CHAPTER ELEVEN

 

 

Dieter floated so high above the world that he could see it curve. His vicious elation had vanished and so had his pain, both supplanted by fear and confusion.

It seemed obvious that his ritual was responsible for his current situation. But this was scarcely the effect he’d intended, and the magic had exploded into existence before he completed his conjuring.

Did that mean he’d botched the casting? If so, what was the consequence? What was it that had actually happened to him?

He had hands he could see when he held them in front of his face, and that felt solid to one another when he clasped them together. Still, a normal human body could scarcely have drifted on the wind this way. He must be pure spirit now, plucked from its shell of flesh and bone. But was it a temporary separation, or was it possible magic had literally shattered his head? If so, his body was a corpse, and he, a ghost.

The thought was distressing but, to his surprise, sparked a perverse sort of hope as well. For if he was dead, mightn’t that mean he was done with struggle and desperation? Beyond the reach of doubt and fear?

The face of the land altered, or rather, his perception of it did. Though he hadn’t dropped any lower, he could suddenly see the heights and valleys seething with life like a busy anthill. It defied common sense that anyone could observe individual men and women or even the grandest works of humanity from such an altitude, yet he was doing it nonetheless. Somehow, he even knew their thoughts.

A farmer planted and tended his crops with the utmost diligence. Drought seared them, and he and his family starved.

A ruffian knifed a friend in a drunken brawl, and a magistrate sentenced him to hang for it. Then, however, the count announced his betrothal, and in celebration emptied out the jails. The murderer continued to kill, for profit now, and was never caught again. He lived a long, happy life on the proceeds.

The lake always froze solid as stone in winter. No one could remember a time when it hadn’t. Yet the little girl skated over a thin spot and crashed through. The villagers found her body after the thaw.

A mother lavished care and affection on her children until a lump flowered in her brain. Then voices whispered, exhorting her to deliver them from sin. To that end, she whipped them every day.

A man digging in his garden unearthed a chest of old gold coins. Miserly by nature, he reburied them, told no one of their existence, and lived meanly all the days of his life. Even as he lay dying, he kept the secret, condemning his neighbours, kindly folk all, to poverty.

It was all unjust and ultimately cruel, for even those few people who attained some measure of happiness came to loss and infirmity by and by. Worse, it was senseless and uncontrollable. No matter how wisely a man laid his plans and how hard he laboured, it was happenstance that determined his fate in the end.

But though the tale of human existence lacked any point or semblance of moral order, it did display a progression. As the generations passed, Chaos crept through the world and all that man had built like an infestation of rats taking possession of a house. Monstrous armies swept down from the north to sack cities and lay waste to principalities. Mutants were born in increasing numbers. Converts flocked to hidden altars to offer to Tzeentch and his ilk.

Emperors and other lords of mankind did everything in their power to drive back devastation and decay. Indeed, they fought so savagely they became horrors in their own right. Yet it was all to no avail, and as defeat followed defeat, the world itself transformed. Trees grew shaggy pelts instead of bark. Horses chased and devoured prey like wolves. Rivers dried up one hour and ran deep with blood the next. New stars flared into being as if someone were stabbing wounds in the sky. Until finally, Dieter could see no difference between the actual world and the landscape of his nightmares, nor between Tzeentch’s warriors and the gibbering, shambling beasts mankind had become.

He screamed, and at last the spectacle ended.

Or at least it shrank to a scale the human mind might apprehend without breaking. Everything whirled and broke apart, and then he stood on a strip of bone-white sand beside a crimson sea. As the waves broke, images formed and dissolved in the foam, providing glimpses of the tortures he’d inflicted on the lamb.

Before him stood a familiar figure in a cowled brown robe.

Dieter swallowed. “All this time, I thought you were a figment of my imagination.”

The priest cocked his head. For a moment, his eyes caught the crimson colour of the waves. “Have we met before?”

“Don’t play games. You’re the creature who’s been working to corrupt me.”

The older man smiled. “Time has little meaning here. That’s why you were able to watch the future of your world unfold. It also allows me to see you in the past as well as the present, and it looks to me as if you worked to corrupt yourself. You worshipped the Changer’s icon and conjured Dark Magic. Perhaps you even invented a phantom tempter you could blame to ease your conscience.”

“If my ‘tempter’ wasn’t you, then why do you look exactly like the figure I saw before?”

The priest smiled. “I can look like a great many things”—his shape seemed to flicker as if he’d become something else, then turned back again, too quickly for Dieter’s eyes to quite follow the double change—“but most of them would strain what’s left of your sanity. This guise seemed more conducive to conversation.”

Dieter took a deep breath. It was frustrating that the priest wouldn’t admit he’d been haunting him all along, but did it truly matter? Perhaps he’d do better to focus on the business at hand. “I was trying to summon a daemon.”

“And maybe you have.”

“You were supposed to appear before me in the warehouse.”

“It takes a great exertion of power for a daemon to fully manifest in the human realm. One day, it will be otherwise, but for now, it was less trouble for me to bring you here.”

Less trouble, Dieter thought glumly. It also made a mockery of the idea that he was truly in control of the proceedings.

“Don’t worry,” the priest continued, “you aren’t dead. Assuming we reach an accord, you can return to your flesh. Which I suppose is bad news for the race of sheep.” He grinned—for just an instant, the leer made his face look like a naked skull, but then it was the same as ever � and waved his hand at the visions in the breaking waves. Shooting stars arced across the sky as if the heavens too were pointing at the sea.

