A Thousand Sons

by Graham McNeill

  That request had been honoured until this moment.

  The Aghoru parted as the Sekhmet approached the crest of the valley, the sharpened blades of their falarica glittering in firelight. Ahriman had no fear of such weapons, but he had no wish to start a fight he didn’t need to.

  Ahriman marched towards the Aghoru, keeping his pace steady, and his gaze was lifted upwards in awed amazement as the titanic guardians of the valley were revealed to his sight.

  ON PROSPERO, THE cult temple of the Pyrae was a vast pyramid of silvered glass with an eternally burning finial at its peak. Where the other cult temples of Tizca raised golden idols of their cult symbols before their gates, the Pyrae boasted a battle-engine of the Titan legions.

  Supplicants to the pyromancers approached along a brazier-lit processional of red marble towards a mighty warlord Titan. Bearing the proud name Canis Vertex, the engine had once walked beneath the banners of Legio Astorum, its carapace emblazoned with a faded black disc haloed by a flaming blue corona.

  Its princeps was killed and its moderati crushed when the engine fell during the bloody campaigns of extermination waged in the middle years of the Great Crusade against the barbaric greenskin of the Kamenka Troika. The Emperor had issued the writs of war, commanding the Thousand Sons, Legio Astorum and a Lifehost of PanPac Eugenians to drive that savage race of xenos from the three satellite planets of Kamenka Ulizarna, a world claimed by the Mechanicum of Mars.

  Ahriman remembered well the savagery of that war, the slaughter and relentless, grinding attrition that left tens of thousands dead in its wake. Imperial forces had been victorious after two years of fighting and earned a score of honours for the war banners.

  Victory had been won, but the cost had been high. Eight hundred and seventy-three warriors of the Thousand Sons had died, forcing Magnus so reduce his Legion from ten fellowships to the Pesedjet, the nine fellowships of antiquity.

  Of greater sorrow to Ahriman was the death of Apophis, Captain of the 5th Fellowship and his oldest friend. Only now that Apophis was dead, was Ahriman able to use that word.

  Canis Vertex had been brought down on the killing fields of Coriovallum in the last days of the war by a gargantuan war machine of the greenskin, crudely built in the image of their warlike gods. Defeat seemed inevitable until Magnus stood before the enemy colossus, wielding the power of the aether like an ancient god of war.

  Two giants, one mechanical, one a flesh and blood progeny of the Emperor, they had faced each other across the burning ruins, and it seemed the battle’s conclusion could not have been more foregone.

  But Magnus raised his arms, his feathered cloak billowed by unseen storms, and the full fury of the aether unmade the enemy war-engine in a hurricane of immaterial fire that tore the flesh of reality asunder and shook the world to its very foundations.

  All those who saw the giant primarch that day would take the sight of his battle with that bloated, hateful, war machine to their graves, his power and majesty indelibly etched on their memories like a scar. Ten thousand warriors bowed their heads to their saviour as he returned to them across a field of the dead.

  The Legio Astorum contingent had been destroyed, and Khalophis of the 6th Fellowship had “honoured” their sacrifice by transporting Canis Vertex back to Prospero and setting it as a silent guardian to the temple of the Pyrae. The raising of such a colossal sentinel was typical Pyrae showmanship, but there was no doubting the impart made by the sight of the dead engine sheened in the orange firelight of the temple.

  Ahriman was no stranger to the impossible scale of the Mechanicum war engines, but he had never seen anything to compare with the guardians of the valley.

  TALLER THAN CANIS Vertex, the identical colossi that stood at the end of the valley were, like the mountain they inhabited, enormous beyond imagining. Soaring, graceful and threatening, they were mighty bipedal constructions that resembled an impossibly slender humanoid form. Crafted from something that resembled porcelain or ceramic the colour of bone, they were manufactured as though moulded from one enormous block.

  Their heads were like sinuous helmets studded with glittering gems, and graceful spines flared from their shoulders like angelic wings. These guardians were prepared for war. One arm ended in a mighty fist, the other in an elongated, lance-like weapon, its slim barrel gracefully fluted and hung with faded banners.

  “Sweet Mother of the Abyss,” said Phosis T’kar at the sight of them.

