‘Will she receive us?’ Kyganil asked.

  ‘She awaits you now.’

  The guards turned around. Stern and Kyganil followed. As the guards approached the doors, they opened silently. The guards stopped at the threshold. Stern and Kyganil passed into the throne room beyond. Its ceiling was much higher than in the hall. It rose to the same pointed vault, the room lifting the eyes involuntarily to its peak. Stern found her impressions of the room shifting from one moment to the next, depending on which point she happened to be looking at. At first, the wraithbone designs conveyed a sense of clarity and light, and the thought that, if Stern could just find the right viewing position, she would see to infinity, in time as well as space. But some of the other lines were darker, more jagged, and she conjured her memories of Commorragh and its games of sensual violence and night.

  The aeldari seated on the throne united these contradictory feelings. She was swathed in crimson and black, her face sternly forbidding. Her eyes glinted with hard judgement and the hint of coal-dark perversity. She looked first at Kyganil, and then at Stern as they approached. Her eyes narrowed slightly, as if in pain, as Stern drew near. The evaluating gaze with which she favoured Stern was a long one, and carried on for several seconds after Stern and Kyganil stopped a few paces from the throne’s dais.

  ‘Your power announces your arrival,’ Yvraine said to Stern. ‘It is a psychic nova. I have rarely seen its like.’

  Stern bowed her head. She said nothing. Yvraine was clearly musing, not in the mood for conversation just yet.

  ‘I wonder if you know the danger you represent,’ Yvraine said.

  ‘To the enemies of what I fight for, I think I do,’ said Stern, sensing an opening now.

  ‘Perhaps. And perhaps neither you nor they fully understand that either. Perhaps no being does, not even the gods. What would you say to that?’

  ‘That I must be watchful not to let such words lead to hubris on my part.’

  Yvraine smiled coldly. ‘Quite so. Quite so.’ She turned a palm up, and the gesture wordlessly changed the subject. ‘I had thought I had heard the last of a need for an alliance with the humans for some time. It seems I was wrong. Must another be sought so soon after the last?’

  ‘The last?’ Stern asked, puzzled. She glanced at Kyganil, who looked just as confused. At least, she noted, Yvraine had not referred to humans as mon-keigh. That had to be a good omen.

  ‘I would have thought I had done more than enough to help your race, Thrice-Born.’

  ‘I’m afraid I do not understand.’

  Yvraine cocked her head, amused. ‘No, you don’t, do you? Then I will be more direct. Was it not enough for me to assist in the return of Roboute Guilliman?’

  The floor seemed to heave beneath Stern. Her balance was suddenly more precarious than it had been in the Shrine of Saint Aphrania. She grappled with what Yvraine had said. The words were fragile. Their meaning was too great. ‘Guilliman,’ she said. ‘Guilliman has returned.’ She almost wept with gratitude. Dagover was right. The Emperor still watched over the rest of the Imperium. Nothing else could explain the return of the Avenging Son.

  Yvraine leaned forward slightly. ‘Then you know nothing of what has transpired on the other side of the Great Rift?’

  ‘We do not, Herald of Ynnead,’ said Kyganil.

  ‘Then the reason for your presence here becomes much more interesting.’

  ‘Does the Imperium still exist?’ Stern asked, torn between hope and dread.

  ‘It does. Its state was desperate. I believe it still is.’

  Stern nodded. The Imperium’s extremity must have been terrible for Guilliman to awake.

  ‘But it endures,’ said Yvraine. ‘When I last took my leave, it endured.’

  ‘You have my thanks for this news.’

  Here, Yvraine turned to Kyganil. ‘Now tell me why you have sought me out.’

  ‘For the reason you spoke of when we entered, Herald of Ynnead. Once again, the aeldari and the humans must stand together.’

  ‘Against what?’

  Kyganil looked at Stern.

  ‘There is something approaching,’ said Stern. ‘A nothingness of terri­ble vastness. I do not know much more than that, but I am sure that, if we do not stop it, it will consume the galaxy.’

