Kerr cursed himself for not having deserted when he had the chance. Then he snapped the whip above the horses’ heads and sent them trotting towards the lights.
Grendel hadn’t enjoyed himself so much since Praag. The creatures that had slaughtered his companions weren’t men, it was true, but he thought that they might once have been, and, as he remade them, he became sure of it.
Apart from anything else, only a human will could have resisted the paralysing magic he had enveloped them with. Even as their blood had fermented into rivers of crippling ecstasy, and even as their consciousness had disintegrated beneath pulses of pure bliss, the creatures had tried to retaliate.
One of them, its snarl melting into a grin of idiot joy, had even made it to within six feet of where the sorcerer stood.
Grendel watched the muscled bulk of the creature as it rolled on the ground, grimacing with pleasure. Its companions were scattered behind it, as helpless in their bliss as the bodies of their victims.
It was a shame about them, Grendel thought, his eyes flickering across the ruin of Jubska’s tribe. Then he shrugged. After all, what were a dozen lives, more or less? What were a million? An artist doesn’t mourn over used paint, and neither would he.
The creature that lay at his feet tried to say something. Grendel watched it curiously. What strength it must have to be able to do even that much. He would save it until last.
In the meantime, he had a celebration to attend. Lips moving with whispered syllables, the sorcerer stalked amongst his victims, fingers dancing in strange patterns. Slowly, painfully, Vaught’s followers began to change into the things that inhabited Grendel’s imagination.
By the time he had finished his masterpiece, night had drawn in. Grendel remained as oblivious to the pulsating stars as he had been to the boiling skies of the afternoon.
Although sweat was freezing to his body, although his fingers trembled and although his throat hurt, he was a happy man. The things he had created were truly worthy offerings.
“Beautiful and functional,” he whispered, his voice hoarse after the day’s efforts.
He ran his trembling fingers over the head of one of them. It responded with a sob, which its remoulded physiognomy caught, amplified and honed.
“Perfect,” Grendel gloated as the creature’s misery rang out in a perfect key. The note was so clear that it would have made any human piper cringe with jealousy.
The sorcerer strolled to the next of the creatures. Its belly was hugely distended and its snout tapering out into a wide mouthed tube. Grendel tapped the thing on its shoulder, and a melancholic bagpipe sigh breathed out of it.
The sorcerer chuckled with delight. He could feel his god’s approval washing over him, a crippling pleasure. For a moment, he teetered on the brink of an abyss, and although it beckoned with sweet seduction, he dragged himself away. There would be time for that later.
For now, he had a ceremony to arrange. It wasn’t just the instruments he’d created, it was the dancers as well. Compared to their fellows, these three had escaped lightly. Although their skin glowed with a dragonfly’s iridescence, they retained their forms.
Grendel resisted the temptation to improve upon them. They would need all their strength for the ritual ahead. So would he. It would be madness to start it now, when he was still exhausted from the day’s creation, absolute madness.
He smiled at the thought, and rubbed his shaking hands together. Then he swallowed, and began to chant.
As he prowled amongst them, his creations began to howl and to sob, and the dancers began to dance to the terrible harmony.
At first, they were clumsy, still sluggish after the hours of paralysis, but as the tune quickened so did their feet. Soon they were dancing a lively jig, knees high and heads lolling about. Grendel waved his hands as they did so, feeling more like a conductor than a sorcerer.
His victims leaped and pranced, and spun through the air, as lively as fish on a line. Grendel watched the rippling muscles and the flash of their skins with approval. Then he saw the faces and frowned. They were slack with misery, the tears spinning from their yellowed eyes as they gyrated around.
That wouldn’t do. With a twitch of his fingers, Grendel spoke half a dozen words and three identical rictus grins starched the dancers’ faces.
The sorcerer laughed with delight, and turned his attention to the dancers’ feet. They were already starting to bloody the jagged rocks. Grendel sucked his teeth as he tried to calculate how long it would be before his victims were dancing on ankle bones. Not too soon, he hoped.
