[Warhammer] - The Enemy Within

by Richard Lee Byers - (ebook by Undead)

  She shifted away from him and rubbed her wrist. “I think you’re tired. Mama always said that communing with our lord exalts our spirits, but it taxes us as well. Now, I’m glad you want to take care of me, gladder than I can say, but we don’t have to figure everything out this very instant. Let me go to the tavern, and you stay here and sleep. I’ll come back as soon as I can.” She swung her legs over the side of the mattress and stood up.

  He sprang up, too, and she realised that he was on the side of the bed nearer the door. If she tried to flee, he could intercept her. Wild, stupid fancies, for she had no reason to bolt, nor he, to hurt her, but for some reason she couldn’t help picturing it.

  “Do you trust me?” he asked.

  She hesitated. “Yes.”

  “Then don’t go. I need you to do something for me.”

  Was that the secret reason for all your tenderness, she wondered? To make sure I stayed put until you were ready to make use of me? “What?”

  “To accompany me somewhere.”

  “Where? Why?”

  “If you trust me—”

  “I do! But only if you’re honest with me!”

  Dieter took a deep breath. “All right. The Master of Change wants to see us.”

  That was so unexpected that for a moment, she wondered if he was joking. “Have you been to see him already?”

  “No. His voice spoke to me from out of the air, the same way he talks to Leopold Mann.”

  “But he only communicates with coven leaders. Maybe he wants you to pick up where Mama left off, but what does he want with me?”

  “Perhaps some other circle is in need of a leader.”

  Jarla shook her head. With Dieter’s encouragement, she’d been trying to think more highly of herself than she had hitherto, but even so, she was certain she’d make a wretched choice to direct a secret cabal of rebels and warlocks. “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Dieter’s face twisted as if he was losing patience with her recalcitrance. At that moment, he reminded her of Adolph.

  “You know I wouldn’t let anybody hurt you,” he said. “I’ve taken steps—I mean, all along, I’ve done my best to look after you, haven’t I?”

  Why had he referred to someone hurting her? Why had that possibility even occurred to him? “Yes,” she said, “you have.”

  “And I always will. So let’s do as the Master orders.” He grinned, a bleak and bitter rictus. “It’s not as if either one of us has a choice.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Of course, I’ll do whatever you say. I just didn’t understand.” She struggled to give him a smile. “Whether I’m going to the tavern or to meet our leader, I suppose I need to get dressed.” Her hand trembling ever so slightly, she reached for her shift, and he didn’t stop her. He simply watched her for another moment, then started pulling on his own garments.

  She didn’t know what to do. She loved Dieter. Of all the people she’d ever loved, he was the only one left. The Cult of the Red Crown had given her a sense of belonging and significance.

  Considered in that light, it would be insane to break with either, let alone both. Yet doubt and fear tugged at her more insistently with every passing moment, begging her to flee from whatever fate held in store.

  As she laced the front of her gown, she watched for an opportunity, uncertain whether she truly meant to take it even if it came. Then Dieter pulled his shirt over his head.

  At that moment, the garment covered his eyes and would hinder the use of his arms and hands. Jarla ran at him and shoved him stumbling backwards. She whirled, fumbled with the catch, and yanked on the door.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Dieter’s back slammed against the wall. He pushed off it, recovered his balance, jerked his shirt down over his head, and thrust his hands out the ends of the sleeves. Some portion of the shabby old garment ripped.

  The trailing folds of Jarla’s skirt vanished out the doorway. Dieter realised he was lucky the door stuck. Otherwise, she’d have a bigger lead—although the situation was bad enough as it was.

  He ran after her, out into the twilight. He hadn’t yet put on his shoes, and the mucky surface of the rutted street sucked at his bare feet. Passers-by and vendors minding their stalls and barrows turned to watch the pursuit. Shovels and sledgehammers cocked over their shoulders, a quartet of filthy labourers grinned in anticipation of an amusing altercation.

  Jarla either heard or sensed Dieter coming after her. She peered about, then oriented on a big, balding, black-bearded man seated on the bench of a cart. By the looks of it, he was just about to drive away.

