01 - Grey Seer

by C. L. Werner - (ebook by Undead)

  “Report,” the chilling voice in the darkness told him.

  Theodor licked his lips nervously, knowing now that he sat in the presence of his master rather than another minion such as himself. “The dead man was Emil Kleiner, a small time smuggler, part of Hans Dietrich’s gang. The body was burned, the tenement where it was found quarantined, as per instructions.”

  “Dietrich’s gang. Progress in finding them.”

  Theodor found himself glancing away from the darkened corner even though he could not see the face of his interrogator. “No progress. There was a fight between Hans Dietrich’s men and those of Gustav Volk five nights ago. Dietrich has been lying low ever since. Many in the gang may have been killed by Volk’s men.”

  “Known survivors,” the chill voice’s clipped words hissed from the gloom.

  “Dietrich and some of his gang were seen in the Orc and Axe the same night as their fight with Gustav Volk. Poorly treated wounds on several of the men make it likely this occurred after their encounter with Volk. In addition to Dietrich and Kleiner, the others present were Dietrich’s brother Johann, Bogdan Kempf, Max Wilhelm and Niklos Mueller. I have issued orders to the soldiers in my district to look for these men and detain them on sight.”

  “Countermand those orders. The men are not to be detained or followed. Sightings of any of them are to be reported. Take no further action until otherwise instructed.”

  Theodor sat in silence, considering the strange commands he had been issued. The importance of finding the smugglers was something that he could not doubt and which he had been certain he had impressed upon his master. The new instructions seemed to betray that urgency.

  A rasping sound, like the rustle of scales against cloth, hissed from the darkness. “More importance must be placed on following and observing these men than catching them. At least for the moment. Nothing must be done to put them even more on their guard than they already are. Other operatives will take up the vigil. You will stand by with your men and be ready to act when indicated.”

  “I obey,” Theodor said, relieved by his master’s explanation but now more perplexed than before. He knew, of course, that there were other operatives in service to the master, but he wondered who could be better qualified to watch the waterfront than the men who patrolled it day in and day out.

  “Dismissed,” the voice hissed from the shadows.

  Theodor rose from his seat and bowed. Turning away from the table, he started to walk back across the platform. As the sensation of unnatural cold passed from him, he looked back at the alcove where he had sat in conference with his mysterious master. The sergeant stared in dumbfounded wonder. Where the alcove had been, there was now only the outer wall of the Black Bat, a single window looking out over the street behind the building! By some sinister art, the little alcove had been conjured into existence in a place where it could not exist!

  As many times as he had experienced the abrupt vanishment of his master, the watchman could not keep his skin from crawling and his blood from turning cold in his veins. Theodor backed away from this evidence of dark powers, turning his thoughts to more clean subjects such as murderers and smugglers as he quickly descended to the main floor of the Black Bat. Even in the light of day, there were some things a man feared to dwell upon.

  Kempf stumbled on the stairs as he exited the little tea shop and descended into the building’s cellar. He always stumbled, his excitement overwhelming his coordination, overwhelming everything in fact. Hans, Volk, the watch, nobody and nothing existed as far as Kempf was concerned. All that mattered was now, was his descent into the cellar, the magical place hidden beneath the shop. His eyes barely registered the growing gloom of the poorly-lit landing at the base of the steps, his nose didn’t even notice the musky, cloying stink that rose to meet it, his ears didn’t trouble themselves about trying to make sense of the muffled voices that could be faintly heard. What little concentration Kempf was able to drag away from the excruciating anticipation that gripped his mind was focused upon the steps beneath his feet.

  A hulking man with arms thick enough to strangle an ox greeted Kempf at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Back for more, eh scum? Didn’t take you long, did it?”

  Kempf had to crane his neck to look into the guard’s scarred visage. “I want to see Otto Ali,” he said, licking his lips as he spoke.

  The guard poked a finger into Kempf’s chest, pushing the weasel-like man back onto the stairs. “I don’t think the boss wants to see you,” he grunted.

  “Please!” Kempf whined, stepping down to regain the ground he had lost. “I must see Otto Ali!”