He was still lost in the thought when a voice shattered his world.
“It’s Grendel isn’t it?”
The sorcerer sprang backwards, as lithe as one of the dancers. He peered through the confusion of their thrashing limbs, but even though the world was alight with aetheric fire, he couldn’t see where the voice had come from.
Then there was a twist of air, a shimmer of heat, and a man waddled from the shadows.
“Stand back!” the sorcerer shrieked. It was the sight of the stranger’s robes that filled him with such panic. Their cut and hue were horribly familiar, and they filled him with the memories of his former colleagues. More to the point, they filled him with memories of what his former colleagues did to defectors.
Grendel stumbled backwards, fingers twitching as he tried to think of the most devastating spell he knew.
The dancers and musicians played on, buffeting Titus as he walked through their midst.
“It is Grendel, isn’t it?” he asked again, and held up his two palms.
“I won’t go back,” Grendel whined, as petulant as a child who doesn’t want to leave the carnival. “I didn’t try to get those damned corpses to walk. They just did. Anyway,” he was suddenly defiant, “the power here. It’s too… too…”
“Wonderful?” Titus suggested.
“Yes.”
The wizard and the sorcerer looked at each other, calculating. The only sound was the horribly tuneful playing of Grendel’s creations, and the soggy stamp of his victims’ disintegrating feet. Titus turned to watch them. He saw the misery that was pummelling their frozen smiles, and the agony that sounded beneath the notes of the living instruments.
He lifted one podgy hand and, as Grendel raised his hands in defence, snapped his fingers.
Dancers and musicians both exploded into fountains of silver light. They shrieked, although only for a second. After that the only sound was the sizzle and hiss of burning bodies, and the stamp of feet as the burning dancers danced on.
“They’re very beautiful,” Grendel muttered as he watched them spin past. As they moved, the flames shifted colour, darkening as they ate deeper into the melting flesh. Titus accepted the compliment with a nod.
“They are beautiful, aren’t they? But I don’t even know how I did it.” He shrugged with unusual modesty. “Ever since I left Praag things just…”
“Just happen,” Grendel finished for him. The wizard and the sorcerer looked at each other, and in the pulsing light of the dancing victims, they smiled.
“I can see why the fools from the colleges don’t want us up here,” Titus said. “Imagine what would happen to their pathetic rules and hierarchies when men such as us found such mastery.”
“Yes, exactly!” Grendel beamed, delighted to have heard his own thoughts echoed. “Imagine what knowledge we will find up here.”
Titus nodded, and tugged thoughtfully at his beard.
“We were the greatest of our generation already,” he said, generously sharing the accolade. “In centuries to come, we will be gods.”
“You think there is a cure for death up here?” Grendel asked, but even as the words left his lips he knew that yes, there was a cure for death. There was a cure for everything, just so long as he kept following his god’s voice to the north.
“There must be.” Titus was equally sure. “There are certainly enough cures for life.”
The two men were st
ill laughing when Kerr stepped into the light of the burning bodies. Grendel raised a finger, but Titus waved it away.
“That’s all right,” he said. “He’s my servant.”
For a moment, Kerr’s eyes showed his surprise as he looked from the wizard to the sorcerer. Despite the contrast between Titus’ rounded face and Grendel’s gaunt cheekbones, and between Titus’ flowing robes and Grendel’s rags, and between Titus’ booming voice and Grendel’s hoarse squeak, he saw that they were both the same; both exactly the same.
Amongst these men, there might be hunter and hunted, victor and victim, but compared to that which separated them from the rest of the world, they were all brothers.
Kerr smoothed the expression from his face as he watched the dancers. The burnt pork stink of roasting flesh filled the air, sharpened with the sulphur smell of the flames. Kerr noticed how the fire blossomed from the pits of the dancers’ eyes, and how it had fixed the insanity of their smiles into clown’s grins of melted skin.
