"So where do you think Ahriman's gone?" asked Camille.

"I think I know," said Lemuel with a conspiratorial grin. "Want to go look?"

THE SEKHMET, THE Scarab Occult, Magnus' Veterans, whichever name they bore, it was one of fierce pride and devotion. None of lower grade than a Philosophus, the last cult rank a warrior could hold before facing the Dominus Liminus, these veterans were the best and brightest of the Legion. Having transcended their likes and dislikes, defied their mortality and broken down their idea of self, these warriors fought from a place of perfect calm.

The Khan had called them automatons, Russ decried their fighting spirit and Ferrus Ma.n.u.s had likened them to robots. Having heard his primarch's tales of the master of the Iron Hands, Ahriman suspected the latter comment was intended as a compliment.

Clad in hulking suits of burnished crimson Terminator armour, the Sekhmet crunched out over the salt plains and onto the lower slopes of the Mountain. Ahriman felt the presence of his Tutelary above him, sensing its unease as the psychic void beyond the deadstones loomed ever closer.

Phosis T'kar and Hathor Maat marched alongside him, their strides sure and eager. The shimmering forms of Tutelaries darted thorough the air like wary shoals of fish in the presence of pack predators. Like Aaetpio, the Tutelaries of his fellow warriors and captains were fearful in the face of the Mountain's emptiness.

To those without aether-sight, Tutelaries were invisible, but to the Thousand Sons with power they were bright visions of exquisite beauty. Aaetpio had served Ahriman faithfully for nearly a century, its form inconstant and beautiful, a vision of eyes and ever turning wheels of light. Utipa was a bullish ent.i.ty of formless energy, as bellicose as Phosis T'kar, where Paeoc resembled an eagle fashioned from a million golden suns, as vain and proud as Hathor Maat.

Ahriman had thought them angels at first, but that was an old word, a word cast aside by those who studied the mysteries of the aether as too emotive, too loaded with connotations of the divine. Tutelaries were simply fragments of the Primordial Creator given form and function by those with the power to bend them to their will.

He linked his thoughts briefly with Aaetpio's. If Magnus was in trouble, then they would need to find out without the sight or aid of their Tutelaries.

Though he had seen nothing tangible in any of his divinations, Ahriman's intuition told him something was amiss. As Magister Templi of all Prospero's cults, Magnus taught that intuition was just as important a tool for sifting meaning from the currents of the Great Ocean as direct vision.

Ahriman suspected trouble, but Phosis T'kar and Hathor Maat longed for it.

THE 28TH EXPEDITION had come to Aghoru three months ago. Its official designation in the War Council Records was Twenty-Eight Sixteen, though no one in the XV Legion ever called it that. Following the successful compliance of Twenty-Eight Fifteen, the sixty-three ships of the 28th Expedition translated from the Great Ocean to find a system of dead worlds, empty of life and desolate.

Indications were that life had once existed here, but now did not. What had caused such a system-wide cataclysm was unknown, but as the fleet made its way towards the sun, it became clear that life on the fifth planet had somehow survived the disaster.

How Magnus had known this insignificant shoal of the galaxy had included a planet inhabited by a severed offshoot of humanity was a mystery, for there were no residual electromagnetics or long-dead emissions to suggest anything lived here.

The Rehahti urged Magnus to order the fleet onwards, for the Crusade was at its height and the Thousand Sons had their share of plaudits yet to earn. Nearly two centuries had pa.s.sed since the Crusade was launched in glory and fanfare, two centuries of exploration and war that had seen world after world folded into the body of the resurgent Imperium of Man.

Of those two centuries, the Thousand Sons had fought for less than a hundred years.

In the early years of the Crusade, prior to the coming of Magnus, the Astartes of the Thousand Sons had proven especially susceptible to unstable genes, resulting in spontaneous tissue rejection, vastly increased psychic potential and numerous other variations from the norm. Labels like "mutants" and "freaks" were hung upon the Thousand Sons, and for a time it seemed as though they would suffer an ign.o.ble ending as a footnote in the history of the Great Crusade.

Then the Emperor's fleet had discovered Magnus the Red in a forgotten backwater of the galaxy, on the remote world of Prospero, and everything changed.

