“You sly man,” Agafia gasped out. “How dare you come into my flat and take advantage of me in such a manner?” He was sure this was a script she had followed many times before. He stood and came around behind the captive woman again.
“How dare I?” He mocked her question. “How dare you invite me here and drive me mad with such shameless, brazen temptation?”
“Tempt you?” Agafia retorted. But before she could continue the pretend argument, George had plucked her sash from the floor and pulled it tight between her teeth, knotting it behind her head. The gag now throttled the words she struggled to enunciate.
“I must make one more slight adjustment,” George announced. He took the small object from his pocket and bent over again, tracing a small triangle on the rug that was just large enough to contain Agafia on the chair. She watched, winking at him when she caught his eye as he stood. She seemed to think this was still a part of the game they had been playing. Then he returned to his place behind her, where she could not see that he was careful to keep his feet outside the boundary of the triangle he had drawn around her. He closed his eyes and leaned forward slightly.
George ran his fingertips lightly along the tendons of her throat and then along the underside of her breasts. “Temptation? That is something we are both well acquainted with, I think,” he muttered. “But for now, we must forgo temptation and get to the real purpose of my visit this evening.”
He lifted his face to the north. “I conjure, O Gadriel, the lord of warfare and knowledge and beauty and seduction! I command you, who revealed the secrets of occult power to mankind! I adjure you, who taught Eve the pleasures of the flesh and became the father of her son Cain! By your delight in woman’s flesh and by the blood of this whore that I offer to your honor and might and by the power of Solomon who bound you, by the authority of Lucifer and Apollyon to torment you, and by your own power: I command you to come without delay and follow the instructions that I give!”
He pulled the object from his pocket again. This time he flicked it open: it was a switchblade knife and its finely honed blade, which he noted Agafia could see out of the corner of one eye, glittered in the dim and flickering candlelight.
A muffled scream was caught by the gag in her mouth. She attempted to throw her weight back against George, fighting against him now in earnest. But he was too quick. With a deft flick, he made a long but quick gash below her left nipple.
Agafia bucked and writhed and threw herself from side to side, back to front. Blood spurted from the cut and then dribbled down her body. Behind her, George kept his hands on her shoulders and leaned his weight into her. Suddenly, she stopped fighting and she slumped against the chair she was sitting in, her body still, her head tipped to one side.
He undid the gag. Air escaped from Agafia’s mouth in a quiet whistle. Seemingly unconscious, her eyes closed, she drew another gentle breath.
“Gadriel: come with your wrath and fury and indignation, your troop of destructive angels!” he barked from behind the unconscious woman.
The flame of the candle soared high, a pillar of flame in the circle he had traced. It crackled and sizzled, the glare of the candlelight making it difficult to see anything else in the room. George held up his hand, still holding the bloody knife, to shield his eyes. The wick sputtered and popped, sending a shower of wax droplets cascading across the room.
“Why call me?” a deep, gruff voice demanded. “Why have you dared disturb me?” The voice dripped with malice and hatred. The woman in the chair lifted her head and twisted her neck, as if trying to see who it was that stood behind her. “What is it you want of me, mortal?” The furious male voice was coming from the mouth of the prostitute. Her eyes, now open, were bloodshot and filled with hatred.
“I am in the midst of combat, Gadriel,” George answered, his voice icy and even. “I need your aid to set free the flood that has been building and waiting to descend on Prague.”
The woman rocked in the chair, straining against the ropes. Even as the chair seemed about to tip over, it struck the invisible boundaries of the triangle George had traced around it and remained upright. The candle flared.
The demonic voice snarled at the Jesuit in rage.
“You cannot escape the triangle,” George reminded the demon imprisoned within Agafia’s body. “Just as I am protected by the circle against any devils you might have brought with you from Hell into this world. Now listen to me! Obey me!”
