03 - Death's Legacy (33 page)

Turning away from the sanctuary, he found himself looking
into the relieved eyes of his guardians. Both looked a little breathless, but he
affected not to have noticed their brief absence at all.

“Thank you for your patience,” he said, mildly surprised at
how steady his voice sounded. “I feel a little better now.” Although he doubted
that he’d get much sleep tonight, after his unexpected encounter with Hanna. His
visions of the girl were stronger and more vivid than ever.

“Are you all right?” Gerhard asked the next evening, gazing
at him quizzically. Rudi nodded. His sleepless night had been succeeded by a
restless day in which he’d eaten sparingly and had finally grabbed a fitful nap
in the middle of the afternoon.

“Apart from a daemon parasite sucking on my soul, you mean?”
he asked sarcastically. Gerhard nodded.

“I take your point,” he said mildly, “but these things take
time. You know we’re doing all we can to find a way of removing it.”

“That’s just it,” Rudi said, pacing the room.
“You’re
doing it, you and Osric. I’m just sitting here, day after day, waiting for
something to happen, and it’s driving me crazy!” His voice was rising, he
realised. Now that he was giving vent to the frustration that had been boiling
away inside him for so long, the relief seemed almost exquisite. “I’m tired of
carrying this abomination around in my head, I’m tired of being jerked about by
Chaos-worshipping lunatics, and I’m tired of sitting on my hands waiting for
someone else to sort it all out for me. I want to do something about it myself!”

“That’s highly commendable,” Gerhard said levelly, “but while
you remain here, you’re as safe as we can make you. We can’t take the risk of
letting you run around the streets, where the agents of Chaos would have an
opportunity of striking at you again.”

“I know that,” Rudi said. “I’m not asking you to let me go
out looking for cultists. That’s your job. I’d just like to do something to help
speed things up, that’s all. You said it yourself, the sooner we get rid of this
thing inside me, the better.”

“That’s true.” The witch hunter nodded judiciously. “Did you
have anything specific in mind?”

“I could help in the library,” Rudi said. “I can read, at any
rate, and I could hardly be safer anywhere else than in there. You heard Osric
say that he would have found out about the ritual earlier if he’d had more time
to spend checking the records.”

“That’s true.” Gerhard nodded thoughtfully. “But I’m afraid
most of the books he’s consulting aren’t that easily read.”

“I noticed,” Rudi said dryly. “But some of them are in
Reikspiel, aren’t they? I could look through those, at least.”

“I suppose you could.” Gerhard looked at him levelly. “But
it’s highly unlikely that you’d find anything pertinent in any of those
documents. Most grimoires are in arcane languages at best, and a few of the most
likely sources are in no human tongue.”

“It’s worth a try, though, isn’t it?” Rudi asked. He looked
challengingly at the witch hunter. “I bet you don’t even know for sure what
you’ve got locked away down there.”

“That’s true,” Gerhard conceded. “Most of the books we’ve
acquired over the centuries are there to be contained, rather than consulted.
There are those who argue that they’d be better off burned and forgotten, but
destroying the page doesn’t destroy the knowledge written on it, and if others
use such blasphemies against us, we can fight them more effectively if we know
precisely what we’re up against.”

“Exactly,” Rudi said, “and even if there isn’t much chance of
me finding anything useful, at least I’d feel better for doing something.”

“Fair enough.” Gerhard nodded thoughtfully. “The talisman
should prevent the daemon from taking advantage of anything you come across.
I’ll get Osric to make the arrangements.”

The following day, Rudi began his researches in the library,
or to be more precise, in the outlying annexe that the witch hunters used for
their clandestine meetings. Gerhard conducted him there shortly after dawn, and
left him there under the watchful eyes of von Karien, his ever-present templar
shadows left waiting outside the door. His kinsman expressed no surprise at his
newly discovered enthusiasm for ferreting through the stacks of arcane tomes,
merely glancing up from the volume he was perusing at the battered wooden table
in the centre of the room as Gerhard ushered Rudi inside. Rudi glanced at it in
passing, but the text was in Classical, the long-dead language used only by
scholars, and found outside libraries almost nowhere but in the ruins left by
those who had passed from the Old World long before Sigmar had reshaped it in
the forge of his indomitable will.

