But that wasn’t the worst of it. Periodically, change happened on a grander scale. At the edge of the desert, the snow capping three of the peaks exploded into clouds of steam. Then, closer to hand, one of the standing stones melted into a feline-headed giant sunk waist-deep in the earth. The titan glared, hissed and snatched for Dieter, but he scrambled back beyond its reach. The creature struggled to drag itself out of the ground, and he fled. Sometime after that, redness ran like streaming blood through the brown terrain. Blades of coarse crimson grass jabbed upwards from what had been sand. The columns of rock became vermilion trees, their branches bedizened with yellow blossoms that smelled like sulphur and trilled to one another.
The universe had gone mad, and was stabbing its madness into Dieter’s eyes. Unable to bear it, he lifted his face to the sky, the realm he comprehended and perhaps even loved better than anything on earth. There, change occurred in a stately cyclical dance, according to laws he understood, which meant that in a certain sense, nothing ever changed at all. The heavens would be his refuge.
That was how he needed it to be. But when he looked up, he found the same inconstancy that prevailed below. He couldn’t even tell if it was day or night, or if that distinction still possessed any meaning. At first, part of the sky was bright without any sun to shed the light, while the rest was dark and dotted with green luminescences—Dieter couldn’t bring himself to think of them as stars—that both churned like eddies and flitted about like flies. Then the whole sky turned mauve, with a white glowing square in the centre. After a time the rectangle crumpled in on itself as if a gigantic invisible hand were crushing it. At the instant it vanished entirely, a robed, hooded colossus appeared where it had been. The immense apparition sat on a golden throne, and legions of daemons, tiny as toy soldiers by comparison, grovelled before it.
Dieter cried out and tore his gaze away, and at that point noticed his shadow. It was changing like everything else, and not just because the light kept shifting.
Shaking, he raised his hands before his eyes. They were pale, then olive-skinned, then mottled with sores. They had four fingers each, and then the left sprouted an extra pair of thumbs. Inconstancy had squirmed its way inside him.
He felt a sudden savage urge to gouge his eyes out so he wouldn’t have to see such things anymore. But a mild baritone voice said, “Please, don’t be foolish.”
Startled, Dieter jerked around, then screamed and flinched. The speaker wore a simple robe belted with rope, as well as a cowl that shadowed his features. He looked like many a common priest, but also like the transcendent figure the wizard had glimpsed enthroned in the sky.
The newcomer must have realised the source of Dieter’s terror, for he pulled back his cowl to reveal a wry, intelligent, human face. “It’s all right! I’m not him. I only want to help you.”
Dieter swallowed. The action felt strange, as if the musculature at the top of his throat had altered. “Help me how?”
“By pointing you over there.” The priest extended his arm. Dieter followed the gesture and beheld a pool of water amid the writhing scarlet grass.
The pool’s surface was still, nor did its silver-grey hue alter even subtly from one second to the next. It was the one steady point in the storm of change, and perhaps that meant it could offer sanctuary.
Dieter dashed to the pool and waded into the cool water. He wondered if he should immerse himself completely.
“That isn’t necessary,” said the priest. He must have run, too, to catch up so quickly. “Just look at the water and nothing else.”
Dieter did as he’d been told, and at first, it helped. The pool didn’t change. It didn’t even reflect the fluctuations in the sky, or his own face, for that matter, and his fear and queasiness eased a little.
Then, beneath the surface, streaks and blobs of soft colour shimmered into being. He cried out in dismay.
“It’s all right,” said the priest. “This is something different. Just keep looking.”
“Very well.” Why not? Even if the pool altered in some ghastly fashion, how could it be more horrific than the transformations occurring everywhere else?
The colours in the water took on definition until they formed a recognisable image. A man and a woman, both tall, slender and blond, lay on their sides in a canopy bed. The man was facing his companion, but she had her back to him. Though the room was dark, enough light leaked through the curtains to reveal the butterflies and roses in the tapestry on the wall.
