A Thousand Sons

by Graham McNeill

  Only the dim glow that swam in the walls illuminated the chamber. Of the thousand Thralls, only eighteen remained alive, though their bodies were gaunt and drained, the glow from their crystals faint and almost extinguished.

  “My lord,” said Amon, coming forward with a goblet of water. “It is good to see you.”

  Magnus nodded, and Ahriman saw how pale his skin had become. His long red hair was matted with sweat, and Ahriman thought he could see the writhing veins and pulsing organs beneath the primarch’s skin. That was a lie, for Ahriman had seen into the heart of Magnus, and there was nothing so mundane as liver, lungs or kidney within that immortal frame.

  Phael Toron, Uthizzar and Auramagma crowded in, their joy at seeing Magnus returned beyond measure. Only Ahriman held back, his emotions mixed at what they had done. For nine long days they had stood vigil over their beloved primarch, neither eating nor sleeping nor partaking of food or water. No words had passed between them, and no communication had been attempted with their brothers on the surface.

  “Was it worth it?” asked Ahriman. “Did you succeed?”

  Magnus fixed him with his single eye, a dull orb of watery blue, and shook his head slowly.

  “No, Ahzek, I think that I did not,” said Magnus. “Just as I attempted to save my brother from the abyss, others were ready to push him in.”

  “Others?” snarled Auramagma. “Who?”

  “A wretch named Erebus who serves my erstwhile brother, Lorgar, It seems the powers that seek to ensnare Horus Lupercal have already claimed some pieces on this board. The Word Bearers are already in thrall to Chaos.”

  “Lorgar’s Legion have betrayed us also?” asked Phael Toron. “This treachery runs deeper than we could ever have imagined.”

  “Chaos?” said Ahriman. “You use the term as if it were a name.”

  “It is, my son,” said Magnus. “It is the Primordial Annihilator that has hidden in the blackest depths of the Great Ocean since the dawn of time, but which now moves with infinite patience to the surface. It is the enemy against which all must unite or the human race will be destroyed. The coming war is its means of achieving the end of all things.”

  “Primordial Annihilator? I have never heard of such a thing,” said Ahriman.

  “Nor had I until I faced Horus and Erebus,” said Magnus, and Ahriman was shocked to see the barest flicker in his primarch’s aura.

  Magnus was lying to them. He had known of this Primordial Annihilator.

  “So what do we do now?” asked Uthizzar. “Surely now we must warn the Emperor?”

  Magnus hesitated before nodding slowly.

  “Yes, we must,” he said. “If my father is forewarned, he can take arms against Horus before it is too late.”

  “Why will he believe us?” asked Ahriman. “We have no proof.”

  “I have the proof now,” sighed Magnus wearily. “Now return to your cult temples and await my summons. Amon, attend upon me; the rest of you may leave.”

  The Captains of Fellowship turned and made their way towards the crystal steps that led out of the cave.

  “Ahriman,” said Magnus, “bend all the power of the Corvidae to unravelling the strands of the future. We must know more of what is to come. Do you understand me?”

  “I do, my lord,” replied Ahriman.

  “Do whatever it takes,” said Magnus. “Whatever the cost may be.”

  LEMUEL AWOKE TO find Ahriman standing over him. His mentor had a stern look in his eye, and Lemuel immediately felt the tension in the room. He stifled a yawn, realising he’d fallen asleep next to Kallista’s bed once again. Her eyes were closed, though it was hard to tell whether it was in sleep or unconsciousness. Camille sat across from him, her breathing still that of a sleeper.

  Camille had recovered well from her ordeal with the psychneuein eggs, quickly returning to her normal, vivacious self.

  “My lord?” he said. “What is it?”

  Amon and Ankhu Anen stood behind Ahriman, making the room feel suddenly small. “You should leave, both of you,” Ahriman told him. “Leave? Why?”

  “Because you will find what has to happen here unpleasant.”

  “I don’t understand,” he said, rising from his chair and moving protectively towards Kallista. Camille woke and looked up, startled, as she saw Astartes filling the room.

