The Enemy Within (6 page)

“So I’ll ask you one last time: will you carry out your end
of our bargain, without any more foolishness?”

“Yes,” Dieter groaned.

“I’m glad to hear it. I’m afraid the caravan is long gone by
now, but don’t worry about it. My friends and I will take you to Altdorf
ourselves.”

Jarla and Adolph led Dieter down a short flight of steps to a
door below street level. Adolph pounded on it, and then, as the wait for a
response dragged on, growled, “Come on, come on.”

Dieter sympathised with his impatience. In the wake of their
encounter with the fiery serpent, he was just as eager to get off the street,
even though he realised that for him, it would only mean heading into new
danger.

Finally a small panel in the centre of the door slid open.
Despite the darkness, Dieter could just make out the gleam of an eye on the
other side of the peephole.

“It’s us!” Adolph said. “Jarla and me. Let us in.”

“Of course, dear,” quavered a scratchy woman’s voice. Dieter
heard a bar slide in its brackets, and then the door creaked open.

On the other side stood an old woman clad in a nightcap,
nightgown, ratty slippers and a crocheted shawl. Her stooped, skinny frame
looked fragile as an eggshell, she had the serene, gentle face of a perfect
grandmother, and all in all, on first impression seemed as unlikely a Chaos
cultist as Jarla.

Or at least she did until she caught sight of Dieter standing
behind his companions. Then, where another person’s eyes might have widened in
surprise, hers narrowed, and just for an instant, her pale, wrinkled features
seemed calculating and sly.

She ushered her callers into a dark space illuminated only by
the red coals glowing in the hearth, then, moving with a quickness that belied
her years, barred the door behind them. After that, though, she doddered. She
used the embers to light a punk, which in turn served to kindle two stubby
tallow candles and an oil lamp.

As the sources of light wavered to life one by one, they
revealed that the old woman occupied a sizeable portion of the building’s cellar
or conceivably even all of it. Suffusing the air with their aromas, bundles of
dried herbs hung from the ceiling, and pots of moss, mould and mushrooms sat on
a table alongside a chopper, mortar, pestle, forceps and a lancet. Tattered,
yellowed anatomical diagrams, inaccurate in certain respects, hung on the walls,
and a stained cot sat in one corner.

“I take it,” she said, “that this is the unfortunate fellow
you told me about.”

“Yes,” Jarla said, “Dieter, but he isn’t what I thought he
was. Something happened, and he showed he already knows how to work magic. Even
better than Adolph, maybe.” Then, realising what she’d said, she tensed as if
she expected her fellow cultist to berate or even strike her. In fact, he
glowered, but let it go at that.

The old woman beamed at Dieter. “I can see we have a great
deal to talk about. My name is Solveig Weiss, but everyone calls me Mama
Solveig, or just Mama. I’m a midwife, a healer, and something more. I assume you
already have some inkling what, or my young friends wouldn’t have brought you
here. But where are my manners, keeping you all standing? Please, pick up the
lights and follow me.”

Dieter took one of the candles and a drip of molten wax stung
his finger. Mama Solveig led them out of the clinic and into the area that
apparently served as her parlour, where they all settled on one shabby piece of
furniture or another.

“Tea?” Mama asked, and looked disappointed when they all
declined. “Well, just let me know if you change your minds. Now let’s have the
story.”

Jarla started it, but once she reached the part where she
went to fetch Adolph, the latter broke in and insisted on continuing it himself.
To Dieter’s ear, his account of the skirmish with the fiery snake was an
ambivalent and somewhat inconsistent affair. It was plain that Dieter’s
abilities had impressed him, and that he felt it important to convey an accurate
sense of them. Yet at the same time, he couldn’t bear to admit that his own
magic had proved less potent if not entirely useless.

When he finished, Mama Solveig gave Dieter another smile.
“Thank you for helping my friends, and after they drugged and threatened you,
too! It’s a debt we can never hope to repay. But the question remains, how did
you do it? Who are you really? Obviously, not the simple disgruntled peasant you
claimed to be.”

Dieter took a deep breath. The moment had come, and now
they’d believe the new lies or they wouldn’t.

