Текст книги "A Thousand Sons"

Автор книги: Грэм Макнилл

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“I expect he does,” said Magnus, reaching out to touch the beginning of the spiralling script on Amon’s shoulder. “You have an old name, Amon, a proud name. It is a name borne by my equerry, a student of poetry and the hidden nature of things. If the name maketh the man, does that mean you are a similar student of the unknown?”

“Defending the Emperor requires a talent for discerning hidden truths,” replied Amon carefully. “I pride myself on having a certain skill in that regard.”

“Yes, I see you do. You are an exceptional man, Amon, and I believe you will go far within your order. I see great things ahead for you,” said Magnus, before adding, “and for you also, Haedo.”

Amon inclined his head at the primarch’s comment, and the two Guardian Spears were lifted aside, allowing Magnus and the Sekhmet to pass.

“That’s it?” asked Ahriman as the Custodes lowered their weapons.

“The Unified Biometric Verification System has identified and logged your genetic markers within its network,” said Haedo. “You are who you claim to be.”

Magnus laughed, and asked, “Is anyone ever who they claim to be?”

The Custodes did not answer, but stood aside to allow them past.

THE PODIUM WAS in sight, but one last intercession was to come before Magnus could take his place at the Emperor’s side. Even once through all the checkpoints, Ahriman could feel the shadowing presence of the untouchables on the periphery of vision and sense.

From the primarch’s comment, he surmised that the watchmen were in fact the Sisters of Silence, the mute sisterhood of untouchables and the guardians of the Black Ships. How typical to see them and the Custodes working hand in hand.

This was the inner circle, metaphorically and literally, for here were gathered the mightiest beings in the cosmos, the brightest sons of the most incandescent sire. Here was where the primarchs gathered before ascending the platform to stand at their father’s side.

Ahriman could see the winged, angelic form of Sanguinis, the lusty red of his armour contrasting with pale feathers of his wings. Hung with loops of silver and pearl like glistening tears, the beatific primarch stood with the Khan, a swarthy warrior shawled in furs and lacquered leather plate, with a winged back-banner that echoed those of the Lord of Angels.

The golden-skinned Urizen held intense discourse with Dorn of the Fists and Angron, while the Phoenician and his cadre of lord commanders preened alongside Horus Lupercal and his lieutenants. Fulgrim’s white hair shone like a beacon, his perfect features gloriously sculpted. Little wonder the members of his Legion prided themselves on their aesthetic with such an example to follow.

Magnus swept forward to join his brothers, but before he reached them, a warrior in dusty white armour edged in pale green stepped to meet him. His shoulder-guard bore the image of a skull in the centre of a spiked halo, marking him as Death Guard. His posture was bellicose, and Ahriman read his hostility in an instant.

“I am Ignatius Grulgor, 2nd Company Captain of the Death Guard,” said the warrior, and Ahriman heard the judgemental tone and the arrogant sneer that spoke of a man without humility.

“I do not care who you are, warrior,” said Magnus calmly, though the undercurrent of threat was unmistakable. “You are in my way.”

Like a living statue, the Astartes stood his ground before Magnus. Two mighty warriors in brass, gold and ash-coloured Terminator armour appeared on either side of Grulgor, long, ebony-hafted scythes held in spiked cestus gauntlets. The harvest blades were dark and heavy with the weight of slaughter they had accumulated. A name leapt to Ahriman’s mind:

Manreapers.

“Ah, the nameless Deathshroud,” said Magnus, looking around him. “Tell your master to show himself. I know he is here, within forty-nine paces, if memory serves.”

Ahriman blinked as a dark outline seemed to flow from a patch of shadow at the foot of one of the Custodes Titans, a tall, gaunt figure in armour of pallid white, bare iron and brass, shrouded in a mantle of stormcloud grey. A bronze rebreather collar obscured the lower part of his hairless skull, and feathers of rancid air gusted from it at regular intervals. The giant figure breathed deeply of these vapours.

