SEVENTH BOON
Mitchel Scanlon
It was late and, given the hour, the draughty expanse of the orphanage’s dining hall seemed hardly warmer than the wintry night outside. Yet despite having been roused blearily from their beds, a dozen barefoot children filed across the cold flagstone floor without complaint. Quiet and dutiful, they came to where Sister Altruda stood with the visitors and formed a line facing them, heads up and spines held straight like diminutive soldiers summoned to a parade ground muster. Then, seeing one of the visitors step forward to inspect them, twelve small faces grew bright with sudden hope—only for those hopes to be abruptly dashed as, finishing her inspection, the young woman turned to Sister Altruda to deliver a terse and crushing verdict. “No,” Frau Forst said, “none of these will do.”
As one, twelve faces fell. Watching it, Sister Altruda felt a familiar sadness to see twelve childish hearts hardened a little more against hope by the pain of rejection. It could not be helped. As priestess to the goddess of mercy, Sister Altruda’s own heart went out to them. But, as director of the Orphanage of Our Lady Shallya of the Blessed Heart, she was a realist. Marienburg manufactured so many unwanted children and if she could find even one a new home tonight it would be a triumph. Though, given that her visitors had spent the better part of an hour viewing dozens of children now without finding one to please them, presently even that small victory seemed beyond her.
Sighing inwardly, Sister Altruda beckoned to the novitiate Saskia to lead the children from the room. Then, summoning her most diplomatic tone, she turned to her visitors once more.
“You must understand,” she said, “there are hundreds of children here. Perhaps if we were to discuss more fully your criteria in choosing the child you wish to adopt, we might speed the selection.”
“Criteria?” Frau Forst replied, as though vaguely bewildered by the term. “There are no criteria, sister. It is simply a matter of finding a child my husband and I can love as our own. A child we can share our lives with. We will know him when we see him. Isn’t that right, Gunther?”
Behind her, Herr Forst gave a single silent nod. They made a strange couple. Frau Forst seemed no more than twenty-odd years of age: a vivacious butterfly of a girl shrouded in colourful silks and velvet furs. A woman whose prettiness, to Sister Altruda’s eyes, was only slightly marred by an over-enthusiastic application of rouge to her lips. In contrast, her husband looked more than twenty years her senior. Trim and well-preserved perhaps, with broad shoulders and none of the heaviness of waist common to men of his years and position. But his dark hair and well-groomed beard were flecked with streaks of grey, while his shrewd, quiet eyes spoke of a man who had seen enough of life to always be wary.
A moth to his wife’s butterfly, Herr Forst dressed in sombre greys and blacks, his only ornament an amulet on a heavy gold chain around his neck announcing his membership in one of Marienburg’s innumerable mercantile orders. Given their disparities, Sister Altruda could not help but suspect that Frau Forst had come here on a whim, intent on choosing herself a trophy child in the same manner as her husband had evidently chosen himself a trophy wife. Still, it was none of her concern. Whatever their motives, she did not doubt that any child would be happier living with the Forsts than in the dreary and overcrowded confines of the orphanage. And besides, the good character of Herr Forst himself was beyond question.
Where others who might consider themselves among the “great-and-good” of Marienburg seemed content to let the city’s flotsam children be condemned to the streets, over the last five years Gunther Forst had been the orphanage’s single most generous private benefactor. He had his eccentricities though and if after five years of distant benevolence he had come to adopt a child outside the orphanage’s usual hours of business then so be it. Sister Altruda would no more reject a reasonable request from Herr Forst than she would the High Priestess in Couronne. No matter how difficult Frau Forst was to please, no matter how nebulous her requirements or exacting her standards, her position as the wife of Gunther Forst placed her beyond reproach. If need be, Sister Altruda would rouse every child in the orphanage and spend the next six hours trooping them past Frau Forst until she found one that pleased her.
Though, given how late it was already, she sincerely hoped it would not come to that.
Hearing the door open once more, Sister Altruda turned to see Saskia leading another group of a dozen children into the room. Lining up as the others had before them, the children waited patiently as Frau Forst stepped forward to examine them. This time though, instead of glancing briefly over the line, Frau Forst paused two-thirds of the way along to gaze down at a sandy-haired boy of about eight whose features seemed almost angelic in their perfection. Guilelessly, the boy lifted his own eyes to stare back and for long moments the woman and the child stood there with eyes locked as though entranced—only for the spell to be broken as, abruptly, Herr Forst cleared his throat. Hearing it, Frau Forst turned to look at her husband for a moment, before turning back to the silent boy before her.
“And what is your name, my little prince?” she cooed at him.
“The boy does not speak,” Sister Altruda said.
“He is mute, then?” Frau Forst asked, raising a quizzical eyebrow towards her.
“No. We examined him when he was brought here and could find no sign of any physical defect. It may be that some shock has caused him to temporarily lose the ability to speak. It is difficult to say. He was found wandering the streets some days ago and we know nothing of his background. Given time, we can only hope his voice returns to him.”