“I conjured you,” Dieter said, trying to assert some semblance of the dominance that by rights should belong to the summoner, not the spirit, “because I require a service.”

“Then you’d better tell me what it is.”

“I need you to kill Mama Solveig.”

“The doting old woman who took you in and cooked you all those wonderful meals? Won’t you feel even more guilty when the treachery is done?”

Dieter scowled. “My emotions are no concern of yours.”

The priest shrugged. “Perhaps that’s true. But I do have a legitimate concern. Solveig Weiss is a faithful servant of the Architect of Fate. Why, then, would I want to harm her?”

“What you want is irrelevant. You’re going to kill her because I command it.”

“And if I resist, you’ll chastise me. But are you certain you can master me on my home ground? Perhaps I can call a thousand maimed lambs bleating and floundering out of the surf to take their vengeance on you.”

Dieter raised his hands as if to conjure. “If so, you’d better start them crawling.”

The priest laughed and lifted his own hands in a pacifistic gesture. His voluminous sleeves slid down his forearms. “Easy! There’s no need for unpleasantness, at least not yet. I was only teasing you. In truth, the god doesn’t care about the old woman’s welfare. He cares about you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Isn’t it obvious? No matter how you try to run away from our lord, every stride carries you closer. You now wear his mark. Your knowledge of Chaos and its powers grows by the day. That’s because the god has chosen you to be his sword, and is leading you down the path you walk to forge and temper you.”

“Nonsense.”

“Deep down, you know it isn’t. But as it’s your fate and accordingly inevitable, it isn’t anything we need to quarrel about. Let’s concentrate on the business that brought you here. I take it you hope that if Solveig Weiss dies, the Master of Change will choose you to succeed her as coven leader.”

“Yes.” At which point, the sorcerer would summon him to his lair, and he would at last discover where the damn place was.

“It’s a reasonable hope,” said the priest. “You’re the ablest magician in your circle, and on top of that, the god has altered you, so who else would the Master pick? But do you really need a daemon to murder the crone? Just take her by the throat and choke her.”

“I have to make sure suspicion doesn’t fall on me, so I can’t kill her in the cellar, and it would be chancy doing it elsewhere. She has magic that alerts her when she’s being followed, and any passer-by could observe me doing the deed. In addition to which, I’m still not certain just how formidable her sorcery is. All things considered, it just seems wiser to act through a powerful proxy like a daemon. Afterwards, my comrades of the Red Crown will assume the Purple Hand summoned the entity just as they conjured the fiery serpent.”

“I follow your reasoning, and I’m glad it isn’t simply squeamishness that makes you baulk at butchering the old woman yourself. Nevertheless, that’s what you’ll have to do.”

“No, I’m commanding you to do it.”

“Command all you like. Neither you nor I have the power to keep me hovering about in your world until an opportune moment to strike arises. What I can do is teach you an enchantment to alter your form sufficiently to conceal your true identity. The spell may also help you get closer to your prey before she spots you, and aid you in actually making the kill. Are you interested?”

“Perhaps.”

“Then what will you give me in exchange?”

“Nothing. You’re constrained to help me.”

“I wonder if we really will have to put that to the test.”

“You said the Changer of the Ways wants me to walk the path I’m on. If so, why should I have to barter? You should be eager to help me.”

“Maybe I should, but daemons tend to dislike helping humans. We certainly detest taking orders from them. And perhaps paying the price is the next step on the path. So: I’ll help you kill Solveig Weiss and so further your schemes. But you will reward me for my trouble, or else suffer the consequences of your intransigence.”

Dieter hesitated. According to the principles of wizardry, he should be able to control an entity he’d summoned no matter how it sought to deceive and intimidate him. But in point of fact, he hadn’t completed the ritual, it hadn’t functioned as anticipated, and he had little confidence in his ability to return to his body without assistance. All in all, it made fighting a daemon in its own world about as unappealing a prospect as he could imagine.

Yet sealing any sort of covenant with the entity could prove equally disastrous. Daemons were infamous for the cunning malice with which they often perverted such compacts. Bargainers discovered too late that the treasures they’d acquired were actually curses, or that the seemingly token prices they’d agreed to pay entailed the forfeiture of their lives, their souls, or the slaughter of their loved ones.

Still, if Tzeentch really did mean for Dieter to survive this encounter relatively unscathed, and if he was careful, bargaining might be at least a little safer than battle, and the bleak truth was, now that he’d recklessly landed himself in this terrible place, he had to try something. “What do you want?” he asked.

“Oh, how about a memory or two? I promise not to take anything you need. In fact, I’ll only extract material that hinders you, that burdens you and slows you as you travel the Changer’s road.”

“In other words, memories that buttress my sense of the man I truly am.”

The priest smiled. “If your identity is so fragile that the loss of a few moments will annihilate it, then you might as well give it up now.”

“Promise me I’ll still remember my identity and my mission. That I’ll still possess all my magic, skills and faculties. That I’ll remain just as capable as I am now.”

“Didn’t I just guarantee as much? But very well. I agree to all your conditions. I swear by the Changer of the Ways. Now do we have a bargain?”

Dieter noticed he was breathing hard and struggled to control it. He flinched from the thought of trading away even a tiny portion of himself. But he feared it was necessary, and besides, a part of him, the part that grew stronger every day, wanted to learn the spell the priest had promised. He craved it as he’d come to hunger for every new piece of dark lore, no matter what it cost him.

