The Tower of Fools

by Andrzej Sapkowski

  “Ermites!” he began melodiously, staring at the glyphs in the Goetic Circle. “Poncor! Pagor! Anitor!”

  Horn snorted quietly. Scharley only sighed.

  “Aglon, Vaycheon, Stimulamaton! Ezphares, Olyaram, Irion! Mersilde! You, whose sight penetrates the abyss! Te adoro, et te invoco!”

  Nothing happened.

  “Esytion, Eryon, Onera! Mozm, Soter, Helomi!”

  Reynevan licked his swollen lips. He put down the amulet decorated with the serpent, fish and sun in a triangle in the place where the deceased Circulos had repeated the words “VENI MERSILDE.”

  “Ostrata!” he said, beginning the activating spell. “Terpandu! Ermas!” he intoned, bowing and modulating his voice as recommended by Lemegeton, The Lesser Key of Solomon. “Pericatur! Beleuros!”

  Scharley swore, catching Reynevan’s attention. Barely believing his own eyes, Reynevan saw the words scribbled in the circle begin to glow with a phosphorescent light.

  “By the seal of Basdathei! Mersilde! You, whose sight penetrates the abyss! Come! Zabaoth! Escwerchie! Astrachios, Asach, Asarca!”

  The words in the circle burned ever brighter, the ghastly glare illuminating the walls, which began to vibrate perceptibly. Horn swore. Tomasz Alpha howled. One of the morons started yelling and weeping audibly. Scharley sprang to his feet, jumped at him and with a short punch to the temple knocked him down onto his pallet, where he fell silent.

  “Bosmoletic, Jeysmy, Eth.” Reynevan leaned over and touched the centre of the pentagram with his forehead. Then, standing up straight, he reached for the polished, sharpened broken head of a nail. With a powerful jerk, he cut the skin on the pad of his thumb and pressed his bloody thumb to his forehead. He took a deep breath, aware that he was approaching the riskiest and most dangerous moment. When the blood was flowing sufficiently profusely, he painted a sign in the middle of the circle.

  The secret, fearsome, forbidden sign of Scirlin.

  “Veni Mersilde!” he cried, feeling the foundations of the Narrenturm begin to shake and tremble.

  Tomasz Alpha howled again and fell silent as Scharley threatened him with a fist. The tower was shuddering visibly now.

  “Taul!” evoked Reynevan, throatily and hoarsely, as the grimoires commanded. “Varf! Pan!”

  The Goetic Circle swelled with a more powerful brightness. The point on the wall it illuminated slowly stopped being just a spot of light and began to assume a shape. The shape of a human being. But not entirely a human being, for people didn’t have such huge heads or such long arms. Nor such enormous horns, growing from a forehead vaulted like that of an ox.

  The tower trembled, the imbeciles moaned at various pitches and Tomasz Alpha accompanied them in a loud voice. Horn sprang up.

  “Enough!” he yelled, shouting over the din. “Reynevan! Stop this! Stop this abomination, dammit! We’ll all perish because of you!”

  “Varf! Clemialh!”

  The rest of the evocation’s words stuck in his throat. The luminous form on the wall was now distinct enough to look at him with two great, snake-like eyes. He saw that the shape wasn’t just looking, but holding out its arms. Reynevan shrieked with fear. The terror paralysed him.

  “Seru… geath!” he gibbered, aware that he was mixing up the spell. “Ariwh—”

  Scharley jumped forward, seized him from behind by the throat, covered his mouth with his other hand and dragged Reynevan—now paralysed with fear—over the straw into the far corner, among the lunatics. Tomasz Alpha fled for the staircase, screaming horrifyingly for help. Horn, meanwhile—clearly in utter desperation—seized the piss bucket from the floor and flung its contents over everything: over the Occultum, the circle, the pentagram and the apparition emerging from the wall.

  The roar that resounded made everybody cover their ears with their hands and cower on the dirt floor. Suddenly a great wind blew, whipping up a tornado of straw and dust which flew into their eyes, blinding them. The fire on the wall died down, quenched by clouds of foul-smelling steam, hissed and finally went out completely.

