SIX

Woe-weavers and Doomsayers
Acceptance
The Red Eye

News of the massacre on Isstvan V spread, as all bad news does, with gleeful rapidity, as if those who bore it took unseemly relish in passing it on. The effect on the populace of the palace was immediate and contradictory. In the worker habs of the Brahmaputra Plateau, riots broke out between those who railed against the notion of the Warmaster’s treachery and those who decried him as a faithless oath-breaker. In the precincts of Ter-Guar, ten thousand wailing women knelt before the towering fortress of the Eternity Gate and begged the Emperor to give the lie to the news.

Woe-weavers and doomsayers roamed the streets, screeching of brother turned on brother as they wailed and gnashed their teeth with zealous frenzy. Panic swept through the palace like the dreaded Life-eater virus, leaving ashen hopes and broken dreams in its wake. Men wept openly before their wives and children, their faith in the infallibility of the Emperor shaken to the core. That Horus Lupercal could have betrayed his father was terrible beyond imagining, but to learn that so many of the Emperor’s sons had followed him into rebellion was more than many could bear.

The people of Terra were waking up to a very different reality, one with which many of the globe’s inhabitants found themselves unable to cope. To have a dream so precious that its demise made life unbearable was the cold reality of the day following the news of the bloodshed on Isstvan V.

Hundreds of inconsolable citizens of Terra threw themselves from the cliffs of the palace or quietly took blades to their necks and wrists in the cold confines of their homes. On the Merican plains of Jonasburg, the seven thousand men and women of a bio-weapons storage facility exposed themselves to a pernicious strain of the newly-developed gangshi virus and perished in the flames of automated decontamination procedures rather than live in a world where the Emperor could be betrayed.

When word reached the Diemensland prison island, the inmates declared themselves loyal servants of the Warmaster and slaughtered their overseers. Regiments drawn from the Magyar Ossurites mustered in the Meganesian heartlands, but the battle to retake the island would take many bloody weeks.

All over the globe, the solid certainty of the Imperium’s invincibility was crumbling, but worse was to come. As the sun reached its zenith above the hollow mountain and the shadows hid, word came that one of the Emperor’s sons had fallen on the sands of Isstvan V. Ferrus Manus, beloved gene-sire of the Iron Hands was dead, slain, it was said, by the hand of his most beloved brother.

It was impossible to believe, ridiculous. That a demi-god could be slain was preposterous, the lunatic notion of a delusional fool. Yet as the hours passed and fragments of information eked from the City of Sight, it became harder to deny the truth of Ferrus Manus’s death. People tore out their hair and mortified their flesh in bloody honour of the Emperor’s fallen son. Vulkan too was rumoured to be dead, though no one could yet say for sure whether this was true or fevered speculation. Yet even as cold facts spread into the global consciousness, they came on a tide of wild rumour and manic embellishment that grew with every retelling.

Some tales spoke of the Warmaster’s fleet breaching the outer perimeter of the solar system, while others had his warships on the verge of entering Terra’s orbit. False prophets arose on every continent, spreading a credo of falsehoods and misinformation until Imperial Arbitrators or gold-armoured warriors of the Legio Custodes silenced them. As more and more lies spread across the world, suspicions began to form in the minds of Terra’s leaders that not all were the result of panic and the mutational power of rumour and distance, but of deliberate misinformation by agents of the Warmaster.

The cryptaesthesians passed word to the Legio Custodes of numerous messages sent to Terra with concealed subtexts, hidden encryptions and suspicious routings. Acting on such information, the Custodians made numerous arrests, all of which only fanned the flames of unrest. The notion of the enemy within turned brother upon brother, neighbours into potential spies, and any word of dissent marked a man out as a traitor.

In such a climate of fear, the people of Terra turned to whatever gave them comfort. To some it was the solace of loved ones, to others it was the oblivion promised by alcohol or narcotics. Some swaddled themselves in hope that the Imperium was strong enough to weather this terrible storm, placing their faith in the Emperor’s wisdom and the power of his remaining armies.

