“Thank you indeed, son, thank you,” said the neufra, overcoming the trembling of her hand. She took a sip and her amber eyes immediately brightened up. “Well, let’s get down to business. Tell me what’s vexing you.”

The Wallcreeper sighed. Or pretended to sigh. He didn’t know his actual mother. She died in a Magdalene nunnery in Lubáň giving birth to him. He was brought up successively by a poorhouse, a parish school and the Wrocław streets. And finally, by Kundrie. A neufra. An elemental. One of the Longaevi, an Eternal.

Kundrie had never revealed her real age to the Wallcreeper, but it was known that she had been living in Wrocław for around two hundred years, bearing in mind she remembered the Mongol invasion. The Wallcreeper met her when he was seven years old. The encounter had been unforgettable. It occurred in the Fish Market, where the Wallcreeper used to hang around, hoping to steal something or catch a cat to torture. In order to exist among humans, Kundrie concealed herself under a powerful illusory spell. From a small child, the Wallcreeper revealed magical gifts and extrasensory powers; the illusion had no power over him and he saw the neufra in her natural form. The sight of her shocked and terrified him. A thing that looked like a cross between a rotten willow tree and a two-legged lizard and plodded around the middle of the Fish Market, shedding stinking lumps, was a little too much for a seven-year-old. Even a seven-year-old like the Wallcreeper.

The intensity of that first impression influenced the power of their later friendship. The neufra—a predatory and extremely cruel creature—was fascinated by the boy’s cruelty. And his magical gifts. She did much to refine them and was able to do so by drawing on knowledge that extended back to the very earliest beginnings. The Wallcreeper was an eager student. At the age of eight, he was a psionic and used simple magic and telepathy with ease, able to cast spells—including spells of sickness—and turn food bad. By ten, he was able to expertly use higher magic and goetia—with whose help he learned how to kill. By the time he was twelve, he was a proficient enough mage to take up studies at Alumbrados, the school located in Aguilar near Cordoba. He was sponsored by Duke Konrad of Oleśnica, at that time a seminarist in Wrocław. The duke and seminarist suddenly recalled the Wallcreeper. For reasons that the Wallcreeper wasn’t party to, but could guess at.