“The first and second sacrifice are complete!” bellowed the man in the robe. “The beast is awakening from its sleep—I can hear it! I can hear it stir deep in the innards of the earth. Homo Deus est!”

  “Homo Deus est, Deus homo est!” chanted the masked men in a frenzy.

  The leader held the dagger high up in the air, just like a priest lifting the cup during the Eucharist. It looked as though he was asking for the weapon to be blessed.

  “O Spiritus Mephistophiel, Madeschea, Diabola, Larua . . . threefold spirit from hell . . . Sanguis tuus, cor tuum . . .”

  Karl had given up trying to make any sense of the twisted Latin terms and names, but the last phrase he understood without a problem.

  Sanguis tuus, cor tuum . . . Your blood, your heart.

  He had a horrible suspicion about what would come next. The black monk would ram the dagger into Faust’s body and slit him open like a fish so he could tear out his heart. Dark spells and invocations still poured from the leader’s mouth, but it couldn’t be long before the dagger shot down. Karl looked around with panic. Was there no way to stop the ritual or at least disrupt it for a while?

  His eyes fell upon the laterna magica sitting on the ground, and from there to the small lantern in his hand. The flame was very weak, but it still burned. Karl’s hands shook. He had plenty of practice setting up the apparatus quickly. Would there be enough time?

  He yanked the crate closer, opened it, and pulled out one of the oil-drenched cloths they had brought along. He held it to his lantern, which had just about gone out. When the rag was alight, he used it to light the oil lamp inside the laterna magica. Then he adjusted the tube until the glowing circle of light was directly on the back wall of the apse.

  The men in the underground church cried out with surprise, and their leader broke off in the middle of his litany. Annoyed, he turned around and spotted the circle, which was hovering and flickering like a supernatural being.

  A not very human sound escaped the monk’s throat. It sounded like the angry growl of a wolf.

  Then Karl inserted the first glass plate his hands could find.

  Johann woke up and stared into the darkness.

  Where was he? What had happened? Scraps of memory returned and slowly came together to form a complete picture. Tonio . . . the underground hall . . . the black potion . . . a baptismal font with blood . . . his daughter, almost naked and lifeless on an altar . . .

  Greta!

  He shot up and was overwhelmed by a wave of nausea. He threw up and retched, and still everything around him was black. Had he gone blind? Was he in hell?

  He tried to focus on his body. The ground below him was cold; it appeared he was lying on a stone floor. Carefully he tried to move his limbs, first his legs, then his hands. He felt damp straw. A sharp pain shot up from his right hand and made him scream out. Something had happened to his hand but he couldn’t remember what. An image flashed through his mind.

  A curved dagger glinting in the light.

  He screamed again. It was strange to hear his own voice, as if it didn’t belong to him. It echoed as if he was deep below ground. He had a terrible headache and trouble breathing, as if something was blocking his nose. Why on earth couldn’t he see a thing?

  With his left hand—burnt from reaching into the glowing brazier—Johann gently touched his face and found that it was almost completely wrapped up in a bandage. He started tugging at the rags and was instantly punished with excruciating pain in his head, worse than the pain in his hand. He threw up again, and his mouth burned like fire as he spat out the caustic bile.

  “I would leave the bandage where it is,” uttered a hoarse voice nearby. “It may be dirty, but they soaked it in oil of Saint-John’s-wort to prevent inflammation. I can smell it from here.”

  Johann froze. He knew the voice.

  “Va . . . Valentin?” he said with a raspy voice. “You . . . you’re alive?”

  “More dead than alive. That monster broke something inside me. I . . . I can’t move. But yes, I’m alive.”

  “What happened?” asked Johann quietly.

  “You really want to know?”

  When Johann didn’t reply, Valentin spoke slowly.

  “After you drank the black potion, the leader cut off your little finger. He said that was the first sacrifice.”

  Johann winced. The wound on his hand throbbed, and he thought he could still feel his finger. But he knew it was no longer there. Another image emerged in his memory: Tonio had thrown the finger—his little finger that used to hold playing cards and make coins disappear—into the baptismal font.

