THREE

The Best Move
Rub’ al Khali
Arzashkun

‘Your Empress is exposed,’ said the Choirmaster of Astropaths with a grin.

‘I am aware of that,’ replied Sarashina, moving the carved piece of coral from the ocean world of Laeran across the board. ‘Do you think this is the first time I have played regicide?’

Nemo Zhi-Meng smiled and shook his head. ‘Of course not, but I do not want to win through your inattention.’

‘You are assuming you are going to win.’

‘I normally do.’

‘You won’t today,’ said Sarashina, as Zhi-Meng took a Castellan with his Chevalier and laid it on the carpeted floor. The board and its pieces had been a gift of the Phoenician himself, and the ornamentation on each figurine was wondrous. Each figure was worked to an obsessive degree, with a character all of their own, as one would expect from the hand of a primarch who was the embodiment of such attention to detail. The feel of them was exquisite, and to touch such pieces was as pleasurable as the game itself.

‘I think you are wrong,’ said Zhi-Meng as Sarashina pushed her Divinitarch across the board.

‘You should think again,’ said Sarashina, reclining on the wealth of sumptuous cushions spread over the floor of the Choirmaster’s chambers. ‘You see?’

Zhi-Meng leaned over the board and laughed as he perceived the arrangement of pieces on the grid.

‘Inconceivable!’ he said, clapping his thin, sculptor’s hands. On the heart finger of his left hand was an onyx ring carved with intertwined symbols that might have been language, but was more likely ornamentation. Zhi-Meng had told her the ring was purchased from a man who claimed to have journeyed from the Fourth Dominion, but Sarashina suspected this was another one of the Choirmaster’s mischievous boasts. If he had retained his eyes, they would have twinkled as he told the story. Instead, his almond shaped eyes were sewn shut, telling anyone who knew of such things that he had been blinded over a century ago when such techniques were common.

The Choirmaster shook his head and he scanned the board again, as though checking he was truly beaten. ‘I am defeated by the assassin’s blade hidden in the velvet sleeve. And here I thought I had planned enough moves ahead to win with ease.’

‘A good regicide player thinks five moves ahead,’ said Sarashina, ‘but a great regicide player–’

‘Only thinks one move ahead, but it is always the best move,’ finished Zhi-Meng stroking the long forks of his white beard. ‘If you’re going to quote Guilliman to me, at least have the decency to let me win first.’

‘Maybe next time,’ answered Sarashina as a blinded servitor entered the Choirmaster’s chambers. Robed in white and with no thoughts of its own, it was a ghostly apparition, its presence visible as a blur of murky light in her mind. Elements of the servitor’s brain had been removed with gemynd-shears, and only the most rudimentary cognitive functions remained.

‘Do you know why I insist we play regicide?’ asked Zhi-Meng.

‘To show off?’

‘Partly,’ admitted Zhi-Meng, ‘but there’s more to it than that. Regicide helps us develop patience and discipline in choosing between alternatives when an impulsive decision seems very attractive.’

‘Always teaching, is that it?’

‘Learning is always easier if the subject doesn’t know it’s being taught.’

‘Are you teaching me?’

‘Both of us, I think,’ said Zhi-Meng as the servitor deposited a steel-jacketed pot of tisane, and the smell of warm, sweetened honey came to Sarashina.

‘You and your sweet tooth,’ she said.

‘It is a weakness, I confess,’ said Zhi-Meng, dismissing the servitor with a gesture and reaching over to pour two small cups of the warm liquid. He handed her a cup and she sipped it gingerly, savouring the sweet taste.

‘It gives me solace,’ said Zhi-Meng, with a smile. ‘And in such times, solace must be taken wherever it can be found, don’t you agree?’

‘I thought that was what the qash in the hookah pipe was for.’

‘Solace comes in many forms,’ replied Zhi-Meng, removing his belt and letting his robe fall to the floor. His body was thin and wiry, but Sarashina knew that there was strength in those limbs that belied their frail appearance. His skin was parchment taut and pale, every centimetre covered in tattoos inked by his own hand with a needle said to have been snapped from the spine of a fossilised beast found in the bedrock of the Merican rad-wastes. A cornucopia of warding imagery was wrought on the canvas of his flesh: hawk-headed birds, snakes devouring their tails, apotropaic crosses, eyes of aversion and gorgoneion.

