“Because no one else does,” snapped Ahriman. “We do know better than anyone else.”

“Maybe you do, but maybe you don’t. What if there’s something you’re missing? What if there’s some little piece of the puzzle you don’t know about?”

“Be silent,” ordered Ankhu Anen. “ Weare the architects of fate, not you.”

“So what happens when you turn those machines off?” asked Camille, taking Lemuel’s hand as they realised the futility of resisting the Astartes physically.

“We will listen to what she has to say and we will learn of the future.”

“No, I won’t let you,” said Lemuel.

“No?” sneered Ankhu Anen. “Who are you to bark orders at us, little man? You think because Ahriman has taught you a few parlour tricks that you are one of us? You are mortals, your abilities and intellect are beneath our notice.”

“Ahriman, please!” begged Lemuel. “Don’t do this!”

“I’m sorry, Lemuel, but they are right. Kallista is dying anyway. At least this way her death will mean something.”

“That’s a lie!” shouted Lemuel. “If you do this, you’ll be killing her. You might as well put a bullet in her brain and be honest about it.”

Amon removed some of the contact points on Kallista’s skull and consulted the readouts on the aetheric blocker. He nodded to Ankhu Anen and said, “It is done. I have kept some of the blocks in place, but her mind is open to the aether now. Just a fraction, but it should be enough to generate divinatory activity.”

Kallista’s eyes fluttered open and she drew in a panicked breath as awareness was forced back to the surface of her consciousness. Her lips moved and breaths of hoarse air gusted from somewhere deep inside her. The temperature in the room fell sharply.

“A million shards of glass, a million times a million. All broken, all shattered glass. The eye in the glass. It sees and it knows, but it does nothing…”

Her eyes drifted shut and her breathing deepened. No more words were forthcoming, and Ankhu Anen leaned over her, prising the lids of her eyes open.

“Increase the flow of aetheric energy,” he ordered. “We can get more out of her.”

“Please,” begged Camille. “Don’t do this.”

“Ahriman, she’s an innocent, she doesn’t deserve this,” cried Lemuel.

The Thousand Sons ignored them, and Amon again adjusted the dials on the machine. The needles dipped even farther, and Kallista’s body jerked on the bed, her legs kicking the covers from her feet. Lemuel didn’t want to watch, but couldn’t tear his eyes from the dreadful sight.

She screamed, and the words poured from her in a flood as the temperature continued to plummet.

“It’s too late… the Wolf is at the door and it hungers for blood. Oh, Throne… no, the blood! The Ravens, I see them too. The lost sons and a Raven of blood. They cry out for salvation and knowledge, but it is denied! A brother betrayed, a brother murdered. The worst mistake for the noblest reason! It cannot happen, but it must!”

Sweat poured from Kallista’s face. Her eyes bulged in their sockets and every muscle and sinew of her body stretched to breaking point. The effort of speaking was too much, and she fell back, her frame wracked with agonising convulsions.

Lemuel felt Ahriman’s grip slacken, and he looked up to see regret written across his face. He extended his aura, projecting his disgust and sadness at Kallista’s treatment by the Thousand Sons into Ahriman’s. The effect was subtle, but Ahriman looked down at him with an expression that was part admiration and part remorse.

“That will not work on me,” said Ahriman. “You have learned much, but you don’t have the strength to influence me with the little power you have.”

“Then you’re just going to let this happen?”

“I have no choice,” said Ahriman. “The primarch has demanded it be so.”

“Lem, they’re going to kill her,” pleaded Camille.

Ahriman turned to face her saying, “She is already dead, Mistress Shivani.”

He nodded to Amon. “Allow the aether free reign within her. We must know everything.”

Magnus’ equerry turned back to the machine and turned all the dials to zero. The needles fell slack and the lights winking on its surface extinguished. The glass readouts on the machine cracked with frost and the globes misted over. Lemuel felt cold like the chill at the end of the world.

The effect on Kallista was instantaneous. Her back arched and her eyes snapped open. Blazing light streamed out, like the furnace breath of an incinerator. It illuminated the room with a sickly blue-green light, throwing shadows of things that didn’t exist across every wall. The ghostly howls of a million monsters ripped from her throat, and Lemuel smelled the awful stench of roasted human flesh.

Smoke poured from Kallista’s body, and even the Astartes were horrified at what was happening to her. The flesh bubbled and smoked on her bones, peeling away in blackened flakes as though the target of an invisible flamethrower. Her body hissed and spat as it was reduced to jellied runnels of boiling fat and meat.

Yet through it all, she still screamed.

Long after her heart and lungs and brain were blackened husks, she kept screaming. The sound cut through Lemuel like a hot knife, twisting in his guts with treacherous force. He dropped to his knees as a screeching whine, like a host of fingernails dragged down a slate-board, bit into his head. Camille was screaming, her grip on his hand as powerful as a clamping vice.

Then, with a terrible ripping, tearing sound, it was over.

Lemuel blinked away bright sunbursts, feeling his stomach lurch at the stench of burned meat that hung like a miasma in the air. He pulled himself to his feet, dreading what he would see as much as he neededto see what had become of Kallista Eris.

Nothing remained of the beautiful remembrancer save a blackened outline seared onto the sheets, and smoking pools of rendered flesh that drooled from the bed in long, rubbery ropes.

“What did you do?” he whispered, tears streaming down his face. “Oh, Kallista, you poor, poor girl.”

“We did what we needed to,” hissed Ankhu Anen. “I make no apologies.”

“No,” said Lemuel, turning to help Camille to her feet. “You didn’t need to do this. This was murder, plain and simple.”

Camille wept with him, burying her head in his shoulder and clawing at his back with heaving sobs of grief.

Ahriman reached out to him.

“I am truly sorry, my friend,” he said.

Lemuel shrugged off his hand, moving past Ahriman towards the door with his arms wrapped tightly around Camille.

“Don’t touch me,” he said. “We are no longer friends. I don’t know if we ever were.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The Warning/You were Right/Too Close to the Sun

MAGNUS SAT IN the centre of the Reflecting Cave, allowing the resonant harmonies of the silent crystals to fill him with calm. His meditations had lasted two nights and he had finally achieved the calm he needed to make his journey He was not alone, for nine hundred Thralls stood in their appointed positions around the chamber, each holding a glimmering crystal into which they had bound their lifeforce.

No more Thralls could be spared, for all those that had taken part in the last ritual had since perished. Nine hundred was fewer than Magnus would have liked, but nine hundred would have to do. What other choice was there?

The spell he had crafted required sacrifice. Its power was beyond anything he had ever conjured, even within the secrecy of his Sanctum or in the days when he had struggled to cure his Legion of their terrible mutations.

The Thralls’ lives were forfeit, but it was a sacrifice each made willingly. Their brothers had died in vain as Magnus had tried to save Horus. They would die to allow Magnus to take warning of that treachery to the Emperor, and none begrudged their lord and master the light of their lives.