Oriens was the temple where Meh’lindi had been. Oriens was where she had found the genestealer coven. They must walk in her footsteps. They must seek for more relics identical to that which the vigilante had worn.
On their way to the Oriens temple they spied, far along a great boulevard, a massive edifice quite out of keeping with the local architecture. In place of domes and arcades: soaring buttressed battlemented walls and a central spire.
‘Looks rather like a courthouse,’ said Grimm with a qualm.
No such institution was marked on the meagre city-map of Shandabar in the
General Guide
.
Nor had they noticed any mirror-masked Arbites patrolling the crowded streets hitherto. ‘Better take a look later on,’ suggested the little man.
A
S THE TRIO
approached the place where the Oriens Temple ought to be, buildings became flattened ruins. A whole neighbourhood had been devastated, and nothing done by way of reconstruction. Even so, pilgrims were converging through the dusty rubble. Soon, what a swarm of touts there were! Not to mention beggars and fortune tellers, souvenir sellers, and vendors of savoury titbits such as stuffed mice or mulled wine. Booths and stalls and kiosks mushroomed all over, as if a fair was being held upon a former battleground. Amidst the devastation, trade was thriving. Customers were legion. Touts buzzed like wasps around juicy fruit. Would-be guides accosted visitors.
To prevent pestering, they hired a guide – a skinny middle-aged fellow whose very appearance seemed something of a deterrent. Due to some overactive gland the guide’s eyes bulged. At some time a knife slash had cleft his upper lip. Perhaps he had been operated upon ineptly because of a deformity. As though as a consequence of his cleft lip, words spilled out of him volubly. Samjani was his name.
‘Thanking for hiring, three sirs, coming here to Shandabar to be beholding the Divine Visage!’
‘Yours not being too divine, eh, Sam?’ commented Grimm. ‘Business being slow for you compared with the other guides?’ Samjani grinned hideously. ‘Normally no one bothering about facial beauty, not here at Oriens.’ He leered hideously. ‘Not here where deformed hybrids were once lurking!’ To what fine dramatic effect Samjani used his split lip and bulging eyes, to suggest the half-human spawn of genestealers. During normal times he would be a fine, frisson-inducing guide.
‘Conceding, short sir, that my looks are jinxing my luck a little when pilgrims being mainly intent upon the Holy Face.’ Indeed, the face of Him-on-Earth would be unveiled two days hence at the Occidens Temple.
Clarification about the nature of that ceremony could await a visit to the Occidens. Meanwhile, here they were at Oriens where Meh’lindi had once been.
Yet where was Oriens amidst all this ruination? Samjani led them up a mound of rubble. ‘Being before you!’
Amidst the detritus, across a wide area, vents gaped. Those vents evidently gave access to a subterranean maze of tunnels, catacombs, chambers and crypts. Debris had been cleared from below ground. Ladders led down into those tunnels which had once been infested by the deformed coven – their heartland, which had finally been cleansed by armoured Space Marines, a legend come to life. Of course this was a rightful place of pilgrimage. Though why had the Oriens Temple never been rebuilt?
‘Priests of Occidens not wishing rebuilding of Oriens, sirs.’ It transpired that there had always been rivalry between Occidens and Oriens. Although lesser in status, Oriens had grown rich because it hosted a giant jar containing clippings, it was claimed, from the Emperor’s fingernails. He-on-Earth was immortal. His spirit reached throughout the galaxy. As if still joined to His person, those nail clippings continued to grow slowly. Priests of Oriens would shave off parings from the divine fingernails, set those in silver reliquaries, and sell them to devotees.
Whereas the Occidens Temple could only display the True Face once in a holy year, every fifty standard years.
The coven had subverted the entire temple administration of Oriens. Their foul magus had become high priest. When all the coven were slaughtered by the Space Marines, and the temple razed in the process – along with much of the neighbourhood, which the temple had owned – no administration existed any longer.
The local Pontifex Urba et Mundi should have appointed a new high priest for Oriens. However, during the uprising of genestealer hybrids this dignitary of the Ecclesiarchy had been assassinated in his palace. By virtue of seniority, his rightful successor should have been the high priest of the Imperial cult of the Occidens Temple.
‘Comprehending me, three sirs?’
