Текст книги "A Thousand Sons"

Автор книги: Грэм Макнилл

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“Do it,” said Ahriman.

Lemuel thumped the desk and the cards collapsed in a rain of images. Ahriman didn’t move, and a single card fluttered through the air to slide precisely between his fingertips. Lemuel was not the least bit surprised when the Librarian flipped it over to reveal a divine figure bearing a fiery sword in his right hand and an eagle-topped globe in his left hand. Angels flew above the figure, blowing golden trumpets from which hung silk banners.

“Just as you wanted,” said Ahriman. “Judgement.”

FOUR DAYS LATER, Lemuel was once again ensconced within Ahriman’s library, though this time he had been promised remembrances instead of instruction. Almost a year after being denied the opportunity to descend to the surface of Ullanor, Lemuel had hoped for a firsthand account of Horus Lupercal’s ascension to Warmaster. In this, he was to be disappointed.

When Lemuel asked about the Great Triumph, Ahriman had shrugged, as though it had been a trivial encounter, something not worthy of remembrance.

“It was a private affair,” said Ahriman. Lemuel almost laughed before seeing that Ahriman was deadly serious. “Why would you want to know of it anyway?”

“Seriously?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe because the Emperor himself was there,” said Lemuel, struggling to understand why Ahriman would think it strange he would want to know of such a singular event. “Or perhaps because the Emperor has returned to Terra and the Great Crusade has a new commander. Horus Lupercal is the Warmaster. Such an event is a turning point in the affairs of mankind, surely you must see that?”

“I do,” nodded Ahriman, “though I fear I would make a poor teller of the tale. I am sure others will recount it better than I in times to come.”

Ahriman sat behind his desk, sipping crisp, corn-coloured wine from an oversized pewter goblet. Lemuel sensed there was more to his reluctance to speak of Ullanor than any doubt as to his ability to give a good enough rendition.

There would be little in the way of remembrance; something was preying on Ahriman’s mind, something that had happened upon the surface of Ullanor, but whatever it was, Lemuel would not hear it today.

To see an Astartes troubled by concerns beyond the battlefield was surprising, and he regarded Ahriman with new eyes. Even stripped out of his armour and clad in a crimson tunic and khaki combat fatigues, Ahriman was enormous. Encased in his battle-plate, his limbs were smooth and clean, machine-like, but now Lemuel could see the bulging musculature of his biceps and the undulant ridges of his pectorals. If anything, an Astartes without his armour was morefrightening. His proportions were human, but also alien and gigantic.

Lemuel had come to know Ahriman well since leaving Ullanor; not well enough to yet count them as friends, but well enough to read his moods. Of his remembrancer friends, he had seen little, for Camille and Kallista spent the bulk of their time in the company of Ankhu Anen in the Photep’s library, learning to develop their nascent abilities. As little as he had seen of his female friends, Lemuel had seen nothing at all of Mahavastu Kallimakus.

“Lemuel?” said Ahriman, snapping his thoughts back to the present.

“I’m sorry,” said Lemuel. “I was thinking about a friend and hoping he was well.”

“Who?”

“Mahavastu Kallimakus, scribe to the primarch.”

“Why would he not be doing well?”

Lemuel shrugged, unsure how much he should say.

“He seemed out of sorts the last time I saw him,” he said, “but then he’s a very old man, prone to the aches and pains of age. You understand?”

“Not really,” admitted Ahriman. “I am as fit now as I was two centuries ago.”

Lemuel chuckled and said, “That should amaze me, but it’s astonishing how quickly you become accustomed to the extraordinary, especially with the Thousand Sons.”

He lifted a modest, cut-crystal glass to his lips and drank, enjoying the rarity of a wine that didn’t taste like it had been strained through a starship’s urinary filtration system.

“How are you liking the wine?” asked Ahriman.

“It is a more refined taste than I am used to,” said Lemuel, “flavoursome and forceful, yet with enough subtlety to surprise.”