“Mortarion,” hissed Hathor Maat.

His sunken cheeks were those of a consumptive, and the deep-set amber eyes those of a man who has seen horrors without number. Glass vials and philtres strung together on Mortarion’s breastplate clinked musically as he walked, his strides sepulchral, punctuated by the rap of his enormous scythe’s iron base on the polished ground. A long, drum-barrelled pistol hung at his side, and Ahriman recognised the merciless form of the Lantern, the Shenlongi-designed pistol that was said to unleash the fire of a star in every blast.

“Magnus,” said the Primarch of the Death Guard by way of a greeting. “I wondered if you would show your face.”

Mortarion’s words were brazen. These were brothers, warrior gods crafted by the Emperor to conquer the galaxy in his name. Like all brothers, they squabbled and vied to attract the attention of their father, but this… this was distilled anger.

“Brother,” said Magnus, ignoring Mortarion’s words. “A great day is it not? Nine sons of the Emperor gathered together on one world, such a thing has not happened since…”

“I know well when it was, Magnus,” said Mortarion, his voice robust and resolute in contrast to his pallid features. “And the Emperor forbade us to speak of it again. Do you disobey that command?”

“I disobey nothing, brother,” said Magnus, keeping his tone light, “but even you must recognise the symbolism of our number. Three times three, the pesedjetof ancient gods, the Occidental orders of angels and the nine cosmic spheres of the forgotten ages.”

“There you go again with talk of angels and gods,” sneered Mortarion.

Magnus grinned and moved to take Mortarion’s hand, but the Lord of the Death Guard pulled away from him.

“Come on, Mortarion,” said Magnus, “you are not immune from the music of the spheres. Even you know that numbers are not cast blindly into the world, they come together in orderly balanced systems, like the formation of crystals or musical chords, in accordance with the laws of harmony. Why else would you insist on keeping these bodyguards within seven times seven paces of you?”

Mortarion shook his head and said, “Truly you are as lost in your mysteries as the Wolf King says.”

“You have spoken with Russ?”

“Many times,” promised Mortarion. “He has been quite vocal since departing the Ark Reach Cluster. We know all about what you and your warriors have been doing.”

“What is it you think you know?”

“You have crossed a line, Magnus,” hissed Mortarion. “You hold a snake by the tail and bargain with powers beyond your understanding.”

“No power is beyond my understanding,” countered Magnus. “You would do well to remember that.”

Mortarion laughed, the sound like mountains collapsing.

“I knew a being like you once before,” he said, “so sure in his powers, so convinced of his superiority that he could not see his doom until it was upon him. Like you, he wielded dark powers. Our father made him pay with his life for such evil. Have a care you do not suffer the same fate.”

“ Darkpowers?” said Magnus with a shake of the head. “Power is simply power, it is neither good nor evil. It simply is.”

He pointed to the pistol at Mortarion’s side.

“Is that weapon evil?” he asked. “Is that great reaper of yours? They are weapons, nothing more and nothing less. It is the use men put such things to that makes them evil. In your hands, the Lantern is a force for good. In an evil man’s hands it is something else entirely.”

“Give a man a gun and he will want to fire it,” said Mortarion.

“So now you are going to give me a lesson in causality and predestination?” snapped Magnus. “I am sure Ahriman and the Corvidae would welcome your input on the subject. Come to Prospero and you can instruct my warriors.”

Mortarion shook his head.

“No wonder Russ petitioned the Emperor to have you censured,” he said.

“Russ is a superstitious savage,” said Magnus dismissively but not before Ahriman saw the shock at the Wolf King’s action. “He speaks out of turn about things he does not understand. The Emperor knows I am his most loyal son.”

“We shall see,” promised Mortarion.

The Death Lord turned away and marched towards the Emperor’s dais as a thunderous braying erupted from the warhorns of every Titan on Ullanor.

