CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Arch Magister Grunwalder had spent the day deep in contemplation. Wrapped in his grey robes, he had sat, silent and unseen, amongst the crowds of Altdorf. From beneath hooded eyes, he had watched the herd as they had passed him, sidestepping the shadows where he lurked, even though they had no idea why.

Occasionally, he would concentrate his gaze on one or another of them, sifting through their thoughts as they passed. Dull stuff, mostly, but here and there were flashes of interest, a scrap of knowledge, or a new idea.

When the sun of late afternoon sent the shadows prowling through the streets, Grunwalder followed them back to the college. He slipped past the guards on the gates, and drifted through the echoing hallways and chambers of the place.

His own rooms lay behind what appeared to be a blank wall at the end of a dusty cellar. Grunwalder felt a twitch of pride as he walked through it and into the business of the vestibule outside his chambers. A dozen scribes worked, hunched over books or crafting charms, each of them bent on the creation of Grunwalder’s next great scheme.

“Excuse me, your honour. I have some bad news.”

Grunwalder spun around, shocked to find a man staring straight at him. He was skinny and barely out of his adolescence. Despite his youth and his rags there was a hard edge about him that was rare even in the college.

At the lad’s voice, the clerks turned to look too, blinking with surprise as they realised that their master was in their midst.

“Oh there you are, arch magister,” one of them said. “I didn’t realise that you were here. This is Kerr. He says that he has some news about Brother Titus.”

“And… the other one,” Kerr added. A hush fell on the scriveners, and Grunwalder cast a disapproving eye over them.

“In that case,” he said, “you had better come into my sanctum and tell me. No, not you, Puch,” he waved the chief scribe away. “I don’t want to keep you from your work.”

“Thank you, arch magister,” the man said and, hiding his disappointment beneath lowered eyes, he got back to work.

Kerr followed Grunwalder through into his rooms. If he had expected another cellar then he was disappointed; somehow the step through the door had brought them to a high chamber, the wide windows revealing the sweep of Altdorf below.

“Well then,” Grunwalder said as he closed the door behind his guest, “what news of Brother Titus? And how… how do you know of him?”

For the first time in decades the arch magister felt a flicker of uncertainty. Somehow he couldn’t catch even a glimpse of this youth’s thoughts. Trying to see inside his mind was like trying to look through a cannonball.

“I was Titus’ servant,” Kerr said, “and I went with him all the way to the north. That’s where we found Grendel.”

“Ah yes, Grendel. Bad business, that,” Grunwalder said. He walked around a vast teak desk and sank into a high backed chair. Kerr continued to stand. “Did Titus find him?”

“Yes,” Kerr said.

The arch magister fought back a flash of frustration. He had forgotten how irritating it was to have to wait for people to tell you what they were thinking.

“What happened next?” he asked. His exasperation gave way to a sense of relief. Of course, he thought, this man must be soft in the head. It would explain why he couldn’t read his thoughts.

“They fought,” Kerr said, “and both ended up dead.”

“Both of them?” Grunwalder asked, although the question was purely rhetorical. He’d already turned his back to the idiot in order to gaze down at Altdorf. All seen, but unseeing, its citizens toiled away beneath him. Clouds were following the evening in, and the city had become a patchwork of light and shadow.

He sighed. It had been this time last year that Titus had left on his chase. He hadn’t thought about him for months.

“Brother Titus has ever been on our minds,” he said, the platitudes rolling easily from his tongue. “In our sadness there is joy that he died as one of our order should, in the pursuit of evil. He will be remembered as the great wizard that he was.”

“Yes,” Kerr said. Grunwalder turned back to dismiss him, a coin already in his fingers, when the cloud cleared and sunlight flooded the room. It bathed both arch magister and servant with the same golden light, and cast their shadows back onto the wall.

Grunwalder tossed the coin to the man, and as it spun through the air, he noticed two things. The first was that Kerr showed no interest in the gold. The second was that his shadow belonged to a much larger, a much fatter, man.

Suddenly he couldn’t breathe, and nor could he speak. His throat had been sealed as neatly as a sausage skin and his fingers flexed uselessly as he fell forwards.

He looked up as bursting blood vessels turned the world pink, and through the veil of his own blood he could see that Kerr had gone. In his place, Titus stood. A cheerful smile creased his podgy face as he chanted the incantation, and his fingers moved with effortless skill.

Grunwalder tried to beg for his life, but it was too late. One by one, he felt his veins beginning to pop. His eyes and tongue bulged, swelling like a deep sea fish that has been dragged up from uncharted depths, and his dying body spasmed in its final agonies.

When it lay still, Titus strolled over to examine it. Then he let his own robes drop and stripped the swollen corpse of its clothing. The tunic was too tight, and where the cloak should have hung it bulged, but no matter. He would have that seen to later.

In the meantime, he had only to breathe a single word for his fat to melt away and his features to smooth and harden into those of the man who lay dead before him.

The college had a new master, and, after all that he had learnt in the north, things would be different.

Oh yes, Titus thought, they would be different all right.

He was still grinning as night fell on the city outside.