“I know what I’m saying.” Circulus cut him off. “I am a recidivist. A Haereticus relapsus, understand? I won’t endure the torture, I’ll incriminate myself… The stake is a certainty. Which is why…”

He gestured towards the symbols on the wall.

“Which is why,” he repeated, “I’m doing what I can, as you see.”

A day passed before Circulos revealed what he was doing. A day during which Scharley expressed his categoric disapproval of Reynevan’s new friendship.

“I don’t understand why you’re wasting your time talking to that madman,” he concluded.

“Oh, leave him alone,” said Horn, siding unexpectedly with Reynevan. “Let him talk to whoever he wants to. Perhaps he needs a change?”

Scharley waved a hand dismissively.

“Hey!” he shouted as Reynevan walked off. “Don’t forget! Eight and forty!”

“What?”

“The sum of the letters in the word ‘Apollyon’ multiplied by the sum of the letters in the word ‘moron’!”

“I’m devising,” Circulos lowered his voice, looking around vigilantly, “a plan to get out of here.”

“Using…” Reynevan also glanced around, “magic, correct?”

“There’s no other way,” the old man stated unemotionally. “At the very beginning, I tried bribery. They beat me. I tried to threaten them. They beat me again. I tried pretending to be a complete halfwit, but they weren’t taken in. I would have feigned being possessed by the Devil, and if old Dobeneck, the Wrocław prior at Saint Adalbert, were still the Inquisitor, I might have succeeded. But that new, young one, he can’t be fooled. What’s left to me?”

“My question exactly: what?”

“Teleportation. Travelling through space.”

The following day, Circulos, glancing around vigilantly to check that no one was eavesdropping, introduced his plan to Reynevan, supporting it, of course, with a long lecture about the theories of sorcery and goetia. Teleportation, Reynevan learned, was quite possible, easy even, on condition, of course, that one sought the assistance of a suitable demon. Circulos revealed that there were several such demons, and that every decent book of spells offered its own kinds. Circulos’s lengthy studies, Reynevan learned eventually, inclined him to follow the instructions of The Grimorium Verum. And The Grimorium Verum recommended the summoning of the demon Mersilde.

“But how to summon him?” Reynevan dared to ask. “Without instruments, without an Occultum? The Occultum must meet a series of conditions, the creation of which in this filthy dungeon would—”

“Orthodoxy!” Circulos interrupted angrily. “Doctrinairism! So harmful in empiricism, so narrow-minded! The Occultum is a trifle when one has an amulet. Am I right, Master Formalist? Of course I am. Ergo, here is the amulet. Quod erat demonstrandum. Just look.”

The amulet turned out to be an oval disc of malachite, more or less the size of a farthing, engraved with glyphs and symbols filled with gold, of which the most conspicuous were a serpent, a fish and a sun inside a triangle.