“All right,” he said, “I agree. But no tricks!”

The priest chuckled. “I believe we already stipulated that. The way you keep harping on it, a person might almost imagine you’re afraid.” He advanced to within arm’s reach. “If you’ll allow me?” He raised his hand and touched his fingertips to Dieter’s temple.

Pain ripped through Dieter’s head. He cried out and stumbled.

“I’m sorry it’s uncomfortable,” said the priest, “but at least it’s quick. Certainly quicker than squinting and puzzling over a musty old grimoire for days on end. Now go home and make me proud.”

He shifted his hand to the crown of Dieter’s head and pushed downwards. Dieter’s body plunged into the sand as if he were a tent peg, and a hammer stroke were sinking him deep into soft earth.

Then the blinding, smothering grit vanished, and he plummeted through a lightless, frigid void until that space disappeared just as abruptly. He landed in his own world and physical body with what felt like a considerable jolt, although, since pure spirit had no mass, he knew the shock was only in his mind.

Mouth dry and heart pounding, he cast about. The lamb’s carcass looked no different. The candle he’d lit didn’t appear to have burned any lower, nor did the blood on his hands feel any dryer. Apparently his sojourn in the realm of Chaos had only lasted a few moments.

He could feel the new knowledge in his head waiting to be savoured and explored, but for once, something else took precedence. He had an anguished sense of loss and violation, and with them came a stab of fear that the priest had broken his promise and taken something vital.

He thought of his parents and his childhood. His training at the Celestial College. Halmbrandt. His name. His mission. Jarla.

As promised, the contents of his memory seemed essentially intact. The priest certainly hadn’t crippled him. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that something precious was gone forever, and somehow, the fact that he had no way of even guessing what the recollection had been made the loss seem even more unbearable. He looked at the lamb again, remembered how he’d relished hurting it, and puked.

 

In time, the sense of loss faded. Though it continued to gnaw at Dieter, it loomed no larger than the rest of his countless worries.

He waited impatiently for Mama Solveig to give him the chance to strike at her, and tried to believe his eagerness stemmed from his desire to satisfy Krieger and go home. In large measure, it was even true. But he couldn’t deny that he also yearned to cast the new enchantment simply for its own sake. He’d spent hours contemplating the incantation the priest had planted in his mind, but that was scarcely the same as actually experiencing the magic.

Finally, one night an hour after sunset, as he sat rereading the forbidden parchments, Mama Solveig hobbled up behind him and put her hand on his shoulder. “I have calls to make,” she said, “and then I thought I might stop at the Four Dancers. I like the minstrel who’s singing there. Do you want to come along?”

Pulse ticking faster, he turned his head to smile at her. “Unless you need me, I believe I’ll stay here. I think I may finally be on the verge of figuring out how to cast the spell that Adolph found without the power turning against us.”

“It will be wonderful if you can. Well, there’s cheese and baked apples left over from supper, and half a jug of ale. Go read by the hearth if you feel chilly. I think this old hole is getting danker and more draughty by the day!”

“Yes, Mama.”

She patted him on the shoulder, collected her basket and shawl, and eventually hobbled out the door.

He forced himself to count to fifty, just to make sure she didn’t turn right around and come back in, either because she’d forgotten an item or thought of something else she wished to say. Then he sprang up from his seat, put the pages back on the lectern, drew a deep breath, and declaimed the first words of the incantation. A sickly-sweet smell suffused the air. The ceremonial wands and staves clinked and rattled in their storage rack.

As he started the final rhyming lines, he braced himself. Everything else he’d experienced as a result of his communication with the priest had been painful in one way or another. It seemed unlikely that this would be any different.

Yet it was. When the change took him, melting and reshaping him from the bones outward, the feeling was so pleasurable he laughed helplessly, as though putting aside humanity was the greatest ecstasy to which a person could aspire.

Once that wild elation faded, he inspected his hands. They were bigger and covered in black scales. His nails had lengthened and thickened into talons. The icon leered at the transformation.

Because his hands were so different in and of themselves, it took Dieter a moment to realise that vision itself had altered in some subtle fashion. His third eye was open, and for once, it probably didn’t matter. Not if the enchantment had altered his face as thoroughly as it had his extremities.

He felt his features to see if that was in fact the case. Scales had sprouted there as well, and the lower half of his face had extended slightly into serpentine jaws. His teeth were fangs.

No, it wasn’t likely anyone would recognise him. The trick would be to keep people from noticing his deformities as he pursued his victim, and the petty tricks that generally served to conceal his third eye were inadequate to the purpose. He cast about for the hooded cloak the mutants had given him, spotted it, and reached it in a single bound. That was wrong, and so, he abruptly realised, was the half-crouch which seemed to be his new body’s natural posture. He needed to walk like a man, and stand up straight.

He should also get moving before he lost Mama Solveig’s trail. He donned the mantle, pulled up the cowl to shadow his face, and headed out the door.

Head bowed as if by woe or weariness, trying not to shrink from the gaze of passers-by, he caught up with the hobbling old woman easily enough. Now that he was viewing her with his new eye, a purple shimmer crawled on her body. If she didn’t sense his presence, he could attack as soon as she was alone.

Unfortunately, he suspected she wouldn’t be alone any time soon. In fact, the streets were growing more crowded as she doddered towards a square notorious for its taverns, fighting pits and brothels.

