Ahriman’s relief at the sight of Magnus emerging from the cave was matched only by the recognition of the disappointment in his eyes. The magnificent primarch glared down at the circle of warriors gathered around the altar, and then shook his head. Even denied the use of his enhanced acuity in the Mountain, Ahriman had felt his master’s enormous presence, a power that transcended whatever wards were woven into the stones of the mountain.
Magnus marched past them, not even bothering to further acknowledge their presence. The masked tribesman, who Ahriman knew must be Yatiri, walked alongside the primarch, and Mahavastu Kallimakus, Magnus’ personal scribe, trotted after them, whispering words into a slender wand that were then transcribed by a clattering quill unit attached to his belt.
“This was a mistake,” said Hathor Maat. “We shouldn’t have come here.”
Ahriman rounded angrily on him, saying, “You were only too keen to march when I suggested it.”
“It was better than sitting about doing nothing, but I did say that the primarch told us to wait,” Maat said with a shrug.
Ahriman had wanted to lash out at Hathor Maat, feeling his self-control faltering in the face of the Pavoni’s smug arrogance. That he was right only made it worse.
He knew he should have trusted Magnus’ judgement, but he had doubted. At best it would probably mean a public apology to Yatiri, at worst potential exclusion from the Rehahti, the inner coven of the Thousand Sons chosen by Magnus to address whatever issues were currently concerning the Legion.
Its members were ever-changing, and inclusion within the Rehahti was dependent on many things, not least an Astartes’ standing within the Legion. The cults of the Thousand Sons vied for prominence and a place in the primarch’s inner circle, knowing that to bask in his radiance would only enhance their powers.
As the power of the aether waxed and waned, so too did the mystical abilities of the cults. Invisible currents inimical to one discipline would boost the powers of another, and portents of the Great Ocean’s ever-changing tides were read and interpreted by the Legion’s geomancers with obsessive detail. At present the Pyrae was in the ascendance, while Ahriman’s cult, the Corvidae, was at its lowest ebb for nearly fifty years. For centuries, the Corvidae had been pre-eminent within the ranks of the Thousand Sons, but over the last few decades, their power to read the twisting paths of the future had diminished until their seers could barely penetrate the shallows of things to come.
The currents of the Great Ocean were swelling and boisterous, the geomancers warning of a great storm building within its depths, though they could see nothing of its source. The subtle currents were obscured by the raging tides that empowered the more bellicose disciplines, ringing in the blood of those whose mastery only stretched to the lower echelons.
It was galling that reckless firebrands like Khalophis and Auramagma strutted like lords while the hidden seers and sorcerers who had guided the Thousand Sons since their inception were forced to the sidelines. Yet there was nothing Ahriman could do, save try every day to re-establish his connection to the distant shores of the future.
He put such thoughts aside, rising through the Enumerations to calm himself and enter a contemplative state. The pavilion of Magnus loomed ahead of him, a grand, three-cornered pyramid of polarised glass and gold that shimmered in the evening’s glow like a half-buried diamond. Opaque from the outside, transparent on the inside, it was the perfect embodiment of the leader of the Thousand Sons.
Three Terminators of the Scarab Occult stood at each corner. Each carried a bladed sekhem staff, and their storm bolters were held tightly across the jade and amber scarab design on their breastplates.
Brother Amsu stood at the entrance to the pavilion, holding a rippling banner of scarlet and ivory. Ahriman’s pride at the sight of the banner was tempered by the fact that he had incurred his primarch’s displeasure by taking the Sekhmet into the Mountain.
Ahriman stopped before Amsu and allowed him to read his aetheric aura, confirming his identity more completely than any gene-scanner or molecular-reader ever could.
“Brother Ahriman,” said Amsu, “welcome to the Rehahti. Lord Magnus is expecting you.”
THE INSIDE OF the pavilion would have surprised most people with its austerity. Given the suspicions that had surrounded the Thousand Sons since their earliest days, those mortals lucky enough to be granted an audience with Magnus the Red always expected his chambers to be hung with esoteric symbols, arcane apparatus and paraphernalia of the occult.
Instead, the walls were rippling glass, the floor pale marble quarried from the ventral mountains of Prospero. Carefully positioned black tiles veined with gold formed a repeating geometric spiral that coiled out from the centre.
The Captains of Fellowship stood upon the spiral, their distance from the centre but one indication of their standing within the Rehahti. Ahriman walked calmly along the dark portions, past the assembled warriors, to his place upon it. Beneath the crystal apex of the pyramid a golden disc in the shape of a radiating sun met the terminations of both black and white tiles, the heart of the gathering.
Magnus the Red stood upon the golden sun.
The Primarch of the Thousand Sons was a magnificent warrior and scholar beyond compare, yet his outward mien was that of a man faintly embarrassed by his pre-eminence amongst equals. Ahriman knew it was a facade, albeit a necessary one, for who could stand face to face with a being whose intellect and treasury of knowledge rendered all other accomplishments meaningless?
His skin was the colour of molten copper, the plates of his armour beaten gold and hard-baked leather, his mail a fine mesh of blackened adamant. The magisterial scarlet plume of his helmet spilled around the curling horns of his armour, and his mighty cloak of feathers was like a waterfall of bright plumage belonging to some vainglorious bird of prey. Partially hidden within that cloak was a thick tome, bound in the same, stipple-textured hide as that on Ahriman’s pistol grip. It came from the body of a psychneuein, a vicious psychic predator of Prospero that had all but wiped out the planet’s previous civilisation in ages past.
The primarch’s expression was impossible to read, but Ahriman took solace in the fact that his position had not yet fallen to the outer reaches of the spiral. Magnus’ eye glittered with colour, its hue never fixed and always changing, though for this gathering it had assumed an emerald aspect with flecks of violet in its iris.
Phosis T’kar stood near Ahriman to his right, with Khalophis on the spiral across from him. Hathor Maat was behind him and to his left, while Uthizzar was to his right and at the furthest extent of the spiral. A warrior’s standing was not simply measured by his proximity to the centre of the spiral, but by myriad other indicators: the position of the warrior next to him, behind him and across from him. Who was obscured, who was visible, the arc of distance between his position and the sun disc, all played their part in the dance of supremacy. Each member’s position interacted subtly with the other, creating a web of hierarchy that only Magnus could fathom.
Ahriman could not read the aetheric auras of his fellow captains, and he felt Aaetpio’s absence keenly. He had not summoned Aaetpio to the meeting, for it would be overwhelmed in the face of the primarch’s power. Magnus himself had no Tutelary, for what could a fragment of the Primordial Creator teach one who had stared into its depths and mastered its every nuance?
Magnus nodded as Ahriman took his place on the spiral and Brother Amon stepped from the shadows of the pyramid to pull the golden doors shut. Ahriman had not seen or sensed Amon’s presence, but few ever did. Equerry to Magnus and Captain of the 9th Fellowship, Amon trained the “Hidden Ones”, the Scout Auxilia of the Thousand Sons.