A Thousand Sons

by Graham McNeill

  “Free my mind from desire? That’s hard for me to do,” pointed out Lemuel.

  “I never promised this would be easy. Quite the contrary in fact.”

  “I know, but it’s not easy for a man of my appetites to suppress them,” said Lemuel, patting his ample, but shrinking, gut. Shipboard cuisine was a bland mixture of reconstituted pastes and flash frozen organics grown in ventral hydroponic bays. It nourished the body, but did little else.

  “Then the Enumerations will help you,” said Ahriman. “Rise into the low spheres and visualise the paths each card will take, the interactions as they strike one another, the ripples they cause in the system. Learn to read the geometric progression of potentiality as each permutation gives birth to a thousand more outcomes regardless of how similar the beginning parameters were. In the forgotten ages, some people knew this as chaos theory, others as fractal geometry.”

  “I can’t do it,” protested Lemuel. “Your brain was crafted for that sort of thing, but mine wasn’t.”

  “It is not my enhanced cognition that allows me to see the cards fall. I am not a mathematical savant.”

  “Then you do it,” challenged Lemuel.

  “Very well,” said Ahriman, rebuilding the house of cards with calm dexterity. When the pyramid was complete, he turned to Lemuel. “Name a card.”

  Lemuel thought for a moment.

  “The Chariot,” he said at last.

  Ahriman nodded and closed his eyes, standing before the desk with his hands at his sides. “Ready?” asked Lemuel. “Yes.”

  Lemuel banged the table and the cards fell to the floor. Ahriman’s hand darted out like a striking snake and snatched a single gilt-edged card from the air. He turned it over to reveal a golden chariot drawn by two winged white horses. He placed the card face up on the desk.

  “You see? It can be done.”

  “Astartes reflexes,” said Lemuel.

  Ahriman smiled and said, “Is that what you think? Very well. Shall we try once more?”

  Once again, Ahriman built the house of cards and asked Lemuel to name a card. Lemuel did so and Ahriman closed his eyes, standing before the precariously balanced cards. Instead of keeping his arms at his sides, he extended a hand with his thumb and forefinger outstretched, holding his fingertips close together, as though gripping an invisible card. His breathing deepened, and his eyes darted back and forth behind their lids.

  “Do it,” said Ahriman.

  Lemuel thumped the desk and the cards collapsed in a rain of images. Ahriman didn’t move, and a single card fluttered through the air to slide precisely between his fingertips. Lemuel was not the least bit surprised when the Librarian flipped it over to reveal a divine figure bearing a fiery sword in his right hand and an eagle-topped globe in his left hand. Angels flew above the figure, blowing golden trumpets from which hung silk banners.

  “Just as you wanted,” said Ahriman. “Judgement.”

  FOUR DAYS LATER, Lemuel was once again ensconced within Ahriman’s library, though this time he had been promised remembrances instead of instruction. Almost a year after being denied the opportunity to descend to the surface of Ullanor, Lemuel had hoped for a firsthand account of Horus Lupercal’s ascension to Warmaster. In this, he was to be disappointed.

  When Lemuel asked about the Great Triumph, Ahriman had shrugged, as though it had been a trivial encounter, something not worthy of remembrance.

  “It was a private affair,” said Ahriman. Lemuel almost laughed before seeing that Ahriman was deadly serious. “Why would you want to know of it anyway?”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe because the Emperor himself was there,” said Lemuel, struggling to understand why Ahriman would think it strange he would want to know of such a singular event. “Or perhaps because the Emperor has returned to Terra and the Great Crusade has a new commander. Horus Lupercal is the Warmaster. Such an event is a turning point in the affairs of mankind, surely you must see that?”

  “I do,” nodded Ahriman, “though I fear I would make a poor teller of the tale. I am sure others will recount it better than I in times to come.”

  Ahriman sat behind his desk, sipping crisp, corn-coloured wine from an oversized pewter goblet. Lemuel sensed there was more to his reluctance to speak of Ullanor than any doubt as to his ability to give a good enough rendition.

  There would be little in the way of remembrance; something was preying on Ahriman’s mind, something that had happened upon the surface of Ullanor, but whatever it was, Lemuel would not hear it today.

