Dieter kicked the other man in the spine. Adolph lurched forwards. Teetering on one foot, Dieter struggled to re-establish his equilibrium so he could kick again.
Adolph spun around with a knife in his outstretched hand. The slash streaked at Dieter’s belly. He flung himself backwards, narrowly avoiding the stroke, but the frantic effort robbed him of his precarious balance and sent him staggering. Begrudging the moment it would take to rise, Adolph snarled the opening words of the spell that hurled shadow blades, and his single self splintered into several.
Dieter could almost have laughed. Apparently it wasn’t a severe enough handicap that he had to fight when he was tired. His eyes needed to resume playing tricks on him as well.
Dark missiles leaped from the hand of the Adolph acting in advance of all the others. Dieter attempted to dodge but knew he wouldn’t manage it. He was still off balance, and the attack flew too fast.
The first set of darts blinked out of existence partway to the target. As did the next, launched from the fingertips of another Adolph’s whipping arm. So did the third. It was only the last flight of missiles that travelled far enough to reach Dieter. He had in fact sidestepped quickly enough to evade those, and they hurtled harmlessly by. His multiple selves collapsing into a single image once again, Adolph goggled in manifest surprise that the attack had missed.
Dieter was just as surprised, but at least he thought he suddenly understood how it had happened. He’d surmised that his third eye sometimes saw a trail of after images a person or object in motion left behind, but he’d been mistaken. In actuality, it was peering into the future, providing glimpses of what was about to happen an instant before it did.
It was an ability he might conceivably have turned to good advantage—except that, now that he finally understood it, his altered vision reverted to normality.
He scrambled back, opening up the distance once again. Adolph clambered to his feet. Judging from his grimace, it cost him a twinge of pain. Maybe Dieter’s punch and kick had done some damage.
But not enough to keep Adolph from edging forwards, knife extended, or beginning another incantation.
Dieter shouted, and his voice was thunder. The deafening bellow jolted the ground and knocked twigs and leaves out of the trees. The spectators staggered.
At the very least, Adolph should have done the same. The blast of sound should have rocked him back, spoiling his conjuring, possibly stunned him or broken bones. But none of that happened. Evidently buttressed by some protective charm or his innate mystical strength, he stood steady despite the roar. Indeed, it was Dieter, taxed by the extreme effort the thunder spell required, who swayed and tottered.
Adolph’s form fractured anew. The image moving ahead of the others spun darkness from its fist, a continuous length of shade that whirled at Dieter like a whip.
Even forewarned, Dieter could tell he wouldn’t be able to get out of the way. The true attack would arc at him too quickly, even as it would reach farther than he could retreat. But as he contemplated the curling shadow, he glimpsed the intricate pattern of deeper and lesser darkness comprising it, and that in turn enabled him to understand the binding more profoundly than he ever had before.
He made no effort to avoid the shadow whip, and it cut him and coiled tight around him. Adolph jerked on the other end of the lash and dumped him on the ground. The cultist then rushed forwards, knife gripped overhand. He realised that, given a few moments, Dieter could likely dissolve the binding with a counter spell, and he meant to finish him before he could recite the words.
But thanks to his heightened understanding, Dieter only needed a single word. Enduring the stinging embrace of the binding as best he could, he waited until Adolph was standing over him ready to stab, then gasped it out.
Instantly obedient as a loyal and well-trained hound, the black coils released him, leaped at Adolph, and whirled themselves around the scribe. Immobilised, Adolph toppled and fell across the body of his foe.
Dieter squirmed out from underneath, then straddled Adolph’s back. He reached to grip the cultist’s neck and strangle the life out of him, then realised that even that wouldn’t provide an adequate outlet for the hate and fury burning in his guts. It would be more satisfying to kill the other man by beating him to death. It would likely take a lot more effort, too, but Dieter didn’t feel exhausted anymore. He grabbed a rock.
Every time he smashed the stone into the back of Adolph’s head, he bellowed. Blood splattered, and bone crunched. In time, the dark coils dissolved, but by then, the scribe had long since lost the ability to resist.
Indeed, a part of Dieter comprehended that he was now simply battering a corpse. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to stop until agony stabbed through his skull, eclipsing his rage and robbing him of his hysterical strength in an instant. It was the onset of a headache the like of which he’d never known, and as he started to weep with the pain, he inferred it was the price for using the exotic capabilities of his new eye.
CHAPTER TEN
Dieter studied his face in the dainty hand-held looking glass, plunder from one of the caravans the brigands had despoiled. An ordinary person might have thought it strange that any mutant would want to possess such an item, but some if not all of them plainly gloried in their deformities.
But Dieter most emphatically did not, and now tried to find reason for hope in the fact that his own alteration wasn’t as conspicuous as it might have been. When last night’s headache began, his third eye had closed and remained so until he deliberately opened it again. Further experimentation had revealed that, at least under normal circumstances, he should be able to keep it shut when he needed to.
With the lid down, an observer probably wouldn’t notice there was anything peculiar about his forehead, and even if he did, he’d likely mistake it for a common blemish or meaningless little bump.
Dieter swiped his hair down over his brow, and that was better still. Cosmetics might help too, when he could lay his hands on the right shade.