Dieter caught his breath in surprise. He was looking at his parents as they’d appeared long before their deaths, when he himself was a child.
“I know you can never forgive me,” his mother said.
“I can and do,” his father replied.
“How?” she spat. “I betrayed you! I gave birth to an abomination and passed it off as your son!”
He put his hand on her shoulder. “It was ten years ago, and back then, I was unfaithful, too. So the way I see it, Dieter isn’t just the punishment for your sins but for mine as well. The important thing is, the Celestial College will take him. We don’t have to live under the same roof with him or even see him again.”
“This never happened,” Dieter said.
“Were you privy to what they whispered to one another in bed?” asked the priest.
“It can’t have happened! They didn’t fear or despise magic. They sent me to Altdorf because I wanted and needed to go.”
“Just watch,” said the priest.
The scene in the water dissolved into drifting colours, which then flowed together and sharpened to present a new picture. The adolescent Dieter, clad in the blue-trimmed garb of an apprentice of his order, rapped on a familiar door.
“Come in,” Franz Lukas answered.
Dieter entered his mentor’s study, cluttered with books, taxonomic charts of birds and clouds, anemometers, astrolabes and other implements of Celestial wizardry. With his brilliant blue eyes shining beneath scraggly white brows, the elderly but still robust and energetic magician was no less emblematic of his particular art.
“Shut it behind you,” Magister Lukas said.
The young Dieter obeyed. “You sent for me, sir?”
“Yes,” the teacher said. “You’ve come a long way in your studies. You’re the most promising apprentice I’ve seen in a while.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“So I think you deserve a reward.” Magister Lukas opened a desk drawer and produced a small book. “Make sure no one else sees it.”
After a moment’s hesitation, the youth took the book and opened the cover. “The Principles of Alchemy.” He clapped the volume shut. “Master, this is the Lore of Metal!”
“So it is.”
“Are you testing me?”
“Perhaps, but not in the way you suppose. I know your teachers, myself included, have drummed it into you that you must restrict yourself to the Lore of the Heavens. Any human wizard who seeks to invoke more than one of the eight winds of magic likewise opens himself to the Chaos from which they derive, and must inevitably come to ruin.”
“Yes, sir.”
Magister Lukas snorted. “No. It’s nonsense. The false rationale for a stricture imposed on us to keep us from realising our potential and ordering all things to please ourselves. The best of us, the wisest and boldest, refuse to wear such a shackle. We acquire knowledge and power wherever we can find them. I believe you’re one of the best, or at least you could be. Am I right?”
The young Dieter hesitated, then tucked the book inside his shirt.
“No!” his older counterpart exploded. “I know this couldn’t have happened! I was there!”
“Yes,” said the priest, “you were.”
The scene at the bottom of the pool flowed and became a view of Dieter as a wandering journeyman mage for hire. Crouched behind a stand of brush at the top of a hill, he peered down at the little dirt road than ran along the bottom.
Singly or in groups, afoot or driving carts, la
den with bundles or chivvying sheep and cows along, people tramped by below. The older Dieter—the real one, he insisted to himself—inferred they’d all been to market and now were heading home through the deepening twilight.
Eventually a stocky man astride a black mare appeared. The quality of his palfrey and his velvet doublet bespoke prosperity, as did the neatly clad servant or clerk riding a mule behind him.
Dieter the journeyman rose, whispered words of power, and thrust his arm out. Darts of azure light leaped from his fingertips to pierce the horseman, who toppled sideways out of the saddle.
The mare kept walking. The servant reined in his mule and gaped at his fallen master. Apparently he had neither noticed the darts flying nor spotted the assailant on the hill, and thus had no idea how his companion had come to grief. He was still staring when a second such attack stabbed into his torso. He slumped forwards onto the mule’s neck.
Dieter looked up and down the road, then ran to the base of the hill. He crouched over the body of the horseman, snatched his victim’s purse and rings, and moved on to the clerk. He crooned to the mule to keep it from shying away.
