[Warhammer] - The Laughter of Dark Gods

by David Pringle (ed) - (ebook by Undead)

  Stefan stooped through the doorway of the Red Moon. A fire blazed at one end and torches sputtered around a stage at the other; the room was full of noise. His cloak steamed in the heat.

  “Stefan!”

  He waved and made his way over to his friends’ table. They poured him wine while he took off his cloak.

  “Welcome, Herr Doktor Stefan,” one of them said, handing him a leather cup.

  Stefan grinned.

  “Thank you, Josef.”

  He sipped and leaned back in his chair to get a good look at the stage, letting the heavy wine slide over his tongue. Tonight was his night; he wanted to savour every moment. To one side of the stage, a heavy-set man was tuning his rebec while another sat cross-legged, running through some repetitive tune on the pipes.

  Stefan missed the point at which the rebec began to thread the room with the counter melody; it was just there, weaving the audience in tight.

  Two women began to dance. They moved easily, perfectly in time, ignoring the audience. To Stefan, it seemed that they danced for each other, swaying in and out of each other’s reach but never touching. He watched, fascinated, as they stepped in close and silk skirts slid up the smooth muscle of their thighs at the same time. They held that position, close enough to feel the heat of each other’s skin, for several heartbeats.

  When the music finished, Stefan clapped as loudly as the rest. Several of his friends threw money onto the stage. Eva always hired the best entertainers in the city.

  “And that was just the first act.” He filled his goblet and took a long swallow, waving the wineboy over for more.

  “Look,” Josef nodded over to a tall woman in a cloak who had just arrived. “Eberhauer’s here.”

  Janna Eberhauer, the deputy High Wizard, took her seat next to the owner of the Red Moon who smiled and stroked her arm, then stood, gesturing towards the stage.

  “Looks like Eva’s going to introduce the next one herself.”

  “…for our next performer. She’s young but very, very talented. Katya Raine.”

  A young woman walked onto the stage carrying a pair of hand drums. Stefan leaned forward. It was the girl he had met by the east gate, the healer. Her loose trousers and sleeveless shirt were soft black. The scarf tied around her arm was black too. Her feet were bare. She sat down and settled the drums between her legs.

  “Tonight, we sit well fed and snug, with the Carnival moons overhead and wine lying warm in our bellies.” There were a few cheers and shouts. “But tonight I will sing of a different place, a village where hungry people sit in their houses roofed with straw while autumn hardens to winter.”

  The audience was silent while Katya’s hands moved over the drums, stroking and tapping, cupping the sounds, bringing them to life. They spoke of ground brittle with frost, of breath steaming in air bright as glass, of a deep and waiting cold. Power built under her fingers. Her eyes glittered with reflected torchlight and she swayed slightly, her head moving from side to side with the beat. Shadows caught and dissolved on the planes and ridges of her cheek and neck. Her fingers moved blindly, gently as moths. She sang…

  …of a young woman kneeling on the floor of an old cow byre, feeding a fire with chips of goat dung. She was excited, impatient. Finally, satisfied with the height of the flames, she opened a small leather pouch and slid a stone onto her palm. It was dull and red. Using tongs, she held the stone over the flames. Now she would see if she was right: if it was heartsblood stone, it would glow in the heat and then, cooled in wine, it would be a treasure beyond price. The wine could be used in many healing tinctures, drop by precious drop. Or so she had been told by her great grandmother.

  With a flat crack, the stone exploded; she coughed in the smoke. Her left arm was stinging and when her eyes stopped running, she saw that it was smeared with blood. A sliver of stone must have caught her. She examined the charred dust on the end of the tongs: whatever the stone had been, it was not heartsblood.

  That night, she woke in pain. Her arm was hot and swollen. Careful not to wake her sister who shared her pallet, she slid from under the sleeping furs and went outside into the moonlight. Around the puncture hole, her arm was puffy and tender. There was still something in there. It would have to come out.

