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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

‘Why was it necessary?’

‘Why was what necessary?’ asked the officer.

‘Why was it necessary to scare me?’

‘Fear simplifies the mind, Master Imus. It is so strong and pure, it quite empties the head and removes all barriers and falsehoods. I scared you so I could read the truth inside you, the honest part of you that you could not dissemble. I’m sorry about that.’

‘You’re a psyker, then?’ Master Imus asked.

+Yes.+

‘Ah. I see. If you can read into the future, tell me... I have no job, and no references. I am too old and set in my ways to retrain. I have no means of support. I came forward of my own free volition, helped you hunt out a heretic and proved my innocence, and I am left the poorer for it. What do I do now?’

+I’m a mind-reader, not a clairvoyant.+

‘Right. Thank you for your candour anyway.’

‘Goodbye, Master Imus.’

Interrogator Eisenhorn closed the door behind him.

Master Imus sat on the threadbare couch. From the floor below, he could hear a baby crying. He could hear the knock of the landlord, going from hab to hab for the week’s rent. Master Imus’ rent dues were in the sideboard drawer. This week’s, and the next’s, but nothing more.

Master Imus was glad he had come forward, and glad he had spoken out. Duty was duty, after all. He tried to inflate some sense of civic pride in his heart.

But he wished, more than anything, he had just kept himself to himself.

REGIA OCCULTA

REGIA OCCULTA

I crossed over into Jared County via the pass at Kulbrech. Air links were down, because of the Cackle, so a reluctant motorised unit of the local militia conveyed me from the capital as far as Kulbrech Town, and then only because the Jared Commissioner had been so insistent. This was – oh – 223.M41, and I was only just out on my own.

Even then, at the very dawn of my career, I was treated with a mixture of fear and suspicion. The rosette, or the title ‘inquisitor’, or a combination of both, fairly focused the minds of those who met me. This attitude bores me these days. Back then, it gave me a sort of vulgar sensation of power.

Inquisitor Flammel had been killed six months before in a miserable warp transit accident, and I had been posted as a locum to cover his circuit, which was the fief worlds of the Grand Banks in the coreward reaches of the Helican sub. Circuit work is a drudge, and one acts, in the main, as an itinerant magistrate, travelling from planetary capital to planetary capital, reviewing flotsam cases gathered by the local authorities. Most are trivial and hardly ordo business, scares conjured up by superstition and petty disputation, though I had spent eight weeks on New Bylar working through a caseload that eventually exposed a traffic in low-grade, unsanctioned psykers.