A Thousand Sons

by Graham McNeill

  Even as the image formed in his mind, he saw that the wolfshead piston was fractionally out of sync with the other pistons in the machine, working to a different beat, and gradually shifting its direction until it was completely in opposition to its fellows. The machine vibrated in protest, its harmonic balance upset by the rogue piston, and the squeal of metal grinding metal grew in volume.

  Ahriman stumbled and let out a gasp of horror as he saw that the machine would soon tear itself apart. To see such an industrious machine destroyed and reduced to little more than wreckage by a previously unseen defect in its design was truly tragic.

  He felt a hand on his arm and looked into the face of a standingly handsome warrior in the pearl-coloured plate of a Luna Wolf. The vision of the machine vanished from his mind, but the lingering sorrow of its imminent destruction creased Ahriman’s features with anguish.

  “Are you well, brother?” asked the warrior with genuine concern.

  “I am,” replied Ahriman, though he felt sick to his stomach.

  “He says he’s fine,” said a massively shouldered brute behind the warrior. Taller than Ahriman, with a gleaming topknot crowning his skull, he radiated choler and the urge to continually prove himself. “Leave him be and let’s rejoin our companies. The march will begin soon.”

  The warrior extended his hand, and Ahriman accepted the proffered grip.

  “You will have to excuse Ezekyle,” said the warrior. “He forgets his manners sometimes, most of the time in fact. I am Hastur Sejanus, pleased to know you.”

  “Ahzek Ahriman,” he said. “Sejanus? Ezekyle? You are Mournival.”

  “Guilty as charged,” said Sejanus with a winning smile.

  “I said those Custodes didn’t know security worth a damn,” said Phosis T’kar, pushing past Ahriman to pull Sejanus into a crushing embrace. “Damn, but it’s good to see you again, Hastur.”

  Laughing, Sejanus pulled himself free of Phosis T’kar’s embrace and punched him on the shoulder as two more warriors in the livery of the Luna Wolves appeared at his side. “Good to see you too, brother. Nobody’s managed to kill you then?”

  “Not for lack of trying,” said Phosis T’kar, standing back to regard the warriors before him. “Ezekyle Abaddon and Tarik Torgaddon, as I live and breathe, and Little Horus Aximand too. I still tell my brothers of the foes we faced together. Do you remember the battles in the Slaughterhouses of the Keylekid? Those damn dragons gave us a hard fight, and no mistake. There was one, remember Tarik? The one with the vivid blue hide that almost—”

  Little Horus held up a hand to stall Phosis T’kar’s reminiscence.

  “Perhaps we can gather after the Triumphal March?” he said, adding, “All of us. I would greatly like to meet your fellows and swap more outrageous tales of battle.”

  Sejanus nodded.

  “Absolutely,” he said, “for I have it on good authority that the Emperor has a great announcement to make. I, for one, do not want to miss it.”

  “Announcement?” asked Ahriman as a shiver of premonition passed along his spine. “What sort of announcement?”

  “The kind we’ll hear when we hear it,” growled Abaddon.

  “No one knows,” said Sejanus with a diplomatic chuckle. “Horus Lupercal has not yet deigned to tell even his most trusted lieutenants.”

  Sejanus looked back towards the podium with a grin.

  “But whatever it is,” he said, “I suspect it will be of great import to us all.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  New Order/Tuition/Fresh Summons

  STARS SWAM IN the glass of the crystal pyramid, faint shimmers of light that winked from the past, the light already thousands or even millions of years old. To be able to look into the past so clearly had always fascinated Ahriman, the notion that what you were seeing in the present was an echo of the past.

  The air within the Photep’s Sanctum was cool, a precisely modulated climate that owed nothing to machine control. The floor was a spiral of black and white crystal, each piece hand-picked from the Reflecting Caves beneath Tizca and shaped by Magnus’ own hand.

  Starlight glinted on the reflective chips, and gleamed from the silver threads and blood-drop pendants hanging from Magnus’ feathered cloak. The primarch stood immobile as a statue beneath the apex of the pyramid, his arms folded across his chest and his head tilted back to allow him to look out into the immensity of space.