Others’ faith in the Emperor was of a radically different stripe, and the clandestine churches of the Lectitio Divinitatus grew from small gatherings of like-minded individuals to massed congregations that met in secret basements, echoing warehouses and other such unremembered spaces.

In time of turmoil, the human mind seeks solace wherever it can, and never more so than in times of war. For it was clear to everyone on Terra that the Warmaster’s treachery was no longer simply an isolated rebellion.

It was nothing less than galactic civil war.

The temple had never been busier, which was ironic given that it was likely to be razed to the ground sometime soon. Ghota had not returned, but Roxanne knew it was only a matter of time. She wondered if she could have done anything different, if there was something she could have done that might have avoided this inevitable doom. No, she had been defending herself, and were it not for her unique abilities then she would have suffered a lingering, degrading and painful death.

Roxanne had come to the temple believing that she deserved such a fate, but time and distance had given her a perspective on what had happened aboard the Argo. It hadn’t been her fault, despite what her father and brothers kept telling her. The vessel had been commissioned at the outset of the Great Crusade and the demands of war had kept it from its regularly scheduled maintenance refits. With such inherently unstable technology as Geller Fields, it had only been a matter of time until disaster struck.

She swallowed hard as a mouthful of bile rose in her throat at the memories of being trapped in her crystal dome, protected and left to wonder what had become of the crew, but knowing full well what their fate had been.

Roxanne rubbed the heels of her palms against her eyes and took a deep breath.

‘Calm is the way that the eye sees,’ she said. ‘The storm parts before me and the swells of the ocean rise to meet me in glorious concord.’

‘Talking to yourself is a sign of madness,’ said a voice at her shoulders. ‘That’s what my dad always said.’

Roxanne looked down and saw the tiny and lost features of Maya’s eldest surviving son.

‘Arik,’ she said. ‘Your father was a clever man. I think he was onto something.’

‘Are you mad?’ asked the boy.

Roxanne considered the question seriously. She wasn’t sure she knew the answer.

‘I think we all go a little mad sometimes,’ replied Roxanne, sitting next to Arik on a wooden bench. ‘But it’s nothing to worry about.’

‘I though I was going mad when my brothers died,’ said Arik, staring at the Vacant Angel at the end of the building. ‘I kept seeing faces on that statue, but mum kept telling me I was making it up and that I was being stupid.’

Roxanne risked a glance at the faceless statue, unwilling to spare it more than a glance. Palladis had told her what he thought he’d seen there after Ghota’s men had been killed, and now she wondered what manner of presence might have fleetingly turned its gaze upon them. Roxanne knew from long experience that there were innumerable things that could be drawn to strong emotions, but she had never heard of them existing in this world.

‘I don’t think you should be looking at it like that,’ she said, turning his small face away with gentle pressure of her fingertips. He was resistant at first, but at last his head turned away.

‘They say that we’re all going to be dead soon,’ said Arik.

‘Who says?’

The boy shrugged.

‘Who says that?’ pressed Roxanne. ‘Who’s been telling you that?’

‘I listen and I hear things,’ said Arik. ‘Too many people crowded in here not to hear what they’re saying.’

‘And what are they saying?’

‘That Horus is coming to kill us all. His fleets are on their way to Terra right now and he’s going to slaughter us all. Just like they say he did with the Iron Hands. He’s burning up all the worlds out in space, and folk are scared he’s going to do the same to us.’

The boy began to cry softly, and Roxanne put her arm around him. She pulled him close and looked for Maya, but Arik’s mother was nowhere to be seen. She had spent a day and a night shrieking at the feet of the Vacant Angel, but Palladis had eventually led her away as the crowds of people flocking to the temple grew ever larger.

Word of what had happened spread through the Petitioner’s City faster than news of a name being called to the inner precincts of the palace, and the curious, the desperate and the needy had flocked to the temple. Palladis had turned them away at first, but it quickly became a futile effort. Over three hundred people filled the temple, many with truthful grief to vent, others here simply to feel part of something bigger than themselves.

Roxanne let the boy cry and tried to think of something hopeful to tell him.

‘The Warmaster is a long way away,’ she said. ‘It will take him a long time to get to Terra from Isstvan V, but the Emperor’s fleets will stop him long before he gets here.’

