“I’m glad now that I didn’t.”
“Keep yourself safe. I have to finish this.” Wiping and
smearing the blood on his forehead, he fixed his three-eyed gaze on the Master
of Change.
As many spells as he’d cast and as much punishment as he’d
absorbed already, Dieter was amazed he was still conscious. He could only infer
that something, his mutation, perhaps, or even Tzeentch’s favour, had granted
him reserves of stamina no untainted human magus could match. Even so, he sensed
he was reaching the end of them, but as he’d indicated to Jarla, he saw no
choice but to keep fighting.
He took a moment to commune with the sky. He felt the wet
weight of the rain pent inside the clouds, the restless winds, and, above them,
the webs of force established by the positions of the planets and
constellations.
At the same time, he observed the phantasmal slime and
shimmer oozing and swirling through the chamber, sometimes adhering to surfaces,
sometimes floating and billowing like mist.
Two powers, one filtered through the cleansing medium of the
firmament and one streaming directly from the ultimate filth that was Chaos. One
pure and one poisonous. He could command either, and knew that to have any
chance at all against the Master of Change, he was likely to need both.
He rattled off a hybrid blasphemy of a spell he constructed
extemporaneously. It was an insanely reckless thing to try, but, in his exalted
state of consciousness, he was confident he was combining the words properly.
He swept his hand through the air as if throwing a ball, and
splinters of light and shadow hurtled from his fingertips. He hoped that the
Master’s mystical defences, whatever they were, would prove inadequate to the
task of stopping both sorts of missile at the same time.
The darts plunged into the Master’s back, and he lurched
around to face his attacker. The little head in the centre of his chest screamed
in pain or rage, but the one set atop his shoulders showed no sign of distress,
in fact, the enormous grin with those tombstone teeth stretched even wider.
The Lord of the Red Crown snarled words of power, and as he
did so, his form split into two superimposed images, the first, the illusory
one, moving just in advance of the second. The phantom thrust out its two left
arms, and a colourless, rippling virulence streaked from its fingers. The
precognitive vision warned when and in what vector the actual attack would come,
and Dieter wrenched himself to the side.
Unfortunately, the edge of the effect must have grazed him
anyway, or else its mere proximity was enough to cause harm, for his mind
fractured, memory, identity and purpose splintering into terror and confusion.
Already incapable of knowing precisely what he was doing or why, he visualised
the configuration of the heavens at the time and place of his birth and shouted
his own name.
His thoughts snapped back into focus, and he realised Franz
Lukas’ ward against psychic assault had saved him. His teacher had trained him
to cast the spell as a sort of reflex, just as an expert fencer would parry a
threatening blade without the need for conscious thought. Otherwise, it would
have been useless against the very assault it was intended to defeat.
Dieter spoke to the air and the drifting, seething mist that
was Chaos, imploring them to unite. He sent the result howling at the Master of
Change.
The wind battered the warlock and tore the multicoloured
vestment from his body. The venom suspended inside it dissolved his flesh like
acid. Blubber melted, baring gory ribs. The infantile head eroded to a
featureless nub. The twitching fingers studding the worm-like tail burned away.
Yet the Master didn’t collapse. Perhaps Tzeentch had marked
and claimed him so completely that even a dose of Chaos in its most destructive
form couldn’t slay him. He screamed a word, and the wind failed. He shook a
blistered, smoking fist, and an unseen force smashed into Dieter’s stomach and
knocked him reeling backwards.
The same force pounded him again and again. Despite the
punishment, he managed a dark binding. He hoped to ensnare an invisible
assailant, but apparently there was nothing tangible for the jagged coils to
grab. They jerked uselessly shut on themselves.
Another blow spiked pain through his shoulder. It didn’t seem
to him as if the attacks were coming with extraordinary accuracy or science, but
everyone connected, and it would only be a matter of moments before they
incapacitated or killed him.
He doubted he could cast another spell. He didn’t have time,
and the relentless assault would likely keep him from articulating the
incantation properly even if he did. That almost certainly meant he was doomed,
but still he struggled to think. To perceive. To find the way out of his
dilemma.
