“The first stone was laid at dawn,” Anaise replied, pausing briefly upon the
step, “two years after our quest for a home had begun. Dawn on the morn of
Geheimnisnacht, eight years ago.”
Geheimnisnacht, the day of mystery. It struck Stefan as somehow appropriate.
“You have toiled mightily hard,” Bruno commented, “to build such a place in so
short a time.”
“Hard indeed,” Stefan echoed. To have constructed a city this size from
nothing, and in only eight years, seemed almost beyond belief.
“We have worked hard,” Anaise agreed. “And our work is only still beginning.”
They had reached the foot of the stairs, which opened out onto an antechamber
much like the one above. Before them lay another set of locked gates. Once
again, the guards turned keys in each of two huge locks. Stefan was reminded of
a brief but uncomfortable visit to the grim Imperial dungeons of Altdorf.
“This is a prison,” he said.
“In part,” Anaise replied. “And much more.”
They passed through the gates, the heavy steel clanging shut behind them.
From somewhere deep within the subterranean expanse there came the faint sound
of voices crying out in pain or in anguish. Stefan thought of the Norscan
prisoners they had passed on the street, and of Anaise’s words:
they’ll make
full atonement for their sins.
He knew there was no atonement that would
purge the hatred for their kind from his heart. He could slake his thirst for
vengeance, but he knew it would always return.
They followed Anaise along a wide passage, past other dark corridors that led
off into the gloom beneath the city. The roof was just high enough for a man to
pass through walking upright. It was dark, lit only by the faint glimmerings of
daylight that penetrated from airshafts, and by lanterns posted at intervals
along the passageway. “This would be our place of last resort, our final refuge,”
Anaise explained. “A place of final defence in the face of the black tide. Of
course,” she added, “we hope it will never come to that.”
“Pray to Sigmar himself it will not,” Bruno concurred.
Anaise came to a door set in the left wall of the passage and waited whilst
they gathered round. “By the way,” she said, “there’s said to be water somewhere
down here too. A hidden spring. What do you make of that?” The last words seemed
to be addressed to Bea in particular. The healer made no reply, but her face
betrayed a sudden flicker of emotion.
“I’d say, let’s hope it stays hidden,” Bruno declared. “At least until we’re
safely above ground.”
Anaise smiled. “I’m sure it will,” she said, and eased the door open.
Beyond was a chamber, lit by the thin, jaundiced light of the lamps. A rush
of air escaped as the door was levered open, air pungent with the sour tang of
death and putrefaction.
“Merciful gods,” Bruno exclaimed, quickly covering his nose and mouth with his
hand. “What abomination is this?”
Anaise stepped inside, wrapping a portion of her gown about her face to form
a mask. “It is evil,” she said. “In here we confront our darkest fears.”
She disappeared into the gloom of the inner chamber. Stefan took a deep
breath, and followed, steeling himself for whatever might be inside.
Standing in the twilit gloom were three figures, men dad in dark robes, their
faces obliterated by masks. They carried instruments of shining steel in their
hands, and Stefan thought momentarily of surgeons, their blades blessed in the
hope of curing, not killing.
But this was no house of healing. The room stank of the charnel house. This
was surely a place of death, not life. The three men stood stock still, their
eyes betraying surprise at the entrance of the strangers. One, whose mask had
slipped, quickly pulled it up to cover his face once more.
“It’s all right,” Anaise called to them. “These are friends, come to see our
great works at first hand.” The men eyed Stefan and his companions with
continuing suspicion. They stood with their backs to some kind of raised table or galley, shielding it
from view.
“These are men of science,” Anaise said, in a measured aside. “Forgive their
lack of social graces. Come, Joachim, do not hide your art from us.”
The three robed men stood back, and, in a frozen moment Stefan took in the
scene laid out before him. On either side of the men there were tables, some
filled with knives and instruments, others with bottles and vials. Beneath the
long galley table was a tray that brimmed with a viscous liquid. And laid out
flat upon the galley itself was a body, very clearly dead.
