“I thought that ‘all this’ was Konstantin’s doing,” Stefan reminded her. “And
none of yours.”
“Konstantin is wise, but he has his weaknesses,” Anaise murmured. She took
another step towards him, her gaze unwavering, unblinking, upon Stefan. “With my
counsel, he could be persuaded to see things another way.”
Stefan raised his arm, barring her way. The urge to strike out at Anaise was
strong, but he held it in check. “Spare me your favours,” he told her. “Save
your counsel for someone else.”
“Very well,” Anaise replied. “So be it.” She lifted her gaze from Stefan to
look at the domed ceiling overhead. “In any case,” she said, “your time has come
and passed. I have no need of you now.”
She snapped her fingers and teams of guards at either end of the chamber
began to haul back upon the ropes suspended from convex roof of the chamber. The
room was filled with a low groaning, the sound of great slabs of stone moving
one upon the other.
Stefan looked up and saw the two sides of the domed roof moving apart like a
set of mighty jaws unlocking, opening the chamber to the night sky. The huge
sliding panels spread apart and fastened into place. A third set of ropes drew
down a cantilevered series of steps from the facing wall of the chamber, near
the rim of what was now an open parapet.
Under the watchful eye of the Guide, Stefan was led towards the stairway to
the stars.
“Please, make your way up,” she suggested. “Don’t you have any curiosity?”
“Does it matter whether I do or not?”
She smiled again, more enigmatically this time. “I promise,” she said, “there
are wonders awaiting you there.”
With sharpened steel a hastening reminder at his back, Stefan began to climb.
The ladders bowed and flexed beneath him, but they were sturdy enough to take
him safely to the top. As he reached the top of the final section, guards
waiting above lifted him clear of the ladders and onto the narrow walkway that
ran around the parapet’s edge. Stefan looked back down into the chamber. Figures
were following him up the ladders: two Red Guards then Anaise herself. Whatever
fate now lay in store for him, it seemed he was to have company.
Now he understood where he was. He had emerged on top of one of the cluster
of four enormous domes that capped the palace of Sigmarsgeist, the highest point
in all the citadel. Three identical structures stood facing him, the four domes
forming the points of a square which framed a courtyard far below. Everything
had a precise, somehow ominous symmetry. But it was not the domes themselves,
nor the courtyard that lay below, that commanded Stefan’s attention. It was what
lay between the domes, and above the courtyard.
The exterior of the palace was barely recognisable as the building he had
seen on his arrival in the citadel. It had been transformed, overlaid almost
entirely with a labyrinthine maze of bridges and walkways superimposed upon the
existing shell of the building, an alabaster exoskeleton that seemed to glow in the night air. There were walls that
jutted out at angles from other walls; bridges that began or ended nowhere,
arcing upwards only to stop abruptly in mid-air. There were steps and footpaths
that led down into solid ground, and those that climbed up to end in thin air.
And between the four domes, where before there would have been clear space,
there was now a contorted lattice-work of paths and bridges, linking the domes
together like binding weeds. To Stefan it looked like insanity given solid form.
He heard Anaise’s voice, close behind him. “This is the power of Sigmarsgeist,
Stefan,” she said. “A change is coming upon the world. All who will not be part
of it will be swept away.”
Stefan gazed upon the scene with stunned wonder, tempered by a growing unease
at what the nightmare might yet portend. “So,” he said at last. “These are the
wonders you were so intent on showing me?”
Anaise’s laugh was high, almost girlish. “More than this.” Her eyes sparkled,
expectantly. “There is something more wondrous yet.”
There was a sound—like a footfall or a series of steps—heavy and
deliberate upon the walkway, out in the darkness somewhere just out of sight.
Stefan turned around quickly, trying to locate it.
The face of the dome that lay directly opposite was splitting open like a
shell, the two halves of the golden orb peeling back to reveal the open space
below. A figure was climbing up out of the darkness, just as Stefan had done a
few minutes before. As Stefan looked on, the hairs on the back of his neck rose
up, and a chill dagger of anticipation stroked the length of his spine. The
figure stood half in shadow, but Stefan already had no doubt of who it was.
