Magnus nodded and smiled.

“Have no fear, Ahzek,” he said, “Wyrdmake was not our only source within the Wolves. I have other assets in place, none of whom know they dance to my tune.”

Ahriman waited for Magnus to continue, but the primarch kept his own counsel.

Before he could ask any more, the stars shimmered, as though a layer of gauze had been drawn over the crystal pyramid.

“Look,” said Magnus, “The Mechanicum Borealis, it begins.”

Like a painting left out in the rain, the image of the stars smeared in the blackness. A fusion of chemical overspill and atmospheric vapour fires on Hexium Minora caught the arcing light of the system’s distant star, refracting a shimmering halo around the world as though it were ablaze from pole to pole with rainbow fires.

The effect was wondrous, despite being born of chronic pollution and rampant industry pursued without heed of the cost to the planet’s ecology. To Ahriman, it was proof that something wonderful could come from the most ugly of sources. A side effect of the Mechanicum Borealis was the thinning of the veil between the material world and the immaterium, and a mélange of unnameable colours and aetheric tempests swirled around the planet’s corona, a distant seascape viewed through a glass darkly.

“The Great Ocean,” said Magnus, his voice full of longing. “How beautiful it is.”

AHRIMAN KEPT THE lights in his private library low, claiming that any aid to concentration was of paramount importance. Lemuel had been surprised how small his mentor’s sanctum was, a chamber no larger than that of a Terran bureaucrat. For a room described as a library, there were precious few books to be found, merely a single bookcase filled with leather scroll tubes and loosely bound sheaves of paper.

A large wooden desk of a pale, polished and darkly-veined wood with an inset blotter of green leather stood against one wall, and a number of thick books with spines a half-metre or more in length lay opened across its length.

An armour-stand bore Ahriman’s battle-plate, like a silent observer of his failures. It reminded Lemuel of Khalophis’ robots, and the thought of those soulless, mechanised warriors sent a shiver down Lemuel’s spine.

“Can you see it yet?” asked Ahriman.

“No.”

“Look again. Drift with the currents. Remember all I have taught you since Shrike.”

“I’m trying, but there are so many. How can I tell what’s the actual future and what’s a potential future?”

“That,” said Ahriman, “is where the skill of the individual diviner comes into play. Some prognosticators have an innate connection to the aetheric paths that guide them with unerring accuracy to the truth, while others must sift though a thousand images of meaningless symbolism to reach it.”

“Which are you?” asked Lemuel without opening his eyes and trying to visualise the myriad paths of the falling cards.

“Think less about me, more about the cards,” warned Ahriman. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

A precisely stacked house of cards sat on the lip of the desk, arranged in a delicately balanced pyramid. Ahriman had produced them from a battered, cloth-wrapped tin, seventy-eight cards of what he called a Visconti-Sforza trionfi deck. Each card was exquisitely detailed and lovingly rendered with vivid colours and expressively wrought images of regal men and women.

“Catch the Seven of Denari,” said Ahriman, and slammed an open palm down on the desk.

The pyramid of cards collapsed, each one fluttering to the floor in a crazed whirlwind of spinning horsemen, kings and princesses. Lemuel snatched his hand out, seizing a card and holding it up before him.

“Show me,” said Ahriman.

Lemuel flipped the card, which showed a female figure reaching up to touch an eight-rayed star.

“The Star,” said Ahriman. “Try again.”

“It’s impossible,” said Lemuel in resignation. He had been trying to catch whichever card Ahriman named from the falling stack for the last three hours without success. “I can’t do it.”

“You can. Lift your mind into the lower Enumerations to clear it of the clutter of material concerns. Let your mind float free of hunger, want and desire. Only then can you follow the correct path to the future echoes.”

“Free my mind from desire? That’s hard for me to do,” pointed out Lemuel.

“I never promised this would be easy. Quite the contrary in fact.”

“I know, but it’s not easy for a man of my appetites to suppress them,” said Lemuel, patting his ample, but shrinking, gut. Shipboard cuisine was a bland mixture of reconstituted pastes and flash frozen organics grown in ventral hydroponic bays. It nourished the body, but did little else.

“Then the Enumerations will help you,” said Ahriman. “Rise into the low spheres and visualise the paths each card will take, the interactions as they strike one another, the ripples they cause in the system. Learn to read the geometric progression of potentiality as each permutation gives birth to a thousand more outcomes regardless of how similar the beginning parameters were. In the forgotten ages, some people knew this as chaos theory, others as fractal geometry.”

“I can’t do it,” protested Lemuel. “Your brain was crafted for that sort of thing, but mine wasn’t.”

“It is not my enhanced cognition that allows me to see the cards fall. I am not a mathematical savant.”

“Then you do it,” challenged Lemuel.

“Very well,” said Ahriman, rebuilding the house of cards with calm dexterity. When the pyramid was complete, he turned to Lemuel. “Name a card.”

Lemuel thought for a moment.

“The Chariot,” he said at last.

Ahriman nodded and closed his eyes, standing before the desk with his hands at his sides. “Ready?” asked Lemuel. “Yes.”

Lemuel banged the table and the cards fell to the floor. Ahriman’s hand darted out like a striking snake and snatched a single gilt-edged card from the air. He turned it over to reveal a golden chariot drawn by two winged white horses. He placed the card face up on the desk.

“You see? It can be done.”

“Astartes reflexes,” said Lemuel.

Ahriman smiled and said, “Is that what you think? Very well. Shall we try once more?”

Once again, Ahriman built the house of cards and asked Lemuel to name a card. Lemuel did so and Ahriman closed his eyes, standing before the precariously balanced cards. Instead of keeping his arms at his sides, he extended a hand with his thumb and forefinger outstretched, holding his fingertips close together, as though gripping an invisible card. His breathing deepened, and his eyes darted back and forth behind their lids.

“Do it,” said Ahriman.

Lemuel thumped the desk and the cards collapsed in a rain of images. Ahriman didn’t move, and a single card fluttered through the air to slide precisely between his fingertips. Lemuel was not the least bit surprised when the Librarian flipped it over to reveal a divine figure bearing a fiery sword in his right hand and an eagle-topped globe in his left hand. Angels flew above the figure, blowing golden trumpets from which hung silk banners.

“Just as you wanted,” said Ahriman. “Judgement.”

FOUR DAYS LATER, Lemuel was once again ensconced within Ahriman’s library, though this time he had been promised remembrances instead of instruction. Almost a year after being denied the opportunity to descend to the surface of Ullanor, Lemuel had hoped for a firsthand account of Horus Lupercal’s ascension to Warmaster. In this, he was to be disappointed.

When Lemuel asked about the Great Triumph, Ahriman had shrugged, as though it had been a trivial encounter, something not worthy of remembrance.

“It was a private affair,” said Ahriman. Lemuel almost laughed before seeing that Ahriman was deadly serious. “Why would you want to know of it anyway?”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe because the Emperor himself was there,” said Lemuel, struggling to understand why Ahriman would think it strange he would want to know of such a singular event. “Or perhaps because the Emperor has returned to Terra and the Great Crusade has a new commander. Horus Lupercal is the Warmaster. Such an event is a turning point in the affairs of mankind, surely you must see that?”