“Sleepers?” asked Hathor Maat. “What are you talking about?”

“The sleeping souls, bound to crystal immortality, left behind to watch,” gasped Uthizzar, “trapped and corrupted, dragged to a slow doom that is worse than death.”

“What in the Emperor’s name is he talking about?” demanded Khalophis.

“The Aghoru call them Daiesthai,” said Magnus, “void beasts given form by the nightmares of mortals since the dawn of time. Men, in their ignorance, call them daemons.”

Ahriman almost smiled. Daemons, indeed…

“You will feel the call of the Great Ocean, my sons,” said Magnus, his eye red and angry. “It will be strong, but rise to the ninth Enumeration. Enter the sphere of inner determination and close your minds off from its power, for it will call to you like nothing you have ever known.”

“My lord?” asked Ahriman. “What is going on?”

“Do it, Ahzek!” snapped Magnus. “This is not power as you know it. It is stagnant and dead. It will try to force its way into your mind, but you must not let it, not for a moment.”

It felt alien to Ahriman to close himself off from the power of the aether, but he did as his primarch ordered, focusing his will and lifting his consciousness to the essence of his higher self, where he became an observer in his own flesh.

Magnus set off towards the mouth of the valley without another word, almost outpacing them all. The tempo of the march picked up, and Ahriman saw confusion in the Space Wolves at this sudden urgency. But the wolves… they understood. Ohthere Wyrdmake spoke to Amlodhi Skarssen, and the masked warrior cast a furious glare towards Magnus the Red.

In his objective state of being, he saw the familiar fear of the unknown, the hatred engendered by the strange and unfamiliar. The Space Wolves did not trust his Legion, but perhaps the tentatively established cooperation of Ohthere Wyrdmake might change that.

The valley climbed towards the ridge, and Ahriman noticed a change in the very character of the landscape. The perfection he had seen in its flawless geometries had subtly altered, as though the world had been shifted a fraction of a degree. Angles that once complemented one another were now horribly dissonant, like a musical instrument a hair’s-breadth out of tune.

Golden ratios were upset and the graceful dance of intersecting lines became a tangle of discordant shapes that violated the perfect order that had existed before. The valley was a place of threat, its every angle hostile. The throaty rumbles of the Land Raiders’ engines echoed strangely from the valley sides, thrown back as if from a hundred different sources.

At last they came to the mouth of the valley, and Ahriman stared in detached horror at what had become of its mighty guardians.

“I CAN HEAR them screaming,” hissed Uthizzar, and Ahriman saw why that should be so.

The titanic constructs stood as they always had, towering and immense, but the smooth, clean lines of their limbs were no longer graceful and pristine. Once they had been the colour of sun-bleached bone, but a loathsome network of poisonous, greenish-black veins threaded their limbs, a necrotic plague that poured from the cave in thick, oily ropes and filled the colossal statues with sickness.

Their splay-clawed feet were rank with the stuff, like rotted vegetable matter that heaved and writhed with foul growth. Blackened legs supported torsos webbed with thin lines of dark matter that absorbed any light that fell upon it. Their slender arms were slick with black veins, polluted conduits carrying the foulness of some nameless corruption. The graceful curve of their enormous heads remained pale and untouched, but even as Ahriman watched, the questing black tendrils oozed around the huge gems set in the surfaces.

Ahriman felt the insistent pressure of their Great Ocean breaking against his barriers of self-control. There was power here, rising up from somewhere far below. Yet what he felt was a fraction of what lay beneath, the trickle that becomes the stream that becomes the torrent. A dam had cracked, and inexorable pressure would soon break it wide open.

He ached to taste that power, to feel it flowing through his body, but he kept it shut out as Magnus had ordered, forcing his gaze away from the great statues.

“What’s happening to them?” he asked.

Magnus looked down at him.

“Something evil, Ahzek,” he said, “something I fear my presence on this world may have hastened. A balance has been upset, and I must restore it.”

Yatiri and his tribal elders, men who had managed to keep pace with the Astartes despite their advanced years, finally reached the edge of the valley.

“ Daiesthai!” he cried, holding his falarica in a tight, white-knuckled, grip. “They return!”

“What in the name of the Wolf’s Eye is he talking about?” demanded Skarssen, marching over with Ohthere Wyrdmake. “What are these things?”

Magnus glared at the Wolf Lord, and Ahriman saw his primarch’s frustration at having a brother Legion’s warriors present. What needed to be done here was best done hidden from inquisitive eyes.

Yatiri turned to Magnus and said, “They crave the dead. We must give them what they desire.”

“No,” said Magnus. “That is the last thing you should do.”

Yatiri shook his head, and Ahriman saw his anger.

“This is our world,” he said, “and we will save it from the Daiesthai, not you.”

The mirror-masked elder turned from the primarch and led his tribesmen into the valley, making his way towards the altar before the cave mouth.

“Lord Magnus,” pressed Skarssen, “what does he mean?”

“Superstition, Lord Skarssen,” said Magnus, “nothing more.”

“That looks like a damn sight more than superstition,” said Skarssen, gripping his bolter tight to his chest. “Speak true now, Magnus of the Thousand Sons, what is going on here?”

“Hel,” said Ohthere Wyrdmake, staring at the titanic constructs with a mixture of horror and fascination, “the Father Kraken of the deep, the keeper of the dead!”

“ Thisis what keeps you from the Wolf King’s side?” cried Skarssen. “Consorting with sorcerers!”

Magnus rounded on the Space Wolf.

“Did you not learn your lesson before, whelp?” he said.

Skarssen recoiled at Magnus’ anger, and Ahriman felt the wash of his fury as it spread like the shockwaves of an explosion. Deeper in the valley, Yatiri and his tribesmen surrounded the altar, chanting a mantra of supplication to non-existent gods. They stood in pairs, facing one another. Ahriman watched Yatiri lift his falarica, and knew what would happen the instant before it was too late to prevent it.

“No!” cried Magnus, seeing what Ahriman saw. “Stop!”

Yatiri turned to the tribesman next to him and rammed his falarica through his chest. His fellow elders stepped together; one man the victim, the other his killer. Spears flashed, blades bit flesh and bone. Blood was spilled.

Ahriman would never know for sure whether it was the death of the tribesmen, the blood splashing the altar or some unknown catalyst, but no sooner had the dead men fallen than the power building in the valley surged like a tidal flood.

The dam holding it back had no chance of stopping it.

With a titanic rumble of cracking stone, the guardians of the valley began to move.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Slayer of Giants

THE GIANTS WERE moving. The fact was as undeniable as it was inconceivable. The ground shook with the force of it. The cliff face cracked and broke, vast boulders falling like dust from the side of the Mountain. Straining with the effort of breaking the shackles of their ancient bindings, the behemoths tore free of the rock.

Ahriman felt the howling shriek of something primal roar from the mouth of the cave with insensate hunger, a force of mindless destruction given free rein after uncounted aeons trapped in the darkness. Rank winds roared from the depths of the Mountain.