Tales of the Old World (81 page)

The room within was of a comfortable size to accommodate perhaps twenty or
more people and had a high, vaulted ceiling. Low swirls of thick, choking
incense from braziers situated around the walls carpeted the tiled floor. The
central area of this floor was dominated by a huge mosaic, with a pattern
delineated in slivers of coloured glass, marble and shell which bore a strong
resemblance to the brand seared on to the prisoner’s torso. At the centre of the
design, four shackles anchored to the floor by thick steel chains awaited a
victim.

On the opposite side of the chamber from the door was a slightly raised
platform, upon which stood a large throne of twisted black wood and purple
velvet. A tall, feminine silhouette rose from this throne and came down from the
platform to stand before the circle. Like the other cultists she wore a long,
deep purple robe, but rather than being belted by a simple cord, hers was a
thick leather belt with a large, wrought-iron skull for a clasp. Also, there
were long vents up to her hips in the sides of the robes, beneath which she wore
fine purple velvet trousers and soft, doeskin boots. The tall figure wore her
hood down, in contrast to the other disciples, and her face was concealed by an
ornate black ballroom mask shaped like a raven. Delicate mother-of-pearl inlay
chased around the eye slits of the mask, behind which blazed violet irises, and
edged the elegant beak too, whilst a spectacular spray of midnight black
feathers held soft golden hair back from her temples.

“Let the offering be brought forward to the circle,” she announced in a
clear, cultured voice. At her behest, the four cultists thrust their prisoner
forward into the circle and more robed figures hurried forth from the shadows to
spread-eagle him in the centre of the mosaic. Only once he was securely shackled
to the floor was the bag removed from the prisoner’s head. His face bore none of
the marks of the torment his body had suffered in the cultists’ care, and for
the briefest of instants his clear grey eyes locked upon the dreamy violet
orbits of the figure looming over him, before he closed his eyelids in despair
and submission. His jaw was clean shaven, and his features lean and predatory,
with a suggestion of strong lineage in both his high forehead, with its sweeping
collar-length black hair, and in the long, straight line of his nasal bridge.

“Well, well, well,” the woman mocked. “Obediah Cain, second lieutenant of the
Church of Sigmar’s Holy Inquisition in Marienburg. You are welcome as our very
special guest of honour. Indeed, you might even say that we need you.”

“Do what you will with me, witch!” groaned the man on the floor. “Remember
that when judgement comes, it is final!”

“It is good that you have given up all notion of redemption, and you are now
looking to history for vindication,” the masked woman spat. “For when M’Loch
T’Chort, Weaver of the Ways, High Daemonic Prince of Twisted Destiny and
Misguided Fate, comes to seize possession of your miserable skin, the last thing
he needs is some lost soul contesting his right to it.”

With that, she delivered a stinging kick to his ribs, causing him to whimper
as the scabs on his brand cracked with the force.

“It’s such a shame that we have to inflict punishment on your earthly clay
before our lord can take up residence within it, but as you witch hunters are
always so fond of demonstrating, the prisoner’s cooperation isn’t adequate
grounds to carry on to the next stage of the procedure. You, more than anyone,
should appreciate what is required to ensure the veracity of any actions or
claims made by a prisoner, because, after all, their co-operation might be a
falsehood to avoid torture. Isn’t that the option presented to your victims,
witch hunter?” she asked, bending down so that her face was close to his own
pained visage. “Isn’t it, you pious worm?” she howled when he did not answer,
and dug the points of her gauntleted fingers into the weeping wound on his
chest.

“Yes! Yes it is, damn you!” sobbed the broken man squirming on the floor.

“Very good,” she said evenly, and stood up once more. “Then let us begin the
rite.”

The dozen or so cultists in the room took up positions around the circle and
began to sway rhythmically, chanting in alien, melodious tongues an otherworldly
mantra of damnation which rose up from the strange vaulted room and out into the
still night beyond, inviting a thing which should not be into the realm of
living men.

