"I met one on Terra before setting out for Prospero," said Ahriman, "a young, ramrod-straight warrior named Valdor. I believe the primarch knows him."

Magnus grunted, telling them everything they needed to know about that acquaintance.

"What was he like?" asked Uthizzar.

"Can't you tell?" asked Hathor Maat. "What's the matter, don't you read minds anymore?"

Uthizzar ignored the Captain of the 3rd Fellowship, and Ahriman smiled as Magnus turned to face his officers with a mock-serious expression.

"Enough," said Magnus. "Captains or not, you will not be permitted to pa.s.s onwards if the Custodes decide you are not of a serious enough mindset. Their word is absolute, and not even a primarch can go against it in matters of the Emperor's safety."

"Come on, Ahzek," pressed Hathor Maat. "What was this Valdor like?"

Magnus nodded indulgently, and Ahriman said, "He was a grimly efficient praetorian, if rather humourless. I suppose when you are part of the cadre responsible for the safety of the greatest being in the galaxy, there is little room for levity."

"Little?" said a voice appearing at Ahriman's side. "There is no room whatsoever."

HOW THE CUSTODES had come upon Magnus and the Sekhmet, Ahriman could not fathom.

He had not sensed their nearness or caught the faintest tremor in the aether of their presence. One minute they had been approaching the checkpoint, the next, their Tutelaries had vanished in the blink of an eye and two Custodes warriors were alongside them.

They were tall, as tall as the Astartes, though their armour was nowhere near as bulky. It had a ceremonial look to it, but Ahriman knew that was a misleading interpretation, one calculated to give the warriors encased within the advantage. So like Astartes and yet so different, like distantly-related kin gone their separate ways and evolved into new forms.

They held long Guardian Spears, lethal polearms that could cut through sheet steel with ease and could sever the ogre-like body of an armoured greenskin in two with a single blow. Red horsehair plumes spilled from their tapered helmets like waterfalls of blood, and the green glow of their helmet lenses was eerily similar to that of the Thousand Sons. Gilded carvings snaked from the seals of their neck plates, curling around their shoulders and down the inner facings of their breastplates.

"Halt and be recognised," said the warrior who had spoken before, and Ahriman focussed all his attention on him. He could sense nothing, not even an echo of his presence in the world, as though he were as insubstantial as a hologram. Ahriman's throat felt dry, and an unpleasantly bitter aftertaste flooded his mouth.

Untouchables, said a voice in his mind with a familiar flavour, powerful, but not powerful enough.

Ahriman could not see them, but with the knowledge that there were psychic nulls nearby, he found he could identify them by their very lack of presence.

"Six of them," he said over his armour's suit-vox.

"Seven," corrected Magnus. "One is more subtle than her compatriots in veiling her presence."

The Custodes crossed their spears, barring their path to the Emperor's dais, and Ahriman's anger flared at the insult implied by the presence of the untouchables. Magnus stood before the Custodes, his physique imposing and threatening, his crested helmet a larger version of those belonging to the warriors before him. For an instant, it looked as though Magnus was one of them, a towering golden-armoured warrior lord.

Magnus leaned down, his eye tracing a path over the inscriptions that flowed across the burnished golden plates of the leftmost warrior.

"Amon Tauromach Xiagaze Lep.r.o.n Cairn Hedrossa," said Magnus. "I would go on, but the rest of your name is hidden within the curve of your armour. And Haedo Venator Urdesh Zhujiajiao Fane Marovia Trajen. Fine names indeed, displaying grand heritage and exceptional lineage, but then I would expect nothing less of Constantin's warriors. How is the old man these days?"

"Lord Valdor abides," said the warrior that Magnus had identified as Amon.

"I expect he does," said Magnus, reaching out to touch the beginning of the spiralling script on Amon's shoulder. "You have an old name, Amon, a proud name. It is a name borne by my equerry, a student of poetry and the hidden nature of things. If the name maketh the man, does that mean you are a similar student of the unknown?"

"Defending the Emperor requires a talent for discerning hidden truths," replied Amon carefully. "I pride myself on having a certain skill in that regard."

"Yes, I see you do. You are an exceptional man, Amon, and I believe you will go far within your order. I see great things ahead for you," said Magnus, before adding, "and for you also, Haedo."

Amon inclined his head at the primarch's comment, and the two Guardian Spears were lifted aside, allowing Magnus and the Sekhmet to pa.s.s.

"That's it?" asked Ahriman as the Custodes lowered their weapons.

"The Unified Biometric Verification System has identified and logged your genetic markers within its network," said Haedo. "You are who you claim to be."