Arik looked up, his face red and puffy with snot and tears.

‘You promise?’

‘I promise,’ said Roxanne. ‘Trust me, I know these things. I used to work on a starship, so I know how long it takes to get from one side of the galaxy to the other.’

Arik smiled, and she tried to keep the truth of the matter from him. True, Isstvan was incredibly distant from Terra, but with fair tides and a steady course, the Warmaster’s forces could reach the heart of the Imperium within months.

Not for the first time, Roxanne wondered what she was doing here, surrounded by people she didn’t know. For all its faults, her family had always drawn tight around its members, even the ones who – rightly or wrongly – were believed to have brought shame upon the good name of Castana. Even she had been brought into the bosom of the family in the wake of the loss of the Argo, albeit with the crushing power of imposed guilt.

With Babu Dhakal’s inevitable retribution looming like an oncoming storm, she knew it would be far safer for her to leave this place. She wore a silver ring that could send a locator pulse to the Castana estates and have a skiff en route to her within minutes. Inside an hour she could be back in the gilded halls of her family’s sprawling Galician manor house, with its great libraries, portrait-hung galleries and luxurious appointments. Without even realising it, she was twirling the ring around her right index finger, her thumb hovering over the activation stud and the first code phrases forming in her mind.

Roxanne took her thumb away from the ring, knowing that however much she might desire to flee, she would never abandon these people. No matter that Babu Dhakal’s thugs had given her no choice, it was her fault they would come and destroy this place and everyone in it. She could no more abandon these people to their fate than she could trick her heart into stopping beating.

Arik reached up and wiped his nose and eyes with his sleeve. His eyes were swollen with tears, but he had found a place of calm within himself.

‘What did you used to do on a starship?’ he asked.

Roxanne hesitated, not yet ready share her identity with the people around her. Like the blind astro-telepaths of the City of Sight, her people were vital to the continued existence of the Imperium, but were feared as much as they were needed. Like most misunderstood things, fear of their abilities had made them outcasts.

‘I helped to make sure it reached where it was supposed to go,’ said Roxanne.

‘That’s why you wear that bandanna under your hood,’ said Arik.

‘In a manner of speaking,’ said Roxanne, suddenly wary.

‘You’re one of them Navigators, ain’t you?’

Roxanne’s head jerked up and she looked around to see who had heard the boy’s question. If anyone was listening, they gave no sign of it. She lowered her head towards Arik and whispered to him.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I am, but you can’t tell anyone. People don’t really understand what we are and how we do what we do. That makes them afraid, and frightened people can do terrible things to the things that frighten them.’

Arik smiled through his tears. ‘You don’t have to worry about that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Everyone knows what you are,’ he said. ‘They’ve known ever since you came here. My dad told me what you were a while ago. Even before you went to get the medicine for me.’

Roxanne was astonished. ‘People know what I am?’

‘Yeah, I heard people talking about it weeks ago.’

She sat back on the bench and let the weight of secrecy fall away from her. All her life she had been taught that the common man feared her and would seek to persecute her if given the chance. The words of one small boy and the actions of the people around her had given the lie to that notion in one fell swoop, and the sudden lightness of being that filled her was like an elixir of purest light poured into her veins.

She looked at the plain, unassuming, ordinary faces that surrounded her, seeing them now for the wonderful, powerful and determined individuals they were. She was accepted amongst them simply because she was here, not through any familial connection, trade agreement or covenant of service.

‘Is it true you’ve got another eye under that bandanna?’

Roxanne nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘Can I see it?’

‘No, I’m afraid you can’t, Arik.’

‘Why not?’

‘It can be dangerous,’ explained Roxanne.

‘I hear you can kill people with it.’

Roxanne ruffled the boy’s hair. ‘You shouldn’t believe all you hear about Navigators, Arik. Yes, people can get hurt by looking at it, but that’s why I keep it covered up. I don’t want to hurt anyone.’

‘Oh,’ said Arik, but shrugged off his disappointment to ask, ‘But you can see the future, right? With your hidden eye, I mean?’

‘I’m afraid not,’ replied Roxanne. ‘We just guide starships, that’s all.’

