Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy

by Stephen Morris

  Magdalena realized the truth of his words. “Yes. Yes, I see that. We cannot let her effort be in vain. We can clear Fen’ka, just the two of us, if we must. We shall!” A new resolve formed in her mind to continue and achieve the task she had been set, as well as having set herself.

  George finished his wine and set aside the glass, leaning forward and resting his elbows on his knees. “Now, it is important that you recall this as carefully as you can,” he instructed. “Who was in the group that met you in the Old Town Square? Who was involved in the plot to send Elizabeth back into her grave in Ireland?”

  Magdalena thought carefully, picturing in her mind those who had interrupted her and Elizabeth’s magical work with the clock. “We were interrupted by… let me think… it was Theo. He threw the salt canisters at Elizabeth. Sean was also there. My friend, Victoria. Former friend,” she corrected. “Also that Orthodox priest, Father… Dmitri. And his wife, Sophia.” George looked up abruptly at the mention of Sophia.

  “Hmm… troubling, that,” he muttered. “But Alessandro was not among them?”

  “No,” Magdalena answered. She understood the difficulty. “We knew there were two people working to stop us—Sophia and Alessandro, who had been to the synagogue, asking to get into the attic—but only one was on the square tonight. Sophia. So where was Alessandro?”

  “I know Elizabeth went to speak with him,” was all George said. “Perhaps she dissuaded him from joining their efforts to stop us.”

  “Perhaps he provoked her,” Magdalena surmised. “She may have been driven to protect herself against Alessandro.” She shuddered, picturing the probable carnage if Elizabeth, the Dearg-due, had been forced to kill him. “But if so, he deserved the punishment.”

  “Quite so. But I thought she also planned to speak with Sophia. I wonder, was she unable to keep the appointment?” George asked.

  “Either dealing with Alessandro took longer than she expected, or she was unable to dissuade Sophia,” Magdalena decided. “But it seems Sophia has drawn others into her effort to keep Fen’ka’s name darkened by false accusations of witchcraft. She must think that Svetovit and the other spirits Fen’ka invoked during her life were the demons and devils the Christians claim. How naïve!” She congratulated herself on her own sophistication.

  “Our enemies are becoming desperate, Magdalena,” George warned her. “Perhaps that is why Sophia has gotten others involved in this struggle. Or, more likely, she has become a pawn in the hand of her husband, Dmitri. He must realize that he cannot stop us in the short time that remains. The noose around the throats of Fen’ka’s enemies grows tighter and he knows he needs help. Their time grows short.”

  “How short? How is the noose growing tighter?” Magdalena pressed him. “Because we are gathering the four magical tools?”

  “In part,” George agreed. “We have the rabbi’s staff and Bruncvik’s sword, and we have disabled the Astronomical Clock. But recall the invocation of justice and judgment we performed together? How we spilled the dregs of the spiced wine and the burning charcoal onto the streets of the city?”

  “Yes.” That had been an amazing experience that Magdalena would never forget.

  “You told me you warned the doorkeepers at the synagogue that a tremendous flood was coming to Prague and that the cultural artifacts in the attic needed to be preserved, correct?” he went on.

  “Yes. I did. How are those connected?” Magdalena wondered.

  “Justice is coming inexorably, Magdalena. Fen’ka’s enemies, our enemies, know this. They know that justice is coming. They will stop at nothing to prevent that. There is a flood coming, Magdalena, a flood that they have summoned. The coming flood is part of their efforts to keep Fen’ka imprisoned by the past,” George explained. “The magic of the Charles Bridge, built by those who murdered Fen’ka to protect themselves from her wrath, has been shaken and is crumbling. But they have taken advantage of this and created a flood, a flood that is coming to wash away not only the bridge but much of the city as well.”

  “They created this flood?” exclaimed Magdalena. Fear and anger bubbled up within her.