“I see,” Frau Forst said, turning to coo at the boy once more. “If you ask me, my little prince, all you need is a nice loving home. A warm, safe place with toys and dogs and all the things a boy could want. Why, once you come home with us, I’m sure we’ll have you talking ten-to-the-dozen in no time.”
With that, Frau Forst held out her hand, smiling in delight as she saw the boy raise his own hand to meet it. It seemed, finally, she had made her choice. And, privately, Sister Altruda found herself forced to admit the search had been worth it. There was indeed something different about this one. There was something about his eyes, a sense of pure and untarnished innocence. If that was what Frau Forst had been looking for all this time, no wonder it had taken her so long to find it.
It was rare, after all, to find much that was innocent on the streets of Marienburg.
Afterwards, sitting within the shuttered comfort of his coach as it sped away from the orphanage into the night, Gunther Forst allowed himself the luxury of a small moment of satisfaction. It had gone better than he could ever have dared hope. The efforts he had invested over the last several years—all the donations, the grand and charitable gestures—had finally paid a handsome dividend. There had been no resistance, no awkward questions; the priestess and her novitiate had given him the boy gladly. And though he might have only a few scant hours left in which to put the rest of his plan in motion, if it proceeded half as smoothly as matters had at the orphanage he should achieve his wider aims with ease.
“My, but you’re a quiet one aren’t you, boy? I don’t know, we save you from that nasty orphanage and not even a word of thanks. What’s the matter, my little prince? Cat got your tongue?”
It was the woman. His erstwhile “wife”. Evidently bored, she produced a small golden heart on a string of teardrop-shaped garnet beads from within her glove and began to dangle it in front of the face of the silent boy beside her, teasing him.
“Surely you can tell us your name at least,” she cooed. “Every boy has a name. Tell me yours and perhaps I will give you this pretty thing as a gift. You would like that, wouldn’t you?”
Looking at the ruby light jumping from the dancing beads, the boy said nothing. Grimly, Gunther recognised them as the same set of Shallyan prayer beads he had seen on Sister Altruda’s wrist earlier. It seemed the dubious talents of the woman opposite him went beyond the obvious. Though it had seemed a masterstroke when he had conceived the idea of hiring a courtesan to accompany him to the orphanage and play the part of his wife now he was beginning to find her tiresome. Granted, she had lent a veneer of legitimacy to his attempts to adopt the child, but now the woman had served her purpose, her presence here was at best an irrelevance, at worst an irritation.
“Leave the boy alone,” he told her.
Pausing, the woman turned to look at him as though trying to read the limits of his patience in the lines of his face. Then, turning back to the boy once more, she began again in the same idiot tone.
“Did you hear that, little prince?” she purred. “Poppa sounds cross. Do you think he is angry because you won’t tell us your name?”
“Far from it,” Gunther said, enough of an edge to his voice to let her know she was trying his temper. “I have long counted silence as a virtue, in both children and harlots alike.”
At that, the woman fell quiet. Crossing her arms, she turned to face the lowered shade of the coach window with her mouth set in a sulky line. But if the boy felt any gratitude towards Gunther for his intervention, he gave no sign of it. Instead, seemingly interested in nothing in particular, he continued to sit in wide-eyed silence. Looking at him, Gunther found himself struck once more by the child’s manner. The boy seemed possessed of a flawless, almost otherworldly aura of innocence. Seeing it, Gunther felt a rising feeling of hope. The vital task of finding someone possessed of a perfect and utter purity had always seemed the hardest part of his plan.
Now he had the boy, the rest should fall into place.
The coach lurched to a halt. Hearing the coach roof above him creak as the driver left his seat, Gunther waited for the door to be opened. But when it was, instead of the coachman he saw a dark figure appear in the open doorway with a black kerchief tied around the lower half of his face, though of more immediate concern was the loaded handbow the man aimed at Gunther’s heart.
“My apologies for the inconvenience, mein herr,” the interloper said. “But I would count it a personal favour if you and the boy would step down from your compartment. Oh, and you will be careful to keep your hands where I can see them, won’t you? I would hate for either of you to have to suffer a misfortune.”
Doing as he was told, careful to keep himself between the handbow and the boy, Gunther stepped down from the coach with the boy behind him. Once outside, he saw the coach had stopped in a refuse-strewn alleyway the uncobbled surface of which declared it to be among one of the city’s more isolated and disreputable thoroughfares. A second kerchief-masked footpad stood behind the first, a short wooden cudgel in his hands, while to their side the coachman lurked nervously beside his horses. Seeing the coachman unharmed and apparently unguarded, Gunther realised at once that he was part of it. Just as he realised, outnumbered three-to-one and with the added distraction of having to protect the boy, he would have to weigh his options carefully.
