Konniger gave a soft grunt of understanding and then caught the unanswered question in the eyes of his manservant.
'Flagellants are holy brethren who mortify and chastise their own flesh for the greater glory of Lord Sigmar, and to drive out from their bodies all temptations of earthly sin. If the unfortunate Brother Vallus was in the habit of regularly beating or whipping himself here in the privacy of his quarters - and these many healed-over marks and lesions on his
skin suggest that this was indeed the case - then it would certainly explain why no one came running to investigate any cries of pain or sounds of violence that may have come from this room last night.'
'A true and holy path, the calling of the flagellant,' intoned Comnenus, sounding for all the world as if he was quoting verbatim from some stern volume of Church doctrine. 'By their pain and suffering shall their devotions be known to all, and verily shall they be elevated to sit at the right hand of Lord Sigmar.'
'Indeed so. Wise words indeed, venerable Comnenus,' said Konniger diplomatically, bowing his head in deference to the old priest.
Vido stared in further horror at the mutilated corpse on the floor. Mortify your own flesh? Whipping and beating yourself? What kind of madness was this? As long as he lived - and, as a halfling, that could be some quite considerable time yet, more than the average lifetime of a human - he doubted that he would ever truly unders tand the ways of mankind.
Konniger looked around the room, taking in again the spartan details of the scribe's cell: the bare, thick stone walls; the smashed furnishings; the locked door that had been broken open to gain egress; the tiny, latch-shuttered window that allowed only a thin trickle of light into the dismal place. There was something else in the room too, the remnants of the heavy reek that had so repelled Brother Vallus's would- be rescuers when they had first broken down the door.
'A room locked from the inside, but containing only a corpse. Signs of a violent statggle, but no sign of any attacker, and no apparent way for them to escape after brutally killing Brother Vallus. It is a mystery, is it not, Vido? Perhaps a mystery worthy of one of those blood-drenched plays from the quill of the great Detlef Sierck himself!'
'It is nothing less than devilment!' shouted Comnenus, angrily waving his stick as if to ward off the evil spirits that he believed were at work here. The servants of the Dark Powers are everywhere. It is only by our steadfast devotion to the Lord Sigmar that we shall have the courage and strength to seek them out and drive them back into the abyss!'
The old priest's words stirred up an excited, nervous hubbub of talk amongst the other scribes crowded at the
doorway and gathered in the passageway beyond. 'Brethren! Brethren, there is nothing to fear,' called the high priest, to little effect. 'Herr Konniger was once our brother within the Holy Church. We all know of him and his reputation. If anyone can find Brother Vallus's attacker, it shall surely be him. Even as I speak, the Guard are scouring the cathedral. With Sigmar's blessing, I feel sure that the culprit will be found within the hour.'
'Oh, sooner than that, brother high priest,' mused Konniger, standing up and carefully brushing away the detritus from the hem of his robes. 'In fact, I can confidently state that the killer is even now in the room among us.'
There were gasps of disbelief and horror, and a further hubbub of nervous, thrilled chatter from those gathered outside. Vido suspected that the gruesome discovery of the dead scribe and its still unfolding aftermath was the most exciting event that the scriptorium and its inhabitants had witnessed in quite some time. Even Vido had been startled by Konniger's claim, but he recognised the trademark touch of his master's often not-so-secret taste for melodramatic showmanship.
'Herr Konniger! Surely you cannot believe that any of our holy brethren are-' began the master of the scriptorium, only to be abruptly silenced by Konniger's upheld hand.
'Brother Vallus was the instrument of his own destruction,' said Konniger, calmly and matter-of-factly. 'I suspected that he had taken his own life almost as soon as I first laid eyes on his body. What I have discovered since then has only confirmed beyond dispute my initial theory.'
'Nonsense!' thundered old Comnenus. 'Death by one's own hand is a crime against the word of Sigmar! No holy brother would damn himself in such a way. Yes, I remember you when you were a young novice, Konniger. Impious and impatient, that is how I recall you. Too eager to challenge that which other, greater minds of the past have set down as proven fact and established doctrine. I thought then that you had the makings of damnable heresy in you, and I have heard much since then to convince me my judgement was correct.'
