“Greetings, Reynevan.” He smiled. “Nice to see you again. You haven’t been here in ages.”
Reynevan had devoted considerable effort to healing his relationship with Štěpán of Drahotuše following the gaffe in the library. But he accomplished it and with results that exceeded expectations.
“Could this be the Master Scharley,” said the librarian, scratching his nose with dusty fingers, “about whom I’ve heard so much? Welcome, welcome.”
Štěpán of Drahotuše, who was descended from old Moravian nobility, was a monk, an Augustinian and—naturally—a sorcerer. He had been friends with the mages of the Archangel’s congregation for many years at the university, but had moved permanently to the hiding place in the apothecary’s shop in 1420 after his Hradčany monastery had been sacked and burned down. Unlike the rest of the mages, he almost never ventured out of the apothecary’s shop—or, more precisely, its library—and he didn’t visit the city. He was a walking library catalogue, knew every book and could quickly locate them, which, in the conditions of the chaos prevailing there, was a simply inestimable skill. Reynevan was very happy to be friends with the Moravian and spent long hours in the library. He was interested in herbal medicine and pharmaceutics and the Archangel’s library was a veritable mine of information in that regard. In addition to the famous classic herbals and pharmacopoeias like those of Dioscorides, Strabo, Avicenna, Hildegard of Bingen and Nicolaus the Superior, the library contained some real treasures. There was Geber’s Kitab Sirr al-Asrar and Shabbethai Donnolo’s Sefer ha-Mirkahot; there were unknown works by Maimonides, Hali, Apuleius and Herrad of Landsberg, as well as other antidotaria, dispensatoria and ricettaria that Reynevan had never seen or heard of before. And he doubted that they had been heard of at the university.
“Very well.” Štěpán of Drahotuše closed a book and stood up. “Let’s go down to the lower chamber. I believe we’ll arrive right on time, for they’ll probably be finishing soon. In any case, it’s quite extravagant to begin conjuration not at midnight, like any normal, self-respecting sorcerer, but at the first hour of the day, but, well… It’s not my business to criticise the actions of somebody like valde venerandus et eximius Vincent Reffin Axleben of Salzburg, a living legend, a walking celebrity. Ha, I cannot wait to see how the master among masters is doing with Samson…”
“Did he arrive yesterday?”
“Yesterday afternoon. He dined, drank and was curious to discover how he could help us, so we introduced Samson to him. Venerandus sprang up and was about to leave, convinced we were mocking him. Samson used the same trick he treated us to last year: he greeted us in Latin and repeated it in Koine and Aramaic. You ought to have seen the honourable Master Vincent’s face! But it worked, as it had with us. The honourable Vincent Reffin looked at Samson kindlier, with more interest—why, he even smiled, as much as the muscles of his face permit, which are fixed in a permanent grimace as sombre as it is arrogant. Then the two of them locked themselves away in the occultum—”
“Just the two of them?”
“The master among masters,” replied the Moravian with a smile, “is also extravagant in this regard. He values discretion, even if it borders on tactlessness, not to say rudeness. The old quack is a guest here, dammit. It doesn’t bother me, I don’t give a hoot, and Bezděchovský is above that kind of thing, but Fraundinst, Teggendorf and Telesma are… furious, to put it mildly, and sincerely wish failure on Axleben. That wish will be fulfilled, in my opinion.”
“Eh?”
“He’s making the same mistake we did at Epiphany. Do you remember, Reinmar?”
“I do.”
“So let’s make haste. This way, Master Scharley.”
From the library, they went out into the cloister, and from the cloister, they went downstairs to the ground floor, where they stood before an iron-bound door. An oval plaque on the door depicted a bronze serpent of Moses, serpens mercurialis. Above the serpent was a chalice with the Sun and Moon rising from it. Beneath it shone the letters V.I.T.R.I.O.L., an abbreviation of Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem, a secret transmutational formula used by alchemists.
Štěpán of Drahotuše touched the door and uttered a spell. The door opened with a grinding and a scraping. As they entered, Scharley sighed deeply.
“Not bad,” he muttered, looking around. “Not bad… I have to admit.”
“I was also speechless the first time I saw it,” said Reynevan, smiling. “Then I grew accustomed to it.”
The work of the alchemic laboratory, which filled an enormous wine cellar, never stopped; something was happening there every single day. The stoves and athanors were never extinguished, relentlessly pouring out heat, which was appreciated in the winter and also on cold summer days. Calcination and annealing were carried out in the athanors, where all sorts of substances were transformed from the albedo to the nigredo phase, giving off dreadful smells. Something was constantly being filtered, distilled or extracted in flasks, accompanied by turbulent effervescence and even more overpowering stenches. Acids acted on metals in large aludels, leading to the transmutation of base metals into noble ones, with varying results. Mercury—or argentum vivum—bubbled in crucibles, sulphur was melted in cupolas, nitro was liberated and salt was deposited in retorts, with fumes making the eyes water. Substances were dissolving, coagulating and sublimating, and acid spurted all over the place, burning holes in the pages of priceless specimens of Ramon Llull’s De quinta essentia, Roger Bacon’s Speculum alchemiae and Arnaldus de Villa Nova’s Theatrum chemicum lying open on tables. Foul-smelling pails of caput mortuum littered the floor.
There were usually at least three or four alchemists at work in the laboratory, as there had been when Svatopluk Fraundinst brought Reynevan there for the first time. That day—unusually—there was only one.
“Hello, Master Edlinger!”
“Don’t come any closer,” growled the alchemist, keeping his eyes on a large flask nestling in hot sand. “It’s liable to explode!”
Duke Wenceslaus, the son of Přemek of Opava, had made the acquaintance in Mainz of Edlinger Brehm, a bachelor of science from Heidelberg, and invited him to Głubczyce. Master Edlinger accepted and spent some time familiarising the young duke with alchemic theory and practice. Wenceslaus—like many of his contemporary dukes—was obsessed with alchemy and the philosophers’ stone, so Brehm lived in splendour and prosperity until the Inquisition started to take an interest in him. When the threat of the stake began to hang over Głubczyce, the alchemist fled to the university in Prague, where the turbulent year of 1419 found him. A foreigner, a German who stood out by speaking poor Czech, would certainly have had a hard time, but the mages from the Archangel recognised his skill and saved him.
Edlinger Brehm seized the flask in iron tongs and poured the gurgling blue liquid into a bowl full of something that looked like frogspawn. It hissed, smoked and gave off a foul smell.
“Sakradonnerwetterhimmelkreuzalleluja! ” There was no doubt that the alchemist had expected a better result. “Eine total fucking Sache! Scheisse, Scheisse und noch einmal Scheisse! Are you still here? I’m busy! Aha, I understand… You’ve come to see how Axleben has got on with Samson?”