Perhaps he could trust his cape and hood to protect him from the casual scrutiny of one or two folk at a time, but it was unlikely to do so if he ventured into close quarters with dozens at once. He wondered how he could continue following Mama Solveig, and instinct nudged him to look I upwards.

For a moment, he imagined he was simply feeling the familiar lure of the sky, the Celestial wizard’s fascination I with the heavens that, thank the gods, had yet to fade no matter how he polluted himself with Chaotic lore. But that wasn’t it. It was the rooflines that tugged at him, not the stars and clouds. He surmised that was because the form he’d adopted could clamber over the tops of the buildings as easily as it could traverse the streets that sliced and snaked between them.

He scuttled into an alley, glanced about to make sure no one was watching, then pulled off his shoes. They were I cramping his feet anyway, because his lower extremities I had enlarged, also. The toes were longer, and their nails were claws.

It turned out that scaling a wall was easy. He was stronger than he’d ever been before, and his talons dug deep into soot-stained, decaying brick and mortar. He reached the sloping, shingled roof in a matter of moments, then peered down until he spotted his quarry.

Mama Solveig doddered on and he trailed her, springing from one rooftop to the next when necessary. That, too, was generally easy. In the poorer precincts, the builders of Altdorf jammed in their structures close together.

Suddenly, the midwife froze. She peered about as if she’d lost her way.

Dieter surmised that in reality, she’d sensed someone was stalking her and was trying to identify her shadow. He crouched low and held himself still.

But he needn’t have bothered. She didn’t think to look above street level, and Dieter sneered at her foolishness.

She stopped twice more to cast about, and still it didn’t occur to her to glance upwards. Meanwhile, her course carried her into darker, narrower streets, where fewer folk were walking. Dieter worried that she’d realise she was safer in a crowd, turn, and retrace her steps, but she didn’t. Instead she hobbled into the enclosed passage, in effect a sort of tunnel, that ran between two buildings.

Dieter dashed along the roof of the walkway. No one was in the courtyard at the far end, which made it a perfect place to close with his quarry at last. He poised himself to leap down on her the instant she stepped out into the open.

Unfortunately, she didn’t, and eventually, he realised she wasn’t going to. She was hiding in the corridor to waylay her stalker just as she’d surprised Dieter beside the river.

Which was to say, she could have chosen a safer course of action, but had instead decided to discover and confront whatever danger threatened her and, by extension, the coven she led. It occurred to Dieter that it was a courageous choice. It inspired respect, and with respect came uncertainty.

He didn’t want to kill an old woman who’d been kind to him. Who could say that it would actually force the Master of Change to reveal himself? Dieter’s mind was sick and at least half-addled with desperation and forbidden knowledge, so it seemed entirely possible that his plan was crazy as well.

But no. Curse it, no. He wouldn’t fall prey to qualms and misgivings now. Mama Solveig was a monster. She turned innocent people into monsters. She’d turned Dieter himself into a mutant, or started the process, anyway. She deserved to die, and even had it been otherwise, this scheme was the only one he had, his last chance of regaining the life Krieger had stolen from him.

Besides, it wasn’t really true that Dieter didn’t want to kill her. A part of him did. It would revel in her destruction as it had the lamb’s.

She was presumably peering out at the end of the passage that opened on the street. He could take her from behind if he attacked from the courtyard side.

As he crawled down the wall headfirst, he wondered whether to assault her with a spell or brute force. In almost any circumstance, he would have opted for the former. But if he ripped her with his claws, the manner of her death would lend credence to the notion that some inhuman agent of the Purple Hand had slain her.

In addition to which, he was curious to see how it would feel. That, too, was a part of experiencing this new magic for the first time.

Planning to creep down the passage, he flipped to the ground. Mama Solveig was at the other end of the walkway just as he’d expected. What he hadn’t anticipated was that she was looking right at him. Somehow she’d finally discerned or simply guessed where he was.

Dieter charged her, and she recited words of power. Though she spoke softly, her high, quavering voice echoed in the enclosed space, with each repetition louder than the last. She lashed her arm through the air, and splinters of darkness hurtled from her hand.

Dieter leaped high and to the side, but the darts diverged as they flew, and despite his attempt to dodge, one pierced his leg. He hissed at the pain, and stumbled when his foot thumped back down on the ground.

He realised he could no longer run or spring with the same nimbleness and speed as before. Mama Solveig evidently recognised it, too, because she judged she’d have time for a second spell before he closed with her. Backing away, but slowly, so as not to hamper her conjuring, she recited and swirled her hands through mystic passes.

Dieter almost laughed. She was casting the shadow binding, the spell that he now knew how to turn against the caster. Thanks to her previous attack, he was limping already, and now he exaggerated it, slowing down and making sure she had time to finish.

She whirled a twisting length of darkness from her hand. He spoke to it as he’d spoken when Adolph sought to snare him with the same effect.

Or rather, he tried. It was the first time he’d attempted to talk since his transformation, and now he discovered that reshaping his jaws and tongue had cost him the ability to articulate without care or effort. The word came out too sibilant and slurred.

So, naturally, the binding didn’t heed it. It whirled around him and snapped tight, stinging him and tying his legs together. He toppled to the ground amid the shards of a broken wine bottle.

