Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy

by Stephen Morris

  The lion leaped to sink his great teeth into Svetovit’s throat as the bull lowered his horns to gore the old god’s chest and the shrieking eagle opened its beak and prepared to rip open the god’s stomach. But the cloud-body of the old devil melted away and the animals threw themselves at empty air. Lightning blinded everyone in the plaza. Svetovit reappeared, kneeling just above the plaza and reaching for the sword. Snatching the weapon up in his gigantic fist, the sword became as proportionately large as Svetovit. Svetovit swung the blade in a circle above his head with a roar of triumphant of laughter. Thunder cracked, shaking the hilltop. The plaza shook and reverberated with the repeated impact of thunderclap after thunderclap after thunderclap, knocking everyone over.

  Looking up, Magdalena saw that the black-green clouds were still rotating in the wind above the cathedral, dropping down long, thin tendrils toward the church’s roof. The wind braided the tendrils together, lengthening and thickening them into a funnel cloud.

  Over the residential wings of the castle, the great horse skidded to a stop, the impact knocking a shower of tiles from the roof that rained onto the pavement and shattered. The horse shook its head and then scrambled up onto its eight legs. Rearing up on its hind legs, whinnying and scraping brilliant cascades of sparks from the air with its forelegs, its head turned in a frantic search for its lost rider. Svetovit stood, sword in hand, saw the horse, and whistled. The horse crashed down onto its hooves and ambled toward Svetovit, who lumbered toward it. Coming up to its master, the cloud-horse stopped and pawed the sky, bowing and dipping its head as it whinnied again in greeting. Svetovit swung a leg up and over the horse’s tail, pulling himself once more onto the stallion’s back. Brandishing the sword, Svetovit shouted in defiance at Magdalena and the others strewn about the plaza and then gouged the horse’s ribs with his heels. The horse reared again and bolted across the sky, turning in a wide arc over the city and beginning another descent to the river.

  “The bridge!” Dmitri shouted, struggling to his feet and pointing. “He’s charging the bridge!”

  The lion, panting in the air over the alchemist’s tower, where he had finally stopped himself after his failed attempt to rip out Svetovit’s throat, raised his head and roared. With the roar still hanging in the air, the shaggy beast loped down to the plaza and seized George’s corpse in his great jaws. Then, leaping back into the air, he also set out across the castle walls and down toward the bridge. The eagle and bull followed the lion with his gruesome prize.

  “Quickly! We have to follow them!” Dmitri’s urged. Magdalena got up on her feet again, prepared to join the others struggling to stand.

  “We can’t let Svetovit wipe out the bridge!” Dmitri said. “If that happens, nothing can stop him from rampaging across the face of Europe!”

  The lion saw the river beneath him, the water pounding against the bridge. Svetovit was still above him, still descending from the sky over the Old Town toward the stone span; though its magic had been poisoned by George, it remained the one shackle on the devil-god’s reclaimed power. The great cat dipped down and opened his jaws. George’s body dropped the short distance into the midst of the floodwaters with a splash and vanished, pulled by the current beneath the surface of the waves. The lion shook his mane and, with the eagle and bull beside him, turned around to face Svetovit.

  “Magdalena!” exclaimed Victoria, hugging her tightly as the others hastily followed Theo back down the Royal Road, retracing their steps to the imperiled bridge. Magdalena hugged Victoria back, dropping the staff and stammering with embarrassment, not sure what to say. Tears spilled from her eyes after she struggled to find the words to express herself and she collapsed against Victoria, sobbing.

  “Oh, Victoria! I am so sorry! So sorry for everything! What have I done?” Magdalena cried, still uncomprehending of how she had been so duped. “What have I set in motion?” She burst into a fresh downpour of tears.

  Victoria stroked Magdalena’s hair but then grasped her firmly by the shoulders and gently shook her.

  “The important thing is that you know you were lied to,” Victoria told her. “Lied to and manipulated. But now you can use what you know of them to intervene in the destruction of Prague. We have to follow them, Magdalena. We have to stop Svetovit.” She began to guide Magdalena out of the plaza.

