Free False Gods by Graham McNeill Page A

Loken had seen a monstrous, thirsting intelligence lurking within the horrid deformity that Jubal had become.
    Erebus was staring at him expectantly and as much as the Word Bearer had been welcomed within the ranks of the Sons of Horus, Loken wasn’t yet ready to share the horror beneath the Whisperheads with an outsider.
    Hurriedly he said, ‘I read of battles between the tribes of men on old Terra, before the coming of the Emperor, and they were said to use powers that were—’
    ‘Was this in The Chronicles of Ursh ?’ asked Erebus.
    ‘Yes. How did you know?’
    ‘I too have read it and I know of the passages to which you refer.’
    ‘Then you also know that there was talk of dark, primordial gods and invocations to them.’
    Erebus smiled indulgently. ‘Yes, and it is the work of outrageous taletellers and incorrigible demagogues to make their farragoes as exciting as possible, is it not? The Chronicles of Ursh is not the only text of that nature. Many such books were written before Unification and each writer filled page after page with the most outrageous, blood-soaked terrors in order to outdo his contemporaries, resulting in some works of… dubious value.’
    ‘You don’t think there’s anything to it then?’
    ‘Not at all,’ said Erebus.
    ‘Tull said that the Immaterium, as he called it, was the root of sorcery and magic.’
    ‘Sorcery and magic?’ laughed Erebus before locking his gaze with Loken. ‘He lied to you, my friend. He was a fraterniser with xenos breeds and an abomination in the sight of the Emperor. You know the word of an enemy cannot be trusted. After all, did the interex not falsely accuse us of stealing one of the kinebrach’s swords from the Hall of Devices? Even after the Warmaster himself vouchsafed that we did not?’
    Loken said nothing as ingrained bonds of brotherhood warred with the evidence of his own senses.
    Everything Erebus was saying reinforced his long held beliefs in the utter falsehood of sorcery, spirits and daemons.
    Yet he could not ignore what his instincts screamed at him: that Erebus was lying to him and the threat of Chaos was horribly real .
    Mithras Tull had become an enemy and Erebus was a brother Astartes, and Loken was astonished to find that he more readily believed the warrior of the interex.
    ‘As you have described it to me, there is no such thing as Chaos,’ promised Erebus.
    Loken nodded in agreement, but despaired as he realised that no one, not even the interex, had said exactly what kind of weapon had been stolen from the Hall of Devices.
    ‘D ID YOU HEAR ?’ asked Ignace Karkasy, pouring yet another glass of wine. ‘She’s got full access… to the Warmaster! It’s disgraceful. Here’s us, breaking our backs to create art worthy of the name, in the hope of catching the eye of someone important enough to matter, and she bloody swans in without so much as a by your leave and gets an audience with the Warmaster!’
    ‘I heard she has connections,’ nodded Wenduin, a petite woman with red hair and an hourglass figure that ship scuttlebutt had down as a firecracker between the sheets. Karkasy had gravitated towards her as soon as he had realised she was hanging on his every bitter word. He’d forgotten exactly what it was she did, though he vaguely remembered something about ‘compositions of harmonic light and shade’ – whatever that meant.
    Honestly, he thought, they’ll let anyone be a remembrancer these days.
    The Retreat was, as usual, thick with remembrancers: poets, dramatists, artists and composers, which had made for a bohemian atmosphere, while off-duty Army officers, naval ratings and crew were there for the civilians to impress with tales of books published, opening night ovations and scurrilous backstage hedonistic excess.
    Without its audience, the Retreat revealed itself as an uncomfortably vandalised, smoky bar filled with people who had nothing better to do. The gamblers had scraped the arched columns bare of gilt