"As I am your son, they shall become mine," were Magnus' words to the Emperor, words that had changed the destiny of the Thousand Sons forever.

United with the Legion that carried his genetic legacy, Magnus bent every shred of his towering intellect to undoing the damage their aberrant genes had done.

And he had succeeded.

Magnus saved his Legion, but the Crusade had progressed in the time it had taken him to do it, and his warriors were eager to share in the glory their brothers were earning with every pa.s.sing day.

The Expedition Fleets of the Legions pushed ever outwards from the cradle of humanity to reunify the Emperor's realm. Like squabbling brothers, each of the primarchs vied for a place at their father's side, but only one was ever good enough to fight alongside the saviour of humanity: Horus Lupercal, Primarch of the Luna Wolves and beloved son of the Emperor.

The Emperor stood at the head of the Luna Wolves and Guilliman's Ultramarines, ready to unleash his terrible thunder against the greenskin of Ullanor, a war that promised to be gruelling and punishing. Who better than the favoured son of the Emperor to stand at his side as they throttled the life from this barbarian foe?

Ullanor would be a war to end all wars, but there was fighting closer to hand that demanded the attention of the Thousand Sons. Lorgar's Word Bearers and the s.p.a.ce Wolves of Leman Russ fought in the Ark Reach Cl.u.s.ter, a group of binary stars occupied by a number of belligerent planetary empires that rejected the Imperium's offer to become part of something greater.

The Wolf King had sent repeated calls for the XV Legion to join the fighting, but Magnus ignored them all.

He had found something of greater interest on Aghoru. He had found the Mountain.

CHAPTER TWO.

Drums of the Mountain/Temple of the Syrbotae/A Place of the Dead THEY HAD ONLY been climbing for twenty minutes, but already Lemuel was beginning to regret his hasty idea to spy upon the Thousand Sons. He'd discovered the steps hidden in the rocks on one of his frequent solitary walks in the lower reaches of the t.i.tanic mountain. Set in a cunningly concealed cleft a hundred metres from the deadstones, the steps wound through the rock of the Mountain, climbing a steep, but far more direct path than the Astartes would be following.

It might be more direct, but it certainly wasn't easier. His banyan was stained with sweat, and he imagined he didn't smell too pleasant. The sound of his heart was like the pounding kettledrums of a triumphal band welcoming the Emperor himself.

"How much further is it?" asked Camille. She was relishing this chance to venture deeper into the Mountain, though Kallista appeared rather less enthusiastic. The Astartes awed and scared her, but the idea of spying on them had sent a delicious thrill through her when he had suggested it. He couldn't read her aura, but her expression said she was regretting her decision to come along.

Lemuel paused, looking up at the metal yellow of the sky to catch his breath and slow his racing heartbeat.

"Another ten minutes, maybe," he said.

"You sure you'll last that long?" asked Camille, only half-joking.

"I'll be fine," he a.s.sured her, taking a swig of water from his canteen. "I've climbed this way before. It's not much higher. I think."

"Just don't collapse on me," said Camille. "I don't want to have to carry you back down."

"You can always roll me back down," replied Lemuel, attempting some levity.

"Seriously," said Camille, "are you sure you're up to this climb?"

"I'm fine," he insisted, with more conviction than he felt. "Trust me, it's worth the effort."

Back at the deadstones it had seemed like a grand adventure for the three of them to undertake, but the numbness of the senses he felt was like having his ears stoppered and his eyes sewn shut. From below, the mountain had been a black wall of nothingness, but climbing deeper into the rocks, Lemuel felt as if that nothingness was swallowing him whole.

He pa.s.sed the canteen around, grateful that Kallista and Camille indulged his desire to stop for a rest. It was early evening, but the day's heat hadn't let up. Still, at least there was some shade here. They could afford a brief stop, for the only other route he knew would take at least an hour to traverse, even for Astartes.

Lemuel took the bandanna from around his neck and mopped his face. The cloth was soaked by the time he was done, and he wrung it out with a grimace. Camille looked up the steps, craning her neck to try to see the top.

"So where does this lead exactly?" she asked.

