The Enemy Within (30 page)

“It’s good to hear you say so, and as you’re willing to be
sensible, I’ll gladly honour our agreement. Why not?”

Dieter sneered. “Why not, indeed? Except, of course, that you
came to grief once already by allowing a person bearing the stain of Chaos to go
free. Why would you risk it again, and have the threat that someday, for
whatever reason, I might reveal the truth about you hanging over your head?
Especially considering that you made the world believe I’m the Chaos worshipper.
If you catch me—killing me in the process, of course—you’ll advance your
career as a witch hunter, which will bring additional opportunities to further
the cause of the Purple Hand. Whereas if you declare that you were wrong about
me, it will count as a mark against you.

“All of which leads me to suspect you’re simply trying to
cozen me into dropping my guard, to make it easier to kill me.”

“It would have been easier for you, too,” Krieger replied,
“if you could have found it in your heart to trust me one last time. Because I
truly am grateful for your efforts, and I would have made your end quick and
clean. You would have died happy, without ever realising that things weren’t
going to work out for you after all. But if you prefer to go down fighting, so
be it.” He waved his hand, and his men started forwards. Jarla whimpered.

“I wouldn’t,” Dieter said. He displayed the little clay
figure with the same subtle flourish he’d once employed to pluck pennies from a
child’s ears.

Dieter was no sculptor, and the figure bore only a crude
resemblance to its inspiration. The ambient gloom and the distance between him
and Krieger should likewise have hindered recognition. But perhaps the witch
hunter felt a pang of instinctive alarm when he beheld the doll, for he barked,
“Wait!” His minions halted their advance.

“That was wise,” Dieter said.

“What is that thing?” Krieger growled.

“It’s you, Otto. Your future.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I said before that I should have deduced you were a Chaos
cultist sooner than I did, and that’s true, but I did realise before tonight.
Since you have pretensions to magical skill yourself, you likely know that all
true sorcerers catch glimpses of Chaos worming its way through the mundane world
from time to time. This new eye of mine enhances that mode of sight.

“The eye opened a crack the second time we met at the tavern,
and I saw an ugly glimmer crawling on you. At first, I imagined it was just an
outward sign of a vicious, brutish nature, but then I realised it meant Chaos
had taken you for its own.

“Once I understood that, it was easy to figure out that you
were actually a follower of the Purple Hand, your pledges were worthless, and
you’d deem it expedient to kill me as soon as I outlived my usefulness. If I
wanted to survive, I needed a way of forcing you to honour our agreement.”

Krieger swallowed. “So you pretended to have a seizure.”

“Exactly. Do you remember how I flailed and scratched at you?
I did it to obtain a bit of your blood, hair and skin. I needed them to make
this talisman.”

“Which is supposed to do what, exactly?”

“If I so choose, it will hurt you. I confess, I can’t say
precisely how. You might go blind. Or mad. Or catch the plague. You might suffer
one calamity after another for the rest of your days. Suffice it to say.
Celestial wizards understand the ways of destiny—that was why you chose me,
remember?—and I’ve bound your fate inside this figure. Don’t make me blight
it.” Dieter spoke a word of command and pressed his thumb down on the doll’s
chest.

Krieger gasped and staggered. Dieter would have been happy to
continue the torment for a considerable time, but he suspected that if he tried,
the other cultists would shake off their uncertainty and move to interfere. So
he stopped squeezing after only a moment or two.

“That was just to prove that you and the doll truly are
connected,” he said. “Don’t make me do something that will have permanent
consequences.”

His eyes wild, Krieger sucked in a ragged breath. “I won’t! I
promise I won’t! I’ll proclaim your innocence as soon as we go back up into the
city! I’ll declare it right now, in writing! There must be ink and parchment
down here somewhere…” He turned as though casting about for them, and his form
divided into multiple images superimposed on one another.

The phantom moving ahead of all the others whirled back
around with a small pistol in its hand. Evidently Krieger kept it concealed on
his person as a weapon of last resort, and he was gambling that he possessed the
speed and marksmanship to kill Dieter before his adversary could exert the power
of the doll.

But thanks to Dieter’s ability to glimpse the future, the
ploy was doomed to fail. He waited another instant—dodge too soon, and Krieger
might realise and adjust his aim—then sidestepped.

The several Kriegers collapsed into one. The little gun in
his outstretched hand spat fire and banged just as Jarla threw herself in front
of the muzzle. She thought she needed to endanger herself to shield Dieter, and
since he’d been too busy watching the witch hunters to keep an eye on her as
well, he hadn’t discerned her intention.

She grunted and flopped backwards. Dieter tried to catch her,
but, with the talisman filling one hand, couldn’t grab hold. Jarla fell down on
her back with a neat little hole above her heart.

