Magnus brushed past, touching Lemuel's shoulder, and the sheer joy of the contact swept any concerns away. Magnus rounded Ahriman's desk and lifted the gold-backed cards.

"A Visconti-Sforza deck," said Magnus. "The Visconti di Modrone set if I am not mistaken."

"You have a good eye, my lord," said Ahriman, and Lemuel suppressed a sn.i.g.g.e.r, wondering if this was what pa.s.sed for humour among the Thousand Sons.

Ahriman's words seemed sincere, and Magnus shuffled through the pack with even greater dexterity than had his Chief Librarian.

"This is the oldest set in existence," said Magnus, spreading the cards on the desk.

"How can you tell?" asked Lemuel.

Magnus slipped a card from the deck and held up the six of denari. Each of the pips was a golden disc bearing either a fleur-de-lys or a robed figure carrying a long staff.

"The denari suit, which corresponds to what is now known as diamonds, bears the obverse and reverse of the golden florin struck by Magister Visconti sometime in the middle of the second millennium, though the coins he designed were only in circulation for a decade or so."

Magnus put the card back in the deck and moved over to Ahriman's bookcase, scanning the contents briefly before turning back to face Lemuel. He smiled, his manner genial and comradely, as though he were sharing a joke instead of a priceless morsel of remembrance.

"When I came to Prospero they said it was as though a comet had borne me to the ground, for the impact I had on them was as great," said Magnus with an amused smile. "The Tizcan commune, which was the name the survivors of the psychneuein gave to their little enclave, was a place rooted in tradition, but they had some skill in wielding the power of the aether. Of course, they didn't know it by that name, and the powers they had, while enough to keep the psy-predators at bay, were little more than the enchantments of idiot children."

"But you taught them how better to use their powers?"

"Not at first," said Magnus, lifting a golden disk inscribed with cuneiform symbols from Ahriman's bookshelf. He looked at it for a moment before replacing it with an almost imperceptible shake of his head. As he turned away, Lemuel saw that it was a zodiacal timepiece.

"I was... young back then, and knew little of my true potential, though I had been taught by the greatest tutor of the age."

"The Emperor?"

Magnus smiled.

"None other," he said. "I was schooled in the ways of the commune, and I quickly learned everything they had to teach me. In truth, I had outstripped the learning of their greatest scholars within a year of my arrival. Their teachings were too dogmatic, too linear and too limiting for my mind's potential. My intellect was superior in every way to those that taught me. With my teachings, I knew they could be so much more."

Lemuel heard arrogance in Magnus' voice. The primarch's power was immense and beyond mortal understanding, but there was none of the humility he often heard when talking with Ahriman. Where Ahriman recognised his limits, Magnus clearly felt he had none.

"So how did you teach them?" asked Lemuel.

"I took a walk into the desolation of Prospero. True power comes only to those who have fully tested themselves against their greatest fears. Within the commune, I knew no fear, no hunger or want and had no drive to push my abilities to their full potential. I needed to be tested to the very limits of my powers to see if I even had limits. Out in the wilds, I knew I would either find the key to fully unlock my powers or die in the attempt."

"A somewhat drastic solution, my lord."

"Was it, Lemuel? Really? Is it not better to reach for the stars and fail than never to try?"

"Stars are giant flaming b.a.l.l.s of gas," said Lemuel with a smile. "They tend to burn people who get too near."

Ahriman chuckled. "The remembrancer knows his Pseudo-Apollodorus."

"That he does," agreed Magnus with a satisfied smile. "But I digress. A year after my coming to Prospero, I walked from the gates of Tizca and marched into the wilderness for nearly forty days. To this day, it is known as the desolation of Prospero, but such a t.i.tle is a misnomer. You will find the landscape quite beautiful, Lemuel."

Lemuel's heart rate spiked, remembering how Ahriman had told him he had seen a vision in which he had been standing on Prospero.

"I am sure I will, my lord," he said.

Magnus poured a gla.s.s of wine and began his tale.

