by Unknown
All over the walls hung bands of cloth with runes painted on them, and bundles of dried kelp and seaweed. On the podium, the same stuff was smoldering in a huge brass bowl. It stank to high heaven.
Every face, including those of the men and women in the blue robes, had turned to the intruders, the singing had stopped. The cowl-wearers were men and women of all ages, the youngest still children of hardly more than ten. All of them were humans. Dwarfs, elves, trolls or ores didn't seem to be represented. Pandur could not make out any weapons, but this didn't mean much. The robes and cowls were capable of hiding a whole lot.
Pandur saw unwelcoming looks but no open enmity. He was amazed that most expressed equanimity. Not a trace of surprise.
Nobody said a word. A positively unnatural silence had descended on the room.
"And now?" Druse growled nervously.
"What are you waiting for? You can order your soyburger," Pandur gave back just as quietly. "The figures on the stage are the waiters. You only have to signal to them."
Druse cursed sotto voce. He seemed to have lost his appetite both for soyburgers and Pandur's humor.
Pandur's own self-assurance was only put on. He had expected the people to scatter or form an angry front against the intruders. He had even reckoned with fireballs and other forms of magical attacks and kept a keen eye especially on the men in the blue robes. But none of them reached for a fetish, nobody moved their lips to mumble a spell. He had absolutely no idea what to make of these people.
"Now there's no call for you folks to get excited," he finally turned to the assembled, raising his voice. "The shooters don't mean a thing. We just wanted to show you the shine on them. Hope y'all appreciate that." After a brief pause he continued, "Listen here, folks. We're stranded in your delightful smoking room and could use a little assistance. For example, you could give us a boat and direct us to the nearest bar."
Silence. Most of the cowl-wearers turned away and looked towards the men and women on the stage. Eventually, one of them rose. He was getting on in years, was in his mid-seventies at least, bald except for a chaplet of grey hair, almost two meters tall, thin, with sunken features and stooped shoulders. He wore a short, curly beard which framed the lower half of his long face like grey foam. A steady gaze from steel-grey eyes, a wry, slightly mocking mouth.
"I am the First Spokesman of the coven," he said with a cracked, but authoritative, voice. "You are disturbing our Thing. But we were expecting you. Put your weapons away. You don't need them and they wouldn't help you. You should be aware of that. Weren't you witness to Tungrita's power"
"Tungrita?" Pandur didn't have the slightest inkling what the man was talking about. Nevertheless, he complied with his request and slipped the Secura back into its holster as there was no immediate danger and the exit was nearby. With clammy fingers, Druse followed Pandur's example.
"Tungrita," the First Spokesman repeated. It sounded reverential and almost solemn. "She appeared and consumed your enemies. You may remember." Again the mocking twist of the lips.
"That... that was you?" Druse asked incredulously.
"Not us - Tungrita!" The cultist corrected him with unmistakable arrogance in his voice. He treated Druse like a schoolmaster would an infant that always made the same mistake when reciting the alphabet.
It was hard to believe, thought Pandur, that this outfit had anything to do with the light witch. But he would have to accept it, he supposed. For some reason or other, the apparition had struck him as something distinct and separate, magical and part of the Awakened World, but not the result of influence exerted by humans.
Shamanist or hermetic magic, as he had witnessed it so far, had a more direct, more targeted effect, and above all was connected with the immediate presence of mages. On the other hand, he had to admit that he had only witnessed magic, had grown up with magic, without having really gone into it deeply. He wasn't even able to say whether this cult worked shamanist magic or ritual witchcraft. These people seemed to have situated themselves between all the fronts.
"Who or what is Tungrita?" he asked.
"The power that guides us," the Spokesman replied tersely, as if that said everything. "And she whom you witnessed. As it was her will to spare you, you are welcome here. We'll help you. Later."
