Van Horstmann

by Ben Counter

  Van Horstmann turned to Argenos. He had made a little progress in escaping the glass spikes that impaled him, but not much. His blood was now a sizeable pool on the floor beneath him.

  ‘I had been saving that for you,’ said van Horstmann. He drew from his robes the sacrificial dagger with the wavy blade, the one which was never clean of the blood no matter how many times it was washed. ‘But as it is, your death will have to be much more prosaic. I apologise.’

  Van Horstmann grabbed the back of Argenos’s head with one hand and yanked it back. Argenos tried to speak, blood flecking his lips. Van Horstmann had no interest in what the witch hunter had to say. He stabbed the blade into Argenos’s chest, twisted it, and withdrew it when he felt Argenos go limp.

  Van Horstmann let go of the witch hunter’s head. Argenos’s head flopped down so his chin touched his chest and the blood spread more rapidly now as what remained of Argenos’s life pumped out of him. His hand, which had still been clutching his hammer, finally fell lifeless and the hammer hit the floor with a ringing like a bell. It was as good a sign as any that Argenos was dead.

  Van Horstmann was suddenly aware of how exhausted he was. The Black Mirror Broken, the Dark magic spell with which he had killed Kardiggian, was one of the most powerful he had ever encountered. It had pushed back the limit of what he was capable of. The flowing of Dark magic through him had robbed him of his energy and his legs were heavy. Even picking up his staff from the floor was an effort. He wiped a sleeve across his brow and when he removed it the light was not as bright and the smouldering corpse of Kardiggian seemed to lie very distant.

  He could hear scales on scales, the coils of them.

  The tower in the aethyr was half-buried in a sea of snakes. That third place, where van Horstmann’s mind fled when it was under mortal strain, was vivid and close now. This was the place where his memory dwelt, the one he had not been able to master. So much of himself had been sliced into manageable pieces and filed away, like volumes on the shelves of the Light Order’s library, but that one memory had never been tamed. It had a life of its own, making itself remembered when it chose, sinking away into obscurity when it suited.

  It was the memory of his sister’s death, of the pit of snakes. Van Horstmann saw himself, felt and smelt it, as he dragged himself to the pit’s edge.

  The woman had watched him. That same woman had watched his sister sink below the surface and die – Lizbeta, who had never so much as let a cruel thought enter her head. That woman had thrown both the youths in, and stood by the pit to watch them die.

  Van Horstmann saw her now with the smirk on her face. It amused her to see van Horstmann, little more than a boy, still struggling for life. That smile was the ugliest thing he had ever seen. A painter would have made the woman beautiful, but that smile was a red slash in her face like the mouth of a fish, the amusement in her eyes as disfiguring as a facial scar.

  Behind her was another figure. A man. He put his arm around her shoulders and kissed her hair.

  ‘Do you see, dearest?’ he said. ‘The serpent is the icon of purity. It separates the corrupt from the pure. You were right.’

  ‘Of course I was,’ replied the woman in a smooth, dark voice. ‘They must let me in. No one understands the principles better than I.’

  ‘They would never permit a woman to join,’ said the man. He had no beard and his was many years younger, but nevertheless it was unmistakeably the same face. Van Horstmann had never been more certain of anything than that. ‘Not the Light Order. They take a mountain’s age to change. We will not see a woman magister of the Light in our lifetimes.’

  The woman turned to her lover. She touched her hand to his cheek. ‘Then it will have to be you,’ she said.

  ‘It will be your learning that takes me to their ranks,’ said the man. ‘Your brilliance that causes me to shine.’

  ‘I love you,’ said Albreda.

  ‘I love you too,’ said Alric.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  COMMANDMENT

  Van Horstmann was on his knees, coughing and gasping down breaths. He composed himself and stood again. From his robe he took the small pane of crystal that looked on to his sanctum.

  Master Chanter Alric was pounding on the sanctum door. Van Horstmann’s face was reflected in every pane in the sanctum.

  ‘Alric,’ said van Horstmann. Alric heard the voice and turned to see dozens of reflections of van Horstmann’s face looking at him. ‘Tell me. Did you ever recognise me?’

