by Ben Counter
Van Horstmann broke from the safety of the cirlcle. The Gold wizards were splitting up, sending bolts of gold or magical light as they ran. A shower of razor-sharp icy crystals hammered into the pews around him and van Horstmann felt slashes of pain along one arm and leg. He jumped a pew and ran.
In the midst of the chaos stood Daegal. Van Horstmann could see the greenish fire around his eyes that signalled Hiskernaath was inside him. Daegal’s own mind would be fighting back, crushed into imprisonment within his own skull, forced to watch through his eyes as he continued the slaughter he had begun. Daegal, being a magister and one whose mind had been well trained, would probably win out eventually. That would make Daegal a witness.
Van Horstmann’s hands described a sphere of white light. He had meditated much in the last few days to ensure the fortress in his mind was well stocked. A simple thought plucked a shining gem from its stores and shattered it, sending a torrent straight from the aethyr through his hands. He unleashed the flame and it shot in a jet into Daegal’s chest, throwing the Gold wizard clean off his feet and through the screen that separated the nave off from one of the temple’s side chapels.
Van Horstmann gasped in a breath. It was ice cold. Channelling too much power had its own dangers. But he could take it. He had to.
He ran after Daegal. Jumping through the wreckage of the screen, he saw the side chapel was dark, a place for contemplation. Prayer cushions were scattered around a statue of an old woman, bent and wrinkled – van Horstmann knew this was Shallya in her role as the Crone, who at the end of every autumn watched over the withering of crops after the harvest to make room for the spring’s new growth.
Daegal was sprawled at the base of the statue. Blood ran from his head. Beneath him were the remains of the screen’s tapestry. A stray bolt of power sailed over the interior wall that separated the nave from the side chapel and impacted against the rafters of the shored-up ceiling.
Van Horstmann drove the butt end of his staff into the ground. Its length glowed white, except for the single eye of the mask that topped it. The diamond glowed with a
purple-black flame. Light magic was perfect for purification, banishment and protection, but only with great force and effort could it be turned to destruction. Van Horstmann had learned that Dark magic was far more efficient at turning the living into the dead, and it was Dark magic that seared from the diamond in his staff.
Van Horstmann held the staff with both hands, like a sword ready to swing. Black power dripped off it, scorching the floor.
Daegal moaned and rolled over. Van Horstmann made ready to strike. He could take the Gold magister’s head clean off if he hit it just right, the dark power hungry to shrivel and tear Daegal’s flesh.
‘No!’ yelled Daegal. With a burst of golden light a form was hurled out through the Gold magister’s chest and smacked into the wall. Van Horstmann recognised the shadowy tangle of limbs and talons as Hiskernaath, forced into the real world.
Daegal was stronger than he had expected.
Van Horstmann swung his staff but Daegal was just sensible enough to see it coming and rolled out of the way. He spat a syllable of power and a burning sword shuddered into life in his hands. Van Horstmann struck again but the sword turned the staff away in a shower of black sparks.
‘You,’ said Daegal. ‘You did this. They will see your magic! There are a score of magisters in this chapel who will run here and see you doing evil.’
‘They will see nothing,’ said van Horstmann. ‘I have made pacts. I have worked wonders. The Dark is hidden within me, and not even Elrisse has seen it. No one will know how you died and if there are any traces of Dark magic left in this place, it will be assumed they came from you.’
‘Why tell me?’ gasped Daegal.
‘So that you will know you are defeated and will choose a quick and painless death.’
‘Stick a painless death up your fundament,’ spat Daegal.
Van Horstmann pointed the staff at Daegal and unleashed the Dark magic held there. It burst from the staff like a gout of black flame. Daegal was caught full in the flame but the image of golden armour appeared, ghosting over him, and though he stumbled back against the statue of the Crone his magical defences held.
‘Daemon-summoner!’ spat Daegal. ‘Heretic! Murderer!’
‘You,’ said van Horstmann, ‘are the murderer. Blood is on your hands. You saw it through your own eyes.’