  “Lem?” she asked, immediately picking up on the tension. “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know yet,” he said.

  “I do not expect you to understand,” said Ahriman with real regret in his voice. “But events are in motion that require us to know of the future. Our normal methods of gathering such information are denied to us, so we must seek other avenues.”

  “What are you going to do? I won’t let you hurt her.”

  “I am sorry, Lemuel,” said Ahriman. “We have no choice. This has to happen. Believe me, I wish it did not.”

  Amon moved towards the bank of walnut-panelled machines and turned all the dials to the their middle positions. The light began to fade from the crackling, buzzing globes and the needles on the brass readouts nosed their way down.

  “WHAT IS HE doing?” Camille wanted to know. “Lord Ahriman, please?”

  Ahriman said nothing, his face betraying his unease.

  “You wanted to know what this machine was for?” said Ankhu Anen, taking Lemuel’s arm. The giant Astartes easily pulled him away from Kallista’s side and handed him off to Ahriman. “It is an aetheric blocker. It isolates the subject’s mind from the Great Ocean. We used such devices to subdue our brothers when the flesh change came upon them. It was the only way to stop it. Your friend’s mind is locked open to its roaring tides, and, but for these devices, aetheric energy would be pouring into her.”

  “Can you… shut her mind to it?” asked Camille, standing protectively beside her friend.

  The Astartes said nothing, and Lemuel read the truth in their auras.

  “They can,” he said, “but they won’t.”

  “She should be dead already,” hissed Ankhu Anen, dragging Camille out of the way. “She has a unique link to future currents, and we must make use of all the tools available to us.”

  “Tools? Is that all we’ve been to you?” asked Lemuel, struggling uselessly in Ahriman’s grip. “All this time, were you just using us?”

  “It was not like that,” said Ahriman, casting a poisonous glance at Ankhu Anen.

  “Yes it was,” said Lemuel. “I see that now. You think you’re so clever, but you’re blinded by your belief in the superiority of your knowledge. You can’t even contemplate that someone else might know better than you.”

  “Because no one else does,” snapped Ahriman. “We do know better than anyone else.”

  “Maybe you do, but maybe you don’t. What if there’s something you’re missing? What if there’s some little piece of the puzzle you don’t know about?”

  “Be silent,” ordered Ankhu Anen. “We are the architects of fate, not you.”

  “So what happens when you turn those machines off?” asked Camille, taking Lemuel’s hand as they realised the futility of resisting the Astartes physically.

  “We will listen to what she has to say and we will learn of the future.”

  “No, I won’t let you,” said Lemuel.

  “No?” sneered Ankhu Anen. “Who are you to bark orders at us, little man? You think because Ahriman has taught you a few parlour tricks that you are one of us? You are mortals, your abilities and intellect are beneath our notice.”

  “Ahriman, please!” begged Lemuel. “Don’t do this!”

  “I’m sorry, Lemuel, but they are right. Kallista is dying anyway. At least this way her death will mean something.”

  “That’s a lie!” shouted Lemuel. “If you do this, you’ll be killing her. You might as well put a bullet in her brain and be honest about it.”

  Amon removed some of the contact points on Kallista’s skull and consulted the readouts on the aetheric blocker. He nodded to An
khu Anen and said, “It is done. I have kept some of the blocks in place, but her mind is open to the aether now. Just a fraction, but it should be enough to generate divinatory activity.”

  Kallista’s eyes fluttered open and she drew in a panicked breath as awareness was forced back to the surface of her consciousness. Her lips moved and breaths of hoarse air gusted from somewhere deep inside her. The temperature in the room fell sharply.

  “A million shards of glass, a million times a million. All broken, all shattered glass. The eye in the glass. It sees and it knows, but it does nothing…”

  Her eyes drifted shut and her breathing deepened. No more words were forthcoming, and Ankhu Anen leaned over her, prising the lids of her eyes open.

  “Increase the flow of aetheric energy,” he ordered. “We can get more out of her.”

  “Please,” begged Camille. “Don’t do this.”

  “Ahriman, she’s an innocent, she doesn’t deserve this,” cried Lemuel.