Led on by the strange, powerful sorceress, the cultists’ performance became
more frenetic, their exhortations more desperate, and a singular change began to
take place within the eerily lit room. The heavy clouds of incense drifting
languidly at waist height coalesced in the centre of the chamber, above the
recumbent witch hunter, and then spiralled upwards into a point like some
grotesque, ectoplasmic worm rearing its swollen bulk out of the foetid soil. The
tip of the apparition dipped towards the unconscious man’s face and infiltrated
his mouth and nostrils, feeding itself, coil after coil into his twitching,
choking body.

The ritual’s leader suddenly ceased her rapturous chanting to command, “It is
time. Let the sacrifice be brought forth for the Sanguinary Binding!”

From a curtained alcove in the shadowy chamber, a night-spawned abomination
of uncommon vileness shambled into the circle. It was a man in stature but,
through constant exposure to the warping malignancy of the Chaos lord, Tzeentch,
his head had puckered and inflated like an over-ripe fruit, the skin thick,
wrinkled and lurid pink in hue, his mouth a broad, grinning slash filled with
row after row of sharp, blackened fangs and his scalp studded with starfish’s
suckers in place of hair. His left arm, too, had become severely mutated and was
grossly elongated and jointed in four places, covered in tough pink skin like
his face, while the hand on the end of the offensive limb had grown to absurd
proportions and its eight thick fingers were hollow tubes. In the daemonic limb
he held a struggling lamb, while in his other, human hand he carried a large
sacrificial knife. Taking up position over the witch hunter, the mutant prepared
to complete the ceremony with a blood sacrifice.

Despite everything that Obediah Cain had been through, some spark of his
original consciousness yet remained untainted by the invading entity, and the
unacceptable presence of a Chaos mutant hovering over him stirred that faint
ember into scintillating action. Cain did the only thing he could under the
circumstances—he brought his knee up sharply, as far as the chains would
permit, into the creature’s shin. It was enough to cause the mutant’s leg to
buckle and deposit him in a heap on top of the witch hunter. The sacrificial
lamb scurried free and gambolled around the room, adding to the confusion.

When the mutant picked himself up from the witch hunter’s body, ready to give
the prisoner one final taste of pain before the ritual erased his soul forever,
pain and shock registered upon his grotesquely leering visage. Others, too, had
noticed the unthinkable thing which had befallen their great plan and began
gasping and crying out in fear and dismay.

“You fool! What have you done?” shrieked the sorceress.

The mutant backed away, shaking his bloated head, his eyes never leaving the
terrible sight in the centre of the circle. The sacrificial knife jutted from
beneath the chin of their prisoner—but worse than that an ephemeral glow was
intensifying within Cain’s open mouth and his cheeks were beginning to bulge
with warp-born energies. Then the coruscating wash of power seemed to contract
in upon itself.

The cultists eyed one another with deep trepidation. The mutant continued to
back off, still shaking his head in pained denial.

Suddenly a brilliant, prismatic cascade of light erupted from the corpse’s
hideously stretched mouth, an otherworldly illumination which seemed to siphon
the flesh from the cultists’ bodies where it touched them, drawing out their
substance in little lumps which evaporated within the searing beams. In the
space of a minute, the screaming and pleading was done. A dozen charred
skeletons clattered to the stone floor.

Obediah Cain’s body writhed and jerked with unholy vigour, then sat bolt
upright tearing the steel bonds from their fittings as though they were a
child’s paper chains. With an impatient gesture he yanked the knife from his
throat and cast it aside. After a deep, gurgling cough, he clamped a hand over
the hole in his voice box and uttered in a horrible, reedy, burbling timbre,
“Nec-ro-mancer! I must find a necromancer!”

“I’m sorry, de la Lune, but after careful consideration the Guild’s senior
tutors have concluded that you are simply not possessed of the finer skills of
meditation and concentration required to make the grade as a qualified Wizard in
this academy.”

Michael de la Lune perched on the edge of a comfortable leather chair in the
opulent office of Paracelsus van der Groot, the Marienburg College of Magic’s
master of apprentices. Across the magnificent teak table, strewn with arcane
trinkets and scrolls, van der Groot was telling him the awful, unbearable news
that he had failed his apprenticeship. De la Lune was a slight man, who had
witnessed the passing of no more than twenty summers, and his boyish, Bretonnian
face wore an expression of crestfallen astonishment. A lock of dark, wavy hair
fell across his forehead as he hung his head in defeat.