"There's a plateau a bit higher up," he said. "It's like a viewing platform of some sort."

"A viewing platform?" asked Kallista. "For what?"

"It looks out over a wide valley I call the Temple of the Syrbotae."

"Syrbotae?" asked Camille. "What's that?"

"A very old legend of my homeland," replied Lemuel. "The Syrbotae were a race of giants from the Aethiopian kingdom of Meroe."

"Why do you call it that, a temple I mean?" asked Kallista, horrified at the word.

"You'll understand when we get there."

"You have a way of choosing words that could get you into trouble," said Camille.

"Not at all, my dear," said Lemuel. "The Thousand Sons are nothing if not rebels. I think they would appreciate the irony."

"Rebels? What are you talking about?" asked Kallista angrily.

"Nothing," said Lemuel, realising he had said too much. Stripped of his ability to read auras, he was being careless. "Just a bad joke."

He smiled to rea.s.sure Kallista he had been joking, and she smiled back.

"Come on," he said. "We should get going. I want to show you something spectacular."

IT TOOK THEM another thirty minutes to reach the plateau, by which time Lemuel swore never to climb the mountain again, no matter how spectacular the views or what the enticement. The sound of his drumming heartbeat seemed louder than ever, and Lemuel vowed to shed some weight before it killed him.

The sky was a darker shade of yellow brown. The light would never really fade, so he wasn't worried about negotiating the descent.

"This is amazing," said Kallista, looking back the way they had climbed. "You were so right, Lemuel."

"Yeah," agreed Camille, taking out her picter. "Not bad at all."

Lemuel shook his head.

"No, not the salt flats. Over there," he said, waving towards a row of spiked rocks that looked like slender stalagmites at the edge of the plateau. If the artificiality of the Mountain had ever been in doubt, the sight of the stalagmites, which were clearly the remains of fluted bal.u.s.trades, would have dispelled it.

"Over there," he said between gulps of air. "Look over there."

Camille and Kallista walked over to the stalagmites, and he saw the amazement in their body language. He smiled, pleased that he hadn't let them down with his talk of a spectacular view. He stood up and stretched his back. His breath was returning to normal, but the drumming in his ears hadn't let up one bit.

"You weren't wrong to call it a temple," said Camille, looking down into the valley.

"Yes, it's quite a view, isn't it?" said Lemuel, regaining some of his composure.

"It is, but that's not what I mean."

"It's not?" he asked, finally realising that the drumming he was hearing wasn't in his head. It was coming from the valley, a haunting, relentless beat that was hypnotic and threatening at the same time. The percussive booms of scores of drums interleaved with brutal disharmony, plucking at Lemuel's nerves and sending tremors of unease down his spine.

Intrigued, he walked stiffly on tired legs to join the two women at the edge of the plateau.

He put a hand on Camille's shoulder and looked down into the valley. His eyes widened and his jaw hung open in surprise. "Throne of Terra!" he said.

AHRIMAN HEARD THE drums, recognising the dissonant notes echoing from the Mountain as those once declared forbidden in an ancient age. Nothing good could come of such a sound, and Ahriman felt certain that something unnatural was being orchestrated within the valley. The Sekhmet matched his pace, their heavy suits driven on by uncompromising will and strength.

"This bodes ill," said Phosis T'kar, as the drums grew louder. "d.a.m.n, but I do not like this place. I am blind here."

"We all are," replied Hathor Maat, looking towards the upper reaches of the valley.

Ahriman shared Phosis T'kar's hatred of the blindness. As one of the Legion's Adept Exemptus, he had attained supreme summits of mastery, aetheric flight, connection with a Tutelary, and the rites of evocation and invocation. The Sekhmet were powerful warrior-mages, and could call forth powers mortal men could never dream of wielding. On his own, each warrior was capable of subduing worlds, but in this place, with their powers denied them, they were simply Astartes.

Simply Astartes, thought Ahriman with a smile. How arrogant that sounds.

Even as he scanned the valley ahead, Ahriman began forming the basis of a treatise for his grimoire, a discourse on the perils of dependence and overweening pride.

