and every second I am here a dozen of my thralls die to keep them open,’
'Don't listen to him, Warmaster,’ said another voice, and Horus turned to see Hastur Sejanus emerge from the darkness of the mining tunnel. This is who we have been trying to avoid. It is a shape-changing creature of the warp that feasts on human souls. It seeks to devour yours so that you cannot return to your body. All that was Horus would be no more,’
'He lies,’ spat Magnus. 'You know me, Horus. I am your brother, but who is he? Hastur? Hastur is dead,’
'I know, but here, in this place, death is not the end,’
There is truth in that,’ agreed Magnus, 'but you would place your trust in the dead over your own brother? We
mourn Hastur, but he is gone from us. This impostor does not even wear his own true face!'
Magnus thrust his fist forward and closed his fingers on the air, as though gripping something invisible. Then he wrenched his hand back. Hastur screamed and a silver light blazed like a magnesium flare from his eyes.
Horus squinted through the blinding light, still seeing an Astartes warrior, but one now armoured in the livery of the Word Bearers.
'Erebus?' asked Horus.
'Yes, Warmaster,’ agreed First Chaplain Erebus; the long red scar across his throat had already begun to heal. 'I came to you in the guise of Sejanus to ease your understanding of what must be done, but I have spoken nothing but the truth since we travelled this realm,’
'Do not listen to him, Horus,’ warned Magnus. The future of the galaxy is in your hands,’
'Indeed it is,’ said Erebus, 'for the Emperor will abandon the galaxy in his quest for apotheosis. Horus must save the Imperium, for it is evident that the Emperor will not,’
SEVENTEEN
Horror
Angels and daemons
Blood pact
With the compact edit engine tucked under one arm and a sense of limitless possibilities filling her heart, Euphrati Keeler made her way through the stacks of Archive Chamber Three towards Sindermann's table. The white haired iterator sat hunched over the book he had shown her earlier, his breath misting in the chill air. She sat down beside him and placed the edit engine on the desk, slotting a memory coil into the imager slot.
'It's cold in here, Sindermann,’ she said. 'How you haven't caught a fever I'll never know.'
He nodded. 'Yes, it is rather cold, isn't it. It's been like this for days now, ever since the Warmaster was taken to Davin in fact,’
The screen of the edit engine flickered to life, its white screen bathing them both in its washed-out light as Keeler flicked through the images she had captured. She zipped through those she had taken while on Davin's surface and those of Captain Loken and the Mournival prior to their departure for the Whisperheads.
'What are you looking for exactly?' asked Sindermann.
'This,' she said triumphantly, angling the screen so he could see the image it displayed.
The file contained eight pictures, all taken at the war council held on Davin where Eugan Temba's treachery had been revealed. Each shot included First Chaplain Erebus, and she used the engine's trackball to zoom in on his tattooed skull. Sindermann gasped as he recognised the symbols on Erebus's head. They were identical to the ones in the book that he had shown Keeler on the sub-deck.
That's it then,’ he breathed. 'It must be the
Using all the various images, and shots of the Word Bearer from different angles, Euphrati was able to create a composite image of the symbols tattooed onto his skull and project it onto a flat pane. Sindermann watched her skill with admiration, and it took her less than ten minutes to resolve a high-gain image of the symbols on Erebus's head.
With a grunt of satisfaction, she made a final keystroke, and a glossy hard copy of the screen's image slid from the side of the machine with a whirring sigh. Keeler lifted it by the corners and waved it for a second or two to dry it, before handing it to Sindermann.
'There,’ she said. 'Does that help you translate what this book says?'
Sindermann slid the image across the table and held it close to the book, his head bobbing back and forth between the book and his notes as his finger traced down the trails of cuneiforms.
'Yes, yes…' he said excitedly. 'Here, you see, this word is laden with vowel transliterations and this one is
clearly a personal argot, though of a much denser polysyllabic construction,’
Keeler tuned out of what Sindermann was saying after a while, unable to make sense of the jargon he was using. Karkasy or Oliton might be able to understand the iterator, but images were her thing, not words.
'How long will it take you to get any sense out of it?' she asked.
What? Oh, not long I shouldn't wonder,’ he said. 'Once you know the grammatical logic of a language, it is a relatively simple matter to unlock the rest of its meaning,’
'So how long?'
'Give me an hour and we'll read this together, yes?'
She nodded and pushed her chair back, saying, 'Fine, I'll take a look around if that's alright,’
'Yes, feel free to have a look at whatever catches your eye, my dear, though I fear much of this collection is more suited to dusty academics like myself,’
Keeler smiled as she got up from the table. 'I may not be a documentarist, but I know which end of a book to read, Kyril,’
'Of course you do, I didn't mean to suggest-'
Too easy,’ she said and wandered off into the stacks to browse while Sindermann returned to his books.
Despite her quip, she soon realised that Sindermann was exactly right. She spent the next hour wandering up and down shelves packed with scrolls, books and musty, loose-leaf manuscripts. Most of the books had unfathomable titles like
As she passed this last book, she felt a shiver travel the length her spine and reached up to slide the book from the shelf. The smell of its worn leather binding was strong, and though she had no real wish to read the
book, she couldn't deny the strange attraction it held for her.
The book creaked open in her grip, and the dust of centuries wafted from its pages as she opened them. She coughed, hearing Sindermann reading aloud from the