  To see an Astartes troubled by concerns beyond the battlefield was surprising, and he regarded Ahriman with new eyes. Even stripped out of his armour and clad in a crimson tunic and khaki combat fatigues, Ahriman was enormous. Encased in his battle-plate, his limbs were smooth and clean, machine-like, but now Lemuel could see the bulging musculature of his biceps and the undulant ridges of his pectorals. If anything, an Astartes without his armour was more frightening. His proportions were human, but also alien and gigantic.

  Lemuel had come to know Ahriman well since leaving Ullanor; not well enough to yet count them as friends, but well enough to read his moods. Of his remembrancer friends, he had seen little, for Camille and Kallista spent the bulk of their time in the company of Ankhu Anen in the Photep’s library, learning to develop their nascent abilities. As little as he had seen of his female friends, Lemuel had seen nothing at all of Mahavastu Kallimakus.

  “Lemuel?” said Ahriman, snapping his thoughts back to the present.

  “I’m sorry,” said Lemuel. “I was thinking about a friend and hoping he was well.”

  “Who?”

  “Mahavastu Kallimakus, scribe to the primarch.”

  “Why would he not be doing well?”

  Lemuel shrugged, unsure how much he should say.

  “He seemed out of sorts the last time I saw him,” he said, “but then he’s a very old man, prone to the aches and pains of age. You understand?”

  “Not really,” admitted Ahriman. “I am as fit now as I was two centuries ago.”

  Lemuel chuckled and said, “That should amaze me, but it’s astonishing how quickly you become accustomed to the extraordinary, especially with the Thousand Sons.”

  He lifted a modest, cut-crystal glass to his lips and drank, enjoying the rarity of a wine that didn’t taste like it had been strained through a starship’s urinary filtration system.

  “How are you liking the wine?” asked Ahriman.

  “It is a more refined taste than I am used to,” said Lemuel, “flavoursome and forceful, yet with enough subtlety to surprise.”

  “The grapes were grown in underground vineyards on Prospero,” explained Ahriman. “It is a vintage of my own concoction, based on a gene-sample I took in Heretaunga bay on what was once the island of Diemenslandt.”

  “I never took the Astartes for students of viniculture.”

  “No? Why not?”

  Lemuel cocked his head to one side, wondering if Ahriman was joking. Certainly the Chief Librarian of the Thousand Sons was a man of serious mien, but all too often he would puncture that with deadpan humour. From the hue of his aura, it seemed his question was honestly asked, and Lemuel floundered for an answer.

  “Well, it’s just that you are bred for war. I didn’t think that left much room for less martial pursuits.”

  “In other words you think we are only good for battle? Is that it? The Astartes are simply weapons, killing tools who cannot have interests beyond war?”

  Lemuel saw a glint in Ahriman’s eye and played along.

  “You are very good at killing,” he said. “Phoenix Crag taught me that.”

  “You are right; we are very good at killing. I think that is why my Legion encourages its warriors to develop skills beyond the battlefield. After all, this crusade cannot last forever, and we will need to have a purpose beyond that when it is over. What will become of the warriors when there are no more wars?”

>   “They’ll settle down and grow fine wine,” said Lemuel, finishing his glass and accepting another as Ahriman leaned over to pour. A shiver passed along his spine at the sheer absurdity of this moment. He chuckled and shook his head.

  “What is funny?” asked Ahriman.

  “Nothing really,” he said. “I was just wondering how Lemuel Gaumon, a sometime academic, sometime dilettante of the esoteric came to share a glass of wine with a genetically engineered post-human? Two years ago, if someone had told me I’d be sitting here with you like this, I’d have thought they were mad.”

  “The feeling is mutual,” Ahriman assured him.

  “Then let us drink to new experiences,” said Lemuel, raising his glass.

  They did, and they enjoyed the strangeness of the moment. When he judged sufficient time had passed, Lemuel said, “You never answered my question.”

  “Which question?”

  “When you were training me with the trionfi cards,” said Lemuel. “When I asked what kind of diviner you were, one with an innate connection to the aether or one who has to struggle for every morsel of truth? I get the feeling it’s the former.”