"There is a lesson here," he said. "It will do us good to face this without our powers. We have become lax in making war as it was once made."

"Always the teacher, eh?" said Phosis T'kar.

"Always," agreed Ahriman, "and always the student. Every experience is an opportunity to learn."

"So what lesson can I possibly learn here?" demanded Hathor Maat. Of them all, Maat had the greatest dread of powerlessness, and the walk into the Mountain had tested his courage in ways beyond what they had faced before.

"We depend on our abilities to define us," said Ahriman, feeling the ba.s.s vibration of the drums through the soles of his armoured boots. "We must learn to fight as Astartes again."

"Why?" demanded Hathor Maat. "We have been gifted with power. The power of the Primordial Creator is in all of us, so why should we not use it?"

Ahriman shook his head. Like him, Hathor Maat had faced the Dominus Liminus, but his mastery of the Enumerations was that of Adept Major. He had achieved self-reliance, but he had yet to achieve the oneness of self and ego-extinction that would allow him to reach the higher Enumerations. Few Pavoni could, and Ahriman suspected Hathor Maat was no exception.

"You might as well send us in unarmed and say we should fight with our bare hands," continued Hathor Maat.

"Someday you may have to do just that," said Ahriman.

THE GROUND, WHICH had been steadily rising for the last hour, began to climb ever more steeply, and the sound of drums grew louder, as though amplified by the soaring walls of the valley. As it always was, Ahriman's gaze was drawn up the incredible height of the mountain. The summit was hidden from view by its sheer ma.s.s, an endless slope rearing into a cloudless, yellow sky that was darkening to burnt orange.

It seemed inconceivable that this towering peak had been raised by natural means. Its proportions were too perfect, its form too pleasing to the eye, and its curves and lines flowed with a grace that was wholly unnatural. Ahriman had seen such perfect artifice before.

On Prospero.

The Vitravian pyramids and cult temples of Tizca were constructed using golden means and the numerical series of the Liber Abaci. Their work had been distilled and refined by Magnus the Red to fashion the City of Light with such beauty that all who beheld it were rendered speechless with delight.

Everywhere Ahriman looked he saw evidence of geometric perfection, as though the mountain's creator had studied the divine proportions of the ancients and crafted the landma.s.s to their design. Spiral patterns on the ground described perfect curves, pillars of rock were equally s.p.a.ced, and each angle of cliff and cleft was artfully arranged with mathematical exact.i.tude. Ahriman wondered what cause could be so great as to require such magnificent feats of geomorphic sculpting.

The mouth of the valley funnelled the sound of drums towards them, the beats rising and falling in what, at first, seemed a random pattern, but which Ahriman's enhanced cognitive processes quickly discerned was not random at all.

"Prime armaments," he ordered, and fifty weapons snapped up in unison, a mix of storm bolters, flamers and newly issued rotary cannons capable of unleashing thousands of sh.e.l.ls per minute. Their official designation was a.s.sault cannon, but such a graceless name had none of the power of its former incarnation, and numerological study had led the Thousand Sons to keep its previous t.i.tle: the reaper cannon.

The Mechanic.u.m had not the wit or understanding to recognise the power of names or the mastery and fear a well chosen one could instil. With six letters, three vowels and three consonants, the reaper's number was nine. Given the organisation of the Thousand Sons into a Pesedjet of nine Fellowships, it was a natural fit and the name had remained.

Ahriman recited the mantras that lifted his mind into the lower Enumerations and calmed his supra-enhanced physiology, allowing him to better process information and react without fear in a hostile environment. Normally this process would enhance his awareness of his surroundings, the essential nature of the world around him laid bare to his senses, but on this mountain the landscape was dead and lifeless to him.

Ahriman saw the diffuse glow of torches and fires ahead. The vibration of the ground was like the heartbeat of the mountain. Was he an ant crawling on the body of some larger organism, insignificant and easily swatted aside?

"Zagaya," said Ahriman, and the Sekhmet formed a staggered arrowhead, with him at its point. Other Legions knew this formation as the speartip, and though Ahriman appreciated the robust, forceful nature of the term, he preferred the ancient name taught to him by the Emperor on Terra at the island fortress of Diemenslandt.