George felt the blade twist as he used it to cut the widdershins circle in the air. The blade seemed as if it were attempting to pry itself free of the hilt in George’s hand.
“Careful, George. The sword seems very heavy,” Magdalena advised. George could sense her concern, and redoubled his efforts to hold the sword firmly enough to draw a steady circle.
“It was made to protect, to defend Prague,” George realized. “Making this circle is bending its power to a purpose for which it was never intended.” He congratulated himself on his skill at manipulating the power of the sword in opposition to its original purpose. He kept struggling to maintain his grip on the hilt, struggling against the strain in his neck muscles and his urge to walk more rapidly as he forced the sword to cut the widdershins circle. Still, the blade occasionally dropped and hit the cobblestones of the plaza, the iron striking sparks from the stones.
Finally, he completed the circle with as much dignity as he could. Magdalena gave him an adoring smile.
Immediately, he felt a change in the air as if all the static electricity from the hovering clouds had dropped into the space of that circle on the hilltop. Sparks popped and tiny fireballs sizzled along the circle he had drawn. He smiled at his handiwork, sweat dripping into his eyes. He pointed to the rooster with the sword.
Magdalena moved slowly but deliberately to avoid disturbing or frightening the bird. George approved of the approach, surmising that she was familiar with handling chickens. She released the latch on the cage door and reached in with both hands. Her hands moved cautiously until, at the last instant, she clutched one hand around the bird’s neck and the other around its torso. She pulled it from the cage, accompanied by its squawking and protesting.
Sean stared at Victoria, dumbfounded. Dmitri turned to her, a wordless exclamation of confusion forming on his lips.
“What do you mean, this not the end of the Royal Road? It is the entrance to the cathedral, yes?” Sophia wanted to know. “Was it not the plan to sprinkle the salt here?”
“No, she is right,” Theo hastily spoke up. “The bulk of the nave and western end of the cathedral was added to the original church, beginning in the 1870s. These doors were only completed in the 1920s.”
“We came on school trips here!” explained Victoria. She could not stop the tears falling down her cheeks. “We were taught that the kings of Bohemia would enter the cathedral for their coronation from the Golden Gate! On the side of the church!” She pointed to their right. “Now we have no more salt left to burn the card in the proper location!” she wailed in despair.
“That door on the side was the main door of the church for most of the church’s history,” Theo agreed.
Sean stared at the salt he had sprinkled on the paving stones. Dmitri glanced at Theo. Sophia hugged Victoria’s shoulders while biting her lip and gazing at the magnificent rose window above the cathedral’s doors.
“We burn the card here,” Dmitri finally announced. “What else can we do?”
“But will it be effective here?” Victoria demanded.
“We were never sure that burning one last card, without burning all the others, would awaken the power of the Road,” Sophia reminded her.
Without saying anything more, Dmitri handed the card to Sean, who Victoria watched trying to wedge it between the stones on which he had drawn the circle of salt. But these stones were set together more closely, more tightly than the medieval cobblestones in the Old Town. He could not get the card into the pavement. He looked at Dmitri, who was kneeling beside him and striking a match.
“Hold the card down with your finger,” the priest said. “Hold it against the stones as long as you can without burning yourself. We will have to hope that is enough.”
Sean nodded his head and bit his lip. “I’m sorry,” he said while staring at the ground.
Dmitri touched the burning match to the card, which Sean held against the stones with his index finger. The flames hovered along the edge of the card and then swept across the image, darting towards Sean’s fingertip. The image hovered in the flame, dark smoke curling in the air above it.
The card suddenly curled into a feathery ash, the fire licking at Sean’s finger. “Ouch!” Sean exclaimed, popping his fingertip into his mouth.
The smoke hovered within the circle of salt as the ash that had been the card kept curling smaller and tighter. It disintegrated, its tiny shreds wafting away. A black smear remained on the stone.
Dmitri looked up into the air above them, waiting.
