“Where is Svetovit?” Theo asked Dmitri, leaning over the barricade as far as he could and looking along the course of the river. Sophia stretched out over the barricade too, but apparently neither of them could make out the cloud-god in the half-light.
Sophia grasped the barricade in both hands and rattled it fiercely. “We need to get past this,” she grunted. “We can’t use the staff to its full extent trapped behind this fencing!”
Dmitri, the staff still pointing forward, gestured with an elbow at a link in the barricade. “There. It can be pulled apart there,” he suggested. Thunder rumbled above them.
Sean hurried to the edge of the water, where he had seen Magdalena and Victoria vanish into the river before dashing to their aid. He stood there a moment, knowing it was too dangerous to plunge into the water. They were clearly victims of a supernatural attack and attempting to rescue the women as if they were victims of a boating accident would not help them. He stared at the surface of the water, rapidly struggling with his memories.
“Water… drowning… what myths?” he demanded of himself. “Who—forced water to disgorge its victims?” He could think of no folktale that would answer his question. What could he do to pull the women from beneath the waves?
Magdalena struck out at George but her hands swung through the water and found nothing to grab hold of or pummel. She swung her feet to kick him away but the water slowed her movements and she felt only the water swirling around her, no contact with George’s shins. She gasped and choked, her lungs struggling to take in air. Darker shadows clouded her vision and she was afraid she was losing consciousness. His stranglehold on her throat grew stronger and tighter. He pulled her face even closer to his. She saw his rage and hatred, felt his fury engulf her. Her lungs were nearly exploding.
Suddenly a second presence plunged through the waves beside Magdalena, adding to the turbulence of the water. This other presence flailed and floundered in the depths. Even in the glimmer of the spectral light, it was impossible to see any detail or make out who or what was there.
“Magdalena!” She heard the thoughts of the new neighbor in the water call her name.
“Victoria!” she answered. “What—why—?” George’s thumbs felt as if they were about to tear through her throat. Then she heard Victoria’s thoughts gurgle and choke and she saw a vast cloud of swirling cloak wrap around her friend. It was Jarnvithja and the troll’s claws clutched Victoria’s throat.
“Now—both of you—bitches—get what you deserve!” Magdalena heard George shriek with glee. Magdalena couldn’t feel her arms or legs any more.
“I have come for you, mortal man, as I promised.” A new voice, deep and cold and as full of hatred as George’s face had been, pierced Magdalena’s fading consciousness. She was dimly aware that Victoria’s struggles and flailing beside her were quickly fading too and she could only imagine the grip Jarnvithja must have on her friend’s throat.
“We’ll both—die—together,” Magdalena realized, unsure of where her limbs—which were growing numb—were, though she could feel the pressure of Victoria’s grasp on her hand. Something rough scratched Magdalena’s palm and she realized Victoria still grasped the twine tied to the yew. She forced her fingers to move and flex, pulling the twine along as quickly as she could until the yew was in her grasp.
“George!” she shrieked in her mind, remembering Dalibor’s hands stuck to the yew. “The yew is for George!”
Magdalena heard George scream in desperation as his fingers were wrenched free of her throat. She struggled to stop from gasping in relief while still trapped beneath the water.
“You have failed, mortal man, as I knew you would,” the new voice went on. “You have failed and now you are mine!” George choked and sputtered and Magdalena imagined such sounds resulted from someone else’s hands around the Jesuit’s ghostly throat.
“Gadriel!” Magdalena heard one word escape George’s mind and the water boiled anew with the struggle between George and the entity whom he seemed to recognize.
Then Magdalena heard Victoria gasp and sputter in the water and was aware of Jarnvithja turning her attention to this new presence.
“Gadriel!” a voice hissed and Magdalena realized it could only be Jarnvithja, whom she had never heard speak. “The man is mine! His body is in the river so he has been committed to MY care!” she insisted.
“Nay, troll,” Gadriel snapped. “The man dared to conjure me and make me part of his petty schemes despite my warnings to leave me be. I promised him that when he failed, I would claim him!”