  The next day, the arm was sore where she had cut into the flesh but it no longer felt unnaturally heavy and hot. The woman wondered what the stone could have been. That night, she woke up again. She unwound the bandage; the arm was healing well but she felt strange, lightheaded. Outside, she did not feel the cold, it seemed that voices and hot breath whispered over her skin. Her body sang with excitement. She ran, laughing and mad, through the freezing night. It was dawn before she returned to her family’s cottage, exhausted and bewildered, with blood on her hands and lips. Frightened as she was, she had the wit to wash herself before she lay down to get what rest she could.

  The young woman tried everything, all her healing arts, to fight the madness growing inside her. But her efforts were useless; the stone which had shattered into slivers had been warpstone, and one speck of warpstone dust could wrench away sanity and mutate a body into something not human. Day after day, she fought the urges swelling up inside her. At night, when the dark influence pulled at her mind, she lost all memory of what she did. When she did sleep, her dreams were full of killing and tearing. Under the scarf tied about her left arm, her skin healed in a scale pattern, like a snake.

  And then the morning came when she woke from her madness to find her whole arm covered in green scales and her nails hooked into claws. Inside the cottage, her entire family lay with their throats ripped out, stiffening in their own blood. She felt no doubt: she had done this thing. She was no longer human.

  By noon, she had laid a huge fire in the centre of the cottage. She fastened the shutters from the outside, then she went inside and locked the heavy door. Using a twig, she pushed the key under the door out of reach. Now there was no way out. She lit the fire and burned herself to death.

  Katya sat silently on the stage, her drums beside her. The glitter was gone from her eyes. Janna Eberhauer, the deputy High Wizard, watched her intently. The whole room was still. She had made them look into the face of a fear they lived with day by day, the horror that was warpstone—its power to pervert healthy daughters and well-loved sons into mutated forms who, shunned by law-abiding people, lost their sanity and turned to the worship of unspeakable gods. In silence, Katya picked up her drums and left the stage.

  The audience stirred, then began to applaud. Coins showered the stage. Wineboys scraped the money into a pile for her to collect later. Stefan drained his cup, filled it and drank again.

  “Hoy!” He called a wineboy over. “Parchment and quill, quickly.”

  When he had finished he folded it, scrawled Katya’s name on the front and gave it to the waiting boy along with a copper coin.

  The boy smirked but threaded his way past the crowded tables and through a curtain at the back. A few moments later, she stood by his table, holding the note.

  “Did you write this?” She tossed it onto the table. “I can’t read.”

  “It says… uh, it asks would you like to join me for some wine?”

  She sat down.

  “I enjoyed your performance.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Yes. Though I’ve never heard of heartsblood stone.”

  “Before she died, my grandmother’s mind wandered. She talked about strange red stones and how good spirits would reward hard work with pots of gold all in the same breath. When you’re young you believe anything. Especially if you want to believe it.”

  “I could almost believe that you sang from knowledge.”

  “Only almost?” she asked.

  Stefan’s friend Josef looked at the scarf tied around Katya’s left arm.

  “Clever. Nice bit of deception, that. But maybe it’s not deception,” he said boldly, “maybe you really are a mutant.” He was drunk.

  She looked amused, no
t shocked.

  “Have I sung my song so convincingly that I must take off my scarf to prove I’m not some creature of the night?” She turned to Stefan. “I’d like that wine now.”

  He beckoned another wineboy.

  “Bring a bottle of wine and a cup for the lady. Make it one of your best and there’ll be some coppers in it for you.” He handed the boy five gold crowns, then felt embarrassed at his extravagance.

  “I’m celebrating,” he told her. “I got my licence today.”

  “I have applied for mine,” she said.

  The wine came before he had to reply. He poured for all of them.

  “Where will you practise?”

  “No idea yet,” he said.

  “You have no real vocation for healing, have you, Stefan?” she said quietly. Close up, he saw that her eyes were dull with fatigue and ringed with blue. She seemed thinner.

