03 - Death's Legacy (34 page)

“That’s all I’d assumed it was, when we recovered it from one
of the Silver Wheel covens we raided last month. I never thought to look at it
more closely. If Rudi hadn’t found it when he did, we might never have realised
it was the original.”

“Or at least a full copy,” Gerhard said. He frowned, looking
troubled. “This ritual seems like a promising place to start, but it also
confirms what we most feared. Greta Reifenstahl, or her associates, are
definitely planning something.”

“Then we need to act quickly,” von Karien urged. “Having the
book in our hands should spike their guns nicely, at any rate.”

“Unless they’ve already copied the parts they need,” Gerhard
pointed out.

“All the more reason to get on with things,” Rudi said,
remembering Hanna’s whispered words in the temple. The others were only
speculating, but he knew for certain that Greta was planning something
dangerous. Or had Hanna really meant to warn him about the witch hunters?
Perhaps he should stall for time, and attempt to delay their attempt until the
sorceress had been able to carry out her plan after all… His head hummed with
confusion, made all the worse by his ever-present headache.

“I agree,” Gerhard said, taking matters out of his hands once
again. “Whether or not the Silver Wheel intended to use this ritual to liberate
the daemon, we can use the same method to destroy it.” A thin smile appeared on
his face, matching von Karien’s. “I have to admit, there’s a certain amount of
satisfaction to be had from turning our enemies’ own weapons against them.”

After that, events seemed to move with bewildering rapidity.
Clerics of increasing seniority came and went, poring over the battered book,
and scribbling copious notes of their own, while the witch hunters held hushed
and urgent meetings from which Rudi was pointedly excluded. Once again, he was
gripped by the sensation of being thrust to the periphery of events, but this
time the sense of frustration he’d felt before was absent. Hanna had promised
that they’d meet again, and although he’d failed to catch sight of her on any of
his subsequent visits to the temple, he continued to find the thought of her
hovering presence reassuring.

So it was with a surprising degree of calm that he listened
to Gerhard a couple of evenings later, while the man in black outlined the plan
they were to follow.

“I can’t deny that it’s going to be tricky,” the witch hunter
said, sipping a mug of mulled wine as he watched the snowflakes flicker past
Rudi’s window.

Winter had gripped the Imperial capital in earnest, and the
temple precincts were becoming overrun with the desperate destitute, hoping to
find some measure of warmth and comfort in the home of the Empire’s patron god.
The temple itself was more crowded than ever, the queues for alms only kept
sullenly restive by the conspicuous presence of heavily armed templars, and on a
couple of his forays to pray there Rudi had stumbled over beggars who had
somehow managed to make their way out of the public areas and into the warren of
byways connecting the peripheral buildings. What had happened to them, he had no
idea. They were removed by the guards, he supposed, or had possibly frozen to
death trying to find the way out again.

“I hardly expected it to be easy,” Rudi countered, “otherwise
we’d have done it by now.” And he would have been off in search of Hanna.

“True,” Gerhard said, and sipped at the warming drink, “but
at least we know what we’re doing now.”

“Which is what?” Rudi sipped at his own drink, feeling the
welcome sensation of warmth washing through his body as it drifted down into his
stomach. “I’m only the vessel, don’t forget. Nobody tells me anything.”

“How very remiss of us,” Gerhard said dryly. He sat down, in
his accustomed chair in front of the fire, stretching his legs towards the
flames. “I’m sure the daemon inside you would like to know how we intend to
destroy it almost as much as you do.” The calm confidence in the witch hunter’s
voice sparked a flood of conflicting feelings within Rudi: a fierce elation,
which he recognised as his own, and raw unreasoning hatred from that abominable
other that shared his skin. He fought down the interloper’s emotions almost
reflexively, and nodded.

“I take your point,” he said, more calmly than he would have
thought possible. “So what can you tell me?” Gerhard looked at him thoughtfully.

“Only that it appears to be possible,” he said. “The ritual
you found so fortuitously in that book should enable us to separate your soul
from the essence of the daemon. After that, a conventional service of exorcism
should be sufficient to banish it back to whatever hell it came from in the
first place.”

