第 19 页

'I know, I know. As my goal. My prey. My nemesis. But he talks like it's more than that. Like he can see the future, or can read it, or

has even been there. He talks to me like… he knows what I'm going to do.'

Fischig frowned. 'And… what do you think that might be?'

I rose and stalked to the altar. 'I have no idea! I can't conceive of doing anything that would please or benefit a daemon! I can't ever

imagine myself that insane!'

'Trust me, Eisenhorn, if I ever thought you were, I'd shoot you myself.'

I glanced back at him. 'Please do.'

I halted and looked up into the flickering flames of the candles, seeing the many shadows and possible shadows of myself they cast,

interlapping and criss-crossing the stone floor. Like the myriad possibilities of the future. I tried not to look into the thicker, blacker

shadows.

'The warp-spawned bastard's just playing games with you,' said Fischig. 'That's all it is. Games to put you off the scent and keep you at

bay.'

'If that's the case, why does he keep saving my life?'

WE WENT BACK out into the moorland wind. The moaning of the pylon seemed louder to me now.

'Who's with you?' Fischig asked.

'Aemos, Bequin, Nayl, Medea, Husmaan… and a lad you've not met, Inshabel. We came here directly from Eechan.'

'Long ride?'

'Best part of six months. We got as far as Mordia on a free trader called the Best of Eagles, and then came the rest of the way as guests

of the Adeptus Mechanicus. The super-heavy barge Mons Olympus, no less, carrying virgin Titans to the garrisons of the Cadian

Gate.'

'Quite an honour.'

'The inquisitor's rosette carries its benefits. But I tell you, the tech-priests of Mars are damned surly company for a two month voyage.

I would have gone mad but for Bequin's regicide tournaments.'

'Nayl getting any better?'

'No. I think by now he owes me… what is it? Hmm. His first born and his soul.'

Fischig laughed.

'Oh, it wasn't all so bad. There was one fellow, a veteran princeps from the Titan Legion. Old guy, centuries old. At the point of

retirement, like those men ever retire. He was supervising the transfer of the new war-machines. Name of Hekate. We got to drinking

some nights. Remind me to tell you some of his war-stories.'

'I will. Come on…'

He had a land speeder parked down off the lane under the swaying axel-trees. We brushed fallen ribbon-leaves off me hood and got in.

'Let me show you what I found. Then we can all meet and greet in a safe place.'

'How safe?'

'The safest.'

WE FLEW OVER the moorlands, into the biting winds, hugging the terrain. The light was fading. The grim glory of Cadia was spread

out below us. This was the merciless, windblown wilderness that raised one of the Imperium's hardiest warrior breeds. Here were the

scattered islets in the Caducades Sea where they were left naked as pre-pubescents to survive the ritual Month of Making. Here were

the hill-forts where the Cadian Youth armies wintered and toughened and waged mock wars on their neighbour forts. Here were the

crags, ice-lakes and axel-forests where they learned the arts of camouflage.

Here were the wide, sundered plains where their live firing exercises were staged.

There is a saying: ''If the ammo ain't live, this ain't no Cadian practice''. Right from the time they are issued with their own las-guns,

which is about the same time they are given their first primary readers, the young warrior-caste of Cadia are handling live

ammunition. Most can fire, and kill, and perform most infantry field drills before they reach the age often standard.

Little wonder that the shock troops of Cadia are among the Imperium's best.

But we weren't here to gawp at the rugged crucible of landscape that had formed the Cadians.

We were here to look at the pylons.

'CHERUBAEL'S BEEN HERE,' said Fischig, jockeying the control stick and eyeing the windspeed gauge. 'Far as I know, nine times in the

last forty years.'

'You're sure?'

'It's what you pay me for. Your daemonhost - and whatever he's working for - is fascinated by Cadia.'

'Why have the Inquisition not had a hint of it?'

'Come on, Gregor. The galaxy is big. Aemos once told me that the weight of data generated by the Imperium would fry all the

metriculators and codifiers on Terra in a flash if it was input simultaneously. It's a matter of making connections. Sifting the data. The

Inquisition - and you - have been looking all over for signs of Cherubael. But some things just don't flag. I got lucky.'

