The arrival nudged him with the tip of his shoe. “Are you injured?” he enquired softly.
Reynevan didn’t answer.
“Who the Devil are you?”
Reynevan didn’t answer that time, either, but curled up in an even tighter ball. The stranger bent over and picked the amulet up from the floor.
“A Visumrepertum periapt,” he said with some admiration in his voice. “Quite well made. And you saw through my fe-fiada using the Spell of True Seeing… Are you a Toledo?”
“Alma…” grunted Reynevan, feeling his head and neck. “Mater… Nostra. Clavis… Salomonis?”
“Yes, yes, we’ll get by without the declamation. Who made the Visumrepertum? You?”
“Teles—Jošt Dun. From Opatovice.”
“And from Heidelberg,” the stranger added carelessly. “How is he?”
“They are all well.”
The visitor shifted his weight from foot to foot. He was a man of around forty, short, pot-bellied, very broad-shouldered and seemingly bowed over under the weight of his shoulders. The clothes he wore were the grey, simple and none-too-clean apparel of a servant. But Reynevan would have bet any money that the stranger was not a servant.
“Do you give your word,” the visitor asked again, feeling his nose, “that you won’t attack me again?”
“No.”
“Eh?”
“I have to get out of here.”
The man said nothing for a while.
“I understand,” he finally said, hoarsely. “You’re in an oubliette and I know its purpose. I shall supply you with vittles and beverages. But don’t read too much into that.”
Reynevan devoured the bread, sausage and cheese almost without taking a breath and almost choked on the watery ale. Having appeased the first pangs of hunger, he ate more slowly, chewing more thoroughly. The man in the grey servant’s costume watched him with interest. After Reynevan had eaten and drunk his fill, he also began to take interest in his visitor.
“Otto of Bergow,” said the man. “The man who imprisoned you in here. Is he aware of your magical abilities?”
“Only sketchily.”
“How long have you been here?”
“What day is it today?”
“Samh—” the man stammered. “I mean All Souls’. Commemoratio animarum.”
Reynevan drained the last drops of ale from the jug and stowed away a bread crust in his jacket.
“You can come clean,” he declared. “When you went to get the food, I had a look at the objects you brought, the ones lying over there—mistletoe, birch bark, a sprig of yew, a candle, an iron ring, a black stone, typical attributes of a ceremony for the dead. And today, as you let slip, is the Feast of Samhain. You passed through this wall to pay your respects to those bones according to the ritual of the Older Tribes.”
“Correct.”
“So he was your kinsman. Or friend.”
“Incorrect. But let’s attend to more important things. I’ll advise you how to avoid death by starvation. You aren’t the first. Plenty have been put in this oubliette, and you see yourself that there’s only one skeleton, not counting those very ancient bones. Listen carefully. Are you?”
“I am.”
“The son of Otto of Bergow, Jan, is an Utraquist and hejtman in the Tábor. Otto somehow got the crazy idea that his Hussite son is plotting against him and wants to take his life and fortune. Although to me it’s utter rot, it has acquired the characteristics of a persecution complex. He senses paid killers around every corner, smells poison at every meal. He sees his parricide son in every Hussite, which explains his hatred of the Calixtines. The matter is simple: you’ll have to confess to being an assassin hired by Jan of Bergow who has come to Trosky to murderer Otto.”
Reynevan snorted. “Delighted with my frank admission, Otto of Bergow will have me broken on the wheel. Assuming he believes me. It would suffice to ask me what his son looks like and the lie will be revealed.”
“You are a mage. Don’t you know any persuasive or empathic spells?”
“No.”
“Well, bad luck.”
“Damn it!” Reynevan exploded. “Stop deceiving me! I don’t want to read too much into it, but you came in here through the sodding wall! So open it and let me leave!”
The visitor said nothing for a long time, not looking at Reynevan, but at the skeleton.
“Unfortunately, that outcome is not possible,” he finally replied.
“What?”
“I cannot do that… Sit quietly or I’ll cast the Constricto on you. For you’ve already learned the hard way that your magic’s no match for mine.”
There was a note of conceit in the visitor’s voice—and that conceit helped Reynevan solve the mystery, played the role of a catalyst which made the hazy solution become transparent. Hunger may also have been sharpening his perception.
“Well, well,” he said slowly. “Just to think, my reason for coming to Trosky was to meet you. You and no other.”
“What are you saying?”
“I cannot compete with you in magic,” Reynevan drawled, “for you are a truly powerful sorcerer. And on top of that, a polyglot, for no one else in the locality knows the word ‘oubliette.’ Were I to escape through a magical passage, were I to vanish mysteriously, the alarm would be sounded: a sorcerer must be hidden at Trosky. A sorcerer who is capable of overcoming the dungeon’s magical protection. For he himself installed it. I got into Trosky in order to meet you, Master Rupilius. To ask for your advice.”
“I congratulate you on your imagination,” snapped the man. “You ought to write romances… What are you bloody doing?”
“I need to relieve myself.” Reynevan stood astride the skeleton. “Why do you ask?”
“Get the fuck away from there!” yelled the visitor. “Get away, do you hear? Don’t you dare desecr—”
He broke off, choking on the unuttered word. Reynevan turned around, smiling triumphantly.
“As I thought,” he said. “Not a kinsman, not a friend, but he comes with a candle and mistletoe on All Souls’ Day to visit his own remains. And falls into a frenzy when somebody makes to piss on them, because I’d be pissing on your very own bones, wouldn’t I? For it’s your bones lying here, Master Rupilius the Silesian, O expert in bodies and astral beings. Your body may have died in this dungeon, but not your essence. You passed astrally into someone’s else’s physical form. Into the form of the person whose spirit you displaced into your own body. And whom hunger killed here, rather than you.”
“It doesn’t bear thinking about,” said Rupilius the Silesian after a long pause. “It doesn’t bear thinking what bloody titans of intellect are wasting away in dungeons these days.”
Reynevan remained alone for a long time. Long enough to decide the rainy day had come and gnaw on the bread crust he had been saving for that day.
After vanishing into the wall, Rupilius the Silesian left him to a terrible loneliness, awful anxiety and the even more awful torture of hope. He’ll return, lingered the hope wailing in his head. He won’t return, he’ll leave me to my fate, the logic in his skull came to life, why should he return, what will he gain by helping me? He’ll forget the man left in the oubliette, erase me from his memory…