  Yvraine said nothing for a long moment. Finally, she asked, ‘This is a vision you have had?’

  ‘It is. For a long time, I did not know it was a vision. The absence is so huge, so suffocating, that I believed I no longer had any visions at all. When I perceived the absence truly, even then I did not understand what it was.’

  ‘I see.’

  Yvraine rose. At the same moment, a wraithbone column emerged from the floor in front of the throne, its base an unbroken part of the whole. It took the form of a braided stand. At its crown was an orb that shone a pure white. ‘Come closer,’ Yvraine said. She stepped off the throne’s dais and stood in front of the column.

  Stern walked forward until they were facing each other across the orb. This close, Stern felt as if just beyond the edge of her hearing, there was a great choir of souls.

  ‘Give me your hands,’ said Yvraine. Stern obeyed. ‘Now seek your vision.’

  Stern closed her eyes. She barely had to open herself up psychically. The nothingness rushed to seize her. Her breath stopped. All was black and cold and numb. The blackness was eternal, swallowing stars and souls forever. She could not see its boundaries. It seemed infinite, and to be growing at the same time, stronger and stronger, finality upon finality, the last of all curtains to fall.

  She jerked out of the vision and saw that Yvraine had released her and taken a step back.

  ‘Enough,’ said Yvraine. ‘I have seen what I need.’

  ‘Do you know what it is?’ Stern asked.

  ‘I do not. I shared your vision. That is all. The danger is as great as you say.’

  ‘Then you understand the need for an alliance,’ said Kyganil.

  Yvraine looked at them both steadily. ‘How do you imagine this will come about? Do either of you have the standing of an ambassador?’ The question was not really a question.

  ‘No,’ said Stern. ‘Until you told me, I did not even know that something of the Imperium endures.’

  Yvraine was silent again, her eyes shadowed, as she thought. ‘Know this, exile of Cegorach,’ she said at last. ‘When the time comes, you will have my aid.’

  Kyganil bowed to the Herald. ‘You have my thanks.’

  ‘And mine,’ said Stern, bowing too.

  ‘Yours, if not that of the rest of your race,’ Yvraine observed.

  Stern could say nothing in answer to that justified remark.

  ‘Where will you go now?’ Yvraine asked her.

  ‘I do not know. I must seek the point from which the nothing­ness will spread, but I do not know where to begin looking for it.’

  ‘On that point, I cannot assist you.’ Yvraine turned once more to Kyganil. ‘And the help I give rests upon a condition. The condition is the task I give you now. You will seek out your former Harlequin kin. Find a Solitaire. You will do this as your part of this bargain. Then I will fulfil mine.’

  Kyganil bowed again in obedience.

  ‘Then we are done,’ said Yvraine. ‘Go now. We have paths that await us all.’

  Kyganil brought them back to the Iudex Ferox. They stepped out of his portal and into an empty cargo bay in the ­bowels of the ship. It would be a few minutes at least before Dagover knew of their presence. The bay was deep in shadow. It had been damaged in battle, and fallen into disuse. There was no light except for a single emergency lumen strip, still emitting a bruised red glow from the base of the walls. The deck above had collapsed diagonally across the space. The bay was a chamber of wreckage and shadows. It was a poor place for a farewell. At least they had their solitude.

  ‘We have walked far together, Thrice-Born,’ said Kyganil.

  ‘A journey I could not have made without you,’ said Stern. ‘I shall miss your wisdom and your blades.’ She smiled. ‘It will be a challenge to grow used to travelling exclusively by human means again.’ The words were banal. Anything she said would be after so many years of companionship.

  They clasped forearms. ‘I will hope our paths cross again,’ said Kyganil.

  ‘I have faith they will,’ Stern said. Everything about their friendship, from its beginning to its duration, was so unlikely that meeting again seemed the least of improbabilities. ‘But we move as fate demands.’

  ‘We do,’ Kyganil agreed.

  ‘Do you think we have performed well?’ Stern asked, shifting to the Harlequin’s idiom, paying tribute and respect to what he had taught her of his ways and faiths.

