Yet even as the thoughts of the city faded, Atharva sensed another presence hidden within its depths, something powerful and alien. His subtle body felt its nearness and he fought the urge to fly the aether towards it. Somewhere close, something had found a way through the veil that separated this world from the Great Ocean, a passage that had escaped the notice of the material world’s inhabitants.

And as Atharva became aware of this intelligence, it too became aware of him and shrank back into whatever shell currently hosted its form. He could still sense it; something that powerful could not completely conceal its presence, it was a thorn in the flesh of the world that would never completely heal.

Atharva dismissed it for now and turned his thoughts to Kai Zulane. He let his body of light drift into the upper reaches of the astropath’s mind, sifting through the clutter of his waking thoughts and the panic and fear of his last few weeks. The savage scarring left by the neurolocutors angered him, and Kai shifted in his dreams as that anger bled into his thoughts.

Atharva saw fleeting images of a vast desert and a towering fortress he recognised as the long-vanished Urartu fortress of Arzashkun. A dry, but informative text of Primarch Guilliman had described it, and a copy of that work resided in the Corvidae library in Tizca. Why would Kai Zulane be dreaming of such a place? True, he had served with the XIII Legion, and it was not beyond the realms of possibility that he might have seen the original work somewhere in Ultramar, but why would he have need to dream of it?

Pushing deeper into that dream, Atharva smelled the aroma of the souk, the fragrance of hookah smoke and the spiced flavour of a dead culture. He had no frame of reference for these sensations, but he sensed their importance to whatever secret Kai held within his mind.

What did the Eye want with this mortal? What could be so important that it would be placed within such a fragile vessel instead of someone worthy of its protection?

Atharva smiled as he recognised a hint of jealousy in his thoughts.

He pressed harder against the edge of Kai’s dreams, employing skills beyond the imaginations of the simpletons who had tried to open his mind. He saw the desert and the vast emptiness it represented. He recognised the significance of the great fortress and the prowling shadow that circled it with a predator’s patience. This was Kai’s refuge, but it would prove wholly inadequate to keep a truth-seeker of Atharva’s skill from eventually breaching its defences.

With a thought, Atharva was at Arzashkun’s mighty gates and he looked up at the brilliant whiteness of the fortress’s many towers and gilded rooftops. Portions of its silhouette were missing, and he could picture the neurolocutors disassembling its structure in an effort to intimidate their captive.

‘You only drove him deeper in,’ said Atharva.

He extended his hand towards the great defensive gates and willed them to open. When nothing happened, he repeated the gesture. Again the gates remained stubbornly closed to him, and Atharva felt a prescient sensation of warning as the sand around him erupted with black streamers of oozing menace. Screams of the dying enveloped him and grasping, clawed hands of glistening black matter pulled at his subtle body, tearing shards of light from his immaterial form that would leave black repercussions on his physical body.

Atharva rose up from the cloying morass of horror and fear, irritated that he had allowed himself to be surprised by such base emotions. His body floated high above Arzashkun, but the black ooze rose up like creepers climbing an invisible building towards him. Atharva had the strongest sensation that Kai’s own guilt was shielding the secret within him, and he smiled in admiration for whoever had placed it there.

‘Very clever,’ he said. ‘The defences can only ever be opened from the inside.’

ATHARVA OPENED HIS eyes and groaned as he allowed his subtle body to return to his flesh abode in the material world. The quality of light in their hiding place had changed, the sun drawing close to the western horizon as night drew in on the mountains.

‘Where did you go?’ said Tagore, and Atharva flinched as he realised the World Eater was right beside him.

‘Nowhere,’ said Atharva.

Tagore laughed. ‘For someone supposed to be clever, you are a terrible liar.’

Atharva had to concede the point. ‘I am a scholar, Tagore. I deal in facts and facts are always true. Lies are for lesser minds who cannot face the truth.’

‘You are a warrior, Atharva,’ said Tagore. ‘First and foremost, that is what you were created to be. Do not forget the truth of thatfact.’

‘I have fought my share of wars, Tagore,’ said Atharva. ‘But it is always such a brutal business that teaches nothing except how to destroy. Knowledge can only ever be lost in war, and such loss is abhorrent to me.’

Tagore considered this and jerked a thumb in Kai’s direction.

‘So we broke him out and he’s still alive. Are you going to tell me what’s so important about him and why we risked our lives for him?’

‘I am not sure yet,’ said Atharva. ‘I was attempting to go into his mind to find out what the Legio Custodes wanted from him, but it is hidden deep.’

‘Something to do with the Emperor,’ said Tagore. ‘That’s the only reason for the Custodians to get involved.’

‘You could be right,’ agreed Atharva.

‘Now you will tell me why you spoke with the hunter on the steps of the Preceptory.’

Atharva had been waiting for this. There was no mistaking the vibrating chord of anger within the World Eater sergeant, and for all Tagore’s lack of subtlety, he would be swift to spot any falsehood.

‘It is hard to explain,’ Atharva began, holding up a hand to forestall Tagore’s ire, ‘but I do not say that to evade an answer. My Legion has many of its warriors dedicated to the arts of divination, sifting the currents of the Great Ocean – the warp as some know it – for threads that link past, present and future. Everything that ever was and ever will be can be read in its depths, but sorting what willbe from what couldbe requires decades of study, and even then it is an imprecise art.’

Atharva smiled, wondering what Chief Librarian Ahriman would make of that.

‘Are you one of these seers?’ asked Kiron, moving away from the recumbent form of the unconscious Gythua. ‘Can you see the future?’

‘I am Adeptus Exemptus, a high-ranking member of my fellowship, and I have trained in all the arts of my Legion, but I am not skilled enough to future-see with any degree of certainty.’

‘But you saw something that day, didn’t you?’ asked Asubha, the blade in his hand crackling with power. ‘Something that made you stand aside when you could have warned us of the approach of our attackers.’

‘I did,’ said Atharva. ‘I saw the galaxy overturned, and moving to the beat of a different drum. I saw us as guardians of a secret that could alter the outcome of this rebellion of Horus Lupercal.’

‘Enough riddles,’ snapped Subha. ‘Speak plainly of what you saw.’

‘I can speak only in possibilities, for that is all I have,’ said Atharva. ‘For reasons none of us can guess, Horus has turned on his father, and three of his brothers have turned with him. Lords Angron, Fulgrim and Mortarion have joined Horus in rebellion, but I do not believe they will be the only ones.’

‘Why not?’ asked Tagore.

‘Because Horus is no fool, and he would not risk everything in one gamble on the sands of a dead world. No, Isstvan V is just the beginning of the Lupercal’s plan, and there are players yet to reveal their faces.’

‘So what does this have to do with him?’ asked Kiron, jerking his thumb at Kai.

‘I believe that Kai Zulane knows the outcome of Horus’s grand plan,’ said Atharva.