The Fool swung his staff with knapsack around his shoulder and brought it crashing into the air above the circle’s outline. Fireworks exploded there.
George apparently trusted in the strength of the circle to protect him and Magdalena from these new opponents. But Magdalena retaliated, striking back as the Fool struck at her. She swung the staff at the Fool’s patchwork doublet, crossing the line of the circle as she did.
“No!” George shouted at her. “Don’t cross the circle!”
It was too late. The Fool had tossed aside his own staff and seized the end of the rabbi’s staff that Magdalena had swung past the protective confinement of the circle. He wrenched and pulled it, attempting to break Magdalena’s grip. The androgynous human figure that had accompanied the World, the card depicting the nude woman dancing, came to the Fool’s assistance and also wrapped both hands around the staff.
George swung at them with Bruncvik’s sword, not simply reaching over the edge of the circle but entering the unprotected space of the plaza outside the malevolent widdershins circle he had drawn.
Dmitri saw George step out of the circle as Magdalena struggled to keep the staff in her grip. He also noticed the luggage cart with the empty cage on it and Magdalena’s shoulder bag on the ground beside it. Something had tumbled out of the bag. A bouquet of some sort. Or a bundle of herbs.
“Look!” Dmitri grabbed Sean’s elbow and pointed toward the bouquet of leaves. “One of their own tools! We can draw a circle with that! Now, while they are distracted!” Without waiting to see if Sean was following him, Dmitri scrambled across the plaza toward the bundle of leaves.
Coming up to the circle, he didn’t pause or worry that he might not be able to cross the magical barrier. But the circle had been cast to harness destructive magic and act as a barrier to magical, not physical, opposition. Dmitri stumbled over the sputtering fire of the circle’s boundary, grabbed the leaves, and bounded back across before Magdalena or George could respond to the noise of his footfalls.
Sean stood waiting for him outside the circle, gesturing and attempting to get the attention of Theo, Sophia, and Victoria. But the three others, attempting to watch both Svetovit’s battle in the sky and George and Magdalena’s battle on the ground, had seen Dmitri steal the bundle of leaves and must have guessed what he was about to use it for. Theo rushed from the shadows of the cathedral wall with one hand firmly grasping Victoria’s arm and the other hand grasping Sophia’s. The trio scurried over to Sean and Dmitri.
Dmitri bent over and touched the bundle of yew to the cobblestones, stumbling in a circle around the others and tracing his route on the ground with the leaves. As he came back to his starting point and closed the circle, there were slim wrinkles along the ground of the same rainbow light that had formed the now-vanquished circle in the sky. Dmitri stood, raising his eyes but afraid of what he might see.
George and Magdalena stood a few feet away, Magdalena now outside the widdershins circle, as was George. Magdalena still held one end of the staff, although the Fool and the other human figure seemed to have a firm grip on it as well. George swung the sword as if to slice through the torso of the androgynous figure that was closer to him than the Fool, but the figure slipped in and out of materialization as George attempted to harm it.
Meanwhile, the feminine World figure seemed to be ignoring the struggle before her and remained content to lazily, luxuriously, sensuously dance and weave her way around the plaza. The images of the lion, the bull, and the eagle had returned and were shimmering in and out of view around her as they participated in her dance.
Dmitri could make no sense of the World’s behavior. There seemed no other way to assist the Fool than by distracting George. Shaking the yew leaves in front of him, Dmitri shouted, “George! Look! We have your leaves! And we’ve cast our own circle with them!” He shook the leaves vigorously again.
George glanced over his shoulder at the sound of Dmitri’s voice. Startled, then furious, George turned and slashed the air in front of him with the sword, probably thinking to disrupt the protective power of Dmitri’s circle. The lights that danced along Dmitri’s circle crackled and popped but the circle held.
As George turned to face Dmitri, the Fool and his partner nearly wrenched the rabbi’s staff from Magdalena’s grip. She cried out and wrenched it back towards her hip, afraid of what would happen if she lost this tug-of-war with the Fool.