Doing his best to ignore the hot, stabbing pain of his bonds, he tried twice more to speak the word of command, and still couldn’t manage it correctly. Meanwhile, Mama Solveig chanted. Luminous cracks zigzagged and forked through the stone walls and ceiling as the repeated evocations of Chaotic forces hammered at the structure of reality.

The old woman cast another barrage of darts. Dieter rolled, jabbing and grinding pieces of broken glass into his body. He dodged some of the missiles, but two more pierced him, and he bucked in agony.

Such attacks weren’t like spear thrusts. They didn’t leave open, bleeding, tangible wounds. But they could kill nonetheless, and surely would, if he had to endure many more of them.

In desperation, he began the counter spell his masters at the Celestial College had taught him. It was comprised of a number of words, any of which his deformed mouth might conceivably mispronounce. But he’d cast it successfully hundreds of times, during his apprenticeship and after. Perhaps all that practice would offset his handicap.

At the same time, Mama Solveig rummaged in her basket. He wondered if, deeming him helpless, she thought it safe to come close and employ a blade or some toxic agent to finish him off.

He whispered the final word of his incantation. His bonds frayed into nothingness. He scrambled to his feet and lunged at Mama Solveig.

Her eyes opened as wide as they could go, but surprise didn’t paralyse her. Magenta glow oozing on her hunched, skinny form, she slashed her hand through the air and screamed a single word.

Already cracked and weakened, a portion of the ceiling shattered, and chunks of stone dropped. Dieter leaped to get out from under them, but some of them caught him anyway, bashing him back down onto the ground.

Mama Solveig had never taught him that spell. Maybe it was a secret weapon she’d kept from everyone, or maybe she hadn’t known it herself until now. Perhaps it was knowledge that had insinuated itself into her unconscious mind as she studied dark lore, to reveal itself at the moment she needed it most.

Dieter struggled to shrug off the weight of the rubble. Maybe this show of resilience made Mama Solveig fear he was unstoppable, because, whirling and running like a woman forty years younger, she fled back out into the night. In a moment, she was lost to sight.

Dieter floundered up from the broken stone, and, his whole body throbbing and aching, staggered out of the passage. He cast about and spotted a smear of purplish glimmer vanishing around a corner. Thanks to his new eye, he hadn’t lost the trail.

He dashed after Mama Solveig as fast as his abused and battered body could go. Maybe he should try to hammer her with a blast of wind or a shout infused with thunder as soon as she came back into view. He’d thought to rend her with his claws and avoid using magic that anyone might associate with Celestial wizards in general or himself in particular. But now, after all the punishment he’d absorbed, he just wanted to make the kill as expeditiously as possible.

He rounded the corner and was pleased to see she wasn’t as far ahead as he’d expected. Even if her usual appearance of feebleness was only a mask, her exertions were apparently taking a toll. He halted, drew a deep breath, and raised his hands.

It was then that half a dozen soldiers, a watch patrol, judging from the lantern on a pole the first one carried, emerged from a side street several paces ahead of Mama Solveig. At once she resumed her hobble and became a perfect picture of fragile senescence once again.

“Help!” she gasped. “Mutant! Chasing me!” She peered back down the street, then pointed. “There it is!”

The soldier with the lantern peered, cursed, set the light on the ground, and drew his sword. His comrades readied their own weapons, and they all trotted forwards.

Dieter had no desire to hurt them, nor did he want to give them a chance to hurt him. But, limping as he was, he doubted he could escape them even if he tried, which meant he had to fight. It was either that or be cut down from behind.

Enunciating carefully, he spoke to the sky, and knives of light flashed from his outstretched hand. The missiles pierced two of the soldiers, and they dropped.

Their comrades baulked. Backing away, Dieter whispered another charm. Hoping that he’d begun to master the trick of pronouncing his words properly even with a reptilian mouth and tongue, he risked speaking more quickly.

One word came out slightly garbled, but the heavens saw fit to help him anyway. Blue light outlined his limbs. Layered on top of his scales, the mystical protection might suffice to protect him from the soldiers’ blades.

He gave them a level stare. “You see how it is,” he said. “I’m a sorcerer. If you make it necessary, I can strike every one of you dead. So don’t. I have nothing against you, and the old woman isn’t what she seems. Just walk away—”

One soldier howled a battle cry, and then they all charged.

Dieter struggled to stave off panic and think. It seemed obvious that they’d try to surround him, and that he needed to prevent it if he could. He faked a step backwards, then sprang at them instead.

The sudden pounce took them by surprise. Even so, the soldier directly in front of him did a fair job of swinging his sword into line, but the armour of light deflected it, and the point glanced off Dieter’s shoulder.

The soldier managed to block with his round steel shield as well. Dieter crashed into it, and his momentum slammed the obstruction back into the soldier’s body and knocked him staggering. A backhand swipe of Dieter’s claws slashed horizontal cuts across his face.

Dieter felt both savage satisfaction and revulsion, and knew he had no time for either. He whirled to find out what the other soldiers were doing.

They’d already turned to threaten him anew. Fortunately, stumbling about, helpless with shock, pain, or, conceivably, the loss of his eyes, the soldier Dieter had clawed was in their way. Dieter grabbed him and shoved him into one of his fellows, and the pair fell to the ground together.

For the moment, that left two soldiers to menace Dieter. Hoping that simple tricks and fierce aggression would continue to serve him well, he faked a grab at one man, then pivoted and lunged at the other.

