A GIFT OF CHANGE
Mehrigus’ skin ran with cold sweat. He sat on the floor of the shop, in the corner, his back to two cold stone walls.
There was a silver bowl full of water beside him. He cupped a handful of it and threw it on his face. His carefully prepared crop of leeches, sat in dozens of glass jars in crates in front of him, just waiting to be carried to the street and put onto carts to take Mehrigus’ ‘cure’ to the city. But now Mehrigus had seen the effects of his cure and had fallen into a stupor, a fog of clouded thoughts. He felt stretched by exhaustion, anticipation and now cold fear.
He hauled himself to his feet and staggered across the room. He clambered up the shallow steps and yanked the door open, stepping out into the street outside. He would find Dormian and Paluris. Mehrigus would need more proof – though he dreaded finding it – if he were to really admit he had failed. He wanted to see, again, his transformation as a cure. He wanted desperately to believe that the rotten man’s fate was down to his own sorry condition.
He headed across Mandringatte and west through the small streets, to the courtyard where Dormian had taken him weeks before.
The little basement was empty. The matted pile of straw still lay at one end but it didn’t look like anyone had been here for days. Mehrigus turned back the way he had come, up the stairs to the passageway between houses. As he emerged into the courtyard, a window opened above him. A man leaned out, yelling, bawling, sobbing. ‘What have you done?!’ It was Paluris. ‘What have you done?!’
Mehrigus stood dumbfounded. Paluris disappeared from the window and up ahead, where stone steps ran from the end of the passageway up to the floor above, the crashing of bolts could be heard. Paluris appeared again, in the open doorway, howling in rage. He stood there, whole again, in a way – one bird-footed leg gripping the stone of the threshold.
Mehrigus turned and fled through the courtyard and down the narrow streets.
Sweat was pouring from Mehrigus’ brow by the time he crashed through the front door of Dormian’s house and charged up the stairs. He burst into the little room Dormian and his family used as a sitting room. He couldn’t wait – he couldn’t risk being refused entry. He needed to see for himself.
Dormian was slumped in the corner, hands to his face, scratching at his eyes. The boy and the two women stood over him.
‘Horrors! Horrors!’ he yelled. ‘I’m surrounded by daemons!’ Dormian turned his head. Swirls of purple and blue clouded his eyes, the pupils barely visible beneath them – not blind, but all too seeing. Mehrigus could feel him fix his corrupted sight on him as he entered the room. Dormian howled all the louder. Mehrigus turned and fled once more.
Mehrigus left Mandringatte, hurriedly descending the steps down to the little lane outside his shop. He turned the corner onto that narrow street to be confronted by a mob, Paluris at their head, hobbling on his mismatched legs, waving a sword and screaming. Around him a crowd was yelling, carrying cudgels, swords, small axes, blacksmith tools – seemingly anything they could lay their hands on. They battered at the door to Mehrigus’ shop.
‘I didn’t mean any of this…’ Mehrigus murmured, weeping as he took an almost automatic set of steps forward. Something inside him was driving him to give himself up to the crowd.
But they hadn’t seen him. Not yet. Up ahead, the mob smashed the door from its charges and in they swept.
Mehrigus hesitated. He reached for the baetylus around his neck. He searched for the words to a prayer to Sigmar – they did not come. The baetylus felt heavier. He turned it over in his fingers, frozen in indecision. Over the weeks and months since Trimegast had gifted him the Book of Transformations, Mehrigus had carved it with new geometries. The runes were meaningless now – lost, all but erased by the lattice of lines that allowed Mehrigus to trace out any of the symbols of transformation and transfiguration he so chose. But it was changed beyond even that now – perhaps it had been for some time. As Mehrigus turned the baetylus in his hands, he followed the oldest of the lines he could find, but no matter how he turned it, he could not follow it back to where it began. The lines ran ever onwards but never returned – it was impossible. It was changed.
Mehrigus felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned, gasping.
It was Trimegast.
