Necromancer (9 page)

“He did it to himself in his madness,” the priestess said,
following Dieter’s gaze. “The sores are where he has pulled the skin away and
picked at the scabs. Perhaps your salve might bring him some alleviation from
the stinging soreness.”

Marilda turned to leave the cell and fixed both Leopold and
Dieter with her suddenly stern gaze. “Pay no heed to anything he tells you,” she
said in barely more than a whisper. “His mind is addled and his wits have left
him. You would do well to remember that.” And with that she was gone.

Dieter stood looking at the lunatic Anselm, who stared back
with an expression of pure terror in his eyes, not knowing quite how to approach
this patient. But the ever-confident Leopold knew, of course. He spoke
calmingly, and almost incessantly, as he approached the pallet bed, continually
explaining to the wretch what he was doing and reassuring him. Dieter attempted
to follow his friend’s example. Leopold truly had a way of putting people at
their ease, madman and sane man alike.

Anselm shied away from the two of them at first, flinching as
Leopold pulled up the torn leg of his britches to inspect the self-inflicted
injuries. Then slowly but surely Leopold’s words seemed to have a calming effect
on Anselm.

“A-are you from the g-g-guild?”

Hearing the thin, reedy voice so unexpectedly and for the
first time made Dieter physically jump and his heart race. He took a step back
from the lunatic’s cot, worried what other surprises he might have in store,
readily believing that the wretch would attack them at any second, falling on
them with gnashing teeth and clawing fingernails, having somehow freed himself
of the jacket. But no such thing happened.

Leopold remained calmly where he was, crouched by the bed
that he might treat the open sores.

“That’s right, the guild of physicians.”

Dieter looked at Leopold admiringly. He wished he had his
friend’s confidence and charisma. But at least he had Leopold’s friendship.

“A-are you doktors? C-can you cure the sick?”

“Not doktors yet; apprentices. But we do try to help those
who ail.”

“C-can you cure a man of a lost s-soul?”

Leopold and Dieter looked at one another uncomfortably.
Dieter shivered, the skin on his arms prickling with gooseflesh. Was it just him
or had the temperature in the damp cell dropped perceptibly?

“I-I was an apprentice, once.”

Dieter fixed the madman with his own inquisitive gaze. “At
the physicians’ guild?” he asked.

“Y-yes. That’s right. At the g-guild. Until…” Anselm
trailed off.

“Until what?” Dieter pressed.

“Until. N-no, I can’t say. M-mustn’t say.” Anselm drew his
legs up, out of Leopold’s tending reach, and started to rock backwards and
forwards on his cot. “No, mustn’t say. M-mustn’t say.”

“What is it?” Leopold asked. “What’s the matter?”

“No, can’t say. Mustn’t say. They’ll think you’re mad; mad, I
tell you!” The lunatic was starting to babble.

Leopold looked at his friend sharply. “What have you done?”
he said accusingly.

“I-I,” Dieter stammered in reply, wrong-footed by first the
lunatic’s behaviour and now by his friend’s aggressive change of character, “I
didn’t do anything.”

“Mad, I tell you. You can’t tell them. Not about the doktor,
not about him, not about what you saw. Physician, heal thyself!”

Who was the madman talking to? To them? To himself? To
someone else they couldn’t see, but whose presence Anselm could feel? He
certainly wasn’t having trouble finding the words he wanted anymore.

“Which doktor?” Dieter persisted. “A doktor at the guild?”

“You can’t tell them about the doktor. Not about him. He’ll
find out. He’ll know. He knows everything. He has your soul.”

Dieter felt the chill even more strongly now. “Which doktor
are you talking about?”

“Stop this,” Leopold snapped.

“Which doktor, Anselm?” Hearing his name used for the first
time, Anselm looked up, directly at Dieter, fear brimming in his eyes once more.

“Can’t you see what you’re doing to him?”

Suddenly the bound lunatic threw himself bodily at Dieter,
landing on the cold stone floor in a heap at his feet, grazing his knees and
making his interrogator take his own startled jump backwards.

“Cannot say, cannot say, cannot say. He knows everything,
everything.”

And then the lunatic’s incoherent babbling devolved into
unintelligible screams, the screams of a terrified man who had lost his soul.