Konniger smiled to himself. 'I remember you too, venerable Comnenus, with your quick mind and temper, and with your cudgel ever at the ready. You taught me much back
then, even if you did not know it, and even if a lot of what I learned may not have been to your intent or liking. Still, I thank you for all that you taught me, wise Comnenus, and I thank you again for your patience now as I endeavour to show the fruits of the wisdom you tried so dutifully to bully and beat into me.'
He knelt down beside the corpse, reaching over to touch one of its clawing, death-frozen hands. The high priest and those few others present in the room moved nervously forward to watch. Comnenus remained where he was, his expression stern and disdainful as Konniger began the explanation of his findings.
'Observe how ripped and torn the flesh is on the cadaver's fingertips. Do you not see how closely those fingers match the marks torn into the flooring and his own skin? Look more closely at these fingertips. Do you not see the splinters of wood driven into the flesh, and the skin and blood beneath his torn fingernails?' Konniger reached out, gently plucking something away from one of the fingers, holding it up for his audience to see.
'And look here. A hair, is it not? There are others also, all of them torn by Brother Vallus from his own head as the agonies and madness of his own self-administered demise overtook him. He must have torn at his own vestments and flesh, bitten off and consumed his own tongue, and clawed deep furrows into this solid wooden floor, consumed by a most unbearable torment.'
'Sigmar's holy bond!' breathed the high priest, staring at the corpse with renewed horror. 'What evil spell or curse would impel a man to inflict such tortures upon himself?'
The brother had an interest in herbalism, did he not?' asked Konniger, indicating the debris scattered on the floor around the corpse. 'Certainly, the evidence here would indicate so. See there - the broken lid of an apothecary case, the scattered remains of various, easily-identifiable herbal substances and remedies, torn parchment scraps of what clearly looks like a herbalist's inventory book. Yes, definitely an amateur herbalist, I think. And, now that I dwell on it, I seem to recall once reading a mildly interesting treatise by one Brother Vallus on the lesser-known restorative effects of Tilean belladonna.'
'So what relevance does any of this have to the manner of his death?' asked Comnenus, his withered voice thick with scorn.
'What indeed?' replied Konniger, clearly relishing this battle-debate with one of his former priest-instructors. 'I know that the years have robbed you of your sight - though not your boundless faith and devotion, honoured Comnenus - so trust me when I recount to you now the symptoms I see upon the body of Brother Vallus. The stretching and distorting of the facial muscles is highly distinctive, as is the wrenching and distortion of the bones and muscles. Poor Scribe-brother Vallus suffered such agony in his final moments, such unimaginable and involuntary violent spasms, that he snapped his own spine and, as near as I can tell, dislocated or wrenched apart near every joint in his body. What does that suggest to you?'
Silence and the deepening of his perpetual scowl were the only responses forthcoming from the old priest. After a pause, Konniger continued.
'Nothing? Very well, then what of the highly distinctive odour that you yourself were first to detect before the door was even opened? "The stench of evil", I believ
e you termed it, and, truthfully you were not much mistaken. Church doctrine and ecclesiastical history is your field of study, wise Comnenus, and I know of no man more learned in such matters than your venerable self, but there are other important areas of knowledge.'
'There can be no greater and better kind of wisdom and learning than that which increases our understanding and appreciation of the Lord Sigmar and his deeds,' barked Comnenus, an answer which elicited a smile from Konniger.
'You do not disappoint me, good Comnenus. You are as true to those words now as you were when I first heard you utter diem those many years ago. Still, had you any knowledge of herbalism, alchemy or even poison lore, you would have perhaps recognised that odour for what it truly was.'
'And what is that?' asked the high priest, casting a nervous glance towards Comnenus.