The sputtering candle within the circle dipped and rose as if buffeted by a winter gale. Gadriel screamed and roared, still trying to escape and still imprisoned within the unconscious prostitute. “Set me free, mortal! Give me my liberty and I will give you untold riches! I will fulfill your widest fantasy! Only set me free upon the earth!”
“Never!” George barked at the demon he had called. “I will give you liberty only to fulfill my command to set free the flood and wash away the bridge that protects Prague!”
The demon paused in his raving and twisted the prostitute’s head to look over her shoulder again, attempting to see the man who stood behind the chair. Venomous laughter erupted from Gadriel’s throat.
“Wash away the bridge that protects Prague? You are mad, mortal! The power of that bridge is infamous! Its magic is unequalled and invincible! No flood can wash it away or destroy the protection it affords Prague! You are mad!”
“I am not mad, Gadriel!” George retorted. “You are bound to obey me by the conjuration worked with the prostitute’s blood and the proper invocations! I, and I alone, have found a way to poison the magic of the bridge and render it vulnerable and weak. So vulnerable and so weak that it and its protective shield around Prague can be washed away by a flood of sufficient strength. That flood, which I have also prepared, needs only to be set loose by you.”
Gadriel stopped trying to look over Agafia’s shoulder and faced the sputtering candle, the high flame having nearly consumed the entirety of the wax candle. The demon was silent and then nodded.
“Very well, mortal man. I will let loose this flood you say can wash away the bridge and its power,” the ancient demon finally agreed. “But when your project fails and the bridge stands and your enemies destroy you, I will be waiting for you in Hell. I will be waiting and I will take special delight in tormenting you! You will be bound to me forever, as I am bound here to your command for these brief moments on Earth.”
“My project fail?” snorted George. “I think not! No one before me has discovered the secret to poisoning the power of the bridge and now—once the sword of Bruncvik is removed from its foundation and delivered to me—I will also wield the power of the rabbi’s staff, the sword, and the Astronomical Clock. All the most important mystical defenses of Prague will have fallen into my hands when Jarnvithja and Fen’ka deliver the sword to me! My power will become a legend among the occult practitioners of the Earth. The bridge’s magic will fail and the city it protects will be washed away. Svetovit will trample it under his horse’s hooves and then I will give him leave to trample the modern world beneath his horse’s hooves as well. It is I, not the bridge, that will be invincible!”
Gadriel listened. Then he laughed quietly. The laughter grew in strength until it sounded like thunder to George.
“I will be invincible!” the Jesuit repeated. “Now, go! Do as I command!”
The demon continued to cackle but the sound subsided, and slowly Agafia’s head dropped again to one side. The candle’s flame gradually descended until it was little more than a spark wrapped around the fragment of wick that remained in the pool of wax in the candlestick. Gadriel was gone to do as George had bid.
“Fail? Never!” George repeated to himself, kneeling to wipe the switchblade clean on Agafia’s robe. The quiet of her gentle breathing filled the room. He slipped the knife back into his pocket after slicing through a loop of the ropes around Agafia’s body so she could struggle her way out of them when she woke, though the knife caught on her skin and left a bright red line
beneath the rope. She wouldn’t be in good shape afterward, and she’d have an ugly scar which might impinge on her ability to attract clients in the future, but she wouldn’t die. That could cause complications.
George looked around the room one last time. He had touched nothing but the rope and he knew that fingerprints were notoriously difficult to lift from textures such as the cords binding the prostitute. There was no physical evidence that could link him to this incident and he knew from previous experience that she would recall little or nothing of his visit when she awoke. He took a handful of Czech coins from his pocket and contemptuously tossed them at Agafia’s feet.
“Gadriel will rue the day he thought to mock me!” the Jesuit promised as he closed the door of Agafia’s apartment behind him and set out to meet Jarnvithja and Fen’ka under the Charles Bridge.
