“What’s calling to you?” said Ahriman, but no sooner had he spoken than he heard it, a soft whisper, like a distant friend calling from afar. It was not an unwelcome sound. It was gentle, a beguiling whisper redolent with the promise of raptures beyond measure.
Magnus turned to his captains and shook his head. Ahriman saw that Magnus’ eye was deep black, the pupil massively enlarged and swollen, as though filled with the same dark substance as the glistening pillars.
“My sons,” said Magnus, and Ahriman felt the barely constrained power laden in every syllable. “Concentrate. Rise to the tenth Enumeration and shut out the voices. You are not strong enough to resist them. I have dealt with power like this before. I mastered it then, and I will master it now.”
Uthizzar nodded, and Ahriman felt his consciousness rise into the uppermost Enumeration, a place of inner solitude where a warrior could find peace, untroubled by the concerns of the world around them. It was an effort to reach such a state of mind, especially here, but Uthizzar was master of his own psyche. Ahriman rose alongside him, and the voices ceased, shut off as surely as a vox-caster with the power cell removed.
With the clarity imparted by the tenth sphere, Ahriman saw movement within the heart of the mass of tentacles, a flash of saffron and a glitter of something reflective.
“No,” he whispered, his grip on the tenth sphere slipping as a flash of recognition surfaced. “Please don’t let it be so.”
As though in response to his words, the tentacles shivered, and a repulsive slithering sound, as of a thousand greasy limbs moving together, filled the chamber. The Space Wolves were instantly alert, their guns snapping upright, though there were no obvious targets for their wrath beyond the black tentacles.
“What is going on?” demanded Skarssen.
Wyrdmake’s staff crackled with power, but the Rune Priest regarded it with horror, as though it had transformed into a poisonous snake.
“Spread out,” ordered Magnus, “and stay away from the edge.”
The gelatinous mass of plant-like growths rippled, and a number of thick stems detached themselves from the domed roof of the chamber. Like disease-ridden fronds in a polluted pool, the nearest tentacles sagged and spread as something moved through them, on a course angled towards the Thousand Sons.
A black veil parted, and Ahriman’s control of the spheres collapsed completely as he saw a wretched figure drift through the tar-black tentacles.
Scraps of orange fabric clung to its naked body, which hung limp with its head down like a puppet bereft of a puppeteer. The figure was borne aloft by a host of slender tentacles, one a gleaming noose around his neck, another around his temple like a crown of obsidian.
These tentacles were not like the others. Their vile substance was alive with gaping mouths and seething eyes that bubbled into existence before dissolving into nothingness.
The figure drew nearer, and he lifted his head. His eyes were oil-dark and reflective, and fine black lines threaded his skin as though the black tentacles had filled him with their corrupt substance. A cracked mirrormask hung at his throat.
The man’s mouth was moving, as though he were screaming in unimaginable torment, but no sounds emerged, only a sopping gurgle of fluid-filled lungs.
“Is that…?” asked Uthizzar.
“It is,” said Magnus sadly. “Yatiri.”
MAHAVASTU KALLIMAKUS HAILED from the subcontinent of Indoi, and was a meticulous recorder of data and a fastidious observer of details. He had scribed much of the earliest days of the Great Crusade and had been one of the first remembrancers to be chosen by the Thousand Sons. His reputation had preceded him, and he was immediately assigned to Magnus the Red.
He had been at Magnus’ side since the restored Legion had departed Prospero in a fanfare of triumph, cheering crowds and billowing clouds of rose petals. He had recorded the primarch’s every thought and deed in a great tome that many called the Book of Magnus.
Those remembrancers who found it difficult to collect any first-hand accounts of the Great Crusade from the Thousand Sons looked upon Mahavastu Kallimakus with no small amount of jealousy. Lemuel had met Mahavastu Kallimakus on the Photepduring a symposium on the best form of data collation, and their friendship had been borne of a mutual love of detail.
“God is in the details,” Mahavastu would say as they pored over one of the many manuscripts in the vessel’s fascinating library.
“You mean the devil is in the details,” Lemuel would reply.
“That, my dear Lemuel, depends entirely on the detail in question.”
Kallimakus was energetic, with the vigour of a man half his chronological age, which was somewhere in the region of a hundred and thirty standard.
Right now, Mahavastu Kallimakus looked every one of those years.
The aged remembrancer opened his book, and Lemuel looked over his shoulder.
“An artist’s notebook,” he said, seeing the charcoal and pencil marks of an artist’s preliminary outlines. “I never had you pegged as a sketcher. All seems a bit woolly for a man like you, none of the precision of language.”
Kallimakus shook his head.
“And you would be right, Lemuel,” he said. “I am not an artist. In truth, I am no longer sure what I am.”
“I’m sorry, Mahavastu, I don’t follow.”
“I do not remember drawing them,” said Mahavastu in exasperation. “I do not remember anything in this book, neither pictures nor words. I look back over every entry I have made and they are a mystery to me.”
Tears glistened in the old man’s eyes, and Lemuel saw the anxiety in his aura replaced with aching sorrow.
“Everything I have written… I remember none of it.”
“Have you had someone from the medicae corps check you out?” asked Camille. “I had an uncle who got old and his mind turned on him. He couldn’t remember anything, even things you just told him. Soon he forgot who he was and couldn’t remember his wife or children. It was sad, watching him die by degrees in front of us.” Mahavastu shook his head.
“I am familiar with such progressive patterns of cognitive and functional impairment, Mistress Shivani, so I had a medicae scan my brain this morning,” he said. “The neuron and synapse counts in my cerebral and subcortical regions are quite normal, and he found no atrophy or degeneration in my temporal and prietal lobes. The only anomaly was a minor shadow in the cingulate gyrus, but there was nothing that might explain all this.”
Lemuel looked more closely at the drawings, trying to sort out some meaning from the ragged sketches and scrawled notations.
“Are you sure you did all this?” he asked, studying the strange symbols that filled every page. He could not read the words, but he recognised the language, and knew that this was no ordinary book of remembrance.
This was a grimoire.
“I am sure,” said Mahavastu. “It is my handwriting.”
“How do you know?” asked Kallista. “You use a scrivener harness.”
“Yes, my dear, but in order to calibrate such a device for use, one must first attune it to one’s own penmanship. There is not a graphologist alive who could tell the machine’s work from mine.”
“What is it? I can’t read it,” said Camille.
“I do not know. It is in a language I have never seen.”
“It’s Enochian,” said Lemuel, “the so-called language of angels.”
“Angels?” asked Camille. “How do you know that?”
“I have an incomplete copy of the Liber Loagaethin my library back on Terra,” explained Lemuel. Seeing their confusion, Lemuel said, “It’s supposed to be a list of prayers from heaven channelled through an ancient magician of Old Earth. It’s written in this language, though I’ve only ever been able to translate tiny fragments of it. Apparently there was once a twin book, the Claves Angelicae, which had the letter tables, but I never found a copy.”