He also felt the pins and needles that itched for release in his own fingers. All it would take would be a look, a word, and perhaps he too could add to the spectacle.
He felt a fist of nausea turning within his stomach.
“Stood too close to the fire did they?” he asked. Grendel was, as ever immune to sarcasm.
“Not at all. Your master used them to light our new friendship.”
Titus was touched.
“The real art was in the making of them,” he said, “after all, who to thank, the candle maker or the match?”
Kerr watched one of the bodies lurch as a foot broke away from the crisped ankle. It danced on anyway, doddering on stumps.
“You truly are the greatest wizard in the world, boss,” he said, awestruck.
Titus preened.
“It must be an honour for one of the college’s lesser wizards to work for you.”
The look of contentment left Grendel’s face. Titus didn’t notice. Instead he made an effort to sound gracious.
“He was lesser only whilst we belonged to the same order,” he explained. “His art was never as great as mine, but up here we both have things to learn.”
“What do you mean my art wasn’t as great as yours?” Grendel asked, his voice cold.
“Only that you didn’t have as many discoveries,” Titus soothed. “I’m sure that, in time, you would have done better. Look at the way the fat bubbles into flame. That violet colour is very difficult to achieve, you know.”
Grendel, his bonhomie replaced by a look of suspicion, licked his lips.
“Imagine how fast he will learn now, boss,” Kerr said, and then flinched beneath Grendel’s glare. “No offence, sire, but we are both here to learn from the master.”
He looked at Titus who puffed himself up.
“It is a real pleasure to serve such a master,” he carried on encouragingly. “I am sure you will find it as… as congenial as I have, and as rewarding.”
Titus nodded approval. Grendel thought about serving the fat man. About degenerating back into being under somebody’s discipline, and in the silence of his thoughts the voice of his god spoke.
If he hadn’t tried to be surreptitious, he might have been successful. As it was, he moved with such a look of hangdog guilt that even Titus, lost in the pleasant haze of a glorious future, noticed that something was wrong.
The remaining seconds of Grendel’s life ended in a blur. Even as he locked his fingers into the horned sign of his god, Titus was speaking, the catechism bursting from him as easily as a sneeze.
Years on the battlefield had taught him the virtue of simplicity, and even as Grendel dithered over his words, Titus’ shadow was racing forwards to engulf him. It rushed unnoticed up Grendel’s legs, as dark and as deadly as a rip tide, and when he began to speak, the darkness slipped hungrily into his mouth.
Kerr watched as it pooled between his teeth, choking his words and filling his eyes with terror. The sorcerer gagged, his throat shuttling back and forth desperately, and clawed at the nothingness that filled his mouth.
He didn’t stand a chance. Even as Grendel dropped to the floor, his flesh was blackening. Kerr, safe behind Titus’ back, watched him writhe in agony.
“What’s happening to him?” he asked.
“Wait and see,” Titus said.
Grendel was already beginning to collapse. The corruption spread beneath his skin and, piece by piece, he began to disintegrate. His fingers were the first to go, turning to ash before grumbling away.
Kerr watched the terror in the dying sorcerer’s eyes. It almost made him feel pity. Almost, but not quite.
“See how fast the flesh corrupts?” Titus instructed. “That is because I have not added to his form, but taken away from it. It is always easier… Oh.”
From amidst the writhing mass of Grendel’s body something gleamed: something as fresh and vigorous as the first shoots of spring.
Its arms were the first things that tore free. They were as long as an orc’s, although skinny, the bones impossibly long and thin. The talons buried themselves into the burnt ground, and the shoulders flexed as the thing dragged itself free of the human remains.
Titus’ fingers twitched, and a fresh wash of sweat glistened on his pale features as the horror wriggled its way out of Grendel’s ruined body. It had no neck, nor any distinct body. Its head was elongated, a snout with two bulging blue eyes growing on either side, and its body was serpentine. It rose from the skin that it had shed, like a cobra from a snake charmer’s basket, although it was Titus and Kerr who were mesmerised.