"I WALKED FOR hundreds of miles, travelling roads that pa.s.sed through broken cities of iron skeletons of tall towers, empty palaces and grand amphitheatres. It was a civilisation of great worth, but it had fallen in a single day, not an uncommon fate among worlds during the madness of Old Night. I came at last to a city, a sprawling ruin at the foot of a cliff that seemed familiar, though I had never before set foot beyond the walls of Tizca. I spent a day and a night wandering its forsaken streets, the shadow-haunted buildings and empty homes that echoed with the last breaths of those who had dwelled within them. It touched me in a way I had not thought possible. These people had lived sure in the knowledge that they had nothing to fear, that they were masters of their destinies. The coming of Old Night changed all that. It had shown them how horribly vulnerable they were. In that moment, I vowed I would master the powers I had at my command, so that I would never fall prey, as they had fallen, to the vagaries of an ever-changing universe. I would face such threats and overcome them."

Again, Lemuel felt the full force of the primarch's confidence, as if it was suffusing his skin and invigorating his entire body.

"I climbed a slender pathway up the cliff and came to a bend in the road, where a long-dead sculptor had erected a tall statue of a great bird carved from multicoloured stone. It was a splendid creature with outstretched wings and the graceful neck of a swan. It perched precariously on the edge of the cliff. This statue had endured for thousands of years, rocking and swaying, but always keeping its balance perfectly. But no sooner had I beheld its grandeur than it toppled from its plinth and was dashed to pieces at the bottom of the cliff, far, far below. The sight of that falling statue filled me with an almost inconsolable sense of loss I could not explain. I abandoned my trek into the mountains and returned to the base of the cliff, where, needless to say, the statue lay smashed into many pieces.

"Where it had hit, the ground was covered with a carpet of shards, some small and some large, but shards and shards and more shards for as far as a man could walk in an hour. I spent the whole day just looking at the shards, measuring them and feeling the weight of them, and just pondering why the statue had chosen that moment to fall."

Magnus paused, his eye misty and distant as he relived the memory.

"You say *chosen' as though the statue had been waiting for you," said Lemuel. "Isn't it possible that it was a coincidence?"

"Surely Ahriman has taught you that there are no such things as coincidences."

"I mentioned it once or twice, yes," said Ahriman dryly.

"I spent the night there and awoke the next morning full of enthusiasm. I spent many days on this carpet of broken stone shards, and eventually I noticed a very strange thing. There were three large stones on the ground, forming a triangle that was precisely equilateral. I was amazed. Looking further, I found four white stones arranged in a perfect square. Then I saw that by disregarding two of the white stones and thinking of a pair of grey stones a metre over, it was an exact rhombus! And, if I chose this stone, and that stone, and that one, and that one and that one I had a pentagon as large as the triangle. Here a small hexagon, and there a square partially inside the hexagon, a decagon, two triangles interlocked. And then a circle, and a smaller circle within the circle, and a triangle within that which had a red stone, a grey stone and a white stone.

"I spent many hours finding even more designs that became infinitely more complex as my powers of observation grew with practice. Then I began to log them in my grimoire; and as I counted designs and described them, the pages began to fill as the sun made countless pa.s.sages across the sky. Days pa.s.sed, but my pa.s.sion for the designs I was seeing was all-consuming."

"And that's how Amon found him," said Ahriman, "squatting in a pile of broken stones."

"Amon?" asked Lemuel. "The captain of the 9th Fellowship?"

"Yes, and my tutor on Prospero," said Magnus.

Lemuel frowned at this apparent contradiction, but said nothing as Magnus continued.

"I had begun my second grimoire when Amon found me. Now, Amon is a quiet, private fellow, not easily given to company. Like many such solitary men, he is a poet and deeply interested in the hidden nature of things. When I saw him, I cried, *Amon, come quickly! I have discovered the most wondrous thing in the universe.' He hurried over to me, anxious to see what it was.

"I showed him the carpet of stones, but Amon only laughed and said, *It is nothing but scattered shards of stone!' I took his hand and proceeded to show my old tutor the harvest of my many days study. When Amon saw the designs he turned to my grimoires and by the time he was finished with them, he too was overwhelmed."

As much as Lemuel was having trouble following Magnus' logic, it was impossible not to be swept up by his enthusiasm. He saw that Ahriman was similarly carried along by the irresistible tide of the primarch's pa.s.sion for his tale.

"Now Amon was much moved," said Magnus, "and he began to write poetry about each of the incredible designs. As he wrote and contemplated, I became sure that the designs must mean something. Such order and beauty was too monumental to be senseless. The designs were there, the workings of the universe laid bare. Together, Amon and I returned home, where he read his poetry, and I showed the masters of Tizca the workings in my grimoires. These were great men, and their love of beauty and nature was marvellous to behold. So amazed were they that they joined me on a pilgrimage back to the cliff where the statue had fallen. The shards were just as I had described them, and the masters of Tizca were overcome with emotion, filling their own grimoires with fantastical writing. Some wrote about triangles, others described the circles, while yet others concentrated all their attention on the glittering spectrum of coloured stones."