Meanwhile, Svetovit seemed more intent on watching George and Magdalena’s struggle than in pressing his attack against the Emperor and the High Priestess. The two remaining powers of the Royal Road seemed momentarily unsure whether to come to the aid of the Fool and the World or to rush at Svetovit in his distraction.
Then Svetovit roared in defiance and tossed aside what bits of the javelin he still held. He shook his fist, slapped his thighs against the horse’s ribs, and charged at the Emperor, who raised his sword as the High Priestess stepped closer and extended her open scroll as if it were a shield to prevent Svetovit’s dodging past the Emperor.
Svetovit roared again, slapped the horse’s rump with his open palm, and the horse leaped up and sailed over both the Emperor’s sword and the High Priestess’ scroll to come down in a shower of sparks directly over the Fool.
“What are you doing?” Sean cried in alarm to Dmitri. “George will be able to cross this circle as easily as you crossed into his!”
“But he will not be able to bring the sword with him,” Dmitri answered. “He will have to set it down.”
“Perhaps I will be able to seize the sword if George attempts to cross your circle,” a shadowy man said, appearing just within their circle. His hair was long and his beard unkempt. Victoria recognized his clothing as that of a medieval Bohemian peasant.
“Who are you?” she asked, as startled as the others by the shadow-man’s sudden appearance and apparent cooperation with their efforts.
“I am known most simply as Dalibor,” the man answered.
Victoria stumbled and caught hold of Dmitri’s arm. “How did you come to be involved in this?” she asked.
“The man named George involved me,” Dalibor answered her. “He did it using that posy of yew and horsehair, which you have now used to construct this circle. The same yew that pulled me from the Jug allows me to cross the circle you have made with it. If you allow it, I would gladly help you stop him.”
“Yes! Do whatever you can!” Sophia urged Dalibor. Dmitri nodded in agreement, not taking his eyes from George, who still stood near Magdalena and had seen Dalibor materialize within Dmitri’s circle.
“Dalibor! Your place is here!” George shouted in fury, striking the ground between his feet with the point of the sword. “Here… or in the Jug!”
Magdalena shrieked. George whirled around, only to witness that the Fool and the other figure, undistracted by George for an instant, had pulled the staff from Magdalena’s grip. The Fool turned and looked up to the Emperor and High Priestess, shaking the staff in his fist. George screamed and ran straight for the Fool, swinging the sword before him. Svetovit, seemingly unsure if he could win a duel against the Emperor and the High Priestess without the aid of the staff and sword, hovered above.
The Emperor and High Priestess, seeing Svetovit’s hesitation and doubt, vanished from the sky, only to reappear on the ground between the Fool and George’s sword. George slashed, the sword hissing through the air as he aimed at the Fool, but struck the unexpectedly appearing protectors instead and hacked a ragged cut through part of the scroll in the High Priestess’ hand.
The Emperor raised his sword to deflect George’s next strike, the ringing echoes of the swords’ clashing together reverberating across the plaza. The swords clashed again and again. George’s strokes were unrelenting and drove the Emperor stumbling backwards a few steps, knocking into the Fool he had sought to protect. The Emperor and the Fool together fell against the border of George’s magic circle.
Ruddy fire and oily smoke exploded from the magical
barrier of the circle where the tarot figures fell against it. The staff went tumbling from the Fool’s hand. George pressed his attack, swinging the great sword of Prague at the torsos of both the Emperor and the Fool. The sword sliced cleanly though both tarot figures and struck the wall of magic they had fallen against around George’s circle. Sparks exploded and hissed as the sword cut through George’s circle. The Fool and the Emperor collapsed and vanished, as did the shadow of the man who had been aiding the Fool.
“No!” Sophia and Victoria wailed together from within the safety of Dmitri’s circle.
George seemed like a swordsman possessed. Hardly pausing for breath, he lifted one arm in an apparent attempt to wipe the sweat from his face and whirled about, swinging the sword in a wide arc and striking the High Priestess across her back. The tarot-woman shuddered and threw her hands up. The scroll flew from her hands up into the air and vanished as she collapsed onto the plaza and vanished in turn.
