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The Maiden of the Dream – John French

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A Black Library Publication

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The Maiden of the Dream

John French

‘If you have nothing, then no one can steal from you.

Desire nothing and nothing can tempt you.

Lose everything and you can take anything.’

- Aphorism of the Nepenthe Collegium of the Scholastia Psykana

Mylasa Yaygus stepped from the shelter of the doorway as the grey man passed. It had started to snow, white shards falling from an iron sky to carpet the city streets. Crisp whiteness crunched under her boots. The black chimneys rose above her, scraping the cold sky. A layer of cold mist had begun to form in the air, pulling halos from the streetlights atop their iron poles. The street was almost empty, just a few scribes from the broker houses, their black velvet robes gathering a scattering of white as they followed on whatever task their masters had set them. A message runner stalked past her, sprung bladed legs hissing, eye lenses fixed on its distant destination. The grey man moved between the scattered pedestrians like water, his movements unhurried and fluid. A long cloak hung from his shoulders, its hood lowered around his neck to allow for the tall hat which marked him as a debt broker of the second order. Under the cloak he wore layered coats of grey velvet and silk. His gloves were soft leather the colour of storm clouds; his neckerchief and waistcoat were slate grey with silver buttons. The cane in his left hand was burnished steel capped with jet. So clothed he fitted the world he moved through without seam and wrinkle. He did not belong here, though. He was not a debt broker. In a sense he was not even human.

The snow began to fall more heavily; Mylasa quickened her step. Ahead of her the man in grey stepped out of the way of a pair of tracked servitors pulling a cart heaped with scroll tubes. He glanced behind him and for an instant she had a view of the pale flesh of his face and his hook-nosed profile. She saw the glint of a dark eye.

A cluster of chained scribes came out of the thickening swirl of snow. The grey man slid behind them. Mylasa swore to herself, and dodged forwards. The scribes’ silver chains jangled as she jostled them. Curses followed her. The shadow of the grey man was vanishing into an alley mouth. She ran, shedding pretense, knife sliding into her right palm, green cloak and skirts swirling behind her. He had seen her, and that meant that he needed removing now. Never mind the fact that the rest of his allies were still out there, never mind that it would mean that more might come. He had to die here and now.

She came round the corner. Black iron walls rose up and up and up above her. The grey man was ten paces down the alley, his back still to her. She ran at him, footsteps muffled in the thickening snow. She reached for his shoulder. Heavy flakes were swirling down. High above, the flare fires from the promethium works breathed fire and orange light into the dull metal sky. She gripped his shoulder and yanked back. The knife in her right hand rose, point first to meet his back as he fell.

He did not fall.

He spun. The thick grey fabric of the cloak yanked out of her hand. The steel cane in his left hand came around with him and hit her forearm with a crack of shattering bone. She cartwheeled back through the white-flecked air, shutting down the pain and shock flooding her. The man in grey seemed still as the world turned around her. She had an impression of sharp features framed by dark sideboards.

Mylasa landed and threw the knife in a single movement. The blade slid to a stop in mid-air. The snow slowed its fall. Frost covered the floating dagger’s blade. The man in grey looked at her for a long instant. Mylasa leapt, muscles flicking her body into the air as her left foot extended into a kick.

A wall of invisible force punched her from the air. More bones broke inside her. More pain. She hit the snow-covered ground, tried to roll, but found the point of the steel walking cane pressed into her neck. The man in grey stood above her. He held her own dagger in his left hand with the casual ease of a killer.

She took a breath. Something wet clicked in her chest, she spluttered, and tasted iron on her lips. She tried again and, rather than defiance, a question came from her mouth.

‘Who are you?’

‘I am Covenant,’ said the grey man. ‘Or rather that is the name of the person who stood here when this encounter occurred between him and his would-be killer. But you were not here, Mylasa. When the gene-assassin called Yaygus came out of the snow-filled night to kill Covenant, you were far above the clouds from which this remembered snow falls. So, to answer your question, my girl, I am the voice of someone you don’t remember.’

‘What–’

‘But the real question, Mylasa,’ said the mouth of the man in grey, ‘is who are you?’

