CHAPTER FOURTEEN

 

 

With his face angled upwards, immobilised, Dieter couldn’t see anything but the dark anemone, but he assumed all the cultists had jerked around to defend themselves from the intruders. If so, then for a moment at least, they’d stop attacking him. Maybe he still had a chance after all.

Or maybe not. He threw darts of light at the flower-thing, but they didn’t appear to damage it. He asked the wind to tear it apart, but the conjured entity withstood the blast. Meanwhile, the pain around the periphery of his face was excruciating. It made it all but impossible to cast spells with the necessary precision, and it seemed to him that the pull was growing stronger.

He croaked the call for a dark binding, nearly botching the cadence of the incantation but correcting just in time. The coils pounced at the anemone, and he sent them snaking and weaving among the petals, entangling the entire structure, then, with a sudden, savage exertion of will, yanked the complex knot tight as a hangman’s noose arresting a condemned man’s drop through the gallows floor.

The binding cut the manifestation to pieces. The myriad pieces screamed, and the petals started tumbling to the floor, only to vanish in mid-fall. The tentacles withered from existence as well, and the pain in Dieter’s face, or anyway, the worst of it, disappeared also. Blood from the punctures along his hairline trickled down his forehead, threatening to drip into his eyes and blind him. He wiped it away and looked around.

As he’d surmised, Krieger and his minions had finally invaded the crypt, along with a flying fiery serpent like the one Dieter had encountered on the night he first met Adolph and Mama Solveig. The newcomers’ pistols had done their work, smearing the air with sulphurous smoke in the process, and now the human intruders had switched them out for swords. The snake dived and struck.

Since Krieger had attacked by surprise, with the advantage of firearms, superior numbers and an infernal ally, he should have had no trouble massacring the leaders of the Red Crown. But in point of fact, it was unclear which side, if either, currently held the upper hand, because only a couple of the cultists had fallen. Perhaps the others wore protective talismans or possessed hidden alterations to their anatomy that had enabled them to withstand a volley of gunfire. In any event, they were striking back, with flares of dark power when possible, and fists and daggers when necessary.

Too much of the time, it wasn’t necessary. Living up to his reputation for lethal skill and prodigious power, rattling off incantations, the Master of Change was conjuring supernatural servitors of his own to interpose themselves between the Red Crown and their foes. Dieter suspected that, like the spider-things Mama Solveig had evoked to test his abilities, the Master’s creatures weren’t real in every sense of the word. But they were tangible enough for one, a scuttling, crab-like thing the size of a table, to catch a witch hunter’s leg in its serrated pincers and snip it out from underneath him. The man fell, and the crab cut and pulled the rest of his body apart.

Left undisturbed to produce such horrors in abundance, the Master would surely vanquish those who’d come to lay him low. Fortunately, Dieter, still standing between the towering black icon and the altar, was likewise well behind the defensive line of monstrosities, in good position to strike at the three-armed adept. In fact, the Master wasn’t even looking in his direction and likely had no idea he’d freed himself from the power of the floating anemone.

Smiling, Dieter breathed the first syllable of a word of power, and something emitted an ear-splitting wail. When the Master heaved around in his direction, Dieter realised the source of the noise must have been the slavering infantile head growing from the warlock’s chest, because the dripping yellow eyes of the twisted lump were glaring at him. It had somehow sensed his hostile intentions and shrieked a warning.

The Master snarled a rasp of a word Dieter had never heard before, and one of the conjured monstrosities forsook the defensive line to rush at him. Perhaps the ugly word was its name. The creature’s round, writhing form was so bizarre and complex that at first glance, it baffled the eye. Dieter couldn’t make out what it was, or whether it was crawling as fast as a man could sprint or rolling itself like a wheel.

Then his mind made sense of it, and he perceived it was a great tangled mass of arms and clutching hands. Perhaps the limbs all grew from a central hub, or maybe they simply attached to one another. Dieter couldn’t see deeply enough into the shadowy crevices in the heaving, squirming mound to determine which.

