A Thousand Sons Read online

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

  “Sounds extravagant,” she said.

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

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

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

  “Yes, Syrbotae,” he said, “giants amongst men, like our grand host.”

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

  “He was magnificent, wasn’t he?”

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

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

  “I don’t know, maybe. You can ask.”

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

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

  “A friend of yours?” asked Lemuel.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Just the ones that interest us,” replied Anen.

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

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

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

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

  “A summons? From whom?” asked Lemuel.

  Ankhu Anen smiled.

  “From Lord Ahriman,” he said.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The Probationer/Creation Myths/Memories of Terra

  THE INTERIOR OF Ahriman’s pavilion was his place of calm. Spacious and well-aired, it was a refuge from the heat of Aghoru. A walnut bookcase sat beside his bedroll, the books on its shelves like old friends, well-thumbed and read countless times, as much for their familiarity as their words.

  A battered copy of Akkadian Literary Forms sat alongside a translated copy of the Voynich Manuscript and the Codex Seraphinianus. The Turba Philosophorum jostled for space with five of the seven cryptical Books of Hzan and the Clavis Solomoni, together with assorted other texts that would not attract unwelcome attention. But had anyone unlocked the hidden compartments secreted within the body of the bookcase, they would have found far more provocative tomes.

  Thuribles hung from sandalwood rafters, and a brazier of green flame burned at the heart of the pavilion. Ahriman breathed in the heady mix of aromas, letting their calming influence ease his passage into the lower Enumerations. He stared into the flames and directed his will along the currents of the aether.

  The future was mist and shadow, a blurred fog through which no meaning could penetrate. In decades past, fractured timelines had shone through the veil of the empyrean, and Ahriman had seen the echoes of futures yet to come as easily as a mortal man could guess what might happen were he to step off a cliff.

  The tides of the Great Ocean were a mystery to him, as unknowable as the far side of the world was to mariners of old. Ahriman felt his concentration slipping, his frustration at his inability to divine the future threatening to overcome his control. Concentration was the key that unlocked all doors, lying at the heart of every practice of the Thousand Sons, and the means by which the greater mysteries could be unravelled.

  Angry with himself, Ahriman shook his head and opened his eyes, uncrossing his legs and rising in one smooth motion. Dressed in crimson robes and a wide leather belt, from which hung a set of bronze keys, he had foregone his armour for this meeting.

  Sobek stood by the entrance to his pavilion, clad in his ruby plates of armour, and Ahriman felt his disapproval.

  “Speak,” commanded Ahriman. “Your aura wears at me. Speak and be done with it.”

  “May I speak freely, my lord?”

  “I just said you could,” snapped Ahriman, forcing himself to calm. “You are my Practicus, and if there is no candour between us you will never achieve the rank of Philosophus.”

  “It galls me to see you punished thus,” said Sobek. “To be forced to train a mortal in the mysteries is no task for one such as you.”

  “Punished?” asked Ahriman. “Is that what you think this is, punishment?”

  “What else could it be?”

  “The primarch has entrusted me with a great task, and this is but the first stage of it,” said Ahriman. “Lemuel Gaumon is mortal and he has a little knowledge and a little power.”

  Sobek snorted in derision and said, “That’s nothing unusual in the 28th Expedit
ion.” Ahriman smiled.

  “True,” he said, “but he is a child taking his first steps, unaware that he walks blindfold along the edge of an abyss. I am to help him to remove that blindfold.”

  “But why?”

  “Because knowledge is a deadly friend, if no one sets the rules. It is our master’s wish that I illuminate this mortal,” said Ahriman. “Or do you doubt the word of the Crimson King?”

  Many of the Emperor’s sons had earned honourable names over the decades of war, not least of whom was Horus Lupercal, Primarch of the Luna Wolves, beloved son of the Emperor. Fulgrim’s warriors knew their leader as the Phoenician, and the First Legion was led by the Lion. Magnus alone of his brothers had earned a series of less than flattering names over the decades of war: Sorcerer… Warlock…

  So when Ahriman had heard his primarch was known among the 28th Expedition’s remembrancers as the Crimson King, he had allowed the name to stand.