Arik nodded, as though he fully understood the complexities and nuances to being one of a caste that was both shunned and required for the Imperium to function. A group that was both powerful and wealthy, yet could never take a rightful place amongst the people they served.

A sudden thought occurred to Roxanne, and she said, ‘Does Palladis realise that everyone knows?’

‘Nah, he thinks he’s the only one,’ said Arik. ‘I think losing his boys must’ve rattled some of the marbles loose in his head. He don’t trust anyone.’

‘I think you might be right,’ whispered Roxanne. ‘You’re a clever boy, Arik, do you know that?’

‘That’s what my mum always tells me,’ he said with a proud smile.

She pulled Arik close and gave him a kiss on the forehead.

‘You have no idea how precious a gift you have just given me,’ she said.

He looked confused, but nodded with a child’s seriousness.

‘Here, let me give you something in return,’ said Roxanne, tugging at her finger and placing something in the centre of his palm. She closed his fingers over it before anyone could see what she’d given him.

‘What is it?’ asked Arik.

Roxanne smiled. ‘It’s a magic ring,’ she said.

The white sands of the Rub’ al Khali rose and fell in endless dunes beyond the walls of the fortress of Arzashkun. Kai wandered the empty ramparts and deserted towers with a pleasant aimlessness to his steps. The sands beyond the walls were silent and dusted by a warm sirocco that carried a pleasing scent of roasted meat, mulled wine and exotic perfumes.

He trailed his fingers over the silver-gold battlements, letting the peace and emptiness of his surroundings calm him. Nothing moved in the sands, no shadowy hunters or buried memories threatening to burst to the surface, for Kai was merely dreaming. His metacognitive powers were developed enough that he could understand he was dreaming and shape his surroundings to a degree beyond most sleepers.

Though Arzashkun was his refuge from the dangerous presences of the immaterium, it was much more than that. It was a place where he could find peace and a measure of solace and isolation. No one else could come here, save by his express invitation to a shared dreamspace, and Kai revelled in the silence that filled every vaulted chamber and domed cupola of the ornately decorated structure.

Kai descended the steps to the courtyard, his steps light and the black mood that had been his constant companion since the disaster on the Argo lightening by degrees. The fear was still there, lurking at the threshold of his perceptions, but he refused to acknowledge it. To remember was to feel, and to feel was to experience. Ten thousand deaths screaming in his head had unhinged his mind for a time, and he wasn’t entirely sure it had returned to him intact.

Yet the few times he was able to escape to Arzashkun were where he could heal in private, where he could experience all the human mind could conjure without fear of dreadful memories and sympathetic terrors. Kai pushed open the doors to the main hall, and breathed in the aroma of scented lanterns and fresh growths. A circular pool glittered in the centre of the hall, its base tiled with a gold and scarlet lozenge pattern, and a silver fountain in the shape of a trident-bearing hero shimmered in the sunlight drifting down from a stained-glass dome.

Palm fronds waved gently in the breeze from the opened door, and the scent of lemongrass and hookah smoke was strong. The air was redolent with the fragrances of distant kingdoms of long ago, and the connection with the past was a potent anchor to Kai in this realm of imagination and dreams. Had he wished, Kai could conjure anything his consciousness desired into being, but this was all he needed. Peace and solitude and an end to the thousands of voices that clamoured for his attention.

Pillars of marble and nephrite supported the roof, and Kai wove a path through them as he made his way to the wide staircase that swept up to the cloisters above. Battle flags of crimson, emerald and gold hung from the graceful arches, honours won in battles no one now remembered. Strange how something so terrible and vital to the lives of thousands of people could so easily be forgotten. The men who had fought in these battles were naught but the sand of the Empty Quarter, but their lives had mattered once. No matter that the tide of history had ground each of them down to insignificant specks of grit, they had once been important, they had once made a difference.

That the difference existed now only in a dream did not lessen their lives. Kai recalled them, even if it was a borrowed memory from a primarch’s writings. In time, he too would be forgotten, but instead of frightening Kai, the thought made him smile. To be forgotten in times like these would be a blessing. To be lauded by everyone, to be depended upon by so many would be a burden no one should ever have to bear.