  He shrugged.

  “I wouldn’t call mixing potions to aid the overtaxed digestions of rich people a holy duty, if that’s what you mean.”

  “The rich are not the only ones who need care.” She looked at him steadily.

  His nostrils filled with the stench of people lying in their own filth, rotting from inside with disease, and the sound of their thin cries deafened him. His stomach rippled; he did not see the wineboy approach the table.

  “Fraulein Katya? The deputy High Wizard wishes to speak with you.”

  Without a word, she stood and followed him.

  Stefan’s hand shook as he reached for his wine. A few tables away, Janna Eberhauer leaned close to Katya, talking softly.

  Josef followed his gaze. “Don’t take it too hard, Stefan. She’s probably happier with her own kind.” He laughed. “I wonder how Eva’s feeling about this.”

  Stefan turned to look at him, full of revulsion. Who for, he was not sure.

  Over the next few days, images of Katya haunted Stefan. He saw her as he had that first time, by the gate, stained with wine, sure of her skill; he heard her singing, remembered the glitter of her eyes. But he dreamed of a different Katya, a Katya who slipped her arms around him from behind and kissed him until he moaned. And when he turned to reach for her, the arms she held out to him were scaled and taloned.

  “Stefan, what catches your interest in here?”

  His father sounded pleased to find him in the room which doubled as library and record repository. Stefan turned round, a scroll pushed through his belt.

  “I was just looking through a few records to see if I could find an exact definition of a mutant.” The lie came easily.

  His father looked interested.

  “Exact definition? Can’t say I’ve ever really thought about it.”

  He went over to a cupboard and rummaged around. “There might be something in the… ah, here we are.” He dragged a volume from an orderly pile and laid it on the table. “Now, let’s see…”

  “Perhaps I should look. You’ve always found references for me. Now that I have my licence, I ought to do my own reading too.”

  His father looked so pleased that Stefan was ashamed of his deception.

  “Well then, I’ll just take what I came for and leave you to it.” He gathered up the pile of scrolls on the table; Stefan held the door for him. “There have been times when I’ve doubted you would ever make a physician, Stefan, but perhaps I have been wrong, perhaps after all you will be sorting through this pile of licence applications one day. I’m proud of you.”

  Stefan pulled the parchment from his belt and sat down. Application for Licence, Physician’s Guild: Katya Raine, he read. She must have hired a scribe.

  He scanned the contents. She came from Schoninghagen, almost a hundred miles to the south and west. What had made her travel all the way to Middenheim? He tucked the scroll back into his belt and left.

  It was one of those rare autumn afternoons when the sun streamed clear and warm into the city. Stefan had not bothered with a cloak. He shouldered his way through the crowds along Burgen Bahn. With only three days to go until Carnival, he was thankful that the Red Moon was not in the middle of the Altmarkt where it was certain to be even more crowded.

  The closer he came to the Red Moon, the slower he walked. Katya’s application rubbed against his skin where it lay hidden beneath his shirt. He did not know what he wanted of her. To talk to her, maybe. Or maybe not. She attracted him but made him uneasy. By the time he saw the distinctive brick of the Red Moon, warm against the grey stone of the other buildings, he was considering abandoning the whole idea and walking straight past.

  The door of the Red Moon opened and Katya slipped out, carrying her satchel. She turned down Zauber Strasse. Stefan peered around the corner after her; she had not seen him.

  He followed.

  Two thirds of the way along the street, she turned into an alleyway. She walked swiftly between houses without pausing to look around; she must have travelled this way several times before. She turned again, left then right, and Stefan almost lost her, just catching a flicker of blue as she went in the back entrance of a big house. He marked the colour of the paintwork and the style of roof tiles. It should be possible to recognize the right house if he worked his way back through the alleys to the front.

  It was Janna Eberhauer’s. He should have known.

  Eberhauer, the deputy High Wizard. And Katya. He felt as though he could not breathe. It took him a few moments to realize that he was shaking with rage. And around and around in his head, like a temple chant, ran the thought: he should have known, he should have known.

