CHAPTER SIX

 

 

Since Jarla knew the eastern part of the city far better than he did, Dieter suggested she pick the restaurant. Promising that the food was better than anyone would guess, she took him to a ramshackle place lit by a paucity of candles. The gloom failed to conceal a general air of shabbiness and grime.

Still, at this moment, any setting free of the taint of Chaos seemed pleasant to Dieter, and he smiled at the waiter. “My friend says venison stew is your speciality.”

The server, a fat man with coppery side-whiskers, a freckled face, and the stink of sweat wafting from his stained armpits, scowled. “It is, but we don’t have any. The hunters are scared to go into the woods and get it. Damn bandits!”

Jarla looked crestfallen.

“In that case,” Dieter said, “bring us a couple of bratwursts and whatever usually comes with them.” The waiter grunted and tramped off to pass the order to the kitchen.

“I’m sorry,” Jarla said.

“It isn’t your fault.” Dieter glanced around and decided their corner of the establishment was far enough removed from the other diners that no one was likely to overhear them if they whispered. “Or maybe it is. The army might already have caught the raiders if not for you.”

“I really am sorry.”

He shook his head. “Relax, will you? That was a joke, or a compliment if you like. I don’t care about the stew. I like sausage, and I like the company.”

She smiled and lowered her eyes.

“Do you know,” he said, “you’re about the last person I would have expected to take part in this enterprise of ours. You’re brave and resourceful, I found that out the night you tampered with my drink, but you also seem gentle. Sweet. How did you become involved?”

She sighed. “Adolph.”

“I should have guessed.”

“Not that I regret it!”

“Well, no. Why would you?” Aside from the risks of arrest, torture, execution, mutation and eternal damnation.

“Things were hard when I was little. My father and brothers all… mistreated me. Other people knew, but no one helped me. When I finally got away from my family, I resolved to make a good life for myself, but somehow things just never worked out the way I hoped. The cause is my chance to finally be happy, or at least to help make a world where others like me will be.”

They stopped talking while the waiter fetched the bratwursts, blackened and still sizzling on the plates.

“I understand,” Dieter said when the fat man had gone away again. He sliced off a bite of sausage. “Still, I’m surprised you’d join after hearing all your life that such efforts are unholy and depraved.”

She hesitated. “You came to Altdorf knowing exactly what you wanted, so when the rest of us offered it to you, we did it in a straightforward sort of way. Some recruits don’t realise what they’re seeking, and to them, the faith reveals itself in stages. When I joined, I was told the group exists to help people and fix things that are wrong, but at first I didn’t realise how ambitious and dangerous its plans really were. But now that I do, I’m proud to be a part of it all.”

Or else you just assume you’re in too deep to get out, Dieter thought. “Did Adolph know what the cult truly was when he brought you in?”

“No. I asked him once, and he got angry that I would even wonder. Because he wouldn’t trick me.” Her voice lacked conviction.

“That’s good. You certainly deserve a better man than any who’d betray your trust.”

She coloured. He could see it even beneath the layers of rouge. Perhaps because she didn’t know how to answer, she took another bite of the spicy, chewy meat. Reminding himself it was better not to push too hard, Dieter did the same, and they ate in silence for a while.

But it wasn’t long before anxiety and impatience compelled him to go to work on her again, although this time he took a different tack. “So, is it really true you’ve never seen our leader, or is that just something you old hands tell to new recruits like me?”

She glanced about, likely making sure no one had wandered close enough to eavesdrop. “It’s true.”

“And you’ve never met a single member of one of the other covens, either?”

“No.”

“It would be funny if there weren’t any others, and no Master of Change, either.” Actually, it wouldn’t be, not for him, because even if he discovered it was so, his instincts told him Krieger would never believe it.

“You mean, if being part of something big is just a lie Mama tells to make us feel brave and important? I can’t believe she’d do that. Anyway, the sacred pages have to come from somewhere.”

“I see your point. Does she meet the Master at a regular time every week or every month? Or does she tell you when a meeting’s coming up?”

Jarla cocked her head. “That’s an odd question.”

He shrugged. “I’m just curious about the way things work. Remember, this is all new to me.”