Finally he murmured a charm. Illusion and disguise were the province of the Grey wizards, but the minor lore available to all magicians included petty charms of diversion and obfuscation, and it was his good fortune that he’d learned a couple.
With the enchantment in place, the third eye was virtually invisible, or at least he thought so. But perhaps he was so desperate he was deluding himself. He turned towards Leopold Mann, who, despite his lack of any eyes at all, seemed to perceive as much as any sighted person. “Tell me the truth. Is it hidden?”
“I can’t tell it’s there,” shrilled the outlaw chieftain, sitting on the ground with his back against an elm, and a strip of bacon, the last of his breakfast, in his clawed and furry hand. “That doesn’t mean a witch hunter wouldn’t.”
Dieter shrugged. “I’ll just have to take my chances.”
“No,” said Mann, “you don’t. You’re one of us now, so why not stay with us? Why go back to Altdorf where you’ll be in danger every moment?”
“I already was, just by virtue of serving the Red Crown.”
“Not like you will be henceforth. You think you can hold the eye shut, but what if you can’t? What if the god marks you a second time, with a change you can’t conceal? The authorities will burn you for certain.”
Yes, they would, and perhaps if Dieter had any sense, he would remain with the brigands. Like Jarla, Mama Solveig, and all the cultists except for Adolph, they’d been friendly and hospitable to him, and Krieger wouldn’t be able to get at him if he joined their fellowship.
Yet he still wanted his old life back. He could live it while concealing a deformity if he had to, and maybe he wouldn’t, not permanently, anyway. He was a magician, and it was a kind of magic that had altered him. Given time, perhaps he could find a way to change himself back.
The alternative was to abandon not merely his possessions and station but his very self, to become completely and irredeemably the creature that had revelled in smashing Adolph�
�s skull and craved the filthy lore of Chaos the way a sot craved drink. What was the difference between such a surrender and death?
“Thank you for the offer,” he said. “It’s more than generous, considering how we began.”
Mann waved the bacon in a dismissive gesture. “The bloodshed was Adolph’s fault, not yours.”
“Be that as it may, I can’t stay. Maybe someday, but not now. I need to go back to tell the coven what happened. That the supplies were lost, and we need to get more to you as soon as possible. Besides, as I mentioned when Adolph and I were arguing back and forth, I have a woman waiting for me.”
Mann snorted. “That last is the true reason, isn’t it? Amazing how stupid a man can be when he thinks with the wrong organ. All right, go, but return before your luck runs out, and bring her with you.”
“Thank you.” Dieter hesitated. “Will you satisfy my curiosity about something?”
Mann shrugged. “If I can. What is it?”
“The Master of Change. For us of the Red Crown, he’s the centre of everything, but Mama Solveig hardly tells me anything about him. She says her reticence makes us all safer, and maybe it does, but I can’t help wondering about him. It’s my nature. Now you, you’re in communication with him. You must know things I don’t.”
Mann smiled, baring his rows of fangs. “Not so much as you hope. Not nearly enough to satisfy my own curiosity. Not long after I started to change, escaped to the forest, and met up with a few others like me, a voice spoke to me from the empty air. It told me I could make myself an outlaw chieftain and take revenge on those who’d condemned me, that conspirators in Altdorf would help me, and it all turned out to be true. The Red Crown started sending supplies and information not long after.”
“And that’s all the Master’s ever been to you? A voice coming out of nowhere?”
“I’m afraid so.”
Dieter sighed. He’d turned into a mutant and nearly lost his life venturing here, and it hadn’t brought him a step closer to completing his mission. He realised he’d been stymied for so long that it would have surprised him if things had worked out any differently.
Dieter reached Altdorf at sunset, when both the sky behind the city’s countless spires and the river cutting through it burned red as fire. The sight of the towering torch-lit gate froze him in place.
He’d begged a hooded cloak from the mutants to help conceal his third eye. Yet despite that and all his other precautions, he suddenly felt an irrational pang of near-certainty that the guards would spot his mutation. Everybody on the street would notice. The only rational course of action was to turn and flee back the way he’d come.
Instead, he drew a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and hiked on towards the entry, where the sentries permitted him to pass through without so much as a question.
On the avenues and in the plazas, it was the same. His heart hammered and his muscles clenched whenever people chanced to glance in his direction, but their gaze always drifted incuriously on.
Gradually his fear abated to a degree, making space for a sort of crazy exhilaration. It was exciting to fool everyone. It woke his sense of mocking superiority. He knew that malicious arrogance was a manifestation of his ongoing psychic transformation and had often tried to suppress it, but not now. It was better than being terrified.
He found Jarla on the corner where she often plied her trade. When she noticed him, she ran to him and threw herself into his arms. The embrace both warmed him and quickened a different sort of fear. He didn’t want to lose her—for one thing, her companionship kept him from feeling quite so utterly alone—and it was possible he might.
“Mama said not to worry,” she murmured, “but when you were late coming back, I couldn’t help it. I was afraid soldiers searched the wagon or followed you or something.”
“Nothing like that,” he replied, “but I did run into trouble. I need to tell you about it, but not standing on the street. Can we go to your room?”
