Now they were all sitting at the worn round table in the library. Senno was the only one who seemed to be genuinely looking forward to the trip. He drummed his fingers on the tabletop excitedly as he watched Elsa light a candle for each person and arrange them in a circle around the table. Then she set out several wooden objects that looked like cheap toys. Lukas peered closer and saw a tiny castle, a bridge, and a roughly carved church.
“What’s this supposed to be?” Paulus asked. “Are we playing with blocks now?”
Elsa smiled. “Not exactly. I borrowed these toys from the son of the smith.” She gestured to each object in turn. “This is Pražský hrad, Prague Castle. This one is the famous stone bridge over the Vltava River, and that’s Saint Vitus Cathedral.”
“How do you know all this?” Jerome asked, reaching for the toy castle. “What’s this thing called again? Pesky rod?”
Giovanni slapped his fingers. “She knows it because she reads, instead of merely amusing herself in shady taverns,” he said sternly. “The question isn’t where she got the information, but why we need it.”
“I explained it to you already,” Elsa replied. “Magic actually happens only inside our heads. These are just tools designed to help us cast the spell—they help us all concentrate on our destination, on Prague.”
“And that works?” Paulus looked skeptical.
“Your little friend is right,” Senno chimed in. “I’ve read about this method. It is only part of the magic ceremony, though. What we need is the book.” He glanced around, searching. “It is here, isn’t it?”
Without a word, Elsa turned away and went to the iron-studded box on the shelf. She opened it with the key on her necklace, and then returned to the table carrying the plain little book.
Senno’s eyes widened. “The Grimorium Nocturnum,” he whispered reverently. “Could I perhaps just—”
“Have a peek inside?” Elsa gave him a look of contempt. “The last person who tried that was Waldemar von Schönborn, and then a hellstorm blew him away.”
Senno sighed. “You’re right, little one. Well, then, let’s begin the ceremony.”
“Ah, actually . . . what happens if the spell only half works?” Jerome asked nervously. “Say, we’re transported to Prague, but high up in the air? Or, worse, deep underground—buried alive?”
“Then I’m afraid our trip will come to an inglorious end fairly quickly,” Senno said in a dry tone. “But I’d say we ought to trust Elsa.” The astrologer rubbed his hands. “I can’t wait another moment to feel the power of the Grimorium for myself. Samsara al mantaya,” he added quietly. “Let the spell begin.”
Elsa sank down onto the last free stool beside Lukas and flipped through the book before finally opening it to a specific page. “Now, all of you, focus completely on the objects within the ring of candles,” she ordered.
After a moment, her lips parted and she began murmuring. Her voice was almost inaudible at first, but gradually it swelled to a torrent of words that sounded to Lukas like they were from another world.
“JAVA AL BARIVIA, CON MARTATEM SORAYA, LUMEN IN NOCTIS . . .”
They sat there motionless, staring at the carved wooden toys.
Elsa continued murmuring the incantation. “LUMEN EST OMNIS, TELEPORTIA IN LOCA ORIENTIS . . .”
Suddenly a gust of wind blew through the library, causing the candles to flicker. The pages of the book rustled quietly and then began moving back and forth on their own, as though the Grimorium itself were searching for the lines needed to complete the spell.
Elsa’s voice grew louder with every word.
“IN LOCA ORIENTIS . . . IN LOCA MATERIA . . . IN LOCA PORTABILIS . . . NUNC MANIFESTA!”
“I don’t think it’s working,” Jerome whispered to Paulus.
“If it doesn’t work,” Paulus hissed back, “then it’s probably because you can only concentrate on three things: wine, dancing, and pretty girls.”
“Ah, quelle bonne idée! At least that would bring us somewhere nice . . .”
“Shh!” Giovanni gave the other two a severe look.
A powerful blast of wind whipped through the room, extinguishing the candles and plunging them all into sudden darkness.
“Merde!” Jerome whined. “How am I supposed to concentrate on those wooden things here in the dark? I can’t even see Paulus’s fat nose.”
“One more word and—” Paulus was interrupted by a sound like tearing cloth—only much, much louder.
