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damaged pod back down the cavern in time to see the last stringy remnants of the foul worm combusting and sliding off the

translithopede's buckled hull. The air was thick with dirty cinders and the smoke of burning fat.

The burning corpses of cultists littered the chamber floor. Motionless stalkers stood in their midst, cycling on pause, waiting for the

next command.

BROKEN AND TWISTED, the great burrower was at least intact. When I brought the pod into the dock-bay, Bure's own tech-adepts

themselves emerged to take care of Medea's unconscious body.

The companionway floor was raked over at an angle. Bure's engineer priests were still trying to repair the inertial dampers.

Acrid smoke filled the air, unpleasantly scented by the fat-fires outside. Aemos met me in the doorway of the control chamber and

hugged me briefly in a rare display of affection. Bure had shed his orange robe. A sinister, stark, inhuman silhouette, he watched our

very human exchange from the edge of the podium, backlit by fires raging in the workstations below.

'We're fine now, old friend,' I said to Aemos.

He broke the embrace, as if guilty. 'You did well, Gregor. Marvellously! I… I didn't mean any disrespect…'

It was at times like that I wished I could still smile. I am too used to my face being the impassive mask Gorgone Locke gave me.

Using my will gently, so he might understand the truth of my words, I said, 'No disrespect taken, old friend.'

Aemos smiled sheepishly and turned away.

His suspensors hissing, Bure glided over to me. To my surprise, he hugged me too. It was brief and clumsy, his servo arms conveying

no warmth. I felt terrible sorrow for him then. His human core had been moved by the events and he had seen and copied Aemos's

impromptu display of affection. Just then, I believe, he passionately wanted to be human again. Just for a moment. But his vicing arms

had no more emotion in them than the tight handshake with which he had first greeted me.

He swung away, his arms to his sides. His green eye-lights flicked back and forth over the repair teams as they worked to contain the

damage.

'I have never said,' he began, his voxed voice toneless and cold, though it tried to be neither of those things. 'Hapshant. He thought the

world of you, Eisenhorn. He told me once that he believed you would eclipse his career with your own. I think he was right.'

'Thank you, magos.'

He turned around to look at me. His eye were tiny spots of emerald fire.

'You never did say what brought you here.'

'Recent matters somewhat overtook us, magos.'

'Yes. But still, you never did say…'

'I have to explain the… circumstances that have changed in my life, magos. I will explain them carefully, in the hope that you will

understand and not think badly of me. But first… I gave you something to safeguard and study, a century ago. I'd like to see it again.'

IT WAS IRONIC, as if some karmic balance was at work. Of course, I didn't believe in such things. Bure had burrowed and tunnelled his

way fruitlessly through the heart of Cinchare for eleven weeks, only to have Aemos casually present him with the Lith's location. And

we had gone deep into the mines to find Bure only to learn that what I had come to Cinchare for had been safely locked away in the

annex of the Adeptus Mechanicus all along, had I but looked for it.

IT TOOK THIRTY hours for the ailing translithopede to make its way back to the surface. Once we'd broken through the blue gypnate

crust at the Imperial Allied mineworks, I sent Aemos and Medea back to the cutter to check in with Bequin and the others, still waiting

aboard the Essene at high orbit. I hoped they hadn't done anything foolish in my absence.

BURE TOOK ME to the annex. His encoded touch brought the sanctum to life, and lit long hallways to either side of the Mechanicus

chapel. He led me down one of these, the illumination plates still flickering as they warmed up after such a prolonged period of disuse.

The magos linked his thoracic neural cables to a wall socket and disengaged a lock. A heavy, armoured door slid open. Then another,

inside the first, then a third, a sturdy iris valve that withdrew segmentally into the wall frame with a noise like swords sheathing.

'This is what you want,' said Bure. 'He has been most informative, over the years.'

'I'll review your reports later, magos,' I said. 'Leave me with him now.'

Bure withdrew.

I stepped through the iris valve and down three grilled steps into the cell, feeling the nauseating static prickle of the psychic

dampening fields. Every surface was dusted with ice-crystals. There was a crackle of synaptic energy.