  Ahriman felt the calm he had established within him crumble when confronted by such powerful icons of war. Like gods of battle, the towering creations rendered everything in the valley inconsequential. He saw the same grace and aesthetic in these guardians as he had seen in the valley’s formation. Whoever had willed this mountain into existence had also crafted these guardians to watch over it.

  “What are they?” asked Hathor Maat.

  “I don’t know,” said Ahriman.

  “Xenos Titans?”

  “They have the look of eldar about them,” said Phosis T’kar.

  Ahriman agreed. Two decades ago, the Thousand Sons had detected a fleet of eldar vessels on the edge of the Perdus Anomaly. The encounter had been cordial, both forces passing on their way without violence, but Ahriman had never forgotten the elegance of the eldar ships and the ease with which they navigated the stars.

  “They must be war engines,” said Hathor Maat. “Khalophis would kill to see this.”

  That was certainly true. Khalophis was Pyrae, and a warmongering student of conflict in all its most brutal forms. If an enemy was to be wiped from the battlefield with overwhelming firepower, it was to Khalophis the Thousand Sons turned.

  “I’m sure he would,” said Ahriman, dragging his eyes from the titanic war machines. The valley was filled with Aghoru tribesmen, all bearing burning brands or battering their palms bloody on tribal drums.

  Phosis T’kar held his bolt pistol at his side, but Ahriman could see his urge to use it was strong. Hathor Maat held his heqa staff at the ready. Warriors who had faced the Dominus Liminus and achieved the rank of adept could release devastating bursts of aetheric energy through their staffs, but here it was no more than a symbol of rank.

  “Hold to the Enumerations,” he whispered. “There is to be no killing unless I give the word.”

  Perhaps a thousand men and women in hooded robes and reflective masks filled the valley, surrounding a great altar of basalt that stood before a yawning cave mouth set in the cliff between the towering guardians.

  Ahriman immediately saw that this cave was no deliberately crafted entrance to the mountain. An earthquake had ripped it open and the blackness of it seemed darker than the depths of space.

  “What’s going on here?” demanded Phosis T’kar.

  “I do not know,” said Ahriman, advancing cautiously through the Aghoru, seeing the crimson plates of the Sekhmet’s armour reflected in their masks. The chanting ceased and the drumming diminished until the valley was utterly silent.

  “Why are they watching?” hissed Hathor Maat. “Why don’t they move?”

  “They’re waiting to see what we do,” replied Ahriman.

  It was impossible to read the Aghoru behind their masks, but he didn’t think there was any hostile intent. The mirror-masked tribesmen simply watched as Ahriman led the Sekhmet through the crowds towards the basalt altar. Its smooth black surface gleamed in the last of the day’s light, like the still waters of a motionless black pool.

  Tokens lay strewn across the altar’s surface, bracelets, earrings, dolls of woven reeds and bead necklaces; the personal effects of scores of people. Ahriman saw footprints in the dust leading from the altar to the black tear in the mountainside. Whoever had made them had gone back and forth many times.

  He knelt beside the tracks as Phosis T’kar and Hathor Maat approached the altar.

  “What are these?” wondered Phosis T’kar.

  “Offerings?” ventured Hathor Maat, lifting a neck torque of copper and onyx, and examining
the workmanship with disdain.

  “To what?” asked Phosis T’kar “I didn’t read of any practices of the Aghoru like this.”

  “Nor I, but how else do you explain it?”

  “Yatiri told us the Mountain is a place of the dead,” said Ahriman, tracing the outline of a print clearly made by someone of far greater stature than any mortal or Astartes.

  “Perhaps this is a rite of memorial,” said Phosis T’kar.

  “You could be right,” conceded Hathor Maat, “but then where are the dead?”

  “They’re in the Mountain,” said Ahriman, backing away from the cave as the drums began once again. He rejoined his warriors, planting his staff in the dusty ground.

  As one, the Aghoru turned their mirrored masks towards the end of the valley, chanting in unison and moving forwards with short, shuffling steps, the butts of their falarica thumping on the ground in time with every beat of the drums.

  “Mandala,” ordered Ahriman, and the Sekhmet formed a circle around the altar. Auto-loaders clattered and power fists crackled as energy fields engaged.