In the confusion of the sword fighting, Magdalena went running for the staff as it clattered across the plaza after the Fool had lost his hold on it. She bent and closed her fingers around it again just as Dalibor appeared before her, reaching for the staff as well.
“You tried to pull me into the Jug!” cried Magdalena in fury, standing and swinging the staff at Dalibor. She hit Dalibor in the ribs and the knight crumpled from the impact. “You tried to kill me!” She swung again with the staff against his shoulder.
“I was following instructions!” gasped Dalibor, lifting his arms to protect himself from the blows of the staff.
“Whose instructions?” demanded Magdalena, gasping for breath and swinging the staff again and striking his forearm.
“The one holding the yew!” snarled Dalibor. “Are you really such a fool, woman?”
Dmitri, taking advantage of Magdalena’s attention on Dalibor and sure that the yew and horsehair in his hand would be some protection, darted from his own circle as Theo and Sean cried out in surprise.
“George! Stop this while you still can!” Dmitri shouted, brandishing the yew posy as if it were another sword equal to the one George held.
Seeing Fr. Dmitri outside the protection of the yew-circle, George called back in furious amusement, “Have you gone mad, Dmitri? Why should I stop this?” He took a deep breath and strode toward Dmitri but then hesitated.
The woman that was the World had continued her dance around the plaza and Dmitri realized in the same instant George must have that she had been casting another circle as she danced, a large circle that encompassed nearly the whole of the plaza. She was nearly back to the point where she had begun her dance and the circle was almost complete. Would the circle of the World supersede and override the other circles? Would it keep Svetovit from the area above the hilltop? Apparently, George was taking no chances. Raising the sword above his head and shouting a battle cry, he charged at the dancing World.
George brought the sword swinging down onto the pavement in front of the World, sparks showering her bare feet. He raised the sword to swing at her, to cleave her in half if he could, when Dalibor was suddenly in front of him and shoving him in the chest and shouting his own war cry into the Jesuit’s face.
George stumbled back but kept his grip on the hilt. The sword descended and cut through Dalibor’s collarbone. George wrenched the sword free and swung again, this time at Dalibor’s knees. Dalibor threw himself at George, but the Jesuit saw what was coming and managed to twist to one side. Dalibor fell forward onto the plaza and George brought the sword down one last time across the knight’s lower back. The dead man shimmered and rippled, fading from view. George, gasping for breath, leaned on the sword and looked around the plaza.
The circle of the World was complete. She took the last step, closing the magical ring around the courtyard, and looked up at Svetovit. She smiled and beckoned to him, still seemingly oblivious of George.
With a final cry of rage, George drove the sword through her breast. She vanished an instant before the sword touched her, as did the shadows of the lion, eagle, and bull that had been her dancing partners.
Dmitri still stood halfway between George and the circle he had cast with the yew. Would the World’s completed circle have any effect on their apparently doomed efforts to stop Svetovit? Or had the World intended to do something else with her circle before George had cut her down?
“They are all gone!” Victoria turned to Sophia in disbelief. “The tarot powers of the Royal Road have been destroyed!”
“Impossible!” shouted Theo, looking wildly about the plaza, seemingly convinced that one of the figures must be hidden somewhere on the hilltop. “They must be here! They must!”
The storm clouds above the cathedral began to rotate in a slow and lazy tide around the spire of the church’s bell tower. The clouds darkened yet further, becoming an opaque hue that hovered on the cusp between black and the darkest shade of green that Victoria had ever seen. Svetovit threw his head back, clapping one hand against his knee as he shook and rocked with uproarious laughter. Thunder rang out and pealed above them, echoing across the city. The breeze stirring near the ground now followed the same widdershins flow of the storm above.
The cloud-horse pawed the air, anxious to charge again. In the gloom, Victoria could hear, rather than see, the horse snort, but then the sparks its hooves scraped from the sky illuminated the steamy clouds puffing from its nostrils. Without warning, Svetovit leaned forward as he had before and drove his heels into the horse’s ribs. It charged down at the hilltop, lightning shattering the darkness, showing the clouds rotating more rapidly, and the force of the breeze growing stronger.