He cast darts of light at it, but the barrage failed to slow it down. It leaped onto the dais and then, like a ball bouncing, flung itself on top of the altar. A dozen hands snatched at him, and he hurled himself backwards. The creature pounced after him. He scrambled to get behind Tzeentch’s statue and use it for cover, but the entity lunged and cut him off.

Dieter kept retreating before it, off the edge of the platform and onwards, relying on the precognitive vision of his third eye to warn him which hands would grab and pummel next. He hurled knives of shadow, but they had no more effect than the darts of light. He wrapped the monstrosity in a binding, but, scarcely pausing in its rolling, slapping, scuttling advance, it gripped the jagged strands and ripped them apart.

Dieter felt himself starting to panic. He was already winded, and his glimpses of the future wouldn’t keep him out of the creature’s clutches once his reflexes slowed. He had to stop it forthwith, but how, when none of his spells appeared to have any effect at all?

He shouted at it with a voice like thunder, but that was no use either. It grabbed his ankle and jerked him off his feet. He slammed down hard on his back, and the entity crawled over him, countless hands gripping and pounding him. He realised that if not for his protective halo, they likely would have rendered him helpless in an instant.

The enchantment couldn’t save him for long. If he was lucky, he might have time to attempt one final piece of magic. Twisting his head back and forth to keep any of the monstrosity’s hands from covering his mouth, he gasped words of power, then scrabbled at the floor, his fingertips catching and bunching something cold and flat.

With his arms essentially immobilised, he couldn’t actually rip the creature’s shadow away from its corporeal form. But the mere effort satisfied the requirements of the spell, and the entity, no doubt suffering the shock and sudden weakness he remembered, faltered in its efforts to mangle and kill its prey. Meanwhile, a second such mass, made of darkness and accordingly vague in the ambient gloom, surged up from the floor.

The shadow creature threw itself on its counterpart, and the original let go of Dieter to defend itself against the assault. Tangled together, they rolled off him, and he jumped up and scrambled to distance himself from their portion of the battle.

Gasping and shaking, he cast about. Though more combatants had fallen on both sides, the fight still raged. Krieger had left off swinging his gory sword to bellow an incantation. His effort shredded the flesh of two of the Red Crown’s conjured monstrosities. The serpent of flame hurtled down at the Master of Change, and he met it with a gesture of denial that stopped it as if it had slammed into an invisible wall. The relentless, ubiquitous discharge of unnatural energies brought chips of stone showering down from the ceiling and woke the graven images on the walls to jerky, repetitive life. Blades of gleaming copper-coloured grass stabbed up from the floor.

Bracing himself for his next effort, Dieter drew a deep breath. Then something smashed into the back of his head.

 

Jarla crouched in a small shrine, an alcove adjacent to the vault where everyone was fighting. A voice had started whispering from the shadows at the back of the space, and the statue in the centre, a representation of a robed dwarf carrying an orb and sceptre, cracked and crunched periodically. Maybe it was just getting ready to fall apart, but it reminded Jarla of an egg in the process of hatching.

She was afraid to stay where she was, but even more reluctant to venture back out into the open and the maelstrom of slaughter there. She wished that she’d tried to flee the temple when hostilities first erupted, but her instinct had been to bolt for cover instead, and now it was too late. With a band of dark-clad, well-armed intruders and a vile miscellany of Chaos creatures swelling the numbers of the combatants, she had little hope of slipping past them all.

So the only thing she could do was cower and watch, and more than anyone or anything else, she watched Dieter. She felt a reflexive stab of anguish when the thing with a hundred hands bore him down, and went limp with relief when he extricated himself from its clutches. The relief was short-lived. Mere moments later, a dark, hairless, shriveled-looking figure with a whipping rat-like tail appeared directly behind him. Perhaps it had just come into existence, or maybe it used a trick of invisibility to creep up on those it wished to harm.

It cocked back a bony fist and punched the back of Dieter’s head. Despite its emaciated appearance, it must be strong, because the blow threw him down on his belly. It immediately dropped to its knees on his back and gripped his neck in a stranglehold, lifting his head in the process. It opened a mouth lined with jagged tusks, and a white tongue as long as Jarla’s arm slithered forth to lick the bloody wounds on Dieter’s face.