‘Those who are mistaken will never be willing to see it,’ Trimegast said, beaming almost beatifically. ‘Come with me.’
Trimegast pushed back his robes, sheathing the sword he held in his hand. He was a foot taller than Mehrigus. He was younger, sturdier, more imposing than Mehrigus had even seen him before. He was changed.
‘They will not see,’ he said. ‘You see, Mehrigus. You see. Now it is time to leave.’
‘No,’ said Mehrigus. ‘They don’t understand… but it’s a mistake. The hydra… the leeches… the cure… It didn’t work… It will… I’ll… I will make it work. I will make it change.’
‘It is enough, my young apprentice,’ said Trimegast, pulling at Mehrigus’ shoulder. ‘You have shown them the power of change. A war is raging, but it is not between mortals and this trifling rot. It is a great game, a war between the gods. And you have shown you command the power to play your part in it, Mehrigus. Nurgle has sent his minions and you have mastered the gifts of change well enough to defeat them. For now. Our master is pleased. But these others, Mehrigus, they do not see…’
Ahead, down the way, the haphazard windows of the old shop erupted outwards into the street one by one, staves, axes and spears bursting through them. A few moments later, smoke followed, billowing.
‘One day it might be revealed to them, perhaps,’ said Trimegast. ‘One day. But for now, you must not be seen, my apprentice. Not like this.’
Up ahead, the mob began to emerge from the shop. They were led by the watch captain. He recognised Mehrigus at once.
‘They’ll hunt me. They’ll find me,’ he said, turning to Trimegast, pale with fear.
‘No,’ said Trimegast. ‘You have been given the gift of change.’
Mehrigus reached a hand into his robes, even as the mob dashed towards him. He fingered the edges of the sheaf of papers. The Book of Transformations. He looked up, panting.
Trimegast stepped across, swinging his huge, twisting staff in a great arc in front of him. Bolts of light shot forth from the gleaming arc, launching into the mob like arrows. Men howled when they struck them and Trimegast turned, grabbing Mehrigus by the collar and hauling him back down the street. Unthinking now, Mehrigus ran with him.
‘Who are you?’ he said.
Trimegast turned a corner – into a little alley between shops leading back to Mandringatte. But up ahead came a watchman. Trimegast leapt forward, striking the watchman down with his staff. He seemed untroubled by the effort.
‘I am Trimegastraxi’attar-i-qash, magister now to you, my apprentice,’ he said. ‘And you are right. They will hunt you. It is time to take the gift of change, Mehrigus…’
Trimegast reached out a hand, running pointed claws over the baetylus hanging around Mehrigus’ neck.
‘Take it, my apprentice. Take the gift of change…’
Mehrigus reached for the book inside his robes. He drew it out slowly, even as he heard the noise of the mob approaching. He ran his hands over it. He was drawn to a part he had never fathomed before. He knew what he needed to do. He could never allow himself to be seen again. Not like this. With the tip of a finger, he instinctively drew a strange sigil he had never seen before.
Trimegast beamed. ‘The Mark of Tzeentch.’
Mehrigus cast off his robes. He stooped and pulled the breeches and jerkin from the slain watchman at his feet, even as the mob approached. There was a puddle in the road beside him, and in the reflection Mehrigus saw, though he already knew, that his appearance was changed. He was taller, younger, his skin darker, his eyes changed from brown to green, his hair from straight and neat to shaggy and thick.
He placed the book on top of his discarded robes and conjured a blue flame around them – he needed those pages no longer. He turned and ran back to the head of the alleyway. The mob was approaching.
‘Where is he?’ yelled the watch captain. Paluris stumbled along behind him, and thirty or forty men after them.
‘He’s not here,’ said Mehrigus. ‘He must’ve gone that way,’ he added, gesturing on down the street towards the north gate. The mob hurried past and Mehrigus made to follow them before letting himself fall behind. He turned, his heart pounding, and slinked back into the shadows where Trimegast waited for him.
This, it seemed, was his fate. He could change it no longer.