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Magisterium – Extract

A Black Library Publication

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Magisterium

Chris Wraight

Samonas had survived.

The bald fact meant almost nothing to him. Preservation of his own life, for its own sake, had never been something he had cared about. The very idea was a kind of blasphemy – one of the few he still believed in.

By the same token, he was not self-indulgent enough to wish that he had perished alongside his brothers of the Ten Thousand. That would have been an equal, if an opposite, error, for grief was as alien an emotion to him as pride. And yet, the event itself, the catastrophe, could not be ignored. It hung like an iron chain around the shoulders of all those who had come back. Physical wounds could heal, and most would do so quickly, but this weight was not a physical thing. None spoke the word ‘failure’, but still it could be half heard in the echoing silences of the Tower, detected in every whisper of faded crimson fabric on cold stone, seen in every deflected look.

Samonas walked down the long gallery. The suspensor lumens in the Tower of Hegemon were turned down. That reflected the mood – the innards of the place were almost empty now, and already growing musty from stagnant air.

Nine out of every ten. Nine out of every ten. At first he had not believed it, even after witnessing the scale of the slaughter at close quarters. No one had. Only once the portal was truly sealed and the foundations of the Palace secured, only once the last ragged lines of survivors had limped back to the arming chambers, their cloaks rent and their blades broken, did it start to seem possible.

Those who had gained the gate waited for many days in the Tower afterwards, hoping more would somehow follow them out, but the deep paths had been closed by the Emperor Himself and could not be opened again. Any souls that had been sent into that impossible realm to contest the approach of Unreality and had not yet returned were lost there.

Nine out of every ten. The loss was barely conceivable. Every Custodian was a unique and priceless creation, a masterpiece of genecraft curated over many decades, sometimes centuries. Before the current conflict had come, the numbers lost in combat had never risen above a handful in any single engagement. A belief in their near-invincibility had taken root, both within and outside the order. Strength begat strength – the Legio Custodes did not shy away from its reputation, but instead cultivated the most ostentatious displays of dominance. Their armour became more ornate, decorated in exponentially more complex designs and insignias. Confidence, bordering – some said – on arrogance, had never been in short supply.

Samonas drew closer to a pair of large doors. He did not know how his master would be. For the first time in the many long years since he had begun to serve him, Samonas found him hard to predict. It had been a sobering discovery, realising that even he was subject to the cold hand of doubt, to the slow poison of uncertainty – beforehand, that had not been obvious.

But there was no time for hesitation. All knew that the Warmaster was approaching now, cleaving an accelerating path towards the world of his birth. What was left was left; those who could still stand and hold a sword were required to find the strength to do so again.

At his approach, a gold-masked Tower guardian opened the doors, and twin brass plates swung inwards across a bare stone floor.

Twenty figures stood in the chamber on the far side. Fourteen were baseline human counsellors and adjutants of the Tower, variously armoured and cloaked in fabrics of antiquity. Five were, like Samonas, members of the order proper – Custodians of the Legion, calm giants of destruction, their helms removed to expose wound-puckered faces. Among them was Diocletian, who would surely be announced Tribune soon, one of the last to withdraw from the great subterranean defeat. That one carried many injuries, some of them physical.

The twentieth, Constantin Valdor, Samonas’ master, towered over them all. His head was unhelmed, exposing a slim, dour face. His scalp was shaved to the skin, marked by a filigree of scars. Little trace of age lingered on his features, even though he had lived for a very long time. When he spoke, his voice was hard-edged but held low. Even for one of the Legio, even when set against the peerless adepts of that place, the command exercised over his body was astonishing and worthy of study – he would resemble a graven image one moment, utterly still, every facial muscle held in perfect stasis, before action demanded a response, and then the liquidity of movement was so abrupt as to scrape against the limits of physical law.

But even his fine armour was damaged. The many carved eyes and sigils and signs were scratched out, as if by a cat’s claws. In places, the gold of his battleplate was burned black-orange. His cloak was tattered, long strips of frayed fabric hanging from battered shoulders.

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A Black Library Publication

Published in Great Britain in 2017 by Black Library, Games Workshop Ltd,
Willow Road, Nottingham, NG7 2WS, UK.

Produced by Games Workshop in Nottingham.
Cover illustration by Dominik Oedinger.

Magisterium © Copyright Games Workshop Limited 2017. Magisterium, GW, Games Workshop, Black Library, The Horus Heresy, The Horus Heresy Eye logo, Space Marine, 40K, Warhammer, Warhammer 40,000, the ‘Aquila’ Double-headed Eagle logo, and all associated logos, illustrations, images, names, creatures, races, vehicles, locations, weapons, characters, and the distinctive likenesses thereof, are either ® or TM, and/or © Games Workshop Limited, variably registered around the world.
All Rights Reserved.

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78572-848-8

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

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