That such symbols flew in the face of the Imperial Truth mattered little to the Choirmaster, for he was the oldest living astropath in the City of Sight, and his knowledge of what protective wards would guard against the dangers of the immaterium was second to none.

He lay down next to Sarashina, and he stroked her arm with great tenderness. She smiled and rolled onto her front, letting Zhi-Meng massage her back and ease the tensions of yet another arduous day of passing increasingly desperate messages from the mindalls to the Conduit and onwards to their intended recipients. Zhi-Meng had studied with the ancient wise men who had dwelled in these mountains before the coming of the Emperor and his grand vision of a palace crowning the world, and his touch spread healing warmth through her aged bones.

‘I could let you do that all night,’ she purred.

‘I would let you,’ he replied. ‘But such is not our lot, my dear.’

‘Shame.’

‘Tell me of the day’s messages,’ he asked.

‘Why? You already know what’s passed through the tower today.’

‘True, but I like to hear what you think of it,’ he said, working a stubborn knot of tension in her lower back.

‘We have been getting a lot of traffic from worlds demanding Army fleets to keep them safe from any rebel forces.’

‘Why not ask for Legion forces?’

‘I think people are afraid that if four Legions can turn traitor then maybe others will too.’

‘Interesting,’ said the Choirmaster. His hand kneaded the bunched muscles around her shoulders and neck as he spoke. ‘Go on. Tell me of the Legions. What news comes to Terra of our greatest warriors?’

‘Only fragments,’ admitted Sarashina. ‘Some Legions send daily for tasking orders, a few are beyond our reach and others appear to be acting autonomously.’

‘Tell me why Space Marines deciding their own orders sets a dangerous precedent,’ asked Zhi-Meng.

‘Why do you ask questions that you already know the answer to?’

‘To see if you know the answer, of course.’

‘Very well, I’ll indulge you, since you’re making me feel human again,’ said Sarashina. ‘Once loosed, such power as the Legions possess will be difficult to shackle to Terra once more.’

‘Why?’

‘To think that the Space Marines are simply gene-bred killers is to grossly underestimate them. Their commanders are men of great skill and ambition. Free to act on their own authority, they will not take kindly to being brought to heel once again, no matter who demands it.’

‘Very good,’ nodded the Choirmaster.

‘But it will not come to that,’ said Sarashina. ‘Horus Lupercal will be crushed at Isstvan. Not even he can stand against the force of seven Legions.’

‘I believe you are right, Aniq,’ said Zhi-Meng. ‘Seven Legions is a force with a power beyond imagining. How long will it be until Lord Dorn’s fleet reaches Isstvan V?’

‘Soon,’ said Sarashina, knowing the vagaries of warp travel made precise predictions impossible.

‘Something bothers you regarding the coming battle? Aside from the obvious, I mean.’

‘The primarch of the VIII Legion,’ said Sarashina.

‘I hear from the Raven Guard that he is reunited with his warriors.’

‘Exactly, but Lord Dorn was adamant that we not send the fleet assembly orders for the Isstvan expedition to Konrad Curze, only to the Night Lords Chapters stationed within the Sol system.’

‘And this has caused alarm within the palace?’ said Zhi-Meng, more to himself than Sarashina. ‘That a primarch rejoins his Legion?’

‘To say the least,’ said Sarashina. ‘No one seems to know where Curze has been since the Cheraut compliance.’

‘Lord Dorn knows, though he will not say,’ replied Zhi-Meng, ‘He bade me send a message to Lords Vulkan and Corax.’

‘What kind of message?’

‘I do not know,’ said Zhi-Meng. ‘It was composed in a manner unknown to me, some form of battle-cant known only to the Emperor’s sons. I can only hope it reaches them in time. But enough of matters upon which we can have no further effect. Tell me of Prospero. Why do you think we have had no contact for months?’

‘Perhaps Magnus is still smarting after his treatment at Nikaea,’ said Sarashina.