“The grapes were grown in underground vineyards on Prospero,” explained Ahriman. “It is a vintage of my own concoction, based on a gene-sample I took in Heretaunga bay on what was once the island of Diemenslandt.”

“I never took the Astartes for students of viniculture.”

“No? Why not?”

Lemuel cocked his head to one side, wondering if Ahriman was joking. Certainly the Chief Librarian of the Thousand Sons was a man of serious mien, but all too often he would puncture that with deadpan humour. From the hue of his aura, it seemed his question was honestly asked, and Lemuel floundered for an answer.

“Well, it’s just that you are bred for war. I didn’t think that left much room for less martial pursuits.”

“In other words you think we are only good for battle? Is that it? The Astartes are simply weapons, killing tools who cannot have interests beyond war?”

Lemuel saw a glint in Ahriman’s eye and played along.

“You arevery good at killing,” he said. “Phoenix Crag taught me that.”

“You are right; we are very good at killing. I think that is why my Legion encourages its warriors to develop skills beyond the battlefield. After all, this crusade cannot last forever, and we will need to have a purpose beyond that when it is over. What will become of the warriors when there are no more wars?”

“They’ll settle down and grow fine wine,” said Lemuel, finishing his glass and accepting another as Ahriman leaned over to pour. A shiver passed along his spine at the sheer absurdity of this moment. He chuckled and shook his head.

“What is funny?” asked Ahriman.

“Nothing really,” he said. “I was just wondering how Lemuel Gaumon, a sometime academic, sometime dilettante of the esoteric came to share a glass of wine with a genetically engineered post-human? Two years ago, if someone had told me I’d be sitting here with you like this, I’d have thought they were mad.”

“The feeling is mutual,” Ahriman assured him.

“Then let us drink to new experiences,” said Lemuel, raising his glass.

They did, and they enjoyed the strangeness of the moment. When he judged sufficient time had passed, Lemuel said, “You never answered my question.”

“Which question?”

“When you were training me with the trionfi cards,” said Lemuel. “When I asked what kind of diviner you were, one with an innate connection to the aether or one who has to struggle for every morsel of truth? I get the feeling it’s the former.”

“Once I was, yes,” said Ahriman, and Lemuel read pride in his aura, but also regret. “I could pluck the future from the aether without effort, guiding my Fellowship along the most productive paths in war and study, but now I have to work hard for even a momentary glimpse into the patterns of the future.”

“What changed?”

Ahriman stood and circled the table, picking up the deck of cards and shuffling them expertly. He could have been a croupier or a cardsharp, thought Lemuel. The ease and dexterity with which Ahriman flicked the cards around his fingers was incredible, and he didn’t seem to notice he was doing it.

“The tides of the Great Ocean are ever-changing, and its influence rises and fall. What was once a raging torrent can dwindle to a trickling brook in a fraction of a second. What was a gentle wave can rise to an all-consuming typhoon. Each practitioner’s powers rise and fall with its moods, for it is a fickle mistress whose interest flits like a firefly in the dark.”

“You speak of it as though it were a living thing,” said Lemuel, seeing the wistful, faraway look in Ahriman’s eyes. Ahriman smiled and replaced the cards on the desk.

“Perhaps I do,” he said. “The ancient sailors of Terra often claimed they had two wives, their earthly mates and the ocean. Each was jealous of the other and it was said that one or the other would claim a seafarer’s life. To live so close to the aether is to live with feet in two worlds. Both are dangerous, but a man can learn to read how they shift and dance in and out of sync with one another. The trick is to read those moments and crest the wave of power while it lasts.”

Lemuel leaned forward and tapped a finger on the gold-backed cards.

“I don’t think that’s a trick I’ve mastered,” he said.

“No, divination is not your forte,” agreed Ahriman, “though you show some skill with aetheric reading. Perhaps I will schedule some time with Uthizzar of the Athanaens for you. He can develop this area of your psyche.”