Magnus laughed, and asked, "Is anyone ever who they claim to be?"

The Custodes did not answer, but stood aside to allow them past.

THE PODIUM WAS in sight, but one last intercession was to come before Magnus could take his place at the Emperor's side. Even once through all the checkpoints, Ahriman could feel the shadowing presence of the untouchables on the periphery of vision and sense.

From the primarch's comment, he surmised that the watchmen were in fact the Sisters of Silence, the mute sisterhood of untouchables and the guardians of the Black Ships. How typical to see them and the Custodes working hand in hand.

This was the inner circle, metaphorically and literally, for here were gathered the mightiest beings in the cosmos, the brightest sons of the most incandescent sire. Here was where the primarchs gathered before ascending the platform to stand at their father's side.

Ahriman could see the winged, angelic form of Sanguinis, the l.u.s.ty red of his armour contrasting with pale feathers of his wings. Hung with loops of silver and pearl like glistening tears, the beatific primarch stood with the Khan, a swarthy warrior shawled in furs and lacquered leather plate, with a winged back-banner that echoed those of the Lord of Angels.

The golden-skinned Urizen held intense discourse with Dorn of the Fists and Angron, while the Phoenician and his cadre of lord commanders preened alongside Horus Lupercal and his lieutenants. Fulgrim's white hair shone like a beacon, his perfect features gloriously sculpted. Little wonder the members of his Legion prided themselves on their aesthetic with such an example to follow.

Magnus swept forward to join his brothers, but before he reached them, a warrior in dusty white armour edged in pale green stepped to meet him. His shoulder-guard bore the image of a skull in the centre of a spiked halo, marking him as Death Guard. His posture was bellicose, and Ahriman read his hostility in an instant.

"I am Ignatius Grulgor, 2nd Company Captain of the Death Guard," said the warrior, and Ahriman heard the judgemental tone and the arrogant sneer that spoke of a man without humility.

"I do not care who you are, warrior," said Magnus calmly, though the undercurrent of threat was unmistakable. "You are in my way."

Like a living statue, the Astartes stood his ground before Magnus. Two mighty warriors in bra.s.s, gold and ash-coloured Terminator armour appeared on either side of Grulgor, long, ebony-hafted scythes held in spiked cestus gauntlets. The harvest blades were dark and heavy with the weight of slaughter they had acc.u.mulated. A name leapt to Ahriman's mind: Manreapers.

"Ah, the nameless Deathshroud," said Magnus, looking around him. "Tell your master to show himself. I know he is here, within forty-nine paces, if memory serves."

Ahriman blinked as a dark outline seemed to flow from a patch of shadow at the foot of one of the Custodes t.i.tans, a tall, gaunt figure in armour of pallid white, bare iron and bra.s.s, shrouded in a mantle of stormcloud grey. A bronze rebreather collar obscured the lower part of his hairless skull, and feathers of rancid air gusted from it at regular intervals. The giant figure breathed deeply of these vapours.

"Mortarion," hissed Hathor Maat.

His sunken cheeks were those of a consumptive, and the deep-set amber eyes those of a man who has seen horrors without number. Gla.s.s vials and philtres strung together on Mortarion's breastplate clinked musically as he walked, his strides sepulchral, punctuated by the rap of his enormous scythe's iron base on the polished ground. A long, drum-barrelled pistol hung at his side, and Ahriman recognised the merciless form of the Lantern, the Shenlongi-designed pistol that was said to unleash the fire of a star in every blast.

"Magnus," said the Primarch of the Death Guard by way of a greeting. "I wondered if you would show your face."

Mortarion's words were brazen. These were brothers, warrior G.o.ds crafted by the Emperor to conquer the galaxy in his name. Like all brothers, they squabbled and vied to attract the attention of their father, but this... this was distilled anger.

"Brother," said Magnus, ignoring Mortarion's words. "A great day is it not? Nine sons of the Emperor gathered together on one world, such a thing has not happened since..."

"I know well when it was, Magnus," said Mortarion, his voice robust and resolute in contrast to his pallid features. "And the Emperor forbade us to speak of it again. Do you disobey that command?"

"I disobey nothing, brother," said Magnus, keeping his tone light, "but even you must recognise the symbolism of our number. Three times three, the pesedjet of ancient G.o.ds, the Occidental orders of angels and the nine cosmic spheres of the forgotten ages."

"There you go again with talk of angels and G.o.ds," sneered Mortarion.

Magnus grinned and moved to take Mortarion's hand, but the Lord of the Death Guard pulled away from him.