Amidst the storm of confusion that had swept through his inner world, the man
that had been Alexei Zucharov was sure of one thing. His journey had reached a
decisive point. He was at a crossroads, upon a threshold that, once crossed,
could never be regained: a point at which he would leave his old life behind forever, and walk towards the strange land that had become
his future.
But he had not finally crossed that threshold, not yet. Some residue of that
old life remained, tumbled fragments of memory that held on, worried and tugged
upon a place deep inside him like a memory that would not be cast off. Faces of
the men who had been his comrades flickered fitfully in his mind like the light
fading from dying lamps. The voice inside of him told him these were no longer
his comrades, rather his bitter enemies now. Still the faces persisted.
Time and again he had removed from his pocket the scrap of folded paper, a
letter, unfinished and never sent, once destined for a loved one now lost
forever inside that other life. The name and place had long vanished, but the
feeling had not. The feeling was love, a warmth and compassion that disturbed
the new Zucharov. It was a last vestige of what he once had been, a reminder,
perhaps, of what he could still be. A reminder that there was a war raging at
the core of his being that was not yet finally over.
There had been no need for Kyros to explain to him that Sigmarsgeist would be
that fateful place, the gateway between his old world and the one that lay
beyond. He had seen it from afar, as the bounty hunter Koenig had hauled him in
chains towards the city. Sigmarsgeist, the city upon the plain, its spreading
mass lit by a phosphor glow that came not from any natural source, but from the
tide of elemental energy that raged like a boiling sea below. The sulphurous
light would have been invisible to the mortal eye, but Zucharov knew he was not
quite mortal any longer. If he was to surrender his soul, then there were things
he would gain in return. Zucharov saw the world as no mortal man could, he saw
the things that lay below. The engines of the gods, in all their terrible
majesty, were laid bare before his gaze.
He had seen his own body change, watched it sometimes with the dispassionate
stare of the spectator at a game, sometimes with the dull horror of a man who
knew he was losing his very soul. The malignancy of the tattoo would not be suppressed. It now covered his arm and was spreading across his shoulder
to his throat and chest. Soon, he knew, it would map his entire body. He knew it
was the visible stain of Chaos, the taint of evil by which he was marked for
damnation. Whilst he bore the tattoo there was nowhere he could go, nowhere he
could hide. His very body now proclaimed him for what he was.
For weeks, since that moment upon the battlefield in Erengrad, Zucharov had
raged against Kyros and the dark master that had branded him so. The power over
men that Chaos promised him was seductive; the livid mark of mutation was not.
Kyros had gifted him the living tattoo. Now it was Kyros that whispered to
Zucharov how he could, if he chose, be rid of it. The key, he had told Zucharov,
was a place known in legend as Tal Dur. The fathomless waters of the lake held
magical powers that would surpass any imagining, power enough to take the
strength of a man such as Zucharov and multiply it tenfold. The power to erase
all visible sign of the mark upon his body, and the power to wash away all sight
of sin.
That was the bargain that Kyros had offered his servant. If Zucharov could
find Tal Dur, then, in return, he would be the first to taste its fruits.
Thereafter, there would be surely nothing that was not within his reach.
In the meantime, Zucharov had studied the images that danced upon his flesh.
The tattoo had foretold his capture by the bounty hunter, and it had foretold
that he would come here, to Sigmarsgeist.
Now, as he stepped from out of the shadows, another history was unfolding in
the lines melting and reforming upon his skin. A face from memory came into
resolution. Zucharov recognised it, knew it was the face of a man he had once
called friend. It was the face of the man who now stood no more than twenty
yards away from him. He had waited long for this, their final meeting. A meeting
that, for one of them, would end only at the gates of Morr, grim God of Death.
Zucharov was certain it would not be he who was about to make that final
journey.
