by Ben Counter
‘Acolyte van Horstmann,’ the steward said.
‘That is I.’
‘Follow me.’
Van Horstmann stood and did as the steward suggested. Outside the cells was the open area where the acolytes learned the patterns and movements of the Light Order’s rituals. Several acolytes were doing so at that moment, reciting the ceremonial chants. A couple glanced at van Horstmann as he followed the steward for the rest of the Light Order, even the Half-Circle staff who were no longer permitted to practice magic, rarely associated with the acolytes.
The lowest floor was one huge room, with low internal walls dividing parts of it into cells. In defiance of logic, the higher up one went, the more rooms the pyramid’s floors were divided into. The first floor was split into the Light Order’s library and the halls where the magisters developed the skills of exorcism for which the Light Order was famed. Van Horstmann followed the steward up the staircase that bisected the two, where the glowing walls were hung with portraits of past Grand Magisters and notable wizards. Each picture was rendered in lacquer and gilt, shining in the light that blazed from lanterns hanging everywhere.
Above that, the floors were divided into dozens of chambers, arranged without any apparent plan or consistency. Some were small study rooms with lecterns and cases groaning with ancient books. Others were armouries with racks of gleaming weapons, or were workshops for illuminating manuscripts or weaving tapestries; some seemed to have no purpose at all. Everything was drenched in light. Some even had pools or fountains filled with glowing liquid. There were, as ever, no shadows.
There, among the labyrinthine interior of the pyramid’s upper levels, the magisters themselves lived. The acolytes and the magisters lived separate lives but some acolytes spoke of how the magisters reigned in obscene luxury in the upper levels, commanding hosts of devoted slaves. Van Horstmann saw that the tales were false, but only just. The living quarters he glimpsed were hung with silks or tapestries, some decked out in exotic décor reflecting some far-flung corner of the world – lands like Cathay or the Southlands, which were just words to all but the most learned of the Empire’s citizens.
The steward reached a set of polished bronze doors and stopped. He bowed to van Horstmann and left without a word.
This part of the pyramid had trophies on the walls, taken from battles in which the Light Order’s battle magisters had fought. Some wizards were academics, spending their lives increasing mankind’s understanding of the aethyr and the many winds of magic. Others served as advisors to the Imperial Court or the elector counts, or served as soothsayers, healers and in all manner of capacities to the cities and nobles of the Empire. The battle magisters, however, fought the Empire’s enemies in open war. Every wind of magic could be turned to destruction, and Light magic was no exception. The order’s magisters had brought back standards and captured weapons from battle – jagged swords, their runes to the Fell Gods obliterated before they were polished and hung on the walls, the bleached skulls of greenskin savages, a tattered banner which had once been a masterpiece of embroidery, perhaps taken from the hands of a dead elf of the Loren forest.
The bronze doors swung inwards. Van Horstmann blinked at the glare from inside, which after a second resolved itself into a chamber dominated by a great globe of silver inlaid with golden land masses and with ocean currents picked out in lapis and agate. The chamber itself was spherical, echoing the contours of the globe. A curved hardwood desk, covered in navigational implements of silver and gold, stood against the wall. Silver crystals hung in bunches from the ceiling, shedding a painfully bright light that blazed off the polished globe.
The light was reflected in every direction, so the figure standing at the desk seemed to shine. He turned and van Horstmann was looking at Grand Magister Elrisse, the old wizard’s head surrounded by a halo of silver light.
‘Acolyte,’ said Elrisse. ‘Enter.’
Van Horstmann approached the globe, and his eyes passed across the shorelines picked out across it.
‘The world,’ said Elrisse. ‘As far as our scholars can reckon it. None know what lies beyond the cape of the Southlands, or what might be found far north of Troll Country. And no man, they say, has ventured to the continent of Naggaroth and returned.’
Large areas of the globe, van Horstmann now saw, were featureless. The shape of the Empire was familiar, along with the bordering nations of Kislev, Bretonnia and Tilea, and the gilded caps of the Worlds Edge Mountains and the Mountains of Mourn. He had never before seen a depiction of the Southlands all the way to the dagger-like point at the southernmost tip. But much of the rest was blank.
