Ahriman looked up at the towering mountain, wondering at the vast power of its makers and what the primarch was doing inside it. Until the power to far-see was taken away, he had not realised how blind he was.
“Where is he?” hissed Phosis T’kar, echoing his thoughts.
It had been four hours since Magnus the Red had followed Yatiri and his tribe into the Mountain, and the tension had been gnawing at their nerves ever since.
“You’re worried about him, aren’t you?” asked Hathor Maat.
“Since when could you master the powers of the Athanaean?” asked Ahriman.
“I don’t need to. I can see you’re both worried,” countered Maat. “It’s obvious.”
“Aren’t you?” asked Phosis T’kar.
“Magnus can look out for himself,” said Hathor Maat. “He told us to wait for him.”
The Primarch of the Thousand Sons had indeed told them to await his return, but Ahriman had a sick feeling that something was terribly wrong.
“Did you see something?” asked Phosis T’kar, noting Ahriman’s expression. “When you travelled the Great Ocean, you saw something, didn’t you? Tell me.”
“I saw nothing,” said Ahriman bitterly. He turned and marched back into his pavilion, retrieving his weapons from a long footlocker of acacia and jade. He bolstered a pistol that was as fine an example of the armourer’s art as any crafted by the artificers of Vulkan’s Salamanders, its flanks plated with golden backswept hawk wings and its grip textured with stippled hide.
As well as his pistol, he also bore a long heqa staff of ivory with a hooked blade at its end, its length gold-plated and reinforced with blue copper bands.
“What are you doing?” asked Hathor Maat when he emerged, accoutred for war.
“I’m taking the Sekhmet into that mountain,” said Ahriman. “Are you coming?”
LEMUEL GAUMON RECLINED against one of the deadstones in the foothills of the enormous mountain, trying to keep within its shadow and wishing his frame was rather less fulsome. Growing up in the mid-continental drift-hives of the Nordafrik enclaves, he was used to heat, but this world was something else entirely.
He wore a long banyan of lightweight linen, colourfully embroidered with interlocking motifs of lightning bolts, bulls, spirals and numerous other less easily identifiable symbols. It had been woven by a blind tailor in the Sangha commercia-subsid to his design, the imagery taken from the scrolls collected in the secret library of his villa in Mobayi. Dark-skinned and shaven-headed, his deep-set eyes carefully watched the encampment of the Thousand Sons, while he occasionally made notes in a pad balanced on his thigh.
Perhaps a hundred scarlet pavilions dotted the salt plains, their sides tied up, each home to a band of Thousand Sons warriors. He’d noted which Fellowships were represented: Ahriman’s Scarab Occult, Ankhu Anen’s 4th, Khalophis’ 6th, Hathor Maat’s 3rd and Phosis T’kar’s 2nd.
A sizeable war-host of Astartes warriors was encamped before the mountain, the atmosphere strangely tense, though Lemuel could see no cause for it. It was clear they weren’t expecting trouble, but it was equally clear something was troubling them.
Lemuel closed his eyes and let his consciousness drift on the invisible currents of power that rippled in the air like a heat haze. Though his eyes were shut, he could feel the energy of this world like a vivid canvas of colour, brighter than the greatest works of Serena d’Angelus or Kelan Roget. Beyond the deadstones, the mountain was a black wall of nothingness, a cliff of utter darkness as solid and as impenetrable as adamantium.
But further out into the salt flats, the world was alive with colour.
The Thousand Sons encampment was a blazing inferno of shifting colours and light, like an atomic explosion frozen at the instant of detonation. Even amid that blazing illumination, some lights shone brighter than others, and three such minds were gathered beneath where Lemuel knew Captain Ahriman’s pavilion was pitched. Something preyed upon these minds, and he dearly wished he was strong enough to venture closer. A bright mind, a supernova amongst guttering candles, normally burned at the heart of the encampment, but not today.
Perhaps that was the source of the Thousand Sons’ tension.
Their great leader was in absentia.