  “Once I was, yes,” said Ahriman, and Lemuel read pride in his aura, but also regret. “I could pluck the future from the aether without effort, guiding my Fellowship along the most productive paths in war and study, but now I have to work hard for even a momentary glimpse into the patterns of the future.”

  “What changed?”

  Ahriman stood and circled the table, picking up the deck of cards and shuffling them expertly. He could have been a croupier or a cardsharp, thought Lemuel. The ease and dexterity with which Ahriman flicked the cards around his fingers was incredible, and he didn’t seem to notice he was doing it.

  “The tides of the Great Ocean are ever-changing, and its influence rises and fall. What was once a raging torrent can dwindle to a trickling brook in a fraction of a second. What was a gentle wave can rise to an all-consuming typhoon. Each practitioner’s powers rise and fall with its moods, for it is a fickle mistress whose interest flits like a firefly in the dark.”

  “You speak of it as though it were a living thing,” said Lemuel, seeing the wistful, faraway look in Ahriman’s eyes. Ahriman smiled and replaced the cards on the desk.

  “Perhaps I do,” he said. “The ancient sailors of Terra often claimed they had two wives, their earthly mates and the ocean. Each was jealous of the other and it was said that one or the other would claim a seafarer’s life. To live so close to the aether is to live with feet in two worlds. Both are dangerous, but a man can learn to read how they shift and dance in and out of sync with one another. The trick is to read those moments and crest the wave of power while it lasts.”

  Lemuel leaned forward and tapped a finger on the gold-backed cards.

  “I don’t think that’s a trick I’ve mastered,” he said.

  “No, divination is not your forte,” agreed Ahriman, “though you show some skill with aetheric reading. Perhaps I will schedule some time with Uthizzar of the Athanaens for you. He can develop this area of your psyche.”

  “I keep hearing of these cults, but why such specialisation?” asked Lemuel. “The sangomas I learned from were men and women who served the people of their townships in many different ways. They didn’t confine themselves to one area of expertise. Why does your Legion break up its teachings into different cults?”

  “The sangoma you speak of skimmed the tiniest fraction of learning from the Great Ocean, Lemuel. The lowliest Probationer of any Thousand Sons cult understands and practices more of the mysteries than even the most gifted sangoma.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” said Lemuel, taking another sip of wine. “But, still, why so many?”

  Ahriman smiled and said, “Finish your drink, and I will tell you of Magnus’ first journey into the desolation of Prospero.”

  “PROSPERO IS A paradise,” began Ahriman, “a wondrous planet of light and beauty. Its mountains are soaring fangs of brilliant white, its forests verdant beyond imagining and its oceans teem with life. It is a world returned to glory, but it was not always so. Long before the coming of Magnus, Prospero was all but abandoned.”

  Ahriman lifted a box of cold iron from the top shelf of his bookcase and placed it on the desk before Lemuel. He opened the lid to reveal a grotesque skull of alien origin, its surface dark and glossy as though coated in lacquer. Elongated, with extended mandibles and two enormous eye-sockets behind them, it was insectoid and utterly repellent.

  “What’s that?” asked Lemuel, curling his lip in revulsion.

  “This is a preserved exo-skull of a psychneuein, an alien predator native to Prospero.”

  “And why are you showing it to me?”

  “Because without these creatures, the cults of the Thousand Sons would not exist.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I’ll show you,” said Ahriman, lifting the skull from the box. He held it out to Lemuel and said, “Don’t worry, it is long dead and its residual aura has long since dissipated into the Great Ocean.”

  “Still, no thanks. Those mandibles look like they could tear a man’s head off.”

  “They could, but that was not what made the psychneuein so dangerous. It was its reproductive cycle that was its most potent weapon. The female psychneuein is drawn to psychic emanations and has a rudimentary fusion of telepathic and telekinetic powers. When fertile, the female psychically projects a clutch of its eggs into the brain of a host being with an unprotected mind, vulnerable to the power of the aether.”

  “That’s disgusting,” said Lemuel, genuinely horrified.

  “That is not the worst of it.”

  “It’s not?”

