Tales of the Old World (72 page)

“Seven boons?” Gunther said, still barely able to comprehend how quickly his
horizons had been diminished. “And who is to decide what the nature of these
boons will be?”

“I will,” the daemon replied. “I promise you they will all be well within the
scope of your abilities. Nor would I insult your intelligence by demanding that
you give me all seven boons at once. You need only perform one boon now and I
will stop you from aging and guarantee you another twenty years of life. Then,
when those twenty years are done, you will perform a second boon in return for
another twenty years, and so on, until all the boons are done. Think of it,
Gunther, perform all seven boons and you can have another one hundred and forty
years of life without aging a single day. Naturally, our agreement would not
extend to protecting you from disease or violent death—even my powers are not
limitless in that regard. But really, I think I am being fair enough already. As
I’m sure you’ll agree, one-hundred-and-forty years is a long time for a daemon
to wait to claim his due.”

Letting his words hang in the air a moment, the daemon sipped his wine as
Gunther wrestled with a thousand silent thoughts and fears. Then, seeing
Gunther’s discomfort, the daemon leaned forward once more with the smile of a
huntsman who knows his trap is sprung.

“Of course,” he said, “if you do not like the terms of my offer, you can
always say no.”

He had said yes, of course. Granted, he had bargained for better terms,
ultimately persuading Samael to extend the period of guaranteed longevity
between each boon to twenty-five years. But, beyond that small concession, he
had had little choice but to accept the daemon’s terms. In the end, the daemon
Samael had every cause to be smug; his was the only bargain on the table.

Now, as he hurried to complete the preparations for his ritual in the shell
of the ruined inn where he had met Samael all those years ago, Gunther found his
thoughts turning towards the six boons he had completed on the daemon’s behalf
already. Some had been relatively straightforward: arranging the disgrace and
murder of a high-ranking nobleman, or the theft of a holy relic—a cup—from
the Temple of Sigmar the Merciful in Stirland. Others had been both more
complicated and time-consuming. Take the six years he had spent working as a
humble lay gardener in the grounds of a temple of Shallya in Ostermark,
corrupting the priestesses and their novitiates one-by-one until he had turned
them all to the worship of Slaanesh. He could still remember the look of outrage
on the mother superior’s face turning to delight when she had finally yielded.
And, while Samael’s motives in requesting some of the boons had been obvious at
once, others had been more obscure, only becoming clearer with time. Take the
sixth boon for example, when he had been called upon to ensure the progression
of a young Sigmarite cleric called Johann Esmer. But, no matter how strange or
onerous the tasks he had been called upon to perform, he had completed them
regardless. And with each completed boon Samael had kept his own side of their
bargain: Gunther had not aged a day in one-hundred-and-fifty years. Tonight
though, the seventh boon was due.

Two days earlier, a messenger had arrived bearing Samael’s instructions to
meet him here in the Six Crowns at midnight. But, for all the successes of their
arrangement thus far, Gunther was not so foolish a man as to trust a daemon to
his word. He had always known Samael would try to cheat him. And Gunther had
seen the loophole in their bargain a century and a half earlier when Samael told
him he would not be protected against disease or violent death. Once the seventh
boon was done and his value was at an end, Gunther fully expected the daemon to
kill him. Why should Samael be willing to wait another twenty-five years for his
soul after all, when it was within his power to kill him and take it at once?
There could be no doubt, the daemon was going to try and cheat him.

Unless, of course, Gunther cheated the daemon first.

From the very beginning he had been playing his own double game, only
agreeing to Samael’s terms to give him the time he needed to find a method by
which to cheat the daemon of his due so that he might live forever. And now,
after one hundred and fifty years of planning and preparation, the final
movements of that game were almost upon him. The pieces were all in place. Soon,
Gunther would play his devil’s gambit.

There was only one last thing.

Turning towards the corner of the room, Gunther saw the boy lying slumped and
asleep on the floor, surrounded by the spilled contents of the bag he had given
him earlier. Seeing the sedative he had put in the sweets had done its work,
Gunther allowed himself the luxury of another moment of satisfaction.

