by Ben Counter
'The hall has responded to our comms.' said the Ordo Malleus pilot in the Thunderhawk's cockpit. 'If the Malleus crew on the Rubicon had mourned the loss of two of their pilots on Sophano Secundus, they hadn't shown it. Wе can land on the roof.'
'Do it.' said Alaric.
The Malleus-trained crews were a strange breed. All of them had emotional repression doctrination and Alaric knew some of them even had cortical detonators that would activate in extremes of terror or elation, so that even if some Chaos power corrupted them the experience would kill them before they did any harm. They were little more than servitors, denied the chance to ever develop a fully-fledged human personality. It seemed to Alaric that countless lives had to be wasted or destroyed just to make the fight against Chaos possible. Of course, that in itself was a victory for the Enemy.
The Thunderhawk passed over the roof of the hall and the top of the cliff, slewing round as it decelerated. Alaric could see the siege lines of the ferals - they had dug trenches in concentric circles and piles of spoil marked the places were they were undoubtedly digging tunnels in the hope of finding a way in through the foundations. There would be enough vaults and cellars beneath the Hall of Remembrance to make it more likely than not that they would succeed. To the rear of their lines huge bonfires burned, with wild-haired, paint-daubed figures dancing around them. Alaric was sure he made out mutations and flickers of sorcery among them as the Thunderhawk descended.
The ferals couldn't trouble the Thunderhawk. For ranged weaponry they had only catapults and bows. The Thunderhawk's landing gear lowered and the gunship touched down on the roof of the Hall of Remembrance, its engines leaving great scorch marks on the cliff face.
The exit ramp lowered, letting in the smell of old stone and burning forest. Squad Alaric and Squad Genhain dropped down onto the pockmarked marble tiles of the roof.
An old, barrel-chested, battle-scarred deacon ran over from a lookout position on the edge of the pediment. He carried a battered autogun and wore grimy, tattered Ecclesiarchical robes. A few young novice preachers and archivists with haunted eyes manned the walls, now looking in undisguised awe at the huge armoured warriors emerging from the Thunderhawk.
The deacon was the only one there who looked like he was worth a damn in a fight. The days of the Hall of Remembrance were numbered.
'Throne be praised!' bellowed the deacon as he approached the disembarking Marines. 'Long have we prayed for deliverance. We had begun to doubt that reinforcements would ever arrive. And yet we have been sent Space Marines in our plight! Truly the Emperor has heard our pleadings!'
'We're not reinforcements.' said Alaric bluntly. 'Are you in charge here?'
The deacon's shoulders dropped. If he had been hanging on to the possibility of the hall's survival, that hope was now gone. But servants of the Emperor did not bemoan their lot, and he did his best not to let it show. 'I am in command on the roof.' said the deacon.
'And below?'
The deacon sighed. 'No one is commanding the defence. We are not soldiers - I was, once, but I can't command a siege. With Confessor Arhelghast dead Senior Archivist Serevic has rank but he's just a scholar.'
'Good. I need to see him as soon as possible.'
'I'll have one of the novices show you down. But... brother... if one of you could stay. Just one of you. Think what could be lost here, think what the Enemy could do to us. One Marine could do the fighting of a hundred men, everyone knows it.'
'Farfallen stands or dies alone, deacon. I need all my battle-brothers for when we take the fight to the enemy. Do what you can to survive, but my Marines will not die here for you.'
The deacon looked like he was about to argue, but he bit back the words. He had not chosen to lead, but he was the only one here who could - now hope of survival was gone, perhaps he would be able to face death on its own terms and realise the only fight he had to win was against despair.
THE HALL OF Remembrance was cut deeply into the rock, a dense warren of vaulted corridors and high-ceilinged chapels that seemed to have been designed with no reason or purpose. Piles of ledgers and scrolls were crammed into every available room and alcove, and some corridors were lined with them. The hall, if it had been designed as anything, had not been designed as a library. Alaric picked one volume up as he passed - its cover identified it as a record of the tithes paid to one of the sub-chapels on Volcanis Ultor. The last entry was three hundred years old.
