Book of the Night

by Oliver Pötzsch

  One foggy morning as it was snowing lightly, they arrived in Heidelberg. Lukas remembered leaving this city more than a year ago; he’d been a child then, anxious and completely alone. His mother had died here, and Lukas’s trip through the German Empire had begun.

  Now he returned as a warrior.

  Heidelberg had been overrun by the Swedes the previous June, and in the morning light, the destruction of the walls, tower, and church steeples was clearly visible behind the city wall. On the steep hillside the famous Heidelberg Castle stood in solitary splendor, but here, too, gutted windows stared down into the valley, one of the towers had been blown away, and in some places, bare, charred beams could be seen where there once was a roof.

  “And now?” Jerome asked, rubbing his cold hands. “We can hardly go riding into town with our weapons and politely ask directions to the Hortus Palatinus.”

  “I assume that our friend here knows exactly where this magical garden is located,” said Giovanni, turning to Lukas. “Is that right?”

  Lukas nodded and pointed to an area to the left of the castle, though it was still too far away to see anything in detail. “The garden, or what’s left of it, is on the west side of the castle,” he said. “To reach it, fortunately, we don’t have to go through the city, we can just circle around it and approach the castle from the mountainside. I’m certain we’ll find a breach in the wall up there, and the castle does not appear heavily guarded.”

  They rode along a little farther out of sight of the city walls before dismounting and leading the horses up a forested slope. Now, in the early morning, it was calm, no one was visible, and clouds of mist drifted over the snowy forest floor. After a short search, they reached a moss-covered wall with several breaks in it.

  “The rear wall of the castle,” Lukas announced. “Probably it was stormed by Tilly’s troops many years ago and not repaired since.” He motioned to his friends, then climbed over the low wall. “Follow me.”

  They crept through the sparse bushes until they came to another wall with a steep drop on the other side. Down below was a wide area bounded by the castle ruins to the west and the mountain above Heidelberg to the north. The area seemed so strange and magical that it briefly took their breath away.

  “This . . . is unbelievable!” Giovanni finally said. “A wonder of the world!”

  Lukas nodded. “That’s what they once called the Hortus Palatinus. It was said there was no more beautiful garden on earth. Now it may be overgrown and partially destroyed, but I clearly remember the flowering arbors and bubbling fountains when my mother took me walking here.”

  There were endless rows of hedges in the garden, which used to be trimmed but now were wild and tangled, and between them, many marble statues, small fountains, hidden niches, arbors, and grottos decorated with shells and semiprecious jewels. The grounds had a number of levels connected by stairways. A fine white layer of frost had settled on the bushes and hedges.

  It took Lukas a while to realize what this image reminded him of. The garden is sleeping, he thought. When war came over it, it began its winter sleep, and now it will never awaken again.

  Once more, he saw in his mind the image of himself, Elsa, and their mother strolling past the fragrant rose beds. His sister had been too young for her to remember it now, but as she stared at the garden below, she, too, was spellbound by the magic emanating from the Hortus Palatinus, even after all these years.

  “Somehow everything here looks like a damned labyrinth,” Paulus grumbled. “Which of these labyrinths was your mother thinking of when she had the tattoos put on your heads?”

  “The Sorcerer’s Labyrinth.” Lukas pointed to an area at the back of the garden directly bordering the steep slope of the mountain. “That’s what we called it then, anyway. I’m sure that’s where the hiding place is.”

  The labyrinth Lukas pointed to was an overgrown, rounded area with concentric circles inside, interspersed with small gaps. At the center stood a solitary, run-down temple.

  “The Labyrinth of the Sorcerer.” Giovanni grinned. “A suitable name for the hiding place of a magic book. The labyrinth does indeed resemble the tattoos on your heads.”

  “Except that it’s now somewhat overgrown,” Jerome noted. “We’ll need our swords and knives to cut our way through there. Very well, let’s get to it!”