“I understand. When I joined, I felt the same. Anyway, I have no idea when she goes to see him.”

Then what good are you, Dieter thought? He imagined himself reaching across the table and slapping her face back and forth, leaving handprints in the cosmetics.

Then the spasm of anger subsided, and he felt sick at the urge that had momentarily possessed him. By the comet, what was happening inside his brain?

Three labourers, sweaty and dirty from their work, tramped in and sat at a nearby table. Jarla indicated them with a shift of her head, warning him it was no longer safe to discuss clandestine matters.

They drifted into talking about his imaginary village as it had supposedly been before disaster overtook it. He invented friends and a lass he’d fancied, all lost to him now, and felt a certain sneering superiority when his fraudulent reminiscences prompted her to pat his hand in sympathy. It was a spiteful, mean-spirited reaction, but he couldn’t entirely suppress it.

In time they finished their meals, rose, and headed for the door. As they passed the labourers’ table, the biggest of the three said, “Hey, darling. When you finish with skinny there, come back. I’ll feed you a sausage.” His companions laughed.

Dieter pivoted, snatched up a ceramic tankard from the table, and backhanded the largest labourer across the face with it. The mug shattered, spattering foam and pungent ale.

The big man lurched back in his chair and clapped his hands to his face. His friends started to rise, and Dieter brandished the remains of the tankard at them. The jagged edges, or perhaps something they saw in his glare or posture, froze them in place.

Jarla pulled on his forearm. “Come on!” she said, and he allowed her to haul him outside. The cool evening air felt good on his flushed, sweaty face.

Now that his rage was subsiding, he was appalled at himself. He’d fought during his time with the army, but only with sorcery and only when necessary. He hadn’t used his hand to strike a blow since he was a child, and he’d never in his life lashed out so viciously in response to such minimal provocation.

“Why did you do that?” Jarla asked.

He sucked in a deep, steadying breath. “I didn’t like the way that bastard spoke to you.”

She lowered her eyes. “He spoke to me the way a man speaks to a whore. Which is all I am.”

“Not true. That’s simply the mask you wear. In reality, you’re a fighter risking her life to help the whole world. Nothing could be worthier than that.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Absolutely.” He took hold of her chin, lifted her head, and kissed her. She pressed and ground against him. He pulled her into the dark, narrow space between two buildings.

He remembered his resolve to take things slowly, and Mama Solveig’s warning that Adolph could prove a dangerous enemy. He told himself he didn’t need to manipulate and exploit a woman he had, despite himself, come to like, not to this extent, particularly if she knew as little as she claimed.

Meanwhile, he kept pawing at her.

 

* * *

 

His behaviour still troubled him hours after he’d separated from Jarla and returned to the cellar. Yet at the same time, he felt a thrill whenever he remembered smashing the labourer across the face, or the frenzied coupling in the dark.

He prayed that a good night’s rest would make him feel more in control, more like his old self. He rose and turned towards the grubby cot in the infirmary.

Mama Solveig said, “I thought we might work on your magic for a while.”

Her statement kindled the now-familiar urge to plunge back into his study of the parchments no matter what the consequences. Struggling to quash the impulse, he said, “I can’t spend all my time reading in the dark, even if I have good eyes and the writing glows. I’ll go blind.”

“That’s all right. I didn’t mean you should return to the papers, not this time. Instead, I’ll teach you some of what I’ve already managed to learn.”

His mind seemed to lock up. He wondered if he couldn’t think of a viable way to refuse because he didn’t really want to. “I thought…”

She smiled. “That you were required to learn every trick without any help from anyone? That truly would be inefficient. I wanted you to familiarise yourself with the holy texts as soon as possible. I believe it prepares the mind for everything that follows. But now that you have, you might as well benefit from everyone else’s discoveries.”

He felt a crazy impulse to laugh. Of course. Might as well, especially when he craved it anyway.

Can’t get away. The only reasonable course is to wallow.

“That would be wonderful,” he said. “During the battle with the spirit, Adolph stole Jarla’s shadow and made it fight for him.”

Mama smiled and nodded. “That is a good one. But you’ll have to detach your own shadow. You wouldn’t want to put a strain on this worn-out old heart of mine.”