The whole place stank of rotting paper. The novice who led them down into the Hall - a gangly, hollow-eyed novice preacher carrying an antique lasgun he clearly didn't know how to use properly - took the Grey Knights lower and lower until the chanting of the ferals outside could be heard through the walls. The boy was terrified of the Grey Knights - very few Imperial citizens indeed ever saw a Space Marine, let alone got this close to them. It must have been like a dream lain over the nightmare of the siege.
'How is all this organised?' Genhain asked, echoing Alaric's own thoughts.
'It's... it's not, really, sir.' answered the novice. 'The archivists keep it all in order, in their heads. They don't write it down. The word of the Emperor is in the hearts and minds of His subjects, not written down where heretics might twist it for their own use.'
Alaric sighed inwardly. Like all Imperial organizations the Ecclesiarchy matched its immense size with its enormous variety. Every preacher and confessor did things differently, and in spite of the zealously conservative synods on Earth and Ophelia VII, matters of dogma and interpretation sometimes made one branch of the Imperial cult look like a whole different religion to the next. The traditions by which the Hall of Remembrance did its sacred work evidently had more to do with the prominence Farfallen once had than with the Emperor's own will - the senior archivists had protected their own coveted position on the garden world by making sure only they understood the hall's archives.
The central levels of the hall contained the archivist's offices. Most were empty - the hall had by then lost most of its staff. Novices' cells led off from one wall, with exhausted novices recuperating in a couple of them. One hard bed contained a body, the bedclothes pulled up over the head, a well-thumbed copy of the Hymnal Imperator placed reverentially on the chest.
'Senior Archivist Serevic.' said the guide meekly, indicating a carved door of dark wood and standing aside. Alaric opened the door and a cloud of heavy purplish incense flowed out. The novice stifled a cough as Alaric entered.
Alaric's enhancements meant the incense and darkness didn't bother him. It was still a dispiriting sight - Serevic, an unassuming, scholarly man in late middle age, bent over a lectern as he pored over a huge illuminated tome, had evidently shut himself up in the room some time ago.
Serevic looked around at the intrusion, evidently about to remonstrate with whichever novice had dared to disturb him. When he saw Alaric filling the doorway his watery eyes widened in shock and he half-fell off his chair, stumbling back against the far wall and dislodging tottering piles of papers and books.
'Who...? Throne preserve us!'
Alaric stepped into the room. He noticed an unmade bed in the corners, scraps of paper everywhere, books heaped against the walls. 'Archivist Serevic?'
'Senior... Senior Archivist. Machas Lavanian Serevic'
'Good. Acting Brother-Captain Alaric of the Grey Knights, in the service of the Emperor's Inquisition.'
'The Inquisition? We... we are Emperor-fearing servants here, there is no need...'
Alaric held up a hand. 'We are not here to judge you. Something dark has come to the Trail and we need information from you if we are to fight it.'
Serevic tried to compose himself, but his voice still wavered. 'I have heard them singing at night, even here. They say their Prince is here.'
'They are right. It is rising somewhere on the Trail, but if we are to fight it we must find out where. The violence here is happening all over the Trail and there is not much time left.'
The other archivists a
re dead. 'There is so much that has been lost to us.'
'This will not be lost. The Prince of a Thousand Faces will rise at the burial place of Saint Evisser.'
'here was a long pause. 'There is no burial place.'
Alaric stepped closer so he was looming right over Serevic. 'The Prince needs Evisser's body to come back. That is the only reason he is on the Trail at all.'
'Brother-Captain, there is no burial place. There is no Saint. That the Trail will soon die proves this. We were forsaken a long time ago.'
Serevic was steeling himself. This was a moment he had prepared for, which meant it was important to him since he was clearly not prepared to lead the defence of the Hall.
'What happened here?' asked Alaric.
'The Emperor's Inquisition cannot save us, brother-captain. The Emperor's Church must keep its own counsel.'
'Very well.' Alaric turned to Justicar Genhain, who waited just outside the door. 'Burn all this.'
