The Enemy Within (10 page)

Whether she tottered about or prowled like a hunting cat, the
knowledge of her proximity had a calming effect on Dieter, because now he at
least felt reasonably certain he understood what was happening. The cultist was
using her own magic to play tricks on him, and once he got his hands on her, it
would likely be easy enough to persuade her to end the game.

So he waited until she was quite near, then wheeled and ran
at the column she was hiding behind. “Got you!”

A creature, possessed of a somewhat manlike shape but utterly
inhuman nonetheless, sprang out from behind the support to meet him. It was
gaunt and male, with dark hide and a head like a spider’s, and, now that it was
near enough, gave off a sharp acidic smell. The light of his lamp glinted on the
countless bulging, faceted eyes peering not just from its head but its torso as
well, its wet, gnashing mandibles, and the blade of its upraised battle-axe. It
gave a hideous rasping cry and swung its weapon at Dieter’s face.

Somehow he managed to arrest his forward momentum and fling
himself back. The axe whizzed by a finger-length in front of his nose, and at
the same instant, he lost his balance. When he fell, the ceramic lamp shattered
against I he floor, spattering his hand with oil.

The spider-thing loomed over him and lifted its axe for a
second stroke. He forced himself to remain still—if he moved early, the
creature would only compensate—and then, when the weapon hurtled down, rolled
to the side. The axe sheared into the floor.

If the gods were kind, it would stick there, too, at least
for a heartbeat, but the creature immediately heaved it free and raised it to
threaten Dieter anew. With the thing right on top of him and attacking so
relentlessly, he couldn’t stop dodging long enough to cast a spell.

Nor was it likely he’d evade the axe much longer. So, in
desperation, he kicked with both feet at the spider-thing’s spindly leg.

Bone cracked. The spider-thing staggered, then vanished as
suddenly and completely as a bursting soap bubble.

Panting, Dieter rose and lifted his light. With only a broken
piece of lamp left in his oily hand, the enchanted implement shined less
brightly than before.

Still, it sufficed to reveal the shadowy forms of other
spider-things, all stalking in his direction.

Could the creatures actually hurt him? It seemed likely. The
one he’d kicked had felt solid to the touch, and its axe had split the floor.

Yet he was fairly certain they were, if not wholly illusory,
at least artificial. For if they were real, they were plainly creatures of
Chaos, and it was all but inconceivable that Mama Solveig was powerful enough to
summon so many so quickly, or that any other warlock could and would dispatch so
many to invade her home.

In other words, as he’d suspected previously, all the
alarming things that were happening were manifestations of one elaborate
phantasmagoric trick, and, since he’d failed to escape the enchantment by
other means, it was time to try to tear it apart. He would have had a better
chance under the open sky, or if he felt more himself, but it was pointless to
dwell on that.

He took a deep breath, declaimed the opening syllables of a
counter spell, and slashed his hands through mystic passes. The spider-things
charged.

Points of light, arrayed in patterns like constellations,
appeared in the air and revolved around him. Outside the building, thunder
boomed as if the heavens were cheering him on.

The creatures vanished, the dissolution wiping them away from
the tops of their heads down to their feet. It was as if they were sand
paintings spilled and obliterated by a witless attempt to stand them upright.

The cellar seemed to draw in on itself like a fist
half-clenching as the walls sprang back into view. Dieter squinted against the
reappearance of the light from the windows. After his time in the dark, the
diffuse, filtered glow seemed bright.

Hands clapped softly. He pivoted and saw Mama Solveig
standing a few paces away. “Well done,” she said. “Although it’s a pity about
the lamp.”

He felt a savage urge to attack her, but managed to resist
it. Perhaps, even knowing what he knew, it helped that she was such a persuasive
counterfeit of a kindly, feeble old granny. “I hoped you enjoyed your prank,” he
gritted. “That first spider-thing nearly chopped me to pieces.”

She looked shocked at the suggestion. “Oh, no, dear, it only
seemed that way. I would never have let you come to harm.”

“So you say, but can I believe you? You also said, or at
least implied, that your magic isn’t especially powerful.”