  Sobek bowed and said, “Never, my lord. Lord Magnus is the fountainhead of our Legion, and I will never doubt his course, no matter what.”

  Ahriman nodded, sensing the presence of Lemuel Gaumon beyond the canopy of his pavilion. He felt the man’s aura, its light dull and unfocussed among the glittering flares of his fellow legionaries. Where they shone with purity and focus, Gaumon’s was blurred and raw, like an unshielded lumen globe, bright in its own way, but unpleasant to look upon for more than a moment.

  “Gaumon is without, Sobek,” said Ahriman. “Send him in.”

  Sobek nodded and left the pavilion, returning a moment later with a heavyset man dressed in a long crimson robe with loose sleeves and a crest of one of the Nordafrik conclaves stitched on his left breast, Sangha, if Ahriman remembered correctly. Lemuel’s skin was dark, though not the dark of those who had been tanned by the Aghoru sun. Ahriman smelled the man’s body odour even over the megaleion oil coating his skin.

  “Welcome,” said Ahriman, modulating his accent to a more natural, fluid tone and indicating the rug beside the brazier. “Please, sit.”

  Lemuel lowered himself to the rag, clutching a battered notebook to his chest as Sobek withdrew, leaving them alone.

  Ahriman sat before Lemuel and said, “I am Ahzek Ahriman, Chief Librarian of the Thousand Sons.” Lemuel nodded vigorously.

  “I know who you are, my lord,” he said. “I’m honoured you sent for me.”

  “Do you know why I sent for you?”

  “I confess I do not.”

  “It is because you have power, Lemuel Gaumon,” said Ahriman. “You can see the currents of the aether that flow through the world from the Great Ocean. You may not know the names, but you know of what I speak.”

  Lemuel shook his head, flustered and caught off guard.

  “I think you must be mistaken, my lord,” said Lemuel, and Ahriman laughed at the sudden panic in his aura.

  Lemuel held up his notebook and said, “Please, my lord, I am just a humble remembrancer.”

  “No,” said Ahriman, leaning forward and projecting a measure of fire into his aura. “You are far more than that. You are a wielder of sorcery, a witch!”

  It was a simple trick, an invisible domination to cow weaker minds. The effect was immediate. Waves of fear and guilt washed from Lemuel in a tide. Ahriman rose through the Enumerations to shield himself from the man’s raw terror.

  “Please… I do no harm to anyone,” pleaded Lemuel. “I’m not a witch, I swear, I just read old books. I don’t know any spells or anything, please!”

  “Be at peace, Lemuel,” chuckled Ahriman, holding up an outstretched hand. “I am teasing you. I am no fool of a witch hunter, and did not summon you to condemn you. I am going to liberate you.”

  “Liberate me?” asked Lemuel, his breathing returning to normal. “From what?”

  “From your blindness and limitations,” said Ahriman. ‘You have power, but you do not know how to wield it with any skill. I can show you how you can use what power you have, and I can show you how to use it to see things you cannot imagine.”

  Ahriman read the suspicion in Lemuel’s aura, and eased it with a nudge of his own powers, as an animal is calmed by soft words and a gentle touch. The man had no barriers whatsoever in his mind, his psyche undefended and open to the tides of the Great Ocean. In that instant of contact, Ahriman knew the man’s every secret. He saw the barb of sorrow in the man’s heart and mellowed, understanding that the grief driving him echoed his own.

  Power was no salve to that grief, and Lemuel Gaumon would realise that in time. That crashing realisation could wait though; there was no need to dash his hopes just yet.

  “You are so vulnerable, and you don’t even realise it,” said Ahriman softly.

  “My lord?”

  “Tell me what you know of the Great Ocean.”

  “I don’t know that term.”

  “The warp,” said Ahriman. “The empyrean.”

  “Oh. Not much really,” admitted Lemuel. He took a deep breath before continuing, like a student afraid of giving the wrong answer. “It’s a kind of higher dimension, a psychic realm where starships can travel far faster than normal. It allows astrotelepaths to communicate and, well, that’s about it.”

