The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,55

wrong and eyed him suspiciously. “What is it? Is he going to become a farmer after all? No higher school? Speak up!”

“No, no.” Johann shook his head. “It’s . . . it’s nothing.” He tried to smile. “The priest is right. Your Rafael is going to become a learned cleric, perhaps even an abbot. The Lord is smiling upon you.”

The wife clapped her hands excitedly, then she hugged her youngest son tightly. “You see, I told you, darling. God has great plans for you!”

Johann felt sweat running down his forehead, and his throat was bone dry. He didn’t understand what had just happened. This had nothing to do with anything he’d read in the books or heard from the master. He thought of Tonio’s words from two days ago.

It’s important that you find your own way to yourself.

Was this what the master had meant? Johann hoped fervently that he was simply tired and had imagined the throbbing. He stood up, said a hasty good night, and climbed upstairs. In the chamber, Tonio was sitting at a table, writing on a piece of parchment in the light of a candle. Jerking shadows danced across the walls. The master looked up and eyed Johann expectantly.

“So? Did you read their futures?” he asked.

Johann nodded.

“It’s not always pretty, is it? Now you know what it means to walk on the third, dark path.” Tonio turned back to his parchment and drew strange-looking figures with his scraping quill. After a while he spoke again, but without looking up.

“When we reach our winter quarters, I will teach you more. More than you like, perhaps. Be patient, my little Faustus.”

Johann dropped into his bed and fell asleep almost instantly. His dreams were gloomy and as sticky as spiderwebs enclosing his mind.

6

THEY LEFT EARLY the following morning. The farmer had been very pleased with his horoscope—not least because it was written on real, expensive parchment. In return for his services, the famous and honorable Tonio del Moravia had received a smoked leg of ham, a keg of wine, and two small sacks of flour. In addition, they’d purchased nuts, dried fruit, salt, honey, cheese, and salted meat.

As they slowly rolled through the snow-covered alpine foothills at dawn, Johann’s thoughts kept returning to the uncanny feeling that had overcome him when he’d read Rafael’s palm. Could it be possible that he had foreseen the boy’s death? The master hadn’t said anything more about his protégé’s first experience as a chiromancer, but Johann thought he could feel Tonio’s eyes on him. When Johann had turned around to look at the farmstead one last time, Rafael had stood in the window, smiling and waving. Johann had turned away with a shudder, unable to return the wave.

They had left the imperial road the previous day and were traveling west along a narrow path. It became increasingly difficult for the horse to pull the wagon. The track was steep and in some places ran along a sheer drop into the valley below. Once, Johann caught a glimpse of a city by a wide river behind the crests of several hills, with a castle sitting on a peak above the town. But it soon disappeared from view. Snowdrifts blocked their way again and again, and each time Johann had to climb down and clear the track with the shovel. Each drift delayed them for over half an hour. Meanwhile, Tonio sat on the box seat, cursing and cracking his whip impatiently.

“We’ll never get there at this pace,” he groused. “Do you want to freeze to death so close to the end? Come on, move it—it’s snow, not cement!”

But to Johann, every shovelful of snow felt like a shovelful of lead.

In the early afternoon, they left the track near a small village and turned onto an even-narrower path, which was bumpy, covered in tree roots, and only just wide enough for the wagon. It wound through a patch of forest with dark firs and sharp boulders, some of them as tall as trees. The snow was knee deep in places, and while Johann labored with the shovel, clumps of snow and ice rained down on him from the trees, soaking his clothes. Finally, when the wagon was stuck once more and a fallen tree blocked the road ahead, Johann threw the shovel aside angrily.

“Damn it, where is this journey supposed to lead?” he railed. “To hell? There’s nothing but rock and ice here!”

The master grinned. “Well, it’s a little too cold for hell. The devil