Having long feared the twin evils of disease and violent death, Gunther had devoted no small number of years to learning the skills necessary to defend against the latter. He was an excellent shot, and hidden out of sight beneath his cloak were a pair of duelling pistols purchased some years past from the grieving widow of hot-headed nobleman whose passion for honour had been exceeded only by the incompetence of his marksmanship. But for all the finely-crafted elegance and accuracy, the pistols were loud and clumsy weapons. And, even in this isolated spot, the sound of shots might serve to draw the attention of the Watch.
It would have to be the knife.
“Here,” he said, lifting the chain from around his neck, “I will give you anything you want so long as you let the boy and I go in peace.”
“A most commendable attitude,” the handbowman said. “Really, mein herr, your clear-sighted grasp of the situation does you credit.”
“Not at all,” Gunther replied, holding the chain out in his right hand and watching as the man took two steps towards it. “I am simply a pragmatist. All the same, I must confess to some surprise. I would have thought a handbow far too expensive a weapon for the purse of a pimp.”
Abruptly, the advancing figure stopped, his eyes above his mask grown suddenly hard and tight.
“He knows, Ruprecht,” the one with the cudgel said, breaking the ugly silence. “He knows who you are.”
“Well, if he didn’t before, Oskar, he certainly does now,” the other replied, pulling his mask down to reveal a sallow yet handsome face. As Gunther suspected, it was the woman’s pimp. “Bravo, Herr Forst. You are right about the handbow, of course. It came into my possession in the wake of a financial dispute with one of Greta’s gentleman clients. But, tell me, how did you know it was me?”
“You let the woman stay in the coach,” Gunther said. “No matter the tales of the gallantry of highwaymen, it seemed unlikely you would leave her possessions unmolested unless they were effectively yours already. That alone was enough to make it clear you were her pimp come to rob me.”
“I am afraid you overrate your value to us, Herr Forst,” the pimp sneered. “Robbing you was never anything more than an afterthought. It is the child we want. To the right buyer, a boy like that is a valuable piece of merchandise. And, I assure you, I make it my business to know all the right buyers.”
“Now,” the pimp said, taking a step forward as he raised his handbow to fire, “seeing as you have been so helpful as to make us aware you know who we are, it would seem foolish to leave you alive to tell of it.”
With a sudden twist of his wrist, Gunther threw the amulet at the pimp, the chain hit the man in the face just as his finger tightened on the trigger. As the bolt flew wild over his shoulder, Gunther stepped forward, pulling his knife from its hidden sheath with his left hand and thrusting it deep into Ruprecht’s side. Eyes startled with pain, the pimp tried to scream, the sound emerged as a wet gurgle as, dying, his body pitched forward towards the ground. But Gunther was past him already. Seeing the other footpad lift his cudgel and charge forward to attack, Gunther tossed the knife from left hand to right with a fluid motion, raising his left arm to block the descending wrist holding the cudgel while, with his right, he slid the knife between the man’s ribs and into his heart.
Pulling the knife free as the second man collapsed, Gunther turned to see the coachman still standing beside his horses. Holding the butt of his coachwhip before him as an improvised weapon, the coachman seemed glued to the spot, caught between the urge to attack and the fear Gunther would dispose of him as easily as the others.
“All I want is to go in peace with the boy,” Gunther told him. “And I want the coach. Run now, and I will let you live.”
For a moment, the coachman stood staring in disbelief. Then, the prospect of escape overcoming his distrust, he turned and ran. Only for Gunther to throw his knife the instant the man turned his back, taking the coachman high in the neck and dropping him before he had gone three steps.
Striding forward to pull his knife from the dead man’s neck, Gunther’s first thoughts were for the safety of the boy. Turning to look behind him, he was relieved to see the still strangely silent child standing, uninjured, beside the coach where he had left him.
“Get into the coach, boy,” Gunther said, stooping to pull his knife free. “We are leaving.”
Instead of moving, the boy turned his wide eyes to stare at something on the coach, before looking back at Gunther once more. Noticing for the first time a slumped figure hanging halfway through the window of the coach door, Gunther stepped forward to investigate and saw something which soon had him silently cursing his luck.
It was the woman. She was dead: the flight of her pimp’s errant bolt jutting from a wound in her neck. Evidently she had been standing watching the confrontation through the window when it struck her. But what concerned Gunther more was the woman’s blood. It was everywhere, staining the side of the coach and the running board beneath it. The coach was next to useless to him now. He could not afford the chance some over-eager watchman would see the blood and be moved to ask questions Gunther would rather not answer. Nor could he simply clean the blood away—even had a suitable supply of water been at hand, it would take too long. And tonight, more so than at any other point in Gunther’s life, time was of the essence.
His decision made, Gunther opened the coach door, stepping to one side to let the woman’s body fall past him. Being careful not to get any more blood on his clothes, he retrieved his belongings from inside the coach before stepping outside once more to take one of the night-lanterns hanging from the coach’s side and fashion a makeshift carrying handle for it from a piece of cloth. Ready at last, he turned to the boy. For better or worse, if they were to reach their destination in good time tonight, they would have to walk.
