He bowed to the two princesses and put on the cloak, glad that they couldn’t see his face anymore. Galen had turned out all but one small lamp and was pulling back the curtains so that they could go out the window.
“Here we go,” Heinrich said with a groan.
When all three had reached the ground, they set off across the lawns, Heinrich moving surprisingly quickly despite his limp. Oliver almost had to trot to keep up with them, the rustling he made crossing the winter-dead lawns telling the princes where he was. When they reached the little glass- paned house at the end, the one that Oliver was starting to think of as the Shadow House, he was panting, and Heinrich was rubbing his left thigh as though it pained him.
“Were you badly injured, in the war?” Oliver couldn’t help but ask.
“An Analousian bullet lodged in the bone,” Heinrich said. “But it’s mostly stiff these days.”
“We’ll need to do this swiftly,” Galen warned them both, handing out candles. “Anyone looking will see the lights through the glass walls, and they’ll come to investigate at once. It will be a bit hard to explain what we’re doing.” He laughed.
As soon as they were all inside, Oliver tossed aside the cloak while Heinrich took matches out of his pocket and lit their candles. Oliver immediately squatted down and showed them the wax writing on the floor. It was easier to see by candlelight, to Oliver’s relief. He’d been afraid that it would be too dark. Or worse, that he’d been imagining it all along.
“Here, hold this.”
The crown prince handed his candle to Oliver. He got down until his nose was nearly touching the tiles, while Oliver and Heinrich held the candles high. Galen moved across the floor like a crab, studying the writing.
“Can you read it?” Oliver finally asked.
“In a way,” Galen said. “It’s not so much writing as a combination of words and symbols that form a powerful spell.”
“What—what kind of spell?”
“Is it a summoning spell?” The shadows made Heinrich’s face look hard and old.
“Worse,” the crown prince said shortly.
“It’s a gateway.” “A gateway to what?” Oliver’s voice shook when he said it, but he wasn’t ashamed.
“A gateway to the Kingdom Under Stone,” Galen said. “Or at least, a gateway out of it.”
“We can’t use it to get there?”
Heinrich sounded disappointed, and Oliver wondered if he was a little bit mad. Who would want to go to the Kingdom Under Stone?
“No, I think it can only bring the princes out, and not in their real forms,” Galen said. Oliver thought he saw him sniff at the wax.
“Where—what—where is the Kingdom Under Stone?” Oliver wasn’t sure how to ask the question, or what question he wanted to ask.
“The Kingdom Under Stone is the prison where Wolfram von Aue and his followers were exiled,” the crown prince explained. “He was too powerful to be killed at the time, so he was locked into a place between worlds. I was fortunate that he had expended so much energy building his palace and stretching his bonds in order to father his sons. I was able to kill him with blessed silver inscribed with his real name, something that wouldn’t have worked two hundred years earlier.”
“I see,” Oliver said, though he wasn’t sure that he did. “So, his sons can only appear as shadows here in the … real world?”
“Yes. Although they’re not really shadows, they’re … well, they’re not really shadows,” Galen said with a small laugh.
“Could one have killed me?”
The crown prince looked up at Oliver, all traces of laughter gone. “Yes.”
He took a clasp knife from his pocket and unfolded it. Grimacing at the sound it made, he began to scrape away the wax writing. “The princes were born here, but the king whisked them away moments later, otherwise they would have died when the sun rose. At night, though, if they can create a gate, they can reach our world in their shadowy forms.”
“Why would you want to go to their kingdom, Your Highness?” Oliver looked at Heinrich, who also took out a knife and squatted down.
“To kill them,” Heinrich said, his voice flat.
“Barring that,” Galen said, pointing to a tile for his cousin to scratch at. “To seal them in their prison for good and all.”
“Is that possible?”
“I did it once before,” Galen said. “But my lock is breaking, or so I assume, judging by what’s happening to my wife and her sisters. These shared nightmares,” he went on, shaking his head, “they shouldn’t be possible. And now a gateway, to allow the princes to leave … it’s only a matter of time until they can make a gateway to draw the girls in. We must reseal the prison.”
“I don’t want to reseal their prison,” Heinrich said, beginning on another tile. “I want to kill them.”
“Heinrich, you know that killing them may not be the best option,” Galen said in a quiet voice.
“Fine then,” Heinrich said. “I won’t kill all of them. Just enough to make it easier to contain the rest.”
“I want to help you,” Oliver said.
“Why?” Galen looked up at him. “Because of Petunia?”
Oliver was relieved that the prince didn’t seem to be skeptical about his conviction. He simply looked like he wanted to know, and so did Heinrich, when Oliver dared to look at the other prince. Oliver was very aware that Heinrich had known his father. Had known him better than Oliver had, in fact.
“Because of her,” Oliver said at last. “Even though I have only met her twice, really … I just …”
“I risked my life to save Rose after only speaking with her twice,” Galen said with a small smile.
Encouraged, Oliver went on. “But also because of my family. If it hadn’t been for the King Under Stone and the trouble he caused with the worn-out dancing slippers, I would have been able to claim my title and take care of my people without resorting to banditry.”
Both princes nodded as though this made perfect sense. And then the crown prince added fuel to Oliver’s ire by saying, “And you have the King Under Stone to thank for the Analousian War as well. We don’t know if he actually started it, but he kept it going for twelve years in order to further entrap Queen Maude.”
Oliver stared at him, aghast. “Do you mean,” and his voice was barely a whisper, “that the King Under Stone was responsible for my father’s death?”
“And my father’s,” Galen said. “And my mother’s, and my little sister’s.” He looked down at the tiles. “I think that’s enough to prevent this gateway from working. Whoever did it will have to scrape all the tiles clean and start over.”
Heinrich blew out his candle. After a moment Oliver blew out the ones in his hands as well. In the dark he felt something soft shoved into his arms.
“Take the cloak, lad,” Galen said. “I hope you’ve got more sandwiches in your pockets. I’m sending you to Bruch.”
“You are?” Oliver felt numb. They were sending him away from Petunia, away from the heart of the crisis? And what was he supposed to do, try to plead his case to King Gregor again?
“I need you to find Bishop Schelker,” Galen said, to Oliver’s surprise. “Tell him we need him. It’s time.”
“You have the spell ready?” Heinrich’s brow creased. “I thought you and the others were still working on it.”
Galen sighed. “We have something,” he said. “There’s no way to test it, of course. I can find a thousand excuses to read more books, spend another de cade exploring more complex magic. But this,” he gestured at the markings on the floor, “tells me that we’ve run out of time.”
“And Schelker will know to bring the others?” Heinrich asked.
“Of course,” his cousin replied. To answer Oliver’s questioning look, he added, “The good bishop is a dab hand at magic, but we’re going to need all the help we can get. There are others with a stake in this who will be coming.