  But it was not the end. For there was a great boom, a terrible boom, though not from the Occultum enveloped in stinking smoke, but from the door high up at the top of the stairs. Rubble showered down, a veritable hail of stone blocks in white clouds of plaster and mortar. Scharley caught Reynevan and dodged under the staircase with him. Just in time, for in front of their very eyes, a thick post from the door weighed down by a hinge plummeted and struck one of the panicked imbeciles straight in the head, splitting his skull like an apple.

  A man fell from above in an avalanche of rubble, arms and legs splayed in the form of a cross.

  Thoughts flashed through Reynevan’s head. The Narrenturm is falling apart. The turris fulgurata, the tower struck by lightning, is disintegrating. The poor, ridiculous fool is falling from the crumbling Tower of Fools, he’s plummeting to his destruction. I am that fool, I’m falling, I’m tumbling to the bottom of the chasm. Destruction, chaos and disintegration, which I have caused. A fool and a madman, I have summoned a demon, I have opened the gates of Hell. I can smell the stench of hellish brimstone—

  “It’s gunpowder…” Scharley, huddled next to him, had guessed his thoughts. “Somebody used gunpowder to blow up the door… Reinmar… Somebody—”

  “We’re being freed!” screamed Horn, scrambling from the rubble. “It’s a rescue! It’s our Czech brothers! Hosanna!”

  “Hey, boys!” screamed someone from above, from the opening where the doors had been, daylight and frosty, fresh air streaming in. “Get out! You’re free!”

  “Hosanna!” repeated Horn. “Scharley, Reinmar! Get out and be quick! It’s our boys! Czechs! We’re free! Come on, at the double, to the stairs!”

  He set off at a run, without waiting for them. Scharley followed. Reynevan glanced at the cooling, still steaming Occultum, at the imbeciles cowering in the straw. Then he rushed for the stairs, on the way stepping over the corpse of Tomasz Alpha who had been given not liberation but death by the explosion that destroyed the door.

  “Hosanna!” Urban Horn could be heard greeting his liberators at the top of the stairs. “Hosanna, Brothers! Greetings, Halada! By God, Raabe! Tybald Raabe! Is it you?”

  “Horn?” asked Tybald Raabe in astonishment. “You’re alive?”

  “By Christ, indeed! So you’re not here because of me—”

  “Not you,” said the Czech called Halada, who had a large red chalice on his chest. “I’m glad to see you in one piece, Horn, and Father Ambrož will rejoice… But we stormed Frankenstein because of them.”

  “Them?”

  “Them,” confirmed a giant in a quilted gambeson that made him look even bigger, pushing his way through the armed Czechs. “Scharley. Reinmar. Greetings.”

  “Samson…” Reynevan felt a lump in his throat. “Samson… My friend! You didn’t forget about us—”

  “How could I forget two men like you.” Samson grinned.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  In which our heroes—although liberated from the Narrenturm—discover they are not as free as they’d like to be. They participate in historical events, burning down several villages and small towns. Then Samson saves what he can, and various other things happen, until finally, our heroes depart. Their path—to use the poet’s metaphor—runs in parte ove non è che luca.

  The snow lying on the roofs stung their eyes with its blinding whiteness. Reynevan staggered and would have fallen from the stairs if not for Samson’s shoulder. The roar and boom of gun and cannon fire reached them from the hospice. The bell in the hospital church moaned painfully, and the bells of Frankenstein’s churches tolled the alarm.

  “Quickly!” yelled Halada. “Towards the gate! And keep down—they’re shooting!”

  They were indeed shooting. A crossbow bolt whistled over their heads and split a plank. As they ran into the courtyard, hunched over, Reynevan tripped and fell to his knees in mud mixed with blood. The dead were lying near the gate a
nd by the hospital: some canons of the Holy Sepulchre in habits, some lackeys and soldiers of the Inquisition, clearly abandoned by Grzegorz Hejncze.

  “Quickly!” urged Tybald Raabe. “To horse!”

  “Here!” A Czech as black and sooty as a devil, wearing armour and holding a flaming torch, reined in his steed. “Make haste, make haste!”

  He swung and hurled the torch onto a thatched shed. The torch rolled down the wet straw and hissed as it landed in the mud. The Czech swore.

  The smell of fire and smoke surrounded them as flames shot up above the roofs of the stables, from where several Czechs were leading out stamping horses. More shots boomed, accompanied by roars and thuds from the fighting taking place near the church hospital. Men were firing crossbows and harquebuses at anything that moved, from the windows of the church tower and the chancel.

