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  I lashed out with my mind. It was no match for his fearsome psychic capacity, but it was enough to put him off his swing. The shrieking chain-blade of the axe sawed through the air over my ducking head.

  My fallen hell-gun was out of reach, and I doubted it would have made a dent in the monster anyway. His baying face, its sutured-on skin stretching around the gaping jaws of his skull, was all I could see.

  My left arm was numb and useless. I threw myself to my feet, pulling my sword from my webbing.

  The device is a fine weapon, of the old kind. It has no material blade like other, cruder models I have seen. It is a hilt, twenty centimetres long, inlaid and wound with silver thread, enclosing a fusion cell that generates a metre-long blade of coherent light. The Provost of Inx himself blessed it for me, charging it to 'protect our brother Eisenhom always from the spawn of damnation'.

  I prayed now that he hadn't been wasting his breath.

  I ignited the blade and fended away the next axe swing. Sparks and metal shrapnel flew from the clash, and the beast's huge strength nearly struck it from my hand. I jumped back a pace or two from the next whistling bow. My head was swimming. Was it the loss of blood or the after-effects of that seductive book?

  Mandragore was incandescent with fury now. I was proving to be annoy-ingly difficult to slay – for a mere mortal.

  I had a dread feeling it wouldn't last.

  He rushed me again, towering over me, and I managed to deflect the force of the chain-axe. But immediately he brought the butt of the weapon's long haft around and struck me in the chest, sending me flying. I actually left the ground and cleared several metres.

  I landed hard on my injured shoulder. The pain rendered me insensible for a second. That was all he needed.

  He crossed the blood-flecked tiles to me in two strides, the axe rising in the air as his growl rose in pitch. With a flailing motion, I kicked the Necroteuch towards him. It struck the toe of one great boot.

  'Don't forget what you came for, abomination!' I rasped out.

  Mandragore Carrion – son of Fulgrim, worthy of Slaanesh, champion of the Emperor's Children, killer of the living, defiler of the dead, keeper of secrets – paused. With a hacking laugh, his soulless eyes never leaving me, he stooped for the book.

  'You counsel well, inquisitor, for… a…'

  His fingers were around the Necroteuch, the metal-shod digits dwarfing it. His voice trailed away. Triumph faded from his hideous face; rage drained away; blood-lust dimmed. His mask of skin hung slack from its sutures. The light in his blood-rimmed eyes dulled.

  The Necroteuch sang through every fibre and shred of corrupted being, stealing from him all sense of the outside world.

  I stood, unsteadily, flexed my grip on the power sword, and sheared his head from his shoulders.

  Before it had even struck the ground, the spinning skull combusted and blazed white hot, dripping liquid flame onto the tiles. The fireball bounced and rolled, rocked over, and consumed itself in a ferocious, dirty fire that swiftly left nothing behind but blackened shards of skull in a smouldering scorch mark.

  The body remained standing, burning from within the torso, shooting long tongues of sickly green flame up out of the neck cavity. A column of filthy black smoke rose into the still air. The gaudy robes and cloak quickly caught, and thick flames enfolded the headless, metal rain.

  At the last moment, I struck off Mandragore's fist with the sword's bright blade, and the Necroteuch it clutched fell clear of the flames. I felt as though it was pleading with me to take it up again, to immerse myself again in the wonders it contained.

  Such wonders. I bent down, torn by duty. The thing should be destroyed, but it held such secrets! Could not the Inquisition, and the Imperium as a whole, benefit from the infinite truths it contained? Had I even the right to destroy something so priceless?

  The puritan part of me had no doubt. But another part abhorred the idea of wasting it. Knowledge is knowledge, surely? Evil stems from how knowledge is used. And such knowledge was here…

  Perhaps if I read a page or two, I could make a better decision.

  I shook my head to cast away the insidious thoughts. The noise of the battle came rushing back. I looked back across the plateau, beyond Man-dragore's upright, burning corpse and the sprawled body of Malahite. The last few pockets of fighting were playing out, and the great tiled platform was littered with dead and debris. Both carrier vehicles were ablaze. The saruthi had gone, taking even their corpses with them. It seemed to me the Gudrunites had overwhelmed the troopers by sheer numbers. Few figures were still standing, and I could see none of my companions.