“The story I told Jarla,” he said, “was partly true. Beastmen
did plunder my village, the crops grew strangely afterwards, and then the witch
hunters came to finish the task of destroying everything we had. What I lied
about was being a farmer. I’m a wyrd. What city folk call a hedge wizard. A
knack for a certain kind of magic runs in my family, and my father taught me to
use it. To help people, never to harm!”

“We believe you,” Mama said.

“I tried to help when the goat-men came, and I did save a few
people. Later, I tried my best to wash the taint from the soil and water. I just
wasn’t able. Yet when the witch hunters arrived, they came after me
immediately.”

Mama Solveig nodded. “Because you had power you earned for
yourself. You didn’t go down on your belly and beg it from the colleges, or wear
the shackles that would have come with it. No matter how kindly your intentions,
people like you, simply by virtue of your existence, pose a threat to the
established order. The nobles and priests think they have to exterminate you or
you’ll one day topple them from their perches.” She leered, providing another
momentary glimpse of the fierce spirit lurking behind her mild-looking exterior.
“As you will. As we will.”

He shrugged. “Maybe.” He’d decided he shouldn’t appear too
eager, or be too quick and facile when it came to proclaiming sentiments and
intentions consonant with their own. As Jarla had recounted it, he’d pushed too
hard before, and thus aroused her suspicions. “Anyway, it was just good luck
that I escaped. Afterwards, I hid on the outskirts of the fief to see what would
happen next. The witch hunters burned innocent folk and the houses, barns and
fields of the survivors, just as I told Jarla. Once it became clear how it was
all going to end, I fancied my neighbours might rise up in anger. If they had, I
would have joined them. But they didn’t. They surely recognised the injustice,
but they were too afraid. Afraid of the hunters and the gods they claim to
serve.”

“They do,” Adolph said, “and that’s how we know Sigmar and
his kind are gods of cruelty and oppression. Fortunately, they aren’t the only
powers to whom a man can pray.”

Dieter nodded. “The things you’re saying… they’re the same
kinds of things I started thinking after I had to run away, and the village
died. The witch hunters had already condemned me for a servant of the Dark Gods.
Maybe it was what I really ought to be. All of a sudden, tearing down the Empire
and building something new in its place didn’t seem like such a bad idea.

“So I came to Altdorf,” he continued, “partly just in the
hope of losing myself among the crowds, but also imagining that maybe I could
find people who felt the way I’d come to feel.” He grinned. “Looking back, I
don’t know why I thought I could find them, but you have to understand that out
in the country, we rustics like to imagine big cities ire rife with all manner
of sin and wickedness, forbidden worship included.”

“Our lord led you to us,” said Jarla, her eyes shining.
Adolph grunted.

“Maybe so,” Dieter said. “But where exactly has he led me?
Who are you people? A Chaos cult, I understand that much, but what does it
really mean?”

“It means,” Mama Solveig said, “that we renounce the Emperor,
the elector counts and the gods who stand behind them. They’re all part of one
vicious conspiracy to enslave and oppress the multitudes of ordinary people, and
we mean to cast them down.”

“With the help of Chaos.”

“Yes. Where Sigmar and his kind forbid, bind and punish, the
Great Conspirator permits, liberates and exalts. Chaos is the pure, true essence
of magic, and once it drowns the sad, rotten world we know, and we all dwell in
the midst of it like fish swimming through the sea, all things will be possible.
We’ll live forever, and get anything we want just by wishing for it.”

Everyone knew how much death and suffering the hordes of
Chaos had inflicted on mankind throughout the centuries, and so Dieter wondered
how any sane person could imagine that its triumph would result in the
establishment of paradise. Yet, though seemingly rational, Mama Solveig did
appear to believe, and so did Adolph and Jarla, hanging on her words even though
they’d undoubtedly heard her preach this sermon before.

“Here’s what I don’t understand,” Dieter said. “You serve
Chaos. Yet a creature of Chaos attacked Jarla, Adolph and me. Why would it do
that? How did it even pass from its own world into ours?”

Adolph spat. “The Cult of the Purple Hand.”

“Perhaps,” Mama Solveig said.

“Who else could it have been? Who else could and would send
such a spirit against us?”

“What,” Dieter asked, “are you talking about?”

