its engines brightening as it built speed. I have to keep the separation, even if it is only for a few hours. I have to rest, but not yet. Ahriman had said that they had to be ready: ready to leave, ready to fight, ready for something that he had not wanted to tell her. After the encounter at the black moon it was an understandable request, but she had stayed linked to the ship for weeks without pause, and the link had begun to take its toll.

After the exhilaration of battle and sudden flight had come the iron-flavoured feeling of exhaustion. It was in those moments that she was weakest, and when she was weak the Titan Child slipped deeper into her thoughts. She had woken from dreams as they scudded through the warp, unable to remember who or where she was. Whispered thoughts of weaponry and sensations of clicking machinery filled her even when her memory returned. Worse were the moments when she had been deep within the sensations of the ship only to find her mind dumped into her body. She would lie in the tangle of interface cables, unable to move, panic washing through her until her body reconnected to her mind. She needed her link to her ship, but at times she loathed it, like a drunk grown tired of drunkenness.

She had no time to rest, though, not now.

She watched the gunship as its flight curved under the station’s belly. Somewhere, on the edge of her perception, her fingers twitched. She scanned the station again with auspex and deep penetration augurs. She raked across its scarred surfaces, listening with multi-spectrum aerials. No movement, no heat signs; just pockets of air trapped in the superstructure, like bubbles trapped in a sunken wreck. The station was a corpse, an empty shell. It made her want to run, to light her engines and dive back into the blackness. She began her slow orbits of the station, her sensors twitching between it and the void. Somewhere, in the body she half forgot she had, she was shivering.

The gunship slid into the station through a ragged hole in its underbelly. Bright white lights stabbed out from the small vessel’s nose and wings. Blackened girders and tangled metal threw shadows into the cavernous space beyond. The gunship glided forwards, the weapon pods in its chin and flanks twitching as they searched for targets. The space had once been a series of holds and stores, but explosions had gouged it to greater dimensions, breaking through floors and walls to create a vast cavern.

In the gunship’s belly Ahriman sat in silence. Tolbek’s sword rested across his knees, his helm’s red eyes staring at nothing. In his freshly lacquered plate and helm, he was a statue. The warp was quiet, like still water around a half-submerged wreck. That quiet did nothing to reassure him.

Ahriman let his mind reach out into the dead space that clung to the station’s bones, probing gently, feeling the tatters of reality slide over his senses. Memories coated in blood and wrapped in screams surfaced in his mind. He had been on the station decades before when the Brotherhood of Darkness had stripped it of life. What they had left was a torn layer of scar tissue over a deep wound. The warp was still, but only in the way ice was still before it cracked.

He pulled his senses back into his immediate surroundings. Residual images and sensations prickled the surface of his thoughts. He blinked and flicked his eyes over the hold. He had not enabled his armour’s enhanced vision and the only light was from Astraeos, Thidias and Kadin’s eyepieces, which glowed like coals in the gloom. He and the three other Space Marines sat closest to the hold’s ramp. Further in, and filling the rest of the hold, were the servitors. They sat along both walls, their bulbous helms lolling and shaking as the gunship manoeuvred. They would not move until commanded. A memory of the hand of the Rubricae closing around his wrist rose in his thoughts and then sank again.

‘Landing area identified,’ came the vox-flat voice of the pilot servitor.

‘Very well,’ said Ahriman. ‘Set us down.’

‘By your will,’ replied the servitor. The whine of thrusters rose in intensity, as the gunship slipped through a web of girders to settle on the torn remains of a platform. There was a thump as its landing feet magnetically locked to the deck.

Kadin had already opened his mag-harness, his bolter ready in his hands. The inter-armour comms were silent, but Ahriman could hear the words of Kadin’s battle oath in his mind like a whispered prayer. Sat beside his brother, Thidias was still, his thoughts a steady beat of battle focus. Astraeos shifted, and glanced at Ahriman.

Ahriman stood and moved to the assault ramp, his sword held ready in his hands. Astraeos rose, his own blade loose by his side.

‘Will you tell us now what you expect?’ said Kadin.

‘I am not certain,’ said Ahriman. He felt the stab of contempt in Kadin’s thoughts, but said nothing.

The high-pitched whine of the engines still shook the gunship as the pilot servitor held it poised to boost away at the slightest sign of trouble. Pistons pushed the hatch wide and the gunship’s air hissed into the darkness outside. Ahriman’s helmet display flickered to life, turning his world into night-piercing monochrome. Hard vacuum and gravity warning runes pulsed red at the edge of his sight. Threat markers glowed in unresolved amber. He stepped from the hatch and felt the magnetised sole of his foot clamp on to the platform. He began to walk, his feet locking and releasing with each step. For a moment it felt as if it were his armour walking, not him, as if he were a passive watcher inside. He shook his head, and saw Astraeos was already moving past him, heading towards where the wide platform met the cavern’s wall. Kadin and Thidias overtook him and spread to either side, their heads moving to scan the cavern. Ahriman followed.

‘All quiet,’ said Thidias, and a popping screech of static filled Ahriman’s ear. He had reached the wall that edged the platform like a cliff rising above a strip of tidal sand, and he stopped and looked back to where the gunship sat. Hard white beams of light still stabbed from its chin and wings, but the airless dark of the cavern seemed to swallow their brightness.

‘Unload,’ he said on a closed channel. Another wail of distortion answered him. For a second he wondered if they had heard him, then the servitors began to march down the gunship’s ramp. They moved in lumbering lockstep, their faces hidden by thick brass domes, their bodies clad in vulcanised rubber. Between them they bore the grey metal chests.

‘I have found a door,’ said Astraeos, his voice chopped by static. Ahriman turned his head and waited for Astraeos’s locator marker to settle in his vision.

‘Stay where you are,’ said Ahriman, and he began to move towards Astraeos’s marker. He found the Librarian on one knee, watching an opening in the cavern wall. The door was as tall as a super-heavy tank flipped on its end, a black gulf edged by the teeth of the blast doors pulled back into its frame.

‘I do not like it,’ said Kadin as he came up behind them. He too was looking up at the waiting doorway, his bolter tracking his eyes. ‘No energy readings, no life or movement signs, it’s like it was scooped out.’ He turned his head and looked at Ahriman. ‘What did you do to this place?’

‘They…’ began Ahriman and then paused. He had been there, he had helped. It was not his design, but he had had a hand in its completion. He thought of the Brotherhood of Darkness, the runes glowing on their midnight armour as they lowered the astropaths into the pyre on chains. They had screamed and screamed until their tongues charred in their mouths. Fat had dribbled off them as they burned. There had been shapes in the fire, shapes which pulled the burning psykers down into the embers. There had been hundreds of astropaths on the station and the pyre had burned for days. The Brotherhood of Darkness had watched from the shadows, their armour glistening with dried blood, whispering their prayers to the night, and Ahriman had stood amongst them.

Think what you were, and how far you have fallen, said a voice in the back of his thoughts, and for a moment he thought he heard the rustle of crows’ wings.

Ahriman shook his head, and looked away from Kadin. He let his mind slide along the angles of the wall and through the doorway. His senses stretched across metal and airless space, flowing down lightless passages and tasting the pockets of stale air trapped behind sealed doors. It felt cold, as if he were swimming through black water under a crust of ice. His mind shivered. It was so easy, like running one’s hand through fine sand, or smelling wood smoke on a winter wind.

The darkness pressed against his thoughts; every inch of the station was bare of the smeared colours left by life, emotion and thought. He paused. Had he been wrong; was this place not what he thought after all? There was only one way to be certain. He let his mind dip just below the level of the real and opened his senses to the dimension beyond –

– a jungle of colour and light, splitting, re-forming, refracting and battering against eyes he did not have.

Heat, the smell of excreta, roses, a feather caress.

Shapes tumbling one over another, like oil mixing with blood and boiling gold.

A shape looked up at him with a pair of eyes the colour of amber and a chuckle spread across a face that formed as it grew. It laughed. There were more faces and a thousand eyes staring at him.

There were hands. Pale, soft hands pawing at black, enfolding liquid.

The stink of ash and urine, the cold of ice and the stickiness of drying blood –

Air gasped into Ahriman’s lungs. He could feel sweat beading on his skin. For a second he could see a lingering after-image, a luminous imprint of juddering hands reaching from a springing vortex of colour. He tried to move but felt his armour resist, and for an instant he felt panic. He was dead in his armour, trapped in its iron grasp, forever falling, forever drowning. Like his Legion, like the brothers he had destroyed.

‘Ahriman.’ Astraeos’s voice filled his ear, urgent and raw.

Ahriman tried to move and this time his armour unlocked as he tensed against it. His vision cleared. Biorhythm warning icons glowed cold blue in his eyes. He had passed out and his armour had locked around him, holding him unmoving. He turned his head. Thick hoar frost covered the platform around him, crawling up the cavern wall and doorway.

Astraeos stood five paces from Ahriman, his sword drawn. Green light clung to the sword’s edge and haloed his head. Thidias and Kadin stood further away, but both had their bolters levelled. Ahriman shook his head again. His throat was dry and his voice cracked when he spoke.

‘How long?’ he said, hearing his words echo in his helm, and the vox scratch and pop in his ear. Thidias glanced at Astraeos. Slowly the Librarian lowered his sword and the light soaked back into the blade. Beside him Thidias let the muzzle of his bolter point down to the floor. Kadin did not move.

‘Two seconds. I felt it,’ said Astraeos. Clicking static filled the pause. ‘Whatever you did, I felt it.’ Ahriman nodded, but said nothing.

He had intended to taste the warp; instead his mind had broken through the veil of reality. Transiting one’s mind to the warp was a delicate matter; it demanded ritual, and care. It should not have been that easy, he thought. He had simply punched through. He remembered the power flooding through him when he had faced Tolbek, the raw joy of it, the ease of power unlike anything he had felt before. But even here it should not have been so easy.

Slowly he took a step towards the door. His muscles were shaking; a taste of burned sugar and soured milk was still on his tongue. He extended his mind again, probing at the warp around them, letting it drift just ahead of his steps. He felt his senses want to leap ahead, to soar in the warp-thinned reality, but that was dangerous in a place like this. Any use of power without fine balance and control was a risk. He should have known that, and for a second he wondered why he had allowed himself to slip before.

The procession of servitors closed in behind them, their magnetised steps sending a tremor through the platform. Ahriman looked back to where Astraeos and his two brothers watched.

‘Follow,’ he said, and stepped across the doorway. Behind him Astraeos glanced at his two brothers and followed into the dark.

Kadin watched Ahriman as they walked through the station’s silent passages. The sorcerer could kill, Kadin had seen that truth, but he moved like a lord rather than a warrior. Kadin had seen it before, an arrogance that ran so deep it bled from words and gestures. It was the mark of one who would destroy anything, and break oaths for truths that only they could see. Kadin had seen his Chapter burn at the hands of such men. Now he was oathbound to ideals that might see him dead.

They turned into another passage. Straight and narrow, it seemed to stretch away into eternity. Kadin turned his head to look back. The servitor procession was ten paces behind him. He blink-clicked his helmet display to infra-vision. The heat fuming from the servitors’ bodies glowed from white to dark blue. He snapped back to the green glow of night vision, and returned his gaze to the tunnel ahead. Astraeos and Ahriman were ahead of him, their positions lit by green runes.

His eye lingered on Astraeos. The Librarian was changing, Kadin could see it; there was rage and defiance still but there was something else, something that perhaps the Librarian was not aware of. Astraeos still held to their former ways, but they were a Chapter of three, and the old oaths seemed thin to Kadin. They had broken their vows, and spilled blood to do it. They were warriors, clinging to lives they should have laid down. And now a new master had their words of loyalty.

Ahriman briefly halted in the darkness in front of Kadin. The sorcerer turned his head to look back. Kadin went still and met his gaze for a moment. Then Ahriman turned away and kept walking. Kadin followed, but his eyes stayed locked on Ahriman’s silhouette. Parchment strips haloed the sorcerer, floating in the zero gravity. Kadin had watched Ahriman attach them to his armour as they rode the gunship. He could not read what was written on the parchment, nor understand the words the sorcerer had muttered as the red wax had bonded them to the blue armour. Just another secret that their saviour was keeping to himself, but then Kadin would have expected no less.

Oaths. All they had were oaths, so Astraeos had said, but Kadin had seen every oath to him broken and broken his own in turn.

We are traitors, he thought. We call our vows sacred as we did when we had a thousand brothers. But they are gone.

The rune marking Ahriman pulsed green in Kadin’s eye. Green. Green for no threat. Green for friendly. The rune flicked to amber ringed by red. An alarm began to shrill in Kadin’s ear. He knew what it meant: the muzzle of his bolter had followed his stare to point at Ahriman’s back. The warning alarm sounded louder. He blink-clicked the warning away but kept staring.

We have fallen. There is no higher cause to give our allegiance to. Trust and we are dead.

He could feel his trigger finger tighten. The alarm started to scream again, filling his helm. He focused on Ahriman, seeing the path of the bolt-round, the point of impact, the secondary target points.

There is only survival.

Kadin blinked the targeting rune to threat. Red filled his eye.

And we survive alone.

Ahriman stopped, and turned. Kadin froze. The red targeting rune spun above Ahriman’s right eye. Kadin stared. Ahriman was completely still, his hands by his sides, his weapons sheathed. Astraeos had stopped a pace in front of Ahriman and was looking back.

‘Is something wrong?’ Astraeos’s voice crackled over the vox. Ahriman cocked his head, the red eyepieces still fixed on Kadin.

Slowly, the sorcerer shook his head.

‘No, it was nothing,’ said Ahriman, and walked away down the passage. Astraeos looked at Kadin for a heartbeat then turned to follow Ahriman. Kadin did not move. The red targeting rune held steady in his eye. Then he blinked it away and followed.

They reached the choral chamber after four hours. Ahriman had felt Kadin’s hostility itch at the back of his skull for every step of the journey. A well of bitterness boiled in the warrior; Ahriman did not need to read Kadin’s mind to know it. Distrust ran through Kadin’s being like worms burrowing deep into dead meat. There was no end to it, just a pause, a momentary cessation.

He is right not to trust me, thought Ahriman.

The door to the choral chamber was small and framed by an arch of cut stone. Thorns, bones and angel wings crawled over the surface, and a carved skull looked down on him as he crossed the threshold. The space beyond was utterly lightless, and his helmet display fizzed with fog as it tried to pierce the gloom.

‘Bring light,’ said Ahriman. Behind him he could sense Astraeos, Thidias and Kadin taking up positions flanking the door. Ahriman smiled, but without humour. There was nothing here to guard against, at least nothing that a defensive dispersal could counter. The servitors followed, burbling acknowledgement of his order. Most of them would have to be destroyed after they were done. The whispers of the place would have got into the remaining meat of their minds. Ahriman was surprised they had functioned so far.

The servitors mag-clamped the metal chests to the floor and began to unfasten the heavy lids. The first chest held glow-globes which they ignited and sent spinning through the airless dark. Ahriman looked up as the spheres of light revealed the chamber around them. Hanging terraces of stone rose above them. Pillars circled each terrace, each pillar a figure carved in green stone that glittered with crystal impurities. There was an angel, its face hidden by its hands; there was a war saint, his face grim beneath a beaten copper halo; and there was a withered woman clasping a twisted staff, a snake coiling over her shoulders, her eyes hidden and her mouth sewn shut.

It was not as he remembered it, as if the silence and darkness had slid a mask over the past. He remembered the screaming, the statues on the lower tiers looking down as the pyre grew, their carved skin blackening with soot. The fireglow had danced shadows across the walls. Smoke had spiralled up, underlit by fire, grey stained to orange and red.

The scars were still there, though. Lengths of chain and crude iron frames still hung from the higher tiers, the metal twisted by heat. The astropaths had screamed, even as fire filled their lungs they had screamed.

He looked down to the heat-cracked floor. It had been a mosaic of crystal and polished stone. At its centre a great eye had looked up at the astropaths when they gathered on the terraces. Images of saints and symbols had spiralled out from the eye to the chamber’s edge. Now the pattern was gone, the tiles melted and fused into an iridescent swirl of colour. At the edge of the floor he could see a face, its features still recognisable. A laurel circled its brow and it looked up at Ahriman with a serene expression at odds with its scorched surroundings.

He felt Astraeos approach. Caution and uncertainty layered the Librarian’s thoughts and questions bled from cracks in his armoured mind. But there was something else besides the unusual hesitancy.

He is changing, thought Ahriman. I am changing him. I am making him what I need: a pupil, an ally to stand by me when I have none. Does he know what I do, does he realise where it might lead?

‘What now?’ asked Astraeos.

‘Send Thidias and Kadin to guard the passage back to the gunship,’ said Ahriman. Distortion ran through his words. He could feel the wild surge of the warp churn just out of sight. It was responding to them, responding to the light of their minds and the dance of their thoughts.

‘Guard? There is nothing here.’ Astraeos gestured at the shadows clustering at the corners of the choral chamber.

Ahriman was silent as he walked to the remaining dark metal chests. He unlocked the lid of the first. Inside, a bronze bowl the size of a storm shield gleamed in the dim light. Circles and symbols spiralled from its centre to its rim. Ahriman lifted it out, his eyes reading the symbolic layers of the pattern. He had instructed Astraeos in some of what they needed to do, but he had never told him the entirety, he had never said it aloud. Astraeos had not asked, but the question and his doubts had boiled at the edge of his thoughts for days.

‘I thought we came here so that you could get answers,’ said Astraeos from behind him.

‘That is why we are here,’ said Ahriman, and turned towards the centre of the chamber.

‘But why here? The warp is close here. I can feel it as you can. This is not an auspicious place. This is a wound.’

Ahriman walked to the centre of the crazed floor and looked up, judging his relative position to the walls with a glance. With a careful flick of his hands Ahriman let the bowl go. It hung in the gravity-starved space, spinning around its centre, gleaming. At the chamber’s door Thidias and Kadin waited, listening. Ahriman let his thought glide out until it touched Astraeos’s mind.

+You know, Astraeos, you know why we are here,+ he sent. Astraeos flinched, but replied.

+You intend to perform a rite– +

+No.+ Ahriman’s reply severed Astraeos’s thought like a knife parting cord. He stood and looked up from the offering bowl. Astraeos had taken a step forwards, his body tensed, his hand unconsciously brushing his sword hilt. Thidias and Kadin were watching, deaf to the thoughts passing between the two psykers. +We are not performing a rite,+ sent Ahriman, and then paused. Will an oath, still fresh and untested, hold him to this? +We are here for a summoning.+

Astraeos was still, his hand resting on his sword hilt, his eyes on Ahriman.

‘Send the others to guard the passage as I ordered,’ said Ahriman, his voice crackling across the vox. He could feel emotion radiating from Astraeos, sending ripples through the aether like stones dropped into already churning water. Then the Librarian straightened.

‘As you will,’ said Astraeos, and bowed his head.

Ahriman watched as Astraeos set another bowl spinning at the edge of the chamber. Ninety-nine of them now floated in the choral chamber, spinning around their centres at different heights from the floor. Each bowl was the width of his palm, and fired from smooth black clay. Crystals of incense sat frozen in the bottom of each one. Ahriman looked around the chamber, taking in every detail as if it were fresh, comparing each object and alignment to the shape that he held in his mind’s eye. The black bowls floated in a pattern that created a multi-planed polyhedron. White candles formed a many-armed spiral across the cracked floor. Both bowls and candles formed alignments with each other, with the chamber, and with the cracks and melted patina of the floor. Ahriman had considered every value, every significance and detail. There was no accident, no chance of concordance or discordance in the design; it was the architecture of his intent made real. He looked down again to where the large bronze offering bowl spun at the centre of the design. Above it an athame held steady, the light of the glow-globes catching the silver of its blade and setting the marks etched on its surface dancing. The chamber was like the tight skin of a drum, ready to resonate to the intent and will of those within its bounds.

Slowly Ahriman touched the athame’s handle with his left hand. It began to turn, spinning with a heartbeat slowness.

+I am ready,+ sent Astraeos.

+Very well.+ Ahriman reached out to grip the athame floating above the offering bowl. +We will begin.+

X

Summoning

It was darker than Kadin had ever known. It was not that he could not see, for he could; it was that the darkness seemed to press on his eyes. Blackness hung over everything like a heavy curtain. Objects would appear in his green-washed view, sometimes so close that he could not believe that he had not seen them before. He would look ahead and see nothing, only to take another step and find a bank of machinery looming above him, or a thick vine of cabling barring his path. Several times he had looked back at objects he had passed, and seen nothing but blackness, and a fizzing hash of green static.

Long ago, on a world only he and his brothers now remembered, he had been born in the dark. They all had. In caves that no sunlight or starlight had ever seen, he had learned to read the flow of air, and sense by smell, touch, and sound. When they had come for him and raised him up to the light, he had remembered the dark. The dark was his father, and mother. So the Chaplains had taught, and Kadin had learned the mysteries behind those words. He was the darkness and the darkness was him. Except here, in the night-vision-tinted corridors of a dead station, he remembered the darkness that sometimes would bubble from the depths of his birth world. He remembered the shunned depths of caves where the beating of his heart was the only thing he could hear or feel. It had been a long time since he had remembered such things.

‘Nothing,’ he said into the vox, and heard a crackling echo of his own voice in his ear.

‘Understood,’ came Thidias’s voice, as stiff and controlled as ever even over the scratched transmission of the vox. ‘Threat signs are negative here.’

They had been patrolling the passages for close to an hour, following Astraeos’s order to guard the route back to the gunship. They moved alone, connected only by the vox and the locator icons pulsing in their retinal displays. Since they had begun Kadin had seen nothing, heard nothing, sensed nothing, but still he did not like it. Inside his helmet there was no sound other than his own breath and the buzzing whirr of his armour. The sounds should have been reassuring; he had lived with them for so long that to be out of his armour felt like the absence of a limb. But in the dark of the passages the familiar sounds felt alien, as if they belonged to someone else.

‘There is no need for this,’ he said as he turned into a wide tunnel of rivet-covered plates. There were marks from gunfire on the wall, and bolter casings on the floor, but they were as old and cold as the rest of the station. ‘There is no threat sign because there is nothing here.’

‘We are to patrol,’ replied Thidias, and Kadin could almost see him shrug. ‘Astraeos willed it of us.’

‘The sorcerer willed it,’ sneered Kadin. In front of him the passage stretched away beyond the limit of his sight. He switched to infra-vision and the corridor became a black space of perfect cold. He turned, looked down, and saw his footsteps as patches of green fading to blue. The vox clicked.

The vox clicked, but only static filled Kadin’s ear.

‘Returning to main route,’ said Thidias abruptly. Alone in the darkness Kadin shook his head.

‘Acknowledged. Proceeding on approach tunnel sweep.’ Kadin cut the vox and turned to start down the waiting passage. He stopped, his limbs and armour locked into sudden stillness.

Patches of heat dappled the passage floor in front of him, their edges bleeding to yellow and green. They led away into the cold dark of the passage he had been about to walk down. The most distant mark was already merging into the icy black. The nearest patch was bright red with fresh heat. It was right in front of him, and had a shape that was recognisable even in the blurred outline of a heat trace.

It was a footprint.

Kadin paused and then blinked his display back to bleached green.

Two eyes looked back at him from an inch in front of his face.

Kadin fired, and the flare of his bolter drowned the sight of glass-black eyes and pale skin. He stepped back, fired again. Static boiled up across his helmet’s display. Something was moving beyond the fog of distortion, something pale, with spindle limbs. He fired a burst, layering fire in a blind pattern.

His helmet display snapped back into focus, bright and clear. There was nothing in front of him. He opened a vox-channel.

A voice screamed in his ears. His fingers clenched on his bolter. He drew breath to shout.

Silence.

The passage was dark and empty in front of him. He blinked to infra-vision. Cold blackness. He looked down at his hands. The muzzle of his bolter glowed yellow-white from its recent use. He looked up.

Darkness. Complete darkness: the darkness of the caves of his human childhood. Somehow he knew that if he looked down again he would not see his weapon, even though he could still feel its weight in his hands.

There was no passage in front of him. He was alone. In his chest his hearts were beating in a forgotten rhythm.

Slowly, Kadin turned and looked behind him.

Ahriman breathed slowly as the chant rose in his mind. He was utterly still, his hands raised at his sides, palms open. His eyes were closed but he could sense Astraeos standing on the other side of the spinning offering bowl. Witch-light was fuming from their hands, pooling in their palms and arcing across their armour.

As Ahriman’s mind wove through the chants he felt Astraeos follow him, his will singing a simpler harmony. He could feel the Librarian struggle, his breath labouring and his skin prickling with sweat. Ahriman had prepared him as best he could, but this was no song made of sound and words; it was a flowing river of meaning and connection, words blended with symbols, with colours and sensations, each triggered in precise metre at the speed of thought. Both Ahriman and Astraeos were creating the chant, but it also created itself, spiralling wider with every passing instant, spinning patterns of its own. If any living thing had stood within the choral chamber they would have felt it, heard it, and seen it swimming before their eyes in broken colours. It was the music of the spheres, the primordial language of creation and destruction, the roaring fire of existence. And it was silent.

Ahriman felt the warp unfold into his mind like fire spreading through a dry forest. It flooded his sensations, overwhelming his sense of the physical. He was his flesh, the beat of his heart, the surge of his blood, but he was also the space around him, the stone walls of the chamber, and the flicker of the glow-globes. He felt the hard lines of reality soften as the laws holding the chamber together flexed in time with his pulse.

Slowly Ahriman opened his eyes. Above them the glow-globes exploded in a sphere of sparks. Opposite him Astraeos was shaking where he stood.

+Open your eyes,+ sent Ahriman. Behind the lenses of his helm Astraeos’s eyes opened. +Ready?+

Astraeos nodded once, and the strain of that movement bled across the psychic link to light stars of pain behind Ahriman’s eyes. Ahriman looked down at his right hand, flexed the fingers and extended it above the spinning bronze bowl. The blue gauntlet unlocked and peeled away from his hand, the sections pulled by telekinetic fingers. The flesh of his hand bleached white as it met the airless cold. Alarms began to ring in Ahriman’s ears. He focused on the athame in his left hand. His thoughts flattened like a mirror, reflecting the rising storm of aetheric energy with calm indifference.

Blood. It always comes to blood, he thought. That was the way of things, and always had been. He heard Astraeos moan. Around him, storm winds smeared the choral chamber’s features. A candle kindled close to him, its flame flickering impossibly in the vacuum. Then another lit, and another. Frost began to form on his left arm, creeping up from the athame. At the edge of the room the servitors began to twitch and spasm. Thick sparks arced across their bodies. Somewhere, at the edge of hearing, Ahriman could hear the chattering of crows. The flesh of his bare hand was blue with cold. He could smell ozone and incense. +Now,+ he thought, and stabbed the athame into his bare palm.

Blood bubbled into the air. It formed spheres of deep red, gloss-sheened in the candlelight. There was no pain, just a numb ache. Everything had become silent and still, as if a wall of crystal had descended around him. There was just the blood, spurting out under its own pressure. In the long-dead rituals of wizards and mystics this moment had many names. It was a moment of balance, of supreme control. His lips split as he spoke the name, dredging its syllables from an oubliette of memory. The sound left his mouth and the hanging spheres of blood began to spin together. The last phrase came from his mouth with a sound like cracking cartilage. He heard Astraeos scream.

‘You are summoned,’ roared Ahriman, and the words echoed in the airless gloom. Around the chamber flames leapt from the floating bowls. Smoke and sound filled the room. He could hear screaming, the screaming of the dying as they were lowered into the pyre of his memory. The floating mass of blood began to burn. The bronze bowl was glowing, shedding its covering of hoar frost in viscous dribbles that fell towards ceiling and floor. Then the bowl fell and the blood fell with it, splashed against the bronze, exploded back up, and froze.

Ahriman stepped back, and drew his sword. Astraeos was staggering, his hand scrabbling for his own blade. The candle flames leapt higher, molten wax falling upwards. The light caught the shape of the frozen blood spray and cast it against the blackened chamber walls. Ahriman glanced at the shadows and froze. The silhouettes of feathered wings and overlong limbs spread and danced across the walls.

In front of him the frozen blood was spreading like the branches of a growing tree. It pulsed as it grew, discolouring and charring as it flowed into the shape of veins, muscle and bone. Shoulders formed. Arms. Hands. A head. A mouth opened in the glistening meat, and moaned with the pain of its birth. The sound of a beating heart shook the chamber. Skin spread across the raw flesh of the body. At last the figure stood tall, its hands by its sides, its bare flesh rippling as details resolved. Eyelids formed and closed over hidden eyes. Hair grew from its scalp to fall to its shoulders in a dark wave. It smiled, showing white teeth, and opened its eyes. They were the yellow of amber, the pupils black holes.

‘Ahriman,’ breathed the figure, and its voice rattled with the sound of dead winds and dry bones.

Across Carmenta’s back, sensor arrays turned as she circled the station. Her weapons and engines were aching, the tension from being held in a state of readiness bleeding into the rest of her being. She kept circling, listening for signals, watching for movement.

Nothing. There was nothing. Again she cycled through augur settings, sifting for the energy markers of Ahriman, Astraeos and their entourage. They had vanished from her senses as soon as the gunship had entered the station. She could not even raise the gunship. She could launch another vehicle, servitor driven, bonded by a close mind-link. No, she would not do that; Ahriman had been clear.

‘Wait,’ he had said. ‘If the matter goes awry, you will know.’ But she had waited and the more she waited the more she wondered if the silence could roar any louder. Should she launch another shuttle? Should she flee, or fire?

No; she would obey. She would wait in silence.

‘Mistress.’ The voice reached her as a thought. She pulled part of herself back from watching the station, and formed her voice into something digestible by a human mind.

‘Egion,’ she said. The Navigator had stayed awake, ready to guide her if they needed to flee.

‘I can see something, mistress,’ said Egion, in a voice that trembled as it formed in her head. Somewhere far away, where she was still flesh wrapped in cables, her skin prickled with cold.

‘What can you see?’ she said, pushing as much calm into the words as possible.

‘I can see it even when I close my eye,’ he said, and the thought carrying the voice was so weak that she could hardly hear its meaning. She realised that if he had been standing in front of her he would have been moaning.

‘Tell me what you can see,’ she said. A wash of emotion leaked across the mind-impulse link, a haze of awe and fear, like watching emotions play across someone’s face as they look at something just behind your shoulder.

‘Silence, mistress. I can see only silence.’

‘I do not understand, Egion.’

‘I looked, just once, and now it’s all I can see.’ His voice had begun to fade.

‘Egion–’

‘Silence, mistress, the warp is silent, it is dark and calm. It is never so. Never.’

‘Why–’

‘It is waiting, mistress,’ said Egion, his voice rising in forced strength. ‘I can see it, I can feel it. I know it. It is waiting.’

The daemon wore his brother’s face, of course. Ahriman let out a long breath as he looked into Ohrmuzd’s countenance. It was the image of his true brother, not as he died, not even as he had lived as a warrior of the Thousand Sons, but as Ahriman remembered him: young, unchanged, human. But of course it was not Ohrmuzd, nor was it human.

‘I command and bind you to the purpose for which I called you,’ he said, and the daemon grinned at the words even though there was no air to carry the sound. ‘By these swords I hold you to this place and my will.’ Ahriman pointed the tip of his sword at the daemon. On the other side of the circle Astraeos mirrored the movement. The daemon flinched, then grinned and bowed its head.

‘It is good to see you again, brother,’ it said, its voice deep and resonant.

‘You are not my brother,’ said Ahriman, his voice level.

‘Oh, am I not?’ The daemon tipped its head to the side, and looked down at the floor. Ahriman could feel its presence testing the bindings like a thief probing a lock. It would not get free; he was certain of his work. He could command it to change its shape if he desired, but he would not; questioning such a creature was a dance of lies and wills.

‘You are a creature of the warp, a lie, a falsehood,’ he said, and sent a measure of his will at the daemon. The splinter of power pulsed through the chamber. The daemon fell as if whipped. Black cracks spread across its skin, and dribbled thick yellow fluid. It panted, curses spilling from its lips in a dozen tongues. It appeared to take a breath, and the cracks in its skin closed. It looked up at Ahriman, rubbing its jaw, an amused expression on its handsome face.

