Come Hell or High Water: The Complete Trilogy Read online

  “I’m sorry to bother you, professor, but I was hoping you might be able to help me with a question I had about something my grandmother told me once,” Magdalena began, “when I was a little girl.”

  “Sit down, sit down, Magdalena.” He gestured to the two overstuffed leather chairs in front of his desk. “I would be happy to answer your question if I can.” His eyes twinkled. They both knew there was almost nothing he didn’t know about Bohemian legends.

  She sat and straightened her skirt. She hardly ever dared to interrupt his work and had never been invited to sit in the great leather chairs. As the de facto chairman of the department (although the title rotated among the senior faculty members), his office was the grandest and most comfortable in the department; Magdalena suspected it was probably the grandest in the entire university.

  “Well, professor, last night I was remembering some stories my grandmother told me when I was little. Some I really don’t remember well, except for a detail here and there, or a name of one of the characters.” Magdalena spun a tale to explain how she knew the names she was about to ask him about. “In one story, there were two spirits. I remember their names, but not much else. I was hoping you might recognize the names and tell me more about what happened.”

  “Surely, Magdalena. Who were the spirits?” the professor prodded.

  “Their names, if I remember them correctly, were Flauros and Hel—no, Hal—phas. Flauros and Halphas. Are those familiar? Do they appear in many of the old stories?” Magdalena tried to hide her excitement as she teetered on the brink of discovering who it was Fen’ka had directed her to contact.

  The professor thought a moment. “Flauros and Halphas.” He leaned back in his chair and it creaked. His thick eyebrows knit together as he folded his fingers together as well. He repeated the names again softly to himself.

  He drew a deep breath. “Well, Magdalena, I’m afraid your grandmother must have been telling you a story she heard from somewhere else. I do recognize Flauros and Halphas, but they appear in no Bohemian legend that I know of. I would be intrigued if you remembered enough of the story to tell me something of the details.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t remember any of the details, professor.” She licked her lips. Was her ruse about to be discovered?

  He stood and walked to a bookcase on the opposite wall, searched along one of the upper shelves, and took down a thick book. He turned around and held it out to Magdalena.

  “Flauros and Halphas were two of the demons named in the Lesser Key of Solomon, one of the most popular handbooks of magic and demonology from the 1600s, although it includes much older material, some of it even from the 1300s. It describes the seventy-two demons that Solomon was able to command to work for him and gives directions for conjuring them,” Hron explained. “This dictionary of demonology should tell you more.” Magdalena took the book he offered her.

  “Just bring it back sometime next week, Magdalena. I might be needing it for a lecture I need to give this summer. I need to decide what I’m writing about.” He chuckled.

  “Thank you so much, professor. I really appreciate this.” Magdalena stood, holding the precious book to her chest. It was large and heavy, old but not tattered, and the binding still in good condition. This was too good to be true: the professor had never lent her one of his books before and this promised to tell her everything she needed to know about Flauros and Halphas and how to contact them. She could hardly wait to look them up on her lunch break. She turned to go back to the outer office as the professor walked back to sit at his desk and go back to whatever he had been working on.

  “Oh, Magdalena.” The professor stopped her as she was about to leave his sanctuary.

  She turned. “Yes, Professor Hron?”

  “You know, this lecture I need to write—that I haven’t quite decided what I’m going to write about—is for a conference we’re holding here in Prague this August. We’re not organizing it, but we—our department, here in this building—are hosting it. A professor friend of mine from Oxford is putting it together. He’s the one I sent the book you got on Golden Lane the other day. Two concurrent conferences, in fact. I was going to ask Lida to work with my friend Theo and oversee it from our end—you know, the room reservations and scheduling, facilities, all that kind of thing. But I think I want you to work on it with him. You’ll like him. He’s easy to work with. And you’ll love the conference subjects. One is about the themes of evil and human wickedness. The other is… Let me see here.” He shuffled through some papers on his desk and held one up.