He really had thought of everything.

By the time the first peals sounded from the harbourmaster’s bell calling
midnight, all the preparations were in place. At the five corners of the
pentagram the man-tallow candles had been lit, thin plumes of acrid smoke rising
to join the sickly-sweet haze of incense hanging above them. At its centre, a
section of the counter of the ruined bar had been set out as a makeshift altar
with the unconscious boy bound and spread-eagled on top of it. Beside it,
Gunther stood stoking a burning brazier, chanting the words of the final ritual.

Then, as the bell pealed its last, he heard the door to the room open and saw
the blond-haired figure of Samael arrive with cloak flowing behind him in a
gentlemanly flourish.

Careful not to allow his eyes to meet the daemon’s gaze, Gunther continued
his chant. From the corner of his eye he saw Samael advancing towards him.
Coming to the binding circle the daemon stopped, raising his hand to press
palm-outwards on the invisible barrier before him, testing its power.

“A binding circle? Impressive, Gunther, if ultimately pointless. After all,
you can hardly stay within your circle forever, can you?” Then, hearing the
sound of lapping water, the daemon finally looked behind him.

The trap had been surprisingly easy to build. Set to be triggered by a
tripwire when the door to the room swung shut, a hidden mechanism had caused a
gourd to tip, releasing a steady flow of water which, even now, fed a shallow
circular channel encompassing the entire outer circumference of the room. Of
course, the real power of the trap lay not in channel, but in the nature of the
water that flowed through it.

“Holy water?” the daemon said, eyebrows raised in sardonic amusement. “It
seems I am caught in the space between two impenetrable circles. Really,
Gunther, you are full of surprises tonight. But tell me: now you have me where
you want me, what do you intend to do with me next?”

On top of the counter, close to his right hand, one of Gunther’s pistols lay
primed and powdered, needing only a bullet to give it lethal force. And, glowing
white-hot within the flames of the brazier, the bullet was almost ready.

It had taken fifty years spent in the study of forbidden texts to learn how
Samael’s bargains worked. Fifty years, in which he had slowly come to understand
that when they had entered into their contract, Samael had lent him a tiny
fragment of his own daemonic essence. A fragment so small that Samael would
never miss it, but still powerful enough to stop Gunther from aging. Hence the
time limit built into their bargain—as small as that fragment was, the daemon
was not about to give up a part of himself forever. But at the same time,
Gunther had learned this essence would not naturally flow back to Samael. It had
to be taken.

And, if Gunther could kill Samael first, he could keep it forever.

Of course, killing a daemon was no easy thing. But, gifted with great wealth
and a century in which to search for the answer, Gunther had finally discovered
a method. In the brazier before him was a bullet forged from meteoric iron and
covered in sigils which Gunther had paid a down-on-his-luck dwarf craftsman a
small fortune to create. One of dozens of savants Gunther had paid to help him
over the years without any of them ever knowing the true nature of his project.
All of them working unknowingly towards the creation of a bullet ensorcelled to
act as a bane to daemon flesh.

A bullet to kill a daemon.

Taking a pair of tongs, Gunther retrieved the glowing bullet from the fire
and slotted it into the notch set in the side of the trocar. Even now, with his
own life in the balance, he could not be sure whether it was possible to kill a
creature like Samael forever. At the very least though, killing the daemon here
and now would banish him back to the daemon realms for a thousand years—more
than long enough for Gunther to find a more permanent solution. But before the
bullet could be used, the ritual demanded that it be tempered in the
heart’s-blood of a sacrificial victim. As to the nature of this victim, the
terms of the ritual were very precise: Only someone possessed of a perfect and
utter purity would do.

Abruptly, eyelids fluttering, the boy on the altar began to stir. But Gunther
had come too far and risked too much to give in to squeamishness now. Besides,
whether the boy died asleep or awake hardly mattered. Lifting the trocar above
his head, Gunther stepped forward to complete the sacrifice. Only to see the
boy’s features suddenly seem to shift and blur, growing bigger. In an instant
the boy was gone.