They repaired to the hidden shrine and set to work under Tzeentch’s watchful eye. As it turned out, Mama Solveig couldn’t articulate the underlying principles, the whys and wherefores, of the spell with anything approaching the lucidity of Magister Lukas and Dieter’s other instructors at the Celestial College. But she did an adequate job of imparting the proper words and gestures, and after a few repetitions, he felt Chaos beginning to rouse.

It dismayed him just how much he liked it. Working Celestial wizardry could be as bracing as a drink of frigid mountain spring water. In contrast, Dark Magic was like guzzling raw spirits. He felt a fierce, heedless elation welling up inside him, and tried his best to hold it in check.

Once Mama Solveig was satisfied with his timing and articulation, it was time to try the spell in earnest. He spoke the words of power, and the darkness around him seethed. Someone laughed. Perhaps it was the icon, the priest, or the stranger he seemed in danger of becoming. Maybe they were all the same thing.

He looked at his shadow, vague in the wavering candlelight, and sensed just how much it would hurt to rip it from its moorings. But it didn’t matter. He was as eager to suffer the shock as he’d been to ravish Jarla.

He snagged his fingertips in the cold flatness of it, gathered in a handful as if he were wadding up a piece of cloth, and yanked. The shadow tore free, and he cried out and staggered at the jolt.

Afterwards, he gasped for breath and clutched at the lectern lest his legs give way. Yet despite the weakness, he felt wonderful. It was always exciting to master a spell, whatever the circumstances, and this time had seemed more exhilarating than ever before. He hadn’t just channelled the attenuated power of the Blue Wind. Rather, he’d reached into the pure heart of magic.

No. No. That was a stupid, suicidal way to look at it, and he tried to shove the notion out of his head.

“Make it do something,” Mama Solveig said.

I should make it rip your head off, Dieter thought, but instead, he decided the shadow should walk back and forth, and, obedient to his unspoken will, it did.

“This is grand,” Mama Solveig said. “I’m so proud of you! When Adolph taught me, it took me days to catch the trick of it. The others still haven’t mastered it. Shall we try something else?”

His immediate impulse was to say yes, but then the cellar seemed to spin as vertigo overwhelmed him. He grabbed for the lectern again, but this time failed to seize hold of it. He fell to one knee, banging it painfully against the floor. His stomach churned, bile burned in his throat, and for a moment, he was sure he’d throw up.

He realised that casting the dark spell had made him sick, and he was glad. Now Mama Solveig wouldn’t insist that he continue his studies immediately, and even more importantly, he had, for the moment, lost the self-destructive desire to do so. All he wanted was to lie down.

Mama Solveig patted him on the shoulder. “Poor lamb,” she said. “It happens this way sometimes, but the sickness will pass, and the next time you cast the spell, it won’t bother you as much.”

 

Dieter woke clenched, almost flinching, as though, even before his waking mind resumed his labours, he dreaded the new day on some deep instinctual level.

The cellar was still almost as dark as it had been when he closed his eyes, with only a hint of morning turning the windows into grey rectangles floating in blackness. He wondered what had roused him, then heard Mama Solveig moving about.

Most likely she’d got up to use the chamber pot. He pulled the covers up over his head in the forlorn hope it would stifle the sound, and then the bar securing the door groaned in its brackets. The panel creaked open and bumped shut.

If she was sneaking off without telling him, did that mean she was going to see the Master of Change? He’d imagined the coven of coven leaders meeting in the dead of night, but he supposed that actually, they could assemble at any time, including the hours immediately before dawn.

He threw off his blankets, sat up, and groped around on the floor for his shoes. It seemed to take forever to find them. He jammed them on his feet, then hurried out the door and up the steps.

Mist hung in the street, blurring and softening the square masses of the buildings. Despite the haze and the feeble predawn light, he could just make out Mama Solveig rounding a corner some yards ahead.

He stalked after her, wondering how close he ought to follow. He didn’t want to lose her, but mustn’t let her spot him, either.

Other early risers trudged past him, and he hoped he didn’t look as much like a creeping malefactor as he felt. The clammy mist chilled him. His cloak would have warded off the cold, but in his haste he’d neglected to put it on.