“So, this was your own idea, was it?” von Karien asked, once
his colleague had departed. Rudi nodded, taking the man’s meaning. In his
position, Rudi supposed, he would be wondering if the newly kindled desire to
search through books of arcane lore was entirely innocent, or the result of
Chaotic contamination from the daemon he carried within him; perhaps even at the
instigation of the daemon itself.

“I think so,” he said, meeting the implied challenge to his
motives head on. Von Karien nodded, curtly.

“I hope so. What changed your mind?”

“I’m not sure,” Rudi told him, somehow sure that sullen
vagueness would seem more convincing than an elaborately-prepared lie about his
conversation with Hanna. “I just got sick and tired of waiting around for
someone else to solve my problems for me, that’s all.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” von Karien said. “I haven’t exactly
been thrilled about wet-nursing you, either.” He gestured to the bookshelves
behind them. “I’ve had anything that seems even vaguely relevant brought in
here, for my own researches.” Rudi turned his head to look in the direction the
witch hunter had indicated. Several of the stacks had been cleared of the old
books that he’d noticed the last time he’d been in the room, and replaced with
bundles of paper and a handful of bound volumes. “Most of the material in plain
Reikspiel is on the shelves in that corner. Interrogation transcripts, the
grimoires we recovered from the witches and necromancers we came across looking
for your friends, that kind of thing.” He shot an evaluating glance at Rudi. “I
hope you’ve got a strong stomach, boy.”

“Strong enough,” Rudi replied shortly. “I’ll start with the
necromancers. They’re supposed to know something about life and death.”

“They think they do,” von Karien said, with a trace of
vindictive amusement, “but they burn just as easily in the end.”

“Well they should know something about the soul too,
shouldn’t they?” Rudi replied shortly.

“I’ve never known one with anything worth the name left,” von
Karien said, and returned to his own researches.

Despite his casual denial, Rudi found the material he began
to read through that morning hard-going, the minds who’d produced it so clearly
deranged that the insanity of its authors seemed to permeate the very pages it
was written on. There was a palpable malevolence about much of it too, a
positive glorying in death and destruction, which he found both distasteful and
disturbing. Nevertheless, he persevered, reluctant to give in so easily and
allow von Karien the satisfaction of having his opinion confirmed.

His dreams that night were dark and unnerving, so much so
that he woke suddenly, his heart hammering, and he almost resolved to remain in
his room the next morning and leave von Karien to his researches. Then he
remembered Hanna’s assertion that he wasn’t the kind of person to let others
solve his problems for him, and the idea of betraying her confidence in him was
even more painful than that of facing another day subjected to the ravings of
madmen. The thought of her calmed him at last, and he fell asleep again, the
image of her face strong in his mind.

After that it became much easier to deal with the horrors he
read, the thought of Hanna a potent antidote to the spiritual poison on the
pages in front of him. On the third day he was astonished to discover what
appeared to be the manuscript of a play, bundled up and sealed.

“This is by Detlef Sierck,” he said, bemused, glancing at the
name on the title page. “What’s it doing in here?”

“Not being performed,” von Karien said. “And it never will be
again. Once, I gather, was more than enough.” Shrugging, Rudi returned it to the
shelf. Fascinating as the chance to read a suppressed work by the Empire’s
greatest playwright would normally have been, it wouldn’t help him to gain any
insights into the problem that faced him at the moment. Forcing a space between
two of the bound volumes on the shelf he’d been working along to make room for
the folio, he found it obstructed by something behind them. Von Karien glanced
up, leaning back in his chair to peer around the shelf at him. “What’s the
matter?”