‘That is certainly possible,’ agreed Zhi-Meng. ‘I saw him after the Emperor pronounced his judgement, and it is a sight I will never forget. His anger was terrible indeed, but even worse was the hurt betrayal I felt in his heart.’

‘I can assign more choirs to reaching Prospero,’ offered Sarashina.

Zhi-Meng shook his head. ‘No. Magnus will re-establish contact before long, I am sure. As hurt as he was by the judgement, he loves his father too dearly to remain estranged for long. There, you are done.’

Sarashina turned onto her front, rolling her shoulders and rotating her neck. She smiled, feeling her joints and muscles flex and rotate freely.

‘Whatever the holy men of the mountain taught you, it has potency,’ she said.

Zhi-Meng laced his fingers together and flexed them outwards with a smile. ‘I taught you what they taught me, remember?’

‘I remember. Lie down,’ she said, sitting up as he lay face down in the space she had just vacated.

She straddled him, and worked her fingers along the length of his tattooed back. Hawk-headed men and grinning snakes stretched and swelled beneath her fingertips.

‘Tell me of Kai Zulane,’ he said. ‘I felt the power of his nightmares through the whisper stones.’

‘There were few in the tower who did not,’ noted Sarashina.

‘His mind is damaged, Aniq, badly damaged. Are you sure it is worth the effort to save him from the hollow mountain? The great beacon will always need fresh minds. Now more than ever.’

Sarashina paused in her massage. ‘I believe so. He was my best student.’

‘Once, maybe,’ said Zhi-Meng. ‘Now he is just an astropath who can send no messages. One who chooses not to send or receive.’

‘I know that. I’ve assigned my best seeker to bring him back. I think you’ll approve.’

‘Who?’

‘Athena Diyos,’ said Sarashina. ‘She has a rare skill in rebuilding damaged minds.’

‘Athena Diyos,’ mused Zhi-Meng with a contented purr as Sarashina walked the heels of her palms over his shoulder blades. ‘Throne help him.’

‘Mistress Sarashina tells me you can no longer master the nuncio,’ said Athena, her voice dripping with venomous scorn. ‘The most basic of the telepathic disciplines, without which no astropath can function. Not much of an astropath are you?’

‘I suppose not,’ said Kai, trying not to stare.

‘Is there something wrong?’

‘Ah, well, it’s just that you’re not quite what I expected.’

‘What did you expect?’

‘Not… this,’ replied Kai, knowing how ridiculous that sounded.

To say that Athena Diyos was not what Kai had expected was an understatement of magnificent proportions. After a night of restless dreams, Kai had been summoned to one of the anonymous training cells on the novitiates’ level. Bereft of furniture beyond a single chair, the cell was as bare of signifiers as it was possible to be.

Athena Diyos had been waiting for him, and Kai immediately sensed the sharpness of her personality.

Her body reclined in a floating chair, contoured to the twisted shape of her spine and what little remained of her limbs. Athena’s legs had been amputated at mid-thigh, and her left arm was a puckered mass of scar tissue. In place of her right arm, a thin manipulator augmetic tapped an impatient tattoo on the brushed steel of the chair. Her skull was hairless and the skin there was like the weathered surface of an ancient ruin. The sockets of her eyes were concave hollows of vat-grown skin, the only part of her face that had escaped the trauma of whatever fate had seen her consigned to this chair.

‘Use those fancy ocular augmetics to blink-click a picture,’ snapped Athena. ‘You can study it at your leisure once we’re done. But for now we have work to do, understood?’

‘Of course. Yes, I mean, sorry.’

‘Don’t be sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t want your pity.’

Her chair spun around and drifted to the other side of the chamber, and Kai took the opportunity to apply a medical filter over his augmetics to examine her one remaining arm. Dermal degradation and scar density told him she had suffered these wounds no more than a few years ago. Evidence of tissue crystallisation indicated her wounds were at least partially caused by vacuum damage.

Athena had been crippled on a starship.

If nothing else, they had that in common.

‘Sit,’ said Athena, turning to face the room’s only chair.

