“Rtsa-brgyud-blama-gsum-gyaaaal!” he bellowed. “Baib-kaa-sngags-ting-adsin-rgyaaai! Show him to me! Find him! Kill him!”
In front of the eyes of the horrified acolyte, who was no stranger to dreadful sights, a reddish glow began to veil the charred skeleton on the catafalque. The glow quickly thickened, took on a form, became more and more material and quickly clothed the skeleton in a bright body. Crimson veins and arteries of fire began to curl and spiral around the charred bones.
“N’ghaa, n’n’ghaighaaai! Iä! Iä! Find him and kill him!”
The skeleton shuddered. And moved. Its bones scraped against the granite of the catafalque. The black skull snapped its charred teeth.
“Shoggog, phthaghn! Iä! Iä! Y-hah, y-nyah! Y-nyah!”
“Scheva! Aradia!” Malevolt sprinkled a handful of powder onto the coals, a mixture of dried sagebrush and pine needles, judging by the smell. He poured blood from the flacon into the flame that shot up.
“Aradia! Regina delle streghe! May it cloud the eyes of he who lies in wait for me. May dread seize him. Fiat, fiat, fiat. Eia!” The beguiler poured three drops of olive oil onto the glowing coals and snapped his fingers. “Scheva! Eia!”
Con tre gocciole d’olio,
With three drops of olive oil,
I curse you, die, burn up, malocchio,
Vanish by the power of Aradia.
Se la Pellegrina adorerai
Tutto tu otterai!
The candle flames suddenly shot upwards.
The candles went out instantly, filling the crypt with the stench of soot. The fire on the tripod vanished into the embers and smouldered deep within it. With a rattle, the skeleton on the granite catafalque disintegrated once more into a hundred charred, black bones of various sizes.
And the parchment on the lectern covered in necromantic hieroglyphics, stained with blood and caked in dove feathers, suddenly caught fire, curled up, blackened. And disintegrated.
It became horribly cold. The magic which a moment before had filled the crypt like warm glue vanished. Utterly and irreversibly.
The Wallcreeper swore foully.
The Hospitaller gasped. Perhaps a little out of relief.
Magic was occasionally like that. There were days when nothing went right. When everything went wrong. When there was nothing else to do but give up on magic.
Before casting the love spell, Malevolt, as was customary with the Older Tribes, donned a wreath of dried stalks. He looked so ridiculous in it that Reynevan could barely keep a straight face.
The love spell was astonishingly simple: the beguiler merely sprinkled the pentagram with an extract of gentian and probably borage. He tossed some pine needles onto the glowing coals and sprinkled a few crushed whortleberry leaves on them. He snapped his fingers several times and whistled; the former and the latter were both typical for the Old Magic. But when he began the invocation, he used a verse from the Song of Songs.
“Pone me ut signaculum super cor tuum ut signaculum super brachium tuum quia fortis est ut mors. Ismai! Ismai! Sun Mother whose body is white from the milk of the stars! Elementorum omnium domina, Lady of Creation, Feeder of the World! Regina delle streghe! ”
Una cosa voglio vedere,
Una cosa di amore
O vento, o acqua, o fiore!
Serpe strisciare, rana cantare
Ti prego di non mi abbandonare!
“Look,” whispered Malevolt. “Look, Reynevan.”
In the haze that had floated above the pentagram, something moved, quivered, danced in a mosaic of flickering reflections. Reynevan leaned forwards and strained to see. For a fleeting moment, he thought he saw a woman: tall, black-haired, with eyes like stars, the sign of a crescent moon on her forehead, dressed in a many-hued gown shimmering with myriad shades, now white, now copper, now crimson. Before he finally comprehended what he was watching, the apparition vanished, but the presence of Mother Universe was still palpable. The haze above the pentagram grew denser. Then it became clearer again and he saw who he desired to see.
“Nicolette!”
She appeared to hear him; she suddenly moved her head. She was wearing a calpac with a fur trim, an embroidered tunic and a cotton shawl wrapped around her neck. He saw a hundred white-trunked, leafless birch trees behind her. And behind the birches a wall. A building. A castle? A watchtower? A temple?
And then everything vanished. Utterly, completely and definitely.
“I know where that is,” said the beguiler, before Reynevan began to complain. “I recognise the place.”
“Then speak!”
The beguiler did. Before he had finished, Reynevan was already dashing to the stable to saddle his horse.
The vision hadn’t lied. He saw an old black oak woodland set against white-trunked birches, all the whiter against the dark trees. Her grey mare trod slowly, gingerly on the deep snow. He struck his horse with his spurs and rode closer. The mare whinnied and his bay stallion answered.
“Nicolette.”
“Reinmar.”
She was dressed in male attire: a padded jerkin with an embroidered pattern and a beaver-fur collar, riding gloves, thick, coloured woollen braccae or leggings and high boots. She wore her fur-trimmed calpac over a silk wimple covering the back of her neck and cheeks, and a woollen shawl had been wound several times around her neck, with the end freely tossed over her shoulder in the manner of a male liripipe.
“You cast a spell on me, sorcerer,” she said coolly. “I felt it. I was compelled to come here by some force. I couldn’t resist it. You enchanted me—confess.”
“I did, Nicolette.”
“My name is Jutta. Jutta of Apolda.”
His memory of her was different. Nothing obvious had changed, not her face, oval like the Madonna of Campin, nor her high forehead, nor the regular curve of her eyebrows, nor the slightly retroussé nose, nor the line of her mouth. Nor the expression of her face, deceptively childlike. Her eyes had changed. Or perhaps they hadn’t changed at all, perhaps what he saw in them now had always been there? A cool thoughtfulness hidden in a turquoise abyss, a thoughtfulness and an enigma waiting to be solved, a mystery waiting to be discovered. Things he’d once seen in almost identical blue and similarly cold eyes. The eyes of her mother. The Green Lady.
He rode even closer. The horses snorted, the steam from their nostrils mingling together.
“I’m glad to see you in good health, Reinmar.”
“I’m glad to see you in good health… Jutta. That’s a beautiful name. Shame you kept it from me for so long.”
“And did you,” she said, raising an eyebrow, “ever ask my name?”
“How could I? I took you for another. You deceived me.”
“You deceived yourself.” She looked him straight in the eyes. “Your dream deceived you. Perhaps you desired in your heart for me to be somebody else? During the kidnap, it was you who pointed me out to your comrades with your own finger as Biberstein’s daughter.”
“I wanted…” He reined in his horse. “I had to protect you from—”
“Exactly!” she cut in. “So what was I to do then? Contradict you? Reveal to your brigand friends who was really who? You saw Kasia; she almost died of fright. I preferred to allow myself to be kidnapped—”