“I keep hearing of these cults, but why such specialisation?” asked Lemuel. “The sangomas I learned from were men and women who served the people of their townships in many different ways. They didn’t confine themselves to one area of expertise. Why does your Legion break up its teachings into different cults?”

“The sangoma you speak of skimmed the tiniest fraction of learning from the Great Ocean, Lemuel. The lowliest Probationer of any Thousand Sons cult understands and practices more of the mysteries than even the most gifted sangoma.”

“I don’t doubt that,” said Lemuel, taking another sip of wine. “But, still, why so many?”

Ahriman smiled and said, “Finish your drink, and I will tell you of Magnus’ first journey into the desolation of Prospero.”

“PROSPERO IS A paradise,” began Ahriman, “a wondrous planet of light and beauty. Its mountains are soaring fangs of brilliant white, its forests verdant beyond imagining and its oceans teem with life. It is a world returned to glory, but it was not always so. Long before the coming of Magnus, Prospero was all but abandoned.”

Ahriman lifted a box of cold iron from the top shelf of his bookcase and placed it on the desk before Lemuel. He opened the lid to reveal a grotesque skull of alien origin, its surface dark and glossy as though coated in lacquer. Elongated, with extended mandibles and two enormous eye-sockets behind them, it was insectoid and utterly repellent.

“What’s that?” asked Lemuel, curling his lip in revulsion.

“This is a preserved exo-skull of a psychneuein, an alien predator native to Prospero.”

“And why are you showing it to me?”

“Because without these creatures, the cults of the Thousand Sons would not exist.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ll show you,” said Ahriman, lifting the skull from the box. He held it out to Lemuel and said, “Don’t worry, it is long dead and its residual aura has long since dissipated into the Great Ocean.”

“Still, no thanks. Those mandibles look like they could tear a man’s head off.”

“They could, but that was not what made the psychneuein so dangerous. It was its reproductive cycle that was its most potent weapon. The female psychneuein is drawn to psychic emanations and has a rudimentary fusion of telepathic and telekinetic powers. When fertile, the female psychically projects a clutch of its eggs into the brain of a host being with an unprotected mind, vulnerable to the power of the aether.”

“That’s disgusting,” said Lemuel, genuinely horrified.

“That is not the worst of it.”

“It’s not?”

“Not by a long way,” said Ahriman, with amused relish. “The eggs are small, no larger than a grain of sand, but by morning the following day, they will hatch and begin to feed on the host’s brain. At first the victim feels nothing more than a mild headache, but by afternoon he will be in agony, raving and insane, as his brain is devoured from the inside out. By nightfall, he will be dead, his skull a writhing mass of plump maggots. In the space of a few hours, the grubs have picked the carcass clean and will seek a dark place to hide in which to pupate. By the following day, they will emerge as adults, ready to hunt and reproduce.”

Lemuel felt his guts roil, trying not to imagine the agony of being eaten alive by a host of parasites in his brain.

“What a horrible way to die,” he said, “but I still don’t understand how such vile creatures shaped Prospero and the Thousand Sons?”

“Patience, Lemuel,” cautioned Ahriman, sitting on the edge of the desk. “I am getting to that. You know of Tizca, the City of Light, yes?”

“It is a place I am greatly looking forward to seeing,” said Lemuel.

“You will see it soon enough,” smiled Ahriman. “Tizca is the last outpost of a civilisation wiped out thousands of years ago, a city where the survivors of a planet-wide cataclysm found refuge from the psychneuein. We suspect some freak upsurge in the Great Ocean triggered an explosion of uncontrolled psychic potential within the population, driving the psychneuein into a reproductive feeding frenzy. The civilisation of Prospero collapsed and the survivors fled to a city in the mountains.”

“Tizca,” said Lemuel, thrilled to be learning the lost history of Prospero.