  When Magnus descended to the surface of a world, his pavilion was a re-creation of this inner sanctum, but it could never hope to capture the rarefied atmosphere that filled this place.

  “Welcome, Ahriman,” said Magnus without averting his gaze from the stars. “You are just in time to watch Mechanicum Borealis with me. Come, join me in the centre.”

  Ahriman walked the spiral, following the black chips towards the centre, letting the walk cleanse him of his negative thoughts in readiness for his walk out along the white spiral. He studied Magnus as he walked.

  Ever since the conclusion of the Great Triumph, the primarch had been withdrawn and sullen. Hastur Sejanus had been right about the nature of the Emperor’s announcement; it had radically changed the universe in which they operated. For close to two hundred years, the Emperor, beloved by all, had led the Great Crusade from the front, fighting in the vanguard of humanity’s second expansion to the edges of the galaxy.

  Those days were over, for the Emperor had announced his withdrawal from the fighting, telling his faithful warriors that the time had come for him to relinquish control of the Crusade to another. The Astartes had wept to hear that their beloved master was leaving them, but as epochal as this separation was, it was more than matched by the Emperor’s next pronouncement.

  Before the gathered warriors, the Emperor removed the golden laurels that had been his most iconic accoutrement and bestowed them upon his brightest son. No longer would the Emperor command the armies of the Imperium. That honour now fell to Horus Lupercal: The Warmaster.

  It was an old title, revived from dusty antiquity, yet it was a natural fit and perfectly encapsulated the unique qualities of the Luna Wolves Primarch. From the millions of warriors gathered before the steel-sheened dais, adulation had mixed with sorrow, but Ahriman had felt the conflicting waves of powerful emotions as the other primarchs reacted to Horus’ ascension. Perhaps they felt it should have been them, or perhaps they raged at having to take orders from one of their own.

  Either way, it made little difference. The decision had been made, and the Emperor was unequivocal in its necessity. Many warriors had expected to renew old acquaintances or swear new bonds of brotherhood on Ullanor, but with the Emperor’s pronouncements made, the garnering of Astartes broke up with almost unseemly haste.

  The 28th Expedition had left Ullanor and made the two-month journey to Hexium Minora, a Mechanicum outpost world, to resupply. The bulk of the Thousand Sons had borne witness to the beginnings of the galactic new order, while some had been on detached duties elsewhere in the sector. With each passing day, more of Magnus’ sons joined their parent Legion to await tasking orders from the Crusade’s new master.

  Sotekis led a mentor company back from supporting the World Eaters in the Golgothan Deeps, and word came through that the last battle formation to arrive, Kenaphia’s Thunder Bringers, had returned after fighting alongside the IV Legion of Perturabo. There were still elements of the Legion scattered throughout the galaxy, but the majority had found its way to Hexium Minora.

  For six months, the Thousand Sons fleet suckled at the planet’s forges and materiel silos like newborns eager for the teat. Billions of rounds of ammunition, thousands of tonnes of food and water, uniforms, dried goods, pioneer supplies, armoured vehicles, power cells, fuel bladders and the myriad items an expeditionary fleet required in order to function were shipped from the surface in bulk lifters or via impossibly slender Tsiolkovsky towers.

  With resupply almost complete, the Legion and its millions of supporting soldiers lay at anchor awaiting orders. Th
e months had not been wasted; Army units conducted battle drills alongside the Astartes, both forces learning much of the other’s abilities and limitations.

  Each Captain of Fellowship divided his time between battle training and exercises of mental discipline to refresh his powers and his connection to the aether, but the Legion was eager to be in the thick of things again. Nor were the remembrancers idle. Most spent their time honing prose for post-Crusade publication, all the while hoping to learn more of the glorious Triumph on Ullanor.

  Others rendered sketches taken over the course of the conquest of Heliosa or during its transitional period en route to compliance, while the lucky few chosen as Neophytes by the Thousand Sons continued their training.