Frustrated, Lemuel’s mind drifted away from the Thousand Sons, and he let it approach the sunken dwellings of the Aghoru. Cut into the dry earth, they were as dark and lifeless as the Thousand Sons were bright and vital. The Aghoru people were as barren as the salt plain, without the slightest spark of a presence within them.
He opened his eyes, exhaling and reciting the Mantra of the Sangoma to calm his racing heartbeat. Lemuel took a drink from his canvas-wrapped canteen, the water warm and gritty but deliciously welcome. Three more canteens lay in the pack next to him, but they would only last the rest of the afternoon. By nightfall, he would need to refill them, for the remorseless heat let up only marginally during the hours of darkness.
“How can anyone live in this heat?” he wondered aloud for the hundredth time.
“They don’t,” said a woman’s voice behind him, and he smiled at the sound. “They mostly live in the fertile river deltas further north or on the western coast.”
“So you said, my dear Camille,” he said, “but to willingly trek from there to this desolate place seems to defy all logic.”
The speaker moved into view, and he squinted through the sun’s glare at a young woman dressed in a tight-fitting vest, lightweight cut-off fatigues and dusty sandals. She carried a combination vox-recorder and picter in a sling around her neck, and a canvas shoulder bag stuffed with notebooks and sketchpads.
Camille Shivani cut an impressive figure with her sun-browned skin, long dark hair bound up beneath a loose turban of wrapped silk and dark glare-shields. Her skin was ruddy brown, her manner forthright, and Lemuel liked her immensely. She smiled down at him, and he gave her his best, most winning smile in return. It was a wasted effort; Camille’s appetites did not include the likes of him, but it never hurt to be courteous.
“Lemuel, when it comes to humanity, even lost strands of it, you should know that logic has precious little to do with how people behave,” said Camille Shivani, brushing her hands together to clear dust from the thin gloves she always wore.
“So very true. Why else would we linger here when there’s nothing worth remembering?”
“Nothing worth remembering? Nonsense, there’s lots to learn here,” she said.
“For an archaeohistorian, maybe,” he said.
“I spent a week living with the Aghoru, exploring the ruins their villages are built upon. It’s fascinating; you should come with me next time I make a trip.”
“Me? What would I learn there?” he asked. “I study how societies form after compliance, not the ruins of dead ones.”
“Yes, but what was there before has an impact on what’ll follow. You know as well as I do that you can’t just stamp one civilisation on top of another without taking into account the previous culture’s history.”
“True, but the Aghoru don’t seem to have much history to supplant,” he said sadly. “I don’t think what they have will long survive the coming of the Imperium.”
“You might be right, but that just makes studying them while we can even more important.”
Lemuel clambered to his feet, the effort causing him to break out in torrents of sweat.
“Not a good climate for a fat man,” he said.
“You’re not fat,” said Camille. “You’re generously portioned.”
“And you are very kind, but I know what I am,” said Lemuel, brushing his banyan free of salt crystals. He looked around the circle of towering stones. “Where are your companions?”
“Ankhu Anen returned to the Photep an hour ago to consult his Rosetta scrolls.”
“And Mistress Eris?” he asked.
Camille grinned. “Kalli’s returning from taking rubbings from the deadstones on the eastern slope of the mountain. She should be b
ack soon.”
Kallista Eris, Camille and Ankhu Anen had spent hundreds of fruitless hours attempting to translate the graceful, flowing runes that wove around the deadstones. So far, they had met with limited success, but if anyone could decipher their meaning it would be this triumvirate.
“Are you any closer to translating the script on the stones?” asked Lemuel, waving a hand at the ancient menhirs.
“We’re getting there,” said Camille, dropping her bag beside his and lifting the picter from around her neck. “Kalli thinks it’s a form of proto-eldar, rendered in a dialect that’s ancient even to them, which will make it next to impossible to pin down an exact meaning, but Ankhu Anen knows of some works on Prospero that might shed some light on the runes.”
“On Prospero?” asked Lemuel, suddenly interested.
“Yes, in the Athenaeum, some big library the Thousand Sons have on their home world.”
“Did he say anything about the library?” asked Lemuel.