Hearing the screams, the priestesses came running. The two
apprentices were bustled out of the cell, the two priestesses who had taken
their place slamming the cell door behind them. The door did not keep out the
heartrending screams of the lunatic, however. They only stopped once the
Shallyan nurses had been able to administer a sleeping draught distilled from
the valerian herb.

The poor man’s screams had unsettled the rest of the
infirmary as they echoed down the draughty stone corridors of the
temple-hospice. The great hall was alive with the anxious murmuring of the other
patients and the priestesses who tended them.

Leopold marched ahead of Dieter, his anger boiling off him,
as they made their way to exit the Temple of Shallya. Then Sister Marilda was
before them, like a suddenly materializing apparition in grey and white.

“Sister,” Leopold acknowledged, ever the well-mannered
gentleman despite his current mood.

“Gentlemen,” Marilda said, her eyes cold, her lips unsmiling.

Dieter slunk after his companion but then paused and
addressed the priestess for the first time. “How did the lunatic Anselm come to
be here? What was it that caused him to lose his mind?”

“I told you not to listen to him,” the sister said sternly,
her previously friendly demeanour gone. “Is it not enough that he
is
mad
and in need of our prayers? I had thought you had come here to help those who
suffered, not to make their suffering worse.”

Then there was nothing more to be said. Dieter would not get
the answers he was looking for here.

But Dieter’s curiosity—that most dangerous of things—had
been piqued. He was intrigued by the mysterious Anselm and was determined to
find out more about him. After all, he had already experienced a darker side to
the guild of physicians and wanted to know what could have made Anselm lose his
mind so utterly. Perhaps part of him had to know that Anselm’s fate wouldn’t
also be his. He would have to looks for answers elsewhere.

Dieter knocked three times on the door to the guild master’s
study. For a moment he heard nothing. Was he doing the right thing, coming here,
effectively challenging the professor, especially after what had happened?
Perhaps the professor wasn’t there at all. Then he heard the single command:
“Enter.”

Taking a deep breath Dieter opened the door and stepped into
the room beyond, the memory of the last time he had been here still a livid scar
in his mind.

Professor Theodrus looked up. “Oh, Heydrich, it’s you,” he
said uncomfortably. “I had thought we had come to… er… an arrangement, after
the… er… incident.”

“Yes, professor, we had and I-I’m sorry to trouble you,”
Dieter looked down nervously at his feet. “B-but there was something I wanted to
ask you.”

“What is it you want?”

Dieter clasped his hands tightly behind his back to stop them
shaking. “I went to the Temple of Shallya today, to help the sisters in their
work. I met a man there, a young man. His name was Anselm.”

A barely-noticeable tic passed across the left side of
Theodrus’ face.

“Do you know him, or what caused him to lose his mind?”

“Anselm? Anselm? I don’t recall the name. I don’t know who
you could mean,” Theodrus blustered, but his cheeks flushed as he did so.

“H-he said he was once a student of the physicians’ guild,”
Dieter pressed on. “It could not have been that long ago. Should I ask one of
the other senior members if they know of him?”

“Close the door,” Theodrus said irritably.

Dieter did as he was bid.

“I remember now. Two years ago there was a student here by
the name of Anselm: Anselm Fleischer. He was an embarrassment to the guild. It
is not something I like to talk about.”

Dieter considered his next words carefully. “He said a doktor
had taken his soul.”

The apprentice now saw the colour visibly drain from the
master’s face. “You cannot believe anything the wretch says, he has lost his
mind.”

Dieter said nothing. The atmosphere in the guild master’s
study was tense, the silence becoming unbearable. Dieter was about to excuse
himself when Theodrus unexpectedly spoke again, releasing the tension in the
room.

“He was a promising student but he abandoned his studies at
the guild, without warning; without giving a reason. One day he simply did not
turn up to help Doktor Fitzgarten and he stopped coming to lectures.” An almost
wistful look had come to the professor’s eyes. “Some of the other students
believed that he had become apprentice to a doktor with dangerously progressive
ideas, a doktor not licensed by the guild, one practising clandestinely in the
town. More than this they did not know.

“Then it was as if he had disappeared completely. Either he
had left Bögenhafen or he was dead. Would that he had been.”

