"There's one thing," he said, now no longer addressing Corso but talking to himself. Hearing his own voice apparently helped him to think. "Something that the ancients didn't foresee, at least not expressly ... Added together in any direction, from up to down, down to up, left to right, or right to left, you get fifteen. But applying the codes of the cabbalists, fifteen also becomes a one and a five, which, added together, make six.... Six surrounds each side of the magical square with the serpent, the dragon, or the Beast, whatever you want to call it."
Corso didn't have to work it out for himself. It was on another piece of paper on the floor:
Borja knelt before the circle, his head bowed. The sweat on his face gleamed in the candlelight. He was holding another piece of paper and reading out the strange words written on it.
'"You will open the seal nine times,' says Torchia's text. That means the key words obtained must be placed in the box that corresponds to its number. In that way we get the following sequence."
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
ONMAD
CIS
EM
EM
OEXE
CIS
CIS
EM
ODED
"Written on the serpent, or the dragon." He rubbed out the numbers in the boxes and inserted the corresponding words in their place. "This is how it looks, to God's shame."
"It has all been carried out," muttered Borja as he wrote the final letters. His hand was trembling, and a drop of sweat slid from his forehead down his nose and onto the chalk-covered floor. "According to Torchia's text, it is sufficient for 'the mirror to reflect the path' to pronounce the lost word that brings light from the darkness.... These phrases are in Latin. They mean nothing on their own. But inside they contain the exact essence of the Verbum dimissum, the formula that makes Satan, our forebear, our mirror, and our accomplice, appear."
He was kneeling in the center of the circle now, surrounded by all the signs, objects, and words written in the square. His hands were shaking so violently that he clasped them together, clawlike, his fingers covered with chalk, ink, and wax. Proud and sure of himself, he started to laugh under his breath, a mad chuckle. But Corso was sure Borja wasn't insane. He looked around, aware that he was running out of time, and started to cross the distance between him and the book dealer. But he couldn't make up his mind to cross the line and stand with him inside the circle.
Borja looked at him malevolently, guessing his fear.
"Come, Corso. Don't you want to read it with me? Are you scared, or have you forgotten your Latin?" Light and shadow alternated with increasing speed on his face, as if the room were starting to spin. But the room was still. "Don't you want to know what these words contain? On the back of that engraving that pokes from between the pages of the Valerio Lorena you'll find the translation in Spanish. Place them before the mirror, as the masters of the art ordered. At least then you will know what Fargas and Baroness Ungern died for."
Corso looked at the book, an incunabulum with a very old and worn parchment binding. Then he bent over cautiously, as if the pages contained a dangerous trap, and pulled out the engraving from between them. It was engraving I of book number three, Baroness Ungern's copy, with three towers instead of four. On the reverse Varo Borja had written nine words:
OGERTNE
EM
ISA
OREBIL
EM
ISA
OREDNOC
EM
ISA
"Courage, Corso," said the book dealer, his voice sour and disagreeable. "You have nothing to lose.... Hold the words to the mirror."
There was, indeed, a mirror close at hand on the floor, amid the melted wax from the guttering candles. It was silver, old, and stained, with a baroque worked handle. It lay faceup, and Corso's image appeared in it, tiny and distorted, as if at the end of a long tunnel of trembling red light. The image and its double, the hero and his infinite weariness, Bonaparte chained in agony to his rock on Saint Helena. Nothing to lose, Borja had said. A cold, desolate world, where the solitary skeletons of Waterloo grenadiers stood guard along dark, forgotten paths. He saw himself before the final door, holding the key like the hermit in engraving II, the letter Teth coiled around his shoulder like a serpent.
He stepped on the mirror and crushed it with his heel, slowly, without violence. The mirror shattered with a cracking sound. The fragments now multiplied Corso's image in countless tunnels of shadow at the end of which countless replicas of himself stood motionless, too small and indistinct to concern him.
"Black is the school of the night," he heard Borja say. Borja was still kneeling at the center of the circle, his back to Corso, leaving him to his fate. Corso leaned over one of the candles and held a corner of engraving I, with the nine inverted words on the reverse, to the flame. He watched the castle towers, the horse, the horseman turned to the viewer advising silence, burn between his fingers. At last he dropped what was left of it, which turned to ash a second later and floated on the hot air of the candles lit around the room. Then he entered the circle and moved toward Borja.
"I want my money. Now."
Lost ever deeper in darkness, Borja took no notice. Anxiously, as if the position of the objects on the floor suddenly appeared incorrect, he crouched and altered the position of some of them. After a brief hesitation, he began intoning a sinister prayer:
"Admai, Aday, Eloy, Agla..."
Corso grabbed him by the shoulder and shook him. Borja showed no emotion or fear. Nor did he try to defend himself. He continued to recite, as if he was in a trance, a martyr praying unaware of the roar of the lions or the executioner's sword.
"For the last time. Give me my money."
It was no good. All Corso saw before him were Borja's empty eyes looking through him, wells of darkness, blank, intent on the chasms of the kingdom of shadows.
"Zatel, Gebel, Elimi..."
He was summoning devils, Corso realized in disbelief. Standing inside the circle, aware of nothing, aware of neither Corso's presence nor his threats, the man was invoking devils by their first names.
"Gamael, Bilet..."
Borja stopped only when Corso struck him for the first time, a blow with the back of the hand that knocked his head to one side. His eyes rolled and then fixed on a point in space.
"Zaquel, Astarot..."
By the time Borja received the second blow, blood was already trickling from a corner of his mouth. With revulsion Corso pulled his hand away, stained with red. He'd felt he was striking something damp, viscous. He took a couple of breaths and counted ten beats of his heart before clenching his teeth, then his fists, and striking again. Blood now flowed from the book dealer's twisted mouth. He was still muttering his prayer, a disturbing, delirious smile of absurd joy on his swollen lips. Corso grabbed him by his collar and dragged him brutally outside the circle before hitting him again. Only then did Borja cry out like an animal, in pain and anguish, struggling free with unexpected energy and dragging himself back into the circle. Corso pushed him from it three times and three times Borja returned to it obstinately. By then blood was smeared all over the signs and letters written on the seal of Saturn.
"Sic dedo me..."
Something was wrong. In the trembling candlelight, Corso saw him hesitate, perplexed, and check the arrangement of the objects in the magic circle. The last few drops were draining from the water clock. Borja had little time left. He repeated his last words with greater emphasis, touching three of the nine boxes: