“I tried to help when the goat-men came, and I did save a few people. Later, I tried my best to wash the taint from the soil and water. I just wasn’t able. Yet when the witch hunters arrived, they came after me immediately.”
Mama Solveig nodded. “Because you had power you earned for yourself. You didn’t go down on your belly and beg it from the colleges, or wear the shackles that would have come with it. No matter how kindly your intentions, people like you, simply by virtue of your existence, pose a threat to the established order. The nobles and priests think they have to exterminate you or you’ll one day topple them from their perches.” She leered, providing another momentary glimpse of the fierce spirit lurking behind her mild-looking exterior. “As you will. As we will.”
He shrugged. “Maybe.” He’d decided he shouldn’t appear too eager, or be too quick and facile when it came to proclaiming sentiments and intentions consonant with their own. As Jarla had recounted it, he’d pushed too hard before, and thus aroused her suspicions. “Anyway, it was just good luck that I escaped. Afterwards, I hid on the outskirts of the fief to see what would happen next. The witch hunters burned innocent folk and the houses, barns and fields of the survivors, just as I told Jarla. Once it became clear how it was all going to end, I fancied my neighbours might rise up in anger. If they had, I would have joined them. But they didn’t. They surely recognised the injustice, but they were too afraid. Afraid of the hunters and the gods they claim to serve.”
“They do,” Adolph said, “and that’s how we know Sigmar and his kind are gods of cruelty and oppression. Fortunately, they aren’t the only powers to whom a man can pray.”
Dieter nodded. “The things you’re saying… they’re the same kinds of things I started thinking after I had to run away, and the village died. The witch hunters had already condemned me for a servant of the Dark Gods. Maybe it was what I really ought to be. All of a sudden, tearing down the Empire and building something new in its place didn’t seem like such a bad idea.
“So I came to Altdorf,” he continued, “partly just in the hope of losing myself among the crowds, but also imagining that maybe I could find people who felt the way I’d come to feel.” He grinned. “Looking back, I don’t know why I thought I could find them, but you have to understand that out in the country, we rustics like to imagine big cities ire rife with all manner of sin and wickedness, forbidden worship included.”
“Our lord led you to us,” said Jarla, her eyes shining. Adolph grunted.
“Maybe so,” Dieter said. “But where exactly has he led me? Who are you people? A Chaos cult, I understand that much, but what does it really mean?”
“It means,” Mama Solveig said, “that we renounce the Emperor, the elector counts and the gods who stand behind them. They’re all part of one vicious conspiracy to enslave and oppress the multitudes of ordinary people, and we mean to cast them down.”
“With the help of Chaos.”
“Yes. Where Sigmar and his kind forbid, bind and punish, the Great Conspirator permits, liberates and exalts. Chaos is the pure, true essence of magic, and once it drowns the sad, rotten world we know, and we all dwell in the midst of it like fish swimming through the sea, all things will be possible. We’ll live forever, and get anything we want just by wishing for it.”
Everyone knew how much death and suffering the hordes of Chaos had inflicted on mankind throughout the centuries, and so Dieter wondered how any sane person could imagine that its triumph would result in the establishment of paradise. Yet, though seemingly rational, Mama Solveig did appear to believe, and so did Adolph and Jarla, hanging on her words even though they’d undoubtedly heard her preach this sermon before.
“Here’s what I don’t understand,” Dieter said. “You serve Chaos. Yet a creature of Chaos attacked Jarla, Adolph and me. Why would it do that? How did it even pass from its own world into ours?”
Adolph spat. “The Cult of the Purple Hand.”
“Perhaps,” Mama Solveig said.
“Who else could it have been? Who else could and would send such a spirit against us?”
“What,” Dieter asked, “are you talking about?”
“We,” said Mama Solveig, “belong to the Cult of the Red Crown. Unfortunately, we’re not the only Chaos worshippers in Altdorf. The Purple Hand have their own network of covens, and they, no less than the lords and priests, are our foes.”
Dieter felt a crazy impulse to laugh. Or possibly weep. He’d known himself ill equipped to face a single Chaos cult, and apparently Altdorf was swarming with them like an old rotten house full of termites!
