Camille Shivani spent almost every waking minute in the library, poring over the histories of Heliosa and the earliest legends regarding the mythical birth rock of Terra. Immersed in the wealth of information, she studied the texts as any scholar might, but also freely indulged her talent for reading the imprints of past owners. Many of the histories were written by men with no connection to the events they described or by those who had won the wars they wrote about, and were thus of little value beyond subjective descriptions.

Tucked away in a neglected chamber near the top of the pyramid structure, however, Camille found a flaking, ochre-stained book that changed everything. Many of its pages were illegible thanks to moisture damage, but no sooner had she touched it than she knew she wouldn't need to read the words to unlock its secrets.

This was history written by someone who had lived through it, an authentic account of an alien world as it pa.s.sed through a turbulent period of change. In an instant, she knew the writer, a young man from the south by the name of Kaleb. She felt his hopes and dreams, his pa.s.sions and his vices. Through his eyes, Camille lived a lifetime of joys and regrets, learning of his time, nearly two thousand years ago, when the tribal city-states of Heliosa had united under the belief in an ancient thunder G.o.d from their earliest days to defeat a marauding race from the stars.

Ankhu Anen was thrilled by Camille's accounts of Kaleb's time, and immediately a.s.signed her an Astartes Zealator from the Athanaean cult to skim the thoughts from her mind and transcribe them via a scrivener harness. From that moment on, any book of unknown provenance was brought to Camille for authentication.

In contrast, Lemuel Gaumon was a stranger in the Great Library. His time belonged to Ahriman, who continued his intensive training in the proper use of his abilities and how to shield his presence from the void-predators that swam the shallows of the Great Ocean.

Only once did Lemuel attempt to broach the subject of what had happened to Hastar upon the causeway before the Great Library. The dreadfully transformed body had been returned to the Photep and placed in stasis, but the shadow of his horrific death hung over the Thousand Sons like a guilty secret.

No sooner had he asked than he knew he had touched an exposed nerve.

"He could not control his power," said Ahriman, with a haunted, reflexive glance towards the silver oakleaf cl.u.s.ter on his shoulder-guard. Lemuel made a mental note to ask about that symbol in quieter times, for it was clear there was a link.

"Could that, what did you call it, flesh change... happen to you?" asked Lemuel, all too aware that he was treading on dangerous ground.

"He promised it would never happen again, to any of us," said Ahriman, and Lemuel read the hurt betrayal in his aura, its nearness too raw and naked to conceal. Ahriman's words spoke of the cold dread of prey that can sense the nearness of a stalking predator. To know that Astartes could feel such emotion shocked Lemuel.

Ahriman would be drawn no further, and nothing more was said on the matter as Lemuel's teachings continued. He was taught how to free his body of light from his body of flesh, and fly the invisible currents and thermals of the aether. Such voyages were short, for his skill had not yet developed enough to allow him any great time apart from his flesh.

Between such instructional times, Lemuel was in his element, travelling from city to city in the company of a squad of Astartes from Ahriman's First Fellowship to doc.u.ment the reconstruction of a world, first-hand. These warriors were all Philosophus, a rank so far above Lemuel's provisional one of Neophyte that it made him dizzy to think a man could master the mysteries so completely.

Mechanic.u.m forge-vessels, city-sized monoliths bringing vast builder-machines and billions of tonnes of raw materials, dropped into the lower atmosphere like continents set adrift in the sky. The descent of such enormous cities of metal through the atmosphere set off a b.u.t.terfly effect of clashing tempests that howled and raged across the world before settling into a continuous downpour that lasted two months.

Campfire scuttleb.u.t.t had it that the planet's inhabitants believed their world was weeping for its conquered people, but no sooner were the iterators made aware of this morsel than it was spun afresh that the rains were the planet washing away the stains of the old days. In conjunction with this, anonymously sourced tales painting the kings of the Phoenix Court as corrupt despots, who exploited the people for their own selfish ends, were subtly fed into the rumour mill.