  It took a while, but finally the friends found an old willow with branches long enough to shinny down into the garden. Once they were on the ground, they walked past a number of overgrown evergreen boxwood bushes that at one time had been fashioned in the shape of animals. Lukas could make out a stag, a fox, a boar, and a hare with laid-back ears, but the bushes hadn’t been trimmed for years and the animals seemed strangely deformed. They had monstrous heads, hunched backs, and their green coat of leaves seemed to mushroom out in all directions.

  Shivering, Lukas pushed his way through the thicket to look at the huge garden before them. On their left was a dark grotto guarded by a stone god sitting by a well. Long icicles hung from his beard, and he seemed to be eyeing the friends suspiciously. As Lukas turned away, he briefly had the feeling the giant would rise and follow them through the garden, but a quick look back reassured him the giant was still sitting beside the fountain.

  “Am I imagining it, or is it really a lot colder here than out in the f-forest?” Jerome asked, his teeth chattering again, as he wrapped his coat more tightly around him.

  “You’re right,” Giovanni replied with a frown. “It’s as if winter has settled in here in the garden. It could just as well be January.”

  In fact, a hard white crust of ice covered many of the tree trunks, the hedges seemed frozen, and drops of ice hung like white pearls on the withered leaves. The closer they came to the rear of the garden, the colder it became. Lukas glanced at Elsa, who had a worried look.

  “Can you explain that?” he asked.

  “Perhaps it really is the book,” she murmured. “It can sense that we are coming, and like an anxious creature, is showing its teeth.”

  “Well, isn’t that just fine,” Paulus grumbled. “Then let’s go and see what else this book has in store for us.”

  A while later, they passed some niches in the rock decorated in shells, with a copper statuette inside, cracked and covered with verdigris. Lukas examined a flute player with goat horns, and a fat, naked child grinning and thrusting his hips toward a ballerina. Giovanni stopped, fascinated.

  “These are surely the so-called automatons,” he explained. “I’ve read about them in a book. They move just by the power of water and steam. I assume that the figure on the left could once play a flute, the beautiful girl could dance, and the fat child, well—”

  “Was peeing on someone!” Paulus interrupted with a grin. “I always knew that princes had a very strange sense of humor. But now let’s move along quickly before I freeze solid.”

  It had become so cold that Lukas could feel the frost creeping into every pore of his body, and when he breathed out, a white cloud rose up. The crunching of his friends’ footsteps in the snow seemed to be the only sound in the entire garden.

  They passed by another weathered fountain and were now standing at the entrance to the labyrinth at the back of the garden. Dark, withered hedges formed a natural wall eight feet high.

  “The Labyrinth of the Sorcerer.” Lukas pointed toward an overgrown entrance that had at one time no doubt been a portal of roses. “We can only hope that our sketch is correct. I wouldn’t want to get lost in there when it’s as cold as this.”

  Giovanni took out the thin parchment sketch he’d drawn, which he’d kept carefully tucked inside his coat. He turned it carefully until it was aligned in the right direction.

  “It appears we are here,” he said, pointing to a spot on the perimeter of the map. “If we follow these instructions exactly, we should soon arrive at the middle.”

  “And how do we know that’s exactly where the book is?” Jerome asked.

  “Do you have a
better idea?” Giovanni snapped back. “From up above we could see there was a temple in the middle of the labyrinth where something could be hidden. Besides, a labyrinth always leads you to the middle—that’s the way the ancient Greeks designed them.”

  He pushed aside an icy twig and disappeared into the labyrinth, and the others followed.

  As Lukas stepped into the tangle of tall hedges, suddenly, as if by magic, the light of day vanished. Though he could still see a narrow strip of the gray winter sky above him, the sun didn’t seem to reach the ground. Everything was bathed in twilight, as if night were falling. Narrow, shadowy paths disappeared into the frosty darkness. Giovanni walked ahead, holding the map, now and then stopping to think before heading down another path.

  “Everything here is so overgrown you really don’t know if it’s a path or just an animal trail,” he complained. “It’s so easy to lose your bearings!”

  “Just keep trying,” Paulus urged him. “My hands are almost frozen to the hilt of my sword.”