'Hello, Eisenhorn,' said a hollow, vox-projected voice. It came from a casket that squatted on a basalt block in the centre of the room.

Both casket and stone were caked in ice. Tiny lights darted and blinked inside the casket's open lid.

I prepared myself. Then I replied.

'Pontius Glaw. We meet again.'

TWENTY

INTERVIEW WITH THE DAMNED.

BURE, WARSMITH.

ORBUL INFANTA.

'LET ME MAKE sure I understand you, Eisenhorn,' said the disembodied voice of Pontius Glaw, slowly and contemptuously. 'You think

I'm going to help you?'

I cleared my throat. 'Yes.'

Pontius laughed. Synapse leads connected to the gold circuits of his engram sphere flashed in series. 'I didn't think a man of such

studied dullness and sobriety as you would have the ability to surprise me, Eisenhorn. My mistake.'

'You will help me,' I said, quietly but emphatically.

I brushed frost from the grilled steps and sat down facing his casket. It was claw-footed, rectangular, compact and filled with complex

technology designed for one purpose: the support and operation of the engram sphere, a rough-cut nugget the size of a clenched fist in

which resided the intellect - and perhaps the soul - of one of the most notorious heretics in the Imperium.

Pontius Glaw, dead in body for nigh on three hundred years, had been in his physical life one of the more unwholesome products of

the powerful Glaw dynasty. That family line, part of the high nobility of Gudrun, had whelped many heretics in its time, the last of

whom had been instrumental in the affair of the Necroteuch. Supported by the considerable efforts of Imperial Navy Security, I had all

but crushed their poisonous lineage, and in the process had captured the engram sphere of Pontius Glaw.

His family and their minions had attempted to sacrifice thousands of innocents in order to restore him to physicality. That, too, I had

denied.

Once the affair had ended, I had been left with this casket full of heretical spite. In terms of technology alone, it was a wonder, and

there was no telling what secrets the Pontius might have in it. So instead of destroying it, I had passed it into the safekeeping of Magos

Geard Bure. Bure, I knew, would have the time and skill enough to unlock its technical marvels at least. And he was trustworthy.

But from time to time in that past hundred years, I had questioned the validity of that decision. In all honesty, I should have

surrendered the Pontius to the Ordo Hereticus for examination and disposal. The fact that I hadn't sometimes played on my

conscience, for it suggested deceit and unwholesome subterfuge on my part. In the light of events in the past year, I found myself

fighting back the notion that perhaps my accusers were right. Had it been the act of an unsound man to secret away such a radical

entity?

Aemos had consoled my spirits, reminding me that the casket utilised mind-impulse technology undoubtedly stolen from the Cult

Mechanicus. There was, he said, no question that such a device should be in the custody of the Adeptus priesthood.

'Go on then,' Pontius said. 'Make your case. Why would I help you?'

'I require specialist information that I'm certain you have. Certain lore.'

'You are an inquisitor, Eisenhorn. All the resources of the Imperium are at your disposal. Am I to understand that, well, that your

scope has become somewhat limited?'

I was damned if I was going to tell this monster of the straits I was in. And even though he was right in a way, there was no Imperial

archive I knew of that could answer my questions.

'What I need might be regarded as… proscribed knowledge.'

'Ahhhhh…'

'What? "Ah" what?'

Even without features or body language to read, Pontius seemed insufferably pleased with himself. 'So you've finally reached that

place. How wonderful.'

'What place?' I felt uncomfortable. I had been planning this interview for months, and now control was slipping entirely to Glaw.

'The place where you cross the line.'

'I hav—'

'All inquisitors cross the line eventually.'

'I tell y—'

'All of them. It's an occupational hazard.'

'Listen to me, you worthless—'

'Methinks Inquisitor Eisenhorn protests too much. The line, Gregor. The line! The line between order and chaos, between right and

wrong, between mankind and man-unkind. I know it, because I've crossed it. Willingly, of course. Gladly. Skipping and dancing and

delighting. For the likes of you, it is a more painful process.'

I rose. 'I don't think this conversation is going anywhere, Glaw. I'm leaving.'

'So soon?'

'Perhaps I'll be back in another century or two.'