And before the reply could come the snow swirled, and the steel cane lashed down, and the world was blank whiteness.

Josef looked down through the view port at the pair of figures in the cell beneath. Frost covered the glass on both sides of the glass. A smell of ozone filled the air even in the observation deck. Static crackled across the walls inside the cell. The two figures within the room were completely still. One was only loosely humanoid, a shrunken, withered thing. It hung above the floor, black robes and vestigial limbs hanging beneath a head ringed by chromed machinery. A throbbing dome of sickly light flickered above its bare skull. The second figure was a wasp-thin man, tall and gaunt. Slick black robes clung to his torso and flared wide beneath his waist. Cables looped under his spindle-thin arms to sockets in his ribs. A metal halo of black iron spikes rose above his head, the metal ring rooted in his skull.

‘How long until this… trial is complete?’ said Josef, fidgeting with the fit of his robes. He was sweating despite the cold, moisture rolling down his wide face.

The woman that stood beside him turned her face towards him. Her skin was pale and had the washed-out greyness of someone who lived their life in the recycled air and false gravity of void ships. Her form-fitting armour was graphite grey, and the colour of her lips hid beneath blue tattooed lines that spilled down her chin. Her eyes were hard, pinprick pupils set in irises of blue so pale that they were almost colourless.

‘Do you wish her ordeal to end?’ she said.

‘I wish you to answer my question,’ said Josef.

The armoured woman rotated her head to look back down into the cell.

‘It will last until we have the answer to our question.’

‘Which is?’

‘Are you demanding to know?’

‘I am the servant of an inquisitor, and I am asking.’

The woman tilted her head as if in acknowledgement.

‘The Primaris named Mylasa serves Inquisitor Covenant in the interrogation of heretics and the purgation of memories from the tainted. Oblivion is her skill, her craft, and one that your master clearly values.’

Josef kept his face impassive. In truth he was sometimes unsure if Covenant valued anyone now, but he certainly found Mylasa useful. Covenant was a daemon hunter of the Ordo Malleus, and part of his self-imposed duty was to maintain one of the greatest and most terrible secrets in the universe, that – in a shadow realm just out of sight – vast and terrible forces coiled, and hungered, and dreamed of the enslavement of mankind. The Dark Gods of Chaos and their daemons could corrupt a soul countless ways, but many of those ways began with simple knowledge of their existence. Mylasa was a weapon in the war that Covenant and his kind fought against Chaos. She could rip truths from minds, and cleanse the minds of those who had learnt the truth, and were too valuable to the Imperium to grant the peace of bullet or blade. She was a psychic torturer and executioner.

Josef held the woman’s gaze, and did not blink.

‘She is valued very highly,’ he said carefully.

‘And that is why your master has requested this examination, and allowed the Scholastia Psykana to administer it.’

Josef looked back at the scene beyond the frosted crystal panes. The air had taken on a heat haze blur. Stigmata had opened on Mylasa’s withered limbs. Blood dripped from her bare toes and fingers.

‘You do not like what we do to her,’ said the woman, still looking at Josef. ‘You think us cruel. You think this unnecessary.’

‘You have the right to do this, but I have the right not to like it,’ he growled.

The woman shrugged.

‘You pity her, preacher, but you should not. Mylasa is a Daughter of Nepenthe. Few can do as she does – cut into others’ thoughts, see and live through their eyes, touch horror and corruption and remain untouched… that is a great gift.’ The woman’s pale eyes focused on the floating, withered figure opposite the gaunt man. The blood pooling on the deck beneath Mylasa was freezing into a crazed, red mirror. ‘But what of her memories? What of her purity? She sees and destroys thoughts that cannot exist, but she must live those memories, again and again. And her soul is not mundane like mine or yours. It burns in the night of the warp. What do all the poisons she drinks do to her? She is strong. Yes, she is strong. But strength is just weakness seen from another point of view.’

‘So you are seeing if she is corrupted?’ said Josef, and felt his lip curl as he spoke. ‘Who are you to judge that?’

‘We cannot judge whether she is corrupt. But we can judge if the defences she was given still hold.’

