In flickering imagery, the region of space – zoomed out to display hundreds of suns and their systems – was beamed above the central table. It was impossible to miss what was wrong.
‘This region here,’ the astropath gestured. ‘If the choir closes its eyes and reaches out with its secret senses... all we hear is screaming.’
The area was vast. Bigger than vast. It covered hundreds upon hundreds of solar systems, ugly even on the hololithic. The warp anomaly showed as a gaseous fog staining the stars, coiling down to a centre of roiling, boiling energy.
‘When you all look at this,’ said Arric Jesmetine, ‘does anyone else see an eye? An eye in space?’
Many agreed. Lorgar did not.
‘No,’ the primarch said. ‘I see a genesis. This is how galaxies appear when they are born. My brother Magnus showed me such things in the Hall of Leng, on fair Terra. The difference is that this... birth... is not physical. This is the ghost of a galaxy. You all see an eye, or a spiral. Both are right, both are wrong. This is the psychic imprint of some incredible stellar event. It was powerful enough to rip the void apart, letting warp space bleed into the corporeal galaxy.’
The astropath nodded, awed gratitude in his eyes as the primarch spoke the words he lacked himself.
‘That is what we believe, sire. This is not merely a warp storm. This is the warp storm, and it has raged for so long that it now saturates physical reality. The entire region is both space and unspace. Warp and reality, all at once.’
‘Something...’ Lorgar stared at the bruised heavens, his gaze distant. ‘This is an abortion. Something was almost born here.’
Argel Tal cleared his throat. ‘Sire?’
‘It’s nothing, my son. Just a fleeting thought. Please continue, Master Delvir.’
The astropath had little more to say. ‘The storms that have wracked our journeys these last weeks emanate from this region. Around 1301-12, space is relatively stable. But think of the storm we endured to reach this point of stability. That storm blankets thousands of star systems around us. If we break from this narrow corridor, the energies playing out would be...’
He trailed off. Lorgar looked at him sharply. ‘Speak,’ the primarch commanded.
‘An old Terran term, sire. I would have said the storm is apocalyptic.’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Argel Tal.
It was Xaphen that answered. ‘Damnation. The end of everything. A very, very old legend.’ The thought seemed to amuse him.
‘If the storm is nothing but screaming,’ Argel Tal turned to Delvir, ‘then how did we find this world? How could you hear the life upon it?’
The astropath took a trembling breath. ‘Because something on the world below us screams even louder.’
‘Something,’ the captain said. ‘You did not say “someone”.’
The robed man nodded. ‘Do not ask me to explain, for I cannot. It sounds human, but is not. The way you would hear another warrior’s accent and know him to be from another part of your home world, the astropathic choir hears something inhuman screaming in human tongues.’
Lorgar cut off the discussion with a motion of his hand. ‘This region is unmapped and unnamed. What vessels were lost in the journey through the storm?’
Phi-44 answered before the fleetmaster could. ‘The Unending Reverence, the Gregorian and the Shield of Scarus.’
The Word Bearers present inclined their heads in respect. The Shield had been the strike cruiser of their own Captain Scarus and his 52nd Company. Their loss was a savage blow to the Serrated Sun, finding itself at two-thirds strength purely by the warp’s fickle winds.
‘Very well,’ said Lorgar. ‘Ensure all stellar cartography is updated, with records sent back to Terra. This region is hereafter known as Scarus Sector.’
‘Will we make planetfall, sire?’ This from Deumos.
With infinite care, the primarch took a rolled parchment from a wooden tube at his belt. He unrolled it with a precious lack of haste, and finally turned it to face them all. On the papyrus scroll, a spiralling stain was sketched in charcoal. Everyone recognised it immediately. It was already before them – the stain across the stars.
As the commanders watched, a vicious shiver ran through the ship. Emergency lighting stained all vision red for several seconds, and the hololithic winked out of existence. Argel Tal re-keyed the activation code as the lights returned.
The image flared back into jagged, unreliable life.
‘Bitch of a storm,’ Major Jesmetine muttered. A few quiet agreements were all the response he got.
‘This is drawn from memory,’ said Lorgar, meeting their eyes in turn. ‘But my Word Bearers will recognise it.’
‘The empyrean,’ the Legion officers said at once.
‘The Gate of Heaven,’ Xaphen amended, ‘from the old scrolls.’
‘We were summoned here,’ Lorgar said, his voice low and clear and unbroken by doubt’s shadow. ‘Something called out to our astropathic choir through the storm. Something wanted us here, and something awaits us on the planet below.’
The astropath broke decorum, possibly for the first time in his quiet and sheltered life. ‘How... how can you know that?’ he stammered the words through pale lips.
Lorgar let the scroll fall onto the table. Something like anger burned behind his eyes.
‘Because I hear the screaming, too. And it is not wordless. Something on the world beneath us is crying out my name into the psychic storm.’
FOURTEEN
Violet Eyes
Two Voices
Answers
Argel Tal looked at his reflection in the cup of water. Thin fingers touched the stark geography of his face. It was like stroking a skull.
Lorgar didn’t look up from writing.
‘Planetfall,’ said the captain.
Violet eyes.
It was only apparent deviation from the purestrain human breed. With violet eyes, the people stared at the emissaries from the stars. Barbarians, dressed in rags and wielding spears tipped by flint blades, confronted Lorgar and his sons.
And yet, the primitives showed little fear. They approached the Word Bearers’ landing site as a disjointed horde, divided by tribes, each host carrying flayed-skin banners and animal bone totems denoting their allegiance to the spirits and devils of their world’s faith.
Lorgar had taken a small host to make first contact with the humans of 1301-12. The rest of the fleet remained ready in the heavens above, but Lorgar preferred to orchestrate first contact in more humble ways.
At his side stood Deumos, Master of the Serrated Sun, with the captains Argel Tal and Tsar Quorel of the Seventh and Thirty-Ninth Companies respectively. Both captains brought their Chaplains, who in turn stood with their crozius mauls drawn. Behind them, one figure stood skeletally slender, clad in a hooded robe. Three mechanical eyes peered out from the cowl as Xi-Nu 73 watched proceedings taking place. At his side, Incarnadine waited motionless, exuding threat without moving a gear.
Only one figure stood apart from the pack; clad in gold, bearing a spear of exquisite craftsmanship. Vendatha, the Custodian. Aquillon would not be dissuaded from one of his brothers joining them. The Occuli Imperator made it a point for at least one of his warriors to always accompany the primarch on incidents of first contact.
The Custodian’s red helmet crest fluttered in the wind, as did the parchment scrolls bound to the Word Bearers’ armour. He stood closest to Argel Tal. In all Vendatha’s time with the fleet, no other Astartes present had showed him – or the other Custodes – the ghost of respect, let alone an offer of friendship.