With the lid down, an observer probably wouldn’t notice there
was anything peculiar about his forehead, and even if he did, he’d likely
mistake it for a common blemish or meaningless little bump.
Dieter swiped his hair down over his brow, and that was
better still. Cosmetics might help too, when he could lay his hands on the right
shade.
Finally he murmured a charm. Illusion and disguise were the
province of the Grey wizards, but the minor lore available to all magicians
included petty charms of diversion and obfuscation, and it was his good fortune
that he’d learned a couple.
With the enchantment in place, the third eye was virtually
invisible, or at least he thought so. But perhaps he was so desperate he was
deluding himself. He turned towards Leopold Mann, who, despite his lack of any
eyes at all, seemed to perceive as much as any sighted person. “Tell me the
truth. Is it hidden?”
“I can’t tell it’s there,” shrilled the outlaw chieftain,
sitting on the ground with his back against an elm, and a strip of bacon, the
last of his breakfast, in his clawed and furry hand. “That doesn’t mean a witch
hunter wouldn’t.”
Dieter shrugged. “I’ll just have to take my chances.”
“No,” said Mann, “you don’t. You’re one of us now, so why not
stay with us? Why go back to Altdorf where you’ll be in danger every moment?”
“I already was, just by virtue of serving the Red Crown.”
“Not like you will be henceforth. You think you can hold the
eye shut, but what if you can’t? What if the god marks you a second time, with a
change you can’t conceal? The authorities will burn you for certain.”
Yes, they would, and perhaps if Dieter had any sense, he
would remain with the brigands. Like Jarla, Mama Solveig, and all the cultists
except for Adolph, they’d been friendly and hospitable to him, and Krieger
wouldn’t be able to get at him if he joined their fellowship.
Yet he still wanted his old life back. He could live it while
concealing a deformity if he had to, and maybe he wouldn’t, not permanently,
anyway. He was a magician, and it was a kind of magic that had altered him.
Given time, perhaps he could find a way to change himself back.
The alternative was to abandon not merely his possessions and
station but his very self, to become completely and irredeemably the creature
that had revelled in smashing Adolph’s skull and craved the filthy lore of Chaos
the way a sot craved drink. What was the difference between such a surrender and
death?
“Thank you for the offer,” he said. “It’s more than generous,
considering how we began.”
Mann waved the bacon in a dismissive gesture. “The bloodshed
was Adolph’s fault, not yours.”
“Be that as it may, I can’t stay. Maybe someday, but not now.
I need to go back to tell the coven what happened. That the supplies were lost,
and we need to get more to you as soon as possible. Besides, as I mentioned when
Adolph and I were arguing back and forth, I have a woman waiting for me.”
Mann snorted. “That last is the true reason, isn’t it?
Amazing how stupid a man can be when he thinks with the wrong organ. All right,
go, but return before your luck runs out, and bring her with you.”
“Thank you.” Dieter hesitated. “Will you satisfy my curiosity
about something?”
Mann shrugged. “If I can. What is it?”
“The Master of Change. For us of the Red Crown, he’s the
centre of everything, but Mama Solveig hardly tells me anything about him. She
says her reticence makes us all safer, and maybe it does, but I can’t help
wondering about him. It’s my nature. Now you, you’re in communication with him.
You must know things I don’t.”
Mann smiled, baring his rows of fangs. “Not so much as you
hope. Not nearly enough to satisfy my own curiosity. Not long after I started to
change, escaped to the forest, and met up with a few others like me, a voice
spoke to me from the empty air. It told me I could make myself an outlaw
chieftain and take revenge on those who’d condemned me, that conspirators in
Altdorf would help me, and it all turned out to be true. The Red Crown started
sending supplies and information not long after.”
“And that’s all the Master’s ever been to you? A voice coming
out of nowhere?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Dieter sighed. He’d turned into a mutant and nearly lost his
life venturing here, and it hadn’t brought him a step closer to completing his
mission. He realised he’d been stymied for so long that it would have surprised
him if things had worked out any differently.