“Nay, devil,” Jarnvithja turned back Gadriel’s rebuke. “He is dead but the project has not failed! Svetovit will destroy the last shreds of the bridge’s magic… and then he will be free!” A slow and hideous chuckle rumbled from the depths of Jarnvithja’s mind through the water.
“Whether Svetovit can free himself of the shackles of the bridge is of no concern to me,” Gadriel answered her. Magdalena was aware that George was still struggling, evidently still in Gadriel’s clutches, but Gadriel seemed to be thinking as calmly and clearly as if he were simply standing and having a barbed conversation with the troll. “The man is still mine!”
Jarnvithja threw herself at Gadriel, apparently to reclaim George as her prize.
Magdalena felt the yew being torn from her grasp as George was being fought over by the devil and the troll. She could not afford to lose it or the answers she needed.
“Fen’ka!” she repeated her earlier command, gasping the words in her head. “I release—George,” she added, remembering his dismissal of Dalibor. “I release you into—the hands of Jarnvithja and—Gadriel. The yew is for Fen’ka!”
Two names came to him! Sean recalled two royal women who were drowned in mystical wells and had become goddesses of the rivers Shannon and Boyne in Ireland. He thrust his hands into his pockets and rummaged around until he found the Infant of Prague medal, which had worked its way into the bottom seam of one pocket. Dropping to his knees, he leaned over the water, holding the medal in the fingertips of one hand while careful to support himself with his other hand on the paving stones.
“Sinann! Bóinn!” he called across the water. “If you have any power here… You, together with the Infant of Prague—save them from the clutches of the flood! Bring Magdalena and Victoria back to land!” Afraid to breathe, he gently tossed the protective medal as far into the stream as he could and heard its plunk.
There was a violent wrenching as some new power grasped Magdalena by the shoulders. The yew was torn from her cold, numb fingers. With a force she had never experienced, she was shot up through the water in an explosive fountain of spray. She gasped and gagged, able to breathe at last! Dropping back into the water, her feet hit the cobblestones and she fell onto her knees, but the water was barely deep enough to cover her heels.
Victoria was beside her, pulling Magdalena to her feet, even as she also struggled to breathe. Together, Magdalena and Victoria blundered forward and nearly tripped over Sean, who scrambled onto his feet and out of their way.
Victoria wrapped her arms around Magdalena, pulling the twine up sharply as she did so. Sheets of water exploded from the water’s surface again, drenching Sean as the angry fountain tossed the yew into the air. It splashed back onto the water’s surface, and out of the shallows, clutching the yew bouquet, trudged the old woman Magdalena knew.
“How dare you?” The hunchbacked old witch grimaced and tried to throw the yew away but could not. It seemed stuck to her skin as if some resin from the leaves had permeated her spectral flesh.
“How did you know how to call me?” she demanded. “This is beyond your skill, girl!” She craned her neck forward, struggling to see around them. “Where is the coven master? Did he teach you?” She paused and peered at Magdalena as if recognizing her for the first time. “Wait! It was you who tried to call me earlier today…” She turned her twisted torso so that she could look in the direction of the castle and then back at Magdalen
a.
“The coven master is not here, is he? You have come on your own. You foolish, foolish girl! You should be with him, calling Svetovit to clear my name!” Fen’ka spat at Magdalena’s feet.
“We did call Svetovit!” Magdalena startled herself with her brave retort to the ghost. “But the coven master is dead now and in the river with Jarnvithja and you lied to me! You did not want Svetovit to clear your name. You wanted him to destroy the city!”
Fen’ka stumbled back as if Magdalena had slapped her across the face. “I would never have lied to you, child!” she snapped. “I do want Svetovit—I need Svetovit—to clear my name and my reputation. But only you could summon him, set him free from his prison, so that he could do so!”
“Then why did I need the assistance of George and Elizabeth? Why did you tell me to seek Flauros and Halphas and bring George and Elizabeth to Prague?” Magdalena demanded.
“What prison was Svetovit in?” Victoria wanted to know, and Fen’ka looked ready to gouge her eyes out.
“Yes, what prison was he in?” Magdalena prompted.