“I see,” Rudi said, feeling the first faint stirrings of
apprehension, although whether they were his or the daemon’s he couldn’t, for
once, be certain. “And how soon do we try this?”

Gerhard smiled at him, in the bleakly humourless fashion that
Rudi had grown all too familiar with since their fateful meeting little more
than half a year ago.

“Tonight,” he said simply.

To Rudi’s surprise, after leaving his room the witch hunter
led him away from the familiar path towards the temple, disappearing instead
down a small side passage that he had always vaguely assumed led to a cellar or
storage room somewhere. The snow was falling thickly around them, and even the
sporadic gleams of lamplight from the windows they passed, or the flickering
torches in their wall brackets, revealed little of their surroundings. Muffled
inside his hooded cloak, for which he was more than grateful, Rudi glanced
around in an effort to orientate himself.

“Where are we going?” he asked, completely lost.

Gerhard shrugged, an indistinct shape in the darkness ahead
of him. “To one of the subsidiary chapels. You didn’t think we were going to use
the temple itself for this, did you?”

“Of course not.” Rudi hadn’t actually considered the matter
before, but now he came to think about it, it did seem pretty obvious. The
ceremony, or whatever else Gerhard had in mind, would have to be held somewhere
private and out of the way, far from prying eyes, especially if something went
wrong and the daemon escaped after all… The shudder that rippled though him at
that thought came from more than just the cold.

“In here.” Gerhard led the way through another door, larger
and more ornate than most of those that Rudi had seen around the complex, but
before he could fully assimilate the details of it the heavy wooden portal had
slammed shut behind him, sucking him down into a welcome haven of warmth and
light.

At first, Rudi was simply too busy doffing his cloak and
savouring the cessation of the bone-chilling cold to fully take in his
surroundings. When he eventually did so, he was unable to suppress a gasp of
astonishment.

The room was huge and circular, and dominated by an altar to
Sigmar at its exact centre. The carving and workmanship of the shrine was
exquisite, easily the equal of anything he had seen in the temple itself. Even
this paled into insignificance compared to the magnificence of the walls
enfolding the small but grim-faced congregation, however.

Every square inch of them was covered in a finely detailed
mosaic, depicting men and dwarfs of breathtaking nobility in savage conflict
with the most bestial orcs imaginable, and after a moment Rudi recognised the
scene as the Battle of Black Fire Pass. The only figure missing seemed to be
that of Sigmar, and as he approached the altar, turning to take in every detail
of the amazing panorama surrounding him, he discovered the reason for that. The
god himself, still then in his mortal form, was behind him, standing guard over
the entrance to this staggering sanctuary. At the sight of the incarnate deity
Rudi felt the hideous presence within him quail, and his confidence grew.

His gaze travelled upwards, drinking in the ornamentation of
the dome, which rose from the walls around them to enclose the whole space in a
magnificently airy fashion. The mosaics continued without a break, chronicling
the rest of the mortal life of Sigmar, culminating in the great twin-tailed
comet that blazed across the centre of the dome. The whole space beneath it was
lit by gently swinging lamps, depending from chains fixed into the ceiling so
cunningly that their very presence seemed a part of the overall design, like
stars surrounding and illuminating the comet itself.

“Awe-inspiring, isn’t it?” Gerhard asked quietly. Rudi
nodded.

“I never knew anything like this existed,” he said. “Not even
in…” He broke off, suddenly sure of where they were, but not quite able to
believe it. “This is the Sun Chapel, isn’t it?”

“That’s right.” Gerhard nodded. “One of the most holy places
in the whole of the Empire.” Looking around, his jaw slack, Rudi didn’t feel too
inclined to disagree. The gold-plated exterior dome, which gave the building its
name, housed the private chapel of the Grand Theogonist himself, and few others
were ever granted the privilege of entering it. If the Church of Sigmar could be
said to have a single spiritual centre it was undeniably here, where the man who
led it came to commune with the Empire’s patron deity in person. The main
temple, sanctified as it was, would merely follow the spiritual path that began
here, at the altar in the centre of the room.

“Is the Grand Theogonist going to perform the ritual
himself?” Rudi asked, his voice trembling a little despite his best efforts to
prevent it. Gerhard shook his head.