  “It’s beautiful, is it not?” asked Magnus as Ahriman joined him.

  “It is, my lord,” agreed Ahriman.

  “I can see so much when I look out from this sanctum, Ahzek, but there is so much more that can be learned. I know much, it is true, but I will know everything one day.”

  Magnus smiled and shook his head, as though amused at his own conceit.

  “No need to hide your frown, my friend,” he said. “I am not so arrogant as to have forgotten my studies of the plays of Aristophanes and the dialogues of Plato. ‘To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.’”

  “I do not look so deeply into the heavens, my lord,” said Ahriman, “But looking at the stars always gives me a sense of peace, knowing that there is an order to the galaxy. It gives me stability in times of change.”

  “You say that as though change is to be feared,” said Magnus, at last looking down at him.

  “Change is sometimes necessary,” said Ahriman with a disarming smile, “but I prefer order. It is more… predictable.”

  Magnus chuckled. “Yes, I can see how that would be pleasant, Ahzek, but the perfect, ordered world is dead and stagnant. The real world is alive because it is full of change, disorder and decay. The old order must pass away so the new one may arise.”

  “Is that what happened on Ullanor?” ventured Ahriman.

  “In a manner of speaking. No order, not even a god-given one, will last forever. After all, the grand principle of creation is that nothing and possibility come in and out of bond infinite times in a finite moment.”

  Ahriman kept silent, unsure as to the primarch’s exact meaning.

  Magnus folded his arms and sighed and said, “We are alone in the stars, Ahzek.”

  “My lord?”

  “The Emperor leaving the Crusade,” said Magnus. “I heard him speak to Horus upon the reviewing stand. My brother desired to know why our father was leaving us, and do you know what he said?”

  “No, my lord,” said Ahriman, though he understood the question was rhetorical.

  “He said that it was not because he wearied of the fighting, but because a greater destiny called him, one he claimed would ensure the legacy of our conquests will live on until the ending of the stars. Of course Horus wanted to know what that was, but our father did not tell him, which I saw cut him deeply. You see, Horus was the first of us to be reunited with our father after our… scattering. He fought at his side for nearly thirty years, father and only son. Such a bond is unique and not easily relinquished. Truth be told, it is a bond many of my brothers look upon with no small amount of jealousy.”

  “But not you?”

  “Me? No, I never lost contact with my father. We spoke many times before he ever set foot on Prospero. That is a bond that none of my brothers can claim. As our Legion departed Ullanor, I communed with my father and told him what I found on Aghoru, a hidden labyrinth of tunnels that pierce the immaterium and link all places and all times.”

  Magnus returned his eye to the stars, and Ahriman kept silent, sensing that to intrude on Magnus’ introspection would be unwise, though the ramifications of his discoveries on Aghoru were staggering.

  “Do you know what he said, Ahzek? Do you know how he greeted this momentous discovery, this key to every corner of the galaxy?”

  “No, my lord.”

  “He knew,” said Magnus simply. “He already knew of it. I should not have been surprised, I suppose. If any being in the galaxy could know such a thing, it would be my father. Now that he knew I had also discovered this lattice, he told me he had discovered it decades ago and had resolved to become its master. This is why he returns to Terra.”

  “That is great news, surely?”

  “Absolutely,” said Magnus without enthusiasm. “I immediately volunteered my services, of course, but my offer of assistance was declined.”

  “Declined? Why?”

  Magnus’ shoulders dropped a fraction as he said, “Apparently my father’s researches are at too delicate a stage to allow another soul to look upon them.”

  “That surprises me,” said Ahriman. “After all, there is no greater student of the esoteric than Magnus the Red. Did the Emperor say why he declined your help?”

  “He not only declines my assistance, he warns me to delve no further into my studies. He assures me that he has a vital role for me in the final realisation of his grand designs, but he would tell me no more.”

  “Did you ask what Leman Russ had told him?”

  Magnus shook his head.

  “No,” he said. “My father knows my lupine brother’s ways well enough; he does not to need me to point out how ridiculous and hypocritical they are.”

