The entrance to the cathedral was an enormous arch twenty times the height of a man. It was flanked by two enormous stone saints carrying bolter and chainsword. Perched over it, as if about to take flight, was another representation of the Angel of Fire. The local sculptors never seemed to tire of those.
No one stopped us from going in. I was astonished. Either the heretics really were confident or there were other safeguards against intrusion. I would not have taken a bet against the latter. Over the years I have developed a healthy distrust of things that seem too easy.
There were armed men wearing the robes of priests inside but they merely blessed us as we passed. They made a strange gesture in the air with their fingers. Their fingertips left a blazing trail in the air, an oddly shaped rune that seemed to leave its mark on your retina long after you had stopped looking at the original. Everyone ahead of us was dropping the bronze local coins into offering slots so we did the same.
Inside was the nave, a long corridor with a ceiling even higher than the entrance arch. Murals painted by an artist of genius covered it. The Angel of Fire led its cohorts against armies of daemons and orks and mutants, slaying them with its sword of flames. Its prophets watched armies of stony-visaged faithful with burning eyes.
From up ahead came a terrible smell of burning flesh mingled with incense. The sound of choirs singing an infernally beautiful hymn filled the air. We walked on. People greeted us and slapped us on the back, celebrating victory, drunk on the strange carnival atmosphere, assuming that we were like them.
For a moment, I felt my view of the world tip towards heresy. There were thousands of people here, and millions outside in the hive and billions scattered across the system, all of whom believed in the absolute truth of the Angel of Fire. I was one of a tiny band of unbelievers. Who was to say that they were wrong and I was right? Who was to judge the truth of the words I had been taught on Belial against the words that were spoken here?
The cathedral was gigantic and awesome, the sense of imminent presence all but overpowering. It was certainly stronger than anything I had ever encountered in the temples of the Imperium. It was as if some great mystic revelation was about to unfold and all I had to do was surrender to the truth of it and I would become part of something greater than myself.
Perhaps these people were right. Perhaps the Angel of Fire really did stand at the right hand of the Emperor. How was I to tell? I had never been to Blessed Terra or stood before the Emperor’s Throne and yet I took the existence of those things for granted, because I had been taught to, because I believed what was written in a book. These people had books too and they told a different and perhaps greater truth...
I felt a pinching grip on my arm and turned to look at Drake. There was a warning glance in his eyes.
‘Resist,’ he said. Perhaps his words shocked me out of the trance state. Perhaps it was something else entirely. I felt the lure of temptation recede but I was aware of how attractive it was and how easy it would be to succumb. I saw something in Drake’s eyes and for a moment I felt something like sympathy for him and I was convinced he felt something like sympathy for me. These were issues he spent his whole life dealing with. He was constantly confronted with challenges to his faith and had to defend it. Did he have his doubts? At that moment I felt certain that he did and that he had to work harder than I to maintain his faith.
I noticed up ahead of us that there was another great arched doorway but this one was barred by lines of armed men who refused all admittance. Instead, lines of people separated to the left and right of the great aisle, passing up stairs and out of sight. Macharius indicated we should go to the right and we joined the crowds going up that way. It seemed better than milling aimlessly in front of the archway until someone became suspicious.
We moved up the steps with the crowd. The stairwell snaked upwards and after what seemed like hours we found ourselves in a huge gallery that looked down into the heart of the cathedral. We gazed out into an immense space. The ceiling was so high above us that it seemed like clouds had formed below us. Perhaps that was only the incense and the smoke of burning flesh from the enormous caged altar. I realised now why the sound of the choir was so loud. It drowned out the sound of the screams of the men being burned alive below me.
People all around watched enthralled as the priests performed their rituals. In the centre of the cathedral was the most beautiful statue of the Angel of Fire I had yet seen. It was perfect and lifelike in every detail. It seemed as if a steel angel with wings of fire really had incarnated itself before us. It looked as if it was just about to open its blind-seeming eyes and gaze down upon us in judgement. Perhaps it was just the flickering of the flames from the altar but it seemed to tremble with life. As I watched a great crane arm lifted the cage full of smouldering corpses from the altar. A second one swung a new cage full of living men into position. Another cage was rolled into place. The people around me watched enthralled. Clearly a high point of the ritual had been reached.
For a moment, there was silence from the choir and the crowd. You could hear only the panicked screams of the men in the cage and the subdued roar of the flames below them. They were burning with a low intensity now, clearly not at their full ritual strength. On a high lectern a priest of the Sons of the Flame spread his arms wide and began to preach a sermon. He talked about heresy. He talked about atonement. He talked about punishing the invaders who had defiled the sacred soil of Karsk. Then he spoke a word and the choir began to sing again, ancient ritual words invoking the blessing of the Angel, asking mercy for the souls offered up and hope that their impure souls would achieve grace as they fed the Emperor’s great servant, the Angel of Fire.
I saw it now in the ancient, beautiful Gothic words of the sacred song. It was an evil parody of the Imperial liturgy. It echoed the words but used them to put a shimmering gloss on this awful sacrifice.
Part of me, the doubting part, whispered that the true Imperial ritual did the same thing, asking men to give up their lives and souls for the Emperor. I quashed it. There is a difference between asking men to act heroically and truly of their own free will and feeding them into a fire in white-hot cages.
I knew looking at the beautiful statue with its beatific face that whatever it represented was nothing holy but something evil and clever which used a shroud of holiness to conceal a corrupt and rotten heart. Below me men burned as flames leapt higher. I thought it could be me down there and realised that we were doing the right thing by opposing the cult even if it cost us our lives. Then it occurred to me that it was most likely going to do just that.
We gaped in horror as more of our comrades were burned. The local people watched agog. I wondered what had made them come. Was it the spectacle? Were they particularly devout? Was this some form of entertainment for them? They did not look any different from the average citizen of Belial and yet here they were, watching people die as if it were entertainment.
I looked from face to face. Some of them wore expressions of awe. One or two of them licked their lips and sweated as if they were taking some sort of pleasure in the brutish spectacle. Most looked a little stunned. I would like to say it was all down to the unholy power of the ritual the Sons of the Flame were enacting but I am sure it was not.
Many of the people looked on, eyes narrowed, features concentrated. They were simply fascinated by the fact of death. For many of them, this was as close as they were ever going to come to it until the day they died. There was an awful mystery here, beyond even that of the rituals of the Angel. I think they were hoping to see something mystical, to get a glimpse of the reality that lies beyond reality, to be witnesses at the moment of transition from life to death, to see something spiritually meaningful.