Jarla tensed, her body preparing to flinch, for she was sure Dieter was about to die. He was plainly helpless, and the creature need only savage him with those terrible fangs or wrench and break his neck with its powerful, long-fingered hands to finish him off. But it didn’t do either of those things. Not yet. Rather, it kept on throttling him while lapping at the flow of blood.

Such being the case, Jarla realised she might be able to save him.

But why should she risk herself? Why forsake her refuge, dubious though it was, dash out into the thick of the battle, and confront a Chaos creature? She comprehended almost nothing of what was happening, but she had heard Dieter say he was a spy. Surely that meant he’d deceived and used her from the start, and probably even expected her to die as a result of his machinations. He’d certainly thrown her down in the street and kicked her into submission, then dragged her into this nightmare against her will.

Yet in the end, he’d endangered himself to save her, and of all the people she’d ever loved, he was the only one left. If she lost him too, was there even a point in trying to preserve what passed for her wretched little life?

I’m an idiot, she thought, stupid as Adolph always said. She drew herself to her feet and, trying to stride quickly but quietly too, advanced on the blood-drinker and its prey.

A stray flare of sorcerous fire blazed at her, and she jumped out of the way. His leather armour hanging in tatters, a lanky swordsman retreated across her path pursued by a thing like a homed lizard stalking on two legs. He executed stop cuts, and it slashed at him with talons as long as fingers. Each was too intent on the other to notice Jarla. She waited for them to pass, then scurried on.

Dieter’s assailant shifted its grip from his neck to his shoulders. In all likelihood, it had already choked him into unconsciousness or worse. It drew the pale tongue back into its mouth and bent to bite the prone man’s throat.

Realising she was out of time, Jarla sprinted. The creature heard her coming, straightened up, and started to twist around. She jabbed her thumbs with their long, painted nails at its round black eyes.

Her right thumb found its target; it was like plunging it into jelly. The left one missed and skated along the side of the creature’s face, scratching its dry, wrinkled hide.

She pulled her left hand back for another try, but the entity struck first, a backhand swat that caught her under the jaw and sent her reeling backwards. As she struggled to regain her balance, the creature hissed and drew itself to its feet.

She retreated. It was all she could do. The creature stumbled, swayed, clapped a hand to its perforated, leaking eye, and she dared to hope she’d incapacitated it after all. Maybe it wanted her to think that and relax her guard, for a bare instant later, it sprang. Startled, she froze.

A wind sprang up. It tore at Jarla’s hair and clothing, but she was only at the edge of the effect. The blast of air had actually targeted her attacker. It caught the creature in mid-leap and tumbled it across the room to smash into the edge of the dais. Bone cracked. The apparition convulsed for a heartbeat or two, then slumped motionless.

Jarla pivoted towards Dieter, who was struggling to stand. She ran to him and helped him up. “You summoned the wind, didn’t you?” she asked.

Rubbing his neck, where the marks of the blood-drinker’s fingers were still visible, he sucked in several rasping breaths before attempting a reply. “Yes. The gods know how. I couldn’t really even talk. When I pushed you away from the altar, I meant for you to get out of here.”

“I’m glad now that I didn’t.”

“Keep yourself safe. I have to finish this.” Wiping and smearing the blood on his forehead, he fixed his three-eyed gaze on the Master of Change.

 

As many spells as he’d cast and as much punishment as he’d absorbed already, Dieter was amazed he was still conscious. He could only infer that something, his mutation, perhaps, or even Tzeentch’s favour, had granted him reserves of stamina no untainted human magus could match. Even so, he sensed he was reaching the end of them, but as he’d indicated to Jarla, he saw no choice but to keep fighting.

He took a moment to commune with the sky. He felt the wet weight of the rain pent inside the clouds, the restless winds, and, above them, the webs of force established by the positions of the planets and constellations.

At the same time, he observed the phantasmal slime and shimmer oozing and swirling through the chamber, sometimes adhering to surfaces, sometimes floating and billowing like mist.