  “Permission to open fire?” requested Hathor Maat, aiming his bolt pistol at the mask of the nearest Aghoru tribesman.

  “No,” said Ahriman, turning to face the darkness of the cave mouth as wind-blown ash gusted from the depths of the mountain. “This isn’t for us.”

  Bleak despair tainted the wind, the dust and memory of a billion corpses decayed to powder and forgotten in the lightless depths of the world.

  A shape emerged from the cave, wreathed in swirling ash: hulking, crimson and gold and monstrous.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Magnus/The Sanctum/You Must Teach Him

  HE COULDN’T FOCUS on it. Impressions were all Lemuel could make out: skin that shone as though fire flowed in its veins, mighty wings of feathers and golden plates. A mane of copper hair, ash-stained and wild, billowed around the being’s head, its face appearing as an inconstant swirl of liquid light and flesh, as though no bone formed the basis for its foundations, but something altogether more dynamic and vital.

  Lemuel felt sick to his stomach at the sight, yet was unable to tear his gaze from this towering being.

  Wait… Was it towering?

  With each second, it seemed as though the apparition’s shape changed without him even being aware of it. Without seeming to vary from one second to the next, the being was alternately a giant, a man, a god, or a being of radiant light and a million eyes.

  “What is it?” asked Lemuel, the words little more than a whisper. “What have they done?”

  He couldn’t look away, knowing on some primal level that the fire that burned in this being’s heart was dangerous, perhaps the most dangerous thing in the world. Lemuel wanted to touch it, though he knew he would be burned to ashes were he to get too close.

  Kallista screamed, and the spell was broken.

  Lemuel dropped to his knees and vomited, the contents of his stomach spilling down the rockface. His heaving breath flowed like milky smoke from his mouth, and he stared in amazement at his stomach’s contents, the spattered mass glittering as though the potential of what it had once been longed to reconstitute itself. The air seethed with ambition, as though a power that not even the deadstones could contain flexed its muscles.

  The moment passed and Lemuel’s vomit was just vomit, his breath invisible and without form. He could not take his eyes from the inchoate being below, his previously overwhelmed senses now firmly rooted in the mundane reality of the world. Tears spilled down his cheeks, and he wiped his face with his sleeve.

  Kallista sobbed uncontrollably, shaking as though in the midst of a seizure. Her hands clawed the ground, scratching her nails bloody as though she were desperately writing something in the dust.

  “Must come out,” she wept. “Can’t stay inside. Fire must come out or it’ll burn me up.”

  She looked up at Lemuel, silently imploring him to help. Before he could move, her eyes rolled back in their sockets and she slumped forward. Lemuel wanted to go to her aid, but his limbs were useless. Beside Kallista, Camille remained upright, her face blanched beneath her tan. Her entire body shook, and her jaw hung open in awed wonder.

  “He’s beautiful… So very beautiful,” she said, hesitantly lifting her picter and clicking off shots of the monstrous being.

  Lemuel spat a mouthful of acrid bile and shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “He’s a monster.”

  She turned, and Lemuel was shocked at her anger. “How can you say that? Look at him.”

  Lemuel screwed his eyes shut, only gradually opening them once again to look upon this incredible figure. He still saw the light shining in its heart, but where before it had been beguilingly dangerous, it was now soothing and hypnotic.

  Like a badly tuned picter suddenly brought into focus, the being’s true form was revealed: a broad-shouldered giant in exquisite battle-plate of gold, bronze and leather. Sheathed at his side were his weapons, a curved sword with an obsidian haft and golden blade, and a heavy pistol of terrifying proportions.

  Though the warrior was hundreds of metres below him, Lemuel saw him as clearly as a vivid memory or the brightest image conjured by his imagination.

  He smiled, now seeing the beauty Camille saw.

  “You’re right,” he said. “I don’t know how I didn’t see it before.”

  A billowing mantle of golden feathers floated at the being’s shoulders, hung with thuribles and trailing parchments fixed with wax seals. Great ebony horns curled up from his breastplate, matching the two that sprang from his shoulders. A pale tabard decorated with a blazing sun motif hung at his belt, and a heavy book, bound in thick red hide, was strung about his armour on golden chains.