“I’ve heard,” he said, choosing his words carefully, not wanting to appear as if he possessed a suspicious quantity of information, “that the gods of Chaos can be as hostile to one another as they are to Sigmar, Shallya and the other powers ordinary people worship.”
“That’s true,” Mama Solveig said, “but the Purple Hand purport to serve the Changer of the Ways just as we do.”
“‘Purport’? You mean they really don’t?”
“No. In their ignorance and vanity, they’ve strayed from the true path.”
“All right, but even so, why are you so at odds that they would try to kill you?”
“The books,” Adolph said.
“What books?” Dieter asked.
“I haven’t heard the whole story.” Mama Solveig sighed. “As old as I am, I don’t suppose I’ll ever advance deep enough into the mysteries, and the confidence of the Master of Change, our high priest, to learn the rest. Not in this life, anyway. But some years back, a very great sorcerer and follower of the god lived here in Altdorf. I’m not certain, but I believe he was a magister, who turned to proscribed studies in defiance of the limits his order decreed. In any case, he belonged to neither the Red Crown nor the Purple Hand, but had a relationship with the men who would become the leaders of both sects. Perhaps it’s even fair to say they were his apprentices.”
“I take it,” Dieter said, “that he collected or wrote a number of grimoires.”
Mama Solveig smiled as if she were telling a bedtime story, and he, the grandson had just shown interest by asking a question. Yes, dear. Books and papers filled with secrets of what the ignorant call Dark Magic, and naturally both the Master of Change and the chief of the Purple Hand hoped to inherit them someday.
“And in time,” the midwife continued, “the day arrived. The sorcerer died, fled the city, or grew beyond the need of books. I don’t know which. But whatever happened, he bequeathed his library to our leader.”
Or else the Master of Change simply leaped on the opportunity to steal it, Dieter thought. “And the Purple Hand proved unwilling to accept the disappointment graciously.”
“Yes. Since then, we’ve tried to destroy one another.” Mama Solveig chortled. “Although they’re hampered by the fact that they don’t know many of us, nor do we know many of them. We all guard our secrets well.”
“But we hurt them sometimes!” Adolph said. “Not long ago, we found out some of them meant to taint the city’s water and cause mutations, and we betrayed the plot to the witch hunters and the watch. Anonymously, of course.”
Dieter shook his head. “I understand there’s bad blood between you, but overthrowing the Empire is the hugest, most dangerous undertaking imaginable. If you all worship the same god…”
“Then maybe we should forget our differences and work together?” Mama Solveig asked. “I’m afraid we can’t. Our strategies are incompatible. They want to infiltrate the Imperial hierarchy and subvert it from within. Put their own candidate for Emperor on the throne one day. It’s a worthless, cowardly plan. It can’t succeed, and even if it did, it would take centuries. Further generations of commoners would live and die in misery.”
“And that’s unacceptable,” Adolph said. “It’s why the Red Crown lends its strength to those who strive to topple the Empire by force of arms.”
Like the mutant brigands Krieger told me about, Dieter thought. �
�That does sound like the more intelligent strategy. The armies of Chaos have nearly succeeded in conquering us—I mean, the Empire—before.”
Mama Solveig nodded. “And next time, with help from within, they’ll prevail.”
“Right. So: I understand you and the Purple Hand are feuding. Therefore, Adolph assumes they identified him, Jarla or both and sent the fiery snake to kill them?”
Mama Solveig fingered her chin. “Do you think it odd? I’ve been thinking the same thing. We don’t work magic without good reason, and neither do the Purple Hand. It’s inherently risky, and could also attract the attention of the authorities. So I doubt I’d summon a spirit just to murder someone on the street. Not when a ruffian with a dagger could do the job.”
Adolph snorted. “It’s easy enough to explain. They had some notion of the might of my sorcery. Thus, they all feared to confront me face to face, and believed that only a daemon had any chance of overwhelming me.”