“We,” said Mama Solveig, “belong to the Cult of the Red
Crown. Unfortunately, we’re not the only Chaos worshippers in Altdorf. The
Purple Hand have their own network of covens, and they, no less than the lords
and priests, are our foes.”

Dieter felt a crazy impulse to laugh. Or possibly weep. He’d
known himself ill equipped to face a single Chaos cult, and apparently Altdorf
was swarming with them like an old rotten house full of termites!

“I’ve heard,” he said, choosing his words carefully, not
wanting to appear as if he possessed a suspicious quantity of information, “that
the gods of Chaos can be as hostile to one another as they are to Sigmar,
Shallya and the other powers ordinary people worship.”

“That’s true,” Mama Solveig said, “but the Purple Hand
purport to serve the Changer of the Ways just as we do.”

“‘Purport’? You mean they really don’t?”

“No. In their ignorance and vanity, they’ve strayed from the
true path.”

“All right, but even so, why are you so at odds that they
would try to kill you?”

“The books,” Adolph said.

“What books?” Dieter asked.

“I haven’t heard the whole story.” Mama Solveig sighed. “As
old as I am, I don’t suppose I’ll ever advance deep enough into the mysteries,
and the confidence of the Master of Change, our high priest, to learn the rest.
Not in this life, anyway. But some years back, a very great sorcerer and
follower of the god lived here in Altdorf. I’m not certain, but I believe he was
a magister, who turned to proscribed studies in defiance of the limits his order
decreed. In any case, he belonged to neither the Red Crown nor the Purple Hand,
but had a relationship with the men who would become the leaders of both sects.
Perhaps it’s even fair to say they were his apprentices.”

“I take it,” Dieter said, “that he collected or wrote a
number of grimoires.”

Mama Solveig smiled as if she were telling a bedtime story,
and he, the grandson had just shown interest by asking a question. Yes, dear.
Books and papers filled with secrets of what the ignorant call Dark Magic, and
naturally both the Master of Change and the chief of the Purple Hand hoped to
inherit them someday.

“And in time,” the midwife continued, “the day arrived. The
sorcerer died, fled the city, or grew beyond the need of books. I don’t know
which. But whatever happened, he bequeathed his library to our leader.”

Or else the Master of Change simply leaped on the opportunity
to steal it, Dieter thought. “And the Purple Hand proved unwilling to accept the
disappointment graciously.”

“Yes. Since then, we’ve tried to destroy one another.” Mama
Solveig chortled. “Although they’re hampered by the fact that they don’t know
many of us, nor do we know many of them. We all guard our secrets well.”

“But we hurt them sometimes!” Adolph said. “Not long ago, we
found out some of them meant to taint the city’s water and cause mutations, and
we betrayed the plot to the witch hunters and the watch. Anonymously, of
course.”

Dieter shook his head. “I understand there’s bad blood
between you, but overthrowing the Empire is the hugest, most dangerous
undertaking imaginable. If you all worship the same god…”

“Then maybe we should forget our differences and work
together?” Mama Solveig asked. “I’m afraid we can’t. Our strategies are
incompatible. They want to infiltrate the Imperial hierarchy and subvert it from
within. Put their own candidate for Emperor on the throne one day. It’s a
worthless, cowardly plan. It can’t succeed, and even if it did, it would take
centuries. Further generations of commoners would live and die in misery.”

“And that’s unacceptable,” Adolph said. “It’s why the Red
Crown lends its strength to those who strive to topple the Empire by force of
arms.”

Like the mutant brigands Krieger told me about, Dieter thought. “That does
sound like the more intelligent strategy. The armies of Chaos have nearly
succeeded in conquering us—I mean, the Empire—before.”

Mama Solveig nodded. “And next time, with help from within, they’ll prevail.”

“Right. So: I understand you and the Purple Hand are feuding.
Therefore, Adolph assumes they identified him, Jarla or both and sent the fiery
snake to kill them?”

Mama Solveig fingered her chin. “Do you think it odd? I’ve
been thinking the same thing. We don’t work magic without good reason, and
neither do the Purple Hand. It’s inherently risky, and could also attract the
attention of the authorities. So I doubt I’d summon a spirit just to murder
someone on the street. Not when a ruffian with a dagger could do the job.”