Nothing.
“Now what do we do?” whispered Sophia.
Then the familiar rainbow of lights danced in the air above them, rippling and curling and undulating like a python encircling its prey. Colors shimmered and shifted as an image materialized in the midst of the eddying light. A nude woman, wrapped in a scarf or shawl that swirled in the wind as she danced, was holding a mushroom-headed staff in each hand. Four other figures—another person of indeterminate gender, an eagle, a bull, and a lion—shimmered around her, peripheral participants in her dance, seemingly centered within a great ribbon-wrapped wreath swinging at the end of an unseen rope. The nude woman smiled down at them, gesturing with her staves, but then returned her attention to her dancing partners. The whole scene hung in the air just above the topmost point of the cathedral doors and then faded and flickered in and out of focus before vanishing altogether.
The five on the ground stared in silence at where the image had hung.
“Is the power of the road awake now?” asked Victoria at last.
Sean pulled his burned finger from his mouth and laid his palm flat against the paving stone. Dmitri placed his hand on the ground next to it, but then the two men looked at each other and shook their heads.
“No ripple of energy, no shift of power in the ground,” Dmitri announced.
“No,” Sean confessed. “No difference.”
The others stood there.
Victoria forced herself not to burst into tears. Sophia, her free arm still wrapped around Victoria’s shoulders, held her tightly, the older woman gently shaking her head and pressing her lips together.
“We can still burn one more card before the Golden Gate,” Dmitri announced. He looked around the frightened, disheartened band. One by one, the others each turned and faced him and nodded in assent.
Dmitri and Sean stood. The small group moved stealthily to their right and around the corner of the cathedral. Another grand plaza opened before them. Across the plaza stood the grand doors that led into the central throne room of the castle buildings. Keeping close together, they made their way along the base of the cathedral walls. They passed an age-blackened statue of Saint George on his prancing horse, piercing the dragon on the ground beneath him with his lance. Victoria noticed that Dmitri crossed himself and asked the saint for his prayers. Sophia kissed her fingertips and brushed them gently against the base of the statue, pausing as she passed it.
“Here.” Victoria spoke at the same instant as Sean, and both stopped and turned to face the Golden Gate. Sophia gasped. Sean and Dmitri stood speechless.
Three great arches soared up to Gothic points, grillwork gates barring anyone who might attempt to walk up the few steps and through the archways. Within the portico created by the arches, stout wooden doors were guarded by flanks of saints and angels who stood in rapt attention. Above the arches, a tremendous mosaic of gold and colored tesserae glittered.
The breathtaking golden mosaic showed Christ the King enthroned in majesty on a rainbow, angels gathered to support the radiant Judge coming to raise the dead and save or damn mankind. Angels hoisted the dead from their graves while the living knelt in supplication before the Judge. The Mother of God with John the Baptist and the apostles soared before the rainbow throne as they interceded for the men and women of all times and places. In the bottom-right corner of the mosaic, angels delivered the damned into the mouth of Hell.
Inside the portico, two other golden mosaics gli
ttered. One showed Eve, her nude body hidden by her long, cascading tresses, with Adam on the other side of the Tree of Knowledge as the serpent tempted them to take the forbidden fruit. Opposite that, the other mosaic showed Mary and the evangelist John on either side of Christ on the cross, Adam’s skull nestled in the rocks on which the cross had been erected.
The magnificent art stunned them all into silence, as it had stunned countless others for hundreds of years.
“Doomsday,” Dmitri whispered at last, crossing himself. “It is the history of salvation.”
“No wonder they call it the Golden Gate,” muttered Sean.
“Burn the card, Father,” Theo urged Dmitri. “Everything now hangs on this.”
Magdalena pressed the rooster to the ground in front of her, kneeling and holding its throat with her right hand and its torso with her left. From its head pressed down flat against the ground, one eye stared up into Magdalena’s face. Seeming to realize what was about to happen, the cock opened its beak to call out to the dawn one last time.