  “They created the situation that makes the flood possible,” George told her. “Their invocations against Fen’ka—and those, like us, who support her—must have been extremely powerful, invoking powers and magic rarely invoked. It takes time for judgment such as you and I invoked to come to fruition, but it will. In order to prevent that, our opponents made their own invocations, and for those counter-invocations to be successful, the weather conditions had to shift. Their counter-invocation must therefore have reached backwards, as well as forward, to accomplish its work. Their magic reached the atmosphere and back into the early summer to make this flood possible.” He paused, regarding Magdalena speculatively.

  “Apparently, Dmitri and the others will do anything they can to stop us,” George warned her. “So it seems we must fight fire with fire,” he said at last. “Now that we know who is working to hinder us, we can more directly protect ourselves and further our efforts to vindicate Fen’ka.”

  “What should we do? How do we prevent them from flooding the city?” fretted Magdalena. “How can we stop so many people who oppose us?”

  “It will take thought. Much thought,” George agreed. “Their strategy is devious, cunning. Let me consider the possibilities overnight. Meet me downstairs in the morning and we can discuss possible responses as we walk to the conference.”

  She stood, understanding that she was being dismissed by the master. “Shall I leave the staff with you, then?”

  George reflected on this before answering. “For the time being, I think that would be best. Leave the staff here. Take your chalice home, though. I doubt our enemies will dare try to enter your apartment again. But you should protect yourself, Magdalena.” He went to his luggage and rummaged about in it, pulling something out and returning to Magdalena at the door.

  “Take this,” he told her. “Hang it in your apartment, near the door or windows. It will keep unwelcome intruders out.” He leaned toward her and she offered her cheek for a kiss. Then she was in the hallway, George closing the door behind her.

  She looked at the object in her hand. It was a medal of the Infant of Prague.

  “What is wrong?” asked Victoria. “Where is the High Priestess?” She searched for the vision she had hoped to see.

  “I’m not sure.” Dmitri stood. “Perhaps because we are further along the Royal Road and not at the beginning? Could that be the difference?”

  “Does the missing vision mean the power of the card was not released?” asked Sophia.

  “Hard to say,” Sean replied, though Victoria knew she had been asking the group and not any one person.

  “Or perhaps because the other was burned in the circle of salt at the Powder Tower,” suggested Theo. “Let’s try the next card here as well, but first make a circle of salt around it.”

  “I am sorry to have wasted the High Priestess card and lost its power, but I think you are correct, Theo,” Dmitri told him. “We should burn the next card here as well, within the circle of salt.” He took the next card, the Empress, from his pocket and placed it upright between the cobblestones, as he had the previous card. He looked to Victoria and gestured around them.

  Victoria turned to Sophia, saying, “I made the last circle. You should make this one.” With a nod of gratitude, Sophia drizzled out the salt as she walked in a small circle around the others, huddled around the card. As she completed the circle, her husband struck another match and lit the card of the Empress.

  More quickly than either of the previous cards, the fire rushed to embrace the card and consume it. The cardboard image blackened and disappeared beneath the growing puddle of soot across its face. The fragments of ash burst into the air as if shot by a cannon. Along with the others’, Victoria’s head jerked up and back, following the flight of the ash with their eyes.

  Two great writhing, rippling serpentine ribbons of rainbow ligh
t materialized above them. The colors flared and faded, pooling together and then pulling back from each other like waves retreating from the shore, only to rush back in again. Embracing like lovers, the ribbons of light rose in a column and then burst into a fountain of tumbling stars that showered down toward the earth but then, as if caught in some powerful updraft, the stars swung up toward the sky again.

  In the midst of the fireworks, two images appeared, facing each other. Both were women, of regal bearing and immense authority, who sat on a throne. One was arrayed in a great, flowing robe and veil and held a scroll on her lap. A strange, horned cap rested on her brow. Her expression was serene, her eyes solemn. A crescent moon was caught in the folds of her cloak around her feet.

  Facing her, the other woman was resting on the pillows of an ornate divan. Wreaths of stars and ivy crowned her brow and she held a scepter in one hand. Free-flowing locks cascaded down her shoulders. Sheaves of golden wheat rustled around her feet and a multitude of flowers adorned her gown. She seemed about to laugh.