Two powers, one filtered through the cleansing medium of the firmament and one streaming directly from the ultimate filth that was Chaos. One pure and one poisonous. He could command either, and knew that to have any chance at all against the Master of Change, he was likely to need both.

He rattled off a hybrid blasphemy of a spell he constructed extemporaneously. It was an insanely reckless thing to try, but, in his exalted state of consciousness, he was confident he was combining the words properly.

He swept his hand through the air as if throwing a ball, and splinters of light and shadow hurtled from his fingertips. He hoped that the Master’s mystical defences, whatever they were, would prove inadequate to the task of stopping both sorts of missile at the same time.

The darts plunged into the Master’s back, and he lurched around to face his attacker. The little head in the centre of his chest screamed in pain or rage, but the one set atop his shoulders showed no sign of distress, in fact, the enormous grin with those tombstone teeth stretched even wider.

The Lord of the Red Crown snarled words of power, and as he did so, his form split into two superimposed images, the first, the illusory one, moving just in advance of the second. The phantom thrust out its two left arms, and a colourless, rippling virulence streaked from its fingers. The precognitive vision warned when and in what vector the actual attack would come, and Dieter wrenched himself to the side.

Unfortunately, the edge of the effect must have grazed him anyway, or else its mere proximity was enough to cause harm, for his mind fractured, memory, identity and purpose splintering into terror and confusion. Already incapable of knowing precisely what he was doing or why, he visualised the configuration of the heavens at the time and place of his birth and shouted his own name.

His thoughts snapped back into focus, and he realised Franz Lukas’ ward against psychic assault had saved him. His teacher had trained him to cast the spell as a sort of reflex, just as an expert fencer would parry a threatening blade without the need for conscious thought. Otherwise, it would have been useless against the very assault it was intended to defeat.

Dieter spoke to the air and the drifting, seething mist that was Chaos, imploring them to unite. He sent the result howling at the Master of Change.

The wind battered the warlock and tore the multicoloured vestment from his body. The venom suspended inside it dissolved his flesh like acid. Blubber melted, baring gory ribs. The infantile head eroded to a featureless nub. The twitching fingers studding the worm-like tail burned away.

Yet the Master didn’t collapse. Perhaps Tzeentch had marked and claimed him so completely that even a dose of Chaos in its most destructive form couldn’t slay him. He screamed a word, and the wind failed. He shook a blistered, smoking fist, and an unseen force smashed into Dieter’s stomach and knocked him reeling backwards.

The same force pounded him again and again. Despite the punishment, he managed a dark binding. He hoped to ensnare an invisible assailant, but apparently there was nothing tangible for the jagged coils to grab. They jerked uselessly shut on themselves.

Another blow spiked pain through his shoulder. It didn’t seem to him as if the attacks were coming with extraordinary accuracy or science, but everyone connected, and it would only be a matter of moments before they incapacitated or killed him.

He doubted he could cast another spell. He didn’t have time, and the relentless assault would likely keep him from articulating the incantation properly even if he did. That almost certainly meant he was doomed, but still he struggled to think. To perceive. To find the way out of his dilemma.

He felt the wind awaiting his command. Evidently the Master of Change hadn’t dissolved the enchantment that bound it to his will. He’d merely interrupted the flow of power, the way a slap in the face might startle and baulk a man, but only for a moment. Still, what did it matter when Dieter had already discovered that even a corrosive gale was insufficient to put the warlock down?

“The god’s dagger,” said the priest.

Dieter glanced to the side. He’d lost sight of the robed apparition when the fight began, but the priest was standing beside him now. Despite the battle raging in the vault, he looked as calm as ever, and why not? Invisible fists weren’t pounding him to death. It seemed likely that no one but Dieter could even see him.

“You felt its spirit when you picked it up,” the priest continued. “Perhaps you can still feel it.”

Dieter realised it was worth a try. He couldn’t see the knife anymore. The dais blocked his view. But he reached out with his mind and sensed the same malevolence he’d encountered before. It enabled him to pinpoint the weapon’s location.