Mama Solveig turned into what he knew to be a warren of twisting, branching alleyways. Even if she continued to hobble, it would be easy to lose her in that circumscribed but treacherous maze. He quickened his pace to make up some of the distance between them.

As though to hinder him, the mist thickened. The old woman was heading in the general direction of the river that had given birth to it, and the sun hadn’t yet risen to start burning it off. All but forsaking caution, Dieter strode faster still.

Even so, another minute brought him to a point where the alley he was following crossed another, and no matter how he peered and listened, he simply couldn’t determine which way Mama Solveig had gone.

He was reluctant to use magic to pick up her trail. His assault on the labourer, brutish copulation with Jarla, and helpless thirst for dark lore all combined to make him feel contaminated and vulnerable. He feared that, until he recovered some stability, even the tamed Chaos bound in Celestial wizardry might further pollute him, or that the magic might escape his control and twist into something ghastly. But unless he was prepared to abandon his current enterprise, it seemed he had no choice.

He glanced about, making sure no one was currently in eyeshot, then started whispering a spell. He was four words into it before he realised just how well founded his misgivings actually were. He wasn’t performing Celestial wizardry but rather the divination from the forbidden texts.

Even then, it was hard to stop. The syllables seemed to articulate themselves like water gushing from a spring. But he clamped down on them and cut them off.

Now more concerned with reasserting his identity as a practitioner of Celestial magic than with acting surreptitiously, he declaimed the spell he’d originally meant to cast in a louder voice and with sweeping passes. When he finished, he looked up, and for one terrifying moment could discern no transformation in the sky. The few stars still visible despite the imminence of morning simply continued to fade as though spurning and forsaking him.

But finally one throbbed to point him in the right direction. He closed his eyes, and for a moment, his body felt slack and heavy with relief. Then he tramped onwards.

The stars led him to a narrow strip of earth too steep for anyone to bother building anything on it, even in teeming Altdorf. The descent ran down to the Reik with its warehouses, boatyards and jetties. The fog lay atop the water like a mass of cotton. He could only just barely make out the shapes of the boats and barges moored along the bank, or the arch of a nearby bridge, which appeared to float unconnected to either shore.

He peered about in perplexity, because it was difficult to see how Mama Solveig could have continued on from here. She would have needed to backtrack to make for the bridge, and it didn’t seem likely she would have clambered down the hillside, which lacked stairs or even a path, to rendezvous with a boat and embark on the river. Had she entered one of the buildings rising close at hand? Hoping for further guidance, he looked up at the heavens. Something plopped onto his cheek.

Dead flies were falling from the empty air. Jagged red lines snaked across the world like cracks ruining a fresco.

The fleeting phenomena indicated someone was working magic. Dieter cast about for the potential threat, but the mist obscured it. A spiral of shadow swirled up around his body, then snapped tight to bind his limbs. Its embrace stung like a row of ant bites, even through his clothes.

It was the same spell Adolph had attempted to use to bind the fiery serpent. Dieter rattled off a spell of protection, and the coil of shadow frayed and vanished. He pivoted, seeking his adversary once more.

That brought him face to face with Mama Solveig, who was just climbing up the rise onto level ground. Perhaps she’d hidden behind a tree, or maybe it was simply the mist that had prevented him from spotting her hitherto. She clutched a lancet in an overhand grip. It wasn’t much of a fighting knife, but quite capable of killing a man who couldn’t move.

Her eyes widened, and she clapped her empty hand to her bosom. “Dieter! Oh, my goodness!”

“Mama Solveig, are you all right?” It was all he could think of to say.

“I’m fine, but I could have killed you. What are you doing here?”

“I… I woke just as you were going out, and at first I thought, well, if you hadn’t asked me to go with you, then I didn’t need to. But then I thought of the Purple Hand lurking about, waiting for the chance to pick us off, and I had the feeling you were in danger. So I tried to catch up with you, but you were too far ahead, and I lost you in the mist. I finally used a charm to track you.”