  Jarla evidently meant to beg him for help. Hoping to speak first, or to yell louder and drown her out, Dieter gasped in a breath and bellowed, “Thief! Stop her! That whore stole all my money!”

  “No!” Jarla cried. “I never did!”

  But she was dressed like a whore, and not entirely dressed at that, and perhaps that prejudiced the carter against her. At any rate, he smiled an ugly smile and said, “The same things happened to me. Teach the bitch a lesson.” He called to his horse, flicked the reins, and the cart clattered into motion.

  Jarla cast about, saw that none of the other spectators were inclined to help her either, and ran on. Dieter pounded after her, caught her by the hair, and yanked her off balance. She fell down in the mud, and he kicked her until she stopped resisting. Sobbing, she simply curled up to shield her most vulnerable parts.

  He hauled her to her feet and marched her back to her stall. Some of the onlookers cheered ironically. He flung Jarla down on the bed and shoved the door shut.

  As was so often the case of late, contradictory feelings and urges pulled him in two directions. He loved her, was ashamed of what he’d done, and ached to make amends. Yet at the same time, he yearned to go on hurting her, to punish her for defying him or simply for the pleasure it would give him.

  He strained to suppress the latter impulse, and to his relief, it faded, although without making him feel as if his decent, rational side had truly assumed control. Rather, he had the odd feeling that the corrupted Dieter, born of dark lore and Tzeentch’s touch, had simply opted to humour him.

  If so, perhaps he’d done it to illustrate just how impotent Dieter’s good intentions actually were, for it soon became apparent that none of his apologies or reassurances were having any effect. Arms wrapped protectively around herself, face ashen, tears sliding down her cheeks, Jarla just stared at him. Eventually he ran out of words, and then there was nothing to do but finish dressing and wait for the Master of Change to call them forth.

  The summons came about an hour after night swallowed the city. A ball of purple foxfire appeared in the air near the door, then floated towards the panel, plainly indicating that it wanted Dieter to follow it out into the night.

  He looked at Jarla and realised from her unchanged demeanour that she couldn’t see the luminous orb. “Get up,” he said, “it’s time.” He hesitated. “If you try to run away—”

  “You’ll only hurt me again,” she spat. “I understand.”

  That flash of bitter anger showed he hadn’t beaten all the spirit out of her, and he was glad. “I know you won’t believe this. You have every reason not to. But it really is going to be all right.”

  The glowing sphere led them on a zigzag course through the darkened streets. He held Jarla’s hand lest she try again to break away, while other folk trudged indifferently past. To Dieter, the passers-by appeared less than real. He had the insane but persistent feeling that as soon as he took another step and changed his angle of view, he’d see they were flat, like figures in a painting.

  Trying not to be obvious about it, he glanced around, looking for some indication that Krieger and his men were on his trail. They should be—he’d left the mark before proceeding to Jarla’s room—yet he couldn’t see any sign of them. Mouth dry, pulse ticking in his neck, he told himself it didn’t mean anything. He shouldn’t be able to spot them, not if they were sneaking with suff
icient craft to take the Master of Change by surprise.

  Eventually the orb dropped and oozed through a rusty iron grate in the cobbles. Dieter sighed. He’d hated his brief stint as an assistant rat catcher, but it seemed he was destined to wade through the sewers one more time.

  The grate wasn’t locked or bolted down. The edges simply sat in grooves devised to hold it in place. Dieter stooped, lifted it, and shifted it aside. A stomach-churning stench wafted up from the darkness below.

  Jarla winced. “Down there?”

  “It will be all right.” The statement sounded more absurd every time he repeated it.

  He gestured for her to precede him down the ladder. Before he followed, he took what might be his final look at the sky. I’m still bound to you, he thought. I never stopped trying to be a worthy Celestial wizard, no matter how it looks.

  One small mercy waited at the bottom of the descent: a walkway set above the sluggishly flowing filth. For the time being, at least, they wouldn’t actually have to splash through the waste. Rats made a rustling sound as they skittered through the blackness.