  “Yes, here it is. One is ‘The Second Annual Conference on Evil and Human Wickedness.’ He held the first one last year in Oxford. The other is what you’ll really love.” He looked up at her. “He’s calling it ‘The First Annual Conference on Monsters and the Monstrous: Legends of Enduring Evil.’ Sounds like it will be right up your alley, Magdalena. I’m sure we’ll be able to find time for you to attend some of the sessions of the conference. Especially if you’re helping with registration and everything. How about it, Magdalena? Are you interested?”

  Her heart leapt into her throat. She had assisted with organizing departmental conferences before, but to work directly with a professor from the West had always been Lida’s prerogative as senior departmental secretary and she always made sure all the other secretaries knew who she was working with. For Professor Hron to ask Magdalena to work with the professor from Oxford would be taken by Lida as a direct assault, but one that she could not retaliate directly at him for. Lida would find some way to exact a price from her, though, Magdalena was sure.

  Furthermore, none of the university secretaries were ever accorded the favor of sitting in on any conference sessions. There was too much regular work in the office to keep up with and it would have appeared unseemly in any case. Secretaries did not rub shoulders with visiting professors. Professor Hron was offering her an unheard-of honor. Besides, the subjects of both conferences sounded fascinating. And the professor from Oxford was tied up with her experience on Golden Lane with the card reader and therefore with her meeting with Fen’ka. The whole thing was like a dream come true.

  “Oh, thank you, professor. I would love to do it.” She tried to not sound too overwhelmed or excited. “It sounds wonderful. Both conferences. Really.”

  “I’ll e-mail Theo to let him know you’ll be handling the details from our end. I’ll forward his e-mail address to you and you can write him and introduce yourself. From his e-mail, you’ll see the dates of the conferences and can make sure everything is entered on the facilities calendar here. It’s already mid-April, so that doesn’t leave much time for two such big conferences in August. But it should be a very interesting collection of people.” Hron sat down and went back to looking at all the papers and books on his desk, wordlessly dismissing Magdalena.

  She went back to her desk and set down the book he had lent her. She had butterflies in her stomach, both from the book he had handed her and the offer he had made. She could tell from the way Lida looked at her that the senior secretary wanted to ask what had transpired in the office.

  “Just wait ’til she finds out about the conferences.” Magdalena chuckled.

  At lunch, Magdalena took the dictionary of demonology out to the square—a broad boulevard really, Na Příkopé, closed to traffic—a block or two down the street, the opposite direction from the park where she had lunched with Victoria. It was a pleasantly warm spring day and the boulevard that opened out onto Wenceslaus Square, Václavské náměstí, around the corner was already full of tourists. She sat on one of the benches and bent over the opened book in her lap.

  It was organized according to the alphabet, like any dictionary, with a multitude of entries. It was in English, not Czech, which was one more reason Magdalena was glad to have spent so much effort learning English when she first started working at the university. Knowing English had opened several doors of opportunity for her, including working with Professor Hron. It would not hav
e been possible to do his foreign correspondence or interact with the international scholars visiting Charles University without being fluent in English. Besides, most of the books Hron passed her to read were in English. She would also have been unable to go to the tarot reader in New York if she had not been so adept at English. In a word, her life would have been completely different and she would have been trapped in yet another level of isolation, in what seemed—at least on occasion—a deeper circle of hell.

  The dictionary had entries about every possible demon, spirit, and supernatural entity imaginable. There were entries about mythological systems from around the world. Some entries were illustrated with reproductions of woodcuts or other artwork, purporting to show the spirits and rites described in the text. It was a fascinating book, one that Magdalena could have sat and read for weeks, digesting it from cover to cover.

  She finally tore herself away from the earlier pages of the book. She found the “F” section and worked her way through the listings until she found “Fl” and then “Flauros.” She skimmed the paragraphs quickly at first and then returned to the beginning of the entry to slowly devour it.

