‘I am,’ Lorgar confessed. ‘I fear the Emperor will break the Word Bearers – and break me. We would be cast alongside the brothers we no longer speak of.’
The silence was hardly comforting. ‘Well?’ Lorgar asked.
‘He might,’ the one-eyed giant said. ‘There was talk of it, before Monarchia.’
‘Did he come to you to ask your thoughts?’
‘He did,’ Magnus admitted.
‘And he went to our brothers?’
‘I believe so. Don’t ask what sides were taken by whom, for I do not know where most of them stood. Russ was with you, as was Horus. In fact, it was the first time the Wolf King and I have agreed on anything of import.’
‘Leman Russ spoke in my favour?’ Lorgar laughed. ‘Truly, we live in an age of marvels.’
Magnus didn’t share the amusement. His lone eye was a deep, arctic blue as it fixed upon Lorgar. ‘He did. The Space Wolves are a spiritual Legion, in their own stunted and blind way. Fenris is an unmerciful cradle, and it breeds such things in them. Russ knows that, though he lacks the intelligence to give it voice. Instead, he swore that he’d already lost two brothers, and had no desire to lose a third.’
‘Two already lost.’ Lorgar looked back to the city. ‘I still recall how they–’
‘Enough,’ warned Magnus. ‘Honour the oath you took that day.’
‘You all find it so easy to forget the past. None of you ever wish to speak of what was lost. But could you do it again?’ Lorgar met his brother’s eyes. ‘Could you stand with Horus or Fulgrim, and never again speak my name purely because of a promise?’
Magnus wouldn’t be drawn into this. ‘The Word Bearers will not walk the same paths as the forgotten and the purged. I trust you, Lorgar. Already, there’s talk that compliance was achieved on Forty-Seven Sixteen with laudable speed. Settler fleets are en route, are they not?’
Lorgar ignored the rhetorical question.
‘I need your guidance, Magnus. I need to see the things you see.’ The gold-skinned primarch watched the procession weaving through the streets, marching closer by the minute.
‘You know of Colchisian mythology, and the Pilgrimage to where gods and mortals meet. You know how it matches the beliefs of so many other worlds. The empyrean. The Primordial Truth. Heaven. Ten thousand names in ten thousand cultures. It cannot be mere superstition, if shamans and sorcerers on so many words all share the same beliefs. Perhaps father is wrong. Perhaps the stars hide more secrets. Perhaps they truly do hide the gods themselves.’
‘Lorgar...’ Magnus warned again. He turned from the balcony, and moved back into the expansive chamber atop the Spire Temple. The domed ceiling was glass, offering a breathtaking view of the sky as night fell. The stars were beginning to make themselves known, pinpricks of light in the sapphire sky.
‘Do not hunt for something to worship,’ Magnus said, ‘merely because your faith was proven false.’
Lorgar followed his brother, slender fingers toying with the hem of his grey robe’s sleeve. The Word Bearers primarch spent much of his time on Colchis in this spire-top observatory, staring up at the stars. It was here that he’d watched and waited for the Emperor’s arrival so many decades ago, mistaken in the belief that he would be a god worthy of worship.
‘Is that how you see me?’ he asked Magnus, his voice softer than before. Hurt shone in his eyes, flecked with buried anger. ‘Is that how you judge my actions? That I cast about in ignorance, desperate for something, anything, to hear my prayers?’
Magnus watched the stars coming out for the night. He noted several constellations already – their shapes taken and bestowed on Chapters within the Word Bearers Legion. There, the faint image of a crozius crowned with a skull; there, the high seat, adopted as the symbol of the Osseous Throne; and there, the flared circle of the serrated sun.
‘That is how history will judge you,’ said Magnus, ‘if you remain devoted to this path. No one will see your desire to elevate humanity or raise the species into some unknown enlightenment. They will see you humiliated and weak, desperate for something to believe in.’
‘Humanity is nothing without faith,’ Lorgar whispered.
‘And yet we do not need religion to explain the universe. The Emperor’s light illuminates all.’
‘That is what you always fail to see,’ Lorgar moved over to a table with several crystal wine glasses. ‘You think faith is about fear. About needing things explained to ignorant minds. Faith is the greatest unifying element in mankind’s history. Faith was all that kept the light of hope burning through the millennia on the thousands of worlds we now reclaim in this Crusade.’
‘So you say, brother.’ Magnus shrugged. ‘You will not be judged kindly for that belief.’
Lorgar poured a glass of dark wine, its scent heightened by the powdered spices added during its fermentation. Lacking the climate for grape vineyards, Colchisian wine was almost always made from dates. The bitter drink reddened his lips as he sipped it.
‘We are immortal,’ Lorgar pointed out. ‘Why would we worry for the future when we will still be around to shape it?’
Magnus ventured no answer.
‘You’ve seen something,’ Lorgar pressed. ‘Something in the Great Ocean. Something in the warp you stare into so often. Some... some hint at what might be. A future yet to come?’
‘It doesn’t work that way, brother.’
‘You’re lying. You are lying to me.’
Magnus turned his gaze from the darkening sky. ‘Sometimes you see and hear only what you wish. You’re wrong, Lorgar. Father is not a god. There are no gods.’
At last, Lorgar smiled as if he’d waited hours for those words to be spoken.
‘Is he a magical sky-spirit dwelling inside a mythical paradise? No. I am not a fool. He is not a god as primitive cultures once understood the concept. But the Emperor is a god in all but name, Magnus. He is psychic power incarnated within a physical shell. When he speaks, his lips never move and his throat makes no sound. His face is a thousand visages at once. The only aspect of humanity he possesses is the facade he wears to interact with mortals.’
‘That’s a very melodramatic perception.’
‘And it is true. The only difference between you and I is that you call him father, and I call him a god.’
Magnus sighed, his breath rumbling as he suppressed a growl. ‘I see where you are leading with this. Now I see why you summoned me. And Lorgar... I am leaving.’
Lorgar offered a golden hand, reaching out to his brother. ‘Please, Magnus. If the Emperor is what he is, there might be other beings that wield the same power. How can so many legends of divinity, from so many disparate cultures, all agree on other powers that exist beyond the veil? There must be gods in the universe. Our species’ most natural instincts cannot be wrong.’
‘This reeks of desperation,’ Magnus sighed. ‘Have you considered that father warned you for a reason?’
‘There is no shame in seeking the truth, Magnus. You of all souls should know that. Have you seen nothing of this in your travels through the Great Ocean? No beings that a human civilisation could perceive as a god or daemon?’
Magnus did not reply. His gaze burned into his brother.
‘My mind is alive with questions,’ the Word Bearer lord confessed. ‘Where in the galaxy would gods and mortals meet?’
The giant’s lip curled. ‘The Great Ocean hides much beneath its tides, Lorgar. We have both walked worlds where the warp bleeds into our reality, only to be manipulated by heathen ritemasters and misinterpreted as “magic”. Would you deceive yourself as they do?’
‘Stay,’ Lorgar implored. ‘Help me.’
Magnus shook his head. ‘Help you stare into the abyss? You want me to guide you along the paths walked by primitives and barbarians?’
Lorgar drew a shaky breath before replying.