03 - Death's Legacy (38 page)

“You mean you can make me immortal?” Rudi asked, astounded.
If that happened, the daemon would never be able to escape and take possession
of his physical shell. Hollobach shook his head.

“Not exactly, no. It’s more a question of anchoring the soul
to the mortal plane than prolonging life as we’d normally think of such a
thing.”

“That sounds like necromancy!” Rudi said in horror, the blood
draining from his face as he recalled some of the obscene ravings he’d read in
the collection of papers that he’d waded through.

Von Karien nodded his vigorous agreement.

“Exactly. The darkest of dark magic; the idea’s unthinkable!”

“Believe me, if this was anything remotely like necromancy
I’d have no part of it,” Hollobach said vehemently. “Such things are a
perversion of natural law, which my order regards with absolute abhorrence. This
is different.” He coughed gently. “You would simply be suspended between this
life and Morr’s realm, a part of both, but fully in neither.”

“A ghost, you mean?” Rudi asked, even more confused. In his
weakened state it was hard to be sure whether the spasms of fear and horror that
continued to shake him were his own or the daemon’s: probably both, he thought
ironically.

“Not a ghost,” Hollobach said. “Your spirit wouldn’t be free
to wander. The whole point of this ritual is to keep it confined to your
physical form.”

“It’s the only way, Rudi,” Gerhard said. “If we do this, the
daemon can never manifest itself, because your spirit can never leave your body
to make room for it.”

“You mean I’d be trapped inside a rotting cadaver for
eternity?” Rudi asked, an abyss of terror opening up beneath his feet at the
prospect. “Aware of what was happening the whole time?”

“Not exactly for eternity,” Hollobach said, in the tones of a
man who cared more about reassurance than accuracy. “The mage priests of the
reptile folk who’ve undergone this process have apparently endured for several
thousand years, but their bodies have been mummified to preserve them. Yours
would simply crumble to dust in a few centuries, and by that point there would
be nothing left for the daemon to possess. Presumably when that happens you’d be
able to complete your journey to Morr’s realm, and the daemon would simply
destabilise.”

“If there was any part of me left by then,” Rudi pointed out.

Hollobach shrugged.

“That’s a considerable risk, of course. There’s no denying
that you’d be trapped for hundreds of years with a daemon entangled in your
soul; hardly a prospect to take lightly.”

“Well, thank you for explaining it to me so clearly,” Rudi
said. He took another gulp of the water, which for some reason did little to
quench his thirst. He glanced at Gerhard. “And thank you for taking my
suggestion seriously after all. It seems we’ll just have to keep looking for an
answer.”

“I’m afraid it’s not that easy,” Gerhard said heavily. “We’ve
run out of time to look for one.”

“Run out of time?” Rudi looked from one face to another, all
three men clearly hoping one of the others would explain. “What do you mean?”

“You’re dying, Rudi,” Gerhard explained, after the silence
had lengthened uncomfortably. “The antitoxins were only partially effective, and
even healing prayers can only reverse so much of the damage that the poisons
left behind in your system are doing. Every major organ in your body is breaking
down, quickly and irreversibly.”

“How long have I got?” Rudi asked numbly, ignoring the howl
of triumph from the oubliette in his psyche where the abomination inside him
dwelt.

“The rate of deterioration is accelerating,” von Karien said.
“Our best guess is four or five days, a week at the outside.”

“Then let’s do it,” Rudi said, “as soon as we can.” A strange
sense of calm had descended on him. Events were moving beyond his control again,
but he could at least decide his ultimate fate. The daemon’s euphoria evaporated
almost as quickly as it had erupted, to be replaced by the familiar surge of
thwarted rage. Rudi ignored it, as he had done so often before.

“That’s a brave decision, Rudi.” Gerhard nodded, relief
evident in his eyes. He turned to Hollobach. “Where do you want to carry out the
ritual? We could probably find somewhere in the temple precincts.”

The Amethyst mage shook his head dubiously.

“Remaining here on consecrated ground would give us more
protection, there’s no doubt about that, but if something was to go wrong, and
the daemon escaped after all, there’s a whole city full of souls out there for
it to harvest. I’d advise moving out to a rural shrine, where fewer innocents
are at risk.”