Or one of them would at least.
“Get onto my shoulders, boy,” Gunther said. “We are going to play piggy-on-my-back.”
Silently, the boy did as he was told. Getting to his feet with the boy clinging to his shoulders, Gunther started on a brisk walk headed southwards. At best estimation they were at least a mile and a half from their destination. He would have to walk fast: the confrontation with the pimp and the others had cost him too much time already. No matter what else happened tonight, all his preparations needed to be ready by midnight.
If not, there would be hell to pay.
He was sweating by the time he got to the docks. And when he reached the outside of the burnt-out tavern in an alleyway just off a deserted wharf, the weight of the boy on his shoulders seemed to have grown so much it was as though he had an adult perched upon his back. Relieved to have arrived at his destination at last, Gunther sank down to his knees to let the boy climb off. Then, rising to his feet and pleased to see no sign of life anywhere along the alley, he made his way toward the tavern with the boy behind him.
It had a history, this place. In its heyday the Six Crowns had been the nexus for much that was illicit and illegal in Marienburg; a place where deals could be struck and bargains made with no questions asked. Most recently, it had served as de facto headquarters for the Vanderhecht Organisation, a ruthless gang of smugglers whose leader had lived a double life as one of the most respected merchants in the city. But Hugo Vanderhecht was dead, killed by a bounty hunter after fleeing to the marshes, while the Six Crowns had been gutted a year ago in an unexplained fire, rumoured to have been set by the gang’s second-in-command in an attempt to hide his identity from the Watch. Still, it hardly mattered to Gunther who had set the fire. Whoever had done it, he owed them a debt of thanks. His work tonight needed privacy, and the derelict, ramshackle building before him would suit his purpose admirably.
Besides, he had his own history with this place. Years ago, it had served as the backdrop to an event which had changed the course of his life. And now that life had come full circle and brought him to the Six Crowns once more.
Advancing towards the fire-blackened doorway, Gunther found himself briefly troubled by thoughts of his own mortality. Something of the tavern’s current state, the crumbling plaster of its walls and the gaping heat-warped windows, brought to mind unpleasant echoes. For a moment he felt the weight of every one of his years bearing down upon him, greater even than the weight of the silent boy who now walked beside him. Perhaps it was nostalgia, or the last spasms of conscience of the man he had once been, but he suddenly felt a sadness he had not known in years. Then, shaking his head to clear it, he put sentiment behind him and pushed the door aside to enter the tavern.
“Come on, boy,” Gunther said, seeing the child hanging back at the threshold. “There is nothing here to harm you.”
Once past its deceptively ruined outer shell, the tavern’s interior was surprisingly intact. Picking carefully through a hallway choked with fallen timbers and ash-strewn debris, Gunther made his way towards what had once been the smaller of the inn’s two public barrooms. Then, checking to see the boy was still behind him, he stepped inside the room, lifting his lantern to inspect the surroundings.
It was exactly as he left it. Thanks to several hours’ worth of heavy labour when he had visited the tavern earlier in the evening, Gunther had cleared the floor of the barroom of its dust and detritus. Happy to see no sign of the room having been disturbed since, Gunther crossed the floor to the ruined bar. Then, stepping behind it, he stooped to pull away some of the fractured casks beneath, revealing the shape of the small wooden chest he had hidden there earlier. Relieved to see it undamaged and its lock intact, he lifted it onto the bar. As he took the key from the thong around his neck, Gunther noticed the boy leaning on the bar, craning his neck expectantly to watch the chest being opened. Pausing, Gunther put his hand inside his cloak to retrieve one of the small cloth purses hanging from his belt before, pulling open the drawstring, he took a bag of waxed paper from within it.
“Here, boy,” he said, giving it to the child. “Inside there are dried apricots and sugared almonds. You may have as many as you want, so long as you sit in the corner there and keep quiet.”
Accepting the offering, the boy jumped down from the bar, hastening to sit cross-legged in a distant corner and begin eating the sweets. For a moment Gunther watched him. Then, satisfied the boy was occupied, he twisted the key in the lock and opened the chest, checking a mental inventory as he arranged the contents on the bar beside him. It was all here: brazier, mortar, pestle, verbena leaves, mandrake root, man-tallow candles, wyrdstone fragments, vials of beastman urine and two dozen other things besides. Coming to the bottom of the chest, Gunther lifted out a long object wrapped in cloth, before pulling the edges of the cloth aside to reveal the bladed iron tube of the trocar. Staring at the thumb’s-width notch set halfway along its length, his hand strayed unconsciously to the small, round object nestling safely within a hidden pocket inside his vest. For a moment he cupped it in his hand, feeling the comfortable weight and hardness of it through the cloth. He had everything he needed. Now, it was simply a matter of putting his plan in motion.