‘How?’ snapped Josef.

The woman just shrugged.

‘By asking the only question that matters – who is she?’

Mylasa Ilk woke with the scream on her lips. Her hands reached out and found the sweat soaked blanket. She thrashed. The fabric tangled her limbs. She was shivering with heat. Her head was pounding. Fever burned through her muscles and skin. White shards were falling all around her. They looked like flakes of ash, like the plumes of burning corpses that fell in the dreams of golden light and screaming.

She could not see. There was just whiteness and the–

‘Hush,’ said her sister’s voice close to her. Mylasa went still. ‘Hush now. It’s all right.’ Cool hands peeled the blanket from her soaking body, untangling its folds from her arms and legs. Mylasa reached out, feeling her fingers shake as they found her sister’s face. There were tears on the cheeks. ‘It’s all right, just another bad dream.’

Her sight began to clear. The whirl of white was settling, the reality of the hab room pushing into her blinking eyes.

The room was the sum of very little: a square box of metal, four strides to a side, enclosing all their lives; a blank door in a bolted frame; a food burner; the mattress pallet she lay on; the work overalls stacked neatly despite the fact that they would never be clean. The air duct fan turned slowly behind a circle of wire mesh. The jug for their water ration sat on the floor beside the mattress, drained to the one quarter line. The numerals on the work rotation clock blinked red from the opposite wall.

Mylasa’s sister knelt down, red hair falling in a matted tangle beside her face.

Beautiful hair, said a small voice in the whirl of her mind. Like copper.

‘It’s all right,’ said her sister, and tried to hug Mylasa, but she pushed her away.

‘There’s something…’ said Mylasa. The words were thick on her tongue. ‘Something from my dream.’

‘You shouldn’t–’

‘Something is going to happen,’ said Mylasa, feeling the certainty fill her as she spoke. ‘The cold… it was so cold… and they…’

‘Forget it,’ said her sister. ‘You must forget it. If anyone heard…’

‘No!’ Mylasa shoved her sister away. ‘It is out there, the cold dark, and the ship that moves but not through water. It is–’

‘Stop!’ shouted her sister, ‘Please, for the love of the Throne stop. They are just dreams, just dreams. Please–’

The door blew inwards. Mylasa’s sister was turning as the blast caught her. She hammered into the metal wall, and fell, a rag doll thrown by a child. Figures in black armour came through the door. Silver masks covered their mouths. Tattooed script covered their bare heads. Swords and pistols glinted in their hands. Mylasa screamed, and the scream froze the cloud of debris before it could fall. She stood. Bolts ripped from the wall. The jug of water shattered. Debris and fragments rose like waves from the surface of the sea and rushed towards the armoured figures. The squall of broken glass and metal tore the first figure through the door in half. Blood scattered. The second blasted backwards, its armour crushing the flesh beneath.

Mylasa felt her rage and grief flow out. There was no divide between her and the dreams now. They were here, in the waking world.

‘We have to protect her,’ Mylasa’s father had once said when he thought she was asleep. ‘She is… different. And they will come for her one day if we don’t keep what she can do hidden.’

She had seen the fear in her father’s eyes as he died, and heard his whispered plea to her sister.

‘Keep her safe. Please keep her safe.’

She had heard the overseers preach about the dangers of witches, and known that the warnings were about her. This moment was always going to come. She had not needed the dreams to tell her that. And tonight it had.

Another figure stepped through the ruin of the door, taller than the others, grey armoured, face bare above the silver smile of its mask. Mylasa felt grief and rage rise through her and pour from her mind into the world. The air ignited. The metal of the walls blackened with heat. The stacked cloths, blanket and mattress became flame and smoke. The burning wave tore towards the grey armoured figure…

And drained into cold nothingness. Mylasa staggered, limbs shaking, terror suddenly taking the place of rage in her heart. She felt her fear trying to pull apart and remake the world into a place where the figure in dark grey was not walking forward, silver sword held low, eyes unblinking. There was nothing behind that stare, just an abyss, which fell away into a darkness deeper than night. For the first time in her life Mylasa felt her thoughts pound against the inside of her skull, screaming at a universe that would not change, that was as cruel as a sword edge. She thought of her father who had wanted to spare her this. She thought of her sister, dead in the corner of the room. She thought that she had never asked for this.