As the iterators did their work in the deep-valley reeducation camps, public debates and potent examples of the Imperium's majesty were unveiled to the people of Heliosa. Lemuel studied the techniques used by the Imperial speakers, noting the armsmen discreetly placed to drag off hecklers, the native turncoat planted within an audience to reinforce the speaker's message with loud agreement, and the unseen vox-bee that flitted through the crowds to broadcast Imperial-friendly questions to which the answers were already prepared.

Each iterator had a team of investigators, whose task it was to unearth local beliefs and traditions, which were then embellished and finally supplanted with subtly altered versions that reinforced loyalty to the Imperium. The work of the Thousand Sons in the Great Library proved to be an enormous help with this.

Magnus' Legion hardly strayed from the library but the Word Bearers worked closely with the iterators, providing security for the camps and reinforcing the teachings with their own brand of loyalty. Lemuel found this element of compliance the most distasteful, seeing the indigenous culture of a world gradually overwhelmed by the Imperium's doctrines like a cuckoo invading a nest. The Word Bearers version of the Imperial Truth was particularly hardline, and Lemuel soon grew weary of the hectoring rhetoric that smelled more of indoctrination than it did of education. It was rumoured that the Emperor had chastised Lorgar's Legion in the past for such zeal, but even if that were true, it seemed the lesson hadn't stuck.

The Imperium was benign. It did bring hope in the form of Unity, but the Word Bearers' argument seemed absurdly petulant, posited along the lines of a schoolyard bully's argument.

"We are right because we say we are right," it said. "Agree with us and we will be friends. Disagree with us and we will be enemies."

That was no way to win the hearts and minds of a conquered people, but what other choice was there? It rankled that this new beginning had to be won with linguistic subterfuge and outright intimidation, but Lemuel was not naive enough to believe that a populace who had fought so hard to resist the Imperium would be brought to compliance without such stratagems. It would shorten the process ma.s.sively if the populace could be made to believe they were better off now than they were before.

What saddened Lemuel most was that it seemed to be working.

Lemuel was reminded of the ancient text Camille had shown him, the Shiji, a meticulous record of a grand historian that glorified the ruling emperor while vilifying the previous dynasty.

In his quieter, darker moments, Lemuel would often wonder if the Imperium was really as enlightened as it claimed.

LIKE AGHORU, AN Imperial Commander was appointed to oversee the Ark Reach Cl.u.s.ter and the long years of reconstruction and integration that lay ahead. Where Aghoru received a civilian administrator, Heliosa required a firmer hand. Major General Hestor Navarre was a senior officer of the Ouranti Draks, a regiment of swarthy-skinned fighters exclusively recruited from the desiccated jungle regions of Sud Merica. A career soldier of Hy Brasil, Navarre had fought his way across a hundred battlefields alongside the Word Bearers, and his appointment was greeted with sage approval.

Unlike Aghoru, scores of regiments were dispersed throughout the conquered Ark Reach Cl.u.s.ter. Imperial administration burrowed its way into every level of society, replacing defunct planetary rulers with Imperial delegates and the infrastructure to allow them to function. Munitorum officials calculated each planet's worth to the Imperium, while storytellers and myth-makers travelled system-wide extolling the glorious history of mankind.

Four months after the collapse of resistance, word came that the last text of the Phoenix Crag library had been copied into the archive stacks of the Photep. A day later, the 28th Expeditionary fleet broke orbit, and Magnus the Red gave the order to make best speed for an isolated shoal of spatial debris in the galactic east of the Ark Reach.

The various shipmasters of the 28th Expedition queried the coordinates, as they were far from the calculated system jump point, but Magnus' order was confirmed. This region of s.p.a.ce would allow their vessels a calmer entry to the Great Ocean, and only when the fleet had reached this newly declared jump point did Magnus reveal their ultimate destination.

The 28fh Expedition had been summoned to the Ullanor system, and excitement spread through the fleet at the prospect of joining the war against the greenskin. More thrilling was the prospect of joining forces with the Emperor himself, who fought in the forefront of the campaign, smiting the savage foe alongside Horus Lupercal.

Hopes of glory to be earned and battles to be fought were dashed, only to be replaced by awe, as it became known that the campaign was already over. The war against the greenskins of Ullanor had been projected to last years, decades even.

The Emperor's summons was not in the name of war, but of victory.

