“What can this world offer me?” he said, raising his voice. “What can it give me? This primitive world, in which everything has already been divided up, snatched and stolen, in which now nulle terre sans seigneur. What can I be here? What position can I achieve, what power can I assume? That of a cathedral canon? Of starosta and governor of Wrocław, or—which the bishop tempts me with—governor of the whole of Silesia? And even should I become a bishop, a cardinal and finally Pope, what is that power in the present times? Even if we manage to vanquish the Hussites, their example will live on, for one cannot annihilate an idea. Others will come after the Hussites, the fractured edifice of Rome will never recover the integrity of an immovable monolith again. Kings and princes will fall like puppets, for what kind of power is it that can be thwarted with a dose of poison or ten inches of dagger blade? And the Fuggers, eyes fixed on the power of money? They’ll see money become worth less than chaff. Mages and sorcerers? They are mortal, very mortal. Longaevi? Only in name are they immortal; they will pass along with their magical power…”

Distant thunder clattered past, a counterpoint to his speech. Kundrie was silent. The Wallcreeper sighed deeply.

“Marco Polo reached Cathay,” he continued. “The Portuguese sailed to Insulas Canarias, to Madera and the Azores, and are preparing to cross the oceans. They believe that they will find wealth and true power beyond the ocean, in a hitherto undiscovered world. They believe in the land of Prester John, in the land of the Moguls in Ophir and Taprobana, and they plan to reach them. They will stop at nothing to achieve that. I, likewise.”

The neufra still remained silent, bristling and flattening her dorsal spines by turns.

“Do you know the last person to speak like that?” she finally asked, “and, interestingly, in a like context? The crazed poet and sorcerer Abdallah Zahr-ad-Dihn, the author of the book entitled Al Azif, which is an onomatopoeic description of the sound emitted by nocturnal insects and ghosts. In later translations, the author’s name is travestied into Abdul Alhazred and the title changed to Necronomicon. Which caught on.”

“I know.”

“So you also know that Abdul Alhazred desired above all else to reach the syderium, that he stopped at nothing. He went to the haunted desert of Roba el-Khaliyeh, to Irem, searched for Kadath. He died a gruesome death in the year 738, in Damascus, in broad daylight; torn to pieces and devoured by a terrible demon before the eyes of many witnesses. Doesn’t that temper your ardour?”

“No, it does not.”

“In that case,” said the neufra, rolling her eyes, “I wish you luck. Plenty of luck.”