“Yes,” confirmed Ahriman. “For thousands of years, the people of Tizca endured, while all they had built in the millennia since leaving Terra fell to dust. The surface of Prospero is dotted with the remains of their dead culture. Empty cities are now overgrown with forests and vines, the palaces of their kings overrun with wild beasts.”

“How did they survive?”

“They salvaged enough knowledge and equipment from the destruction to construct techno-psychic arrays and sustainable energy sources, which then allowed them to build giant hydroponic gardens deep in the caverns of the ventral mountain ranges.”

“Where you grow the fruit for delightful wines,” said Lemuel, raising his glass in a toast, “but that’s not what I meant. How did they survive the psychneuein?”

Ahriman tapped his head and said, “By developing the very powers that made them so vulnerable. The psychneuein were drawn to Tizca in their thousands, but the survivors were able to train their most gifted psykers to use their minds to erect invisible barriers of pure thought. They were primitive, bombastic powers compared to the subtle arts we employ today, but they kept the creatures at bay. And so, the practitioners of the mysteries remained locked in their limited understanding of the Great Ocean’s power until the coming of Magnus.”

Lemuel leaned in and placed his wine glass on the edge of the desk. The origin myths of the primarchs were often shrouded in allegory and hyperbole, embroidered over time with all manner of fanciful details involving tests of strength, contests of arms or similarly outlandish feats.

To hear of a primarch’s deeds on his home world from a warrior of his Legion would surely be the greatest achievement of any remembrancer, an authentic account as opposed to one embellished by people like the iterators. Lemuel’s pulse rate rose in expectation, and he felt a chill gust at his shoulder, like the breath of an invisible passer-by. He frowned as he saw a shimmer of red in the cut crystal of his wine glass, the hint of a golden eye looking back at him from the liquid.

Lemuel glanced over his shoulder, but there was no one there.

Looking back at his glass, it was simply wine. He shook off the unease the image had conjured. Ahriman was looking at him with an amused expression on his face, as though expecting him to say something.

“You were saying,” said Lemuel, when Ahriman didn’t continue, “about Magnus?”

“I was,” said Ahriman, “but it is not my story to tell.”

Confused, Lemuel sat back in his seat and asked, “Then whose story isit to tell?”

“Mine,” said Magnus, appearing at Lemuel’s shoulder, as if from thin air. “I shall tell it.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The Desolation of Prospero/The Fallen Statue/Fresh Summons

IT SEEMED LIKE the grossest insult to be seated in the presence of so mighty a being, but no matter how Lemuel tried to rise, the muscles in his legs wouldn’t obey him. “My lord,” he finally managed.

The primarch wore a long, flowing robe of crimson edged with sable, secured at the waist by a wide leather belt with a jade scarab design at its centre. His curved blade was sheathed across his back, and his bright hair was pulled into a series of elaborate braids entwined like the roots of a giant tree.

Magnus filled the library with his presence, though he appeared to be no bigger than Ahriman. Lemuel blinked away a hazed outline of the primarch and stared into his single eye, its amber iris pinpricked with white magnesium. Where his other should have been was blank flesh, smooth as though it had never known an eye.

“Lemuel Gaumon,” said Magnus, and the syllables of his name flowed like honey from the primarch’s mouth, like a word of power or some hidden language of the ancients.

“That’s… that’s me,” he stammered, knowing he sounded like a simpering idiot, but not caring. “I mean, yes. Yes, my lord. It’s an honour to meet you, I never expected to, I mean…”

His words trailed off as Magnus raised a hand.

“Ahriman was telling you of how I founded the cults of Prospero?”

Lemuel found his voice and said, “He was. I would be honoured if you would take up where he left off.”

The request was audacious, but a newfound confidence filled him with sudden brio. He had the distinct impression that Magnus had not arrived here by accident, that this encounter was as stage-managed as any of Coraline Aseneca’s supposedly improvised theatre performances.

