[Stefan Kumansky 02] - Taint of Evil
Page 17
“We need to get moving,” he said to Bruno. “We don’t have much time now.”
Bruno lifted Bea’s face towards his own. Her cheeks were lined with tears.
“It’s not going to be safe here,” Bruno told her. “Come with us.”
Bea shook her head in confusion. “I can’t,” she said, her voice choked with sobs. “I have to stay,” she said at last, more firmly now. She looked at the second guard, lying crumpled in a heap by the doorway.
“I’m a healer. I have to stay, and do what I can for him.” She put her arms about Bruno. “It’s all right,” she said. “They won’t hurt me. I know that.”
Stefan looked to Bruno. “There’s no guarantee that she’ll be any safer with us,” he said. “It might truly be best if she stayed.”
Bruno stood facing the two of them, battling his emotions. “Shallya watch over you,” he said at last to Bea. “We’ll come back for you. As the gods are my witness, I promise we will.”
Stefan took Bea’s hand. “I’m sorry this is happening,” he said. “There isn’t time to explain now. But you must believe me. There’s something very wrong about Sigmarsgeist.”
Bea regarded him without judgement, and forced a smile. “Go now, hurry,” she urged. “And the gods grant you luck.”
They gathered up the weapons from the fallen guards. “Where to?” Bruno demanded, breathlessly.
“The cells, I think,” Stefan replied. “I want to see what else they’re keeping down there. We must make all speed.”
But whatever luck the two comrades had been granted had already expired. Stefan and Bruno had barely descended a single flight of steps from their quarters when they were met by Hans Baecker, a quartet of armed men at his heel.
Baecker drew out his sword smartly and greeted Stefan with a thin smile.
“Stefan,” he said. “I’m sorry you weren’t able to take my advice about resting. I’m afraid I must insist that we return to your chambers.”
Stefan looked down at the men below, one hand upon the sword now buckled at his waist, weighing the odds. Baecker plucked the question from his mind, and answered it unequivocally.
“You’re excellent swordsmen, both of you,” he said. “You might stand a chance of overpowering us.” He cast a glance over his shoulder. “But you should know that Rilke is waiting in the courtyard below with a dozen or more men. I’m sure he’d like the chance to put your resilience to the test.”
Baecker took another step up towards Stefan and Bruno. He smiled again, but there was no warmth in his eyes now. He extended his hand.
“Now, gentlemen,” he said. “The swords, please.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Betrayals
They were taken to the chamber of the High Council, back to the place where they had first met with the Guides. It was where their encounter with Sigmarsgeist had begun, and where, Stefan now feared, it might now end. This time there were to be no speeches of welcome. This time the soldiers lined around the walls had a very different role.
Most of the places around the great table were empty. Whatever judgement would be reached here today would be reached without the wisdom of the council. Stefan wasn’t expecting much in the way of justice.
Konstantin von Augen sat at the head of the table, staring impassively at Stefan and Bruno. To his left, Hans Baecker, the same thin smile still playing about his lips. On his right, Rilke, his stone face revealing no hint of emotion. Of Anaise, there was as yet no sign.
When Konstantin finally spoke, his voice was filled with an angry sadness.
“You have betrayed us, Stefan,” he said. “You have betrayed our trust, and murdered one of our brothers. Every soul of Sigmarsgeist is treasured, you must know that. We opened our gates and our hearts to you, and you have repaid us with treachery.”
Stefan stood in silence for a few moments. Konstantin sounded truly wounded, a righteous man who had been wronged. For a moment Stefan had found his own anger punctured, tempered by something very like guilt. Could it be that he had made a mistake? Perhaps the blow that he had suffered had impaired his thinking. Perhaps, truly, he had got things badly wrong. If Konstantin von Augen was only acting a role, then he was playing his part exceptionally well.
“The girl, Bea, had no part in this,” Bruno said firmly. “However you choose to judge us, she is free of any guilt.”
Konstantin’s eyes narrowed. “That is a view shared by my sister,” he replied, coldly. “But we shall find the truth of that in due course.”