Serevic gasped. 'Burn? But... this is sacred, this is our...'
'The Hall of Remembrance will fall. This knowledge will fall into the hands of the Enemy. If it is of no use to the Emperor, then it is nothing more than a weapon for his foes.'
'There is no reason! No reason! This is... this is sacrilege! The sacred word must remain! To destroy all this is no more than heresy!'
'I first thought.' said Alaric carefully, 'that the archivists only wanted to maintain their own positions here. But that's not why you keep all this knowledge organized only in your own memories. Is it, Serevic?'
Brother Ondurin had unslung his incinerator and a blue flame was flickering at its nozzle.
'You are here to guard this knowledge. You are here because the Ecclesiarchy knows something about the Trail, and St Evisser, and Ghargatuloth, and they want it kept secret. But we are offering to destroy it all, so that once the ferals tear you apart there will be no secrets left to find. So why shouldn't we burn it all? We would be helping you. Why do you care about saving any of this?'
Serevic's voice was a whimper. 'Because... I'm not finished...'
Alaric held up a hand. Ondurin lowered the barrel of his incinerator, which had been poised to send a gout of flame into the books piled up in the nearest cell. 'The Ecclesiarchy should have appointed a stronger-willed man to keep their secrets. Tell us what we need to know or it will all burn, and you will watch it.'
A fat tear rolled down Serevic's face. 'I can't tell you. Throne of Earth, they took me here as a child, and even when I didn't know anything they told me it is a mortal sin to tell...' Serevic looked up. His lip trembled. 'But... I can show you.'
KELKANNIS EVISSER WAS nobody. He was a novice adept sent to the tiny Administratum offices on Solshen XIX back when it was a newly-settled planet earmarked for use as an agri-world. He was no more than a name on a roster, just like trillions of men and women who would never amount to anything more.
It was late in Evisser's life when Solshen XIX found itself in the path of greenskin raiders. The orks belonged to just one of thousands of warbands who marauded through the frontiers of the Imperium, and their periodic bouts of carnage amongst scattered Imperial settlements were as much a part of an Imperial citizen's life as prayer, work and obedience.
Homing remained when they left Solshen XIX. Hothing but burning ruins.
And Kelkannis Evisser.
Evisser was not the only sole survivor in the Imperium. Whole mythologies had grown up around them - to some they were unlucky, having used up the good luck of everyone around them. To others they were lucky charms, protected by the Emperor's grace. To the Administratum a sole survivor was just another adept, to be moved sideways while the settlement on Solshen XIX was rebuilt.
But Kelkannis Evisser would not be drawn back into the vast machine of the Administratum. He had seen the will of the Emperor as the greenskins butchered his colleagues. He had seen how even the orks were, in their own way, instruments of the Emperor's hand -they had been sent to show Evisser the Emperor's infinite mercy and strength, the blinding heat of His wrath, the endless depth of His belief in mankind's destiny to rule the stars. Kelkannis had been chosen to survive precisely because he was nobody, just like the trillions who made up the Emperor's flock, and it was Kelkannis's duty to show them all how the Emperor's message applied to the lowly and the exalted alike.
They thought him mad. He refused to prove them right. Those sent to denounce him listened, and in turn came to believe that it was something more than blind fortune that had saved him from the rampaging greenskins. The mere fact that the Administratum could not make him another part of their machine made him special. Even the faceless, endless bureaucracy of the Imperium could not crush his spirit.
He was more than just a man with divinely inspired grace who spread the word of the Emperor. He was hope itself - hope that the lowly men and women of the Imperium could play a meaningful part in the Emperor's plan for humanity, hope that a single soul could mean something to the Imperium.
If there was one thing the people of the Imperium needed, it was hope. Worlds clamoured for Evisser to visit them, and when he came the governors and Arbites were powerless to stop immense crowds flocking to hear him speak. It was not long before some started speaking of future sainthood.
Then came the miracles. A savage plague was decimating the lower city of one of Trepytos's port hives. Evisser went to the heart of the quarantined zone and stayed there for six months, easing the dying hours of thousands, giving to millions the comfort of knowing they died in the Emperor's grace. That was miracle enough, but in spite of spending every waking moment at the bedsides of the dying Evisser was untouched by the plague.