“What?”

“He was found months later by a barge captain and his son. He
was roaming the Ostendamm, his clothes rags, his body filthy. All he would say,
repeating it over and over, was, ‘Physician, heal thyself’.”

“They brought him to the guild. Once we were able to get any
sense out of him it soon became apparent that his memory was like Wissenland
chesse, full of holes. He could tell us that his name was Anselm but the name
Fleischer meant nothing to him. He could not tell us how he came to be wandering
the Ostendamm, nor did he know any of us at the guild, even though he knew he
had studied there himself.”

Dieter realised that he was staring at Theodrus aghast.

“It truly is a tragic tale. Whatever had happened to him in
the lost months had robbed him of his sanity. His wits had left him.”

“So you sent him to the Temple of Shallya.”

“He could not even clean up after himself anymore. The
matter had become… difficult; the guild’s reputation might become tarnished.
The guild makes an annual donation to the temple’s collection box for his keep.”

Dieter did not know what to say. Each question answered
merely raised a dozen more. “It is a truly tragic tale,” was all he could
manage.

“I don’t think you need mention this to any of the other
apprentices, do you?”

“N-no, professor.”

“Very good. We have an understanding again then.”

“Yes.”

“Now, will there be anything else?”

“No, professor.”

This consultation was most definitely over.

It was on Aubentag, the seventeenth day of Pflugzeit, that
the news reached Dieter that his father was dying.

On that day the sky was the grey of a burial shroud, with the
threat of rain never fulfilling its promise. The message found him at the guild
at noon, the messenger having been pointed in that direction by Frau Keeler. It
was written in his sister’s hand and uncharacteristically brief. Things were
dire indeed.

Conflicting emotions raged through Dieter as he bundled his
notebooks into his scrip, along with several jars of herbs and treatments he had
helped produce. Then he excused himself from Doktor Hirsch’s company. He knew
that he had to return home to Hangenholz immediately. It was his duty. His dear
sister Katarina needed him. His father was dying. He only hoped he would reach
Hangenholz in time.

In the corridor outside Hirsch’s chamber Dieter collided with
Leopold Hanser.

He had not seen Leopold since the incident at the Temple of
Shallya. They had hardly spoken after leaving the temple. Leopold had seen a new
side to his friend, that day, and it was not a side he had liked.

As a consequence Dieter had kept himself more and more to the
lodging house in Dunst Strasse or the guild, preferring to move about the town
by daylight and even then where the streets were busy and crowded. Dieter still
felt vulnerable travelling alone, following his interrogation at the hands of
Brother-Captain Krieger.

“I’m sorry,” Dieter said, picking up his dropped scrip.

Leopold saw the look in his friend’s eyes. “Dieter, what’s
the matter?” he asked, genuine concern softening the words.

“It’s my father. He’s dying.”

Leopold gasped and looked crestfallen. “Then it is I who am
sorry.”

Dieter returned briefly to his lodgings to collect a change
of clothes and his travelling cloak, retrieve his full purse from its hiding
place behind a loose brick in his garret room, and to leave a message for Erich
with Frau Keeler. The large woman gave him a motherly smile and touched his arm.
Dieter drew away sharply, uneasy with the physical contact—no one had touched
him like that since his mother died, other than his sister—but he managed to
return her smile weakly.

His scrip full, Dieter made his way to the Reisehauschen on
the Bergstrasse, arriving just in time to buy passage on the last carriage of
the day, leaving at two hours past noon, heading out on the Nuln road. He would
have to change at the coaching stop of Vagenholt but he could still be in
Hangenholz within three days, Morr willing.

Hangenholz didn’t look any different to how he had last seen
it, other than then, almost three months earlier, it had still been in the grip
of winter. Now the snow was gone from the fields, replaced by healthy stalks of
oats and barley, and the iron-hard frosts had gone, leaving the packed earth of
the road softer underfoot. But the steeple of the chapel still showed over the
thatched roofs of the houses, the backdrop of the woods behind, and the mill
with its slow-turning waterwheel by the bridge before the village. Beyond them
all atop the blasted tor of Raven’s Crag was the ruined tower that watched over
the village like some sinister sentinel.