Another blow rocked him backwards. He struggled to transcend the shock and focus his will. The wind screamed. The dagger spun up from behind the pedestal, then shot at the Master’s head.

With all the power at his command, the warlock surely could have deflected the attack, but with his eyes fixed on Dieter, he didn’t see it coming. Nor could the secondary head warn him, because Dieter had already succeeded in killing that part of him, anyway.

Bone crunched as the sacrificial instrument punched into the back of the Master’s head, burying itself to the hilt. The warlock pitched forwards, and after a moment, it became apparent that nothing was striking at Dieter anymore. At the same time, he felt the knife’s vicious jubilation at making a kill.

Dieter wished that he too could savour the victory, but since he and Jarla were still in danger, it was a luxury he couldn’t afford. Gasping and swaying on his feet, he cast about, taking stock of the rest of the battle.

The fiery serpent was gone, but some of the Red Crown’s conjured horrors had perished, too, and in the wake of their summoner’s death, others now vanished, their defensive line disintegrating. Its loss would make it more difficult for the four surviving followers of the Red Crown to cast spells unhindered, and it appeared that Krieger wasn’t the only fighter on the other side capable of working magic of his own. Another swordsman chanted a rhyme, and a retreating warlock’s foot plunged into solid floor as if he’d stepped in a hole.

All in all, it seemed that the Master’s death had turned the tide in Krieger’s favour, and, reasonably confident of the witch hunter’s chances, Dieter retreated, distancing himself from the thick of the fray. Battered and weary as he was, he urgently needed to catch his breath and settle himself for what was still to come. Jarla scurried out of a recessed space in the wall to join him.

It took about a minute for the last of the Red Crown to fall. Krieger was still on his feet, and so were half a dozen of his men. At least two of the latter were sorcerers. No one was casting spells at the moment—which had the beneficial effect of slowing the random Chaotic manifestations distorting reality throughout the chamber—but a violet glimmer, evidence of the forces they’d recently invoked, crawled on their lips and hands.

Seven against one was long odds, just about as hopeless a situation as the one Dieter had faced when he’d first defied the Master of Change. Jarla tried to embrace him, and he prevented her. He didn’t want his movements hampered or his view obstructed. “It’s not over yet,” he whispered.

Krieger leered at the two of them. “When did you grow the third eye?” he asked.

“A while back,” Dieter said. “When did you cast your lot with the Purple Hand?”

The big man chuckled. “I suppose that once I burst in here with a Chaos creature in tow, and my brothers and I started using magic, my true allegiance became rather obvious.”

“I should have realised early on,” Dieter said. “It made no sense that, with all its resources, the Order of Witch Hunters couldn’t find a more willing and capable spy than me. But you couldn’t involve the entire order, could you? The honest witch hunters couldn’t know anything about what your little circle of traitors intended if, at the end of it all, you were going to plunder the Master of Change’s collection of grimoires for your own cult.”

“Cleverly reasoned,” Krieger said. “That was the way of it.” He glanced at the man standing next to him. “I told you he was sharp.”

“Apparently I’m not,” Dieter said, “for I missed other clues along the way. The arrival of the first burning serpent gave me what I desperately needed: a second chance to win Jarla and Adolph’s trust. The timing was amazingly fortunate—unless the people who were shadowing me observed my predicament and sent the creature to help me resolve it. Then, later, you had no interest in catching Leopold Mann and his followers. You claimed it wasn’t your job, but, considering all the harm the raiders have done and the notoriety they’ve achieved, it’s difficult to understand how any loyal servant of the Empire could be so utterly indifferent.

“But you didn’t answer my question: how long have you served the Purple Hand?” Dieter didn’t actually care, but he did want to prolong the conversation. It gave him additional time to control his laboured breathing and to recover a bit more of his strength.

“It’s only been a few years,” Krieger said. “When I started out, I was what you called an ‘honest’ witch hunter.”

“What happened?”