“It isn’t. I’m strongest here at home, where I practise my
devotions and my link to Chaos never fails. Where I’ve laid charms to aid my
conjuring and help me escape if the witch hunters ever call for me. Yet even so,
when you made up your mind to try, you had no difficulty breaking free of my
glamour.”

“Why did you catch me in it in the first place?”

She smiled. “To test you. To see if your abilities were as
modest as you claim. Plainly, they’re not, so why did you lie?”

He groped for an acceptable answer and decided something
close to the truth might serve. He hoped so, because it was the only thing that
came to mind. “I want to learn as much as I can, for its own sake and to bring
the Empire down. I do. It’s just that things are happening too fast. After I
kissed the icon, my visions were… troubling. I’m still trying to decide what
they mean and how to feel about them, and already you want me to immerse myself
in dark lore and contend with that as well? I’m not sure I can bear up under the
pressure.”

“Don’t be a silly goose. Of course you can. Have faith that
the Changer brought you here for a reason.”

“I want to believe—”

“Then do. I understand what you’re going through. Every new
convert has misgivings. All your life, everyone has told you Chaos and evil are
the same thing. Then, when you first catch a glimpse of it, it is disturbing,
because it’s so different and so much bigger than this sickly, drab little world
we inhabit.

“But as you persevere in the faith,” she continued, “you’ll
come to see how glorious it is. That it’s the only ideal worthy of your
adoration. But even if it were otherwise, you’ve already pledged yourself to the
god, and he’s accepted your troth. It’s too late for second thoughts.”

“In other words, stop shirking and study the damn papers.”

“‘Shirking’ is too severe a judgement, but yes.”

All right, he thought. If she insisted, she could closet him
with the documents for hours on end. That didn’t mean he had to read them. Now
that he knew what he was up against, his will was strong enough to resist the
temptation.

Wasn’t it?

His forehead gave him a pang, and, in the gloom in the middle
of the cellar, something clicked. It was probably a rat’s claw tapping on a hard
surface. Surely not a carved stone monstrosity changing position.

* * *

Jarla’s home, if one cared to dignify it with that term, was
a single cramped box of a room adjacent to the street and handy to the barracks
and the marketplace, a place she could bring men willing to pay extra for
privacy. Adolph hesitated before pounding on the door. Because the bitch might
be with such a customer even now, and if so, he’d rather not know it, even
though he understood her whoring aided the cult.

Even though, in a strange, angry, hurtful sort of way, it
sometimes excited him to imagine it.

He rapped on the cheap pine panel. For several heartbeats, no
one answered. Then Jarla called, “Yes?”

He scowled. She generally hesitated before answering a knock
or doing a good many other things, for that matter. It was one of many annoying
habits she had yet to abandon no matter how often he corrected her.

“It’s me,” he said. “Let me in.”

The door was warped, and bent slightly in its frame as she
tried to pull it open. After a moment, it jerked loose, and Jarla peered out at
him.

She was fully clothed, and, looking over her shoulder, he saw
that the room had no other occupants. He wondered what she’d been doing shut
away by herself, then noticed the brass pendant she was wearing around her neck.
It was a representation of Tzeentch in his draconic guise, but simplified and
stylised into an essentially abstract figure. The average person wouldn’t
recognise it for what it was.

But many a witch hunter would. Adolph hastily entered the
room and shoved the door shut behind him to hide the damning display from public
view.

“You’ve been practising your cantrips again,” he said. It was
the only reason she’d dare to wear the pendant anywhere but inside Mama’s hidden
sanctuary.

“Well, yes,” Jarla said.

“I thought you’d given up on ever mastering them.” It had
seemed only sensible that she should. As the coven’s experimentation had
revealed, she possessed a spark of mystical ability, but it seemed too feeble to
accomplish anything useful.

“I had. But if the Purple Hand are going to try to kill us, I
need some way of defending myself.”

It made a certain amount of sense, but he could tell she was
keeping something back. “Is that all there is to it?”