“But don’t take on so, lad,” continued the corpulent van der Groot, toying
with one of his enormous rings in embarrassment, “There are plenty of careers
wanting for resourceful, educated fellows like yourself. Have you considered
perhaps something in one of the mercantile professions—they’re always looking
for accountants and administrators. Or if you still want to work with magic, how
about the Alchemists’ Guild? I know a few people there and everything they do is
academic. Not quite so esoteric as our stuff, eh?

“I could get in touch with—”

Against all the protocols, the young man dared to interrupt one of the
masters and spoke for the first time since entering the office. “Please sir? By
your leave, I think I’d just like to collect my belongings and be gone.”

“Yes, yes. I understand lad,” van der Groot said breezily. “I know it’s a
sore blow to you young ones to be told that you’ve failed, but only a few ever
succeed. There’s no shame in it, so you stay in touch and—”

There was the sound of the door shutting.

Michael strode down the tangled web of corridors which burrowed through the
great edifice that was the Marienburg College of Magic. He kept his head down on
the way to his private quarters, ignoring the greetings of other wizards of his
acquaintance along the route. His head was a whirl of confusion and resentment.
What had he done to fail the test? He had thought this establishment to be an
enlightened one. After all, hadn’t they offered him a second chance after he had
failed the entrance exam to the exalted Altdorf college. Though he had long
suspected that entrance to Altdorf’s college had more to do with money than
ability, and he reasoned that his Bretonnian lineage being of freeman stock,
rather than the aristocracy who more usually gained admittance there, was the
real reason that he failed the exam. However, he couldn’t understand why the
establishment which had eventually permitted him entry to the field of his
beloved magical research would now turn their backs on him. Their reasoning
seemed to be beyond him.

Michael reached his spartan quarters and began packing such meagre
possessions as he owned into the sling bag which had accompanied him from his
home city of Lyonesse four years earlier. What would become of him now? It was a
bitter irony that he had travelled so far, learning two new languages in his
pursuit of magical expertise and the Classical script employed in conjuration,
just to seemingly have to return to Bretonnia with nothing to show for it but a
couple of apprentices’ parlour tricks. Oh, he might stay in Marienburg as van
der Groot had suggested, but that would be taking an almighty risk with his
dwindling funds. If he couldn’t find some way to sustain himself here then he
might end up a beggar or worse, and he was in no mood for taking chances at
present. It would be much more sensible, he reasoned, to use what money he had
left to buy passage back to his homeland whereupon he could take up employment
in his father’s textile trade, much though the idea pained him. On the face of
things, however, he didn’t see any other reasonable options open to him.

“Damn it! Everything is a mess. Damn magic and damn merchants too!” he
muttered, swinging the heavy satchel over his shoulder. With that, he left the
little room he had inhabited for the past four years for the final time and
headed out of the building.

Blinking owlishly in the light of day, Michael passed beyond the portals and
out into Guilderstraase, pausing briefly to hand his room keys over to the
gatekeeper. Eyes which burned with intent unknown marked him as he proceeded
down the broad thoroughfare, then a dark figure hurried from the alley whence it
had observed him so that it might intercept the youth before he passed from
sight.

Michael was still in a condition of shock, his thoughts lost in fanciful
notions of how he would spend the rest of his life, when a hand clapped down
heavily upon his shoulder. Michael almost leapt clean out of his skin at the
sudden contact and whirled to face whoever it was that presumed to be so
familiar.

It was a tall man, garbed in the traditional attire of the religious puritans
who made the vanquishing of heretics their lives’ work: wide-brimmed hat,
leather britches and high riding boots, a half cloak worn over a blouson shirt,
and a burnished steel gorget to protect his neck from Vampires. At his belt he
wore a long, heavy bladed sabre and a fine duelling pistol, along with pouches
for powder and shot.