Kai wondered how people like Malcador, Lord Dorn or the Choirmaster stood it.

He paused by at the bottom of the wide staircase, closing his eyes and letting the burbling sound of the fountain wash over him. His blindsight trembled and a breath of wind sighed across the skin of his face, as Kai inhaled the scents of a land long since consigned to history. Smell was one of the strongest senses in the dream landscapes, and the heady aroma of alinazik, habesh and mahlab transported Kai’s thoughts to an open-air souk, its thronged pathways filled with jostling, sweating bodies: chattering vendors, haggling customers and slit-mouthed cutpurses.

Kai could taste the smoke of cookfires, the billowing clouds of hashish and the potent reek of papazkarasi as it was poured from clay ewers into pewter mugs nailed to drinking posts. So real was the sensation that Kai had to hold onto the carved balustrade to keep himself from sinking to his haunches at the aching sadness he felt.

Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes, and Kai wondered at how he could know these sounds and smells. This was no fantasy conjured from the depths of his imagination, these were sense-memories that belonged to a mind other than his own. These sensations had been dredged from the depths of a memory so ancient that it staggered Kai that any one mind could contain so much history.

Kai gasped and opened his eyes. The world wavered as his grip on its solidity faltered for an instant. His breath came in sharp hikes, though he knew in this dreamspace he was not truly breathing. Kai’s body lay asleep on his cot bed, but certain laws still held true in the world of dreams as they did in the real world – though such a term was almost meaningless to one whose existence was lived in a world beyond the comprehension of most mortals.

A flicker of movement caught his eye, and Kai looked up to the cloister in time to see a figure move out of sight. He stood dumbfounded for a moment, unable to believe what he’d just seen. Someone else in his dreamscape? Kai had heard fanciful tales of powerful psykers who were able to invade the dreams of sleepers and alter their mindscapes, but the last such cognoscynth was said to have died thousands of years ago.

‘Wait!’ cried Kai, turning and taking the stairs two at a time. He was out of breath by the time he reached the landing, and turned ninety degrees to mount the last flight of stairs. The terrazzo floor was patterned in a square-edged spiral motif, a maze with only one way in and out, and Kai rushed along the cloister towards where he had last seen the mysterious figure.

Silken curtains bellied out from arched openings, carrying the beat of a distant drum that echoed like a heartbeat from another epoch of the world. Kai could see no musicians, and knew the sounds were as impossible as the sight of an intruder in his dreams. He ran along the cloister, leaving the sound of percussion in his wake, and passed through a curtained doorway into a chamber of light and verdant growth. Trees grew through the floor as though nature had reclaimed this fortress after thousands of years of neglect by man. Creeping vines hung like gilded wall hangings from the pilasters, and waving fronds garlanded the window openings.

At the far end of the chamber a tall figure in long robes of white and gold stepped towards a doorway. Too distant to make out his features, his eyes were pools of great sorrow and infinite understanding of the price men pay for their dreams.

‘Stop!’ cried Kai. ‘Who are you, how can you be here?’

The figure did not answer and stepped out of sight. Kai ran through the room, brushing drifting leaves and questing vines from his path as he fought towards the doorway through which the robed figure had passed. The scents of spices, fresh growths and old memory was strongest here, and Kai shouted out in triumph as he finally reached the doorway. The smell of salt water and hot stone came from beyond the door, and – now that he had reached it – Kai found himself strangely reluctant to pass through.

Summoning up what little courage he possessed, Kai stepped over the threshold.

He found himself on a balcony he had never known existed, high on the side of the central tower of the fortress. The sun was a burning eye of searing red, and a lake so vast it better deserved to be called an ocean stretched out before him, wondrously blue and almost painful to look at. Birds flocked over the water, and small fishing boats bobbed close to the shore.

The balcony was deserted, which was impossible, as there was no way the intruder could possibly have escaped. Save the door behind him, a drop of hundreds of metres was the only way off the balcony. Only the creator of the dreamspace had the power to alter the laws that governed the logic of a dream, and even then it was dangerous, so how this mysterious stranger had escaped Kai was beyond him.