Kai took a seat, and the padded chair encased his body. Pressure sensors shifted internal pads to match his bone structure. It was the most comfortable seat Kai had ever known.

‘Do you know who I am?’ asked Athena.

‘No.’

‘I am Athena Diyos, and I am a seeker. That means I am going to find the pieces of your ability that still work and put them back together. If I succeed you will be of use again.’

‘And if you fail?’

‘Then you will be sent to the hollow mountain.’

‘Oh.’

‘Is that what you want?’ asked Athena, her augmetic arm ceasing its relentless tattoo on the arm of her chair.

‘At this point I’m past caring,’ said Kai, crossing his legs and rubbing a hand across his stubbled cheeks. The light in the room was offensively bright and shadowless, making it feel horribly clinical. Athena’s chair hovered close to him, and he smelled the counterseptics and pain balms slathered on her ruined arm. He noticed a gold ring on her middle finger, and zoomed in on the tiny engraving at its centre: a feathered bird arising from a cracked egg in the midst of a raging fire.

She saw his glance, but didn’t acknowledge it.

‘Do you know what happens in the hollow mountain?’ she asked.

‘Of course not,’ said Kai. ‘No one speaks of it.’

‘Why do you think that is?’

‘How should I know? A rigorous code of silence?’

‘It’s because no one who goes into the hollow mountain ever comes out,’ said Athena. She leaned forward, and Kai fought the urge to press himself further back in his own chair. ‘I’ve seen what happens to the poor unfortunates who go in there. I feel sorry for them. They’re gifted with power, just not enough to be useful in any other way. It’s a noble sacrifice, but sacrifice is just a pretty way of saying that you’re going to die.’

‘So what happens to them?’

‘First your skin cracks, like paper in a fire, falling from your bones like dust. Then your muscles waste away, and though you can feel the life being drawn out of you, it’s impossible to stop. Piece by piece, your mind dies: memory, joy, happiness, pain and fear. It all gets used. The beacon wastes nothing of you. Everything you were is sucked from your frame, leaving nothing but a withered husk, a hollow shell of ashen, dry skin and powdered bones. And it’s painful, agonisingly painful. You should know that before you so lightly dismiss this last chance of life I’m offering you.’

Kai felt the heat of her breath on his skin, hot and scented with a sickly sweet aroma of medicines.

‘I don’t want that,’ he said.

‘Didn’t think so,’ said Athena, the manipulator augmetic pushing her away from Kai.

‘So how are you going to help me?’

‘How long since you entered a receptive trance?’ asked Athena.

The question took Kai aback. ‘I’m not sure.’

‘If I am going to keep you from the hollow mountain, then you need to give me something to work with, Kai Zulane. If you ever lie to me, ever hold anything back or make me think that in any way you are impeding my work or putting a single living soul within this city in danger, then I won’t hesitate to write you off. Am I making myself clear?’

‘Amply,’ replied Kai, now understanding that his life was in this disfigured woman’s lap. ‘It has been several months since I’ve entered a receptive trance.’

‘Why? That must be painful to you,’ said Athena. ‘Are you psi-sick?’

‘A little,’ admitted Kai. ‘It hurts in my joints and I have a low grade headache all the time.’

‘Then why avoid a trance?’

‘Because I’d rather be sick than feel what I felt on the Argo.’

‘So it’s nothing to do with any lack of ability. That’s a relief. At least I’ll have something to work with.’

Athena’s chair slid towards him again, and she held out her hand. The skin was puckered and tight, ribbed with buckled ridges of hardened, discoloured flesh. It was glossy and wet looking, and he hesitated for the briefest second before taking her hand in his own.

‘I’m going to enter a nuncio trance,’ said Athena. ‘You’ll follow my words, but I want you to form the dreamscape. Whatever you normally use to blank the canvas prior to a message, do nothing different. I will be with you, but all we’re doing is forming the dreamscape. We’re not going to send or receive a message. Understand that before we go in.’

‘I understand,’ said Kai. ‘I don’t like it, but I understand.’

‘You don’t have to like it. Just do it.’