  “Wait,” sniffled Magdalena. “We cannot leave this.” She bent over to retrieve the staff she had let fall. She gestured to the yew bouquet that Fr. Dmitri had dropped.

  “We should take that also,” she told Victoria. Victoria picked it up and the two women made their way after Dmitri and the others.

  Svetovit galloped toward the center of the bridge, swinging the sword down toward the stone path across the raging river. Lightning sliced through the sky toward the bridge. The black-green clouds tumbled from their perch in the sky above the cathedral and rolled toward the bridge. The beginnings of the funnel cloud unraveled and drifted apart. Svetovit, no longer high above the ancient center of his cult, drew the storm to the bridge.

  The great lion saw Svetovit charging the bridge, the sword flashing in his fist. The fur bristled along his back, his lips pulling back in a snarl that exposed his sharp teeth. The bull lowered his great horns and pawed the ground with a front hoof. The eagle circled around the four-footed beasts, its talons extended as its shriek mingled with the roaring of the bull and lion. Svetovit saw the three animals and there was a flash of hesitation, a quiver of uncertainty in his swinging of the sword. But then, with a battle cry, he pulled the horse up and charged, not at the bridge but at the lion.

  The streets of the Little Town were still empty as Dmitri and his companions hurried down the hill from the castle to the bridge, the residents and hotel guests having all been evacuated. As they tumbled across the Little Town Square and down the street leading directly to the bridge, lightning flickered incessantly above. The shadows beneath the arcade along the street danced and writhed in the half-light of the lightning under the black-green sky. Coming to where the street passed through the bridge’s guard tower and then melted into the plaza—where the bridge landing was hidden beneath the flood—Dmitri pressed against the interlocking police barricade that still blocked access to the plaza. Sean, Sophia, and Theo pressed up next to Dmitri. Moments later, Victoria, grasping the yew, and Magdalena, clutching the rabbi’s staff, arrived and pressed up to the barricade too.

  “There! See?” Dmitri cried, pointing to the sky above the bridge. Sophia crossed herself.

  The lion and bull were darting in and around and between the horse’s eight legs, nipping and snapping, while the eagle screamed and charged at Svetovit’s four faces. The horse neighed and whinnied as it pranced about, attempting to avoid the sharp jaws of the lion or the horns of the bull. Svetovit struggled to maintain his balance on the horse, swinging the great sword wildly in arcs that might intimidate a lesser fighter but did nothing to frighten off the fearsome animals from the tarot. Then the sword sliced through the winged ox, and it was gone.

  The remaining eagle and winged lion seemed to be struggling to keep the horse and rider distracted until the academics could reach the bridge. Watching from below, gasping for breath and exhausted, Dmitri was sure that either the sharp blade in Svetovit’s hand would deeply slice across the back of one of the remaining tarot beasts or one of the sharp hooves of the horse would come down heavily and crush a limb or paw. But watching from the barricade, Dmitri realized that as the beasts harried the cloud-horse and its rider, they were also attempting to lead the horse away from the river. Dmitri dared not think what might happen if Svetovit or the horse injured one of them, causing it to tumble into the river below.

  Then the pair of tarot animals paused, seeming to notice Dmitri and his companions at the barricade blocking access to the bridge.

  The eagle shrieked at the lion and madly flapped its great wings. The lion ran from Svetovit’s horse and both tarot beasts made a large turn in the sky and seemed to come straight toward the
academics.

  “The animals! They’re charging at us!” Sophia cringed and huddled behind the barricade.

  Dmitri and the others ducked down as the tarot beasts skimmed over their heads through the guard tower passage and then rose back into the sky behind the tower to charge again at Svetovit.

  Magdalena felt the rush of wind as the great eagle swooped through the air above them, felt the pummeling of the lion’s paws in the air. Looking back towards the bridge, she saw Svetovit hesitate as if deciding whether to pursue the animals or attack the bridge.

  She thrust the staff into Fr. Dmitri’s bloodstained hands.

  “Use this,” she urged him. “Strike Svetovit or the horse. Knock them down if you can.” Startled, he stared at her and then the staff, his mouth dropping open.

  Magdalena grasped Victoria’s free hand.