Krieger snorted. “What happened was that I was a man, too, with a man’s appetites, and in one little flyspeck of a hamlet the peasants asked me to judge an accused witch who was also the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

“The evidence indicated she probably had dabbled in casting charms of the most trivial sort, but I had no reason to think anything awful would happen if I pretended otherwise. So I set her free, and she thanked me as we’d agreed she would.”

“And in due course,” Dieter said, “something bad did happen.”

“Yes. She turned into a monster, slaughtered her entire village, and commenced a rampage across the province. It took a company of knights to bring her down.

“I winced when I heard about it, but at first I wasn’t worried. No one was left alive to tattle that I’d investigated the bitch and declared her innocent. But then someone came to me with proof that he and his associates were in possession of the affidavit I’d written.”

“‘Someone’ being a member of the Purple Hand.”

“Yes, although I didn’t find that out for a while. He told me that if I didn’t do him and his friends the occasional favour—condemn a prisoner they wanted burned, or turn a blind eye to another’s obvious guilt—they’d send the document to my superiors, and that would have been the end for me. I doubted my ability to convince a tribunal I’d made an honest mistake, and it wouldn’t have mattered even if I could. The witch had done too much harm for the wretch who released her to evade punishment, no matter what the circumstances.”

“So you capitulated.”

“Yes, and over time, the favours became more frequent, and came to include crimes that had nothing to do with witch hunting. My new masters paid me in gold for my services, gradually took me into their confidence, and, discerning the aptitude in me, set about teaching me magic. They were drawing me in, you see. Converting me from a reluctant conscript into a true believer.”

“And it worked?”

“Of course. How could it fail? I couldn’t deny the truth of the Changer’s teachings, or resist the lure of forbidden secrets. I couldn’t help delighting in the touch of Chaos and the working of Dark Magic.” Krieger grinned. “Judging from the look of your forehead, you can’t, either.”

“You’re wrong about that.” Dieter decided he’d regained about as much of his vigour as he was likely to without actually lying down and sleeping the rest of the night away. “We should talk about what happens next.”

“If you like.”

“I’ve given you everything you demanded of me, with the result that you’ve accomplished all your goals. The Master of Change and his lieutenants are dead. His library is surely waiting down here somewhere for you to take it for your own.” It hurt him to say as much, with the implication that he himself would never see it. Even now, in the most desperate circumstances, the craving for dark lore still gnawed at him. “Now I ask you to keep your promises. Let Jarla and me go. Clear my name.”

Krieger chuckled. “So you can return home with a third eye in the middle of your forehead?”

“Let me worry about that. All you need to know is that my deformity works to your advantage. I can’t denounce you as a Chaos worshipper lest you denounce me for a mutant. Not that I’d bother to accuse you anyway. There was a time when I might have cared about your crimes, but I’ve had such concerns beaten out of me. At this point I simply want to save myself.”

“It’s good to hear you say so, and as you’re willing to be sensible, I’ll gladly honour our agreement. Why not?”

Dieter sneered. “Why not, indeed? Except, of course, that you came to grief once already by allowing a person bearing the stain of Chaos to go free. Why would you risk it again, and have the threat that someday, for whatever reason, I might reveal the truth about you hanging over your head? Especially considering that you made the world believe I’m the Chaos worshipper. If you catch me—killing me in the process, of course—you’ll advance your career as a witch hunter, which will bring additional opportunities to further the cause of the Purple Hand. Whereas if you declare that you were wrong about me, it will count as a mark against you.

“All of which leads me to suspect you’re simply trying to cozen me into dropping my guard, to make it easier to kill me.”

“It would have been easier for you, too,” Krieger replied, “if you could have found it in your heart to trust me one last time. Because I truly am grateful for your efforts, and I would have made your end quick and clean. You would have died happy, without ever realising that things weren’t going to work out for you after all. But if you prefer to go down fighting, so be it.” He waved his hand, and his men started forwards. Jarla whimpered.

“I wouldn’t,” Dieter said. He displayed the little clay figure with the same subtle flourish he’d once employed to pluck pennies from a child’s ears.

Dieter was no sculptor, and the figure bore only a crude resemblance to its inspiration. The ambient gloom and the distance between him and Krieger should likewise have hindered recognition. But perhaps the witch hunter felt a pang of instinctive alarm when he beheld the doll, for he barked, “Wait!” His minions halted their advance.