  Kyganil smiled. ‘Magnificently,’ he said. ‘Especially for so small a troupe, so often deprived of any audience, perpetually without the proper one.’

  ‘By your side, the art was its own reward.’

  Kyganil placed a hand over his heart and bowed his head. ‘Well said, Thrice-Born. It has been the great honour of my path to perform beside you.’

  ‘As it was mine to dance beside you.’

  ‘Then I bow to you, until the curtains rise to reveal us to one another once more.’

  ‘I bow to you in the same hope.’

  Stern stepped back, giving Kyganil space to summon his portal to the webway. He gestured, and a frame of air around him shimmered. They looked at each other one last time, holding on to the link of soli­darity. Kyganil stepped into the portal. His image shimmered too. Then the air cleared, and he and the portal were gone.

  Stern did not move right away, contemplating the loss of the fellowship of the xenos she trusted with her life. She was left with the company of the human she did not trust at all.

  Then she left the cargo bay. She walked towards the bridge, sure that one of the inquisitor’s officers would meet her momentarily. It had already been several minutes since she and Kyganil had returned. Dagover knew she was back. If he claimed otherwise, she would not believe him.

  ‘Will this suit your needs?’ Dagover asked.

  Stern walked across the threshold of the chamber the inquisitor was offering as her quarters. It was on the same deck as his study, a short distance from the bridge. It was one of the chambers attached to the cloisters. It was sparsely furnished. There was an iron cot, a shrine taking up most of the forward wall, and little else. It was a religious cell.

  ‘You had Ministorum priests aboard?’ Stern asked.

  ‘You sound surprised.’

  ‘Given your radicalism, I am.’

  ‘My faith in the God-Emperor is not open to question.’

  ‘I did not say that it was. But the Ecclesiarchy is suspicious of the unorthodox. As I happen to know.’

  Dagover gave an electronic grunt. ‘Priests and a prayer conclave have not always been part of this vessel’s complement. They have been sometimes, though.’

  ‘When it suited you politically.’

  The hooks spread Dagover’s lips into a smile. ‘I leave the exegesis of my decisions to you. They were with me when last we departed a world before the great warp storm tore the sky. They did not survive the century. I think, for many of them, a crisis of faith weakened them in combat.’ He walked slowly around the room. ‘That is the past. Will this chamber do?’

  ‘It will.’ Its proximity to the bridge was useful. Its proximity to Dagover’s quarters was, she guessed, useful for him. That made no difference to her. She presumed she would be under perpetual observation.

  ‘Very well,’ said Dagover. ‘Now we have the question of our destination. I am disappointed the exalted figure you consulted had no helpful suggestions.’

  ‘I believe in the Emperor and His guidance.’

  ‘As do I, Sister Superior Stern, as do I.’

  She did not think he was mocking her. She was willing to believe his protestations of faith. What she wished she could discern was his underlying purpose. But the reptile was as unreadable as ever.

  And then he said, ‘Guilliman,’ and his face changed. He seemed to be looking past Stern, at an object of wonder.

  Was he acting? she wondered. Was he genuine? Or was his genuine display a strategy in itself, its purpose to win her trust?

  There was no way to know.

  ‘Yes,’ Stern said. ‘Guilliman.’

  ‘You believe this to be true?’

  ‘I think it would be a strangely pointless lie, coming from an Ynnari.’

  ‘It is an event that gives one hope,’ said Dagover.

  ‘It does.’

  ‘Yet I think, too, of how close to the brink we must be for him to return.’

  ‘As a Recongregator, do you not feel vindicated?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ The rasp was barely louder than a whisper. ‘I have fears, though, Sister Superior. I have fears that my vindication will come to feel like the mockery of fate. Or that I will discover that my faction did not act fast enough, or forcefully enough. I need to know.’

  ‘So do I,’ Stern told him. ‘But the darkness is what I must fight. If the struggle takes me farther away from what remains of the Imperium, then so be it. If that is a condition that is unacceptable to you, tell me now.’

