Daemon Gates Trilogy (3 page)

'We'll just have to look for ourselves,' he said finally, making sure Glouste was secure inside his jacket before nudging his horse forward. It balked at the wild sights and sounds before it, and at the mass of people filling the street, but Dietz patted it on the neck and guided it slowly, steadily through the throng, which parted around them and then swallowed them up again.

CHAPTER TWO

Alaric rubbed at
his eye.

'Leave it alone' Dietz warned without even turning around. 'You'll make it worse.'

'It burns' Alaric complained, hating the whine he heard in his voice, but unable to control it. His eye had been aching and throbbing since the battle in Vitrolle, and it had grown steadily more painful and more distracting. He suspected he'd gotten soot in it, or a speck of gunpowder, or even a tiny metal shaving; the air had been filled with all manner of things during that battle and it would have been easy to catch something in passing. He'd meant to see a physician about it once they were back in Middenheim, but hadn't had the chance; they'd gone straight to Hralifs shop and after that he'd been too concerned about the missing mask to worry about something as minor as his health. How had cultists found out the carpenter had been holding the relic for him? And where were they tak­ing it?

He glanced around and shuddered, hoping Altdorf wasn't the cultists' final stop. He hated the city, he always had. It epitomised everything he disliked in a city, with its heavy, glowering walls, its ostentation, its layout that seemed deliberately designed to confuse, its total concern for its own appearance and welfare at any cost, and its utter disregard for everyone else around it. Altdorf was only interested in Altdorf, and the city as a whole was perfectly willing to sacrifice every other place and person in the Empire - and beyond - for its own success and survival. It was the perfect home for the Empire's rulers.

Alaric had never liked it here, and the fact that some of his brothers loved it only cemented his own opinion of the place. Picking his way through its crowded streets, search­ing for something so powerful and deadly many would kill to possess it, he knew what would happen if any of those nobles learned of the mask's existence. He only prayed that they had not been the cause of the theft, because if a noble had already set his sights on gaining the mask there was little that would stand in his way.

Right now, the city seemed worse than ever. Alaric had always considered Geheimnistag a time of ill omen. Most sensible people locked themselves away for the day, safe inside their homes, and made offerings to whichever god they favoured that the day might pass them by in relative peace. Back in school he had known students who had considered the Day of Mystery a time of revelry. It was a day when all behaviour was excused as a reaction to the spirits, and so you could do anything and get away with it. Others had felt the same, and he had seen people cavort­ing and carousing, and generally behaving like savages and lechers, acting in ways they would not dare at any other time, secure in the knowledge that no one would blame them for their actions on that one day.

In Middenheim, the attitude had been even more wide­spread, and Alaric had seen groups of people celebrating

all around the city during Geheimnistag, without a care for the consequences tomorrow.

Here in Altdorf such behaviour was apparently the norm. It looked as if the entire city had turned out for the celebration. Everywhere he turned he saw masks, cos­tumes, banners and sculptures. The street was insane with people and motion, and colour and shape, and he could barely focus his eyes or think straight amid the mad, pounding tumult.

Over there, for instance, a man cavorted beside a pair of women, his head masked by a pig's visage. An appropriate image, surely, for he was leering openly at both his scant­ily clad companions, but the pig's features seemed almost real, albeit distorted.

The snout was massive, the eyes flaring to a ruby bril­liance, and the ears were swivelling to catch the women's laughing replies. The creature's wide mouth opened, revealing the sharp teeth of a predator, and drool spilled out past the fangs, dripping to the pavement below and sizzling where droplets struck the paving stones. The pig- man reached for one of the women with a clawed hand, the sticky pink of new flesh beneath an open wound.

Alaric looked away, gasping for breath and blinking rapidly to clear his vision. What had that been about? Was he simply tired and anxious? He was feeling light-headed - was he growing ill? Had that man's costume really been that elaborate, that... convincing? Its flesh had seemed real, even from here.

'You all right?' Dietz asked, reaching out to steady him, and Alaric nodded.

'Fine, fine,' he replied. 'Let's keep moving.'

Which way?'

