The rest of the evocation’s words stuck in his throat. The luminous form on the wall was now distinct enough to look at him with two great, snake-like eyes. He saw that the shape wasn’t just looking, but holding out its arms. Reynevan shrieked with fear. The terror paralysed him.

“Seru… geath!” he gibbered, aware that he was mixing up the spell. “Ariwh—”

Scharley jumped forward, seized him from behind by the throat, covered his mouth with his other hand and dragged Reynevan—now paralysed with fear—over the straw into the far corner, among the lunatics. Tomasz Alpha fled for the staircase, screaming horrifyingly for help. Horn, meanwhile—clearly in utter desperation—seized the piss bucket from the floor and flung its contents over everything: over the Occultum, the circle, the pentagram and the apparition emerging from the wall.

The roar that resounded made everybody cover their ears with their hands and cower on the dirt floor. Suddenly a great wind blew, whipping up a tornado of straw and dust which flew into their eyes, blinding them. The fire on the wall died down, quenched by clouds of foul-smelling steam, hissed and finally went out completely.

But it was not the end. For there was a great boom, a terrible boom, though not from the Occultum enveloped in stinking smoke, but from the door high up at the top of the stairs. Rubble showered down, a veritable hail of stone blocks in white clouds of plaster and mortar. Scharley caught Reynevan and dodged under the staircase with him. Just in time, for in front of their very eyes, a thick post from the door weighed down by a hinge plummeted and struck one of the panicked imbeciles straight in the head, splitting his skull like an apple.

A man fell from above in an avalanche of rubble, arms and legs splayed in the form of a cross.

Thoughts flashed through Reynevan’s head. The Narrenturm is falling apart. The turris fulgurata, the tower struck by lightning, is disintegrating. The poor, ridiculous fool is falling from the crumbling Tower of Fools, he’s plummeting to his destruction. I am that fool, I’m falling, I’m tumbling to the bottom of the chasm. Destruction, chaos and disintegration, which I have caused. A fool and a madman, I have summoned a demon, I have opened the gates of Hell. I can smell the stench of hellish brimstone—

“It’s gunpowder…” Scharley, huddled next to him, had guessed his thoughts. “Somebody used gunpowder to blow up the door… Reinmar… Somebody—”

“We’re being freed!” screamed Horn, scrambling from the rubble. “It’s a rescue! It’s our Czech brothers! Hosanna!”

“Hey, boys!” screamed someone from above, from the opening where the doors had been, daylight and frosty, fresh air streaming in. “Get out! You’re free!”