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shared with Karras were a matter for the two alone. Cordatus would not ask. He would, no doubt, be summoned below after his khajar left for space. The Megir would share anything he needed to know then.
    Cordatus dared not explain the depths of the Chapter’s hopes to Karras. At least, not directly or in any great detail. The sharing of that knowledge would alter the very future it suggested. But there were other methods to steer him along the critical path. Cordatus had seeded several prime futures with a series of psychic messages, each intended to corral Karras in the necessary direction. Only time would tell if those messages were ever received. The act of placing them had taken Cordatus beyond the previous limits of his capabilities. It had stretched him to a point perilously close to absolute psychic collapse, after which, warded or not by his tattoos and holy amulets, he would have been unable to resist possession. There was no thought more chilling to a Librarian: that a daemon of the warp might swallow his soul, claim his body, and turn his powers upon the Order he loved above all else… The word nightmare was hardly adequate.
    As Cordatus had scored his messages in the surface of time to come, the Black River had surged and crashed around him, carrying him almost into the Afterworld. But he was not the Mesazar for nothing. Few among even the most powerful Librarians of the Adeptus Astartes would have survived, but among those few Athio Cordatus stood as one.
    When you return, my khajar… if you return… it may be I who sits atop the Shariax. I would pray to Terra to be spared such a fate, but it is inevitable, and it is my duty. I shall embrace it for the sake of the Order, though I am a lesser man than the First Spectre, and I may not last as long.
    Cordatus watched his khajar march to the middle of the hangar and stop, facing the sleek black shuttle that would take him up to the Adonai . Behind him, the serfs and servitors trundled to a halt. Arranged in ranks on either side of the hangar, every Space Marine in Logopol, with the exception of the members of Third Company and those others whose duties could not be postponed, stood in attendance, dressed in full plate to honour their brother on his leaving. The mood was grim. This was not like a standard departure. All those present knew the odds were against Karras ever returning, alive or dead.
    Cordatus had used Karras’s time below to have the tech-priests dress him in full power armour. The Chief Librarian stood now as a polished, gleaming vision of power and position, his shimmering ceramite replete with purity seals, the sculpted icon of the Crux Terminatus, and several formal pieces inscribed or embossed with details and renderings of his greatest personal glories. From his massive pauldrons, a thick cloak trailed all the way to the hangar floor.
    In truth, Cordatus felt overdressed as he looked at his khajar. Karras had donned simple combat fatigues of dark Librarius blue. He seemed almost naked in comparison to the armoured might of the others. But that was as it should be. Instructions from the Deathwatch were explicit: those sequestered into service were to arrive out of armour. They would not wear it again until the taking of Second Oath. To those who had never served, that meant little. But Cordatus remembered his own term of service, despite the intervening centuries. Those days of relentless training without his second skin had made him feel like a damned neophyte again. Karras would not relish it, as he himself had not, but there was purpose behind it. His khajar would come to see that quickly.
    Flight Lieutenant Qree, who had since re-boarded the shuttle to make final preparations for take-off, descended the craft’s ramp now and stopped in front of Karras. He bowed low and spoke a few words of greeting. Karras couldn’t manage a smile. He nodded. The lieutenant bowed again, turned sharply and marched back to the shuttle, followed now by