  He went round the back again and settled against a wall where he could see the door but where he would be out of sight of anyone leaving. No matter how long it took, he would wait. Then he would find out what was going on.

  By the second hour, the sun was sinking, leaving the alleys in shadow. He stamped his feet to keep them warm and wished he had worn a cloak.

  His legs began to ache and he was hungry. The wall he was leaning on was damp. Doubts gnawed at him: what if she had left by the front door? He pushed it to the back of his mind.

  The stars were showing. The remains of his rage sat in his stomach like an undigested meal. He would not give up, but he was achieving nothing here.

  Stefan reached the Red Moon just before midday. His muscles were stiff and aching, and he wore a cloak against the freezing mist. He hoped he would not have to wait long.

  This time she did not carry the satchel with her drums but a different bag. Something a physician might carry. Instead of turning down Zauber Strasse, she walked south along Burgen Bahn. It was easy to follow her through the crowds without being seen. It became even busier as she led him along Ost Weg; by Markt Weg the crowds had become so dense that he had difficulty keeping her in sight. When they reached the Altmarkt, he moved to within three strides of her back, trusting to luck that she did not look round.

  Luck almost abandoned him when she went into an apothecary’s. Trying to duck out of sight, he crashed backwards into a barrow full of fruit alongside a stall. He panicked when the owner shouted at him then calmed as he realized Katya would not be able to pick out one noise from another in the din: fruit sellers hawked their wares; a mother pulled down her child’s breeches and held him over the gutter while he shrieked in protest; a woman, passing the mother and child, got splashed and began to shout. Stefan helped the angry stall owner to pick up the fruit.

  When Katya came out of the shop, she turned out of the Altmarkt towards the Old Quarter. Stefan’s heart thumped. The Old Quarter was not a safe place to be, at any time. There were no crowds to hide behind there. He wished he was carrying a knife, even though he had never used one before, except to cut meat. He turned a corner. Alleys led off in all directions. He panicked; Katya was nowhere to be seen.

  There was no warning; a kick caught him behind the knees and he went down, his arm twisted up his back and a knee on his spine. Stone scraped his jaw as his attacker pulled his head around to get a look at his face.
/>   “It’s you.” Katya made a sound of disgust and let him up.

  Stefan stood up slowly. She had knocked the wind out of him.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No,” he managed.

  “Good. Explain why you’re following me.”

  He wanted to shout at her, tell her how much she had frightened him.

  “Why are you practising without a licence?” he blurted instead.

  “I have applied. It’s only a matter of days before I receive the official stamp of approval. Then your orderly mind can rest from its worries about proper paperwork.”

  He said nothing, remembering the parchment against his ribs.

  “Come with me and see the people I treat. Then tell me I need a licence before I lift a finger to help them.”

  He was so close that he could smell the damp wool of her cloak her sandalwood perfume. Mist stung his scraped chin; she could have broken his neck while he lay on the ground. Unease knotted his belly.

  They walked through the worst part of the old quarter.

  “Those I treat are poor, sick, old. They are not gentle people. Prepare yourself for that.”

  Splintered buildings gaped at him like broken teeth, waiting to swallow him, trap him in their rottenness and despair.

  “This way.”

  They climbed over rubble blocking a doorway. Her sandalwood was not strong enough to counter the smell of filth and neglect. Inside, it was gloomy; many windows were boarded up. Stefan jumped as a shadow moved nearby.

  “They wonder who you are.” She put her bag on the floor near the remains of a staircase and took off her cloak. She gave it to him to hold. “Wait here.”

  She climbed the stairs and disappeared into the darkness.

  Stefan tried to concentrate on the cloak in his hands. It felt rough. When he was rich, he would buy her a cloak of fine, heavy wool, lined with silk. A green cloak, the same colour as the trousers she had been wearing by the east gate. Then he remembered Eberhauer.