Pandur had no wish to be helped by the wrong people. Tungrita or no, if these jokers belonged to the Runenthing, he would take what he needed, and a friendly smile wouldn't come into it.
"Do you have anything to do with the Runenthing?" he asked the old man. "Or with National Action? Does it bother you that I have Russian, Polish and Jewish ancestry?"
"The Runenthing is walking the false path," the man answered with an edge to his voice. "And least of all do we want anything to do with the bully-boys of the NA. And I don't mind what sort of blood flows through your veins. We are the Tungrita Thing! In Tungrita there are all manner of elements, uniting the spirits of critters and humans. Tungrita recognizes no races and no nations. How could we be expected then to stand for nationalism and racial purity?"
His statement of belief sounded genuine. But Pandur was not yet convinced. "You use runes and call yourselves a Thing. These are the hallmarks of folkish shamans of the Runenthing, aren't they?"
Disquiet and impatience spread among the assembled. The Spokesman raised his hand, enjoining calm. "We are not accountable to you," he said curtly. "But I'll make allowance for your ignorance. It may be correct that some of us once belonged to the Runenthing, but now we follow the true path. The runes are still the medium of our magic, but not its essence. That will have to satisfy you." The old man made an impatient hand movement. "And now disturb us no longer. Sit or go. We shall help you. But you must wait until our ceremony is completed." He sat down again, sank abruptly into a kind of trance and commenced a monotonous litany. The other men and women on the stage followed suit. Gradually they were joined by voices from the ranks of the cowl-wearers, who were again concentrating fully on the coven of the thirteen. Soon the same clipped, whimpering, moaning chant that had accompanied Pandur and Druse through the long corridor reverberated around the hall.
The two men wanted to leave the room and wait outside. They turned round.
They ran straight up against the muzzles of three machine guns and two assault rifles. The weapons hung before silver-grey uniforms, embellished on the chest with a black buckle symbolizing the structure of an atom. Grey steel helmets with the same symbol. Proteus!
Babyfaces with alert eyes were staring at them. Except for the grinning leader, who was a few years older, the megacon guardsmen were still extremely young, almost children. Unfeeling, inquisitive faces that were dying to send wetware spattering around. Just for the heck of it, to see what it was like. Or that had already seen it - and enjoyed it. Worth repeating.
Both Pandur and Druse were aware that sooner or later these lads would shoot at them or others. Straight away if something didn't suit them. As the two men had no chance of drawing their guns before being riddled with bullets, they didn't even make the attempt.
"Hey, ya potheads!" the leader shouted down. "Smokin' yer old mattresses again, huh? We aleady told ya, we can't stand the stink of that stuff."
To Pandur's surprise, the sing-song did not break off and none of the robe-wearers looked up. If anything, it seemed to him, the chanting intensified.
"Cut out the cat's chorus!" the guardsman roared, jerking his Scorpion machine gun up to point in the air and sending a burst of fire into the ceiling.
Lumps of concrete and plastic thudded down alongside flattened bullets, plaster showered down after. The chanting broke off. But the members of the coven still didn't look up. They had joined hands. Their eyes appeared empty, as if they were gazing into the furthest distance or within themselves.
Suddenly, Pandur had the sensation of there being a foreign presence in the hall. It seemed to rise from the ring the coven had formed, spread out and fill the room. The fire of burning seaweed flared up brightly, but o
therwise nothing was to be seen. If it was the light witch that had entered the hall, then she was manifesting herself differently than she had out there in the bay. Without light, without her semi-material body, only as a breath of her aura. But it was present. A force field. In the waters of the Weser-Jade Bight, his body had been thrust aside by Tungrita and swept away on a wave. Now he felt a power that seemed to press his spirit against an immaterial wall.
"That's better," the Proteus man said. Either he hadn't sensed the presence of the foreign being, or he refused to give it credence.