“That was wise,” Dieter said.

“What is that thing?” Krieger growled.

“It’s you, Otto. Your future.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I said before that I should have deduced you were a Chaos cultist sooner than I did, and that’s true, but I did realise before tonight. Since you have pretensions to magical skill yourself, you likely know that all true sorcerers catch glimpses of Chaos worming its way through the mundane world from time to time. This new eye of mine enhances that mode of sight.

“The eye opened a crack the second time we met at the tavern, and I saw an ugly glimmer crawling on you. At first, I imagined it was just an outward sign of a vicious, brutish nature, but then I realised it meant Chaos had taken you for its own.

“Once I understood that, it was easy to figure out that you were actually a follower of the Purple Hand, your pledges were worthless, and you’d deem it expedient to kill me as soon as I outlived my usefulness. If I wanted to survive, I needed a way of forcing you to honour our agreement.”

Krieger swallowed. “So you pretended to have a seizure.”

“Exactly. Do you remember how I flailed and scratched at you? I did it to obtain a bit of your blood, hair and skin. I needed them to make this talisman.”

“Which is supposed to do what, exactly?”

“If I so choose, it will hurt you. I confess, I can’t say precisely how. You might go blind. Or mad. Or catch the plague. You might suffer one calamity after another for the rest of your days. Suffice it to say. Celestial wizards understand the ways of destiny—that was why you chose me, remember?—and I’ve bound your fate inside this figure. Don’t make me blight it.” Dieter spoke a word of command and pressed his thumb down on the doll’s chest.

Krieger gasped and staggered. Dieter would have been happy to continue the torment for a considerable time, but he suspected that if he tried, the other cultists would shake off their uncertainty and move to interfere. So he stopped squeezing after only a moment or two.

“That was just to prove that you and the doll truly are connected,” he said. “Don’t make me do something that will have permanent consequences.”

His eyes wild, Krieger sucked in a ragged breath. “I won’t! I promise I won’t! I’ll proclaim your innocence as soon as we go back up into the city! I’ll declare it right now, in writing! There must be ink and parchment down here somewhere…” He turned as though casting about for them, and his form divided into multiple images superimposed on one another.

The phantom moving ahead of all the others whirled back around with a small pistol in its hand. Evidently Krieger kept it concealed on his person as a weapon of last resort, and he was gambling that he possessed the speed and marksmanship to kill Dieter before his adversary could exert the power of the doll.

But thanks to Dieter’s ability to glimpse the future, the ploy was doomed to fail. He waited another instant—dodge too soon, and Krieger might realise and adjust his aim—then sidestepped.

The several Kriegers collapsed into one. The little gun in his outstretched hand spat fire and banged just as Jarla threw herself in front of the muzzle. She thought she needed to endanger herself to shield Dieter, and since he’d been too busy watching the witch hunters to keep an eye on her as well, he hadn’t discerned her intention.

She grunted and flopped backwards. Dieter tried to catch her, but, with the talisman filling one hand, couldn’t grab hold. Jarla fell down on her back with a neat little hole above her heart.

He stared down at the body in astonishment. He’d mastered the tainted side of himself and refused to kill Jarla when she lay atop the altar. Instead, he’d unchained her, and fought the sorcerers of the Red Crown to give her a chance to escape. It seemed impossible that, after all that struggle, she lay dead anyway.

Then, abruptly, stupefaction gave way to fury. He bellowed and gripped the doll as tightly as he could. Responsive to his hatred even without incantations or mystical gestures to compel them, Chaos and some rarefied essence of lightning blended together, poured into his body, surged down his arm and burned in his straining fingers.

The clay figure burst into flame as if it were made of paper, then shattered into half a dozen pieces.

Krieger shrieked and dropped his gun and sword to paw at his face. It was a bad idea, because the flesh there had lost its cohesion, and a touch sufficed to dislodge it from the bone beneath. Gory scraps and viscous liquid streamed down like stew slopping from a ladle.

