The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,57

upstairs.

Old ashes still lay in the fireplace built into the deep wall. It was bitterly cold. Inside, too, pentagrams had been drawn on the walls, in a color that reminded Johann of dried blood. A cup stood on the table, beside a tinged pewter plate holding something tiny and mummified.

“How long ago were you last here?” asked Johann with disgust. “A hundred years ago?”

“Possibly.” The master grinned. “Like I said, it’s been a while. Let’s take a look at the second floor.” He climbed up the creaking stairs, and Johann followed. The second floor was also furnished and adorned with pentagrams. It even contained a bed, but the straw inside was rotten.

Once Tonio had looked about for a few moments, he said to Johann, “We’re leaving the wagon at the edge of the woods, and the horse goes in the stable. You bring everything into the tower.” He pointed down the stairs. “We cook, eat, and study on the first floor. The second floor is yours.”

“And the third floor?” asked Johann, noticing the master hadn’t checked above them yet.

“That’s mine alone, and you’ve got no business up there.” Tonio gave him a stern look. “If I catch you in my room, I’ll skin you like a rabbit—just like the barbarians used to do with the Romans. Understood?”

Johann nodded. He walked outside and started to lug the many crates, chests, and sacks up the hill. The master immediately carried the sack of books upstairs.

As Johann cleaned and swept the worst of the dirt and rotten straw from his room and the first floor, he wondered what was hidden in the uppermost chamber.

For the next few days they were busy fixing up the dilapidated tower. They found lengths of timber in the stable to close off the open windows. They found, hidden under the straw from Tonio’s last stay, a stash of tools, including a hammer, a saw, and nails. The master turned out to be quite handy as a carpenter, and they made good progress. They reroofed the stable, and Johann cleared out the worst of the trash.

The chimney finally drew properly once Johann had removed several dead birds and mummified rats, and they were able to cook and get some warmth into the old walls. Johann stuffed his bed with fresh straw and covered it with furs. He filled the small chest in his room with his few possessions. He also had a table, where the master permitted him to study selected books. But the third floor remained closed to Johann.

At the end of the day, they’d sit by the open fire—the warmest place in the tower. The cage with the raven and the two crows dangled from the ceiling, the birds eyeing their new home curiously and flapping their wings. Bear and wolf skins served as cushions, and the large table was covered with books, parchment scrolls, bits of cheese rind, and half-empty cups of wine. Tonio had even built a shelf, which was now filled with neat rows of books, like soldiers of knowledge.

Johann soon had to admit that the tower wasn’t as inhospitable as he’d first thought. But when the wind whistled through the cracks, howling and moaning, he thought of the tortured Roman souls Tonio had told him about. And sometimes, at night, he heard a soft murmuring and chanting from the master’s chamber, together with heavy footsteps pacing the room. It sounded almost as if the master was speaking with another person, as if someone else was in the room with him, someone very large.

Several times Johann thought Tonio was by his bedside, holding his hand like at the Black Eagle Inn.

There is a time for everything, he heard the master’s voice say. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to heal and a time to kill . . .

But when Johann awoke the next morning, nothing remained but a vague memory, and he told himself that it had been only a dream.

When they sat together by the fire in late afternoon, Johann finally received the long-awaited lessons. At first he learned more about palm reading, and then they turned to the subjects of pyromancy, hydromancy, and aeromancy, which were all elements of the art of divination. Johann took a particular liking to pyromancy. The master threw a handful of salt into the fire and gestured at the dancing flames.

“Learn to read them,” he said. “Watch how the flames crackle and lick. You can learn much from the color, too: