The Enemy Within

by Richard Lee Byers - (ebook by Undead)

  Dieter’s assailant shifted its grip from his neck to his shoulders. In all likelihood, it had already choked him into unconsciousness or worse. It drew the pale tongue back into its mouth and bent to bite the prone man’s throat.

  Realising she was out of time, Jarla sprinted. The creature heard her coming, straightened up, and started to twist around. She jabbed her thumbs with their long, painted nails at its round black eyes.

  Her right thumb found its target; it was like plunging it into jelly. The left one missed and skated along the side of the creature’s face, scratching its dry, wrinkled hide.

  She pulled her left hand back for another try, but the entity struck first, a backhand swat that caught her under the jaw and sent her reeling backwards. As she struggled to regain her balance, the creature hissed and drew itself to its feet.

  She retreated. It was all she could do. The creature stumbled, swayed, clapped a hand to its perforated, leaking eye, and she dared to hope she’d incapacitated it after all. Maybe it wanted her to think that and relax her guard, for a bare instant later, it sprang. Startled, she froze.

  A wind sprang up. It tore at Jarla’s hair and clothing, but she was only at the edge of the effect. The blast of air had actually targeted her attacker. It caught the creature in mid-leap and tumbled it across the room to smash into the edge of the dais. Bone cracked. The apparition convulsed for a heartbeat or two, then slumped motionless.

  Jarla pivoted towards Dieter, who was struggling to stand. She ran to him and helped him up. “You summoned the wind, didn’t you?” she asked.

  Rubbing his neck, where the marks of the blood-drinker’s fingers were still visible, he sucked in several rasping breaths before attempting a reply. “Yes. The gods know how. I couldn’t really even talk. When I pushed you away from the altar, I meant for you to get out of here.”

  “I’m glad now that I didn’t.”

  “Keep yourself safe. I have to finish this.” Wiping and smearing the blood on his forehead, he fixed his three-eyed gaze on the Master of Change.

  As many spells as he’d cast and as much punishment as he’d absorbed already, Dieter was amazed he was still conscious. He could only infer that something, his mutation, perhaps, or even Tzeentch’s favour, had granted him reserves of stamina no untainted human magus could match. Even so, he sensed he was reaching the end of them, but as he’d indicated to Jarla, he saw no choice but to keep fighting.

  He took a moment to commune with the sky. He felt the wet weight of the rain pent inside the clouds, the restless winds, and, above them, the webs of force established by the positions of the planets and constellations.

  At the same time, he observed the phantasmal slime and shimmer oozing and swirling through the chamber, sometimes adhering to surfaces, sometimes floating and billowing like mist.

  Two powers, one filtered through the cleansing medium of the firmament and one streaming directly from the ultimate filth that was Chaos. One pure and one poisonous. He could command either, and knew that to have any chance at all against the Master of Change, he was likely to need both.

  He rattled off a hybrid blasphemy of a spell he constructed extemporaneously. It was an insanely reckless thing to try, but, in his exalted state of consciousness, he was confident he was combining the words properly.

  He swept his hand through the air as if throwing a ball, and splinters of light and shadow hurtled from his fingertips. He hoped that the Master’s mystical defences, whatever they were, would prove inadequate to the task of stopping both sorts of missile at the same time.

  The darts plunged into the Master’s back, and he lurched around to face his attacker. The little head in the centre of his chest screamed in pain or rage, but the one set atop his shoulders showed no sign of distress, in fact, the enormous grin with those tombstone teeth stretched even wider.

  The Lord of the Red Crown snarled words of power, and as he did so, his form split into two superimposed images, the first, the illusory one, moving just in advance of the second. The phantom thrust out its two left arms, and a colourless, rippling virulence streaked from its fingers. The precognitive vision warned when and in what vector the actual attack would come, and Dieter wrenched himself to the side.

