Book of the Night

by Oliver Pötzsch

  “As if Elsa meant anything at all to you!” Lukas called out, trying to summon up his courage. “All you want is the magic book. Nothing else matters to you.” The wolf was crouched on the ground just a few steps away and glaring at him, as if ready to pounce at any moment, but its image seemed to be gradually fading. Lukas pulled his sword, ready to fight and hurry over to help his friends, but he was still trembling too much to move.

  “Are you so sure of that, boy?” Schönborn stared at Lukas and pointed casually at Elsa, who glared back at him. “Take a closer look at her, Lukas. You have dark hair, just like your parents. Elsa, on the other hand . . . well, she is blond.” He grinned and briefly raised his cowl, revealing a bald head with a fringe of graying blond hair. “Like me.”

  Lukas lowered his sword. Elsa, too, appeared confused. “Just what . . . are you trying to say?” she finally asked.

  “I’ll show you something,” Waldemar von Schönborn replied. “Look at this.” He pulled up his right sleeve and pointed to a thumb-sized birthmark in the shape of a falling teardrop near his elbow. “It’s called a witch’s mark,” he explained, “and it’s found on witches and magicians. At least that’s what people believe. As you may imagine, I’ve avoided as much as possible showing it to other people. Even Elsa is seeing it now for the first time. But she recognizes it because . . .”

  “Because she herself bears such a mark,” said Lukas, completing the thought. His grip on his sword weakened as the awareness hit him like a bolt of lightning. He had seen this mark on Elsa years ago when they were being bathed in a washtub in the castle, and he had seen how some servants had looked at Elsa suspiciously—her blond hair, the freckles, the birthmark. A bastard, one of the servants had whispered. At the time, Lukas didn’t understand the meaning of that word.

  Now he understood.

  “Elsa is my daughter,” Schönborn declared, savoring the moment. “The first time I arrested your mother on suspicion of witchcraft, I immediately noticed her beauty. She was beautiful, bright, and had something about her that I couldn’t get out of my mind. She never confessed, but I knew already. She was a powerful witch—a white witch. I had to possess her, and I took her, and in that night, Elsa was conceived. I assume your father knew, but he kept it to himself. The shame was too great. Yes, Elsa is my daughter, and for that reason I never wanted any harm to come to her.”

  Lukas’s heart was pounding wildly. He remembered the day more than a year ago when he fled from Schönborn’s henchmen. What had Schönborn called out then?

  Bring me the girl alive, quickly, but kill the boy.

  Now, he finally understood why. Schönborn had spared Elsa because she was his daughter, and so he had cared for her like a father. He had taught her everything . . . reading, writing, magic . . .

  The wolf under the archway seemed to have grown into a giant shadow lurking between the weathered columns. Lukas shuddered. Everything was as in his dreams, his surroundings faded away, and the cries of his friends behind the archway sounded muffled. Even Elsa, at his side, appeared to be in another world. She had rolled up her sleeve and was staring transfixed at the birthmark as if she still didn’t understand.

  “Elsa,” Schönborn continued gently. “It’s true, I am your father. You are the child of an inquisitor and a white witch, and both my powers and those of your mother are united in you. Together we can turn the world upside down.” He extended his hand once more. “Now, finally, give your dear father the book. You see he needs you. Alone, I cannot use the Grimorium. You are the last of the white witches, and I need your help. Together we are the most powerful magicians since the ancient druids Mug Ruith and Cathbad.”

  Elsa, still clutching the book, trembled and turned pale, but now she raised her hands and, as if in a trance, took a step toward Schönborn.

  “No, Elsa, don’t do it!” cried Lukas.

  Lukas’s fear of what would happen to Elsa was greater than his fear of the wolf, and he lunged at Schönborn, but at the same moment, the wolf growled and came between them. Lukas shouted and attacked it with his sword, but the weapon passed through its body as if through a cloud of smoke. Lukas staggered and fell to the ground, and his sword slipped from his hands as the beast opened its jaws to seize his throat, coming closer, inch by inch. Lukas’s fear grew beyond measure, as did the wolf towering over him. He reached out again for his sword and gripped the handle, but he knew that the weapon could not help him this time.

