[Warhammer] - The Laughter of Dark Gods

by David Pringle (ed) - (ebook by Undead)

  Something moved.

  “Who is it?” Sweat wormed down his back. “Anyone there?” His voice was swallowed by the dark. Something was watching him.

  A shadow inched its way across the floor towards the dim light. It sat back on its haunches and tried to speak. Panic leapt like lightning up Stefan’s spine. He ran.

  He did not look where he was going, he just ran, pursued by visions of the mutant with lumpy and misshapen limbs and running sores, whose elephantine skin grew too far across its eyes and stretched over its mouth making speech almost impossible.

  When Katya found him he had stopped retching. He pulled himself into a ball.

  “Leave me alone.”

  She squatted down beside him and felt for fever.

  “Keep away from me!” He pushed her hand away.

  After a while, he asked, “Why do you do this?”

  “Because they need me.”

  “Mutants don’t need anyone.”

  She was silent so long he thought she was ignoring him.

  “The one who frightened you is called Siggy. He is not a mutant. When he was two years old, his father spilled burning lamp oil on him. The burns were so bad that his arms and legs healed all out of shape and his skin thickened and grew back in all the wrong places. He can’t stand properly and it hurts for him to move around even a little. Without proper attention, his skin dries out and cracks. I can help him with that.”

  Stefan tried to remember Sigg’s face but the memory was slippery. He did not know what to think. Burns might explain the disfigurement.

  “Are you telling me the truth?” His voice was hoarse.

  “Siggy is not a mutant.”

  He was uncertain.

  “I could still report you for not having a licence.” It was like a talisman, a ritual chant to dispel confusion.

  “I can help some of them, Stefan. You could too.”

  He wanted to believe her but his fear was real. She stood up.

  “Come on.”

  She reached down to help him up. Her cloak slid back to reveal the scarf tied around her arm. Fear slammed through him again.

  “Show me,” he licked his lips, “show me what’s under that scarf. Then I’ll help you.”

  She went still. “I won’t bargain with you.”

  “Why not? There will be things you need, certain ingredients you won’t be able to buy without showing a licence. I could get them for you.” He pushed himself upright. “Show me what’s under the scarf.”

  “You don’t know what you’re asking.”

  “Show me.”

  “When I sing, Stefan, I do more than mouth a few words to a pretty tune. I give an audience mystery, myself an air of otherness.” She touched the scarf gently. “This is my mystery.”

  “Show me. That’s the price of my help.”

  She was silent a moment.

  “It may not be what you want to see.”

  She unwound the scarf. Stefan’s stomach curled in a tight fist as the last twist of cloth fell free.

  “Look.”

  The arm was perfect and unblemished. Where the scarf had been, the skin was pale. Stefan reached out to touch it with his fingertips. It was warm and smooth.

  There was no relief; the tension burrowed deeper into his stomach. He did not understand why. He wanted to walk away and never see Katya Raine again and could not; he had made a bargain.

  “Make me a list of the things you need. I’ll deliver them tomorrow.”

  The Red Moon looked smaller in daylight. It smelled of stale wine and ash: the remains of last night’s fire lay in the grate. An elderly woman had gone to tell Katya he was here.

  Stefan was tense and his head ached slightly; he had not slept well. He flinched when Katya entered the room. She was limping slightly.

  “I tripped over my drums in the dark last night,” she said, gesturing at her leg. “It’s bruised, but nothing a bit of comfrey won’t cure.”

  Stefan could not imagine Katya being clumsy.

  “I have everything you asked for.” He placed a small sack on the table between them.

  “Thank you. How much do I owe?”

  “I don’t want your money.” Confusion made him abrupt. He did not want to touch anything which had been near her. But she was beautiful.

  “Thank you again.” She paused. “Would you like a drink while you’re here?”

  “No. I have to get out. I mean, I have to go.”

  He retreated ungracefully.