“I suppose you may be right, dear. I confess, I can’t think of a better explanation. In any case, the important thing is that you and Jarla must promise to be very careful from now on.”
“I promise,” Jarla said, solemn as a child.
Adolph shrugged. “I’ll watch my step, and the Purple Hand had better watch theirs.”
“Good,” Mama said. “Thank you.” She looked at Dieter. “And now, young man, it’s time for you to make your choice.”
“My choice?” Dieter asked. He understood perfectly well what she meant, but an unexpected jolt of dread made him want to stall for at least a few more heartbeats.
“Of course. We’ve trusted you with secrets that could send us all to the rack and the stake. After helping Jarla and Adolph, you deserved no less. But now you have to decide whether you want to join us in our struggle or go your own way.”
“Please stay,” Jarla said.
He felt a profound reluctance to say yes, even though it was for that very purpose that Krieger had sent him here. But he knew that, even had he been willing to defy the witch hunter a second time, he had no choice. For all their seeming cordiality, Mama Solveig and her followers would murder him if he declined their invitation. They didn’t dare release him to speak of what he’d learned, or, for all they knew, to join a rival Chaos cult.
So he tried to infuse his voice with a bitter fervour. “Yes. I’ll join you. The agents of the Empire destroyed my life. They ruin everyone’s life. Somebody needs to cast them down!”
“I’m so glad!” Jarla reached out, squeezed his hand, glanced at Adolph and let it go again.
“We’re all glad,” Mama Solveig said. “So glad that, even though it’s late, and a feeble old woman like me needs her rest, we’re going to make you one of us right away. Please, take up the lights again and come with me.”
She led them deeper into the cellar, while the shadows slithered away before them. Jarla came to Dieter’s side. “Don’t be scared,” she whispered.
“I’m not,” he lied. His pulse ticked in his neck, and his mouth was dry. He peered, looking for anything that might provide some hint of what was to come. He saw only the thick brick columns supporting the weight of the building overhead, junk festooned with cobwebs, and rat droppings.
Then Mama Solveig halted, and twisted her arm and hand through an intricate cabalistic gesture. As when she’d made haste to bar the door, the sure, quick action betrayed no hint of swollen joints or brittle bones, and suggested that her usual slow, unsteady, cautious way of moving was merely a pretence.
Magic sighed through the darkness, and a patch of air rippled as objects wavered into view. Dieter realised a charm had hidden them hitherto, and the old woman had dissolved it.
The items were plainly intended to be tools for working magic, albeit not the specially crafted implements employed by true wizards or even their lowly apprentices. When common folk set out to practise the black arts, they evidently had to make do with the sorts of knives, cups and censers available in any marketplace. Only the wands and staves, meticulously shaped, polished and inscribed with glyphs, looked truly sufficient for their purpose. Most likely one of the cultists earned his living working in wood.
Loose sheets of parchment reposed atop a lectern, but no books or scrolls were in evidence. The cultists had scrubbed a section of the otherwise filthy floor to draw a complicated pentacle in red chalk. They hadn’t managed the necessary geometric precision, however. Although Dieter didn’t recognise the figure, any true scholar of magic would have perceived instantly that it was either uselessly or dangerously out of balance.
All in all, on first inspection, the cultists’ sanctum sanctorum seemed less impressive than Dieter might have anticipated. Or rather, it would have seemed so to an ordinary man. But a mage, particularly a Celestial wizard, sometimes discerned things imperceptible to other folk, and suddenly he glimpsed traces of a sort of oily shadow clinging to even the humblest of the implements assembled in the coven’s sanctuary.
It was the taint of Chaos, making his eyes smart, suffusing the air with a carrion stink and twisting queasiness into his guts. But noisome as it was, he thought he could bear it until he discerned the vague shape perched on a plinth at the back of the area, where the flickering light of the candles and oil lamp barely reached. At that point, the foulness overwhelmed him, and he cried out and recoiled.
Jarla grabbed his hand and he jerked it away. Flinging his arms around him from behind, Adolph seized him in a bear hug. Dieter struggled, but couldn’t break free of the hold. Mama Solveig whispered under her breath, touched his forehead, and his panic abated.