“Hammerhof,” Rudi said slowly. Von Karien glanced at him
sharply, and then nodded.

“The perfect place,” he agreed. “It’s consecrated ground, and
it’s miles from anywhere.” He shrugged. “And I can’t deny there’s a pleasing
symmetry about it.”

“I know.” Rudi nodded, shivering, and pulled the counterpane
up around his shoulders. “It all started there—it’s only right that it should
finish there, too.”

Two days later they left the temple precincts just after
dawn, in a coach surrounded by templar outriders, and Rudi watched the dismal
city streets jolting past beyond the window in a desultory fashion. He’d
insisted on climbing aboard by himself, shrugging aside Gerhard’s offer of a
helping hand with a pettishness that vaguely surprised him.

“I’m dying, not an invalid,” he’d snapped, clambering up the
steps with more effort than he would have believed possible, and dropping onto
the hard leather seat with a sigh of relief. The cold winter air had invigorated
him a little, and enough of it seeped around the pane of glass that he now
leaned against to keep his head clear, but the biting chill seemed to be
settling into his bones, a constant presence, and he shivered uncontrollably
most of the time. He pulled the thin travelling rug that Gerhard had handed to
him around himself, grateful for its presence.

He’d brought very little with him, even less than he’d left
Kohlstadt with so many months before. There didn’t seem to be any point in
burdening himself with possessions now, not even a change of clothes. By this
time tomorrow, he’d have no need of anything. Before leaving his room in the
Templars’ Court for the last time Rudi had dumped the rest of his worldly
belongings, a pitifully small collection, on the bed and contemplated them.

“I suppose Osric should have these,” he’d told Gerhard before
turning towards the door, the last remnants of his former life already
forgotten. For a moment he’d considered bequeathing something to Fritz, who, if
not exactly a friend, had certainly become a companion on his adventures,
despite the mutual loathing they’d had for one another back in their home
village. But so far as he knew, Gerhard was still unaware of the young man’s
presence in Altdorf, and it might not be prudent to draw his attention to the
fact. The last time the witch hunter had laid eyes on Fritz, he’d ordered his
execution as a heretic for attempting to conceal his brother’s mutations.

Rudi sighed heavily, misting the glass for a moment. The
streets of the capital city were just as crowded as he remembered them, despite
the ravages of winter, and the omnipresent stench, which he’d almost forgotten
about in the incense-scented cloisters of the temple, wound its way in through
the gaps in the coachwork along with a myriad of freezing draughts.

All those people, he thought, going about their lives, far
from the remnants of Archaon’s armies and the havoc they’d wrought in the north,
blissfully unaware of the fact that Chaos was here too, gnawing away at the
foundations of their safe and secure little world. He shuddered again, not
entirely from the cold, and watched street traders and burghers, fishwives and
mercenaries, servants in livery and beggars in rags, and envied them all their
ignorance. Some glanced at the coach as it passed, but most ignored it, wrapped
up in their own petty concerns.

Well, if his sacrifice was to be the price of all those lives
continuing to potter along in peaceful obscurity, oblivious to the threat all
around them, then perhaps it was worth it after all. He’d known what the stakes
were in the abstract, but seeing all these people, flesh and blood human beings,
made it seem real. For the first time, he began to understand that this really
was about more than the struggle between himself and the daemon inside him, and
that its final defeat wasn’t just a matter of personal pride.

“Feeling tired?” von Karien asked. The two witch hunters were
sitting on the bench seat opposite.

“No more than usual.” He continued to stare out of the
window. So many faces, and none of them the one he suddenly realised that he’d
hoped against all rational expectation to see. There were plenty of young women
about, many of them blonde, but Hanna, naturally, was nowhere in sight.

That was probably just as well too, he thought. It wasn’t as
if he knew what he’d do if he did catch a glimpse of her. Smile and wave, or cry
“Witch!”
like the lynch mob in Kohlstadt had done, and watch while the
templars rode her down? Once again his warring emotions contended briefly,
before subsiding quietly into apathy. None of it seemed to matter anymore. Their
paths had diverged again, as he’d always known they would in the end, and by
some twist of fate they’d ended up on different sides in a battle that neither
of them could ultimately win.