Kai nodded and closed his eyes, slowing his breathing and running through the preparatory mantras that would expand his consciousness into the dreamscape. This part was easy. Anyone could do it, even a non-psyker, though all they would get out of it was a sense of relaxation. It was the next part that would be troublesome, and he tried to force down his apprehension.

‘Rise into the dreamscape,’ said Athena, her voice losing its harsh edge and becoming almost pleasant.

A mild sensation of vertigo tugged at Kai’s mind as he let the mantras lift consciousness from his body. He heard the suggestion of singing, like a choir in a far distant theatre. The tower’s astropaths were busy, but that was only to be expected in such turbulent times. A million sibilant voices filled the tower, but the whisper stones kept them separate. Kai dismissed any thoughts of the rebellion on the edge of Imperial space, picturing a soothing light enveloping his body in a protective sheath.

Now he was ready.

He could feel Athena’s presence as her consciousness flowed alongside his own. In such a mental state, there was no such thing as up or down, but human perceptions couldn’t help but shape so formless a space. Each astropath entered a receptive state in their own way, some surrounding themselves with imagery relating to the telepath whose projections they were attempting to receive, others by focussing on the key symbolic elements common to most senders.

Kai employed neither method, preferring to create his own mental canvas upon which to imprint the sending telepath’s imagery. All too often, a message could be distorted by the mental architecture of the receiving mind, and such misinterpretations were the bane of every astropath. In all his years of service, Kai had never yet wrongly interpreted an incoming vision, but had heard – as had all students of the City of Sight – horror stories of telepaths who had misread desperate pleas for aid or despatched expeditionary fleets to destroy worlds whose inhabitants were loyal servants of the Throne.

He felt heat and his skin prickled with sweat.

False heat, but real enough in this place of dreams and miracles.

Kai opened his eyes and the desert stretched out for kilometres all around him.

White sand shimmered in the heat haze, a vast empty landscape of nothingness that was completely free of anything troubling. Nothing disturbed the achingly empty vista – it was as though all life and character had been utterly erased from the world.

Kai’s dreamscape had been this way ever since his return to Terra.

Hypnopompic drugs had kept him awake aboard the salvage cutter, but the human mind could not long escape the need to dream. Denied such sleep-depriving narcotics in the Castana medicae facility on Kyprios, his first night back on Terra had almost shattered his fragile psyche, before his training had kicked in and he had taken control of his dreaming. Aside from last night, he had come to this place in his dreams and wandered its wondrous emptiness until he woke.

Such sleep refreshed the body, but left the mind without any form of release.

‘This is your canvas?’ asked a voice behind him, and Kai turned to see Athena Diyos walking towards him. Her long robes flowed around her shapely body, and long hair, auburn with a hint of gold red flowed to her shoulders.

‘You look surprised,’ she said.

‘I suppose I am,’ replied Kai, as taken aback as when he had first seen her.

‘You shouldn’t be. This is the realm of dreams after all. You can shape your form to how you wish yourself to be.’

‘But not you,’ said Kai, catching the well-honed deflection. ‘This is the real you.’

Athena swept past Kai, and instead of the medically-prescribed chemical reek of her skin, she smelled of cinnamon and almonds.

‘You are beautiful,’ said Kai.

She looked over her shoulder with a smile, and her face came alive. ‘You are kind. Most people say you were beautiful.’

‘You’ll come to understand that I’m not “most people”.’

‘I’m sure,’ said Athena. ‘So this is your dreamscape?’

‘Yes, this is the Rub’ al Khali,’ said Kai.

‘I don’t know what that means.’

‘It means the Empty Quarter,’ said Kai. ‘It was a desert of Old Earth that grew and grew until it merged with another great sandscape that eventually filled the mid-terrene oceans to create the dust bowl.’

‘It is the mental mindscape of a dreamer who does not want to dream,’ said Athena. ‘It is not healthy to inhabit a level of cognition that denies the subconscious mind any release. No symbolism, nothing to remind a dreamer of the waking world and nothing to reveal so much as a single aspect of the dreamer.’

‘So what do we do now?’ asked Kai.

‘We explore,’ said Athena. ‘I need to get a feel for your mind before I can see the cracks.’