  But that wasn’t all.

  “And the second sacrifice?” he asked quietly. “What was the second sacrifice?”

  Silence spread through the room, a heavy silence that was almost harder to bear than the darkness around him.

  “Speak up, damn it!” gasped Johann. “What was the second sacrifice?”

  “They . . . they cut out your left eye.”

  Johann groaned. He felt sick again but he had nothing left to throw up. He was tempted to touch the bandage with his hand, but he knew that every touch would result in agonizing pain and could lead to infection. He probably suffered from fever already.

  “They went about it very professionally,” said Valentin with a shaking voice. “They used proper surgical instruments—I’m guessing one of the masked men was a Nuremberg physician. I think they wanted you alive.”

  “For the third sacrifice,” whispered Johann.

  “Yes, but it never came to that. Something happened. I must have passed out for a while, but I heard shouts and swearing, and then they locked us up in here. I suspect we’re in some forgotten cellar below the Sebaldus Church. I don’t know what happened next.”

  Silence descended over their prison chamber again while Johann’s eye socket throbbed. The pain was surprisingly bearable—probably an aftereffect of the black potion. Johann guessed the drink contained henbane or devil’s trumpet, or both. That would also explain the hallucinations. Johann remembered seeing people in the glistening surface of the basin. First Tonio—or a younger version of Tonio—and then a knight. He’d thought the man was Gilles de Rais—a name that had been haunting his dreams for years. No wonder that it should appear in his hallucinations.

  “May I ask you something, Johann?” Valentin’s voice roused him from his musings. “That potion they gave you. I thought it was poison and you would never regain consciousness. And yet you’re awake, you speak—”

  “Ash,” said Johann tiredly.

  “What did you say?”

  “Ash. I ate ash. When they dragged me to the basin, I held on to one of the braziers. I pretended to stumble, grabbed some cold ashes from the edge, and stuffed them into my mouth.”

  Johann ran his tongue along his gums and teeth. He could still feel the foul-tasting crumbs in his mouth. “The ancient Greeks knew that ash is detoxifying. I hoped it would lessen the worst effects of the potion.” He added bitterly, “Even if it couldn’t save my eye.”

  With a trembling hand he felt for the bandage again. Then he adjusted it on one side until his right eye was unobstructed. For a few moments, everything remained pitch black, and Johann was beginning to think he had gone completely blind. But then he started to make out a few outlines around him. He was lying on the floor of a dark cellar, and there was a closed door on the wall opposite him. A shivering bundle lay on the ground beside him—Valentin. His old friend looked even more miserable than Johann felt. Valentin’s body was strangely twisted, like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

  “I . . . I’m so sorry, Johann,” stammered Valentin. “Believe me, I only wanted to save Greta. They forced me to bring you down here, and it had to be tonight. Something to do with the stars, some comet—”

  “I think we’re even,” said Johann, cutting him off. “You—”

  A noise made him jump with fright. It was a key turning in the lock.

  Johann took a deep breath.

  They had come to fetch him for the third sacrifice. His body stiffened and his pulse raced. He didn’t want to show fear, but he knew he couldn’t prevent it. Hopefully his sacrifice would at least save Greta.

  “God is great and powerful,” he uttered instinctively. “God, give me strength . . .” He realized he hadn’t prayed for his own immortal soul in a very long time. Perhaps now was a good moment to start.

  “The Lord is my shepherd,” he started. It was the psalm that had comforted so many dying and frightened men before him. “I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures—”

  “Doctor, it’s me!”

  Johann broke off and turned his bandaged head to the door.

  There were no masked men, no insane devil worshippers, no Tonio.

  Just Karl Wagner.

  His assistant’s outline was stark against the light of a torch from behind him.

  What on earth? Johann thought. For the first time he wondered whether God might be a real person made of flesh and blood, standing in front of him in the shape of Karl.

