Warhammer Red Thirst

by Warhammer

  Each of these discoveries reinforced her resolution, and encouraged her to increase her efforts, which she began to do by denying herself sleep. It was soon noticed, however, that Adalia burned more candles than any three of her companions, and she was summoned to the Superior to explain why this was so.

  She took Mother Thelinda to see her work, sure that the sight of the partially-reconstructed window would be sufficient explanation and excuse, but the Superior had no notion of it as an intriguing puzzle to be solved, and could not see the picture emerging within the confused array of lead and glass. Mother Thelinda saw the broken pattern only as a silly and trivial mess, and said so.

  "You must see, Sister Adalia," she said, in a gentle and kindly fashion, "that the objective cannot be worth the effort. What could you possibly gain by completing a task whose achievement would bring no worthwhile reward? You must understand that it is not fitting for a priestess of Shallya to become obsessed with worldly things. A window of coloured glass, however beautiful, is only a window on the everyday world. Our concern is to bring the mercy of Shallya to those who suffer grief and pain, not to play with ornaments."

  Adalia accepted these rebukes very mildly, but her penitence was feigned, and she was glad that Mother Thelinda did not think to offer a specific instruction commanding her to abandon her work. Nevertheless, she did resolve to try harder to perform those observances which her faith required of her.

  For some days she was unable to collect more than a handful of very tiny fragments of glass from the slopes beneath the burgeoning temple. Nor, in those few days, did she use more candles than any of the other sisters. But her enthusiasm for her task was not really lessened at all; almost every piece of glass which she found was now the cause of a tangible thrill, for she was very often seized by the conviction that she knew exactly where her new find would fit into the growing whole.

  The outer circles of the window came steadily nearer to completion, and she soon redoubled her efforts once again in searching for the missing fragments. When the outer circles had been restored, save for a mere handful of fugitive shards, a most astonishing thing happened.

  There began to emerge from those outer rings of glass, during the hours of deepest darkness, an uncanny glow, which grew by degrees into a flickering silvery radiance. It was as though the window was no longer laid out on a solid floor at all, but had been set in place to transmit the effulgence of a dawnlit sky.

  Had Sister Adalia been less absorbed in her project, she might have been made anxious by this mystery. She might have remembered that this window had not been an ornament in some nobleman's pretty palace, but a part of the fortress of Khemis Kezula, where it might conceivably have had some other purpose than mere decoration. She might even have recalled to mind that curious warning about "glorious light" which had passed through the company as an item of idle gossip.

  Had she been able to think in this way she would then have understood that her duty to Shallya demanded that she consult her Superior at once. But her mind was filled by now with other thoughts and desires, and she had already acquired the habit of secrecy. As things were, the thought which first sprang into her mind when she saw this radiance was that it would help her to save candles, and thus be freed from further pressure to abandon her self-appointed task.

  Her stratagem worked well; Mother Thelinda was satisfied with what appeared to be a return to normal conduct - and Sister Adalia was trapped in the unfolding web of her deceit, unable now to seek advice about the significance of the eerie light which lit her room for a few hours on either side of midnight.

  She did not feel as if she was imprisoned by her deceit. Indeed, she felt more contented than she had ever been before. It was as if that emptiness within her being, of which she had only been half-aware, had been filled as neatly and cosily as it could be. She was now possessed of a completeness which all her sincere and heartfelt prayers to Shallya had somehow never provided for her.

  Most of the pieces of glass to which her instinct led her as she patrolled the slopes beneath the temple were rosy or blue in colour, and the reconstruction of the circles where they belonged soon progressed to the point where almost every piece could be put unhesitatingly into place. And as these inner circles neared completion, they began to add their own measure to the light which poured into Sister Adalia's room in such a magical fashion.

  Adalia loved that light - which was certainly very beautiful - and delighted in studying its many changes. It was not in the least like true sunlight, for it had a ceaseless ebb and flow in it; what had earlier been a casual flickering was now a more tempestuous agitation. Whenever she knelt beside the window, bending over it in search of the place where a particularly problematic shard belonged, her many shadows would move on the whitened walls behind her like a troop of wild dancers capering about a magical fire.

  The dingy walls of her room were quite transformed by the light of the window; their greyness was utterly banished by it and the sacred symbols of Shallya's worship were completely blotted out. So too was the dreary greyness of her habit redeemed, for the light made it blaze with brightness, as though it were not a priestess's robe at all but the coloured costume of some mighty wizard of the Colleges.

  Of the figure in the centre of the picture, however, Adalia could as yet see almost nothing. There were only a few fugitive pieces of glass which seemed to belong there, which gave the merest impression of feathery form, without any proper indication of the configuration of the wings, nor the least sign of beak or eye. No light came, as yet, from the innermost circle of the window.

  Adalia's quest was nearly brought to an abrupt conclusion when Sister Penelope and Sister Myrica, who chanced one night to be out and about at an unusual hour, reported seeing strange lights in her window. Adalia was summoned yet again to see the Superior. She became very anxious lest it be commanded that her work must cease, and she stoutly denied that anything unusual had occurred. She insisted that she had been asleep at the time the light was reported, and knew of no possible source from which it could have come.