“My God,” Senno breathed. “It’s working. It’s actually working!”
Lukas couldn’t believe his eyes. The table was split down the middle, and crimson fog was rising from the crack in the wood! As the gap widened, the vague contours of a city began to take shape on the other side. A river snaked through it, and Lukas could just make out a large castle with high walls in the background.
There was a deafening bang, and then something knocked Lukas to the floor and dragged him by the legs toward the crack.
“SAMSARA AL MANTAYA!”
Elsa’s loud voice was the last thing he heard before the red fog swallowed him.
IV
Lukas drifted through the thick fog, weightless. Occasionally he thought he could just make out his friends’ silhouettes, or felt his arms and legs brushing against them. He heard shouts and cries, but everything was masked beneath a powerful rushing sound, as though they were tumbling down a gigantic waterfall.
Then everything went silent.
The next thing Lukas became aware of was a musty, slightly sweet smell that he couldn’t identify at first. He opened his eyes and found himself staring up at the low ceiling of a small room. He was lying on a cold stone floor, shivering as though feverish. A narrow window above him let in a little sunlight—just enough for him to make out the beer barrels stacked against the wall by the door.
“Oh, my head!” someone moaned beside him. It was Giovanni. “It’s throbbing as though I spent the whole night drinking.”
“Hm, strangely, it smells that way in here too,” Paulus muttered from somewhere nearby. “You’d almost think we were in . . .”
“A beer cellar,” Lukas said, blinking as he pulled himself to a sitting position. “Looks like the spell actually did bring us somewhere else.”
“Hm, the time isn’t right, either.” Giovanni pointed through the tiny window. “It’s daytime out now—the journey must have taken longer than we expected.”
“Well, at any rate, this isn’t the Castle Lohenfels cellar,” Lukas said. “So the spell did work. The question is whether Elsa actually brought us to Prague.” Lukas stopped and glanced around. “Elsa? Elsa, are you around here somewhere?”
To Lukas’s great relief, his sister was lying beside him, just a few paces away. Exhausted, he crawled over to her and brushed her hair out of her face. She was breathing heavily and looked extremely pale.
“Everything all right?” he asked quietly.
Elsa nodded, but without opening her eyes. “The spell . . .” she murmured. “Took almost all . . . my strength. Need . . . sleep. The Grimorium . . .”
“It’s right here beside you on the floor,” Lukas said, inspecting the book. “Looks like it got singed in a couple of spots somehow, but it’s still in better condition than a couple of us.” He glanced over at Paulus, who was just staggering to his feet. Giovanni and Jerome looked completely wrung out as well, but at least they were uninjured. Only then, as he peered around the dim cellar, did Lukas realize that someone was missing.
“Senno!” he cried. “Senno isn’t here!”
“Damn it!” Paulus grunted. “I knew there was no trusting that quack. Maybe this is all a trap, and he wanted to get rid of us?”
“By leaving us here with Elsa and the book he so desperately wants?” Lukas shook his head. “I doubt that. Something must have gone wrong with the spell.” He glanced behind the barrels and squinted into the dark corners of the room, wondering if Senno was lying unconscious somewhere. But the astrologer wa
s nowhere to be found.
“Maybe he was simply transported a little farther away,” Lukas surmised. “Out onto the street or into the building next door, or—”
“Five feet underground,” Jerome finished, shuddering.
“At any rate, we’re on our own now,” Giovanni said. “Wherever we are. Who knows if this accursed cellar is even in Prague? And anyway, why a beer cellar?” He glanced at Jerome skeptically.
Jerome shrugged sheepishly and looked down at his feet. “Ah, I admit that I may have thought about a tavern for just a teensy moment when that red fog came,” he mumbled. “And about dancing and pretty barmaids. Paulus was the one who put the thought into my head.”
“Oh, fantastic,” Paulus groaned. “Thanks to you, we’ve landed underneath some drinking hole. God knows where you last amused yourself with your women. We are probably in Frankfurt or Heidelberg, not Prague. Nicely done, Jerome.”