  Unfortunately, the edge of the effect must have grazed him anyway, or else its mere proximity was enough to cause harm, for his mind fractured, memory, identity and purpose splintering into terror and confusion. Already incapable of knowing precisely what he was doing or why, he visualised the configuration of the heavens at the time and place of his birth and shouted his own name.

  His thoughts snapped back into focus, and he realised Franz Lukas’ ward against psychic assault had saved him. His teacher had trained him to cast the spell as a sort of reflex, just as an expert fencer would parry a threatening blade without the need for conscious thought. Otherwise, it would have been useless against the very assault it was intended to defeat.

  Dieter spoke to the air and the drifting, seething mist that was Chaos, imploring them to unite. He sent the result howling at the Master of Change.

  The wind battered the warlock and tore the multicoloured vestment from his body. The venom suspended inside it dissolved his flesh like acid. Blubber melted, baring gory ribs. The infantile head eroded to a featureless nub. The twitching fingers studding the worm-like tail burned away.

  Yet the Master didn’t collapse. Perhaps Tzeentch had marked and claimed him so completely that even a dose of Chaos in its most destructive form couldn’t slay him. He screamed a word, and the wind failed. He shook a blistered, smoking fist, and an unseen force smashed into Dieter’s stomach and knocked him reeling backwards.

  The same force pounded him again and again. Despite the punishment, he managed a dark binding. He hoped to ensnare an invisible assailant, but apparently there was nothing tangible for the jagged coils to grab. They jerked uselessly shut on themselves.

  Another blow spiked pain through his shoulder. It didn’t seem to him as if the attacks were coming with extraordinary accuracy or science, but everyone connected, and it would only be a matter of moments before they incapacitated or killed him.

  He doubted he could cast another spell. He didn’t have time, and the relentless assault would likely keep him from articulating the incantation properly even if he did. That almost certainly meant he was doomed, but still he struggled to think. To perceive. To find the way out of his dilemma.

  He felt the wind awaiting his command. Evidently the Master of Change hadn’t dissolved the enchantment that bound it to his will. He’d merely interrupted the flow of power, the way a slap in the face might startle and baulk a man, but only for a moment. Still, what did it matter when Dieter had already discovered that even a corrosive gale was insufficient to put the warlock down?

  “The god’s dagger,” said the priest.

  Dieter glanced to the side. He’d lost sight of the robed apparition when the fight began, but the priest was standing beside him now. Despite the battle raging in the vault, he looked as calm as ever, and why not? Invisible fists weren’t pounding him to death. It seemed likely that no one but Dieter could even see him.

  “You felt its spirit when you picked it up,” the priest continued. “Perhaps you can still feel it.”

  Dieter realised it was worth a try. He couldn’t see the knife anymore. The dais blocked his view. But he reached out with his mind and sensed the same malevolence he’d encountered before. It enabled him to pinpoint the weapon’s location.

  Another blow rocked him backwards. He struggled to transcend the shock and focus his will. The wind screamed. The dagger spun up from behind the pedestal, then shot at the Master’s head.

  With all the power at his command, the warlock surely could have deflected the attack, but with his eyes fixed on Dieter, he didn’t see it coming. Nor could the secondary head warn him, because Dieter had already succeeded in killing that part of him, anyway.

  Bone crunched as the sacrificial instrument punched into the back o
f the Master’s head, burying itself to the hilt. The warlock pitched forwards, and after a moment, it became apparent that nothing was striking at Dieter anymore. At the same time, he felt the knife’s vicious jubilation at making a kill.

  Dieter wished that he too could savour the victory, but since he and Jarla were still in danger, it was a luxury he couldn’t afford. Gasping and swaying on his feet, he cast about, taking stock of the rest of the battle.

  The fiery serpent was gone, but some of the Red Crown’s conjured horrors had perished, too, and in the wake of their summoner’s death, others now vanished, their defensive line disintegrating. Its loss would make it more difficult for the four surviving followers of the Red Crown to cast spells unhindered, and it appeared that Krieger wasn’t the only fighter on the other side capable of working magic of his own. Another swordsman chanted a rhyme, and a retreating warlock’s foot plunged into solid floor as if he’d stepped in a hole.