‘Would you like to see how Ohrmuzd died again?’

Ahriman felt another shard of power crack from his mind before he could think. The daemon fell back to the ground, its skin flaking off. Beneath the skin was something that looked like the matted feathers of a dead crow. It pulled its knees to its chest, whimpering and weeping. Slowly the smooth skin closed, and it stood again, nodding as if in apology.

‘I am sorry. You have questions,’ said the daemon, looking at Ahriman. ‘You do, don’t you?’ It cocked its head. ‘That is why I am here, that is why you called me?’

‘By the nine hundred words I bind you to answer what I command,’ said Ahriman. The daemon laughed, a high false laugh.

‘So formal, Ahriman.’ The daemon turned to where Astraeos held his sword drawn, his body locked at readiness, then craned its head to look at Ahriman over its shoulder. ‘This is the apprentice? What fate will you doom him to, Ahriman? Or is this another attempt at redemption?’ It stretched its head back and seemed to breathe deeply through its nose. ‘How many mortals did you help burn here?’ It flicked its head back towards Astraeos. ‘You should ask him.’

Ahriman saw Astraeos flinch, but the daemon was already turning back to Ahriman, grinning, delight dancing in its eyes. ‘Is that why you chose to come back? To wallow in sorrow for your sins?’

Ahriman said nothing. The daemon shrugged.

‘I seek knowledge,’ said Ahriman. The daemon seemed to sigh. ‘I seek knowledge of Amon.’

‘Another whose trust you rewarded with betrayal,’ said the daemon, and it was no longer grinning but standing still, arms by its side, its face solemn.

‘A brother came seeking me. His name was Tolbek. He came to drag me to Amon’s knees. I have sought the other exiles of my Legion but they are dead or with Amon.’ Ahriman paused, but the daemon did not move or speak. ‘Do you know of what I speak?’

‘Yes,’ said the daemon, and rolled its eyes. ‘Of course I know of what you speak. All we do is watch you, because your pitiful scrap of a Legion is our only concern.’

‘Why does he seek me? What does he intend?’

The words seemed to hit the daemon like a physical blow. It shuddered, its whole body briefly losing its pure lines before settling again. Its chest heaved, and it spat black phlegm onto the floor.

‘I cannot say,’ said the daemon. Ahriman raised a hand, and his disgust forced the daemon to its knees.

‘You will tell me.’

‘I cannot say, because I do not know,’ whimpered the daemon.

Ahriman extended his hand and formed a fist. The daemon crumpled with a sound of cracking bones and popping joints. It crouched on the ground, holding its head and rocking backwards and forwards.

‘It is hidden from my eyes, from the eyes of all our kind.’ The daemon looked up at him, speaking from behind fingers that pulled at its own skin. Black and yellow blood was running over its knuckles. ‘You should be flattered, Ahzek. For such powers to be bent to hide the truth from you, it is almost an honour.’ It smiled, its yellow eyes flicking up at Ahriman. ‘Almost.’

Ahriman was about to speak, but the daemon spoke before he could.

‘But do you want to know why he hates you?’ Its cheeks twitched with seeming pleasure. ‘That I do know.’ Ahriman watched the daemon’s tongue flick over its teeth and lips.

Because I destroyed them, and broke the hope I promised them, thought Ahriman. The daemon was nodding.

‘Because you were right,’ said the daemon. Ahriman felt ice slide down his spine. ‘Because you saw truly but failed. That is why.’

For a second Ahriman could say nothing, and just stared back at the daemon’s yellow gaze. Then he shook himself and asked something that had occurred to him as he had watched the daemon manifest.

‘One of your kind came to me before Tolbek appeared,’ said Ahriman, remembering the image of a crow, and the light burning in Karoz’s eyes. ‘I am fate come round at last,’ it had said.

‘I know nothing of that.’

Ahriman nodded. He had expected no other answer. The relationship between the creatures of Chaos was as complex as it was fluid. There were countless daemons, each a fragment of the daemonic consciousnesses that some called the Gods of Chaos. The gods spawned daemons and swallowed them again at whim. Within the ranks of daemons there were creatures of greater and lesser power. There were creatures that hunted mortal souls like wolves, and had little intelligence beyond their instinct to hunt and devour. There were lesser servants, soldiers and attendants, that swarmed to their god’s will. Above them were the greater choirs, and the princes who had ascended from mortality in their god’s service. The daemon that stood before Ahriman was a princeling of the pantheon of Chaos, a creature that must once have been mortal but who had slipped the bonds of flesh. A fragment of its name learned long ago had allowed Ahriman to summon it, and bind it to answer him.

‘What is the path to finding the truth I seek?’ asked Ahriman.

‘A path of lies,’ said the daemon. It crouched, shoulders hunched, its back rising and falling as if it were struggling to breathe. Its skin looked pale and clammy, the muscle beneath wasted. Ahriman paused; through the binding he could feel the daemon’s essence twist like a fish pulled from water, dying in air it could not breathe.

‘From where can I learn the answer I seek?’ said Ahriman, and the daemon twitched at the question. It was trembling, its now bone-thin fingers pawing at its mouth. It is dissipating, thought Ahriman; its form and presence were draining from the physical world, back into the great ocean of the warp.

‘From Amon himself,’ it said. ‘No other can speak the answer you seek.’

Of course, of course, but then what did I expect? That Amon would be less than the sorcerer and strategist that he was?

‘Where is he?’ The daemon snarled, showing teeth that were now black and rotting. ‘Tell me. You must tell me,’ said Ahriman.

It shook its head. ‘I will show you,’ said the daemon, and extended a skeletal hand. Ahriman did not move. The daemon was bound to his will, but to touch it, to make a connection with it, would strain those shackles. It was a risk. ‘I cannot lie to you. You know that your binding does not allow me to utter falsehood.’

I have to know. I have come this far. I have to know.

‘There is not much time, Ahriman. If you wish to know then I must show you the path to what you seek.’ Ahriman looked at the open palm of the daemon’s hand. On the opposite side Astraeos started forwards. Ahriman reached out, and touched the daemon’s hand.

Fingers closed around Ahriman’s wrist. Cold spread up his arm and laughter filled his ears.

‘Thank you, Ahriman. Thank you,’ said the daemon, and its pleasure made him feel suddenly sick. A pattern unfolded in his mind, layered with formulae, metaphor and ritual; a path through stars and space and impossibility. ‘I spoke truth, this is the path. I give this to you, Ahriman, but you will never see the path’s end.’

Ahriman tried to pull himself back, to pull his hand away, but could not. He could see both the warp and the physical realm, like two pict feeds overlaid. The daemon bloomed in the warp around him, becoming a snake covered in burning feathers. It spiralled around him, pulling him into an embrace of fire. In the physical realm the daemon still wore his brother’s face as it roared with glee. It stepped towards him and Ahriman felt the bindings he had placed on it shatter, each one a bright nova in his skull. He saw his mistake, then, and the trap that waited to swallow him.

He had summoned and bound the daemon, but beneath those bindings were others which wove through it at a deeper level. Someone had already bound the daemon to a different purpose, someone who had guessed what he might do to get answers. He had summoned the daemon, but it served another.

Ahriman’s battle plate glowed red under the daemon’s grasp. His skin was blistering against the inside of his armour. The candles on the floor rose into the air, the tallow melting in an eyeblink. The bowls of incense crashed to the floor. Shards of black porcelain fell towards the ceiling. The servitors standing at the edge of the room burst apart, exploding into spheres of blood mist. Green ball lightning crackled over the walls. Out on the edges of his aetheric sight, Ahriman could see vast shapes made of the shades of night. The shapes bulged and swelled with thousands of hungering faces and reaching hands.

The daemon looked down at him. It no longer looked like Ohrmuzd, it no longer looked like anything even slightly human. Ragged black feathers pushed through its pale skin. It reached out a taloned hand and touched Ahriman’s forehead. The metal of his helm buckled and cracked. Armour integrity warnings screamed in his ears. The air in his armour stank of carrion meat and hot metal. He thrust his mind at the daemon, trying to draw power to him, finding only the constricting presence of the daemon choking his soul.

‘I will be free,’ whispered the daemon, and the whisper echoed, rising in volume and changing until it filled Ahriman’s ears. He tried to move his sword hand but it moved so slowly, and the daemon’s mouth was opening wider and wider. ‘I will take your mind to my master, and I will be free.’

Ahriman felt his strength wither. He had failed. He was nothing, a heretic and fool whose reach had exceeded his grasp, a remnant who should have fallen to dust long ago.

The daemon shrieked, and suddenly its grip on Ahriman vanished. It writhed, clawing, its back arching. The point of Astraeos’s sword projected from its chest. Blood and pus bubbled from the wound, sheeting down its torso.

Behind the daemon Astraeos let go of the sword’s hilt. The shadows behind the Librarian were moving, forming shapes of limbs, tentacles and teeth-ringed mouths. Astraeos’s shoulders were shaking, thick plates of ice cracking from his armour as he moved. He looked at Ahriman and sent a single word.

+Run.+

XI

Warp Breach

‘We must run,’ screamed Egion.

Carmenta felt terror, and it was not all her own. Egion was crying in her soul, his terror bleeding through the mind-impulse link. Her engine’s flames fluttered and misfired. Stars and darkness blurred in the sensors that were her eyes.

Don’t let me go, she moaned. Please don’t let me go. The Titan Child’s engines spluttered and died. It streaked forwards on its momentum, the station looming closer by the second. Hold on to me, she pleaded. Something is coming for us, for us all. Do not let me go.

In her cable cradle her body went into convulsions. She retched oil and blood through the mouth slot in her lacquered mask. She was drifting, her mind unanchored. Voices whispered in her ears, telling her of things she had forgotten, of the darkness of a labour hab, of the broken turning of a fan, and the chopped light falling across the body of a man curled on a soiled pallet. He twitched and gave a hacking breath. His eyes opened. She had thought he was looking at her, but he would never see her again. The air had reeked of urine, mould and rust, she had forgotten that. How could she forget that? It was not a memory, it was the present. She was not the Titan Child. She was not Carmenta. She was nothing but a girl starring at her father’s face, and watching his blood-pink spittle dribble down his cheek. She could see the cogged tattoos of service under the runnels of spit.

The memory vanished.

I am losing control, she thought.

‘It’s here,’ shouted Egion, over the link. She could almost see him twisting in his amniotic tank, defecating and bleeding in panic. ‘It is here, we must run. Run.’

‘No. We must…’

‘We must run,’ he shouted, and as he shouted his voice carried the vision of his fear into her mind.

She saw what he had seen. It was like seeing a reflection caught in rippling water, all form and pattern breaking as soon as it was seen. She could see beyond the grey lines of the station, behind the stars. Shapes moved there, huge and protean. Scales and scabs of colour clung to their bulk. They waited, their hunger barely restrained.

Carmenta shrieked as a machine. Throughout the Titan Child power conduits ruptured, spilling gas and burning fuel into her insides. The plasma reactors faded and surged. She felt her own body twist in the cradle of cables. Her engines were still burning, but she was numb to them. She was losing her grip on her Titan Child. Her hull was shaking, trembling like skin exposed to an icy wind. Egion’s terror was flooding her with human fear and the ship was trying to shake her free. She had to cut the interface with Egion, or he would destroy them.

She forced her mind back into the link. Her mind became the Titan Child again, ramming through her systems, trailing code damage and corrupt routines. She grasped the mind-impulse link and in that instant she saw him.

He floated in his amniotic tank, churning it to froth with his vestigial limbs. Ribbons of fresh blood stained the fluid. Feed and waste tubes had ripped from the sockets in his mouth and back. His head seemed grotesquely large atop his shrunken torso, his eyes milk-white with blindness, his mouth stapled shut. The open eye on his forehead twitched wildly at the view beyond the crystal walls of the chamber.

‘Please,’ he said.

She shut down the link and the vision of the Navigator’s chamber vanished. The slow beats of her plasma-filled heart pulsed through her as she hung silent in the void. Then the Titan Child’s engines roared to life. Fire ran through her veins, and she wanted to run, to run and not look back. But she turned towards the dead station.

‘Ahriman,’ she shouted in an electronic cry.

Ahriman did not run. The chamber’s stone walls and pillared tiers were melting. In front of him the daemon arched its back, and vomited a great wash of black liquid into the air. The sword impaling the daemon began to glow with heat. Astraeos staggered backwards, his palms smoking. The daemon quivered, scattering burning droplets of blood as its body dissolved into a boneless pool of flesh. More daemons stepped from shadows like congealing smoke. Bodies of wasted muscle and cracked skin clawed out of the gloom. Ahriman glimpsed white eyes, claws, and rows of hooked teeth in mucus-thick jaws.

Exhaustion bubbled up inside Ahriman. Black circles popped at the edge of his eyes. Hoots and chitters scratched at his thoughts. He felt as if he were falling down a lightless shaft. He took a step backwards. His muscles ached as if he had been fighting for weeks without rest.

A daemon stepped from the growing throng. It had a long, vulpine head, and its skin was taut over a hunched body of lean muscle. It took a slow step, its black eyes flicking over Astraeos and Ahriman. Ahriman saw its legs tense. The daemon jumped. Behind it the rest of its kin came forwards in a single wave. Astraeos began to turn to face the leaping daemon, but too slowly. The daemon’s claws touched his shoulder guard just before it was about to land.

+Down,+ shouted Ahriman. Astraeos dived to the floor. The telekinetic wave hit the daemon while it was still in mid-air, and flung it back in a spray of black slime. The charging daemons faltered, and Ahriman ran forwards and pulled Astraeos to his feet in the instant before they rallied and came on again. Bright light danced in front of his eyes and his skin felt clammy. The circle of daemons closed over them before they could take a step. Ahriman heard claws scrabble at his armour. Teeth and eyes filled his vision. Rancid breath fogged his eyepieces. He felt something sharp slip through a joint in his leg armour. Armour integrity warnings lit in his helmet display.

+Astraeos,+ he called, and reached for the Librarian’s mind. He felt Astraeos’s mind resist for an instant, and then open. Their wills became one, and Ahriman felt his fatigue fall away. He formed a single, blunt thought and heard its echo in Astraeos’s mind.

The dome of force exploded outwards. Daemons ripped from the floor and tumbled through the air. Fragments of pottery, metal and bone rose in a scattered cloud. A moment of perfect, still calm flowed through Ahriman. He could feel every mote of dust and scrap of debris caught on the edge of the expanding telekinetic sphere. He changed the shape of his thought and Astraeos followed. The debris exploded outwards in a wave of shrapnel. The daemons caught in the blast fell in shredded heaps. The way was open to the door out of the chamber.

The calm had vanished from Ahriman as suddenly as it had come. He felt Astraeos’s mind buckle. Voids opened in his own will. They ran for the door.

The daemons followed, pouring into the passage opening like a swarm of insects. Frost ran down the walls in front of them. Cracks opened in the plated metal, glowing with a blue light. Ahriman tumbled end over end, his mag-grip on the floor broken. He reached out blindly, felt his hand hit something solid and grabbed on. His body spun around his grip and slammed into a hard surface. Force juddered through him, and the air left his lungs. He could not tell if he was holding on to the wall, ceiling or floor. Confused runes swam across his eyes. He twisted around, trying to find the direction in which they had been running. Silence filled his skull. He could feel blood hammering in his ears. Something hit his arm, and he twisted to bring his sword around. Astraeos’s eyepieces were inches away from Ahriman’s faceplate. The Librarian had clamped on to the passage wall.

+Which way?+ sent Ahriman, but Astraeos was reaching past him, pointing.

No, realised Ahriman. Not pointing. Aiming.

The bolt pistol fired. A jet of silent flame spat over Ahriman’s shoulder. Ahriman spun around, still holding himself in place with his right hand. The bolt-round’s detonation lit the darkness for a second. A living wall of mouths and reaching claws filled the passage behind them. Ahriman pulled his sword around and closed his eyes. He burrowed deep into his being, calling on reserves of focus he had kept sealed for so long he had almost forgotten them.

+Burn,+ he sent, and the fire leapt from the blade tip. It shone blue with heat. Ahriman’s mind went with the fire, riding its fury and guiding its path. It struck a daemon with a halo of waving arms, and burned straight through it. He swept the fire around, cutting through the daemons in a brilliant arc. Some of the daemons split into two smaller bodies which floated for a second in the death-slime of their parent before swimming forwards. Others burst apart in explosions of multi-coloured steam.

Ahriman was shivering, his skin clammy and wet with sweat inside his armour. The formulaic patterns in his mind were burning, tainting his senses. He could smell smoke, and feel heat prickle his lungs. Somewhere beside him Astraeos had stopped firing.

They had to move. He released his hold on the flame. It did not end. The fire still coursed from his sword tip, ripping through his mind and body. He could not stop it; he could not release the power he had called. In his mind the burning pattern glowed brighter and brighter, becoming more complex, sucking in thoughts and sensations like a hurricane wind. The hand holding the sword began to glow. Pain lanced from his fingers, but he could not open them; he could do nothing but watch as fire boiled out of the cracks of his soul. His skin blistered. There was just fire roaring in his mind. He could not stop. He could not remember how it had begun.

I am Ahzek Ahriman, came a voice from the depths of his mind. It was an old voice, forgotten and rejected.

No, he screamed in a thought that was charring to nothing. No, I am not. He failed. The dream failed, and I fell.

The power vanished, soaking back into his mind. He opened his eyes. The lance of heat still lingered as a smear of neon light hanging in the vacuum, cooling and fading from blue to purple. The distant door to the choral chamber was still visible, edged by a pulsing blood-red glow. Globules of slime and skin spun in the half-darkness. As he watched, pink amorphous shapes began to form from the vaporised slime. He could see sucker-tipped fingers flexing as they extruded from the congealing matter.

Ahriman turned to look for Astraeos. The Librarian was already flying down the passage, kicking off walls, floor and ceiling. Ahriman started to follow. A beam of actinic light fizzed past him and melted a hole in the passage wall. He turned as a daemon hooted and flicked another beam of light from its fingers. The daemon was crawling across the buckled floor-grating. A wide mouth split the face in the centre of its torso, a thick tongue slavering over teeth. Blue and yellow flames were licking its skin, and lighting the hunger in its saucer eyes. Its six limbs moved with boneless speed as it scrambled closer.

Ahriman spread his mind into the passage walls. Sweat instantly sheeted his skin, and then froze in hard droplets. His body floated to the centre of the passage, cradled in a telekinetic web. Pressure built like a tightening bowstring. The metal of the walls began to buckle. He felt as if the noon sun were blazing in his skull. In front of him, Astraeos was spinning as he shoved away from the roof. He folded his mind around the Librarian. Astraeos resisted, shoving back with a panicked wave of will. Ahriman felt the pain in his head increase.

+Submit,+ screamed Ahriman, and felt the resistance drop away. He released the force of his mind, as a daemon reached for him with a flame-wreathed hand. Ahriman and Astraeos shot forwards like arrows loosed from a bow. The tunnel ripped apart in their wake. The star of pain in Ahriman’s head exploded. Shreds of metal scattered before them, half melting or dissolving into grey dust as they flew into the waiting dark.

The Titan Child rolled and skidded as Carmenta felt thrusters fire too hard. Opposing forces shook through her bones, and she screamed in pain. Coolant was venting into her holds, oil spraying from ruptured pipes, her corridors filling with acidic gas and steam. Bulkheads snapped shut, and she felt parts of the ship go numb. The Titan Child kept skidding. The iron cliff of the station’s flank loomed out of the static of her sensors, so close she felt she could touch it. Then her sensors cut out and plunged her into blindness.

No, no, no, she thought, no, not like this, not blind. She was alone and could feel nothing. No, not like this. I am not flesh. Only flesh dies. I am metal, I am data, and machine. I am Titan Child.

Her machine eyes opened again as data punched back into her mind. She was in time to see something pull itself from the station.

A hundred-metre-wide sheet of metal cracked from the station’s back and lifted up like the carapace of a vast turtle rising from mud. Tendrils of lurid energy trailed from it as it emerged. Under its shell the creature had limbs of wreckage, pincers of twisted metal, and fins of torn steel. A blunt head formed from twisted gun turrets turned and looked at the Titan Child. Its eyes were gouged holes that wept molten metal. Carmenta looked back at it and felt the promise of ruin in the creature’s gaze.

The creature roared, an impossible sound that rang across the void. Carmenta fired. Plasma batteries and turbolasers lit the narrow gulf between her and the station. The creature leapt. Debris spun behind it, sparkling like snowfall under starlight. Wings of crumpled metal unfolded from under its shell. Carmenta could not process what was happening. She had missed. The creature was accelerating towards her.

No, it was flying in the airless void. The buzzing beat of its wings flooded her sensors. She readied to fire again, feeling the thrum of charging capacitors and vibration as breeches closed on macro-shells.

With a shower of void-pitted metal another creature broke through the back of the station and leapt into the void, then another, and another.

Carmenta fired. The creatures vanished as plasma-tipped shells exploded in a spread of overlapping fire-spheres. The release of each shot was hot, filled with a scream of molten fury.

The creatures came through the inferno, red with heat, mouths wide. Carmenta felt cold, the cold of dead iron spinning through an endless night. She fired once more before the wave of burning creatures passed through her shields and sank their claws into her hull.

Ahriman’s mind buckled as his thoughts slurred. They were tumbling now rather than flying through the station, banging off walls, floors and ceilings. Ahriman’s helmet display cut out, returned and cut out again. He could hear air hissing from rents in his armour. He had no idea how much further they had to go, or even if he had guided them back the way they had come.

The frame of an open blast door slammed into his helm. Sparks ignited behind his eyes. Part of his awareness fell away, as a portion of his brain blacked out. He hurtled on unguided, momentum spinning him on as his telekinetic projection died.

Astraeos caught him, grabbing him as he tumbled past. The Librarian had clamped his boots to a wall and reached out to hook Ahriman’s arm. He tried to speak, but his teeth were loose in his mouth and his tongue was thick with blood. A sickly luminous haze crept across his vision.

+Which way?+ sent Astraeos. Ahriman tried to answer, then shook his head. Astraeos pulled him closer, his face looming in Ahriman’s blurred vision. +Which way should we take?+ sent Astraeos again. Ahriman tried to understand what the Librarian meant. +They are coming.+

Ahriman turned his head, and tried to focus through the fog of colour and popping stars of light. Three doorways looked back at him, three blank openings leading to darkness. They had come this way; of course. Or had they? His thoughts flowed like treacle. He could not remember and he could not have been sure which door led to the gunship even if he had. Astraeos was shaking him harder and harder. He moved his hand to push him away, but his movement was sluggish and weak. He tried to grip Astraeos’s shoulder. The ceramite was vibrating as he touched it. Ahriman stopped moving back down the passage they had flown down. The walls were shaking as if in rhythm to a rising tide.

+Which one?+

+I don’t know,+ sent Ahriman.

The end of the passage glowed as walls bent and flexed like the inside of an arching snake. Astraeos let go of Ahriman, and raised his bolt pistol. Light spilled forwards, clawed and horned shadows reaching down the walls. Ahriman found he still had his sword in his hand. He tried to raise the blade but the movement made him roll in the zero gravity.

A stuttering streak of flame sprang from behind them. The daemons vanished behind a wall of phosphor-bright detonations. Ahriman turned. Another burst of flame split the passage. A figure in armour the colour of dull copper was advancing from behind them, firing as he moved, his feet locking to the floor with each step. The vox spat to life in Ahriman’s ear.

‘Take the central door. One hundred metres, then left turn fifty metres.’ Thidias’s voice was emotionless, but Ahriman could taste the focus in the warrior’s mind.

‘Where is Kadin?’ shouted Astraeos. Thidias gave the smallest twitch of his head in reply, took a step towards the daemons and fired a broad burst. Ahriman could see that the fire pattern was taking all of the warrior’s focus.

‘I do not know,’ said Thidias. The last round coughed from Thidias’s bolter. He stepped forwards, pulled the clip from the weapon, loaded, and fired again in the space of a breath. The passage in front of him was ablaze, phosphex and oxygen gel burning white-hot on the walls and floor. Beyond the glare Ahriman could see the daemons recoil like wolves on the edge of torchlight. ‘Last contact was before the station…’ Words failed Thidias, but he needed to say nothing more.

Ahriman looked towards the central of the three doorways, and then back to Astraeos.

‘Go,’ said Thidias. ‘I will hold.’

For how long? thought Ahriman, but he kicked off towards the central doorway.

‘Go,’ said Thidias again, and Ahriman glanced back. Astraeos had not moved from beside his brother. ‘Go, brother.’

‘We stand as one,’ growled Astraeos. Pale lightning was playing around his fists, and Ahriman could feel the Librarian trying to draw power from the warp.

‘No,’ said Thidias. ‘You always were bad at judging character.’ He was firing in short controlled bursts, stepping forwards to change the angle of his shots. With every explosive splash of fire the daemons were closer, their bodies flickering between impressions of limbs, eyes, hands and teeth. Thidias turned his head for a second to look at Astraeos.

‘You will go, and I will stand alone. It is my choice.’ The Librarian was silent for a second then kicked off in a leaping bound towards the door. Ahriman crossed the threshold just in front of him. They scrambled towards the waiting dark, while behind them muzzle flashes strobed on.

Half blind with fatigue they moved with heedless speed, spiralling and crashing, until they spilled from the door into the cavern and saw the gunship waiting. The muzzles of the wing-mounted heavy bolters glowed dark red. Something had already come for the gunship. Globular flesh, scraps of metal and spent cases formed an expanding cloud. Ahriman pushed off from the door frame. The cooling mouths of the guns swivelled to face him. Sensor discs sent identification signals, and his battered armour answered. The guns went still. Unable to slow or steer his flight, Ahriman hit the craft’s blunt wing with a bone-jarring clang. He grasped the wing before he spun into the vast darkness of the cavern. Astraeos hit the tail fin an instant later, and almost lost his grip.

Slowly Ahriman pulled himself down the wing. The ramp was still open, and dim red light diluted the gloom of the crew compartment. Ahriman had begun to climb the ramp when he saw the figure waiting within.

Thidias stopped firing. His clip was empty. Light filled the passage in front of him, the bright white of phosphex dancing in the blackness of the daemons’ eyes. He let go of the bolter, and his last touch sent it gliding into the narrowing space between him and his foe. He drew his knife and pistol. The daemons came on without pause. Red target runes spread across his eyes as he aimed the bolt pistol. He began to fire, switching from target to target without thinking. Daemons fell. Bodies burst like bloated sacks of skin. A smell of rotting meat and spice filled his mouth and nose. He pushed the sensation away, and kept firing. The round counter ticked towards zero in the corner of his eye.

The bolt pistol went silent. The daemons were ten paces away, their flesh quivering as they swung and flew closer. He began to run towards them. His knife was a reassuring weight in his hand, like a memory held close.

He had broken his oaths to the Imperium. Others, now long dead, had disputed that fact, but Thidias had always known the truth in his soul. They were falling, and would fall further. Better that he ended now, as a warrior who could still remember what honour was.

A daemon broke away from the swarm, and spiralled towards Thidias. Long arms waved around its stump of a body, and hundreds of tiny mouths covered its bloody-pink flesh. Thidias took another stride, dropped low and rammed his knife upwards. Black liquid drooled out in weightless cords as he sawed up through the deflating bag of the daemon’s corpse. Something was scrabbling at his legs with long talons. He kicked blindly, felt an impact and kicked again. Something he could not see stabbed into his left ribs. Alarms began to ring in his ears. Acid was spreading down the inside of his armour. He cut at a creature with a wide mouth and rolling eyes. The blow split it in two. The alarms were a constant whine in his ears. He took a breath, felt liquid rise in his throat. He raised his knife and cut again, before a hooked talon darted out and spilled his guts into the cold vacuum.

Ahriman went still. The figure was half sprawled against a flight bench. Red crystals of blood hung around its crumpled form. It wore armour, its pitted bronze surface gleaming dull in dim light. Even half hidden by shadow it was clear that its body was not whole: its arms and legs were bloody stumps. Something had ripped chunks from its chest. He could see white ribs poking from the sides of its wounds. Ahriman stepped forwards. He began to reach out with his senses to feel for the pulse of life in the slumped figure. As soon as he tried his mind filled with a chorus of cries and a heat-haze sickness.

Astraeos swung down into the hold, not seeing the figure. +Come on,+ he sent. Ahriman made to reply, but a voice stopped him.

‘Brother?’ said the voice, scraping across the vox. The figure on the floor moved, turning its head with drunken slowness. It still wore its helm, but the eye-lenses were blank and unlit. Astraeos had frozen where he was. ‘Is that you, Astraeos?’

It was Kadin, the warrior’s voice a crunching slur of clotting blood. Kadin tried to move, but what he achieved was a pitiful twitching. ‘Brother, I cannot see,’ said Kadin, a wet breath between each word. Astraeos took two strides and bent down.

‘It is I,’ said Astraeos. ‘We have you, brother, you will be well.’ Kadin coughed, and Ahriman heard the scraping of bones in the sound.

‘Liar,’ said Kadin. ‘Where is Thidias?’ Astraeos said nothing, and after a second Kadin nodded weakly.

‘We have to go now,’ growled Astraeos. As if in echo to the words the gunship’s weapons began to fire. Ahriman felt the craft’s frame shake with recoil. Beyond the open hatch, strobing muzzle flashes broke the blackness. He moved towards the front of the crew compartment, clicking the vox to transmit as he did.

‘Take off!’ He had no idea if the pilot servitor was still alive or if its mind was still functioning, but he shouted the command anyway. ‘Take off now!’ A blurt of machine code answered him. A second later the gunship’s internal gravity activated, and the ramp began to close. Through the narrowing gap Ahriman glimpsed the daemons, floating and bobbing towards them, caught in the flarelight of the firing guns. The gunship rocked as it unclamped from the platform. Air vented into the crew compartment in a cold fog. The guns were still firing, and the gunship shivered as its engines lit. Ahriman grabbed hold of an overhead rail.

The gunship shot across the cavern, accelerating on bright cones of fire. Behind it the daemons ran across the platform and leapt into the void after it. Bolts of corpse light and arcs of crackling power followed the gunship. Some hit, burrowing into metal, chewing into circuits and fuel lines. The heavy bolter mounts on the wings swivelled and fired.

Within the crew compartment Ahriman tried to reach for a point of serenity amidst his fatigue. Kadin’s wounds were thawing, oozing blood onto the decking. Astraeos was muttering something to the dying warrior, one hand supporting the back of Kadin’s helmet.

Something hit the gunship, sending sparks crawling across the inside of the hull. The stink of burning cables and hot metal filled the compartment. Ahriman pulled his thoughts away from the scene in front of him, and pushed his mind into the void beyond the hull. A thought the shape of ice and crystal formed in his mind, hardening over the gunship like a shell. Another bolt of lightning cracked across the gunship’s wing, and Ahriman felt his mental ward hold for a second and then break. He gasped, and blinked away blood-thick tears.

+Astraeos,+ he sent. The Librarian’s head snapped around. Ahriman could feel the rage fuming off him in hot waves. +I need your help.+

Astraeos said nothing but reached up and pulled his helm off. His skin was pale, and burn marks blistered his brow. He stared back at Ahriman, his true eye a pale orb with a pinprick of black beside the electric green of his augmetic.

+We will all die here if you do not help me,+ Ahriman sent. Astraeos looked back to the chewed remains of his brother. Fresh blood was seeping from the wounds. +We will die here, and any chance Kadin may have will die with us.+

Outside the hull, the heavy bolters fired their last shells. As if sensing the weakness the daemons spilled forwards. The gunship jinked and flipped, weaving amongst blasts of rainbow energy. Invisible blows ripped at its wings, sending it spinning. Ahriman heard the craft’s frame scream like a ripped girder. There was no time. He turned to look back at Astraeos.

+Now,+ he sent, and layered the command with all he had learned of the Librarian. Astraeos was a man with many names: the name granted to him by his Chapter, the name he had been born with and forgotten, the name that his mentor had called him, and the number the Black Ships had given him when they took him from his birth world. The command held all of these names, and it hit him like a physical blow. Astraeos half fell then came up fast, his face twisted with pain and rage. Ahriman remained still.

