She returned to her corporeal self like an eagle resuming its eyrie, breathing honeyed incense and enjoying the slow trickle of physical sensation. It felt like blood flowing through starved arteries.
In the Scholastia Psykana she'd learnt to call this the pater donum: the brief flush of warmth and contentment that followed a scrying trance, like a reward from the Emperor's own hand. She allowed it to work its way along each limb, curling her toes and arching her back.
Relish it, the adept-tutors had taught. Enjoy it whilst it lasts. It was, after all, the single facet of telepathy that justified the term ''gift'' where all others equated more accurately to the symptoms of a curse.
The pater donum would not last. It would be gone in an instant, and at that unhappy moment all the fierce memories of the trance would crash inwards to drown her.
She opened her eyes, focused on the single guttering candle at the centre of the scrying-ring, and allowed the sludge of recollection to break through.
Her first thought was this:
Something has fallen from heaven.
The meditation cell was a simple affair.
Four rockcrete walls arched overhead, sloping together to form a crude dome with a needle of bronze at its core: a conduction point for the astral body. Gone were the scriptures picked out in gold and opal across each wall, gone were the stylised star charts and mantras patterning the seer-dome, gone were the great twisting shelves of chittering incense drones. Such comforts she'd left behind on the fortress-world Safaur-Inquis, and this spartan cube was as far removed from the decadence she'd come to expect as it could be. She supposed she should be grateful for anything at all, given the indifference her new master had showed her, but still... there were limits.
A withered servitor — once human, long since lobotomised, dissected, infested with logic engines and clattering components — poked a stunted limb against her shoulder, its one rheumy eye fluttering spastically. It tried to talk, but the rune-etched staples through its lips and jaw allowed little more than a moist clucking, a long strand of drool wobbling from its chin.
On Safaur, her trance-awakenings had been tended by gende servants: smooth-skinned subordinates with tongues neady removed and ownership studs across each eye, hurrying to mop her sweat and massage her shoulders, lovingly recording on scented parchment whatever insights the meditation bestowed. On Safaur her trance-suite flocked with locust-like automata: emeralds for eyes and rubies for jaws, coloured streamers of psychoactive pheromones falling like musk from their tails. On Safaur a dozen cogitators existed solely to interpret her visions. On Safaur the majesty of her quarters was matched only by the view from her central garret, and between assignments she spent hours gazing across the acid shores of the sulphur seas. On the Inquisitorial fortress-world of Safaur-Inquis, her masters wielded their influence with artistry and opulence.
Her present circumstance was therefore somewhat galling.
Here, a one-armed man/machine with a techstylus and a snot-clogged nose was the best the governor's chamberlain could provide. It poked her again, marking her naked skin with a moronic stripe of ink before leaning away, eye rolling. Above it a faulty servodrone corkscrewed erratically across the ceiling, oozing incense. It bashed against the wall with depressing regularity, and she found herself unconsciously counting along — tap-tap-tap — like the beating of a plastic heart.
Anything to distract her from the memories.
But no, the warm pleasure of the pater donum had passed, the details of this dull little chamber had ceased to offer any but the most rudimentary of diversions, and the growing pressure behind her eyes couldn't be contained indefinitely. Sighing, she pulled a simple robe across her shoulders, clenched her jaw, snuffed out the candle and focused on the details of the trance, still burning bright in her mind.
'Record,' she commanded, waving a hand. The servitor straightened, stylus poised on the fluttering surface of an augur-slate, clucking its readiness.
'There follows the account,' she began formally, ignoring the whispering of the servitor's joints, 'of the furor arcanum undertaken in the Emperor's name on this day — date it — by I, interrogator primus of the retinue of Inquisitor Kaustus, on Imperial hive-world Equixus. In service of the most blessed Inquisition and in fealty to his Holiness the Emperor of Man, I attest upon my immortal soul to the provenance of this account, and swear upon its veracity — may my lord else strike me down.' She drew a breath, shivering at the cold. 'Blessings be upon His Throne and dominion. Ave imperator!'
She watched as the servitor scrawled the dedication with a mechanical twitch, scrolling the data-slate onto a clean line. She took a moment to compose herself, pursed her lips, then continued.
'For the third time — refer to prior reports — the trance began with the sensation of... altitude.' She closed her eyes and remembered the cold, the dizzying sensation of an abyssal nothingness gaping on every side, ice forming on her skin. She immersed herself in the memory and continued to speak, applying the recall techniques she'd been taught since an early age. 'I... I felt as though I was standing at a great height,' she said, 'and all around me the ground rushed away like the sides of a mountain. Except... a mountain made of metal. I couldn't see anything — there was too much snow — but I knew that if I stepped too far in any direction I'd fall. I'd fall and never stop falling, all the way down to a... a deep darkness, where no light ever shines. I couldn't see it, but... I knew it was there. I could feel it.
'There was a moment of nausea — though...' She half smiled, childishly proud, '... though today, for the first time, I did not vomit. It seemed to me, then, that something was drawing near, pushing through the snow, and though I was scared I stood my ground...' She chewed a lip, brows dipping. 'Perhaps I feared the drop more than I feared the approaching presence, I... I don't know. During previous trances I've awoken at this point and my efforts to divine further details have been frustrated. Today I... persisted. I'm certain I caught a glimpse of the... the presence in the snow, which has eluded me until now.
'It seemed to be myself.'
She glanced up, aware of how ridiculous the sentiment sounded. If the servitor was even capable of such judgement it gave no indication of it, awaiting her next words with the same dumb focus as before. She tried to relax, reminding herself that the interpretations of the furor arcanum were never straightforward, and that the libraries of the Scholastia Psykana were filled with validated predictions that had arisen from the most preposterous of trance-visions.
Still she hesitated, disturbed by the vividness of the dream.
'It was me, but... but I looked different. My hair was cut short and I wore rags, and... there was blood on my face. One of... oh, Throne... one of my arms was gone. Bleeding like a fountain... I was trying to say something but the wind was too strong and I... I couldn't hear, and that's when I saw... I...
'I was being carried. In the air, like... flying. I tried to see what was holding me but it was covered by the snow and there was... there was a shadow over its face.'
She was vaguely aware of a tear slipping down her cheek, and distantly — surreally — wondered why it was there. What did it mean?
The words came in a jumble now, refusing to stop, and she felt herself caught up in the same fearful horror as during the trance itself, tumbling and screaming and freezing, all at once.
'I looked into it... the shadow, I mean... and it was like I was falling, straight through the snow towards the ground, and... and something was chasing me, burning me from behind my eyes... Emperor preserve me, it was a pregnant hag — the size of a city — rushing down from the stars... a-and... and she hit the snow and... ohhh... her bones broke and her belly split and...