Dorn marched towards the centre of the mindhall, and Ibn Khaldun felt his skin prickle at the nearness of such a forceful, implacable psyche. The majority of mortal minds simmered with mundane clutter close to the surface, but Rogal Dorn’s mind was an impregnable fortress, hard-edged and unyielding of its secrets. No one learned anything from Dorn he did not want them to know.

‘My brothers are approaching Isstvan V,’ said Dorn. ‘I needto be here.’

‘Communion has yet to be established, Lord Dorn,’ said Sarashina, clearly understanding the futility of attempting to eject a primarch from the mindhall. ‘But if you are to stay, then you may only observe. Do not speak once the link is achieved.’

‘I do not need a lecture,’ said Dorn. ‘I know how astropathic communion works.’

‘If that were truly the case, then you would have respected the warding seal upon this chamber,’ said Sarashina, and Ibn Khaldun felt the momentary flare of anger from behind the monolithic walls of Rogal Dorn’s mind fortress. Almost immediately it was followed by a mellow glow of begrudged respect, though Ibn Khaldun sensed this only because Dorn allowedit to be sensed.

‘Point taken, Mistress Sarashina,’ said Dorn. ‘I will be silent. You have my word.’

Ibn Khaldun dragged his senses away from the primarch; a difficult feat in itself, for his presence had a gravity that drew in nearby minds. Instead, he splayed his mind outwards into the echoing space of the vast chamber in which he lay.

Fashioned in the form of a great amphitheatre the heart of the Whispering Tower, this chamber had been shaped by the ancient cognoscynthswho first raised the City of Sight, many thousands of years ago. Their unrivalled knowledge of psychically-attuned architecture had been hard-won in a long-forgotten age of devastating psi-wars, but their arts were long dead, and the skill of crafting such resonant structures had died with them.

Amid the blackened mindhalls of the City of Sight, the Whispering Tower reached the farthest into the gulfs of space between the stars, no matter what lofty claims the Emperor’s grand architects might make of the ornamented spires they had built around it.

A thousand high-ranking astropaths surrounded Ibn Khaldun, seated in ever-ascending tiers like the audience at some grotesque spectacle of dissection. Each telepath reclined in a contoured harness-throne, appearing as shimmering smears of light in Ibn Khaldun’s consciousness, and he sharpened his focus as a subtle change in the choir’s resonance tugged at the edge of his perceptions.

A message was being drawn towards the tower.

Whisper stones set within the ironclad walls shone with invisible light as they eased the passage of the incoming message, directing it towards the centre of the mindhall.

‘He’s here,’ said Ibn Khaldun, as the presence of the sending astropath swelled to fill the chamber like a surge tide. The sending was raw and unfocussed, a distant shout straining for someone to listen, and Ibn Khaldun folded his mind around it.

Like strangers fumbling to shake hands in a darkened room, their thoughts slowly meshed, and Ibn Khaldun gasped as he felt the hard texture of another’s mind rasping against the boundaries of his own. Rough and sharp, blunt and pugnacious, this sending was typical of astropaths who spent prolonged periods assigned to the Iron Hands. Cipher codes flashed before him in a complex series of colours and numbers, a necessary synesthesia that confirmed the identity of both astropaths before communion could begin.

‘You have it?’ asked the Choirmaster.

Khaldun didn’t answer. To grasp the thoughts of another mind from so far away demanded all his concentration. Fluctuations in the warp, random currents of aetheric energy, and the burbling chatter of a million overlapping echoes sought to break the link, but he held it firm.

As lovers gained a slow understanding of their partner’s rhythms and nuances, so too did the union of minds become easier. Though to call anything of this nature easywas to grossly understate its complexity. Ibn Khaldun felt the cold wastes of the immaterium all around him, roiling like a storm-tossed ocean. And like the oceans of Old Earth, it was home to creatures of all shapes and sizes. Ibn Khaldun sensed them swarming around the bright light of this communion like cautious predators circling potential prey.

‘I have communion,’ he said, ‘but I won’t be able to hold it for long.’

The spectral outline of somewhere far distant began to merge with Ibn Khaldun’s sensory interpretation of the mindhall, like a faulty picter broadcasting two separate images on the same screen. Ibn Khaldun recognised the hazy image of an astropath’s chamber aboard a starship, one that bore all the stripped-down aesthetic of the X Legion. Figures appeared around him, like faceless ghosts come to observe. They were mist-limned giants of burnished metal with flinty auras, angular lines and the cold taste of machines.

Yes, this was definitelya ship of the Iron Hands.

Ibn Khaldun ignored the additional presences and let the body of the message flow into him. It came in a rush of imagery, nonsensical and unintelligible, but that was only to be expected. The psychic song of the choir grew in concert with his efforts to process the message, and he drew upon the wellspring of energy they provided him. Will and mental fortitude could cohere simple messages sent from planetary distances, but one sent from so far away would need more power than any one individual could provide.

Khaldun was special, an astropath whose skills in metapsychic cognition could transform confused jumbles of obscure symbolism into a message that even a novitiate could decipher. As the raw, urgent thoughts of the expeditionary astropath spilled into his mindscape, his borrowed power smoothed their rough edges and let the substance of the message take shape.

Ibn Khaldun interpreted and extrapolated the images and sounds together, alloying astropathic shorthand with common allegorical references to extract the truth of the message. There was art in this, a beautiful mental ballet that was part intuition, part natural talent and part training. And just as no remembrancer of a creative mien could ever truly explain how they achieved mastery of their art, nor could Ibn Khaldun articulate how he brought sense from senselessness, meaning from chaos.

Words sprang from him, reformed from the encrypted symbolism in which they had been sent. ‘The world of black sand. Isstvan,’ he said. ‘The fifth planet. The Legion makes good speed. Lord Dorn’s retribution flies true, yet the sons of Medusa will strike before even the Ravens or the Lords of Nocturne. Lord Manus demands first blood and the head of the Phoenix.’

More of the message poured through, and Ibn Khaldun felt some of the astropaths in the tiers above him perish as their reserves of energy were expended. Such was the import of this message that losses amongst the choir had been deemed acceptable.

‘The Gorgon of Medusa will be the first warrior of the Emperor upon Isstvan. He will be the speartip that cleaves the heart of Horus Lupercal. He will be the avenger.’

Ibn Khaldun slumped back in his harness as the message abruptly ended, and allowed his breathing to return to normal. His mind began the tortuous process of re-ordering itself in the void left by communion’s end, but it would take many days rest to recover from this ordeal.

As always, he wanted to sit up and open his eyes, but the restraints of his harness and the sutured veil of skin over his empty eye sockets prevented him from doing either.

‘It is done,’ he whispered, his words echoing around the chamber as though he had shouted at the top of his voice. ‘There is no more.’

Mistress Sarashina took his hand and stroked his glistening brow, though his consciousness was already fading after such strenuous mental exertion. Lord Dorn loomed over him, a glittering nimbus of light playing around the golden curves of his battle plate, and the proximity of such naked power was like a defibrillating jolt that kept Ibn Khaldun from slipping into a recuperative trance.