The Thousand Sons were to stand with many of their brother Legions in a Great Triumph honouring the Emperor's victory, a spectacle the likes of which the galaxy would never see again. Under Magnus' expert direction, the fleet Navigators plotted a razor's course for the Ullanor system.

The Expedition fleet of the Word Bearers was deeply enmeshed in the integration of the worlds of the Ark Reach into the Imperium, and Lorgar would pull his warriors out and make for Ullanor when they were able.

Magnus and Lorgar said their goodbyes briefly, the mighty primarchs speaking words that only they could hear. But as Ahriman watched them part, he caught a flicker of Magnus' aura, the faintest whisper of something indefinable, yet disquieting.

The last time he had seen it had been when Magnus and Russ had almost come to blows.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

Triumph/The Dusk Lord/Old Friends ULLANOR WAS A world transformed. In the hands of the greenskin it had been reduced to a rough world of reeking lairs and filth-choked encampments. Astartes war had cleansed its surface with scarifying fury that swept all before it. Yet for all its ferocity, it could not compare with the industry of the Mechanic.u.m.

Four Labour Fleets of geoformers went to work on the rugged hinterlands that had housed the feral warlord of the savages, levelling the world's largest continent as a stage befitting the Master of Mankind. Millions of servitors, automatons and penal battalions went to work on its construction, reducing mountains to rubble and using the debris of their grinding down to fill the lightless valleys and even out the undulant wastelands where the greenskin had lit his revel fires and thrown up his ugly fortresses of mud and clay.

What should have taken centuries took months, and as squadron after squadron of Thunderhawks of the Thousand Sons broke through the acrid clouds of smog and dust hanging over Ullanor, it was a sight calculated to take a viewer's breath away.

The ground below was a polished granite mirror, a terrazzo landma.s.s that shone like the angelgla.s.s of the ancient court astronomer. Vitrified craters had been melted into the landscape and filled with promethium. Searing flames turned the sky orange and sent towering pillars of smoke into the heavens. A laser-straight road, half a kilometre wide and five hundred long cut through the heart of the craters, its extremities marked by trophy posts bearing the bleached, fleshless skulls of greenskin brutes.

Almost obscured by the smoke, hundreds of enormous vessels hung in low orbit, their engines straining against the pitiless attraction of gravity. The atmosphere clashed with chain lightning from the blistering electromagnetic fields each vessel generated. Flocks of strike cruisers, fighter aircraft and bombers flew formation overhead, the roar of their engines a wordless vocalisation of primal glory.

The vermilion starships of the Blood Angels jostled for position with the fabulously ornamented vessels of the Emperor's Children. Phalanx, the mighty golden fortress of the Imperial Fists, dominated its segment of the sky, defying the laws of nature by hanging immobile above the earth.

The battle-scarred flagships of the Khan, Angron, Lorgar and Mortarion flew above the mirrored ground alongside their brother primarch's ships, yet supreme amongst them was a gilded warship that held anchor above the one element of the continent not planed flat by the industrial meltas of the Mechanic.u.m.

This was the Vengeful Spirit, command ship of Horus Lupercal, second only to Phalanx in its savage power of destruction. Entire worlds had died by its lethal a.r.s.enal, and Horus Lupercal had shown no restraint in unleashing its full fury. Fourteen Legions had answered the Emperor's summons, a hundred thousand of the greatest warriors in all human history, and nine of the primarchs were in attendance, the rest too scattered by the demands of the crusade to reach Ullanor in time.

Eight million soldiers of the Imperial Army had come, and a dizzying plethora of banners, battle flags, trophy standards and icon poles were rammed into the ground in the centre of each armed camp. They stood proud alongside thousands of armoured vehicles and hundreds of t.i.tans of the Legio t.i.tanicus. Towering above the mortal soldiers, the treads of the mighty battle engines were like a city of steel on the march.

The Thousand Sons were amongst the last Legion forces to make planetfall. The entire continent sweltered like a blacksmith's forge, the hammer of history ready to beat the soft metal of existence into its new form.

Only an event of galaxy-changing magnitude could warrant such a spectacle.

Only the greatest being in the galaxy could inspire such devotion.

This was to be a gathering like no other.

