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found Bure supervising two servitors who were machining symbols into a two-metre long pole of composite steel.

'Eisenhorn,' he said, raising his bright green eye-lights to look at me.

'How goes the work?'

'I feel like a warsmith, back in the foundries of the forge worlds, when I was flesh. The specifications you have asked for are difficult,

but not impossible. I enjoy a challenge.'

I took several sheets of paper from my coat pocket and handed them to him. 'More notes, taken during my last interview with Glaw.

I've underlined the key remarks. Here, he suggests electrum for the cap piece.'

'I was going to use iron, or an iron alloy. Electrum. That makes sense.' He took my notes over to a raised planning table that was

littered with scrolls, holoquills, measuring tools and data-slates. Pages of notes that I had already provided him with were piled up,

along with the psychomet-rically captured images Ungish had drawn from my mind of the Cadian pylons, Cherubael, Prophaniti, and

the ornaments he had worn.

'I'm also pondering the lodestone for the cap. I considered pyraline or one of the other tele-empathic crystallines like epidotrichite, but

I doubt any of them would have the durability for your purposes. Certainly not for more than one or two uses. I also thought of tabular

zanthroclase.'

'What's that?'

'A silicate we use in mind-impulse devices. But I'm not convinced. I have a few other possibilities in mind.' It was a measure of the

trust Bure showed me that he felt he could mention such Cult Mechanicus secrets so freely. I felt honoured.

'Here's the haft,' he said, showing me to the etching bench where the two servitors were machining the decoration of the long pole.

'Steel?'

'Superficially. There's a titanium core surrounded by an adamantium sleeve under the steel jacket. The titanium is drilled with

channels that carry the conductive lapidorontium wires.'

'It looks perfect,' I said.

'It is perfect. Virtually perfect. It's machined to within a nanometre of your measurements. Let me show you the sword.'

I followed him to a workbench at the far end of the smithy where the sword lay on a rest under a dust sheet.

'What do you think?' he asked, drawing the cloth back.

Barbarisater was as beautiful as I remembered it. I admired the fresh pentagrammatic wards that had been etched in the blade since I

had last seen it, ten on each side.

'It is a remarkable artifact. I was almost unwilling to make the alterations you requested. As it was, I wore out eight adamantium drill

bits on this side alone. The hardened steel skin of the blade around the solid core has been folded and beaten nine hundred times. It is

beyond anything we can manufacture today.'

I would owe Clan Esw Sweydyr for this weapon, as I already owed them for Arianrhod's life. I should have returned it to their care,

for it was part of their clan legacy and usuril, or ''living story''. It was mine to safeguard, not to take, and certainly not to deface this

way. But face to face with Prophaniti at Kasr Gesh I had learned two things. Indeed, that monstrous thing had told them to me.

Pentagrammatic wards worked against dae-monhosts, but they were no stronger than the weapon that bore them.

To my certain knowledge, there were few finer, stronger blades in human space. I would make my peace and apologies to the clans of

Carthae in time, fates permitting.

I went to touch it, but Bure stopped me. 'It is still resting. We must respect its anima. In a few days, you can take it. Train with it well.

You must know it intimately before you use it in combat.'

He accompanied me to the door of the forge. 'Both weapons must be blessed and consecrated before use. I cannot do that, though I can

ceremonially dedicate their manufacture to the Machine God.'

'I have already planned for their consecration,' I said. 'But I would welcome your ceremony. When I go against Quixos, I can think of

no more potent a patron god to be looking down over me than your Machine Lord.'

'WE WILL BE leaving in a few days,' I told him.

The casket was silent for a while. 'I will miss our conversations, Eisenhorn.'

'Nevertheless, I have to go.'

'You think you're ready?'

'I think this part of my readiness is complete. Is there anything else you can tell me?'

'I have been wondering that. I cannot think of anything. Except…'

'Except what?'

The lights around the engram sphere twinkled. 'Except this. Apart from everything you've learned from me, the secrets, the lore, the

mysteries, you must know that going after this foe is… dangerous.'

I laughed involuntarily. 'I think I've worked that much out already, Pontius!'

