Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy

by Stephen Morris

  “Who… who are we invoking?” she asked, unsure if she remembered the words she had heard him say.

  “Svetovit. The old god worshipped on the hilltop here that Fen’ka looked to for protection,” George quietly explained. “Call on him as I did and plunge the athame through the card again.”

  Magdalena reached to take hold of the ritual knife. It was more difficult to free its point from the wooden table than she had expected. She held it above the card a moment and struggled to remember the invocation George had made. She took a deep breath and blurted out what she could recall.

  “Svetovit!” She could hear her own voice, neither calm like George’s nor filled with authority and self-confidence. “Svetovit!” she repeated. “Awake! Come to us! We come to you as did Fen’ka, who looked to you to defend her and protect her. Come to us. Aid us to avenge her death!” She drove the knife into the card, nearly missing it in her nervous excitement.

  A smile crept across George’s face. “Well done,” he murmured. Reaching out again, his eyes still closed, he took the quivering knife just as it was about to fall over. He held it over the card a third time, and then repeated his original call to Svetovit, appearing confident that his voice would be heard wherever it was that Svetovit was—what? Sleeping? Waiting? Magdalena wasn’t sure. He drove the dagger through the card into the tabletop for the final time. Even in the smoky candlelight, Magdalena could make out the gashes he had made in the card and the nick she had caused.

  She could feel a power gathering in the air about them, sense a force—no, a personality—step into the space with them. She closed her eyes and let this sensation wash over her. The entity’s presence was one of the most tangible sensations she had ever experienced. Was this Svetovit? She wasn’t sure but suspected it was. When was the last time anyone had called on him, she wondered. Had Fen’ka been the last until tonight?

  She heard a sound beside her and opened her eyes. George had set the athame down and picked up the card. He held it in the slowly subsiding smoke of the censer, still face down, and then dropped it onto the charcoal. It lay there for an instant before it began to darken and fray, curling up into a ball of ash before her eyes. Just as it lost any semblance of its original shape, one corner twisted up into the air as if struggling to escape the terrible grasp of the thurible’s coals. Magdalena recognized it as the card Temperance, one of the Major Trumps, the same card she had been given by Madame de Thebes outside the Gestapo office. She wondered which of Fen’ka’s enemies it had stood for, why it had been chosen. But she was afraid to ask George, afraid that the sound of her voice would shatter the sense of power and presence that enfolded her.

  George picked up the whisk and flicked it through the spiced wine in the pot. Frothy foam mushroomed up around the whisk and he then deposited a ladleful of the frothy wine in the silver cup Magdalena had set out. He lifted the cup with one hand and held it aloft briefly (“Like a priest at church,” Magdalena thought) before bringing it to his lips and drinking most of it in a series of swallows. He then filled it with another ladleful of wine and gave it to Magdalena, who understood what she was to do. She lifted it as she had seen George do and…

  Something nearly grabbed the cup from her hand! She could feel the thirst, the neediness, the desperation of whatever it was that so urgently needed to quench its thirst with the wine that she held aloft. She stumbled and a few drops splashed over the rim of the cup and fell onto the table.

  “Do not drop the cup!” George barked. “You—no one else—must consume the wine! Consume what you can, but leave the dregs.”

  Magdalena regained her balance, lifted the cup again but this time prepared for the entity’s fierce desire for the liquor. She held the cup there, almost taunting it, daring it to try and seize it again. Then she swiftly brought it to her lips and swallowed it, wave after wave of warm wine splashing down her throat. She coughed when the spicy dregs touched the back of her throat, though, and spat into the chalice the soggy mass that had been cinnamon and cloves, cardamom seeds and orange slices.

  George took the cup from her and set it on the table, scraping the last few drops from the kettle into the cup. “Take the athame,” he instructed, “and open a door in the circle.”

  Magdalena sliced a wide swath from the circumference of the magic circle and returned the knife to the table. As she had leaned over to reach the floor with the dagger’s point, she had seen that the incense smoke had not dissipated throughout her apartment but had been restricted to the confinement of the circle. Now the accumulated smoke seemed to pulse and strain against the restrictions of the circle, beginning to seep out through the door she had opened in the magic.

  Having returned the athame to the table, George picked up the thurible from the pentagram-inscribed platter and handed it to Magdalena. She took its wooden handle and was surprised at how warm the wood had become. He then handed her the short staff. Picking up the chalice with the dregs of the spiced wine in his left hand and the bottle of water in the other, he turned and led the way through the opening in the magic circle. As they stepped out of the circle, the smoke—like water bursting from a crack in a dyke—flowed into the rest of the apartment and swirled about them, hovering like a cloud of swarming bees. The hot thurible that Magdalena carried had exhausted the frankincense, all its fragrance and smoke having poured into the air. The coals, glowing red beneath a veneer of ash, winked and were slowly breaking apart into smaller chunks.

  George walked slowly and stately the few steps through the small living room area to the door leading out to the building lobby. He paused and the door, which Magdalena did not recall leaving ajar, swung open. He stepped into the lobby, Magdalena following him. The incense smoke continued to envelop them, moving with them as they walked and slightly obscuring Magdalena’s vision.

