The young eldar grasped the shimmering penumbra in her hands and slewed it across the platform. She touched a star and it grew brighter, until it could be seen that there were tiny planets and moons orbiting it.
‘This is the star we know as Pe-Kara,’ she said. ‘The mon-keigh call it Kargad, and the system belongs in what they call their Imperium. But, my lady, I have been delving through the memories of the spirit stones, and the voices of those who have gone into the gems tell me that the Pe-Kara system once belonged to us, and within it is almost certainly one of those planets that we know as the Crone Worlds. It was once a place that the eldar called their own, and walked upon, under whose skies our people lived and loved and–’
‘Impossible,’ Te Mirah said, shaken. ‘The Crone Worlds were all closer to the Eye of Terror. They were overrun and destroyed by the Great Enemy, who holds them still.’
‘On what do you base your assumptions?’ Ainoc asked the craftseer, more gently. Drawing her out. He already knows, Te Mirah realised.
‘I have analysed the composition of the Pe-Kara star. It contains elements in profusion that are found more commonly in those systems close to the Eye of Terror. The star itself has also undergone massive gravitational anomalies in the distant past.
‘I believe that in the upheaval of the Eye of Terror’s creation, this system was pushed farther out across the sector, as though it were afloat upon a pond into which someone had thrown a great stone. We have seen this before, with other planets.’
‘Planets, yes – stars, no,’ Te Mirah said shortly. ‘And the damage done to those planets by the upheaval rendered them uninhabitable, stripped of their atmospheres.’
‘I believe that in the swirling currents of that time, the entire Pe-Kara system was lifted and moved wholesale, a whole section of the void rearranged.
‘It did not occur without extensive damage – there is a broad asteroid belt within the system, and large, moon-sized asteroids litter it. The oldest spirit stones tell us that Pe-Kara corresponds to a star we once knew as Vol-Meroi. It was orbited by seven worlds, and dozens of moons. At present, only one planet of any real size survives in the system. The mon-keigh call it Ras Hanem, but in our own tongue it was once, I believe, the world known as Vol-Aimoi.
‘I have farscanned the planet. The surface is a wasteland, but its basic structure and composition comply with our records of that lost world. The mantle and crust of the planet are laced with solid seams of ore and heavy metals. This may have helped it survive the upheaval of its relocation, which destroyed the other six ancient worlds of the system.
‘My lady, I believe it to be undeniable. Ras Hanem is Vol Aimoi.’
Te Mirah was stunned. The young eldar was staring up at her with painful intensity. She could feel the yearning in Anandaiah’s soul – it resonated with the same emotion in her own.
The need to find some remnant of what they had been, to rescue memories and artefacts of a vanished time from the Void before they were lost forever.
But it could not be, surely… They would have known before now.
‘Why have none of our fleets ever picked up on this before?’ she asked harshly.
‘The Kargad system is within the purview of the most dedicated warriors of the Imperium,’ said Ainoc. He folded his arms, and the lean cast of his features drew into disgust.
‘It is watched over by those among them known as the Adeptus Astartes. The Space Marines. Our people do not choose to have dealings with such fanatics, and such is their brute prowess in war that it has always been deemed too costly to make any deep foray into their territories in this part of the galaxy.’
‘Too costly…’ Te Mirah mused.
But this information changed things. If such a thing could be true, then it would be worth almost anything, any level of risk, to investigate it. A Crone World which had not been overrun by the forces of Chaos – there was no telling what might be buried in its soils. Priceless relics, soulstones, all manner of–
‘There is something more,’ she said suddenly. ‘Something you have not yet told me.’ She felt their unease, even a level of apprehension.
Ainoc nodded. He extended one long hand to Anandaiah, and the young eldar bowed her head.
‘My lady, Vol-Aimoi has been under Imperial control for several millennia, it is true, but in the recent past the forces of Chaos have swept across that sector of space, travelling from the Eye of Terror in vast armadas.
‘They have an interest in the sector which goes beyond their normal lust for conquest and slaughter. The human warriors known as the Adeptus Astartes repelled a huge invasion a hundred and fifty of their solar cycles ago, at great cost to both sides.’
‘You think that the Great Enemy also believes what you conjecture to be true?’ Te Mirah asked.
‘It would explain their repeated attempts to take control of that sector,’ Ainoc said grimly.
‘There are ripples in the warp, playing out from Vol-Aimoi as we speak,’ Anandaiah said. ‘It is what first drew my attention to that sector of space.
‘My lady, Chaos has come again. There is battle and slaughter on the planet – the echoes of it are coursing through the immaterium. The Great Enemy has returned, to lay claim to that ancient world. The Imperium is fighting to keep it. Untold millions have been adding their screams to the currents of the warp, and the carnage is stirring up the Dark Powers.’
I had felt it, Te Mirah thought. I had known it, and ignored it. Ainoc is right – I have become jaded. I should have had an inkling of these events long before some lowly craftseer, no matter how gifted.
She stared at the slowly pulsing star on the summoned display before her.
‘How long have you known this?’ she asked.
Anandaiah lifted her hands. Not long. I–’
‘Not you. Ainoc.’
The warlock had no trace of levity on his fine-drawn face now. His features were set in the white mask which she had seen come upon him in battle.
‘Two turns of shipday, no more.’
Time. Time was running past them like some lithe child, scampering into the Void and taking all their possibilities with it.
No time to send back word to Il Kaithe. No time to consult with the Autarch. They were too far from the craftworld.
Decisions came harder to her now that she was old in the reckoning of her people. She saw more than she once did; the outcomes of every choice she made crowded her mind almost as soon as it was selected.
But she still knew what she had to do.
She looked up at the graceful contours of her beloved ship, the Brae-Kaithe, to which she had been wed for centuries.
Beloved.
She did not want to bring this spouse, this child of hers into harm’s way, but that was the essence of the decision she was about to make.
Forgive me.
Then she raised her head, and her eyes glittered as bright as the summoned stars of the craftseer’s display.
‘Steering, set us a course for the Pe-Kara system. Set more sail and bring us to best speed.’
Her voice rang around the wraithbone vault, as musical as the notes of a song.
‘Ainoc,’ she said to the warlock standing before her. ‘Ready your people. Wake the warriors from the stones.
‘We go to look upon a war.’
TEN
Casum Regis
There was a horrible fascination to the spectacle of war, Governor Riedling thought. Viewed at a distance – ideally, a great distance – it took on the grandeur of which the poets prated. An epic worthy of verse, of song, of prayer.
Up close, it was a squirming, black shock of nightmare.
And – he sipped his wine – they never talk about how it smells. Like a dead rat under the floor. The smell never leaves one, no matter how many perfumed handkerchiefs are held to the nose. No matter how many baths one takes, one feels the reek of it on the skin, day and night. It steals away appetite, it ruins sleep.