'No, you don't know what I mean. You have the determination, I know, the ambition, I know that too - you have the knowledge, we

assume, and the weapons too, we hope - but unless your mind is prepared, you will perish. Instantly, and no ward or staff or blade or

rune will save you.'

'You sound like… you care if I lose.'

'Do I? Then consider this, Gregor Eisenhom. You may deem me a monster beneath contempt, but if I do care, what does that say about

me? Or you?'

'Goodbye, Pontius Glaw,' I said, and closed the cell hatches behind me for the last time.

I WILL RECORD this thought now, because I feel I must. For all that Pontius Glaw was… and for all that came later, I cannot shake my

bond to him, though I try. There, in the cell on Cinchare, and a century before in the dim hold of the Essene, we had spoken together

for hundreds of hours. I had no doubt that he was an unforgivably evil thing, and that he would have killed me in a second during

those times had he been allowed the chance. But he was a being of extraordinary intellect, wit and learning. Admirable in so many,

strange ways. But for that tore, Aaa's tore, back on that spring day on Quenthus, his life may have been different.

And if it had been different, and we had met, we would have been the greatest of friends.

WE HAD STAYED on Cinchare for three months. Too long, in my opinion, but there had been no way to speed the preparatory work.

We celebrated Candlemas in the little chapel of the Ministorum off the plaza, lighting candles to welcome the new Imperial year, and

lighting others to commemorate the town's dead. Aemos and Bequin read the lessons, for all of the Ecclesiarchs were amongst the

remembered dead. Bure and his tech-adepts worshipped with us, and he hovered to the choir rail under the great statue of the God-

Emperor to lead us in the devotional prayers.

I was fretful and edgy. Partly because I was anxious to get underway now, but also because of the lore in my head, the mysteries to

which Glaw had introduced me. So much, so much of it dark. I knew I was a changed man, and that change was permanent.

But I considered that a year before - just a year, though it felt much, much longer - I had been a helpless prisoner in the bleak

Carnificina, and Candlemas had passed me by before I had realised it.

I was not that man any more either, and that change had been nothing to do with Pontius Glaw's whispered secrets. For all the

darkness swilling in my head, it was better to be here, strong and ready, fortified, in the company of friends and allies.

There was no choirmaster to play the organ, so Medea had brought her father's Glavian lyre, and played the Holy Triumph of the

Golden Throne so that we could all sing.

THAT NIGHT, WE feasted in the refectory of the Cult Mechanicus to honour the start of 341.M41. Maxilla, who remained on duty

aboard the Essene, sent a banquet to us on a shuttle, along with servitors to wait upon us. One of them reported that a vast storm of

meteors had swarmed across the sky at the stroke of midnight, lighting the night side of Cinchare with their fires. Nayl growled that

this was a bad omen, but Inshabel insisted it was a good one.

I suppose it rather depended which part of the vast spread of the Imperium you came from.

THE OTHERS SPENT the next two days packing up and making ready to leave, but Aemos and I attended the dedication ceremony in the

cimeliarch of the Adeptus Mechanicus annex.

Machine Cult servitors chanted in a modulated binary code and beat upon kettledrums. Magos Bure was clad in his orange robes with

a white stole over his shoulders.

He blessed the weapons he had made in turn, taking one then the other from the two tech-adepts who stood in attendance.

Barbarisater, the pentagrammatic power sword, lifted to the light that speared down from the eyes of the Machine God's altar. Then

the runestaff, Bure's masterpiece.

He had fashioned a cap-piece for the rune-etched steel pole out of elec-trum in the form of a sun-flare corona. In the centre of it was a

human skull, marked with the thirteenth sign of castigation. The skull was the lodestone, carved by Bure himself into a perfect

facsimile of my own skull, as measured by radiative scans. He had tried and rejected over twenty different tele-empathic crystals

before finding one he trusted would be up to the task.

'It's beautiful,' I said, taking it from him. 'What crystal did you use in the end?'

'What else?' he said. 'I carved that copy of your skull from the Lith itself!'