Kai walked to the edge of the balcony and rested his hands on the sun-warmed stone. He took a breath of the clean air, sharp and free of the chemical tang that pervaded every breath of the Terran atmosphere.

‘Where is this place?’ said Kai, knowing somehow that the man he had been chasing would hear him.

A hand clamped his shoulder with a powerful grip. The touch was electric, and Kai had the sense that had he chosen to do so, the owner of this hand could break him into tiny pieces with a simple twist of his wrist.

‘It is Old Earth,’ said a voice at his ear. Soft, lyrical, but with a core of steel.

‘How?’ asked Kai, enthralled by the man’s voice.

‘The human mind is impossibly complex, even to one such as I,’ said the man, ‘but it is no great feat to share my memories with you.’

‘You’re really here?’ asked Kai. ‘I’m not imagining this?’

‘You are asking if I am really here? In a dream you created?’ said the man with a wry chuckle. ‘That’s one for the philosophers, eh? What is reality anyway? Is this any less real to you than your life in the Whispering Tower? Does fire in a dream not warm you just as well as one of timber and kindling?’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Kai. ‘Why are you here? With me, right now.’

‘I wanted to see you, to know more about you.’

‘Why? Who are you?’

‘Always the obsession with names,’ said the man. ‘I have had many names over the long years, and one is as good as another until it is shed for the next.’

‘So what do I call you?’

‘You don’t call me anything,’ said the man, and the power of the grip on Kai’s shoulder increased exponentially. Kai winced as the complex arrangement of bones in his shoulder ground together. ‘You just listen.’

Kai nodded, and the pain in his shoulder eased a fraction. The birds over the lake swooped down over the fishing boats, their caws echoing from the water as though from a great distance. Kai narrowed his eyes. Staring at the vivid blue of the lake was hurting his eyes, and his augmetics had no power to help him in this dream.

‘Great and terrible forces are abroad in the galaxy, Kai, and the billions upon billions of threads they weave into the future are beyond the comprehension of even the greatest of the eldar seers, but one particular thread I have seen entwines with my own. Can you guess whose that is?’

‘Mine?’ ventured Kai.

The man laughed, the sound so infectious it made Kai smile despite the growing ache in his shoulder. Yet it felt somehow insincere, as though this man had not laughed in a very long time and had forgotten how it was supposed to sound.

‘You, Kai Zulane? No, you are not destined to be remembered by the saga-tellers of the ages yet to come,’ said the man, and Kai felt him look into the glaring red eye of the sun. ‘It is of another I speak, one who has the ability to undo all that I have achieved and cut my thread, but whose face is hidden from me.’

‘So why are you here talking to me?’ asked Kai. ‘If you are who I think you are, then there must be a million things more important than me for you to deal with.’

‘Very true,’ agreed the man. ‘But I am here talking to you because you will bear witness to my ending. I sense you are being pulled along by the unseen thread that leads to my death. And if you can see it, then I can know it.’

‘And you can stop it?’ asked Kai, as the red sun began to descend.

‘That remains to be seen.’

The regicide board lay untouched. This was no time for games, and they all knew it.

Nemo Zhi-Meng paced his chambers with a harried expression creasing his already craggy and lined features. Since the Conduit had passed word of the disaster at Isstvan V, he had not slept, and the strain was beginning to show.

‘Sit down, Nemo, you’re wearing me out,’ said Sarashina.

‘And put some damn clothes on,’ added Evander Gregoras

‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I do my best thinking on the move. And it helps being naked, the energies flow through me so much better.’

‘You know that’s nonsense,’ said Sarashina.

Zhi-Meng’s head snapped up and he waved her objections away. ‘You know as well as anyone that whatever works for you only works because you make it so.’

Sarashina lay back on a contoured couch, trying to let its massaging texture ease out the terrible cramps in her shoulder and neck muscles. It was a hopeless task. Days of constant telepathic communion with astropaths all over the Imperium had pushed them all to the end of their endurance. The Choirs were operating far beyond safe limits, and hundreds had burned out like quick-burning star shells fired over a midnight battlefield.