  All in all, it seemed that the Master’s death had turned the tide in Krieger’s favour, and, reasonably confident of the witch hunter’s chances, Dieter retreated, distancing himself from the thick of the fray. Battered and weary as he was, he urgently needed to catch his breath and settle himself for what was still to come. Jarla scurried out of a recessed space in the wall to join him.

  It took about a minute for the last of the Red Crown to fall. Krieger was still on his feet, and so were half a dozen of his men. At least two of the latter were sorcerers. No one was casting spells at the moment—which had the beneficial effect of slowing the random Chaotic manifestations distorting reality throughout the chamber—but a violet glimmer, evidence of the forces they’d recently invoked, crawled on their lips and hands.

  Seven against one was long odds, just about as hopeless a situation as the one Dieter had faced when he’d first defied the Master of Change. Jarla tried to embrace him, and he prevented her. He didn’t want his movements hampered or his view obstructed. “It’s not over yet,” he whispered.

  Krieger leered at the two of them. “When did you grow the third eye?” he asked.

  “A while back,” Dieter said. “When did you cast your lot with the Purple Hand?”

  The big man chuckled. “I suppose that once I burst in here with a Chaos creature in tow, and my brothers and I started using magic, my true allegiance became rather obvious.”

  “I should have realised early on,” Dieter said. “It made no sense that, with all its resources, the Order of Witch Hunters couldn’t find a more willing and capable spy than me. But you couldn’t involve the entire order, could you? The honest witch hunters couldn’t know anything about what your little circle of traitors intended if, at the end of it all, you were going to plunder the Master of Change’s collection of grimoires for your own cult.”

  “Cleverly reasoned,” Krieger said. “That was the way of it.” He glanced at the man standing next to him. “I told you he was sharp.”

  “Apparently I’m not,” Dieter said, “for I missed other clues along the way. The arrival of the first burning serpent gave me what I desperately needed: a second chance to win Jarla and Adolph’s trust. The timing was amazingly fortunate—unless the people who were shadowing me observed my predicament and sent the creature to help me resolve it. Then, later, you had no interest in catching Leopold Mann and his followers. You claimed it wasn’t your job, but, considering all the harm the raiders have done and the notoriety they’ve achieved, it’s difficult to understand how any loyal servant of the Empire could be so utterly indifferent.

  “But you didn’t answer my question: how long have you served the Purple Hand?” Dieter didn’t actually care, but he did want to prolong the conversation. It gave him additional time to control his laboured breathing and to recover a bit more of his strength.

  “It’s only been a few years,” Krieger said. “When I started out, I was what you called an ‘honest’ witch hunter.”

  “What happened?”

  Krieger snorted. “What happened was that I was a man, too, with a man’s appetites, and in one little flyspeck of a hamlet the peasants asked me to judge an accused witch who was also the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

  “The evidence indicated she probably had dabbled in casting charms of the most trivial sort, but I had no reason to think anything awful would happen if I pretended otherwise. So I set her free, and she thanked me as we’d agreed she would.”

  “And in due course,” Dieter said, “something bad did happen.”

  “Yes. She turned into a monster, slaughtered her entire village, and commenced a rampage across the province. It took a company of knights to bring her down.

  “I winced when I heard about it, but at first I wasn’t worried. No one was left alive to tattle that I’d investigated the bitch and declared her innocent. But then someone came to me with proof that he and his associates were in possession of the affidavit I’d written.”

  “‘Someone’ being a member of the Purple Hand.”

  “Yes, although I didn’t find that out for a while. He told me that if I didn’t do him and his friends the occasional favour—condemn a prisoner they wanted burned, or turn a blind eye to another’s obvious guilt—they’d send the document to my superiors, and that would have been the end for me. I doubted my ability to convince a tribunal I’d made an honest mistake, and it wouldn’t have mattered even if I could. The witch had done too much harm for the wretch who released her to evade punishment, no matter what the circumstances.”