* * *
Stefan had not seen Alexei Zucharov since the battle for Erengrad. Stefan
barely knew it then, but, as that battle ended, another was about to begin. The
beginnings were there in the first gleaming of madness that shone, faint but
insistent, in Zucharov’s eyes. It was there in his sudden, violent flight from
the city. And it was in the small mark, no more than a bruise, half-hidden
beneath the gold band that he wore upon his wrist. Stefan knew that, if ever
they met again, he would see a changed man in Zucharov. But nothing had prepared
him for the extent of the change that had come upon his former comrade.
Zucharov had grown: physically he had become bigger and stronger. The man
that Stefan remembered had been tall and powerfully built, more than a match for
all but a few of the bravest men on the field of war. But in the days and weeks
since Erengrad, every muscle in his body had expanded, and his frame had
stretched and opened as though struggling to contain the awesome physical might
within. The creature that was now Zucharov looked less a man than a machine of
war designed with one purpose only—to deal death and destruction to any that
stood in its way, and deal it without pity or discrimination. Zucharov’s deep
eyes stared out at Stefan, but there was no warmth, no recognition in the
connection they made.
“Is this wonder enough for you, Stefan?” Anaise asked him.
Stefan did not take his eyes from Zucharov for a moment.
“This is beyond your reckoning,” he warned Anaise. “This man is more dangerous
than anything you have ever known. He will destroy you, and all of your works,
and leave nothing but dust.”
Anaise laughed, a hollow, mocking sound. “It’s not me he wants to destroy,
Stefan.”
Zucharov moved out of the shadows, onto the brittle web of marbled fibres
that now meshed the four domes together. With his left hand he drew out his
sword, and then Stefan saw the extent of the disfigurement, the dark blemish
that reflected the torment that raged within. Tiny figures moved in a macabre
dance across Zucharov’s flesh. Stefan looked on, mesmerised, horrified.
Everything he saw told him that Alexei Zucharov was no longer human, that every fragment of the man that he
had once known as a friend was gone. And yet, as he watched Zucharov step
forward, sword in outstretched hand, all Stefan saw was a mirror of his own
self: a being driven by an all-consuming, single-purpose. A fierce, unyielding
purity of vision, and a will to prevail that would only be subdued by death
itself.
He could not believe—was not yet ready to believe—that this was a mirror
that reflected only darkness. He called out to Zucharov, the sound of his voice
echoing in the night sky high above Sigmarsgeist.
“Alexei.” The word so familiar on his tongue. The prelude to countless shared
combats, and many more mugs of beer in celebration of a battle won. The familiar
was now the alien, and the battle that lay ahead would be between them, and it
would be unto death.
“Alexei! In the name of the gods, don’t you know who this is?”
Zucharov paused, his weight balanced precariously on the delicate walkway
created by the arch of stone across the space between the two domes. For a
moment it seemed as though he
did
remember. His expression shifted
momentarily, and a look akin to recognition flickered in his eyes. In that
moment Stefan understood that Zucharov’s soul was in the balance. The realm of
Chaos had not claimed him, not yet. He prayed to the merciful gods that it might
yet not be too late, and called Zucharov’s name again, this time with greater
urgency.
Zucharov turned his head, scanning the open space until his eyes locked with
those of his former friend. Stefan would never know what battles raged below
those dark pools, what agonies his soul endured as it slowly fell into that
chasm of eternal night. The gaze flickered, but when it finally settled upon him
once again Stefan knew all would be lost. Alexei Zucharov was gone, and a
monster looked out at him through his eyes.
“Stefan.” The word was spoken without warmth. It was statement of fact, an
identification rather than a greeting. “Stefan Kumansky.”
Alexei Zucharov—or the shell of the being that had once borne his name—lifted up his sword and started to cross the newly formed bridge towards Stefan.
Stefan was unarmed. He turned to Anaise, a murderous anger towards her and
all the world burning in his heart.
“Is this how you would have it end?” he demanded furiously “Am I to be
butchered by a man who no longer knows his own mind?”
Anaise simply smiled once again, and tilted her head on one side. Stefan saw
something sparkle in the night sky as it spun towards him. He reached out,
grabbing the hilt of the sword before it tumbled into the well of the courtyard.