  Because Penelope and Myrica could offer no tentative explanation of their own, Adalia's word was accepted, but Mother Thelinda took the opportunity to question her further about the fate of the stained glass which she had collected. Adalia denied that she was any longer interested in the reconstruction of the window, and said that in any case, no sizeable pieces of glass had been found for some considerable time. Because the latter part of the statement was true, the whole was believed.

  After this interview, Adalia took the precaution of hanging up a dark cloth to curtain the narrow window of her room while she worked, and always left the greater window on the floor covered by a rug when she went out.

  That Mother Thelinda believed Adalia's story was due in part to the conviction with which she told it, but also to the fact that she seemed so healthy and cheerful nowadays that it was impossible for any of her fellows to believe that she was going without sleep. When the sisters had come to Selindre, and for some time after, Adalia had been pinched of feature and pasty of face, and far from being the strongest of the company - but now her skin was tanned and lustrous, and her laughing eyes were as bright as a bird's.

  Her companions could only think that it was the sunlight and the air, and the hard but willing labour, which were at long last changing her for the better.

  Adalia no longer fell eagerly upon the few tiny slivers of glass which were occasionally found while work on the temple proceeded; indeed, she professed indifference to them. One way or another, though, the fragments disappeared into her sleeves and pockets, and were carried anxiously at the end of each evening's communal rituals to the privacy of her room. There, the periphery of the innermost circle was slowly filled in, and she waited with rapt anticipation for the vital moment when the light which streamed through the outer circles would spread to the centre - when that enigmatic image would, as she thought of it, "catch fire".

  She lived for that day; nothi
ng else seemed to matter at all.

  Unfortunately, the central motif remained irritatingly absent; there were a few fragments of glass which seemed to represent feathers, and enough lead to imply that the figure was the head of a bird, but of the beak and eyes there was still no trace. By now she had searched every inch of the slope beneath the burgeoning temple most assiduously, and she knew that there was little hope of finding anything but tiny fragments there.

  Without the vital pieces, there was little more of the puzzle to be done, and nothing to occupy her hands and mind in those hours when the light of another world filled her room with its gorgeous colours. Her old habits reasserted themselves, but when she prayed - without taking care to specify which deity it was to whom she addressed her prayers - she prayed only for a gift and a revelation; her prayers expressed the yearning of her obsessive heart, which had no other object of affection than the face in the centre of the window.

  For seven times seven nights the light waxed and waned, and each time it died Adalia went meekly to her bed. But on the next night, she was so filled with the glory of the light that she was utterly entranced, and was driven out by the fierceness of her hunger - out of her room and out of the house.

  Winter had come by now, and the night was bitter. Snow was falling on the slopes, its whiteness all-but-invisible in the cloudy night. But she did not feel cold at all, and made her way unerringly to the site of the temple, which was nearly complete.

  In the courtyard of the temple, someone was waiting for her. He carried no lantern and she could not see his face, but she knew by his stature and his voice that he must be a dwarf.

  "I have something which you want," he said, "and you have something which my master desires. Will you make a contract of exchange, so that your heart's desire might be answered?"

  "I will," she said. She felt as though she was lost in a dream, and in dreams one does not ask too many questions.

  "Here is what you need," said the dwarf, and she felt a rough and hairy hand as he gave her a parcel of rags which had something hard and sharp-edged within it.

  As the other turned to go, Adalia said: "Take whatever I have to give, in return."

  And he replied: "It is already taken."

  Then she took the parcel back to her room, and carefully hid it away before she went to sleep.

  On the next night, when all had become quiet, she uncovered the window to let free its turbulent light, and took out her prize. She carefully unwrapped the bundle, exposing half a hundred pieces of coloured glass and a few twisted slugs of lead.

  The fragments of glass were mostly small and misshapen, and it was clear that it would be no easy task to fit them together in the correct order. It had been a long time since she had so many new shards to work with, and she was delighted by the challenge. Her nimble fingers began the work of turning and sorting, flying as though impelled by an intelligence other than her own, and she felt meanwhile as though she was laughing inside. She was very quick in slotting the pieces into place, for each one seemed to know exactly where it belonged.

  The eyes she placed last, and when she placed them, she knew that her work was finished - that although a hundred tiny cracks and crannies remained in the grand design, she had done enough.

  Incandescent light sprang from the heart of the window, and the figure detailed there was suddenly present in all its resplendent glory.

  For a few fleeting seconds she still thought that the figure was the head of a bird - perhaps that legendary firebird which was still occasionally glimpsed above the cliffs of Parravon. Then, she thought that it might be the head of a griffon, like the one displayed as a trophy in the Great Hall of the Governor's Palace in Quenelles. While its colours were still limned by curves of clotted lead it might have been either of those things. But then, as the cataract of light poured through the window between the worlds, the lead which held the pieces of coloured glass seemed to melt and shrivel, so that the image ceased to be an image, and became reality.