AHRIMAN FIXED THE primarch's cloak to the pauldrons of his armour, hooking the bone catches on a clasp in the form of an upthrust talon. He settled it around Magnus' shoulders, letting the flowing lines of iridescent feathers mould to his frame.

Magnus stood at the centre of the spiral within his Sanctum, the gla.s.s pyramid brought in pieces from the Photep and rebuilt upon the perfectly flat surface of Ullanor. The crystalline panels shimmered orange in the light of the giant fires outside, but Magnus' mastery of the arts of the Pavoni kept the temperature within perfectly cool.

Under normal circ.u.mstances, Amon would attend upon the primarch, but on this momentous day, Magnus had requested Ahriman prepare him, fastening the plates of his armour to his muscled frame and ensuring he was not outshone by his brothers.

"How do I look?" asked Magnus.

"You will certainly attract attention," said Ahriman, stepping back from his primarch.

"And why should I not attract attention?" countered Magnus, throwing out his arms in an operatic gesture. "Am I not worthy of it? Fulgrim and his warriors may quest for perfection, but I embody it."

The primarch was clad in all his finery, the gold of his armour shimmering bright in the flickering torchlight. His horned breastplate was thrusting and magnificent, his helmet barely able to contain his slicked crimson hair, which was bound in three long scalp-locks. He bore twin blades sheathed across his back and carried a heqa staff of gold and emerald, his chained grimoire partially concealed in a long kilt of leather and mail.

"It's not the sort of attention I think you want," said Ahriman. "I have seen the way the other Legions look at us."

He hesitated before speaking again, giving voice to the fear that had plagued him in the two months since departing the Ark Reach Cl.u.s.ter, "Like they did when the flesh change was still rife."

Magnus turned his gaze upon him, the emerald green of his eye matching the gemstones on his heqa staff.

"The Symbol of Thothmes holds within my Sanctum, so none may hear your words, but make no mention of the flesh change beyond these walls," warned Magnus. "That curse is behind us. When the Emperor brought you all to Prospero I ended the degradation of the gene-seed and restored biological harmony to the Thousand Sons."

Magnus reached down and placed a hand on Ahriman's shoulder. "Too late for your brother, I know, but soon enough to save the Legion."

"I know, but after seeing what happened to Hastar..."

"An aberrant mutation, a one in a billion fluke," promised Magnus. "Trust me, my son, that can never happen again."

Ahriman looked up into Magnus' eye, seeing the power that lay in his heart.

"I do trust you, my lord," he said at last.

"Good. Then we will speak no more of this," said Magnus with finality.

WITH MAGNUS AT their centre, the Sekhmet marched across the mirror-smooth surface of the continent towards the one feature that stood proud of the landscape. The mountain had once served as the greenskin warlord's lair, but it had been erased from the world, its flattened base a steel-skinned dais for the Emperor and his honoured sons.

Magnus would take his place alongside his gene-sire with his brothers: Dorn, the Khan, Angron, Sanguinius, Horus, Fulgrim, Mortarion and Lorgar. The warriors of the Thousand Sons had spent the entire voyage from the Ark Reach Cl.u.s.ter preparing for this moment, for none wished to be found wanting in the eyes of his brothers.

Ahriman had picked only the best and most learned of his Fellowship to accompany Magnus to the dais, and each had been honoured with a cartouche secured to his armour by a wax scarab. Auramagma had joked that they should all put out an eye to mark themselves as the chosen of Magnus. No one laughed, but that was Auramagma's way, to carry the joke too far into tastelessness.

At the head of the thirty-six warriors of the Sekhmet were the captains of Fellowship, the senior warriors of the Pesedjet who bore the t.i.tle of Magister Templi. Only Phael Toron of the 7th was absent. His Fellowship remained on Prospero to protect its people and train the students who hoped, one day, to be counted amongst the Thousand Sons.

The flickering embers of the Tutelaries frolicked in the air above them, basking in the presence of so much raw aetheric energy. Some of that was the invisible aftertaste of the xenos species that had once called this rock home. It was as crude and powerful as a flamethrower, but its potency was equally short-lived. Aaetpio followed in Magnus' aetheric slipstream, while Utipa prowled the edge of their group with Paeoc and Ephra, each one a shifting, formless ma.s.s of light and wings and eyes.