Opening a jar containing the crushed fingerbones of a martyred Sigmarite saint, Gunther put them in the bowl of the mortar, adding a quantity of chalk and powdered dragon tooth before grinding it together with the pestle. Then, being careful to leave no gaps, he used the mixture to draw a circle of binding on the floor around the bar. To give the circle power he would have to chant the warding spell. But that would come later. He must see to the tripwires first, then draw a pentagram within the binding circle, centred on the bar. After that, there were candles to be lit, incenses to be burned, an altar to be arranged. A dozen different tasks awaited him before he could begin the ritual, and a single moment’s carelessness in any of them would spell disaster. But he was confident, all the same. He had prepared for this night’s work for decades. Years spent carefully considering all that might go amiss, shaping and reshaping his design, planning everything down to the smallest detail. But he had needed to; the stakes were high. So high, not one man in ten thousand times would have ever dared risk what he would tonight. But no matter the risks, no matter the dangers, the prize would be worth it. Come what may, tonight he would play a devil’s gambit. And he would play to win.
Dimly, through the walls of the tavern, Gunther heard a bell tolling in the distance. The harbourmaster was calling time. Ten bells. Two hours to midnight. He would have to work fast. As he hurried to the contents of the chest once more to resume his preparations, Gunther was struck by the irony of it. The course of the life he had set upon in the backroom of the Six Crowns when Marienburg was still part of the Empire would be decided in the selfsame tavern in two hours time. Despite all the groundwork and the decades of planning, all his life came down to in the end was a mere two hours. No, not even that. Like all men, ultimately the course of his life would be decided in a single moment—a moment for him that would come when the bell tolled midnight. But he could hardly complain. Where most men stumbled blindly towards the defining instants of their lives, he had been forewarned of his decades ago. It was not as though the moment had caught him unawares; he had been gifted with many years in which to make ready. Years more than three times past the normal span of man. Exactly one hundred and fifty years, to be precise.
It was busy in the Six Crowns that night and, as he edged his way through a crowd of hard-faced men towards the bar, it came as no surprise to Gunther to see that the tavern’s reputation as a den of thieves and cutthroats seemed well-deserved. He saw men who wore the scars of branding, others with clipped ears or penal tattoos, even a man with a rope scar around his neck. More than half the men there had been marked in one way or another by the city fathers’ justice. Though, to Gunther’s mind, that was all to the good. His business here tonight was a private matter. And, whatever their other vices, criminals at least could usually be relied upon to keep themselves to themselves.
Coming to the bar at last, Gunther signalled to the barman, dropping a guilder on the counter by way of enticement.
“Can I help you, mein herr?” the barman asked, lifting the coin to his mouth to test it with his teeth.
“I am here to meet someone,” Gunther told him. “In the backroom. It has all been arranged.”
Saying nothing, the barman looked Gunther up and down with ill-disguised suspicion. Then, right hand wandering beneath the bar before him, he spoke once more.
“You were given a token?” he asked, eyes dark with distrust.
Fumbling in his vest, Gunther produced another coin, a six-sided silver one that had been delivered to his house by messenger three days earlier, and handed it to the barman. Rather than bite this one, the barman stood studying it in his hand, looking first at the embossed motif of a serpent coiled around a piece of fruit on one side, before turning it over to see Six Crowns arranged in a circle on the reverse.
“Six crowns, mein herr,” the barman said, offering a hard, humourless smile as he handed the coin back to him. “Quite a coincidence, don’t you think?”
Lifting the hinged flap at the end of the counter, the barman nodded for Gunther to step behind the bar. Then, leading him through a curtained doorway, he ushered him into a hallway stacked on either side with empty beer casks and crates of bottles, before pointing towards a door at its end.
“The backroom is down there, mein herr,” the barman said. “No need to knock. You are expected.”
With that, he was gone, stepping back behind the curtain towards the bar and his patrons. Alone now, Gunther found himself strangely paralysed by the weight of his own expectations. He could hardly believe it could be so simple. Where he had expected blood sacrifice or elaborate rituals, there was only a short walk down an ordinary corridor towards a perfectly nondescript door. A door through which, he hoped, lay the answer to an ambition he had pursued for more than twenty years.
Summoning his will at last, Gunther advanced down the corridor and lifted his hand to the doorknob. Doing his best to keep it from shaking, he pushed the door open.
“You must be Gunther,” a smoothly spoken voice said from within the room. “Please, come in. I assure you, there is nothing here to harm you.”
Stepping inside the dingy backroom, Gunther found his expectations confounded for the second time in as many minutes. Ahead of him at a table at the centre of the room sat a blond-haired man in the clothes of a gentleman, a sardonic smile twitching at the corner of his lips as he raised a wineglass in languid greeting.
“You were expecting horns, perhaps?” the figure said as though reading his thoughts. “Cloven hooves? A barbed tail, even? I hope you are not disappointed. Given the unfortunate tendency of mortals to soil themselves when confronted with my true form, I thought it better to dress down for our meeting. Frankly, the floor of this room seemed filthy enough already.”