  Alric looked around, confused. ‘Grand Magister, whatever you have done, there are men who will kill you for it. Whoever you have bargained with, whatever contracts you have–’

  ‘I asked you a question,’ said van Horstmann, keeping his voice level. ‘Did you ever recognise me? When I was an acolyte, when I first walked in through Midday’s Mirror, did you recognise me?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Alric. ‘I had never met you before. What are you saying?’

  ‘You forget so easily the ones who had to suffer,’ said van Horstmann. ‘How many were there? How many experiments did she conduct before the snake pit?’

  Alric seemed to deflate. He sank to the floor of the sanctum. ‘The pit? How did you–’

  ‘Because I went in,’ snapped van Horstmann. ‘My sister and I. But only I came out. What did you two hope to achieve, Alric? What did she think it would tell you?’

  ‘That the serpent would sort the corrupt from the pure,’ said Alric. His face had blanched and his eyes were wide. Sweat was starting to sheen on his forehead. ‘She was brilliant…’

  ‘Your wife.’

  ‘My wife.’

  There was a part of van Horstmann, tiny and all but silent, that had never truly believed he would ever make it here. He had shut it away with all the rest of his doubts, all the fears that might have stood in his way. He could feel that memory flaming up and burning away now. The warmth of it flowed through him, a tingling that started at the back of his head and wound its way down his neck, down his chest, around his limbs. ‘I joined the Light Order. I studied the magic of Light and Dark. I sacrificed wonders to the God of Lies, and I contracted with daemons. All for revenge. All to make you both pay for what you did to Lizbeta, and to me. Have you heard of the Key of Isha? The key to forge a prison. The key that when it was broken, would seal any door, forever, never to be opened. To create a prison for all time.’

  Van Horstmann held up a hand to the crystal pane, so Alric could see it. In his hand were the broken shards of the Key of Isha.

  Alric realised what van Horstmann had done. His eyes welled up and he began to cry. ‘It was her!’ he cried out. ‘All her idea! I would never have even studied the Light at all, were it not for her! She did all this!’

  ‘You mean her?’ said van Horstmann.

  One of the panes in the sanctum changed. It was now showing the image of a room in a well-furnished Altdorfer town house, with curtains of burgundy velvet and a four-poster bed. Standing in front of a mirror was a woman, middle-aged but, from a distance at least, still beautiful. She was peering worriedly at a buboe growing on her neck, examining it as if she was seeing it for the first time.

  ‘I gouged out the eye of Magister Vek at Kriegsmutter Field,’ said van Horstmann. ‘I placed on it the enchantment that causes everything it sees to appear here, in your cell. And then I placed it on the wardrobe in your wife’s chamber, so you can watch her. She has just discovered the first symptoms of Gods’ Rot. But it is not the strain that kills quickly. Morkulae the Cup-Bearer of Nurgle created a strain for me that kills very, very slowly, and with great suffering. She will live even beyond her natural lifespan, as bit by bit she decays. She will soon be bedridden. After that she will never leave that room. And you will watch it all.’

  Another pane changed. This one showed the Chanter’s Hall, looking towards the Master Chanter’s dais and the huge musical organ. ‘I cut out the eye of the ratman seer at the battle of Drufenhaag, and put the same enchantment on it.
Without you there, no one will take on the responsibility for maintaining the organ you worked so hard to have built. It will tarnish and fall apart until it is forgotten, like the legacy you wanted to build with your wife’s knowledge in the Light Order. And you will watch it all.’

  Van Horstmann cast a third subtle spell, and another pane changed. This time it showed a view of Altdorf, from the very topmost tower of the Imperial Palace. Through the haze of smoke from a thousand chimney stacks, it was possible to make out the charred area beyond the fork of the Reik, all the way to the outskirts of the city where the walls gave way to the fields and forests of Reikland.