  “Come with me. Bring that,” she said, pointing to the yew bouquet Victoria still held. Magdalena led Victoria back through the passage and around the base of the guard tower to the edge of the flood that occupied what had been the small, lowlying plaza on the right side of the bridge. The inundated hotels and restaurants stood as dark and silent witnesses, debris bobbing in the swirling eddies.

  Magdalena took the bedraggled yew from Victoria, the worn length of string still tied around the stems bound with fraying horsehair, and inspected it before handing the end of the string back.

  “Hold this tightly,” Magdalena instructed her friend. “I saw George do this earlier this morning to raise Dalibor from the Jug and it was difficult to hold the string, even then, with both of us.” She made sure Victoria wrapped the string tightly around her fist and then the two women knelt at the edge of the water. Magdalena, holding a loop of the string tightly, tossed the yew as far across the water as she could toward the central body of the river. It hovered on the surface and then the current pulled it forward, towards the place where Magdalena had met Fen’ka under the bridge.

  “Fen’ka!” Magdalena barked the old woman’s name, surprising herself with the animosity in her voice. “Fen’ka!” she repeated. “Are you awake? Can you hear me?”

  “Why did the animals charge us before charging Svetovit again?” Sophia asked Dmitri and Theo.

  “Maybe to invite us to join the fray?” Theo suggested. “They want us to do something, I think.”

  Dmitri stared at the staff Magdalena had thrust into his hands.

  “How do I use this?” he asked the others. “It must be the rabbi’s staff from the synagogue attic, but how do we harness its power?”

  “It looked like Magdalena simply swung it,” Theo offered.

  “Swing it now!” Sophia exclaimed, pointing at the sky above the bridge, where Svetovit was raising the sword as if preparing to strike the bridge. His horse continued to prance and caper, as the eagle and lion continued to nip at its flanks. Svetovit made a sudden twist and turn, swinging the sword behind him, and cut through the lion. The lion vanished. Svetovit tossed the sword into his other hand and in a fluid swing, nearly cut through the eagle, which darted aside at the last moment. A handful of wing feathers fluttered in the air.

  “Knock the sword from his hand!” Sophia shouted.

  “How?” Dmitri shouted back, afraid to take his eyes off the cloud-devil, who swung again at the eagle and toward the bridge below.

  “Swing the staff! Knock the sword from his hand!” Theo and Sophia both urged Dmitri.

  “Swing it?” Dmitri repeated. “But what if I miss Svetovit and hit the eagle?”

  “Aim high!” Sophia urged. “But swing it now!”

  Dmitri, remembering images he had seen of Moses with his staff at the Red Sea, held the staff upright in both hands and brought it down in a quick stroke that slashed the air.

  Walls of water burst up from the flood, struck by the magic of the staff, crashing into Svetovit and his horse, the unexpected force of the water knocking the god from his horse and sending him tumbling through the air. The horse was tossed whinnying onto its side, its eight legs flailing as it slid through the air. The tarot eagle was also knocked aside. The walls of water hung shimmering in the air momentarily before collapsing into the river amid great splashing and clouds of spray.

  Shadows glimmered in the depths of the water. Was the dim light that illuminated Magdalena and her friend a reflection from the black-green sky or was it escaping from the flooded cobblestones? The shadows circulated and plunged beneath the yew, rising toward it and then veering away. The roar of the river rushing past the bridge made it impossible to hear any whispers from the water here, but Magdalena suspected she would have heard them if the river had not been so loud, as she heard them in the depths of the Jug when the yew had been dropped into its darkness.

  “Magdalena!” Victoria exclaimed. “Something pulled on the yew! Or was it the current?”

  “I felt it too, Victoria.” Magdalena twisted her head to one side as she peered across the water at the yew hovering in the waves. “I don’t know if it was the current, but hold on because…”

  The yew was wrenched forward and down. Magdalena cried out in the same instant Victoria did as the string she held was pulled taut enough to cut into her hands. Magdalena could see the wake of the string as it broke through the water, the yew somewhere beneath it.

  “Fen’ka! The yew is for Fen’ka alone!” ordered Magdalena, imitating George’s command to the ghosts in the Jug to leave the yew for Dalibor. Who knew how many other ghosts might be in the river, as eager to escape the water as those others so eager to escape the Jug? She struggled to stand, keeping the string tight in her grasp. Victoria stumbled to her feet as well.

