Tales of the Old World (71 page)

“Come on, boy,” Gunther said, seeing the child hanging back at the threshold.
“There is nothing here to harm you.”

Once past its deceptively ruined outer shell, the tavern’s interior was
surprisingly intact. Picking carefully through a hallway choked with fallen
timbers and ash-strewn debris, Gunther made his way towards what had once been
the smaller of the inn’s two public barrooms. Then, checking to see the boy was
still behind him, he stepped inside the room, lifting his lantern to inspect the
surroundings.

It was exactly as he left it. Thanks to several hours’ worth of heavy labour
when he had visited the tavern earlier in the evening, Gunther had cleared the
floor of the barroom of its dust and detritus. Happy to see no sign of the room
having been disturbed since, Gunther crossed the floor to the ruined bar. Then,
stepping behind it, he stooped to pull away some of the fractured casks beneath,
revealing the shape of the small wooden chest he had hidden there earlier.
Relieved to see it undamaged and its lock intact, he lifted it onto the bar. As
he took the key from the thong around his neck, Gunther noticed the boy leaning
on the bar, craning his neck expectantly to watch the chest being opened.
Pausing, Gunther put his hand inside his cloak to retrieve one of the small
cloth purses hanging from his belt before, pulling open the drawstring, he took
a bag of waxed paper from within it.

“Here, boy,” he said, giving it to the child. “Inside there are dried
apricots and sugared almonds. You may have as many as you want, so long as you
sit in the corner there and keep quiet.”

Accepting the offering, the boy jumped down from the bar, hastening to sit
cross-legged in a distant corner and begin eating the sweets. For a moment
Gunther watched him. Then, satisfied the boy was occupied, he twisted the key in
the lock and opened the chest, checking a mental inventory as he arranged the
contents on the bar beside him. It was all here: brazier, mortar, pestle,
verbena leaves, mandrake root, man-tallow candles, wyrdstone fragments, vials of
beastman urine and two dozen other things besides. Coming to the bottom of the
chest, Gunther lifted out a long object wrapped in cloth, before pulling the
edges of the cloth aside to reveal the bladed iron tube of the trocar. Staring
at the thumb’s-width notch set halfway along its length, his hand strayed
unconsciously to the small, round object nestling safely within a hidden pocket
inside his vest. For a moment he cupped it in his hand, feeling the comfortable
weight and hardness of it through the cloth. He had everything he needed. Now,
it was simply a matter of putting his plan in motion.

Opening a jar containing the crushed fingerbones of a martyred Sigmarite
saint, Gunther put them in the bowl of the mortar, adding a quantity of chalk
and powdered dragon tooth before grinding it together with the pestle. Then,
being careful to leave no gaps, he used the mixture to draw a circle of binding
on the floor around the bar. To give the circle power he would have to chant the
warding spell. But that would come later. He must see to the tripwires first,
then draw a pentagram within the binding circle, centred on the bar. After that,
there were candles to be lit, incenses to be burned, an altar to be arranged. A
dozen different tasks awaited him before he could begin the ritual, and a single
moment’s carelessness in any of them would spell disaster. But he was confident,
all the same. He had prepared for this night’s work for decades. Years spent
carefully considering all that might go amiss, shaping and reshaping his design,
planning everything down to the smallest detail. But he had needed to; the
stakes were high. So high, not one man in ten thousand times would have ever
dared risk what he would tonight. But no matter the risks, no matter the
dangers, the prize would be worth it. Come what may, tonight he would play a
devil’s gambit. And he would play to win.

Dimly, through the walls of the tavern, Gunther heard a bell tolling in the
distance. The harbourmaster was calling time. Ten bells. Two hours to midnight.
He would have to work fast. As he hurried to the contents of the chest once more
to resume his preparations, Gunther was struck by the irony of it. The course of
the life he had set upon in the backroom of the Six Crowns when Marienburg was
still part of the Empire would be decided in the selfsame tavern in two hours
time. Despite all the groundwork and the decades of planning, all his life came
down to in the end was a mere two hours. No, not even that. Like all men,
ultimately the course of his life would be decided in a single moment—a moment
for him that would come when the bell tolled midnight. But he could hardly
complain. Where most men stumbled blindly towards the defining instants of their
lives, he had been forewarned of his decades ago. It was not as though the
moment had caught him unawares; he had been gifted with many years in which to
make ready. Years more than three times past the normal span of man. Exactly one
hundred and fifty years, to be precise.