  ‘And I plucked out the eye of Heinrich Grunhald-Salzenhaar, from his tomb in the Garden of Morr. It was remarkably well-preserved, for in life he was a patron of the priests of Morr and they rewarded him with an incorruptible corpse. Through it you can watch the fate of Altdorf. At first it will trouble you not. But time will seem to speed up. The hours will flit by. Your wife’s body will decay, your legacy will become dust, but then the worst will come. Altdorf will change. It will wax and wane. It will burn and be rebuilt. All without you. And you will understand just how little your life meant. Watching it, you will go mad. And you will stay mad, tormented, in my sanctum forever. Time does not flow there. You will not want for thirst or hunger. You will watch forever as the world leaves you far, far behind. And mine is the last voice you will hear, ever, until the end of time.’

  ‘Van Horstmann!’ yelled Alric. ‘It was not me! It was her!’

  ‘She was insane,’ said van Horstmann. ‘She was compelled. But you went along because you wanted her. You made a choice.’

  ‘Damn your eyes, van Horstmann!’ screamed Alric. ‘Rot you in hell, you mad–’

  Van Horstmann snapped the pane of crystal in his hands. Alric’s face vanished and his voice cut off.

  In all of this, in all the intricate planning, the consideration of every possible thread of fate, he had not given any thought to this moment – to how he should feel. He had done it. He had his revenge. Alric would watch everything he loved die, then the world he knew change, and he would watch it trapped forever in a room created to drive him mad.

  He did not know how he was supposed to feel. Triumphant? Elated?

  He could give it some proper thought later. Van Horstmann turned now to the structure in the centre of the innermost vault, letting the broken pieces of the key fall to the vault floor. He took up his staff again and let the spiral of Dark magic begin working its way through him, opening the energy channels of body and soul up to the darkest impulses of the aethyr.

  He had finished what he had come to the Light Order to do. Now all that remained was to escape.

  Broken and mutilated, every muscle and chitin section torn, Hiskernaath the daemon dragged its form down the last few steps. Surrounded there by the pulses of raw Light magic, it was agony. But Hiskernaath was sustained by a force more fundamental even than the magical flesh of the daemon. The very hand of its god was moving it on.

  Morkulae and the plaguebearers were things of Nurgle, budded off from the Plague God’s unholy flesh. They were despicable things deserving of no more respect than the lowest of animals. No imagination. Hiskernaath was a creature of Tzeentch, and it took pride as, in those final moments of its existence, it was moved directly by the will of the Changing Lord.

  Hiskernaath reached the shore and the doorway. It had rendered itself invisible, but even so a glistening smear of blood and torn flesh was left behind it like the trail left by a slug. It crawled through the doorway and into the innermost vault.

  It saw van Horstmann standing at the lock which was concealed among the scrollwork in the central structure. Hiskernaath did not care – it was not there for van Horstmann. The daemon’s destruction had signalled the end of its contractual obligations to van Horstmann, but Tzeentch had saved it from annihilation and restored it anew, free to follow its god’s will instead of the wizard’s.

  Hiskernaath headed instead for the blood-soaked form of Witch Hunter Argenos. Argenos was also still alive, but not because his god had intervened on his behalf. Sigmar rarely played his hand so directly. Unlike the gods of Chaos, Sigmar did not answer prayers to him in person. No, it was bloody-mindedness that kept the witch hunter alive, as if each stuttering beat of his heart was compelled by another hateful thought of revenge.

  Hiskernaath reached Argenos. Even if Argenos had been fully conscious, he would not have seen the daemon there. He would not have known it was a daemon that spoke to him then. Perhaps, with the last few trickles of his blood oozing from his chest wound, he thought it was Sigmar speaking to him.

  ‘Splinterwing,’ whispered the daemon Hiskernaath into the witch hunter’s ear.

  Then, his final task completed, Tzeentch permitted Hiskernaath to dissolve away, his substance rejoining the winds of the aethyr in blessed oblivion.

  Van Horstmann had learned that the key to unlocking the Light was using the Dark. A shard of black lightning formed in his hand, and he had to fight to keep it from breaking out and streaking across the vault. But he held it firm, aimed it at the swirl of dense sculpture that was the vault’s hidden lock, and hurled the lightning with all his force of will.

  The marble shattered, leaving a smouldering hole through the wall. In the darkness beyond, something stirred. Something huge.