He stared down at the body in astonishment. He’d mastered the
tainted side of himself and refused to kill Jarla when she lay atop the altar.
Instead, he’d unchained her, and fought the sorcerers of the Red Crown to give
her a chance to escape. It seemed impossible that, after all that struggle, she
lay dead anyway.

Then, abruptly, stupefaction gave way to fury. He bellowed
and gripped the doll as tightly as he could. Responsive to his hatred even
without incantations or mystical gestures to compel them, Chaos and some
rarefied essence of lightning blended together, poured into his body, surged
down his arm and burned in his straining fingers.

The clay figure burst into flame as if it were made of paper,
then shattered into half a dozen pieces.

Krieger shrieked and dropped his gun and sword to paw at his
face. It was a bad idea, because the flesh there had lost its cohesion, and a
touch sufficed to dislodge it from the bone beneath. Gory scraps and viscous
liquid streamed down like stew slopping from a ladle.

Krieger tried to extend a beseeching hand to Dieter, and it
fell off his wrist. The witch hunter’s left eye collapsed and slipped back into
its socket as though some parasite ensconced inside his skull had sucked the
optic into its mouth.

Krieger pitched forwards, convulsed twice, and then stopped
moving entirely. The corpse bloated instantly, as though it had lain and rotted
for days.

It was, Dieter assumed, the end for him as well. The threat
to Krieger had been his only hope of forcing the Purple Hand to let him go. Now
that he’d already carried it out, the remaining cultists had no reason to accede
to his demands. Indeed, he’d given them additional cause to butcher him.

So be it, but, even though, in the wake of that last piece of
magic, he doubted he had even a trace of power left, he’d do his best to make
them work to avenge their leader. He drew breath, lifted his trembling hands,
and only then realised they still weren’t moving to attack him. Was it possible
that Krieger’s death, or the gruesome, unexpected manner of it, had cowed them?

Someone cleared his throat. Dieter pivoted to meet the gaze
of a man who’d whipped him back in his cell in Halmbrandt. The ruffian had a
long, scraggly caprine beard, a missing incisor, and blood from a fresh wound in
his right forearm darkening his sleeve. He held a short sword in either hand.

“You said we could have the Red Crown’s books and papers,” he
said, the hint of a quaver in his voice.

“Yes,” Dieter replied.

“Then go. Go now, and we won’t try to hurt you, all right?”

Fearing a trick, Dieter edged towards the exit, picking up
his cloak and a lantern in the process. The cultists watched with malice in
their eyes, but did nothing to prevent him.

It occurred to him that he was abandoning Jarla’s body. The
Purple Hand would either toss it in a sewer or simply let it lie and rot in the
evil place where it had fallen.

She deserved better, but then, she always had. Dieter had
deceived and exploited her from the start, and a proper burial, even if he could
have managed it, was scarcely enough to make amends.

He staggered through the reeking sewers as fast as the
darkness, slippery, treacherous footing, and his bruises, facial wounds and
exhaustion would allow. He glanced back often to see if anyone was following
him. As far as he could tell, nobody was.

At the foot of the ladder, wincing at the thought of the
agonising headache that would soon follow, he closed his third eye. He pulled up
his cowl as well, to obscure the unnatural organ and the bloody punctures on his
forehead, cheeks and jaw, then set down his lantern and clambered up the rungs.
Twice he nearly lost his grip, but not quite, and finally he crawled back out
onto the street.

A spotted dog barked at him. Several boys glanced around in
his direction, then resumed their game of kickball.

Dieter lifted his eyes to the heavens.

Even with the smoke, lights and rooftops of the city
obscuring it, the beauty of the night sky clogged his throat and brought
stinging tears to his eyes. He knew he should keep watching for enemies stalking
after him, but as he rose and stumbled onwards, he only wanted to gaze at the
stars and forget everything else.

“Well done,” said a baritone voice.

Dieter lurched around, saw the priest, and realised he wasn’t
surprised. Some part of him had expected the phantom to reappear.

Which didn’t mean he was glad. “What do you want now?” he
wheezed.

The priest smiled. “To congratulate you on your victory.”

Dieter’s guts twisted. “What victory? I just lost a woman who
loved me and everything I was fighting to reclaim. Krieger was the only person
who could have given me back my life, and I went berserk and killed him.”

“As you were supposed to. It’s all a part of the Changer’s
plan. At the end, that was why the Purple Hand feared to fight you. Whether they
realised it consciously or not, they sensed that the god would favour you, not
them.”

“No!” Dieter exploded. “There isn’t any plan, and even if
there is, I’m going to thwart it! I feel as though I’ve lost everything, but I
haven’t, not yet. Despite everything, I haven’t lost myself, and by the sun and
stars, I won’t. I’ll find a way to purge the sickness inside me and scour your
master’s filth from my face.”

“Excellent!” said the priest. “Walk your road, learn your
lessons, and we’ll talk from time to time along the way.” He turned and
disappeared. Overhead, a falling star sliced a long gash across the sky.

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