  A massive hand slapped against the sheathed length of a thick-bladed broadsword. “Go drown yourself, rat,” the guard growled. “No layabouts and no charity. Beat it before you start to annoy me.”

  Kempf dug frantically into his tunic, dragging out the little leather pouch Hopfoot had given him. He opened it, displaying the coins for the guard. The thug grunted appreciatively and thumbed a few coins from the purse.

  “Why didn’t you say you could pay?” the guard muttered, stepping aside and allowing Kempf to scramble past him.

  Beyond the guard was a thick oak door. Kempf gave a practised knock against the wooden panel, a series of raps and taps that would allow him entrance to the lair of Otto Ali. The door opened and a glowering brute, every bit as large and imposing as the outer guard, looked Kempf over from head to foot before motioning the little man inside.

  Within was a brick-lined grotto, its exact dimensions hidden by shadow and the litter of wooden bunks crammed into every inch of the main floor. The smell of human sweat and urine was too strong for even Kempf’s distracted senses to ignore, the delirious moans and mumbled words rising from the bodies sprawled on the bunks too persistent to escape his ears. A few old lanterns, their glass cracked and caked in grime, flickered from rusty chains set in the ceiling casting a feeble glow upon the drug den.

  “You come to visit us again, my friend,” a thickly accented voice beamed. Kempf’s heart fluttered like that of a young lover in the presence of his paramour. He turned quickly to face the speaker. The man who had addressed him was swarthy, his complexion darker even than that of a Tilean. Oily black locks, their lengths curled and stringy, draped down across his thick brow. A smarmy smile split his broad face, displaying teeth that matched the thick gold rings piercing his ears. The man’s attire was like his lineage; a curious mixture of the Empire and far distant Araby. A wide sash circled his heavy gut while foreign slippers with curled toes covered his feet. The mixed-blood Arabyan laid a heavily jewelled hand on Kempf’s shoulder, like an old friend rather than a man who had used violence to eject the man from this very cellar only the night before.

  “More gold, and so soon?” Otto Ali laughed, knowing that the smuggler would never have penetrated this far into his establishment if he were still as destitute as when he had left it. Kempf handed him the pouch Hopfoot had given him for the shard of wyrdstone. Otto Ali poured the contents into his hand and tutted. “Only silver,” he sighed.

  Kempf’s shoulders sagged, his face falling into a mask of despair.

  “Still,” Otto Ali mused, “this should be enough to buy a few dreams… small dreams,” he added when he noticed the joyous relief that seized the smuggler. It would not do to raise the man’s hopes too high. That might lead to another ugly scene such as the previous night.

  Otto Ali clapped his hands together and a thin servant joined the two men. A long-stemmed pipe was in the servant’s hand and Kempf could barely contain himself as the minion led him away towards one of the bunks. Otto Ali started to follow, but a sharp voice demanded the Arabyan’s attention, pulling him into one of the drug den’s many dark corners.

  Kempf dismissed the proprietor from his thoughts. Dismissed everything in fact as the servant poured a pinch of shiny black powder into the bowl of the pipe, then pressed the stem to the smuggler’s lips. Another servant, one of the few trusted to c
arry an open flame in the den, manifested beside the bunk and placed a candle beneath the bowl. After a moment of smouldering against the river-clay bowl, the contents of the pipe began to vaporise. Greedily, Kempf drew the fumes up through the pipe and into his body.

  Dreams gripped Kempf, dreams such as the smuggler preferred to his bleak reality. There was only one distraction as he slipped into the visions filling his mind. Something was snuffling close beside his bunk, something like a big stinky dog. It was too much effort to turn his head and see what it was, so he drew another lungful of vapour into his body.

  Voices came to him. One was thin and scratchy, the other was Otto Ali’s.

  “Take-watch human-meat,” the thin voice chittered. “Smell-scent like warpstone. No-no warpstone, maybe-might.”

  “This man is a good customer,” Otto Ali objected. “If I keep him I can’t get more of his silver.”