‘I would wish,’ he said, ‘to see it completed.’
‘How so?’ asked Elrisse.
‘Incompletion is abhorrent to the mind,’ replied van Horstmann. ‘Like a ritual unfinished or a circle broken.’
‘Well, rest assured that men are dying as we speak to map the world’s furthest corners.’
‘Good,’ said van Horstmann.
Elrisse opened a fat ledger with yellowing pages on the desk. ‘It has been four years since you walked through our doors,’ he said. ‘In that time there has been scarce cause for me to hear your name.’
‘An acolyte is best known for nothing,’ said van Horstmann, ‘either good or ill.’
‘Quite,’ said Elrisse. ‘Tell me. What do you imagine Master Chanter Alric has to say about you?’
Van Horstmann did not answer for a moment. ‘It is difficult to know how we appear in the eyes of another.’
‘It is difficult to call down the Light wind and let it course through us,’ said Elrisse smoothly. ‘Yet we do it.’
‘Studious and deliberate,’ said van Horstmann. ‘Little trouble. Accurate in his memory of the First Circle rituals.’
‘Such are the prerequisites for becoming an acolyte in the first place. Hardly remarkable.’
‘I have no ambition to appear remarkable.’
Elrisee smiled, not looking up from the ledger. ‘Some would say that we cannot enter into the study of magic at all if we are content to be unremarkable. Is it not rather extraordinary to simply walk through the doors of this pyramid? To enter into the secret coven of Teclis? We work wonders, van Horstmann, do we not?’
‘What we do,’ said van Horstmann, ‘is essential. Without the wizards of the colleges of Altdorf, the Empire is lost. Perhaps the world itself. The agents of the Fell Powers can be met only by the combination of the sword and the spell. Our work is as necessary as the maintenance of soldiers or the rule of the emperors. There can be little room for wonders when we must devote every moment to the survival of our people.’
‘Well put, acolyte,’ said Elrisse. ‘How long have you been working on that for?’ He closed the ledger. ‘There is one thing for which I and Master Chanter Alric remember you. I know you have not been spoken to about it since it happened. And I know there have been rumours, for Kant and Thielen were unable to hold their tongues completely. But you have said nothing. The exorcism of Princess Astrid is what I speak of, van Horstmann. The deaths of Schwartzgelben, Diess and Vort. Vort, I understand, died in your arms. Is that not so?’
‘It is so.’
‘Have you revisited that day, acolyte?’
‘I have.’
‘And what do you see?’
Van Horstmann looked at the chamber’s curving floor. ‘I see Vort’s eyes,’ he said. ‘I saw when the life went out of him. One moment they were the eyes of a man. The next they were dull. Vort was not a man any more. He was a corpse. I saw that moment come and go. That is what I remember. I see it when I close my eyes.’
‘And the daemon? You banished it, van Horstmann. You cast it back into the aethyr. It rages there as we speak, defeated. You have not even spoken of that. There are magisters in this very college who would take every opportunity to crow that they defeated such a creature. But you have said nothing.’
‘I called on the Light. I offered it my devotion, and it flowed through
me. I remembered the words of Teclis and the founding Grand Magisters. There is not much else to say.’
Elrisse closed the ledger. He pointed up at the globe again. ‘Some of us never leave Altdorf. Some of us rarely even leave this pyramid. But there are those among us, of all the orders of magic, who have seen more of this world than most men imagine exists. Do your eyes turn to the horizon, acolyte?’
‘Yes,’ said van Horstmann. ‘I wish to see it. That is where the wonders lie. Not in the works of wizards, but in the places where the winds of magic have carved their secrets into the world.’
‘You can,’ said Elrisse. ‘If you so wish it.’
‘My studies monopolise my time and the energies of my mind. It is fruitless to lust for such things now, when I have so far to go before I can even step outside this college as a wizard.’
