03 - Death's Legacy (23 page)

The wizard shook his head, a trace of regret entering his
voice for the first time.

“The red wind blows strongly around you, that’s true, but so
does something else. I can quite clearly see the stain of
dhar
in your
aura, and it’s gone far too deep to control or eradicate.”

“You can see what?” Rudi asked, more in the hope of keeping
the conversation reasonable than because he expected an answer he could hope to
understand. Hollobach had implied that this was the only college that Hanna
might be qualified for, and if they refused to take her, she was surely doomed.
If she lost her temper now, it would all be over. The fire mage looked at him
curiously, as if he’d only just registered his presence. Perhaps he had.

“The dark wind of magic.” The man’s voice softened a little
more. “Your friend has a strong natural affinity for pyromancy, it’s true, and
to anyone with the sight from a different college, the strength of the red wind
around her would tend to obscure anything else, but for one of the Bright Order,
it’s all too obvious.” He turned back to Hanna. “If you’d come to us earlier, we
might have been able to help you, but I’m afraid the taint goes too deep for
that now.”

“I see.” Hanna nodded tightly. Rudi expected her to argue,
grow angry, and even threaten the man. The old Hanna might have done, but the
changes that the last few months had wrought in her evidently went further than
he suspected. “I’m sorry to have wasted your time.” She turned. “Come on, Rudi,
we’re going.”

“I’m afraid I can’t allow that,” the wizard said. His posture
shifted subtly, and Rudi felt the hairs on the back of his head begin to rise,
his scalp tingling as if a thunderstorm was imminent.

“You can’t stop me,” Hanna replied, her voice level. To
Rudi’s horror, a seething ball of red flame appeared in the air in front of her,
hissing and spitting as it hovered in the space between them and the mage.

The wizard’s expression hardened.

“You dare to call on the power of the Changer here? You’re
more corrupted than I thought.” He muttered something under his breath, and the
flames vanished. A moment later, a sword materialised in his hand, apparently
composed of fire itself, and he took a step towards Hanna, raising the
supernatural weapon.

“Leave her alone!” Rudi shouted, drawing his own sword by
reflex. A part of his mind watched in wonderment as he interposed himself
between the mage and the girl, feeling the heat of the blazing blade against his
skin. An expression of irritated surprise crossed the wizard’s face.

“Out of the way, boy.” He struck, a lazy blow, clearly not
expecting Rudi to stand his ground. Rudi countered reflexively, expecting the
flames to sweep around the thin strip of steel and across him, but the parry
connected with something that felt physical, redirecting the strike in the nick
of time. A blast of heat seared past his face, and he kicked out, taking the
wizard in the back of the knee as he stepped around him to avoid the blow. With
a bellow of hurt surprise, the man fell, the impact raising a cloud of ash that
hung in the air between them, coating Rudi’s throat, and leaving his eyes
stinging from the choking grit.

“Hanna, run!” He turned, expecting the girl to have taken
advantage of the momentary distraction to escape, but she was holding her
ground, her face tense. The bronze gate was opening, and, in the distance, other
orange-robed figures could be seen running through the ashes towards them,
bobbing and weaving like living flames. Clearly, despite her jibe to the
magister, the gatekeeper hadn’t been neglecting his duty after all.

“I’ve done with running,” she said flatly. Rudi took a step
back to stand by her shoulder, his blade raised to fend off the wizard, who was
clambering to his feet. The man’s face was contorted with rage, his robes
mottled with grey powder, and his insubstantial sword hissed gently as he
brought it up to a guard position. He clearly knew something of swordplay, and
wasn’t about to make the mistake of underestimating Rudi for a second time.

“Then die where you stand, witch.” He moved into the attack
again, a little more warily, but sure of the support of his approaching
colleagues.

Hanna screamed something incomprehensible, which seemed to
vibrate through every bone in Rudi’s skeleton, and he was barely able to deflect
the blazing weapon once more. Had it not been for his extensive experience of
street fighting, which allowed instinct to take over, he knew he wouldn’t have
made it at all. Exploiting the opening he’d made, he kicked out again, driving
the wizard back with a boot to the midriff.

Abruptly, the man was enveloped in a nimbus of emerald fire.
Rudi flinched, expecting him to immolate, like the skaven that Hanna had killed,
or the soldiers that Greta had struck down on the moors, but the wizard seemed
completely unharmed. It appeared that Bright wizards were immune to pyromancy,
which now he came to think about it wasn’t all that surprising. With a nervous
glance at the approaching mages, who seemed to have closed the distance far more
quickly than he would have thought possible, he shifted his stance, and prepared
for his opponent’s next onslaught.

“Get out of here. I’ll hold them off.” To Rudi’s
astonishment, the wizard turned to face his approaching colleagues. The flaming
sword vanished as abruptly as it had appeared, and a sheet of flame burst into
existence, cutting off the reinforcements from the college, snapping and
twisting like a banner in the wind.

“Thanks,” Hanna said, with a feral grin. She grabbed Rudi’s
arm, and tugged him into motion. “Come on, we haven’t got much time.” His head
reeling, Rudi began to run back the way they’d come.

“What did you do?” he asked. For a moment, Hanna looked
confused.

“I’m not really sure,” she said at last, their footfalls
stumbling through the carpet of ash. “It was like when the skaven attacked us,
and I found I could do the fireball spell. It just appeared in my head, and I
knew I could cast it. I’ve affected his mind, so he thinks his friends are
enemies, and we’re on his side.”

“I see.” Rudi stole a glance back behind them. From the
flashes in the distance, the deluded mage was still making a fight of it. “Will
it last long?”

“I don’t know,” Hanna said, as their footsteps began to
clatter on cobbles again. Somehow, in the handful of minutes that Rudi could
have sworn was all they’d spent in the wilderness of ash, night had fallen, the
streets in the distance illuminated by flaring sconces, and the slivers of light
leaking around the edges of doors and shutters. She shrugged, a malicious smile
appearing on her face. “I don’t suppose he will, though.”

“What will you do now?” Rudi asked, slowing their pace to a
more normal one as they approached the inhabited area again, hoping to blend
into the ever-present crowd. Raucous laughter drifted from a couple of nearby
taverns, mocking the ruination of Hanna’s hopes. He could barely imagine the
disappointment that the girl must be feeling. Instead of a refuge, she had only
found more enemies. “Where will you go?”

“I’ll be fine,” Hanna said, with a resolution that surprised
him. “I pretty much expected this to happen anyway.”

“You did?” Rudi fought to keep the astonishment from his
voice. Hanna nodded.

“I spoke to Gofrey on the boat. He warned me that the
colleges might be afraid of anyone showing real talent. They want dutiful little
apprentices who do what they’re told, not powerful mages with minds of their
own.”

“What did he suggest you do?” Rudi asked. “He seemed to be
part of a group of some kind, but he didn’t want to say much about it.”

“In case he was wrong. I know.” Hanna nodded again. “But he
did say that the college would be watched. If something like this happened, the
Silver Wheel would know, and take steps to help me.”

“What kind of steps?” Rudi asked. Hanna shrugged, looking
slightly nonplussed.

“I don’t know. Send someone to get in touch, I suppose.”

“I see.” Rudi nodded, scanning the sea of faces around them
for any sign of recognition or complicity. “Any idea how we’re supposed to
recognise them?”

“I don’t think you’ll have much trouble with that,” a new
voice said quietly from the shadows of an alley mouth. It was soft and feminine,
and vaguely familiar. Turning, his hand already on his sword hilt, Rudi
struggled to identify it.

Hanna had no such difficulty, breaking into a run towards the
half-obscured figure, wrapped in a hooded cloak against the evening chill. As
Rudi followed, the lurking woman was briefly illuminated by a shaft of light
that burst momentarily from an opening door. It only lasted an instant, but that
was all it took. Then the alley mouth plunged back into darkness, obscuring the
familiar face of Greta Reifenstahl once again.