Dieter reached Altdorf at sunset, when both the sky behind
the city’s countless spires and the river cutting through it burned red as fire.
The sight of the towering torch-lit gate froze him in place.
He’d begged a hooded cloak from the mutants to help conceal
his third eye. Yet despite that and all his other precautions, he suddenly felt
an irrational pang of near-certainty that the guards would spot his mutation.
Everybody on the street would notice. The only rational course of action was to
turn and flee back the way he’d come.
Instead, he drew a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and
hiked on towards the entry, where the sentries permitted him to pass through
without so much as a question.
On the avenues and in the plazas, it was the same. His heart
hammered and his muscles clenched whenever people chanced to glance in his
direction, but their gaze always drifted incuriously on.
Gradually his fear abated to a degree, making space for a
sort of crazy exhilaration. It was exciting to fool everyone. It woke his sense
of mocking superiority. He knew that malicious arrogance was a manifestation of
his ongoing psychic transformation and had often tried to suppress it, but not
now. It was better than being terrified.
He found Jarla on the corner where she often plied her trade.
When she noticed him, she ran to him and threw herself into his arms. The
embrace both warmed him and quickened a different sort of fear. He didn’t want
to lose her—for one thing, her companionship kept him from feeling quite so
utterly alone—and it was possible he might.
“Mama said not to worry,” she murmured, “but when you were
late coming back, I couldn’t help it. I was afraid soldiers searched the wagon
or followed you or something.”
“Nothing like that,” he replied, “but I did run into trouble.
I need to tell you about it, but not standing on the street. Can we go to your
room?”
Jarla said yes, of course, conducted him to her shabby little
stall, and shut the door behind them. The cramped space smelled as stale as
usual. She lit a candle, and then they sat down side by side on the bed. “What
happened?” she asked.
“Adolph tried to get rid of me. He killed Lampertus and told
the outlaws I did it, so they’d murder me in turn.”
She winced. “I was so afraid he meant to hurt you.”
“In the end, he wasn’t able to make the lie stick. Leopold
ordered a trial by combat to decide who was telling the truth, and I won. To do
it, I had to kill Adolph.”
He held his breath as he watched to see how she’d react. For
after all, she’d known and loved Adolph long before she ever met Dieter, and he
suspected the scribe still held a place in her heart. She wasn’t the sort of
person to turn her back entirely on anyone who’d given her affection, however
selfish or abusive.
Such being the case, could she forgive the man who’d slain
Adolph? Would she even believe the reason why? If not, it seemed unlikely that
any of the other cultists would credit it.
Tears flowed from her eyes, cutting channels in the paint on
her face. “Thank our lord you’re safe.” She pressed her lips to his, and,
relieved, touched by her devotion, he returned the kiss just as fiercely and
fumbled with the fastenings of her dress.
Afterwards, he lay blissfully spent on his back, and,
propping herself on one elbow, she smiled and studied his face from mere inches
away. It was then that she gently caressed the lid of his third eye with her
fingertip. “What’s this?” she asked.
He meant to tell her he’d simply suffered a blow to the head
while fighting Adolph. Unfortunately, the eye chose that moment to open of its
own accord. Jarla gasped and jerked backwards.
Appalled that she’d seen the deformity, Dieter wanted to
cringe, but then shame gave way to a surge of anger. How dare she find him
monstrous when she professed that she wanted to change, also? When she herself
had led him to the cult, the icon, and so bore responsibility for all that
followed?
He sat up and closed his fist to strike her, and then she
started to sob. “Now you’ll have to go away, and how am I supposed to stand it?”
Was it possible she wasn’t repulsed? He put her hand on her
shoulder, and she didn’t pull away. “This… change. It doesn’t sicken you?”
Eyes squinched shut in a futile attempt to stanch the stream
of tears, she shook her head. “It startled me. Maybe I’d need to get used to it.
But I would, except that I won’t get the chance. You’ll go back to the raiders
and I’ll never see you again.”
“I promise that won’t happen.”
She blinked. “Everyone who changes goes to the forest.”