Fen’ka turned her attention back to Magdalena. “Prison is such a harsh word. Svetovit was not in prison so much as…”
“Liar!” Sean shouted. “This is Fen’ka, right?” he asked Magdalena.
“Yes,” Magdalena answered. “This is Fen’ka.”
“I thought as much.” He looked around the ground. “Ghosts are notorious liars. But Magdalena already knows that because she has seen through your lies. The real question is, how do we get you to tell the truth?”
He saw what he must have been looking for and darted to retrieve it from the gutter along a curb behind them, barely above the water mark. He stepped back beside Victoria and held his prize up proudly. It was the jagged, broken fragment of a cobblestone, washed up by the flood from the depths of the inundated plaza.
He knelt down and used the fragment to scratch a figure on the stones that looked like a three-legged swastika. “This is the symbol of Manannán mac Lir, an Irish god whose goblet could distinguish between a lie and the truth,” he explained. “Put the yew there, on the sigil,” he instructed the women. “She will have to speak the truth then.”
Victoria’s face lit up. “The truth—at last!”
Fen’ka shrieked and tried to dart back into the flood, but Victoria seized the soggy yew in Fen’ka’s hands and wrenched it toward the dry cobblestones. Magdalena grabbed hold of the yew too, Fen’ka still shrieking and spitting and struggling. But together, Magdalena and Victoria dragged the yew onto the character Sean had drawn and Fen’ka tumbled atop it. Sean jumped toward her and scratched a circle on the cobblestones around her with his sharp fragment of stone.
Sobbing and wailing, Fen’ka struggled to her feet. “Free an old woman!” she implored Magdalena. “Do not listen to your lying, so-called friends! They want to keep my name besmirched with the charge of witchcraft! Set me free, Magdalena, as I begged you to do when you first came to the bridge to answer the call of a frightened, maligned old woman!”
“Quiet!” barked Sean. “You will answer her questions and you will speak only the truth! None of your lies this time!” Lightning erupted from the darkness above them.
Theo and Sophia wrestled with the links that joined the sections of the barricade until they wrenched them apart. Together with Dmitri, they spilled into the plaza, searching the sky for Svetovit. Dmitri could hear Fen’ka shrieking.
Bolts of lightning flashed in the darkness, revealing Svetovit charging toward the bridge, accompanied by the thundering scream of his cloud-horse in the sky. He was swinging the sword above his head.
“Get the sword away from him!” Sophia shouted again. “Knock it from his hand!”
Dmitri swung the staff. His stroke was immediately answered by the wild cries of the horse, bucking and kicking its back legs against the painful goading of the staff and nearly throwing Svetovit from its back. Dmitri, hoping to make Svetovit drop the sword, swung again and knocked the horse’s legs out from under it. It skidded down the river, past the bridge, cascades of sparks showering toward the earth from its hooves. Svetovit, his leg trapped beneath the horse, was dragged along. The sword slashed a flaming gouge in the clouds, ruddy flames sputtering along the wound in the sky. The tarot eagle swooped from behind a cloud to peck at the eyes of one of the god’s four faces.
“Yes. Tell us the truth, Fen’ka,” Magdalena instructed the ghost, composing herself even as she nervously twisted the tangled string, the end of which Victoria still held, that was tied to the yew in Fen’ka’s hands. Magdalena and Victoria stepped closer to the shuddering witch, who cringed and forced her shoulder up as a shield between herself and them, as if she feared they would strike her.
“Why now?” Magdalena asked.
Fen’ka cringed and doubled over, screaming and hopping from foot to foot as if the rune beneath her were burning them. “Because he could not come before now!” she sobbed at last, the pain in her feet appearing to subside. She stood and glared at Magdalena.
“Why not?” Magdalena wanted to know.
“Because… because that girl, Nadezda her name was, rewrote the last words of my call to him,” Fen’ka answered with a grimace, her voice halting and stumbling as if the words were being pulled from her throat against her will. “She rewrote it so that rather than coming to vindicate my name as the last of the flames I was burned in died, he could only come when sixty-four generations had passed.”