George lifted the sword and drew its point across the base of the rooster’s neck, between Magdalena’s hands, silencing the black bird once and for all. Blood dribbled onto the feathers at first but then exploded in an arc that shot into the air, a few drops splattering onto George and Magdalena on either side of the fountain of gore.
“As this fire dies…”
(mid-February 1357)
V
avrinec kissed his wife as he and Petr departed for the bakery the next morning.
She set a clay bowl of coals, scooped from the fireplace, on the hearth for safekeeping. As soon as she finished, Vavrinec burst through the door, followed by a bewildered Petr.
“The river! It’s flooding!” Vavrinec exclaimed. “Everyone is fleeing!”
“Then you must take Petr and Milos and go to the house of Ryba until I return.” Nadezda stood and gathered the things Vavrinec would require for the baby. “You will need someone to nurse Milos.”
“Where are you going?” Petr demanded.
“She must tend to important business in the Little Town,” Vavrinec interjected. “It has been postponed far too long and must be settled today. Flood or no flood.”
Nadezda was surprised to hear Vavrinec explain her impending task with such certainty. She had half-expected him to object at the last minute, point out the danger, demand that she think of her family and—now that Lilith had not been seen of late—give up her foolish notion of saving the city from Svetovit. But instead, he was explaining to Petr that she had to cross the river in the midst of a flood.
She wrapped Milos in a blanket and pressed the baby into his father’s arms as Vavrinec handed Peter the bundle of goods they would need for the day. Nadezda hugged Petr tightly and pushed the hair from his face.
“I love you, Petr,” she said. “If the flood detains me, remember that. Please help Vavrinec care for Milos.” Because it was, after all, his gift of the burning stick that would make it possible for her to rewrite the curse, she added, “I am grateful for all you have given me.”
“I love you too, Nadezda,” Petr begrudgingly admitted. “Settle your business quickly and come home soon.”
She stood and kissed Vavrinec, long and deep, and hugged Milos.
“I will hurry back as soon as may be,” she promised her menfolk as they stepped out of the house for the second time that morning, the noise of the crowds plainly audible up the lane. Vavrinec looked anxiously into her eyes one last time, then closed the door and was gone.
Alone, Nadezda took the bit of Candlemas candle and lit it from the hearth, then placed it in the lantern. She set the bowl of coals to one side in case she needed to relight the candle before leaving.
Taking Ryba’s gift of the canister of dead water, she leaned over the hearth and stirred the flames and coals in the fireplace one last time. The familiar gesture reminded her of all the other times she had stirred these coals and embers, the times she had stoked the flames with new kindling, the evenings she had gathered her family around its warmth. Then she poured the dead water onto the glowing coals. “What better way to extinguish the curse than by extinguishing the fire with water that washes away curses?” Nadezda thought. Hissing and spitting, the coals went ashen and black, thick steam rising up the chimney. She stirred the coals again to see if any glints of flame remained. There was one, but it winked out as she prepared to smother it with the wet ashes around it.
She stood and looked around the room again. A thought struck her. “Have I given coals to anyone since Petr cast the burning stick from Fen’ka’s fire into ours?” Was there another hearth that contained the flames of Fen’ka’s curse that she would need to extinguish? She decided that no, no one had come asking for coals since last September.
She wrapped her cloak about her shoulders and tucked her knife and cord into an apron pocket. She had only to extinguish the bowl of coals now before setting out to confront Svetovit. She reached for the ceramic vessel and then paused.
“Dare I extinguish these?” she asked herself. “What if the lantern goes out while I climb the hill to Hradčany? Then all this will have been for naught. Maybe I should bring the bowl of coals?” But she could not carry the bowl, the rooster in its wicker cage, and the lantern. “Maybe I should leave the lantern here instead? But there is no way to adequately protect the coals from the weather and they may go out even more easily than the Candlemas candle in the lantern,” she realized. She felt heartsick and nervous extinguishing the coals, but it seemed the only way to achieve her goals. The risks, no matter what she did at this point, were unavoidable.