'How?'

'I was doing my job. Old friend of mine, Isak Actte, from the old arbites day. Used to be my boss, in fact. He rose, got promoted,

wound up on Hydraphur as an arbites general and then got stationed here as watch overseer to the Cadian Interior Guard. I contacted

him years ago, and got a message I had to check.'

'You're intriguing me.'

He ran us low over a headland and our speeder made a small, sharp shadow on the glittering ice-lake below.

'Actte said the arbites had closed down a heretical cell here on Cadia about ten years ago. Called themselves the Sons of Bael. A fairly

worthless lot, by all accounts. Harmless. But under interrogation, they'd admitted to following a daemon they called Bael or the Bael.

The local inquisitor general spent some time with them and had them all burned.'

'What's his name?'

'Gorfal. But he's dead, three years gone. The current incumbent is a she. Inquisitor General Neve. Anyway, the cell has flared up a few

times since then. Nothing a good team of riot-officers couldn't handle. Like I said, the Sons of Bael were pretty harmless, really. They

were only interesting in one thing.'

'Which was?'

'Measuring the dimensions of the pylons.'

THE PYLON HAD been looming in our windscreen for a while now, and Fischig swept us around it, almost kissing the black stone.

The moaning song of the wind as it laced through the geometries of the pylon was now so loud I could hear it over the racing turbines

of the speeder.

The pylon was vast: half a kilometre high and a quarter square. The upper facing of the smooth black stone was machined with

delicate craft to form holes and other round-edged orifices no bigger than a man's head. It was through these slim, two hundred and

fifty metre tubes that the wind moaned and howled.

And the tubes weren't straight. They wove through the pylon like worm tunnels. Tech-magos had tried running tiny servitor probes

through them to map their loops, but generally the probes didn't come back.

As we banked up higher for another pass, I could see the distant shape of the neighbouring pylon, across the moors, sixty kilometres

away. Five thousand, eight hundred and ten known pylons dot the surface of Cadia, not counting the two thousand others that remain

as partial ruins or buried relics.

No two are identical in design. Each one rises to a precise half kilometre height and is sunk a quarter kilometre into the ground. They

predate mankind's arrival in this system, and their manner of manufacture is unknown. They are totally inert, by any auspex measure

known to our race, but many believe their presence explains the quieting of the violent warp torrents that makes the Cadia Gate the

single, calm, navigable route to the Ocularis Terribus.

'They were trying to measure this thing?'

'Uh huh,' Fischig replied clearly over the speeder's drive as we pulled another hard turn. 'This and several others. They had auspex and

geo-locators and magnetic plumbs. Finding the exact dimensions… and I do mean exact… was the entire goal of the Sons of Bael.'

'They connect with Cherubael… I mean, beyond the "Bael" part?'

'The interview logs I've read show they name "Bael" fully as a god called Cherub of Bael, who came amongst them and made

demands that they measure the pylons in return for great knowledge and power.'

'And the inquisitor general… this Gorfal? He suppressed this?'

'Not deliberately. I think he was just sloppy.'

'I want to speak with the current inquisitor general… Neve, did you say her name was?'

'Yeah. I thought you might.'

WHILE DAYLIGHT REMAINED, we flew west to Kasr Derth, the largest castellum in the region and the seat of provincial government for

the Caducades. Fischig switched on the speeder's vox-ponder and broadcast the day's access codes to the sentry turrets as we passed

the outer ring-ditch. Even so, Man-ticore and Hydra batteries traversed and tracked us as we went over.

The vox-ponder pinged fretfully as it detected multiple target-locks.

'Don't worry,' said Fischig, noticing my look. 'We're safe. I think the Cadians enjoy taking every possible opportunity to practise.'

We ran down the line of a slow moving convoy - drab, armoured twelve-wheeler transports escorted by lurching Sentinel walkers -

and followed the highway up towards the ridge of the earthwork. Beyond it, and two more like it, the heavy, grey fortifications and

shatrovies of Kasr Derth sulked in the twilight.

Watch-lights on skeleton towers stood on the upper slope of the earthwork. More turret emplacements and pillboxes studded the

defence berm like knuckles. Again, the vox-ponder pinged.