“I shall tell you, for you are a rare man, Lemuel. You have vision to see what a great many people would run from in fear. You have promise, and I intend to see it fulfilled.”

“Thank you, my lord,” said Lemuel, though a tiny warning voice in his head wondered exactly what the primarch meant by that.

Magnus brushed past, touching Lemuel’s shoulder, and the sheer joy of the contact swept any concerns away. Magnus rounded Ahriman’s desk and lifted the gold-backed cards.

“A Visconti-Sforza deck,” said Magnus. “The Visconti di Modroneset if I am not mistaken.”

“You have a good eye, my lord,” said Ahriman, and Lemuel suppressed a snigger, wondering if this was what passed for humour among the Thousand Sons.

Ahriman’s words seemed sincere, and Magnus shuffled through the pack with even greater dexterity than had his Chief Librarian.

“This is the oldest set in existence,” said Magnus, spreading the cards on the desk.

“How can you tell?” asked Lemuel.

Magnus slipped a card from the deck and held up the six of denari. Each of the pips was a golden disc bearing either a fleur-de-lys or a robed figure carrying a long staff.

“The denari suit, which corresponds to what is now known as diamonds, bears the obverse and reverse of the golden florin struck by Magister Visconti sometime in the middle of the second millennium, though the coins he designed were only in circulation for a decade or so.”

Magnus put the card back in the deck and moved over to Ahriman’s bookcase, scanning the contents briefly before turning back to face Lemuel. He smiled, his manner genial and comradely, as though he were sharing a joke instead of a priceless morsel of remembrance.

“When I came to Prospero they said it was as though a comet had borne me to the ground, for the impact I had on them was as great,” said Magnus with an amused smile. “The Tizcan commune, which was the name the survivors of the psychneuein gave to their little enclave, was a place rooted in tradition, but they had some skill in wielding the power of the aether. Of course, they didn’t know it by that name, and the powers they had, while enough to keep the psy-predators at bay, were little more than the enchantments of idiot children.”

“But you taught them how better to use their powers?”

“Not at first,” said Magnus, lifting a golden disk inscribed with cuneiform symbols from Ahriman’s bookshelf. He looked at it for a moment before replacing it with an almost imperceptible shake of his head. As he turned away, Lemuel saw that it was a zodiacal timepiece.

“I was… young back then, and knew little of my true potential, though I had been taught by the greatest tutor of the age.”

“The Emperor?”

Magnus smiled.

“None other,” he said. “I was schooled in the ways of the commune, and I quickly learned everything they had to teach me. In truth, I had outstripped the learning of their greatest scholars within a year of my arrival. Their teachings were too dogmatic, too linear and too limiting for my mind’s potential. My intellect was superior in every way to those that taught me. With my teachings, I knew they could be so much more.”

Lemuel heard arrogance in Magnus’ voice. The primarch’s power was immense and beyond mortal understanding, but there was none of the humility he often heard when talking with Ahriman. Where Ahriman recognised his limits, Magnus clearly felt he had none.

“So how did you teach them?” asked Lemuel.

“I took a walk into the desolation of Prospero. True power comes only to those who have fully tested themselves against their greatest fears. Within the commune, I knew no fear, no hunger or want and had no drive to push my abilities to their full potential. I needed to be tested to the very limits of my powers to see if I even hadlimits. Out in the wilds, I knew I would either find the key to fully unlock my powers or die in the attempt.”

“A somewhat drastic solution, my lord.”

“Was it, Lemuel? Really? Is it not better to reach for the stars and fail than never to try?”

“Stars are giant flaming balls of gas,” said Lemuel with a smile. “They tend to burn people who get too near.”

Ahriman chuckled. “The remembrancer knows his Pseudo-Apollodorus.”

“That he does,” agreed Magnus with a satisfied smile. “But I digress. A year after my coming to Prospero, I walked from the gates of Tizca and marched into the wilderness for nearly forty days. To this day, it is known as the desolation of Prospero, but such a title is a misnomer. You will find the landscape quite beautiful, Lemuel.”