Over a dozen had suffered catastrophic intrusions that had required the intervention of Golovko’s Black Sentinels. Thankfully such incidents had been contained and the cells of those poor unfortunates were now sanitised by fire and sealed with psi-locks.

‘And the Vatic saw no sign of this?’ Zhi-Meng asked. ‘We’re sure of that?’

‘Nothing was logged with the Conduit apart from the dream vision of Athena Diyos,’ said Gregoras, flicking through reams of sifted data on his dataslate. ‘Not even any residuals or imagery they interpreted wrongly.’

‘And you’re sure about that, Evander?’ demanded Zhi-Meng. ‘The palace wants heads on spikes for this, and we’re next in line at the chopping block.’

‘I am sure, Choirmaster,’ said Gregoras in a tone that conveyed his irritation at the idea his people might have missed something. ‘If there was something to be found, the cryptaesthesians would have seen it.’

Zhi-Meng nodded and resumed his naked pacing.

‘Damn it, but why didn’t Athena send her vision straight to the Conduit? Why did she waste time going to you, Aniq?’

‘I’ll let the insult in that question go this time, Nemo, but don’t ever speak to me like that again.’

‘Sorry, but you know what I meant.’

Sarashina smoothed out her robes and said, ‘It would have made no difference, and you know it. By the time Athena interpreted her vision it was already too late. The traitors had already struck. There was no way we could have warned Ferrus Manus or the others.’

‘I know that, but it rankles,’ said Zhi-Meng, pausing to suck on the coiled pipe of a gently smoking hookah. Aromatic fumes, redolent of desert mountains, filled the air. ‘Lord Dorn is ready to break down the Obsidian Arch and drag me out by scruff of the neck for this. He wants to know why we didn’t see this coming. What am I supposed to tell him?’

‘You tell him that the currents of the immaterium are always shifting, and that to think that you can use them to predict the future with anything other than best guesses is like shooting an arrow on a windy day and predicting which grain of sand it will hit.’

‘I told him that,’ said Zhi-Meng. ‘He wasn’t impressed. He thinks we failed, and I’m inclined to agree with him.’

‘Did you tell him that we are not seers?’ asked Gregoras. ‘That if we could predict the future, we’d be locked up in the Vault with the Crusader Host and the rest of the traitors the Custodians have rounded up?’

‘Of course, but Lord Dorn is a blunt man, and he demands answers,’ said Zhi-Meng. ‘We all know that it is possible to see potential futures, echoes of events yet to come, but for not one single astropath in this city to get so much of a glimpse of this strikes me as awry. Not one of your Vatic caught so much of a whiff of this, Aniq, not one!’

‘Apart from Athena Diyos,’ said Gregoras.

‘Apart from Athena Diyos,’ repeated Zhi-Meng. ‘How is that possible?’

‘I do not know,’ said Sarashina.

‘Find out,’ ordered Zhi-Meng.

‘Perhaps this is the pattern,’ said Gregoras.

‘You and your pattern,’ cried Zhi-Meng, throwing his arms into the air and slapping them down on the top of his head. ‘There is no pattern. You are inventing things, Evander. I have seen the things you have seen, and I detect no pattern.’

‘With all due respect, Choirmaster, you do not live in the detritus of dreams as I do, and you do not see what I see. I have studied the pattern for centuries, and it has been building to something terrible for many years. All the voices speak of a great red eye bearing down on Terra, a force of awesome destruction that will forever change the course of history.’

Zhi-Meng stopped his pacing. ‘That’s what your precious pattern is telling you? I don’t need Yun’s Oneirocritica to tell me what that means. A novice could tell you the red eye represents Horus Lupercal. If that’s all your years of looking for patterns that aren’t there has told you then you’ve been wasting your time, Evander.’

‘The eye does not represent Horus,’ said Gregoras.

‘Then who does it represent?’ asked Sarashina.

‘I believe it to be Magnus the Red,’ said the cryptaesthesian. ‘I think the Crimson King is coming to Terra.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Evander,’ hissed Zhi-Meng. ‘Magnus is still on Prospero, nursing his wounded pride after Nikaea.’

‘Are we sure about that?’ asked Gregoras.