'Borgio's Brew,' answered Konniger unhesitatingly. 'A uniquely Tilean addition to herbal lore. A mixture of hemlock, belladonna and certain rarer and more exotic herbal
materials. Combined, they create a most potent and terrible poison, one which any competent herbalist would be able to synthesise. The poison induces the most horrid agonies in its unfortunate victims, causing the extreme physical dislocations which we see here in the body of Brother Vallus. As the venom seeps through the substance of the victim's flesh, it is expelled back outwards in the form of a foul-smelling black sweat that forms on the victim's skin, and which quickly evaporates into the surrounding air as the body begins to cool after the point of death.'
'And that is the source of the foul vapour we could smell?'
'It is, sir,' accorded Konniger. The odour is unmistakable, and I can still discern it emanating faintly from the body.'
'If what you say is true, Konniger, then our brother is truly damned,' said the blind scholar, 'for self-murder is intolerable in the eyes of the Church. Why, then, would Vallus do such a thing? And also, if he did indeed seek his own death, why did he choose such a painful and protracted method of self-extinction?'
Konniger bowed his head in a quiet salute of respect to his old tutor and tormentor. 'It pleases me to know that age has not also robbed you and the Holy Church of your fine powers of reasoning, Comnenus. What you have so acutely expressed is indeed the real mystery here, is it not? Let us see if we cannot now resolve it without further delay.'
He looked up towards the stolid figure of the Cathedral Guard master-at-arms. 'Master-at-arms, I will need your assistance in moving and stripping the body. And perhaps,' he added, nodding towards the open door and the crowded passageway beyond, 'the door now can be closed and the holy brethren outside reminded of whatever important duties they must doubtless have waiting for them elsewhere.'
Konniger waited while the gaggle of priests and novices outside were chased away by a trio of guardsmen. With the door closed and guarded, the only people who remained in the cell were Konniger, Vido, the high priest, Comnenus and the master-at-arms. The big, ex-mercenary barely reacted as Konniger handed him a pair of linen gloves for handling the body. 'There may be some poisonous residue left on the corpse's skin,' explained Konniger, as he carefully put on an
identical pair of gloves, 'so we must take care not to touch the skin directly. As an additional precaution, we shall have to wash our hands in a bowl of hot water infused with cloves afterwards.'
Working in tense silence together, they expertly stripped and turned the body. At once, everyone in the room with the exception of blind Comnenus immediately saw something odd upon the skin of the corpse.
Those patterns or marks, what are they?' asked the high priest, leaning forward in repulsed fascination. Getting as close as he dared to the apparently still-toxic substance of the body, he pointed at the strange marks now evident upon the skin of Vallus's torso. 'Some kind of flagellant scarring?'
'That is what I thought at first,' admitted Konniger, carefully running his glove-protected fingers over the ridged, hexagonal-shaped clusters of marks across the corpse's shoulders and sides. 'But see how oddly regular and precise they are. In fact, one might almost consider them to be-'
'Scales!' Vido blurted out in horrified dismay. 'Ranald's eye, his skin is hardening and breaking up into something like lizard scales!'
'Something else here too,' grunted the master-at-arms, indicating the naked corpse's uncovered back. 'Big blisters or welts of some sort. Could they be another effect of the poison you talked of?'
Konniger shook his head. 'Not as far as I'm aware.'
The sage-detective studied the five distinct, angry red swellings running down the dead man's spine. Gingerly, he touched one of them, and felt something soft and unpleasantly malleable moving beneath the jelly-like skin of the swelling.
"Your dagger, sir,' he asked the Cathedral Guard, careful to keep the tone of his voice free of the dry, sick fear which now gripped him.
He took hold of the proffered weapon, wielding it like a surgeon's tool as he adeptly sliced two criss-crossing incisions into the surface of the swelling. A clear, oily liquid - most distinctly not human blood - seeped out from the cuts made by the sharpened edge of die blade. Konniger eased the dagger's point into the centre of the large, blister-like swelling where the two incisions crossed. With a quick, flick
ing twist of the dagger blade, he peeled open the petals of the wound he had made.