Astraeos stopped, his hands clenched in fists. The gunship bucked again. Astraeos opened his mouth, but never said what he was intending.

Kadin rose from the deck, floating into the air with a crack of bones that sounded like pistol shots. Frost spread across the walls and deck. In Kadin’s deep wounds, blood ice was forming. His head came up last. Black eyepieces looked at Ahriman.

Ahriman felt cold. In his mind the distant cries of the daemons suddenly sounded like laughter. He had misunderstood. He remembered the gunship’s weapons glowing red as he had approached it. He saw Kadin’s wounds and remembered the blood and meat hanging in the airless dark. The daemons were not chasing them, they were circling.

‘I cannot see,’ said Kadin’s choking voice.

The Titan Child was burning across half her hull. Carmenta knew it, but could not feel it any more. Her void shields were gone. Scabs of molten slag had peeled off across her flanks and prow. The creatures crawled over her, chewing and ripping at armour plates softened by the heat of their breath. She was half blind but she could see the gunship, spinning in a clear sphere of space a few hundred metres away. It was so close but it was tumbling like a broken bird. In one of her still functioning landing bays, a slab-sided lifter rose from the deck. Its servitor crew blurted an acknowledgement of her order. Blast doors unfolded and the lifter pushed into the void.

Kadin floated towards Ahriman. Steam was rising from him even as frost thickened across his armour. Shreds of skin hung from the stumps of his legs. Kadin’s wounds closed before Ahriman’s eyes, fresh flesh filling the chewed gaps.

Astraeos lunged towards Kadin. Kadin’s head twitched, and a telekinetic wave slammed Astraeos into the wall. He rolled with the impact and sprang forwards. Kadin drifted to the side and struck him across the chest with a lash of energy. Ahriman heard a dry crack of splintering ceramite. Astraeos folded, and before he could hit the floor the daemon’s power smashed him across the compartment. He lay still, blood seeping from the cracks in his armour.

Kadin looked back to Ahriman.

No, thought Ahriman. It is not Kadin, not any more. He could see it now, the daemon rooted in Kadin’s flesh like a parasite, snaking through his blood and bone like horned chains. There was nowhere to move. He tried to summon power, but it slipped out of his grasp like a rope tugged away by the wind. The daemon gave a sorrowful cackle in his head. He could not move. He felt invisible hands grip his flesh, holding him in place. The daemon raised Kadin’s arm. A long talon of frozen blood extended from the chewed stump. Delicately, almost gently, the daemon placed the tip on the lens above Ahriman’s left eye. The daemon pushed the talon forwards. The crystal of the eye-lens splintered. Ice-blue light flooded Ahriman’s left eye. He could not look away as the needle tip extended towards his pupil.

+Kadin,+ said Ahriman, and felt the last inch of his strength shorten. The talon tip halted. The daemon roared with rage, the sound ripping from Kadin’s blood-clogged lungs. +Kadin. I bind your flesh. I compel you by your blood.+ The daemon staggered, and around them the stricken gunship spun and spun. Ahriman’s will flowed into Kadin’s body. It was not fully the daemon’s. Not yet. The daemon had taken Kadin as a host, but it had done so by blunt force. There was still a fragment of Kadin’s mind and body it had yet to conquer.

Into that shrinking gap Ahriman poured the last of his will. He did it without subtlety, ramming his raw strength against the daemon. He felt the scraps of Kadin’s soul lend him strength. The daemon vomited, and the neck seal of Kadin’s armour burst as red-streaked bile spilled down his chest. The stolen body twitched, striking the walls of the compartment. Ahriman felt his knees buckle. His own body felt like a distant memory. The daemon’s hold on Kadin’s flesh weakened, then began to slip. The daemon’s back arched. Kadin’s body was glowing like an overheating furnace. Ice melted from him, turning to steam before it could hit the floor.

Then he felt another presence pour into Kadin’s body. It was cold and black, like water gathered from a deep cave. The daemon that had been fighting for Kadin’s flesh vanished beneath the oncoming tide. Ahriman felt the edge of the new presence touch his own mind. It was like being stabbed by needles of ice, and the shock snapped him back into his body.

Above him the new creature shivered with Kadin’s flesh and stepped forwards. Kadin’s features vanished as his body moved, as if he had fallen into shadow. For a second he looked like a hole cut in the background of the world.

The newcomer reached down and lifted Ahriman from the floor, cradling his head in Kadin’s hands. He could feel the creature’s eyes looking at him, into him. He looked back.

‘No, not you,’ croaked Ahriman. ‘It cannot be you.’

+Forget,+ said the shadow. Ahriman blinked.

He saw billowing clouds of light that spiralled to a vanishing point. His body was cold, his mind was numb. He could not think. Somewhere beyond the border of his senses, he was bleeding. The world was silent. He was not sure if he was still breathing.

He could not remember where he was. Warm darkness crept over him.

He saw nothing.

XII

Change

Ahriman woke suddenly, pain and nausea replacing a blank absence of sensation. His eyes were open, but he could not see. He tried to raise his hands to touch his face, but they would not move.

‘Subject conscious,’ said a machine voice, and he flinched at the suddenness of the noise. A high ringing filled his ears, and he could hear the whir and scrape of mechanical gears.

‘Remove the dermal covering,’ said another voice. This one was human and female. He recognised its hard edge. ‘Start at the face.’

‘Carmenta?’ he said. Something sharp pricked his forehead, and scored down the centre of his face.

‘Yes, Ahriman.’ He felt something tug at his face, and light stabbed into his eyes. He blinked, for a moment as blind as he had been before. Then the world around him resolved into blurred shapes and indistinct colours. ‘You are alive.’

He turned his head. He wore no armour, and was bound to an upright frame in a long chamber that extended away to blackness on either side. Bright lights stabbed down at him from a hoist suspended above him. The walls and ceiling were gloss red, and a channel ran down the scuffed metal floor. He could smell antiseptics, machine oil and crude but powerful pain suppressors. A hunched servitor stood close beside him, staring at him with a cluster of green lenses. Red-brown spatters covered its off-white robe, which trailed in scabbed tatters across the floor. The servitor peeled an inch-thick layer of what looked like pale fat from Ahriman’s skin. Carmenta stood in front of him, her cracked red lacquer face tilted to one side, watching. Ahriman thought she looked exhausted, but he could not say why.

‘You have been unconscious for six solar days,’ said Carmenta, as if answering an unasked question. ‘You suffered extensive internal damage, bone fractures, blood loss and burns.’ She stepped forwards, a mechadendrite reaching out to take the limp layer of flesh from the servitor’s razor fingers. He noticed the lattice of capillaries running through the soft material. ‘Luckily your body has done much to heal the damage itself. The layer of synthetic flesh was mainly to treat the scorching. You looked like you had been cooked.’ Ahriman looked beyond the harsh circle of light. He could see metal frames and racks, nests of machine arms gathered close to the ceiling, and metal-sided vats connected to thick pipes that snaked across the floor.

‘You are a biologos, as well as a machine-wright?’ he said.

‘I dabbled once. This is one of the servitor reclamation holds.’

‘Helpful.’

‘Not really. The little I know of your kind just confirmed that there was little that we could do. Your own flesh is your salvation.’ Ahriman nodded. The injuries he had sustained must have induced a healing coma. As sensation returned he could tell that he would be below peak condition for some time. His aetheric senses also felt dull and sluggish, as if a deadening fog wrapped his mind. The memories of the last moments on the gunship were indistinct blurs. He shook his head. That he was alive, and that the Titan Child had clearly survived, was enough for now.

‘Where are we?’ he asked.

‘In a dead stop in the deep void.’ Carmenta paused. ‘It cost us. I hope it was worth it.’

‘Astraeos?’

‘Is alive,’ she nodded. ‘Like you he suffered significant physiological damage. He is still in the same type of coma you just woke from. Kadin suffered worse. I am not sure what happened to him, or why he is alive.’

Ahriman’s blurred memories snapped into sharp focus. Adrenaline roared through his tired veins. He could feel damaged muscles twitching in response. He was suddenly aware that his limbs were still bound to the metal frame, thick rubber-covered clamps holding him at the wrists and ankles. A thought pulled them open with a grind of bending metal. He stepped to the floor.

‘Where is he?’ he growled.

‘He is unconscious in a sanguinary immersion tank,’ said Carmenta, carefully. ‘I don’t know if he will wake again.’ He looked at her and something in his look must have shaken her, because she stepped back, her hands and mechadendrites rising. Ahriman stilled his own emotions.

‘Isolate it,’ he said. ‘Shut down every connection to where he is held and override all access protocols. Keep it that way until I see him.’ Carmenta did not move. ‘He is a danger to the ship, to all of us.’

‘Really?’ If she had had lips Ahriman was certain they would have curled. ‘An unconscious cripple kept alive in a tank is a danger? You think I don’t know that you already keep an abomination on my ship? The thing created by your pet Maroth.’ She was staring at him, her bionic eyes lit with coldness.

‘Do as I say,’ he snapped, and she flinched and took a quick step away from him. She is still human, he thought. Broken and driven half mad by the machine she tries to tame, but she still feels and fears. It took him a moment to reach what he judged a correct response. ‘I am sorry for what happened, mistress.’

‘My ship, you nearly killed my ship, and you say that Kadin is a danger to us.’ Her voice trembled as she spoke and her mechadendrites twitched. ‘Parts of the ship are still burning. Half of it is just wreckage: systems, weapons, engines. All so you could get answers?’

Ahriman returned her stare. He had once known many tech-priests and adepts of the Mechanicum. In the time since he came to the Eye he had met many more who had fallen to the warp. All had seemed to him to become colder with age, more withdrawn, as if becoming like the metal of their machines. It was a form of insanity, he supposed, an obsession that dissolved away everything outside it. In Carmenta, though, the closer she bonded with her ship, the more fractured and raw her emotions, the more human part of her became; and what was left became… What?

‘We will find supplies, and there are places on the Eye’s periphery that can remake ships. Even one of this size.’

She shook her head, a strange combination of mechanical precision and human exhaustion.

‘Egion is dead,’ said Carmenta in a flat voice. Ahriman understood then what she meant: the Titan Child was dead in the void. It would be able to jump to the warp, but without a Navigator it would be rudderless, capable only of short, unguided hops before having to re-enter reality. They would be guessing their path and even the most modest journey would take an eternity. Worse, they balanced on the rim of the Eye of Terror in a region already saturated by unstable warp phenomena and storms. They might be alive for now, but Carmenta was facing near certain death if they attempted to move. For someone who was still human in a sense, she was taking it well.

‘How did he die?’ he asked, after a pause.

‘I am not sure,’ said Carmenta, and there was a note in her voice that he could not place. ‘Perhaps it was this place that killed him. Perhaps he was dying before we went to the station.’ She turned away with another shake of her head, and took a clinking metallic step towards the end of the chamber. ‘We fled once we had you. Some of the… the creatures were still on my hull. I had to shake and burn them off.’ She paused, an angry catch in her voice. ‘I had to destroy parts of the ship’s hull. I had to hurt my own ship. Egion was screaming all the time we were in the warp, then he just stopped, and we were here, and he was dead.’

He looked at Carmenta as she took another limping step. Dried blood stained her charcoal robe, and he could smell servo systems overheating as she moved. She was hiding something from him, but he restrained the instinct to simply take it from her thoughts; he had taken too much from her already.

‘Where are we now?’ he asked. Carmenta kept walking, and did not look at him as she replied.

‘Egion was raving as we fled. I do not know how their kind function, but I think at the end he was not navigating so much as running in terror.’

‘Where did he flee to?’

Carmenta stopped, and slowly turned her head to look back at Ahriman. In the low light the cracks in her mask looked like the traces of black tears.

‘Home, Ahriman,’ she said. ‘He tried to flee home.’

Looking out of the armourcrys cupola Ahriman saw the Cadian Gate as a fluttering dot of light, set in a lone patch of black in a voidscape stained with nauseous colour. It was a gate only in the abstract sense, of course. A system turned into a fortress, it guarded the only stable passage from the Eye of Terror into the Imperium. There were other ways into and out of the Eye, but they were uncertain and dangerous paths, difficult to find and likely to kill any that sought them. Any sizeable fleet wishing to pass into or out of the Eye of Terror had to pass through Cadia, or so it was said. Garrisoned by millions of troops, ringed by space fortresses, and circled by war fleets, anything trying to break through had to either bring overwhelming force or wear the face of a friend. Time and again armies of renegades had tried to break Cadia and failed.

‘Towards the light,’ said Astraeos softly from beside him. Ahriman glanced towards the Librarian.

No, he thought. Not a Librarian, an acolyte, an apprentice. My apprentice.

Astraeos still wore the robe the servitors had given him while he slept and healed. Glossy burn scars covered his face and arms, and all his facial hair had vanished. His breath hissed and cracked with the sound of unhealed bones. Ahriman felt an echo of the lingering pain in Astraeos’s body every time he looked at him.

Both of them stood under a wide dome of brass and crystal high on the spine of the Titan Child. Beneath them the living wreck of the ship glimmered in the curdled starlight. Black wounds like huge bites ran along the ship’s hull. In places he could see gas and liquid still venting from holes. The leaking gas formed a mist, which hung over the buttresses and gun towers like smoke rolling over a burned city. The ship was still at a dead stop and had been for days. In that time Astraeos had woken, Carmenta had healed what she could of her ship, and Ahriman had brooded on what to do next. He knew, of course. The options were limited, but that did not make them any less dangerous, or any more palatable.

After a long moment Astraeos turned his head to look at Ahriman.

‘The Navigator ran towards the only light he could see, and it led him here,’ said Astraeos, his breath hissing wetly between each word. ‘All creatures born in the light run towards it when they are afraid. Only vermin run into the shadows.’

Ahriman raised his eyebrows, and looked back to the stars. A dark mood had pervaded Astraeos since he had woken from his healing coma. Ahriman had caught snatches of bleak and clouded thoughts the few times that he had skimmed his apprentice’s mind. For a while Ahriman had thought it was fatalism, that the fate of his last two gene-brothers had broken Astraeos’s spirit, but it was not; it was resignation, a surrender to something cold and dark within.

‘This is the closest I have been to the Imperium since…’

‘Since you betrayed it,’ said Astraeos. Ahriman was silent for a second. He could recall every day with a precise clarity, but how long had passed since he had last broken the bounds of the Eye eluded him. Time in the Eye was not fixed; like a trick of perspective, it changed depending on where one stood, and for how long one looked.

‘Yes,’ he said.

‘What happened on the station? Why did my brother die?’

‘He died because I made a mistake.’

‘Just one?’

Ahriman held Astraeos’s gaze and nodded.

‘The daemon I summoned was already bound to do another’s will. My summoning drew it into existence, but once it was manifest I had no control over it.’

‘It was a trap,’

‘Someone predicted my actions, and acted first.’

‘Amon?’

‘I think so, but I have no shortage of enemies,’ shrugged Ahriman, and turned to look down the length of the Titan Child to the distant tip of its prow.

‘I want to wake Kadin,’ said Astraeos. Ahriman let out a slow breath. He knew it would come to this; it was one of the inevitable steps he would have to take if he wanted to move forward. He should have ordered Kadin dumped into a plasma furnace and the ashes vented into the void.

‘That would be unwise,’ he said after a moment.

‘It would be unwise to refuse,’ said Astraeos, his voice cold, but his thoughts growling with aggression. ‘You promised me salvation for Cadar, but you have only taken another brother from me.’ Then the emotions vanished and Astraeos’s thoughts were just the familiar hum of a well-shielded mind.

He is learning quickly, thought Ahriman.

Ahriman stared back, his face still, his emotions balanced and masked by layers of subconscious baffles. He could annihilate Astraeos, and burn Kadin to nothing without allowing him to wake.

He could do these things, and lose what few allies he had.

Necessity is the father of error.

‘Very well,’ said Ahriman.

Astraeos watched him for a heartbeat then nodded. ‘Once he is awake we follow you, and you will fulfil your promise to me.’

Ahriman gave a crooked smile. ‘Is that a fresh oath?’

Astraeos’s mouth made a stiff line. ‘If you choose.’ He paused and glanced out at the distant light of Cadia. ‘You mean to continue, don’t you? After all this, you intend to find Amon.’

‘Yes,’ said Ahriman. ‘The daemon showed me how to find him.’

‘You believe what it showed you, even though Amon bound it to his service?’ Astraeos shook his head.

‘It was not bound to hide where Amon is.’

‘You don’t think that it could be what Amon wants: a trap within a trap to draw you to him?’

Ahriman said nothing. He had considered the possibility that the information the daemon gave him was a trap, or a lie, or both, but he was committed now. He had to know.

After a second Astraeos shook his head again, but this time the gesture was heavy with weary resignation.

‘How will you follow this path? We are four souls and a broken ship without a guide.’

‘We are not without a guide,’ said Ahriman. ‘I can guide us for a short way.’

‘Where?’

Ahriman looked up to where Cadia glimmered amidst its sea of calm night.

‘To steal a Navigator.’

Kadin rose from the blood tank on the end of polished chains. The tank was an iron-sided box over twice the height of a man, set at the centre of a chamber of riveted bronze that curved to a domed roof. Viewports in the tank’s side showed the red liquid within. Cracked glass readout displays were set beside the viewports, and symbols scrolled across their grimy surfaces in luminous blue. The air in the chamber was damp and warm.

Astraeos watched as the machines suspended above the tank slowly swallowed the chains. He sniffed; the air stank of fresh blood, a sharp iron taste that overwhelmed even the smell of machine oils and rust. His brother’s head was the first thing to break the surface. The servitors had cut Kadin’s helmet away to attach a mane of injector tubes and bio-feeds to his scalp and neck. Under the draining blood the skin of his face was pale grey and pulled taut over his skull. Spiral-shaped lesions covered his crown and looped down over his sunken cheeks. His eyelids were closed. Blood drained from his slack mouth as he rose from the tank. Astraeos stared. Still clad in his stained robe, he felt suddenly cold. Part of him wanted to look away, but he could not.

‘He is in a drug coma,’ said Carmenta from beside him. She turned her head to glance at Ahriman. The sorcerer stood utterly still, his eyes watching Kadin emerge from the tank, his hand resting on the pommel of his sword. ‘The dose we need to keep him sedated is massive, and…’ She trailed off as Astraeos looked at her. He nodded once to her, not sure why she had stopped speaking. He looked back to the top of the tank.

Kadin’s torso had emerged. Astraeos heard himself breathe out slowly, but did not feel the air leave his lungs. The armour over Kadin’s shoulders and chest was blackened and melted. The edges of torn ceramite had folded into the exposed flesh beneath. His right arm was missing below the elbow, the left below the shoulder. The legs that emerged were twisted strips of meat hanging from shattered pegs of bone.

The hoist stopped with a clunk of gears, and then swung forwards. Slowly it lowered Kadin until he was on a level with Astraeos. Blood was pouring off him, spattering on the floor and forming dark pools. Astraeos lifted his arm and slowly extended his open palm. Behind him Ahriman’s stillness shifted. Astraeos’s hand touched Kadin’s shoulder guard.

‘Brother,’ said Astraeos quietly.

‘He cannot respond. His injuries are extensive, and we are still passing sedative into his system.’

+Brother,+ sent Astraeos, focusing his message on the ember of consciousness he could sense in his brother’s mind.

+His ears and mind are closed,+ sent Ahriman, and Astraeos felt a surge of anger at the sorcerer’s intrusion. +He is in the abyss. Even if he wakes and can speak, he will not be your brother.+ A warmth of reassuring emotion came with the sending, like a hand of a friend resting on his shoulder. +Trust me in this.+

‘Withdraw the sedatives,’ said Astraeos. Carmenta glanced from him to Ahriman. ‘Wake him,’ he snarled.

Carmenta paused for a moment, then stepped towards the tank and keyed a small control panel. There was a distant clunk of shifting machinery, and the tubes connected to Kadin jerked and twitched. More blood began to dribble onto the chamber floor from Kadin’s body.

Astraeos watched, waiting for a scream, for Kadin to wake like a child from a nightmare. After several minutes of silence and stillness, he turned to Carmenta again. She shrugged with a ripple of mechadendrites.

‘He was gravely wounded, and my knowledge of Adeptus Astartes biology is limited at best.’

Astraeos was about to bite off a reply when he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. His head snapped around to meet Kadin’s open eyes staring back at him. Astraeos froze. Eyes. Kadin had two eyes. The iris of each was bright green and slit by a black pupil. There was no sign of the augmetic, just smooth skin.

‘Brother,’ said Kadin, in a wet rasp which became a smile. Suddenly blood was pouring from his mouth, and Astraeos flinched back. Carmenta’s mechadendrites uncoiled in an eyeblink. Only Ahriman was still, his relaxed hand resting on his sword hilt. Kadin coughed, and spat a thick clot of blood onto the deck.

‘Blood in his lungs,’ said Ahriman.

‘So,’ said Kadin. ‘Are you going to unchain me?’

Astraeos was looking at his brother intently. Kadin’s voice was a mutilated growl, a grave-echo of his old tones. And the eyes…

‘I am not going to kill you,’ said Kadin, his gaze flicking between Astraeos, Ahriman and Carmenta. He smiled. ‘You have my word.’

‘You are… injured, brother,’ said Astraeos.

‘A fact that I had managed to grasp.’ Kadin’s lips peeled back from broken and jagged teeth. He still had not blinked. Astraeos glanced at the flesh and armour of his brother’s body. Now that the blood had drained from it, he could see portions of flesh that looked to have healed, ugly knots of scar tissue, visible through breaks in armour plating. His gaze stopped. The broken ceramite and plasteel glinted brightly where it had sheared. Except, in places it seemed to have softened and distorted; as if it had begun to close over the flesh beneath, as if it were flesh itself, as if it were healing.

‘You–’

‘It’s gone. See for yourself.’ He flicked his chin to Ahriman. ‘Or ask the trickster lord if you don’t wish to look.’

‘Your body is not whole.’

‘Augmetics, brother.’ Kadin turned his face to Carmenta. Astraeos thought he saw her shiver. ‘You can fit those, can you not? And I will need armour, though I do not think that some of this will come off. You will have to work around that.’

For a second Astraeos wondered if he should not have let Ahriman keep his brother shut away, forgotten and quiet. Even if he wakes and can speak, he will not be your brother, said Ahriman in his memory.

Perhaps death would be better, thought Astraeos. But then I would be the last, and then what would any of it have meant?

‘You won’t let me die, brother,’ said Kadin without looking at him, then turned his head slowly to fix Astraeos with his green, reptile eyes. ‘You don’t have the strength.’ Kadin raised his chin towards Ahriman. ‘And he needs you, so he won’t kill me even though he should.’

Astraeos found his hands were clenched, his own scarred face set in hard lines. It was not his brother, he knew that the moment Kadin had spoken, but he had to know what of him remained. Slowly, hesitantly he extended his consciousness out and into Kadin’s mind.

It was like plunging a hand into an open wound. He could feel textures of torn thoughts, holes where memories and beliefs had been. What remained hung together in a tangle of tattered remnants. There was nothing else there, no daemonic intelligence nested in the ruins, just a mutilated hole where it had once been. Astraeos broke the connection, and met his brother’s gaze. Kadin gave a smile that was almost a grimace.

Ahriman had stepped up beside Astraeos. ‘And what do you intend?’ he asked, his voice cold and flat.

‘Why, to follow where you lead, Ahriman,’ said Kadin and spat another clot of blood and acidic phlegm onto the deck.

‘Do as he says,’ said Ahriman to Carmenta. ‘Rebuild what you can of him.’ Astraeos found his mouth opening to say something, but Ahriman had already turned and walked out of the chamber. He looked back to his brother, the unformed thought still caught in his open mouth.

Kadin grinned up at Astraeos, as thickening blood oozed from the corners of his mouth.

Kadin had heard Maroth before he had seen him. The low cough of rust-clogged servos and the stuttering whine of the sorcerer’s armour had followed Kadin as he walked the deep and silent spaces of the Titan Child. He had been walking ever since Carmenta had finished her work, ever since he had been remade.

He closed his eyes and heard the sound of creaking armour again, closer now, moving between the rows of machinery at his back. He opened his eyes and the monochrome, shadowless world returned. His leg pistons snapped and hissed as he moved. Carmenta had done her work, folding the remains of his body around limbs of plasteel. In some way those additions had been stranger than the other changes: his regrown eyes, the fact that he was sure that he could not remove his armour if he had tried, that the world he saw, touched and breathed seemed as dead as a holo projection.

His mind was no longer whole; he could feel the breaks and voids in his own psyche like the ghost sense of a lost limb. Emotions and thoughts did not link up, and his memories were a ruin of holes and fragments. Whole sections of his life were gone, and some seemed so unreal that it was as if his life belonged to someone else. He no longer knew what any of it meant, but worse, he was not sure that he cared.

Kadin’s tongue flicked out and he tasted the air. It was warm with the static pulse of thousands of cables and pipes which twisted across the chamber. The darkness was almost complete but the passage stretched in front of him in yellowed monochrome, as if dirty moonlight shone from behind him. He had always been able to see in the dark, that was the first gift of the world which had borne him and then of the gene-seed which had remade him. But now the shadows seemed to melt away from his gaze. Every now and again he would close his eyes just to feel the touch of true darkness.

He did not know what had happened to his augmetic eye; there was no mark of it on his face, just smooth skin and bone circling the socket in which a new eye looked out at the world. He breathed out slowly. His breath still tasted of the blood of the immersion tank, sweet iron on his tongue. The sensation enfolded him for a second, and in the darkness behind his eyes he could feel nothing but the thick flow of blood on his skin, inside his veins, in his lungs and mouth.

A low hiss of breath filled his ears, so close that it felt as if it were next to his ear. Kadin spun and his arm snapped out, pulling Maroth from his hiding place in a machine niche. Piston-driven fingers squealed on fracturing ceramite as his grip closed around the collar of Maroth’s armour.

Rage filled Kadin. Rage like a thundercloud. Rage that shook him like the shout of a god. He remembered the sorcerer leaning in towards him, smiling, blood dribbling down his chin. ‘Your eye tastes of weakness,’ he had said. ‘Just like your brother’s,’ and all the while all Kadin had been able to think of was Cadar falling, his chest open to the air. The rage became a scream inside him that merged with the metal screech of his closing grip.

Then suddenly nothing, just blank emptiness that flowed to the horizon of his thoughts like a black mirror. He looked at Maroth dangling at the end of his grasp. A wet laugh spluttered from Maroth’s speaker-grille.

‘You will not kill me, Kadin,’ said Maroth.

‘And what makes you think that?’ Kadin gazed at him, his hand still gripping the collar of Maroth’s armour. The sightless lenses of the hound-shaped helm blinked with light.

‘Because you and I are kin,’ hissed Maroth. His legs were scrabbling, trying to find purchase on the decking as he clawed at Kadin’s arm. ‘That is why I have sought you, because we are the same now.’

It was Kadin’s turn to laugh. ‘We are no kin.’ The fingers of his hand tightened, and he heard something pop in Maroth’s neck.

‘You are here searching the shadows. You look for yourself but you will find nothing.’

Kadin reached up with his free hand and gripped Maroth’s wrist. Slowly, he twisted and heard the armour break and the bones within pop. Maroth screamed, the high sound echoing through the machine stacks before turning into a rasping gurgle. Kadin tensed to begin to pull the arm from its socket. Pistons bunched down his arms.

‘Tell me that you feel anger as you once did,’ said Maroth, and his voice held no laughter or madness, just a weariness that held Kadin as still as if he had been bound to stone. ‘Tell me that you remember what it was to hate and know why. Tell me that you cannot feel the abyss within your soul.’

Kadin had gone completely motionless. Maroth nodded as if in agreement. ‘It will grow. Yes it will. In time you will bathe in blood just to try and remember what it was to feel anything. You will kill and burn all you once treasured and find that it means nothing. The abyss will take all. I know this. It is why I found you, why I am here.’

Maroth shook his head, and the gesture for an instant was that of Thidias looking up at him from the floor of his chamber. ‘We are falling,’ Thidias had said, ‘and the sun is a vanishing memory.’

Kadin felt his hand tense to snap closed, then he breathed out and dropped Maroth to the floor. He looked down at the broken being that had once been a man, and then a Space Marine, and now was just a creature. He watched as Maroth patted at his cracked armour like an animal licking a wounded paw. He could see nothing of the strength of a warrior, nothing of the pride of the gene-seed and tradition that had once made Maroth. He saw only filthy armour hiding a body within that had nothing left to it but the next breath coming from its mouth.

‘We are the abyss’s hollow children, you and I,’ said Maroth, and cocked his head as if waiting. Kadin watched him for a heartbeat and turned to walk away. After a second Maroth scrambled after the sound of footsteps.

Ahriman shook. Blood had run from his eyes and dried in long brown runnels across his cheeks. Sweat sheened his skin and his mouth was numb with repeating the same phrases for days.

But this place has no days, he thought. No days and no nights. Just the slow-moving surge of thoughts and emotion, rising, spiralling, and falling, like the deep tides of an ocean, like the winds of Terra, like the sway of a forest.

He realised that his focus had slipped, and that the next ritual phrase had almost caught in his throat. He forced his mind back into the rote pattern, and aligned his heartbeat to the rhythm of the words coming from his dry mouth.

He sat on the bare metal floor of the viewing tower where he and Astraeos had looked towards the Cadian Gate. Black iron shutters closed off the view beyond the crystal dome above. The only sound was that of his slow breaths. A polished circle of silver hung in front of him, suspended by his will, its surface rippling with the reflected light of another world. He gazed into the mirror surface, watching patterns form, his mind shifting between remembered stores of symbolism.

+Reduce engine output by two-fifths. Allow us to drift for six seconds then continue on previous vector.+ The effort of the sending forced fresh sweat to bead his bare arms and chest. He felt Carmenta understand the message, and sensed the Titan Child’s engines dim in response. Astraeos sat opposite him, mouth closed, his mind syphoning strength into Ahriman. Even with such support, scrying their route towards the Cadian Gate was draining Ahriman to the point of delirium.

They were travelling a relatively short distance, at least in terms of real space. In the warp, though, distance meant nothing. Thought, emotion, imagination and dreams were more real than anything physical. A true Navigator was able to look directly into that unreal realm and read its tides. Ahriman knew that what he did was a shadow of that ability. Where a Navigator saw the warp directly, Ahriman was looking at an echo captured by ritual and interpreted by symbolism. It was as crude as the ancients divining the course of the future in the coiling of smoke, or the way that sand fell from a child’s hand.

Yet crude or not, it took his entire mind to avoid the reefs and storm tides of the warp before the ship hit them. He had not blinked since they had entered the warp. He could not; one missed instant of perception would end them all.

On the scrying mirror the patterns of light and colour shifted suddenly and he felt his mind reel. A wave of dizziness and nausea rose from his guts, and he fought it down, focusing on the changing patterns and colours. He clawed for understanding of what he was seeing. Then, without warning, he had clarity.

+Exit. Now.+ The thought blurted from his mind, and a second later he felt a slippery sensation beneath his skin as the Titan Child dived back into real space. Ahriman did not move; in his mind the oracular calculations spun on like cogs driven by a still-tense spring. The scrying mirror still swirled with colour and light.

‘We have made translation,’ came Carmenta’s voice over the chamber vox-speaker. Ahriman did not blink. His consciousness was fading; only the rote processes he had held steady in his mind while guiding the ship were still running. On the polished silver of the mirror a shape appeared, like a shadow cast through mist.

What is this? What am I seeing? The thoughts formed in Ahriman’s mind, but the momentum of his ritual had unwound, and blackness rose from within to claim him. His eyes closed and he slumped back. The mirror fell to the floor and shattered.

He lay on the stone floor and dreamed of shadows shaped like men, and soft voices telling him to forget.

He opened his eyes hours later to see stars looking down at him from beyond crystal. Astraeos had gone. He picked himself up, his head aching in bright stars behind his eyes. He limped to the vox-speaker and thumbed it to life.

