Reynevan groaned and changed his position. He was bruised, but probably nothing was broken. He heard the grinding and scraping of the grating being closed.
“Ah, I almost forgot,” Bergow added from above. “Magic, if you are indeed a sorcerer, won’t help you. That cocksure mage I mentioned put special protection spells on the hladomorna. He claimed that not even Merlin himself could undo them. It turned out he wasn’t lying, which he found out to his cost. He perished down there and will now keep you company. Thus, if Rupilius the Silesian couldn’t escape from there, you have no chance, either. Farewell. And since soon you’ll be drinking your own piss, let me wish you prosit in advance.”
The footsteps and clanking of metal faded. The echoes died away. And a deep, dull silence fell.
It took some time for Reynevan’s eyes to adapt to the darkness. Enough to notice the grinning white skull of a skeleton chained to the wall in the corner of the dungeon.
The rumour was true. The sorcerer Rupilius really had resided at Trosky Castle. And still did. For ever and ever.
The fundamental problem of magical amulets, Telesma, the Prague sorcerer from the Archangel, had once explained to Reynevan, is a matter of size. The matter of size is even more significant than that of price. Everyone knows that the more valuable the material a talisman is made from, the more powerful it is. But it was the Phoenicians who came up with the principle that good means dear. Buy cheap, buy dross—that axiom was also said to have been conceived among the merchants of Tyre and Sidon.
The claim that the more substantial the mass of the amulet, the greater its power was a truism, and an extremely problematic one at that, for the very nature of magical periapts demanded that they be handy. A talisman was useful if it could be carried on one’s person—in a pocket, inside a jacket, on a finger. So what if a dried and pressed stork allowed one to easily read a stranger’s thoughts? said Telesma. Or a mummified corpse’s leg could reliably protect one against spells. Where is one to carry it? On a string around one’s neck? It looks ridiculous.
All one can do, the sorcerer finished his theorising with a practical conclusion, is to reconcile oneself with the fact that amulets, talismans and suchlike are only suitable for weak magic, for lower-level sorcery. Having reconciled oneself thereto, one should do what one can—which means to miniaturise. If it can’t be more powerful, let it at least be more convenient to carry around.
So Telesma experimented thoroughly—with varying results. And when Reynevan left Prague, he received as a gift a small copper casket no larger than two human fists. The satin-lined compartments concealed no fewer than twenty small objects: miniaturised amulets with various uses.
Naturally, Reynevan guarded the box carefully and didn’t expose it to any risk. Since the expedition to Trosky Castle was damned risky, the box had remained in Scharley’s care. With certain exceptions. He took two amulets with him: a ring for healing wounds and a periapt for detecting magical activity. Aside from being useful, the two talismans also had the virtue of being inconspicuous. The healing ring, cast in tin, concealed a large diamond. The magic-detecting periapt was made of gold wire masked by entwined horsehair.
Its inconspicuousness hadn’t protected the ring—everything had its value to Hurkovec’s martahuzes, even tin. When stripped of his sheepskin coat, hat, pouch, belt and Venetian dagger, Reynevan had also lost the ring—he’d been fortunate not to lose the finger as well. However, the horsehair-covered magic-detecting periapt fastened around his arm above the elbow had escaped the attention of the men who searched him. And was now the only thing Reynevan could count on.
And Reynevan had to count on something—and fast. He realised that two days had passed since his last meal. He hadn’t eaten for forty-eight hours. And hardly drunk anything.
“Visum repertum, visum repertum, visum repertum. Cabustira, bustira, tira, ra.”
When he repeated the spell, it achieved no more than he had the first time. The walls of the oubliette—or as Bergow preferred, the hladomorna—glowed like phosphorous, emitting light like rotting wood in the forest and confirming the depressing truth that the dungeon was indeed set about with a powerful protective spell. However, the skeleton chained to the wall, in whom Reynevan must have seen Rupilius the Silesian, the illustrious theoretician and practitioner of the sorcerer’s arcana, wasn’t shining or giving off the tiniest glow. Illustrious or not, Rupilius in the form of a merrily grinning skeleton, unlike the walls, wasn’t emitting any magic, which was incontrovertible proof that the works of sorcerers endure longer than they themselves do.
Reynevan somewhat lost heart, since he had harboured a faint hope that the periapt would enable him to detect something that would prove useful in his situation. For, being a sorcerer, Rupilius could have smuggled some magical objects into the dungeon, for example in his rectum, as the mage Circulus had done when he was imprisoned in Narrenturm. But Rupilius the Silesian had brought nothing with him. And there he was, common sense suggested, sitting in the corner and grinning among his other decaying and crumbling bones. If he’d had other options, common sense went on, it wouldn’t have ended like that.
After telling common sense to shut up, Reynevan put the amulet to his lips, then to his forehead.
“Visum repertum, visum repertum, visum repertum…”
His hands were trembling slightly and he had difficulty uttering the whispered spell. He was famished. And dreadfully thirsty. A strange, very unpleasant feeling began to grip him.
The feeling of desperation.
He didn’t know how much time passed, how long he’d been imprisoned. He was quickly losing track and would fall asleep from time to time, now in a nervous and short-lived doze, now in a deep sleep, close to lethargy. His senses beguiled him, he heard voices, whining, moaning, the scraping of stone against stone, the clanking of metal against metal. Far away—he could have sworn—a girl was laughing. He could have sworn that somebody was singing in what sounded like German.
The forests are all a-greening
Why is my beloved far away?
He rode away on his horse
Oh, who will love me?
Typical symptoms, he thought. Hunger and dehydration are beginning to take effect. I’m losing my mind. I’m going mad.
And suddenly something occurred that confirmed to him that he was indeed mad.
The opposite wall of the dungeon moved.
The lines of mortar clearly bowed and rippled like patterned fabric blown by the wind. The wall suddenly billowed like a sail, swelled in a large and quickly growing bubble. The bubble burst stickily. And something emerged from it.
That something was invisible, evidently concealed beneath a spell. Dumbfounded, frozen and curled up in a ball in the corner, Reynevan observed the outline of a shape, a transparent shape, metamorphosing, bulging as it moved, like water. He guessed why he was able to see it at all: the remains of the spell emitted by the magic-detecting periapt still hung in the air.
The transparent shape moving smoothly towards Rupilius’s skeleton hadn’t noticed him. But Reynevan suddenly understood with blinding certainty that this might be his only chance.
“Video videndum! ” he yelled with the amulet in his hand. “Alef Tau!”
The shape materialised so suddenly that it shuddered, which made Reynevan’s task much easier. He leaped at the newcomer like a lynx, grabbed him and flung him down onto the dirt floor, then punched him under the ribs with all his strength. It forced the air and a foul curse from the visitor and Reynevan seized him by the throat. Or tried to, for he was suddenly butted in the face. Although he saw stars, he returned the blow, cutting his forehead on the newcomer’s teeth. The latter swore again on being struck and yelled something incomprehensible. The magic-detecting amulet reacted automatically and the dungeon filled with light. Of course, Reynevan managed to think, feeling a dreadful force lifting him up in the air. There’s no doubt he’s a sorcerer. Somebody who knows magic, he thought as he levitated. I’ve taken on a mage, he thought just before slamming into the wall with great force. He crumpled and curled up in a ball, unable to take any further action.