  The Thousand Sons ignored them, and Amon again adjusted the dials on the machine. The needles dipped even farther, and Kallista’s body jerked on the bed, her legs kicking the covers from her feet. Lemuel didn’t want to watch, but couldn’t tear his eyes from the dreadful sight.

  She screamed, and the words poured from her in a flood as the temperature continued to plummet.

  “It’s too late… the Wolf is at the door and it hungers for blood. Oh, Throne… no, the blood! The Ravens, I see them too. The lost sons and a Raven of blood. They cry out for salvation and knowledge, but it is denied! A brother betrayed, a brother murdered. The worst mistake for the noblest reason! It cannot happen, but it must!”

  Sweat poured from Kallista’s face. Her eyes bulged in their sockets and every muscle and sinew of her body stretched to breaking point. The effort of speaking was too much, and she fell back, her frame wracked with agonising convulsions.

  Lemuel felt Ahriman’s grip slacken, and he looked up to see regret written across his face. He extended his aura, projecting his disgust and sadness at Kallista’s treatment by the Thousand Sons into Ahriman’s. The effect was subtle, but Ahriman looked down at him with an expression that was part admiration and part remorse.

  “That will not work on me,” said Ahriman. “You have learned much, but you don’t have the strength to influence me with the little power you have.”

  “Then you’re just going to let this happen?”

  “I have no choice,” said Ahriman. “The primarch has demanded it be so.”

  “Lem, they’re going to kill her,” pleaded Camille.

  Ahriman turned to face her saying, “She is already dead, Mistress Shivani.”

  He nodded to Amon. “Allow the aether free reign within her. We must know everything.”

  Magnus’ equerry turned back to the machine and turned all the dials to zero. The needles fell slack and the lights winking on its surface extinguished. The glass readouts on the machine cracked with frost and the globes misted over. Lemuel felt cold like the chill at the end of the world.

  The effect on Kallista was instantaneous. Her back arched and her eyes snapped open. Blazing light streamed out, like the furnace breath of an incinerator. It illuminated the room with a sickly blue-green light, throwing shadows of things that didn’t exist across every wall. The ghostly howls of a million monsters ripped from her throat, and Lemuel smelled the awful stench of roasted human flesh.

  Smoke poured from Kallista’s body, and even the Astartes were horrified at what was happening to her. The flesh bubbled and smoked on her bones, peeling away in blackened flakes as though the target of an invisible flamethrower. Her body hissed and spat as it was reduced to jellied runnels of boiling fat and meat.

  Yet through it all, she still screamed.

  Long after her heart and lungs and brain were blackened husks, she kept screaming. The sound cut through Lemuel like a hot knife, twisting in his guts with treacherous force. He dropped to his knees as a screeching whine, like a host of fingernails dragged down a slate-board, bit into his head. Camille was screaming, her grip on his hand as powerful as a clamping vice.

  Then, with a terrible ripping, tearing sound, it was over.

  Lemuel blinked away bright sunbursts, feeling his stomach lurch at the stench of burned meat that hung like a miasma in the air. He pulled himself to his feet, dreading what he would see as much as he needed to see what had become of Kallista Eris.

  Nothing remained of the beautiful remembrancer save a blackened outline seared onto the sheets, and smoking pools of rendered flesh that drooled from the bed in long, rubbery ropes.

  “What did you do?” he whispered, tears streaming down his face. “Oh, Kallista, you poor, poor girl.”

  “We did what we needed to,” hissed Ankhu Anen. “I make no apologies.”

  “No,” said Lemuel, turning to help Camille to her feet. “You didn’t need to do this. This was murder, plain and simple.”

  Camille wept with him, burying her head in his shoulder and clawing at his back with heaving sobs of grief.

  Ahriman reached out to him.

  “I am truly sorry, my friend,” he said.

  Lemuel shrugged off his hand, moving past Ahriman towards the door with his arms wrapped tightly around Camille.