  His jerkin was filthy and torn, his hair looked ruffled and wild, and in his hand he was holding Valentin’s key ring.

  “One of them was for this door,” he said with a tired smile. “First one I tried. Lucky I took this when we climbed into the prison.” He looked back down the dark corridor nervously. “I don’t think we have much time. They’ll return for you soon.”

  Johann’s throat was making a rattling sound. After a few moments he realized that he was trying to laugh—a circumstance so strange given their situation that he thought he must be dreaming.

  “My God, boy—heaven sent you!” he exclaimed eventually.

  “I have to agree with you for once,” replied Karl. “I disrupted that horrific devil’s mass with an image of our savior. Jesus Christ inside a glowing circle of light—the leader of those Satanists wasn’t overly thrilled. It didn’t take them long to discover the laterna and destroy it, but at least they had to pause their ceremony for a while to search for me.”

  “And now you have come back,” mumbled Johann. “You could have fled.”

  Karl lowered his eyes. “I still owed you something, remember? I think now I’ve earned the right to get back my letters.”

  “You certainly have.” Johann struggled to his feet, and Karl stared at the bandage on Faust’s face. He hadn’t seen it in the dim light until then.

  “What in heaven’s name have they done to you?”

  “That isn’t important right now. The only thing that matters is where they’ve taken Greta.”

  “When I set off the turmoil with the laterna, some of those masked madmen took the girl away.” Karl hesitated. “That creepy fellow at the front shouted something about taking her up to the church.”

  “Probably the Sebaldus Church. I guess they want to keep Greta as a pawn,” said Valentin from his corner. He moaned softly. “They’ll only let her go once the third sacrifice has been given—if they don’t simply kill her as an undesirable witness.”

  “He gave me his word,” said Johann pensively, more to himself. “He’s bound by it.” He hesitated. “We need those people to feel secure. I can’t leave. If they find that I’ve escaped, they will kill Greta or do even worse things to her.”

  He thought about Tonio’s words at the altar.

  It is the same as with lambs—the younger, the better tasting . . . Perhaps I will take her with me on Walpurgis Night in a couple of years, and we can share her.

  “Damn it!” he swore. “There must be a solution. There always is one!”

  But no matter how hard he thought, he couldn’t find one. Whether he stayed or whether he went—he wouldn’t see his daughter again. He was doomed. Down here in this hell on earth, all his knowledge was for nothing.

  “I know a solution,” said Valentin all of a sudden. His voice was firm and determined.

  “Which is?”

  “You go and I stay.”

  “And how is that supposed to help?” said Karl. “They’ll see right away that the doctor has fled.”

  “Not if I am the doctor.”

  “You the doctor?” With his one remaining eye Johann stared at his friend in confusion. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re wearing a bandage that covers most of your face,” explained Valentin. “I’m a fair bit shorter than you, but I don’t think they’ll notice in the dark. Not if I’m wearing your star cloak. We’ll stuff my clothes with straw and put them in the corner. They won’t take much notice of the dummy—most likely they assume I’m already dead. They want you, Johann!”

  Johann shook his head. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Listen, Johann. I’m dying! I can feel it. My whole body is numb, and the coldness in my limbs is spreading. I was already a cripple beforehand, but that monster broke the last few bones that weren’t broken inside me. Even if I lived—I’d be a living corpse.” Valentin gave Johann a pleading look. “All I have left is Greta! You must find her and save her. It is the last thing I’m asking of you. One last favor as a friend.”

  “I’ve let you down before,” muttered Johann. “I might do it again.”

  “You won’t let me down, Johann. I forgave you for lying to me and using me all those years ago. But I would never forgive you if anything happened to Greta. You would never forgive yourself, I know that.”

  Johann didn’t reply. His head hurt, and his eye socket and his right hand burned like fire. There was a high probability that he wouldn’t survive this. If those lunatics didn’t kill him, fever probably would. He had made sacrifices, but now his friend was going to give his life for him.