  Nothing could help him anymore. It was over, the wolf would seize him by the throat, and then—

  At that moment, he heard a voice . . .

  Have no fear, children. It is only fear that allows evil to prevail.

  Lukas was stunned, and then his heart leaped for joy. From the surprised expression on Elsa’s face, he realized that she, too, had heard the voice.

  The voice of their mother.

  The tender words gave Lukas new strength. He looked at the wolf with a steady gaze, trying to concentrate on what his mother had just said.

  Have no fear . . .

  “I have no fear, I have no fear,” he kept murmuring to himself, as if praying. “We have no fear.”

  The wolf recoiled and began to contract like a balloon when the air is released.

  “We have no fear!” Lukas shouted. “No fear!”

  Then he laughed right into the beast’s face.

  The wolf’s contours began to blur, and the individual dots scattered like bees in search of nectar. Soon all that was left of the great beast was a thin gray cloud.

  For the first time, Schönborn seemed uncertain, and he turned to Elsa, who was still standing before him holding the Grimorium.

  “I am your father,” he said in a firm voice, “and I order you to obey me. Now give me the book.”

  Elsa reached out her hand holding the Grimorium.

  “Do you see?” Schönborn said with relief. “You’re a good girl. Now all you have to do—”

  Elsa opened her mouth and spoke:

  “OMAR PARTUIS SENTA GRAVA. FORAMEN PORTABILIS.”

  The words came from her mouth, but they didn’t sound like those of a little girl. They sounded like a deep, dark voice from the depths of hell, as if a dragon had been awakened, now soaring up to the heavens to destroy the earth with its fiery breath.

  “Foramen portabilis!” Elsa shouted again.

  A storm arose, sweeping across the clearing, and the book in Elsa’s hands began to flutter, faster and faster. Small bushes and hedges were uprooted and flew past Lukas.

  Then the world began to spin, more and more wildly, like a bowl on a potter’s wheel.

  “No!” Lukas could hear Schönborn screaming from somewhere. “No, Elsa! Stop! You are my daughter—you . . . are . . . my . . . No!”

  The scream suddenly broke off, and everything around Lukas turned as black as a starless night sky. Schönborn, Elsa, the frozen, and his friends had all disappeared. He heard a faint hissing that gradually got louder, as if a heavy object were falling down from a great height.

  At the same moment, Lukas sensed that it was he himself that was falling.

  XXVII

  When Lukas opened his eyes, the fall abruptly stopped.

  He seemed to be lying on something hard, but it was not the frosty ground of the garden labyrinth. The smell was different, too. The fresh winter breeze had vanished; only the stench of moldy straw, rat feces, and decay remained. He noticed he was still clenching the Pappenheim sword, and the pistol was still tucked under his belt. Wherever he might be, at least he was not unarmed.

  He struggled to get to his feet and realized that despite his precipitous fall, he hadn’t broken anything. Everything around him was still dark, but after he’d blinked a few times, he began to recognize some vague outlines. Light fell through some tiny cracks above him, forming a square.

  A trapdoor, he thought.

  When he reached out with his hands, he felt a hard stone wall, mold, and slimy moss.

  This is a cell, and I�
��m a prisoner! But where, in God’s name, is Elsa? What happened?

  “Elsa,” he cried into the darkness. “Elsa! Are you here somewhere? Please, Elsa, say something.”

  A terrible fear swept over him—but the fear he had lost Elsa again, and his friends, too, seemed to have vanished. Was he all alone in this sinister dungeon?

  Not far from him, he heard a groan, and he crept toward it on his hands and knees. He could feel cold arms and legs, and finally a face bathed in sweat. He breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t need light to recognize it was his sister lying there. Elsa was breathing fitfully, still holding the leather-bound book of magic. Lukas bent down over her and tried to warm her with his body.

  “Elsa,” he whispered, “everything will be all right. I am with you.”

  “I . . . know, Lukas.” She coughed. “You are my big brother, and big brothers have to watch over their little sisters, don’t they?”