"Come on, Mortarion," said Magnus, "you are not immune from the music of the spheres. Even you know that numbers are not cast blindly into the world, they come together in orderly balanced systems, like the formation of crystals or musical chords, in accordance with the laws of harmony. Why else would you insist on keeping these bodyguards within seven times seven paces of you?"

Mortarion shook his head and said, "Truly you are as lost in your mysteries as the Wolf King says."

"You have spoken with Russ?"

"Many times," promised Mortarion. "He has been quite vocal since departing the Ark Reach Cl.u.s.ter. We know all about what you and your warriors have been doing."

"What is it you think you know?"

"You have crossed a line, Magnus," hissed Mortarion. "You hold a snake by the tail and bargain with powers beyond your understanding."

"No power is beyond my understanding," countered Magnus. "You would do well to remember that."

Mortarion laughed, the sound like mountains collapsing.

"I knew a being like you once before," he said, "so sure in his powers, so convinced of his superiority that he could not see his doom until it was upon him. Like you, he wielded dark powers. Our father made him pay with his life for such evil. Have a care you do not suffer the same fate."

"Dark powers?" said Magnus with a shake of the head. "Power is simply power, it is neither good nor evil. It simply is."

He pointed to the pistol at Mortarion's side.

"Is that weapon evil?" he asked. "Is that great reaper of yours? They are weapons, nothing more and nothing less. It is the use men put such things to that makes them evil. In your hands, the Lantern is a force for good. In an evil man's hands it is something else entirely."

"Give a man a gun and he will want to fire it," said Mortarion.

"So now you are going to give me a lesson in causality and predestination?" snapped Magnus. "I am sure Ahriman and the Corvidae would welcome your input on the subject. Come to Prospero and you can instruct my warriors."

Mortarion shook his head.

"No wonder Russ pet.i.tioned the Emperor to have you censured," he said.

"Russ is a superst.i.tious savage," said Magnus dismissively but not before Ahriman saw the shock at the Wolf King's action. "He speaks out of turn about things he does not understand. The Emperor knows I am his most loyal son."

"We shall see," promised Mortarion.

The Death Lord turned away and marched towards the Emperor's dais as a thunderous braying erupted from the warhorns of every t.i.tan on Ullanor.

"Now what do you suppose he meant by that?" asked Phosis T'kar.

THE SEKHMET FULFILLED their duty of seeing their primarch to the Emperor's sheared mountain podium, marching in procession alongside the honour guards of the nine primarchs who had come to Ullanor. To move in such elevated circles was a notion Ahriman found himself hard-pressed to comprehend.

The primarchs took their place upon the steel-sheathed dais and their honour guards were dismissed. The chance to parade before the Emperor was a once in a lifetime opportunity for most of the warriors.

To know a primarch was an honour, but to parade before nine of them in the presence of the Emperor was the stuff of dreams. Ahriman would march with his head held high before demi-G.o.ds made flesh, the apotheosis of humanity and genetic engineering, wrought from the bones of ancient science.

That twenty such beings could have been created was nothing short of miraculous, and as he surveyed the n.o.ble countenances around him, Ahriman suddenly felt very small, the tiniest cog in an ever-expanding machine. The notion of the t.i.tanic forces at work struck a powerful chord within him, and he felt the power of the Great Ocean swell in his breast. He saw his metaphor take shape in his mind's eye, a magnificent, planet-sized machine of wondrous artifice working seamlessly in balance with its every cog, gear and piston. Those mighty pistons thundered, powering the greatest industry and causing the worlds around it to swell with new life and new beginnings.

In the midst of the machine he saw a piston stamped with a snarling wolfshead, its amber eyes glinting like gems. It fired up and down in a bank of similarly embossed piston heads, each with an emblematic design stamped upon it, a golden eye, a white eagle, a set of fanged jaws, a crowned skull.

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 ma.s.sively 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 Seja.n.u.s, pleased to know you."

"Ahzek Ahriman," he said. "Seja.n.u.s? Ezekyle? You are Mournival."

"Guilty as charged," said Seja.n.u.s with a winning smile.

"I said those Custodes didn't know security worth a d.a.m.n," said Phosis T'kar, pushing past Ahriman to pull Seja.n.u.s into a crushing embrace. "d.a.m.n, but it's good to see you again, Hastur."

Laughing, Seja.n.u.s 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. n.o.body'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 d.a.m.n 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."

Seja.n.u.s 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 pa.s.sed along his spine. "What sort of announcement?"

"The kind we'll hear when we hear it," growled Abaddon.

"No one knows," said Seja.n.u.s with a diplomatic chuckle. "Horus Lupercal has not yet deigned to tell even his most trusted lieutenants."

Seja.n.u.s 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.