In the circle together, Victoria, Sophia, Sean, and Theo all cried and shouted, ducking down and clutching each other. Across from them, Dmitri cried out and dropped to his knees as well, covering his head with his arms and dropping the yew. Driven by the wind, it scuttled across the plaza in the dark. Even Magdalena covered her head with her hands and bent over, though she kept hold of the staff.
Just as the horse seemed about to crash into the hilltop, Svetovit pulled it back up, causing it to scream and roar, rearing and prancing on its back four legs as the front four scraped shower after shower after shower of sparks from the black-green clouds.
Lightning flickered in the still-deepening darkness, throwing all the figures on the hilltop into stark relief for an instant. The lightning flickered again and this time Victoria was sure of seeing something.
It seemed to be a convocation of shadow figures assembling on the hilltop. A bird—a peacock?—was strutting along while a group of four people seemed to be slinking across one corner of the plaza. Victoria was sure a young nun darted in another direction and vanished into the cathedral before she glimpsed a man in a cassock standing near the dead rooster, his arms crossed across his chest, staring up at Svetovit.
Svetovit also seemed to see the shadows in the dark, his thunderous voice joining that of his horse, which continued its angry prance in the sky. He held onto the horse with his knees, disentangling his fingers from the animal’s mane and smashing one giant fist into his other oversized hand’s open palm. The hilltop shook and reverberated. Svetovit roared again and reached out, pointing down at the courtyard toward an open area where no one was standing.
Lightning oscillated between the clouds.
Victoria saw a young woman where Svetovit had pointed, a young woman who seemed to be standing inside a circle of red cord, the only detail she could make out in the all-too-brief flicker of light. The woman was holding up something that glittered in the dark as if she held a star, though Victoria could not make out what it was.
George stared at this young woman, ignoring the other shadow people on the hilltop. He lifted the sword with difficulty in both hands, perhaps exhausted by the morning’s duels. He walked towards her, slowly and carefully, as if seeking new obstacles that might have appeared in the dark to impede him. Magdalena, standing upright now, took a step towards the shadow woman as
well. She held the staff in front of her as if to protect herself if anyone or anything attempted to block her. She took another step. As she came closer to the woman, she was also coming closer to George and then following in his footsteps.
Victoria and the others slowly stood and watched George, followed by Magdalena, come closer to the shadow woman holding the star in one hand. Victoria held her breath, afraid to move and disturb the strange tableaux, the seeming dance between George and the two women—one a shadow, the other Magdalena—playing out before her eyes. But then Victoria, unable to stop herself, raised her arm and tried to warn the shadow woman to beware of George, but no words could escape her suddenly parched-dry throat.
The shadow woman fell to one knee.
A large stone hit Nadezda’s leg and she cried out, falling to one knee. Her attention was wrenched back from the shadowy figures around her and back to Svetovit. She saw him pluck an even larger stone from among those the stonecutters had set aside for carving.
“You must wait for four times eight generations to pass, Svetovit! Four times eight generations must follow the extinguishing of the fire before you may touch the city again!” Nadezda called out.
A shiver seemed to ripple through Svetovit and then across the rapidly circling storm clouds above. He raised his arm and, half standing from where he was mounted, he threw something toward the fallen woman. Lightning crashed around them. Everyone on the hilltop covered their eyes. Victoria cried out. The shadow woman fell onto her side, clutching the star to her with one arm as the other fell past the red cord she had been standing within.
Svetovit reached into the clouds and threw another handful of lightning across the city. The hilltop rocked in the simultaneous thunderclap that ricocheted among the stone walls of the plaza. The shadow woman on the ground seemed to struggle, trying to pull her hand back over the red cord but apparently unable to move it.
Then he launched something silver like a lance that pierced the woman’s wrist, and a great spurt of blood burst from the wound. She cried out, but the lance pinned her wrist to the ground.
Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy Page 121
