The First Heretic

‘You are Argel Tal. You were born on Colchis, in the village of Singh-Rukh, to a carpenter and a seamstress. Your name means “the last angel” in the dialect of the southern steppes tribes. You are the youngest warrior in the Legion ever to inherit the mantle of company captain. You once bore swords of red iron – the blades of your predecessor – which you lost in service to your primarch. You are Argel Tal, a Bearer of the Word. You are my son.’

The Word Bearer looked down at his skeletal hands. ‘Sire,’ he said softly. ‘Forgive me.’ Argel Tal managed to meet his primarch’s eyes, infinitely grateful that he saw no judgement in those grey depths.

‘There is nothing to forgive.’

‘You knew more of my life than I realised.’

Lorgar smiled. ‘All of my sons are precious to me.’

Argel Tal rubbed at his sore eyes. ‘Ingethel told us that our changes would begin at the ordained time, when the galaxy burns. But I am losing myself now. Is this the ordained moment already? Is the galaxy aflame? None of my memories are my own, father. There’s a copper taste on my tongue, like the echo of blood. Perhaps this is fear. Perhaps this taste is the fear so many poets and archivists have written about.’ The captain laughed, the sound hollow and humourless. ‘And now I speak my valediction.’

‘It need not be a valediction, Argel Tal. That cannot be decided until the tale is told.’

SEVENTEEN

A Dead Empire

Revelations

Genesis

Ingethel gestured at the planet with a crooked claw.

They called it Melisanth. It was one of the last to feel the Eye’s spreading influence.

‘Auspex confirms no life readings, even down to the bacterial level,’ Captain Sylamor’s voice rasped over the vox.

‘She really needed to scan to see that?’ Torgal asked.

Below them was the ghost of a world – a globe of black oceans and grey landscapes, inexpertly guarded by thin cloud hazes. Even in orbit above Melisanth, the ship was buffeted by the warp-winds outside, while the observation dome endured the liquid, a tidal press of human faces and figures bursting against the reinforced glass. Each one splashed over the shielding with oil-on-water incandescence, flowing back into the maelstrom as soon as it destroyed itself.

After a while, Argel Tal started to see the same faces reappear. They seemed to be reforming out there in the winds and hurling themselves at the ship over and over again.

‘Are they souls?’ he asked aloud.

It is primordial matter. In the realm of flesh and blood, it manifests as psychic energy. Your thoughts give it shape. You see human souls, but it is so much more. Eldar souls. The flesh of the neverborn, that humanity once named daemonkind. Raw psychic currents. Possibility incarnate, when the mind shapes reality.

‘I want to walk the surface of that world.’

You will die.

Argel Tal rounded on the creature, anger marring his unscarred features. ‘Then why drag us here? What is the purpose of this journey if we cannot leave the ship? To stare at dead worlds from behind our Geller Field? To listen to the shrieking of lost souls?’