‘Really? I disagree, acolyte. I disagree most firmly. Many of your fellow acolytes will never advance beyond the First Circle. Perhaps they will serve in the Half-Circle, perhaps the Light College will become closed to them. But you are not among them. Whether you are willing to admit it or not, or whether you merely conceal your true thoughts, you are very remarkable. You saw your fellow acolyte die and yet kept your head enough to match wills with a daemon of the aethyr. You have shown devotion in your studies and a discipline of mind. On their own any of these would give us confidence that you can rise above your current station. Together they leave us little doubt. Tell me, have you heard the name Obadiah Vek?’
‘I have,’ said van Horstmann. ‘I understand that he was a magister of this order, and that he was lost.’
‘He died here,’ said Elrisse. He raised a hand and a glowing spot appeared on the globe, in the vicinity of the Empire’s northern provinces. ‘He served as a battle magister in the army of Nordland, against the Pretender Count Scharndorff. A battle was fought at Kriegsmutter Field and in that battle Magister Vek lost his life. It diminishes us all, acolyte, when one of us is lost. In times of war we find ourselves much diminished. This order stood proud alongside Emperor Magnus in the Great War’s culmination, and we lost many. Times are scarcely less perilous now. It is an onerous task to replace such men as Magister Vek, for they prove themselves bulwarks against the Empire’s enemies and islands of sanity in the ocean of the aethyr. But replace them we must. Vek died six years ago and his place has not been taken. There were none who could take it. I have decided that now, there is.’
Van Horstmann did not reply.
‘You may, if you wish, celebrate. Or perhaps thank me. They are empty emotions but would not be inappropriate. You cannot deny those petty moments of humanity forever, van Horstmann. You are permitted them. As of this moment you are a magister of the Second Circle. A Light wizard. One of us, van Horstmann, a wizard of the pyramid.’
Van Horstmann bowed his head. ‘Thank you, Grand Magister. I shall do everything in my power to prove your decision was the right one.’
‘It was not a decision,’ replied Elrisse without pause. ‘It was fate.’
Magister Vek had expected to return to the College of Light. It had not occurred to him that his life might end in the mud and filth of Kriegsmutter Field. His quarters were still fully appointed and stood just as Vek had left them. It was only the withered state of the Lustrian orchids and mandrake root on the alchemy table that suggested Vek had been away at all.
Each magister decorated his quarters in their own way, echoing some far-flung part of the world that a non-wizard might never even hear about. Vek had made use of the arts of the lands beyond the Worlds Edge Mountains, a bleak and hazardous bowl of rocky desert which had once maintained a handsome and far-reaching civilisation. A pair of monumental figures, with the bodies of lions and the heads of men with carved beards hanging in elaborate braids, bracketed the room. The furniture was of carved red-black stone taken from some volcanic quarry: a grand writing desk covered in implements for drawing out the exacting proportions of ritual circles, ceiling-high cabinets and bookshelves, the round alchemy table with its circular slab supported on a tripod, and four polished bronze sculptures of birds and animals that watched from each corner of the main chamber. The bedchamber had a huge four-poster bed with its pillars taken from some long-fallen temple, and cabinets and chests for the vestments of a magister’s rank.
Van Horstmann stood in the centre of this room and took note of its contents. The cabinets were piled with books and trinkets, small objects of art or ritual purpose from across the world. It must have taken years, and a near-obsessive eye for the arcane and obscure, to have collected them all. Vek also had a weakness for skulls, especially carved from strange materials: pitted iron, volcanic glass, chunks of jade and marble.
‘I trust everything is to your liking, magister,’ said the steward who had showed van Horstmann to the chambers. ‘Do not hesitate to express your displeasure if it is not.’
Van Horstmann looked back at the steward standing in the doorway. It was impossible to place them – their attitude was permanently locked between haughtiness, servitude, and the feeling they knew something they were not telling. The stewards of the Light College were presumably recruited from acolytes who did not make the grade, but there was no similarity between this inscrutable man and the studious youths of the Chanter’s Hall.
‘This will do for now,’ said van Horstmann.
