'Aemos?'
'Yssarile!' He all but had to spit the word out of his mouth to make the sound. The gilded clock on the table beside his unmade bed chimed twice suddenly for no reason.
'It keeps doing that/ Aemos growled crossly. His finger stabbed another mark on the paper for me to look at and then traced down a curling line of script. His notes, I realised, had taken the form of the chart itself. 'Here, look. There was a war. The daemon-king Y-Y-'
'Just call him the daemon-king/
The daemon-king fought a war of staggering enmity with a rival. The rival's name is not given, but from the marking here, I would guess it was one of what we tentatively understand to be the four primary powers of Chaos, although it seems there were only three at that time. I wonder why?'
I couldn't answer that. I wondered if the farseer could.
The rival is described as a foul sorcerer/ Aemos continued. 'I don't pretend or want to know the hierarchies of the warp, but in simple terms, Y-Y-damnit! Yssarile! was a lieutenant, a warlord, a prince… whatever you want to call it, who tried to usurp the place of this primary power/
Aemos unrolled another crumpled sheet and wiped pencil shavings off it. 'The war lasted… a billion years. As we would understand it. The daemon-king was destroyed by his rival. Killed outright. His host fled in terror at this crashing defeat, and sought sanctuary in the material universe. Our universe. There they established a capital and six kindred colonies. The capital, Ghiil, was built upon the daemon-king's mausoleum, which was itself constructed around his barque/
'His barque?'
'I suppose they mean his ship. The word is closer to "chariot" or "galley" in literal terms. And I think this may be the key point. The barque was his war machine, the craft that he rode into battle. It is described – here, and also here – as being of such power and might that the warped ones who wrote this were themselves staggered by it/
He looked at me. 'The barque of the daemon-king. A weapon of inconceivable power that lies entombed in the mausoleum of Ghtil. That prize, so I am told, is what Glaw is after/
'Told?'
He started, shaking his head. 'I'm tired. I meant that's what I've learned. From this. My work/
You said "told"/
'I did not/
'Distinctly/
'Yes, well I did. Because I used the wrong word. Learned. That's what I have learned/
I put my hand on his shoulder, reassuringly, but he flinched. 'Aemos, you've done an extraordinary job with this. I've asked a lot of you/
'Yes, you have/
Too much/
'I serve you, sir. It is never too much/