Alaric glanced around again, frowning. That was the question, after all. The cultists had come here, he was sure of it, but where had they gone once they'd entered the city? They had probably reached Altdorf well before the

Geheimnistag festivities had begun this morning, which meant the crowd would have obliterated any traces of them. Except...

A splash of colour caught his eye, and his gaze narrowed. 'There,' he said, pointing towards a smear of brilliantly crimson blood decorating one of the city's wrought-iron lampposts. They went that way.'

Dietz glanced in that direction. 'How can you tell?' the older man's long face showed concern, though his voice was as level as ever.

'That splotch of blood, there on the lamppost,' Alaric answered, pointing it out again. 'Don't you see it?'

His friend shook his head. 'I can't see anything through this crowd.' He frowned. 'Are you sure? Sure it's from them?'

'Yes.' And he was, though he wasn't entirely sure why. 'It's exactly the same shade as the marks I saw in Middenheim,' he explained, which was true enough, but that wasn't all of it. There was just something about the mark, something in the way it had caught his eye, in its shape, in its placement; he couldn't put it into words, but he knew it had come for the cultists.

Dietz studied him for a second, then shrugged. 'Only clue we've got,' he admitted tersely. 'Might as well.'

He pulled back on his horse, and Alaric kicked his for­ward in response, taking the lead. He led them slowly into the throng of revellers, glancing this way and that, trying to see any more marks that might appear.

He wasn't sure why Dietz couldn't see them. Back in Middenheim he'd simply thought his friend was dis­tracted by worry - he and Hralif had been friends in their youth, and now Hralif was engaged to Dagmar, who Dietz doted upon - but on the road, Dietz had still missed every sign, while they had stood out to Alaric as if limned in fire. Here, amid this insanity, how could he see them at all?

But see them he did. A second smear appeared against a tethering pole, leading Alaric to detour off the main street and onto a smaller side road. A third mark caught his eye from a striped awning, and part of him wondered how the cultists had reached that high, and what sort of wound would continue to bleed, and in such quantities, after so much time? Shouldn't the cultist have bled out long since at this rate? Another part of him simply rejoiced to know they were still on the right track.

It was the only part of Alaric that rejoiced at all. The rest of him was either too exhausted to care, too concerned to be pleased, or too worried to be happy. The last emotion was gaining more and more dominance with every foot they travelled into the city. Everyone seemed to be cele­brating Geheimnistag, and all with a fervour that Alaric had never seen before. The costumes were more elaborate, the masks more realistic, and the imagery more disturbing than any he had encountered in previous years. It was less a celebration than a true unleashing of the city's darkest impulses, and it seemed to be spreading.

They passed a building whose door was closed tightly against the mayhem, but blood spilled out beneath the heavy barrier, seeping across the cobblestones and spread­ing in a slow, sticky pool across the street. Alaric watched with horror as it approached his horse's hooves. The cop­pery smell assaulted his senses, and his horse whickered with concern, its eyes rolling, but it did not react as the blood lapped against its hooves, and when it raised each hoof Alaric saw they bore only dirt and mud.

In another spot, they passed a narrow alleyway, and Alaric made the mistake of glancing down it. There were figures there, though he hesitated to call them people. For an instant, their limbs seemed oddly jointed and too long, more like insects' than men's. Their heads swivelled strangely on long necks, and their hands seemed narrow and pointed, like blades of flesh. The strange scene faded,

though the cluster of people remained. There was a woman with them, and her screams echoed along the walls, as did the smack of flesh against flesh, but there was laughter as well, and his throbbing head could not tell if those peals came from her or from the men with her. Alaric glanced back at Dietz, who shook his head, although his jaw was tight.

'Not our concern,' the older man warned, though from the look he directed back towards the alley, Alaric sus­pected he would happily intercede.

Dietz was right. They were after the cultists, and the mask. Whatever was going on in the alley, even if it were as horrible as it seemed to him, it was as nothing compared to the horrors the mask could unleash in the wrong hands. They had to retrieve it. That had to come first. Alaric steeled himself and rode on, until he could no longer hear the screams or the accompanying shouts and cheers.