“Where were you going, Stefan,” Baecker interjected, “when we found you upon the stair?”
Stefan looked to Bruno. There seemed little point in subterfuge now. They would know the truth of this one way or another, and then learn the consequences.
“To the cells,” he said, simply.
Rilke raised an eyebrow, and flashed a brief, ironic smile. “I dare venture that your wish will be accommodated,” he said, dryly.
Konstantin leaned forward, perplexed by Stefan’s answer. “We held nothing back from you,” he said. “Why were you intent on going back? Why did you kill a man for so little gain?”
“I wanted to see who else had found their ways to the dungeons of Sigmarsgeist,” Stefan said. He took a deep breath. “I’d got things wrong,” he said, looking directly at Baecker. “The night we met you we had come from a village. Its name was Grunwald, though no one will ever have cause to speak it now. There must have been forty or more souls living there. By the time we arrived they were all dead—butchered and burned.”
“We took it to be the mutants,” Bruno interjected.
“We assumed they had destroyed Grunwald,” Stefan continued. “Our assumption was wrong.”
“Why are we wasting our time with this nonsense?” Baecker blurted out, angrily.
“Indeed,” Konstantin concurred. “It is you, Stefan Kumansky, who stands before me accused. Do you think that you can deflect that accusation by in turn accusing us?”
“I only ask to be heard,” Stefan replied, determinedly. “I ask that you hear me out.”
“You will be heard,” Konstantin granted him, coldly. “And then you will be judged.”
To his right, Rilke sat strangely silent, his eyes fixed all the time upon Stefan. Stefan turned his gaze from Konstantin back towards Hans Baecker.
“What had those people done to anger you?” Stefan asked him. “Was the toll they had paid for your so-called ‘protection’ not enough? Or had you just stripped out all you could? Was that why you attacked Mielstadt? Was that why the people of Grunwald had to die?”
Baecker stood up and flung his cup to the floor, the clay smashing on the hard ground. “We have heard enough of this insolence!” he roared. “Will you let this man—this murderer—speak his slander against us?” he demanded of Konstantin.
Konstantin reflected, his face an inscrutable mask.
“I will not countenance lies,” he said, quietly. “But I will hear you answer his question.”
“The mutants had been to Grunwald,” Baecker said. “Someone there had chosen to give them succour—food, shelter—who cares? It’s all the same.” He fixed Stefan with a disdainful stare. “They gave succour to evil, and suffered the consequences.”
“There were no mutants in Mielstadt,” Stefan retorted, furiously “But that didn’t save the people there.” He turned his gaze back upon the Guide. “You know what your people have done!” he shouted at Konstantin. “Or is it simply that you choose to be blind to their deeds?”
lust for a moment, Stefan thought he saw a glimmer of doubt in the Guide’s eyes. Then Konstantin seemed to banish the thought, waving it away with a gesture of impatience.
“Baecker is a loyal servant of Sigmarsgeist,” he proclaimed. “I am satisfied that he speaks the truth.” He spread his hands, drawing the matter to the close, and sighed, deeply.
“I thought Sigmar had delivered us a great gift in you, Stefan Kumansky,” he said. “And in you, too, Bruno. Perhap
s I allowed myself to see what I wished to see, rather than the truth that is now laid before me.” He closed his eyes, and sat for a few moments in contemplation.
“Is there anything more?” he asked Baecker. “Anything at all you have not told me?”
“My lord, every deed I have ever done has been for the glory of Sigmarsgeist,” Baecker replied. “You know the power that evil has. You know that it can take the most innocent of forms.”
Konstantin lowered his head, and deliberated. When he raised his gaze once more, any doubt or pity had been swept aside.
“You have betrayed our trust, and betrayed the cause of Sigmarsgeist,” he said to Stefan and Bruno. “The clear penalty for such deeds is death.” He looked to his two lieutenants. “Unless you find argument to the contrary?”
Baecker shook his head. The faint, almost cruel smile had returned, and he was looking directly at Stefan. Stefan could scarcely believe this was the same man he had been glad to call comrade. To the right of the Guide, Rilke at last broke his silence.