“Now what do you suppose he meant by that?” asked Phosis T’kar.

THE SEKHMET FULFILLED their duty of seeing their primarch to the Emperor’s sheared mountain podium, marching in procession alongside the honour guards of the nine primarchs who had come to Ullanor. To move in such elevated circles was a notion Ahriman found himself hard-pressed to comprehend.

The primarchs took their place upon the steel-sheathed dais and their honour guards were dismissed. The chance to parade before the Emperor was a once in a lifetime opportunity for most of the warriors.

To know a primarch was an honour, but to parade before nine of them in the presence of the Emperor was the stuff of dreams. Ahriman would march with his head held high before demi-gods made flesh, the apotheosis of humanity and genetic engineering, wrought from the bones of ancient science.

That twenty such beings could have been created was nothing short of miraculous, and as he surveyed the noble countenances around him, Ahriman suddenly felt very small, the tiniest cog in an ever-expanding machine. The notion of the titanic forces at work struck a powerful chord within him, and he felt the power of the Great Ocean swell in his breast. He saw his metaphor take shape in his mind’s eye, a magnificent, planet-sized machine of wondrous artifice working seamlessly in balance with its every cog, gear and piston. Those mighty pistons thundered, powering the greatest industry and causing the worlds around it to swell with new life and new beginnings.

In the midst of the machine he saw a piston stamped with a snarling wolfshead, its amber eyes glinting like gems. It fired up and down in a bank of similarly embossed piston heads, each with an emblematic design stamped upon it, a golden eye, a white eagle, a set of fanged jaws, a crowned skull.

Even as the image formed in his mind, he saw that the wolfshead piston was fractionally out of sync with the other pistons in the machine, working to a different beat, and gradually shifting its direction until it was completely in opposition to its fellows. The machine vibrated in protest, its harmonic balance upset by the rogue piston, and the squeal of metal grinding metal grew in volume.

Ahriman stumbled and let out a gasp of horror as he saw that the machine would soon tear itself apart. To see such an industrious machine destroyed and reduced to little more than wreckage by a previously unseen defect in its design was truly tragic.

He felt a hand on his arm and looked into the face of a standingly handsome warrior in the pearl-coloured plate of a Luna Wolf. The vision of the machine vanished from his mind, but the lingering sorrow of its imminent destruction creased Ahriman’s features with anguish.

“Are you well, brother?” asked the warrior with genuine concern.

“I am,” replied Ahriman, though he felt sick to his stomach.

“He says he’s fine,” said a massively shouldered brute behind the warrior. Taller than Ahriman, with a gleaming topknot crowning his skull, he radiated choler and the urge to continually prove himself. “Leave him be and let’s rejoin our companies. The march will begin soon.”

The warrior extended his hand, and Ahriman accepted the proffered grip.

“You will have to excuse Ezekyle,” said the warrior. “He forgets his manners sometimes, most of the time in fact. I am Hastur Sejanus, pleased to know you.”

“Ahzek Ahriman,” he said. “Sejanus? Ezekyle? You are Mournival.”

“Guilty as charged,” said Sejanus with a winning smile.

“I said those Custodes didn’t know security worth a damn,” said Phosis T’kar, pushing past Ahriman to pull Sejanus into a crushing embrace. “Damn, but it’s good to see you again, Hastur.”

Laughing, Sejanus pulled himself free of Phosis T’kar’s embrace and punched him on the shoulder as two more warriors in the livery of the Luna Wolves appeared at his side. “Good to see you too, brother. Nobody’s managed to kill you then?”

“Not for lack of trying,” said Phosis T’kar, standing back to regard the warriors before him. “Ezekyle Abaddon and Tarik Torgaddon, as I live and breathe, and Little Horus Aximand too. I still tell my brothers of the foes we faced together. Do you remember the battles in the Slaughterhouses of the Keylekid? Those damn dragons gave us a hard fight, and no mistake. There was one, remember Tarik? The one with the vivid blue hide that almost—”

Little Horus held up a hand to stall Phosis T’kar’s reminiscence.