‘Ahriman?’ Fatigue filled Carmenta’s voice.

‘Where are we?’

‘We are stationary in real space.’ Silence crackled from the speaker-grille, and then she spoke again. ‘I can see Cadia, Ahriman. We are close enough that I can see the light of its star.’

‘Good,’ he said, and was already moving. He was tired, but they had to prepare. There was no time for the doubts of dreams.

Part Three

TO DUST RETURNED

XIII

Clockwork

‘Signal. Partial. Imperial probable. Minimal energy output. Additional energy readings indicate weapons fire, field and hull damage.’ The servitor finished its monologue of information and went silent. On the circular command platform of the Lord of Mankind Inquisitor Selandra Iobel registered the report with a pursing of her lips. It was unexpected, but then nothing in the Eye of Terror was totally predictable, even on its margins. They would need to decide what to do, and quickly. That did not please her; hasty decisions had a habit of being regretted later.

They were on course for Cadia, its star shining several weeks of real space travel away. No one, not even an Inquisitorial augur mission, dropped from the warp close to Cadia, at least not if they expected to survive. So the Lord of Mankind pushed through the void like a sea voyager of old returning to port after a storm. Iobel wanted to see that fortress system again, to not be on constant alert, be free of the chronotrap, and allow herself to be tired. Above all she looked forward to being free of her damned armour. Fire-orange lacquer covered its plates, and the outlines of angel wings, raptor heads and rayed suns spread across its surface in lines of black iron. She shifted in her seat, unconsciously trying to release slowly cramping muscles. She had worn the battle plate for weeks, and it had begun to feel like a hand clamped over her skin. Not that there was any choice. Every member of the crew wore armour; it was a necessity.

She turned to look at her two peers. Inquisitor Erionas sat on his brass throne, his eyes closed above the rebreather that covered the lower part of his face. He wore graphite-grey armour sculpted across the chest to resemble flayed musculature. A spread of thick cables connected his throne to the cogitator towers that ran down the centre of the command chamber. Iobel could see light playing across the inside of Erionas’s eyelids. He gave no sign of having heard the servitor’s report, but she knew he had; he heard everything. On her other side Malkira sat on her own seat of polished bone. The thrones were tiresomely symbolic, of course. Iobel’s own throne was silver, but no more comfortable for it. A hunched figure crouched to the right hand of each throne, its features hidden by red robes woven with sacred names.

Malkira gave a blood-wetted cough, her usual preface to speech. ‘We should ignore it.’ Iobel turned to look at Malkira, and was met by the inquisitor’s black eyes glinting back at her from the wrinkled skull of her face. ‘Time is running low.’ Malkira raised a hand and tapped the chronotrap fixed to the chest of her pearl-white armour. Cogwork whirled behind the circular pane of crystal. Iobel glanced down at the brass frame of her own chronotrap, her eyes reading the movement of the numerals etched into the silver and brass cogs.

‘You are correct,’ said Iobel.

‘Of course I am,’ snapped Malkira, and coughed again. The rhythmic pumping of the life-sustaining systems built into the crone’s armour became louder. ‘We are risking too much if we divert our course now. A few more weeks and the data will be secure.’

‘You don’t need to convince me,’ said Iobel.

‘No,’ said Erionas. Both Iobel and Malkira turned to look at him. He had not moved, and his eyes were still closed. ‘We should divert course to investigate.’ His voice crackled out of the vox-grilles set into his respirator.

‘Ridiculous,’ sneered Malkira, her lips peeling back from her silver teeth.

‘No.’ Erionas’s voice held no emotion. Iobel had heard him order the razing of cities with an equally dead voice. ‘This is an opportunity. I have accessed the scanner readouts. The ship is of unusual construction. It’s definitely Imperial, in my opinion. Psyocculum assessment says that it has been deep within the Eye. Yet it does not exhibit macro levels of malign warping. A culling of its data stores could tell us much.’

‘Or get us all killed in the sight of safety,’ spat Malkira.

‘Safety is not why we came here.’ Erionas let that reminder sit in the silence.

He was right, of course, Iobel could not deny it. They were an augur expedition, a ship sent into the Eye to gather information on its nature and current state. The data and lore they carried in their warded stacks was beyond value. It was a glimpse of the face of their enemy, one that might warn them of growing threats, or reveal weaknesses.

Such expeditions were dangerous in the extreme, and the possibilities of attack and violent death were the most minor of the risks they faced. The Eye itself was toxic to the soul and body. Warp energy and matter overlapped in the Eye, and physical laws became thinned to the point of non-existence. At the edges of the Eye a weak skin still existed between the two realms, but at its heart nightmare reigned unchallenged. To venture even partway into the Eye risked corruption.

The Lord of Mankind had been crafted specially to make such a voyage. Prayers and wards had been etched into every plate and rivet of her hull. Psychic dispersers and null generators ran through her structure. Any part of the ship could be sealed and flooded with nerve gas should the systems detect an intrusion. Most of the crew were servitors, and almost all of the human crew were kept in stasis until needed. All but the three inquisitors would be executed on return to the Imperium. The risk of corruption was too high. All of them knew this, and yet all still served. It was a fact that caused Iobel to feel puzzlement and admiration every time she looked into the face of one of the doomed but dutiful crew.

But the warp not only corrupted, it also made a mockery of time. It was possible for an expedition to spend a handful of months in the Eye and return to Cadia thousands of years later, or seconds after they left, or in the past. There was also no guarantee that all of those on the ship were experiencing the same amount of time. So each member of the crew wore a chronotrap, and more were set into the structure of the ship. The traps measured subjective time and exposure to the substance of the warp, slicing it away in a million cog clicks.

‘There is no time,’ said Malkira, tapping the chronotrap set onto her breast. Iobel felt the fluttering whir of her own chronotrap send a small vibration through her armour.

‘Incorrect. Temporal distortion across this volume is falling, and we are within exposure levels. We approach, send a recovery mission, return and continue on to Cadia. In and out, as soldiers say.’ Erionas paused, as if enjoying his use of such a phrase. ‘We have risked much, why not a little more?’

Malkira snorted. After a handful of heartbeats they both turned to look at Iobel.

She knew it would come to this. ‘Agreed,’ she said. ‘We will investigate with caution.’ Malkira scowled, but began hissing orders to servitors and crew. Iobel was sure Erionas was smiling behind his respirator.

The Titan Child lay in the void, its hull gently revolving on an irregular axis. Grey clouds of gas and atomised liquid hung around its bulk, expanding slowly like warm breath expelled into cold night air.

‘This is ill-advised,’ said Astraeos, and glanced towards Carmenta. She ignored him. Connected by a trunk of cables to the ship, it was easy to let the activity in the hold fall into the background of her awareness. It was not a full interface, the systems here did not allow for that; her mind was still her own, but she could feel the rumbling dreams of the Titan Child, and touch its heart. It was reassuring, like knowing someone was close to you as you slept. The ship was half dormant, its injuries allowed to bleed energy and waste into the void. She felt the tug of its slumber, even as she controlled its steady beat.

‘The Imperial ship is on an intercept course,’ said Ahriman without looking up from where he knelt on the deck. ‘Our alternatives at this point are limited.’ He was armoured again. The azure lacquer reflected the stab lights suspended above. A white tabard covered his torso and hung around his legs. Parchments hung from his shoulder guards, covered in script Carmenta did not understand. A design spiralled out from where he knelt, its curves and sinuous symbols burned into the deck with a melta torch. It spanned the width of the hold, ranging across hundreds of metres of metal plating. It had taken days, and Ahriman had laboured alone until now. At the tip of his hand she saw the white heat of a flame spark and then vanish.

‘We may not survive the damage,’ said Astraeos. Like Carmenta, he stood on a hoist suspended a foot off the hold’s floor.

‘We certainly won’t survive another way,’ said Ahriman. Astraeos looked as if he were about to say something else, but remained silent. His armour was an echo of Ahriman’s, but Carmenta could not shake the feeling that it looked temporary, as if the blue painted over the pitted battle plate would flake off to reveal the old bronze beneath.

They are both right, thought Carmenta. This plan will probably kill us all, but we have no choice. Wait until a ship came close enough to become curious. Cripple its engines with a surprise weapons strike. Then Ahriman, Kadin and Astraeos would board the stranded ship and take what they had come for. Then run again. It was simple, but it rested so much on chance and luck that Carmenta could feel herself recoiling from the risk, not least because of Ahriman’s method of boarding their prey.

He will kill us, said a voice inside her. He has nearly done so many times over. He is our destruction. She suppressed her worries with a shiver. At least they had been lucky in one respect. They could have waited months or years for a ship to pass close enough to notice them and decide to have a closer look. In fact it had only taken a few weeks.

‘The Imperial ship is closing, and transmitting hailing codes.’ She could feel the cipher codes itching across the Titan Child’s systems. The signals felt aggressive, like a challenge shouted at a figure seen on the edge of light. They are right to be cautious, she thought.

‘Why do they hail us? We are a near dead wreck in their eyes, are we not?’ asked Astraeos.

‘They are seeing if there are any survivors or active response systems,’ she said.

‘If they find any signs that the ship is not as dead as it seems…’

‘They won’t.’ She had prepared for weeks, setting systems and machinery to function in broken spasmodic rhythms, and the largest part of the Titan Child’s wrecked appearance was no illusion. The encounter at the dead station meant that the Titan Child was in many ways what she seemed: a half-crippled ship, twisted by battle damage, barely clinging on to existence. Every time Carmenta had linked herself to her ship, she had felt its damage like a lingering fever, and emerged with empathic wounds in her flesh and damage to her augmetics. For the first time she had begun to fear the link with her ship; she had a terrible feeling that the Titan Child had begun to hunger for her, and its hunger was not kind.

Astraeos grunted at her words and looked away, his eyes roaming across the design cut into the deck by Ahriman.

‘This will work?’ he asked, flatly. Ahriman looked up, his face impassive, but there was a flicker in his eyes as he looked at Astraeos.

‘Nothing is certain,’ he said. Astraeos met Ahriman’s gaze, held it for a second then looked down and nodded.

‘As reassuring as ever,’ said Kadin. He was staring at the pattern Ahriman had cut into the floor, his eyes flicking across symbols and lines as if taking in every detail, as if he were reading. Astraeos, she noticed, chose to stand at the other end of the platform from his brother. The two had not said a word to each other since they had entered the hold.

They had not been able to remove the armour from Kadin’s remaining flesh, nor had they been able to recolour its blackened plates. Carmenta had personally fitted what augmetics were available. That at least had been successful, almost worryingly so. Kadin’s flesh had begun to grow and embrace the metal replacements. His right and left arms now ended in three-digit pincers of brushed steel. Below the waist he walked on a pair of back-jointed legs, which hissed at every step. A bolter and double-edged chainsword were mag-clamped to his back.

Carmenta felt a tingle as another wash of signal from the approaching ship hit the Titan Child’s sensors. Her attention strayed from the sights in front of her, as a part of the still-waking ship began to break the signal ciphers apart. There was something about the hailing signals, something hidden in the weave of their code…

The cipher cracked open.

She blinked, suddenly terrified. She was trapped, crammed into a shell of soft meat joined to weak metals. She could not feel the void on her outer layer. She could not feel the beat pulse of her plasma core. She began to panic. She could not move. She did not understand what had happened to her. Her flesh shell was quivering. She did not understand why. She–

Carmenta gasped and staggered on the hoist platform. A ripple of sparks spiralled up the bundle of cables that linked her with the Titan Child. For a second she could hear nothing but the panicked chatter of machines roaring to life in a disorganised spasm. Lights flickered on and off in the hold. The hull creaked. Somewhere in the ship, power began to flood sleeping systems.

‘What’s happening?’ Ahriman was on his feet. Carmenta blurted static-filled machine code, feeling the sharp sounds grate in her still-human throat. She was swaying, her mechadendrites grabbing blindly at the air. Ahriman vaulted onto the hoist platform. One of the metal tentacles snapped at him but he batted it away with a thought.

‘What–’ he began.

‘The ship,’ said Carmenta. ‘It is afraid, it’s trying to get ready to fight or run.’ The lights above them were strobing faster and faster, like a rising heartbeat. ‘The ship that is coming…’ She felt the world sway around her. ‘It’s not just an Imperial ship. It is the Inquisition.’

‘Multiple energy blooms,’ blurted a servitor wired into the sensor systems. ‘Full threat alert initiated.’ Iobel heard the words, and was already clamping her helm over her head. Red light filled the command nave of the Lord of Mankind. Blast doors were dropping over the exits. A static charge filled the air as a null field activated. Iobel felt a wave of nausea as the field smothered her psychic sense.

‘A trap,’ hissed Malkira from beside her. A cyber-cherub with wings of beaten copper lowered a dome-shaped helm over the crone’s head. It locked in place with a hiss of air.

‘We don’t know that yet,’ said Erionas, his voice flat calm. ‘There are other possibilities.’

‘Target energy flow fluctuating,’ called a servitor. ‘Target shields sporadically active. Engines firing.’

A silver-coated servo-skull drifted over Iobel’s shoulder. It held a boltgun in calliper hands. Iobel reached out and took the weapon, feeling the targeting display inside her helm come alive as she touched the gold-worked casing.

‘If it is not a trap, what other explanation could there be?’ she asked, glancing at Erionas.

‘Target vessel firing weapons,’ said the servitor.

‘Increasingly unlikely ones,’ said Erionas. His eyes opened, two bright spheres of glass gazing out at the red-lit chamber. ‘All weapons prepare to fire.’

Ahriman felt the hull shake. Munitions impacts, he judged. He turned to Carmenta. She was twitching, trying to stand as sparks ran over her black robes.

‘How far out is the enemy ship?’

‘I can’t tell,’ she gasped.

‘You must. How far?’

‘They have yet to reach optimal firing distance.’

He nodded. It was as he guessed and it was not good. They were supposed to be closer, much, much closer.

‘Get control of this ship,’ he snarled, and turned to Astraeos. ‘Astraeos, Kadin, here.’ He was reaching into Astraeos’s mind even as he stepped to the deck.

+Ascend,+ he sent, as his own consciousness climbed to perfect focus. He felt Astraeos’s thoughts resonate with his own. He began to loop his thoughts, sending separate patterns spinning through his mind like pinwheels, each gathering power. The design etched into the floor began to glow, fire-orange light radiating from where they stood at its centre. The power in his mind called to the etched symbols, and they answered him. He felt the swelling power roar with hunger that he alone could not feed.

+Now,+ he sent to Astraeos, and raised his hands. His mind touched Astraeos’s consciousness and linked to it.

It was like standing at the site of a lightning strike. Around them the Titan Child vanished, and Ahriman’s mind soared across space like a burning comet.

‘Accelerate. Maintain fire,’ called Erionas, his voice raised over the babble of machines and voices. ‘Burn it to nothing.’ Iobel watched the crew respond. Her throne and the deck beneath it were shaking in time with the recoil of hundreds of guns.

‘Target impacts are good,’ purred Erionas. Iobel could tell he was watching the direct gunnery dataflow. ‘We will need to be closer to finish her off, but annihilation will be complete.’

‘So sure?’ said Malkira, the speaker-grille of her helm robbing her voice of none of its scorn.

‘Yes,’ said Erionas. ‘We will have virtually destroyed them before they are in effective range.’ Iobel found herself nodding, but not because of the words. Her skin felt taut. A sour taste of metal ran over her tongue. There was something wrong, she could feel it. On her chest the chronotrap’s cogs began to whirl faster.

They should have turned and left the wreck to its fate, they should have kept course for Cadia. They should…

She stopped her thoughts. Her eyes were closed, her breath and pulse still. She let her perceptions settle, trying to see the pattern in the whirl of emotion and sensations. On the Lord of Mankind she alone was a psyker. Her ability was low grade, barely a functioning talent, but in that moment she knew that something was very, very wrong. It was like a building wave of pressure rolling in front of a storm.

‘Something is coming.’ Her voice was cold, and only she heard the tremble at its root.

‘What–’ began Erionas, but at that moment Iobel felt something slam into her mind with the force of a tidal wave. Around the bridge, machines, servitors and people were yelling. Every chronotrap across the ship began to hiss as their cogs spun to a blur.

Astraeos could still see even with his eyes closed. He could see Ahriman stood to his right, his arms outstretched, his physical form lost in a white blaze of light. He could see Kadin, his face coldly impassive. Ahriman spoke another phrase, and the world became a shape with too many dimensions that spun away like a leaf caught on the wind. The deck beneath their feet was gone even though he could still feel it. Stars surrounded them. Astraeos did not need to look at Ahriman to see him; the sorcerer’s mind was burning like a sun, sucking in all other light, growing brighter and brighter. The stars were turning, whirling to broken rainbows against the void. Only the three of them remained fixed, only they were still, everything else was movement. They were skimming beneath the void, looking out at the stars like fish seeing clouds turn above the surface of the sea.

A vast shape loomed suddenly in front of them. It was a ship, jagged, stardust-pitted, a black knife cutting through the void beyond the veil of swirling stars. Fire surrounded it, streaking from its crenellated flanks. They dived towards it. He felt something shatter around them, as if they had broken through a pane of glass. They were inside the ship. He could see shapes around him. They were translucent, glass-spun outlines of walls, doors, and pipework. Then reality snapped into place with a roar of sirens and the sound of tearing metal.

XIV

Taken

Silvanus woke from his drug coma with a gasp. His mundane eyes opened to the flash of warning lights. The chair enclosing his body shook as his back arched, and his fingers raked at the black leather. He vomited, heaving mucus from his empty stomach. He could feel the awakening drugs grating through his body, flushing away his dreams in a chemical rush. His heart was hammering in a broken rhythm.

He scrambled up, pulling needle-tipped tubes from his body. Liquid dribbled from the needle marks as he moved. He could not see properly, the emergency awakening still fogging his eyes, but that did not matter. All that mattered was reaching the observation cupola. They were in a full emergency: that was the only reason he would have been woken in such a brutal manner. It meant that there was an incursion within the ship, or a primary level threat. He needed to be able to steer a course should the ship have to translate to the warp.

He tried to run. His legs skidded out from underneath him, and the cold deck came up to meet him hard. The air went out of his lungs. He gasped, lying on the floor.

You’re a fool, Sil, he thought to himself. He came up onto his knees, and he felt the need to throw up again. A fool for thinking this was a good idea, and a fool for agreeing. After a moment of trying to stop the world spinning, he did vomit.

In the corner of the chamber the hulking shape of his warden clanked forwards. Silvanus looked up at its machine gaze, and tried a grin.

The warden stopped above him, looking down with a cluster of glowing red lenses. Its body was a vaguely humanoid sculpture of green-lacquered armour plates. Somewhere within its metal shell its lobotomised brain watched him. Its weapon-arms were hissing, fully charged and ready to fire. It was there to protect him, but it would also kill him if he ever showed a sign of corruption by the warp.

Silvanus reached a hand up towards the warden. An articulated limb snapped out of its side, revealing a multi-faceted scanning lens. A sensor ray swept over Silvanus’s naked body; he felt its touch as a static tickle inside his skin. Its scan complete, the warden took a heavy step back, leaving Silvanus on the floor, hand still weakly raised.

‘Good to see you too,’ said Silvanus.

He paused, took another breath, and finally managed to stand up. His head felt like an explosion had gone off in his skull. He swayed, glad that there were no mirrors in his chamber; something told him that his current state would not have had a positive effect on his appearance.

He was tall, like all his bloodline, and unusually thickset, which only meant that he had slightly more flesh than a skeleton. Powder-white skin and scarlet eyes completed the overall aesthetic. Besides a few tubes hanging from needles still embedded in his flesh, the only thing he wore was a bandana of black silk and silver thread. The strip of fabric wound across his forehead, its ends hanging down between his shoulders. Beneath the thick silk, his third eye stared out blindly at the physical world.

Muttering low curses at past decisions, Silvanus pulled a blue silk robe over his head. The fabric stuck to wet patches of drying blood and injection medium. A smell of flowers was thick in his nose, and he could taste strange metallic flavours on his tongue, another consequence of a shock awakening. They kept him in a drug coma when he was not navigating, or preparing to navigate. It was a safety measure, one among many designed to minimise the risk of sending a ship into the Eye. Silvanus had laughed when they had told him, but they had not seen the joke.

He limped towards a door of black metal on the far side of the chamber. A golden eye sat in the heart of a rayed sun of orange topaz at the door’s centre. He raised his left hand as he approached the door. A luminous sun and eye emblem bloomed across his palm, and the door split down the middle.

Beyond was a lift, its walls lined with black stone. Silvanus stepped in, and paused while the warden clanked through the door behind him. A second later the door sealed, and the lift shot upwards. As he heard the chains pull them towards the observatory high on the spine of the Lord of Mankind, Silvanus Yeshar, Navigator Primus of House Yeshar, wondered what had triggered the alert which had woken him. After a moment of consideration he decided he really did not want to know.

Ahriman felt the shockwave as the Imperial ship’s psychic protection broke. Fragments of invisible barriers spun in the warp like shattered crystal. Across the ship null field generators burnt out, and silver wards melted to run down walls in white hot tears. His head was reeling, filled with images of racing stars. They had reached the objective, the translocation ritual had worked, but they would die now, in the space of a handful of heartbeats, if he failed in this moment.

He closed his eyes, and let all thoughts fall away. His mind was clear. The pulse of blood through his body was an ocean surge, low and controlled. He could feel his muscles relax, and his armour mimicked them. Above it all he floated, a mind without thought, with infinite choice and unfixed possibility. He felt sensations run through his flesh, tugging at his attention, screaming to let them rule his mind and body. He held still. Half-formed thoughts passed through him like clouds across a blue sky. He let them pass.

His heart beat once.

He had not done this in a long time. Even when Tolbek had come for him, he had fought from instinct. This, though, this would be different.

He let the sensations of his physical self return fully. His mind searched for imbalance in his body chemistry. He had to have balance. To enter the mind of battle everything needed to be in balance. He was crouched on one knee, he realised: his head bent as if in prayer, his fingertips resting on the floor.

He stood, and opened his eyes.

Debris was still falling around him. He could see torn slivers of metal spinning slowly amongst shreds of burning parchment. The walls had buckled outwards as if hit by a Titan’s fist, and they were glowing with heat. Beside him Astraeos was still straightening, his hand moving to the hilt of his sword. Kadin was a pace further away, standing just as he had been in the hold of the Titan Child. Red light covered them, caught in the moment before it strobed off and blinked back. A fog half filled the roof, venting from ducts in the ceiling. He could sense the toxins in the fog, the potential for death waiting in each particle. At their backs was darkness, in front of them a door of riveted metal. A yellowed skull stared at Ahriman from the centre of a tri-barred ‘I’ worked into the door in black marble. He did not recognise the symbol.

His hearts beat again.

Thoughts, reasoning and logic slotted back into place like cogs in clockwork. This was what it was to be a Magister Templi of the Thousand Sons, this was what the Imperium had never grasped; power was nothing without balance. Reason to balance force, will to balance passion, coldness to balance fury.

Ahriman sensed Astraeos reaching into the warp, drawing power to him like a choking man gulping air. Foolish, rash, unbalanced. The warp submitted to will, but to the balanced mind and body it gave the power to soar. Ahriman waited. He was ready, his mind rooted, its processes running with perfect precision. He expanded his awareness. There were people coming for them; they were running down the corridor on the other side of the door.

Kadin had taken a stride, the pistons of his augmetic legs bunching in place of muscle. The door in front of them remained shut.

Ahriman selected his patterns of thought and formulae, placing them within the blank sheet of his mind like a surgeon arranging razors on a silver tray.

He was ready.

His hearts beat once.

Kadin’s step crashed down. Red light strobed across Ahriman as he flicked out a telepathic command.

+Down.+

Astraeos ducked. Kadin twisted, trying to shrug the command off even as he crashed into the passage wall.

Fire sprang from Ahriman’s eyes. The air roared as it cooked. The white-hot beam struck the door and bored through it like a spear through fat. Liquid metal sprayed out in a molten flower. The hole in the door widened, rippling outwards, glowing brighter and brighter.

Ahriman could feel the presence of minds beyond the door, fourteen still alive, one fading to nothing, ten already gone. His telekinetic blow hit the door and blew the remains out in a cone of molten metal rain. The troopers that had been crouching in the passage beyond vanished as the pressure wave lifted them from their feet and mashed them into the walls. Some further back held their nerve and began to fire. Shots clouded the glowing breach in the door.

Ahriman walked forwards. Cold light followed him, wrapping his body, spiralling around him as if in an invisible wind. The troopers kept firing as he stepped through the breach. Las-bolts and hard rounds flared as they met the cloak of light and began to spin, forming an accelerating column. Ahriman kept walking, the cyclone turning around him sucking up debris from the floor; swelling, turning faster and faster, beginning to glow as the fragments abraded to sand. Lightning crackled across its surface. Ahriman could feel his mind holding every particle as it flew.

He reached the door. A wall of fire rose to meet him. He released the cyclone and it tore forwards.

The storm broke over the troopers and tore them into fragments of bone and tatters of flesh. It swept on, scraping the passage walls to shining metal, and smearing everything with a wet red film. Ahriman walked in its wake, his eyes closed as his mind leapt ahead, running under the skin of the ship, sensing and hunting like a loosed hound.

Iobel pulled herself to her feet. There was blood smeared across the inside of her helmet. She reached up and yanked it off.

‘Emergency protocol–’ protested Malkira as Iobel took a breath. The air of the command chamber stank of burning wiring and overheating machines. Iobel tasted blood on her lips. Her head felt as if something were trying to crack it open. The chronotrap on her chest was whining, its cogs spinning faster than she could see.

‘Shut up,’ she said, and spat onto the floor. Malkira went still. Unable to see her face, Iobel wondered if the old crone had died of shock.

‘We have a secondary grade incursion in progress,’ said Erionas, the monotone of his voice cracking.

‘Primary,’ said Iobel. Somewhere inside her chest something clicked wetly. She coughed and tasted iron and acid on her tongue. She had glimpsed something in the hammerblow moment when the incursion began. It lingered in her perception like a bruise. An impression of the soul that had broken their psychic defences like a hand punching spun sugar. Calm – behind the power, the mind that guided the destruction had been calm. ‘It’s a primary grade incursion.’

‘How can you be sure?’ asked Malkira.

‘Because I am the only psyker on this ship.’ She looked at each of the other inquisitors in turn. Beneath her feet the deck shook in time with distant macro-cannon fire. ‘Because I felt what just happened. It’s him; he knows what we have seen. He has come for us.’

Ahriman’s mind spun through the Lord of Mankind. This was his thought form, the shape of his mind and soul projected into the warp. He was still standing in the dark corridor, but his mind was a ghostly bird in flight. His senses skimmed down tunnels, passing through metal, ramming through warded doors. Images and sensations flicked past his mind: the smell of oil, the clang of feet on plated floors, the blare of alarms. He noted each detail, building a map in his mind. He spread his awareness, thinning it to the barest layer of perception and instinct. Physical substance faded to a whisper-thin impression, minds became candles flickering in a fog of matter. As he soared he felt the crystalline shapes of psychic wards and the empty domes of null fields. He spun past them, squeezing through gaps like water through cracked glass.

There: a mind shaped like no other on the ship. It was twisted, like a tree trained to grow in a particular shape. He could feel the lines of its altered mental architecture: the consciousness of a Navigator.

Ahriman’s mind snapped back into his physical self. The wide junction in front of him was red and slick with meat and chewed fragments of armour. Above them a snowflake formation of cogs whirled and spun in the domed ceiling. There was clockwork everywhere, thousands of devices great and small, slicing through time in billions of ticks, as if terrified of losing an unmeasured moment. The entire ship was built on paranoia, laced with poorly understood defences. It made him want to smile.

Kadin was working his way through a knot of crimson-clad troopers. Astraeos was watching his brother, his glowing force sword bright in his hand, the fresh blue lacquer of his armour already scarred, burned and spattered with a sticky red film. Ahriman could not see his face, but coldness radiated from the Librarian’s mind. He could not interpret what it meant and he had not time to read more deeply. He reached into Astraeos’s mind and showed him the path to the Navigator.

+Go,+ he sent to Astraeos. +Kadin will protect me. Be swift.+

Astraeos nodded and made for a passage that sloped up towards the apex of the ship’s spine. Ahriman watched him go. In his mind he reached back, feeling for the link to the ritual circle inscribed on the deck of the Titan Child’s hold. It was there, waiting at the edge of his consciousness, a thread to lead them back through the dark. He rose into the air, lightning blazing around him as telekinetic hands cradled him. The gate back through the aether opened like an eye into blackness. It felt like fire, like ice, like the kiss of steel and the taste of dust on desert air.

+Be swift,+ he sent again. + I cannot hold the way back open for long.+

Silvanus came to his feet in a single movement. His heart thudded in his chest. He turned around, his hands raised as if to ward off a blow.

Nothing.

To the side of the chamber his warden pivoted its torso section, looking at him with questioning crystal eyes. Silvanus breathed hard and felt the terror still running through him. There was nothing there. The ocular chamber was as it had been when he had begun his meditation, the sounds of the ship muffled by the thick blue fabric that covered the floor and crept up the walls. It was quiet except for the sound of his ragged breaths.

He shook his head, and rubbed a hand across the fabric covering his third eye. It was aching. He had been lying on the velvet-covered pallet at the chamber’s centre, allowing his mind to slip into the hypnotic awareness required before navigation. He had been visualising, preparing his mind for the perception of the warp. Then something had moved across his mind, blotting out his thoughts like a vast winged shape passing in front of the sun, and he found himself standing, adrenaline shaking through his veins.

He looked around again, each sense straining for some indication that he might have imagined it. His eyes twitched over every detail: the silver shutters closed over the dome above, the gems sewn into every dimple in the upholstered floor, the polished wood covering the door that led to the lift shaft. Everything was as it was, as it should be.

The insistent beat of his heart began to slow. He took a breath, looked back at the warden’s patiently waiting gaze.

‘You did not notice anything?’ The guardian servitor tilted its head then rotated its gaze away. ‘Thought not.’

The sound of rending metal rang through the chamber. Silvanus froze. The sound came again, echoing like the ringing of a broken bell. He stared towards the doors. Had he seen them tremble? On the other side of the chamber the warden unfolded, growing taller as its leg pistons extended. Its armour plates shifted to increase its bulk. It trained its weapons on the lift door and Silvanus could see the pulse of power in their charge coils. There was a smell of ionising air.

‘Retreat. Behind. My. Position,’ said the warden in a dead machine voice. Silvanus realised it was the first time he had heard it speak. He nodded and began to move.

He took one step, and felt the cushioned floor shake beneath him. Silvanus had just time to dive to the ground before the door vanished in a scream of vaporising wood and exploding steel. Dust and smoke flooded the chamber. Silvanus hit the floor, and curled into a ball. He could not hear, everything was a dull roar. The warden fired, beams of energy carving through the smoke.

A shape appeared out of the fog. It was huge, a blunt outline of armour. The warden twisted, fired and fired again before Silvanus could close his eyes. Blue stars of energy flew across his vision, burning into his retinas. The armoured figure raised a hand. The beams of energy hit a wall of golden light, and the room vanished in a sheet of white brilliance. Silvanus caught a glimpse of a blunt-snouted helm and gleaming blue armour before his eyes shut.

A Space Marine. A Librarian. As he opened his eyes to the storm of light and fury he realised that his chances of surviving were minimal.

The warden was firing again, shifting position in a blur of piston-driven limbs. More bolts of energy burned through the fog from its weapons. The Librarian pivoted, his form blurring with speed. The energy beams never hit him, but began to orbit him in neon lines. The warden shifted, armour plates redistributing over its body as its weapons vented heat.

The Librarian halted. The captured bolts of energy flicked out as a trailing whip of starlight. The warden was moving, but not fast enough. The bolts of energy struck its central torso and burned into its core. It stood, twitching for an instant, weapons trying to rise, liquid metal spraying down its chest. Then it fell, with a sound of unwinding gears. The Librarian began to pace forwards.