His target warded himself with a deft shift of his shield that was virtually an attack in its own right. Dieter slammed into the rock-solid barrier with bruising, stunning force, rebounded and reeled off-balance.

His momentary loss of equilibrium gave the soldiers time to flank him. He retreated, bounded this way and that, trying to get out from in between them, but they matched him step for step.

Meanwhile, their swords leaped at him. He dodged some strokes, and so far, the others were only slicing shallow cuts. He knew that luck couldn’t hold. His defences notwithstanding, it wouldn’t be long before one of his adversaries struck hard and true enough to kill him.

He, of course, struck back at those infrequent moments when the pressure of their onslaught abated sufficiently to allow it. His new body was strong and quick—or at least it had been before enduring so much abuse—and seemed equipped with a feral instinct for physical combat that the human Dieter could never have matched. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to offset the soldiers’ advantages of training, teamwork, and the longer reach their swords afforded them. Nor could he cast a spell with the blades flashing at him so relentlessly.

The soldier he’d merely knocked down clambered to his feet and came running to assist his comrades, and that surely meant the end of the fight was at hand. Dieter was about to die.

Or so he assumed until he glimpsed motion from the corner of his eye. He glanced and spied Mama Solveig lashing her hands through the passes required for the binding spell. It had held him once, for a few heartbeats anyway, and she evidently assumed it would do so long enough for the soldiers to dispatch him.

It was a considerable miscalculation from someone who was generally so shrewd. Even though they weren’t looking at her, she was running a risk using magic in the soldiers’ presence, and they certainly didn’t need her aid to kill him. She should have been able to tell that, but evidently his monstrous appearance and dogged pursuit had so rattled her that she couldn’t.

Or perhaps Tzeentch had clouded her judgement because he had plans for Dieter, just as the priest had claimed.

Dieter thrust that ghastly notion out of his mind. He couldn’t afford to think about that or anything but dodging, blocking and keeping the soldiers’ blades out of his vitals for a few more tortured breaths.

A coil of darkness spun from Mama Solveig’s hand. He spoke to it, and this time pronounced the word of usurpation clearly. Two of the soldiers were standing close enough together for the length of shadow to entangle them both, and it spun around their upper bodies and smashed them together. They lurched off-balance and fell with a clash of shields and armour.

Dieter pivoted towards his remaining opponent to find the soldier’s sword streaking in a horizontal arc at his neck. He barely managed to duck beneath the cut, then grabbed the other man’s fighting arm before he could recover. He gave it a vicious yank and twist, his claws shearing muscle and his strength popping it out of the socket. The soldier’s face turned white, and the hilt of his weapon slipped from his fingers.

Now that his foe was helpless, Dieter wanted to kill him, wanted to butcher all the soldiers who were still alive. Why not? They’d done their utmost to slaughter him. But the ashen, wide-eyed face beneath the helmet looked very young, a boy’s visage, not a man’s, and perhaps that was what made him hesitate. He reminded himself Mama Solveig was the real enemy, and these wretches, merely her dupes, and it gave him the strength to throw the lad to the ground and pivot in her direction.

She fled, and he sprinted after her. His wounded leg throbbed every time his foot impacted the street, but he was too furious for the pain to baulk him.

At the last moment, she tried to turn and face him, but she was too slow. He leaped onto her shoulders and carried her down beneath him.

He hooked his claws in the sides of her neck and pulled, shearing flesh. Blood spurted from severed arteries. He knew that was sufficient, she’d be dead in a moment or two if she wasn’t already, but he was too excited to let it end so quickly. He flipped her over onto her back and ripped at her face and torso.

It wasn’t until he’d obliterated every trace of her features that he started to calm down, and then he noticed the shreds of raw, gory meat caught on his talons. It occurred to him that the old woman could give him one last meal, and the notion made him smirk. He raised his right hand to his mouth.

 

Like a good many of the dolts who patronised the Axe and Fingers, Niklas the pawnbroker erroneously fancied himself a wit. Leering, he served up the same lewd plays on words Jarla heard at least once a night, that she had, in fact, heard a dozen times from him. She giggled and replied in kind, leaned over as she served him his beer so he could see down her bodice, and eventually breathed an invitation in his ear.

Eager as she’d expected, he stood up so quickly he nearly overturned his chair, and inwardly, she winced. It was strange. Dieter never sneered at her for being a whore, and yet, now that he was her lover, selling her favours seemed more difficult and unpleasant than it ever had when she was with Adolph.

At least Niklas always finished quickly. She’d close her eyes and imagine herself elsewhere while he poked away at her, and maybe it wouldn’t be too bad. The pawnbroker produced a purse from within his jerkin, loosened the drawstring, and then, as if Jarla’s thoughts had summoned him, Dieter limped in the tavern door.

She gasped at his cuts, bruises and scrapes, torn clothing and dazed, sick expression. If he felt as wretched as he looked, it was lucky he still possessed the wit to hold his third eye closed.

She started towards him, and a hand grabbed her forearm from behind. “I’m first,” Niklas said.

She pivoted, wrenching herself free. “Not now,” she snapped. Niklas opened his mouth, presumably to object. “Leave me alone!” The pawnbroker flinched, then snorted and turned away.

Jarla rushed to Dieter. Up close, his clothing and breath smelled of vomit. “What happened?” she asked. He shook his head to indicate that he wasn’t up to explaining yet, or that he couldn’t do it in public.

