And Reynevan had to count on something—and fast. He realised that two days had passed since his last meal. He hadn’t eaten for forty-eight hours. And hardly drunk anything.

“Visum repertum, visum repertum, visum repertum. Cabustira, bustira, tira, ra.”

When he repeated the spell, it achieved no more than he had the first time. The walls of the oubliette—or as Bergow preferred, the hladomorna—glowed like phosphorous, emitting light like rotting wood in the forest and confirming the depressing truth that the dungeon was indeed set about with a powerful protective spell. However, the skeleton chained to the wall, in whom Reynevan must have seen Rupilius the Silesian, the illustrious theoretician and practitioner of the sorcerer’s arcana, wasn’t shining or giving off the tiniest glow. Illustrious or not, Rupilius in the form of a merrily grinning skeleton, unlike the walls, wasn’t emitting any magic, which was incontrovertible proof that the works of sorcerers endure longer than they themselves do.

Reynevan somewhat lost heart, since he had harboured a faint hope that the periapt would enable him to detect something that would prove useful in his situation. For, being a sorcerer, Rupilius could have smuggled some magical objects into the dungeon, for example in his rectum, as the mage Circulus had done when he was imprisoned in Narrenturm. But Rupilius the Silesian had brought nothing with him. And there he was, common sense suggested, sitting in the corner and grinning among his other decaying and crumbling bones. If he’d had other options, common sense went on, it wouldn’t have ended like that.

After telling common sense to shut up, Reynevan put the amulet to his lips, then to his forehead.

“Visum repertum, visum repertum, visum repertum…”

His hands were trembling slightly and he had difficulty uttering the whispered spell. He was famished. And dreadfully thirsty. A strange, very unpleasant feeling began to grip him.

The feeling of desperation.

He didn’t know how much time passed, how long he’d been imprisoned. He was quickly losing track and would fall asleep from time to time, now in a nervous and short-lived doze, now in a deep sleep, close to lethargy. His senses beguiled him, he heard voices, whining, moaning, the scraping of stone against stone, the clanking of metal against metal. Far away—he could have sworn—a girl was laughing. He could have sworn that somebody was singing in what sounded like German.

The forests are all a-greening

Why is my beloved far away?

He rode away on his horse

Oh, who will love me?

Typical symptoms, he thought. Hunger and dehydration are beginning to take effect. I’m losing my mind. I’m going mad.

And suddenly something occurred that confirmed to him that he was indeed mad.

The opposite wall of the dungeon moved.