from this place,” Rhion said, as they settled down in the darkness of one of the sheds and, after a muttered prayer, the old Kabbalist set to the bread and cheese and apples in the box like a starving wolf. “When he hears about the hue and cry for you, it’s a good bet he’ll take steps to keep the camp guards away, as well. My guess is von Rath knows about the place already but I suspect Poincelles doesn’t think so—and anyhow he’s stolen too much of the Occult Bureau’s property to furnish it to want anyone looking too closely.”
“The tzadik Akiba ben Joseph, the greatest of the rabbis, says that it is no sin to eat food that is unclean to save one’s life, for your life is the Lord’s property, which it is incumbent upon you to preserve... and by extension I suppose that it is also permissible to hide behind the demon Lilith’s skirts in there.” The old man jerked one greasy thumb at the dark bulk of the barn against the star-powdered sky. “But that place makes me want to wash more than nine months in the pigsty of their camp.”
“Amen,” Rhion muttered, drawing his knees up and wrapping his arms around them. Poincelles’ spells, curses, and protective demon seals might have no power in them, but the dirty magics done in the barn clung to the place like a stench. “It’s only for a couple of nights.”
The old man grunted, wrapped what was left of the food again in its papers, and replaced it in the box. “There. If I eat more I’ll be sick. Now—what are they doing in that place? That Schloss, that lodge of theirs... I saw the truck go out last week, and twice the week before, taking people they’ve been keeping, like me, apart from the others, people they don’t put onto the lumber gangs or send to the mills to work. And the ones who work in the crematoria whisper about how they came back...”
“Have you ever heard of a group called the Adepts of the Shining Crystal?”
Cocking his head, Leibnitz thought about it for a moment, then frowned. “No. And I’ve heard of most, at least in Europe, though in America...” He shrugged resignedly, leading Rhion to wonder what this America, whose participation in the war von Rath seemed to fear, was really like. “They’re crazy over there.”
Sitting in the blackness of the shed, his back to one of its splintery doorposts, Rhion spoke of all that had befallen him since he had received, in the rainy solitudes of the Drowned Lands, word that Jaldis had wanted to see him in Bragenmere. He had meant to give a swift and concise encapsulation, but it didn’t turn out that way.
“We have the night before us,” the old man said gently, and, for the first time in three months, Rhion found himself able to talk—about the Nazis, about his unhealed grief for his old master, and about his loneliness and his growing fears. Sometimes he touched back on his original topics—the Spiracle, the Dark Well, the need to be at the stones on Witches Hill at the maximum pull of the sun-tides—but more frequently, as the Dog Star rose burning above the eastern trees and the birds woke and cried their territories, each to each, in the hushed dark of early summer predawn, he found himself talking about Tallisett and his sons, about the Ladies of the Moon, about wizardry, and about magic.
“As far as I can tell magic just—just isn’t in this world anymore,” he said, turning his head a little to look down the slope at the meadow, spread out in a shimmering of water and weeds and a thin white ground mist. In the stillness and utter peace it seemed impossible that such a place as Kegenwald existed. “From what I can tell, nobody did anything to cause this, any more than human malice causes the fall of night. It happened. Even the faes are gone, the faerie-folk—water goblins, pookas, lobs, grims. It might change some day, but there’s nothing I or anyone can do to change it.”
He sighed. “I’m not even sure if the damn Spiracle will work, you know? They work on little things, but something like this... It’s never been tried. I thought of rigging up a Talismanic Resonator, which would draw on the Void itself...” He shook his head. “But aside from the fact that it would create a field anyone could