The warden pushed itself up and leapt forwards. Half dead, it was still fast. It was on the Librarian before he could move, pitching him from his feet. The two fell together. Metal screeched on ceramite. The warden tried to bring a weapon to bear, but the Librarian’s hand clamped around its barrel. Silvanus could see the pistons in the warden’s arm juddering with force. Oil was dribbling to the floor from ruptured hydraulic feeds.

The Librarian’s arm began to bend, and the muzzle of the warden’s weapon began to glow. The Librarian grunted. Arcs of indigo light wormed across his armour, spreading frost in their wake. The warden lifted into the air, its limbs struggling against invisible bonds. There was a storm reek in the air, a scent of electricity and cold iron. The Librarian came to his feet in a single movement and his sword came up with him. Its edge looked like sunlight caught in fractured glass.

The warden’s head twisted around, its machine eyes locking on Silvanus. It began to make a sound that might have been the start of a word. The sword cut it in two.

It hung in the air for a second, its limbs suddenly still, blood and oil pouring to the floor. Then it fell. The oil soaking the fabric-covered floor began to burn. The Librarian walked forwards through the spreading flame.

Oh, God-Emperor, thought Silvanus. He could see scorch marks spreading up the Librarian’s greaves. He had seen Space Marines before, had navigated ships in warfleets accompanying many Chapters. He was not one of the masses who only knew of the Adeptus Astartes through stories. That knowledge was no comfort.

The Librarian stopped, his green eyes fixed on Silvanus. His sword smoked with ghost energy. Gold-etched serpents coiled down its length, and hounds snarled from the crossguard. Silvanus could not take his eyes off the blade. The Librarian gave a low growl, the sound rolling from his speaker-grille like distant thunder. After a second Silvanus realised that the sound was a humourless laugh.

‘You will live, Navigator,’ the Space Marine said as he reached down and pulled Silvanus from the floor.

‘Navigator spire breached,’ Erionas shouted an instant before a servitor echoed his words.

‘We are dead,’ said Iobel, but Erionas was not listening. His shining eyes were twitching as if in a deep dream, reading fast flows of data. ‘He will kill what we know.’

‘It is not him,’ spat Malkira. ‘It cannot be. How can he be here?’

‘The warden is no longer active,’ said Erionas. ‘We must presume the Navigator is lost.’

‘Irrelevant,’ said Malkira. ‘We are running in to Cadia in real space. The loss of the Navigator is not a primary threat.’

‘And if we need to jump to the warp?’ Iobel did not look at the other two inquisitors. Her eyes were moving around the chamber. The Lord of Mankind was still firing on the enemy vessel, still closing for the kill. Gunnery officers and augur servitors called out changes in target aspect and firing pattern. Around them others tried to track the progress of the incursion. That had not proved easy – it was moving with extreme aggression, demolishing opposition and breaking through containment measures. And all the while the chronotraps whirled out of sync, counting down the potential taint of each one of them.

So many uncertain outcomes, she thought. So many possibilities that end with us as just another dead ship drifting on the edge of the Eye. That represented something worse than damnation, or death; it represented failure. Slowly she nodded once to herself, and checked that her power mace was still clamped to her back. She picked up the boltgun from where it lay on the arm of her throne and racked the arming slide. She had watched the making of each of the shells in its clip. Nine thousand verses of detestation covered each casing in lettering finer than a strand of hair. Each round was tipped by Terran smelted silver and filled with the dust produced by the Golden Throne. She began to walk towards the chamber doors.

‘You must not leave. We are in lockdown protocol,’ Malkira’s voice blurted out behind her.

‘What are you doing?’ called Erionas.

‘I am going to try and kill what has come for us,’ she called without looking back. While I still have hope that it is possible, she thought to herself. She turned to look back at her enthroned and unmoving peers. Her eyes moved to the red-robed figures crouched at the side of each throne. ‘I will take the seraphs,’ she said.

Malkira was shaking her head. Iobel could feel the crone’s anger rising, tickling at the edges of her psychic senses. Erionas remained still, and then nodded once.

‘Jehoel,’ he said. The creature beside his throne unfolded. It moved with a docile slowness, but she could see the impression of muscles bunching under the fabric. It stood still, waiting.

‘Midrash,’ said Iobel, and a second hunched figure stood from beside her empty throne. The lump of its head turned within its cowl to look at her.

Iobel looked back to Malkira. The crone reached up and unfastened her helm. She looked at Iobel with her true eyes, and then tapped the chronotrap on her chest.

‘We are almost out of time. Much longer within the Eye and we cannot return.’

Iobel nodded.

Malkira continued to gaze at her, and then her lips cracked over her silver teeth. ‘Arvenus,’ she said. The figure beside her throne stood.

Iobel turned and walked to the chamber’s sealed door. In her wake the hooded figures followed.

+Hurry.+ Ahriman’s thought broke into Astraeos’s mind with raw urgency. He did not bother to reply but began to run faster. The Navigator hung from his left hand, half conscious, moaning in pain, his legs dragging in his wake. Astraeos kept moving. It did not matter if the Navigator was in pain. All that mattered was that he was alive.

Astraeos still had his sword drawn, its edge lit with a fragment of his will. He could smell battle in his mind, the scent of screams and panic getting stronger with each step. He turned a corner and the light and sound of battle broke over him. Bodies lay in wet red heaps. Chunks of meat lay in black pools which reflected the flash of gunfire. Above it all Ahriman floated. The warp tunnel back to the Titan Child hung beneath Ahriman, a frozen lightning bolt opening wide like a mouth. Beyond the gate’s opening, colours spiralled into an impossible distance. Acid sweat oozed across his skin as he looked at it.

Above him, the cogwork set into the ceiling broke. Cogs the size of tank wheels fell, glowing at their edges. He realised he had stopped moving. Somewhere, at the edge of his sight, he saw Kadin standing, bloody and steaming. The screams and shouts of the fight rolling around Kadin sounded dull, as if they had passed through water. On the floor Silvanus moaned and stirred as if in an unpleasant dream. Astraeos could not take his eyes off the warp tunnel as it opened. Slowly, as if wading through sand, he began to drag the Navigator forwards.

He was halfway to the warp tunnel when the seraphs came out of the dark with a crackle of lightning and metal.

‘Mecrurias!’ Iobel spoke the word of activation as she ran. Behind her, the three hooded figures that followed her leapt forwards. Beneath their hoods, mouths opened in tongueless roars. Drug injectors dumped aggression and reaction boosters into their blood. Veins stood out across their skin. Their red robes burned from their bodies as their power lashes activated. Juddering with speed, they began to run. After five paces they had overtaken Iobel. As their null limiters shut down Iobel had to suppress the instinct to run in the opposite direction.

The seraphs glowed in the warp-tainted air, the warding circuits in their skin crawling with letters and symbols from dead tongues. They had once been ordinary people, taken by the Black Ships from worlds where they were shunned. Then the Inquisition had taken them and forged them to a new purpose. All their thoughts were transformed into murderous rage. Held by pacifier helms, they became their true selves only when activated by the speaking of ritual words. The Ecclesiarchy called such a process arco-flagellation, but the seraphs were creations of a higher order. Each was a pariah, a soul with no soul, a creature that cast no shadow in the warp, untouchable by its powers. As they ran through the passage opening, their numbing presence hit the gathering vortex of warp energy like a sea tide meeting lava.

Ahriman felt the presence of the seraphs, and his will slipped. His eyes snapped open. The rainbow light of the warp lit the junction chamber in front of him. At his back he could feel the warp tunnel shrink, its existence collapsing as the seraphs numbed his mind. He could see the Titan Child’s hold just beyond the opening, so close, yet drifting further away. Multi-coloured lightning arced through the air, crawling across the heaped corpses and bronze walls. Astraeos was standing halfway across the chamber, a limp figure in a soiled blue robe hanging from his fist.

+Go. Through. Now,+ he sent, and with every word he felt his will slip and the warp tunnel begin to close. The seraphs were bounding closer, their hunched shapes blurred by shadow in Ahriman’s eyes. Astraeos began to move, lifting the Navigator like a sack. The seraphs’ blankness howled in Ahriman’s mind. They were black holes sucking his reality into a shrieking silence. Where his mind should have seen the flame of their souls, all he saw was an abyss. He felt like he was suffocating, as if the air were being pulled from his lungs. He saw a human female in flame-coloured armour.

Astraeos was a pace away from the gate. He paused, raised his sword and sent a fork of lightning at the seraphs. It vanished in mid-air even as it arced from the sword tip. Ahriman felt the power drain away like water poured on sand. Astraeos paused, and his sword tip wavered and dipped.

+Go!+ screamed Ahriman. Astraeos turned and ran through the gate. Ahriman looked up as the lead seraph bounded over a heap of corpses, its movements juddering like a jammed pict feed. He could see the drool hanging from its rotting teeth, and the veins twitching in its taut muscles. It leapt, its legs curling underneath it, its flail-tipped arms raised above its head. Ahriman stared – he could not move, he was frozen, numb.

A huge shape hit the seraph in mid-leap. The seraph twisted, power crackling over its flails. Kadin landed on top of it, and his chainsword cut it in two before it could rise. Blood formed a mask of rubies on his pale face. He turned, his chainsword rising, as the second seraph brought its flails down. The power whips wrapped around the blade, licking it with lightning. For an instant the teeth of the chainsword tried to turn, and then the blade shattered. Ahriman saw Kadin fall, his face a ruin of punctured meat. He gripped the seraph as he collapsed, a metal hand clamped around its throat.

The third seraph was still bounding towards Ahriman, its metal-muzzled face low to the bloody deck, its muscles tensing to leap the final metres. He felt the warp tunnel shrink. His skin was cold, his head pounding in rhythm with his hearts. Then he saw movement behind the seraph.

The human’s face was pale, her skin the colour of snowfall. Orange and black armour encased her slender form. He could see the silver-headed pins holding the red blaze of her hair above her head. She was looking at him, directly at him. Her eyes were blue. He felt an echo in that gaze, a spark of something that cut through the numbing fog of the seraphs. Recognition, fear, triumph, a tumbling of half-formed memories that flared from her mind. She raised a boltgun and his eyes met its dead gaze.

The third seraph leapt.

The gate held open at his back crumpled.

Three paces away Kadin came to his feet, roaring, the head of a seraph in his hand.

The human woman fired.

Ahriman saw the gun flare, felt his mind slide off the shell as it flew through the air.

Kadin’s shoulder hit him in the chest.

Ahriman fell, and did not hit the ground.

XV

Secrets

Voices came out of the night. Ahriman thought he recognised some of them, but were they voices or were they thoughts? Were they his thoughts?

‘We are taking fire…’

+Oh God-Emperor, oh holy God–+

‘He is bleeding.’

Why did she know me? How could she recognise me? What did she recognise?

+Turn by three quarters. Grid 657 through 754, accelerate.+

‘Oh God-Emperor.’

‘Be silent.’

Fate has come for you, Ahriman.

+I am going to die. Oh Throne, oh Throne, oh Throne…+

‘Mistress Carmenta?’

I fell to my own pride.

‘He is not conscious.’

+Route power through conduit alpha 101721.+

‘That was a hit. They are coming after us.’

+Shield failure… cannot recharge… shield failure...+

It was a mistake. I am sorry. We should never have begun. I am sorry, brother.

‘… conscious…’

+…there is no way out from this…+

‘Jump to the warp.’

Apollonia. Because of Apollonia.

‘There are fragments inside the wound.’

No, it is one of the nine. One of the Fifteenth. A son of Magnus. The dreams of enslaved worlds scream his name.

‘If you do not guide us we all die here.’

+ Throne, I want to live–+

‘All right.’

‘Jump to warp. Do it now.’

…going to die… jump… collate…. blood loss… god… mistress… end it now… jump–

White. Bright white; the white of sunlight on unwritten paper.

Everything was still. He looked down at his hand. It was bare. He flexed his fingers. They moved, but he felt nothing. Everything was quiet; the whisper of thoughts on the edge of perception, the shifting surge of the warp in his mind, the noise of sensation, all of it was gone.

I am cut off, he realised. I am trapped somewhere inside myself. Something has made parts of my brain and body shut down.

There had been a gunshot. He remembered the muzzle flash, and the feeling of falling backwards through the collapsing warp tunnel.

Yes, he realised. The shell hit me. It had found the weak armour under his arm and punched into his torso. An instant later Kadin had pitched him backwards into the warp tunnel.

There had been no pain, just a sudden numbness as his body shut down. Then there had been a second feeling, a feeling of being wrapped in deaf oblivion. Something was in his blood, in his body, surging around his veins with every heartbeat. It had cut his connection to the warp. The voices, they had been the last vanishing calls out of the dark as night fell. He knew all this with detached certainty.

He looked around. The whiteness had been complete, but now a checked stone floor extended away to the horizon. He turned his head again. A long corridor met his eyes. He could see sunlight streaming in through arched windows.

This is my memory palace, he realised. My mind is retreating to the one thing that exists wholly within itself.

Slowly he stood, and took a step down the corridor. There were no doors, just blank smooth stone. He kept walking.

You may be dying, he thought. Do you even know how long you have been here?

The corridor extended without ending. He turned and started to walk the other way, and stopped.

Two doors stood on opposite sides of the corridor. He recognised only one of them. The door on his right was small, wooden and carved with a flock of birds rising towards the sun. It was an old door, one of the first he had placed in his memory palace, and he had not opened it since. He took a step towards it then hesitated, and looked over his shoulder.

The second door was obsidian, polished to a mirror surface, without handle or hinges. He had never seen it before.

What is beyond here?

He stepped closer and saw his reflection slide across the oil-black surface. His hand rose almost without his realising it, his fingers extending to touch the black stone. He froze. The reflection had gone. In its place he saw the flash of a gunshot again, and the echo of light in the armoured woman’s eyes. His mind had leapt outwards as the shell had left the gun, like a hand scrabbling for dry land before sinking beneath the waves. Her mind had been open, the terror and triumph of the moment leaving her unshielded. He had touched her thoughts as the bolt shell hit him, and seen something of the secrets she kept.

This is a door of secrets. His hand moved forwards, then paused again. He looked down the corridor in both directions. There were no other doors except the obsidian door and the small door of carved wood.

He paused for a long moment. Then he pushed open the black door, and saw what the inquisitors had found in the Eye of Terror.

Ahriman’s pupils went wide in his eyes. He gasped. A fresh wash of blood gushed over his lips. Carmenta froze, her mechadendrites poised over the open wound.

‘Don’t move,’ she said, and saw his eyes focus on her. He stopped moving. She tried to relax, to focus on the movement of the blades and callipers inside the wound. There were pieces of shrapnel still inside his chest. She had been teasing them out of the torn flesh for hours. Slowly she withdrew a mechadendrite, a sharp sliver of blood-slick silver held between its pincers. Ahriman’s eyes focused on the fragment.

‘Where are we?’ he croaked.

‘Holding steady in real space,’ said Astraeos from behind her. She saw Ahriman’s eyes refocus. He nodded, and his eyes pinched shut as if at sudden pain. His skin was clammy and its colour had bled away to a cold grey.

He is dying, she thought. She turned and dropped the fragment into a glass cylinder. A dozen scraps of silver lay at the bottom. And perhaps that is best, came another voice in her head. He has led us to the edge of ruin again and again. Sooner or later he will lead us too far and we will fall.

‘I will see the Navigator,’ said Ahriman, and began to push himself off the polished metal slab. Tubes that had been sucking the blood from his open wound came loose and began to splutter red droplets over his bare skin. Ahriman winced, then his face hardened. ‘My armour,’ he said, his mouth barely opening. ‘Bring it to me.’

‘There are still fragments in the wound,’ said Carmenta. Ahriman slowly turned his eyes on her.

‘I am aware of that.’ A bead of blood formed at the corner of his lips. ‘I can feel them. They are like needles in my mind. You won’t be able to remove them all. Two of them are hooked into the flesh next to my heart.’ He breathed hard. ‘Seal the wound.’

‘If I don’t get them out…’ she began.’

‘They may kill me, but not for a while, and I need that time.’ He glanced from Astraeos to Carmenta. ‘Seal it, and then bring me my armour and the Navigator. We have much to prepare.’

After a long moment she nodded and began to cauterise the wound. The smell of charring flesh caught in her throat as it rose from her tools.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked, as she stapled the lips of the wound closed.

‘Where we have always been going: to my brother. To Amon.’

Ahriman’s eyes were suddenly bright, and Carmenta felt more terrified than she had in all her years of flight. Astraeos did not move, but she could feel him waiting.

‘After all that has…’ began Astraeos.

‘The ship we took the Navigator from was no wandering pilgrim. It had gone into the Eye, looking for secrets. Their mystics had read portents of a power rising in the Eye, gathering forces to it.’ Ahriman paused and Carmenta could see something briefly replace the pain in his eyes.

‘How can you know this?’ said Carmenta before she could stop herself.

‘I saw it in the mind of the one that shot me.’ Ahriman moved his right hand to touch the lips of the wound in his side. His fingers came up red. He stared at his own blood.

‘What did they find?’ asked Astraeos quietly.

‘They found the ashes of a war.’

Astraeos frowned.

‘There is always war within the Eye. You have told me this yourself: eternal war for power, for resources.’

‘This was not that type of war, it was a war of annihilation.’ Ahriman looked back up, his eyes unfocused. ‘Scars cut deep into the warp itself. Vortices of destruction that scream the names of those who created them. Daemons scavenging the remains of hell worlds cracked open like soft fruit. All just the by-blows of one battle.’

‘What battle?’

Ahriman’s face looked like a mask of dead grey skin.

‘The fall of the Planet of the Sorcerers. The final death of my Legion.’

‘This has happened?’ asked Astraeos carefully.

‘Not yet,’ Ahriman shook his head. ‘Time is not a single river in which we all float towards one end. It flows in many streams. Some flow fast, some slow. If you stand within your own stream you see only your own time, but within the warp you can move between them. A ship may enter the warp and return before it left, or emerge after centuries that the crew have experienced as hours. Such things have happened. Within the Eye, the streams of time are broken and tangled: moments of futures and pasts crammed together in an unravelling knot.’

‘So it will happen,’ said Astraeos.

‘Perhaps.’

‘How could it not, if it has already happened in the future?’

‘Knowledge is power, knowledge changes everything. I know, and so that can change what happens now.’ Ahriman gave a smile that was as cold as snow. ‘I have never believed in fate.’

‘Amon,’ said Astraeos after a long pause. ‘This is the answer that you looked for. This is what Amon gathers for: to prepare for this war.’

Ahriman said nothing.

There is something he is not saying, thought Carmenta. Another secret he is holding close.

‘Prophecy,’ said Ahriman, his voice suddenly heavy with resignation. ‘All glimpses of the future are flawed. Believe them to mean one thing, and you are falling into a trap. Ignore them and they pull you back in. Prophecy has followed me since I could dream, and all of it has led to ruin.’

‘There are wars that we must run from,’ said Astraeos.

Ahriman shook his head. He looked older and more tired than Carmenta had ever seen him.

‘No. I will not bow to fate.’

Even if it kills you, thought Carmenta. Even if it brings ruin to all of us. Ahriman looked at her, and she wondered if he had heard her thoughts.

‘You cannot do this.’

The words hung in the air. For a second Carmenta thought she had spoken without realising, but then Astraeos spoke again.

‘You cannot do this, Ahriman,’ he said. Carmenta looked at him. His face was as blank and fixed as stone. He shook his head and his armour purred as it followed the small movement.

Ahriman did not reply, but pulled himself to his feet. His eyes closed for a second and he swayed where he stood, then he steadied to complete stillness. To Carmenta he suddenly looked like a bronzed statue, washed with drying blood. Slowly his eyes opened.

‘I must do this,’ said Ahriman softly. Astraeos walked away without another word. All Carmenta could look at was the blood slowly dripping from the edge of the metal slab.

The precise gap between loyalty to the Imperium and betrayal was not something Silvanus had considered before. He knew about the warp, of course; he knew about it as few others born in the Imperium ever would. The warp was his reason for existing, it gave him purpose and meaning. Without it he was just a mutant with a third eye in the middle of his forehead. He knew how the warp could corrupt, about daemons and their thirst for the weakness of mortals. He had seen the reality behind the secrets as he gazed directly into the churning ocean of the warp’s heart. He had been tested by the Inquisition, and they had found what he already knew: that he had a mind that was unconventional, highly resilient, and difficult to tempt. What they had not considered was that Silvanus, while reckless, was not suicidal. Risks were calculations, gambles with at least a chance of coming out the other side. Faced with the certainty of death, he would rather stay alive. As he bowed before his new master he reflected that this last quality was the breaking point of his loyalty to the Imperium.

‘Rise.’ The voice was deep and resonant. Silvanus obeyed and stood, trying not to grit his teeth as the bruises from his abduction sent sharp complaints up his nerves. The figure who stood above him was a Space Marine. Silvanus’s eyes skittered over the blue armour, noting the imperfections and battle damage hidden under the lacquer. He looked up and met blue eyes. He flinched. It happened before he could stop himself. They were bright blue, like sapphires catching sunlight. It was not the colour that surprised him, but their utter stillness.

‘I am Ahriman.’

Silvanus bowed his head again, in part so he could look away from those still eyes.

‘Silvanus…’ he began, but a low resonant chuckle spread through the small chamber.

‘I know you.’

Silvanus thought Ahriman was about to embellish the statement, but only silence followed. He had a sudden urge to shiver.

‘Lord…’

‘I am not a lord. Once perhaps, but not now.’

Another silence lengthened. Silvanus swallowed, and glanced at the floor. Sweat was prickling across his back, and the dusty robes they had given him suddenly felt unbearably itchy against his skin. He had the feeling that if he were to look up he would find that Ahriman’s blue eyes would not have moved.

‘I wish you to navigate this ship.’

‘I have already–’

‘I wish you to navigate it to a particular location.’

Silvanus waited, and then chanced a glance up. Ahriman had tilted his head to one side, his eyes still fixed, waiting. Silvanus noticed a small spot of dried blood at the corner of Ahriman’s mouth.

He bit his lip. This was the moment; if he would not do what Ahriman wished then he was of no use, and he had no doubt that once he was of no use he would die. A quickly silenced part of him found that this choice made him very angry. He smiled, realised it was a grimace, smiled wider and then realised that smiling at a Traitor Space Marine was like grinning at a tiger.

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ nodded Silvanus. ‘Do you have navigational data for the location? Charts, rutters, puzzle cyphers?’

Ahriman slowly shook his head.

‘Then how, my lor…’ Silvanus coughed to mask the slip. ‘How can I navigate there?’

‘I have a path for you to follow,’ said Ahriman, and raised a hand. Silvanus flinched at the feeling of the armoured fingers on his scalp. An electrical prickle skittered over his skin. He suddenly felt that something very unpleasant was about to happen. He opened his mouth to speak, but at that moment the world vanished around him as the path poured into his mind.

It came in a cascade of light and sound. He heard music, and saw patterns form from golden threads of light. He smelt burning sugar, and heard whispers of voices fading in and out of hearing. It was like a nonsense song made out of every sensation. He felt it drag through his consciousness, pieces of imagery snagging like threads on thorns.

It lasted for a second. It lasted for an eternity. At some point he screamed.

Then it was done, and he found himself curled on the floor of his chamber, trembling. Above him Ahriman stared down, his eyes star-points of blue.

‘You see the path. You will take us there,’ said Ahriman.

Silvanus tried to speak, to say that he understood, but all he could do was nod.

XVI

Gathering

From a distance, the gathering looked like a scattering of gems glinting on a velvet field. Only as the distance closed – slowly, ever so slowly – did the stars become the teardrop fires of plasma engines. There were dozens of craft, perhaps hundreds, all rotating around a single point. It was like watching the lights of a city from the night sky; but here, each building was a ship.

As they moved closer, light began to catch the edges of towers and turrets. At the centre was a ship larger than all the rest. Its hull was red iron and narrowed to a point like a spearhead. Minarets and crystalline domes hung from its belly, while a city of silver towers rose into the void from its back. It had known other names, but to Ahriman it would only ever be the Sycorax.

‘A lot of ships for a dead Legion,’ grunted Astraeos. Ahriman turned his eyes from the images. He was only half concentrating; the rest of his mind was revolving through a sequence of thought patterns, pushing power into the arrangement of circles and lines scratched by Carmenta’s servitors into every floor and wall of the ship. That, and shutting out the dull ache from the wound in his side.

‘I thought only a few of your gene-kin survived?’ said Astraeos with a shrug that radiated disgust burning just beneath the surface. It reminded Ahriman of Kadin.

‘Only a few of us did,’ said Ahriman carefully and turned his eyes back to the images floating across the pict screens. ‘Many remain at my father’s side.’ He saw the grainy image of a trident-like vessel, its hull glimmering as if encrusted in jewels, then flicked to another: a grand cruiser with a broad nose of battered iron, its hull the blue of midnight. ‘These are not all true kin of the Thousand Sons. Others have answered Amon’s call. Renegades and fragments of other Legions and Chapters.’

‘Do they know what Amon intends?’

Ahriman shook his head.

‘Then why do they answer his call?’

‘Power,’ breathed Ahriman, still picking out the ships of different warbands; some whose names he knew, many which he did not. ‘Power burns bright in these realms. These others are carrion hoping to ride on the fires of Amon’s ascent. They do not care what that end is, only that they can feed on the warmth while it lasts.’

‘Look, more come,’ said Astraeos, nodding to a screen that had flared with static and then showed an image of two long-prowed ships sliding from the warp. Multi-coloured energy hung from them as the wound in the black sheet of stars closed behind them. Astraeos glanced again at Ahriman.

‘You are sure they will not detect our presence?’

Ahriman nodded but did not look up. Soon Carmenta would cut the power throughout the ship. The engines would go cold and they would drift towards the gathering on momentum alone, as black and cold as the void. While the ice clotted in the outer holds, Ahriman’s mind would keep turning, the formulae in his consciousness feeding the incantation that hid the presence of the ship from other minds. Scratched into the bones of the ship, the Sign of Thothmes had been expanded far beyond its original purpose. Ahriman thought of Magnus closing the sign over meetings of his inner circle, shielding their deliberations from the minds and eyes of others. The use he put it to now was far from what he could have imagined then.

Necessity changes everything, he thought.

‘Another hour of burn, then darken the ship,’ he said.

Astraeos gave a nod, and he left Ahriman watching the fleet of his brother grow larger and closer.

Darkness fell across the ship and cold came with it. Ahriman could see temperature warnings flare at the edge of his helmet display as he approached the door to his chamber. There was no light except the glow of his eyepieces. He passed a servitor that was moving with determined slowness. Dark marks and blisters had spread across the exposed flesh of its arms and face. He could hear its gears squealing as they froze. The air had stopped circulating first and what remained had become dense and misted with ice particles from the last breaths of moisture. Everything was quiet, slowing like blood cooling in a corpse after the last beat of its heart.

We are become like the dead, he thought, as he tasted blood and silver again. He could not feel the slivers in his chest any more, but he could taste their poison draining his mind.

He reached the circular hatch and pulled it open with a scream of frozen iron. The blackness within was absolute, and his helmet display created a scene of shapes formed in faded green. There were the bowls of oil for light, there the hard sleeping pallet, and there the chest. He moved to it, hesitating before he opened the lid. The objects lay within as they had before. He knelt and picked out the chipped scarab. He breathed slowly, feeling the weight of the gemstone in his palm. He felt something stir within its heart, a kernel of sympathetic memories unfolding into his mind.

There were pyramids of glass burning. There were animal shapes in grey armour wading through lakes of black water. There were… He shut the memory off. He did not need to see it again. There was no lesson it could teach other than the lesson of pain.

He looked down. The helm looked back at him. Its dust-filmed eyes seemed black, and the marks beneath each eye looked like paths carved by tears. He paused, his hand halted halfway to reaching into the chest.

Am I right to come here? The thought bubbled to the surface. He felt the doubt in his mind, the rolling surge of questions without end. He could hardly remember what he had been before the Rubric. No doubts, just the certainty of hubris.

He gave a short bark of laughter that echoed coldly in the chamber. It would always be a part of him now, a wound that would never heal. I had to come, I am responsible. I cannot flee that truth no matter how far I run.

He reached down and touched the helm’s bronze faceplate. He waited, but no surge of memory came, no flowering of revelation; just the hardness of dusty metal beneath his fingers.

Do I even have the right to judge what Amon does? He remembered the clear brightness of the belief that he would set everything right. Hope. A fool’s gold glinting in the palm of cruel fate. And yet… and yet…

The helm felt light in his hand. He had not realised he had picked it up. Dust fell from it, sparkling green in his augmented sight.

The prophecies and visions may be wrong. I may be wrong. The words of daemons, of oracles, of faces glimpsed in dreams and visions rose in his memory.

You remember this path even though you shunned it…

Others will dare the paths you do not. It is fated…

Fate has come for you, Ahriman, as you feared it would and knew it must…

The Legion will die. It will become less than the dust that the Rubric made it…

I see lines of choice vanish into darkness and I cannot see their ends….

There may be another way. There may be a path not just of survival but of hope, of restoration, of redemption….

There is a choice.

He raised the helm until he could see the light of his eyes reflected in its dust-covered lenses.

Gas whispered out in a frozen cloud as he unfastened his helmet and dropped it to the deck. He was blind, wrapped in sudden darkness, as the cold crawled over his skin with frosted fingers. He gripped the other helm, and turned it by touch. He could feel ice crystals forming on his lips. The helm slid over his head and locked into place, with a hiss of pressurisation. He could smell the dust, a gritty taste on the first breath he took. The helmet display blinked to wakefulness. Pictograms flowed across his eyes in turquoise, amber and red. He turned his head, seeing the world again in bright white lines. He felt the stillness of certainty.

I am responsible, he thought as he walked from the chamber. I always was. For good or ill.

They would hit something soon, she was sure of it. That or something would detect them. It was only a matter of time, and as every nanosecond passed the probabilities slid further down towards an abyss of certainty. The Titan Child was deep within the gathering enemy fleet. Her shields were down, her reactors reduced to an ember glow, and her sensors running on so little power that she was almost blind. There were hundreds of ships out there. She had plotted a trajectory through them, but without power she was drifting on momentum alone, unable to move, a dead lump of metal.

A pair of cruisers cut across her path. One second they were not there and then they were looming into her awareness so close she could feel the heat wash of their engines. They dwarfed her. Once they might have been recognisable as ships of the Imperium, but those features had long been lost. Their hulls were bronzed, and chewed by battle scars like the face of a slave fighter. Piled structures shaped like faces rose from their hulls, and she could sense the waiting guns projecting from their mouths.

She felt calculations surge through her, estimating velocities and vectors. The bronze ships were getting closer. She would have to fire her engines soon. But her reactors were all but dead. The calculations spiralled on and the ships loomed closer.

She had to wake the reactors. Yes, that was the only way. Wake the reactors and let her heart beat again. Let her live again. She was paralysed, suffocating in the void, a dumb iron arrow thrown blind into oblivion.

You will not survive this, came a voice in her soul. We will die here. All will be lost. We will be become crippled shadows. Broken. Halved.

The cruisers slipped past her without a collision.

Somewhere she was breathing hard. She could feel a heart racing in rising panic. She tried to correct it, but the blood it pumped was roaring through her faster and faster.

Another ship slid past her, its engines burning into her half-blinded sensors. The risk calculations screamed again in her awareness. She was cold and blind and she would not survive this madness.

She had to waken, she had to… She must…

Ahriman has led us to this folly, spoke the voice again. He cannot be trusted. This time we will not survive.

What can I do? What must I do?

The answer did not come in words. She remembered the Mechanicus fleet coming, appearing in the night sky above her birth world. They had hidden the stars with iron. She remembered the vast cylinders of Titan drop-pods falling through the atmosphere like the fists of gods. The information links had filled with broken words and fragments of data, the screams of dying machines. She had watched and listened as her clan died, as the world which cradled them died. She had known what to do then, what she had to do for her Titan Child. They had screamed at her as she ran: streams of broken machine code, ciphers of anger and hurt and despair. She had listened to them all until they were too faint to hear any more. She knew they had died. The clan of mystics bonded to their machines had died screaming at her for her betrayal. All had hated her in those last moments, of that she was certain. But she had lived, and her other self, the iron creature of the void with a heart of fire, had lived as well.