  “That is broadly true, but the Great Ocean is so much more than that, Lemuel. It is the home of the Primordial Creator, the energy that drives all things. It is a reflection of our universe and we are a reflection of it. What occurs in one affects the other, and like a planetary ocean, it is not without its predators. Your mind, dull though it is, shines like a beacon in the ocean for the creatures that lurk in its depths. Were I to allow you to use your powers unchecked, you would soon be dead.”

  Lemuel swallowed and placed the notebook beside him.

  “I had no idea,” he said. “I just thought… I mean, I don’t know what I thought. I figured I was able to tap into parts of my mind others weren’t able to. I could see lights around people, their auras, and I learned to read them, to understand what they were feeling. Does that make sense?”

  “It makes perfect sense. Those lights, as you call them, are aetheric echoes of a person’s emotion, health and power. A shadow self of that person exists in the Great Ocean, a reflection of their psyche that imprints itself in its currents.”

  Lemuel shook his head with a wry smile and said, “This is a lot to take in, my lord.”

  “I understand that,” said Ahriman. “I do not expect you to absorb it all just now. You will become my Probationer, and begin your studies on the morrow.”

  “Do I have a choice in this?”

  “Not if you want to live.”

  “Tomorrow,” said Lemuel. “Lucky I happened to be selected for the 28th Expedition, eh?”

  “If there is one thing I have come to know in my long years of study, it is that there is no such thing as luck when it comes to the positioning of the universe’s chess pieces. Your coming here was no accident. I was meant to train you. I have seen it,” said Ahriman.

  “You saw the future?” asked Lemuel. “You knew I was going to be here and that this was all going to happen?”

  “Many years ago, I saw you standing on the streets of Prospero in the robes of a Neophyte.”

  “On Prospero!” said Lemuel, his aura shimmering with his excitement. “And a Neophyte, that’s one of your ranks, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” confirmed Ahriman, “a very low one.”

  “And you saw this? It’s the future? That’s amazing!”

  Ahriman smiled at how easily mortals were impressed by such powers. How impressed and, more often, how frightened.

  “In years past, I could travel the Great Ocean and open my eyes to a world of potential futures,” explained Ahriman. “To do that is no great trick, even mortals can do it. But to read those currents and sort meaning and truth from the chaos is a skill beyond all but the most gifted of seers.”

  “Will I be able read it?”

  “No,” said Ahriman, “not without decades of training by the Corvidae. To
read the multi-dimensional patterns of the Great Ocean and lift meaning from the meaningless requires two modalities of thought. Firstly, the rapid, accurate and efficient movement of thought from concept to concept, whereby all ideas become one; and secondly, the halting of thought altogether, were one idea is reduced to nothing. I have an eidetic memory, a mind crafted by the greatest technologists of the forgotten ages that allows me to do this. You do not.”

  “Then what can I do?”

  “First you must learn how to shield your consciousness from danger,” said Ahriman, rising to his feet. “When you have accomplished that, then we will see what you can do.”

  THE ALIEN TITANS towered above him, majestic and powerful, but Khalophis wasn’t impressed. True, they were bigger than Canis Vertex, but they had none of the robust brutality of the Warlord guarding the gates of the Pyrae cult’s temple. He stepped back, craning his neck to see the elongated curves of their mighty head sections.

  Phosis T’kar had told Khalophis of the giant statues, and he’d wanted to see them for himself, to measure himself against them.

  He turned from the towering constructs to face his warriors. A dozen Astartes from the 6th Fellowship stood behind the black altar, an object that reeked of dark rites of sacrifice. He’d listened at the Rehahti as his primarch had explained that the Mountain was a place of remembrance for the dead and was to be treated with respect. That didn’t change the fact that Khalophis simply didn’t trust the Aghoru.

  Their masked leader stood with ten other tribesmen, all with their faces obscured by mirrored masks. Their presence had been a condition of allowing Khalophis and his warriors to come to the valley. That spoke of subterfuge. Why would the Aghoru not want the Legion to come to their valley?

  “What do you have to hide?” he whispered, unheard by any save himself.

  The masked leader of the Aghoru was looking at him, and Khalophis gestured towards the giant constructs.

  “Do you know what these are?” he asked.