  A canon of the Holy Sepulchre lay against the wall at the entrance to the burning medicinarium. It was Brother Tranquillus. His wet habit was smouldering and steaming, and he was holding his belly in both hands, blood streaming through his fingers. His eyes were open and staring straight ahead, but he probably couldn’t see anything.

  “Finish him off,” said Halada, pointing at him.

  “No!” Reynevan stopped the Hussites with a high-pitched cry. “No! Leave him.” Seeing their menacing looks, he added more quietly, “He’s dying… Let him die in peace.”

  “Time is short anyway,” called the soot-covered horseman. “No use wasting it on that half-corpse! Onwards, to horse!”

  Reynevan, still half-asleep or in a trance, mounted the horse that was handed to him. Scharley—riding beside him—nudged him with his knee.

  In front of him were Samson’s broad shoulders and Urban Horn was on the opposite side from Scharley.

  “Be careful who you support,” hissed Horn. “They are Orphans from Hradec Králové. Don’t fool around with them—”

  “That was Brother Tranquillus—”

  “I know who it was.”

  They tumbled through the gate, straight into smoke. The hospital mill and outbuildings were burning, flames belching upwards. The bells were still tolling in the town and people teemed on the town walls.

  They were joined by more riders, led by a moustachioed man in cuir bouilli and a mail hood.

  “Over there,” the moustachioed man pointed at the church, “the door to the vestibule’s almost forced, and there’d have been plenty to loot! Brother Brázda—they were almost in!”

  “Maybe, but those up there will soon realise how few of us there really are.” The man with the blackened face addressed as Brázda pointed at the town walls. “Then they’ll come out and finish us off even quicker. To horse, Brother Velek!”

  They galloped away, splashing mud and melting snow. Reynevan’s faculties had returned enough to enable him to count the Czechs: he calculated that a force of about twenty had stormed Frankenstein. He didn’t know whether to admire their bravado or be surprised by the scale of the destruction wrought by such a tiny force—in addition to the hospital buildings and mill, the dyers’ sheds on the banks of the Budzówka were ablaze, along with the sheds by the bridge and the barns just outside the Kłodzko Gate.

  “Farewell!” The moustachioed man in cuir bouilli addressed as Velek turned around and shook a fist at the burghers gathered on the wall. “Farewell, papists! We’ll be back!”

  The defenders responded with shots and yells. The yells were fierce and brave now that the town’s citizens had managed to count the Hussites.

  They rode at breakneck speed, not sparing a thought for the horses. Although it looked like sheer stupidity, it turned out to be part of the plan. Having covered a distance of almost half a mile at astonishing speed, they reached the snow-covered Owl Mountains and passed Silver Mountain, where five young Hussites and fresh horses were waiting for them in a forest ravine. Clothing and equipment were found for the former prisoners of the Narrenturm. A little time was also found for conversation.

  “Samson? How did you find us?” Scharley asked.

  “It wasn’t so simple,” said the giant, tightening his horse’s girth. “After your arrest, you simply vanished. I did my best to find out where you’d been taken, but no one would talk to me. Fortunately, although they didn’t talk to me, they talked in front of me quite freely. One rumour had it that they’d taken you to Świdnica, another that it was Wrocław. Then Master Tybald Raabe, our friend from Kromolin, happened along. It took me some time to persuade him to listen to me, because at first he took me for an imbecile.”

  “Can we let that drop, Master Samson?” the goliard said with slight reproach. “We’ve already discussed it. Why go back to it? And since you do look, forgive me, like a—”

  “We all know what Samson looks like,” said Scharley, who was shortening his stirrup leathers alongside them. “Just tell us what happened next.”

  “Master Tybald Raabe was taken in by my appearance.” Samson’s dopey face twisted into a smile. “Like everyone else, he disdainfully refused to talk to me, but he was so indifferent to my presence that he talked in front of me. I quickly realised who Master Tybald Raabe was and made him understand that I knew. And how much I knew.”

  “So it was, m’lord.” The goliard blushed, embarrassed. “I was terrified then… But it was all… explained…”

  “It became clear that Master Tybald had friends,” Samson interrupted calmly, “among the Hussites from Hradec Králové since he works for them as an intelligence agent and an emissary, as you’ve probably guessed.”

