‘Woe, my son,’ the shade wailed. ‘You bring ruin to the House of Hohenbach.’
Emperor Boris cringed away from the apparition. Frantically, he broke the hold of those seated to either side of him and leaped away from his chair. Almost at once, the ghostly image winked out and the hall was plunged into darkness as the candles sputtered. Screams of alarm filled the darkness until servants threw open the doors and brought more candles.
‘I think we’ve had enough amusement for one night,’ Boris declared, sounding anything but amused. His sardonic composure rattled, he hastened from the hall without so much as a glance at the prostrate form of his warlock. The abrupt disruption of the seance had sent the aethyric energies snapping back into Fleischauer’s body, breaking his trance and leaving him more dead than alive.
Princess Erna glanced from the stunned warlock to the fleeing Emperor, unsettled by her own ordeal. Against her will, she felt sympathy for Boris. Where her own father had returned to bestow words of hope, his had offered only condemnation.
Chapter VIII
Altdorf
Nachgeheim, 1114
The chambers of the Holy Synod of Sigmar had been unused since the completion of the Great Cathedral some hundred years ago. It had only been the death of Grand Theogonist Uthorsson and the transplantation of the Holy Seat from Nuln to Altdorf that brought the vast hall of marble and alabaster into prominence. For years, the chambers had been made ready, prepared for the ecumenical council of theologians, priests and augurs who would debate the election of a new Grand Theogonist.
Plague had kept the Holy Synod empty, the fear of the strange death that was laying waste to the Empire. To gather the leadership of the Temple in one place, to expose them all to the threat of dissolution, was something the Sigmarite elders would not countenance. Since the founding of the man-god’s cult by Johann Helsturm over a thousand years ago, never had the prospect of annihilation been more pronounced. An orc invasion, religious warfare with one of the other temples, natural and arcane catastrophe, these were things that might wipe out a city or devastate a province, but never were they so widespread as to threaten the whole of the Empire. The Black Plague had spread its pestilential grip into every corner of the land. Nowhere was safe. Like the locust, it might seem to recede only to bide its time and explode afresh with renewed vigour. This plague had neither pattern nor rhyme. It was unpredictable. It was a thing of Chaos.
Seeing the hand of the First Enemy in the Black Plague, the Sigmarite elders had deferred the election of a leader until such time as it was considered safe to convene in sacred council. To do otherwise, they felt certain, would be to tempt the profane Ruinous Powers into exerting their hideous strength and wiping out the very foundation of the Temple. They must wait, wait until the plague began to abate and the power of Chaos waned once more.
Waiting, however, was an option that was no longer available to them.
It was a small group that was gathered in the Holy Synod, a feeble echo of the great congregation for which the vast hall had been built. The rows of cherrywood pews, rising in tiers and surrounding the central nave, were empty. The stained-glass windows depicting Sigmar’s victories over beast, monster and man stared down upon only a tiny clutch of robed figures gathered before the jade altar in the sanctuary at the front of the chamber. Their voices echoed through the deserted room.
‘What you ask is impossible.’ The words were spoken in a carefully measured tone, a voice struggling to smother the intense emotion stirring in the heart of the speaker. Arch-Lector von Reisarch was the Consultator of the Sacred Rites, successor to Arch-Lector Hartwich and, with the death of Grand Theogonist Thorgrad, the highest-ranking priest in the whole of Altdorf. Known as a jovial father of the faith, he was held with almost paternal fondness by the Sigmarites of Altdorf, a warm and friendly face to a religion that could at times be cold and distant.
It was a very different expression von Reisarch wore now from that jocular visage known to his diocese. The priest’s face was severe, his jaw set in defiance, his eyes smouldering with unspoken rage. The exuberant old man who wasn’t above slipping a jest about the foibles of priesthood into a sermon was gone, subsumed beneath the angered patriarch who glared at the Imperial personage who had intruded upon the sanctity of the Holy Synod.
Adolf Kreyssig’s expression was no less severe. ‘I ask nothing,’ he said. ‘I am the Protector of the Empire, invested with the authority of the Emperor… Authority bestowed upon him by immortal Sigmar himself.’
‘Secular authority,’ von Reisarch countered. ‘The power of the Emperor is secular, not spiritual. You have no jurisdiction over the politics of the Temple.’
Kreyssig glanced across at the vicar-general and the other priests attending von Reisarch. ‘You must be very important now, your beatitude. The Arch-Lector of Altdorf, once the hierophant of all Sigmarites in the Imperial capital, at least until Grand Theogonist Thorgrad relocated the Holy Seat. Then you were simply reduced to another functionary, a number-two man. How you must have missed the taste of power! The second son of an old and privileged estate. No inheritance from his family, so he must seek his fortune by taking up holy vestments.’
‘You dare,’ von Reisarch gasped. ‘You dare utter such blasphemies in this sacred place!’
‘I would dare anything to preserve the Empire,’ Kreyssig retorted. He pointed to the great stone hammer suspended above the shrine. The symbol was more than simply that of Sigmar as god, but of Sigmar as uniter of mankind.
‘I am versed in the symbolism of faith,’ von Reisarch growled, his voice like acid.
‘But do you understand it?’ Kreyssig challenged. ‘Your refusal to convene the Holy Synod and elect a new Grand Theogonist threatens the unity of the Empire. The people look to the Temple of Sigmar for hope and guidance, to assure them that despite the plague and unrest there is stability. Faith in Sigmar is the bedrock of the Empire, the rope which binds the people together and endows them with a sense of unity. When the Temple is seen to be strong, the spirit of the people is strong. When the Temple is seen to be weak, the people lose faith. Their hearts stray into strange places.’
‘You are a fine one to speak of faith,’ von Reisarch accused. ‘It was on your orders that Arch-Lector Hartwich was arrested and would have been executed had he not fallen victim to the plague. It was through your scheming that the Bread Massacre brought bloodshed overflowing in the streets. It was your barbarous murder of Grand Master von Schomberg that pushed men like Prince Sigdan into revolt. Tell me, who has done more to break the spirit of Altdorf?’
‘I can tell you who will restore that spirit, and how,’ Kreyssig said. He removed a folded proclamation from his tunic, setting it down on the altar. ‘You will convene the ecumenical council. You will elect Lector Stefan Schoppe as Grand Theogonist.’
Von Reisarch’s eyes blazed. ‘You not only demand the impossible, but you add the sacrilege of dictating the decision of Holy Sigmar!’ The other priests with the arch-lector began to whisper angrily among themselves, horrified by Kreyssig’s arrogant blasphemy.
‘I demand what is necessary to keep the Empire intact,’ Kreyssig stated. ‘As Protector, that is my duty. The people need a strong Temple to unite them. The Temple needs a Grand Theogonist to make it strong.’
The arch-lector removed the scroll from the altar, casting it to the floor with a contemptuous gesture. ‘This Temple is answerable to the will of Sigmar, not the machinations of a power-mad peasant. There will be no ecumenical council!’