The smile on his lips grew even broader. Stunned, his mind reeling, Gunther gawped at him for a moment, before stammering a reply.
“You are the Silver Tongue, Daemon Prince and First among the Infernal Legions of the god Slaanesh?” he said, voice cracking as he said the last word aloud.
“Generally, I prefer the name Samael,” the other purred. “But really, Gunther, you know all this already. Otherwise you would never have come here to meet me.”
“You know my name?” Gunther asked, regretting how foolish the question made him sound the second it left his lips.
“Of course I do, Gunther,” Samael replied, sliding an opened bottle of wine and spare wineglass across the table towards him. “When a man comes to bargain with me, I make it a point to learn all I can of him. But we can discuss that later. First though, I suggest you take a chair and try to re-gather your wits. Oh, and help yourself to the wine. Whatever its other faults, this tavern possesses a surprisingly inoffensive cellar.”
Sitting down warily to face the daemon, Gunther picked up the bottle, only to pause halfway through filling his glass at the thought of a sudden, fearful premonition.
“You may drink freely, my friend,” the daemon said, seeming to read his thoughts again. “Even if I had the slightest intention of killing you tonight, I need hardly resort to anything so tiresome as poison.”
Feeling vaguely embarrassed, Gunther finished filling the glass, then took a healthy draught of what soon proved to be an agreeable, if not quite vintage, red Bordeleaux. Despite his best efforts to hide it, he was sure his nervousness was entirely obvious to the creature before him. Just as it was similarly obvious to him that the daemon’s pleasant appearance—the easy charm, handsome good looks and fashionable frills and ribbons of his clothing—were no more than a mask. No matter how convivial his host, Gunther did not for a minute doubt that he was in presence of an ancient evil. With that thought there came a rising tide of barely suppressed panic as suddenly he was struck by the sheer enormity of what he had come here to do tonight. But this was no time for second thoughts. For better or worse, he had set himself on this course willingly. And even here, in the face of damnation, he would not waver.
“Now, where were we?” the daemon mused, apparently convinced Gunther had settled himself enough to begin their business. “Ah yes. I was commenting on how well I know you. And I do know you, Gunther, better than anyone else in the world, I’d wager. For example, unlike your mercantile peers, I know you have spent the last twenty years of your life obtaining and studying a wide variety of magical, alchemical and heretical texts. You have read the works of Van Hal, von Juntz, Krischan Donn, Ralfs, even the tedious prose of the Ratmen-obsessed Leiber. And all of it with the aim of achieving a single burning ambition. But it was only recently, after a visit to Marienburg’s Unseen Library to read Hollseher’s Liber Malefic, that you finally discovered a means by which to achieve your aim. Now, you have come here to me in the hope that I can give you what your books could not. Well, happily, I can help you, Gunther. But there are rules in these matters. And, if you want me to grant your wish, you must first speak the words of it aloud.”
It was true, all of it. But, before he moved his mouth to frame the words, Gunther reminded himself he must be wary. It went without saying that the daemon would try to trick him. But in the end, the selling of a man’s soul was a business matter like any other. If he was to get what he wanted in return, Gunther must simply be careful when it came to negotiating the contract.
“I want you to make it so that I will not age and will live forever,” Gunther said.
For a moment, the daemon stared at him in amusement, the smile at the corner of his lips growing several notches wider. In the days leading up to the meeting Gunther had practised this scene in his mind many times, but despite all those rehearsals he had never expected to hear the answer Samael gave him now.
“No,” the daemon said with a smile.
Gunther sat open-mouthed, gaping at the smug daemon in disbelief. He had come to sell his soul—how could Samael refuse him?
“You must try and see it from my point of view, Gunther,” Samael said, fingers pressed together in a curiously human gesture. “What use is it, after all, for a daemon to be pledged the soul of a man who is going to live forever? How would I ever collect the debt? No, I am sorry, my friend, but I am afraid I must reject your proposal.”
Stunned, Gunther sat in uneasy and despairing silence. Twenty years, he thought. Twenty years, and I am no closer to my objective.
“Of course, I do have a counter-proposal,” the daemon said mildly, as though unaware of the effect his words had on Gunther’s desperate heart. “Absolute immortality may be out of the question. But there seems no reason I couldn’t keep you from aging and grant you longevity enough to extend your life beyond the normal span of man. And in return all I ask for—aside from your soul, of course—is that you perform a limited number of tasks on my behalf. Shall we say seven? Give me seven boons, Gunther, and I will give you a part of your wish at least.”
“Seven boons?” Gunther said, still barely able to comprehend how quickly his horizons had been diminished. “And who is to decide what the nature of these boons will be?”