She crumpled to the soot-covered floor, scrabbling backwards, skin burning on the hot metal.

The figure advanced.

‘Why…’ moaned Mylasa Ilk. ‘Please, why?’

It raised its hand, but it was not the hand that held the sword. A heavy circulate of chrome and polished spikes glinted in the figure’s grasp. Vials of liquid gleamed like jewels on its circumference.

The figure stopped. Mylasa waited.

‘Why?’ she asked one last time.

‘Because this is not you either, girl,’ said the figure in a voice she had heard before but did not recognise. ‘Because it was not you curled on the floor of a hab when the hunters of the Black Ships came. Her name was Ilk and she had no other name. After this moment she became one of the thousands sent to Terra to burn so that the Emperor can live.’

Mylasa stood, looking around her at the still tableau of the hab room.

‘I met her on the Black Ship…’ she said carefully as understanding crept through her. This was not her memory. It belonged to someone else.

She turned to look at the figure on the floor where she had just been. Wide eyes looked up at her from a soot and tear-streaked face, but the gaze was frozen and unseeing.

‘I met her only once. We were put in a cell together, two frightened girls, huddled together in the dark. The null fields must have failed because in the dark I found that I was not alone. Our minds touched. I knew her for what? A minute? An hour? Not much, but enough.’ She paused, and looked back at the witch-seeker who was not a witch-seeker. ‘Enough to remember a life.’

‘And who are you?’

‘I…’ she began, but the figure moved before she could speak.

‘You are not ready to answer yet.’

And he raised the spiked circulate and pressed it down on her skull. The spikes bored in. Drug injectors thumped, and Mylasa arched her back and opened her mouth to scream as the world vanished again.

‘You test her for memories?’ said Josef. ‘But everyone remembers.’ He could feel his frown creasing his face. He was sweating profusely now. The air in the observation room had become close and humid as Mylasa and her examiner filled the cell beneath with ice and static.

The woman in grey armour did not answer him at first, and he noticed her mouth pinch tight at his question.

‘We test for memories of a certain kind,’ she said at last. ‘Not the memories that pile up from living – we look for the deepest memories, the memories that make us who we are, that come to us in dreams and nightmares, and in hope and despair.’

‘And you, what? You test these memories for corruption?’

‘No,’ said the woman carefully. ‘We test to make sure that those memories are absent.’

‘But–’ he began to growl seeing the horror implied in that explanation.

‘She is an eater of lives, preacher. She swallows thoughts, and memories and dreams, and to do that, and remain pure, requires that she have no true core, no real self, no deep memories to rise unbidden from the dark as she wades through the filth of another mind.’

‘You did that to her?’

‘That is how the Scholars of Nepenthe make their sons and daughters,’ she paused, and Josef thought he saw a brief smile of pride on the woman’s face as she looked at Mylasa. Scabs of frozen blood clung to her floating form. ‘Most telepaths are not strong enough for the process. Most of those that are strong enough die anyway.’

‘But not her,’ said Josef.

‘Not her,’ said the woman. ‘She has strength.’

‘But you test her anyway.’

‘The fortress that crumbles may have stood against every enemy until the last.’

‘How profound,’ he said.

Mylasa Verrun gave a lopsided smile, knocked the glass of blue spirit back, and then – slowly, because she was not entirely sure that her hands were following her mind’s commands – turned the glass upside down and put it on the top of the major-domo’s head. Disappointingly the man did not even blink.

‘No,’ she said, and smiled wider. Behind her the cluster of her friends lounging on the dustsheet-covered furniture giggled. The major-domo reached up and carefully took the glass from his head. A film of sticky blue liquid clung to his shaved scalp. She wondered how the man would react if she licked a finger and wiped it from his skin. She was very tempted to try it and find out.

‘Your mother…’ began the major-domo carefully.

‘Whatever the walking corpse has sent you to say the answer is still…’ she reached out and picked up another glass of spirit from a table, and raised it to her lips ‘…no.’

