[Warhammer] - The Enemy Within

by Richard Lee Byers - (ebook by Undead)

  Then the blinding, smothering grit vanished, and he plummeted through a lightless, frigid void until that space disappeared just as abruptly. He landed in his own world and physical body with what felt like a considerable jolt, although, since pure spirit had no mass, he knew the shock was only in his mind.

  Mouth dry and heart pounding, he cast about. The lamb’s carcass looked no different. The candle he’d lit didn’t appear to have burned any lower, nor did the blood on his hands feel any dryer. Apparently his sojourn in the realm of Chaos had only lasted a few moments.

  He could feel the new knowledge in his head waiting to be savoured and explored, but for once, something else took precedence. He had an anguished sense of loss and violation, and with them came a stab of fear that the priest had broken his promise and taken something vital.

  He thought of his parents and his childhood. His training at the Celestial College. Halmbrandt. His name. His mission. Jarla.

  As promised, the contents of his memory seemed essentially intact. The priest certainly hadn’t crippled him. Yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that something precious was gone forever, and somehow, the fact that he had no way of even guessing what the recollection had been made the loss seem even more unbearable. He looked at the lamb again, remembered how he’d relished hurting it, and puked.

  In time, the sense of loss faded. Though it continued to gnaw at Dieter, it loomed no larger than the rest of his countless worries.

  He waited impatiently for Mama Solveig to give him the chance to strike at her, and tried to believe his eagerness stemmed from his desire to satisfy Krieger and go home. In large measure, it was even true. But he couldn’t deny that he also yearned to cast the new enchantment simply for its own sake. He’d spent hours contemplating the incantation the priest had planted in his mind, but that was scarcely the same as actually experiencing the magic.

  Finally, one night an hour after sunset, as he sat rereading the forbidden parchments, Mama Solveig hobbled up behind him and put her hand on his shoulder. “I have calls to make,” she said, “and then I thought I might stop at the Four Dancers. I like the minstrel who’s singing there. Do you want to come along?”

  Pulse ticking faster, he turned his head to smile at her. “Unless you need me, I believe I’ll stay here. I think I may finally be on the verge of figuring out how to cast the spell that Adolph found without the power turning against us.”

  “It will be wonderful if you can. Well, there’s cheese and baked apples left over from supper, and half a jug of ale. Go read by the hearth if you feel chilly. I think this old hole is getting danker and more draughty by the day!”

  “Yes, Mama.”

  She patted him on the shoulder, collected her basket and shawl, and eventually hobbled out the door.

  He forced himself to count to fifty, just to make sure she didn’t turn right around and come back in, either because she’d forgotten an item or thought of something else she wished to say. Then he sprang up from his seat, put the pages back on the lectern, drew a deep breath, and declaimed the first words of the incantation. A sickly-sweet smell suffused the air. The ceremonial wands and staves clinked and rattled in their storage rack.

  As he started the final rhyming lines, he braced himself. Everything else he’d experienced as a result of his communication with the priest had been painful in one way or another. It seemed unlikely that this would be any different.

  Yet it was. When the change took him, melting and reshaping him from the bones outward, the feeling was so pleasurable he laughed helplessly, as though putting aside humanity was the greatest ecstasy to which a person could aspire.

  Once that wild elation faded, he inspected his hands. They were bigger and covered in black scales. His nails had lengthened and thickened into talons. The icon leered at the transformation.

  Because his hands were so different in and of themselves, it took Dieter a moment to realise that vision itself had altered in some subtle fashion. His third eye was open, and for once, it probably didn’t matter. Not if the enchantment had altered his face as thoroughly as it had his extremities.

  He felt his features to see if that was in fact the case. Scales had sprouted there as well, and the lower half of his face had extended slightly into serpentine jaws. His teeth were fangs.

  No, it wasn’t likely anyone would recognise him. The trick would be to keep people from noticing his deformities as he pursued his victim, and the petty tricks that generally served to conceal his third eye were inadequate to the purpose. He cast about for the hooded cloak the mutants had given him, spotted it, and reached it in a single bound. That was wrong, and so, he abruptly realised, was the half-crouch which seemed to be his new body’s natural posture. He needed to walk like a man, and stand up straight.