“Better?” she asked.
He swallowed. “Yes.” Not only was the instinctive, unreasoning terror fading, the feeling of vileness was bearable once more.
“Now, you mustn’t feel embarrassed,” the old woman said. “The first time is difficult for everyone. How could it not be, when what you feel is the majesty of the god himself?”
Steeling himself to look more closely, Dieter saw that the form on the cheap plaster pedestal was a black carving of a monstrous bird, dragon, or amalgam of the two. Supposedly the Changer of the Ways possessed forms beyond number, but was often depicted in this guise. The sculptor had fashioned it from congealed dark stuff, undoubtedly poisonous not merely to flesh but to the soul and reality itself.
“Don’t worry,” Jarla said. “You’ll get used to the way it feels. We all have.”
He supposed they had. Otherwise, they would have dropped dead, or turned into babbling lunatics. But it was difficult to imagine.
“Are you ready?” Mama asked.
Dieter reminded himself that, taint of Chaos or no, icon or no, he still had no choice. Even so, he had to swallow before he could answer. “Yes.”
“Then kneel and repeat after me.” He assumed the attitude she’d demanded, and she put her left hand atop his head. “I, Dieter, renounce all earthly ties.”
“I, Dieter, renounce all earthly ties.”
“To family and friend.”
“To family and friend.”
“To land and lord.”
“To land and lord.”
The initiation continued in the same vein for a while, as he swore to renounce every sort of loyalty a sane man might profess. It didn’t particularly bother him to do so, which prompted the odd thought that perhaps, in recent years, he hadn’t truly felt committed to much beyond his own comfort and advancement of his art. At any rate, except for the noxious psychic pressure of the sculpture, he tolerated the process easily enough.
Next, however, he had to offer prayers and praise to the Changer of the Ways. Fortunately, the litany stopped short of actually requiring him to pledge his soul to the god. He wouldn’t have done that no matter what the consequences. But the declarations he was required to make were sufficiently blasphemous that no one could have articulated them without disquiet. He told himself he didn’t mean them, that they were only words, but it was scant comfort. As a wizard, he understood the power implic
it in language.
At last Mama Solveig said, “Good. Now, stay on your knees and approach the god.”
“What?”
“It won’t hurt you,” Jarla said. “It hasn’t hurt any of us.”
Shivering, soaked in sweat, Dieter knee-walked forwards. With every advance, the malignancy in the sculpture beat at his mind like a hammer.
Somehow he made it to the foot of the plinth. There he had a final invocation to repeat.
Afterwards, Mama chanted in a rasping, hissing language he’d never heard before. The sound of it made his head throb until he thought he couldn’t stand it anymore.
“And now,” she said, reverting to conventional speech at last, “for the final consecration. Rise and kiss your new master.”
No! Dieter thought. He’d done everything else, but he wouldn’t, couldn’t touch the icon. Better to spin around and try to fight his way out of here. The powers of sky and storm would answer his need, even in a basement. Better to run again and hope Krieger couldn’t catch him a second time. Better to abandon all hope of ever regaining the life the witch hunter had stolen away from him.
But even as such thoughts howled through his mind, he rose, then bent over the statue. It was as if the prayers he’d recited, Mama Solveig’s will, or the poisonous atmosphere in the sanctuary made it impossible to do anything else.
As the statue filled his field of vision, he had the elemented feeling it was swelling larger, or else revealing its true size: a thousand times vaster than the tiny, ephemeral world he knew. He touched his lips to its serpentine neck, and icy cold seared them.
“That’s long enough,” Mama Solveig called.
Dieter recoiled from the statue. His legs gave way beneath him and he fell.
CHAPTER FIVE
Dieter stumbled through a desert, with masses of granite protruding from the earth and a range of mountains rising in the distance, and moment by moment, everything changed.
Many of the alterations were small but disturbing nonetheless. A dune flattened slightly, a pattern in the sand oozed into a different configuration, or the striations in a pillar of stone darkened. There was nowhere he could rest his gaze to escape the constant, nauseating crawling.
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