“Well, it should be easy enough to check.” Giovanni hurried up to the cellar door, opened it, and disappeared through it. The others followed him, Lukas supporting Elsa, who was still very weak.
On the other side of the door, they found a steep, wobbly set of wooden stairs leading up to another door. This one was a trapdoor in the ceiling. Giovanni pushed it open, and the sound of clinking tankards, laughter, and music washed over them. A moment later, everything fell silent. When Lukas climbed the last few stairs, he found himself in a tavern, surrounded by two dozen or so men and women in simple garb, seated at rough-hewn tables. They were holding foamy tankards and staring at the new arrivals as if they were ghosts.
From behind the counter, the bald-headed barkeep shouted, “Jste zlodji?” He barked at Lukas and his friends, “Zlodji, hä?” But Lukas didn’t understand what the man was saying.
“Ah, good man, I fear we do not speak your language,” Giovanni said with a bow. “But please be assured that we would never—”
“Zlodji!” Infuriated, the barman withdrew a club from beneath the counter. Several of the men jumped from their chairs and came toward the friends, bearing tankards and knives. One particularly large, clearly drunk, pockmarked man threw his tankard at Lukas, who was barely able to duck out of the way. The man charged toward him, but Lukas moved quickly, stuck out his leg, and tripped the man. A moment later, the other revelers attacked as well.
“Let’s get out of here!” Paulus shouted, drawing his huge, powerful broadsword. He used the flat of the blade to smack the cudgel out of the barkeep’s hand, while Jerome and Giovanni used their rapiers to defend themselves against chair legs and tankards. Lukas grabbed Elsa by the hand, and they all ran through the front door and out into a narrow, foul-smelling alley. The angry mob remained in hot pursuit.
“We need to shake them!” Giovanni called. “This way!”
After a moment of hesitation, they turned onto a small side street. Lukas prayed it wasn’t a dead end. They ran past a line of hunched, sorry-looking half-timbered houses with peeling plaster. The cobblestones were knuckle-deep in filth, and grunting swine briefly blocked their path. They narrowly dodged a cart carrying bundles of rags. Lukas kept helping Elsa along as they sprinted through the labyrinth of winding alleyways.
Gradually, the screams of their pursuers grew fainter, eventually fading away entirely. Panting, the group stopped in a small, junk-packed courtyard surrounded by shabby little houses. Apart from the black cat staring at them from a windowsill, it seemed they were alone—for the moment, anyway.
“We need to figure out where we are,” Giovanni wheezed, out of breath. “The barkeep didn’t speak any German, so we know we’ve at least left the country. Too bad everything in this accursed labyrinth looks the same. We could be anywhere in the world!”
“Give me a moment.” Lukas stacked a couple of rotting boxes atop one another and climbed to the roof of one of the squat little houses. From his perch, he was able to see more of the city.
The view took his breath away.
Beyond the sea of rooftops, he saw a stone bridge with numerous arches spanning a broad river. There were several more districts on the far side of the river, and a massive castle—far larger than even the one in Heidelberg—overlooked the whole city. The castle grounds were so expansive that an entire cathedral would have fit behind those high walls. He recognized it.
The stone bridge over the Vltava, the castle, and the cathedral—they’d actually made it.
“Prague!” he called down to the others. “It’s really Prague! I can see the Hradschin!”
Giovanni laughed. “Then I suppose the barkeep back there was speaking Bohemian. Fortunately, from what I understand, there are quite a few German speakers here in Prague as well. That should make things a bit easier.”
“Things are still plenty complicated,” Paulus muttered. “Without Senno, we have no idea where to go. We’re supposed to find these Imperial Regalia things, but where and how? We can just as easily start looking for three needles in a haystack.”
“Senno said we would have friends here,” Lukas said after climbing down from the roof. “Who could they be?”
“They must have something to do with our time in Wallenstein’s army,” Giovanni mused aloud. “So who . . .” He stopped short, and his expression brightened. “Well, I don’t know who it is, but I have an idea where we might start looking. I heard once that Wallenstein built himself a house here, a summer residence of sorts. Senno is Wallenstein’s astrologer, so perhaps the spell sent him there.” He gave Jerome a severe look. “And maybe we would all have ended up there, if someone hadn’t had his mind elsewhere as the spell was cast.”