  He should also get moving before he lost Mama Solveig’s trail. He donned the mantle, pulled up the cowl to shadow his face, and headed out the door.

  Head bowed as if by woe or weariness, trying not to shrink from the gaze of passers-by, he caught up with the hobbling old woman easily enough. Now that he was viewing her with his new eye, a purple shimmer crawled on her body. If she didn’t sense his presence, he could attack as soon as she was alone.

  Unfortunately, he suspected she wouldn’t be alone any time soon. In fact, the streets were growing more crowded as she doddered towards a square notorious for its taverns, fighting pits and brothels.

  Perhaps he could trust his cape and hood to protect him from the casual scrutiny of one or two folk at a time, but it was unlikely to do so if he ventured into close quarters with dozens at once. He wondered how he could continue following Mama Solveig, and instinct nudged him to look I upwards.

  For a moment, he imagined he was simply feeling the familiar lure of the sky, the Celestial wizard’s fascination I with the heavens that, thank the gods, had yet to fade no matter how he polluted himself with Chaotic lore. But that wasn’t it. It was the rooflines that tugged at him, not the stars and clouds. He surmised that was because the form he’d adopted could clamber over the tops of the buildings as easily as it could traverse the streets that sliced and snaked between them.

  He scuttled into an alley, glanced about to make sure no one was watching, then pulled off his shoes. They were I cramping his feet anyway, because his lower extremities I had enlarged, also. The toes were longer, and their nails were claws.

  It turned out that scaling a wall was easy. He was stronger than he’d ever been before, and his talons dug deep into soot-stained, decaying brick and mortar. He reached the sloping, shingled roof in a matter of moments, then peered down until he spotted his quarry.

  Mama Solveig doddered on and he trailed her, springing from one rooftop to the next when necessary. That, too, was generally easy. In the poorer precincts, the builders of Altdorf jammed in their structures close together.

  Suddenly, the midwife froze. She peered about as if she’d lost her way.

  Dieter surmised that in reality, she’d sensed someone was stalking her and was trying to identify her shadow. He crouched low and held himself still.

  But he needn’t have bothered. She didn’t think to look above street level, and Dieter sneered at her foolishness.

  She stopped twice more to cast about, and still it didn’t occur to her to glance upwards. Meanwhile, her course carried her into darker, narrower streets, where fewer folk were walking. Dieter worried that she’d realise she was safer in a crowd, turn, and retrace her steps, but she didn’t. Instead she hobbled into the enclosed passage, in effect a sort of tunnel, that ran between two buildings.

  Dieter dashed along the roof of the walkway. No one was in the courtyard at the far end, which made it a perfect place to close with his quarry at last. He poised himself to leap down on her the instant she stepped out into the open.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t, and eventually, he realised she wasn’t going to. She was hiding in the corridor to waylay her stalker just as she’d surprised Dieter beside the river.

&
nbsp; Which was to say, she could have chosen a safer course of action, but had instead decided to discover and confront whatever danger threatened her and, by extension, the coven she led. It occurred to Dieter that it was a courageous choice. It inspired respect, and with respect came uncertainty.

  He didn’t want to kill an old woman who’d been kind to him. Who could say that it would actually force the Master of Change to reveal himself? Dieter’s mind was sick and at least half-addled with desperation and forbidden knowledge, so it seemed entirely possible that his plan was crazy as well.

  But no. Curse it, no. He wouldn’t fall prey to qualms and misgivings now. Mama Solveig was a monster. She turned innocent people into monsters. She’d turned Dieter himself into a mutant, or started the process, anyway. She deserved to die, and even had it been otherwise, this scheme was the only one he had, his last chance of regaining the life Krieger had stolen from him.

  Besides, it wasn’t really true that Dieter didn’t want to kill her. A part of him did. It would revel in her destruction as it had the lamb’s.