It was busy in the
Six Crowns
that night and, as he edged his way
through a crowd of hard-faced men towards the bar, it came as no surprise to
Gunther to see that the tavern’s reputation as a den of thieves and cutthroats
seemed well-deserved. He saw men who wore the scars of branding, others with
clipped ears or penal tattoos, even a man with a rope scar around his neck. More
than half the men there had been marked in one way or another by the city
fathers’ justice. Though, to Gunther’s mind, that was all to the good. His
business here tonight was a private matter. And, whatever their other vices,
criminals at least could usually be relied upon to keep themselves to
themselves.

Coming to the bar at last, Gunther signalled to the barman, dropping a
guilder on the counter by way of enticement.

“Can I help you, mein herr?” the barman asked, lifting the coin to his mouth
to test it with his teeth.

“I am here to meet someone,” Gunther told him. “In the backroom. It has all
been arranged.”

Saying nothing, the barman looked Gunther up and down with ill-disguised
suspicion. Then, right hand wandering beneath the bar before him, he spoke once
more.

“You were given a token?” he asked, eyes dark with distrust.

Fumbling in his vest, Gunther produced another coin, a six-sided silver one
that had been delivered to his house by messenger three days earlier, and handed
it to the barman. Rather than bite this one, the barman stood studying it in his
hand, looking first at the embossed motif of a serpent coiled around a piece of
fruit on one side, before turning it over to see Six Crowns arranged in a circle
on the reverse.

“Six crowns, mein herr,” the barman said, offering a hard, humourless smile
as he handed the coin back to him. “Quite a coincidence, don’t you think?”

Lifting the hinged flap at the end of the counter, the barman nodded for
Gunther to step behind the bar. Then, leading him through a curtained doorway,
he ushered him into a hallway stacked on either side with empty beer casks and
crates of bottles, before pointing towards a door at its end.

“The backroom is down there, mein herr,” the barman said. “No need to knock.
You are expected.”

With that, he was gone, stepping back behind the curtain towards the bar and
his patrons. Alone now, Gunther found himself strangely paralysed by the weight
of his own expectations. He could hardly believe it could be so simple. Where he
had expected blood sacrifice or elaborate rituals, there was only a short walk
down an ordinary corridor towards a perfectly nondescript door. A door through
which, he hoped, lay the answer to an ambition he had pursued for more than
twenty years.

Summoning his will at last, Gunther advanced down the corridor and lifted his
hand to the doorknob. Doing his best to keep it from shaking, he pushed the door
open.

“You must be Gunther,” a smoothly spoken voice said from within the room.
“Please, come in. I assure you, there is nothing here to harm you.”

Stepping inside the dingy backroom, Gunther found his expectations confounded
for the second time in as many minutes. Ahead of him at a table at the centre of
the room sat a blond-haired man in the clothes of a gentleman, a sardonic smile
twitching at the corner of his lips as he raised a wineglass in languid
greeting.

“You were expecting horns, perhaps?” the figure said as though reading his
thoughts. “Cloven hooves? A barbed tail, even? I hope you are not disappointed.
Given the unfortunate tendency of mortals to soil themselves when confronted
with my true form, I thought it better to dress down for our meeting. Frankly,
the floor of this room seemed filthy enough already.”

The smile on his lips grew even broader. Stunned, his mind reeling, Gunther
gawped at him for a moment, before stammering a reply.

“You are the Silver Tongue, Daemon Prince and First among the Infernal
Legions of the god Slaanesh?” he said, voice cracking as he said the last word
aloud.

“Generally, I prefer the name Samael,” the other purred. “But really,
Gunther, you know all this already. Otherwise you would never have come here to
meet me.”

“You know my name?” Gunther asked, regretting how foolish the question made
him sound the second it left his lips.

