"He's even speaking of spirits you know. Cinderman, the arch-prophet of secular truths, speaking of spirits. I put him right, naturally. He mentioned spirits were a concern of yours."
"[Cinderman] convinced me it was a plague at first. But I saw a spirit. A demon, take hold of Xavier Jubal and remake his flesh into the form of a monster. I saw a demon take hold of Jubal's soul and turn him against his own kind!"
"No, you didn't," Horus said.
"Sir?"
Horus smiled, "Allow me to illuminate you. I'll tell you what you saw Garviel. It is a secret thing, known to a very few, though the Emperor -- Beloved of All -- knows more than any of us. A secret Garviel, more than any other secret we are keeping today.
Can you keep it? I'll share it, for it will soothe your mind. But I need you to keep it solemly."
"I will" Loken said.
The Warmaster took another sip. "It was the warp, Garviel."
"The ... Warp?"
"Of course it was. We know the power of the Warp, and the chaos it contains. We've seen it change men. We've seen the wretched things that infest its dark dimensions. I know you have. On Eridas. On Cyrinx. On the bloody coast of Tassalon. There are entities in the warp that we might easily mistake for demons."
"Sir," Loken began,"I have been trained in the study of the warp. I am well prepared to face its horrors. I have fought the foul things that pour forth from the gates of the Empyrean. And, yes the warp can seep into a man and transmute him. I have seen this happen. But only in psykers. It is the risk they take. Not in Astartes."
"Do you understand the full mechanism of the warp, Garviel?" Horus asked. He raised the glass to the nearest light, to examine the color of the wine.
"No sir. I don't pretend to."
"Neither do I, my son. Neither does the Emperor -- Beloved by all -- not entirely. It pains me to admit that, but it is the truth, and we deal in truths above all else. The warp is a vital tool to us. A means of communications and transport. Without it there would be no Imperium of Man. For there would be no quick bridges between the stars. We use it, and we harness it. But we have no absolute control over it. It is a wild thing that tolerates our presence but brooks no mastery. There is power in the warp, fundamental power. Not good. Nor evil. But elemental, and anathema to us. It is a tool we use at our own risk."
The Warmaster finished his glass and set it down. "Spirits. Demons. Those words imply a greater power. A fiendish intellect and a purpose. An evil Archetype with cosmic schemes and strategems. They imply a god or gods at work behind the scenes. They imply the very supernatural state that we have taken great pains through the light of science to shake off. They imply sorcery and a palpable evil."
He looked across at Loken, "Spirits, demons, the supernatural, sorcery. These are words we have allowed to fall out of use for we dislike the connotations. But they are just words. What you saw today. Call it a spirit. Call it a demon. The words serve well enough. Using them does not deny the clinical truth of the universe as man understands it. There can be demons in a secular cosmos, Gavriel, just so long as we understand the use of the word."
"Meaning the warp."
"Meaning the warp. Why coin new terms for its horrors when we have a bounty of old words that might suit us just as well. We use the words alien and Xenos to describe the inhuman filth we encounter in some locales. The creatures of the warp are just aliens, too. But they are not lifeforms as we understand the term. They are not organic. They are extradimensional. And they influence our reality in ways that seem sorcerous to us -- Supernatural if you will. So, let's use all those lost words for them: Demons, Spirits, Possessors, Changelings. All we need to remember is that there are no Gods out there in the darkness. No great demons and ministers of evil. There is no fundamental, immutable evil in the cosmos. It is too large and sterile for such melodrama. There are simply inhuman things that oppose us. Things we were created to battle and destroy. Orks. Guycan. Toshepta. Chilacid. Eldar. Jokearo. And the creatures of the warp, who are stranger than all for they exhibit powers that are bizzare to us because of the otherness of their nature."
Loken rose to his feet. He looked around the lamp-lit room and heard the moaning of the mountain wind outside. 'I have seen psykers taken by the warp, sir,' he said. 'I have seen them change and bloat in corruption, but I have never seen a sound man taken. I have never seen an Astartes so abused.
"It happens," Horus replied. He grinned, "does that shock you? I'm sorry. We keep it quiet. The warp can get into anything, if it so pleases. Today was a particular triumph for its ways. These mountains are not haunted as the myths report, but the warp is close to the surface here. That fact alone has given rise to the myths. Men have always found techniques to control the warp, and the folks here have done precisely that." 'They let the warp loose upon you today, and brave Jubal paid the price.'
'Why him?'
'Why not him? He was angry at you for overlooking him, and his anger made him vulnerable. The tendrils of the warp are always eager to exploit such chinks in the mind. I imagine the insurgents hoped that scores of your men would fall under the power they had let loose, but Tenth Company had more resolve than that. Samus was just a voice from the Chaotic realm that briefly anchored itself to Jubal's flesh. You dealt with it well. It could have been far worse.'
'You're sure of this, sir?' Horus grinned again. The sight of that grin filled Loken with sudden warmth.
'Ing Mae Sing, Mistress of Astropaths, informed me of a rapid warp spike in this region just after you disembarked. The data is solid and substantive. The locals used their limited knowledge of the warp, which they probably understood as magic, to unleash the horror of the Empyrean upon you as a weapon.'
'Why have we been told so little about the warp, sir?' Loken asked. He looked directly into Horus's wide-set eyes as he asked the question.
'Because so little is known,' the Warmaster replied. 'Do you know why I am Warmaster, my son?'
'Because you are the most worthy, sir?'
Horus laughed and, pouring another glass of wine, shook his head. 'I am Warmaster, Garviel, because the Emperor is busy. He has not retired to Terra because he is weary of the crusade. He has gone there because he has more important work to do.'
'More important than the crusade?' Loken asked.
Horus nodded. 'So he said to me. After Ullanor, he believed the time had come when he could leave the crusading work in the hands of the primarchs so that he might be freed to undertake a still higher calling.'
'Which is?' Loken waited for an answer, expecting some transcendent truth.
What the Warmaster said was, 'I don't know. He didn't tell me. He hasn't told anyone.' Horus paused. For what seemed like an age, the wind banged against the longhouse shutters. 'Not even me,' Horus whispered.
Loken sensed a terrible hurt in his commander, a wounded pride that he, even he, had not been worthy enough to know this secret. In a second, the Warmaster was smiling at Loken again, his dark mood forgotten.
'He didn't want to burden me,' he said briskly, 'but I'm not a fool. I can speculate. As I said, the Imperium would not exist but for the warp. We are obliged to use it, but we know perilously little about it. I believe that I am Warmaster because the Emperor is occupied in unlocking its secrets. He has committed his great mind to the ultimate mastery of the warp, for the good of mankind. He has realised that without final and full understanding of the Immaterium, we will founder and fall, no matter how many worlds we conquer.'