“We’ll go upstairs,” she said. She put her arm around him, guided him in the proper direction, then noticed the barman’s glare. He wasn’t happy with her for rebuffing Niklas or for what she intended now, either, because no money had changed hands. “I’ll pay for the room,” she told him.

It was scarcely worth paying for, just a tiny stale-smelling hole even more squalid than the stall in which she made her home. But it had a door to separate the occupants from the outside world, and a bed for them to rest on. Jarla sat Dieter down on top of the straw mattress, took him in her arms, and then he started to sob.

She rubbed his back and waited for him to cry himself out. It took a long time, but he finally stopped shaking and lifted his head from her shoulder. His eyes were bloodshot. He had ruddy blotches on his face and mucus on his upper lip.

She wiped his nose. “Tell me what happened,” she said.

He hesitated, and she felt a pang of uneasiness. She was upset already, of course, profoundly upset to see him so distraught, but this was different.

He’d obviously run to her for comfort, and such being the case, she would have expected that, when the time came to explain what was wrong, the story would have gushed out like his tears. Instead, he had the air of a man calculating precisely what to say.

But surely that couldn’t be so. He loved and trusted her too much to withhold or manipulate the truth. It was just that, in the wake of his ordeal, whatever it had been, he needed a moment to collect his thoughts.

“I—” He swallowed and began again. “Mama Solveig’s dead.”

“What?”

“We were going to call on some of her patients and a creature attacked us. Not another fiery snake, but something else out of Chaos. The Purple Hand must have sent it, too. I tried to fight, but my magic couldn’t stop it. You see what it did to me. I thought it would kill me for certain, but it just cleared me out of its way, because it was really after Mama.”

Jarla felt tears start from her own eyes, heralding the bitter sorrow to come. She wasn’t truly grieving yet. The news had shocked her numb. But she knew she would. Solveig Weiss had shown her more love and kindness than her true mother ever had.

“Did she suffer?” Jarla asked.

“I hope not. At the end, when… the beast finally sank its claws into her, everything seemed to happen quickly.” He started crying again, and this time, they wept together.

When that outpouring of anguish subsided, she murmured, “I don’t blame you for what happened, and I don’t want you to blame yourself.”

To her surprise, he jerked back out of her embrace to stare into her face. The third eye popped open to study her as well.

“What do you mean by that?” he demanded.

“Just that I know you did everything you could to save Mama, and if you couldn’t, no one else in the coven could have done it, either. So you mustn’t hate yourself because the daemon or whatever it was got past you.”

“Oh. I thought…” He gave his head a shake, as if to clear it. “You’re right. I did my best, and I shouldn’t despise myself for failing. Mama wouldn’t want that.”

“No, she wouldn’t. She’d want us to serve the god and take care of one another.” Perhaps because his manner was still strange, she suffered another stab of anxiety. “You are going to stay with me and take care of me, aren’t you? I’ve lost everyone else who really mattered.”

He sighed. “Yes. Of course.”

 

Dieter crouched in the shadowy alley with the taste of Mama Solveig’s blood and flesh in his misshapen mouth. Jarla’s voice called his name repeatedly, the sound louder, nearer, every time.

She mustn’t see him in his current monstrous guise. He recited the words intended to turn him back into a human being, but nothing happened. He tried again, and it still didn’t work.

Jarla appeared framed in the entrance to the alley. She gaped at him. “Dieter! You killed Mama! You ate her!”

He wanted to deny it, but a sort of inertia held him. He stood mute and passive, and then it was too late. She vanished, and a band of armed men materialised in her place. Some were Krieger’s assistants, some were Mann’s freakish followers, and the rest were the watch patrol Dieter had clawed his way through to reach his intended victim, up and walking despite their gory wounds.

They all charged Dieter, and he wheeled and fled before them. They cried his name as they pounded after him.

For a while he ran through Altdorf’s benighted streets and alleyways, and then, abruptly, the city gave way to sunlit fields of scarlet grass. Voices shouted his name from ahead as well as behind. He crested a rise and beheld Tzeentch’s legions arrayed in a battle formation.

If he stayed where he was, his pursuers would catch and butcher him. If he ran onwards, the god’s warriors would protect him, but it would mean joining their ranks to serve forever after.

He couldn’t choose. He stood paralysed until guns banged, and the balls hammered into his torso. He screamed, and then the vermilion grasslands vanished. Gasping, heart pounding, drenched in sweat, he lay on his back in darkness.

A nightmare, he told himself, it was only a nightmare. In reality, he wore his natural form, and he was still in Mama Solveig’s cellar. Or rather, he supposed, it was his cellar now, so long as he paid the rent.

He took deep breaths, let them out slowly, and the tension started seeping out of his body. Then a voice said, “Dieter.”

He threw off his covers and sat up on the cot. “Who’s there?”

For a heartbeat or two, no one answered, and Dieter wondered if the voice had merely been an echo of his dream. Then it repeated his name.

“I said, who’s there?” Dieter called, and when the voice again failed to answer, he, too alarmed to take the time to light a candle in the usual way, rattled off a charm. A yellow teardrop of flame flowered atop the nearest taper, illuminating the infirmary, and, to a lesser degree, the shadowy spaces beyond. As far as Dieter could see, he was alone.

Mann had told of a voice that spoke from empty air. Had Dieter’s lunatic scheme actually worked? “Are you the Master of Change?” he asked.