  She was presumably peering out at the end of the passage that opened on the street. He could take her from behind if he attacked from the courtyard side.

  As he crawled down the wall headfirst, he wondered whether to assault her with a spell or brute force. In almost any circumstance, he would have opted for the former. But if he ripped her with his claws, the manner of her death would lend credence to the notion that some inhuman agent of the Purple Hand had slain her.

  In addition to which, he was curious to see how it would feel. That, too, was a part of experiencing this new magic for the first time.

  Planning to creep down the passage, he flipped to the ground. Mama Solveig was at the other end of the walkway just as he’d expected. What he hadn’t anticipated was that she was looking right at him. Somehow she’d finally discerned or simply guessed where he was.

  Dieter charged her, and she recited words of power. Though she spoke softly, her high, quavering voice echoed in the enclosed space, with each repetition louder than the last. She lashed her arm through the air, and splinters of darkness hurtled from her hand.

  Dieter leaped high and to the side, but the darts diverged as they flew, and despite his attempt to dodge, one pierced his leg. He hissed at the pain, and stumbled when his foot thumped back down on the ground.

  He realised he could no longer run or spring with the same nimbleness and speed as before. Mama Solveig evidently recognised it, too, because she judged she’d have time for a second spell before he closed with her. Backing away, but slowly, so as not to hamper her conjuring, she recited and swirled her hands through mystic passes.

  Dieter almost laughed. She was casting the shadow binding, the spell that he now knew how to turn against the caster. Thanks to her previous attack, he was limping already, and now he exaggerated it, slowing down and making sure she had time to finish.

  She whirled a twisting length of darkness from her hand. He spoke to it as he’d spoken when Adolph sought to snare him with the same effect.

  Or rather, he tried. It was the first time he’d attempted to talk since his transformation, and now he discovered that reshaping his jaws and tongue had cost him the ability to articulate without care or effort. The word came out too sibilant and slurred.

  So, naturally, the binding didn’t heed it. It whirled around him and snapped tight, stinging him and tying his legs together. He toppled to the ground amid the shards of a broken wine bottle.

  Doing his best to ignore the hot, stabbing pain of his bonds, he tried twice more to speak the word of command, and still couldn’t manage it correctly. Meanwhile, Mama Solveig chanted. Luminous cracks zigzagged and forked through the stone walls and ceiling as the repeated evocations of Chaotic forces hammered at the structure of reality.

  The old woman cast another barrage of darts. Dieter rolled, jabbing and grinding pieces of broken glass into his body. He dodged some of the missiles, but two more pierced him, and he bucked in agony.

  Such attacks weren’t like spear thrusts. They didn’t leave open, bleeding, tangible wounds. But they could kill nonetheless, and surely would, if he had to endure many more of them.

  In desperation, he began the counter spell his masters at the Celestial College had taught him. It was comprised of a number of words, any of which his deformed mouth might conceivably mispronounce. But he’d cast it successfully hundreds of times, during his apprenticeship and after. Perhaps all that practice would offset his handicap.

  At the same time, Mama Solveig rummaged in her basket. He wondered if, deeming him helpless, she thought it safe to come close and employ a blade or some toxic agent to finish him off.

  He whispered the final word of his incantation. His bonds frayed into nothingness. He scrambled to his feet and lunged at Mama Solveig.

  Her eyes opened as wide as they could go, but surprise didn’t paralyse her. Magenta glow oozing on her hunched, skinny form, she slashed her hand through the air and screamed a single word.

  Already cracked and weakened, a portion of the ceiling shattered, and chunks of stone dropped. Dieter leaped to get out from under them, but some of them caught him anyway, bashing him back down onto the ground.

  Mama Solveig had never taught him that spell. Maybe it was a secret weapon she’d kept from everyone, or maybe she hadn’t known it herself until now. Perhaps it was knowledge that had insinuated itself into her unconscious mind as she studied dark lore, to reveal itself at the moment she needed it most.