“He has other matters to deal with.” The tone of his voice
was enough to imply that in the witch hunter’s opinion there were none that
couldn’t have been delegated with a little more willingness to make the effort.
“And if things were to go wrong…” He shrugged. “Another difficult succession
would hardly be in anyone’s interests at the moment.” Again, it was quite
evident from his tone that Gerhard had little time for the internal politics of
the Church.

“He has, however, pronounced his blessing on our efforts here
this evening,” a new voice chimed in. Rudi took the proffered hand of a chubby
little man in clerical robes more by reflex than design, and shook it
automatically. “For that, we should at least be duly grateful.”

“Perhaps you’ll thank him for us when you see him,” Gerhard
said, his due gratitude sounding distinctly muted.

“I’m Lector Markzell,” the man said, introducing himself to
Rudi as if they’d met purely by chance at some kind of social function. Only his
old watchman’s instincts enabled Rudi to spot the undercurrent of nervousness
beneath the podgy clergyman’s veneer of relaxed affability.

“Rudi Walder,” Rudi said, as if Markzell hadn’t already known
precisely who he was, and the lector nodded. Despite his air of evident good
living his handshake had been firm and purposeful, and Rudi wondered how many
people had made the fatal mistake of underestimating him over the years.

“Herr Gerhard has explained what we’re about to do?” Markzell
asked. Rudi nodded.

“In principle,” he said.

“Good, then we might as well get started.” Markzell stepped
back a pace and turned, gesturing to the rest of the people present. Rudi
expected him to attract their attention by calling out, or clapping his hands
perhaps, but such was the force of the stout little priest’s personality that
everyone fell silent at once, and began to take up what were clearly prearranged
positions around the room. Markzell turned back to Rudi. “If you would care to
make yourself as comfortable as you can on the steps of the altar? Anywhere you
like, it shouldn’t matter.”

“Right.” Rudi turned to follow the lector’s instructions, and
found Gerhard barring his way. He was about to push past, when, to his surprise,
the witch hunter took him by the arm.

“Sigmar bless and keep you, Rudi,” he said quietly. By the
time Rudi had got over his astonishment enough to respond, Gerhard had already
turned away and gone to join the pair of templars flanking the ornately carved
door of the shrine.

Perhaps it was because of this that Rudi sat where he did,
facing the giant icon of Sigmar himself, the stern visage of the god gazing down
at him from his vantage point over the portal. Or perhaps he would have done so
anyway, drawing comfort from the deity’s protection. In either case, it was a
decision that was to save his life before the hour was out.

Once the ritual actually began, Rudi thought, it seemed oddly
anti-climactic. Eight priests spaced themselves in a perfect circle around the
altar, midway between the shrine and the walls, at the cardinal points of the
compass and equidistantly between them, chanting sonorous phrases which Rudi
couldn’t understand but which seemed to resonate deep inside his bones. Markzell
bustled about at the altar, sometimes chanting in counterpoint to the others,
and at other times doing mysterious things with incense burners or drizzling
uncomfortable doses of sanctified oil over Rudi’s head. Gerhard and his templars
continued to stand before the doors, their expressions either intent or
indifferent, it was hard to be sure.

For a long time, it seemed, nothing was happening, and Rudi
began to find the warmth and the chanting soporific. His vision began to blur,
the encircling line of clerics and the inspiring mosaics beyond them rippling as
if through a summer heat haze. He blinked, trying to clear his eyes, and as he
did so he realised with a sudden shock that Markzell and the altar were still
perfectly in focus. Something was happening to the air itself, the power of the
ritual sealing the altar off from the room beyond. Inside him, the daemon
stirred, and a howl of impotent rage burst from his throat.

“Good! Fight it Rudi, fight it!” Gerhard’s voice came as if
from a long way away, forcing itself through the thickening air between them.
Markzell was chanting again, facing the shrine, his voice deepening, and beads
of sweat beginning to settle in the folds around his jowls. Without pausing for
breath, he lifted a silver hammer from the surface of the altar and turned,
suddenly, bringing it down in one smooth motion towards Rudi.