“I will,” the daemon replied. “I promise you they will all be well within the scope of your abilities. Nor would I insult your intelligence by demanding that you give me all seven boons at once. You need only perform one boon now and I will stop you from aging and guarantee you another twenty years of life. Then, when those twenty years are done, you will perform a second boon in return for another twenty years, and so on, until all the boons are done. Think of it, Gunther, perform all seven boons and you can have another one hundred and forty years of life without aging a single day. Naturally, our agreement would not extend to protecting you from disease or violent death—even my powers are not limitless in that regard. But really, I think I am being fair enough already. As I’m sure you’ll agree, one-hundred-and-forty years is a long time for a daemon to wait to claim his due.”
Letting his words hang in the air a moment, the daemon sipped his wine as Gunther wrestled with a thousand silent thoughts and fears. Then, seeing Gunther’s discomfort, the daemon leaned forward once more with the smile of a huntsman who knows his trap is sprung.
“Of course,” he said, “if you do not like the terms of my offer, you can always say no.”
He had said yes, of course. Granted, he had bargained for better terms, ultimately persuading Samael to extend the period of guaranteed longevity between each boon to twenty-five years. But, beyond that small concession, he had had little choice but to accept the daemon’s terms. In the end, the daemon Samael had every cause to be smug; his was the only bargain on the table.
Now, as he hurried to complete the preparations for his ritual in the shell of the ruined inn where he had met Samael all those years ago, Gunther found his thoughts turning towards the six boons he had completed on the daemon’s behalf already. Some had been relatively straightforward: arranging the disgrace and murder of a high-ranking nobleman, or the theft of a holy relic—a cup—from the Temple of Sigmar the Merciful in Stirland. Others had been both more complicated and time-consuming. Take the six years he had spent working as a humble lay gardener in the grounds of a temple of Shallya in Ostermark, corrupting the priestesses and their novitiates one-by-one until he had turned them all to the worship of Slaanesh. He could still remember the look of outrage on the mother superior’s face turning to delight when she had finally yielded. And, while Samael’s motives in requesting some of the boons had been obvious at once, others had been more obscure, only becoming clearer with time. Take the sixth boon for example, when he had been called upon to ensure the progression of a young Sigmarite cleric called Johann Esmer. But, no matter how strange or onerous the tasks he had been called upon to perform, he had completed them regardless. And with each completed boon Samael had kept his own side of their bargain: Gunther had not aged a day in one-hundred-and-fifty years. Tonight though, the seventh boon was due.
Two days earlier, a messenger had arrived bearing Samael’s instructions to meet him here in the Six Crowns at midnight. But, for all the successes of their arrangement thus far, Gunther was not so foolish a man as to trust a daemon to his word. He had always known Samael would try to cheat him. And Gunther had seen the loophole in their bargain a century and a half earlier when Samael told him he would not be protected against disease or violent death. Once the seventh boon was done and his value was at an end, Gunther fully expected the daemon to kill him. Why should Samael be willing to wait another twenty-five years for his soul after all, when it was within his power to kill him and take it at once? There could be no doubt, the daemon was going to try and cheat him.
Unless, of course, Gunther cheated the daemon first.
From the very beginning he had been playing his own double game, only agreeing to Samael’s terms to give him the time he needed to find a method by which to cheat the daemon of his due so that he might live forever. And now, after one hundred and fifty years of planning and preparation, the final movements of that game were almost upon him. The pieces were all in place. Soon, Gunther would play his devil’s gambit.
There was only one last thing.
Turning towards the corner of the room, Gunther saw the boy lying slumped and asleep on the floor, surrounded by the spilled contents of the bag he had given him earlier. Seeing the sedative he had put in the sweets had done its work, Gunther allowed himself the luxury of another moment of satisfaction.
He really had thought of everything.
By the time the first peals sounded from the harbourmaster’s bell calling midnight, all the preparations were in place. At the five corners of the pentagram the man-tallow candles had been lit, thin plumes of acrid smoke rising to join the sickly-sweet haze of incense hanging above them. At its centre, a section of the counter of the ruined bar had been set out as a makeshift altar with the unconscious boy bound and spread-eagled on top of it. Beside it, Gunther stood stoking a burning brazier, chanting the words of the final ritual.
Then, as the bell pealed its last, he heard the door to the room open and saw the blond-haired figure of Samael arrive with cloak flowing behind him in a gentlemanly flourish.
Careful not to allow his eyes to meet the daemon’s gaze, Gunther continued his chant. From the corner of his eye he saw Samael advancing towards him. Coming to the binding circle the daemon stopped, raising his hand to press palm-outwards on the invisible barrier before him, testing its power.
“A binding circle? Impressive, Gunther, if ultimately pointless. After all, you can hardly stay within your circle forever, can you?” Then, hearing the sound of lapping water, the daemon finally looked behind him.
The trap had been surprisingly easy to build. Set to be triggered by a tripwire when the door to the room swung shut, a hidden mechanism had caused a gourd to tip, releasing a steady flow of water which, even now, fed a shallow circular channel encompassing the entire outer circumference of the room. Of course, the real power of the trap lay not in channel, but in the nature of the water that flowed through it.