It was not the body of a man, though possibly it might once have been. The
cadaver had the proportions and structure of a man, but the leathery hide of a
reptile. The body had been sliced open along one side, the incision running from
the base of its torso to the top of its misshapen skull. Several of the
creature’s organs had been cut out and placed within the clear glass jars, or
laid out upon silver trays positioned on either side of the body. From the open
incision, a stream of something oily and viscous oozed from the body, falling
into a vessel below the galley. It wasn’t blood, though the milky flow was
flecked with red. The stench from the body was beyond belief. As they watched,
the contents of the vessel shifted and stirred.
“Shallya save us,” Bea whispered. “There’s something alive in there.”
“Maggots,” Stefan said, fighting the urge to retch. Anaise looked at him, and
nodded. “The mark of Nurgle,” she said. “Dark lord of infestation and decay.”
Stefan stared at the scene, quietly aghast. “What is going on here?” he
demanded. “What in the name of Sigmar are they doing?”
“This is no casual examination,” Anaise replied, coldly. “Our physicians are
studying the ways of the Dark Powers. Only through understanding evil can we
hope to destroy it.”
She turned towards Stefan, a defiant challenge burning in her eyes. “Or would
you rather we knew nothing of our enemy, until they were feasting on the corpses
of our dead?”
“I feel as though I already know too much,” Bruno said, keeping his hand
clamped over his mouth.
Bea turned away, a trembling in her body. Her face was a
confusion of disappointment and anger. “This is horrible,” she pronounced, her
voice very small.
Stefan found he did not know what to think. The sight of the mutant,
dissected upon the surgeons’ table, repelled and fascinated him in equal
measure. Part of him could not believe that man could work in such intimate
proximity to evil without becoming evil himself. But, if, truly, Chaos could be
understood, measured and weighed like the pieces upon a scale—what then?
Perhaps one day, finally, it could be overcome. Forever.
There was a brief, and uncomfortable space in the conversation, a tension
finally broken by Anaise. “Come,” she said. “This is a shock to your senses, and
I should apologise for inflicting it upon you without warning.” She hesitated.
“We should return to the Seat of the Guides. Konstantin will be able to explain
this to you so much better than I.”
None of them had any objections. It was a relief to get beyond the door of
the chamber, putting the physicians and their grim endeavour beyond both sight
and mind. The four and their guards retraced their steps a distance through the
passage. The sound of voices began again to grow louder.
“We are near the cells now. Do you want to come and look?” She extended a
hand towards Stefan. “I think of you as our friends. I want to keep no secrets
from you. I want you to know exactly what Sigmarsgeist is, what it stands for.
Only then can you truly judge.”
“After what we have seen, I doubt little else can shock us,” Stefan replied.
“It cannot fail but be easier on the stomach,” Bruno agreed. He took Bea’s
hand. “Come on,” he said, encouragingly. “We’ll be back above ground in no
time.”
The prison cells lay beyond a further set of gates, their iron bars thicker
and sturdier than either of the two they had passed through before. Any captive
would surely look upon them and despair of ever regaining his liberty. As they
made their way through the chill grey of another passageway, the isolated cries
gradually grew to a cacophony.
“Their agony comes from within,” Anaise commented. “The Dark Gods began their
torture long before they ever found themselves here.”
There were series of iron doors along the length of the passage, a dozen or
so on each side. Many of the lightless cells were empty, but, in others,
something malevolent stirred. Creatures thrashed at the chains that held them
fastened to the walls, or roared belligerent hate at the sound of footsteps
outside. Stefan caught glimpses of the creatures that only evil could beget: an
orc, the green-skinned killer staring at its captors with brutish defiance; two
beastmen, bull-headed mutants locking horns in snarling, futile combat in the
narrow confines of their cell. Creatures so wedded to violence that they would
tear each other apart if they could find no better foe.
But amongst the monsters there were also men. More of the Norscans, the mark
of mutation not yet apparent on all of them. And others, some in armour, some
not. Soldiers, perhaps, or mercenaries. Who knew what they were, or what they
had been? They were all prisoners now.
