Free The Enemy Within by Richard Lee Byers - (ebook by Undead)

there!”
    “Yes,” said the priest, “you were.”
    The scene at the bottom of the pool flowed and became a view
of Dieter as a wandering journeyman mage for hire. Crouched behind a stand of
brush at the top of a hill, he peered down at the little dirt road than ran
along the bottom.
    Singly or in groups, afoot or driving carts, laden with
bundles or chivvying sheep and cows along, people tramped by below. The older
Dieter—the real one, he insisted to himself—inferred they’d all been to
market and now were heading home through the deepening twilight.
    Eventually a stocky man astride a black mare appeared. The
quality of his palfrey and his velvet doublet bespoke prosperity, as did the
neatly clad servant or clerk riding a mule behind him.
    Dieter the journeyman rose, whispered words of power, and
thrust his arm out. Darts of azure light leaped from his fingertips to pierce
the horseman, who toppled sideways out of the saddle.
    The mare kept walking. The servant reined in his mule and
gaped at his fallen master. Apparently he had neither noticed the darts flying
nor spotted the assailant on the hill, and thus had no idea how his companion
had come to grief. He was still staring when a second such attack stabbed into
his torso. He slumped forwards onto the mule’s neck.
    Dieter looked up and down the road, then ran to the base of
the hill. He crouched over the body of the horseman, snatched his victim’s purse
and rings, and moved on to the clerk. He crooned to the mule to keep it from
shying away.
    “No!” the actual Dieter cried. “None of this is true.”
    “It wasn’t before,” said the priest, his voice now cold and
pitiless, “but it is now. Did you really think a puddle could shield you from
Chaos? Chaos is all-powerful. It can transform anything, even the past. Do you
perceive your memories changing?”
    Dieter felt a churning inside his head.
    “Your past made you who you are,” the priest continued, “so,
since Chaos can alter that, it can transform you into whatever it wants. As it
has. Go and take your place among your comrades.” He waved his arm.
    Dieter turned and saw that somehow the monstrous army he’d
seen in the sky had appeared at the edge of the pool. One of the nearest daemons
had the body of a huge scorpion and the gurgling, cooing head of an infant. Its
drool shrivelled the grass. The entity next to it resembled a seven-legged
mastiff pieced together from irregular bits of brass and lead. No two of the
creatures were alike, and many, manifesting the same entropy infecting the
landscape, oozed and flickered from one shape to another.
    “No!” Dieter said. “I’m not one of them.”
    “Of course you are.” The priest scooped up a handful of water
and let it go. It fell partway, then froze, hanging in the air in a bright
streak that finally reflected Dieter’s face with the clarity of a fine glass
mirror.
    He screamed.
     
    The daemons grabbed Dieter by the wrists, to drag him into
their ranks by force or tear him apart for his recalcitrance. He thrashed,
trying to break free even though he knew it was impossible for one to prevail
against so many.
    Then suddenly, it wasn’t daemons holding onto him anymore,
and he wasn’t standing in the pool. A woman peered anxiously down at him.
Disoriented as he was, it took him a moment to recognise Jarla, partly because
it was the first time he’d seen her face without its whorish mask of paint. She
looked younger, and more shy and tentative without it.
    “Are you all right?” she panted.
    Far from it. He was still shaking with terror, and his heart
thumped as if he’d sprinted for miles. He was also gasping. He laboured to
control his breathing, meanwhile insisting to himself that his sojourn in the
realm of Chaos had only been a nightmare, a nightmare that was now over, and it
blunted the edge of his fear. “Maybe.” His voice came out as a croak, and he
realised his throat was dry and scratchy.