He jerked back to wakefulness, suddenly aware that he’d been
dozing. They’d passed beyond the city gates, journeying through a bleak winter
landscape, the fields and occasional patches of woodland muffled beneath a
blanket of snow. For the most part it seemed undisturbed, apart from the ribbon
of rutted slush marking the approximate limits of the road they followed,
although the crisp white surface was mottled here and there with traces of the
small animals that continued to eke out a living in the harsh winter conditions.
Even from within the jolting coach Rudi could recognise rabbit tracks, and the
marks left by scavenging birds, and felt his spirits lifting. This was where he
belonged, he thought, out here in the countryside, as far as possible from the
thronging hives of humanity where he’d spent so much of the past year.

He glanced back, seeing the long, low bulk of the city wall
receding into the distance.

“How much longer?” he asked. Von Karien shrugged, looking a
little uncomfortable, and Rudi felt an unexpected pang of sympathy. No doubt his
kinsman was recalling the last time he’d been to the old family estates, fifteen
years before, and had devoutly wished never to return.

“An hour or two, it depends on the road.” Rudi nodded, as the
coach shuddered against a particularly deep rut. The ground was frozen solid,
which at least meant they wouldn’t be bogged down in the mud as they would have
been in the spring or autumn, but the icy conditions would be treacherous, and
the coachman would have to drive cautiously.

“How’s Hollobach getting there?” he asked, suddenly aware
that the three of them were alone in the carriage. He’d been expecting the
magister to join them for the journey, but they’d evidently bypassed the
Amethyst College completely. It wasn’t all that surprising, now that he came to
think about it. The simmering animosity between the wizard and the witch hunters
had been all too evident at their previous meeting, and it was hard to tell
which of them most disliked having to work with the other.

“I’ve no idea,” Gerhard said, managing to imply that such a
state of affairs suited him fine. With nothing much else to say, Rudi returned
his attention to the bleak winter landscape.

Rudi hadn’t been quite sure what he expected to find in
Hammerhof, but the large, sprawling manor house still managed to surprise him.
They’d come to it through the hamlet, a small cluster of homes and businesses
that barely merited so grandiose a title as “village”, and he’d anticipated
something on a similarly modest scale. Instead, as the carriage rounded a small
copse of snow-shrouded trees, he found himself looking at a mansion, which
seemed at first to rival the scale of von Eckstein’s town house in Altdorf.

“Impressive,” he said. He looked across at von Karien. “I’d
no idea you’d given up so much.”

“It was tainted,” von Karien said shortly, “as I told you. I
wanted no part of the place, and I still don’t.”

“I’m sure the use the Church has been able to put it to has
more than redressed the balance,” Rudi said. The patch of woodland was
disappearing behind a wrought iron gate in which the symbols of the hammer and
the twin-tailed comet were intricately intertwined, and he gave the copse a
last, regretful look as his view of it was finally cut off by a high brick wall.
He could picture the quiet and solitude within the glade, and felt it calling to
him, a final lingering reminder of his old life. The gatekeeper, an elderly
priest bundled up in a thick cape against the cold, clanged the portal closed
behind the coach and scurried gratefully back to the warmth of his gatehouse.

“I hope so,” von Karien said.

The main driveway swept up to the front of the house, which
seemed to be flanked by the same jumble of outbuildings that graced von
Eckstein’s estate. This was the main entrance, Rudi reminded himself, and had
been laid out with the intention of impressing visitors, but it was hard not to
feel awed by the place. After everything he’d heard from Gerhard and von Karien,
he’d been expecting there to be some brooding reminder of the manse’s sinister
history in the very atmosphere surrounding them, but the only ambience he could
discern as he disembarked painfully from the coach was one of cheerful activity.
Initiates and clergy were hurrying from building to building, discussing matters
of doctrine, devotional art, or the latest plays on the stages of Altdorf as
they went, while servants moved about quietly in the background, unobtrusively
catering to their more worldly needs in order that they might turn their minds
more readily to higher things. Many of the outbuildings appeared to have been
converted to scholarly uses, and it didn’t take Rudi long to pick out a chapel
and a library. Most of the main rooms of the house, he assumed, were used for
study or accommodation.