  “Not by a long way,” said Ahriman, with amused relish. “The eggs are small, no larger than a grain of sand, but by morning the following day, they will hatch and begin to feed on the host’s brain. At first the victim feels nothing more than a mild headache, but by afternoon he will be in agony, raving and insane, as his brain is devoured from the inside out. By nightfall, he will be dead, his skull a writhing mass of plump maggots. In the space of a few hours, the grubs have picked the carcass clean and will seek a dark place to hide in which to pupate. By the following day, they will emerge as adults, ready to hunt and reproduce.”

  Lemuel felt his guts roil, trying not to imagine the agony of being eaten alive by a host of parasites in his brain.

  “What a horrible way to die,” he said, “but I still don’t understand how such vile creatures shaped Prospero and the Thousand Sons?”

  “Patience, Lemuel,” cautioned Ahriman, sitting on the edge of the desk. “I am getting to that. You know of Tizca, the City of Light, yes?”

  “It is a place I am greatly looking forward to seeing,” said Lemuel.

  “You will see it soon enough,” smiled Ahriman. “Tizca is the last outpost of a civilisation wiped out thousands of years ago, a city where the survivors of a planet-wide cataclysm found refuge from the psychneuein. We suspect some freak upsurge in the Great Ocean triggered an explosion of uncontrolled psychic potential within the population, driving the psychneuein into a reproductive feeding frenzy. The civilisation of Prospero collapsed and the survivors fled to a city in the mountains.”

  “Tizca,” said Lemuel, thrilled to be learning the lost history of Prospero.

  “Yes,” confirmed Ahriman. “For thousands of years, the people of Tizca endured, while all they had built in the millennia since leaving Terra fell to dust. The surface of Prospero is dotted with the remains of their dead culture. Empty cities are now overgrown with forests and vines, the palaces of their kings overrun with wild beasts.”

  “How did they survive?”

  “They salvaged enough knowledge and equipment from the destruction to construct techno-psychic arrays and sustainable energy sources, which then allowed them to build giant hydroponic gardens deep in the caverns of the ventral mountain ranges.”

  “Where you grow th
e fruit for delightful wines,” said Lemuel, raising his glass in a toast, “but that’s not what I meant. How did they survive the psychneuein?”

  Ahriman tapped his head and said, “By developing the very powers that made them so vulnerable. The psychneuein were drawn to Tizca in their thousands, but the survivors were able to train their most gifted psykers to use their minds to erect invisible barriers of pure thought. They were primitive, bombastic powers compared to the subtle arts we employ today, but they kept the creatures at bay. And so, the practitioners of the mysteries remained locked in their limited understanding of the Great Ocean’s power until the coming of Magnus.”

  Lemuel leaned in and placed his wine glass on the edge of the desk. The origin myths of the primarchs were often shrouded in allegory and hyperbole, embroidered over time with all manner of fanciful details involving tests of strength, contests of arms or similarly outlandish feats.

  To hear of a primarch’s deeds on his home world from a warrior of his Legion would surely be the greatest achievement of any remembrancer, an authentic account as opposed to one embellished by people like the iterators. Lemuel’s pulse rate rose in expectation, and he felt a chill gust at his shoulder, like the breath of an invisible passer-by. He frowned as he saw a shimmer of red in the cut crystal of his wine glass, the hint of a golden eye looking back at him from the liquid.

  Lemuel glanced over his shoulder, but there was no one there.

  Looking back at his glass, it was simply wine. He shook off the unease the image had conjured. Ahriman was looking at him with an amused expression on his face, as though expecting him to say something.

  “You were saying,” said Lemuel, when Ahriman didn’t continue, “about Magnus?”

  “I was,” said Ahriman, “but it is not my story to tell.”

  Confused, Lemuel sat back in his seat and asked, “Then whose story is it to tell?”

  “Mine,” said Magnus, appearing at Lemuel’s shoulder, as if from thin air. “I shall tell it.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The Desolation of Prospero/The Fallen Statue/Fresh Summons

  IT SEEMED LIKE the grossest insult to be seated in the presence of so mighty a being, but no matter how Lemuel tried to rise, the muscles in his legs wouldn’t obey him. “My lord,” he finally managed.