“No!” the actual Dieter cried. “None of this is true.”
“It wasn’t before,” said the priest, his voice now cold and pitiless, “but it is now. Did you really think a puddle could shield you from Chaos? Chaos is all-powerful. It can transform anything, even the past. Do you perceive your memories changing?”
Dieter felt a churning inside his head.
“Your past made you who you are,” the priest continued, “so, since Chaos can alter that, it can transform you into whatever it wants. As it has. Go and take your place among your comrades.” He waved his arm.
Dieter turned and saw that somehow the monstrous army he’d seen in the sky had appeared at the edge of the pool. One of the nearest daemons had the body of a huge scorpion and the gurgling, cooing head of an infant. Its drool shrivelled the grass. The entity next to it resembled a seven-legged mastiff pieced together from irregular bits of brass and lead. No two of the creatures were alike, and many, manifesting the same entropy infecting the landscape, oozed and flickered from one shape to another.
“No!” Dieter said. “I’m not one of them.”
“Of course you are.” The priest scooped up a handful of water and let it go. It fell partway, then froze, hanging in the air in a bright streak that finally reflected Dieter’s face with the clarity of a fine glass mirror.
He screamed.
The daemons grabbed Dieter by the wrists, to drag him into their ranks by force or tear him apart for his recalcitrance. He thrashed, trying to break free even though he knew it was impossible for one to prevail against so many.
Then suddenly, it wasn’t daemons holding onto him anymore, and he wasn’t standing in the pool. A woman peered anxiously down at him. Disoriented as he was, it took him a moment to recognise Jarla, partly because it was the first time he’d seen her face without its whorish mask of paint. She looked younger, and more shy and tentative without it.
“Are you all right?” she panted.
Far from it. He was still shaking with terror, and his heart thumped as if he’d sprinted for miles. He was also gasping. He laboured to control his breathing, meanwhile insisting to himself that his sojourn in the realm of Chaos had only been a nightmare, a nightmare that was now over, and it blunted the edge of his fear. “Maybe.” His voice came out as a croak, and he realised his throat was dry and scratchy. “Is there water?”
“Yes.” She went to fetch it, and as it gurgled from pitcher to cup, he looked about. He was lying on the stained cot in Mama Solveig’s infirmary. Up close, the bed smelled of sweat, blood and mildew. Shafts of sunlight fell through the windows, and it appeared that except for Jarla, no one else was about.
She brought him his drink, and, parched though he was, he made himself sip it a little at a time, lest it make him sick. “Thank you. How long was I unconscious?”
“Hours.” She sat down on a little three-legged stool beside the cot. “It’s afternoon. Mama and Adolph had to leave, but I stayed with you. At the end, when you were yelling and flailing around, I was afraid you were going to hurt yourself, so I took hold of your arms.”
“Thank you,” he repeated. “You’re a good friend.”
She smiled and lowered her eyes. “It’s all right. Mama and Adolph would have stayed, but they had to do their work. My job… well, you know. It’s mostly at night. I asked before if you’re all right. Do you know yet?”
He took stock of himself. As best he could judge, his memories and character remained as they’d always been. Jarla wasn’t reacting to him as if his body had altered in some freakish fashion. Perhaps he’d suffered a frightening dream and nothing more.
Or perhaps not. He felt a strange feverish restlessness and had a throbbing tender spot in the middle of his forehead. He told himself that anyone newly awakened from a delirium would feel unwell, and that he’d likely smacked himself in the face while thrashing about.
“I’ll live,” he said, swinging his legs off the cot and sitting up, noticing in the process that someone, most likely Jarla, had removed his shoes. “I have to say, no thanks to anyone but you, and even you weren’t truthful about what was going to happen to me.”
She flinched. “I didn’t know. No one else has ever had such a strong reaction. Mama says it’s because you have an extraordinary aptitude for magic.”
“Really?” He hesitated. “In that case, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken harshly to the person who took care of me.”