  He drew his belt knife and conjured a glow onto the blade to serve as a torch. Disdainful of the light, the darkness stepped backwards. The foxfire floated east, and once again, he waved for Jarla to take the lead. The ledge wasn’t wide enough for them to walk side by side, and it would be unwise to place her at his back.

  After a while, she said, “We don’t have to stay in the cult, risking our lives in a cause we can never win. We can run away together. I swear, I’ll make you happy!”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “But right from the start, it’s all been leading here, no matter how I tried to abandon the path, and now our only hope is to try to find a way out the other side.”

  The glowing orb abruptly made a right-angle turn and vanished into what appeared to be solid, fungus-spotted masonry. But when Dieter gingerly ran his hand over the wall, he found the edge where obstruction gave way to empty air. The hidden archway wavered into a blurry sort of semi-visibility when his fingers slipped inside it. The orb hung waiting on the other side.

  Jarla took a deep breath. “All right.” She started in.

  “Wait.” Dieter peered back the way they’d come and still couldn’t see any indication that Krieger and his men were on his trail.

  Maybe they weren’t. Maybe they never had been, and even if they had, they might well have lost track of him by now. The sewers were a maze.

  But he had to assume they were behind him somewhere, and likewise needed to make certain they wouldn’t miss the concealed doorway. Using the point of the glowing knife, he scratched an arrow on the stonework.

  “What are you doing?” Jarla asked.

  “Quiet,” he replied. He didn’t dare explain for fear that someone would overhear. Of course, it was entirely possible that the Master of Change was employing sorcery to observe him at this very moment, but he simply had to hope it wasn’t so.

  “Now,” he said, “go on.”

  Beyond the threshold, it soon became apparent they’d exited the sewers for a different sort of warren. The floor was dry, with no depression to channel muck. The stonework was manifestly finer, with carvings ornamenting the walls. Yet the catacomb felt even fouler than the filthy, reeking tunnels that had brought them here, because the taint of Chaos lay over everything. Dieter perceived it as an oily, creeping shimmer.

  Jarla likely couldn’t see it the way a true magus could, but she sensed it, and despite her familiarity with the similar forces at play in Mama Solveig’s shrine, she paled and swallowed as if resisting a pang of nausea. “What is this place?” she asked.

  Dieter inspected some of the graven symbols. “Dwarfs built it,” he said, “long before there was an Altdorf. But after they died out or abandoned it, another group occupied it, and cut their own glyphs alongside and atop the builders’ original inscriptions.” He recognised many of the newer sigils from the forbidden texts. “That second group served Chaos as we do.”

  “I don’t want to serve it,” Jarla whispered. “I didn’t understand!”

  “Just trust me,” he pleaded, “and keep moving.”

  They walked on, and he sensed a stirring of arcane forces, visible only as a shift in the shadows that didn’t quite fit with the motion of his light. The manifestation swirled around them like a whirlpool, and, unliving but aware in its fashion, seemingly examined them from all sides at once. Then a touch, ephemeral as a cobweb but somehow noisome as dung, dragged down Dieter’s face. He stiffened, and, a moment later, Jarla cried out, no doubt alarmed and revolted by the same sensation.

  “It won’t hurt you,” he said. “It’s just a defensive ward. It had to make sure we are who we’re supposed to be, but now that it has, it will let us pass.”

  It did. But he wondered if Krieger could cope with such an enchantment, and do so with a minimum of noise.

  Light flowered in the darkness ahead. Another fifty paces brought them to their destination, and the foxfire, its task accomplished, winked out of existence.

  Peering about, Dieter found that the light of half a dozen scattered lanterns, inadequate though it was, sufficed to reveal that the long-vanished dwarfs had constructed a splendid temple to serve as the crowning glory of the complex. Interrupted by choir lofts and galleries, the walls of the sanctum sanctorum swept up and up to a vaulted ceiling. Unfortunately, the Chaos worshippers who came after had perverted and polluted this holy of holies even more thoroughly than they had the rest of the corridors and chambers. Made of the same congealed malignancy as the icon in Mama Solveig’s cellar, a black image of Tzeentch leered behind an elevated red marble altar equipped with shackles, and runnels to drain away blood. A curved jewelled dagger lay atop it, waiting for someone to pick it up and stab and slice a sacrifice to death.