He felt the wind awaiting his command. Evidently the Master
of Change hadn’t dissolved the enchantment that bound it to his will. He’d
merely interrupted the flow of power, the way a slap in the face might startle
and baulk a man, but only for a moment. Still, what did it matter when Dieter
had already discovered that even a corrosive gale was insufficient to put the
warlock down?
“The god’s dagger,” said the priest.
Dieter glanced to the side. He’d lost sight of the robed
apparition when the fight began, but the priest was standing beside him now.
Despite the battle raging in the vault, he looked as calm as ever, and why not?
Invisible fists weren’t pounding him to death. It seemed likely that no one but
Dieter could even see him.
“You felt its spirit when you picked it up,” the priest
continued. “Perhaps you can still feel it.”
Dieter realised it was worth a try. He couldn’t see the knife
anymore. The dais blocked his view. But he reached out with his mind and sensed
the same malevolence he’d encountered before. It enabled him to pinpoint the
weapon’s location.
Another blow rocked him backwards. He struggled to transcend
the shock and focus his will. The wind screamed. The dagger spun up from behind
the pedestal, then shot at the Master’s head.
With all the power at his command, the warlock surely could
have deflected the attack, but with his eyes fixed on Dieter, he didn’t see it
coming. Nor could the secondary head warn him, because Dieter had already
succeeded in killing that part of him, anyway.
Bone crunched as the sacrificial instrument punched into the
back of the Master’s head, burying itself to the hilt. The warlock pitched
forwards, and after a moment, it became apparent that nothing was striking at
Dieter anymore. At the same time, he felt the knife’s vicious jubilation at
making a kill.
Dieter wished that he too could savour the victory, but since
he and Jarla were still in danger, it was a luxury he couldn’t afford. Gasping
and swaying on his feet, he cast about, taking stock of the rest of the battle.
The fiery serpent was gone, but some of the Red Crown’s
conjured horrors had perished, too, and in the wake of their summoner’s death,
others now vanished, their defensive line disintegrating. Its loss would make it
more difficult for the four surviving followers of the Red Crown to cast spells
unhindered, and it appeared that Krieger wasn’t the only fighter on the other
side capable of working magic of his own. Another swordsman chanted a rhyme, and
a retreating warlock’s foot plunged into solid floor as if he’d stepped in a
hole.
All in all, it seemed that the Master’s death had turned the
tide in Krieger’s favour, and, reasonably confident of the witch hunter’s
chances, Dieter retreated, distancing himself from the thick of the fray.
Battered and weary as he was, he urgently needed to catch his breath and settle
himself for what was still to come. Jarla scurried out of a recessed space in
the wall to join him.
It took about a minute for the last of the Red Crown to fall.
Krieger was still on his feet, and so were half a dozen of his men. At least two
of the latter were sorcerers. No one was casting spells at the moment—which
had the beneficial effect of slowing the random Chaotic manifestations
distorting reality throughout the chamber—but a violet glimmer, evidence of
the forces they’d recently invoked, crawled on their lips and hands.
Seven against one was long odds, just about as hopeless a
situation as the one Dieter had faced when he’d first defied the Master of
Change. Jarla tried to embrace him, and he prevented her. He didn’t want his
movements hampered or his view obstructed. “It’s not over yet,” he whispered.
Krieger leered at the two of them. “When did you grow the
third eye?” he asked.
“A while back,” Dieter said. “When did you cast your lot with
the Purple Hand?”
The big man chuckled. “I suppose that once I burst in here
with a Chaos creature in tow, and my brothers and I started using magic, my true
allegiance became rather obvious.”
“I should have realised early on,” Dieter said. “It made no
sense that, with all its resources, the Order of Witch Hunters couldn’t find a
more willing and capable spy than me. But you couldn’t involve the entire order,
could you? The honest witch hunters couldn’t know anything about what your
little circle of traitors intended if, at the end of it all, you were going to
plunder the Master of Change’s collection of grimoires for your own cult.”
