“Precisely,” confirmed Štěpán of Drahotuše. “Let’s go. Aren’t you coming?”
“Actually,” said Edlinger Brehm, wiping his hands on a rag and glaring at the bowl of smoking frogspawn with eyes full of regret, “actually, I can. There’s nothing keeping me here.”
There was a small door in an inconspicuous corner of the alchemic laboratory behind an inconspicuous curtain. For an uninitiated person—if one were ever to make it there—the door appeared to open onto a storeroom full of crates, barrels and bottles. Those in the know moved a lever hidden inside one of the barrels, uttered a spell and the wall slid open to reveal a dark opening that smelled of graveyards. At least, it gave that impression the first time.
Edlinger Brehm lit a magical lantern with another spell and led them on. Štěpán of Drahotuše, Reynevan and Scharley followed him onto steps leading downwards in a spiral around the walls of a dim and apparently bottomless shaft. Cold and damp rose up from the bottom.
Štěpán of Drahotuše turned around. “Remember, Reynevan?”
It was no palace hallway where we were,
but just a natural passage under ground,
which had a wretched floor and lack of light.
“Samson Honeypot,” Scharley guessed immediately. “I meant to say: Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy. Our comrade’s favourite work of poetry.”
“There’s no doubt it’s his favourite,” said the Moravian, smiling, “for he quotes it extremely often. Your comrade has recalled many a quotation from the Inferno, on these stairs in particular. You, sir, I see, know him well in that respect.”
“I’d know him by that at the end of the world.”
They didn’t go far down the staircase, only two floors, although the shaft was much deeper and the steps vanished into a blackness from which the splashing of water could be heard. It was a natural cavern, whose history was lost in oblivion, extending down to the Vltava. Nobody knew who had discovered the cave or when, nor who used it or for what purpose, nor who had left this building that had stood there for centuries concealing the entrance to the cavern. Most clues pointed to the Celts—the cavern’s walls were covered in partly rubbed-off, moss-obscured reliefs and paintings, which were dominated by typical intricately interwoven ornaments and circles filled with meandering lines. Here and there appeared no less typical wild boars, red deer, horses and horned human figures.
Edlinger Brehm pushed open a heavy door. They entered.
In the underground—so-called “lower”—chamber, at a table laden with food, sat the rest of the Archangel mages: Svatopluk Fraundinst, Radim Tvrdík, Jošt Dun and Walter of Teggendorf. And Jan Bezděchovský of Bezděchov.
Jošt Dun, called Telesma, like Štěpán of Drahotuše, had once been a monk—which was betrayed by his hair. After his tonsure had grown back, unruly strands stuck out above his ears, making their owner look a little like an eagle owl. From what Reynevan knew about him, since his early years, Telesma had practised ora et labora in the Benedictine monastery in Opatovice, where he had also first come into contact with the secret arts. He had then studied in Heidelberg, where he perfected his magical knowledge. He was an absolute authority regarding talismans in terms of theoretical knowledge about them and also with respect to their practical construction. He also cast quite accurate horoscopes, which he traded, selling them to various false prophets, pseudoastrologers and fake fortune tellers, and making tidy profits from doing so. Beside the takings from the apothecary’s shop, Jošt Dun’s earnings were the congregation’s chief source of income.
Walter of Teggendorf, who was now getting on in years, had been a student at Vienna, Bologna, Coimbra and Salamanca, and had facultas docendi at all those schools. He was marked by an immense reverence for medicine, alchemy and Arabic magic, particularly for Geber and al-Kindi, that is, as he said himself, for Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan and Abu Yusuf Ya’qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi. Teggendorf’s fascinations found their expression in his approach to the Samson affair. In his opinion, jinn were to blame for everything. He claimed that in his current shape, Samson was a majnun, or a person in whose body a more powerful jinn had imprisoned as a punishment an inferior jinn that he had vanquished. There was nothing to be done with imprisonment like that, pronounced the German sorcerer. All that remained was to conduct oneself well and wait for an amnesty.
The Reverendissimus Doctor Jan Bezděchovský of Bezděchov was the oldest, most experienced and most respected of the Archangel sorcerers. Hardly anyone knew any personal details about him as he didn’t like to talk about himself. He was at least seventy, which, with respect to his youthful appearance, testified to considerable magical powers. It was known he had lectured at the Sorbonne during the reign of King Charles V the Wise, who died in 1380, and in accordance with the regulations, a university lecturer had to be at least twenty-one years old. The universities he had studied and taught at certainly included Paris, Padua, Montpellier and Prague; and those four definitely didn’t exhaust the list. It was rumoured that in Prague Bezděchovský became involved in a serious quarrel and a bruising personal feud with the rector, the celebrated Jan Šindel. The basis of the conflict, about which Reynevan had already heard during his studies at the academy, wasn’t known, but was behind Bezděchovský’s departure from the university and his severing of all contact with it. After 1417, Bezděchovský simply vanished. People wondered long and hard about what had become of him, Reynevan among them. And now he knew.
“Greetings, young man,” said Bezděchovský. Only he among the entire company didn’t address Reynevan by his first name. “Greetings to you, too, Master Scharley. Your fame goes before you. We heard it’s your second year with the Taborites. So how is the war going? What’s new?”
He was the only member of the company not to interest himself in politics. The old man was quite indifferent to the events of the war that occupied the interest of the whole of Prague. He only asked about them out of politeness.
“Aye, the war’s going well,” Scharley replied politely. “The right cause is winning, the wrong one losing. Our chaps are beating the foreigners. I meant to say: the good are beating the bad. I mean: Order is triumphing over Chaos. And God rejoices.”
“Oh, oh,” said the old wizard happily. “How wonderful! Sit beside me, Master Scharley, tell me…”
Reynevan joined the other mages. Radim Tvrdík poured him some wine, Spanish Alicante judging from the bouquet.
“How are things?” asked Štěpán of Drahotuše, nodding towards the closed door leading to the occultum, the room of divination and conjuration. “Any results? Or at least some heavenly or earthly signs?”
Svatopluk Fraundinst snorted. Telesma did, too, although he didn’t raise his head from the talisman he was polishing with jeweller’s rouge.
“Herr Meister Axleben prefers to work alone,” said Teggendorf. “He doesn’t like people looking over his shoulder. He guards his secret methods closely.”
“Even from those who play host to him,” Fraundinst remarked sourly, “thus showing what he thinks of them—as nothing but thieves, out to steal his secrets. He probably hides his pouch and poulaines under his pillow before going to sleep so we can’t steal them, either.”