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Back The Magos Save as PDF
Chapters (51)
  1. Suggested Reading Order
  2. Title Page
  3. Warhammer 40,000
  4. Introduction
  5. PESTILENCE
  6. MASTER IMUS’ TRANSGRESSION
  7. REGIA OCCULTA
  8. MISSING IN ACTION
  9. BACKCLOTH FOR A CROWN ADDITIONAL
  10. THE STRANGE DEMISE OF TITUS ENDOR
  11. THE CURIOSITY
  12. PLAYING PATIENCE
  13. THORN WISHES TALON
  14. GARDENS OF TYCHO
  15. THE KEELER IMAGE
  16. PERIHELION
  17. THE MAGOS
  18. One
  19. Two
  20. Three
  21. Four
  22. Five
  23. Six
  24. Seven
  25. Eight
  26. Nine
  27. Ten
  28. Eleven
  29. Twelve
  30. Thirteen
  31. Fourteen
  32. Fifteen
  33. Sixteen
  34. Seventeen
  35. Eighteen
  36. Nineteen
  37. Twenty
  38. Twenty-One
  39. Twenty-Two
  40. Twenty-Three
  41. Twenty-Four
  42. Twenty-Five
  43. Twenty-Six
  44. Twenty-Seven
  45. Twenty-Eight
  46. Twenty-Nine
  47. Thirty
  48. Chronology
  49. About the Author
  50. A Black Library Publication
  51. Cover

Drusher frowned. ‘My teaching post isn’t much, but at least it’s safe.’ He handed her back the pistol.

‘You sure?’ she asked.

‘Whenever I spend any time with you, Macks, it ends up getting exciting,’ he said. ‘Rather too exciting for a man of my disposition.’

‘Hey,’ she replied, as if hurt, ‘I haven’t got you killed so far.’

Drusher smiled. ‘So far.’

Macks nodded.

‘All right,’ she said. She kissed him briefly on the cheek, and turned to walk back to the transporters.

Every wrong turn destiny had ever offered him…

And which was this? Drusher sighed.

‘Macks?’ he called out.

‘Yes?’

‘Would I get my own desk?’

Turning back, she smirked. ‘Valentin, you’ll even get your own couch.’

Drusher got to his feet, and wandered down the path after her.

THE KEELER IMAGE

THE KEELER IMAGE

Medonae the Eater, so called because of his appetites, had declared an auction, and word of this sale brought dealers and speculators from across the subsector, despite the isolation of his home.

An item in the catalogue drew my attention. I sent an agent in advance to confirm the provenance, and when word came back to me that it seemed authentic, I made arrangements to attend the sale in person.

Medonae the Eater dwelt on a war-burned rock called Pallik. Its orbit and revolutions blessed Pallik with a complex and irregular pattern of days and nights, some long, some short, some bright, some dim, which had led to the publication of various thick zodiacs and ephemeris tracts. I was not much bothered with learning the names and durations of the day-night cycle. All I knew was that I should avoid the long and formidable ‘burnday’, a periodic event when all three suns rose together.

Many of those attending the auction arrived by cutter and orbital boat, setting down in the bleak flats of the desert outside the sloping walls of Medonae’s palace. Others came into the local city, Baryt Prime, and then hired caravans to trek out to the palace, six hundred kilometres beyond the city gates. Caravans made the trip almost daily, laden with goods from the city’s produce markets, such was Medonae’s appetite.

I set down on a mesa five kilometres from the palace, and made the way on foot. It was a lowday, when only the second sun made an appearance in the heavens, and then only for a brief interval of six and a half standard hours.

It was cold and dry. Through my glare shields, the sky was a deep, rich blue and the sun a white ball that cast lens flare when I turned my head. Light glinted on the hulls of shuttles and cutters parked on their landing frames on the desert floor. I saw the thin dust plume of a caravan procession fifteen kilometres out.