  “Flauros. Also known as Havres, Haures, or Hauras (due to scribal error, misreading ‘Fl’ for ‘H’). A great duke or general of Hell, Flauros has command of either twenty or thirty-six legions of spirits, depending on the manuscript consulted. In the Ars Goetia or Lesser Key of Solomon, he is the sixty-second or sixty-fourth demon in the list of seventy-two commanded by the Old Testament king during the construction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Following their service to Solomon, they were all confined within a bronze vessel, though they may still be individually summoned or conjured if the proper conjuration is employed. He is generally described by those who have seen him as a great leopard, although he has also reportedly been seen in human form, in which case he has a terrible countenance and eyes of fire. He is able to answer questions, although he will lie if not contained by a magic triangle (much as the one conjuring him must stand in a magic circle).

  “Flauros is also able, and willing, to destroy the enemies of his conjuror, should the conjuror so request or require. The conjuror may also gain the aid of Flauros to see through the deceptions and lies of other demons, thus avoiding temptation or even destruction. He is also known to assist other spirits in resisting or even overcoming the attempts of exorcists.”

  Magdalena looked up from the text in her lap, dumbfounded. A shiver ran down her spine despite the warm midday sunlight. Flauros sounded like a powerful but dangerous character. A few weeks ago, she would have thought the dictionary’s entry an interesting collection of old stories and legends, mostly made up by storytellers or religious leaders trying to impress or control others. Now she knew that the dictionary’s words were based on the real experiences of real people. Flauros was real, just as Fen’ka was real. Flauros was frighteningly real.

  Magdalena knew how to interpret some of the code words in the description, though. Flauros was described as a demon but that did not—Magdalena knew from her previous reading—necessarily mean that he was a fallen angel or terribly wicked, as in Christian cosmology. In the ancient so-called pagan Greek religion, the word “demon” simply meant “ethereal spirit,” whose morality could be described as good, evil, or even neutral—it all depended on the personality of the particular demon. Such spirits had quickly been categorized as evil by the early Christian theologians and teachers in their attempts to discredit the old religious ways. That Flauros was also described as a commander of the armies of Hell was again an example of anachronistic vocabulary. The ancients may well have looked up to Flauros as a powerful leader of spiritual armies, but to locate those armies in Hell (as the polar opposite of the Christian Heaven) was likewise a Christian attempt to discredit the spiritual experience of those who disagreed with them. Furthermore, Hell was itself simply the Norse name of the goddess who governed the realm of the dead and had not, in that mythological system, implied any moral judgment or infliction of suffering on the denizens of her kingdom. So if Flauros was said to be a duke of Hell who held command of demonic armies, those words could be interpreted in either a Christian or non-Christian fashion: he was one of the leaders of those angels who had fallen in their revolt against God and had been cast into a pit of everlasting fire and pain or he was a powerful immaterial spirit who shared in governing and commanding the realm of the dead.

  It was this position of his in the world of the dead that no doubt gave him his ability to answer all questions. Because he stood outside the limits of earthly chronological time, he could see everything that occurred in a single flash, whereas earthbound mortals who experienced time in a flat, linear fashion could only experience events sequentially, one after the other. From Flauros’ perspective, outside time, there was no past or future. Only the Now. Much like the Christian idea of God’s place in eternity. Furthermore, that he was said to have a propensity for lying could also be taken as a Christian association with the Father of Lies and the fallen angels’ denial of the ultimate Truth. Or it could reflect an old human experience of spirits who enjoyed beguiling and teasing their mortal clients, who never really understood the deeper truths the spirits were attempting to communicate.

  It was an interesting aside, however, that Flauros would be willing to undermine the attempts of other demons to beguile, cheat and lie to humans. There seemed to be little sense of solidarity with his fellow spirits. The willingness to destroy the enemies of the conjuror was also intimidating. Clearly not an entity Magdalena wanted to provoke needlessly; if the conjuror’s enemies were fair game, might not the conjuror herself be open to attack? She was sure that was the reason for the text to underline the importance of the magic circle even while the demon was in the magic triangle; such use of a magic circle would have been standard during such a conjuration. “I wonder why the use of the circle should be so emphasized. Anybody who knows anything about this kind of magic would know that!”