“Perhaps we can gather after the Triumphal March?” he said, adding, “All of us. I would greatly like to meet your fellows and swap more outrageous tales of battle.”

Sejanus nodded.

“Absolutely,” he said, “for I have it on good authority that the Emperor has a great announcement to make. I, for one, do not want to miss it.”

“Announcement?” asked Ahriman as a shiver of premonition passed along his spine. “What sort of announcement?”

“The kind we’ll hear when we hear it,” growled Abaddon.

“No one knows,” said Sejanus with a diplomatic chuckle. “Horus Lupercal has not yet deigned to tell even his most trusted lieutenants.”

Sejanus looked back towards the podium with a grin.

“But whatever it is,” he said, “I suspect it will be of great import to us all.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

New Order/Tuition/Fresh Summons

STARS SWAM IN the glass of the crystal pyramid, faint shimmers of light that winked from the past, the light already thousands or even millions of years old. To be able to look into the past so clearly had always fascinated Ahriman, the notion that what you were seeing in the present was an echo of the past.

The air within the Photep’s Sanctum was cool, a precisely modulated climate that owed nothing to machine control. The floor was a spiral of black and white crystal, each piece hand-picked from the Reflecting Caves beneath Tizca and shaped by Magnus’ own hand.

Starlight glinted on the reflective chips, and gleamed from the silver threads and blood-drop pendants hanging from Magnus’ feathered cloak. The primarch stood immobile as a statue beneath the apex of the pyramid, his arms folded across his chest and his head tilted back to allow him to look out into the immensity of space.

When Magnus descended to the surface of a world, his pavilion was a re-creation of this inner sanctum, but it could never hope to capture the rarefied atmosphere that filled this place.

“Welcome, Ahriman,” said Magnus without averting his gaze from the stars. “You are just in time to watch Mechanicum Borealis with me. Come, join me in the centre.”

Ahriman walked the spiral, following the black chips towards the centre, letting the walk cleanse him of his negative thoughts in readiness for his walk out along the white spiral. He studied Magnus as he walked.

Ever since the conclusion of the Great Triumph, the primarch had been withdrawn and sullen. Hastur Sejanus had been right about the nature of the Emperor’s announcement; it had radically changed the universe in which they operated. For close to two hundred years, the Emperor, beloved by all, had led the Great Crusade from the front, fighting in the vanguard of humanity’s second expansion to the edges of the galaxy.

Those days were over, for the Emperor had announced his withdrawal from the fighting, telling his faithful warriors that the time had come for him to relinquish control of the Crusade to another. The Astartes had wept to hear that their beloved master was leaving them, but as epochal as this separation was, it was more than matched by the Emperor’s next pronouncement.

Before the gathered warriors, the Emperor removed the golden laurels that had been his most iconic accoutrement and bestowed them upon his brightest son. No longer would the Emperor command the armies of the Imperium. That honour now fell to Horus Lupercal: The Warmaster.

It was an old title, revived from dusty antiquity, yet it was a natural fit and perfectly encapsulated the unique qualities of the Luna Wolves Primarch. From the millions of warriors gathered before the steel-sheened dais, adulation had mixed with sorrow, but Ahriman had felt the conflicting waves of powerful emotions as the other primarchs reacted to Horus’ ascension. Perhaps they felt it should have been them, or perhaps they raged at having to take orders from one of their own.

Either way, it made little difference. The decision had been made, and the Emperor was unequivocal in its necessity. Many warriors had expected to renew old acquaintances or swear new bonds of brotherhood on Ullanor, but with the Emperor’s pronouncements made, the garnering of Astartes broke up with almost unseemly haste.