  Lukas laughed. “Yes, that’s what they’re supposed to do, but you have to at least tell me what happened and where we are.”

  “It was anger.” Elsa’s lips were now very close to his ear, and she trembled as if she had a fever. “When Schönborn said I was his daughter, the book and my anger simply swept me away. I wanted only to leave, to escape this monster who is my father.” She was crying softly.

  “Do you mean you cast a spell that took us to another place?” Lukas asked.

  Elsa was silent. Lukas felt her face and realized it was wet from the tears running down her cheeks. “It’s a very powerful spell,” she said finally. “All my hate was needed to pronounce the words, and it brought me to the threshold of death. I felt something dark reaching out for me with its claws.”

  “But where are we?” Lukas asked again. He looked up, where he could now clearly see the outlines of the trapdoor. “It looks like your spell put us in a cell. Are we back in Schönborn’s dungeon?”

  “No, Lukas. It’s another cell.” She coughed again. Laboriously, she took hold of Lukas and pulled herself up. “I hope, at least, that it is.”

  “But which one?” Lukas asked.

  “It’s the place I first thought of when I spoke the magic words,” Elsa said, carefully getting to her feet. “The place where it all began.”

  Suddenly, it dawned on Lukas, and his heart skipped a beat. “Do you mean . . .”

  “It’s the cell in the keep of Lohenfels Castle,” she finished for him. “You left me here alone then, when Schönborn took our mother away. I was so afraid. I climbed up the ladder, and you were standing there looking out the embrasure, your eyes wide with fear. I knew at once that something dreadful had happened. It was like . . .”

  “Like the end of our childhood,” Lukas murmured. “I know. I also felt something like that.”

  “You ran away and left me behind. I cried for days until Schönborn’s magic finally made me forget everything. Now the memory has returned.” Elsa began climbing up the ladder. “Let’s see what awaits us up there.”

  “Elsa, wait! We don’t know who is up there—maybe Schönborn’s henchmen, or someone else.”

  Lukas hurried up the steps after her, but she had already lifted the trapdoor and crawled through the opening. He found her in a corner of the drafty keep, staring out through a jagged opening in the wall.

  The sight took his breath away.

  The keep had been blown up so that only two of the original tower walls were standing. Outside, an icy wind was blowing. Below them lay what was once their parents’ castle—charred ruins, the caved-in roofs of the stables, a castle wall shot to pieces . . . the courtyard where they once played hide-and-seek as children, with rubble scattered everywhere. Lukas was so shocked that for a while, words failed him.

  “The Swedes must have done this,” he finally said. “Lohenfels was one of the last castles loyal to the Kaiser. My God, they haven’t left one stone unturned here.”

  Suddenly, between the ruins, he spotted something moving. A broad-shouldered figure white with stone dust rose to his feet. His shirt was torn and his hair disheveled.

  One of the frozen! Lukas realized at once. They followed us here. Now we are finished!

  Elsa let out a loud cry, but then a deep, grumbling voice spoke up.

  And cursed in a very familiar way.

  “What the hell happened? Damn, I feel like I’ve been rolled over by a thousand-pound cannon. Damn, damn, damn!”

  Then two other forms emerged from the rubble. They stumbled around, but it didn’t appear they were injured.

  “Paulus, Giovanni, Jerome!” Lukas cried out. “My God, I thought it was Schönborn!”

  “Can someone pinch me so I know I’m no longer dreaming?” Giovanni mumbled. “Where are we, anyway?” he asked, looking around. “And where the hell is the labyrinth?”

  Jerome knocked the stone dust from his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter where we are. In any case I can’t let the girls see me in this outfit,” he wailed. “C’est terrible!”

  Despite the devastation all around them, Lukas had to laugh. “My God, you three look like really pathetic castle ghosts.” He pointed at the destruction everywhere. “Well, if you still need proof that my sister can cast spells, here it is. Welcome to Lohenfels Castle.”

  Jerome stared at him in amazement. “You mean this pile of rocks is your father’s castle? And your sister cast a spell to bring us here?” He turned to Elsa. “Couldn’t you have found something a bit more pleasant? Venice, for example? Or Paris, with its pretty girls and good wine?”