The elderly high priest of Occidens had refused to appoint a new high priest to Oriens. However beholden an appointee might be to begin with, new power would soon banish old allegiances. Piously the high priest of Occidens had insisted that first of all his own elevation must be properly ratified by higher authority. His argument was that if ungodly monsters had polluted one of the major temples of the holy city, how could the high priest of any other temple be worthy to elevate him?
‘Years being spent compiling a heresy report...’
Finally this report was dispatched thirty light years to the office of the Cardinal Astral, who was responsible for a diocese many hundreds of cubic light years in volume. Since the report had not been properly submitted by the office of the Pontifex of Sabulorb (he being dead and unable to sign), a clerk returned the report, according to Samjani’s gossip.
In the meantime the scrupulous high priest had died of old age. His acting successor resubmitted the report along with a request for his own formal ordination as senior cleric – which was rightly the business of the vacant office of pontifex on Sabulorb. Thus the decades passed by.
The ruins of Oriens proved as worthy of pilgrimage as the erstwhile Hall of the Holy Fingernail. Beneficiaries were the guides and vendors – who all paid a hefty tithe of their takings to the supervising Occidens Temple.
‘Ultramarines wuz here,’ said Lex.
‘Indeed, big sir.’
‘Aaah...’
Lex could not quite sustain the role of uncouth barbarian in such a context. He must examine certain relics on vendors’ trays.
The majority of these relics proved to be forgeries: mere solid models of bolt shells – with no armour-piercing tip, nor propellant, nor mass reactive detonator, nor explosive.
After careful scrutiny, Lex advised Grimm to purchase two genuine explosive bolt shells. The proposed price was ridiculously inflated, steep as the sky. Lex was lofty too, and massive. The vendor dared not refuse Grimm’s offer after Lex flexed himself and growled about counterfeits and blasphemy.
Finally they came to the exposed crypts.
A
S
J
AQ GAZED
down from above into one such crypt, his lips formed the name
Meh’lindi
.
In the guise of a monster she had crept through that very chamber which was now vulgarised by gawping sightseers, none of whom knew a scrap about her anguished bravery, no more than any of these guides did, nor anyone else on Sabulorb apart from Jaq himself and Grimm and Lex.
Such vulgarity! Jaq could have leapt down into the crypt with a scourge. He could have flailed about him to cleanse these ruins of infatuated tourists. How dared they obliterate her dusty footprints of long ago with their own trivial tread?
‘Descending now to be viewing the monsters’ lair?’ prompted Samjani.
Deep in his throat Jaq growled at their guide, who was one of these selfsame instruments of vulgarity. Why should he not growl like a beast? Might he not need to wind his desolate passion up to a pitch of frenzy and temporary surrender of his own rational will?
Hastily Grimm intervened: ‘So what happened, Sam – I’m meaning, what was happening to that jar of fingernails, eh?’
‘Smashing and scattering during fighting, abhuman sir. His holy nails still turning up amidst rubble, often difficult to be identifying.’
‘I bet they are,’ agreed Grimm.
‘Keeping a nail for oneself being punishable by flogging. All surviving nails being in safe keeping of Occidens. Half-shekel fee for finding one here!’
‘Nails still growing, eh?’
‘Nails under lock and key at Occidens, never being on display.’
‘You amazing me.’
‘During time of my great-grandad many bloody brawls were occurring between the disciples of the nails and followers of the True Face...’
Jaq wandered from vent to vent, pausing to gaze down in lengthy bitter reverie. Lex attended him silently.
F
OR
L
EX, TOO
, this was a place of potential purity despoiled by thieves. Here was a place where noble Space Marines had fought valiantly and victoriously; and where some had no doubt died, their progenoid glands to be harvested respectfully by medics. The blue-hued Ultramarines had come; they had cleansed; they had gone – leaving behind seeds of legend and by no means as many unused explosive bolts as the trade in relics suggested.
How it would have heartened Lex to obtain a whole satchel of ammunition clips. Yet might he not then have felt himself to be all the more an impostor? Someone aping a Marine on account of his brawn – when he truly was a Marine in reality! Aye, a renegade knight who had torn the service studs from his brow... Let Rogal Dorn, the dawn of his being, remain with him through this time of self-imposed exile, for a greater good.