‘Your mother has sent me to inform you that your second sister has returned.’

Mylasa blinked, and lowered the glass from her lips.

‘Cordia…’ she said. ‘She is back?’

The major-domo nodded once, the high collar of his stiff black-and-gold uniform creaking at the movement.

She put the glass back on the table.

‘Take me to her,’ she said. The major-domo nodded again, turned and began to move towards the doors out of the unused staterooms that Mylasa had commandeered for her experiment with the family liquor stores. She followed him, ignoring the calls of disappointment from her friends.

They passed through the corridors of the manse towards the east wing. Candles floated on suspensor discs beneath the high ceilings. Grim faces looked down from painted walls. Dust rose from the dark red rugs under their feet.

She had not seen her sister for two years. Cordia was supposed to be learning the void trade on one of the family’s chartered merchant ships. Of all of Mylasa’s siblings and half siblings, Cordia was the only one who had ever been genuinely kind to her. She was the only member of the family who Mylasa thought of as worthy of the word. If Cordia was back that would mean having someone other than her vacuous supposed friends to talk to. It would mean…

Wait… wait… not until she is past… and then quickly…

Mylasa stopped. She blinked, looking around for a voice that she was sure had spoken just behind her left shoulder.

The major-domo paused and looked back at her. She stared at him, eyes darting around her, sweat prickling her skin.

‘Mistress?’ he said. ‘If we could hurry, your mother was most insistent.’

In her head she felt facts and inconsistencies poke through the fog of alcohol and excitement. Why was Cordia back now? How could she be back now? Why would her mother send for her to see Cordia? The old witch would have taken greater pleasure in keeping Mylasa in the dark than inviting her to greet her sister. Why were they going into the old east wing, rather than the central manse? Why…

‘Mistress…’

The walls were shimmering. The candlelight dimmed in her eyes. Echoes filled her ears. The world was looming over her. Shadows coiled around the major-domo. Mylasa shrank back from him. He stepped towards her.

‘Follow me, mistress,’ he said.

His eyes were smudges of fire in her sight that was suddenly like that of a nightmare. Somehow she could see the dagger in his sleeve, and feel the eyes of the figures in the shadows waiting for her to take another step.

‘No…’ she said, and took a step backwards.

The major-domo leapt at her, tugging the knife free of his sleeve. A high guttural word tore from his lips. Figures charged from further down the corridor. Mylasa jerked back as the major-domo’s dagger slashed past her. She was no fighter, but neither was he. She kicked him the only way she knew how, as though he were a door that needed breaking down. He staggered. She turned to run the way she had come. Figures were running down the corridor towards her. Even through the fever smear of this living nightmare, she could recognise servant uniforms. Twisted silver masks hid their faces. Screams followed them. All of them had knives. Snakes coiled down the serrated blades.

In a lightning flash of insight she knew. A serpent had coiled through her family while Mylasa had been sulking and drowning her youth. Her mother had made the family into something monstrous, and now was trimming away any imperfection in what she had created.

The wall three paces behind her blew inwards.

A dust-clogged shockwave picked Mylasa up and slammed her into the opposite wall. Pain ripped the nightmare veil from her eyes. She coughed as dust filled her throat. A cluster of figures in servant uniforms and silver masks came out of the rolling cloud of smoke. Silver edges glinted with murder.

The nearest masked figure exploded. The detonation spread crimson through the air. Bolt rounds shrieked past. The sound was deafening. Blood and shrapnel tore the world apart around her. Two figures advanced out of the breach in the wall. They fired, moving with tight efficiency. Muzzle flare glinted from burnished steel plates as the lead figure braced and sent a stream of shells into the masked servants. He was bareheaded, a grey beard framing a hawk-like face. The dirty light gleamed off the bronze tri-barred ‘I’ on his breastplate.

An inquisitor, she thought.

The figure turned and looked towards where she lay at the base of the wall. She tried to move, but there was the taste of copper in her breaths and a sharp grinding pain in her legs as she tried to move. The inquisitor stepped towards her, dark eyes meeting her gaze. The gunfire ceased, and ringing silence filled the corridor.