'It was on Quenthus Eight, in the spring of 019.M41.'

I paused at the cell hatchway. 'What was?'

'The moment I crossed the line. Would you like to hear about it?'

I was rattled, but I returned to my seat on the steps. I knew what he was doing. Imprisoned in his casket without touch or smell or

taste, without any sensory stimulation, Pontius Glaw craved company and conversation. I had learned that much during my long

interrogations of him aboard the Essene ten decades before during the voyage to the remote system KCX-1288. Now he was simply

feeding me morsels to make me stay and talk to him.

However, in a hundred years of captivity he had never come close to revealing such intimate details of his personal history.

'019.M41. A busy year. The buttress worlds of the far eastern rim were resisting a Holy Waaagh by the greenskins, and two of the

High Lords of Terra had been assassinated in as many months by disaffected Imperial families. There was talk of civil war. The

subsector's trader markets had crashed. Trade was bad. What a year. Saint Drache was martyred on Korynth. Billions starved in the

Beznos famine.'

'I have access to history texts, Pontius,' I said dryly

'I was on Quenthus VIII, buying fighters for my pit-games. They're a good breed, the Quenthi, long in the hams and quite belligerent. I

was, perhaps, twenty-five. I forget exactly. I was in my prime, beautiful.'

There was a long silence while he considered this reflection. Light-sparks pulsed along his wires.

'One of the pit-marshals at the amphitheatre I was visiting advised me to see a fighter who had been bought in from the very edges of

the Ultima Segmentum. A great, tanned fellow from a feral world called Borea. His name was Aaa, which meant, in his tongue,

"sword-cuts-meat-for-women-prizes". Isn't that lovely? If I had ever sired a son, a human one, I mean, I would have called him Aaa.

Aaa Glaw. Quite a ring to it, eh?'

'I'm still on the verge of leaving, Glaw.'

The voice from the casket chuckled. 'This Aaa was a piece of work. His teeth were filed into points and his fingertips had been bound

and treated with traditional unguents since his birth so that they had grown into claws. Claws, Eisenhorn! Fused, calcified hooks of

keratin and callouses. I once saw him rip through chainmail with them. Anyway, he was a true find. They kept him shackled

permanently. The pit-marshal told me that he'd torn a fellow prisoner's arm off during transit, and scalped a careless stadium guard.

With his teeth.'

'Charming.'

'I bought him, of course. I think he liked me. He had no real language, naturally, and his table manners! He slept in his own soil and

rutted like a canine.'

'No wonder he liked you.'

The frost crackled around the casket. 'Cruel boy. I am a cultured man. Ha. I was a cultured man. Now I am an erudite and dangerous

box. But don't forget my learning and upbringing, Eisenhorn. You'd be amazed how easy it is for a well-raised and schooled son of the

Imperium to slide across that line I mentioned.'

'Go on. I'm sure you had a point to make.'

'Aaa served me well. I won several fortunes on his pit-fights. I won't pretend we ever became friends… one doesn't become friends

with a favourite carnodon now, does one? And one certainly never makes friends with a commodity. But we built an understanding

over the years. I would visit him in his cell, unguarded, and he never touched me. He would halt out old myths of his home world,

Borea. Vicious tales of barbary and murder. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The moment, the moment was there on Quenthus, in the

amphitheatre, under the spring sun. The pit-marshal showed me Aaa, and tempted me to purchase him. Aaa looked at me, and I think

he saw a kindred soul… which is probably why we bonded once he was mine. In his simple, broken speech, he implored me to buy

him, telling me graphically what sport I would have of him. And to seal the deal, he offered me his tore.'

'His tore?'

'That's right. The slaves were allowed to keep certain familiar items provided they weren't potential weapons. Aaa wore a golden tore

around his neck, the mark of his tribe. It was the most valuable thing he possessed. Actually, it was the only thing he possessed. But

no matter… he offered it to me in return for me becoming his master. I took it, and, as I said, I bought him.'

'And that was the line?' I sat back, unimpressed.

'Wait, wait… later, later that same day, I examined the tore. It was inlaid with astonishing technology. Borea might have been a beastworld