  Paulus raised his saber and kept looking around suspiciously. Lukas also had an uneasy feeling that someone was lying in wait for him behind every hedge.

  Or something, he thought. Maybe the bearded guard at the fountain really is following us . . .

  The bushes became thicker, and the space between them was sometimes just shoulder width. Thorny branches reached out and tugged at Lukas, and ice-cold, sharp-edged leaves scraped across his face. Now the light had almost completely disappeared, and their frozen coats crackled in the cold.

  Once again, Giovanni found himself at a crossing and studied the map.

  “Don’t tell me we’re lost,” Jerome groaned. “Pretty soon my feet are going to fall off.”

  Giovanni looked up from the map. “You can try it yourself, if you want. There actually should be another passage, but I can’t find anything here. We should be almost there.” He sighed. “I’m at a loss, damn!” Angrily he kicked a pile of icy leaves, and at that moment, Lukas shouted.

  “There’s the path! Do you see it?”

  Behind the pile of leaves, an opening appeared that until then had been hidden. Lukas pushed the pile aside and crawled on his knees through the hole. Suddenly everything around him became brighter, pale sunlight was visible, and it became noticeably warmer.

  A clearing appeared before him with a few dead linden trees and a small wooden building in the center. The roof had partially caved in, the columns adorned with wood carvings were tilted and bent, and ferns and ivy hung down the sides of the building.

  “The temple in the middle of the labyrinth!” Lukas shouted. “We actually found it.”

  Now the others also crawled through the hole and stepped into the clearing.

  “I was here with my mother once,” Lukas said excitedly. “We stopped to rest at this temple.”

  He rushed into the building, whose walls for the most part were rotted and had collapsed. The stone floor was covered with moldy foliage that Lukas quickly pushed aside, hoping perhaps to find a stone slab with something buried beneath it. But the foundation was smooth and all of one piece.

  “Where could your mother have hidden the book?” murmured Giovanni, who was now standing beside him, looking around. They examined the columns and the roof, but couldn’t find anything unusual. In the meantime, the other friends and Elsa explored the temple surroundings.

  “There’s nothing here,” Jerome finally announced. “I’m telling you, the book is somewhere else. Perhaps this isn’t even the right labyrinth.”

  “But it is,” Lukas replied. “The hiding place has to be here somewhere.”

  He closed his eyes and brought back memories of the past.

  “Let’s play hide-and-seek, Mother . . . please . . .”

  He had run off to hide here somewhere, but where? Lost in his memories, he walked around the clearing.

  “Just drop it, Lukas,” Jerome said. “There’s nothing here. Let’s try instead—”

  “Shh!” Giovanni interrupted. “Can’t you see he’s thinking?”

  “How would Jerome know that?” Paulus said. “He doesn’t even know what it means to think.”

  “If I wasn’t so damned cold, I’d have rapped you over the head with my rapier, you idiot,” Jerome replied.

  “Stop this arguing at once!” Elsa shouted. “Or shall I cast a spell and give you all long noses?”

  Her threat worked. Grumbling, the two separated. Jerome leaned against one of the crippled linden trees, pouting, while Lukas kept walking back and forth in the clearing.

  Where did I hide then? he was thinking. Where . . .

  “Merde!” Jerome sputtered, looking up at the gray sky, from which a few snowflakes were falling. “If I were a rabbit or a badger, I could at least crawl into my warm, comfortable burrow, but now—”

  “The badger hole!” Luke cried out. “Of course! How could I have forgotten?” As excited as he was, he still couldn’t help laughing. “This is the second time Jerome has put me on the right track. If this continues, he’ll become even smarter than Giovanni.”

  He ran toward the astonished Jerome, still leaning on the linden, and brushed aside a knee-high pile of icy foliage, twigs, and mushy snow that had formed against the tree. Behind it was a twisted, dead root, and beneath that a small burrow. His heart pounding, Lukas knelt down and reached into the opening.

  “When I was here with my mother, I was so small I could hide in this place,” he declared. “It’s no doubt an old badger’s burrow.”

  “Just make sure there’s no badger in it now,” Paulus warned him. “Those beasts can really bite.”