“There’s something jammed in behind here,” Rudi said. He
pulled a couple of the larger volumes off the shelf and fished around behind
them, eventually producing a small book. It was bound in plain leather, worn
with age, and with what looked like water stains marring its surface. Its pages
were wrinkled with damp, and smelled faintly of mildew. Evidently it had spent a
good deal of time out of doors, or perhaps in a decaying building somewhere,
becoming gradually exposed to the elements as the structure around it crumbled
away. He’d seen a couple like it already, although neither had been in quite
such poor condition. “It’s just another diary by the look of it. It must have
fallen down the back there when this lot was put on the shelves.”

He returned to the table and opened it at random, half
expecting the words to wriggle away from his eyes as they had done when he’d
glanced at the
Fulvium Paginarum.
They didn’t. Instead, they remained
fixed on the page, faint, crabbed handwriting, the words blurred a little where
the ink had seeped into the dampened paper, but still perfectly legible.

…this day did I again encounter the beastmen, escaping
barely by means of concealment within a tree of alder, due to the clamour of
their coming. Of the yrbes I obtained I anticipate much, and hope not to venture
within the wood again for considerable time…

The Reikspiel was somewhat archaic, but still easy to
understand. Rudi stared at the page, wondering who had written it, and why.

That question at least was easily answered. He flicked back
through the leaves until he found the first.

Being a chronicle of my researches into the mystical realm,
begun this day the third of Sigmarzeit in the 1832nd year of the Empire, set
down for the guidance of others, by Theodoric of Ostermark.

Rudi felt the hairs on the back of his neck begin to prickle.
This document predated the founding of the Colleges of Magic by almost five
hundred years, and the destruction of the fabled lost city, which had once been
the capital of its author’s home province, by more than a century and a half.
Perhaps this Theodoric, whoever he had been, really had stumbled across a
crucial piece of knowledge lost to future generations.

The more he read, the more he began to realise that this was
nothing like the deluded and blasphemous ravings he’d been plodding through so
wearily before. Though most of Theodoric’s notes concerned matters that Rudi
knew nothing about, the man seemed to have been rational and cautious, building
methodically on his earlier discoveries, and putting such arcane lore as he was
able to glean from other sources to the test wherever possible. In the cases
where it wasn’t, because to do so seemed too dangerous or the collaboration of
other spell casters was required, the sage of Ostermark had merely recorded what
he’d heard or read, with such observations as had evidently seemed pertinent at
the time, and moved on to more readily verifiable researches.

It was one such passage, about halfway through the book,
which arrested his attention. By this time, Rudi had been reading for several
hours, and his eyes were blurring with fatigue.

…it is said that the True Essences may be conjoined by
means of such a ritual, as was once used by the shamans of the Old Way to
commune with the spirits of beasts, although great care must be exercised lest
the souls thus conjoined be intermingled too greatly for their subsequent
dissolution…

For a moment, the words hung before him, their meaning
obscured by the fog of exhaustion that had descended inexorably upon him as the
day wore on, but as they penetrated his fatigue-dulled synapses a flood of
familiar panic shook his body. Trembling so violently that he almost dropped the
book, he took a deep breath and fought for calm. Whatever these notes might
mean, the daemon inside him was clearly terrified of their implications. Rudi
gave a feral smile.

“Got you,” he told the thing, savouring the prospect of
imminent victory. He took a deep breath, stilling the hammering of his heart,
and looked up at the witch hunter sitting opposite. “Osric. I think this may be
it.”

“You’re sure this is genuine?” Gerhard asked. Von Karien
nodded, the flickering of firelight in the grate of Rudi’s chamber in the
Templars’ Court deepening the shadows around his face, and imparting an
uncharacteristic glow to his normally pale features.

“It certainly appears to be. It’s old without a doubt, and
the text is a close match for the known fragments.”

“The known fragments of what?” Rudi asked, and Gerhard
glanced in his direction.

“Theodoric’s manuscript. It’s been copied many times over the
centuries, no doubt being pared down to just the passages that the transcriber
understood in the process, until little remained in circulation but a handful of
spells, passed from witch to witch.” Von Karien nodded again.