“Death would be more than they deserve,” he said. “It is of little consequence to me, but I would put them to work in the mines, or upon the walls. Let them give their blood to atone for their crimes. After all,” he said to Konstantin, “once they have given their all, they can still be put to death.”
Konstantin nodded. “As ever, Rilke, you are wise.” He stood to address Stefan and Bruno. “You will serve Sigmarsgeist,” he pronounced, “by one means or another. Your deaths are postponed for as long as you may labour in our service.” He sat, and the shadow of sadness passed across his features once again. “Do not think I pass this judgement lightly,” he said. “Nor should you think that my judgement is a mercy.” He signalled to the guards for the prisoners to be led away.
“Before your penance is served, you may be wishing for death as your deliverance.”
Anaise sat patiently by Bea’s side, waiting for the girl’s sobs to subside. Bea cried unashamedly. Days of conflict and confusion had come to a head inside of her, and now the dam had burst. She felt miserable and powerless. Since they had found her, tending the wounded guard, she had spent all but a few hours confined within Anaise’s quarters. She was not a prisoner, Anaise had explained, yet neither was Bea any longer free to go as and where she chose. If not guilty of the crime, then she had at the very least been tainted by it. Anaise had made it very clear how she had intervened in person to spare Bea from Konstantin’s rage. Now Anaise was her protector, and, to all intents, her custodian, too.
After what seemed to her like an age, Bea lifted her face and looked around. They were sitting facing the ring of stones that lined the ancient well—the Well of Sadness, Anaise had called it. The name seemed particularly appropriate to Bea now.
Even through the numbing grief, she could feel the energy radiating from the well, like the heat from a great fire. She shuddered. She was not ready for this yet.
“Why have we come here?” she asked.
Anaise ran her hand through Bea’s hair, brushing the strands back from her tear-streaked face. “There is nowhere safer than here,” she whispered, soothingly. “This is the one place Konstantin will dare not come. This is my place alone.”
“Konstantin is searching for me?”
“He does not understand you,” Anaise said. “He doesn’t understand us.”
Bea uttered a cry, a nervous, fearful half-laugh. “I don’t think I understand, either,” she said. “I don’t understand what’s happening. And I don’t understand why you are choosing to protect me.”
Anaise plaited Bea’s hair between her fingers. “Because I do understand you,” she said at length. “You were confused. Your loyalties were torn. You felt you owed a debt to Stefan and Bruno, that’s why you helped them. But you also wanted to do the right thing. That’s why you stayed to tend to the wounded guard.” She smiled, and drew back. “It’s all right. I understand.”
Bea shook her head, uncertainly. Everything made sense, and yet no sense. She thought hard about what she needed to say. “Stefan and Bruno are good men,” she declared. “I know that their souls are pure.”
“But why did they kill a man, and grievously wound another?” Anaise asked, gently. “Can you explain that?”
Bea shrugged. The tears started to well up inside her again. She did not know, yet she sensed that something was wrong, something that she could not yet explain. It was there in the fabric of Sigmarsgeist itself, the unceasing, barely controlled growth of the citadel each day. And it was there in the energy that swelled, like restless waves upon a sea all around her. But the explanation was still beyond her reach.
“They are good men,” was all she could say.
“You say that, but—” Anaise paused, and inclined her head, looking deeper into Bea’s eyes. “Wait—there is something else, isn’t there? You hold a place in your heart for one of them.” She hesitated, put a finger to her lips. “Is it—Bruno?”
Bea averted her eyes, and gave the slightest of nods. She felt her eyes prickling with tears again. Anaise drew an arm around her shoulder to comfort her.
“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of.” She reached for a glass, and placed it into Bea’s hand. “Here,” she said. “Drink some of this.”
Bea lifted the glass to her lips, and sipped. The clear liquid burned in her throat. “Merciful Shallya,” she exclaimed, coughing. Her head felt light, faintly giddy. “What is it?”