Mama Solveig sighed. “I sensed someone following me, assumed the worst, and hid. When you turned up, these short-sighted old eyes couldn’t make out your face. The fog’s too thick, and I had a bad angle peering up from below. So I sought to defend myself.”

He grinned. “I’d say you were succeeding pretty well.”

She waved a tremulous hand in dismissal. “That’s a kind thing to say, but you didn’t have any trouble breaking free of my enchantment. You know, dear, I don’t think the Purple Hand have figured out who I am, and even if they have, I doubt they’ll bother us this morning. The only person I felt coming after me was you.”

Was she saying she knew he was lying? “Well, I hope you’re right.”

“Dieter, I want you to listen to me very carefully. This life we live is holy and full of wonders, but it wears on the nerves. The secrecy, the danger, opening yourself to the god… it’s all a strain, and from time to time, you may find yourself imagining things.”

“I can understand that.”

“But whatever you’re thinking or feeling, you mustn’t follow when I go off alone. Trust me to look after myself. Because if you follow me to the wrong place, I’ll know it, and if I don’t, others will. And then we’ll kill you. It’s just as simple as that.”

“All right. But I was only trying to help you.”

“I know, dear. I’m very grateful, and the fact of the matter is, you can.” She nodded towards the slope. “See the mushrooms?”

He did now, though he hadn’t noticed them before. The pale, spotted caps poked up through the grass. “Yes.”

“They’re what I came for. I use them in my medicines, and they’re best if gathered just before sunrise. Come help me pick them.”

 

Mama Solveig tottered about the cellar setting out cakes and cheese, just as if she were preparing for an ordinary party. Dieter attempted to help, and as usual, she shooed him away.

She did allow him to play doorman, and he admitted the coven members one by one. It was the first time he’d met any of them except for her, Jarla and Adolph, and it struck him just how ordinary the others appeared. The rage, misery, or fundamental perversity that had drawn each to the Changer of the Ways lay buried beneath a quotidian facade.

Of course, the obvious mutants all ran away to join Leopold Mann.

Someone else knocked. Dieter opened the peephole, and Jarla, her wistful face scrubbed clean of paint and her hair pulled back, peered in at him. His forehead gave him a pang, and, fumbling with the sliding bar, he admitted her.

She offered a tentative smile, and then, after a moment, squeezed his forearm. “Should we talk?” she asked.

“Probably.” He waved her towards Mama Solveig’s workspace. Since the others had congregated around the food and drink in the kitchen, the infirmary offered a modicum of privacy. She sat on the cot, and he took the stool.

“What happened in the alley,” she murmured. “It was nice.”

“It was.”

“I didn’t tell Adolph.”

He supposed that, considering her trade, it was ironic that she thought it mattered whether she had or hadn’t. Yet he understood the difference between what she did for her own fulfilment and what she did for coin, and he suspected Adolph was sensitive to the same distinction. “Do you intend to?”

“I don’t know. We’ve been together for a while. He takes care of me.”

“From what I’ve seen, he bullies you.”

She shrugged as if the two things were the same. “I’d never want to hurt him, and I need someone in my life.”

“Are you telling me what happened between us shouldn’t happen again?”

“I don’t know! I guess I’m asking, if I did decide to leave Adolph, would you want to be with me?”

He had no idea how to answer.

He was a wizard of the Celestial Order and she was a common streetwalker, and yet, he did like her. He just didn’t know if the emotion ran deep and true, or merely sprang from the fact that, lonely and frightened, he overvalued any comfort that came his way. Or perhaps it was a symptom of the mental sickness he’d contracted from Dark Magic.

Not that it actually mattered what he felt or why. She was a cultist, his enemy and the enemy of everything healthy and sane, and if he hoped to go on breathing, all he could afford to care about was how best to deal with her to safeguard himself and further his mission.

But how was that, exactly? He could strengthen the bond that had sprung up between them, but was there a point if she had no way of helping him find the Master of Change? Was it worth antagonising Adolph?

He suddenly felt a spasm of impatience with his ambivalent, torturous calculations. He wanted the bitch, he might still find a way to exploit her to accomplish his purpose, so why not take her? He could handle Adolph. If need be, he could squash him like an insect.

He smiled at Jarla. “Of course I want to be with you.”