“Cleverly reasoned,” Krieger said. “That was the way of it.”
He glanced at the man standing next to him. “I told you he was sharp.”
“Apparently I’m not,” Dieter said, “for I missed other clues
along the way. The arrival of the first burning serpent gave me what I
desperately needed: a second chance to win Jarla and Adolph’s trust. The timing
was amazingly fortunate—unless the people who were shadowing me observed my
predicament and sent the creature to help me resolve it. Then, later, you had no
interest in catching Leopold Mann and his followers. You claimed it wasn’t your
job, but, considering all the harm the raiders have done and the notoriety
they’ve achieved, it’s difficult to understand how any loyal servant of the
Empire could be so utterly indifferent.
“But you didn’t answer my question: how long have you served
the Purple Hand?” Dieter didn’t actually care, but he did want to prolong the
conversation. It gave him additional time to control his laboured breathing and
to recover a bit more of his strength.
“It’s only been a few years,” Krieger said. “When I started
out, I was what you called an ‘honest’ witch hunter.”
“What happened?”
Krieger snorted. “What happened was that I was a man, too,
with a man’s appetites, and in one little flyspeck of a hamlet the peasants
asked me to judge an accused witch who was also the most beautiful woman I’d
ever seen.
“The evidence indicated she probably had dabbled in casting
charms of the most trivial sort, but I had no reason to think anything awful
would happen if I pretended otherwise. So I set her free, and she thanked me as
we’d agreed she would.”
“And in due course,” Dieter said, “something bad did happen.”
“Yes. She turned into a monster, slaughtered her entire
village, and commenced a rampage across the province. It took a company of
knights to bring her down.
“I winced when I heard about it, but at first I wasn’t
worried. No one was left alive to tattle that I’d investigated the bitch and
declared her innocent. But then someone came to me with proof that he and his
associates were in possession of the affidavit I’d written.”
“‘Someone’ being a member of the Purple Hand.”
“Yes, although I didn’t find that out for a while. He told me
that if I didn’t do him and his friends the occasional favour—condemn a
prisoner they wanted burned, or turn a blind eye to another’s obvious guilt—they’d send the document to my superiors, and that would have been the end for
me. I doubted my ability to convince a tribunal I’d made an honest mistake, and
it wouldn’t have mattered even if I could. The witch had done too much harm for
the wretch who released her to evade punishment, no matter what the
circumstances.”
“So you capitulated.”
“Yes, and over time, the favours became more frequent, and
came to include crimes that had nothing to do with witch hunting. My new masters
paid me in gold for my services, gradually took me into their confidence, and,
discerning the aptitude in me, set about teaching me magic. They were drawing me
in, you see. Converting me from a reluctant conscript into a true believer.”
“And it worked?”
“Of course. How could it fail? I couldn’t deny the truth of
the Changer’s teachings, or resist the lure of forbidden secrets. I couldn’t
help delighting in the touch of Chaos and the working of Dark Magic.” Krieger
grinned. “Judging from the look of your forehead, you can’t, either.”
“You’re wrong about that.” Dieter decided he’d regained about
as much of his vigour as he was likely to without actually lying down and
sleeping the rest of the night away. “We should talk about what happens next.”
“If you like.”
“I’ve given you everything you demanded of me, with the
result that you’ve accomplished all your goals. The Master of Change and his
lieutenants are dead. His library is surely waiting down here somewhere for you
to take it for your own.” It hurt him to say as much, with the implication that
he himself would never see it. Even now, in the most desperate circumstances,
the craving for dark lore still gnawed at him. “Now I ask you to keep your
promises. Let Jarla and me go. Clear my name.”
Krieger chuckled. “So you can return home with a third eye in
the middle of your forehead?”
“Let me worry about that. All you need to know is that my
deformity works to your advantage. I can’t denounce you as a Chaos worshipper
lest you denounce me for a mutant. Not that I’d bother to accuse you anyway.
There was a time when I might have cared about your crimes, but I’ve had such
concerns beaten out of me. At this point I simply want to save myself.”