  Dieter struggled to shrug off the weight of the rubble. Maybe this show of resilience made Mama Solveig fear he was unstoppable, because, whirling and running like a woman forty years younger, she fled back out into the night. In a moment, she was lost to sight.

  Dieter floundered up from the broken stone, and, his whole body throbbing and aching, staggered out of the passage. He cast about and spotted a smear of purplish glimmer vanishing around a corner. Thanks to his new eye, he hadn’t lost the trail.

  He dashed after Mama Solveig as fast as his abused and battered body could go. Maybe he should try to hammer her with a blast of wind or a shout infused with thunder as soon as she came back into view. He’d thought to rend her with his claws and avoid using magic that anyone might associate with Celestial wizards in general or himself in particular. But now, after all the punishment he’d absorbed, he just wanted to make the kill as expeditiously as possible.

  He rounded the corner and was pleased to see she wasn’t as far ahead as he’d expected. Even if her usual appearance of feebleness was only a mask, her exertions were apparently taking a toll. He halted, drew a deep breath, and raised his hands.

  It was then that half a dozen soldiers, a watch patrol, judging from the lantern on a pole the first one carried, emerged from a side street several paces ahead of Mama Solveig. At once she resumed her hobble and became a perfect picture of fragile senescence once again.

  “Help!” she gasped. “Mutant! Chasing me!” She peered back down the street, then pointed. “There it is!”

  The soldier with the lantern peered, cursed, set the light on the ground, and drew his sword. His comrades readied their own weapons, and they all trotted forwards.

  Dieter had no desire to hurt them, nor did he want to give them a chance to hurt him. But, limping as he was, he doubted he could escape them even if he tried, which meant he had to fight. It was either that or be cut down from behind.

  Enunciating carefully, he spoke to the sky, and knives of light flashed from his outstretched hand. The missiles pierced two of the soldiers, and they dropped.

  Their comrades baulked. Backing away, Dieter whispered another charm. Hoping that he’d begun to master the trick of pronouncing his words properly even with a reptilian mouth and tongue, he risked speaking more quickly.

  One word came out slightly garbled, but the heavens saw fit to help him anyway. Blue light outlined his limbs. Layered on top of his scales, the mystical protection might suffice to pro
tect him from the soldiers’ blades.

  He gave them a level stare. “You see how it is,” he said. “I’m a sorcerer. If you make it necessary, I can strike every one of you dead. So don’t. I have nothing against you, and the old woman isn’t what she seems. Just walk away—”

  One soldier howled a battle cry, and then they all charged.

  Dieter struggled to stave off panic and think. It seemed obvious that they’d try to surround him, and that he needed to prevent it if he could. He faked a step backwards, then sprang at them instead.

  The sudden pounce took them by surprise. Even so, the soldier directly in front of him did a fair job of swinging his sword into line, but the armour of light deflected it, and the point glanced off Dieter’s shoulder.

  The soldier managed to block with his round steel shield as well. Dieter crashed into it, and his momentum slammed the obstruction back into the soldier’s body and knocked him staggering. A backhand swipe of Dieter’s claws slashed horizontal cuts across his face.

  Dieter felt both savage satisfaction and revulsion, and knew he had no time for either. He whirled to find out what the other soldiers were doing.

  They’d already turned to threaten him anew. Fortunately, stumbling about, helpless with shock, pain, or, conceivably, the loss of his eyes, the soldier Dieter had clawed was in their way. Dieter grabbed him and shoved him into one of his fellows, and the pair fell to the ground together.

  For the moment, that left two soldiers to menace Dieter. Hoping that simple tricks and fierce aggression would continue to serve him well, he faked a grab at one man, then pivoted and lunged at the other.

  His target warded himself with a deft shift of his shield that was virtually an attack in its own right. Dieter slammed into the rock-solid barrier with bruising, stunning force, rebounded and reeled off-balance.

  His momentary loss of equilibrium gave the soldiers time to flank him. He retreated, bounded this way and that, trying to get out from in between them, but they matched him step for step.