“Where have they all come from?” Bruno asked.
“Some are the flotsam of the war in Kislev,” Anaise told him. “Those who fled
south, hoping to find easy pickings in the unprotected lands of the Ostermark.”
She pulled back from the narrow bars of a cell as a face loomed out of the
darkness, venomous fangs snapping at her hand.
“Yet some of these are men,” Bruno protested. “Ordinary men.”
She looked at him, one eyebrow raised, then turned to Stefan. “You do not
think that evil can take human form?”
Stefan knew only too well what the answer was. Evil could take on almost any
form. Chaos was never more dangerous than when it cloaked itself in familiarity.
“What will happen to them?” he asked.
“Many will be put to work, building against the day when their kind will
return to threaten the world. Others…” she inclined her head back the way they
had come.
“Others will serve in other ways.”
Something in the thought appalled Stefan, appalled and disgusted him. And yet
he knew that reason was all on Anaise von Augen’s side. If the mastery of Chaos
was the end to which they were striving, who was to say that the ends did not
justify the means?
“Please,” Bea steadied herself against Bruno’s side, and gasped for breath.
Her face had turned a deathly pale.
“She needs some air,” Bruno declared. “And for that matter, so do I. I’ve
seen enough here.”
Anaise turned to Stefan. “Have you seen enough?”
Stefan took in the rows of cells, the inhuman wailing from the creatures
trapped inside. It was the stuff of nightmares. But if, within that nightmare,
there existed a seed of hope that that evil could not only be contained, but
conquered? Was that a nightmare, or a dream?
“I’ve seen things we’ve never seen before,” he said. “And, for that matter,
never thought to see.” He looked at Anaise, and nodded. “Yes, I have seen
enough.”
Anaise signalled to one of the guards. “Take our guests back above,” she
instructed. “See that their needs are attended to.”
Anaise waited whilst the guard led Stefan and the others away. She listened
as they ascended the steps towards daylight, listened to the sound of their
footsteps echo and fade. Then she turned back along the passageway, the second
guard following at a distance. As she passed along the row of cells the
cacophony of hate erupted again. The captives screamed out at her in their
torment, their hatred for all her kind. Anaise inclined her head one way, then
the other, and kept walking with the serenity of the invulnerable.
Near the end of the row she stopped by a cell, and slid back the narrow panel
in the door. A powerful scent wafted from the cell. Not the stench of decay, but
something quite different: a sweet, animal scent, earthy and cloying. The smell
of both fear and desire, of dread, and of anticipation. Anaise flinched away,
but drank it down all the same. She edged closer, and looked inside.
Crouched upon the floor of the cell were two or more bodies, their smooth
skins glistening in the gloom. Their bodies were intertwined, in some kind of
grotesque embrace. Sensing Anaise, they broke apart. One of the creatures stood
and turned to the door. The figure was slender and quite hairless. Neither quite
human nor animal, neither male nor female. Its body was covered with what at
first looked like wounds, a scattering of swollen, cherry bruises all across its
arms and chest. It peered out at Anaise, its pale, almond eyes holding her in
its liquid gaze. The bruises swelled and parted, splitting open like ripe fruit.
A dozen miniature mouths opened in a facsimile of a smile; tiny tongues forking
through needle-pointed teeth. Anaise pulled her gaze away but stayed fixed by
the door, breathing in the musk-drenched odour of the cell.
“My lady.” She turned at the voice of the guard, standing several steps behind
her in the passageway. The white-clad soldier stood waiting for instruction, his
face blank of emotion. “My lady?”
Anaise cast a final, long, look at the apparition. She shivered, then looked
away. “No,” she said to the guard. “Not this time. Let us away.”
“Your comrades have found these things shocking, Stefan. I understand that.
But you must try to understand us, understand our purpose. The forces we will
face in that final battle recognise no fairness, no noble ideals of honour. They
will use every opportunity, every cruel turn of fortune against us. If we are to
survive the coming storm, then we must be prepared to do likewise. We must fight
fire with fire. There is no room in our armoury for compassion.”