The 28th Expedition had left Ullanor and made the two-month journey to Hexium Minora, a Mechanicum outpost world, to resupply. The bulk of the Thousand Sons had borne witness to the beginnings of the galactic new order, while some had been on detached duties elsewhere in the sector. With each passing day, more of Magnus’ sons joined their parent Legion to await tasking orders from the Crusade’s new master.

Sotekis led a mentor company back from supporting the World Eaters in the Golgothan Deeps, and word came through that the last battle formation to arrive, Kenaphia’s Thunder Bringers, had returned after fighting alongside the IV Legion of Perturabo. There were still elements of the Legion scattered throughout the galaxy, but the majority had found its way to Hexium Minora.

For six months, the Thousand Sons fleet suckled at the planet’s forges and materiel silos like newborns eager for the teat. Billions of rounds of ammunition, thousands of tonnes of food and water, uniforms, dried goods, pioneer supplies, armoured vehicles, power cells, fuel bladders and the myriad items an expeditionary fleet required in order to function were shipped from the surface in bulk lifters or via impossibly slender Tsiolkovsky towers.

With resupply almost complete, the Legion and its millions of supporting soldiers lay at anchor awaiting orders. The months had not been wasted; Army units conducted battle drills alongside the Astartes, both forces learning much of the other’s abilities and limitations.

Each Captain of Fellowship divided his time between battle training and exercises of mental discipline to refresh his powers and his connection to the aether, but the Legion was eager to be in the thick of things again. Nor were the remembrancers idle. Most spent their time honing prose for post-Crusade publication, all the while hoping to learn more of the glorious Triumph on Ullanor.

Others rendered sketches taken over the course of the conquest of Heliosa or during its transitional period en route to compliance, while the lucky few chosen as Neophytes by the Thousand Sons continued their training.

“It’s beautiful, is it not?” asked Magnus as Ahriman joined him.

“It is, my lord,” agreed Ahriman.

“I can see so much when I look out from this sanctum, Ahzek, but there is so much more that can be learned. I know much, it is true, but I will know everything one day.”

Magnus smiled and shook his head, as though amused at his own conceit.

“No need to hide your frown, my friend,” he said. “I am not so arrogant as to have forgotten my studies of the plays of Aristophanes and the dialogues of Plato. ‘To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.’”

“I do not look so deeply into the heavens, my lord,” said Ahriman, “But looking at the stars always gives me a sense of peace, knowing that there is an order to the galaxy. It gives me stability in times of change.”

“You say that as though change is to be feared,” said Magnus, at last looking down at him.

“Change is sometimes necessary,” said Ahriman with a disarming smile, “but I prefer order. It is more… predictable.”

Magnus chuckled. “Yes, I can see how that would be pleasant, Ahzek, but the perfect, ordered world is dead and stagnant. The real world is alive becauseit is full of change, disorder and decay. The old order must pass away so the new one may arise.”

“Is that what happened on Ullanor?” ventured Ahriman.

“In a manner of speaking. No order, not even a god-given one, will last forever. After all, the grand principle of creation is that nothing and possibility come in and out of bond infinite times in a finite moment.”

Ahriman kept silent, unsure as to the primarch’s exact meaning.

Magnus folded his arms and sighed and said, “We are alone in the stars, Ahzek.”

“My lord?”

“The Emperor leaving the Crusade,” said Magnus. “I heard him speak to Horus upon the reviewing stand. My brother desired to know why our father was leaving us, and do you know what he said?”

“No, my lord,” said Ahriman, though he understood the question was rhetorical.

“He said that it was not because he wearied of the fighting, but because a greater destiny called him, one he claimed would ensure the legacy of our conquests will live on until the ending of the stars. Of course Horus wanted to know what that was, but our father did not tell him, which I saw cut him deeply. You see, Horus was the first of us to be reunited with our father after our… scattering. He fought at his side for nearly thirty years, father and only son. Such a bond is unique and not easily relinquished. Truth be told, it is a bond many of my brothers look upon with no small amount of jealousy.”

“But not you?”