“Then I have a choice to make.”

It wasn’t the response he’d expected, and it irked him. It made him feel she was teasing and toying with him. He felt an urge to grab her, kiss her, master her, and then something seethed at the periphery of his vision.

He turned to see shadow squirming into being by the door. The clot of darkness sprouted hands which slid the bar aside, then withered into non-existence.

Adolph swaggered through the doorway. Mama Solveig gave him a look that mixed affection and exasperation in equal measure. “Dear, we’ve talked about this before: don’t cast spells for trivial reasons, don’t do it out in the open, and particularly, don’t do it outside my home.”

Adolph grinned. “No one was looking.” Dieter assumed the idiot had chosen to make an impressive entrance to remind everyone who was accounted the ablest sorcerer and Mama’s de facto lieutenant.

The scribe looked about. When his gaze fell on Jarla and Dieter sitting together, his mouth tightened, and he tramped in their direction. Jarla hastily rose and moved to greet him. Dieter didn’t want the other man towering over him, so he stood up as well.

Adolph barely acknowledged Jarla. He gave Dieter a glower. “So. I hear you’ll try to teach us something tonight.”

“Yes,” Dieter replied. Mama Solveig had insisted on it.

“Something you found in the holy writings?”

“No.” The only new spell he’d discovered therein was the charm of divination, and he didn’t dare share that one. Somebody could use it to discover his true identity and intentions. “Something my father taught me.”

Adolph snorted. “Hedge magic.”

“All magic derives from Chaos and is accordingly sacred in the eyes of the Changer of the Ways. But if you haven’t absorbed even that basic truth, I suppose you can stay out here and drink cider.”

“Is that what you’d like me to do? Then I’m sorry to disappoint you. I never neglect a chance to worship, and I won’t mind picking up your little cantrip. It’s just that I’m disappointed. Mama told us to expect miracles of you.”

Dieter was still trying to decide how to respond to the sarcasm when Mama Solveig clapped her hands to attract everyone’s attention. The drone of conversation died away.

“We’re all nine of us here,” she said, “so let’s begin.” She opened a chest sitting atop a table. “Come put on your regalia.”

Said regalia proved to be tabards sewn from irregular scraps of cloth, pink, puce and purple, primarily, garish as a jester’s motley. Only Adolph’s costume deviated from the common mould. He reached into the box, removed a black velvet cloak with a purple satin lining, shook it out, and swirled it around his shoulders. The costly garment was an extravagance for a fellow earning a journeyman’s wages, but apparently he imagined it made him look like an adept.

When Mama Solveig revealed the shrine, the icon seemed to pounce out of the dark. The writing on the parchments started to glow.

Prayer followed, and then the sacrifice of two young goats. Adolph slit the throats of the bound, bleating kids and laid the bodies at the foot of Tzeentch’s pedestal. Dieter felt a sudden elation and struggled to deny it, to clear his mind, to be himself, and not the newborn other who continually tainted his feelings and skewed his judgement.

“Now,” Mama Solveig said, “Dieter will teach us a spell.”

He’d pondered exactly what to impart. It shouldn’t be anything the Red Crown could use to hurt others, or anything overtly evocative of the powers of storm and sky. Adolph, Jarla and Mama Solveig had already seen him use such abilities, but even so, he preferred not to provide any more reason for people to suspect that he wasn’t a humble wyrd but rather a Celestial wizard.

In the end, he’d decided on the simplest of spells, the charm to make a handheld object shine with its own inner light. He started instructing Mama Solveig, Jarla, Adolph and a boatman named Nevin as he’d once taught apprentices of his own order. The remaining cultists supposedly lacked any trace of mystical aptitude, and so they simply stood and watched.

To Dieter’s surprise, despite their lack of any clear, comprehensive grounding in the theory of magic, his current pupils seemed to catch on quickly. They’d plainly derived some benefit from their study of the blasphemous texts, and learning a basic charm with the help of a competent teacher was considerably easier than uncovering, comprehending and mastering the complex hidden spells.

Finally the little pewter vial in Jarla’s hand radiated silvery light. She stared at it in what seemed a combination of delight and disbelief. “I did it! I did it the first of anybody.”