Pandur waited feverishly for something to happen. Either one or other of the nervous youngsters would very soon want to know if his bang-bang could still talk and would likely choose the two men nearest to him to try out a conversation. Or... He didn't know what to expect instead. What he had already witnessed. The sense of being sucked in, digested, ejected? Not a genuine alternative to the prospect of being splattered all over the rune posters as an abstract painting. He fervently hoped Tungrita commanded one or two magical variants that were kinder to onlookers.
The spokesman of the Proteus men seemed to be enjoying his role. He had probably been practising it at home in the arcology in front of a mirror. "It's not as if we want anything from ya," he said to the cultists. "There's only one we want. .." He made a brief pause, savoring the moment, still looking towards the stage.
Sure, thought Pandur. What else. It's for me they're here... His hand moved slowly upward although he knew it was pointless.
The Proteus man suddenly swung round and pointed his Scorpion at the two men. Pandur's hand froze. The guardsman grinned. He looked at Druse. "Did ya think we weren't gonna find ya?"
What an idiot! He thinks Druse's his man!
Druse spat.
"Now, now, Druse," said the Proteus man, scolding. "Ya're ruinin' these good people's carpet. Is that any way to behave?"
Pandur registered two things. First, the Proteus man had addressed Druse by name. This meant the guardsmen, for whatever reason, actually were looking for Druse and not a former decker by the name of Walez. Second, what he had been expecting the whole time happened.
Tungrita attacked.
From one moment to the next, Pandur sensed a force field licking over his body. What he felt himself, he saw in Druse: all the hairs on his body stood on end. Then the two men flew across the room like living projectiles, smashing into the nearest row of seats. The being, Tungrita or whatever, became visible as a shivering, formless, glowing mist, a bubbling white cloud hanging suspended in the middle of the room and fed by a column of mist from among the coven. No hook-nosed face this time, no glittering eyes, no wriggling lightbeams as hair, no hunched figure. Only waves and shivers. And humming. That ominous humming which Pandur had already heard once. All other sounds were absorbed.
The guardsmen fired like men possessed into the apparition, silently, eerily. The bullets were caught as if by cotton wool and swallowed up. Then five lumps detached themselves from the edge of the cloud, like snowballs hurled by a titan. They rose to the hall ceiling and then sped down vertically onto the heads of the Proteus men. Each of the balls seemed to know its personal target exactly and hit it with unerring accuracy. They reached five steel helmets. Split them. Cleft the heads beneath the helmets. Cleft the bodies beneath the heads. Reached the heavy boots and dissipated. The gaping bodies dissipated, vanishing into thin air. Along with the uniforms, the helmets, the weapons. Not one single button or atomic buckle was left behind. There was not even enough to form a few ugly stains. A snuff-dry breath lay in the air, as if after an electrical discharge. Then a smell of ozone spread, to be replaced by something that smelt like salt and kelp. Then came a heavy smell of decay that took the breath away, that combined within itself all the morasses, all the slime and all the excrement of this world.
It was all over. The apparition had simply disappeared into thin air. It had not, as it were, merely become invisible, but Pandur sensed a sudden emptiness into which poured everything that had previously been thrust aside. The shivering cloud had disappeared along with the unholy stench. More precisely, it was replaced by the normal stink, the fug of stationary air and the pungent smell of smoldering seaweed. The members of the coven let go of each other, the circle broke up. The voices of the cowl-wearers whirred confusingly around the room, while the coven remained silent.
Finally, the bald-pated old man rose, turned to the brothers and sisters of the Thing, raised his arms to the ceiling and said unctuously, "Thanks be to Tungrita. May this be a lesson to our foes."
With no attention to a ritual close to the ceremony, the Spokesman dropped his arms and left the stage, stooped. He descended some narrow steps, holding fast to the handrail, and walked up the central aisle past the rows of seats towards Pandur and Druse. The cultists were quietly talking together and paid him little attention.
The two men had recovered from the tempestuous events sufficiently to stand up, but were still too dazed to speak.