Fischig dropped the speed and altitude, and swung us down towards the eastern barbican, a small fortress in its own right, bristling

with Earth-shaker platforms. A bas-relief Imperial eagle decorated the upper face of the ashlar-dressed structure.

We ran in through the barbican's gate, over the hydraulic bascule that crossed the inner moat, and into the castellum's deliberately

narrow and twisting streets.

Cadia's earliest kasrs had been built in the High Terra style, with the wide streets laid out on a grid system. In early M.32, a Chaos

invasion had made wretchedly short work of three of them. The broad, ordered avenues had proved impossible to defend or hold.

Since then, the kasrs had been planned in elaborate geometric patterns, the streets jinking back and forth like the teeth of a key. From

the air, Kasr Derth looked like an intricate, angular puzzle. Given the Cadians' mettle and their skills at urban-war, a kasr could be

held, street by street, metre by metre, for months if not years.

We slunk along the busy, labyrinthine streets as the caged lamps came on and business began to shut for the night. I was about to

remark to Fischig that it looked for all the world like a military camp, until I realised that even the civilian fashion was for

camouflaged clothing. It soon became easy to pick out locals from visitors. The jag-white and grey of tundra dress or the panelled

green and beige of moor fatigues marked out newcomers and off duty soldiery. The population of Kasr Derth wore grey and brown

checkered urban camouflage.

We passed the stilted horreums of the Imperial Cadian Granary, and the tight-packed baileys of the rich and successful. Even the

townhouses of the wealthy had armouring on their mansard roofs.

To the left lay the brightly-lit aleatorium, to which night crowds were already flocking to gamble away their pay. To the right, Kasr's

senaculum with its gleaming, ceramite-plated shatrovy pyramid. Ahead, lay the minster of the Inquisition. The vox-ponder pinged

again as the gun-walls along the deep approach followed us.

Fischig settled the speeder down on the spicae testicae paving of the minster's inner yard, where sunken guide-lights stitched out a

winking cross. Inquisitorial guards in gold-laced burgundy armour approached us as we swung back the speeder's canopy and climbed

out.

I showed the nearest one my rosette.

He clipped his heels together and saluted.

'My lord.'

'I wish to see the inquisitor general.'

'I will inform her staff,' he said obediently, and hurried away across the herringbone paving, holding up his baldric so his power sword

wouldn't trip him.

'You won't like her,' Fischig said as he came round the parked speeder to join me. 'Why?'

'Ah, trust me. You just won't.'

'IT'S LATE. I had finished business for the day,' said Inquisitor General Neve, stabbing her holoquill back into the brass power-well on

the desk.

'My apologies, madam.'

'Don't bother. I'm not about to shut my doors to the famous Inquisitor Eisenhorn. We're a long way from the Helican sub, but your

fame precedes you.'

'In a good way, I hope.'

The inquisitor general rose from her writing desk and straightened the front of her green flannel robe. She was a short, sturdy woman

in her late one tens, if my eye was any judge, with salt and pepper hair plied back tightly into a bourse. She had the typical pale, tight

flesh and violet eyes of a Cadian.

'Whatever,' she snapped.

We stood in her sanctum, an octastyle chamber with a black and white cosmati floor and aethercite walls inscribed with a waterleaf

design. It was lit with rushlights and the flame glow accented the carved lotus motif.

Inquisitor General Neve clumped around her desk to face us, leaning on an ornate silver crutch.

'You'll want to be reviewing the Bael records, I suppose?'

'How did you guess?' I asked.

She favoured her weight on her sound foot and pointed the rubber-capped toe of the crutch at Fischig.

'Him, I know. He's been here before. One of yours, I suppose, inquisitor.'

'One of my best.'

She arched her spare, plucked eyebrows. 'Hah. Much that says about you. Come on. The archivum.'

A DIM SCREW-STAIR led down to the basement archivum. The turning steps of the spiral were hard for her to manage, but she shooed

me away curtly when I offered to assist her.

'I meant no insult, inquisitor general,' I said.

'Your kind never do,' she snapped. I felt it wasn't the moment to inquire what kind that might be.