Pariah (Bequin: Warhammer 40,000 Book 1) by Dan Abnett

Author:Dan Abnett [Abnett, Dan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Games Workshop
Published: 2021-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 24

Which concerns his Holiness and the brass reading room

I walked across to join Hodi where he waited. I did not feel brave. Once I had reached him, he fell in step with me and we walked across the huge expanse of the open floor towards the high altar. Prayer drones buzzed past us. A man with a wooden tray called out the prices of the parchment blessings he was selling. A brief flurry of raindrops fell on us, milked from the microclimate high in the dome’s apex. The spatter of raindrops made me look down at the floor. It was mosaic, a huge mosaic, made up of trillions of tiled fragments. I had heard that only if you climbed up the dome to the very top, and peered in through the skylights at the summit, could you perceive the mosaic image in full and understand what it depicted. This felt, to me, like an adequate metaphor for my life.

An amplified voice was booming out from the direction of the high altar and the oratory platform. The voice had been booming for the whole time, but only now was I getting close enough for it to become the dominant sound.

I realised it was the voice of the Pontifex. It was his daily address and blessing, delivered from the high throne, through vast, augmetic vox systems, the speaker horns of which bloomed like ivory flowers from the mouths of giant, screaming angel statues around the oratory steps. As you approached the high altar, the volume became painful. Dense crowds of pilgrims, hundreds deep, had gathered to stand or kneel at the steps and listen. Many held aloft votive candles, or blessed scrolls, or medals of the God-Emperor, as if they might soak up some benediction that the Pontifex’s voice bestowed upon the air.

Precinct wardens, their painted masks beatific, parted the crowd to let Hodi through, and I followed in his slipstream. We went up the steps onto the lower oratory platform, right under the first outcrop of vox speakers. The noise was immense. The voice was so distorted by volume and echo, I could no longer make any distinct sense of it. It was just a noise. Pilgrims covered the steps, many in floods of tears, though whether this was a sign of religious rapture or hearing damage, I could not tell.

Further banks of speakers stood behind the first, huge chrome horns, cones and bells, growing out of the mouths and eyes of the vast statues and carvings that encased the walls on either side. They were all gilded. Prayer drones in great numbers hovered and buzzed in this area, stirring as the sound waves pulsed the air, surrounding the speaker horns like bees or hummingbirds around tropical blooms.

We were now advancing across the lower platform and down the throat of the monolithic ravine that led to the altar. Vertical columns of black and bronze organ pipes lined the cliffs on either side of us, rising some two or three hundred metres into the roof.

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