  “So you capitulated.”

  “Yes, and over time, the favours became more frequent, and came to include crimes that had nothing to do with witch hunting. My new masters paid me in gold for my services, gradually took me into their confidence, and, discerning the aptitude in me, set about teaching me magic. They were drawing me in, you see. Converting me from a reluctant conscript into a true believer.”

  “And it worked?”

  “Of course. How could it fail? I couldn’t deny the truth of the Changer’s teachings, or resist the lure of forbidden secrets. I couldn’t help delighting in the touch of Chaos and the working of Dark Magic.” Krieger grinned. “Judging from the look of your forehead, you can’t, either.”

  “You’re wrong about that.” Dieter decided he’d regained about as much of his vigour as he was likely to without actually lying down and sleeping the rest of the night away. “We should talk about what happens next.”

  “If you like.”

  “I’ve given you everything you demanded of me, with the result that you’ve accomplished all your goals. The Master of Change and his lieutenants are dead. His library is surely waiting down here somewhere for you to take it for your own.” It hurt him to say as much, with the implication that he himself would never see it. Even now, in the most desperate circumstances, the craving for dark lore still gnawed at him. “Now I ask you to keep your promises. Let Jarla and me go. Clear my name.”

  Krieger chuckled. “So you can return home with a third eye in the middle of your forehead?”

  “Let me worry about that. All you need to know is that my deformity works to your advantage. I can’t denounce you as a Chaos worshipper lest you denounce me for a mutant. Not that I’d bother to accuse you anyway. There was a time when I might have cared about your crimes, but I’ve had such concerns beaten out of me. At this point I simply want to save myself.”

  “It’s good to hear you say so, and as you’re willing to be sensible, I’ll gladly honour our agreement. Why not?”

  Dieter sneered. “Why not, indeed? Except, of course, that you came to grief once already by allowing a person bearing the stain of Chaos to go free. Why would you risk it again, and have the threat that someday, for whatever reason, I might reveal the truth about you hanging over your head? Especially considering that you made the world believe I’m the Chaos worshipper. If you catch me—killing me in the process, of course—you’ll advance your career as a witch hunter, which will bring additional opportunities to further the cause
of the Purple Hand. Whereas if you declare that you were wrong about me, it will count as a mark against you.

  “All of which leads me to suspect you’re simply trying to cozen me into dropping my guard, to make it easier to kill me.”

  “It would have been easier for you, too,” Krieger replied, “if you could have found it in your heart to trust me one last time. Because I truly am grateful for your efforts, and I would have made your end quick and clean. You would have died happy, without ever realising that things weren’t going to work out for you after all. But if you prefer to go down fighting, so be it.” He waved his hand, and his men started forwards. Jarla whimpered.

  “I wouldn’t,” Dieter said. He displayed the little clay figure with the same subtle flourish he’d once employed to pluck pennies from a child’s ears.

  Dieter was no sculptor, and the figure bore only a crude resemblance to its inspiration. The ambient gloom and the distance between him and Krieger should likewise have hindered recognition. But perhaps the witch hunter felt a pang of instinctive alarm when he beheld the doll, for he barked, “Wait!” His minions halted their advance.

  “That was wise,” Dieter said.

  “What is that thing?” Krieger growled.

  “It’s you, Otto. Your future.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I said before that I should have deduced you were a Chaos cultist sooner than I did, and that’s true, but I did realise before tonight. Since you have pretensions to magical skill yourself, you likely know that all true sorcerers catch glimpses of Chaos worming its way through the mundane world from time to time. This new eye of mine enhances that mode of sight.

  “The eye opened a crack the second time we met at the tavern, and I saw an ugly glimmer crawling on you. At first, I imagined it was just an outward sign of a vicious, brutish nature, but then I realised it meant Chaos had taken you for its own.