‘There isn’t much to explore in the Rub’ al Khali.’

‘We’ll see. Tell me why you are here.’

‘In this trance?’

‘No, in the City of Sight. I read your file. You were attached to the Ultramarines Legion aboard the Argo, a helot-crewed frigate en route to the Jovian shipyards for a structural refit prior to making the translation to Calth. Tell me about why you are here and not en route to Ultramar.’

‘I don’t think we should talk about that,’ said Kai. The landscape on the far horizon rippled as though something vast moved just below the surface of the sand. He tried to ignore it, but the featureless wasteland of his dream shifted to accommodate this new intrusion.

Athena followed his gaze, seeing the cascade of white sand from the ridge above them.

‘What is that?’ she asked.

‘You read my file,’ said Kai, straining to keep the fear from his voice. ‘You should know what it is.’

‘I want you to tell me.’

‘No,’ said Kai.

Something broke the surface of the sand, something glistening and metallic, cobalt blue and gold, like the scaled hide of a serpent breaking the surface of the ocean. It moved with a hunter’s grace and a killer’s patience before vanishing beneath the surface.

‘We’re very exposed out here,’ said Athena, matter-of-factly.

‘I know that,’ snapped Kai.

‘Don’t you think we ought to find somewhere safe?’

‘Where would you suggest?’ snapped Kai. ‘We’re in the desert.’

His heart was hammering against his ribs, and his palms dripped sweat. His mouth felt dry and his bladder wanted to empty itself. He shielded his eyes from the blazing sun and scanned the horizons for any sign of the subterranean predator.

‘No, we are not,’ said Athena. ‘We are in your mind, sharing your fear. Whatever is out there is part of you, and the only one who will let it hurt us is you. Come on, Kai, have you forgotten the first principles of psychic defence?’

‘I can’t stop it from coming.’

‘Of course you can,’ said Athena, taking his hand. ‘Craft whatever it is that kept you safe before.’

Kai saw the glint of metal breaking the sand over Athena’s shoulders, and all thoughts of even the most basic training tenets fled from his mind. The fear was all-encompassing, and he heard the sound of screaming, a host of terrified voices that seemed to ooze from the sand like the cries of an entire army buried alive.

‘You can do this, Kai,’ said Athena, glancing down at the sand. ‘Hold on to my voice.’

Athena began reciting the basic exercises of the nuncio, and the soothing cadence of her voice was like a calming soporific. ‘This is the dream I craft for myself. It a place of tranquillity. I am the master of this domain. Say it with me, Kai.’

‘I am the master of this domain,’ said Kai, trying to force himself into believing it. The shadow of the thing beneath the sand spread on the surface, a gathering darkness that wouldn’t fade. It was circling beneath them, rising to the surface with lazy sweeps of its metallic body. It knew its prey was vulnerable, and was in no hurry to rush the kill.

‘Say it like you mean it!’ hissed Athena. ‘I don’t want to see that thing any more than you do.’

‘I am the master of this domain!’ yelled Kai.

‘Now craft us somewhere safe,’ said Athena.

Kai tried to clear his thoughts as the sand shifted beneath them. The screaming voices were closer to the surface now. A leviathan moved beneath him, and its bulk was impossibly vast, stretching out kilometres to surround Kai and Athena.

He knew what it was, but that knowledge only made him more determined to avoid it.

‘I know somewhere safe,’ he said.

‘Show me,’ said Athena.

Slowly, stone by stone, Kai pictured the construction of a fortress of light in the raw fecundity of his mindscape. Fictive turrets, domed towers, pleasure gardens and tree-lined processionals erupted from the sand around them, rising higher and higher with every passing moment. Gilded arches, ornamented balconies and minarets of jade, mother of pearl and electrum formed from the building blocks of imagination and recall.

This was a fortress of ancient times, a wonder of the world that no longer existed.

Athena’s eyes widened at the sight of the magnificent fortress, its walls glittering with hoar frost and polished smooth as though formed from vitrified sand. The ground rose beneath them and they were carried into the air on a high wall, hundreds of metres from the undulant sand.

‘What is this place?’ asked Athena as their dizzying ascent halted.