In point of fact, he actually did feel a twinge of guilt, and had to remind himself she was a Chaos worshipper who’d turn on him instantly if she learned his true purpose. It would be idiotic to regard her as anything but a threat.
Or a resource.
Because it was plain that she liked him. He didn’t know why, except that over the course of their conversations, he’d always tried to appear friendly and never to show disdain for her profession. Perhaps, melancholy, lonely, and dubious of her own worth as she seemed to be, that was all it took to win her affection.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I can understand you being angry. To tell you the truth, I was upset, too. I was afraid the Changer would mark you right away, you’d have to go into the forest with Leopold and his company, and then I wouldn’t see you anymore. Not until I change.” She sighed. “If I ever do.”
Dieter peered at her. “Let me get this straight. You want to transform?”
“Yes. We all do. It’s a blessing from the god.”
“Then why do you and the others keep the icon set back from the area where you work your rituals? Why not bring it close and bask in its power as much as you can? I imagine you’d change pretty quickly.”
“Mama says that would be impious. Like trying to force the god’s hand. We need to worship as we’ve been taught. She says there’s a practical side to it, too. Every servant of the Master of Fortune can’t acquire his mark and flee to the woods, not all of us at once. He needs human beings here in the city, to smuggle supplies and new recruits to Leopold, and to discover the army’s plans and pass those along. I help with that part. Sometimes the soldiers talk when they… spend time with me.”
“Well, maybe it’s because I lack understanding, but I’m glad the god hasn’t got around to changing you yet. If he had, I never would have met you, and besides that, I like your face the way it is.”
Jarla blushed. Dieter wondered how best to follow up on his flattery, and then the door groaned open. Mama Solveig doddered through, looked at her two acolytes sitting opposite one another, and smiled.
“Dieter,” she said, “awake at last.”
“Yes.” He pondered how to speak to her and decided that at least a little resentment was in order. Any other reaction might seem unnatural and accordingly suspicious. “I appreciate Jarla staying with me, but you’re the healer. Why weren’t you trying to help me?”
“Because you we
ren’t sick,” Mama said, hobbling closer. “The Changer’s touch is a blessing, not an illness. What did you dream?”
He hesitated. “A world where everything kept changing. Armies of daemons.”
“And it was all wonderful and beautiful, wasn’t it?”
“Well… yes.” In a bizarre way, it had been. He’d just been too frightened to realise until now.
“Yet there you sit complaining, just because you had to go to sleep to see it. Don’t you realise you’re being foolish?”
“Maybe, but I never had a seizure before.”
“And in your place, I’m sure I’d be concerned, too. But I doubt you’ll have any more. As I said, it’s not that you’ve fallen sick. You’ve become one of the elect, and since that was what you wanted, I hope you can forgive me for giving it to you.”
He sighed. “Well, I suppose. Why not, considering that I came out of it all right.” The tender spot on his forehead gave him a twinge.
Mama Solveig smiled. “I’m so glad. I’d hate to think we were mistaken about you, and you’d end up regretting it if I did. Do you feel well enough to talk a while longer, or would you like to rest?”
“We can talk.”
“Good.” The old woman turned to Jarla. “Why don’t you go down by the barracks, dear? Earn some money and see what you can learn.”
Jarla pouted as if she found the suggestion uncongenial. But she merely said, “Yes, Mama,” and took her leave.
“She’s a sweet girl,” Mama said as Jarla pulled the door shut behind her, “but Adolph could make a nasty enemy.”
Dieter hesitated. “I don’t want enemies. I want to fit in and serve the cause.”
“Of course you do, and that’s one of the nice things about joining the coven. Perhaps the rest of the world is against you, but you have a family now, brothers and sisters who look after their own. For instance, Jarla told me you’ve been slaving away for pennies catching vermin, and sleeping in a hostel for beggars and tramps. We can do better than that. For the time being, you can live here and be my helper in the healing trade.”
The Enemy Within Page 6