  He walked slowly along Burgen Bahn, not wanting to go home. On the Ostgarten Weg, dwarfs were building a huge wooden platform overlooking the park. Graf Boris and his family would sit there tomorrow and watch the Carnival fireworks. The hammering and hoarse shouts as pieces of timber were lifted into place and fastened together were muffled and unreal. He turned left off the Garten Weg and down Grun Allee which ran along the southern edge of the Altmarkt. Here, he found what he wanted: noise and bright colours to push the fear he did not understand from his mind. He wandered there for hours.

  As the afternoon began to turn to evening, he found himself standing next to an old woman, watching a sleight-of-hand artist who had set up his table between a flower barrow and a beer seller. The man was pulling eggs and brightly coloured scarves from his mouth and tossing them into the audience. There was scattered applause. He bowed, then took a cage from under his table. Inside, a snake hissed; its tongue flickered in and out. Stefan stirred uneasily.

  The old woman poked him in a friendly fashion.

  “All done with misdirection,” she said, nodding at the magician who was holding up the snake while displaying its empty cage, assuring the crowd that there was no hidden trapdoor or false base.

  “What?” Stefan said. He was poised on the edge of realization.

  “I said, it’s all done with misdirection. While we’re looking at that empty cage, he’s…”

  Misdirection. Now he knew why there had been no relief at the sight of that unblemished arm. Oh, gods, misdirection.

  “Here, are you all right?” The woman’s voice seemed miles away. “You’re white as a bedsheet.”

  He had been fooled. She had fooled everyone. He had to do something, tell someone.

  Janna Eberhauer stood silently by her fire, contemplating the flames. Her hair was loose and she was wearing her bed robe.

  “What are you suggesting?” she asked mildly.

  “That perhaps she is not all she seems,” Stefan said carefully.

  “And you came to me.”

  “I don’t want anything to happen to her. But if she…” He swallowed. “Mutants are an abomination. You’re the deputy High Wizard.”

  The curtain screening the room from the sleeping area drew back. Katya limped through, brushing her hair. She looked ill. Stefan stared, immobilized by shock. She had been there all the time. She limped towards him.

  “Keep away from me.”

  “Stefan, I’m not evil.”

  “Why are you risking so much?” he asked Eberhauer. “You can’t help her. Nobody can.”

  “Yet you came to me, to ask for help.”

  Faced with the wizard’s calm, he felt foolish and graceless. Katya lowered herself into a chair. He saw how carefully she moved.

  “What’s the matter with her?” he asked Eberhauer.

  “I can still speak for myself,” Katya said. She reached for a cup of water and took a sip. “The story I told, the song, is essentially true in one respect.” She put the cup down and began to roll up the bottom of her trousers. It was an obvious effort. Eberhauer moved to help her.

  Fear flexed like a snake in Stefan’s belly.

  “No,” he croaked, “I don’t want to see.”

  Eberhauer looked up from the bandage she was unrolling.

  “You accuse and meddle without knowing anything,” she said calmly. “Now you will learn.”

  “No!” Horror lapped at his reason. “I can’t!”

  “You can.”

 
Eberhauer rose and took his hand. He could not resist as she led him over to where Katya leaned back in the chair, her eyes closed in exhaustion. Her right trouser leg was rolled up past the knee. Bloody bandaging lay in a heap on the rug.

  Stefan looked.

  There was a slash across the back of her calf, the sort an inexperienced swordsman might make trying to hamstring an opponent. It was a recent injury, beginning to scab over. He frowned.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Examine it closely.”

  Around the healing gash, almost too faint to be seen, was a tracery of cracks. In a scale pattern.

  “We tried to excise the speck of warpstone that must still be in there,” Eberhauer said, impossibly calm.

  “It’s evil,” he whispered.

  “Listen to me. Katya is not evil. Warpstone acts on her flesh and its madness pulls at her mind. But that is not evil. As to the madness, she is strong. She resists still.”

  “But her skin…”

  “I am not evil,” Katya said from the chair. “I am not mad.”

  Stefan refused to hear her, he spoke to Eberhauer.

  “But she will be, in the end.”

  “Without help, yes.”