Dieter smiled. “Good for you.”

Adolph scowled and continued to scowl when the quill in his own grasp and the objects in the hands of Mama Solveig and Nevin began to shine white, yellow or blue. Oblivious to his displeasure, the boatman and Jarla grinned and congratulated one another. Dieter gathered that their attempts to learn magic generally ended in frustration, but tonight each felt like a genuine magus.

When the lesson concluded, Mama Solveig beamed at her flock. “This is splendid. As I’ve told you, nine is a sacred number, and the ideal number for a coven. Now that we’ve completed our circle, it’s plain that we’ll do great things. But it’s time to finish up for tonight, lest those who wait for you at home wonder where you tarried so late. Dieter, will you read a benediction from the holy texts? Whatever you choose will be fine.”

“I deliver the benedictions!” Adolph said.

“More often than not,” the old woman replied, “because my bleary old eyes have trouble making out the characters, and you read well. But so does Dieter, and the god loves change, so let’s give him a turn.”

Actually, Dieter, or at least the still-sensible part of him, would have been happy to let Adolph do the reading. He didn’t want to subject himself to the influence of the luminous words so soon after working sorcery, even of the most benign and trivial sort. But he couldn’t think of a plausible excuse to refuse.

He chose a rambling screed on the ultimate invincibility and inevitable triumph of Chaos. So far, it had never fascinated him to the extent that some of the other passages had. If he steeled himself against its enticements and stopped after a few lines, maybe it wouldn’t be able to chip away at him.

He began to read, and it was all right. The blasphemous words sought to entrance him, but by now he and the texts were like fencers who duelled one another every day. He’d learned their tricks, and the knowledge aided his defence.

He reached the final syllables with his head still clear, or as clear as it ever was anymore. Then Adolph cried out, startling him. He faltered.

“Keep going!” Adolph snapped. He was all eagerness now. Dieter realised that something hidden in the screed had begun to reveal itself to him, and he was as avid as any magician on the verge of discovering a new enchantment.

Dieter looked to Mama Solveig. “Yes,” she said, “keep reading. We mustn’t waste the opportunity.”

That left him no choice but to continue. It was now more difficult to hold himself aloof from the spiritual pollution implicit in the text, because he was just as curious as Adolph to discover what secret lurked encoded in the surface message. It would be even more poisonous, but what true wizard could turn away from it?

He reached the end of the document. Adolph told him to start over and he did.

The second time though, certain syllables started emphasising themselves. He didn’t articulate them any louder, but they somehow resounded in the mind. Stringing them together, knowing instinctively where the breaks ought to occur, he constructed words of power. Other cultists cried out or laughed crazily as they too glimpsed the hidden pattern.

“I’ve got it!” Adolph shouted. He snatched one of the staves and brandished it over his head, an action that spread his handsome cloak like a pair of wings. Evidently he meant to try the spell.

“Wait!” Dieter said. “We aren’t ready. We don’t understand it yet.”

Adolph sneered. “Maybe you don’t, you and your stupid little lights. I’ll show you some real magic.” He slashed the gleaming oak rod through a mystic pass and uttered the first word of command.

Dieter hoped Mama Solveig would intervene, but she didn’t. She and the other cultists simply watched, plainly apprehensive but eager for a marvel as well, apparently trusting in Tzeentch to protect them. The icon’s snarling grin seemed to stretch a little wider.

Adolph shouted the final word of the spell and thumped the butt of the staff on the floor for emphasis. Power whined in a crescendo that died abruptly.

For a moment it seemed that apart from the shrill noise, nothing had happened. Then a sort of oval-shaped distortion, seething and running with sickly colour, opened in empty air.

Hanno, the squat, grizzled cabinetmaker who fashioned the cult’s wands and staves, stepped closer to peer at the writhing, floating abnormality. “It’s a marvel,” he said in a bullfrog voice, “but I don’t understand the use of it.”

Likewise rippling and oozing with colour, hands and forearms shot up out of the oval as if it had become a hole into another world, as, perhaps, it had. They grabbed Hanno and jerked him forwards. He screamed but fell silent when his head disappeared into the opening.