Light flashed above; the clanging metal reverberated. They’re getting me out of here, thought Reynevan. There’s hope… Unless Bergow has become impatient. Anxiety froze the hope. And has decided to drag a testimony out of me by other means. They’ll release me from here, but only to haul me off to the torture chamber…
Something boomed thunderously, a clanging from above; the grating opened with a grinding sound, followed by a clattering and a scratching. Somebody blocked out the light and suddenly the shape of a ladder being lowered emerged from the darkness.
“Out you come, Reynevan,” sounded the voice of Rupilius the Silesian from high up. “At the double, at the double!”
I didn’t reveal my identity to him, he realised, scrambling up the smoothly worn rungs. I didn’t tell him my given name, much less my familiar nickname. He’s either a telepath, a psychic or… At the top, it turned out to be the “or.” And Reynevan grunted as he was embraced in a powerful bear hug.
“Samson!”
“Aye, Samson,” Rupilius the Silesian, who was standing beside them, confirmed with a slight sneer. “I envy you your comrades, lad. Could be worse, could be worse. And now be off, time to go.”
“But how—”
“There’s no time!” The sorcerer cut him off. “Time to go! You’ve a long journey ahead of you.”
They climbed up some stairs, from where a metal-bound door led them to the torture chamber, full of spine-chilling instruments and tools. In a corner, barely visible, was a small door leading to a narrow corridor. They passed more doors and Rupilius only stopped at the fifth or sixth.
“El Ab! Elevamini ianuae! ”
The door yielded to his gesture and biblical spell and they entered. The room was full of chests and cases. Rupilius placed a lantern on one and sat down on another.
“Let’s get our breath back,” he ordered. “And talk.”
The chest that Reynevan sat down alongside was full of books. He wiped off the dust. Averroes’ Culliyyat. Ramon Llull’s Ars Magna. Bernard of Clairvaux’s De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae.
“These are my belongings,” said Rupilius, making a sweeping gesture towards the cases. “Books and other things I need for my work. Some of them have a price. Most don’t. Most of them are priceless, if you understand what I mean.
“You, Reynevan, are Toledo. What you are, Samson, I don’t fully know, but you, too, undoubtedly guess the essence of the matter, which will save us time and trouble. Thus, without details—which, if you don’t mind, are none of your bloody business—I’ll tell you: Otto of Bergow, for ten years my sponsor and benevolent master, suddenly stopped being benevolent and began making demands that I couldn’t fulfil. Or didn’t want to. It was thus planned for me to starve to death in the oubliette, having fallen out of favour with my master. In the dungeon, I managed to end the existence of my good old body, and of the soul of the other person that I separated from its body, the one I currently use. The transfer took place in some haste, and I also chose my object in haste. The result is that I am only a servant at Trosky. As such, I cannot remove my effects from here. Effects I am very attached to. Very attached, do you understand? So the agreement is this: I’ll help you escape from the castle. In return, you must come back in two years and help me to move out. Agreed? I’m waiting.”
“One thing first of all, Master Rupilius,” said Reynevan, stroking the metal binding of The Enchiridion of Pope Leo. “I entered Trosky in order to—”
“I know why you’re here,” interrupted the sorcerer. “Samson and I have already chatted briefly about that. And we know a little.”
“It’s true,” said the giant, smiling at Reynevan’s expression. “We know a little. Not everything. But there is some progress.”
“I’m not interested in ‘some progress,’” said Reynevan, biting his lip, “but in finding a way to solve the problem once and for all. You said it’s high time you returned home, Samson. You asked me to do what I could. And now, when a chance is within reach—”
“Weren’t you listening?” Rupilius didn’t let him finish again. “I said that we have spoken, and that we know a little. But nothing is yet within reach, regrettably. Not yet.”
“We already know a little,” replied Reynevan. “Vincent Axleben took an interest in Samson in Prague—and he’s a master among masters, after all. He claimed it concerned the astral body. And the perispirit. The perispirit… Hm… Positively circling.”
“A circulating perispirit.” Rupilius grimaced. “Well, well. Indeed, one knows the master by his hypotheses. But did the master among masters ever explain what it’s all about?”
Anyone who had any contact with magic and occult knowledge, even in passing, knew what the perisprit was. Every novice of the esoteric arts was regaled at the very start of his education with a long, convoluted disquisition, given in an extremely obscure way, about the construction of the human creature. Human beings, the disquisition explained, consist of the physical aspect—the material body—through which they interact with the external material world surrounding them. Human beings also have a spirit, built from immortal ether. There also exists something that connects and binds the spirit to the body, something that mediates between the spirit and the body, and that something is the fluid body, known as the perispirit, blah, blah, blah.
Although the matter appeared simple, it was difficult to find two mages who agreed regarding the perispirit. There were arguments about whether the perispirit was coarser or more ethereal, or, in accordance with the Emerald Tablet, grosser or subtler. There was no agreement as to whether the perispirit was permanent or changeable, nor what the perispirit did and didn’t influence.
There was a theory that attributed quite an enormous role and capabilities to it. According to this theory, the perispirit—being by nature a bond between the material body and the ethereal spirit—determined both the strength and the quality of the bond. In other words, it gives the body more or less spirit. But not all perispirits are alike. Some are given a proverbial “great soul,” making artists of them. Others are given great analytic abilities, making them into scientists and inventors. Those granted the ability to control other souls become leaders and statesmen. It allows a select few to see what is unseeable, to gaze into the abyss of astral beings, making them great mages, spiritualists, prophets and psychics. But the perispirit is so stingy with the rest that even though they have a spirit, the only thing they can do is sit in a tavern drinking one beer after another.
Reynevan had known all that for a long time. As it’s been said before, it was elementary knowledge. After the examination of Samson carried out in Prague, Axleben had, however, used the term “positive perispirit” and “circling perispirit.” This was advanced knowledge and the mages of the Archangel only explained it to Reynevan later. According to most theories, the bond between the perispirit and the spirit was unbreakable, but the bond with the body was not. The perispirit, it was claimed, can decide at any moment that the bond between the spirit and a given body didn’t suit it and sever it. As a rule, it was claimed, the perispirit did that at the moment when the bond was being formed, in other words just after birth or in the first weeks of the infant’s life, explaining the high infant mortality rate.