  They were both looking at him. The air was thick and sticky difficult to breathe.

  “Oh gods, you want me to do it. You want me to hack at it again, slice into the muscle, bone deep, and cut, and cut. No.” He backed towards the door. “It won’t work, it just won’t work. Even if I cut the whole leg off.”

  Eberhauer was silent a moment, watching the flames. “Warpstone dust is materialization of Chaos-matter into solid form. Magic is the manipulation of energies inherent in Chaos.” She looked at him directly. “I am a wizard. This thing is possible.”

  They helped Katya onto the bed; Eberhauer stroked her hair and began to hum while Stefan gathered what they would need. He rolled up the rug and laid the gloves, bowl, bandages and other things on the floor. The wizard stood, letting the sound build as she raised her arms over her head and down again in a slow circle. She nodded to Stefan: Katya slept. He wiped the leg down and poured raw alcohol over his knife.

  Though he had never cut into living tissue before, he used the knife easily, like a quill, marking the edges of the excision then sliding the blade in sideways to part skin from muscle. He mopped at the blood. The muscle was red and plump beneath his fingers. He cut into it. Around him, the humming became more insistent, singing through his hands.

  He stopped at a tight knot of tissue. The vibration in his hands became an angry jangle. This was what he was looking for. He probed at it, eased what looked like a fleck of dirt onto the tip of his knife. This was the focus of all his nightmares; so small. It was glowing. He lifted it out into the air.

  Eberhauer’s humming swelled into a sound thick enough to stand on; Stefan could feel the force of it flowing down his arm, recoiling from the malignancy poised at the end of his knife. His fear became anger, a refusal of the torment of Chaos, for his sake, for Katya’s sake. He joined his negation to Eberhauer’s. The warpstone dimmed and began to smoke, curling smaller and smaller until there was nothing left.

  Stefan sat by the bed and watched her breathe. There were still hollows under her cheekbones but the dark circles under her eyes were fading. Outside, the first fireworks of Carnival stained the sky.

  Janna Eberhauer came and stood behind him.

  “She’ll leave us, won’t she?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Where? Back to Schoninghagen?”

  “She told me she’s always wanted to see the north. She will go there, I think, to the snow and ice.”

  “You want her to stay.” He knew how much the wizard had risked, and perhaps why.

  “I want whatever is right for her. And she has found all she came here for.”

  “Not quite.” He reached inside his shirt. The scroll of parchment was stamped with Katya’s name and sealed with the blue of the elector. He laid it on the coverlet near Katya’s hand, stood up.

  “Tell her it might be useful if she ever comes back. And tell her,” he looked down at the woman sleeping on the bed, “tell her I plan to work at the Temple of Shallya a while, until I know what I want.”

  He closed the door quietly behind him and stepped out into the splash of light and colour which was Carnival.

  THE SONG

  by Steve Baxter

  “Nice ring, Sam. What’s the sparkly stuff—glass, or something less expensive?”

  Buttermere Warble, known to his friends as Sam, looked up with a start. On the other side of his table was a small figure with a grinning face and a thatch of brown hair. “Oh. Tarquin. It’s you. Your boat’s in, then. Oh, good.”

  Now more halflings came crowding into the tavern after Tarquin. Jasper, the barman of Esmeralda’s Apron, pot-belly wobbling, growled at them to shut the damn door. Even here, deep in Marienburg on the murky rim of the Elven Quarter, the winds off the Sea of Claws had power.

  The halflings pulled up stools and began settling around Sam’s table. Soon he was ringed by a jostling rabble. “Join me, why don’t you,” Sam said drily. In his line of work it was useful to have contacts at all levels of society—but you could have too much of a good thing…

  “Aw, Sam, aren’t you glad to see us?” A skinny young halfling called Maximilian dug a worn pack of cards out of his woollen coat and began shuffling them.

  “Oh, sure. I was getting so sick of calm, peace and quiet.”

  Tarquin sat opposite Sam. “So what’s the story with the ring?”

  Sam’s ring was a fat band of gold; shards of crystal caught the light. Another young sailor bent over to see. “Broken glass must be in this year.”

