‘But you never can,’ said Kai.

‘No,’ agreed Gregoras. ‘And if you stop trying…’

‘You get psi-sick,’ finished Athena. ‘Your mind aches for what it once had. I felt it when they brought me back from the Phoenicianand I couldn’t use my powers for weeks. I never want to go through that again.’

‘The cognoscynths could maintain that first sensation,’ said Gregoras. ‘Every time they touched the warp was like the first time. They became addicted to the power, and it is said they were virtually immune to the dangers of the warp. No immaterial creature could touch them, and without limits on their power and ambitions, the cognoscynths became obsessed with dominating lesser men, believing that they alone could control the destiny of the species. And they had the power to do it.’

‘I’ve heard rumours of what they could do, but it all seems too overblown, the kinds of powers ordinary folk thinkwe have.’

‘Whatever you have heard is likely true,’ said Gregoras. ‘There was little a cognoscynth could not do. After all, if you can control people’s minds, you can do anything at all.’

‘They could go into your mind and… change things?’ asked Kai.

‘They could go into your mind and do anything at all,’ repeated Gregoras. ‘For example, I could no more compel you to throttle Mistress Diyos than I could have you slit your own throat with a sharp blade. Nor, I suspect, could I convince you of the dissonant beauty of Dada’s Antisymphony, no matter how hard I tried. Most people’s own innate sense of self-preservation and understanding of right and wrong are too ingrained to overcome, but a cognoscynth could make you his puppet with no more effort than breathing. He could compel you do perform unimaginable acts of horror and make you laugh as you did them. He could erase your memories, graft new ones in their place and make you see what he wanted you to see, feel what he wanted you to feel. Nothing of the spaces in your mind that make you who you are would beyond his reach.’

Kai felt his skin crawl at such invasive psykery.

‘No wonder our kind are feared,’ he said.

‘Our kind have always been feared, even before the psi-wars,’ said Gregoras. ‘It is the way of men that they fear what they do not understand and seek to bring it to heel. The aftermath of the psi-wars was a perfect excuse to do so. And here we are, shackled to a bleak iron city in the midst of the greatest fortress this world will ever see.’

‘How did the wars end?’ asked Athena.

‘The legends say a great warrior with golden eyes arose, the only man whose will was strong enough to resist the influence of the cognoscynths. He rallied the armies of those few kingdoms left and trained a cadre of warriors like no other, stronger, faster and tougher than any of the great bands of old. One by one, they stormed the citadels of the cognoscynths on the backs of great silver flying machines. Not ever the most powerful cognoscynth could dominate the golden-eyed warrior, and every time he slew one of these psyker-devils, the enslaved armies were freed from bondage, and willingly joined the forces of the great warrior. It took another thirty years, but eventually his armies brought down the last cognoscynth, and the people of the world were free again.’

‘And what became of the warrior?’ asked Kai.

‘No one knows for sure. Some legends say he was killed in the battle with the last cognoscynth, others that he tried to take power himself and was killed by his men.’

Gregoras paused and a wrinkle at the side of his mouth told Kai he was smiling. The gesture was unsettling, like the death grin of a corpse. ‘Some even say the warrior still lives among us, waiting for the day when the power of the cognoscynths returns.’

‘But you don’t believe that?’ asked Athena.

‘No, of course not. To imagine that any such being could still exist is the stuff of children’s tales and foolish saga poets. No, that warrior, if he even existed as the legends recall, is long since dust and bones.’

‘Shame,’ said Kai. ‘The Imperium could use someone like him right now.’

‘Indeed,’ said Gregoras. ‘Now that you know the true measure of a cognoscynth’s power, tell me the substance of your so-called encounter with one.’

And so Kai took Gregoras through every stage of his dream: the Empty Quarter, the deserted fortress and the strange sounds and smells of a distant land that emerged from the air itself. He spoke of the harsh blue of the lake and the glaring red eye of the sun that beat down on the desert sands like a burning hammer. Finally, Kai ended his tale with the ghostly figure that drifted through the empty halls of Arzashkun with easy familiarity.

Gregoras sat opposite him as he spoke of his meeting with the figure, the unseen presence and the powerful grip he had taken on Kai’s shoulder. He related all that the figure had said, and ended his tale by showing Gregoras the marks on his shoulder once more.

The cryptaesthesian licked his lips, and Kai struggled to hold back an expression of revulsion. The gesture was like a lizard’s anticipation of a fresh meal, yet there was a tightness to Gregoras’s posture that had been absent when they had first arrived at his chambers. Though it seemed hard to credit, Kai believed the cryptaesthesian to be worried.

‘Tell me again of the sun,’ Gregoras demanded. ‘Speak, and be clear. How did it look, how did it make you feel? What imagery did you use to describe it? The metaphor and the impression. Tell me of them, and do not add or embellish. Just as you saw it.’

Kai cast his mind back to the moment before the robed figure appeared behind him.

‘I remember the simmering heat of the desert, the salt-tang of the air and the rippling horizon. The sun was red, vivid red, and it seemed as though it was looking down on the world, as though it was a huge eye.’

‘The red eye,’ whispered Gregoras. ‘Throne, he’s almost here.’

‘Who?’ asked Athena. ‘Who is almost here?’

‘The Crimson King,’ said Gregoras, looking beyond Kai at the impossibly complex pattern sketched out on the wall behind him. ‘Sarashina, no! It’s happening now. It’s happening right now.’

FAR BENEATH THE birthrock of the race that currently bestrode the galaxy as its would-be masters, a pulsing chamber throbbed with activity. Hundreds of metres high and many hundreds more wide, it hummed with machinery and reeked of blistering ozone. Once it had served as the Imperial Dungeon, but that purpose had long been subverted to another.

Great machines of incredible potency and complexity were spread throughout the chamber, vast stockpiles and uniquely-fabricated items that would defy the understanding of even the most gifted adept of the Mechanicum.

It had the feel of a laboratory belonging to the most brilliant scientist the world had ever seen. It had the look of great things, of potential yet untapped, and dreams on the verge of being dragged into reality. Mighty golden doors, like the entrance to the most magnificent fortress, filled one end of the chamber. Great carvings were worked into the mechanised doors, entwined siblings, dreadful sagittary, a rearing lion, the scales of justice and many more.

Thousands of tech-adepts, servitors and logi moved through the chamber’s myriad passageways, like blood cells through a living organism in service to its heart, where a great golden throne reared ten metres above the floor. Bulky and machine-like, a forest of snaking cables bound it to the vast portal sealed shut at the opposite end of the chamber.

Only one being knew what lay beyond those doors, a being of towering intellect whose powers of imagination and invention were second to none. He sat upon the mighty throne, encased in golden armour and bringing all his intellect to bear in overseeing the next stage of his wondrous creation.

He was the Emperor, and though many in this chamber had known him for the spans of many lives, none knew him as anything else. No other title, no possible name, could ever do justice to such a numinous individual. Surrounded by his most senior praetorians and attended by his most trusted cabal, the Emperor sat and waited.