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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

I never forget Ebhoe. I never forget his corpse, wheeled out by the sisters. He had been caught in the infirmium flames on Pirody Polar. Limbless, wizened like a seed-case, he hung in a suspensor chair, kept alive by intravenous drains and sterile sprays. A ragged, revolting remnant of a man.

He had no eyes. I remember that most clearly of all. The flames had scorched them out.

He had no eyes, and yet he was terrified of the light.

I still believe that memory is the finest faculty we as a species own. But by the Golden Throne, there are things I wish I could never remember again.

MASTER IMUS’ TRANSGRESSION

MASTER IMUS’ TRANSGRESSION

‘I suppose,’ he sniffed, ‘you get a lot of cases like mine.’

The officer did not reply. In the ten minutes since Master Imus had been received, the officer had made very few remarks, except to announce his credentials and ask a few general questions.

Master Imus had presented himself, of his own volition, at the portico of the dark, unfriendly building late that afternoon. He had been invited to wait in an anteroom off the inner yard.

The anteroom was cold and forlorn. The fretful fingers of individuals previously invited to wait there had marked the white plaster with a greasy patina, and pacing feet had worn the wooden floor. There were no windows, but light poked in through a trio of dingy filters. From outside, faraway, Master Imus could hear the street noises of workers flooding home to their habs and their evening meals.

Master Imus sat in one of the old wooden chairs provided.

A clerk attended him first. The clerk led Master Imus through to a side office panelled in dark wood, and sat him at a small desk. The clerk was hunched over with the weight of the stenogram built into his chest. He sat on a stool, handed Master Imus a form, and told him to read out the questions printed on it and answer them in his own words. As Master Imus spoke, haltingly at first, the clerk’s bird-foot hands pecked the keys of the stenogram and recorded his comments. The stenogram clattered like an adding machine, a sound that made Master Imus feel exceptionally sad.

When the form was completed, the clerk left the office, and was replaced, after a few minutes, by a second clerk. The second clerk led Master Imus into a chamber that smelled of machine heat, and was cluttered with banks of whirring cogitators.

The second clerk examined Master Imus’ papers, and copied them on one of the cogitators. Several versions of Master Imus’ biographical particulars flashed up on the multiple screens for a moment and then faded into a dull, green glow. This slow, silent dissolution of all he was seemed unpleasantly symbolic to Master Imus.