  Lemuel’s eyes were drawn to the book, its unknown contents rich with the promise of knowledge and the secret workings of the universe. A golden hasp was secured with a lock fashioned from lead. Lemuel would have traded his entire wealth and even his very soul to open that book and peer into its depths.

  He felt a hand on his arm and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet. Camille hugged him, overcome with wonder and love, and Lemuel took pleasure in the embrace.

  “I never thought to see him this close,” said Camille.

  Lemuel didn’t answer, watching as two figures followed the being from the cave. One was an Aghoru tribesman in a glittering mask and orange robe, the other a thin man wearing an ash-stained robe of a remembrancer. They were irrelevant. The majestic being of light was all that mattered.

  As though hearing his thoughts, the warrior looked up at him.

  He wore a golden helmet, plumed with a mane of scarlet hair, his face wise beyond understanding, like a tribal elder or venerable sage.

  Camille was right. He was beautiful, perfect and beautiful.

  Still embracing, Lemuel and Camille sank to their knees.

  Lemuel stared back at the magnificent being, only now seeing that a single flaw marred his perfection. A golden eye, flecked with iridescent colours without name, blinked and Lemuel saw that the warrior looked out at the world through this eye alone. Where his other eye should have been was smooth and unblemished, as if no eye had ever sat there.

  “Magnus the Red,” said Lemuel. “The Crimson King.”

  AGHORU’S SUN HAD finally set, though the sky still glowed faintly with its light. Night did not last long here, but it provided a merciful respite from the intense heat of the day. Ahriman carried his golden deshret helmet in the crook of his arm as he made his way towards his primarch’s pavilion. His connection to the secret powers of the universe had established itself the moment he had led the Sekhmet past the deadstones. Aaetpio’s light had welcomed him, and the presence of the Tutelary was as refreshing as a cool glass of water in the desert.

  Ahriman’s relief at the sight of Magnus emerging from the cave was matched only by the recognition of the disappointment in his eyes. The magnificent primarch glared down at the circle of warriors gathered around t
he altar, and then shook his head. Even denied the use of his enhanced acuity in the Mountain, Ahriman had felt his master’s enormous presence, a power that transcended whatever wards were woven into the stones of the mountain.

  Magnus marched past them, not even bothering to further acknowledge their presence. The masked tribesman, who Ahriman knew must be Yatiri, walked alongside the primarch, and Mahavastu Kallimakus, Magnus’ personal scribe, trotted after them, whispering words into a slender wand that were then transcribed by a clattering quill unit attached to his belt.

  “This was a mistake,” said Hathor Maat. “We shouldn’t have come here.”

  Ahriman rounded angrily on him, saying, “You were only too keen to march when I suggested it.”

  “It was better than sitting about doing nothing, but I did say that the primarch told us to wait,” Maat said with a shrug.

  Ahriman had wanted to lash out at Hathor Maat, feeling his self-control faltering in the face of the Pavoni’s smug arrogance. That he was right only made it worse.

  He knew he should have trusted Magnus’ judgement, but he had doubted. At best it would probably mean a public apology to Yatiri, at worst potential exclusion from the Rehahti, the inner coven of the Thousand Sons chosen by Magnus to address whatever issues were currently concerning the Legion.

  Its members were ever-changing, and inclusion within the Rehahti was dependent on many things, not least an Astartes’ standing within the Legion. The cults of the Thousand Sons vied for prominence and a place in the primarch’s inner circle, knowing that to bask in his radiance would only enhance their powers.

  As the power of the aether waxed and waned, so too did the mystical abilities of the cults. Invisible currents inimical to one discipline would boost the powers of another, and portents of the Great Ocean’s ever-changing tides were read and interpreted by the Legion’s geomancers with obsessive detail. At present the Pyrae was in the ascendance, while Ahriman’s cult, the Corvidae, was at its lowest ebb for nearly fifty years. For centuries, the Corvidae had been pre-eminent within the ranks of the Thousand Sons, but over the last few decades, their power to read the twisting paths of the future had diminished until their seers could barely penetrate the shallows of things to come.