Father Dmitri and his four companions fled from the Astronomical Clock, where the Dearg-due had miraculously disappeared into the darkness with a final echoing shriek, but only after murderously feeding on Wilcox. After navigating the empty nighttime streets, they stood catching their breath in the comparative safety of the arcade beneath the Powder Tower. Fr. Dmitri, the Eastern Orthodox chaplain from Tennessee, looked at the others: his wife, Sophia, Magdalena’s friend Victoria, and the other two academics, Sean from Dublin and Theo from Oxford, who like Fr. Dmitri, were visiting Prague to attend the twin conferences on Evil and on Monsters.
Theo gasped. “What just happened there?”
“Evidently, my nephews in Ireland have vanquished the evil Dearg-due,” Sean answered. “Either they or my graduate student. We won this round!”
“But at the loss of Wilcox, Peter, and Alessandro!” Sophia burst out.
“But many more will be lost if we fail now,” Fr. Dmitri interjected. “We have only one hope of stopping the Dearg-due’s ally, George. We must reactivate the power of Prague’s Royal Road before he can destroy the magic protecting the Charles Bridge.”
“All right, this was your idea,” Theo told Fr. Dmitri. “What do you think is the best way to begin?”
George stepped out of Agafia’s building and hailed a taxi that took him back toward his hotel. Alighting from the taxi near the Little Town Square, he strolled down Bridge Street past the nearly empty restaurants and taverns. He followed the road underneath the bridge to the pool where he met Fen’ka’s ghost and the troll Jarnvithja the night before. The water, normally so tranquil in the pool, rushed and eddied as it poured into the alcove under the bridge and then rushed out again, leaving trails of foam on the surface that circled repeatedly as if caught in a whirlpool. The water level was much higher than it had been even the night before, let alone its usual early to mid-August level.
“There is almost no room for that boat to slide into the pool from under the bridge,” George observed. “Certainly not room for Jarnvithja to stand as she steers the boat with her pole. Will she even get through? Should we have selected an alternate meeting place?” he wondered. He stepped as close the water as he dared lest he be caught in the relentless grasp of the furious river and pulled into it. He looked about and allowed a quiet smile to bloom on his face. His plan was working with more efficiency and skill than he had dared hope.
Lights from a hotel behind him played across the surface of the water. The rush of the water made it impossible to hear the approach of Jarnvithja’s barge. George wondered how long he should wait before attempting to meet the troll at some other point along the river.
“I didn’t bring any of the tarot cards or dandelion with me,” he realized. How would he call Jarnvithja to a new meeting place? He had no choice but to wait for her there. At least it was nearly midnight on a Sunday evening and the streets seemed deserted. No one was coming or going from the hotel behind him. There were no sounds of footsteps on the bridge. There would be no witnesses to his reception of the great sword from Jarnvithja if she brought it to him as he had instructed.
He finally decided he had waited long enough and was turning to go when something caught his attention out of the corner of one eye. He paused and looked more closely across the water towards the massive stone pillars that supported the bridge.
There it was! The boat was sliding under the bridge into the stone-lined inlet. The cloaked and hooded figure of Jarnvithja sat alone in the back of the boat, where Fen’ka had sat before. There was no sign of Fen’ka anywhere in the boat. The troll’s gnarled and taloned hands grasped the bargepole and attempted to guide the boat through the surging current. George saw the boat sway and wobble in the river, buffeted by the conflicting currents. Jarnvithja finally brought the boat to rest at the edge of the swollen river, near where George was standing. The wooden bottom of the boat scraped against the stone paving where Magdalena must have stood when she first met the burned woman and her spectral escort.
Under the hood, Jarnvithja’s face was lost in shadow, though George could see her eyes glinting in the darkness. A handful of tangled hair tumbled out of the hood and down one shoulder, wet and glistening in the damp mist thrown up by the churning river.
“So. You’ve come.” It was a statement more than a question that George directed to Jarnvithja. The hood inclined as the troll slowly nodded.
“I was not sure you would come this evening,” George continued. “Or, I was not sure that you would be able to bring the boat to land here.” He gestured to the swollen river at his feet. The hood turned and bent as Jarnvithja seemed to inspect the water level. The hood’s movement eventually ceased and the troll seemed to fix her gaze on George once again.