“I watched you,” said the disembodied voice. It was masculine, with a shivering metallic undertone like the fading note of a gong. It sounded from one point, then another, as if the speaker were physically present and flitting around the room like a fly. “I saw everything.”

Dieter swallowed. Saw everything? What did that mean? Was the Master, if this was really he, saying that he knew Dieter was a spy? That he’d watch him murder Mama Solveig?

Dieter rose from the cot. If he was in danger, he wanted to meet it on his feet. “Just tell me who you are,” he said.

“I saw you quell the curse Adolph so stupidly unleashed. I watched you teach the others. I saw you rob the armoury and journey into the forest.”

Dieter felt marginally better. It only made sense that even if the Master of Change had the ability to spy on him, he wouldn’t spend his every waking moment doing so, and by the sound of it, he hadn’t been watching when Dieter met with Krieger, or did anything else incriminating.

“Then I hope you were pleased. Assuming that you are who I think you are.”

The voice laughed, which made the hint of vibrating metal more overt. The sound had a crazy quality as well, like the cackle of a senile old man finding humour where sounder minds saw none.

“Now why would you assume that?”

“Mama Solveig is dead. If the Master of Change wants to maintain governance over the coven she assembled, he’s going to have to communicate with one of the other members.”

“But why would it be you, the new recruit? Why not someone who’s served the Red Crown long enough that his loyalty is beyond question?”

Dieter didn’t care for the implication that his own fidelity was not, but decided not to respond to it directly. Not yet, not unless he had to, for fear of making the situation worse. “The high priest of the coven needs to be an accomplished warlock, and with Mama, Adolph and Nevin dead, and Jarla’s skills so rudimentary, I seem to be the only candidate.”

“You’re arrogant,” said the voice.

No, Dieter thought, I’m the sword of Tzeentch, his anointed champion. In the long run, likely more important than you. Then he faltered, appalled to catch himself embracing, even for an instant, the venomous lie the priest had told him.

But now was not the time to agonise over this further evidence of his psychic division and deterioration. Rather, he needed to show more respect. “I don’t mean to be arrogant,” he said. “I bristle when I’m uneasy, and you rattled me by calling out of the darkness. Truly, I was only trying to answer the question you asked. But if that answer wasn’t good enough, maybe this one will be.” He opened his new eye.

He thought that when he did, he might somehow catch a glimpse of the Master of Change even though the cult leader was apparently projecting his voice from far away. Unfortunately, he didn’t. The only thing he saw that hadn’t been visible before was a purplish shimmer crawling on Mama Solveig’s worktable, the bundles of herbs hanging above it, and the thick brick pillars.

“Yes,” said the voice, “the mark of the god. It means a great deal, and yet, not all of us who receive his favour are as thankful as we ought to be.”

“I am.”

“I hope so. My divinations suggest you’re destined to accomplish much in the service of our lord. But I’ve found that prophecy by itself can prove a treacherous guide. A mage should never ignore his common sense.”

Dieter’s pulse ticked in the side of his neck. “And what does your common sense tell you?”

The voice laughed. “Nothing conclusive, but it is troubled that in the brief time since you joined your coven, the mistress and four other members have died.”

“You said it yourself: it was Adolph’s folly that killed Nevin and Maik and himself, for that matter. He forced me to strike him down. As for Mama, we assume the Purple Hand waylaid her. I certainly had no reason to do it. I liked her.”

“Yet even so, perhaps you coveted her position.”

Dieter shook his head. “Adolph did. I didn’t. Not while she was alive.”

“What about now?”

“Well, to be honest, yes. Who wants to be a common soldier if he can be a captain instead? So, if you truly doubt me, tell me what I must do to win your trust.”

“Fair enough. I intend to summon you to the next gathering of coven leaders. When you come, bring Jarla Kubler along with you.”

Dieter hesitated. “I understood that no one but coven leaders ever attend such assemblies.”

The Master of Change chuckled. “Then you were misinformed. Naturally, we bring lesser folk. We need them. When the lords of the Red Crown pay homage to our patron, it’s only fitting that we offer a finer sacrifice than goats.”

“I’ll gladly secure one. But Jarla is a faithful servant of the god.”

“Up to now, perhaps, but she’s soft and weak. Better to send her to her reward before she fails us.”

“If you kill her, what effect will that have on the rest of our circle?”

“None, because they’ll never know what became of her. She’ll simply disappear, and then, not immediately but not long after, you’ll show them new documents full of dark lore. It will prove you’ve been to see me, and I chose you to succeed Mama Solveig.”

Dieter struggled to think of another objection, but nothing came to him, or nothing helpful, anyway. It was useless to argue that murdering Jarla would be cruel and unjust. Devotion to Chaos was supposed to transcend all such petty considerations. Nor would it help to plead that he loved her, because that was exactly the point. The Master of Change was demanding that he betray her to demonstrate his absolute commitment.

Damn it, why was he even worrying about a whore, a Chaos worshipper, when the accomplishment of his mission might finally be at hand? He’d known from the start that if he actually succeeded in taking down the Red Crown, she was almost certain to burn with the rest of the cultists. He’d reminded himself again and again that she was expendable.

Yet he realised now that she mattered to him. Perhaps not sufficiently to sway him from his course, but certainly enough to make it bitter.

“All right,” he said. “Just tell me where I’m supposed to bring her.”

“I’ll guide you when the time comes.”

The mauve and violet shimmering faded, and Dieter sensed he was alone once more. His head started throbbing a moment later.