Lemuel’s heart rate spiked, remembering how Ahriman had told him he had seen a vision in which he had been standing on Prospero.

“I am sure I will, my lord,” he said.

Magnus poured a glass of wine and began his tale.

“I WALKED FOR hundreds of miles, travelling roads that passed through broken cities of iron skeletons of tall towers, empty palaces and grand amphitheatres. It was a civilisation of great worth, but it had fallen in a single day, not an uncommon fate among worlds during the madness of Old Night. I came at last to a city, a sprawling ruin at the foot of a cliff that seemed familiar, though I had never before set foot beyond the walls of Tizca. I spent a day and a night wandering its forsaken streets, the shadow-haunted buildings and empty homes that echoed with the last breaths of those who had dwelled within them. It touched me in a way I had not thought possible. These people had lived sure in the knowledge that they had nothing to fear, that they were masters of their destinies. The coming of Old Night changed all that. It had shown them how horribly vulnerable they were. In that moment, I vowed I would master the powers I had at my command, so that I would never fall prey, as they had fallen, to the vagaries of an ever-changing universe. I would face such threats and overcome them.”

Again, Lemuel felt the full force of the primarch’s confidence, as if it was suffusing his skin and invigorating his entire body.

“I climbed a slender pathway up the cliff and came to a bend in the road, where a long-dead sculptor had erected a tall statue of a great bird carved from multicoloured stone. It was a splendid creature with outstretched wings and the graceful neck of a swan. It perched precariously on the edge of the cliff. This statue had endured for thousands of years, rocking and swaying, but always keeping its balance perfectly. But no sooner had I beheld its grandeur than it toppled from its plinth and was dashed to pieces at the bottom of the cliff, far, far below. The sight of that falling statue filled me with an almost inconsolable sense of loss I could not explain. I abandoned my trek into the mountains and returned to the base of the cliff, where, needless to say, the statue lay smashed into many pieces.

“Where it had hit, the ground was covered with a carpet of shards, some small and some large, but shards and shards and more shards for as far as a man could walk in an hour. I spent the whole day just looking at the shards, measuring them and feeling the weight of them, and just pondering why the statue had chosen that moment to fall.”

Magnus paused, his eye misty and distant as he relived the memory.

“You say ‘chosen’ as though the statue had been waiting for you,” said Lemuel. “Isn’t it possible that it was a coincidence?”

“Surely Ahriman has taught you that there are no such things as coincidences.”

“I mentioned it once or twice, yes,” said Ahriman dryly.

“I spent the night there and awoke the next morning full of enthusiasm. I spent many days on this carpet of broken stone shards, and eventually I noticed a very strange thing. There were three large stones on the ground, forming a triangle that was precisely equilateral. I was amazed. Looking further, I found four white stones arranged in a perfect square. Then I saw that by disregarding two of the white stones and thinking of a pair of grey stones a metre over, it was an exact rhombus! And, if I chose this stone, and that stone, and that one, and that one and that one I had a pentagon as large as the triangle. Here a small hexagon, and there a square partially inside the hexagon, a decagon, two triangles interlocked. And then a circle, and a smaller circle within the circle, and a triangle within that which had a red stone, a grey stone and a white stone.

“I spent many hours finding even more designs that became infinitely more complex as my powers of observation grew with practice. Then I began to log them in my grimoire; and as I counted designs and described them, the pages began to fill as the sun made countless passages across the sky. Days passed, but my passion for the designs I was seeing was all-consuming.”

“And that’s how Amon found him,” said Ahriman, “squatting in a pile of broken stones.”

“Amon?” asked Lemuel. “The captain of the 9th Fellowship?”

“Yes, and my tutor on Prospero,” said Magnus.