Camille shrugged, taking off her glare shields and rubbing her gritty eyes. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”
“No reason,” he said, smiling as he saw Kallista Eris approaching the circle of deadstones, and grateful for the distraction.
Wrapped in a flowing white jellabiya, Kallista was a beautiful, olive-skinned young woman who, did she but desire it, had the pick of the male remembrancers attached to the 28th Expedition Fleet. Not that there were many remembrancers attached; the Thousand Sons were ruthlessly selective in choosing those allowed to accompany their campaigns and record their exploits.
In any case, Kallista declined every offer of companionship, spending most of her time with Lemuel and Camille. He had no interest in a liaison with either woman, content simply to spend time with two fellow students of the unknown.
“Welcome back, my dear,” he said, moving past Camille to take Kallista’s hand. Her skin was hot, the fingers charcoal stained. She carried a drawstring bag over one shoulder, rolled up sheets of rubbing paper protruding from its neck.
Kallista Eris was a student of history, one whose field of expertise was the manner in which knowledge of the past was obtained and transmitted. Once, in the library aboard the Photep, she had shown Lemuel holo-picts of a crumbling text known as the Shiji, a record of the ancient emperors of a vanished culture of Terra. Kallista explained how its factual accuracy had to be questioned, given that its author’s intent appeared to be the vilification of the emperor previous to the one he now served. The veracity of any historical text, she explained, could only be interpreted by understanding the writer’s intent, style and bias.
“Lemuel, Camille,” said Kallista. “Do you have any water? I forgot to take extra.”
Lemuel chuckled. “Only you would forget to take enough water on a world like this.”
Kallista nodded, running a hand through her auburn hair, her skin reddening even beneath her sunburn. Her green eyes sparkled with amused embarrassment, and Lemuel saw why so many desired her. She had a vulnerability that made men alternately want to protect or deflower her. Strangely, she seemed oblivious to this fact.
Lemuel knelt beside his pack to retrieve a canteen, but Camille tapped him on the shoulder and said, “Save it, looks like we’re getting some brought to us.”
He turned and lifted a hand to shade his eyes, seeing one of the Astartes walking towards them with a bronze, oval-shaped vase held out before him. The warrior’s head was bare, apart from a trailing topknot of black hair, and his golden-skinned features were curiously flat, his eyes dark and hooded like a cobra’s. Despite the heat, Lemuel shivered, catching a flicker of cold power hazing the warrior’s outline.
“Sobek,” said Lemuel.
“You know him?” asked Camille.
“Of him. He’s one of the Scarab Occult, the Legion veterans. He’s also Captain Ahriman’s Practicus,” he said. Seeing Kallista’s look of incomprehension, he added. “I think it’s a rank of proficiency of some sort, like a gifted apprentice or something.”
“Ah.”
The Astartes warrior halted, towering over them like a solid slab of ceramite. His battle armour was gloriously intricate, the crimson plates engraved with geometric forms and sigils that Lemuel recognised as similar to those woven into his banyan. Sobek’s right shoulder-guard was stamped with a golden scarab, while the left bore the serpentine star icon of the Thousand Sons.
In the centre of the star was a black raven’s head, smaller than the scarab, yet subtly given more relevance thanks to its positioning within the Legion’s symbol. This was the symbol of the Corvidae, one of the cults of the Thousand Sons, though he had been able to glean precious little of is tenets during his time with the 28th Expedition.
“Lord Ahriman sends this hes of water,” said Sobek. His voice was sonorous and fulsome, as though produced in a deep well within his chest. Lemuel supposed the peculiar Astartes tone was due to the sheer volume of biological hardware within his body.
“That’s very gracious of him,” said Camille, holding her hands out to receive the hes.
“Lord Ahriman instructed me go give the water to Remembrancer Eris,” said Sobek.
Camille frowned and said, “Oh, right. Well, here she is.”
Kallista took the proffered hes with a grateful smile.
“Please send Lord Ahriman my thanks,” she said, placing the heavy vase on the ground. “It’s most considerate of him to think of me.”
“I shall pass your message to him when he returns,” said Sobek.