‘No, van Horstmann. You will not open my mind to your daemon pet again. I will die before I let it in.’
‘Then you will die.’
Van Horstmann grabbed a handful of reality with his mind and wrenched at it. The Crone statue toppled forwards and Daegal had to dive out of the way before it crashed onto him and crushed him.
Van Horstmann drove the head of his staff into the ground. The stone slabs of the floor fractured and from the mouth of the mask issued a burning serpent of purple flame. It shot along the floor and arrowed into Daegal.
Daegal cried out and rolled away. The chest of his robes was torn and burned. The skin of his chest was burned away, too, revealing charred muscle clinging to his ribs. He thrashed on the floor to extinguish the dark flames that clung to him.
Van Horstmann stood over the Gold wizard and raised his staff to strike. Daegal coughed out a syllable of power and a shield of golden light appeared above him. Van Horstmann’s staff rang off the shield and Daegal dragged himself away.
The shield shimmered and faded. Van Horstmann struck again, this time swinging the staff down like a miner’s pickaxe into a coal seam. The shield appeared again, but weaker, translucent and blurred. It shattered under the blow.
Van Horstmann bent down and grabbed Daegal by the throat. He hauled the Gold wizard to his feet and slammed him against the wall of the side chapel.
Blood was running from Daegal’s mouth. One eye was rolled back and bloodshot. He took in a single, gurgling breath, misting blood down the front of his charred robes.
‘All this,’ he said. ‘What for? Why did you do it?’
Van Horstmann dropped his staff. He placed the palm of his hand over Daegal’s face.
Learning the ways of Dark magic had not been easy. It was chaotic and insane, and did not fit well into van Horstmann’s fastidious mind. The Light was marshalled through order and ritual. Dark magic was an emotional thing, its conduit to the aethyr punched through by force of hatred alone. It had been a tough lesson to learn, allowing his emotions to the fore, channelling them instead of suppressing them.
But in the end, it had almost been pleasurable the first time it had worked. To finally give his feelings free rein had felt forbidden and exhilarating. He felt that savage joy now as his hatred bored through the wall between his mind and the aethyr.
At the pinnacle of the fortress was a hole in the sky, a black chasm from which fell a rain of blasphemous power. Van Horstmann, fortunately, had hatred to spare.
The power rippled through his body and into Daegal. It was uncontained, uncontrolled. The results of this magic could not be predicted, but in that moment van Horstmann did not care.
Instantly, Daegal began to change. His robes billowed as tumorous growths bloomed beneath his skin. The pain on his face was swamped as the structure of his skull warped, one eye bulging wide, one sinking into a growing mass of pulpy muscle. Van Horstmann stood back as Daegal screamed, until even that was lost to him as his throat swelled up and one shoulder burst into dozens of pallid white bulbs like the egg sacs of a giant spider.
It could not be contained. Daegal swelled up to an obscene size, his shape no longer human, skin and flesh mutating at random. Bones cracked. Daegal’s ribcage split open and organs spilled out, swelling up and squirming.
The thing that had once been a Gold wizard screamed again, as it gained a moment’s control over its lungs. Then it burst, exploding in a shower of blood and shattered bone.
Van Horstmann had ducked behind the statue of the Crone just before Daegal exploded. He felt a w
arm rain of blood and gore, and though he avoided the worst of the debris shower he could hear the wet smacks as chunks of Daegal thudded against the walls and the statue.
He glanced around the statue. Just a heap of shredded muscle and a pool of gore remained. Daegal’s robes had been shredded and soaked in blood, and there was nothing left to suggest he had ever been human, let alone a wizard.
Van Horstmann took a breath. He was shaking with fatigue and adrenaline. He put a hand against the outer wall of the temple and willed raw power through him again, forcing one of the stone blocks out of position. It slid from its place in the wall, crumbling mortar and stone dust showering down as it moved. A fresh draught reached him and he saw he had opened enough of a hole to let himself squeeze out.
