‘Please, you can tell me,’ pleaded Gregoras. ‘What is it? What have you seen?’

‘Nothing you would ever want to know,’ said Sarashina, turning her gaze upon Kai once more. ‘Nothing anyoneshould know, and for that I am truly sorry.’

‘Sorry?’ said Kai. ‘Sorry for what?’

Sarashina darted forward, fast as quicksilver, and took hold of Kai’s head with both hands. The light that burned in her eyes flared, and Kai screamed as a host of burning, screaming, violent, bloody and sharp-edged images poured through him, filling his brain to capacity and beyond. Kai screamed as his mind sought to process this immense flood of information. A billion times a billion pictures, events, memories and perceptions flashed through his consciousness, the sensory input of a life lived over thousands of years. No mortal brain could contain such a vast repository of knowledge. Such a wealth of experience could only be contained by a mind that existed outside the physical world, a mind that was not constrained by physical limitations of flesh and blood.

Amid the chaos of his overfull mind, Sarashina’s voice cut through the crescendo of new thoughts like a diamond blade.

This warning is for one person, and one person alone. You will know who when you see him. Others will seek to know what I have given you, but you must never tell them what you have learned. They will break you open to learn what I have told you, but they will not find it. I will hide it in the one place you will not go.

Kai’s augmetic eyes rolled back in their sockets, and tears of blood spilled from his eyes. The world receded to a white point of light.

He heard the booming report of a heavy gun, a splash of warm wetness on his face.

A light was snatched from the world, and the torrent of life flowing into Kai was abruptly cut off, like a data cable wrenched from a Mechanicum logic engine. From a deluge of a thousand images every instant, one single image expanded to crystal clarity.

A face, ancient and wise, ruthless and single-minded.

A man who was so much more than a man: a warrior, a poet, a diplomat, an assassin, a counsellor, a killer, a mystic, a peacemaker, a father and a war-bringer.

All these and thousands more.

Yet it was his eyes that captured Kai’s attention.

They were the most beguiling colour of warm honey.

Like coins of the purest gold.

KAI OPENED HIS eyes and found himself looking at the bare iron dome of the mindhall. The watery light from the dead star was gone, and the harsh illumination of arc lights filled the space with an unforgiving clarity. He wanted to sit up, but his limbs were locked to his side. His head ached abominably. Shooting pains stabbed his brain repeatedly, and he groaned as what felt like the mother of all migraines surged to the fore of his skull.

Colours flashed before him, sickening and dizzying. His gut lurched, and he fought to keep his bile from exploding from his gullet. This wasn’t psi-sickness, this was overload. Just as too little use of an astropath’s powers was painful, too much could be just as debilitating.

‘What…?’ was all he could manage before a face appeared above him, upside down.

‘You’re awake,’ said Gregoras.

‘I think so,’ he said. ‘What happened?’

‘What do you remember?’ said Gregoras, moving around so that he was the right way up.

‘Not much,’ said Kai. ‘I feel terrible. Why can’t I move?’

Gregoras nodded and looked down at Kai’s body. Kai followed his gaze and saw that he was bound at the wrists and ankles by shackles of gleaming silver. Intricate carvings were acid-etched into the metal, and Kai zoomed in on them.

‘Warding sigils?’ he said. ‘Why am I in chains covered in warding sigils?’

Gregoras sighed. ‘You really don’t remember what happened when Sarashina touched you?’

Kai shook his head and Gregoras looked up at something out of his eye line.

‘First of all Golovko shot Sarashina in the head,’ said Gregoras. ‘Now I never liked her much, but she didn’t deserve that. Gunned down like a common criminal.’

‘She’s dead?’

‘Didn’t you hear what I said? She was shot in the head by a Black Sentinel. Nobody survives that, Zulane.’

‘You still haven’t answered my question,’ said Kai, the sickening pain in his head shortening his already finite patience. ‘Why am I chained?’

‘For safety. Yours and mine.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘No, you don’t,’ said Gregoras. ‘I suspect you never will.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ demanded Kai.

‘It means I was right to think you were going to be trouble.’

Heavy hands came from behind and hauled Kai to his feet. His limbs felt like rubber, as though the strength had been drained from him, and he stumbled as his legs tried to bear his weight. The hand that held him upright kept him from falling without effort. His flesh ached and his skin felt as though a low-grade electric charge ran over its surface.

Kai’s own shadow was thrown out before him, an elongated slice of blackness. Two shadows went with it, but these were broader and longer by far, the shadows of giants. Kai turned to see what manner of ogre stood behind him, and the breath caught in his throat as he saw the two figures that had lifted him from the floor as though he weighed nothing at all.

Their armour was unblemished gold, heavy plate and tightly-hammered mail weave, with kilts of segmented leather and brushed steel. Cloaks of the deepest crimson were fixed to their shoulders by carven pins in the shape of lightning bolts. Both wore tapered helmets, one with a dangling horsehair plume of blood red, the other with silver wings affixed to the cheek plates.

They carried tall spears with ivory coloured hafts, each one terminating in a blade as long as Kai’s arm and bearing a monstrously large projectile weapon slung beneath the cutting edge. The plates of their armour were not smooth, they bore intricately carved renditions of words that curled around greaves, along the edges of breastplates, beneath pauldrons and around gorgets.

‘Legio Custodes…’ breathed Kai.

Kai had heard that Custodians earned their names through the course of their enhanced lives, and if that were true, then these warriors were clearly long-lived specimens of the order. They stood immobile as the golden statues said to guard the great subterranean pyramids of the sub-stratum deserts of the Sudafrik, but Kai guessed they could spring into action faster than he could think.

‘Kai Zulane,’ said one of the golden giants, the one with the silver wings on his helm.

‘Yes,’ replied Kai, surprisingly calm at facing such a deadly warrior.

‘I am Saturnalia Princeps Carthagina Invictus Cronus Ishayu Kholam, and you are bound by Imperial law to my custody. If you attempt to escape or employ any facet of your astropathic abilities, you will be terminated instantly and without recourse to any higher authority. Is anything I have said unclear?’

‘I’m sorry, what?’

The giant leaned forward, and it seemed to Kai that the red eye lenses of his helmet narrowed. Saturnalia’s head inclined to the side and Kai tried to imagine what thoughts must be going through the Custodian’s mind. Saturnalia looked over at Gregoras.

‘Has be been made imbecilic?’ asked the Custodian.

‘No,’ answered Gregoras. ‘I believe he is simply confused.’

The Custodian found this puzzling. ‘I was quite clear.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said Gregoras. ‘If you will allow me…?’

Saturnalia nodded and stood upright.

‘I don’t understand what’s happening,’ said Kai. ‘Where are they taking me? I haven’t done anything.’

‘Sarashina touched you, a powerful telepath who was, if not possessed, then at least acting as a conduit for high level warp intelligences using her Vaticabilities. Whatever passed through her is now inside you, and we are going to find out what it is.’