"You have been favored with being rescued by Tungrita a second time," said the Spokesman. It didn't sound at all lofty, but like a matter-of-fact statement. The man let them feel plainly that for him they were strangers, who were only tolerated because the light witch had spared them. Pandur had the impression that the coven did not really control Tungrita, but merely activated her. The light witch seemed willing and able to take her own decisions. They had her to thank, and not the coven, for not also having been rent asunder from head to toe by a deadly snowball.
"We would've sorted out the drekheads on our own," said Druse, contrary to better knowledge.
The old man uttered a short laugh. "Of course you couldn't, but you're of no concern. You had better not imagine you're Chosen Ones. You were spared, it was no more than that. Tungrita aids our Thing to confound its enemies, that is all."
"Out in the bay as well?" asked Pandur. He could not work out to what extent the megacon yacht had posed a danger to the Thing. And even the Proteus people had apparently only wanted to capture or kill Druse, and would have spared the cultists. Druse... How had the redhead managed to call down Proteus's wrath? Pandur's picture of the events of the last few hours began to become shaky. Had the attack in the bay, had Tupamaro's treachery nothing to do with him at all, but only with Druse? Who was Druse really? Only a pirate, or something else?
"Out there, too," the Spokesman answered without emotion. " Although the action we took against the ship might have been based on false information."
All right! The First Spokesman was conceding a mistake. More than ever, Pandur had the impression the old man was claiming a competence he didn't actually have.
The Spokesman seemed to sense that his authority had suffered. He felt compelled to explain himself. "For Proteus, we are a thorn in their flesh," he said. "We have already been attacked once. We were not prepared. There were deaths. That is why we decided to destroy one of the conglomerate's vessels. It would seem, however, that Tungrita attacked a different ship. But now Proteus will understand that we will not waver."
"Proteus will only be missing five men and they'll be back," Druse said darkly. He seemed edgy. Apparently he had no wish to be with the cultists when Proteus sent another squad.
"Proteus has learned every single detail of what has occurred," said the old man with self-satisfaction.
Neither Pandur nor Druse asked him how this was possible. They were sure the Spokesman was not lying. He had seen what had happened in the bay and expected them. Clairvoyance, presumably, magical ability. It would seem the coven also had the power of projecting images to other places or into other minds. According to everything Pandur knew about magic, both skills required a consciously cooperating medium. Which posed the question how great Tungrita really was and how far her sphere of influence extended. Was the light witch the secret ruler of the Weser-Jade Bight, perhaps even of the entire German Bight?
"We will now partake of a small repast and discuss your passage to the coast," said the Spokesm
an.
Chapter Three
"Sittin' On a Fence"
Witches and Wise People almost always organize themselves in groups of thirteen ("covens"), which are practically independent as regards details of the cult. A spiritual center for the witches has formed itself on the Brocken in the Harz Mountains; in addition, there are twelve other cult sites, dictated by nature, which enjoy particular significance and serve as important ritual locations for certain parts of the country. For defined rituals, the "wardresses and wardens" of these thirteen sites form the High Coven, as it is known which, at least in witch circles is considered the most powerful magic group in the world.
For witches, the world revolves around the godheads of nature foremost among them the Earth Mother sometimes even the Horned One. A variety of groups revere Diana (the moon), which tends to entail a homiphobic attitude. These groups sometimes also worship traditionally male idols (Dragonslayer the Wild Hunter) in female guise.
Some witches totally reject the "servile reverence" of idols as gods and, in their stead, choose a totem in animal form, almost always the cat, magpie or snake.
By far the majority of Wise People feel themselves bound to their idol more by ties of friendship than by subservience. The worship shown the godhead tends in such cases to the joyously festive rather than awed prayer.
The normally positive attitude to nature by all means permits responsible exploitation of its resources - the vegetarianism found among many Wise People, say, is a question of a personal stance and has no connection with the functioning of magic.