“Me? No, I never lost contact with my father. We spoke many times before he ever set foot on Prospero. That is a bond that none of my brothers can claim. As our Legion departed Ullanor, I communed with my father and told him what I found on Aghoru, a hidden labyrinth of tunnels that pierce the immaterium and link all places and all times.”

Magnus returned his eye to the stars, and Ahriman kept silent, sensing that to intrude on Magnus’ introspection would be unwise, though the ramifications of his discoveries on Aghoru were staggering.

“Do you know what he said, Ahzek? Do you know how he greeted this momentous discovery, this key to every corner of the galaxy?”

“No, my lord.”

“He knew,” said Magnus simply. “He already knew of it. I should not have been surprised, I suppose. If any being in the galaxy could know such a thing, it would be my father. Now that he knew I had also discovered this lattice, he told me he had discovered it decades ago and had resolved to become its master. This is why he returns to Terra.”

“That is great news, surely?”

“Absolutely,” said Magnus without enthusiasm. “I immediately volunteered my services, of course, but my offer of assistance was declined.”

“Declined? Why?”

Magnus’ shoulders dropped a fraction as he said, “Apparently my father’s researches are at too delicate a stage to allow another soul to look upon them.”

“That surprises me,” said Ahriman. “After all, there is no greater student of the esoteric than Magnus the Red. Did the Emperor say why he declined your help?”

“He not only declines my assistance, he warns me to delve no further into my studies. He assures me that he has a vital role for me in the final realisation of his grand designs, but he would tell me no more.”

“Did you ask what Leman Russ had told him?”

Magnus shook his head.

“No,” he said. “My father knows my lupine brother’s ways well enough; he does not to need me to point out how ridiculous and hypocritical they are.”

“Still,” said Ahriman, “it is a shame to have lost the opportunity to learn more of the Wolves. Ohthere Wyrdmake and I formed a close bond. With Uthizzar’s help, I would have learned much of the inner workings of the Wolf King’s Legion.”

Magnus nodded and smiled.

“Have no fear, Ahzek,” he said, “Wyrdmake was not our only source within the Wolves. I have other assets in place, none of whom know they dance to my tune.”

Ahriman waited for Magnus to continue, but the primarch kept his own counsel.

Before he could ask any more, the stars shimmered, as though a layer of gauze had been drawn over the crystal pyramid.

“Look,” said Magnus, “The Mechanicum Borealis, it begins.”

Like a painting left out in the rain, the image of the stars smeared in the blackness. A fusion of chemical overspill and atmospheric vapour fires on Hexium Minora caught the arcing light of the system’s distant star, refracting a shimmering halo around the world as though it were ablaze from pole to pole with rainbow fires.

The effect was wondrous, despite being born of chronic pollution and rampant industry pursued without heed of the cost to the planet’s ecology. To Ahriman, it was proof that something wonderful could come from the most ugly of sources. A side effect of the Mechanicum Borealis was the thinning of the veil between the material world and the immaterium, and a mélange of unnameable colours and aetheric tempests swirled around the planet’s corona, a distant seascape viewed through a glass darkly.

“The Great Ocean,” said Magnus, his voice full of longing. “How beautiful it is.”

AHRIMAN KEPT THE lights in his private library low, claiming that any aid to concentration was of paramount importance. Lemuel had been surprised how small his mentor’s sanctum was, a chamber no larger than that of a Terran bureaucrat. For a room described as a library, there were precious few books to be found, merely a single bookcase filled with leather scroll tubes and loosely bound sheaves of paper.

A large wooden desk of a pale, polished and darkly-veined wood with an inset blotter of green leather stood against one wall, and a number of thick books with spines a half-metre or more in length lay opened across its length.

An armour-stand bore Ahriman’s battle-plate, like a silent observer of his failures. It reminded Lemuel of Khalophis’ robots, and the thought of those soulless, mechanised warriors sent a shiver down Lemuel’s spine.

“Can you see it yet?” asked Ahriman.