Anaise laughed, and took the glass from her. “At least it brought some colour to your poor face,” she said. “Just a simple herbal elixir,” she explained. “All the way from Talabheim. Come, drink a little more. It’ll put the fire back in your heart.”
Bea looked at the glass with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity, her troubles momentarily forgotten. “But I thought—” she began. “I thought you said—”
“That such things were not allowed in Sigmarsgeist?” There was a note of mockery in Anaise’s suddenly stern tone.
“Quite right. We must set an example for our people, to guide them along the true path.” She raised the glass to her lips, and drained it in one draught. “This is different, though,” she continued. “Besides, there is no wrong in acknowledging our desires.” She refilled the glass from the stone flask at her side. “So long as it is only to understand them.”
She offered the glass back to Bea. “We must set examples, Bea,” she said. “That does not mean we must be enslaved by them.” She smiled. “Konstantin might not agree with me,” she said. “But you can share my secrets.” She stood, and lifted Bea to her feet. “You shall be a part of all of them.”
“I should leave,” Bea said, hurriedly. “It is not right for me to stay here.” She tried to shrug Anaise aside, but the Guide was in no mood to let her go.
“Where will you run to, Bea?” Anaise asked. “To Bruno, to join him in his miserable cell? You won’t be of help to him that way, be assured of that.” She turned the girl’s face towards her own. “Or to Konstantin, perhaps? I hope you wouldn’t be so foolish. I can only do so much to ensure your safety.” She reached to Bea’s cheek, tracing the line of her tears with one finger. “Once things are quieter, it will be safer for you,” she said. “Until then you should rest here. With me.”
“What do you want of me?” Bea asked. “What can I have that is so valuable to you?”
By way of answer, Anaise steered Bea towards the centre of the room. As her eyes fell upon the shadowed hollow of the Well of Sadness, Bea felt herself begin to fall, as though the ground beneath her feet had suddenly dropped away. She walked—or glided, so it seemed—towards the well as if drawn by irresistible gravity. She stopped herself, just short of the edge, and stood clutching at the low stone wall for support.
“I’m not ready for this,” she stammered. “I’m not strong enough. The drink has made me confused—”
“The magic is summoning you,” Anaise insisted, brushing her protests aside. “It is your strength th
at it has recognised. The waters of Tal Dur, Bea. They are waiting to be found once more. They wait for you to release their power.” She drew her on, insistent. “It is your calling, Bea. Your gift. It is your duty to heed that call.”
For all her fear, Bea found herself staring down into the depths of the ancient well. The shaft dropped away into darkness, an empty, arid void. And yet, as she looked down, Bea felt the brush of air light against her face. A slight fluttering breeze, as if, far below, something stirred. And she thought that, just for a moment, she heard a sound, the sound of water; single drops falling upon the parched earth. A needle-thin trickle of cool water snaking across the base of the dead well.
She pulled her face away. At once the sound was gone, and the air resolved once more to stillness. She felt light-headed, giddy from much more than the sip of liquor.
“I must have imagined it,” she said to Anaise. “I thought for a moment I heard something.”
“There is nothing false in your imagining,” Anaise replied. “All that you saw and heard will come to pass.” She smiled. “Tal Dur is waiting for us, Bea. Waiting for you to find the key.”
They were not to be taken down to the cells, not yet at least. Konstantin had decreed that their punishment was to be hard labour in the service of Sigmarsgeist. And the punishment was to begin at once.
Stefan and Bruno were led from the High Council to an outer yard of the palace, where they joined a gang of perhaps twenty or thirty other men. Some were in pairs or small groups, but most stood or sat upon the ground on their own, lost in some dream, or some private misery of their own. Few if any were speaking, and none seemed to notice the newcomers’ arrival amongst them.
Stefan cast his eyes around, trying to fathom whether these might be allies or enemies that they now found themselves amongst. There was no clear answer to that question that he could see. All of the gathered prisoners looked human, with no obvious marks of mutation upon them. But whether they were men who had marched beneath the dark flag, or simply villagers who had found themselves on the wrong side of the Red Guard, there was no way of telling.