  The lobby was dark, the light evidently turned off again by the frugal landlady. George walked confidently in the dark, though, and out into the street. Magdalena had not seen how he opened the door, given that both his hands were full, but the hovering smoke and lack of light conspired to make it difficult for her to see.

  There was no one on the street. The night was surprisingly quiet. It was dark as well, the buildings blocking the moonlight and casting deep shadows all along the street. George stepped into the middle of the street and then stood still. Magdalena stood beside him and, following his lead, faced away from her building at an angle.

  George lifted the chalice to the sky. “In the Lord’s hand there is a cup,” he muttered, “full of spiced and foaming wine, and the wicked of the earth shall drink and drain the dregs.” Then he bent his knees, squatting close to the surface of the road, and turned the cup upside down. The remnants of the spiced wine fell onto the cobblestones and began to seep between them. Magdalena, in her mind’s eye, thought she could see the city as if from a great height. Crowds seemed to be running through the streets, as if attempting to escape the reach of something she could not see.

  Even as she watched the panic-stricken crowds in her vision, she was aware that George had stood and held the cup out before him, upright. He turned the water bottle so that the water poured into the cup and over its brim, splashing onto the cobblestones and flowing away down the slight incline which, if someone were to walk along and follow it, would eventually lead to the bridge.

  Again Magdalena was aware both of herself standing in the empty street with George and of herself looking down on the city from some astral vantage point. She saw cascades of water bursting as if from the great deep, threatening to engulf the city even as she also saw the rivulets coursing between the cobblestones of her own street. She saw torrential rains falling on cities she did not recognize. She saw great surging waves break against the cliffs that overlooked the Old and Little Towns. She saw the waves knock aside buildings that stood in their way. She saw the Kampa and “Little Venice” neighborhoods along the riverbank vanish beneath the waves.

  George seemed to pour the water for much long
er than Magdalena expected it would last, but finally the bottle seemed to be empty and he turned the chalice to shake the last few drops onto the road. The floodwaters of her vision began to calm, though not subside.

  “Cast out the coals of judgment upon the earth,” George quietly instructed Magdalena. He went on, seeming to quote a text he knew by heart: “The angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and cast it onto the earth.”

  Magdalena squatted down as he had down earlier, and emptied the hot coals and ash from the thurible onto the cobblestones of the old street. Hissing and spitting steam where they encountered the spiced wine or water that had been poured out, the coals tumbled along the cobblestones and through the cracks to the earth beneath. They continued to glow red, cracking into smaller pieces as they bounced and tumbled along. In her waking dream, she saw flaming hailstones crash into the city, exploding as they demolished Renaissance palaces and Romanesque churches alike. She saw several large falling stars streak towards the bridge and heard the explosions as the bridge tumbled into pieces beneath the river.

  “Beat the road with your staff.” Still squatting, she heard George’s voice above and behind her but as if from a great distance. “Beat a circle around us and knock the coals as far along the road as you can.”

  Magdalena, moving as if in a dream, gently tapped the street with the stylized mushroom-like head of her staff, walking in a circle around George as she did so.

  “Again. With more strength,” the priest told her. She did so, hearing the sound of the wood against stone in the quiet of the late night.

  “Once more. With ferocity,” the coven master growled. She repeated the circuit, throwing aside caution and unconcerned that the wood might break from the force of her blows. The sharp cracks the wand made against the cobblestones ricocheted up and down the hillside. Then, remembering his first instructions, she swung at the coals that still winked in the night and sent them sailing further down the hill. Some rolled into a gutter and were quickly extinguished by the mud there while others, coming to rest in the middle of the street, slowly died in the night. She was certain, even as she was moving along the street, that massive, boulder-size coals were shooting out of the ruins of the bridge and causing havoc in ever-widening circles around the city. As she swung the staff, she was also dimly aware that the cloud of smoke that had remained about them slowly began to dissipate over the city. Fragrant threads and wisps of smoke slithered over the roofs of the Little Town and across the river, twining themselves around the statues of the bridge—it was back again, though she did not understand how it had been restored—before finally reaching the Old Town and the square where Fen’ka had met her end so many centuries before. Some few coils of smoke crawled towards the cathedral and castle complex above them.

  “Well done.” George’s eyes were closed but he seemed pleased. Magdalena found herself pleased as well. Pleased that he was pleased.

  Magdalena stood in the street, holding her staff and the empty thurible. Particles of charcoal glittered among the cobblestones that were untouched by the splashing water or the spiced wine. She saw—no, felt—that while she had opened a door for herself into a larger world when she had conjured Flauros and Halphas, she and George had now opened a much larger door for an entity, a presence—Svetovit? Was that what George had called it?—to step through into this world.