  ‘It is not,’ said Dagover. ‘We will go where we must.’

  She was relieved, and she was disturbed that she was relieved. With Kyganil gone, she was dependent on Dagover and his ship for transport. She did not like the idea of needing the inquisitor. She felt uneasy and wary in a constant, gnawing way that was ­foreign to her after so long in the trusted company of the aeldari.

  ‘Where, though, must we go?’ Dagover asked.

  ‘I will seek the guidance of the Emperor.’

  ‘You sound confident that you will receive it.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Much has changed in a short time.’

  ‘It has.’

  The smile crept over his face. It looked like victory. ‘Then we have cause to rejoice. I will leave you to it.’

  The lizard in power armour walked out of the cell.

  Stern closed the door behind him, sealing herself in gloom. Candles flickered on the shrine, casting moving shadows over the bronze sculpture of the holy winged skull. Stern kneeled before the shrine. She fixed her gaze on the sockets of the skull. This was not a relic that would crumble at her touch. It was a symbol. It could be destroyed, but what it represented could not.

  ‘Father of Mankind,’ she said. ‘Forgive me for my weakness. Forgive me for not seeing what I should, and for believing you no longer protected your children. Though I am not worthy of your blessing, I am your servant eternally. Show me what you would have me do. Grant me the wisdom to know how best I must serve you.’

  She closed her eyes and bent her head to her clasped hands. The darkness that came to devour the stars enveloped her once more. She could barely breathe. The nothingness sought to consume everything. If she did not fight it, she would vanish in the suffocating black.

  ‘You are not everything,’ she growled at the nothingness. ‘You will be defeated.’

  She did not have the strength to see past it. The black future swallowed all the times to come, and it crushed the present. She strained against it, but it was like trying to hold back the tidal wave of a terrible ocean. She started to drown.

  ‘I will not despair!’ she cried in prayer. ‘My greatest strength is not my own. It is the strength of the God-Emperor that will stand against this evil.’

  It was not for her to see the way. It was for her to believe that she would be shown the way.

  Her duty was to have faith.

  And she did. Her belief in the God-Emperor sang in her heart. The shrine before her gave her a way to concentrate her thoughts, and powerful as symbols were, it was still just a symbol. Monuments and rituals served their purpose, but they fell away to insignificance before the essence of faith itself. That was what she offered the God-Emperor now.

  She gave herself to the totality of belief. Without reservation.

  She believed. She became belief.

  Her identity vanished, yet the darkness could not absorb her, for Another had claim over her.

  And in this state, for a tiny, blessed fragment of eternity, the domi­nion of the nothingness receded. It had not yet arrived, it had not yet consumed all, and so something came through to Stern.

  A name.

  A place.

  A beginning.

  Severitas.

  Stern found Dagover on the bridge. ‘Severitas,’ she told him. ‘That is where we must go.’

  ‘What is there?’

  ‘Our destination.’

  Dagover cocked his head. ‘Are you bandying words with me?’

  ‘No. I am telling you what I know, and nothing more.’

  ‘Very well.’ Dagover leaned over the tacticarium table. ‘Severitas,’ he muttered, and called up a hololithic map of the galaxy. A rune pulsed yellow over a planet in the sector. ‘Interesting. In close parallel to our current position, but on the other side of the rift, as far as I can tell.’

  ‘Your map is incomplete,’ Stern commented. It only showed a rough approximation of the huge warp storm’s location.

  ‘We do not know the full extent of the rift,’ said Dagover. ‘We have mapped what we have been able to determine, but there is too much we don’t know.’ He extended an arm and tapped Severitas. ‘I should have said that I think this planet is on the other side of the rift. But there is a fair bit of guesswork involved.’

  ‘It is not in the storm. Of that I am sure.’

  ‘Good. I am trusting your visions not to send us to a world consumed by the warp. We are still faced with a problem. Somehow, we have to cross that rift without the benefit of the Astronomican.’

  ‘True. So we will.’

  ‘I’m eager to know how you think we will do so.’

 

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