The Emperor's Legion (Watchers of the Throne #1) - Chris Wraight Page 0,112

he had before.

I bowed. ‘You were right,’ I told him. ‘About Cadia.’

‘We get signals from it now.’ He shuddered. ‘You don’t want to know what’s in them.’

We walked across a long curving span that vaulted over lines of scribe-pits.

‘And the anathema psykana are back,’ he croaked, limping and leaning heavily on an iron cane. ‘They were part of my purview, in the old times.’

‘Perhaps you should have fought to keep them,’ I said.

‘No doubt. Though we struggle to hold on to what we still have, and I am not stupid enough to pick a fight now with Valoris.’ He shot me a cynical glance. ‘I don’t really like to see Custodians on the High Council, Tieron, despite the necessity of it. They have strange ways.’

You can talk, I thought.

‘You’ve studied the data I sent to you?’ I asked.

I’d kept my promise. I’d made facsimiles of the information Valerian had brought me and distributed it to all those I could still trust on the Council. I had little hope of countermanding Haemotalion’s cordon openly, but there was still the chance of building a coalition against it, and in any case it needed to be seen. If the next invasion was coming via those routes then we were wasting precious time in power plays when we should have been racing to prepare.

‘I did, and found it most absorbing,’ Kerapliades answered, leading me to a high curved doorway. Everything in that place was elliptical and elusive, just like its occupants. ‘In fact, that’s what I wished to speak to you about.’

He made a gesture with his bony right hand, and the door swished open. Beyond was another dome, twenty metres high and windowless. A great iron orrery clanked and wheeled inside it, driven by concentric mechanical tracks. The interior of the hemisphere glowed with lumen-points and the trails of hololith projections. It was a planetarium, of sorts – a mystical representation of physical space, enhanced, I guessed, by psychic augmentation.

I barely noticed any of that, though. Waiting for us in the centre of that infernal machine was Guilliman, alone and dressed in the ancient robes of his office. Even out of armour his aura of command was effortlessly and absurdly dominating, and I found myself dropping to one knee before I was even aware of it.

‘Chancellor,’ the primarch said in acknowledgement, then nodded at Kerapliades. ‘The Master tells me this thing originated with you.’

At first I didn’t realise what he meant, but then noticed how the planetarium had been calibrated. The hololithic lines strung out before us looked very similar to those on the image Aleya had discovered, and I recognised the eight nodes surrounding Terra at the centre.

‘I still don’t understand it,’ I said. ‘Not really.’

‘We are no longer blind, chancellor,’ said the primarch. He looked different to how he’d been before – his noble face was heavily lined now, as if rapid ageing had somehow taken place. When I had first encountered him he had looked like a prince, full of furious energy. Now he had the grizzled aspect of a warrior-king, a monarch weighed down with understanding that was no doubt dreadful. ‘These are the eight cardinal nodes of a warp circlet around Terra. They describe the only channels safely usable for sizeable fleet movements at this point in time.’

‘And the enemy plans to use them,’ I offered, going on what Aleya had believed. ‘They will approach through them, strike at us here.’

Kerapliades shook his head. ‘It’s too late for that,’ he said, flicking a finger at the swirling diagrams circling overhead. One by one, the nodes went out, fading from red to black. Seven were lost immediately. Only one, the closest of them, remained faintly present. ‘Those worlds have already been taken, seized from us while we were blinded.’

I turned to Lord Guilliman, suddenly anxious. ‘Then why do they not push on?’ I asked. ‘They’re so close, a mere warp stage away. They’re looking right down at us – why do they wait?’

‘Because attack is not their intention,’ Guilliman replied. He turned away from the orrery and fixed me with those frigid blue eyes, and as ever I found it almost impossible to return the gaze. ‘They know I am here. They know what I intend. Now that the Astronomican burns again, they know I will launch the crusade that will liberate the stars. Time is of the essence now, for every hour we delay leads to more worlds lost, and yet time is precisely what we do not