Only his own soul lit the way for him, the light of it coaxing meaning from the surrounding matter of his domicile. There were no servants to tend to him in the mornings any more. As part of his penance he had dismissed them. He half saw, half felt his way to his wash basin where he plunged his face into freezing water. It filled his empty eye sockets, chilling his skull. The discomfort was good. He patted around for his towel and dried his face. Then he washed himself gaspingly, and went to pray.
The arcane patterns of hexagrammatic wards glimmered all around him, defining the corridors of the Silent Mansions. Through the murk of the solid walls behind the wards, he saw the distant glimmer of soulshine. Psychic humans were flaring beacons, the more mundane sort still bright and glorious in their own way. Closer to his location there were the dim, barely-there flickers of servitors slumbering in their alcoves. Anwar had heard it said that mind-wiping was no worse than execution. The people who said such things were wrong: the souls of the servitors were trapped in bodies of dead flesh and metal. It was a fate worse even than the ocean of souls that awaited the truly dead.
His long staff tocked as he made his way to the Master’s Chapel. This room was the biggest in the Mansions, full of artworks created with psychically active substances of immense cost that only the blind could see. Anwar went before the great statue of the Emperor Resplendent and knelt.
By nature, Anwar was a spiritual man. His early life had been one of wonder, as a world no one else could see had opened to him. The Black Ships had taken that world away from him and given him another more profound, when he had lost his sight in exchange for the touch of a god. That the Emperor was divine was beyond doubt. Anwar had seen Him, a blazing soul that drowned all others with its light. The statues he had seen as a youth captured not the tiniest truth of His essence. For that one glimpse, Anwar felt himself truly blessed. He was content in all that he had done, he had served to the best of his ability and risen as far as any man of his station might go. He had a good friend in Sark. Sark was more powerful than Anwar, strong enough to keep his eyes. Sark had lived a full-blooded life before he took high office, Anwar one of monkish self-denial. But Anwar did not resent him.
He was long past any sort of envy. He had been satisfied with the role the Emperor had chosen for him, and he worked diligently to fulfil that role when immersed in the madhouse of the Great Chamber. He had watched the ridiculous power struggles within the High Lords with a species of detached bewilderment, banding together with Sark and Gibran for no other reason than to preserve his sanity. He left politics to the others, taking pride in keeping his adeptus in order, and he had been content.
He gave praise for his blessing, whispering mantras of thanks over and over.
But he should have done more. He should have been more vigilant.
For years, Anwar had also been complacent. Lately anguish replaced his contentment. He wondered, in the dead of night, if he could have foreseen the rise of the Beast. The Green Roar had built slowly, giving all the appearance of being a simple disturbance in the warp like so many in the past. The sort of storm that might last a night or a millennium, bearable nonetheless. But it had been different. He should have put resources into divining its source. Its true nature had become apparent only when the Beast attacked, and then the bestial howling of the orks had overwhelmed so many of his adepts. Communications had fallen into chaos. Now the warp was stilling again. The roaring of the ork had not disappeared, but receded into the distance like the thunder of a passing storm. Anwar was fearful. Like a storm, the Beast could return again.
‘I should have seen it coming, my Lord. I swear I will next time,’ he whispered. ‘I will be more vigilant.’
He pulled down his hood and unlaced the top of his robes. Anwar had ceased to wear the ornate garments of a High Lord, reverting to the plain green astropath’s garb. He pulled his skinny arms from the sleeves and pushed the robe down to his waist. He took up a switch, made of rare birchwood grown in hallowed arboreta. It was priceless, his sole remaining indulgence. This was his first penance.
‘For failing in my duty, I beg Your forgiveness,’ he murmured. The crack of thin wood on flesh echoed off the chapel walls. Anwar suppressed a cry of pain.
‘For failing in my duty, I beg Your forgiveness.’ He switched sides, whipping himself over the left shoulder.
Every day, his back burning from his flagellation, he forced himself from the Silent Mansions to the astrotelepathicum of the Imperial Palace. There he spent hours in the receiving couches, parsing messages from all over the Imperium. The majority of them were degraded by the turmoil in the warp. Disrupted chronologies were common.
Anwar was gifted still. The passing of years had dulled his abilities little. He decoded more messages than the youngest and best, and he made himself do it. Story after story of ruination, horror and savagery. This work was his second penance for his inaction. He prayed it would be enough to earn the Emperor’s forgiveness. He knew in his heart it was not.
‘For failing in my duty, I beg Your forgiveness!’ he said louder, his papery voice filling with power. He hit himself harder.
‘For failing in my duty—’
The gentlest scuff of a foot on dusty stone broke his chant. A blind man hears no better than a seeing man, but he does pay attention more closely to what his ears tell him.
‘Who’s there?’ he said and turned. The nearest soul light was many rooms distant. There was nobody in the chapel with him. Still he was compelled to shout out. ‘This is the Chapel of the Master of the Adeptus Astra Telepathica! Who is there?’
Silence. There was nobody there. There could be no one there without his seeing. Why then did the iron hand of dread squeeze his heart?
He groped for his staff and stood, robes dangling around his waist. Sightless eyes panned around the room. Far greater senses than sight showed him nothing. The hexagrams and psychic paintings on the wall glowed, disapproving faces staring down.
He froze. There, there was a disturbance in his second sight, a warping of a ward-tapestry’s silver threads. He drew in a frightened breath. The distortion moved, coming closer. As it approached it became a sucking black void that drew all light towards it, banishing it utterly.
‘Traitor,’ said a voice in a low whisper that pulled at the weft of Anwar’s soul.
‘No, wait. I am no traitor. I am a loyal servant of the Emperor!’ said Anwar. He stumbled backwards, until his back connected painfully with the edge of the altar.
‘We are the Emperor’s justice. We are the Emperor’s judgement.’ A whirring rasp of machinery came, that of a metal iris opening. The whining rise of weaponry spooling up to full power vibrated Anwar’s teeth painfully.
There was only one being this could be. A Culexus Assassin: a creature like the Sisters of Silence, born without a soul, taken, trained, honed into a killer of psykers, an abomination which could extinguish the light of a soul as easily as snuffing a candle. ‘I know your kind! Why did Vangorich not release you to fight the orks? Why do you only show yourself now? You call me disloyal? What about the Grand Master!’
A darker point of light appeared in the air at head height, totally black, the absence of everything — space, time and soul. Anwar felt his very being tugged towards it. The sensation was excruciating. Absolute terror flooded his aged heart.
‘Please! Please,’ he sobbed. ‘I know. I… I know. I could have done more. I shall! I have learned my lesson. It is not enough to fulfil the Emperor’s wishes. One must always strive to exceed them. I know this now,’ said Anwar. He slipped down the altar to kneel on the cold floor. ‘Tell the Grand Master, I know I have been remiss. I am sorry. I am ashamed.’ But his eyes could not cry, and no tears came.