  Robed in pink, puce and purple, in finer versions of the costumes Mama Solveig’s coven wore to conduct their rituals, eight figures stood waiting in the vicinity of the altar. On first inspection, the Master of Change’s deputies looked like ordinary men and women, yet as Dieter had guessed, the cult leader himself was a mutant so deformed that he surely lived his entire life underground. For, even cloaked in the most potent spells of disguise, he would have found it impossible to walk the streets of Altdorf undetected.

  That was because the size and shape of his body were entirely wrong. He was fatter than any human could be without his heart failing, and because he was too immense to close his robe, Dieter could see that his lower body had fused together to become a bloated, sexless, worm-like tail with clusters of twitching fingers growing out of it. The appendage would hump and drag behind him as he crawled about.

  Above the navel, an extra head, small as an infant’s, drooling and weeping dark slime, lolled from the centre of a hairless, blubbery chest. The Master’s arms were too long and possessed too many joints, and an extra one grew from the left shoulder. The upper head, positioned more or less where a head should be but off-centre nonetheless, was nearly all lipless mouth lined with square, stained teeth, the remaining features and the cranium itself squashed together at the top to create an appearance of imbecility.

  Dieter had sojourned with Leopold Mann and his followers, but even so, the Master’s appearance was grotesque enough to make him falter. Jarla sobbed, whirled, and took a first running stride towards the exit.

  Dieter dropped his luminous knife and grabbed her. The blade clattered on the floor, and she thrashed, struggling to break away. “Calm down!” he whispered. “If you run now, they’ll kill you for certain! I won’t be able to stop them!” She kept flailing and kicking, and managed to jerk an arm free.

  Then, however, the coven leaders rushed up to help him immobilise her, and of course she had no hope of prevailing against so many. They bore her to the altar, shoved her down on her back, and snapped the shackles shut around her wrists and ankles. She jerked on her chains, rattling them, wailed and sobbed, until, her hand lashing back and forth, a grinning female cu
ltist slapped her into quiescence.

  Dieter wanted to stop the abuse, but knew it would be suicide to try. He had to content himself with taking note of the key hanging on the side of the sacrificial stone.

  He retrieved his knife, sheathed it, and approached the Master of Change. He dropped to his knees as he’d once knelt before Mama Solveig and the icon in her keeping. Up close, the mutant smelled like sour milk.

  The Master put his right hand on top of Dieter’s head. Portions of his palm bulged, pressing down, then receded, as if, beneath the skin, tumours were swelling and dissolving. “I give you,” he said, the metallic shiver still underlying his otherwise human tone, “the blessing of the Changer of the Ways.”

  “Thank you, Master,” Dieter said.

  “Are you ready to take the next step in your service?” the Master asked. “Are you prepared to lead your coven?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then come with me.” The sorcerer led him before the altar, where Jarla lay shuddering, and the black draconic figure looming behind, then bade him kneel once more. The other cultists formed a circle around them.

  Dieter realised with a stab of panic that they meant to anoint him a coven leader forthwith, and that the ritual would surely culminate in Jarla’s murder. He’d hoped for some sort of instruction or examination first, something he could protract to give Krieger a chance to arrive. But that obviously wasn’t how the Master wanted to proceed, and Dieter couldn’t think of any way to deflect him from his course. He could only pray that the ceremony was a lengthy one.

  As it turned out, the preliminaries, a series of chanted prayers and catechisms, did take a while. The obscene import of the declarations and the corrosive power radiating from Tzeentch’s statue ground at Dieter’s mind, churned his guts, and made his head swim. But he’d learned to endure such things, and so far at least, managed to prevent them from drowning his will and sense of purpose. Glancing from the corner of his eye, he kept on watching and listening for Krieger.