“Well, then, let’s go find this summerhouse!” Paulus clapped his hands. “If Senno is really there, Jerome owes us all a large tankard of beer.”
They wandered through the narrow streets, stopping periodically so Elsa could rest. After a while, they came to a small church with a pair of street urchins playing marbles out front. Giovanni approached them and exchanged a few words; fortunately, these boys seemed to understand him. They gestured to the west, laughing and shaking their heads again and again.
“What did they say?” Lukas asked when Giovanni returned.
“I started by asking them what day it was,” Giovanni replied, grinning. “I was worried that we’d been transported not only to another place, but to another time as well. But it really is the day after the full moon in July of 1633.”
“And where do we find Wallenstein’s house?” Jerome asked.
“The boys said it was on the other side of the river, directly beneath Castle Hill.” Giovanni furrowed his brow. “Those obnoxious brats kept laughing when I referred to it as a house. But at least now we know where we need to go.”
After a while, they reached the wide, rushing Vltava River and the stone bridge Lukas had seen from the rooftop. It was the longest, most beautiful bridge he had ever laid eyes upon, with tall gate towers and massive stone support arches. An endless stream of people crossed it in both directions: peddlers with their back-baskets, nobility wrapped in expensive scarves, knights in gleaming armor. Though the war had laid waste to the Reich, it seemed to have largely spared Prague thus far—or, at least, Lukas didn’t see any major damage to the bridge and surrounding houses.
What he did notice was a row of sun-bleached human skulls on pikes, up on the bridge tower.
As he and his friends crossed the bridge, Lukas pointed out the gruesome scene. “Must be criminals of some sort, put on display here as a deterrent.”
Giovanni knitted his brow. “I’ve heard that after the Bohemian uprising, the Kaiser had all of their leaders beheaded. I suppose the skulls are there to remind the people of Prague what happens to those who take up arms against the German Kaiser.”
Lukas shivered a little as he passed the bridge tower. Now, on the far side of the bridge, they could also see a rectangular palatial property a stone’s throw away, at the foot of Castle Hill. The estate seemed to stretch across an entire neighborhood, and was bordered by ot
her magnificent residences.
“Well, it isn’t Prague Castle—that’s up on the hill,” Jerome mused aloud. “But this looks like a castle, too.”
Giovanni groaned and smacked his forehead. “That must be Wallenstein’s palace. No wonder those boys were laughing when I called it a house. This ‘summer residence’ is practically a town in itself! How will we ever find anyone in there?”
“I’m sure people around here know of the astrologer and his drivel,” Paulus growled. “So let’s just go up to the gate and ask for Senno. Maybe he’s been there all along. And then we’ll be able to find out what went wrong with the spell.”
They circled around the property until they discovered a broad main gate guarded by half a dozen soldiers bearing swords and halberds. The watchmen peered down at them mistrustfully as they approached.
“What do you boys want?” one of them snapped in German. “Get over to the new part of town with the rest of the servants!”
“Good day to you, gentlemen!” Lukas stepped forward, raising a hand in greeting. “We’re looking for the honorable Senno, Wallenstein’s astrologer. Would you happen to kn—”
The watchman laughed derisively. “Who do you think you are, boy? The chamberlain? Get out of here before I drive you off.”
“We were just asking for information,” Lukas tried again. “So please—”
The soldier smashed the pommel of his sword into Lukas’s chest, sending him flying to the filthy ground. “Like I said, get out of here, farm whelp. Otherwise I’ll hang you upside down by your feet until you learn your manners.”
That was too much for Lukas—his old rage, which had caused problems many times in the past, got the better of him once again. He’d never had any patience for being treated unfairly. He leapt up, reached for his rapier, and disarmed the watchman with a single movement. The soldier’s sword clattered to the ground. “I’m no farm whelp, I’m Lukas von Lohenfels!” he hissed. “Son of the Count von Lohenfels!”
Almost immediately, Lukas regretted his impulsiveness—but it was too late.