“Returns?” asked Lemuel. “Where’s he gone?”
Sobek glared down at him, and then marched back towards his encampment. The Astartes had not answered his question, but Lemuel caught an upward flicker of Sobek’s eyes towards the mountain.
“Friendly sort, isn’t he?” remarked Camille. “Makes you wonder why we bother, eh?”
“I know what you mean; none of them are exactly welcoming, are they?” said Lemuel.
“Some are,” pointed out Kallista, emptying water into her canteen, and managing to spill more than she transferred. “Ankhu Anen has helped us, hasn’t he? And Captain Ahriman is quite forthcoming in his remembrances. I’ve learned a lot from him about the Great Crusade.”
“Here, let me help you,” said Lemuel, kneeling beside her and holding the vase steady. Like most things designed for or by Astartes, it was oversized and heavy in mortal hands, more so now that it was filled with water.
“I’d be fascinated to read what you’ve accumulated so far,” he said.
“Of course, Lemuel,” said Kallista. She smiled at him, and he felt his soul shine.
“So where do you think Ahriman’s gone?” asked Camille.
“I think I know,” said Lemuel with a conspiratorial grin. “Want to go look?”
THE SEKHMET, THE Scarab Occult, Magnus’ Veterans, whichever name they bore, it was one of fierce pride and devotion. None of lower grade than a Philosophus, the last cult rank a warrior could hold before facing the Dominus Liminus, these veterans were the best and brightest of the Legion. Having transcended their likes and dislikes, defied their mortality and broken down their idea of self, these warriors fought from a place of perfect calm.
The Khan had called them automatons, Russ decried their fighting spirit and Ferrus Manus had likened them to robots. Having heard his primarch’s tales of the master of the Iron Hands, Ahriman suspected the latter comment was intended as a compliment.
Clad in hulking suits of burnished crimson Terminator armour, the Sekhmet crunched out over the salt plains and onto the lower slopes of the Mountain. Ahriman felt the presence of his Tutelary above him, sensing its unease as the psychic void beyond the deadstones loomed ever closer.
Phosis T’kar and Hathor Maat marched alongside him, their strides sure and eager. The shimmering forms of Tutelaries darted thorough the air like wary shoals of fish in the presence of pack predators. Like Aaetpio, the Tutelaries of his fellow warriors and captains were fearful in the face of the Mountain’s
emptiness.
To those without aether-sight, Tutelaries were invisible, but to the Thousand Sons with power they were bright visions of exquisite beauty. Aaetpio had served Ahriman faithfully for nearly a century, its form inconstant and beautiful, a vision of eyes and ever turning wheels of light. Utipa was a bullish entity of formless energy, as bellicose as Phosis T’kar, where Paeoc resembled an eagle fashioned from a million golden suns, as vain and proud as Hathor Maat.
Ahriman had thought them angels at first, but that was an old word, a word cast aside by those who studied the mysteries of the aether as too emotive, too loaded with connotations of the divine. Tutelaries were simply fragments of the Primordial Creator given form and function by those with the power to bend them to their will.
He linked his thoughts briefly with Aaetpio’s. If Magnus was in trouble, then they would need to find out without the sight or aid of their Tutelaries.
Though he had seen nothing tangible in any of his divinations, Ahriman’s intuition told him something was amiss. As Magister Templi of all Prospero’s cults, Magnus taught that intuition was just as important a tool for sifting meaning from the currents of the Great Ocean as direct vision.
Ahriman suspected trouble, but Phosis T’kar and Hathor Maat longed for it.
THE 28TH EXPEDITION had come to Aghoru three months ago. Its official designation in the War Council Records was Twenty-Eight Sixteen, though no one in the XV Legion ever called it that. Following the successful compliance of Twenty-Eight Fifteen, the sixty-three ships of the 28th Expedition translated from the Great Ocean to find a system of dead worlds, empty of life and desolate.
Indications were that life had once existed here, but now did not. What had caused such a system-wide cataclysm was unknown, but as the fleet made its way towards the sun, it became clear that life on the fifth planet had somehow survived the disaster.