Krieger tried to extend a beseeching hand to Dieter, and it fell off his wrist. The witch hunter’s left eye collapsed and slipped back into its socket as though some parasite ensconced inside his skull had sucked the optic into its mouth.

Krieger pitched forwards, convulsed twice, and then stopped moving entirely. The corpse bloated instantly, as though it had lain and rotted for days.

It was, Dieter assumed, the end for him as well. The threat to Krieger had been his only hope of forcing the Purple Hand to let him go. Now that he’d already carried it out, the remaining cultists had no reason to accede to his demands. Indeed, he’d given them additional cause to butcher him.

So be it, but, even though, in the wake of that last piece of magic, he doubted he had even a trace of power left, he’d do his best to make them work to avenge their leader. He drew breath, lifted his trembling hands, and only then realised they still weren’t moving to attack him. Was it possible that Krieger’s death, or the gruesome, unexpected manner of it, had cowed them?

Someone cleared his throat. Dieter pivoted to meet the gaze of a man who’d whipped him back in his cell in Halmbrandt. The ruffian had a long, scraggly caprine beard, a missing incisor, and blood from a fresh wound in his right forearm darkening his sleeve. He held a short sword in either hand.

“You said we could have the Red Crown’s books and papers,” he said, the hint of a quaver in his voice.

“Yes,” Dieter replied.

“Then go. Go now, and we won’t try to hurt you, all right?”

Fearing a trick, Dieter edged towards the exit, picking up his cloak and a lantern in the process. The cultists watched with malice in their eyes, but did nothing to prevent him.

It occurred to him that he was abandoning Jarla’s body. The Purple Hand would either toss it in a sewer or simply let it lie and rot in the evil place where it had fallen.

She deserved better, but then, she always had. Dieter had deceived and exploited her from the start, and a proper burial, even if he could have managed it, was scarcely enough to make amends.

He staggered through the reeking sewers as fast as the darkness, slippery, treacherous footing, and his bruises, facial wounds and exhaustion would allow. He glanced back often to see if anyone was following him. As far as he could tell, nobody was.

At the foot of the ladder, wincing at the thought of the agonising headache that would soon follow, he closed his third eye. He pulled up his cowl as well, to obscure the unnatural organ and the bloody punctures on his forehead, cheeks and jaw, then set down his lantern and clambered up the rungs. Twice he nearly lost his grip, but not quite, and finally he crawled back out onto the street.

A spotted dog barked at him. Several boys glanced around in his direction, then resumed their game of kickball.

Dieter lifted his eyes to the heavens.

Even with the smoke, lights and rooftops of the city obscuring it, the beauty of the night sky clogged his throat and brought stinging tears to his eyes. He knew he should keep watching for enemies stalking after him, but as he rose and stumbled onwards, he only wanted to gaze at the stars and forget everything else.

“Well done,” said a baritone voice.

Dieter lurched around, saw the priest, and realised he wasn’t surprised. Some part of him had expected the phantom to reappear.

Which didn’t mean he was glad. “What do you want now?” he wheezed.

The priest smiled. “To congratulate you on your victory.”

Dieter’s guts twisted. “What victory? I just lost a woman who loved me and everything I was fighting to reclaim. Krieger was the only person who could have given me back my life, and I went berserk and killed him.”

“As you were supposed to. It’s all a part of the Changer’s plan. At the end, that was why the Purple Hand feared to fight you. Whether they realised it consciously or not, they sensed that the god would favour you, not them.”

“No!” Dieter exploded. “There isn’t any plan, and even if there is, I’m going to thwart it! I feel as though I’ve lost everything, but I haven’t, not yet. Despite everything, I haven’t lost myself, and by the sun and stars, I won’t. I’ll find a way to purge the sickness inside me and scour your master’s filth from my face.”

“Excellent!” said the priest. “Walk your road, learn your lessons, and we’ll talk from time to time along the way.” He turned and disappeared. Overhead, a falling star sliced a long gash across the sky.

 

 

Scanning and basic
proofing by Flandrel,
formatting and additional
proofing by Undead.