Magnus directed all his attention on Lemuel, his amber eye flickering with internal fires.

"Do you know what they said to me?" asked Magnus.

"No," breathed Lemuel, hardly daring to add his voice to the telling.

Magnus leaned down.

"They said, *How blind we have been.' All who could see the designs knew that they had to have been put there by a Primordial Creator, for nothing but such a great force could create this immense beauty!"

Lemuel could picture the scene, the sheer immensity of the cliff, the broken carpet of multi-coloured shards and the awed gathering of students of the esoteric and the outlandish. He sensed their awe and felt the tide of history rising up to sweep away the old beliefs and leave a new way in its wake. Lemuel felt as though he were there, as though he inhabited the body of one of the venerable philosophers of Tizca, and found his mind opening to a host of new possibilities, like a blind man suddenly shown the sun.

"It was amazing," he whispered.

"That it was, Lemuel. That it was," said Magnus, pleased he truly appreciated the significance of what he was being told. "It was a great moment in the history of Prospero, but as is the way of history, nothing of import is ever achieved without bloodshed."

Lemuel felt his chest constrict with panic, feeling the horrible sensation of impending danger, as though he stood on the cusp of an abyss, waiting for a shove in the back.

"We had been lax in our mental discipline," said Magnus, and a trace of sadness entered his voice. "Such was our excitement at what I had found that we allowed our guard to drop."

"What happened?" asked Lemuel, almost afraid of the answer.

"The psychneuein," said Magnus. "They were drawn to us in their thousands, blackening the sky with their numbers as they descended like a plague from ancient times."

Lemuel drew in a breath, picturing the dark swathes of psy-predators as they swarmed from their darkened caves, organically shifting clouds of deadly clades, the relentless buzzing of thousands of crystalline wings the sound of inevitable doom.

"The males swarmed in, a hurricane of snapping mandibles and tearing claws, and fifty men died in the time it takes to draw breath. Behind the males came the females, engorged with clutch upon clutch of immaterial eggs. Their furious reproductive hunger was insatiable, and dozens of my friends fell to their knees in horror as they felt the psychneuein eggs take root in their brains. Their screams will stay with me forever, Lemuel. It is the sound of brilliant men who know that soon they will be raving madmen, their brains pulped ma.s.ses of digestible tissue."

A hushed silence filled the library, as the visceral terror of that notion took hold.

Magnus poured wine for them all before continuing.

"The beasts swirled around us, battering us with psychic thrusts, scrabbling at our mental barriers to seed our minds with their eggs, and only the strongest of us remained. Amon and eight of the masters of Tizca stood with me, and as the psychneuein attacked again, I knew this was what I had been seeking all along, a true test of my abilities. I would finally discover whether I had limits. I would see if I was the master of my powers or was to be found wanting."

To look at Magnus as he told his story, Lemuel couldn't believe that such a warrior could ever be found wanting. Even telling the story gave his skin a faint luminosity, a heat that flowed through his veins. Magnus' amber eye had darkened to a fiery orange, the glittering sparks in its depths now swimming in his pupil.

"Then, as the psychneuein came at us again, something magnificent happened. I felt something move within me, I felt changed, as though an immense power that had lain within me, dormant and untapped, surged to life. As I contemplated the moment of my death, raging fires erupted from my hands. I hurled torrents of flame into the sky, as though I had always known I had such powers, and smote hundreds of psychneuein to ruin with every gesture.

"Memphia and Cythega, masters who had seen the patterns in the red stones, stood at my side, and walls of flame sprang up at their command. Ahtep and Luxanhtep plucked beasts from the air and dashed them on the rocks with the power of their minds, for they had found the spiral patterns of white stones. Hastar and Imhoden had seen the eight-angled crown of shards and willed the vital fluids within the psychneuein to boil within their exo-skeletons. Amon had been first among the hidden masters to see the patterns in the shards, and his mastery of them was second only to mine. Images of the future and imminent danger seared though his mind, and he cried words of warning to his fellows, telling them of dangers to come and of how they might avoid them.

