The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,246

feel their hands as they lifted him onto some kind of stretcher and carried him out of the chamber. Soon he heard the strange litany again as they neared the underground hall. Valentin smelled burnt oil and smoke, a lot of smoke. He couldn’t cough or his voice would give him away.

The men set him down, and the chanting stopped.

“We’ll catch that scoundrel soon, I swear!” hissed someone not far from Valentin. The voice reminded him of a snake. “What a pity the cripple never told me that Faust’s assistant was with him. My birds need food, and he’s a handsome young man. But that doesn’t matter now. All that matters is the last ritual—the third sacrifice.”

Valentin held perfectly still. When he’d sent word to the man named Tonio del Moravia a few hours beforehand that he was bringing Faust to the agreed place, he hadn’t mentioned anything about Karl Wagner. He wasn’t sure why—a whim, one last tiny attempt of resistance against the enormously powerful, inexplicable evil. Who was Tonio? A madman who had gathered followers who were just as mad as him, or was he more than that? In the few conversations Valentin had led with him at night in some foggy alleyway, he hadn’t come any closer to figuring out the man’s mystery. Something incredibly cold radiated from him; he seemed like an ancient reptile in a human body. Only his eyes had glowed.

Who are you?

Valentin had hoped to learn the answer before his death. But then he realized that he didn’t need any more answers after death, because there would be no more questions. Nothing mattered anymore. Nothing but Greta, the girl he loved like his own daughter, the girl who had enriched his poor, pathetic life a thousandfold for the last few years. Images started to appear before his mind’s eye, giving him strength.

Greta laughing on a swing, her little hands clasping the hemp ropes tight, her legs dangling . . . Greta with a bleeding knee snuggling up to him . . . Greta with her doll on her lap, her mouth smeared with honey . . . Tell me a story, Uncle Valentin! Just one more story before bedtime—please!

He wanted to leave this life with those images in his mind.

The litany rose again, and Valentin heard the snake’s voice above the chanting.

“O Mephistophiel, O Satanas, O Diabolos, O Larua . . .”

Valentin no longer trembled; his body and mind felt calm. He was no longer afraid, because he knew that his life had had meaning. And that he wasn’t dying for nothing. Because of him, Greta would live, and she’d even have a father. More memories rose to the surface; there were so many of them.

Greta, stark naked in a wooden tub, giggling, her little arms stretched out for him . . .

“O Samael, O Azazel, O Beelzebub . . .”

Greta and him on a horse, riding together across the fallow fields outside Nuremberg, and she laughs—oh, how she laughs!

“O Iris, O Scheitan, O Urian . . .”

Greta dancing for him, spinning around, her dress a whirling circle . . . Her laughter . . . oh, her ringing laughter . . .

“O Lucifer, accept the third sacrifice!”

Something was driven deep into Valentin’s chest, but he felt no pain, only a pleasant warmth spreading all through his body.

He laughed as his soul traveled heavenward.

Far down below, in a world that was no longer his, someone screamed out loud with rage and disappointment, and Valentin knew that the devil had lost the game.

Johann was dreaming.

The August sun fell on him warmly from a cloudless blue sky; bees and flies buzzed around him, and the ears in the grain field were brushed by a wind as gentle as if someone were stroking his cheek. Margarethe was lying next to him, singing the old, familiar nursery rhyme.

Growing in our garden are parsley and thyme; our Gretchen is the bride, she’s looking so fine . . .

Together they dozed in their favorite hiding place in the rye field, not far from the walls of Knittlingen. The grain was trampled flat in a circle around them, and in the center stood the weathered stone cross.

“Will you marry me when we’re grown up, Johann?” asked Margarethe softly in his dream. “Will you look after me? Now and forever?”

Johann smiled and squeezed her hand. “I promise I will look after you. Now and forever.”

“Just like you . . .” Margarethe hesitated. She brushed a strand of flaxen hair from her