  His regal cloak torn and his face bloodied, Oberon Glaw strode towards me, a laspistol clenched in his right hand.

  'Throw that down, Glaw. It's over.'

  'For you, yes.' He raised the weapon. A munitions canister on one of the burning carriers ignited and blew the armoured vehicle apart in a stunning conflagration. Flung out by the blast, broken armour plating and sections of track whizzed through the air like missiles. A chunk of trans-axle impaled Lord Glaw through the back of the head. He fell without a sound.

  I grabbed a piece of smoking hull plate, and scooped the Necroteuch up on it. I would heed no more of its soft enticements. I let it slide off the makeshift scoop into Mandragore's upright corpse, so that it fell down through the open neck of the blazing armour into the furnace of the torso.

  The flames turned red, then darker still. The blaze grew more intense. Something without a mouth screamed.

  I limped away from the pyre. Malahite was alive and awake, calling out, 'Locke, please! Please!' in a hoarse voice.

  Across the plateau, one of the naval speeders lifted into the air. Gorgone Locke was at the controls, with Dazzo slumped in the seat beside him. In moments, the racing speeder was disappearing over the ragged peaks, away from the plateau, towards the endless beach.

  Midas, Bequin, Aemos and Lowink had survived the ordeal and the battle, though all had minor injuries. Two dozen Gudrunites were also still alive, including Jeruss.

  Aemos wanted to see to my wound, but I had bound it tight to stanch the flow of blood and I wanted to waste no more time.

  'I think it would be prudent to get out of here/ I told them.

  Fischig lay on a makeshift stretcher. The saruthi weapon that had obliterated Twane had cost him an arm and half of his face. Mercifully, he was unconscious. Two Gudrunites bore him up.

  'It pains me to say this, but we're taking him too/ I told Midas and Jeruss, indicating the collapsed Malahite.

  Are you sure?' Betancore asked.

  'The Inquisition will want to plunder his brain/

  Our ragged, battered party left the dark uplands and retraced our steps to the hazy levels of the beach. The booming had increased in volume and frequency and the sky was growing dark.

  'It is as if/ said Aemos ominously, 'this place is coming to an end/

  'We don't want to be here when that happens/1 said.

  From the beach, we could see the two Imperial frigates and the merchantman had departed. A wind, thick with an afterburn of ammonia, was picking up. Their vacuum suits more or less intact, Midas and Lowink went ahead to recover the gun-cutter.

  My vox link crackled. Maxilla's voice suddenly sang out.

  'Eisenhorn? For pity's sake, are you there? Are you there? Three ships just left, moving right past me! Conditions are worsening. I cannot stay here much longer. Respond! Please respond!'

  'Maxilla! This is Eisenhorn! Can you hear me? We need you to move in and pick us up. We have injuries… Fischig and several others. This whole environment may be collapsing. Repeat, I need you to move the Essene in to my location and pick us up!'

  A moment or two of static. Then his answer.

  'As you instruct, Gregor, but it's not going to be easy. Say again, what did you say about Fischig?'

  'He's hurt, Maxilla! Come and get us!'

  'Hurry!' Bequin shouted over my shoulder. We don't want
to be here any more!'

  More static. Tell Alizebeth, I agree with that! Ha!'

  The echoes, delays and dislocations were catching up with themselves. The wrongness was righting itself and, I thought with irony, that made things no better for us.

  TWENTY-ONE

  A gathering of peers.

  Lord Rorken contemplates.

  Malahite's secrets.

  Two days later, aboard the Essene at anchor beyond the treacherous reaches of system KCX-1288, we made our rendezvous with the Imperial taskforce outbound from Gudrun.

  We'd made good our escape from the world of the plateau in less than two hours. As Aemos had predicted, the place seemed to unravel around us, as if that apparently timeless realm of the sea, the beach and the uplands had been nothing but an ingenious construct, a space engineered by the saruthi to accommodate the meeting with their human 'guests'. As we rode the gun-cutter back to the waiting Essene, the hazy radiance had begun to dim and atmospheric pressure dropped. We were beset by turbulence, and natural gravity began to reassert its influence. The impossible cavity had begun to decompose. By the time Maxilla was running the Essene down the dark corridor of arches as fast as he dared, the inner space where we had confronted the aliens was nothing but a dark maelstrom of ammonia and arsenical vapours. Our chronometers and horologiums had begun to run properly again.