She hesitated. “Mama Solveig said that, since Dieter already
knows some magic, maybe he’ll discover things in the papers that we’ve missed.”

Adolph sneered. “I doubt it.”

“Maybe, with his help, I really can learn. Maybe he can teach
us all.”

He slapped her, and the crack resounded in the enclosed
space. Eyes wide, pressing her hand to her cheek, she shrank back against her
rumpled bed.

“Do you think,” he demanded, “he can do better than me?”

“No! It’s just… you figured out a lot, but not everything.
Mama and the others teased out some of the secrets before you did. So that just
shows, a fresh set of eyes could be useful, especially if Dieter already knows
things the rest of us don’t.”

Adolph grunted.

In point of fact, he felt torn. He was avid to acquire more
learning, more power, and Jarla, for once, was right: Dieter might be the proper
guide to lead them all deeper into the mysteries.

Yet it galled him to see a newcomer so favoured and
respected. Not long ago, Adolph had been a mere journeyman scribe recording the
minutiae of other men’s lives. The Cult of the Red Crown had raised him from
insignificance as he’d discovered talents for both sorcery and the crimes that
aided Leopold Mann. Mama Solveig might be the high priestess of the coven, but
her followers had come to regard him as her unofficial lieutenant and heir
apparent. He had no intention of relinquishing that status and the good things
that came with it.

Good things that included Jarla. She was just a stupid slut,
to be discarded as soon as something better came along, but until then, she
belonged to him, and he wouldn’t let anyone steal her.

He decided he needed to walk a middle course. He’d learn
whatever Dieter had to teach, but at the same time, defend his position and
prerogatives.

He could start by reminding Jarla whose property she was.
“Take off your clothes,” he said, “and fetch me the rope.”

Dieter poked the corner of his toast into the round yellow
yolk, puncturing it. Mama Solveig had prepared his eggs just the way he liked
them.

He took a bite, chewed, the morsel crunching, and closed his
eyes in pleasure.

“Is it all right?” the old woman asked.

He swallowed. “Better than all right.” Indeed, the meals Mama
Solveig prepared were tastier and more plentiful than any he’d enjoyed since the
day Otto Krieger overturned his life, just as her cellar, squalid though it was,
was luxurious compared to a doss house or sleeping outdoors. He still felt
restless and irritable, still worried about the twinges in his forehead, but for
the moment at least, his new living arrangements, together with his liberation
from the noxious toil of rat catching, had brightened his mood.

It almost seemed conceivable that he might survive this
lunatic errand after all.

“Should I make more?” Mama Solveig asked.

“No, thank you. You already made more than I can finish.”

Her greasy tin plate and utensils in hand, the healer rose
from the rickety, ring-scarred table, a cast-off, by the looks of it, from some
tavern or other. “Then I’ll start clearing and washing up.”

“Leave that for me.”

“I most certainly will not. It’s women’s work, and besides, I
like taking care of people. It’s why I became a healer.”

And a Chaos worshipper, he wondered, forcing me to wallow in
filth and helping mutants waylay innocent travellers? With the thought came a
sudden pang of loathing that burst his appreciation of petty comforts and doting
care like a soap bubble, and he had to struggle to keep his face from contorting
into a scowl.

The mad thing was that he suspected, had he asked out loud
how she reconciled her dedication to the healing arts with her service to Chaos,
she would have justified it somehow. As he’d observed before, the cultists
weren’t crazy, it was subtler than that, but their devotions twisted their
thinking.

How long would it be before they twisted his? Or had the
process begun already?

He finished his breakfast and washed it down with the last
gulp of water from his cup. Then Mama Solveig took up her wicker basket of
healing implements and led him back into the hidden sanctuary.

His heart thumped and his meal abruptly weighed like a stone
in his stomach as they neared the icon. Mama Solveig patted him on the forearm.
“It’s all right, dear. You don’t have to go near it today. It’s too soon, I
think. Just stand back and watch.”

Reciting a prayer, she doddered right up to the coiled black
sculpture, then opened her basket. She took out a bandage and rubbed it over the
image as if to dust and polish it.