Outside, Altdorfers were gathering to see what the commotion was. They shied away when they saw van Horstmann, perhaps because they recalled the Great Fire and other catastrophes blamed on the Colleges of Magic, or perhaps simply because van Horstmann was spattered with blood and probably still smouldering from the barrages of destructive magic.
Overhead, smoke was issuing from the holes in the temple ceiling. The Light wizard delegation were moving as a mass away from the temple into one of the many streets leading away. As van Horstmann ran towards them he saw that they were gathered around Elrisse, and that Kardiggian was carrying the wounded Mother Heloise.
A few were casting bolts of white fire towards the temple doors, answered by sprays of molten gold. But the main battle was done. The Gold wizards remained in the temple while the Light wizards were retreating. Van Horstmann reached the Light delegation and saw he was not the only one who looked fresh from the battlefield. Many were bloodied or scorched. Robes were torn and burned, and some men limped or nursed obvious wounds.
‘Van Horstmann!’ shouted Elrisse. ‘I thought we had lost you, magister!’
‘Alas, Morr did not take kindly to my knocking,’ said van Horstmann. ‘I live yet.’
‘Then stay close and see to it that you continue. We must get to the pyramid.’
‘The Gold Order struck the first blow,’ said Kardiggian. ‘We all saw it. There will be consequences, Grand Magister, grave ones for the Gold Order. There must be.’
‘There will, magister,’ replied Elrisse. ‘I swear it. The Gold Order might have started hostilities, but it will be the magisters of the Light who will end them.’
Van Horstmann could just see the faces of the Gold wizards sheltering behind the temple doors. They looked as confused and panicked as the Light magisters did. They were probably making the same promises Elrisse just had – consequences, justice, vengeance. There was no sign among the Light wizards that any of them had glimpsed the use of Dark magic in the chapel. The wards that van Horstmann had cast about him had done their job. Part of the reason for all this, though not the greatest part, was to see if he could cast the magic he needed without its true nature being detected. The test had been a success. As for the rest of it – time would tell.
There were tears in Mother Heloise’s eyes, and not just from the pain. Once again the Temple of Shallya, a place sacred to peace, was the site of bloodshed.
It had been relatively simple to send the lightning bolt down.
Procuring the bolt had been the most difficult part. Any smith in Altdorf would have been very curious to know why they had been asked to forge such a thing, and rumours in Altdorf moved quicker than a new breed of plague. If such a smith learned of the golden lightning bolt sent to impale the Light Order’s pyramid, he would be able to tell the authorities about the shaven-headed, sunken-eyed magister who had commissioned it.
Instead, he had used a number of intermediaries to have it made, in sections, by smiths in Nuln, Talabheim and Marienburg, then assembled them himself over several long nights in Altdorf’s slaughterhouse district where empty properties were common enough for van Horstmann to appropriate one. It had been tedious and physical labour, but compared to learning the principles of Dark magic between his Light Order studies it had been simple to teach himself the basic smithing needed.
The magic was easier for van Horstmann. Light magic put the bolt in the sky, and Dark magic sent it hurtling down. When Elrisse had commanded van Horstmann be one of the magisters investigating the origin of the attack, van Horstmann had taken the opportunity to stop just short of outright accusing the Gold Order, knowing that most magisters had come to that conclusion of their own accord.
Van Horstmann had never sat down and written out the stages that he hoped would follow, but they were etched into his mind, into the stones of the fortress, and they had all followed one another just as he had imagined. The Gold and Light Orders, already natural adversaries, were pushed into outright conflict. Sooner or later it would explode into open warfare, and the Grand Magisters, of course, would move to head off such an eventuality with a grand diplomatic gesture. A gesture they would both have to partake in, along with a good representative number of their magisters. All those wizards would have to be in the same room at the same time, their guards down, because that was the only way that such a diplomatic solution could be reached.
Add Hiskernaath, and a likely instrument like Daegal, and the bloodshed at the Temple of Shallya had become a logical inevitability.