  The two women hovered above them a moment, gazing at each other. They nodded to each other, as if recognizing each other after a long absence, and then turned their attention to the people on the ground. The woman with the scepter extended her free hand toward the earth. The woman with the scroll lifted a finger toward the five gathered around the burnt cards as she arched an eyebrow. Then both images blurred and faded into the night.

  No one spoke. No one dared to breathe. Quiet and confidence suffused them. Finally Victoria spoke the words that articulated what they must have all realized. “That was the High Priestess facing the Empress, was it not? They were both here.”

  “Which was which?” asked Sophia.

  “The woman with the scroll was the High Priestess.” Victoria was happy to have an opportunity to contribute what she could to the skills and knowledge of these academics who had spent their professional lives studying, if at arm’s length, the magic they were all engaged in now. “She with the crown of stars was the Empress.” They continued to stare in the air where the women had sat on their thrones.

  Dmitri shook himself. “We shall continue, yes?” he asked at last. “We do have a task at hand to complete,” he reminded them. The others nodded. As they set out down the Royal Road, Sophia sprinkled the precious white crystals onto the roadway.

  The street curved gently as it led them back toward the Old Town Square but there were no intersections to cross or sharp turns in the road. Sophia and Victoria took turns pouring salt onto the road, the men taking turns carrying the bags.

  “Wait a moment!” exclaimed Sean. “This building. This building here!” He pointed to a building on their right with a broad, gently arched doorway. A small plaque identified it with two numbers, one red and one blue. “When Hron led us on the tour of the Old Town our first evening here, he pointed this out as the residence of a Queen Eliška, related somehow to the Queen Judith who built the first bridge over the river. The Charles Bridge was built to replace the Judith Bridge, didn’t Hron say? If George’s intent is to wash away the Charles Bridge with a flood, wouldn’t this be a good place to release the power of the next tarot card?”

  Dmitri looked at the building and then up and down the length of the road they had come. “It has been quite a distance since we burned the cards of the High Priestess and the Empress. It seems we should burn another one along this portion of the road and yes, this does seem an appropriate place to do so, given its association with the construction of the bridges.”

  He took several cards out of his pocket and selected the card numbered ‘IV,’ putting the others back into his pocket. He bent over and found a crack in a cobblestone to insert the card of the Emperor. Victoria, who was holding the salt at that point, traced the circle of salt around them as Dmitri struck the match and held it to the card.

  This time it was the card that seemed to yearn for the flame, as it fell toward the match in Dmitri’s fingers. The fire struck the image and quickly ate a hole where the face of the emperor had been. The soot-edged hole grew and consumed the card from the center outward, the fragmentary frame of ash collapsing into the void that had been the image.

  The quivering rainbow appeared once again as the power of the card was released to join the regenerated power of the Royal Road. The image of the Emperor shimmered into sight above them, a stern-faced man garbed in the folds of a thick cloak who sat on a massive throne of carved stone. A jeweled crown glittered on his brow, sparkling in the light of the rainbow that circled him in imitation of the salt encircling the people on the ground.

  The Emperor reached out a hand toward the residence of the queen and then gestured up and down the street. The rainbow whirled about him in its dizzying dance, bursting into shards of multicolored light, which skipped along the length of the street as stones might skip along the surface of a lake. The image hung above them a moment longer and then also shattered into explosions of fireworks, the sparks fluttering towards the street but fading from sight before touching the earth.

  Sean was the first to break the awe-filled silence that followed. He sighed loudly and coughed to clear his throat.

  The procession began its progress along the Royal Road again, the salt gently falling toward the cobblestones. The vibration of power beneath Victoria’s feet had become unmistakable when the street widened and melted into the expanse of the Old Town Square. Now it burst out of its constrained channel of the street and flooded into the cobblestones of the Old Town Square. Tiny stars and rivulets of light coursed through the air above the street and out into the square. A distant rumble filled the air. Was it the power of the Road she heard or the roar of the near-flood stage river not far away?