‘Covenant,’ said the man, and the second man who had come through the breach moved closer. This one was younger, and his features held an intensity that robbed them of some of their handsomeness. He wore armour that reminded her of the pict images she had seen of elite soldiers of the Astra Militarum. The gun in his hands had the blunt shape of something designed without a veneer of art to hide its purpose. ‘This one is alive,’ said the inquisitor. ‘Signal Orsino to send a gunship and medicae. You are responsible for this one. I want her to live.’

‘Yes, my lord,’ said the young man called Covenant, and turned away, talking into a vox bead.

‘I…’ she began, forcing the words from herself. ‘I do not know anything. I have nothing that I can tell you.’

The inquisitor’s gaze bored into Mylasa.

+Perhaps,+ said a voice in her head. +But you are more than you seem, aren’t you? +

‘I…’

The drifting cloud of dust froze. The inquisitor’s face became a sculpture.

The figure of the young Covenant shook himself, and turned back towards Mylasa. He looked at the inquisitor’s still face, and shook his head

‘This is not even a real memory is it?’ he said. ‘It is based on bits of one of Inquisitor Covenant’s memories of Inquisitor Argento, and the moment that his master found the girl who would become Covenant’s fellow apprentice and later inquisitor. Her name was Idris, not Mylasa, wasn’t it? And this dream is something you built from what? Those few recollections of Covenant’s and your own imagination?’

Mylasa shook her head.

‘It is a real memory,’ said Mylasa, standing, the idea of pain and injury falling from her. Her clothes shimmered to green silk, and her hair grew, and turned to burnished copper. ‘It was Idris’ memory of the moment she met Covenant and Argento. She once shared it with me, back when she and Covenant still worked together. She was a telepath too. This memory was of the moment her family ceased to exist, and also the moment when she was saved. Without it, what would have happened to her? The Black Ships? Would she have become fuel for the Golden Throne? Would she have become like me?’ Mylasa stopped, shivered and reached out a hand to run it through the frozen smoke cloud as though dipping it into a pool of water.

‘The memory of an inquisitor?’ said the man wearing the dream form of Covenant. ‘You are honoured, it seems.’

She shook her head.

‘No, not really,’ she looked around her, blinking. ‘This didn’t end well. Not for any of them. It just took time to reach that end.’ She dropped her hand to her side, and let out a breath. ‘Come on, let’s be done with this. I am tired of dreaming.’

‘As you wish,’ said the man, and the image of smoke and people came apart.

Mylasa fell and she knew that she would fall through countless more dreams of stolen lives until she reached the bottom. Until she could fall no further.

She thought she heard the voice of Josef, speaking close by, yet far away.

‘Why must she not remember her past?’

‘Because she must be nothing,’ said a woman’s voice in answer. ‘And what is a person but what they remember?’

‘So you took everything from her?’

And on Mylasa fell towards the infinity of lives that waited beneath her.

‘It was the only kindness we could give her.’

Mylasa opened her eyes. Snow covered the ground beneath her feet. Above her the bare branches of a tree reached up to the light of a full moon. Bare branches glinted silver with frost. The hills she stood on fell smoothly away, rolling towards the edge of the sky in soft, white folds. The air was sharp with cold. Somewhere, far off, a night-raptor took wing with a cry.

‘Mylasa…’ The voice behind her brought a smile to her lips that did not reach her eyes. She pulled the green velvet of her coat closer. The white fur collar pressed against her cheeks. She let out a breath, shivered and jumped slightly, trying to shake some heat into her skin.

‘You would have thought that I would have picked a dream that was a little warmer.’

‘You like the cold,’ said the voice.

‘True,’ she said.

The man stepped up beside her. His face was slim, the features fine. A smile hung on his lips as he looked up at the frosted tree. He wore a black coat with silver buttons, but his hands were bare. He pressed them together and breathed between the palms. Mylasa glanced at him. He looked young apart from his eyes.

‘Where is this?’ he asked.

She shrugged.

‘I don’t know. I have never seen it before.’