  Lukas pulled his hand back, but when he didn’t hear any snarling or hissing, he reached in again. The hole was so large he couldn’t feel the back of it with his fingers, so he got up his courage and crawled head-first into the opening.

  The stench of wild animals and dung made him gag. He held his breath for a moment, then pushed forward until his hips were also inside the earthy burrow. Roots and leaves scratched his face. Back then, he had gotten his whole body inside the hole, and he still remembered the tingling feeling when his mother walked past the tree and couldn’t find him at first. It had been a perfect hiding place.

  Also the perfect hiding place for a book . . . ?

  “Well?” Lukas could hear the muffled voice of Giovanni outside. “Is there something there or . . .” His voice trailed off as Lukas crawled deeper into the hole.

  Frantically, Lukas searched the pitch-black space with his hands. He could feel dry straw, rock-hard feces, bones, and scraps of fur. The stench was so bad that his eyes began to tear up, and he wouldn’t be able to stand it here much longer. Again, he searched the darkness for the book, for anything, but nothing was there.

  He’d been wrong.

  As he started to back out again, his right hand touched some hard object in a corner. It seemed to be made of wood and was about the size of a jewelry box. He could feel the cool iron of a padlock.

  “I found something!” he shouted. “A little box. This is it.”

  But his friends didn’t answer. Holding the little box in his hands like a fragile egg, Lukas pushed backward toward the surface, where he could feel the cold winter wind blowing over his legs. His lungs filled with fresh air. Hurriedly he pulled the box out behind him and turned to his friends, beaming with joy.

  “Finally, our trip is—” He stopped short, as if someone had suddenly grabbed him by the throat, and the box clattered to the ground.

  Before him stood Waldemar von Schönborn.

  The inquisitor smiled broadly. His crimson cloak was the color of fresh blood, and a thin layer of snow covered his cap. In the background, the three Spanish mercenaries with the dead eyes were waiting. One of them was holding a knife to Elsa’s throat and had clapped his other hand over her mouth as she struggled to free herself. The two other creatures had drawn their swords and were pointing them at Giovanni, Jerome, and Paulus, who were silently staring at Lukas and the box,
helpless with rage.

  “How nice to see you again, Lukas,” said Schönborn. He stooped down and picked up the weathered wooden box. With his long, slender fingers, he tenderly stroked the cover, secured by a rusted padlock. “Of course, it’s much nicer to have finally arrived at my goal and realized my greatest dream—and I can thank you for that.”

  Lukas suddenly felt the world turn colder.

  XXVI

  For a while, they stood there silently looking at each other, and then Schönborn began to speak again.

  “So it was worth waiting for,” he murmured. “You probably thought you could escape from me, but you forget that in this accursed Reich, I still wield great power. Fresh, fast horses await you at every inn when you travel with the seal of the pope.” With a smile, he raised his right hand with a golden signet ring on his finger. “All doors are open to me.”

  “He caught us by surprise,” Giovanni said. “We were so excited about what you found in the hole. I’m sorry, Lukas.”

  “You mustn’t feel sorry,” Lukas replied softly. “I knew that it wasn’t over yet.” He turned to Schönborn. “How did you find us? Was it magic?”

  Waldemar von Schönborn shrugged. “I must confess, at first it was harder than I’d expected. There was a protective magic, but that didn’t stop us for long.”

  “Curses! Elsa’s wooden angels!” Paulus ground his teeth and stared sheepishly at the ground. “I lost the ugly thing right away somewhere in the forest. I swear, I’ll never say anything against handmade toys again.”

  Schönborn seemed confused for a moment, then continued. “Well, in the end, I could cast a stronger spell anyway.” He reached under his cloak and pulled out two puppets that looked like they’d been made from thin, finely woven thread. “Your hair, Lukas, and Elsa’s as well. Do you remember? You were kind enough to leave some of it behind. These puppets finally set me on your track. When I saw you were heading for Heidelberg, I put two and two together. A few days ago, we overtook you, then patiently waited for you here.”