“No.”

“Look again. Drift with the currents. Remember all I have taught you since Shrike.”

“I’m trying, but there are so many. How can I tell what’s the actual future and what’s a potential future?”

“That,” said Ahriman, “is where the skill of the individual diviner comes into play. Some prognosticators have an innate connection to the aetheric paths that guide them with unerring accuracy to the truth, while others must sift though a thousand images of meaningless symbolism to reach it.”

“Which are you?” asked Lemuel without opening his eyes and trying to visualise the myriad paths of the falling cards.

“Think less about me, more about the cards,” warned Ahriman. “Ready?”

“Ready.”

A precisely stacked house of cards sat on the lip of the desk, arranged in a delicately balanced pyramid. Ahriman had produced them from a battered, cloth-wrapped tin, seventy-eight cards of what he called a Visconti-Sforza trionfi deck. Each card was exquisitely detailed and lovingly rendered with vivid colours and expressively wrought images of regal men and women.

“Catch the Seven of Denari,” said Ahriman, and slammed an open palm down on the desk.

The pyramid of cards collapsed, each one fluttering to the floor in a crazed whirlwind of spinning horsemen, kings and princesses. Lemuel snatched his hand out, seizing a card and holding it up before him.

“Show me,” said Ahriman.

Lemuel flipped the card, which showed a female figure reaching up to touch an eight-rayed star.

“The Star,” said Ahriman. “Try again.”

“It’s impossible,” said Lemuel in resignation. He had been trying to catch whichever card Ahriman named from the falling stack for the last three hours without success. “I can’t do it.”

“You can. Lift your mind into the lower Enumerations to clear it of the clutter of material concerns. Let your mind float free of hunger, want and desire. Only then can you follow the correct path to the future echoes.”

“Free my mind from desire? That’s hard for me to do,” pointed out Lemuel.

“I never promised this would be easy. Quite the contrary in fact.”

“I know, but it’s not easy for a man of my appetites to suppress them,” said Lemuel, patting his ample, but shrinking, gut. Shipboard cuisine was a bland mixture of reconstituted pastes and flash frozen organics grown in ventral hydroponic bays. It nourished the body, but did little else.

“Then the Enumerations will help you,” said Ahriman. “Rise into the low spheres and visualise the paths each card will take, the interactions as they strike one another, the ripples they cause in the system. Learn to read the geometric progression of potentiality as each permutation gives birth to a thousand more outcomes regardless of how similar the beginning parameters were. In the forgotten ages, some people knew this as chaos theory, others as fractal geometry.”

“I can’t do it,” protested Lemuel. “Your brain was crafted for that sort of thing, but mine wasn’t.”

“It is not my enhanced cognition that allows me to see the cards fall. I am not a mathematical savant.”

“Then you do it,” challenged Lemuel.

“Very well,” said Ahriman, rebuilding the house of cards with calm dexterity. When the pyramid was complete, he turned to Lemuel. “Name a card.”

Lemuel thought for a moment.

“The Chariot,” he said at last.

Ahriman nodded and closed his eyes, standing before the desk with his hands at his sides. “Ready?” asked Lemuel. “Yes.”

Lemuel banged the table and the cards fell to the floor. Ahriman’s hand darted out like a striking snake and snatched a single gilt-edged card from the air. He turned it over to reveal a golden chariot drawn by two winged white horses. He placed the card face up on the desk.

“You see? It can be done.”

“Astartes reflexes,” said Lemuel.

Ahriman smiled and said, “Is that what you think? Very well. Shall we try once more?”

Once again, Ahriman built the house of cards and asked Lemuel to name a card. Lemuel did so and Ahriman closed his eyes, standing before the precariously balanced cards. Instead of keeping his arms at his sides, he extended a hand with his thumb and forefinger outstretched, holding his fingertips close together, as though gripping an invisible card. His breathing deepened, and his eyes darted back and forth behind their lids.