She felt calm. Carefully, slowly, she eased power from her sensors to a communication array. She would only have enough for a signal no stronger than a murmur, but it would be enough to save her.

‘I am the Titan Child,’ she said in a whisper of signal code, ‘and I must speak to Lord Amon.’

XVII

Darkness

‘Ahriman?’ Carmenta’s machine voice was weak in his ear. A whisper, he thought.

‘Yes, mistress?’ He had been making for Astraeos’s chambers. Now he stopped. There was something in Carmenta’s voice, a note that he could hear even through the lifeless modulation of her words. She was linked to the ship, of course. In a sense it was the ship’s voice she was using.

‘Come to the command deck.’ There was something wrong, he could tell. Something colouring even the cold machine words. Had they been discovered? They must be close to the heart of Amon’s gathering. Something could have detected their presence. Perhaps his psychic masking was flawed. No, he would know. But what else could have edged Carmenta’s voice with tension?

‘What has happened?’ he said.

‘You have to see it yourself,’ replied Carmenta.

The three Storm Eagle gunships slid through the dark in a triangular formation. Each was painted an arterial crimson, but in the void they appeared black. The thin light of stars picked out the hints of rows and rows of pictograms etched across the hull of each craft, each no larger than a finger bone. Across the underside of the crafts’ wings, engraved gold feathers spread in mimicry of the wings of true birds of prey. No lights betrayed their approach, and their engine flames glowed a cold blue that was quickly lost to the eye. They could not see what they were making for, but that did not matter. They followed a single signal that pulsed through the void.

When the ship did appear in front of them they were so close that they had to bank sharply to avoid crashing. They skimmed the scorched and gouged hull, following the signal’s siren call. They looped high towards the bridge that punched from its upper hull like a fist. They passed holes the size of battle tanks, unhealed in the thick armour plating. Even at a few metres’ range the ship seemed dead. Only the guiding signal gave the lie to that perception.

The landing-bay doors opened to greet them. The three Storm Eagles glided through the opening and settled onto the metal deck, their thrusters briefly surrounding them in a cloud of white mist. The ramps at the front of each gunship hinged open. The figures that marched onto the deck did so in complete unity, their armoured bulk hidden by the low light and the dissipating clouds of thruster fog.

Three figures emerged last of all. Each wore robes of silver and bone over their red armour. Wide crests flared above their helms, one resembling a cobra, another topped by the twin serpent, the third a disc worked like a rayed sun. The cobra-headed figure marked his steps with a staff topped by a black orb. Curved khopesh swords hung at the waist of the other two figures.

A servitor shuffled from the shadows. It was a hunched, pitiful thing, its flesh withered in the copper and chrome of its mechanical frame. It stopped a pace from the armoured figures, and bowed like a rag doll folding to the floor.

‘Greetings,’ said the servitor in a voice like electricity sparking between wires. The three figures glanced at each other. ‘The mistress of the Titan Child calls you to follow.’ The servitor turned and began to shuffle away. After a second’s pause the three figures and their silent entourages followed.

Astraeos found Kadin in the central corridors. It had taken him some time to decide to tell him of Cadar’s fate. Warmth still lingered in the slowly stagnating air of the vessel’s core, but there was no light. Astraeos had tracked his brother by sound, listening for the thrum of powered armour and the hiss of pistons in the deepening silence. His brother was armoured but bareheaded, his eyes gazing directly ahead. In the ghost-green of Astraeos’s night vision Kadin’s eyes glowed like jewels in sunlight. Three paces behind Kadin limped Maroth, chuckling and mewling, his vox-caster and speaker-grille cutting in and out. Astraeos felt anger bubble to the surface at the sight of the broken sorcerer.

‘Brother, there is something that we must speak of,’ called Astraeos.

Kadin did not look at him but kept walking. ‘How nice that you still call me that.’

‘You are my brother, you always will be.’

Kadin inclined his head, looked to Astraeos and then away with a thin smile on his lips.

‘Touching.’

Maroth continued to chuckle, the sound chopping between speaker and vox, as if his armour itself were laughing.

‘Be silent,’ Astraeos spat. Maroth turned the muzzle of his helm from Astraeos to Kadin. Behind the faceplate Astraeos knew the broken sorcerer was grinning.

‘Nothing left, nothing left,’ purred Maroth. ‘Not his brothers, not his honour, not his soul.’ Maroth tapped the lenses of his helm. ‘Only one eye with which to see how much he has lost.’

Astraeos moved at blink-fast speed. His foot stamped into Maroth’s chest with a crack of metal on ceramite. Maroth lifted from his feet and hit the passage wall, and Astraeos was on him before he could slide to the floor. Rage ran through Astraeos in a hot red cloud. All he could see was the wreck of his past, and the tatters of everything he had tried to preserve. He had failed; every time he had tried he had failed. Maroth spluttered, wet noises coming out in chopped lumps from his speaker-grille. Astraeos thought he was still laughing. He put his foot on Maroth’s chest as the sorcerer tried to rise.

‘Leave him,’ said Kadin. Astraeos kept his eyes fixed on Maroth, seeing the one who had transformed Cadar and taken his brothers’ eyes.

‘No, Ahriman promised,’ screamed Maroth, the words wet and mixed with broken teeth and blood.

Astraeos roared and raised his foot to stamp down on Maroth. The image of Cadar’s body looking back at him with empty voids for eyes filled his mind.

He paused, breathing hard. His ears were ringing with rage. He wanted to strike again, to feel that release of letting anger and muscle become one. He let out a long, shaking breath.

‘You are losing yourself, brother,’ said Astraeos, jerking his head at where Maroth lay. ‘You let him follow you like a dog. After what he was, what he did–’

‘No, Astraeos.’ Kadin’s voice was quiet, but it cut through Astraeos like a cold knife. ‘I lost myself long ago, as did you.’

‘No, we still–’

‘Have honour? Astraeos, you beggared that long ago. I am not what I was, and neither are you. Would Codicer Astraeos have done that?’ Kadin glanced to where Maroth was trying to pick himself up off the floor. ‘We are changed and changing. What we were is gone.’ Kadin paused. His rasping voice sounded tired. ‘We have Ahriman, and that is all. We are all dogs following at his feet.’

Astraeos opened his mouth to reply, found he had no words. His rage had drained away. He felt suddenly empty, the feeling spreading out and through him.

No, he thought. The emptiness that bubbled up inside him had been there since the ships of the Inquisition and the warriors in grey had fired on their home world. He tried not to look at his hands; he knew his fingers were shaking. What do I do? What am I now? What do I do?

And then a new sensation hit Astraeos like a cold shadow passing over the sun, as if a light that he was not aware of had gone dark. His head twitched up, his eyes looking around for the source of the uncanny chill. He could hear the silence in his ears.

‘What was that?’ said Kadin. Astraeos looked at his brother. Kadin was looking up at the shadows at the edge of the corridor. Astraeos felt a shiver run across his skin.

‘I don’t know.’

‘Darkness, it is here.’ Maroth had pulled himself to his feet, his head rolling from side to side as he leant on the passage wall. Then he tipped his head up sharply at Astraeos. ‘Can’t you see it?’

Astraeos blinked his helmet display to life, and opened a vox-channel.

‘Ahriman.’ Static was the only reply. He switched channels. ‘Mistress Carmenta.’

Silence.

Astraeos glanced at his brother. Kadin nodded. They began to run, unclamping weapons as they moved. Behind them Maroth followed, breathing curses to himself.

Ahriman paused before the entrance to the bridge. He had felt something, something subtle and distant like a movement under the surface of dark water, or the quick hiding of a lamp beneath a cloth. He turned, his eyes moving across the shadows at the edge of the antechamber. Nothing, just a feeling. But everything was a sign, he had learned and thought that truth long ago.

He peeled off a portion of his mind. His hand shifted on the grip of his sword. He waited, but there was nothing. He turned back to the doors and pressed his hand against the opening seal. The doors ground back into the walls. He froze.

Darkness. Complete darkness waited for him beyond the doors. No wink of system lights, not even the smallest kernel of luminescence from a servitor’s eye. He felt something, the tiniest imperfection in his thought processes. He had missed something. No, he had seen something out of the corner of his eye, something that was bending light and shadow around it, something that was hiding just out of sight. Suddenly he was very aware of how tired he was, and of the psychically toxic silver lodged in his chest.

The hairs on his arms rose, and static prickled up his spine.

He sensed the telekinetic wave an instant before it broke and lifted him from his feet. The darkness vanished, as if a curtain had been ripped back to reveal the sun. Suddenly he could feel the presence of other minds all around him. They burned bright, and power howled around them like hurricane winds.

Sensations and emotions blurred as he turned through the air: heat, cold, anger, the heaviness of his own body, the gravity pulling it down, the threat icons flashing in his eyes, the tension of his fingers still gripping his sword, the spiralling gold patterns inlaid into the floor. He felt the fingers of another mind ramming into his thoughts, pulling apart his calm like a knife parting threads. He was scrabbling in a swamp of panic and then, and then…

His mind froze, it became crystal, each thought, sensation, and emotion held still as he spun through the air.

Amon’s forces were on the Titan Child. There were at least three psykers. They were powerful. There were Rubricae too, twenty-four of them. He sensed all of this in the space of a slow heartbeat.

He hit the floor. Full reality snapped back into place. He rolled to his feet and his sword came up to meet a downward cut at his head. Light flared where the two blades met. He saw red armour, bone robes and a golden helm with a sun-disc crest. Power blazed from behind the golden helm, touching his mind like the heat of the sun. He shifted, turned the enemy’s blade, and cut down at the golden helm.

It was not there. The warrior was past his guard, turning so fast that Ahriman could not predict the movement. He began to react, but too slowly. The blow sliced across his shoulder. Ceramite glowed yellow where the blade cut. The sword whipped back.

Ahriman stepped back as the golden-headed sorcerer cut again. The glowing point of the sword screamed as it scored a line across his chest, the cut going wide. Ahriman stamped forwards, and his kick rammed the sorcerer into the air. His mind was still reeling, trying to shape his will into power as the warp boiled around him. He could taste silver and iron.

On the edge of sight two other figures in robes paced forwards. Their movements seemed slow, almost casual. One was raising a staff. Lightning forked through the air. Ahriman felt it an instant before he saw the flash. The lightning shattered inches from his body. Blinding arcs earthed in the floor. Ahriman felt the shield he had raised tremble as the lightning crawled across its glowing surface.

He felt for the point of calm in the middle of the storm of his mind, found it, and suddenly everything seemed quiet and slow. The golden-helmed sorcerer was still turning in the air behind him. He would hit the floor in less than a second. In front of him the sorcerer with the staff and the cobra-crested helm was in mid-step, his aura flowing from crystal blue to muddy red as he struggled to refocus his own power. To his left another sorcerer was one stride into a charge, a curved khopesh held low in both hands. Beyond them he could see the Rubricae. They encircled the room, their boltguns aimed inwards but silent, their eyes watching, waiting.

Ahriman dropped his invisible shield and the lightning wreathed him, climbing up his body. The sorcerer with the staff was shaking, trying to shut off the power that was flowing through him. Ahriman drew the lightning into himself, absorbing it and radiating it outwards. A blinding flash filled the chamber. The three sorcerers stumbled.

Ahriman’s mind rose from his body. His thought form was a creature of pure psychic energy, a vast black-winged bird with two heads, its eyes pinprick windows into a furnace. The physical chamber slid to a dim outline as he left his fleshly body behind.

The three sorcerers shimmered and then their minds leapt into the air, their thought forms trailing cloaks of light and shadow. They changed as they ascended into the warp; translucent wings unfolding from predatory bodies, mouths opening, fangs glowing like the death of stars. They were mockeries of the lost angels of legend, formed from fury and power.

Ahriman’s raven thought form roared and dived towards the glowing angels. The thought forms met in a supernova of colour and light. The crystal dome above the chamber shattered. Frost formed on every surface. Ahriman felt claws and teeth rake his thought form, scoring lines through his wings. This was battle fought with the mind alone, the thought forms no more than projections into the warp, but that made it no less dangerous. In the physical realm he began to bleed inside his armour.

His claws closed on one of the angelic thought forms. It writhed in his grasp, shifting shape; now serpentine, now scaled and bloated with flesh. Ahriman gripped tighter and soared upwards, the sorcerer’s thought form held in his claws. Golden droplets of aetheric blood tumbled in their wake. Somewhere in the physical world he passed through the hull of the Titan Child. Stars and the engine fires of warships were dim impressions on the edge of his awareness.

+Quiet, my brother,+ he whispered, and squeezed. His claws sank into the thought form’s flesh. It screamed as its body split open. Ahriman let go. The thought form fell from his claws. It shattered as it fell, its substance breaking into luminous tatters. Ahriman’s thought form reached the top of his climb and rolled over into a dive. The beaks of his twin heads closed on the remains of the dissolving thought form.

Feelings and memories flooded Ahriman’s mind as aetheric blood filled his mouth. Kiu, that was this sorcerer’s name. Kiu, acolyte of the Raptora. Kiu, so silent unless spoken to, now screaming with all his mind and soul. He spat Kiu’s shrivelling thought form out. In the chamber far below, the serpent-crested sorcerer fell to the floor.

The other two thought forms were rising to meet him. Ahriman roared and the roar became flame. The thought forms twisted aside. One had taken the body of a feline predator; two sets of wings spread from its back, and its fur flickered between the colours of snow and jet. The other coiled through the air, its long body glistening with blue and golden scales, its wings sheets of translucent skin. Ahriman spread his wings and met them, claws first. They tumbled together. He felt teeth rip his flesh and feathers away. Somewhere, where he had real flesh, new wounds opened. Pain billowed through him. He lashed out blindly as he felt himself weaken. He was falling now, not diving, tumbling in a savage embrace with his enemies, focus and power bleeding from him with every instant.

No, he thought. I will not end like this, not at the hands of my brothers. He gave in to the pain, let it surge into his consciousness. The raven shape of his thought form began to burn. Black feathers kindled to bright flame. His thought form cracked, blazing lines opening across its shape. And all the while the pain rose, burning away all other thoughts and sensations.

The sorcerers’ thought forms howled. Their skin peeled away. Ethereal flesh charred black and began to dissolve. They bit and clawed deeper as they burned, scrabbling at Ahriman’s thought form even as it cracked with heat.

White brightness filled Ahriman’s mind. He was losing himself, his mind dissipating into the warp as it consumed itself. He could feel his name start to drift just beyond memory, as the vortex of sensation dragged him into its embrace. He would become a dimming light, alone and unremembered. He had to end the fight; he had to end it now.

His will cut through the pain. His thought form’s bird body melted, and became a glowing sphere. The thought forms wrapped around it shrieked as their claws and teeth sank into the molten surface. Then the sphere uncoiled. Glowing lengths of scaled flesh wrapped around the thought forms. Ahriman felt them claw and struggle as his thought form constricted tighter and tighter.

Their movements grew weaker as the mind of each sorcerer pushed against his grasp. He gripped tighter, wrapping his will over their minds even as he felt fatigue wash through him. He had sustained his projection in the warp for no more than a second of real time, but even that had cost him. Blackness crept across the edges of his thoughts like night falling after day. The two thought forms trembled, twisted one last time and went still.

The exhaustion came in a thick cloud. It boiled up from within, dragging him down like the waves of a dark ocean. His will wavered. The pain and fatigue were enfolding him, cutting away his awareness of the warp. His thought form began to fade; the serpent sphere broke apart, unravelling like a knot of burning rope. Ahriman felt his consciousness flood into his body again.

He lay on the stone floor, his sword fallen by his side. Around him the Rubricae watched him stir but did not move. He tried to breathe, choked and found there was blood in his mouth. There was blood in his armour, too. He could feel it sticking to the inside of his body like a second skin. He rolled onto his side and began to stand up. Sympathetic slashes and bites in his sides and legs pulled open, and pain whipped through him. A fever haze rose through his body; he swayed. Frost covered the chamber and floor. Splinters of crystal from the shattered dome above mingled with the ice. Under the rime he could see Kiu and the other two sorcerers. They did not move.

The Rubricae watched him as he stood, their eyes glowing green, unmoving. Whispers filled his ears, pushing through the fog of exhaustion. He turned, slowly, looking between the watching eyes. The Rubricae remained still. On the floor one of the sorcerers stirred. Ahriman reached down for his sword.

Then he felt it, a ripple in the fabric of reality, like a stone dropped into a flat pool of water.

He grasped his sword and stood again. His helmet display pulsed with injury warnings. He was still losing blood. His eyes dimmed and luminous worms twisted at the corners of his sight. He was tired, so tired. He took a breath and felt blood rise in his throat. Even as he tried to gather his will, it scattered. He looked up.

A mote of golden light hung in the middle of the chamber. In his mind he could feel and hear the warp churning like water curling into a whirlpool. The mote of light expanded like a blown bubble. Stars and night swirled at its centre.

Of course, he thought. He could see shapes, three indistinct humanoid outlines shimmering as if seen through a heat haze.

I am a fool. I should have understood what was happening here. He tried to gather power to his will. He raised the sword. The sigils along the blade were dim. Around the edge of the chamber the Rubricae took a step forwards, their guns levelled.

The sphere of stars swelled, and the shapes of the three figures grew clearer.

He had failed, he had presumed, he had missed the most logical of reasons why Amon had not come himself while Ahriman was still strong. Because it would have been foolish, and Amon, apart from that one time when he had believed Ahriman, had never been foolish.

The three figures were clear now: two wore flowing white robes and red armour. Curved horns rose from their helms to hold golden discs. The third figure wore blue silk robes over his armour. Horned skulls covered his shoulders, tapers of yellowed parchment spilled from the visible red plate, and he carried a staff of silver topped by the symbol of a serpentine sun. Horns rose from the crown, temples and cheeks of his blank-fronted helm. The eyes that looked at Ahriman from behind the narrow eye-slit were red coals.

The figures stepped from the swirl of colour and stars. Ahriman tried to take a step forwards, but his muscles would not respond. Blood foamed in his throat as he breathed. He stumbled, then collapsed to one knee. The three figures watched him, not coming any closer, not retreating. Ahriman kept his eyes fixed on the third of their number. He could feel the presence of all three newcomers, the hard control and power like sunlight trapped in a fist. But the third figure shone brighter than anything else in the room.

+Amon,+ sent Ahriman, and the effort filled his eyes with nauseous swirls of colour. The figure in the horned helm nodded, and then turned to look at his companions.

+Help him stand,+ sent Amon. A shiver ran through Ahriman. It had been a long time since he had heard that mind. He smiled despite himself.

Amon’s two companions approached Ahriman from either side. Both wore khopesh swords at their waist and had pistols clamped to their thighs. Ahriman breathed, trying to gather power to his mind and balance the rhythms of his body. If he could focus he could knit his wounds back together, he could… he could…

Hands gripped him and pulled him to his feet. His vision was clogging with shadows. He heard his sword clatter to the ground. He could not feel his hands. He could not feel anything. The world was folding in on itself. The winds of the aether seemed to be thick with swirling dust. Amon’s voice in his thoughts, calm and soft, followed him as he fell into the dust cloud in his mind.

+ It is good to see you, Ahriman.+

Carmenta had watched with all her eyes. Internal scanners and pict lenses had seen Ahriman approach the doors to the bridge, then pause. Then there had been an explosion of light and static that grated across her senses. She had felt distortion and corrupted code boil through her as she glimpsed movements faster than she would have believed possible. Then there had been stillness, and the crackle of unnatural energy playing over her hull. An instant later one of Ahriman’s opponents had fallen to the floor, as if he were a puppet with his strings cut. Then the other two had followed. Finally she had watched Ahriman struggle to pull himself from the floor where he had sprawled.

I was right to do this, she thought. I had no choice. He would have destroyed us. My child would have been taken from me. I was right to do this. A blue-robed figure that must be Amon had appeared out of thin air. She watched as Amon’s two attendants pulled Ahriman to his feet. No one had said anything, not Ahriman, not Amon, not any of the silent Space Marines that encircled them all.

I was right to do this. She tried to purge the doubt, but it stuck to her like clotted blood to a hand.

She saw Ahriman slump in the grip of the two Space Marines. The one that must be Amon turned towards the doors to the command bridge.

‘Titan Child,’ he called, and she noticed that his voice was strong and calm, kind even. ‘It is done.’ He paused and turned his head so that he was looking directly into one of her pict-eyes. ‘You are free.’ He turned his gaze away, and something silent passed between him and the Space Marines encircling the chamber. He was looking at Ahriman, she realised. Hanging like a drowned man between the arms of the acolytes. ‘But betrayal should buy no peace.’

Amon’s head turned and he was looking into the pict lens again. His eyes were burning. She tried to shut down the visual feed, but could not. His eyes stared back at her from every pict-eye, blazing brighter and brighter. She felt them bore into her, stripping away layers of machine code. She wanted to scream, to run. She felt her limbs tangle in her cradle of cables. She could not feel the rest of herself: her reactors, engines and weapons were not there. All that remained was her link to the pict feeds, and that she could not break. She felt something burning within her, something liquid and vital boiling.

Carmenta’s body juddered in its cradle. Blood rained down from her, spattering on the floor as the blood cooked in her remaining flesh, as Amon’s eyes turned from her.

+Peace, Titan Child,+ whispered Amon. +Be at peace.+

Amon turned and let the killing thought fade from his mind. His thoughts felt clotted and soiled. But it had been necessary; an act of balance, not malice. The tech-priest had betrayed the trust Ahriman had given her, and any betrayal had a price. One could not choose the limits of one’s beliefs; he had learned that long ago. It was a mercy anyway. He had touched the mind that called itself the Titan Child, felt the aberrations, the lumps of self-mutilation and distortion. He glanced at the encircling Rubricae, felt the broken particles of their thoughts swirl in his mind. They tasted of dust. Yes, better brief pain and then peace than what the ship or its mistress would have become.

He looked to where Zabaia and Siamak stood, holding the collapsed form of Ahriman. With a mental flick he extended his mind and lifted Ahriman from them so that he floated above the floor. With another tendril of thought he lifted Ahriman’s sword. He turned it over, noting the markings and the red iron raptor rising from the golden flames of the crossguard: Tolbek’s sword. So Tolbek was gone. He felt something move in his mind, a dull pulse of something starved and weakened. One more, he thought, and looked at Ahriman. He let the sword drop from his hand.

+There are two of our silent brothers on this ship,+ he sent to Zabaia and Siamak. +I can sense them. Tolbek brought them here, his mark is on them. Follow their scent. Bring them back to us. Then give this ship to the fire.+

Both acolytes bowed their heads and withdrew. He nodded in response and turned away. Behind him the injured and unconscious forms of Kiu and the other two sorcerers lifted into the air on cushions of telekinesis. He muttered a fluid stream of names and commands, and the Rubricae moved to flank him. He would return to the Sycorax by Storm Eagle, leaving one to carry Zabaia and Siamak once they had completed their task.

He walked from the chamber, and behind him the four limp figures floated like puppets dragged by their wires. Beside him the Rubricae matched his step and hissed words from broken memories.

+Soon, my brothers,+ sent Amon. +Soon.+

XVIII

Names

Astraeos felt the enemies’ presence before he saw them. He was moving towards the bridge, Kadin a pace behind him, both running, their boots ringing metal thunder from the deck. Behind them Maroth limped, wheezing and muttering. Then something had touched his mind, a feeling like an insect running over his skin in the dark. He became still. At his side Kadin halted, looking at him, a question held in his green slit eyes.

Astraeos shook his head. He could feel it now, twin minds working seamlessly together, reaching out through the warp like searchlights. He could taste the formation of their thoughts. For a second he had thought it was Ahriman. The twin minds had the shape of Ahriman’s mind, as if the same hand had crafted them, but there were differences, imperfections and shadows of weakness. They were powerful, though. Powerful and unknown.

He slid his mind into a pattern of thought and felt the warp respond, drawing shadows and confusion around them like a tattered cloak. They vanished, sinking into a dark fold in the warp. He glanced at Kadin. His brother’s eyes were glowing in the gloom. He nodded once to Astraeos, as if he had felt and understood what Astraeos had done and why.

‘Yes, brother,’ said Kadin. ‘We will hunt.’

Silvanus had tried to drug himself to sleep. The materials he had found for the task had been crude and, as it turned out, inadequate to his needs. He had slept for a while, but the peace he had wanted had been broken by dreams of beasts of light and fire tumbling through a void of stars. He had woken feeling stomach acid kissing the inside of his mouth. He shivered and gave limited thanks to whatever deity still cared that he had not been sick in his sleep; given his circumstances it would have been consistent with his fortunes.

Lord of humanity, it is freezing. He had been given the void suit to insulate him from the cold, but he was fairly certain that it had not been used for some time, and the last person to wear it had not taken care of it. Curled on a pallet of mouldering fabric he shivered, and brought his hands up to rub his eyes. His hands hit the glass of the suit’s visor. He went back to cursing fate.

It was not that he wanted rest, he just wanted to shut everything out, to make reality into a featureless dream. He had agreed to pilot, of course he had agreed, he had seen enough that death held no temptation. But what would his survival be? What could possibly happen to him now? And there was no going back; he was a renegade now, an ally of servants to the nameless powers of the warp.

But, a voice whispered at the back of his thoughts, did you not already know the Inquisition would never let you live after your service was complete?

He opened his eyes. The grimy glow of the single light set into the small chamber’s ceiling looked back at him with a cracked gaze. The room was small, barely a cell. It nested close to the bridge, some kind of crew quarters from when the ship had had humans as well as servitors as crew. He thought about taking his suit helmet off, and then decided against it. The air in his suit was stale with his breath and odour, but he felt certain it would be better than the smell of his quarters.

The pallet felt unpleasantly soft as he rolled off it and came unsteadily to his feet. His head was pounding. He could still see the images of glowing beasts raking each other with claws as they fell. That was not good. He let his hands drop to his sides, took a deliberately slow breath, and waited to see if the dream images faded. After a minute he could still see them in unfading detail.

‘Oh no,’ he muttered, and began to move towards the sealed hatch. He pulled it open and on the other side did his best to start running in the direction of the bridge. Something had happened, and whether they were heretics or not the others needed to know. There were many indications of events taking place in the warp. Many would be dismissed by mundane humans: bad dreams, minor ailments, coincidence. As a Prime of one of the greatest Navigator houses he had spent much of his life aware of the difference between the mundane and the ominous. As he ran, he really, really hoped he was wrong.

The two sorcerers reached the bronze-covered doors and knew they had found what they had been looking for. It had taken more effort than they had anticipated to trace the psychic spoor of the two Rubricae. Voices and images had ghosted across their minds as they moved through the ship. A number of times they had thought that they had detected a sentience close by, trailing them through the ship’s corridors. They had reached out but the phantoms had melted under their gaze. The whole ship was rotten, psychic residue clinging to its presence in the warp like tatters of skin on a skull.

They placed their hands simultaneously on the bronze doors. From beyond they could hear the muted murmur of the Rubricae, a psychic sound so low it was barely a whisper. They did not look at each other in acknowledgement. No word or blunt psychic message was necessary for them to understand each other. Zabaia and Siamak were twins of the rarest kind. While other twins might share identical features, they shared identical minds. Their consciousness intertwined, overlapping through a psychic connection so deep that in a sense they had but one mind.

They felt another presence in the chamber beyond as they pushed open the doors. It was no matter, there was nothing left on this ship that could threaten them now that Ahriman had been taken.

The chamber was dark and blackened. They saw both with the augmented sight of their helmets and the second sight of their minds. Ash was thick on the floor. Every surface was scorched black. They could see pillars, their sides crusted with hardened dribbles of molten metal. Black chains hung from the ceiling, their lengths twisted by the heat. The two Rubricae stood facing the doors. They were coal-black with soot. Fire had scoured everything from the chamber but they still remained, unliving, never dying, and standing mute as if waiting. But it was the twisted throne at the other end of the room that drew Zabaia’s and Siamak’s eyes.

A figure sat on the throne. It was a Space Marine, or at least it had been; something about the way it rolled its head to look at them told the twins that the nobility and power of the Adeptus Astartes no longer lived in the figure. It had dragged its feet through the ash to reach the throne from a door that lay to one side of the chamber.

‘If I tell you, will I live?’ said Maroth. His hound-snouted helm tilted as he spoke. The twins did not move as their thoughts lifted Maroth from the throne and pinned him to the air.

+ Helio Isidorus.+

+Mabius Ro.+

The names echoed from the twins’ minds. The Rubricae shivered, soot falling from their joints as they turned, their guns rising.

‘You have been deceived,’ screamed Maroth, as the Rubricae’s fingers tightened on the triggers of their guns. ‘You will die here.’

The Rubricae paused. Siamak stepped away from his brother. Behind the mask of his helm he was smiling.

‘How could that happen?’

‘Like this,’ said Kadin as he stepped from the shadows, his chainsword already roaring.

The bridge was quiet. Very quiet. Silvanus moved forwards slowly. He was used to how ships sounded, to how they vibrated with mechanical life; the Titan Child felt dead. Of course, that was the point: drop all systems to nothing, and just allow the most fundamental systems to sip power while Ahriman did whatever terrifying thing he needed to. But this felt different, like looking at a corpse that had been breathing a second before. He was getting a terrible feeling that he had been right.

Silvanus had noticed the silence as he stepped into the bridge, and started moving with clumsy care. He had entered through a door low in the system pits. On any other ship tech-adepts and Naval officers would have been stalking the crevice-like rows of machines and servitor-crewed consoles. On the Titan Child there was not even a sign that another living soul had walked the deep parts of the bridge in a century. He had crept his way past rows of cold machinery, noting the servitors slumped at their positions in the stab lights from his suit. He had knocked one as he passed and it had slid to the floor, its dead flesh crumbling away from its metal components. He had stared at the wire-filled sockets of the servitor’s skull, and a new and unpleasant question had opened in his mind.

How was this ship even running before? He stared at the long-dead servitor for a cluster of heartbeats then moved on, picking his way over the cables that snaked across the floor, noting the grime covering the glass of display consoles.

He was ascending to the main command platform, on a caged spiral stair, when he heard the dripping. At first he thought it was distortion in his suit’s sound feed. He banged the side of his helmet. Noise scratched his ears, then went quiet. He heard it again, a single drip, soft yet echoing in the utter quiet of the bridge. He could feel his heartbeat rising. Breath fogged the glass of his visor as he climbed slowly up the stairs. He could not help but hear it now, a ragged drip, drip, drip.

The command platform was a long tongue of metal plating extending from the vast blast doors at the rear of the chamber. He had seen similar structures on other ships, but they had been dominated by the captain’s command throne, and the podiums, pulpits and dais of senior command staff. On the Titan Child it was bare.

The sound of dripping felt as if it were all around him now. Slowly he reached up and unfastened his suit helmet. It came away with a low hiss. The cold hit his face and he felt the moisture in his skin start to freeze. His breath fogged in the beam of the suit’s stab lights. The air was thick with the smell of dirt mixed with congealed oil. He listened.

Drip.

He started to move towards the centre of the platform, the cone of the stab lights reaching forwards in front of him.

Drip.

Liquid glistened. A wide pool had spread across the platform. He bent down, and extended a gloved hand to the pool. It came up running red and oil-black.

Drip.

He saw the drop hit the surface of the pool. Ripples spread from the point of impact. He looked up, and the stab lights followed his gaze.

‘Throne of Terra.’

The beam of light hit Astraeos as he ran forwards. It glowed blue with heat. He felt its power burn an instant before it struck, and shunted it aside with a thought.

Focus, calm, Ahriman’s watchwords. Astraeos lashed out with a thought of raw force. Siamak’s mental shield rose almost too late. It was enough for Astraeos to take another stride, and slide his sword free. Siamak drew his own weapon and met Astraeos’s cut. The sound of thunder echoed across the chamber as light flared from the crossed blades.

Two paces from Astraeos, Kadin made a lateral cut. Zabaia pivoted to the side. He was a blade’s width too slow. The chain teeth caught his right arm just below the elbow, and wet shreds of flesh sprayed through the air. Kadin turned the blow’s momentum and sliced from above his head with a shriek of bionics. Zabaia’s left hand flashed out and lightning hit Kadin in the chest.