Hiskernaath had returned after three nights. Van Horstmann had found him in his quarters, as he had known he would. The daemon was squatting against the ceiling, sulking as if van Horstmann had just had the creature whipped. The daemon wanted to gallop back into the warp, away from its servitude, but the contract inked into van Horstmann’s skin had held and the daemon had been forced to return to its master. Van Horstmann had put it back in Vek’s puzzle box, ignoring the daemon’s ever-creative cursing as it was compelled to obey him once again.
The Light Order lost two magisters. One was Parsifal, whose body had remained in the temple and was returned by the priestesses of Shallya the next morning, left beside Midday’s Mirror wrapped in funeral vestments. The other had been Magister Olasonn, a young man of Kislevite stock. He had been caught in the scrum for the doors, knocked to the ground and despatched by a conjured blade of gold that fell from the ceiling and impaled him through the throat. Van Horstmann had helped carry Olasonn’s body on the way back from the temple to the Buchbinder District.
He had looked into Olasonn’s face. The magister was young by the standards of wizards, not long out of the Chanters’ Hall. He was handsome and blond, and the rigours of magic had yet to drain him into one of the chill husks who inhabited the Light Order’s upper echelons. Everything he could have been, could have done, had been stolen from him in the Temple of Shallya, in a bloodbath that was van Horstmann’s responsibility.
Perhaps there had once been a van Horstmann who would have been haunted by that face. Certainly it was a face worthy of haunting a killer. But it troubled van Horstmann no more than the face of Magister Vek, and van Horstmann had not thought of that old magister for years except as the collector of the trinkets that now cluttered up his quarters. He could barely even remember Vek’s features. Van Horstmann did spare a few thoughts to wonder just what kind of a person he must be not to care about those he killed. Most people would be unable to sleep at night knowing they had committed just one of van Horstmann’s crimes. Vek, Rudiger Vort, the dead at the temple – any one would be enough to drive a man mad with guilt. But any guilt ran off van Horstmann like rain.
Guilt, he concluded, would only get in the way. It would be an obstacle in his path. If he had felt it, he would have to have conquered it before it stopped him from getting what he wanted. Perhaps his subconscious had decided to save him the effort and ignore the guilt entirely. Or perhaps he had never been able to feel it at all. Perhaps he had been born that way.
In the end, van Horstmann concluded it mattered little either way, and returned to his studies while he waited for fate’s pendulum to take its next swing.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE ORDER OF DEATH
Maximili
an van der Kalibos of the Amethyst Order went everywhere accompanied by ravens. Quite probably he could not have gone without them if he had wanted to. Kalibos carried a staff of skulls and wore robes of purple trimmed with black. He did not cast a shadow or a reflection because he was so attuned with death that he existed, some said, partly in the next world. Silence seemed to go with him, and a zone of chill. Plants died when he went near. If he walked on grass he left a blackened trail.
The Pyramid of Light did not like Maximilian van der Kalibos. The pyramid wanted everything drenched in light, lit up from every angle. Maximilian van der Kalibos, and the Amethyst magic that suffused him, wanted him always wrapped in darkness, only his face, bone-white with black hair and goatee, lit as if from a guttering torch held in front of him. The result was a feeling of unease, a shuddering hint of powers locked in opposition. When he entered the pyramid, divinations all turned towards uncertainty and chaos, and acolytes seemed to lose concentration as ceremonies went awry.
Grand Magister Elrisse met van der Kalibos and accompanied him and the chattering ravens up to one of the conference chambers near the pinnacle. A pair of Amethyst wizards flanked van der Kalibos, shadowing the Grand Magister of the Amethyst as if they were two more ravens.
The chamber chosen for the occasion was circular and ringed with pillars of white marble. A great circular table held a feast of wine and fine dishes from the better markets and cooks of Altdorf, not because anyone had any intention of eating anything, but because that was simply the way one played host to the Supreme Patriarch of the Colleges of Magic.
‘The situation,’ said van der Kalibos, ‘is intolerable.’ They were the first words he spoke when he sat down at the table opposite Grand Magister Elrisse.