An uprising of mutant slaves on Magnos Omicron threatened to tip the forge world into anarchy. Evisser walked miraculously through the gunfire to speak with the rebellion's leaders and convince them, through nothing but the clarity of the Emperor's word as it was spoken through him, to lay down their arms and return beneath the Imperial yoke.
In the void between the star systems starships followed Evisser everywhere he went, for as he passed he left the warp cold and still. Not one ship was lost to warp storms or madness so long as they followed. In this way the Trail was first marked out, systems linked by the journeys of Evisser as he ministered to the despairing and the downtrodden.
He brought the Emperor's grace to deaths that would otherwise mean nothing. He left a wake of renewed faith and diligence everywhere he went. The citizens of the Trail adored him and began to celebrate him vociferously - within a year of his miracle at Trepytos there were festivals and parades in his name. Chapels were dedicated to his spirit. Soon, the speculations of sainthood were forgotten and people began to refer to Saint Evisser as a matter of course - for what else was a saint, but an individual made graceful and miraculous by the Emperor's will, an embodiment of His mastery over humanity?
And so as a living saint, Kelkannis Evisser did wonders that came to bear his name. He spent decades travelling to almost every system in the Trail, and wherever he trod shrines and chapels were built in celebration. The Hall of Remembrance itself was built where he first landed on Farfallen, for when he stepped off the exit ramp of his shuttle it was said that every flower on the planet suddenly bloomed in exaltation. He blessed the dark towers of Volcanis Ultor and the subterranean geothermal forges of Magnos Omicron, the fields of Victrix Sonora and the teeming oceans of Solshen XIX, the very stars that shone down on the Trail.
It was due to St Evisser that a tract of frontier space had become a populous and wealthy cluster of worlds. Pilgrims came and brought prosperity with them, and in thanks the wealthy and powerful built monuments to St Evisser. They refused any overtures of humility from the Ecclesiarchy and built gold-domed cathedrals, jewel-studded statues, museums of priceless art in Evisser's name.
A saint had been born to the Trail to show how the Emperor looked out as lord over all humanity - the wealthy and the poor, the powerful and the meaningles
s, those ministered by his church and those who toiled ignorant in the hives and the forges.
And while the Trail of Evisser endured, Evisser himself would never truly die.
ALARIC SNAPPED THE book shut crossly. Serevic had shown him to a locked vault beneath the hall, where books and scrolls lay strewn seemingly at random across the floor. But Serevic had known exactly what each one contained, and had picked out for Alaric only those that were relevant - the true and corroborated history of St Evisser.
And when the eulogising and myth-making were taken out, there was very little truth indeed. All Alaric had was a skeleton of a saint's life. No details. No description of Evisser's family, his companions, even what he looked like. Of course, the history of the Imperium had never been written down in its entirety - such a thing was impossible - and events of the distant past were coloured by interpretation and bias if they survived at all. But there had to be something more. Why else would the Hall of Remembrance have trained its archivists to maintain such secrecy over St Evisser?
Alaric was almost alone in the darkness of the vaults. A terrified novice waited by the door, attending on Alaric to show that the hall, though besieged, still observed the protocols that one Imperial servant deserved to receive from another. Genhain and Brother Ondurin, his incinerator still held ready, waited just outside the door. Genhain and Alaric's Marines were in a defensive cordon around the vault, and they were not just there for show - Alaric was sure he could hear scratching beneath the vault where the ferals were tunnelling under the Hall. It was only a matter of time before they got in.
'Justicar Genhain.' said Alaric. Genhain walked in, leaving Ondurin at the door. 'What do you make of this?'
Genhain walked over to the table Alaric sat at, and looked at the pages lying open. They were from a sketchy, official history of the Trail, and Serevic had assured Alaric that this description of St Evisser, along with a few documents confirming some of his miracles, constituted the body of information the Ecdesiarchy had wanted to protect.
