At the moment, however, Frederick wasn’t concerned with the dead townspeople lying in the niches, awaiting the rites that would commend them to the keeping of Morr. He wasn’t concerned with the dozens of newly dead the corpse collectors would bring him in the morning. He was concerned only with the piteous figure stretched out upon the stone table at the centre of the mortuary, its long blonde tresses fanned out around its still-beautiful face.
By custom and stricture, he should never have brought Aysha here. A suicide was a damned soul, a thing cursed by Morr and abandoned to the infernal hells of his murderous brother Khaine. The Sylvanians believed that the flesh of a suicide attracted ghouls from their forest lairs. The proper thing to do was to bury such a wretch in the middle of a crossroads, a great stone stuffed in the corpse’s mouth and the bones of its legs broken with a spade.
Frederick cared neither for custom or stricture. This was Aysha, his sister by marriage, a woman who, if he had remained in Marienburg, might have been even more to him. He was willing to commit sacrilege for her, to spare her anguished spirit the indignity of a nameless grave. For her, he was willing to do even more.
The priest looked over at the black candles laid out around the body. It had taken him most of the day to make those candles, a labour that still made his gut churn with disgust. He glanced over at the darkened niches, picturing the mutilated bodies hidden in the darkness. It was blasphemy for a priest of Morr to do such a thing, but the books of Arisztid Olt had been adamant regarding the corpse-candles and their necessity to the ritual.
Frederick stepped away from the table, slapping his hands together in nervous agitation. He had long studied the tomes of Olt’s secret library, studied them when he should have consigned them to the flames. Until now, he had never been tempted to exploit that occult knowledge. He had considered the esoteric secrets with the detached appreciation of a scholar. He had never intended to put such obscenities into practice.
It was heresy for a priest of Morr to even contemplate what Frederick was doing. If they hadn’t been taken by the plague, the Black Guard would have executed him for even thinking about such a thing. The servants of Morr had a connection to death and the world beyond the mortal plane, but the magic Frederick thought to invoke was something else entirely. It wasn’t part of death, but a blasphemous attack upon it. It wasn’t a connection to the world beyond, but rather a violent assault upon the gateway between planes.
With a moan of despair, Frederick rounded upon the table. His arm was raised to sweep the candles to the floor, to turn away from this heresy before he committed the ultimate sacrilege. But his eyes focused upon the pretty features of Aysha. Conviction faltered and temptation flooded into his heart. Instead of dashing the candles to the floor, he took a rushlight and ignited the hempen wicks. One by one, the corpse-candles sputtered into stagnant life, their eerie blue flame seeming to increase rather than lessen the darkness of the mortuary.
The priest circled to the foot of the table, staring up at Aysha’s shrouded form. He placed the edge of a stone knife against his palm, cutting deep into the flesh, gritting his teeth against the pain. With his own blood, he drew a symbol upon the floor, tracing from memory the ancient Nehekharan hieroglyphs. From a wicker cage, he retrieved a red-breasted wren. Sacred to Taal, killing a wren was an affront against the gods of nature. Frederick paused only a moment, then snapped the bird’s neck, tossing the pathetic body to the rats creeping among the corpses.
Frederick could feel the mortuary growing colder, a chill that was somehow more profound than the mere bite of winter. It was a chill that seeped down into the soul itself, the clammy clutch of dark magic and Old Night. He could almost see fingers of darkness reaching through the shadows, drawn to his rites of blasphemy and horror. He hesitated as he stared down at the last object required by Olt’s spell. The priest gagged at the thought of what he must do. Only the thought that he had come too far to hesitate now steeled him for the perversion. In one swift motion, he scooped up the gelid bit of flesh, trying not to visualise the empty socket from whence it had come, and popped it into his mouth. His body rebelled as he swallowed the abomination; he clamped his bleeding palm across his mouth and forced the sickness back down.
At once, the darkness came rushing in. Frederick could feel it pawing at his robes, slithering against his skin. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled and his face felt as though it had been plunged into the maw of an ice troll.
Frederick shook himself from the sensations crawling across his body, from the frozen talons clawing at his soul. He stared again at Aysha and from his lips streamed the harsh notes of an ancient tongue, the language of vanquished Khemri whose streets were dust a thousand years before the birth of Sigmar.
The peat-lamp sputtered and died, leaving only the blue flames of the corpse-candles and the sickly light of Morrslieb streaming through the mortuary’s single window to illuminate the room. Frederick’s flesh turned to ice as the eldritch emanations summoned by his spell came rushing in. Rustles and squeaks heralded the fright of rats as they scurried away from the fell energies summoned by the priest.
A cold glow suffused Aysha’s corpse. From her pursed lips, a smoke-like wisp began to rise. Seeping into the atmosphere like an uncoiling snake, the glowing mist assumed the rough semblance of shoulders and head, the faint echo of limbs and torso. Only the most fevered, deluded imagination could have said the ghost bore the slightest resemblance to the woman it had been. It was a thing of shadows and reflections, a memory and nothing more.
Frederick smiled as he looked into the face of Aysha. Forgotten was the horror and blasphemy. All that mattered was her presence and the chance to speak to her one last time.
‘Aysha,’ the priest whispered. The wisp shifted slightly as the name was spoken.
A thin, rattling voice, like the scratch of talons against glass, hissed through the room. ‘There are doors that must not be opened,’ the phantom words took shape in Frederick’s mind. ‘Powers that must not be invoked. Beware of calling that which you cannot dismiss.’
Frederick stared into the ghostly visage, doubt flickering through his heart. The enormity of this sacrilege pressed against him, squeezing him like the grip of a python, crushing the breath from his lungs. For any man to draw upon this unholy magic was crime enough, but how much worse was it for him, a priest of Morr, a man dedicated to the sanctity of the grave?
‘There are sympathies of spirit and mentality that must never be made,’ the ghost warned. ‘Do you wield the Power or does it wield you?’
Frederick closed his eyes, refusing to accept the spectre’s warnings. He knew what he was doing. It was evil, abominable, but it would only be this once. He would never draw upon this magic again. He would have no use for it. Just this one time, this once so he might speak to Aysha one last time. Just this once so when his time came, his soul might find peace.
The priest opened his eyes again, gazing into the cold wispy image of Aysha. Grimly, Frederick exerted his will over the ghost, forcing its doleful tidings to subside.
‘Why have you called me?’ the apparition demanded.
Frederick leaned against the table, remembering only at the last moment Olt’s precaution about not stepping out from among the symbols he had drawn upon the floor. ‘I had to see you, had to speak to you. I had to let you know.’