  Then she saw that the central figure was neither bird nor griffon, nor any other mere animal intelligence. Plumed and crested with gorgeous feathers he might be, but this was a person, whose gaze was brighter with wisdom and knowledge than the eyes of any human or elven being she had ever seen.

  There was a tiny voice of warning within her, which tried to cry "Daemon!" in such a way as to make her afraid, but the voice seemed to Adalia to be no more than a tiny echo, feeble and forlorn - and if, as she supposed, it was the last vestige of that love and adoration which she had once given freely to Shallya, then its insignificance now was clear testimony of the transfer of her loyalty to another power.

  The face which looked at her, out of that other world which was so wondrously filled with ecstatic light, was incapable of smiling - for the beaked mouth was set as hard as if it was carved from jet - and yet she was in no doubt that he was glad to see her. She was perfectly certain that he longed to enfold her in his feathery embrace, to cover her tenderly with the splendour of his fiery plumage.

  The sheer beauty of the prospect overwhelmed her, and she threw wide her arms to welcome that transcendent embrace.

  Behind her, crowded upon the cold and narrow walls of that space which had been given to her for her allotted share of the world of mortal men, a hundred coloured shadows strutted and jostled, utterly unaware of their own thinness and insubstantiality, uncomprehending of the fact that they were mere whimsies of a light from beyond the limits of the earth.

  Adalia, who had once been a Sister of Shallya, gave voice to a liquid trill of pure pleasure - and those eyes which she had so recently restored to their proper place focused upon her an astonishing, appalling look of love, which was full of laughter and the joy of life...

  When Sister Adalia did not appear for morning prayer Sister Columella and Sister Penelope were sent to inquire whether she was ill.

  They discovered her naked and supine upon the floor of her room, with her arms thrown wide and her legs apart.

  It was, they said, as though she had been seared from top to toe by some incredible fire, which had burned her black. The walls of her room, and her discarded robe, were similarly black and ashen. And embedded in Adalia's vitrified flesh, sparing not a single inch of it, were thousands upon thousands of tiny pieces of glass.

  These coloured fragments, as Mother Thelinda was able to observe when she was summoned by her horror-stricken messengers, gave Adalia's corpse the appearance of being encrusted with an extraordinary quantity of precious gems.

  Had they not known that it could not possibly be another, Columella and Penelope told their friends, they might never have guessed that it was poor Adalia. She had been so utterly transfigured by her mysterious death that she might have been anyone at all.

  THE SONG

  by Steve Baxter

  "Nice ring, Sam. What's the sparkly stuff, glass? Or something less expensive?"

  Buttermere Warble, known to his friends as Sam, looked up with a start. On the other side of his table was a small figure with a grinning face and a thatch of brown hair. "Oh. Tarquin. It's you. Your boat's in, then. Oh, good."

  Now more halflings came crowding into the tavern after Tarquin. Jasper, the barman of Esmeralda's Apron, pot-belly wobbling, growled at them to shut the damn door. Even here, deep in Marienburg on the murky rim of the Elven Quarter, the winds off the Sea of Claws had power.

  The halflings pulled up stools and began settling around Sam's table. Soon he was ringed by a jostling rabble. "Join me, why don't you," Sam said drily. In his line of work it was useful to have contacts at all levels of society - but you could have too much of a good thing...

  "Aw, Sam, aren't you glad to see us?" A skinny young halfling called Maximilian dug a worn pack of cards out of his woollen coat and began shuffling them.

  "Oh, sure. I was getting so sick of calm, peace and quiet."

  Tarquin sat opposite Sam. "So what's the story with the ring?"

  Sam's ring was a fat band of gold
; shards of crystal caught the light. Another young sailor bent over to see. "Broken glass must be in this year."

  Sam covered the ring with the palm of his hand. "It's personal."

  Tarquin shook his head in mock disapproval. "Oh, come on," he said. "We're just off the boat. Tell us while we're still sober."

  "I told you, it's personal."

  "How personal?"

  "A tankard of ale."

  Maximilian laughed. "Ah, keep it." He slapped cards on the rough tabletop. "Three Card Pegasus. That's what I want to spend my sober time on..."

  But Sam pushed back the hand he'd been dealt. "Sorry, lads. Deal me out."

  Tarquin sat back, mouth wide. "You're kidding. Dragon High Sam, refusing a game?"

  "What is it?" Maximilian asked. "Funds low? No juicy cases recently?"

  Sam shook his head. "No. I'm sworn off Pegasus, that's what."

  "Why?"

  "Well, it's kind of connected to the ring. But it's basically because of what happened last time I played..."

  The circle of faces were fixed on him now. "Come on, Sam. Tell us."

  Sam looked significantly at his tankard.

  Tarquin picked it up. "Don't tell me. That's personal too, right? Well, you win, Sam. I'll get your ale. But it had better be worth it..."

  Sam leaned forward and folded his arms theatrically. "Right. Picture the scene," he began. "It was in the Apron; in this very bar. This table, I think. I can't remember too clearly." Briefly the halfling's face grew dark, belying his jocular tone. "I'd... had a bad day. I'd taken it out on one or two tankards - " "So tell us something new."