Suddenly the image resolved. Three figures, wading through the bayou's knee-deep water. One, a massive ogryn with a blaster cannon, followed in the splashing wake of a sturdy male human dressed in beige combat armour, his face hidden by a rebreather. This human was scanning the area with a hand-held auspex. The third figure was beside him. It was tall, broad, and moved with a strange stiffness, its body partially draped with what looked at first like a cape of feathers.
They weren't feathers. They were blades. Tongues of polished, sharpened metal interlaced into an armoured garment. Beneath it, 1 could glimpse a body of burnished chrome, duralloy and steel, a mechanical humanoid body of marvellous design.
The work of Magos Geard Bure, I had no doubt. The late Geard Bure.
This is was Khanjar the Sharp. The man-machine… the 'living blade' from the eldar vision. Pontius Glaw.
I could see his face. It was the face of a beautiful young man with a mane of curled hair, but the hair didn't move and the expression didn't alter from a curling smirk. It was a mask worked from gold, like the head of a noble gilded statue. I had seen the face before, in old records that showed Pontius Glaw in his prime.
There was no sound, but Glaw said something to his point man. Then he turned and seemed to address someone or something we couldn't see.
There was a long pause as they waited and then the ogryn shuffled back, as if alarmed by something. The point man set his auspex to close focus. Glaw stood still as if awestruck for a moment, then clapped his metal hands in delight.
'I can't see what they're doing…' Kenzer said.
There's nothing there to see/ Gideon snapped in disappointment. That seemed to be the case. There was a faint visual distortion where the psychic ghost of the location failed to match its real counterpart exactly. But nothing else.
'No/ I said suddenly. 'I think there is. Get your astropaths to widen the field of the seance/
'What?' Gideon asked.
'Just do it/
With a little effort, Ravenor's telepaths managed to increase the diameter of the conjured scene. Almost at once, were able to make out shadowy figures lurking around the edge.
'Psykers!' said Gideon.
'Exactly/ I said. 'The reason we can't see what he's up to is because he did what we're doing!'
'An auto-seance.'
That's right.'
'How did you guess, Gregor?'
'Mr Kenzer here said there were no ancient remains on Promody. Glaw has to be looking for the past by other means.'
'But we can't resolve what it is he's seeing.
'Go back,' said a voice behind us. Silently, the eldar seer had joined us on the walkway.