  We left the fractured planet behind, braving flares and gravity storms as we made a dash for the outer system. Forty minutes after leaving that place, rear-aligned sensors could find no trace of the 'wound', as if it had collapsed, or had never been there to begin with.

  How the saruthi came and went I had no idea, and Aemos was little help. We had seen no sign of other vessels or other points of egress from the planet's crust.

  'Do they live within the planet?' I asked Aemos as we stood at an observation platform, looking back at the retreating star through glare-dimmed ports.

  'I fancy not. Their technologies are beyond my ken, but I feel that they might have arrived on the plateau through those archways from another world, into a place they had built for the meeting.'

  Such a concept defied my imaginings. Aemos was suggesting interstellar teleportation.

  Outside the system, there had been little trace of the heretical fleet. As far as Maxilla was able to tell from drive and warp wakes, the three ships, no doubt bearing Locke and Dazzo, had rejoined their attentive flotilla and moved away almost at once into the immaterium.

  Other warp indicators informed us that the taskforce was approaching, no more than two days away. We dropped grav-anchor, saw to our wounds, and waited.

  Thirty weeks before, as we departed Damask, I had sent my request for assistance to Gudrun via Lowink astropathically. I had outlined as much of the situation as possible, providing what detail and conjecture I could, and had hoped the Lord Militant would send a military expedition to support me. I did not demand, as the likes of Commodus Voke were wont to do. I was sure the urgency and importance of my communique would speak for itself.

  Eleven ships loomed out of the empyrean before us in battle formation: six Imperial frigates running out in the van, fighter wings riding out ahead of them in formation. Behind this spearhead of warships came the battleships Vulpecula and Saint Scythus, each three times the size of the frigates, each a bristling ogre of a vessel. To the rear was an ominous trio of cruisers, black ships of the Imperial Inquisition. This was no military expedition. This was an inquisitorial taskforce.

  We exchanged hails, identified ourselves and were escorted into the fleet pack by an honour guard of thunderhawks. Shuttles transferred our wounded, including the still unconscious Fischig and the prisoner Malahite, to medicae faculties aboard the Saint Scythus. An hour later, at the request of Admiral Spatian, I also crossed by shuttle to the battleship. They were awaiting my report.

  My left arm bound and tightly slung in a surgical brace, I wore a suit of black and my button-sleeved leather coat, my rosette pinned at my throat. Aemos, in sober green robes, accompanied me.

  In the echoing vault of the Saint Scythus's docking bay, Procurator Olm Madorthene and a detail of navy stormtroopers waited to greet us.

  Madorthene wore the impressive white dress uniform in which I had first seen him, and the men's blue armour was rich with gold braid and ceremonial decoration.

  Madorthene greeted me with a salute and we strode as a group towards the elevators that would carry us up into the command levels of the ship.

  'How goes the uprising?' I asked.

  'Well enough, inquisitor. We understand the Lord Militant has declared the Helican Schism over and quashed, though pacification wars are still raging across Thracian.'

  'Losses?'

  'Considerable. Mainly to the population and materials of the world affected, though some fleet and guard units have taken a beating. Lord Glaw's treason has cost the Imperium dear.'

  'Lord Glaw's treason has cost him his life. His body rots on a nameless world in the system behind us.'

  He nodded. 'Your master will be pleased.'

  'My master?'

  Lord Inquisitor Phlebas Alessandro Rorken sat in a marble throne at the far end of a chapel-like audience hall two decks beneath the main bridge of the Saint Scythus. I had met him twice before, and felt no more confident now for those experiences. He wore simple robes of crimson over black clothing and gloves, and no other decoration except for a gold signet ring of office on one knuckle. The austere simplicity of his garb seemed to accentuate his authority. His noble skull was shaved except for a forked goatee. His eyes, deep set and wise, glittered with intelligence.

