‘And the Vaticsaw no sign of this?’ Zhi-Meng asked. ‘We’re sure of that?’

‘Nothing was logged with the Conduit apart from the dream vision of Athena Diyos,’ said Gregoras, flicking through reams of sifted data on his dataslate. ‘Not even any residuals or imagery they interpreted wrongly.’

‘And you’re sure about that, Evander?’ demanded Zhi-Meng. ‘The palace wants heads on spikes for this, and we’re next in line at the chopping block.’

‘I am sure, Choirmaster,’ said Gregoras in a tone that conveyed his irritation at the idea his people might have missed something. ‘If there was something to be found, the cryptaesthesians would have seen it.’

Zhi-Meng nodded and resumed his naked pacing.

‘Damn it, but why didn’t Athena send her vision straight to the Conduit? Why did she waste time going to you, Aniq?’

‘I’ll let the insult in that question go this time, Nemo, but don’t ever speak to me like that again.’

‘Sorry, but you know what I meant.’

Sarashina smoothed out her robes and said, ‘It would have made no difference, and you know it. By the time Athena interpreted her vision it was already too late. The traitors had already struck. There was no way we could have warned Ferrus Manus or the others.’

‘I know that, but it rankles,’ said Zhi-Meng, pausing to suck on the coiled pipe of a gently smoking hookah. Aromatic fumes, redolent of desert mountains, filled the air. ‘Lord Dorn is ready to break down the Obsidian Arch and drag me out by scruff of the neck for this. He wants to know why we didn’t see this coming. What am I supposed to tell him?’

‘You tell him that the currents of the immaterium are always shifting, and that to think that you can use them to predict the future with anything other than best guesses is like shooting an arrow on a windy day and predicting which grain of sand it will hit.’

‘I told him that,’ said Zhi-Meng. ‘He wasn’t impressed. He thinks we failed, and I’m inclined to agree with him.’

‘Did you tell him that we are not seers?’ asked Gregoras. ‘That if we couldpredict the future, we’d be locked up in the Vault with the Crusader Host and the rest of the traitors the Custodians have rounded up?’

‘Of course, but Lord Dorn is a blunt man, and he demands answers,’ said Zhi-Meng. ‘We all know that it ispossible to see potential futures, echoes of events yet to come, but for not one single astropath in this city to get so much of a glimpse of this strikes me as awry. Not one of your Vaticcaught so much of a whiff of this, Aniq, not one!’

‘Apart from Athena Diyos,’ said Gregoras.

‘Apart from Athena Diyos,’ repeated Zhi-Meng. ‘How is that possible?’

‘I do not know,’ said Sarashina.

‘Find out,’ ordered Zhi-Meng.

‘Perhaps this is the pattern,’ said Gregoras.

‘You and your pattern,’ cried Zhi-Meng, throwing his arms into the air and slapping them down on the top of his head. ‘There is no pattern. You are inventing things, Evander. I have seen the things you have seen, and I detect no pattern.’

‘With all due respect, Choirmaster, you do not live in the detritus of dreams as I do, and you do notsee what I see. I have studied the pattern for centuries, and it has been building to something terrible for many years. All the voices speak of a great red eye bearing down on Terra, a force of awesome destruction that will forever change the course of history.’

Zhi-Meng stopped his pacing. ‘ That’swhat your precious pattern is telling you? I don’t need Yun’s Oneirocriticato tell me what that means. A novice could tell you the red eye represents Horus Lupercal. If that’s all your years of looking for patterns that aren’t there has told you then you’ve been wasting your time, Evander.’

‘The eye does not represent Horus,’ said Gregoras.

‘Then who does it represent?’ asked Sarashina.

‘I believe it to be Magnus the Red,’ said the cryptaesthesian. ‘I think the Crimson King is coming to Terra.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Evander,’ hissed Zhi-Meng. ‘Magnus is still on Prospero, nursing his wounded pride after Nikaea.’

‘Are we sure about that?’ asked Gregoras.

SEVEN

Cognoscynths

The Cave

The Gate is Broken

EVEN IN A place as lightless and silent as the Whispering Tower, the lair of the cryptaesthesians was gloomy and foreboding. Kai and Athena moved swiftly through the melta-bored tunnels, pausing every now and then to run their fingers along the wall to check for the notched guide marks. Astropaths soon learned to navigate the familiar corridors of their tower, but none visited the deep levels where the cryptaesthesians plied their trade without very good reason.

‘This is a bad idea,’ said Kai, feeling the psychic pulse of whisper stones bleeding the residue of hundreds of astropathic visions into the trap chambers.

‘I know, but it was your idea,’ Athena reminded him, the sound of her support chair sounding disproportionately loud in the angular corridor. ‘I distinctly recall telling you it was a bad idea several times. You don’t go looking for the cryptaesthesians, theyfind you.’

Hundreds of metres below ground, the temperature was low and Kai’s breath misted before him. The dimly lit corridor stretched out before him for hundreds of metres, unmarked doors blending with the walls, and only the occasional mark on the walls giving any indication as to how far they had travelled.

‘You can always go back,’ said Kai.

‘And miss seeing you get chewed up by Evander Gregoras? No chance.’

‘I thought Sarashina told you to help me.’

‘She did,’ said Athena. ‘And right now I’m helping you by making sure you get out of this level with your brain still in your skull.’

‘Now you’re being dramatic.’

‘Tell me that when Gregoras has you wired up to his machines, then we’ll see how dramatic I’m being.’

Kai knew Athena was right. It wasfoolish to seek out the cryptaesthesians, for the towers of the astropaths were awash with dark rumours of their powers. Some said they could pluck secrets from the darkest parts of a person’s psyche, others that they could brainwash any individual into any act imaginable. Yet more told that they could read the minds of the dead.

Such talk was just that, talk, but Kai had no clear idea of how these most secret astro-telepaths worked. He suspected they were associated with the security of the City of Sight, assessing the messages that came to the towers for any warp-borne corruption. Where the Black Sentinels protected the physical aspects of the city, Kai believed the cryptaesthesians looked to its psychic defences.

He reached out to run his fingers along the wall, feeling the particular notches that told him he was on the right level and a few metres away from his destination.

‘This is it,’ he said as they stopped before a plain door of brushed steel.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ she said. ‘I told you, it was just a dream. You know anything can happen in a dream. Especially the dreams of a telepath. They don’t have to mean anything.’

Kai shook his head. ‘Come on, you are Vatic, you know better than that.’

‘You’re right, I doknow better than that, but I also know that his is a dangerous door to open, and one that will not easily be shut. To invite a cryptaesthesian to examine the interior architecture of your mind is to forever alter it, to bare the darkest, secret parts of the mind to their scrutiny. Once a cryptaesthesian is in your head, nothing is hidden from them.’

‘I have nothing to hide,’ said Kai.

‘We all have something to hide,’ said Athena. ‘Something we don’t want the rest of the world to know. Trust me on this. I’ve seen the astropaths the cryptaesthesians have questioned, and they allended up being sent to the hollow mountain.’

‘Well if that’s where I’m heading anyway, then this can’t do any harm.’