  “Still,” said Ahriman, “it is a shame to have lost the opportunity to learn more of the Wolves. Ohthere Wyrdmake and I formed a close bond. With Uthizzar’s help, I would have learned much of the inner workings of the Wolf King’s Legion.”

  Magnus nodded and smiled.

  “Have no fear, Ahzek,” he said, “Wyrdmake was not our only source within the Wolves. I have other assets in place, none of whom know they dance to my tune.”

  Ahriman waited for Magnus to continue, but the primarch kept his own counsel.

  Before he could ask any more, the stars shimmered, as though a layer of gauze had been drawn over the crystal pyramid.

  “Look,” said Magnus, “The Mechanicum Borealis, it begins.”

  Like a painting left out in the rain, the image of the stars smeared in the blackness. A fusion of chemical overspill and atmospheric vapour fires on Hexium Minora caught the arcing light of the system’s distant star, refracting a shimmering halo around the world as though it were ablaze from pole to pole with rainbow fires.

  The effect was wondrous, despite being born of chronic pollution and rampant industry pursued without heed of the cost to the planet’s ecology. To Ahriman, it was proof that something wonderful could come from the most ugly of sources. A side effect of the Mechanicum Borealis was the thinning of the veil between the material world and the immaterium, and a mélange of unnameable colours and aetheric tempests swirled around the planet’s corona, a distant seascape viewed through a glass darkly.

  “The Great Ocean,” said Magnus, his voice full of longing. “How beautiful it is.”

  AHRIMAN KEPT THE lights in his private library low, claiming that any aid to concentration was of paramount importance. Lemuel had been surprised how small his mentor’s sanctum was, a chamber no larger than that of a Terran bureaucrat. For a room described as a library, there were precious few books to be found, merely a single bookcase filled with leather scroll tubes and loosely bound sheaves of paper.

  A large wooden desk of a pale, polished and darkly-veined wood with an inset blotter of green leather stood against one wall, and a number of thick books with spines a half-metre or more in length lay opened across its length.

  An armour-stand bore Ahriman’s battle-plate, like a silent observer of his failures. It reminded Lemuel of Khalophis’ robots, and the thought of those soulless, mechanised warriors sent a shiver down Lemuel’s spine.

  “Can you see it yet?” asked Ahriman.

  “No.”

  “Look again. Drift with the currents. Remember all I have taug
ht you since Shrike.”

  “I’m trying, but there are so many. How can I tell what’s the actual future and what’s a potential future?”

  “That,” said Ahriman, “is where the skill of the individual diviner comes into play. Some prognosticators have an innate connection to the aetheric paths that guide them with unerring accuracy to the truth, while others must sift though a thousand images of meaningless symbolism to reach it.”

  “Which are you?” asked Lemuel without opening his eyes and trying to visualise the myriad paths of the falling cards.

  “Think less about me, more about the cards,” warned Ahriman. “Ready?”

  “Ready.”

  A precisely stacked house of cards sat on the lip of the desk, arranged in a delicately balanced pyramid. Ahriman had produced them from a battered, cloth-wrapped tin, seventy-eight cards of what he called a Visconti-Sforza trionfi deck. Each card was exquisitely detailed and lovingly rendered with vivid colours and expressively wrought images of regal men and women.

  “Catch the Seven of Denari,” said Ahriman, and slammed an open palm down on the desk.

  The pyramid of cards collapsed, each one fluttering to the floor in a crazed whirlwind of spinning horsemen, kings and princesses. Lemuel snatched his hand out, seizing a card and holding it up before him.

  “Show me,” said Ahriman.

  Lemuel flipped the card, which showed a female figure reaching up to touch an eight-rayed star.

  “The Star,” said Ahriman. “Try again.”

  “It’s impossible,” said Lemuel in resignation. He had been trying to catch whichever card Ahriman named from the falling stack for the last three hours without success. “I can’t do it.”

  “You can. Lift your mind into the lower Enumerations to clear it of the clutter of material concerns. Let your mind float free of hunger, want and desire. Only then can you follow the correct path to the future echoes.”