Despite Grimm’s best efforts, at this meditative moment Samjani suddenly scurried to accost Lex. Goggling and leering enthusiastically, he exclaimed, ‘You could almost be pretending yourself an Ultramarine, big sir!’
Pretend? How so? By leaping down into a crypt, wearing no armour at all? By dashing through crowded tunnels, fighting his way through all those thieves and beggars!
Pretend to be an Ultramarine – when he was rightfully a Fist! Lex’s hand swept back reflexively, the broad bat of his palm about to swat Samjani.
Grimm interposed. ‘Sam! There’s a courthouse in this city, ain’t there? Being a courthouse, being a courthouse!’ he babbled.
Lex withheld himself. The courthouse, yes indeed. Oh, if he broke their guide’s neck – if he knocked his head off – this wouldn’t matter one whit to a courthouse. Yet that a courthouse should be here, where none had been mentioned by Meh’lindi: ah, that could be a nuisance.
Mundane crimes were of no concern to an Imperial courthouse. Murders and robberies? Let the local police take care of those. Crimes against the Imperium were the business of a courthouse. What were the trio seemingly involved in, but terrible covert treason?
Did Samjani realize the narrowness of his escape? Impassioned pilgrims who hired him might often be volatile in their behaviour. ‘Being a courthouse, certainly,’ chirped the guide obligingly. ‘Construction commencing just a few years after the Ultramarines were visiting.’
It figured. The subversion of an important temple of the Imperial cult by sly inhuman hybrids – and the corruption of this world’s administration – was proof of laxity. Laxity was a crime.
According to Samjani the hereditary governor of the time, Hakim Bad-shah, had been absolved of heresy along with his family. The Badshah dynasty could continue. Massive fines upon the Badshahs paid for the precinct courthouse, which took ten years to complete, and for its maintenance.
Samjani mentioned that the gates of the courthouse were generally closed. Those judges within seemed mainly involved in their own affairs and intrigues.
Jaq was paying attention by now.
‘Are the marshals of the court leading no regular patrols through Shandabar?’ Not to Samjani’s knowledge.
‘Are the Arbites sending no execution teams in search of offenders?’
Samjani seemed not to know what an execution team might be. ‘People killing themselves readily enough,’ Samjani said. He refused to elaborate. Perhaps he was merely alluding to the religious rivalries and brawls.
P
RESENTLY THEY LEFT
the crowded wasteland, and their informant, to walk across the city in the direction of the Occidens Temple, by way of that courthouse, so as to study it. The trek could take two to three hours, if one paused to admire lesser shrines or the great fish market or the camelopard stockyard, with its vista of the governor’s palace not far beyond.
W
HEN THEY CAME
close to the immense courthouse they watched for a while from the far side of a broad, thronged thoroughfare. The looming sprawl of the courthouse occupied a whole city block. Evidently several hectares of buildings had been demolished to make way for such an edifice – unless those buildings had already been casualties of the genestealer uprising.
Stout walls soared upward, inset with hundreds of lancet windows which were too slim for any human body to squirm through yet which would serve excellently as firing slits. Bastions jutted. Buttresses were fortified. Grimacing gargoyles poked from beneath crenellated parapets and pinnacled turrets. Surmounting the central spire was an orb in the shape of a grinning skull. All along the upper reaches of the courthouse, an imposing frieze ten metres high bore the repeated motif of a jawless skull interspersed with the motto
PAX IMPERIALIS – LEX IMPERIALIS.
The Emperor’s Peace, the Emperor’s Law.
For Lex to see his own name coincidentally writ high and huge seemed such an indictment of his own desertion of duty – as though that frieze were displaying the names of notorious criminals!
‘Huh, well my own name ain’t up there,’ joked Grimm. ‘They ain’t looking for me yet.’
Were the judges looking for anyone in particular? True to Samjani’s account, the great ornamented plasteel main gates were firmly closed.
This could be due to the sheer crush of pilgrims during the holiest time of a holy year. Judges in residence might not wish a paste of people to be squeezed through their portals willy-nilly into whatever great courtyard lay behind those gates.
The reason could also be, as Samjani implied, that this courthouse had become preoccupied by its own internal politics, since Sabulorb seemed genuinely pacified.