A fierce wind whipped around them and Kai held her tight as it sought to hurl them from the walls.

‘It is the Urartu fortress of Arzashkun,’ said Kai. ‘It once stood at the headwaters of a great river that was said to have its source in the garden that birthed humanity.’

‘Does it still stand?’ asked Athena as more towers, higher walls and yet more barred gateways formed from the shimmering sand of the dreamscape.

‘No, it was destroyed,’ said Kai. ‘A great king razed it to the ground many thousands of years ago.’

‘But you know its likeness?’

Kai heard the rumble of something vast approaching the surface of the sand, but kept his attention firmly focussed on Athena’s question. If he allowed his thoughts to stray beyond the walls of the fortress they would come crashing down. Instead, he cast his mind back to the glass walls of an incredible library that nestled amongst towering highland forests.

‘Not long after I took up my position with the XIII Legion, I was lucky enough to be allowed access to the Crystal Library on Prandium,’ said Kai, focusing on the past to avoid the present. ‘You should see it, Athena, tens of millions of books and paintings and symphonies contained within resonant crystals set all along the length of the canyon walls. The warden showed me one of Primarch Guilliman’s works, just set in the cliff like it was nothing out of the ordinary. But it was incredible, and it wasn’t what I’d expected either. There wasn’t any illuminated scriptwork or exquisite calligraphy, just a painstaking attention to detail that no mortal writer could ever match.’

‘And this fortress was in the book?’ said Athena.

‘Yes. On a page that told of Lord Guilliman’s time on Terra before his Crusade fleets set out into the galaxy. I saw a sketch of this fortress, so real that I could feel the hardness of its stone and the strength of its walls. It was a footnote really, a veiled reference to when the primarch’s father had travelled there and studied its architecture. I have been to those lands, and nothing remains of Arzashkun now, not even memory, but Lord Guilliman’s skill had rendered it as clearly as if Rogal Dorn himself had handed him the plans.’

‘If only that were true,’ said Athena, and Kai followed her gaze beyond the walls.

His breathing quickened and he struggled to keep his equilibrium as a bloom of red appeared on the sand, like a splash of blood in milk. His racing heart rate increased still further, and he swallowed as he felt the furious tugging of memory. A child’s pleading voice intruded on his thoughts and the red stain expanded at a geometric rate.

The shadowy hunter beneath the ground surged towards the spreading crimson mass, hot and urgent in its desire. It broke the surface beyond the walls, all angles, blades and red noise. A ghost ship brought to the surface of the deepest ocean, it breached like an ambush hunter and crashed back down with a thunderous boom. Its flanks were iron and blue, gold and bronze. It was a world killer, a monster capable of unimaginable destruction, and his fortress of light was no match for its terrible power.

It came on a tide of screams, ten thousand voices shrieking in terror and pain. It knew his name and it wanted him to join the dead whose bones and blood filled its wailing corridors and chambers.

Kai was catapulted from his dreamspace with a terrified shout as the fortress was overwhelmed in a terrifying crescendo of leering faces, black blades and tearing fangs.

His eyes flicked open and he jack-knifed upright in his chair. The whisper stones glowed angry red as they dissipated the psychic residue of their connection into the trap chambers beneath the tower. Kai pressed the heels of his palms into his face, feeling the chill ceramic and steel of his artificial eyes against his skin. Revulsion, guilt, sorrow and terror vied for space in his frontal lobes and a strangled sob burst from a throat that was raw from screaming.

No tears fell, but the anguish he felt was no less potent.

The desert was gone and the blunt, geometric forms of Athena’s chamber rushed to fill his senses with bland, clinical reality.

‘That was the Argo?’ said Athena.

Kai nodded. He realised he was still holding her hand, his knuckles white with tension. Tiny crescents of blood welled from where his nails had cut the thin layer of her regrown skin. Instantly contrite, he pulled his hand away.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I didn’t mean…’

Athena closed her fingers into a pained fist.

‘I felt it,’ she said, taking his hand again. ‘Everything you felt as they died. I felt it all.’

Kai wept tearlessly for the lost souls of the Argo.

But most of all he wept for himself.