  “What a coincidence.” Scharley grinned. “And what an abundance of—”

  “Scharley.” Urban Horn, standing behind his horse, cut him off. “Drop it, will you?”

  “Very well, very well. Go on, Samson. How did you find out where to look for us?”

  “That is a curious thing. Several days ago, a slightly strange young man approached me in a tavern near Broumov. He made it clear he knew who I was. Unfortunately, at first he wasn’t able to utter anything save the sentence—and I quote—‘bring out the prisoners from the prison and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.’”

  “Isaiah!” said Reynevan in amazement.

  “Indeed. Chapter forty-two, verse seven.”

  “That’s beside the point. It was his nickname. And he led you to the Tower of Fools?”

  “I wasn’t that surprised, given the… unique manner in which he communicates.”

  “And then,” Scharley said, “a daring raid by the Hradec Hussites entered the Kłodzko region, rode all the way to Frankenstein—a good six miles over the border—burned down half the cottages outside the castle and seized the Hospice of the Holy Sepulchre and the Narrenturm. And all—if I understood it correctly—just for me and Reynevan. Master Tybald Raabe, I don’t know how to thank you, indeed I don’t.”

  “The reasons will soon be made clear.” The goliard cleared his throat. “Patience, m’lord.”

  “Patience isn’t one of my greatest virtues.”

  “Then you will have to work a little on that virtue,” said Brázda, the commander of the troop, who had ridden up and come to a halt beside them. “The reason we got you out of that plight will be explained when the time is right, and no sooner.”

  Brázda, like most of the Czechs in the troop, had a chalice cut from red cloth sewn to his chest. But he was the only one to have pinned the Hussite emblem directly onto the coat of arms visible on his paltock.

  “I am Brázda of Klinštejn, from the Ronovic family,” he said, confirming their guesses. “And now we are done talking—time is short and this is enemy territory!”

  “It’s dangerous indeed to wear a chalice on your chest here,” Scharley agreed mockingly.

  “On the contrary,” replied Brázda of Klinštejn. “Such an emblem protects and defends.”

  “Really?”

  “You may have an opportunity to see for yourself, m’lord.”

  One soon arose.

  The troop r
ode swiftly through Silver Pass. Beyond it, in the region of the village of Ebersdorf, they encountered a military detachment consisting of heavily armed cavalry and bowmen numbering at least thirty men, riding under a red standard decorated with a ram’s head, the Haugwitzes’ coat of arms.

  And indeed, Brázda of Klinštejn was absolutely right. Haugwitz and his men stood their ground only until the moment they saw the sign of the Chalice, then the knights and the crossbowmen reined their horses around and rode away at a gallop, mud splashing from their hooves.

  “What do you say about the sign of the Chalice now?” Brázda turned to face Scharley. “Effective, isn’t it?”

  It couldn’t be denied.

  They galloped on, driving their horses unrelentingly. As they rode, they gulped down flakes of falling snow.

  Reynevan felt certain they were heading to Bohemia, that after reaching the Ścinawa Valley they would turn upstream, towards the border, along a road leading straight to Broumov. He was surprised when the unit dashed through a hollow in the Table Mountains which loomed up blue to the south-west. He wasn’t the only one surprised by the route.

  “Where are we going?” Urban Horn shouted over the driving snow. “I say! Halada! Sir Brázda!”

  “Radkov!” Halada shouted back curtly.

  “Why?”

  “Ambrož!”

  Radkov, which Reynevan was seeing for the first time, turned out to be a pleasant little town nestling at the foot of tree-covered mountains. Red roofs rose up behind the ring of town walls, above which towered a slender church spire. The sight would have put them in a cheerful mood were it not for the huge cloud of smoke swirling over the town.

  Radkov had been the target of a raid.

  The army gathered outside Radkov numbered a good thousand warriors, many of them infantry armed with various kinds of pole weapons, from simple spears to more sophisticated gisarmes. At least half the soldiers were equipped with crossbows and firearms. There was also artillery—a medium-sized bombard hidden behind a raisable shield aimed directly at the town gate, and trestle guns and cannons positioned in the gaps between pavises.