Staring in amazement at the alabaster-skinned female figure that had replaced
him, Gunther found himself strangely attracted to the swelling curve of her
hips, the sharp-toothed seductiveness of her smile and the jagged perfection of
her horns. Then, as the writhing goddess before him lashed out with a
scythe-like claw, Gunther found the growing warmth of his desire displaced by a
more primal sensation.

Pain.

Afterwards, watching the daemonette flaying the flesh from Gunther’s dead
bones, Samael found himself wondering briefly if he should punish her for her
excesses. He had so wanted to see that last look of despair in the man’s eyes
when he realised his long life was finally over and torment awaited him. But,
lost in her enjoyment, the daemonette had killed him too quickly. Though, on
balance, Samael decided to let the matter pass—it must have been difficult for
her, after all, to have had to walk beside the mortal all night without tearing
him apart. And, besides, the daemonette’s purpose here was not yet done.

In her abandon, the daemonette had knocked over one of the pentagram’s
candles, breaching the binding circle. Approaching the altar, Samael saw the
trocar lying on the floor where Gunther had dropped it and he stooped to pick it
up. Inside, the bullet was still hot, the magical energies released by Gunther’s
ritual still waiting latent within it.

Turning towards the daemonette, Samael saw her pause in her mutilations to
lick the blood, cat-like, from her talon. Looking into the amber irises of her
eyes, Samael saw a perfect and utter purity, untainted by conscience or thoughts
of compassion. Then, savouring that thought for a moment, he took the trocar and
stabbed her in the chest.

“Why?” the daemonette asked him in Darktongue, her accent like the mewling of
scalded cats.

“Because it would be a shame to let Gunther’s work go to waste,” he told her,
pushing the blade deeper into her heart. “Especially when I spent so very long
covertly guiding that dull-witted mortal on his quest.”

Strength fading, her heart’s-blood ichor flowing down the tube of the trocar
to temper the bullet inside it, the daemonette looked at him in incomprehension.
Then, the memories of thousands of years’ worth of sensations dying with her,
her heart grew still.

Letting her body fall as he pulled the trocar from it, Samael was pleased to
feel the stirring of painful energies emanating from within the bullet. In the
end, the whole affair had come to a most satisfactory conclusion. After
one-hundred-and-fifty years, the ritual—and the seventh boon—had finally
been completed. The bullet was ready now. A bullet to kill a daemon.

One could never know when a thing like that might prove useful.

The scratching had started again. Freda lay huddled in the darkness, cold
sweat gluing her nightdress to her trembling body. In the light of the day it
was a pretty thing, this nightdress. She’d chosen it because of the rabbit
pattern sewn into the hem. Tonight, with the pattern hidden by darkness, it felt
like a shroud.

Her knuckles were already bruised, but she carried on gnawing at them anyway,
like a rat with a bone. Even when her sharp, little teeth tore through the skin
and her mouth filled with the bitter, hot, copper taste of blood, she couldn’t
stop.

Tonight there were more things to worry about than cuts and bruises. Horrible
things.

Beneath the weight of her terror, Freda struggled to remember the words of a
prayer, any prayer that might make the scratching stop. But she struggled in
vain. All she could think of was the thing in the cupboard and how far away her
father was.

Then the sound stopped. The pause lasted for a second, then a dozen, and then
a dozen more. Freda held her breath, willing the silence to last. At length she
felt the first tiny flicker of relief and took her fist out of her mouth.
Slowly, with as much courage as a warrior entering a dragon’s lair, she raised
her head from beneath the covers and peered towards the cupboard.

A loud impact banged against its doors.

With a shriek, Freda leapt from her bed, ran from the room and raced down the
stairs. Her feet pounded on the floorboards, like a drummer sounding the
retreat, the noise of her flight making her run all the faster.

“Daddy!” she screamed, as she fled down the short hall to his study, the
rabbits on her nightdress snapping about her heels.