  The fact that Flauros needed to be confined within a magic triangle was something new. Magdalena was familiar with magic circles from the reading and small practice of Wicca that she had shared with her friends, but she had never come across a reference to a magic triangle before. She made a mental note to look up magic triangles in the book later.

  Magdalena glanced at her watch and realized her lunch break was nearly over. She had to get back to the office. She closed the book and stood. “I’ll have to go through everything in this much more carefully at home tonight,” she promised herself. “And take notes.”

  Magdalena hurried home and rushed through her simple dinner in order to spend the evening looking up a variety of entries in Professor Hron’s dictionary and taking detailed notes. She started again with “Flauros” and then found “Halphas.” She chewed her bottom lip as she wrote down the highlights of the brief entry for Halphas:

  “Halphas. Also known as Malthus, Malthous, or Malthas. An earl of Hell, listed in the Ars Goetia, is described as looking like a stork but having a rough human-like voice when speaking. He commands twenty-six legions of demons and is known for building towers, supplying them with ammunition or weapons, and sending or transporting warriors to where they are needed.” Halphas seemed to be interested in military matters.

  She spent the rest of the evening and most of the next looking up a variety of entries, one after the other in a kind of “free association,” one entry leading to another and that one to the next. She learned that the Ars Goetia (which contained the Lesser Key of Solomon and could be translated literally as “The Art of Cheating or Juggling,” which were Greek euphemisms for “witchcraft” or “sorcery”) had been revised and republished by the British occultist Aleister Crowley in 1904.

  She learned that such a handbook of magic is called a “grimoire,” taken from an Old French word that is derived from the same Latin root as “grammar” and “glamour.” Any book of basic instruction in almost any subject was called a “grammar” in the Middle Ages, the dicti
onary article asserted.

  She read that a magic triangle can be as simple as three lines drawn on the ground or as complicated as a magical emblem inscribed with a wide variety of symbols and images; the main point seemed to be that the triangle, composed of three points and three lines that support and strengthen each other, makes a strong fence that constrains a demon’s energy and allows no room for deception or even only partial truth-telling. It is also the essence of stability and can represent either fire or water, male or female depending on whether it points up or down. When two triangles are imposed on each other, forming a six-pointed Seal of Solomon (the official name for the figure often identified by the public as the Star of David), the image is one of balance, completion, integrity.

  She learned that facing the correct direction was critical in performing spells and conjurations. (“Maybe that’s why none of our little spells ever worked,” thought Magdalena. “We didn’t know what direction we were supposed to face.”) Conjurations of demons most often required the conjuror to face north, said to be the direction of the Devil. That made her uncomfortable, but she decided it must be another Christian attempt to malign an older practice.

  She turned to directions for a magic circle, which she was already familiar with from her Wiccan practice. She found more information on the four tools required for practicing magic: a chalice (cup), an athame (knife, dagger or sword), a staff (the proverbial magic wand), and a pentacle (a disk engraved with a five-pointed star and sometimes additional symbols). She, Victoria, Michaela, and Suzanna had made themselves simple versions of each of these things, though Magdalena was certain her supplies were nicer; she wondered whether she needed to get more professional tools to contact Flauros and Halphas.

  She stared at her notes. Why had Fen’ka told her to seek out the assistance of these two spirits? What was it about them that Fen’ka thought would be so helpful in clearing her name and finally winning justice? Flauros was said to be good at answering questions as well as destroying enemies. In a way, he was almost as military-minded as Halphas. Maybe Fen’ka had suggested these two because they could work as a team: Flauros could answer her question, “Who should help win justice for Fen’ka?” and Halphas would consider them warriors in the cause of truth and deliver them.