Perhaps a hundred scarlet pavilions dotted the salt plains, their sides tied up, each home to a band of Thousand Sons warriors. He’d noted which Fellowships were represented: Ahriman’s Scarab Occult, Ankhu Anen’s 4th, Khalophis’ 6th, Hathor Maat’s 3rd and Phosis T’kar’s 2nd.
A sizeable war-host of Astartes warriors was encamped before the mountain, the atmosphere strangely tense, though Lemuel could see no cause for it. It was clear they weren’t expecting trouble, but it was equally clear something was troubling them.
Lemuel closed his eyes and let his consciousness drift on the invisible currents of power that rippled in the air like a heat haze. Though his eyes were shut, he could feel the energy of this world like a vivid canvas of colour, brighter than the greatest works of Serena d’Angelus or Kelan Roget. Beyond the deadstones, the mountain was a black wall of nothingness, a cliff of utter darkness as solid and as impenetrable as adamantium.
But further out into the salt flats, the world was alive with colour.
The Thousand Sons encampment was a blazing inferno of shifting colours and light, like an atomic explosion frozen at the instant of detonation. Even amid that blazing illumination, some lights shone brighter than others, and three such minds were gathered beneath where Lemuel knew Captain Ahriman’s pavilion was pitched. Something preyed upon these minds, and he dearly wished he was strong enough to venture closer. A bright mind, a supernova amongst guttering candles, normally burned at the heart of the encampment, but not today.
Perhaps that was the source of the Thousand Sons’ tension.
Their great leader was in absentia.
Frustrated, Lemuel’s mind drifted away from the Thousand Sons, and he let it approach the sunken dwellings of the Aghoru. Cut into the dry earth, they were as dark and lifeless as the Thousand Sons were bright and vital. The Aghoru people were as barren as the salt plain, without the slightest spark of a presence within them.
He opened his eyes, exhaling and reciting the Mantra of the Sangoma to calm his racing heartbeat. Lemuel took a drink from his canvas-wrapped canteen, the water warm and gritty but deliciously welcome. Three more canteens lay in the pack next to him, but they would only last the rest of the afternoon. By nightfall, he would need to refill them, for the remorseless heat let up only marginally during the hours of darkness.
“How can anyone live in this heat?” he wondered aloud for the hundredth time.
“They don’t,” said a woman’s voice behind him, and he smiled at the sound. “They mostly live in the fertile river deltas further north or on the western coast.”
“So you said, my dear Camille,” he said, “but to willingly trek from there to this desolate place seems to defy all logic.”
The speaker moved into view, and he squinted through the sun’s glare at a young woman dressed in a tight-fitting vest, lightweight cut-off fatigues and dusty sandals. She carried a combination vox-recorder and picter in a sling around her neck, and a canvas shoulder bag stuffed with notebooks and sketchpads.
Camille Shivani cut an impressive figure with her sun-browned skin, long dark hair bound up beneath a loose turban of wrapped silk and dark glare-shields. Her skin was ruddy brown, her manner forthright, and Lemuel liked her immensely. She smiled down at him, and he gave her his best, most winning smile in return. It was a wasted effort; Camille’s appetites did not include the likes of him, but it never hurt to be courteous.
“Lemuel, when it comes to humanity, even lost strands of it, you should know that logic has precious little to do with how people behave,” said Camille Shivani, brushing her hands together to clear dust from the thin gloves she always wore.
“So very true. Why else would we linger here when there’s nothing worth remembering?”
“Nothing worth remembering? Nonsense, there’s lots to learn here,” she said.
“For an archaeohistorian, maybe,” he said.
“I spent a week living with the Aghoru, exploring the ruins their villages are built upon. It’s fascinating; you should come with me next time I make a trip.”
“Me? What would I learn there?” he asked. “I study how societies form aftercompliance, not the ruins of dead ones.”
“Yes, but what was there before has an impact on what’ll follow. You know as well as I do that you can’t just stamp one civilisation on top of another without taking into account the previous culture’s history.”
“True, but the Aghoru don’t seem to have much history to supplant,” he said sadly. “I don’t think what they have will long survive the coming of the Imperium.”
“You might be right, but that just makes studying them while we can even more important.”
Lemuel clambered to his feet, the effort causing him to break out in torrents of sweat.
“Not a good climate for a fat man,” he said.
“You’re not fat,” said Camille. “You’re generously portioned.”
“And you are very kind, but I know what I am,” said Lemuel, brushing his banyan free of salt crystals. He looked around the circle of towering stones. “Where are your companions?”
“Ankhu Anen returned to the Photepan hour ago to consult his Rosetta scrolls.”
“And Mistress Eris?” he asked.
Camille grinned. “Kalli’s returning from taking rubbings from the deadstones on the eastern slope of the mountain. She should be back soon.”
Kallista Eris, Camille and Ankhu Anen had spent hundreds of fruitless hours attempting to translate the graceful, flowing runes that wove around the deadstones. So far, they had met with limited success, but if anyone could decipher their meaning it would be this triumvirate.
“Are you any closer to translating the script on the stones?” asked Lemuel, waving a hand at the ancient menhirs.
“We’re getting there,” said Camille, dropping her bag beside his and lifting the picter from around her neck. “Kalli thinks it’s a form of proto-eldar, rendered in a dialect that’s ancient even to them, which will make it next to impossible to pin down an exact meaning, but Ankhu Anen knows of some works on Prospero that might shed some light on the runes.”
“On Prospero?” asked Lemuel, suddenly interested.
“Yes, in the Athenaeum, some big library the Thousand Sons have on their home world.”
“Did he say anything about the library?” asked Lemuel.
Camille shrugged, taking off her glare shields and rubbing her gritty eyes. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”
“No reason,” he said, smiling as he saw Kallista Eris approaching the circle of deadstones, and grateful for the distraction.
Wrapped in a flowing white jellabiya, Kallista was a beautiful, olive-skinned young woman who, did she but desire it, had the pick of the male remembrancers attached to the 28th Expedition Fleet. Not that there were many remembrancers attached; the Thousand Sons were ruthlessly selective in choosing those allowed to accompany their campaigns and record their exploits.
In any case, Kallista declined every offer of companionship, spending most of her time with Lemuel and Camille. He had no interest in a liaison with either woman, content simply to spend time with two fellow students of the unknown.
“Welcome back, my dear,” he said, moving past Camille to take Kallista’s hand. Her skin was hot, the fingers charcoal stained. She carried a drawstring bag over one shoulder, rolled up sheets of rubbing paper protruding from its neck.