  The path of the Royal Road led across the Old Town Square. The group stepped into the center of the Old Town, everyone reluctantly moving toward the body of their friend Wilcox and the Astronomical Clock opposite that marked the continuation of the Royal Road out of the square as it made its way toward the castle. From where they stood, Victoria could even see the illuminated prison tower at the corner of the castle, said to be haunted by the ghost of the knight named Dalibor.

  Magdalena had to do something. She did not know what had brought the academics to the base of the Astronomical Clock in the Old Town Square, but they had hurt Elizabeth, the Dearg-due, there. George thought they had even discovered a way to send Elizabeth back to her grave in Ireland.

  They were still in the Old Town somewhere, doing something to thwart Magdalena’s effort to undo the miscarriage of justice that had led to Fen’ka’s execution. They were trying to stop Magdalena from stripping away the lies that had killed Fen’ka and still maintained the corrupt power structures of the modern world. She couldn’t be as calm about the academics tonight as George seemed to be. She had to do something. She had to avenge her friend Elizabeth. She had to do something to stop them and avert the flood they were bringing towards Prague.

  First, she rushed out into her small back garden and gathered a few handfuls of the stalks and blossoms that grew there in haphazard fashion. Not sure what she was picking in the dark, she knew from her months of study before the conferences that all of these would have some magical effect. Then, in too much of a hurry to turn on the kitchen light, she dropped them onto the kitchen table and rummaged through her kitchen drawers in the half-light coming from the living room. She found a green candle stub, not as large as the one she had been looking for, but it would do. She lit it at the stove and fixed it to the charred wooden tabletop with a drop of hot wax. Then she took her ritual dagger—her athame—and first traced a triangle pointing north around the candle and then a circle around the triangle, much like she had done that night last spring, so long ago, when she had conjured the two spirits in her garden.

  Then she lay the athame aside and sat down at the table, also facing north. She placed her palms down on the tabletop, on each side of the circle she had traced in the surface of the table. She closed her eyes and concentr
ated.

  “Breathe slowly and deeply,” she instructed herself quietly. “Like the meditation books instruct. Slowly and deeply.” She felt her pulse slow a bit and the quiet of her steady breathing spread throughout her body. When she felt the quiet tickle the periphery of her consciousness, she opened her eyes.

  Nothing in the semi-darkness of the kitchen seemed to have changed. The flame atop the candle burned like a small star and cast dancing shadows around Magdalena whenever an occasional breeze wafted through the side window. She stared at the candle, though, her eyes unable to see anything clearly in the flickering shadows and darkness of the room. Her pupils grew large and round as she focused only on the candle’s flame and the rest of the room fell away from her consciousness. She was much more aware of herself there in the shadows than she had ever been in the light. She felt the tabletop beneath her palms, felt each of the tiny pricks on her hands from the rough, burnt splinters, but was aware of little else. She heard the sound of her own steady breathing and noticed it had become even slower.

  She stared into the candlelight, seeing the dirty smudge of the wick at the heart of the flame. The flame dipped and wavered, then grew steady and elongated as its tip reached upward, ever upward, and the flame itself stretched and narrowed. There was a breath of a breeze and the flame severed into a pitchfork of flame, its three tines struggling to remain erect, before it melted back together into one steady point of fire.

  Deep within the flame was a shimmer as colors shifted and rearranged themselves to become a vision. Magdalena saw the Old Town Square. Or at least a previous version of the Old Town Square. There were the churches and the Old Town Hall with its squat square tower and façades of buildings that looked much as they did today but were different in some fashion Magdalena could not easily identify. There was a woman tied to a stake in the Old Town Square in the heart of a fire. The woman seemed angry and defiant, proud and furious. But then she seemed to cough and choke, and her face fell forward and the fire rushed up to consume her. Magdalena wanted to look away in horror and disgust but could not tear her eyes from the fiery vision.