  The water boiled and seethed around the yew. Magdalena slowly pulled the yew toward her. Victoria gathered up the length of the string that Magdalena fed her.

  “Something’s caught on it,” she whispered. “Something that doesn’t want to come out of the water. Is it…?”

  Magdalena nodded, holding her breath and struggling to keep pulling the string and bringing the yew into the shallows at their feet. The boiling fury of the water followed the string, just as the thrashing of a large fish caught on a hook traced the route of the line to the fisherman’s pole. Magdalena shut her eyes and turned her face to one side, leaning all her weight away from the river so as not to be pulled forward into its depths. Without warning, an explosion of spray burst from the water’s surface and the twine in her hands jerked again, wrenching her off balance so that she let loose of the twine, stumbled forward, and fell into the river.

  Storm clouds of boiling froth enveloped Magdalena as she plummeted into the cold water. She coughed and sputtered, her lungs nearly empty, as she had been holding her breath while pulling the twine. Unable to see in the water, she swung her arms and legs, expecting to meet the stonework of the inundated plaza.

  But she found no foothold and seemed to be continuing her descent into water that should not have been this deep along the edge of the flood. Terrified and confused, she fought the urge to scream.

  Something—a hand, perhaps?—wrapped around her ankle and dragged her even further into the murky depths. Then the hand was joined by another clutching at her clothing and then the hand released her ankle and… a pale light glimmered around her and the hand released her clothing but two hands wrapped themselves around her throat. George’s face pulled close to hers through the illuminated froth and bubbles around them.

  “This is your fault!” she heard his thoughts snarl in her mind. “Your witless friends called the Royal Road to block Svetovit’s entrance into this world and stole the sword from me! The lot of you have robbed me of my victory—my triumph! My fame! And now my corpse has been thrown into the river and I am trapped here in bondage to the troll-woman!”

  The voice of his thoughts became a furious screech in her head. “But I will not be trapped here alone! You will pay for your insolence and troublemaking, girl! You will die in the river with me, and be forced to remain here. Even if I cannot see Svetovit’s tr
iumph, at least I will know that I made it possible for him to destroy the bridge and that you and your friends have failed even more miserably than I!” His fingers gripped her throat more tightly. His thumbs dug into her windpipe.

  “Not—my fault!” Magdalena sputtered, half-forming the words with her lips as she struggled. River water surged into her mouth and she clamped her lips shut to block it. “You—lied! You—wanted—Dalibor—kill me!” She spat her thoughts at her attacker.

  Victoria stood at the edge of the flood, stunned. Magdalena had lost her balance, stumbled into the river, and vanished in an explosion of spray and foam. Now Victoria stood clutching the end of the twine wrapped around her fist, unsure of what to do.

  “Magdalena!” she shouted at the river’s surface. There was a momentary surging and frothing in the middle of the flooded plaza, but the river was too busy filling the courtyard for Victoria to tell if the agitation in the water was due to the river’s currents or Magdalena’s struggles below the surface.

  “Magdalena!” Victoria shouted again. Without another thought, she waded into the river to find and help her friend.

  Dmitri watched as Svetovit, still clutching the sword in his hand and drenched with river water, struggled to his feet upriver over the outskirts of the Little Town. Each of his four beards dripped madly as the river water streaked down his torso and both arms. He looked across the river, apparently searching for his horse. He whistled long and shrilly, turning his attention up and down the river.

  A lonely whinny answered him and the horse came trotting from between the clouds across the river. It shook its head and whinnied again. Sighting the god, it lowered its head and crossed the sky above the river. Svetovit mounted the steed and shook the sword in his clenched fist at Dmitri on the ground. Thunder crashed through the air. The green-black clouds over the Charles Bridge began to congeal and rotate above Dmitri and the staff.

  Dmitri was wielding the staff when a muffled explosion came from one side. The sound of spraying and slashing water and Victoria shouting barely registered when Sean exclaimed, “I’m going to help Magdalena and Victoria!” Sean ran in their direction before Dmitri had a chance to respond.