“The athame of Prague,” George announced. “The sword of Bruncvik. You extracted it from the foundations of the bridge, yes? My breaking of the enchantment of the mortar was successful, was it not?” He could not keep the note of pride out of his voice. He had done what no one had been able to accomplish in the six hundred and fifty years since the construction of the bridge.
Jarnvithja nodded again. She pulled the bargepole out of the water and laid it down the length of the boat. A considerable portion of the pole extended out over the water from the prow. She then reached toward her feet, bringing her face nearly level with her knees. The swollen hunchback rose above her, wrapped in shadow and her dark cloak. Her talons scrabbled against the boards of the rowboat floor and then her shoulders stiffened and George thought he heard a grunt of effort. The hunchback shuddered and the giant troll woman sat upright again, raising her hands, in which she now grasped the great broadsword in its scabbard, extracted from the foundations of the bridge.
She held the sword upright, its great hilt resting against the knuckles of her hands. George caught his breath. The sword of Bruncvik, one of the four magical tools of Prague and one of the most powerful magic talismans of medieval Europe, was his to take. What power would be his to command once he held the sword? Had Fen’ka and Jarnvithja considered that? By taking possession of the sword, which together with his destabilizing of the magic of the bridge—which the presence of the sword, taken from its foundations, amply proved—he would be acclaimed one of the greatest Grand Masters of the ages. With the magic of the sword, he might even be able to hold death at bay and win immortality. That was more than he had dared to think when Gadriel had taunted him in Agafia’s apartment.
Jarnvithja was using both hands to hold the sword and it wobbled slightly. This ancient artifact was a material reality and no mere spectral or disembodied vision. It was clearly much heavier than anything she had been accustomed to holding aloft for a great many years. “How many years?” George wondered. “Probably for as many years as the river itself has flowed through this valley,” he decided.
He stepped toward the boat, the chill water rushing into his shoes and up his legs. He reached to take the sword from Jarnvithja, but in a single, swift motion, she laid the sword across her lap, causing him to nearly lose his balance and topple into the water as his hands closed on empty air. George glared at her and, cursing under his breath, closed his right hand a
round the scabbard, reaching for the hilt with his left. But Jarnvithja kept one hand on the hilt and another on the scabbard and refused to let the sword go.
“Do not toy with me, troll,” George warned her furiously. “I can walk away from this effort to revitalize Fen’ka’s curse as easily as not. If I leave you and that witch, who will come to her rescue again? No one knows as much about the magic of the bridge as I. That should be self-evident; when have you or the dead in the river whom you command ever before been able to extract the sword from the foundations? That proves that the magic of the bridge is crumbling, does it not? That means, for the first time since it was built, the bridge is vulnerable. So when the bridge is washed away in the coming flood, the full power and wrath of Svetovit will be unleashed against the city. Both he and Fen’ka will be forever in my debt. But if I walk away and refuse to set them and their power free, and you are to blame for having angered me, do you not think that they have ways to make your existence beneath the river more miserable than ever in the days to come?”
Jarnvithja’s hood remained steady, as if she were staring him in the eye and daring him to make good his threat. He stood there as well, the cold water crawling up his trousers, daring the troll to release the sword or see him turn away.
Then his patience snapped. “Very well. You think to wield the sword yourself? You think to be the one to set Fen’ka and her curse free with it? Hardly! You have no idea of how to wield the blade or harness its power. You can explain to both Fen’ka and Svetovit why you did not deliver the sword to me.” He hissed and turned, splashing water onto the cobblestones as he stepped out of the swollen river towards the hotel and the road above.
A clatter and a splash behind him caused George to look back over his shoulder despite his intention to walk away. Jarnvithja had taken the barge pole and plunged it into the water beside her boat. It stood, quivering, as if it were a great tree caught in a windstorm. She spread her arms, raising her hands from the sword as if to invite him to take the blade from her knees.
Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy Page 93