Lemuel frowned at this apparent contradiction, but said nothing as Magnus continued.

“I had begun my second grimoire when Amon found me. Now, Amon is a quiet, private fellow, not easily given to company. Like many such solitary men, he is a poet and deeply interested in the hidden nature of things. When I saw him, I cried, ‘Amon, come quickly! I have discovered the most wondrous thing in the universe.’ He hurried over to me, anxious to see what it was.

“I showed him the carpet of stones, but Amon only laughed and said, ‘It is nothing but scattered shards of stone!’ I took his hand and proceeded to show my old tutor the harvest of my many days study. When Amon saw the designs he turned to my grimoires and by the time he was finished with them, he too was overwhelmed.”

As much as Lemuel was having trouble following Magnus’ logic, it was impossible not to be swept up by his enthusiasm. He saw that Ahriman was similarly carried along by the irresistible tide of the primarch’s passion for his tale.

“Now Amon was much moved,” said Magnus, “and he began to write poetry about each of the incredible designs. As he wrote and contemplated, I became sure that the designs must mean something. Such order and beauty was too monumental to be senseless. The designs were there, the workings of the universe laid bare. Together, Amon and I returned home, where he read his poetry, and I showed the masters of Tizca the workings in my grimoires. These were great men, and their love of beauty and nature was marvellous to behold. So amazed were they that they joined me on a pilgrimage back to the cliff where the statue had fallen. The shards were just as I had described them, and the masters of Tizca were overcome with emotion, filling their own grimoires with fantastical writing. Some wrote about triangles, others described the circles, while yet others concentrated all their attention on the glittering spectrum of coloured stones.”

Magnus directed all his attention on Lemuel, his amber eye flickering with internal fires.

“Do you know what they said to me?” asked Magnus.

“No,” breathed Lemuel, hardly daring to add his voice to the telling.

Magnus leaned down.

“They said, ‘How blind we have been.’ All who could see the designs knew that they had to have been put there by a Primordial Creator, for nothing but such a great force could create this immense beauty!”

Lemuel could picture the scene, the sheer immensity of the cliff, the broken carpet of multi-coloured shards and the awed gathering of students of the esoteric and the outlandish. He sensed their awe and felt the tide of history rising up to sweep away the old beliefs and leave a new way in its wake. Lemuel felt as though he were there, as though he inhabited the body of one of the venerable philosophers of Tizca, and found his mind opening to a host of new possibilities, like a blind man suddenly shown the sun.

“It was amazing,” he whispered.

“That it was, Lemuel. That it was,” said Magnus, pleased he truly appreciated the significance of what he was being told. “It was a great moment in the history of Prospero, but as is the way of history, nothing of import is ever achieved without bloodshed.”

Lemuel felt his chest constrict with panic, feeling the horrible sensation of impending danger, as though he stood on the cusp of an abyss, waiting for a shove in the back.

“We had been lax in our mental discipline,” said Magnus, and a trace of sadness entered his voice. “Such was our excitement at what I had found that we allowed our guard to drop.”

“What happened?” asked Lemuel, almost afraid of the answer.

“The psychneuein,” said Magnus. “They were drawn to us in their thousands, blackening the sky with their numbers as they descended like a plague from ancient times.”

Lemuel drew in a breath, picturing the dark swathes of psy-predators as they swarmed from their darkened caves, organically shifting clouds of deadly clades, the relentless buzzing of thousands of crystalline wings the sound of inevitable doom.

“The males swarmed in, a hurricane of snapping mandibles and tearing claws, and fifty men died in the time it takes to draw breath. Behind the males came the females, engorged with clutch upon clutch of immaterial eggs. Their furious reproductive hunger was insatiable, and dozens of my friends fell to their knees in horror as they felt the psychneuein eggs take root in their brains. Their screams will stay with me forever, Lemuel. It is the sound of brilliant men who know that soon they will be raving madmen, their brains pulped masses of digestible tissue.”