“Of course I do, Gunther,” Samael replied, sliding an opened bottle of wine
and spare wineglass across the table towards him. “When a man comes to bargain
with me, I make it a point to learn all I can of him. But we can discuss that
later. First though, I suggest you take a chair and try to re-gather your wits.
Oh, and help yourself to the wine. Whatever its other faults, this tavern
possesses a surprisingly inoffensive cellar.”

Sitting down warily to face the daemon, Gunther picked up the bottle, only to
pause halfway through filling his glass at the thought of a sudden, fearful
premonition.

“You may drink freely, my friend,” the daemon said, seeming to read his
thoughts again. “Even if I had the slightest intention of killing you tonight, I
need hardly resort to anything so tiresome as poison.”

Feeling vaguely embarrassed, Gunther finished filling the glass, then took a
healthy draught of what soon proved to be an agreeable, if not quite vintage,
red Bordeleaux. Despite his best efforts to hide it, he was sure his nervousness
was entirely obvious to the creature before him. Just as it was similarly
obvious to him that the daemon’s pleasant appearance—the easy charm, handsome
good looks and fashionable frills and ribbons of his clothing—were no more
than a mask. No matter how convivial his host, Gunther did not for a minute
doubt that he was in presence of an ancient evil. With that thought there came a
rising tide of barely suppressed panic as suddenly he was struck by the sheer
enormity of what he had come here to do tonight. But this was no time for second
thoughts. For better or worse, he had set himself on this course willingly. And
even here, in the face of damnation, he would not waver.

“Now, where were we?” the daemon mused, apparently convinced Gunther had
settled himself enough to begin their business. “Ah yes. I was commenting on how
well I know you. And I do know you, Gunther, better than anyone else in the
world, I’d wager. For example, unlike your mercantile peers, I know you have
spent the last twenty years of your life obtaining and studying a wide variety
of magical, alchemical and heretical texts. You have read the works of Van Hal,
von Juntz, Krischan Donn, Ralfs, even the tedious prose of the Ratmen-obsessed
Leiber. And all of it with the aim of achieving a single burning ambition. But
it was only recently, after a visit to Marienburg’s Unseen Library to read
Hollseher’s
Liber Malefic,
that you finally discovered a means by which
to achieve your aim. Now, you have come here to me in the hope that I can give
you what your books could not. Well, happily, I can help you, Gunther. But there
are rules in these matters. And, if you want me to grant your wish, you must
first speak the words of it aloud.”

It was true, all of it. But, before he moved his mouth to frame the words,
Gunther reminded himself he must be wary. It went without saying that the daemon
would try to trick him. But in the end, the selling of a man’s soul was a
business matter like any other. If he was to get what he wanted in return,
Gunther must simply be careful when it came to negotiating the contract.

“I want you to make it so that I will not age and will live forever,” Gunther
said.

For a moment, the daemon stared at him in amusement, the smile at the corner
of his lips growing several notches wider. In the days leading up to the meeting
Gunther had practised this scene in his mind many times, but despite all those
rehearsals he had never expected to hear the answer Samael gave him now.

“No,” the daemon said with a smile.

Gunther sat open-mouthed, gaping at the smug daemon in disbelief. He had come
to sell his soul—how could Samael refuse him?

“You must try and see it from my point of view, Gunther,” Samael said,
fingers pressed together in a curiously human gesture. “What use is it, after
all, for a daemon to be pledged the soul of a man who is going to live forever?
How would I ever collect the debt? No, I am sorry, my friend, but I am afraid I
must reject your proposal.”

Stunned, Gunther sat in uneasy and despairing silence. Twenty years, he
thought. Twenty years, and I am no closer to my objective.

“Of course, I do have a counter-proposal,” the daemon said mildly, as though
unaware of the effect his words had on Gunther’s desperate heart. “Absolute
immortality may be out of the question. But there seems no reason I couldn’t
keep you from aging and grant you longevity enough to extend your life beyond
the normal span of man. And in return all I ask for—aside from your soul, of
course—is that you perform a limited number of tasks on my behalf. Shall we
say seven? Give me seven boons, Gunther, and I will give you a part of your wish
at least.”