An eye, baleful and awful, stared up at him from the flesh of the dead man's back. Suddenly, it blinked, a thin membrane of skin flicking across its wet, slimy surface. Then, slowly, with a vile, wet, sucking sound, it rolled round in its orbit, looking in turn at each of the horrified observers in the room.
There were shouts and cries of disbelief and revulsion from Vido and the others. Even Konniger felt the dagger drop from his nerveless fingers as he instinctively backed away in appalled disgust. It was the high priest, pale-faced with fear, who was the first to speak the dreaded word on the minds of everyone in the room: 'Chaos!' he hissed in terror. 'Here in the very cathedral of Sigmar, the foul mark of the Dark Powers!'
'Did I not say?' roared Comnenus, waving his cudgel in stern admonishment. 'Did I not warn you? There is devilment afoot! The servants of the Dark are amongst us!'
Vido had scrambled back with the others to get as far away as possible from the vile proof of Comnenus's thundering words. As servant and companion to Zavant Konniger, the halfling had often seen glimpses of the many faces of the Dark Powers of Chaos, but here it was lying before him in its most visible and terrifying form.
Mutation. The mere word struck terror into the heart of any inhabitant of the Old World; the thought that the secret taint of Chaos might somehow enter their bodies and blossom forth from their own flesh in the most horrible ways imaginable.
Vido continued to stare at the body, unable to look away from the horror growing under the dead scribe's skin. The eye sat there, pulsing in its fleshy cradle. While they watched, the queasy observers could see further signs of wriggling and agitated movement from beneath the surface of the other pustular swellings that dotted the corpse's back.
Even Konniger, who had perhaps seen more of the ways of Chaos than any man still living or yet still sane, was visibly unnerved by what he had uncovered within the dead man's body. He stared at the mobile eye, apparently unaware that he was voicing his chain of thought aloud.
"Yes, of course... the contagion of Chaos... what else would drive a servant of the Church to take his own life? The secret shame, the terror... they must have been unbearable to a member of the priesthood. Undoubtedly, he must have felt that he was being punished for some imagined sin or transgression... he mortifies his own flesh night after night, trying to drive the evil out of himself, but it is all in vain. Finally, he realises his own damnation and decides to take his own life... but how? He has some skill as a herbalist and knows how to administer many substances and elixirs which will extinguish human life quickly and painlessly. Why then does he choose the most painful and protracted means available to him? Bec
ause he is also a flagellant, of course... because, in his madness, he believes that he is being punished for his sins, and that the only way to redeem himself and drive the Chaos taint out from his flesh is to die in the most agonising manner possible... yes, it all makes sense, but there is still one vital question that we do not yet know the answer to-'
'It must all be destroyed!' thundered Comnenus, his words shaking Konniger out of his horrified reverie. 'The body, everything in this room, all of it is contaminated with the malefic touch of the Dark Powers. The room itself must be cleansed by fire and purified with prayer and exorcism, and all of us must also undergo ritual purification if we are to be cleansed of any similar contagion.'
'No!' objected Konniger. 'The contagion must be tracked back to its original source. There may be clues here, evidence that will let us discover where-'
But it was too late; the master-at-arms was already herding everyone out of the room, summoning more guardsmen to seal the room and escort Konniger and the others to a place where they would undergo the laborious and unpleasant process of being cleansed, body and soul, of any taint of Chaos infection. In his time with Konniger, Vido had witnessed the aftermath of several similar outbreaks of the corruption that was Chaos, and was now familiar enough with the procedure. The contents of the room would be put to the torch, and even the remnants of the ashes would be sealed in some safe container before being buried deep in the earth. The room itself would be exorcised and purified, its
very stones scrubbed clean with holy water which in this case might be blessed by the Grand Theogonist himself. The room would be sealed shut and left unused for years, possibly for ever, such was the dread and fear that the threat of Chaos commanded in the minds of the Empire's inhabitants.
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