Walter of Teggendorf, who was now getting on in years, had been a student at Vienna, Bologna, Coimbra and Salamanca, and had facultas docendi at all those schools. He was marked by an immense reverence for medicine, alchemy and Arabic magic, particularly for Geber and al-Kindi, that is, as he said himself, for Abu Musa Jabir ibn Hayyan and Abu Yusuf Ya’qub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi. Teggendorf’s fascinations found their expression in his approach to the Samson affair. In his opinion, jinn were to blame for everything. He claimed that in his current shape, Samson was a majnun, or a person in whose body a more powerful jinn had imprisoned as a punishment an inferior jinn that he had vanquished. There was nothing to be done with imprisonment like that, pronounced the German sorcerer. All that remained was to conduct oneself well and wait for an amnesty.

The Reverendissimus Doctor Jan Bezděchovský of Bezděchov was the oldest, most experienced and most respected of the Archangel sorcerers. Hardly anyone knew any personal details about him as he didn’t like to talk about himself. He was at least seventy, which, with respect to his youthful appearance, testified to considerable magical powers. It was known he had lectured at the Sorbonne during the reign of King Charles V the Wise, who died in 1380, and in accordance with the regulations, a university lecturer had to be at least twenty-one years old. The universities he had studied and taught at certainly included Paris, Padua, Montpellier and Prague; and those four definitely didn’t exhaust the list. It was rumoured that in Prague Bezděchovský became involved in a serious quarrel and a bruising personal feud with the rector, the celebrated Jan Šindel. The basis of the conflict, about which Reynevan had already heard during his studies at the academy, wasn’t known, but was behind Bezděchovský’s departure from the university and his severing of all contact with it. After 1417, Bezděchovský simply vanished. People wondered long and hard about what had become of him, Reynevan among them. And now he knew.

“Greetings, young man,” said Bezděchovský. Only he among the entire company didn’t address Reynevan by his first name. “Greetings to you, too, Master Scharley. Your fame goes before you. We heard it’s your second year with the Taborites. So how is the war going? What’s new?”

He was the only member of the company not to interest himself in politics. The old man was quite indifferent to the events of the war that occupied the interest of the whole of Prague. He only asked about them out of politeness.

“Aye, the war’s going well,” Scharley replied politely. “The right cause is winning, the wrong one losing. Our chaps are beating the foreigners. I meant to say: the good are beating the bad. I mean: Order is triumphing over Chaos. And God rejoices.”