Poppy asked a little while later, “How many matches have you got?”
Hero
The hunting lodge was locked tight, and all the curtains were drawn. It looked as though no one had been there for a month at least. There were even dried leaves blown across the front steps, the sight of which was apparently hilarious to the crone.
“A very nice touch,” she cackled. “But never fear, young hero, someone is inside.”
“Are you sure?” Bishop Schelker’s face was tense.
They were all tense. As soon as Oliver had spurred his horse along the track, the others had followed, arriving only a heartbeat after. Karl and Johan and the rest of Oliver’s men were not far behind, either, even though they were on foot.
The crone didn’t even bother to answer Schelker. She climbed down off her horse and tied it to the long rail in front of the lodge, then pointed to Oliver.
“Boy! Hero! You have nice, broad shoulders: see if you can’t get yourself through that door.” She made an encouraging gesture.
Oliver got down from his own horse and tied it to the rail. He looked helplessly at the door, a massive thing of aged oak and iron. He could try ramming his way in, but he knew full well that his bones would break before the wood so much as splintered.
“Stop toying with the poor lad,” said Walter Vogel as he dismounted.
He threw his reins to Oliver, who tied up the old man’s horse as Walter hobbled up the steps to the door. He did something for a moment with the lock, and the door swung open.
“Magic,” Oliver breathed as Bishop Schelker tied his horse beside Walter’s.
“Picked the lock, more like,” the bishop snorted. “Herr Vogel has many talents. Not all of them that mysterious. Or very honest.”
“Oh,” Oliver said, feeling foolish.
“Come along.” The good frau stalked up the stairs to the door.
Oliver and the bishop hurried after her. Oliver drew his pistol and was pleased that the bishop did the same. He wasn’t being overly cautious then. Their bullets were silver, which the bishop had blessed, but that would hardly keep them from being effective on an ordinary man.
Like Grigori.
“Hello the house,” Walter called out cheerfully. “Anyone at home?”
Silence.
Complete and utter silence. Not a single footstep could be heard that was not their own. No bustle of servants, no sound of a small caged bird twittering from the parlor, no hiss of a teakettle from the kitchen. The hair on Oliver’s neck stood on end, and he knew that they were all gone: Grigori, his men, everyone. But where had they gone without Oliver’s men seeing?
“I think we’d—” Bishop Schelker began, but Oliver silenced him, holding up one hand.
Oliver was sure that he had heard something, but he wasn’t sure what or where the sound was coming from. They all froze in the middle of the front hall, heads cocked and eyes unfocused. Then Oliver heard it again: a scraping noise that came from a room on the left.
Oliver readied his pistol and crept toward the room with Bishop Schelker just behind. Oliver crouched down and peered through the keyhole but couldn’t see anything. He tried the door latch. It opened easily, and Oliver jumped into the room with his pistol cocked.
Three men were lying bound and gagged in the middle of the floor. Oliver recognized Galen and Heinrich and assumed that the third man was another of the royal husbands.
Oliver holstered his pistol and pulled out a hunting knife. He ran to Prince Galen and sawed through the ropes that bound his hands while Bishop Schelker rushed to Prince Heinrich.
“This is a fine state of affairs,” said the crone as she came into the room. “Got the drop on you, did he?”
“Yes,” the crown prince said with disgust, removing his gag. “He did.”
“In all fairness, he did have a small army,” Prince Heinrich said.
“He … what?” Oliver looked around.
The hunting lodge showed no sign of a scuffle. Oliver’s heart clenched as he noticed a small marble statue of a stag in the corner of the room. He was almost certain that had belonged to his father.
“We followed Grigori here because we had his people tied up in the woods,” Galen said, as he massaged his hands and wrists. “We outnumbered him fourteen to one! Heinrich had a gun to his head! Then, when darkness fell, the room was filled with people—”
“Those weren’t people,” the prince Oliver didn’t know interrupted, his voice dark with revulsion.
“Under Stone’s court,” clarified Heinrich. “They surrounded us, tied us up, and then they were gone in a matter of minutes.”
“Where are the princesses?” Walter’s voice was as sharp as Oliver had ever heard it.
“They’re gone,” said the other prince as the bishop freed him. “They went to Under Stone to be with Petunia, before we were ambushed.”
“Ye gods,” Oliver said, feeling sick.
“Begin at the beginning,” Bishop Schelker urged.
Galen leaned back against the sofa, still sitting on the rug. His skin looked grayish, and his voice was raw, but he waved away Schelker’s waterskin. “We were coming here for lunch,” the crown prince began. “Halfway here, Petunia saw a rosebush in full bloom and tried to pick some of the flowers. We tried to stop her, but Grigori interfered. Before we could get to her, the ground opened up and she fell.”
“We know,” Walter Vogel said. “Oliver’s men were watching.”
“We came here, and when the courtiers arrived,” Heinrich said, continuing the story while Galen finally took a drink from the waterskin, “we were overpowered at once, all of us. Galen, Frederick, and I were tied up, and we could hear Grigori talking to the girls in another room for some time. They must have agreed to go after Petunia, because after a while, we heard only Grigori and his men. Then they disappeared too.”
“I’m amazed that Poppy didn’t just shoot Grigori,” Bishop Schelker said.
“She almost did. And so did I,” Galen told them. “But he is the only one who knows where the new gateway into the Kingdom Under Stone is.”
Prince Frederick sighed. “But now they’ve gone, and we still don’t know where the gate is.”
“We are not entirely without hope,” Walter assured him. “The gate is somewhere in this lodge. Oliver’s men haven’t seen any sign of anyone leaving.”
“Oliver’s men again?” Heinrich murmured.
Oliver was strangely embarrassed. “They were worried about Petunia,” he muttered.
“And a good thing too,” Frederick said.
“We’d better find that gate,” the crone said. She turned and started out of the room.
“Hold a moment,” said Heinrich. He got to his feet, nearly falling against the sofa as he did so. He stretched and rubbed his bad leg for a moment, a frown creasing his face. “What do we do when we get there?”
“Whatever needs to be done,” Walter Vogel said.
“Not good enough,” said Heinrich. “What will need to be done to stop this from happening over and over again?”
“Seal them all up once again, and this time we’ll make sure it holds,” the old man said, rubbing his seamed face.
“Can you be sure?”
“I haven’t spent the last fifteen hundred years learning to knit my own socks, boy!” The crone looked like she might box Heinrich’s ears, if she could have reached them.
Heinrich didn’t look pleased; he looked even grimmer, if that were possible. “You’ve found the way? Galen’s studies—”
“Galen’s studies are a wonder,” said Walter Vogel gently, “but as the good frau has said, we have had centuries of time to perfect our original spell.”
“Last time it took a dozen practitioners, and most of them died,” Galen pointed out. He put a hand on Walter’s shoulder and squeezed it. “If we dared to take more time—”