"Phanek and Thothmes had seen the dance of squares, circles and triangles, the interaction of line and curve speaking to them of the hidden thoughts of all. They sensed the l.u.s.t within the psychneuein to plant their psychic seed within our minds, the relentless animal hunger that drove them to feed and propagate. They reached into the minds of the beasts and twisted their perceptions so that they became blind to us."

"The cults of the Thousand Sons," said Lemuel. "That's where they came from."

"Just so," said Magnus. "The subtle nuances of the Great Ocean were revealed to me that day, and when we returned to Tizca the members of my fellowship returned to their pyramid libraries to contemplate what they had learned. I watched over their deliberations and guided their studies, for I had seen the patterns of the broken statue first and knew better than any man how to wield the power of the aether. The nine masters devoted their every waking moment to what they had learned in the desolate wastelands, honing their unique abilities to become the first Magister Templi of the Prosperine cults.

"As word of their power spread throughout the adepts of Tizca, devotees flocked to study at their feet, hungry to learn the new ways to harness the power of the Great Ocean."

"And what of you?" asked Lemuel. "Why did you not become a cult leader?"

"Because I became the Magus," said the primarch, "Master of all the cults."

"Magus? That's the highest rank isn't it?" asked Lemuel.

"No," said Magnus, "there is one rank above it, that of Ipsissimus, a being free from limitations, who lives in balance with the corporeal and incorporeal universe; for all intents and purposes, a perfect being."

Lemuel heard Magnus' pride and knew there could be only one man in creation that could match such a description, one man who Magnus looked up to above all others.

"The Emperor, beloved by all," said Lemuel.

Magnus smiled and nodded, folding his arms across his wide chest.

"Indeed, Lemuel," he said, "the Emperor. And it is with news of my father I come to the Library of Ahriman."

Lemuel was instantly alert. Any sc.r.a.p of information about the Emperor, the architect of humanity's fate, and the powerhouse behind the monumental undertaking of the Great Crusade, was eagerly seized upon by the remembrancers. To hear such news first-hand from one of the primarchs would be an honour indeed.

"Now that the last elements of the Legion have rendezvoused, we are summoned to my father's side once more."

"Are we returning to Terra?" asked Ahriman. "Is it time?"

Magnus hesitated, deliberately teasing the moment out.

"It is not for Terra that we set our course, but the Emperor promises the most serious of conclaves, the most momentous of gatherings, where the greatest questions of the age are to be debated."

Lemuel gasped. Such news was grand indeed, but there was more to this singular piece of information than Magnus was letting on.

He smiled, buoyed up with sudden confidence.

"There's more isn't there, my lord?" he asked.

"He is perceptive, this one," said Magnus with a nod to Ahriman. "I think you are right, my friend; a stint with Uthizzar will hone his abilities nicely."

Magnus turned to Lemuel once more and said, "This conclave will be the crux of our Legion's existence, my friend. This will be our defining moment, where the Emperor at last acknowledges our worth."

"You have seen this, my lord?" asked Ahriman.

"I have seen many things," said Magnus. "Great events are in motion, the wheel of history is on the turn and the Thousand Sons will be at the forefront of the new universal order."

"Where will this gathering take place?" asked Ahriman.

"Far from here," said Magnus, "on a world named Nikaea."

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

Nikaea/Thrown to the Wolves/The Emperor's Right Hand CATARACT CLOUDS OBSCURED the surface, a striated covering shot through with pyroclastic sparks and umber lightning. Nikaea was a new world, its geology unfinished and its final form not yet set. Tectonic movement and kilometres-deep pressure waves rippled below the crust, sending shockwaves through the mantle, and ripping some continents apart while slamming others together.

Two Stormbirds and a Stormhawk knifed through the clouds like swooping birds of prey, their crimson hulls painted with corrosive rain as they descended through the volatile atmosphere. Nikaea was a world in flux, its character in the throes of violent birth.

s.p.a.ce around the planet was a choppy soup of electromagnetic static, the approaches lousy with spatial debris caught in the whirling, inconstant gravity waves that rendered geomagnetic guidance systems inoperative.

Only by following a constant beacon of incandescent light that speared into the heavens from the world below could any craft hope to navigate the Nikaea system. To attempt to find Nikaea, let alone a fixed point on its surface without the aid of this signal would have been impossible for any but the luckiest pilots in the galaxy. It had taken an entire year for the 28th Expedition to travel from Hexium Minora to this remote corner of the galaxy.