HE CAME TO see us off, to the docking barn where the gun-cutter had sat for so long. Nayl and Fischig were carrying the last things

aboard. We had broken astropathic silence at last the night before, and informed Imperial Allied, Ortog Promethium, the Adeptus

Mechanicus and the Imperial authorities of the fate that had befallen Cinchare minehead. We would be long gone before any of them

arrived to begin recovery work.

Bure said farewell to Aemos, who shuffled away to the cutter.

'There's nothing adequate I can say,' I told the magos.

'Nor I to you, Eisenhorn. What of… the inmate?'

'I'd like you to do what I asked you. Give him mobility at least. But nothing more. He must remain a prisoner, now and always.'

'Very well. I expect to hear all about your victory, Eisenhorn. I will be waiting.'

'May the Holy Machine God and the Emperor himself protect your systems, Geard.'

'Thank you,' he said. Then he added something that quite took me aback, given his total belief and reliance on technology.

'Good luck.'

I walked to the cutter. He watched me for a moment, then disappeared, closing the inner hatch after him.

That was the last time I ever saw him.

FROM CINCHARE, THE Essene ran back, fast and impatient, into the great territories of the Segmentum Obscurus, a three month voyage

that we broke twice.

At Ymshalus, we stopped to transmit the prepared communiques, all twenty of them. Inshabel and Fischig left us too at that point;

Inshabel to secure passage to Elvara Cardinal to begin his work there, and Fischig for the long haul back to Cadia. It would be months,

if not years, before we saw them again. That was a sorrowful farewell.

At Palobara, that crossroads on the border, busy with trading vessels and obscura caravans guarded by mercenary gunships, we

stopped and transmitted the carta declaration. There was no going back now. Here, I parted company with Bequin, Nayl and Aemos,

all of whom were heading back to the Helican subsector by a variety of means. Bequin's goal was Messina, and Aemos, with Nayl to

watch over him, was bound for Gudrun. Another hard parting.

THE ESSENE CONTINUED on for Orbul Infanta. This was now a lonely, waiting time. Each night, the remains of my company gathered

in Maxilla's dining room and ate together: myself, Medea, Maxilla and Ungish. Ungish was no company, and even Medea and Maxilla

had lost their sparkle. They missed the others, and I think they knew how dark and tough the time ahead would be.

I spent my days reading in the cabin library of the cutter, or playing regicide with Medea. I practised with Barbarisater in the hold

spaces, slowly mastering the tricks of its weight and balance. I would never match a Carthae-born master, but I had always been good

enough with a sword. Barbarisater was an extraordinary piece. I came to know it and it came to know me. Within a week, it was

responding to my will, channelling it so hard that the rune marks glowed with manifesting psychic power. It had a will of its own, and

once it was in my hands, ready, swinging, it was difficult to stop it pulling and slicing where it pleased. It hungered for blood… or if

not blood, then at least the joy of battle. On two separate occasions, Medea came into the hold to see if I was bored enough for another

round of regicide, and I had to restrain the steel from lunging at her.

Its sheer length was a problem: I had never used a blade so long. I worried that I would do my own extremities harm. But practice

gave me the gift of it: long-armed, flowing moves, sweeping strokes, a tight field of severing. Within a fortnight, I had mastered the

knack of spinning it over in my hand, my open palm and the pommel circling around each other like the discs of a gyroscope. I was

proud of that move. I think Barbarisater taught it to me.

I worked with the rune staff too, to get used to its feel and balance. Though my aim was appalling, especially over distances further

than three or four metres, I became able to channel my will, through my hands, into its haft and then project it from the crystal skull in

the form of electrical bolts that dented deck plating.

There was, of course, no way I could test it for its primary use.

WE REACHED THE shrine world of Orbul Infanta at the end of the twelfth week. I had three tasks to perform here, and the first was the

consecration of the sword and the staff.

With Ungish and Medea, I travelled down to the surface in one of the Essene's unremarkable little launches rather than the gun-cutter.

We went to Ezropolis, one of Orbul Infanta's ten thousand shrine cities, in the baking heartland of the western continent.

Orbul Infanta is an Ecclesiarchy governed world, famously blessed with a myriad shrines, each one dedicated to a different Imperial

saint, and each one the heart of a city state. The Ecclesiarch chose it as a shrine world because it lay on a direct line between Terra and