I returned to the cabin I shared with Aemos, locked the doors and sat down with him. 1 ran through my theory.
'Pontius Glaw…' his old lips spat the name. 'Pontius Glaw…'
'It fits, doesn't it?'
'From what you tell me, Gregor. Though of course, I know little of what passed between you and that monster on Cinchare.'
We had first tackled the villainy of Pontius Glaw and his poisonous brood right there on Gudrun back in 240, an age ago as it seemed. At the time, Glaw himself, a notorious heretic, had been dead for two centuries, his obscene activities curtailed by Inquisitor Angevin.
But Glaw's intellect and engrammed personality had been preserved in a psi-pathetic crystal by his noble family. We thwarted the attempts of House Glaw to restore him to corporeal life, and afterwards I had the crystal placed for safekeeping with my old ally, Magos Geard Bure of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
A century later, in 340,1 had revisited Bure's remote fastness on the mining world Cinchare during the Quixos affair, in order to obtain arcane information concerning daemonhosts from his prisoner. Without Pontius Glaw's dark advice, I would never have been able to vanquish Quixos or his slaved daemons Prophaniti and Cherubael.
But I had been forced to deal with Glaw. Make it worth his while. The lure I dangled was that in return for his help, I would commission Bure to manufacture a body for him to inhabit.
And, because I was an honourable man, I kept my word, believing that even if Glaw was given mobility, he would never escape Geard Bure's clutches.
It seemed I had been wrong about that.
During those private interviews on Cinchare, Glaw had confessed to me die event that had driven him, the accomplished scion of one of Gudrun's most respected noble houses, into the worship of the warp.
It had happened on Quenthus Eight in 019. Glaw had been visiting the Quenthi amphitheatres, purchasing gladiators for his pit-fighting hobby. Even before his fall, he was a cruel man. He bought one brute, a warrior from a remote feral world… Borea, I seem to recall. Anxious to please his new master, the warrior had given Glaw his tore. It was an ancestral relic from the feral world, and neither the warrior nor Glaw realised it was tainted with the foulest Chaos. Glaw had put it on and immediately had fallen into its clutches. That one simple act had sealed his fate and transformed him into the idolatrous fiend who had plagued the Helican sub-sector for nearly two decades.
I gave Aemos the gist of this.
The matter seems to fit together. You believe, I take it, that Pontius Glaw has escaped from his prison on Cinchare, built up his forces, and is now targetting you for revenge?'