Kadin laughed as the lightning danced across his armour. The chainsword struck Zabaia’s helm. It cut through the golden disc and horns, and screamed as it chewed into ceramite. Zabaia rammed his weight forwards. Kadin stumbled. Zabaia spoke a single word aloud and became fire. His flesh and armour vanished, receding to a dark silhouette in an inferno.

A smile cracked Kadin’s pale face.

‘Very nice,’ he said and swung his chainsword. The blade’s teeth were already melting as it met the flames. Kadin let go of the grip an instant before the blow would have landed. His right hand vanished into the flames, the mechanical fingers glowing dark red as they closed on the sorcerer’s head. He wrenched sideways, his body pivoting with a scream of pistons. Zabaia spun through the air, the inferno guttering out, blood raining in his wake. The half-crushed helm and head of the sorcerer dropped to the floor from Kadin’s cooling fingers.

Siamak staggered as his twin died. Astraeos came forwards, his sword raised to deliver a kill-stroke. Siamak fell, sending a cloud of ash into the air, panic suddenly ringing loud from his mind. Astraeos was about to cut down when he heard the telepathic commands whispered from Siamak to the two Rubricae. It was a ragged sending, a raw scream full of fury and confusion.

The Rubricae fired. Astraeos raised his hand. The glowing rounds exploded just beyond his fingers. Pink and blue flames billowed across the dome of force. He could feel the flames chewing at the shield, laughing with frustrated fury.

Siamak rose from the floor, dry ash falling from his armour. The two Rubricae stepped forwards, firing again and again. Astraeos felt his mental shield cracking. The flames of the exploding shells chattered as if in anticipation. To his right he could sense Kadin moving, leaping forwards, a war shout forming in his mouth; but slowly, far too slowly. Siamak stepped forwards, his form dusty ash-grey. The sword in his hand was glowing. The Rubricae looked at Astraeos with soot-darkened eyes. He let his shield drop.

+ Helio Isidorus. Mabius Ro.+ Astraeos formed the names in his mind, and sent them in a raw shout of command.

The Rubricae froze; their fingers stilled on the triggers of their guns. Siamak faltered. Astraeos felt his shock. Kadin hit him before he could recover, a furnace-hot fist cracking his faceplate. The sorcerer fell, rolled and started to rise. Astraeos could see a single bright blue eye through the shattered eyepiece of the sorcerer’s helm. Kadin stamped down, and crushed the helmet and the skull beneath.

Silence filled the chamber. Astraeos turned to look at his brother, but Kadin was already turning away to look for the remains of his chainsword. From the throne at the end of the chamber Maroth smiled.

‘I did say you would die here.’

Silvanus stared up. A tangle of cables hung from darkness above. Some were as thick as his arm, others were fine strands of silver, all woven together like a nest of creepers in a jungle canopy. A bare arm stuck out from amongst the cables. It looked as if it had been cooked. Dark droplets of fluid grew on the fingertips. Further up the nest, he could see Carmenta’s crimson mask hanging slackly in the curve of a thick cable. Its eyes looked down at him, blank blind holes in a cracked face. He could see where the cables connected to her skull; the sockets were drooling pus and thick blood.

Silvanus heard a moan, twisted to look around him, and then realised that the sound had come from his own mouth. The cold was burning his lungs. He coughed, and felt the bile rise in his throat. He vomited, dropping to his hands and knees, retching even after the contents of his stomach were glistening on the deck.

He heard a sound like air clicking through pipes. He looked up, swallowing the sour taste in his mouth. A faint light looked back at him from the pits of Carmenta’s eyes. He could not move, he could only stare back. The fingers of her hand twitched, scattering black drops into the pool beneath. The light in her eyes pulsed, and he heard the clicking suck of her breath again.

He stood slowly, keeping his eyes on hers. Her hand was just in reach. He stretched up. His glove brushed her fingers. He opened his mouth.

Carmenta spasmed. Blood showered down. The nest of cables shook. Across the bridge, dead servitors jerked in their seats as their augmetics sparked. Screens flashed to life with static. Silvanus could smell hot metal and burning wire. A wet shriek shook the stale air as Carmenta screamed. Silvanus thumbed his suit’s vox, shouting into whatever channel was open.

‘Help me, anyone. Help me.’ After five seconds Carmenta went still and the blood began to drip again.

XIX

Peace

Ahriman blinked as the light fell across his face. A door had opened. He could see a figure silhouetted against the brightness. He raised his head and squinted.

The small movement set chains clinking above him. They had bound him, he realised. Adamantine manacles circled his forearms and ankles. Thick chains led from his wrists to the ceiling above, held taut by his weight. More chains linked his ankles to the heavy loops in the white marble floor. They had removed his armour, of course, leaving him with a sleeveless tunic of rough fabric. His muscles ached, and his mind felt numb. The unhealed wound in the side of his chest wept pink fluid. Somewhere out beyond the cell the warp swirled like an ocean held back beyond glass. Null field generators buzzed beneath the floor and wards wove through the cell, etched into every stone and every link of chain. The cell was lightless and silent to the power of the warp. In here, he was just flesh and bone.

The door closed behind the figure, and the chamber was black again. Ahriman heard a measured breath. A glow blossomed in the dark as a candle lit and its flame grew. Light caught the edges of the candle bearer’s armour and spread shadows across a smooth face.

‘There,’ said Amon. ‘We will have light at least.’

Ahriman met Amon’s eyes, and they seemed almost black.

‘I will not help you,’ said Ahriman. Amon’s mouth formed a weak smile. He walked to the side of the chamber, and placed the candle in a holder. He moved around the room lighting more candles until pools of light broke the shadows. Ahriman watched as Amon lit a final candle to the right of the chamber’s only door.

‘Do you remember the light of Prospero?’ Amon paused, his eyes fixed on the flame as it grew. ‘The sun catching the pyramids, the dawn light crawling across land and sea. Sometimes I think I will never see such light again.’ He turned and looked at Ahriman, the sad smile still in place. ‘But then perhaps it is just memory.’ Ahriman remained silent as he remembered a city shining under a bright sky, and the flanks of the pyramids turning to sheets of sunlight.

‘For a long time I thought of returning there, of trying to see what remained.’ Amon nodded as he walked closer to Ahriman, and then shook his head. ‘Strange, isn’t it? We were created as warriors, to be apart from humanity. Where does sentimentality fit into that?’ He stopped, a pace away from Ahriman. ‘But then I realised that the light existed only in my memory. If I touched the ashes, and saw the storm-broken sky, the memory would vanish. Then what would remain of Prospero?’

Ahriman held Amon’s gaze.

‘The past cannot be changed, brother,’ said Ahriman softly. Amon looked away to the light at the edge of the room.

‘This is how it ends. You know that, don’t you?’

‘Brother, what you intend–’

‘What I intend?’ Amon shook his head. ‘You think that you see clearly.’ He gave a low laugh. ‘Your failings do not change, Ahriman. We are a dead Legion. What remains are just echoes, and the twitchings of corpses. Is that what you dreamed of? Is that why you led us to defy our father?’

Ahriman looked into Amon’s face.

‘I was wrong.’

‘You destroyed us, and your dream was flawed.’ Amon’s voice was measured, and Ahriman could barely hear the emotion running under the surface. ‘Perhaps you are right, perhaps there is no way to undo what the Rubric did, but that is not my intention, brother. I will not follow you into dreams. This is how we end, not how we are remade.’

Ahriman felt ice unfold in his guts and spread through him. He thought of the dead worlds he had seen waiting in the possible future.

They will become less than dust…

‘You cannot destroy the Legion,’ said Ahriman, hearing his own voice shake as he spoke.

‘But I will, brother. Perhaps you thought that I dreamed of restoration, or forgiveness at the hand of our father. Those are false hopes, and the path they lead us on is a path of lies. We are done. There is no going back, nor forgiveness for what we did, but there can be an end, and perhaps there will be peace in that. You have already destroyed us. I will redeem us in the only way that remains.’

‘The Rubric will preserve the Legion. Our brothers do not live but they cannot die.’ Above him the chains rattled as he spoke.

‘I will break the Rubric. I will turn it on itself.’ Amon nodded sadly. ‘You showed me that such grand change is possible, and if you can remake a Legion you can reduce it to less than dust.’

‘He will stop you,’ spat Ahriman.

‘Magnus?’ Amon laughed, and Ahriman’s gaze snapped back to his brother’s face. Amon was shaking his head in disbelief. ‘You have never in all these years thought that the Rubric came from his own work? Do you really believe that he did not know what we did? That part of him did not see the ruin he had brought us? Do you think that he does not long for an end?’

Ahriman felt as if Amon had struck him.

‘It will fail,’ he said, but he could feel the weakness in his own voice. Amon let out a long breath.

‘It will not,’ said Amon. ‘If I have to burn half of the Eye of Terror and raze the Planet of the Sorcerers to find the means, I will break your Rubric, and let our Legion die at last.’

‘Amon…’

‘I thought you might come to me in the end. I even goaded you to do it. If you survived my hunters I knew you would have to know why they had come for you.’ There was sorrow in his eyes, Ahriman realised, sorrow and pity. ‘Broken as you are, you are still Ahriman, master of the Corvidae, Chief Librarian of the Thousand Sons. Your pride is still strong enough to allow you to believe that you can somehow change what will happen, that your knowledge and insight is greater, that you can divert the course of fate. You say that you were wrong, that the Rubric was a mistake, but your arrogance still burns under the lies you tell yourself. You are unchanged, brother.’

‘Amon…’ Ahriman shook his head, even as his thoughts tumbled.

‘Why did you not use the Rubricae?’ asked Amon suddenly. ‘You could have tried to turn them against us when we came for you. Why didn’t you?’

Ahriman thought of the plain of dust, of Magnus pulling apart the walking statue that had been Artaxerxes. He remembered the ghost cries as the armour had come apart and then reknitted.

‘They are my brothers, not my slaves.’

‘They are the slaves you made them.’ Amon turned away and looked up to the gloom that hid the chamber’s ceiling. ‘You should have used them, that would have been honest at least, my friend. It would have shown that you understand what you are.’

The words seemed to prise off scabs that had formed in Ahriman’s mind. Amon was right. Ahriman had allowed himself to believe lies that had destroyed him once already. He was nothing, a fading echo of failure.

‘Help me. Give me what you know of the Rubric,’ said Amon. ‘Give your brothers peace. You will see it end and then you may have your own peace.’

Fate, thought Ahriman. Fate come round at last.

‘Come.’ Ahriman felt Amon’s hand on his shoulder. ‘I forgive you. Help end what you began, brother. Give it to me.’

Ahriman thought of the towers of the Planet of the Sorcerers, of the hulking shapes walking out of the settling dust, of the dead light in their eyes. ‘I am sorry, my brothers,’ he had said.

Ahriman lifted his head. His eyes met Amon’s, sky-blue meeting night-black. He nodded once.

Amon opened his mouth, and words came out, long strings of syllables that seemed to resonate through the room. Ahriman felt the wards unpicking and the great ocean of the warp wash over him again. In his mind he thought he heard a laugh like the call of a murder of crows as his mind connected again to the great and secret power of the universe. Amon held his gaze. Ahriman felt his brother’s mind hovering all around him, waiting.

He closed his eyes, reached back, unlocking rooms that he had long kept sealed in the corridors of his mind. The Rubric spilled out, unfolding in precise detail: every ritual, every source, every modification and moment of insight. It formed in his mind, a focused crystal of memory. He held it for an instant.

He could resist. Amon had undone the wards, his power was his again, he could fight, he could… He opened his eyes. Amon was looking at him, his face impassive. Let our Legion die at last…

Ahriman touched his brother’s mind. It felt warm, like the voice of a friend long missed. The memories flowed between them; it lasted an instant, but inside Ahriman felt he lived those long days of folly again. Then Amon closed his eyes and nodded. He turned away, muttering words and formulae. The candles went out and Ahriman felt the cage of wards form around him again, shutting out the sound of the warp until the chamber was silent. Amon reached the door, and it opened. Bright light spilled into the chamber again. Amon paused at the door, and then looked back at Ahriman.

‘Thank you,’ said Amon, and left Ahriman to the dark.

XX

Every Weapon

The renegades came to his call, eventually. Silvanus looked around when he heard their steps shudder across the deck. They strode onto the bridge, spattered in blood and caked in ash. There were five of them: first the one called Astraeos, followed by the half-machine Kadin and the hunched one called Maroth, and behind them in turn two Space Marines with high-crested helms and scorched black armour. He could see a glimmer of green light from under the soot caking their eyepieces. The purr of power armour vibrated through his bones. They stopped on the edge of the clotting pool of blood and oil, looking up at the nest of cables and wires. Silvanus met Astraeos’s eyes, glowing in his blunt-snouted helm. He felt a tremble run under his skin.

‘She is alive,’ he said and heard the dryness in his own throat as he spoke. ‘At least I think she is…’ Carmenta had stopped moving some time before, but Silvanus had held her dangling hand and tried to talk to her as the green light of her eyes dimmed and flickered. He had not known what to say. He noticed that Astraeos was looking at Carmenta’s blistered fingers. Silvanus looked away, and met the slit green eyes of Kadin. The renegade was staring at Silvanus the way a feline predator might look at possible prey. The one called Maroth giggled. Something about hearing a Space Marine make such a noise made Silvanus want to run as fast as he could.

‘Get her down,’ said Astraeos, his voice grinding from the grille of his helm. Kadin stepped forwards, and Silvanus saw the flash of a blade. The nest of cables split with a crackle of sparks. Carmenta’s body fell, then jerked to a halt above the deck and was held at the end of the cables that connected to her body. She swayed for a second, hanging like a broken puppet. A second cut of Kadin’s blade tumbled her to the deck before Silvanus could catch her. He scrabbled forwards, and cradled her head in his hands. Her robes were soaked in blood and clinging to her half-machine body.

‘She needs help,’ he gasped. ‘She–’

‘Is a traitor,’ said Astraeos. Silvanus looked up at the Space Marines. All of them were looking at him. Silvanus looked down at Carmenta. He had met her a handful of times since he had been pressed to serve as the Titan Child’s Navigator. He did not like her, but she clung to life with shallower breaths, and nothing deserved to fade into darkness without someone fighting to save it.

‘How is she a traitor?’ he said, trying to hide the shake in his voice. Astraeos said nothing, and Silvanus felt the blood hammering in his muscles telling him to run. Then the Space Marine gave the smallest of nods.

‘There were enemies on this ship, and we found one of their gunships in the hangar bays.’ He pointed at Carmenta. ‘She betrayed us. There is no other way they could have got on board.’

‘She is still alive.’

Astraeos shifted his gaze to Carmenta.

‘Where is Ahriman?’

‘Ahriman,’ gasped Carmenta, and tried to move, her feet scrabbling on the blood-slick deck. Astraeos knelt and leant his face down so that it was only centimetres from Carmenta and Silvanus.

‘Where is he?’

‘Ahriman,’ said Carmenta again, and her head twisted, jerking out of Silvanus’s grip as she slid to the deck.

‘Tell me,’ said Astraeos, and there was something cold and relentless in his voice.

‘Amon.’ Carmenta brought the word up with a wet cough of dirty blood. ‘Amon.’

Kadin stepped forwards, the knife still glinting in his fist.

‘End this,’ he snarled. Silvanus tensed.

‘No,’ said Astraeos. Kadin froze. Astraeos removed his helm. The face beneath was no more comforting than the blunt lines of the helm: the right eye was silver crystal, the left shadowed beneath a scarred brow. Something in the cast of the lean features made Silvanus think of an old wolf, tired yet still dangerous. Expressions flickered across those features like the deep surge of ocean waves. Silvanus felt a tingle across his skin, and smelled the sudden static charge in the air. Carmenta had stopped moving; her breath was low but measured, her gaze locked on Astraeos.

‘Ahriman will judge her betrayal for himself,’ said Astraeos, and straightened.

‘She is dying,’ said Silvanus.

‘Not yet,’ said Astraeos.

Silvanus felt Carmenta shift in his grip. Her feet scrabbled on the decking, then she rolled until she was on her hands and knees. He could hear her breath clicking and sucking out of her mechanical lungs. Slowly she stood. It was painful to watch, and she nearly fell twice. The first time Silvanus tried to catch her, but she batted his arm away. Finally she stood upright, her robes hanging off her in red-soaked tatters. Her mechadendrites dangled lifeless down her back. Her head came up last, and Silvanus saw the light in her eyes harden.

‘The. Flesh. Is. Weak,’ she croaked. ‘But. I. Am. Not. Flesh.’ She paused and took a breath that sucked with a sound that belied her words. ‘I. Am. Titan. Child.’

Silvanus shivered. The words were the base monotone of a machine.

Astraeos turned to look at Kadin.

‘We need her,’ he said. ‘Judgement will come later.’

‘Need her for what?’ asked Kadin.

‘To take the Sycorax.’

Maroth spluttered and laughed. Silvanus just looked at the Space Marine with his mouth wide open. He had seen the fleet around Amon’s capital ship, and the size of that one warship alone was terrifying.

‘How?’ growled Kadin.

‘With every weapon we have,’ said Astraeos.

‘Cadar.’

The name slipped from Astraeos’s mouth before he could stop himself. The dark filled his eye and beat against his mind as he looked at the bound daemon. The creature hung at the centre of its web of chains. Frost textured its bare skin white, and its empty eyes had been staring at Astraeos from the moment he entered the chamber. He heard Maroth fall to his knees behind him. The broken sorcerer was muttering and mewling like a mother over a cub. Kadin had refused to come into the chamber.

‘Brother.’ Astraeos paused and swallowed in a dry throat, wondering if somewhere Cadar could hear him. ‘Forgive me.’

‘Don’t do this,’ Kadin had said.

Astraeos felt his heartbeats still to almost nothing, and calmness spread through his mind, a mirror reflecting the power of the warp. Ahriman’s teaching had never sat well with him; it had not fitted his soul, like a weapon made for another’s hand.

Until now. His mind rose through levels of focus, the possibility contained in those tiers of stillness unfolding before him. The creature in front of him was like a fold of cold starlight forced into skin. He could see and feel the shape of the bindings that ringed it, that held it in place. His mind touched those bindings. The bound daemon shook and the chains shivered.

‘By the bindings upon you, I call you to my service.’ The daemon grinned its needle grin. Links of chain began to part. Maroth was screaming over the vox.

‘You do not know what this choice is.’ Kadin had stood in front of Astraeos, his reptile green eyes unblinking.

‘I must,’ he had said. Kadin had closed his eyes and shook his head.

‘For an oath?’

‘For an oath.’

Kadin had looked him in the eye and then turned away.

‘Remember that, brother.’

‘I bind you to me.’ The words rang through the warp. The daemon’s head twisted from side to side, but its empty eyes stayed fixed on Astraeos. A feeling of red hunger spilled into Astraeos’s thoughts. He could taste blood on his own bared teeth.

‘I bind your existence to my soul.’ The frost was melting from the daemon’s body, the drops becoming crimson as they fell.

‘I bind your will to me.’ The chains holding the daemon shattered. It rose, twisting and juddering like a string of images from a broken pict feed. Astraeos felt one set of bindings dissolve even as his mind made them anew, anchoring them in his own consciousness. The daemon gave a single spasm, its body rippling like a cracked whip. Then it was still, and the darkness and twilight haloed it like a cloak.

Astraeos raised his hand and beckoned. The bound daemon drifted forwards. Maroth had gone silent. The daemon bared its teeth.

+Feed,+ said the daemon into Astraeos’s mind. He flinched at the sensation of its thought. He could still taste blood in his own mouth, and feel the creature’s hunger. Its jaw opened, and closed silently. +Feed,+ it growled again, and he realised that his own jaw was working.

‘You will feed,’ said Astraeos.

XXI

Remade

The crimson Storm Eagle left the hull of the Titan Child and began a long burn aimed at the core of the gathering fleet. A dozen ships’ sensors saw it, registered it as one of Amon’s own and averted their gaze. The Sycorax itself had been expecting the craft and a hangar deck yawned open to receive its returning child. The gunship settled amongst others of its kind: craft of greater and lesser size, all crimson, all gleaming under the harsh white light. Tech-wrights moved around the other craft, caressing their hulls, connecting or disconnecting pipes and cables while muttering in a low hooting tongue. Bird masks of verdigris-stained bronze covered their faces, and ochre robes swirled around them as they moved. All of them were of the Cyrabor, a clan of long corrupted tech-wrights. Their masters had given their bond to the great sorcerer Amon, and so they served him, maintaining his weapons of war. Such service was a blessing of the many-eyed god, and the Cyrabor viewed the sorcerers they served with fear and awe. When they saw the craft enter they noted its marks of status, identified it as serving the personal acolytes of Amon and moved to receive it.

The ramp in the Storm Eagle’s nose hinged open. Two of the Cyrabor moved forwards, then stopped. A figure stepped from the inside of the gunship. It wore red armour, and the robed figures recognised the horned crest and disk on the top of the helm as the mark of one of the twin acolytes of Amon. Rents and crumpled impact wounds marked both helmet and armour. The figure paused and looked at the waiting machine-wrights, then began to stride across the deck. Behind him two Rubricae followed, coal black in the stark light. One Cyrabor glanced at its fellow, hooting and clicking in a half-whisper. More of the machine-wrights began to move away, some staring at the red-armoured Space Marine. Many had seen the twin acolytes only once, from a distance, but they knew that they were never apart: where one went the other followed. Yet here was one alone.

The mutters became louder. Across the chamber more of the robed figures began to look up, and some began to move towards the docking bay’s exits. Weapon brutes began to pull themselves from niches in the chamber’s walls, weapons clattering ready at the end of slab-muscled limbs. Bronze plates covered their chests and torsos. Their heads were lumps of beaten metal with asymmetric clusters of multi-coloured rangefinders. They stalked forwards, their eyes fixed on the Space Marine who was still walking calmly across the deck. Low-level threat condition messages began to pulse across the Sycorax’s vox-net. Requests for more details came back from command nodes. The Space Marine halted, his gaze taking in the closing ring of weapon brutes.

Somewhere a series of checks and questions hit a critical level of concern. A siren started to wail in the distance. A challenge began to burble from the weapon brutes. The Space Marine looked back at the Storm Eagle. His voice when he spoke was clear and calm.

‘Now,’ he said.

Astraeos began to run. Behind him the two Rubricae raised their bolters. He could feel the ghosts of their movements in his mind. The creatures in front of him were tall, hunched, lumps of brass and bronze fused with spiral-tattooed flesh. A sweep of his mind counted twenty in the hangar bay. He sensed their crude thought processes shift from challenge to threat in a heartbeat.

Gun mounts roared. A lattice of fire converged on him. Astraeos did not stop. His mind re-formed reality around him. There was a stutter in time. He felt the rounds pass through him; they felt like the prick of needles. He was a ghost flicking between solid and illusion. Ricochet sparks scored the deck behind him.

+Fire,+ he sent. Behind him the Rubricae obeyed. A weapon brute exploded, its flesh and blood burning before it could hit the deck. A tech-wright beside it became a collapsing torch of cyan and rose flames. Astraeos had a curved khopesh sword hanging from his belt, but his own straight sword was in his grip. The bolt pistol in his other hand roared. Another brute fell, its head a bloody crater. The rest kept firing, heaping the deck at their feet with shell cases.

Sirens screamed through the docking bay. Strobing yellow light filled Astraeos’s eyes, and then he hit the enemy line and was amongst the weapon brutes. The brute in front of him seemed to realise he was not stopping and tried to shuffle backwards. Astraeos’s blow split it from shoulder to hip, and he felt his blade become blood-hot in his hand as it cut. Slick pink offal spilled onto the deck. Astraeos pivoted with the momentum of his first blow and brought his sword around low. A second weapon brute collapsed, its legs severed at the knee. It fired as it fell, spraying rounds into the air as it scrambled to rise on bloody stumps. The remaining brutes were turning to try and bring their guns to bear.

Astraeos raised his hand. A wave of telekinetic force ripped out along a line from the point of his palm. Weapon brutes and debris spun into the air. Some of the creatures were still firing as they tumbled. A stray round found a fuel line and a red mushroom of flame thumped upwards. The weapon brutes fell back to the deck with cracks of snapping bones. Machine-wrights were running for the blast doors even as they sealed. A fresh cluster of weapon brutes lumbered from their niches at the far end of the bay.

A shadow was spreading from the open ramp of the Storm Eagle. It coiled along the deck and the snout of the gunship like an exhalation of frozen night. The figure of the bound daemon emerged from the craft’s troop compartment. It floated forwards, moving with serene slowness. The surviving weapon brutes registered its presence and swivelled to fire. A sphere of lightning flashed around the daemon as a storm of rounds rose to meet it, sheets of white blotting out the red alarm lights. A smell of sweet flowers and spoiled meat filled the air. An arc of lightning whipped out, and a machine-wright exploded. The lightning jumped on, running from body to body, snaking across the metal of the deck in thick ropes.

The creature was roaring in Astraeos’s mind, and he bit back the shriek of glee that was rising in his throat. His vision crawled with ghost images as his mind boiled. He felt a part of his concentration slip, and a blow crashed into his right shoulder. He staggered, caught himself and ducked the second blow. A weapon brute, its guns dry, had barrelled into him, swinging its flesh-metal arms as clubs. His mind reached into the brute’s chest, and crushed its heart. It collapsed to the floor with a dull thump of slack muscle.

The Rubricae were beside him now, shooting any of the weapon brutes that tried to rise from where they had fallen. He glanced back to the Storm Eagle. Kadin had emerged and behind him was Silvanus, supporting the crumpled form of Carmenta.

+Ready?+ he sent, and Carmenta nodded stiffly. He switched his sending to Kadin. +Get her to where she needs to be.+ Kadin did not acknowledge the order, but moved towards a tower of machinery which rose from the hold’s deck. Carmenta and Silvanus limped after Kadin, keeping close to his back as if sheltering from a high wind. Astraeos saw rounds spark off Kadin’s armour.

They did not have long: a minute at best, a handful of seconds at worst. Amon and his servants would be coming. Against those numbers there was no hope. Astraeos smiled behind his helm as he pointed his sword and flame washed across a weapon brute. Its skin flaked black, the meat of its muscle cooking as it staggered and collapsed. There was next to no hope as it was.

To his left the daemon was drifting forwards. Lightning reached out from its body and crawled over the hull of a hunch-winged craft. The fuel feeds linked to the craft ignited, and it rose into the air on a plume of oil-stained flame. Astraeos felt the wash of heat through his armour. He dived to the side as the craft crashed down onto the deck. A second explosion blossomed, and then became a red and black cloud that spread across the bay’s ceiling.

Astraeos came to his feet. The docking bay was a fire- and smoke-smeared vision of hell. Bodies lay scattered in blackened heaps; weapons fire still stitched through the smoke. As he watched, another bolt of lightning bleached the drifting smoke white. He heard the daemon cackle at the edge of his thoughts. The two Rubricae walked through the flames, their heads and weapons turning to fire at targets that Astraeos could not see.

+It must be now,+ he sent. The vox crackled, and Kadin was speaking in his ear.

‘It won’t work, brother. She collapsed when she connected to the machines. We–’

‘I. Am. Here. Librarian.’ The voice cut across the vox. It was a voice made of the scratch of static and the clicking of gears. It shook Astraeos’s skull.

+Take it,+ he sent, and mag-locked his feet to the deck.

A weapon brute, its left arm severed, loped towards him. He measured the distance to the charging brute with a glance. It would never reach him.

The sirens fell silent. Every light in the hangar bay went dark. For an instant, before his helmet display compensated, he felt as if he were watching flames and shadows dance in a cave far beneath the earth. Then he felt the deck tremble as the external blast doors ground open. Starlight met firelight, and a wind began to howl. A second later the atmospheric containment field cut out. The open blast doors exhaled the rolling cloud of flame and smoke. Bodies dragged across the deck. The living flailed as they tumbled out into the night beyond the Sycorax’s hull. Then the sucking wind was gone and Astraeos was standing in dark silence. He began to move, and the daemon and Rubricae followed him. He reached out and touched Carmenta’s mind.

+Find Ahriman, mistress. Find him and keep us alive+.

It took three minutes for the forces on board the Sycorax to realise the scale of the threat they faced. Cohorts of bronze-armoured Cyrabor wardens mobilised from their lodges deep in the Sycorax’s gut. Sorcerers breathed commands into hundreds of Rubricae and they began to march through the corridors of their ship, silent but for the ring of their feet on the decking.

Amon, alone in his high tower on the spine of the Sycorax, received a sending from one of his inner circle, and rose from his meditation. He had taken five paces across the chamber when the Sycorax began to shudder.

The Cyrabor machine-wrights felt it first. Attached to the Sycorax by cables and webs of half-metal flesh, they began to babble and scream. They felt a presence rise through the ship’s systems like a shark emerging from the depths. It spread like poison, flooding from minor system to minor system until it was pouring into the controls of entire sections of the ship.

The Sycorax had swum the lightless depths of the Eye of Terror for millennia; the warp had permeated its hull and heart, and in a very real sense it was alive. Every drop of blood spilled on its decks, every restless dream of its crew, every battle it had fought, had grown inside its bones. It was a proud creature with a mind like a king predator, but it was unprepared as a black cloud poured into its systems. The cloud spread to machines, to cypher slaves and datastacks, it spread between parts of the Sycorax not connected to anything else, and it spread even as the Sycorax tried to contain it. And all the while, as it subverted systems and melted overrides, it called a name.

‘Titan Child,’ it roared, as if calling for vengeance for the dead.

Across the ship bulkheads slammed shut on troops running to respond to the incursion. Plasma reactor vents flooded sections with glowing super-heated clouds. Outer deck holds opened to deep space. Emergency hatches opened in sequence, creating open passages from the depths of the Sycorax to the cold void. Hundreds of slaves, machine-wrights, warriors and drone breeds died in the minutes after they heard the alert sirens. They died scrabbling for weapons; they died in the dark, half waking from dreams; they died muttering prayers to the god of fate that had betrayed them.

The Sycorax reacted like a beast clawing at its own flesh as parasites ate it from within. It activated defence turrets in corridors packed with its own slave crew. Power, gravity and life support fluctuated across the ship. Airless dark swallowed the bridge, and the human slave crew choked as the atmosphere was sucked from the chamber. Electrical discharges ran through the hull, arcing between walls and floors.

Only the Thousand Sons moved through the ship with unblunted purpose. The sorcerers melted through closed bulkheads with blue-hot fire, and jumped through barriers like insubstantial ghosts as they moved to meet the enemy. With them came hundreds of Rubricae, slow marching statues of red armour, the green light cold and obedient in their eyes.

A cold peace had come to Ahriman after Amon had left. He had slid back into his own mind until he was walking through the palace of memories. It was quiet in a way that he had never realised possible. His footsteps echoed as they carried him down passages he had not walked for a very long time. He heard old memories scratching at the doors. Occasionally he paused, listened, and heard voices of friends long gone. Sometimes his hand went to push a door open, but he always hesitated, and then walked on. He walked until he found himself in front of a small door. A carving of birds spiralling towards the sun covered the door’s dark wood. Dust had accumulated in the recesses. There were older doors in the palace, but this was a door he had not opened since he had first closed it. He hesitated, then pushed. The door swung softly open.

A wide balcony extended away from him to meet a view of dry desert, and a sky divided between clear blue and a layer of ochre storm cloud. A boy sat at the edge of the balcony, swinging his legs into the warm air, his hair stirring in a sudden gust of wind. He was tossing stones into the air, catching them without looking at them. Occasionally the boy would close his eyes, and a stone would halt in its fall to hang in the air. He looked no more than ten, but there was a seriousness to his face that made him seem older as soon as he looked up at Ahriman. The boy’s eyes were bright blue. He smiled.

‘Hello, Ahzek,’ he said, and the stone suspended in the air in front of him dropped into his palm. Ahriman smiled.

‘Ohrmuzd,’ said Ahriman, and watched as the memory of his true brother turned away, closed his eyes and tossed another stone into the air. It hung, the black water-polished ovoid turning slowly in front of Ohrmuzd’s closed eyes.