  “Don’t touch me,” he said. “We are no longer friends. I don’t know if we ever were.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  The Warning/You were Right/Too Close to the Sun

  MAGNUS SAT IN the centre of the Reflecting Cave, allowing the resonant harmonies of the silent crystals to fill him with calm. His meditations had lasted two nights and he had finally achieved the calm he needed to make his journey He was not alone, for nine hundred Thralls stood in their appointed positions around the chamber, each holding a glimmering crystal into which they had bound their lifeforce.

  No more Thralls could be spared, for all those that had taken part in the last ritual had since perished. Nine hundred was fewer than Magnus would have liked, but nine hundred would have to do. What other choice was there?

  The spell he had crafted required sacrifice. Its power was beyond anything he had ever conjured, even within the secrecy of his Sanctum or in the days when he had struggled to cure his Legion of their terrible mutations.

  The Thralls’ lives were forfeit, but it was a sacrifice each made willingly. Their brothers had died in vain as Magnus had tried to save Horus. They would die to allow Magnus to take warning of that treachery to the Emperor, and none begrudged their lord and master the light of their lives.

  Magnus opened his eye as Ahriman approached.

  “Is everything prepared?” he asked.

  Ahriman was robed in white, and he bore the Book of Magnus before him like an offering. Magnus read his favoured son’s concern, but he alone of all his warriors could be entrusted with this spell, for only Ahriman had the clarity of thinking and detached command of the Enumerations necessary to intone the incantation with the required precision.

  “It is, my lord,” said Ahriman, “but again I ask you, is this the only way?”

  “Why do you doubt me, my son?” asked Magnus.

  “It is not that I doubt you,” said Ahriman hurriedly, “but I have studied this evocation and its power is unlike anything we have ever attempted. The consequences—”

  “The consequences will be mine alone to bear,” interrupted Magnus. “Now do as I ask.”

  “My lord, I will always obey, but the spell to break into the alien lattice-way calls for bargains to be struck with the most terrible creatures of the Great Ocean, beings whose names translate as… daemons.”

  “There is little beyond your knowledge, Ahriman, but there are yet things you cannot know. You of all men should know that ‘daemon’ is a meaningless word conjured by fools who knew not what they beheld. Long ago, I encountered powers in the Great Ocean I thought to be sunken, conceptual landmasses, but over time I came to know them as vast intelligences, beings of such enormous power that they dwarf even th
e brightest stars of our own world. Such beings can be bargained with.”

  “What could such powerful beings possibly want?” asked Ahriman. “And can you ever really be sure that you have the best of such a bargain?”

  “I can,” Magnus assured him. “I have bargained with them before. This will be no different. If we could have saved the gateway into the lattice on Aghoru, this spell would be unnecessary. I could simply have stepped into it and emerged on Terra.”

  “Assuming a gateway exists on Terra,” cautioned Ahriman.

  “Of course a gateway exists on Terra. Why else would my father have retreated there to pursue his researches?”

  Ahriman nodded, though Magnus saw he was far from convinced.

  “There can be no other way, my son,” said Magnus. “We talked about this before.”

  “I remember, but it frightens me that we must wield powers forbidden to us to warn the Emperor. Why should he trust any warning sent by such means?”

  “You would have me trust the vagaries of Astrotelepathy? You know how fickle such interpretations can be. I dare not trust a matter of such dreadful importance to mere mortals. Only I have the power to project my being into this alien labyrinth and navigate my way to Terra with news of Horus’ treachery. For my father to believe me I must speak to him directly. He must bear witness to the acuity of my visions, and he must know what I know with the totality of my truth. Heard third-, fourth- or fifth hand through a succession of intermediaries will only dilute any warning until it is too late to do anything. That is why it must be this way.”

  “Then it must be done,” said Ahriman.

  “Yes, it must,” agreed Magnus, rising from the floor of the chamber and walking with Ahriman to the point beneath the bronze mechanism that lay below Occullum Square. Magnus looked up through the green gem at its base, as though looking to Terra itself.

  “It will be dangerous,” admitted Magnus, “but if there is anyone who can do it…”

  “It is you,” finished Ahriman.

  Magnus smiled and said, “Watch over me, my son?”