“Grendel?” Titus asked as the thing turned its elongated head towards them. Its tongue whipped out as if to taste the air, and as it moved towards Titus and his apprentice, a sweet scent filled the air.
Titus swayed on his feet, eyes half closed as he inhaled the perfume. It reminded him of bougainvillea, of honeyed pancakes, of fresh sheets after a hard day.
With an effort, he opened his eyes in time to see that the thing was sliding towards them.
“Grendel? Is that you?”
The thing that had been Grendel had neither the will nor the ability to reply. Instead, it rose up on its sinuous body and prepared to strike, and for the first time, Kerr spoke.
“Kill it!” he shouted, “or it will kill us.”
“Yes,” Titus said vaguely, although he seemed in no hurry to move. “It smells wonderful.”
Kerr looked at his master’s dazed expression and at the thing that towered above them. He reached up to Titus’ ear, grabbed it, and twisted, hard.
The wizard pulled away, startled.
“Kill it,” Kerr repeated, and Titus looked up in time to see the horror’s tongue lash out towards him. It gleamed a poisonous green, and even as it blurred forwards, Kerr could see the teeth that serrated its edge.
Titus spoke a syllable before it connected, but that syllable was enough.
Before the tip of that lash of a tongue connected, it had grown transparent, and when it did brush against one of Titus’ jowls, it was scarcely more than a shadow. Even so, the touch was almost lethal, burning a furrow through the wizard’s fat that would have reached the arteries of a slimmer man.
Titus rolled backwards, fingers already twitching as he readied a fresh incantation, but his work was already done. The thing that had become Grendel was fading, flickering in and out of existence as its substance dissolved.
Soon, there was nothing left of Grendel at all, but for the dying light of the human torches. Even with their creator gone, they still writhed and twitched, enslaved by the remains of their own lives.
“Stupid fool,” Titus said, picking himself up and touching his wounded throat. It had been cauterised as neatly as if by burning pitch, the wound closed behind the thing’s touch to seal it into his flesh.
He cast a quick, disinterested glance back towards Grendel’s victims as the first of them fell over. Then he turned to Kerr.
“Bring the carriage up,” he
said, that flat, mesmerised look already back in his eyes.
“Yes,” Kerr said, relief soothing his horror. “Time to go home, hey boss?”
“Home? No. No, we are going north. Look at these wonders, boy. Imagine what else lies in store for us.”
Titus turned to gesture to the field of ruined bodies, the living and the dead equally damned.
“All this,” Titus promised him, “is only a taste of what lies ahead.”
Kerr stood behind his master and looked at the promised land. Then his dagger was in his hand, and even as Titus spoke again, he struck.
The dagger bit deep, slicing through fat and between the ribs that lay beneath. When it had driven home, Kerr twisted.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Arch Magister Grunwalder had spent the day deep in contemplation. Wrapped in his grey robes, he had sat, silent and unseen, amongst the crowds of Altdorf. From beneath hooded eyes, he had watched the herd as they had passed him, sidestepping the shadows where he lurked, even though they had no idea why.
Occasionally, he would concentrate his gaze on one or another of them, sifting through their thoughts as they passed. Dull stuff, mostly, but here and there were flashes of interest, a scrap of knowledge, or a new idea.
When the sun of late afternoon sent the shadows prowling through the streets, Grunwalder followed them back to the college. He slipped past the guards on the gates, and drifted through the echoing hallways and chambers of the place.
His own rooms lay behind what appeared to be a blank wall at the end of a dusty cellar. Grunwalder felt a twitch of pride as he walked through it and into the business of the vestibule outside his chambers. A dozen scribes worked, hunched over books or crafting charms, each of them bent on the creation of Grunwalder’s next great scheme.
“Excuse me, your honour. I have some bad news.”
Grunwalder spun around, shocked to find a man staring straight at him. He was skinny and barely out of his adolescence. Despite his youth and his rags there was a hard edge about him that was rare even in the college.
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