  Sam covered the ring with the palm of his hand. “It’s personal.”

  Tarquin shook his head in mock disapproval. “Oh, come on,” he said. “We’re just off the boat. Tell us while we’re still sober.”

  “I told you, it’s personal.”

  “How personal?”

  “A tankard of ale.”

  Maximilian laughed. “Ah, keep it.” He slapped cards on the rough tabletop. “Three Card Pegasus. That’s what I want to spend my sober time on…”

  But Sam pushed back the hand he’d been dealt. “Sorry lads. Deal me out.”

  Tarquin sat back, mouth wide. “You’re kidding. Dragon High Sam refusing a game?”

  “What is it?” Maximilian asked. “Funds low? No juicy cases recently?”

  Sam shook his head. “No. I’m sworn off Pegasus, that’s what.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, it’s kind of connected to the ring. But it’s basically because of what happened last time I played…”

  The circle of faces were fixed on him now. “Come on, Sam. Tell us.”

  Sam looked significantly at his tankard.

  Tarquin picked it up. “Don’t tell me. That’s personal too, right? Well, you win, Sam. I’ll get your ale. But it had better be worth it…”

  Sam leaned forward and folded his arms theatrically. “Right. Picture the scene,” he began. “It was in the Apron; in this very bar. This table, I think. I can’t remember too clearly.” Briefly the halfling’s face grew dark, belying his jocular tone. “I’d… had a bad day. I’d taken it out on one or two tankards—”

  “So tell us something new.”

  “I was playing Pegasus. And losing. I couldn’t even cover the pot. But there were only two of us left in the hand.” He paused.

  “And?”

  “And I held three Dragons.”

  A collective sigh rippled around the table.

  My only opponent was called Eladriel (Sam went on). An elf. Tall, with a streak of gold in the silver of his hair; quite distinguished looking, like a lord almost, even with his knees crammed under the halfling-sized tables. Slumming it a bit down here in the Apron, obviously.

  (Jasper growled in warning.)

  I remember his eyes. Black as a bird’s, they were; the
y pinned me as I tried to decide what to do.

  “Well, Sam?” Eladriel said. “Do you fold?”

  I took another pull at my tankard and tried to think straight. Only three Unicorns can beat three Dragons; we all know that. But I’d lost too much.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t fold.”

  “Then cover the pot.”

  “You know I can’t,” I said a little bitterly.

  Eladriel smiled, showing even teeth. “Fold or cover,” he said.

  I stared at my three-Dragon hand. “I’ll use a marker.”

  Eladriel ran a delicate finger over the edge of his three cards.

  “Now, come,” he said slyly. “Markers in a place like this? I think not. You don’t have anything of value?”

  I knew without looking. “Nothing.”

  Eladriel tutted. “Everyone owns something, no matter how low they sink.”

  “Thanks a lot.”

  I stared at those black eyes.

  “Fold or cover,” he snapped.

  “Name it,” I said thickly. “Name the stake you want.”

  His voice was low. “Are you serious?”

  “Name it.”

  “Your mind,” he said rapidly. “Your very being. Your last asset. Gamble your mind, my friend.”

  Another player reached out of the darkness and touched my arm. “No, Sam. Fold.”

  “I know you, Warble,” Eladriel hissed. “You are… an investigator, are you not? And one of some repute. Your mind is good—for a halfling…”

  Now anger mixed in with the booze and the fatigue—just as the elf wanted, I suppose now—and I decided I was going to teach him a lesson.

  The coal eyes glowed. Three Dragons leapt at the edge of my vision.

  “I’m in,” I said.

  “Sam, this is crazy—”

  “I’m in. And I’ll see your hand.”

  Eladriel smiled. And he laid his cards on the table.

  You know what they were.

  “I know a little battlefield magic,” said Eladriel briskly, and he drew a small, wasp-waisted bottle from his coat. “I’m an old soldier, you see. This won’t hurt, Sam.”

  He passed his fingers before my face, once, twice—