The deep blue of the sky heralded a snowstorm. And something even worse. Worse, for being unknown.

Chapter Twenty-Five

In which Reynevan makes a choice. But not everything ends well.

Reynevan avoided Frankenstein, skirting the town from the south, via Sadlno. He had a dreadful headache, but his spells weren’t working, his hands clumsy with anxiety. The pain was making him dizzy.

He rode as though in a dream. In a nightmare. The road, the Kłodzko road, part of the Wrocław–Prague trade route, suddenly stopped being an ordinary road, the route Reynevan knew well. It changed into something Reynevan didn’t know and had never seen.

In the dark, overcast sky, a cloud of dense, swirling blackness suddenly billowed, like ink in water. A savage, strong wind blew up, bending the trees over. His horse tossed its head, neighed, whinnied and thrashed around. Reynevan rode, barely able to see the road in the pitch black.

Flaming points glow in the darkness. And red eyes. The moon shines limpidly behind black clouds.

The horse neighs. Rears up.

There’s no village where the village of Tarnów ought to be, just a graveyard among misshapen trees. Crosses lean over graves. Some have been stuck in upside down. Fires burn between the graves, shapes swaying to and fro in the flickering gleam. The cemetery teems with monsters. Lemures scrape the graves with their talons. Empusas and necurats wriggle out of the frozen earth. Murons and mormoliks raise their heads and howl at the moon.

Drosselbart sits among the monstrosities, Reynevan can see him clearly. Now, after death, he is even thinner than when he was alive. More cadaverous than a cadaver, he looks like a mummy, dry skin stretched over old bones. One of the lemures is gripping his arm in his teeth above his elbow, biting and chewing. Drosselbart appears not to notice.

“As far as the good of the cause is concerned,” he calls, looking at Reynevan, “individuals do not count! Prove that you’re ready to make sacrifices! Sometimes we must sacrifice what we love!”

“A stone tossed at the ramparts!” howl the lemures. “A stone tossed at the ramparts!”

There’s a crossroads outside the cemetery. Rzehors is sitting with his back against a cross. His face is half-covered and he is wrapped in a shroud, a blood-soaked piece of sackcloth.

“The chariot of history runs on,” he says indistinctly, with effort. “No power is capable of stopping it. Sacrifice her! You must sacrifice her! For the cause! For the Chalice! The Chalice must triumph!”

“A stone at the ramparts!” croak shretls, hopping, ears flapping. “Toss her like a stone at the ramparts!”