‘A construct then,’ he said. ‘The tree you once saw on a forest world, the cold from the memory of winter?’

‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘I honestly don’t know.’

‘Something from your childhood…?’

She gave a brittle laugh.

‘Is that what you think? That this is the last piece of personal memory that I keep at the heart of my soul? The lost jewel of who I was before I became what I am?’ She snorted. ‘No, even if it is something from my past, it doesn’t belong to me now.’

‘You could be lying…’

‘You are a telepath who has just spent a lot of effort digging through my subconscious,’ she said, ‘you tell me.’

He smiled at her, and there was sincerity in his expression.

‘A fair point,’ he said. They both turned to look at the silent snowscape.

In the quiet, she could hear the rustle of the frost thickening on branches above her.

‘Is that it then?’ she asked. ‘You are satisfied that I am free of the taint of self?’

He turned and looked at her, his eyes moving over the stolen features that she wore in her dreams: the green fabric, the red hair, the knowing smile in a slim face, all the tiny details of a person taken from hundreds of other peoples’ memories.

‘There remains only the question – who are you, Mylasa?’

A heartbeat passed, and she wondered how long all this had taken in the waking world: A second? An hour? A lifetime?

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

He nodded, and raised his hand. Light split the palm.

‘Good,’ he said.

And the snow and night became gossamer thin, and beyond it she could see an image of a steel and glass cell in a world that was not a dream.

Inside her soul Mylasa smiled to herself.

About the Author

John French has written several Horus Heresy stories including the novellas Tallarn: Executioner and The Crimson Fist, the novel Tallarn: Ironclad, and the audio dramas Templar and Warmaster. He is the author of the Ahriman series, which includes the novels Ahriman: Exile, Ahriman: Sorcerer and Ahriman: Unchanged, plus a number of related short stories collected in Ahriman: Exodus, including ‘The Dead Oracle’ and ‘Hand of Dust’. Additionally for the Warhammer 40,000 universe he has written the Space Marine Battles novella Fateweaver, plus many short stories. He lives and works in Nottingham, UK.

Inquisitor Covenant must hunt down the daemon at the heart of a planetary conspiracy. But how high a price will he pay to defeat this evil?

A Black Library Publication

Published in 2016 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
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Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by John Blanche.

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ISBN: 978-1-78572-265-3

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* 3. Further to the general restriction at paragraph 2, Black Library shall be entitled to terminate this license in the event that you use or store the e-book (or any part of it) in any way not expressly licensed. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the following circumstances:

o 3.1 you provide the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.2 you make the e-book available on bit-torrent sites, or are otherwise complicit in ‘seeding’ or sharing the e-book with any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.3 you print and distribute hard copies of the e-book to any company, individual or other legal person who does not possess a license to use or store it;

o 3.4 you attempt to reverse engineer, bypass, alter, amend, remove or otherwise make any change to any copy protection technology which may be applied to the e-book.

* 4. By purchasing an e-book, you agree for the purposes of the Consumer Protection (Distance Selling) Regulations 2000 that Black Library may commence the service (of provision of the e-book to you) prior to your ordinary cancellation period coming to an end, and that by purchasing an e-book, your cancellation rights shall end immediately upon receipt of the e-book.

* 5. You acknowledge that all copyright, trademark and other intellectual property rights in the e-book are, shall remain, the sole property of Black Library.

* 6. On termination of this license, howsoever effected, you shall immediately and permanently delete all copies of the e-book from your computers and storage media, and shall destroy all hard copies of the e-book which you have derived from the e-book.

* 7. Black Library shall be entitled to amend these terms and conditions from time to time by written notice to you.

* 8. These terms and conditions shall be governed by English law, and shall be subject only to the jurisdiction of the Courts in England and Wales.

* 9. If any part of this license is illegal, or becomes illegal as a result of any change in the law, then that part shall be deleted, and replaced with wording that is as close to the original meaning as possible without being illegal.

* 10. Any failure by Black Library to exercise its rights under this license for whatever reason shall not be in any way deemed to be a waiver of its rights, and in particular, Black Library reserves the right at all times to terminate this license in the event that you breach clause 2 or clause 3.