  There was no way van Horstmann could get out of the Pinnacle Vault the way he had entered. All the magisters in the Order of Light would be gathering at that moment around the entrance to the vaults, descending through the sea of light ready to ambush van Horstmann with every destructive spell they knew. If they had to, the magisters could seal the pyramid’s space-folding magic, cutting off the way out via the Midday’s Mirror and trapping van Horstmann as surely as he had trapped Alric. But van Horstmann had never intended to get out on foot.

  Two great shapes loomed through the darkness, crowned with spines and set with bright burning eyes. One shape was as brutal as a slab of stone, fangs gleaming in an undershot jaw. The other was slim and wicked, an emaciated snout topped with narrow eyes as cunning and sharp as steel.

  ‘Baudros!’ called van Horstmann. ‘I offer you freedom from your prison. In return, I ask only passage to the lands of Norsca, far away from here. After that you will be free to do as you will. How do you answer? Will you accept my offer?’

  The reply was a terrible twin roar. For the first time in its existence the Pinnacle Vault turned dark as the cascades of light were blasted away. The structure at the heart of the vault shattered, chunks of marble falling away. An icy gale blew, catching the Mantle of Thoss and throwing it away into oblivion. Magical swords and chalices clattered on the floor. A tapestry followed the Mantle into nothingness. Flying debris smashed an urn full of goddess’s tears.

  Baudros emerged from its prison. Its scales were grey-black, its horns and fangs white bone. Its tattered wings spread out above it as its two necks stretched out to their full extent, each head opening its jaws wide and howling out a gale. Its imprisonment had caused its flabby bulk to waste away and now it was slender and powerful, nothing but muscle and scale coiled up to strike.

  It was like standing before a natural disaster incarnate. As if every earthquake and storm had coalesced into one form and was now standing before van Horstmann roaring its anger at being imprisoned for so long.

  ‘Teclis imprisoned you, but Teclis failed,’ shouted van Horstmann over the din. ‘Take me to safety and you will be free to avenge yourself on him!’

  Four burning eyes fixed on van Horstmann. The wizard did not take a backwards step, even as the dragon’s claws dug into the marble as it stepped towards him.

  One of its heads, the cunning one, lowered to the floor. Van Horstmann found a foothold in the gnarled scales behind its head and vaulted up onto its neck, like a rider mounting a horse. The scales were as sharp as broken flint but he held on tight, his hands cut deep.

  ‘Fly, Baudros!’ yelled van Horstmann. ‘F
or Tzeentch! For vengeance! Fly!’

  Witch Hunter Argenos knew that the dragon was the last thing he would ever see. His vision wavered and he could not be sure if the monster had one head but two. It did not matter. He knew only one thing now – that he had a single task to complete. Because Sigmar had told him to. His whole life he had longed to hear the voice of his god in person. He had followed every scripture, abandoned everything in his life, given everything he had ever earned to Sigmar. He had sacrificed his body and done things that had made him abandon even the simple morality of every man. And he had not heard his god reply.

  Until now.

  Argenos forced his head up, to look the dragon in the eye. This head was brutal and animalistic, and its eyes fell on the witch hunter.

  ‘Splinterwing,’ said Argenos, with the last gasp of his last breath.

  The dragon inhaled, and breathed out a fatal black wind. Witch Hunter Argenos was stripped to the bone, his skin and flesh sloughing away as a handful of ash. The glass spears holding him in place shattered and his very bones were carried away, leaving nothing to suggest Witch Hunter Argenos had ever existed.

  But it did not matter.

  Because his final commandment had been fulfilled.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  SPLINTERWING

  Baudros, the two-headed dragon of Chaos, flapped his wings once and took flight. Another beat of his wings and he hurtled upwards, and from his twin throats roared a blast of black fire that tore through the vault ceiling. The dragon burst through into the ocean of light and kept going, streaking up towards the floor of the vault above.

  Again its fire bored through the floors of the pyramid. Generations of artefacts were shattered and thrown aside as the dragon crashed through the vaults. It burst up into the Chanter’s Hall, throwing aside the bodies of acolytes still carrying away their dead from the battle against van Horstmann’s daemons. Pillars toppled as its enormous serpentine body tore through the chamber.