“Mother!” Hanna flung herself into Greta’s arms, and the two
women embraced one another fervently. Feeling uncomfortably intrusive, Rudi
turned away from their emotional reunion, preferring to remain a few paces
closer to the mouth of the alley where he could keep watch more easily. While
Hanna and Greta continued their conversation in a hushed and excited undertone
he scanned the street for any signs of unusual activity, fearing that if they
lingered much longer they’d attract the attention of their enemies. After all,
if the Silver Wheel, whoever they were, could keep a discreet eye on the Bright
College without anyone noticing, then so might the witch hunters, eager to
pounce on disappointed applicants like Hanna.

His jaw knotted at the thought. Even now, he couldn’t quite
believe the casual arrogance with which the magister they’d met had turned her
away, without even giving her the chance to prove herself.

“Hanna, my love.” After a few moments Greta stepped away from
her daughter’s encircling arms, and smiled at her fondly. “You’re looking well.”

“I feel well.” A new strength seemed to be flowing through
the girl. Her posture was relaxed and confident, despite the renewed threat to
her life that was hanging over her, without even the hope of a reprieve. Rudi
watched her as unobtrusively as he could, concerned that the effort of casting
the mysterious spell that had turned the wizard against his own colleagues had
fatigued her as much as the previous eruptions of spontaneous magic seemed to
have done, but this time she seemed completely unaffected by the experience. She
didn’t even seem breathless after fleeing from the wilderness of ash. “I’m
growing more powerful by the day.”

Her voice seemed different too, Rudi thought. It had always
sounded mellifluous enough to him, but it seemed richer now, with textures and
harmonies in it that he couldn’t really distinguish individually, but which were
undeniably there. Greta nodded, with more than a trace of maternal pride.

“I could tell that. Precious few natural talents could best a
college magister in a contest of power.”

“You saw that?” Rudi asked. He wasn’t sure why he was so
surprised. Greta had been turning up from time to time ever since the fugitives
had left Kohlstadt, usually accompanied by the hulking mutant, Hans
Katzenjammer. Every time she did so she helped them in some way, before
vanishing again, usually leaving a pile of dead enemies behind her. Greta nodded
in response. “Then why didn’t you do something to help?”

“There was no need,” the witch said. “I knew Hanna was going
to beat the arrogant fool. The Changer is the source of all magic. He’s scarcely
going to allow it to harm his chosen servants, is he?”

“Then Gerhard was right.” Rudi felt a sickening lurch in the
pit of his stomach, unable to tear his eyes away from the horned sorceress. Part
of him didn’t even want to, that would mean looking at Hanna again, his friend
and companion for the last few months, the one person in the world on whom he’d
felt able to rely. “You really are agents of Chaos.”

“Gerhard knows a lot less than he thinks he does,” Greta
countered. “You’ve seen him murder and terrorise, just on the suspicion that
someone might have glimpsed a little of the truth he tries so hard to suppress.
Have you forgotten what he did to Hans’ mother?”

Rudi hadn’t. The image of Frau Katzenjammer, eyes wide with
shock, still trying to comprehend what had happened to her son, even as Gerhard
slit her throat, rose up vividly in his mind. He shook his head, trying to
dispel the unsettling vision.

“Of course not, but…” He could scarcely force the words
out. He took a step deeper into the darkness of the alleyway, and lowered his
voice, afraid of being overheard by the distant revellers, whose innocent
merriment seemed so ironic a counterpoint to the maelstrom of horror that he
felt sweeping over him. “You worship the Dark Gods!”

“Only one of them,” Greta said, “and whatever you’ve been
told, unlike the others, Tzeentch is essentially benign.”

“Tell that to the Ostlanders!” Rudi snapped. “He didn’t seem
all that benign to them when his armies were slaughtering their way across the
Empire!”

For the first time, Greta’s face clouded a little. “Not all
change is subtle or peaceful,” she said, “but the real damage was done by the
servants of the other three. They truly do deserve the execration heaped on
their names throughout the world.”

“You really are an acolyte of the Changer?” Hanna asked,
doubt entering her voice for the first time. She stared at her mother in what
seemed to Rudi to be honest perplexity.

Greta nodded. “Of course I am. His greatest adversary is the
Lord of Decay. How could I call myself a real healer if I didn’t do all I could
to confound the machinations of the bringers of disease? The more I called upon
his aid, the more powerful I became, and the better able I was to help people.
How can there possibly be anything wrong in that?”