The air of Ullanor still bore traces of the greenskin, despite the seared reek of the promethium basins and the lingering aroma of gun oil and Astartes bio-chemicals. Exhaust fumes hung in low-lying smog banks, and the burnt metal taste of Mechanic.u.m machines was a sour reek of exotic oils and unguents.

Thousands of Astartes filled the plain as far as the eye could see, preparing for their triumphal march. Though this was perhaps the most heavily-armed planet in the Imperium, there was tension in the air, a volatile mixture of martial pride and superiority, common among gatherings of fighting men of different origins. Each group of warriors measured the others, deciding which was the strongest, the proudest and the most courageous.

Ahriman marched alongside Magnus, feeling the wariness of his brother warriors as they stared at his magnificent primarch.

"I never thought to see so many Astartes gathered together," Ahriman said to Magnus.

"Yes, it is impressive," agreed Magnus. "My father always knew the value of the symbolic gesture. They won't forget this. They'll carry tales of it to the far corners of the galaxy."

"But why now?" asked Ahriman. "When the Crusade is in its final stages."

A shadow crossed Magnus' face, as though Ahriman's question had strayed into a region he disliked.

"Because this in an epochal moment for humanity," he said, "a time when great change is upon us. Such times require to be marked in the race memory of the species. Who among us will ever experience a moment like this again?"

Ahriman was forced to agree with that sentiment, but as they drew near to the first checkpoint in the perimeter around the Emperor's dais, he realised that Magnus had neatly diverted his question.

A pair of Warlord t.i.tans stood sentinel on the approaches to the sheared root of the mountain. Clad in gold and bearing the thunderbolt and lightning motif of the Emperor, the t.i.tans had come from Terra to protect their lord and master. His mightiest praetorians, these t.i.tanic custodians were the perfect blend of technology and martial spirit.

"Bigger than the one you have propped up outside the Pyrae temple," said Hathor Maat to Khalophis as they marched between the engines.

"That they are," agreed Khalophis, missing or ignoring Maat's mocking tone, "but war isn't always won by the warrior with the biggest gun. Canis Vertex is a predator, and would take both these fine fellows with it before it went down. Size is all very well, but experience, that's what counts, and Canis Vertex earned its fair share on Coriovallum."

"We all did," agreed Phosis T'kar sagely. "But when you talk about Canis Vertex, don't you mean it was a predator."

"We'll see," said Khalophis with a grin.

"A t.i.tan wouldn't worry me," said Hathor Maat. "It's just a machine, a big one, I'll grant you, but without a princeps to command it, a t.i.tan is simply a giant statue. For all their skill, the Mechanic.u.m haven't yet invented a machine that doesn't need a human being to control it. I could agitate the water molecules in the princeps' skull until his head exploded, boil the blood in his veins or send millions of volts through its carapace to electrocute the crew."

"I could bring it down easily enough," said Phosis T'kar playfully. "I did it once before, remember?"

"Yes," said Uthizzar. "We all remember. You never tire of telling us how you saved the primarch from a t.i.tan on Aghoru."

"Exactly," said Phosis T'kar. "After all, the bigger they are-"

"The bigger mess they make of you when they tread on you," finished Ahriman. "We are here to escort the primarch, not indulge your fantasies of how powerful you are."

Beyond the t.i.tans, hulking golden warriors in the armour of the Custodes protected every approach to the hub of the continent, giant warriors of equal aspect to the Astartes, with plates of brazen gold, inscribed with curling script, bedecked with fluttering oath papers secured with wax seals. Six of them manned the checkpoint, with a trio of Land Raiders growling behind them and a pair of dreadnoughts to further augment their strength.

"First t.i.tans, now this. You think they expect trouble?" asked Hathor Maat with a smile.

"Always," said Ahriman.

"Surely these security measures are ridiculously overblown and unnecessary? After all, who would dare attempt something hostile on a world crowded with Astartes and the best war machines the Imperium has at its disposal?"

"Have you ever met a Custodes?" asked Phosis T'kar.

"No, what has that got to do with anything?"

"If you had, you would know how stupid that question is."