  Around him was his entourage. Ten inquisitorial novices of interrogator rank or below, upheld banners, sacred flamer weapons, caskets of scrolls and slates, gleaming tools of torture on red satin cushions, or open hymnals. Flanking them were four bodyguards in red cloaks with double-handed broadswords held stiffly upright before their faces. Their armour was ornate, and the full visors had been fashioned and painted into the likenesses of four apostolic saints: Olios, ferido, Manezzer and Kadmon. The masks were flat-eyed and expressionless and almost naive, lifted exactly from representations on illuminated manuscripts of old. A huddle of dark-robed savants waited nearby, and a dozen cherub servitors in the form of podgy three-year-olds with golden locks and the spiteful faces of gargoyles circled around, scolding and mocking, on grav-assisted golden wings.

  'Approach, Eisenhorn/ Lord Rorken said, his soft voice carrying down the chamber effortlessly. Approach all/

  At his words, other figures emerged from anterooms along the sides of the hall, and took their seats to either hand. One was Admiral Spatian, an ancient, skeletal giant in white dress uniform, attended by several of his senior staff. The others were inquisitors. Titus Endor, in his maroon coat, unescorted save for a hunched female savant. He cast me an encouraging

  nod as I passed by. Commodus Voke, wizened and shuffling, helped onto his seat by a tall man in black. The man's head was bald and hairless apart from a few sickly clumps. His scalp, neck and face were livid with scar-tissue from injuries and surgery. It was Heldane. His encounter with the carnodon had not improved his looks. Like Endor, Voke nodded to me, but there was no friendship in it.

  Next to him, Inquisitor Schongard, stocky and squat, the black metal mask obscuring everything but his raddled eyes. He took his seat and was flanked by two lean, supple females, members of some death-cult by the look of them, both nearly naked save for extensive body art, barbed hoods and harnesses strung with blades.

  Opposite Schongard sat Konrad Molitor, an ultra-radical member of the ordos I had little love or respect for. Molitor was a fit, athletic man dressed from head to toe in a tight weave-armour bodyglove of yellow and black check with a polished silver cuirass strapped around his torso. His black hair was close-trimmed and tonsured and he affected the air of a warrior monk from the First Crusade. Behind him stood three robed and hooded acolytes, one carrying Molitor's ornate powersword, another a silver chal
ice and paten, and the third a reliquary box and a smoking censer. Molitor's pupils were bright yellow and his gaze never wavered from me.

  Last to take his seat, at Lord Rorken's right hand, was a giant in black power armour, a Space Marine of the Deathwatch chapter, the dedicated unit of the Ordo Xenos. The Deathwatch was one of the Chambers Militant, Marine chapters founded exclusively for the Inquisition, obscure and secret even by the standards of the blessed Adeptus Astartes. At my approach, the warrior removed his helmet and set it on his armoured knee, revealing a slab-jawed, pale face and cropped grey hair. His thin mouth was curled in a frown.

  Servitors brought a seat for me, and I took my place facing the Lord Inquisitor. Aemos stood at my side, silent for once.

  We have read your preliminary report, Brother Eisenhorn. Quite a tale it is. Of great moment.' Lord Rorken savoured the last word. 'You pursued Glaw's heretic fleet to this Emperor-forsaken outer world, certain that they planned to trade with a xenos breed. That trade, you stated, was for an item whose very nature would threaten the safety and sanctity of our society.'

  'I reported correctly, lord brother.'

  "We have known you always to be earnest and truthful, brother. We did not doubt your words. After all, are we not here in… unusual force?'

  He gestured around and there was some laughter, most of it forced, most of it from Voke and Molitor.

  And what was this item?'

  The aliens possessed a single copy of a profane and forbidden work we know as the Necroteuch.'

  The reaction was immediate. Voices rose all around, in surprise, alarm or disbelief. I heard Voke, Molitor and Schongard all calling out questions

  and scorn. The assembled retainers, novices and acolytes around us whispered or gabbled furiously. The cherubs wailed and fluttered into hiding behind Lord Rorken's throne. Rorken himself studied me dubiously. I saw that even the grim Space Marine looked questioningly at the inquisitor.