  “Take-watch!” growled the voice. “Take-watch or no-no black dust for Ali-man! We pay-pay shiny ore to Ali-man.”

  “I can give him more black dust,” Otto Ali mused. “He will dream for days. But why do you want him?”

  The scratchy voice laughed, a weird trilling sound that was ugly enough to almost pull Kempf from his drugged indolence. “Not want-find. Thanquol want-find! Thanquol Grey Seer! Reward much-much! Use human-meat find-take maybe-warpstone! Thanquol reward much-much!”

  A shabby-looking gutter snipe in tattered coat and scuffed boots, there was nothing in the appearance of Ludwig Rothfels that made him stand out among the shambling crowds that filled the streets of Altdorf, pushing and squirming their way through narrow streets choked with unwashed masses of humanity. There were hundreds of his ilk creeping through the busy market squares and thoroughfares of the capital, waterfront vagabonds stealing forth from their habitual squalor to rub elbows with their betters. Beggars and thieves, cutpurses and muggers, only when the crowds thinned as the sun began to set would the city watch be able to separate them from their marks and drive them back into the lawless slums.

  Ludwig ducked the sweep of a chicken farmer as he gawped and gaped at the sights of the city, forgetting the long pole slung over his back, squawking poultry dangling from it by their tethers. He dodged the carriage of a nobleman as the dignitary rushed through the street, allowing no delay as the traffic parted before his horses. The wheels of the carriage threw up great sheets of muck and mud as they ploughed down the lane. Curses and garbage pelted after the noble as he vanished down the avenue.

  Ludwig wiped mud from the coat he had used to shield himself, spitting against the cobblestones as he added his own curses to the chorus. The miserable toffs!

  One day they’d answer for their pomposity and arrogance! The red hand of revolution would rise again and the great palaces in the Imperial Quarter would burn! Then the streets would ran with blue blood and the roar of the oppressed would be heard!

  The little, scrawny man’s face grew crimson as emotion welled up inside him and his hand clenched itself into a fist at his side. Then reason reasserted itself and Ludwig gave a nervous, hunted look up and down the street, fearful of who might have noticed his momentary loss of control. Paranoia had quietened his revolutionary spirit, deadening his ideals beneath a shroud of fear. Not fear of the politicians or the nobles, not even the witch hunters and their brutal ways. Ludwig was a man who had defied all of them to do their worst and never backed down before their threats and violence. His right hand was missing two fingers from the time he had been rounded up by the Reiksguard and encouraged to betray his fellow revolutionaries. All they had wrested from his tongue was the same spittle he’d given the street.

  It was later, much later, that he’d discovered true fear. It was when he’d first set eyes on the sinister being he would call master that Ludwig had learned the nature of terror. The cell of conspirators, a revolutionary group calling itself the Red Talon, had gathered in the old abandoned manor house of Prince Steffan, planning their own addition to the festivities being arranged to celebrate the birthday of the Emperor. The plotting had not gotten far when the meeting was disturbed, disturbed by a spectral apparition that seemed to grow out of the darkness. Ludwig was a man of words and ideas, not a fighter, but many within the Red Talon were seasoned warriors, veterans of military campaigns, naval engagements and underworld skirmishes.

  Ludwig was to learn much that night, as the violence of that tremendous battle stripped away the mask that had cloaked the true nature of the Red Talon. Many of his fellow revolutionaries were exposed as twisted mutants, hiding their corruption beneath a veneer of normalcy. Their leader, Ulrich Schildenhof, proved to be a disciple of the Ruinous Powers, a sorcerous agent of the Purple Hand.

  Lofty principles and fiery rhetoric crumbled beneath the horror and shame of the moment, Ludwig’s mind numbed by the guilt of being used as a pawn by such unholy things. Then his horror was magnified when he saw the lone, shadowy intruder spring into battle with Schildenhof and his inner circle. One man against the awful mutations of a dozen degenerate horrors and the infernal sorcerer whom they served. It should have been a slaughter. It was, but not the way Schildenhof expected. Ludwig could still remember the look of absolute disbelief on the black magister’s face as his head rolled across the manor’s ceramic floor.