“Yours was a curse to revenge yourself against Prague, not to vindicate your name!” Sean accused Fen’ka.
“Call… curse… Call it what you will,” Fen’ka retorted.
“Did you—or anyone else—try to call Svetovit before?” Victoria asked.
Fen’ka spat on the cobblestones in fury. “Whenever Jarnvithja and I attempted to call Svetovit to Prague—and we have tried several times!—his coming was always prevented because the sixty-four generations had not yet passed. But this is the sixty-fifth generation since I was burned and finally it was only the magic of the bridge prevented Svetovit’s answering my call! But the coven master found a way to poison the power of the bridge!”
Fen’ka paused, as if trying to decide if she should continue. “Not only was Svetovit able to come,” she sneered as she finally continued, “but the sword of Bruncvik was extracted from the bridge and given to the coven master.”
“That sword is the sword of Bruncvik?” exclaimed Sean, gesturing wildly at Svetovit in the sky behind them. “The sword that Svetovit is using to attack the bridge?”
“But it was made to protect Prague, not destroy it!” Victoria was aghast.
Fen’ka laughed. “But the coven master must have turned the sword against Prague, because Svetovit wields it now. It will protect him, as it must protect the one who holds it. But to protect Svetovit, it must destroy what feeble shreds remain of the power of the bridge.”
“Then how can Svetovit be defeated?” Magdalena wanted to know. “The truth, Fen’ka.”
Fen’ka laughed again and looked towards Svetovit. “Defeat him now? I think not!”
Dmitri swung the staff again, scraping the surface of the water with its power. Sheets of spray hurtled toward Svetovit, blinding both the horse and its rider. The horse, still skidding across the sky towards the castle, whinnied and neighed like a wild animal. Svetovit, all his eyes clenched shut against the spray, clutched the ribs of the horse more tightly with his knees as he tightly wrapped the fingers of his free hand in the horse’s mane and swung the sword in wild, blind circles over his head.
Lightning stippled across the sky, giving the whole scene the appearance of a stop-action movie. Sparks rained onto the river from the horse’s hooves scraping the storm clouds. Deafening thunder burst in the air.
“Sophia! Theo!” Dmitri shouted. “Do you still have the medals of the Infant of Prague? Throw them onto the bridge! They might help strengthen its power!”
Theo immediately plunged his hands into his
pockets and rummaged around.
“I swung mine over Elizabeth’s head!” Sophia replied. “Remember? That’s how I escaped her. My medal is gone, Dmitri!”
“I have mine!” Theo exclaimed in triumph, pulling his out of his pocket. He took a deep breath. “May it help to strengthen the bridge!” he mouthed as he threw the small medallion. Dmitri watched it sail toward the bridge before hearing the small clatter as it fell onto the cobblestones of the bridge’s central span.
Ripples fluttered through and across the cobblestones of the bridge, the usual solid stonework appearing as insubstantial as gossamer for a fraction of a second. Dmitri glanced at Theo and Sophia, seeing hope darting across their faces.
Svetovit and the horse righted themselves in the sky near the castle and turned to face the bridge. With one hand, the cloud-god swatted aside the eagle, which had again begun to peck at one of his eyes. Svetovit kicked the horse in its ribs, and as the animal charged the bridge, he reached toward the bridge with the sword and roared in seeming triumph. Dmitri swung the staff once more with a furious snap, smacking the cloud-devil firmly on the knuckles.
Svetovit cried out in pain and shock, dropping the sword in his surprise.
“The sword! Catch it!” screamed Sophia.
The sword tumbled through the air, falling toward the plaza where Magdalena stood with Sean, Victoria, and Fen’ka. Falling away from Svetovit, the sword tumbled blade-over-hilt in the air, reverting from gigantic to human scale. Fen’ka shrieked and cowered as the clang of it striking the cobblestones reverberated through the air. Svetovit leaned over the side of his still-galloping horse, reaching for the sword.
Magdalena dropped the twine she had been clutching and darted toward the enchanted weapon. She seized its hilt, shocked by how heavy it was. Using both hands, she struggled to hold it aloft.
Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy Page 124