  Elsa smiled weakly as Lukas led her down the keep’s partially destroyed outer stairs to the courtyard. “I’m sorry that I’m not even half as good at being a witch as you’d hoped for. I’m happy anyway that my spell was good enough to get not only me and Lukas, but you three as well, out of the Heidelberg Castle gardens.”

  “What happened to Schönborn and his frozen ones?” Giovanni asked cautiously.

  “The magic whirlwind was strong enough to carry them off,” Elsa replied, “but where it took them, I can’t say, unfortunately. I only hope it’s far, far away.”

  Paulus spat out a tooth he’d evidently lost in his fall. “I’m afraid there’s no place far enough away for that monster. If Schönborn ever sees us again, he won’t have too many kind words for us.”

  “And neither will his henchmen.” Jerome grinned. There was a bloodied cut across his forehead. “Considering they’re invulnerable, we sure kicked the hell out of them. Do you know how I—”

  They heard a sound coming from down in the stables. Jerome and Giovanni reached for their swords while Paulus grabbed a large rock and crouched down, ready to attack. But it was only an old woman in a torn dress, probably looking for something in the ruins. With a cry, she dropped her bag and fell to her knees.

  “Oh, my lords, do me no harm!” she pleaded. “I have only come to look around for some of my former belongings. Never would I—”

  “Agnes!” Lukas shouted with joy when he finally recognized the old woman. She was his former nurse who had given him her grandson’s clothes when he fled from Lohenfels. In the year since then, her hair had become almost white. “It’s me—Lukas! Don’t you recognize me?” Then he pointed at Elsa. “And here is my sister. We are back! The others are friends of mine, and you have nothing to fear from them.”

  For a moment, the old maid looked as if she were seeing ghosts. Her jaw opened and shut silently, like a fish’s, and then she sighed deeply.

  “Thanks be to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, miracles still happen. The young lord and Elsa have returned, and now everything will be fine!”

  Sobbing, she fell at Lukas’s feet, and it took him a while to calm her down a bit so she could relate to him and the others what had happened at Lohenfels Castle in the last year.

  “Right after you fled, the horrible Spaniards took over here,” she told him excitedly. “They exploited us so mercilessly that we were almost grateful when the Swedes finally attacked the castle in the summer. But they were not o
ne bit better, and with their firearms, they shot everything to pieces. I only wanted to see if there was anything useful under the rubble. People in this area are in great hunger.”

  “If there’s anything still left here, it probably moldered away long ago, or the rats ate it,” Giovanni muttered. “I can’t imagine any place drearier than this.”

  Lukas gazed at the forlorn castle with its charred beams and courtyard strewn with blocks of stone. Giovanni was right. His parents’ castle was a desolate, uninhabitable place. Strangely, though, this thought did not make him sad, but defiant. He stood up straight. “Things really look bad here,” he said in a low voice, “but nevertheless, it’s my home. Our home,” he added, turning to his sister, who stood silently alongside him.

  Elsa frowned. She was still holding the Grimorium in her small hands, as if it were all that could protect her from the surrounding chaos. “What are you trying to say? Do you want to stay here, amid all the rubble?”

  “Well, so far as I can see, the hall is still in fairly good condition,” he replied. “The roof over the ground floor did not collapse, and the left wing of the building seems quite livable. If the chimney isn’t obstructed—”

  “Wait a minute.” Paulus rubbed the side of his nose. “You really intend to live here?”

  “Why not?” Lukas shrugged. “I’ve had enough of war and destruction. This is our home, and I am the heir of Lohenfels. Eventually, the Swedes will leave. Now, after the death of their king, it can’t be long before they also disappear from the Palatinate, and then I will rebuild this castle, bigger and more beautiful than ever.”

  The old nurse beamed. “Oh, young master, would you really do that?”

  Lukas nodded earnestly. “As sure as my name is Lukas von Lohenfels. For now, keep this secret to yourself, Agnes. I don’t want us to have uninvited visitors up here. But when the time is right, I’ll ask the men of the surrounding villages to help me rebuild the castle.”