“Holy water?” the daemon said, eyebrows raised in sardonic amusement. “It seems I am caught in the space between two impenetrable circles. Really, Gunther, you are full of surprises tonight. But tell me: now you have me where you want me, what do you intend to do with me next?”
On top of the counter, close to his right hand, one of Gunther’s pistols lay primed and powdered, needing only a bullet to give it lethal force. And, glowing white-hot within the flames of the brazier, the bullet was almost ready.
It had taken fifty years spent in the study of forbidden texts to learn how Samael’s bargains worked. Fifty years, in which he had slowly come to understand that when they had entered into their contract, Samael had lent him a tiny fragment of his own daemonic essence. A fragment so small that Samael would never miss it, but still powerful enough to stop Gunther from aging. Hence the time limit built into their bargain—as small as that fragment was, the daemon was not about to give up a part of himself forever. But at the same time, Gunther had learned this essence would not naturally flow back to Samael. It had to be taken.
And, if Gunther could kill Samael first, he could keep it forever.
Of course, killing a daemon was no easy thing. But, gifted with great wealth and a century in which to search for the answer, Gunther had finally discovered a method. In the brazier before him was a bullet forged from meteoric iron and covered in sigils which Gunther had paid a down-on-his-luck dwarf craftsman a small fortune to create. One of dozens of savants Gunther had paid to help him over the years without any of them ever knowing the true nature of his project. All of them working unknowingly towards the creation of a bullet ensorcelled to act as a bane to daemon flesh.
A bullet to kill a daemon.
Taking a pair of tongs, Gunther retrieved the glowing bullet from the fire and slotted it into the notch set in the side of the trocar. Even now, with his own life in the balance, he could not be sure whether it was possible to kill a creature like Samael forever. At the very least though, killing the daemon here and now would banish him back to the daemon realms for a thousand years—more than long enough for Gunther to find a more permanent solution. But before the bullet could be used, the ritual demanded that it be tempered in the heart’s-blood of a sacrificial victim. As to the nature of this victim, the terms of the ritual were very precise: Only someone possessed of a perfect and utter purity would do.
Abruptly, eyelids fluttering, the boy on the altar began to stir. But Gunther had come too far and risked too much to give in to squeamishness now. Besides, whether the boy died asleep or awake hardly mattered. Lifting the trocar above his head, Gunther stepped forward to complete the sacrifice. Only to see the boy’s features suddenly seem to shift and blur, growing bigger. In an instant the boy was gone.
Staring in amazement at the alabaster-skinned female figure that had replaced him, Gunther found himself strangely attracted to the swelling curve of her hips, the sharp-toothed seductiveness of her smile and the jagged perfection of her horns. Then, as the writhing goddess before him lashed out with a scythe-like claw, Gunther found the growing warmth of his desire displaced by a more primal sensation.
Pain.
Afterwards, watching the daemonette flaying the flesh from Gunther’s dead bones, Samael found himself wondering briefly if he should punish her for her excesses. He had so wanted to see that last look of despair in the man’s eyes when he realised his long life was finally over and torment awaited him. But, lost in her enjoyment, the daemonette had killed him too quickly. Though, on balance, Samael decided to let the matter pass—it must have been difficult for her, after all, to have had to walk beside the mortal all night without tearing him apart. And, besides, the daemonette’s purpose here was not yet done.
In her abandon, the daemonette had knocked over one of the pentagram’s candles, breaching the binding circle. Approaching the altar, Samael saw the trocar lying on the floor where Gunther had dropped it and he stooped to pick it up. Inside, the bullet was still hot, the magical energies released by Gunther’s ritual still waiting latent within it.
Turning towards the daemonette, Samael saw her pause in her mutilations to lick the blood, cat-like, from her talon. Looking into the amber irises of her eyes, Samael saw a perfect and utter purity, untainted by conscience or thoughts of compassion. Then, savouring that thought for a moment, he took the trocar and stabbed her in the chest.
“Why?” the daemonette asked him in Darktongue, her accent like the mewling of scalded cats.
“Because it would be a shame to let Gunther’s work go to waste,” he told her, pushing the blade deeper into her heart. “Especially when I spent so very long covertly guiding that dull-witted mortal on his quest.”
Strength fading, her heart’s-blood ichor flowing down the tube of the trocar to temper the bullet inside it, the daemonette looked at him in incomprehension. Then, the memories of thousands of years’ worth of sensations dying with her, her heart grew still.
Letting her body fall as he pulled the trocar from it, Samael was pleased to feel the stirring of painful energies emanating from within the bullet. In the end, the whole affair had come to a most satisfactory conclusion. After one-hundred-and-fifty years, the ritual—and the seventh boon—had finally been completed. The bullet was ready now. A bullet to kill a daemon.
One could never know when a thing like that might prove useful.