Jarla said yes, of course, conducted him to her shabby little stall, and shut the door behind them. The cramped space smelled as stale as usual. She lit a candle, and then they sat down side by side on the bed. “What happened?” she asked.
“Adolph tried to get rid of me. He killed Lampertus and told the outlaws I did it, so they’d murder me in turn.”
She winced. “I was so afraid he meant to hurt you.”
“In the end, he wasn’t able to make the lie stick. Leopold ordered a trial by combat to decide who was telling the truth, and I won. To do it, I had to kill Adolph.”
He held his breath as he watched to see how she’d react. For after all, she’d known and loved Adolph long before she ever met Dieter, and he suspected the scribe still held a place in her heart. She wasn’t the sort of person to turn her back entirely on anyone who’d given her affection, however selfish or abusive.
Such being the case, could she forgive the man who’d slain Adolph? Would she even believe the reason why? If not, it seemed unlikely that any of the other cultists would credit it.
Tears flowed from her eyes, cutting channels in the paint on her face. “Thank our lord you’re safe.” She pressed her lips to his, and, relieved, touched by her devotion, he returned the kiss just as fiercely and fumbled with the fastenings of her dress.
Afterwards, he lay blissfully spent on his back, and, propping herself on one elbow, she smiled and studied his face from mere inches away. It was then that she gently caressed the lid of his third eye with her fingertip. “What’s this?” she asked.
He meant to tell her he’d simply suffered a blow to the head while fighting Adolph. Unfortunately, the eye chose that moment to open of its own accord. Jarla gasped and jerked backwards.
Appalled that she’d seen the deformity, Dieter wanted to cringe, but then shame gave way to a surge of anger. How dare she find him monstrous when she professed that she wanted to change, also? When she herself had led him to the cult, the icon, and so bore responsibility for all that followed?
He sat up and closed his fist to strike her, and then she started to sob. “Now you’ll have to go away, and how am I supposed to stand it?”
Was it possible she wasn’t repulsed? He put her hand on her shoulder, and she didn’t pull away. “This… change. It doesn’t sicken you?”
Eyes squinched shut in a futile attempt to stanch the stream of tears, she shook her head. “It startled me. Maybe I’d need to get used to it. But I would, except that I won’t get the chance. You’ll go back to the raiders and I’ll never see you again.”
“I promise that won’t happen.”
She blinked. “Everyone who changes goes to the forest.”
“They don’t need to if they can hide what they are. I can, and if a time ever comes when I can’t, I already have Leopold Mann’s permission to bring you with me when I join his band.”
“Truly? The two of you already talked about it?”
“Truly. I wouldn’t leave you behind.”
“Thank you!” She kissed him, and he tasted the salty tang of her tears. For a moment, he felt he adored her with all his heart, and then the notion seemed ridiculous.
How could genuine love exist between them when she didn’t even know who he really was? When he lied to her every hour they spent together? When he intended to destroy the cause to which she’d pledged her life even though it might well entail destroying her along with it?
Yet he felt what he felt. It was true and false, real and unreal, just as Tzeentch’s teachings would have predicted. Just as all the world supposedly was when a person saw it clearly.
In time, Dieter came to find the situation comical, albeit in a grotesque sort of way. He’d returned from the wilderness with a ghastly deformity right in the middle of his face and the blood of a fellow cultist on his hands, and yet nothing changed.
Glimpsed and dismissed by the blind, indifferent gazes of countless labourers, beggars, merchants, and even soldiers and priests, he walked the teeming streets of Al
tdorf as unremarked as ever. Jarla still loved him, and as far as he could tell, neither Mama Solveig nor any of the other cultists held Adolph’s death against him. They’d all been aware of the scribe’s jealousy and rancour, and they remembered how his reckless experimentation with magic had nearly killed them. Perhaps, though no one said it outright, they believed they were well rid of him.
Dieter supposed that, generally speaking, he was lucky that things continued just as before, but in one respect, it was as unfortunate as could be. He still had no idea how to discover the Master of Change’s whereabouts.
He worried about the problem as he accompanied Mama Solveig on her rounds, taught his pupils in the coven petty magic that he hoped would prove useless for committing treason, and pored over the forbidden parchments. He knew his studies were self-destructive, perhaps the gravest of all the perils facing him. Yet he returned to blasphemous texts again and again, and feared he always would so long as they were available. His only hope was to complete his mission, then hand the documents over to Krieger or throw them in a fire.
Late one night, he sat and read with Mama Solveig’s soft snore buzzing from the darkness enshrouding the cellar. The wavering light of a single taper illuminated Tzeentch’s ebony leer and the pentacle chalked on the floor. He’d used the candle to light his way to the shrine, but no longer needed any such implement to peruse the parchments. The characters glowed like hot coals as soon as he touched the pages.
It was strange how he could read the same words over and over again, and yet his fascination never abated. Perhaps it was a symptom of incipient insanity. He smirked at the thought, then wondered why, for a moment, he’d found it so amusing.
The writing on the page began to flicker as ripples of brightness ran through it. Certain characters shined more brightly, while others dimmed.
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