A man darted out in front of his horse a moment later, forcing Alaric to rein in sharply to avoid trampling him.

He shouted something incoherent up at them as Dietz pulled up alongside. He was a short, fat man with an unkempt beard and a thick head of hair sticking out every­where. His clothes looked slept in, as did his grimy skin, and he held a thick jug in one hand. 'Drink?' The man proffered the jug, and Alaric saw it uncoil slowly," its scales rustling as they slid past each other; it was no earthenware vessel, but a large, buff-coloured snake, its tiny eyes a glit­tering black, its fangs the same midnight shade.

'N-no, thank you,' Alaric managed to stutter, kicking his horse back into motion, and leaving the man behind them, still holding the writhing serpent high. Alaric heard a hiss as he pulled away, and realised with a start that it had come from the man. Glancing back, he saw strange slit pupils reflecting the nearby lamplight, and a thin forked tongue emerge to lick dry, narrow lips. Then they were gone, and it was just a heavy little man holding a wine jug.

'Something wrong?' Dietz asked, and Alaric shook his head. Had Dietz seen that as well? No, he would not be asking so blithely if he had. Should he say something? Would Dietz believe him?

They had been through many strange experiences together before this. They had fought daemons together, for Ulric's sake! And if he really was seeing such things, surely Dietz had a right to know?

'I-I'm seeing things,' Alaric answered finally, letting his horse slow to a steady walk as they continued down the street. At least it was quieter here than it had been closer to the city gates, with fewer revellers and thus less frequent revolting images.

'It is Geheimnistag,' Dietz pointed out. He glanced around, the distaste evident in his expression. 'Lots of strange sights here, and unpleasant ones.'

'I know, but it's more than that,' Alaric argued. 'That man back there, with the jug - what did you see?'

Dietz shrugged. 'A drunkard,' he answered succinctly.

'And the jug?'

'Just a jug.'

'I saw a snake,' Alaric explained, though he found him­self doubting his own memories. 'And the man looked serpentine as well.' Had he really seen that? It all seemed blurred, unclear. 'At least, I think that's what I saw,' he admitted.

'You're exhausted,' Dietz reminded him, 'and your head hurts. It's hard to see anything clearly in the middle of all this.'

That was certainly true. The day was heading towards dusk, the shadows lengthening, and that distorted images and even sounds. The buildings produced strange echoes, and all the costumes and masks - was he just imagining things? Letting his mind play tricks on him, taldng those disguises and adding more fanciful touches from his own fears?

'Perhaps you're right,' he said, relieved that there was a rational explanation. 'It would be simple enough to mistake one thing for another in all this smoke, and the imagery cer­tainly makes one think of the macabre.' Yes, he thought, that made sense. 'I'm already tired, so I'd be even more suscepti­ble to seeing images that were not truly there.'

Dietz nodded. Clearly he was not seeing anything out of the ordinary, but then Dietz never did. The man was a rock of common sense and practicality, which was one of the things Alaric valued about him. No matter what was going on around them, Dietz always saw clearly.

'We should stop for the night,' Dietz suggested.

'No.' That was one thing Alaric was certain about. 'We're too far behind them as it is. We need to close the distance, not increase it, else we've no chance of catching those men and regaining the mask.' Dietz's resigned nod showed that he'd expected that response, and that he didn't think they'd find much at this hour and in this crowd, but he didn't argue, simply nudging his horse to a faster pace. Alaric matched him.

For several minutes, Alaric was able to focus entirely upon following the strange trail only he could see. He ignored the people and other sights, sounds and smells as best he could, letting them slide past him, trusting his horse to pick its way through the crowd without his full attention. But slowly the festival crept back in upon him, stealing into his attention and distracting him from the search. Everywhere he turned, Alaric saw horrors, though only for the blink of an eye: people as animals, as beasts, as monsters; people bearing appalling wounds, or inflict­ing them upon themselves and each other; people committing acts he could not have imagined anyone would ever perform, even when drugged, intoxicated and caught up in mass hysteria. Each time, the strange image was gone before he could focus on it, leaving only a con­fused after-image in his mind.