The Emperor's Legion (Watchers of the Throne #1) - Chris Wraight Page 0,73
lazuli and copper, finer than any luxury I had witnessed in the Palace itself. Among them were scraps and slops of unnatural flesh, steaming as if cooked on the frigid air. I was no scholar of the arcane, but I could guess what those things must have been, and there were so many of them – a legion of the corrupt, lying entwined with the corpses of their victims.
In the centre of the crater was a mighty gate shaped into a high arch. There was nothing human in that thing’s construction – it was a mere twist and a skein of bone, glimmering like cold flesh, and yet high enough for a Warhound Titan to have walked through. I could not imagine that it had been there for very long – even in such a desolate place it would have been discovered and investigated long ago – and so this too must have been some construction of sorcery, linked to the residue of the daemonic that littered the crater floor.
It was a place of terror and amazement, an anomaly beyond any I had witnessed in my long career. I might have simply stood dumbfounded before it, drinking in the spectacle, but in truth these marvels soon left little impression on me. The Custodians, in whose presence I had been so cowed on Terra, did not inspire their previous awe. The thousands of Space Marines, our Imperium’s great defenders, gave me only a passing sense of majesty.
That had nothing to do with them. It had everything to do with the presence at their heart.
I started to move again, stumbling down the far slope, moving like a sleepwalker. I heard Jek calling out, trying to hold me back, but I didn’t listen. I was hardly aware of anything around me, and only dimly noticed the blurred outlines of the giant warriors as they laboured. They paid me no attention. I was just one of many functionaries and technicians now descending on the site to study it and make it secure. They could have no conception of whom I served, and even if they did I guessed they would pay it little attention.
I don’t know how long it took me to reach the centre. Probably a long time, dragged out by stumbling. Eventually, though, I saw the xenos gate soaring up before me, and I saw the stars under its arch blur and tremble, and knew I was close.
He was there, waiting. I had no idea then just how far he had come, nor what perils he had mastered, but he was there. He was surrounded by his great and austere counsellors and champions, none of whom so much as looked at me. They conferred among themselves, looking to their weapons, every movement thick with fatigue.
I knew who he was. I recognised the pictures from the devotional tracts. We had been served with those images from childhood, told to meditate on them incessantly, even to pray to them, instructed never to let them out of our mind. Quadrillions had seen those templates of heroism and reflected on the glory that had been, using them as exemplars of the human spirit and hoping, perhaps even heretically, that they would return one day.
I never thought it would happen. I did not believe it possible. I thought the masses were ignorant and weak, and that our salvation could only come from those powers we still retained, not the legends of a half-remembered past.
Alone of all those assembled there, he noticed me limping amid the giants. He looked past the Custodians who stood there, their spears streaked with blood. He looked past the captains of the Space Marines and the grotesque lords of Mars, and fixed me with cold blue eyes.
I could feel my heart racing out of control. The whole place was like an intoxicated dream, a phantasm sent to drain the last sanity from our tortured bodies, and yet I could not deny its reality. When he spoke, the voice was accented strangely, almost unintelligibly, the voice of another age. Despite my attire, he knew instantly who I was from the sigils of office on my environment suit, and was careful to address me with the utmost precision.
‘Cancellarius Senatorum Imperialis,’ he said.
It was only then that any of the others turned towards me. There was a shield-captain close by in burnished gold, one I should perhaps have recognised, but by then it was a challenge merely to remain conscious.