Ahriman sat by his brother. He had no armour, he realised; just a pale blue tunic that was the echo of the one Ohrmuzd had worn in this memory. He looked at his twin. The lines of the young face were the mirror of his own. He had remembered every gesture and syllable of this moment since it had first unfolded. At the time he had wondered why. Later, with Ohrmuzd gone, he had thought he knew why. Now, as he gazed at his twin again, he knew he had been wrong before.

‘Stop it,’ said Ohrmuzd without opening his eyes. ‘You are distracting me.’

‘Sorry,’ said Ahriman, and looked towards the horizon. The dirty yellow cloud had grown, eating up the blue of the sky. A fork of lightning flashed at the cloud’s edge. A warm wind swirled over Ahriman’s skin, and he could smell the storm charge in the air. He frowned.

‘There was no storm,’ said Ahriman.

‘What?’ said Ohrmuzd, a note of irritation in his voice.

‘There should be no storm. This is the memory of the day before we were sent as aspirants to the Fifteenth Legion. There was no storm that day.’

Ohrmuzd shrugged. His face was smooth, unmarked by any of the many changes that would come in the years to follow. Ahriman felt his lips form a weak smile; he was in a sense looking at his own face; they had been almost indistinguishable except for perhaps a tendency for Ahriman’s forehead to crease when he was in thought, or worried. He had been worried that day; all the dire possibilities of what was about to happen to them had crowded his thoughts, so that he could do nothing but roll them over and over and over in his mind. Ohrmuzd had known, he had always known.

‘It will be all right, Az,’ said Ohrmuzd. Ahriman blinked, then stared at his brother as he had in his memory. He had said something, too, some frightened little question. ‘Stop that,’ Ohrmuzd had replied. ‘You always have to think the worst, don’t you?’

‘I am sorry,’ said Ahriman, and knew that he had said the same in the past.

‘And stop saying sorry.’ Ohrmuzd had opened his eyes and let the floating stone fall into his palm. ‘Can’t you just be excited? Think of what we might become, what we might learn, what we might do.’ He gave Ahriman a sharp look. ‘Have you been dreaming again?’

He had, of course. He had always dreamed and even when he was a child those dreams had had a tendency to come true. Ohrmuzd sighed. ‘They are not necessarily true, you know.’ His voice dipped the way it always had when he had found an opportunity to impart serious knowledge. ‘To talk of fate is foolishness.’

‘You never could resist quoting to show off,’ Ahriman chuckled.

‘Fate is for us to choose, to make our own. If we are destined for a particular future it is because we have chosen that end.’ Ohrmuzd gave the solemn nod of a clever child pronouncing truth. Then he grinned. ‘Anyway, we will be all right.’ He glanced at Ahriman and there was fierceness in his eyes. ‘I will make sure it is all right, Az.’

Ahriman said nothing. He looked away from his brother, back to the storm that had rolled over the view like a curtain. The blue sky was gone, and the light had a shrouded, dirty quality. Rain began to fall, first a few drops, then more, until water was trailing out of the sky and streams rolled down the faces of the dunes. Ahriman breathed in. There had been no storm that day, but the air still smelled of the storms that he remembered.

‘I wish you had been right,’ said Ahriman, after a long pause. Ahriman suddenly could not remember what his brother had said next. ‘I have reached the end. It would have been better if we had never begun… If I had never begun. It’s over now at last.’

‘No.’

Ahriman’s head snapped around. Ohrmuzd was looking at him, wide blue eyes laughing as the rain ran down his face.

‘What did you say?’ The rain was swallowing the sound of his voice. A sheet of lightning turned the world white for an instant.

‘No, Ahzek.’ Ohrmuzd smiled, and then laughed into the storm. ‘It’s not over yet.’ Ahriman felt the ground tremble. He could not see through the rain. The thunder shook him.

His head came up, and his eyes opened to the darkness as the cell shook again. Above him the chains holding him chimed as they rattled together. His heart was hammering. A metallic shriek was pushing into his ears. The floor and walls were glowing, the runes and marks etched into the stone blazing too bright to look at. The shackles around his ankles and feet were burning into his skin. The noise soared higher and higher. He could feel pressure inside and outside of his skull.

The door exploded in a shower of molten metal. Ahriman felt the warp meet his mind like a flood tide. His head was spinning as he saw a figure stride through the glowing wound that had been the door. The figure wore red armour and his helm was that of a Thousand Son, and he held a sword in each hand: one a curved khopesh, the other a straight blade wound with golden serpents. Ahriman recognised him; the way the figure moved marked him as clearly as if he had shouted his name.

+Ahriman,+ sent Astraeos as he paced forwards. Behind him the bound daemon floated, its form rippling with dark cords of unlight. The shapes of two Rubricae filled the door like stone sentinels. Their armour was soot-black. Ahriman felt a knot of ice bunch in his chest. Astraeos raised his sword, and cut down. Ahriman could see the arc of the blade, could feel the power in the cut, the total focus that burned along its edge. The chains above Ahriman’s head parted and he fell to the floor. He looked up as Astraeos removed his helm and looked down.

Ahriman looked to the daemon hovering above. It had grown long needle blades of bone from its fingers. Blood dripped from the talon tips. The bound daemon was smiling its shark smile.

‘What have you done?’ breathed Ahriman. Astraeos sheathed his sword, a grim smile twisting his scarred face for an instant.

‘Fulfilled my oaths,’ he said.’

They ran down corridors lined in silver and lapis, past banners covered in the languages of mankind’s long past. Lights pulsed on and off. They ran through blackness, then brightness. Ahriman’s bare feet rang on the deck as he ran, the chains still hanging from his wrists and ankles clattering in his wake. Blood trickled down his side from the lips of the ragged shell wound. Astraeos was moving in front of him, bolt pistol tracking every pulsing shadow. The daemon followed them, its presence crackling over the walls in arcs of black energy. He could hear it hissing in his thoughts. There were other presences in his mind; he could feel them probing towards them in the warp, running after them like hounds.

My brothers, he thought. I am running again.

Doors and hatches opened at their approach, and sealed again after they passed. Sometimes they would not open and Astraeos would mutter and start in a new direction.

The Librarian’s thoughts were cold, aligned on their path but spread across a dozen mental processes that spun like interlocking devices . At another time Ahriman would have been proud. Now, his thoughts were numb.

Why do I run? What am I running to preserve? A life lived on the margins, persisting without any purpose other than to draw the next breath?

They ran into a wide-mouthed passage, its pipe-clad ceiling reaching far above their heads. A toothed door opened to greet them at the passage end. The air was thin, the pressure and oxygen levels low. His hearts surged to compensate, but he could feel his steps faltering. Sharp, jagged pains filled his chest and his breaths were wet with blood.

Their hunters were close behind them, now; he could feel them converging on their position.

+‘Ahriman.’+ The shout was both sound and psychic sending. He felt an armoured hand close on his arm. He turned and met Astraeos’s gaze. ‘Move,’ growled Astraeos, and pulled him, but he resisted.

They are my brothers. Ahriman stopped in the middle of the passage. Astraeos turned to look back at him, and the bound daemon drifted to a halt. Ahriman looked down at the shackles around his wrists. Symbols spiralled across the loops of metal, half melted and distorted but still visible.

I will not run. Not again.

He turned to look behind him.

I will stand against fate, even if it destroys me.

Thirty paces behind them a section of the wall glowed from orange to white. It bulged, like a blister forming on charring skin, and then blew outwards in a spray of molten metal.

A dozen Rubricae advanced out of the glowing breach. They marched forwards slowly, their red armour appearing black in the low light. Ahriman felt his heartbeat filling his chest. He blinked, seeing them for a second under a red sun, emerging from a dust cloud. The Rubricae levelled their boltguns, twelve black circles looking at him like the eyes of the dead, like…

…a red sun with a serpentine corona. A raven circling, its wings a black silhouette against the fire.

‘Your fate, Ahriman,’ said a voice that was made of the roar of the sun and the call of carrion. ‘Your fate come around at last. Your fate. Your choice…’

His mind felt disconnected from his body, as if he were looking at what was happening from far away, from the other side of a memory.

…the sun was getting larger. Its boiling red surface filled his mind’s eye. He could feel the sun’s heat, the fury of its core. He could see a distant speck that was the silhouette of a raven…

‘It was always this choice…’ called the raven.

The Rubricae began to fire.

Astraeos grunted as a dome of energy expanded around him and Ahriman. The shield blistered with impacts, multi-coloured fire spraying across its surface. Astraeos juddered, as if each round which hit the shield was a blow to his body.

The bound daemon drifted forwards, and black lightning leapt from its eyes and hit a Rubricae. A flash filled the passage, turning light to shadow, and dark to bright white. Three Rubricae lay on the floor, dust spilling from rents in their armour. For a second the Rubricae’s fire slackened.

A low shriek filled the passage, like broken glass grating together, like a gale howling through burned cities. On the floor the dust began to drain back into the Rubricae. Slowly, they stood, worms of green light crawling over the holes in their armour. They stepped forwards and began to fire. The daemon hissed like a cat and jerked backwards.

Astraeos turned his face to Ahriman.

‘Run,’ croaked Astraeos. He was weeping blood.

…the red sun filled his soul. His mind was blind. He could only hear the raven. ‘There is nothing that cannot be changed. Nothing that cannot be overturned by knowledge and the will to wield it. You know this; you have always known this…’

Ahriman looked up; his movements slow, so slow. Beyond the dome of Astraeos’s shield the Rubricae were moving, walking in with slow purpose. Astraeos collapsed, his limbs twitching. There was a burned sugar stench in the thin air. One of the Rubricae stepped forwards, its weapon rising in one hand, the muzzle of its bolter a mouth waiting to speak a last greeting. It was one pace away from him.

…a plain of dust beneath black glass mountains, a red sun rising to colour the dawn with blood. His brothers’ eyes looking at him, waiting.

‘You failed them,’ called the raven. ‘Is that the salvation you were looking for?’

‘Magnus,’ called Ahriman as he felt the raven’s wings beat around him. ‘Father, is it you?’

‘No,’ laughed the raven.

‘What are you?’

‘You know my name,’ called the raven.

Ahriman’s eyes stared back at the muzzle of the gun. His mind was clear. Everything was moving to a slow pulse. This was not the trained calm of battle, it was not the serenity of meditation, it was something else: a fulcrum moment, a blade-edge of time. He could feel the Rubricae’s finger begin to tighten on the trigger.

‘No,’ said Ahriman.

The Rubricae’s finger tightened. It shifted forwards as if leaning into a wind. The muzzle was a finger-width from his eye.

+No.+ The command pulsed out of him, washing across the encircling ranks. The Rubricae’s finger froze. Ahriman turned his head to look at the other Rubricae. They were completely still. He spoke their names in his mind, and heard their dead voices answer him.

Astraeos looked up at him, fatigue bleeding off him in waves. Ahriman bent down and pulled him to his feet. Astraeos glanced at the dozen Rubricae.

+What is this?+

+A beginning,+ sent Ahriman.

Kadin waited, his bolter cradled in his crude metal hands. It was quiet, but he knew better than to find that a good sign. He shifted on the tower of machinery and felt ice crack and fall from his armour as he moved. The hangar bay was void-cold and as dark as a tomb.

It will be our tomb, he thought. Amber target markers shifted as he glanced between the sealed entrances to the bay. Everything was a luminous cold green. Beside him Carmenta stirred. He looked down at where she lay. Cables snaked from beneath her robes to ducts in the tower top beneath their feet. She had been twitching every now and again ever since the hangar bay had gone dark. Silvanus squatted by her, his eyes closed behind the illuminated visor of his void suit. Every now and again the vox cut in for a second and Kadin could hear the man’s teeth chattering.

‘Be silent,’ he growled. The Navigator looked up at him.

‘What?’

‘Your teeth are making a noise.’

‘I am cold.’

Kadin shrugged.

‘That is not my problem. Your noise is.’

The Navigator looked like he was about to say something, then he nodded and clamped his teeth together. Five seconds later the man’s whole body started shaking. Kadin nodded and turned back to scanning the hangar deck.

Light filled his eyes. A red glow was spreading across one of the sealed entrances like a blush spreading over a cheek. Kadin brought his bolter up. Target runes converged on the glowing red.

‘What is happening?’ asked Silvanus.

Kadin said nothing. The door was glowing a poured-iron orange now.

‘What–’ began Silvanus. The door burst apart. Hot globules of metal spattered across the deck. Air rushed through the glowing breach into the vacuum of the hangar bay. It met the void’s cold and became a vast breath of white fog.

Kadin started raking the opening with a dispersed pattern of fire. Shapes moved forwards through the explosions, heavy armoured shapes that moved with slow purpose. A red targeting rune spun above one of the shapes, and he put a trio of rounds into it. It reeled, then fell. His eyes flicked to the next and he fired again. Five had come through the breach and he could see more behind them. He could hold them at the breach for two minutes, he reckoned, then another three for them to cross the deck to the tower.

Then Kadin saw the first figure he had put down rise from the floor. More came through the cooling breach. He could see red armour glistening like fresh blood. At that moment a second of the sealed entrances burst open.

‘What’s happening?’ screamed Silvanus.

‘We are getting ready to die,’ replied Kadin, as he fired another burst.

Ahriman’s unarmoured skin bleached white in the cold as he strode onto the hangar deck. He could see gunfire spitting across the hangar from a tower of machinery. Astraeos followed on his left, his swords drawn and lit with cold fire. To his right Rubricae and sorcerers were spilling into the space from a hole melted through a blast door. Behind Ahriman his own Rubricae followed him in lockstep.

Lines of fire crossed the darkness towards them, burning in a rainbow of colours. The bound daemon drifted above them, surrounded by a halo of sheet lightning. Bolts of darkness fell from it as it ascended. Fire rose to meet it, tearing through its lightning aura. It began to shriek, twisting like a broken-winged bird. Ahriman kept walking towards the centre of the hangar bay. Fire flicked towards him and he deflected it with a twitch of his thoughts. Power flowed through him and radiated outwards in a halo of blue flame. It was so simple, like being half blind and now able to see again.

Ahriman could see Kadin now, standing on the gantry at the top of the machine tower, fire spitting from the barrel of his bolter. Carmenta lay on the floor behind Kadin. Cables crawled over her from where they spilled from access panels and data ducts. Silvanus crouched beside her; he had his eyes screwed shut.

Ahriman stopped. He was at the centre of the hangar bay now, at the base of the tower from which Kadin was still firing. Ahriman’s dozen Rubricae formed a circle around him, facing outwards. A thought from Ahriman and they stopped firing. A metre beyond their circle explosions danced across an invisible barrier. Astraeos looked at Ahriman with a flicker of concern. The hangar was full of Amon’s forces, hundreds of Rubricae encircling them in an unbroken wall.

+This will work?+

Ahriman smiled.

He looked at the army of Rubricae gathered in the hangar. He spoke their names, rolling them through the warp like the notes of a song. Other minds rose to oppose him, but he poured his will into the song of names. The warp felt like a river of fire as it flowed through him. The Rubricae stopped firing.

Astraeos looked at Ahriman as if he had never really seen him before.

+It’s not over yet,+ sent Ahriman. He could feel the sorcerers who stood at the back of the ranks of Rubricae recoiling in shock at what had just happened. There were thirty-six of them. A good number and all were powerful, but not powerful enough.

The air became heavy, laden with static and the scent of ozone. He felt the wills of the thirty-six sorcerers push into the warp. Huge pieces of wrecked machinery rose into the air as if pulled on invisible chains. Ahriman nodded to himself as if impressed.

The pieces of wreckage hurtled towards him. His mind reached out and plunged into each piece of twisted metal. He felt their weight, their dimensions, and the spinning of their atoms. He formed a thought, and it caught in the warp like a spark set to kindling. The wreckage dissolved as it flew, falling to the deck as a rain of fine metallic sand.

+Enough.+ The thought rang through the warp. Silence fell. A new presence had entered the vast chamber; it burned like a newborn star, shining with fury. +Ahriman.+ Amon’s thought voice rippled through the warp.

Ahriman turned to look to where the thought voice had come from. The thousand luminous eyes of the Rubricae turned with him. They parted, forming a corridor to a high door at the far side of the hangar bay.

+They are not slaves, you said,+ laughed Amon’s thought voice. +I thought your beliefs were stronger than this. A shame, they held a type of honour if nothing else.+

Amon walked forwards. The tip of his staff clicked on the soot-covered floor in time with every step.

+I cannot let you destroy our Legion,+ sent Ahriman, his voice rolling through every living mind in the chamber and far beyond. Throughout the Sycorax and the fleet of ships gathered in the void, they heard him. +You have fallen, Amon. You have allowed despair to blind you to hope. I understand this, I know why, but it is a path of lies. There is another way.+

Above Ahriman the bound daemon shrieked, its scream spilling through the air as it descended like a comet. Amon raised his staff. Then there was a blur of white light, a sound like glass shattering, and the daemon was falling, smoke and frozen blood vapour trailing behind it. Beside Ahriman Astraeos fell as if struck by an axe. A wash of blood vomited from his mouth and Ahriman heard bones crack.

Amon looked down, continued walking between the ranks of Rubricae. The silk of his robe rippled with each slow stride.

Ahriman turned at a low growl of pain. Astraeos was trying to rise from the deck. Blood had pooled in his eye sockets, and his hands and legs were scrabbling for purchase. Ahriman reached down and placed a bare hand on Astraeos’s shoulder.

‘Be still, my friend,’ he said quietly. ‘Be still. You have paid your oaths. I need no more of you now.’ He glanced to where Kadin crouched behind a bank of machinery, the still form of Carmenta at his feet. He looked back to Amon advancing towards him. ‘But I do need your sword,’ he said, and took the blade from Astraeos’s hand as he stood. The sword was unfamiliar in his hand, its serpent-etched blade a dull weight. He pulsed his mind into its crystal core. The golden serpents began to burn and writhe along the blade.

Amon had stopped nine paces away. A nimbus of light played around the curved horns of Amon’s helm and the top of his staff. Ahriman felt the pressure building behind his eyes at the magnitude of power held in check within Amon.

+You are unarmoured,+ sent Amon.

+A minor impediment,+ replied Ahriman. The wound in his side was bleeding freely now, and he could feel the silver shards shift with every beat of his hearts.

+I would have given you a good death, not the end you deserved, but a last gift from a friend.+ Ahriman felt the sorrowful smile bound into the thought.

+It has to be like this,+ sent Ahriman, and raised Astraeos’s sword. The chains hanging from his wrists clinked. +It has to be. All power is ritual. And this is ritual, Amon. Fate decided by the sword at the centre of the circle, beneath the eyes of all.+

+Always teaching,+ laughed Amon, a real laugh that cracked the still air.

Ahriman levelled the sword with both hands. He flexed his fingers against the hide-bound grip. His mind was clear, no ritual patterns of thought, no architecture of power held on a trigger in his soul. Just the moment of waiting, extending in slow heartbeats.

White fire shot from Amon’s eyes. Ahriman met it with a wall of force. The fire sprayed out in mid-air. Ahriman felt the fire surge against his mind, released the shield, swallowed the flame into his soul, and spat it back out.

The fire washed over Amon, soaking into his body like water into sand. Ahriman raised his sword and paced forwards. He could feel the path of the blow, every feint, every intention. He cut down. Amon’s staff spun in the air, the serpentine sun at its tip scything towards his legs. Ahriman’s sword met the blow, and he felt the muscles tear in his shoulders. Half-clotted blood spat from the wound in his side, and silver-edged pain shot up his spine. He turned his wrists, let the staff slide past, and spun his sword to cut again.

Amon stepped back, spinning his staff. A razor of invisible force sliced from Amon’s mind, and opened a bloody line across Ahriman’s arms. Suddenly his hands were sticky with his own blood. More blood blossomed across the fabric of his robe. He whirled forwards, his movement, blade and mind folding together to one point. Staff and sword met in a blink of supernova-bright light. Ahriman stumbled, and his mind opened for a second.

Amon’s mind leapt from his body and battered into Ahriman’s mind before he could recover. It was a thundercloud of raw energy, lit from within by veins of red fire. Ahriman fell, his sword sliding from his grip. Amon’s mind tumbled through Ahriman’s consciousness, raking lines of fire in its wake. White heat ran along Ahriman’s nerves and filled his head. He was burning from inside, body and soul. Bright, cold pain stabbed in his chest. He tasted silver on his tongue and felt sharp edges slice towards his hearts. Had he risked too much? Would he fail even now?

Fire uncoiled from Amon’s limbs where he stood above Ahriman. The light in the hangar darkened. Amon grew taller, and taller, an outline in heat and black oblivion. He rose to his feet and then into the air. Ahriman could taste burning meat in his mouth. His tongue was blistering, his veins were clotting with red ice. He looked up at the burning outline of Amon.

+You will be as you have made us.+ Amon’s voice filled Ahriman’s mind. +Dust.+

His body shaking, Ahriman shook his head slowly.

+The Rubric.+ Ahriman’s voice was clear and cold. +You were right about the Rubric. It is a part of all Thousand Sons now. It is bound into our beings.+ Amon went still, and Ahriman saw that he finally understood. +The Rubric runs through us all, linking us, sustaining us.+ Amon tried to pull his mind back from Ahriman’s, but could not. +And its power is in my hand.+

The final words of the Rubric, old before mankind had dreamed, sprang from Ahriman’s lips. Amon heard them, and was screaming even as he burned brighter and brighter. Ahriman no longer saw the hangar, just a black void, and the ghost impression of Amon outlined in golden light. Glowing cords connected them together, binding them closer as Amon writhed.

+‘Amon,’+ said Ahriman with tongue and thought.

Amon’s shriek rose through the air, higher and higher.

+No. No, you cannot.+ Amon’s voice rang in Ahriman’s head. A gale was rising, spiralling into a cyclone around the glowing form of Amon.

White light flared around Amon. Ahriman felt his brother’s last breath as his flesh became dust, like a peal of thunder on a desert horizon.

Amon’s armour came apart, each component pulling away from the other, spilling grey dust into the turning wind.

The vortex enveloped Ahriman and lifted him from the ground. The separate pieces of Amon’s armour orbited Ahriman, aligning over his splayed body. Then, one plate at a time, they slid into place over Ahriman’s flesh. Finally Amon’s horned helm slipped over Ahriman’s skull. He saw the world bathed in data and overlaid with auras bleeding from the warp. He floated down to the floor.

Every eye was on him, both living and dead. The minds of the living sorcerers were teetering on the edge of indecision. The dead simply waited.

He felt his tongue move in his mouth, the settling beat of his hearts, the slight shifting of his muscles. He closed his eyes for a second.

Now it is done, he thought. Now there is only one way, and that way is forward.

Ahriman raised his hands. Flames leapt from the floor. Red lacquer peeled from the armour of every Rubricae and sorcerer. The tatters of paint spun in the flames. Polished silver armour plate reflected the fire for a long moment, shimmering like the surface of burning oil. Then the flames flickered blue, and the silver armour became polished sapphire. Ahriman looked across the ranks of blue armour. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he heard a raven call.

Slowly, he knelt and bowed his head.

‘I am sorry, my brothers.’ He looked up. The slits of his helm flared with cold light. ‘Now we begin again.’

Epilogue

The bridge of the Sycorax was quiet for all its vastness, a place of soft, mechanical clicks and the whispered commands of the Cyrabor machine-wrights. The seer crystal floated at the centre of the bridge’s nave, a sphere as wide as Ahriman was tall. It sang in Ahriman’s mind, like a glass bell struck by a silver hammer.

Images of battle clouded the crystal’s depths. Ahriman watched as a spear-hulled ship spun against the distant stars. Its engines fired in ragged blasts. Burning vapour seeped from fissures in its hull. It fired, ragged scatters of brightness spattering into the dead void, hitting nothing. A macro-warhead hit the dying ship. The view in the crystal blinked white as the warhead detonated. The ship tore into pieces, each one burning as it spun away into darkness like a torch tossed into a well.

Ahriman’s mind pulled the view back and vision within the sphere broadened. Las-fire latticed the blackness; the stars were lost amongst the detonations of torpedoes. He could trace the formations of ships moving together, cutting through the void to circle and kill their prey. The bright splash of a high-mass plasma explosion drew his eye for a second. Some would escape, there was no helping that. Fate would find them, he was sure.

Many of Amon’s assembled fleet had transferred their loyalty to Ahriman. Some had not. A handful of renegades and mongrel warbands had answered his call for fealty with cannon fire. Others had fled. Ahriman had sent one order: run them down.

Of such necessities are monsters made, he thought. But it was necessary; there would be blood and ruin before the end of the path they now walked. It was unfortunate: a waste, but one that they would recover from. Most of the warbands drawn to Amon’s flame had seen little issue with transferring their loyalty to another lord. Ahriman curled his lip.

Of the Thousand Sons only two groups had refused to bend their knees to him. Calitiedies, lord of an order of sorcerers from half a dozen Legions, had run before any other. The Second Circle had not fired but had not responded to Ahriman’s call and had taken two dozen of his brothers beyond his reach. He had let them go, ordering the hunters to different targets.

Ahriman turned away from the crystal, and the image within the sphere clouded. Carmenta sat in the command throne, her flesh and augmetics hidden by a thick robe of red velvet. Her head was bowed, the light of her eyes dim within the cave of her cowl. Cables ran from the deck to slither over the throne and vanish within the robes. The cables buzzed with a teeth-aching purr. She had been there ever since they had disconnected her from the machine tower in the hangar bay. Even that had nearly killed her. That did not worry him – it was to be expected.

‘Mistress,’ he said clearly, and stepped to the base of the command throne. Her head came up slowly. Green light ignited beneath the cowl, growing slowly brighter. A drone of machine code came from her hidden mouth. She paused. Ahriman heard something rasp in her throat, and then she shivered.

‘You wish to tell me that I will live,’ said Carmenta, her voice a halting monotone.

‘Which speaks, the Titan Child or Carmenta?’

‘Which answers, Horkos or Ahriman?’

He laughed, then wondered if it was supposed to have been a joke.

‘My intention was humorous,’ said Carmenta as if following his thoughts. ‘It was a poor effort.’

He nodded, then reached up to pull the horned helm from his head. He took a breath, noted the odd scent of cinnamon in the air that seemed to follow the Cyrabor everywhere.

‘The Titan Child will be destroyed before we leave,’ he said carefully.

‘Before the fleet leaves,’ intoned Carmenta, the emphasis a sudden rise in volume. ‘What need do you have for one husk of a ship now?’

‘It is–’

‘A place of memory, and discarded pasts.’ Carmenta raised her machine eyes to Ahriman’s gaze. ‘Let it burn.’

‘You will be the Sycorax now,’ said Ahriman, looking across the bridge as if to indicate the bronze and silver instruments, the soft movements of the machine-wrights. A clicking pulse of machine code breathed from Carmenta, and then she shook her head slowly.

‘No. The Sycorax will be me.’ She coughed a stream of numbers. ‘A fitting punishment.’

A pause hung in the air.

‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why forgive my betrayal?’

Ahriman gave a tired and crooked smile.

‘We must all hope that betrayal can be forgiven,’ he said and turned away.

After he had gone, and his footsteps had faded, Carmenta nodded once to herself. Her head lowered, the light in her eyes dimmed, and she began to mutter the dream song of her machine.

‘It should be destroyed,’ said Kadin as they watched the silver doors shut on the bound daemon. The screaming faces of gargoyles carved in high relief covered the doors, their cheeks and eyes incised with runes. A cluster of blue-robed acolytes began to mutter, and the runes began to glow and crawl across the silver, sealing the daemon’s power within.

‘It can’t be,’ said Astraeos. He watched as the final ward burned with amber light. He wanted to turn away but he kept watching the door. He had watched as the daemon was bound and its cell sealed, and felt its presence shrink in his mind. The connection was still there, it would always be there. He understood that. ‘We are bound together, it and I. Entwined. And somewhere inside its shell Cadar might still linger.’

Kadin shook his head and turned away from the door. The sound of pistons and gears briefly broke the quiet of the narrow passage. Kadin’s armour was still blackened and gouged. He had refused to recolour it. Astraeos thought that it looked like the cracked surface of skin. His own armour was blue, and he held a high-crested helm in the crook of his arm. A snake of fire coiled on his shoulder.

‘Was it worth it?’ asked Kadin. Astraeos said nothing, but also turned away from the door. They began to walk, their strides out of rhythm, under the yellow flames of the glass oil lamps which hung from the passage’s ceiling.

At its end, they passed through a small door back into the rest of the ship. They moved through corridors and chambers filled with strange faces and stranger voices, carrying their silence with them until they came to a viewport set into the hull of the ship like a vast eye watching the stars. They stopped. Beyond the crystal the Eye of Terror looked back at them, its bruised glare unblinking.

‘What now?’ said Kadin after a long moment. Astraeos did not look away from the Eye. He thought of what Ahriman had told him, of what came next.

‘War, Kadin,’ said Astraeos and let out a long breath. ‘A war against fate.’

Maroth hurried through the corridors of the Sycorax. His armour hissed in time with his heavy muttering breaths. Sometimes he had to stop and feel his way by touch, or by sniffing through the muzzle of his helm. He passed scribes, initiate acolytes, warrior slaves and machine-wrights. Many looked at him but none challenged him or allowed their eyes to meet the sightless holes in his helm. The creature, for it could be no Space Marine, had Lord Ahriman’s mark upon it and its life belonged to Ahriman alone.

When he found the passage and door he sought, he gave a small whimper of pleasure. A passing cluster of yellow-swathed serfs hurried out of sight. Only when they were far beyond seeing or hearing did Maroth raise his hand to the door and mutter. It was a small door, deliberately unobtrusive, but if any had seen him undo the wards bound into it they would have done more than wonder. The orange light of oil lamps lit the narrow passage beyond.

With the door resealed behind him Maroth straightened and began to walk. His movements were silent. If there had been anyone to see in this utterly silent corridor they would have noticed that his shape seemed to bleed into the shadow, and that the flames grew and burned the green-blue of glacial ice as he passed.

At the silver door he stopped and made a sound like the hoot of a night bird. The gargoyles worked into the door snarled with silent anger, and runes in their eyes burned with blue light before settling to contented inactivity. He raised a hand and pushed the door open.

His master was waiting for him, bound in chains, the husk of its physical form as pale as white marble. It smiled at him. It always smiled. The door sealed behind Maroth. He looked up at a face that had once belonged to a mortal named Cadar. He would have laughed, but he rarely laughed truly. He did not really see the point.

‘Our endeavour succeeded,’ said his master, its voice like the crackling of ice across lightless water.

‘Yes,’ Maroth replied. ‘Yes it did, sire.’

Acknowledgements

A book is always more than the writer. Behind the words on the page are a host of people who, knowingly or unknowingly, nudge, cajole or just flat out push the story over the border between dream and reality. This book is no different:

To Liz, for making sure I reached the end and did not get lost on the way.

To Christian Dunn, because a book is always as much the editor as the writer.

To Graham McNeill, for providing mighty shoulders for me to stand on.

To Ead Brown, Colin Goodwin, Trevor Larkin, Andy Smillie, and Chris Wraight, for their encouragement and feedback.

To all of the others who helped in ways large and small.

Thank you.

About the author

John French is a writer and freelance games designer from Nottingham. His work for Black Library includes a number of short stories, the novellas Fateweaver and The Crimson Fist and the forthcoming novel Ahriman: Exile. He also works on the Warhammer 40,000 role playing games. When he is not thinking of ways that dark and corrupting beings can destroy reality and space, John enjoys making it so with his own Traitor Legions on the gaming table.

For Henry French

A BLACK LIBRARY PUBLICATION

Published in 2012 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd., Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK

Cover illustration by Fares Maese

© Games Workshop Limited 2012. All rights reserved.

Black Library, the Black Library logo, Games Workshop, the Games Workshop logo and all associated marks, names, characters, illustrations and images from the Warhammer universe are either ®, TM and/or © Games Workshop Ltd 2012, variably registered in the UK and other countries around the world. All rights reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-0-85787-821-2

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise except as expressly permitted under license from the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.