  In the cold, dark water of the river a cloud of mud and small particles of debris rose up from the river bottom and swirled in the murky depths beneath the Charles Bridge. It twisted and undulated like a sea serpent hunting for its prey. An intense chill radiated out into the water surrounding the cloud of filth, a chill that differed in kind and not simply degree from the cold river water. A particular stench began to seep into the river from the evil cloud as well, a stench that would go unnoticed by almost all the living but assailed the dead trapped in Jarnvithja’s gloomy domain. The cloud burst like a filthy pustule, the debris and mud spewing across the breadth of the river and then slowly settling down again onto the bottom of the mighty Vltava. As the loathsome cloud collapsed, it released the stench into the river. It was the stench of evil enchantment and black magic, the reek of mystical perversion and corruption. As it trickled out into the current, the dead recoiled from it and scrambled up, as close as they dared, towards the surface of the water to escape the tentacles of the cursed odor.

  But Fen’ka, lurking in the crevices of the lowest reaches of the riverbank, detected the odor and lifted her face towards the direction it was coming from. Of all the scents and fragrances and odors that had drifted through the river’s water over the centuries since her ashes had been deposited in the river, this seemed to her the most refreshing fragrance she had ever experienced. She turned to Jarnvithja beside her. The troll and the dead woman smiled at each other and nodded.

  “They have done it,” Fen’ka whispered, relishing the words. “They have done it. They have called Svetovit, Jarnvithja. Magdalena has done what I asked of her. She answered my call and believed me, Jarnvithja! She believed me and has called Svetovit!”

  Just as the scent of frankincense had dipped and swirled above the coals in Magdalena’s thurible before she had cast the burning coals from it onto the streets of Prague as a judgment against it, now another scent dipped and swirled in the breeze above the city. This scent, far more sinister than frankincense yet virtually undetectable by mortals, curled through the air as it plummeted and rose by turns. High above the cathedral there was a burst of power in the clouds like a stone thrown into a pond. Ripples of power, like those that radiate across the surface of the pond from the impact of the stone, shimmered across the night. Ancient metaphysical barriers wheezed and groaned like wooden castle gates assaulted by the battering rams of an enemy horde. Behind those barriers, Svetovit heard them creaking as the foul scent tickled his nostrils. The scent was seeping through the cracks in the barriers, slipping under and around them to reach him. He smiled in the darkness, delighted by the sighing of the barriers under assault. He thought he could hear their hinges squealing like rusty iron that had not been opened for hundreds of years.

  “The time has come.” His thoughts muttered like distant thunder. He raised his left hand in a fist and smashed it against the already strained barriers that stood between him and Prague.

  PART 2: RISING

  The Magician

  (Thursday, August 8–Friday, August 9, 2002)

  E

  lizabeth wandered the streets of the Little Town of Prague. She had said good night to Alessandro in the hotel lobby, having given him a quick kiss on the cheek. They had been flirting on the Charles Bridge when he seemed suddenly taken ill and had retreated to his room for the night. But she was awake. She was hungry.

  She made her way back out into the night air. Prague was surprisingly lively. People filled the streets despite the hour. She stood in the darkness and breathed deeply. She knew the air at this time of year was humid but the city smelled remarkably fresh. She had never been to Prague and was eager to enjoy the delights it offered. She made her way back to the Charles Bridge.

  Jazz was still playing at the other end of the bridge, the music swirling through the air. Couples walked along the bridge while small knots of tourists stopped to admire the views of the brightly illuminated castle from the causeway. Some people made their way to the base of St. John’s statue to rub the brass plates for luck. Teenage boys whooped and hollered, darting between the more staid adults. Elizabeth stepped onto the bridge and into the happy stream of humanity making their way through the night.

  She walked along the bridge a short distance and then made her way down a staircase leading to a cobblestone plaza spread out along the river. The plaza was less crowded than the bridge, but the doors to the taverns and restaurants all stood open, filling the plaza with laughter and chatter.

  She strolled along the plaza, smiling at the people she passed. Several of the men paused and smiled in return, nodding their acknowledgemen
t of her presence to the consternation of their girlfriends and wives.

  “Interesting,” she said to herself. “Several interesting possibilities here, but… No, none are quite right.” She paused and closed her eyes. She breathed deeply and caught the fragrance she was searching for. The whisper of a scent beckoned her and she followed it, continuing unhurriedly through the plaza and into the grassy park area beyond. The river was always beside her as she walked along the dark path. Fewer people were along the river here, all couples arm in arm in the moonlight. As she passed, nearly all the men turned their heads without even being aware there might be a choice to do otherwise.

  Then she saw the one she sought ahead.

  A man sat alone on a park bench, hunched forward with his elbows on his knees, leaning towards the water. He was in his mid-thirties, and swarthy. The sports jacket he wore was stretched tight across his broad shoulders. She made her way to his side and sat beside him. She put her elbows on her own knees. Their shoulders brushed.

  Startled, the man looked up at Elizabeth. She could see his eyes glitter.

  “Hello,” she purred in her Irish accent. “Do you speak in English?”

  “A bit,” he acknowledged, smiling in return. The rough stubble on his cheeks was darkly etched in the stark light of the streetlamp beside them. This close to him and at this angle, Elizabeth could see that the top buttons of his shirt were undone. Elizabeth shook her long tresses to catch his attention.

  “Where are you from?” she asked.

  “Turkey,” he answered, his English decorated with the ripple of an accent. “Istanbul. You?” He pulled a cigarette pack from a pocket and offered her one.