She overturned the coals into the soggy ashes in the fireplace. A new round of hissing and spitting erupted. New clouds of steam rose. She took the fire tongs and overturned the coals many times, ensuring they were thoroughly sodden. Red lights glinted through the ashy overcoatings and then winked out, one by one. The die was cast. There was only one way forward now.
Gathering the caged rooster and the lantern under her cloak, she was ready. Nadezda surveyed the room, one foot already out the door.
The oil lamp was burning before the icon. “How could I have been so thoughtless? All my efforts would have been ruined!” she chided herself. The flickering, dying light of the oil lamp had first alerted her to Lilith’s presence and she had lit the new wick with a straw from the fire on the hearth. She lifted the oil lamp down and blew out the wick. Satisfied that all was finally, truly ready, she set out towards the river.
The sky was quickly growing darker and the wind was growing stronger, the shrill whistle from between the towers and turrets of the houses growing louder as she neared the river. She was the only person going towards, not away from, the river. The streets were empty, as the impending flood had driven everyone away from their homes. Broad puddles stretched across the streets and small rivulets came bubbling out of narrow windows opening into crypts below the houses. Even the beggars who typically lurked near the wooden bridge were gone. There was no sign of the monks typically stationed there to collect the toll. “No doubt they think no one will dare to cross in this weather,” Nadezda thought.
Before her, the swollen river continued its tumultuous careening downstream. Waves broke against the bridge and occasionally spilled across the causeway. Standing before the wooden bridge, she could see it shiver against the onslaught of the current, but its moorings seemed to be holding fast. The wooden joists creaked and groaned, louder even than the wind whipping past the chimneys of the nearby houses. She stepped onto the bridge.
The wood trembled beneath her, the force of the current pushing against the joists. But there seemed to be something more to this tremor. It was almost as if the bridge were alive and had sensed Nadezda’s presence. The bridge seemed to be warning the river, like a dog whose fur was rising along its back and a growl rumbling in its throat as it pulled back its lips to expose its teeth when confronted by an enemy. Nadezda took another step forward, biting her lower lip. Her
hands, one holding the rooster’s cage and the other grasping the lantern, were unable to grasp the handrails of the bridge to steady herself. So she kept as much to the center of the walkway as she could.
The wood was slippery from both the rainfall and the waves spilling across it. She took another step, anxious to maintain her balance and not slip on the slick planks or drop either the rooster or the lantern. Step after tremulous step, Nadezda made her way across the bridge. The wind buffeted her face and whipped her cloak about her. The rooster was surprisingly quiet. The wooden bridge groaned and creaked but seemed to be holding fast as the river roared close beneath her feet.
She finally reached the Little Town landing and stepped onto the cobblestones. As she did, the bridge sighed behind her and seemed to visibly relax after having delivered her across the river. A tremendous crack assaulted Nadezda’s ears as a beam below the causeway broke away and swirled about, upended in the water, before being carried away in the frothy tumult.
The streets of the Little Town were as empty as on the Old Town side of the bridge. Nadezda made her way toward the Little Town Square and then up the steep hill to the castle. Lightning occasionally streaked across the sky as she neared the top of the hill. The castle had been opened earlier that morning as a refuge for those attempting to escape the river’s onslaught, so the guards at the gates into the castle complex must have assumed Nadezda to be a straggler, a latecomer who had been delayed because she had not wanted to abandon a pet rooster. One guard pointed her towards a courtyard to the left and she followed his instruction.
The courtyard was full of workmen and their families. The wealthier merchants and minor nobility who lived close by the river must have been inside one of the buildings. Aiming for an archway on the other side of the courtyard, Nadezda made her way through the crowds, careful to hold her lantern high and avoid its being jostled. Reaching the arch, she followed the wall towards her destination.
Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy Page 118