‘Very good,’ said the steward. ‘Magister Vek’s staff is located alongside his robes. All of Magister Vek’s belongings were accounted for save for a small hardwood puzzle box he kept on his person. It was not found on his body when it was recovered.’
‘I see. Where was Magister Vek buried?’
‘He was interred in a field south of Kriegsmutter Field,’ replied the steward, ‘alongside the other notable dead of the battle. As a battle magister it was thought fitting to leave him so buried.’
‘Of course. Wait a moment.’
The steward stood dutifully by the door as van Horstmann went into the bedchamber. Like the rest of the Light College the chambers were drenched in light, flooding down from a dozen braziers that hung from the ceiling. It would take a great deal of effort to make a hiding place when there were no shadows, but no doubt Magister Vek had possessed sufficient ingenuity. Van Horstmann would have to thoroughly search the chambers to see if Vek had left any secrets behind when he left to join the war in Ostermark.
Van Horstmann opened a chest by the foot of the extravagant bed. It contained several sets of ivory-coloured robes with gold embroidery. One of the robes wrapped something and van Horstmann bent to pick it up.
It was a staff. Vek’s staff. It was gilded and sturdy, shoulder-high and very finely made. Its head was that of a hooded snake with emerald eyes. The snake was one of the most persistent symbols of the Light Order. In the earliest mythologies of the world it was a symbol of purity and banishment – its venom could drive out spirits, provided the bitten host survived, and the marks of its winding through the sand were once thought to be the passage of ghosts who followed the snake away from the dwellings of men and back to the netherworld. The snake swallowing its tail was said to be the origin of the ritual circle. A scattering of snake venom over such a circle marked the culmination of many of the Light Order’s rituals.
Van Horstmann returned to the main chamber holding the staff. ‘Take this from me,’ he said.
‘Magister?’
‘I have a dislike of snakes,’ said van Horstmann. ‘I shall require a staff made for me. Kruger and Granitebrow of Altdorf shall be commissioned to make it. I understand they are among the finest goldsmiths in the city. It shall be of this height, a staff of gold banded with silver. The top shall take the form of a mask of a young woman, as a death mask but with the eyes open. One eye will be a diamond. I trust this will not be beyond the resources of my order.’
‘Of course,’ said the steward, taking the offending staff from van Horstmann’s hands. ‘Masters Kruger and Granitebrow have long been trusted suppliers of the Light Order. You sha
ll have it within the fortnight.’
‘That is all.’
The steward nodded and left, closing the door behind him.
Once he was alone, van Horstmann placed the puzzle box on the writing desk.
He had carried this object from Kriegsmutter Field, where he had taken it from a pouch tied to Magister Vek’s waist. He had kept it on his person, not trusting the Light Order not to search his acolyte’s cell, and its hard wooden corners against his skin were so familiar a set of sensations that when he took it from beneath his robes he felt like a part of himself had been removed.
It had been difficult to keep it hidden at first. It wanted to be revealed, to be admired and toyed with, like a needy pet. But Egrimm van Horstmann had learned to keep secrets and eventually it seemed to have given up, to relinquish its ticklish grasp on the back of his mind.
It was beautiful. He had not ascertained where the box had been made. Elven, perhaps, carved from the living trees of Averlorn in Ulthuan or from the heartroot of some ancient oak of Loren. Magic winked off it, like light off a gemstone.
Van Horstmann had spent a lot of time trying to open the box. There had been enough long nights on the way from Ostermark to Reikland to test out the give in its various panels and carvings. A seashell-shaped panel on one side slid in the width of a fingernail, and another panel could be levered aside to reveal the tightly-wound nests of bark and beaten gold inside, like the innards of a timepiece.
A stud was pressed and a lever pulled halfway. The puzzle box opened up with a series of descending tones.
Van Horstmann paused. He reached into the well of power at the back of his mind, that stemmed from the foundations of the fortress, and imagined a stony depth of silence. He took that idea and let the magic fill it, and it spread out from him in an invisible hemisphere – a magical zone of silence. It was difficult to hide anything for long in the Light College, but it was possible, at least, to keep it silent.