  “I’m not doing it for you, Johann,” Valentin whispered. “I’m doing it for Greta.”

  For Greta.

  Johann nodded slowly. Neither he nor Valentin mattered—all that mattered was the girl.

  His daughter.

  “I’m going to need a new bandage,” Johann said with a heavy voice.

  Then, slowly and carefully, he unwrapped the dirty rags from around his head.

  30

  RUSHING DOWN THE corridor a short while later, Johann felt as though he were trudging through a swamp. His legs kept giving way beneath him, and Karl had to hold him up. Despite the ash he’d swallowed, the poison of the black potion was still wreaking havoc in his body. Shadows would leap at him from the walls, and he thought he could hear the voice of the handsome knight.

  Faites vite . . . faites vite . . . faites vite . . .

  The only thing keeping him going was the thought of Greta.

  Before they’d gone, he and Valentin had embraced one last time, and Johann had sensed that the strength was draining from his old friend’s body. When he looked down at Valentin with his healthy eye one last time, Johann had seen himself on the stone floor. Bandaged head, star cloak, and the shell of a body, nothing more.

  He had learned one thing from Valentin: what really mattered wasn’t what could be seen on the outside, nor the blind pursuit of knowledge, of power.

  All that mattered was love.

  What use was all his cleverness if he couldn’t protect those he loved? Valentin had shown him what love was capable of by sacrificing himself for Greta. In that moment, Johann had realized that it was love alone that gave meaning to life. That was something Tonio would never understand.

  It was this revelation that spurred him on now.

  Johann staggered more than he walked. He felt as cold as ice. He wore only a thin shirt that reached to his knees; they’d put everything else on Valentin. Somehow he managed to climb up a steep set of stairs that led to another door. With one of the many keys from Valentin’s key ring, Karl opened the lock, and they found themselves in a room that, unlike all the previous ones, had a window. Early morning light fell through the bluish crown-glass pane.

  They were back on the surface.

  Shaking with fever, Johann looked around. The door was so smoothly set into the wall that it was almost invisible from the outside. A narrow walkway lined by columns led into another room. Elegant oak chests with veneer decorations lined the walls, and gold and silver cups stood on a table in the center. Karl opened one of the chests and gasped. Reverently, he held up a gemstone-studded cross—clearly a monstrance.

  “We’re in the inner sanctum,” he whispered. “The sacristy of the Sebaldus Church. The masked men probably took Greta the same way.” Karl put down the cross and looked around. “Hmm. Somewhere in here should be . . .” He opened another chest, rummaged around for a while, and, grinning triumphantly, pulled out two musty-smelling priests’ robes. “Ha, I knew it. We’ll hardly find a better disguise inside a church.”

  With much difficulty, Johann pulled on one of the robes, the hood scarcely concealing his poorly bandaged face. He was still shaking, but at least he felt a little warmer. He could tell the fever was still spreading, however.

  When Karl had also put on his robe, he gave Johann a questioning look. “And now? What is your plan?”

  Johann closed his eye. He wanted to put off the moment when he’d have to admit that he had no plan. The renowned and wise doctor was nothing but a poor, half-blind fool.

  “You . . . you said before that they were taking Greta to the church,” he said. “Did they say anything else? Any particular place—anything at all?”

  “The leader only yelled that they ought to take the girl up to the church. I guess they went into the city from here. Nuremberg is a big place.”

  Johann sighed and reached for the tabletop to brace himself. “Then . . . then let’s go into the church, at least. Maybe we’ll find a clue as to Greta’s whereabouts.” But even while he spoke the sentence, he knew how helpless he sounded.

  They walked down another walkway, crossed another room, and came to a door whose bolt had been left open. Slowly, Karl opened the door.

  The nave of the Sebaldus Church lay in front of them. The sacristy wasn’t far from the altar with the silver chest containing the relics of Saint Sebaldus. The slanted light of dawn fell through the tall glass windows and bathed the many columns, arcades, and side chapels in an unearthly light.

 

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