“They don’t need to if they can hide what they are. I can,
and if a time ever comes when I can’t, I already have Leopold Mann’s permission
to bring you with me when I join his band.”
“Truly? The two of you already talked about it?”
“Truly. I wouldn’t leave you behind.”
“Thank you!” She kissed him, and he tasted the salty tang of
her tears. For a moment, he felt he adored her with all his heart, and then the
notion seemed ridiculous.
How could genuine love exist between them when she didn’t
even know who he really was? When he lied to her every hour they spent together?
When he intended to destroy the cause to which she’d pledged her life even
though it might well entail destroying her along with it?
Yet he felt what he felt. It was true and false, real and
unreal, just as Tzeentch’s teachings would have predicted. Just as all the world
supposedly was when a person saw it clearly.
In time, Dieter came to find the situation comical, albeit in
a grotesque sort of way. He’d returned from the wilderness with a ghastly
deformity right in the middle of his face and the blood of a fellow cultist on
his hands, and yet nothing changed.
Glimpsed and dismissed by the blind, indifferent gazes of
countless labourers, beggars, merchants, and even soldiers and priests, he
walked the teeming streets of Altdorf as unremarked as ever. Jarla still loved
him, and as far as he could tell, neither Mama Solveig nor any of the other
cultists held Adolph’s death against him. They’d all been aware of the scribe’s
jealousy and rancour, and they remembered how his reckless experimentation with
magic had nearly killed them. Perhaps, though no one said it outright, they
believed they were well rid of him.
Dieter supposed that, generally speaking, he was lucky that
things continued just as before, but in one respect, it was as unfortunate as
could be. He still had no idea how to discover the Master of Change’s
whereabouts.
He worried about the problem as he accompanied Mama Solveig
on her rounds, taught his pupils in the coven petty magic that he hoped would
prove useless for committing treason, and pored over the forbidden parchments.
He knew his studies were self-destructive, perhaps the gravest of all the perils
facing him. Yet he returned to blasphemous texts again and again, and feared he
always would so long as they were available. His only hope was to complete his
mission, then hand the documents over to Krieger or throw them in a fire.
Late one night, he sat and read with Mama Solveig’s soft
snore buzzing from the darkness enshrouding the cellar. The wavering light of a
single taper illuminated Tzeentch’s ebony leer and the pentacle chalked on the
floor. He’d used the candle to light his way to the shrine, but no longer needed
any such implement to peruse the parchments. The characters glowed like hot
coals as soon as he touched the pages.
It was strange how he could read the same words over and over
again, and yet his fascination never abated. Perhaps it was a symptom of
incipient insanity. He smirked at the thought, then wondered why, for a moment,
he’d found it so amusing.
The writing on the page began to flicker as ripples of
brightness ran through it. Certain characters shined more brightly, while others
dimmed.
Excitement swept all of Dieter’s worries and discouragement
away. A new truth, maybe a new enchantment, was about to reveal itself.
It was a spell, and unlike the magic Adolph had unleashed to
imperil the entire coven, in no way ambiguous or enigmatic. Its purpose and the
proper way of performing it were immediately apparent. Indeed, they almost
seemed to brand themselves on his understanding.
With comprehension came a spasm of nausea so powerful that,
for the moment at least, it even loosened the grip of his obsession. He’d
appeased his helpless hunger, gorged on the magic even though it sickened him,
and now perhaps he could rest. He put the parchments back on the lectern, picked
up the candle, and made his way towards his cot.
Mama Solveig snorted and groaned in her sleep. The noise
snagged Dieter’s attention, and, fatigue and revulsion both forgotten, he began
to reflect on her and the problem she represented. That in itself wasn’t
unusual. He did it every day. But now his thoughts ran in a new direction, as if
the lore of Chaos had stimulated his mind.
The midwife was the coven’s sole link to the Master of
Change. He’d understood that from the first time he met her, but had found
himself unable to turn the knowledge to his advantage. Now, perhaps, he was
starting to grasp how, but it took several hours of sleepless rumination before
he realised how the new spell could figure in his plans. Maybe that was because
he hadn’t wanted to see.