“Separate earth from fire,” Samson’s voice replied almost immediately. “Separate with great care that which is subtle from that which is gross. And the Power will rise up from Earth to Heaven, then will descend to the Earth again and draw into itself all higher and lower creatures. Then you will possess the glory of this world. And all darkness will flee.”

“Vazotas, Zamarath, Katipa!” cried Bezděchovský. “Astroschio, Abedumabal, Asath! Speak! I summon you to speak!”

There was a long silence, interrupted only by the sizzling of candles.

“Completum est…” Samson’s calm voice finally sounded. “Completum est quod dixi de Operatione Solis.”

Neither the spells nor the names of God helped, neither Astroschio nor Abedumabal helped. The ritualistic gestures made over Samson using the athame and the boline didn’t help. Fumigation with incense didn’t help. The aspergillum of verbena, periwinkle, sage, mint and rosemary didn’t help. Both the Greater and the Lesser Keys of Solomon proved to be powerless, and the Enchiridion and The Grand Grimoire fared no better. Magic had almost destroyed the building, but Samson didn’t say another word.

The wizards of the Archangel pretended they weren’t bothered by the fiasco, saying, Never mind, we’ve made a start and we’ll see happens next. Jan Bezděchovský, who found it hardest to put on a brave face, only managed to cite several similar cases of change of personality—he had in mind among others the casus of Poppo of Osterna, the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order. Pessimism was in the air, since in that case all the efforts of the Prussian sorcerers had come to nothing. To the end of his life, until his death in 1256, Poppo of Osterna had been “different”—which no one minded, for the real Poppo had been an awful whoreson.

Teggendorf looked on the bright side, attributing the infortunium to simple bad luck, invoked al-Kindi and tirelessly told stories about shaytans, ghouls, jinn and ifrits. Fraundinst and Edlinger Brehm blamed the dies egiptiaci, the unlucky Egyptian days, to which in their opinion belonged that memorable Friday, the thirty-first of August 1425, the day of the exorcism in the Silesian Benedictine monastery. The evil “Egyptian” aura, they said, had tainted the exorcism and its results, and the matter had become singularly abnormal and difficult to reverse because of it. Telesma then remarked that nothing would be achieved without talismans and promised to manufacture some suitable ones. Radim Tvrdík, before he was shouted down, mumbled something about golems and shems.