02 - Taint of Evil by Neil McIntosh - (ebook by Undead)

been.
Dreams of what might yet be, and dreams of what now would never come to pass. He
saw there were hundreds of futures, futures seeded from the random fates of
hundreds of pasts. Any of them might have been true, or none of them. All
certainty was lost and nothing was yet decided.
    Somewhere in a time now past, he remembered a battle, the clash of steel that
had marked the point in his history where the change had begun. That had been
the beginning. The place where the great river of chance had divided, and swept
him along a different path.
    At night gazing sleepless at the stars, he would recall another sky, the
blood red sky above the battlefield, smoke rising from the crumbling spires of
the beleaguered city. Whether he had been fighting to save the city, or to
destroy it, Zucharov no longer knew. But upon that field, as the fog of battle
cleared to reveal the cruel fields of the dead, he had come upon his defining
hour.
    Time after time upon the journey across the empty plains of the Ostermark
Alexei Zucharov relived the moment in the battle that the horseman had appeared.
The lone rider, emerging from the enemy lines, riding directly towards him. His
callow indifference to Zucharov’s presence. No attempt to flee, nor to defend
himself from the blow that would surely cut him down. Alexei Zucharov remembered
his disappointment; his sudden, raging fury that this, his final, crowning glory
upon that day should be diminished by an opponent who would not even fight back.
    He recalled his rage, that glory should be so unjustly denied him. This should
have been the ultimate test, the final battle of champions. Instead, the combat
was ended in moments. Alexei watched, as he had watched a hundred times before,
the dark knight fall beneath his sword. The distaste, the bitter distaste for
this unworthy opponent, so easily despatched. He would strip what he could from
the corpse. His sword, his dagger, his other tokens of allegiance to the Dark
Powers. He would take his horse, a monstrous beast that stood twice the height
of a mortal man. But none of this would be enough to sweeten the bitter taste of
victory so easily won.
    And then, Zucharov had seen the amulet. The circle of pure, lustrous gold
upon the Chaos warrior’s wrist. In all his battles, amongst all the trophies
claimed from his vanquished dead, Alexei had never seen anything like it.
Sunlight poured from the clouds and fell upon the golden band, illuminating the nines etched upon its surface. Runes and words that
spoke in an unknown tongue, the ancient tongue of the Dark Gods. Of all the
treasures Zucharov had found, this, he knew, was the lodestone of his dreams. It
had to be his at any cost.
    Zucharov had been ready to cut the gold from the champion’s flesh, but there
had been no need. The shimmering band had slipped, smooth and easy, from the
dead knight’s hand. But, once he had put it on, Zucharov found that the amulet
could not be removed. It sat fast upon his wrist, as if stitched into his flesh.
Now it was part of him forever.
    He began to grow stronger. He could feel the raw energy channelling from the
gold band into his body. All pain, all weariness, was banished. Soon there would
be nothing he could not do. At the same time, the mark of transformation had
appeared on his flesh. It had started as a tiny blemish, a mark no more than a
bruise, upon the skin beneath the amulet. After a while the bruise had begun to
change and grow, altering in shape and line, dissolving and resolving until it
became recognisable as an image, like a tattoo. It was the image of a warrior on
horseback, rising triumphant above a fallen foe. As Alexei stared down upon it,
the image began to move.
    As the days passed, a new world began to unfold in miniature on his living
flesh. These were the pictures from his dreams, the images of his past and of
all his futures. Through those images Zucharov watched destiny unfold, pointing
him upon the