  The former agitator and rabble-rouser shuddered at the image and hurried on his way. Ludwig had preached to any who would listen about the Emperor’s spies and how they were steadily attacking the privacy and dignity of every soul in Altdorf. He had believed his words. Now he knew them for the exaggerated lies that they were. Now he knew what it was like to be watched by a being who did have eyes everywhere.

  He did not know why he had been spared that night. Perhaps it was because he had been an innocent dupe of the ring’s cultist leadership. Perhaps it was because in him Jeremias Scrivner found skills that would be useful to his own organisation. Whatever the reason, Ludwig knew it would have been a death sentence to refuse the offer that spectral shadow spoke to him amid the gory shambles of the Red Talon’s ruin.

  The agitator shook his head, trying to dislodge the terrifying memory. He was still not sure if what he had been granted was reprieve or simply deferment. What he was certain of was the folly of delay. His new master did not have much patience for folly.

  Ludwig saw the darkened doorway of a cellar, its iron-fenced steps climbing to join the level of the street. He fumbled at the pocket of his coat, producing a strange gilded key. His father had been a locksmith, among a dozen other professions as his family had quietly starved in the squalor of Altdorf’s waterfront, but Ludwig had never seen the likes of the key before. He would almost swear that it changed each time he placed it into a lock, an impression that was always as hard to shake as it was to accept.

  With one last glance over his shoulder, Ludwig darted down the cobblestone steps and pressed his body against the iron-banded cellar door. The key slithered into the bronze lock like a hand into a glove, producing a scratching, clicking sound as it turned the mechanism. He pulled the key out quickly and stuffed it back into his pocket, not daring to look at it, fearful he might notice some change in its shape. Muttering a prayer to Verena, goddess of wisdom and light, Ludwig pulled the door open and ducked inside.

  His prayer was not answered. Ludwig could tell at once. The cellar was as black as the belly of a daemon, not even the feeblest light trickling through its glazed window, as though the day feared to trespass upon this lingering patch of midnight beneath the streets of Altdorf. A cold iciness crawled through his flesh, seeping into his body and numbing his soul. His breath became a frosty whisper as he forced himself to step deeper into the darkness. Somewhere in the gloom, he knew, was a little metal box painted to look like one of the flagstones. Perhaps he would still be allowed to place his message there and withdraw.

  “Report,” came the hissed command, at once both distant and near.

  Ludwig shivered as he heard the voice of his master. He fumbled again in the pocket
s of his coat, drawing the letter he had written with the master’s crawling ink. There was no sound, no sense of anyone moving towards him, not even the slightest brush against his hand, yet somehow the sheaf of parchment was plucked from his fingers just the same.

  Ludwig could hear the parchment crinkle somewhere in the darkness. He could imagine grey eyes of smoke gazing upon those pages as the mind behind them willed the ink to form itself into letters once more. Somehow, he knew that the written words would not be enough.

  “Johann Dietrich spotted,” Ludwig said, forcing the quiver from his voice. “I followed him to the shop of Dr. Lucas Phillip Loew the alchemist. Dietrich remained there for some time. Upon leaving, he pursued an indirect route to the Crown and Two Chairmen. I waited for three bells, but he did not emerge from the tavern. At that point I decided that he was not coming out again and hurried here to make my report.”

  There was silence in the darkness, silence as thick and menacing as anything Ludwig had experienced in the dungeons of the Emperor. Ludwig knew that a tremendous intellect was digesting his words, twisting and turning them, viewing his account from angles Ludwig could neither understand nor fathom. There were some things it was best not to understand… or question.

  “Assume position outside Dr. Loew’s. Observe any visitors. Await further instructions.”

  Ludwig sketched a deep bow, putting far more sincerity into the gesture than he had ever showed the Emperor or the Grand Theogonist. “I obey,” the scrawny man whispered. He reached behind him, feeling for the door, his hand closing desperately about the handle. Lingering only a moment to hear his master’s cold voice, Ludwig pulled open the door and rushed back into the fading daylight.