Princess of the Silver Woods (Twelve Dancing Princesses) (25 page)

“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—”

“What did I just say to the other one?” The old woman jerked a gnarled thumb at Heinrich. “We wouldn’t have come if we didn’t think we could succeed.”

“The power will mostly pass through the good frau and
myself,” said Walter. “The rest of you will be quite safe.” He leveled his gaze at Oliver. “But we will need all of you.”

“Of course,” Oliver said, getting to his feet. He tried not to show how stiff the ride had made him. “Of course I’ll do whatever necessary.”

“And if you’re wrong, Walter? About the focus? About the effectiveness of the spell?” Heinrich’s frown had never left his face.

“Have we ever been wrong before?” The good frau smacked him on the upper arm, which was as high as she could reach. She looked at Galen. “Well? Tell him!”

“No, good frau,” Galen said, with a faint smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “You never have been wrong.”

“I have everything here that Walter and the good frau have asked for, and the items that you sent for as well, Galen,” Bishop Schelker said, indicating a satchel slung across his chest. “Let’s find the gate and go. The princesses have spent long enough below.”

They tramped from room to room, looking for a way to reach the Kingdom Under Stone. In every room, Walter Vogel and the good frau would stand with their heads cocked as though listening to something. Then they would shake their heads and move on.

“The whole house reeks of magic,” the crone complained after a few minutes. “Did Under Stone’s men tramp through every pantry and water closet?”

After they had searched every room in the house, they
went back through the front hall. Walter decided that Prince Grigori had destroyed his gate after he and his people went through, and there was no point in lingering.

They would have to make their own way Under Stone.

Frederick moaned. “How long will that take?”

No one answered him.

“As there is no food here, we could go to my hall,” Oliver offered. “It’s not very fine, but you could work there unmolested as long as you needed.”

Oliver couldn’t bear to look at Galen’s or Walter’s faces as he said this. He could see that they were thinking that making their own gate would take not a matter of hours or days, but months or years. It didn’t bear thinking on.

He reached out and nearly brushed the canvas of an enormous painting that hung on the nearest wall. It was a hunting scene and looked very familiar. He was almost certain that it had belonged to his family. In fact, one of the figures wore a dark tunic that clearly had been painted over, and he thought it had borne his family’s coat of arms before. He squinted at it. The paint in several places looked wet, now that he gave it closer scrutiny.

“Shall I return to Bruch, while the rest of you go to this hall of Oliver’s?” Frederick asked.

He started to add something more, but Karl and the rest of Oliver’s men burst through the front door. Karl had an ax in one hand and a pistol in the other, and all their masks were in place.

“What’s afoot?” Karl demanded.

“Ah, an escort back to the young earl’s hall,” said Walter Vogel with a laugh.

“Karl,” Oliver said, holding up his hands. “Hold your fire!”

When he lowered his arms, his elbow passed right through the painting as if it hadn’t been there. Oliver slowly removed his arm, then he plunged his hand in. It was as though there was no paint, no canvas, and no wall behind. It just kept going.

“I believe I’ve found the gate,” Oliver said.

He moved his arm back and forth. The gate was as high and as wide as the painting, and Oliver held his breath as he thrust his head in to look around.

“Oliver! What are you doing?”

He heard Karl shout, but it wasn’t necessary. He could see quite well, and there was nothing to alarm him. Just a stairway of gold that descended toward a silver gate. Beyond the gate he could see a wood, also of silver, and beyond that the spires of a black palace. He drew back.

“That’s the gate all right,” he told them, feeling almost giddy.

“How in heaven’s name?” Prince Heinrich’s mouth was agape. “They walked through a
painting
?”

“And not a very good one, either.” The crone sniffed. “Those horses have stumpy legs, and what are they hunting? I can’t tell if that’s a fox or a polecat.”

Oliver bowed to the old woman. “When this is all over, I shall replace this painting with a portrait of you, good frau.”

“Well!” That seemed to please her. “Help me over the frame, then.”

Arsonist

Petunia was crouched in a corner of Rose’s bedchamber, trying to light the leg of a small table on fire. Her sisters all stood watch, except for Poppy and Violet, who had gone off on some mission of their own. This made Lily even more nervous than did the prospect of setting Rose’s room on fire, for as she said, “Anytime Poppy gets that look in her eye, it makes me nervous.”

“Just light it already,” Jonquil shrilled. “And try not to use up all the matches!”

“Thank you, Jonquil,” Petunia snapped. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Be nice,” Daisy whispered. She was standing next to the chair with a pitcher of water, ready to douse the experiment.

But there was no fire. Petunia had even shredded a handkerchief as kindling and wrapped the bits around the leg of the chair. They had no books in their room, though Rose swore she had seen some of the princes reading when they
had been trapped in the palace as children. Even if the slick wood of the chair was reluctant to burn, the linen—or whatever it was the handkerchiefs were made of in Under Stone’s realm—should have caught fire by now; she’d placed three matches directly on the threads.

“I don’t think it will work,” Petunia admitted. “And Jonquil’s right: I shouldn’t use up all my matches just playing around. I’ve never seen them so frightened; there must be some way to use that against them.” She closed the little box of matches and put it in her bodice.

“What was it exactly that you started on fire last night?” Rose’s forehead was creased with concentration.

“The horrid flowers that I had picked in the wood,” Petunia recited. “And my fan from the ball, and my handkerchief.”

“Did it all burn?”

“Yes!” Then Petunia stopped. “No,” she said more thoughtfully. “I don’t really think the fan burned. But that handkerchief—wait! That handkerchief was one of mine! It burned and so did the flowers. There was a nasty mess on my dressing table afterward; I could see it through the webby thing that Rionin put over it all. I don’t know if the sticks of the fan burned; I could see its shape through the web. But a footman cleared it all away before I got a good look at it.”

“If they are so afraid of fire,” Orchid said, “it might be that things here aren’t meant to burn. They might have some chemical on them, or be made of things that aren’t naturally flammable.” She pushed her spectacles up higher and nodded.

“What isn’t flammable?” Petunia frowned at her.

She’d never heard of such a thing. Her father had lectured her at length when she was a child about how everything had the potential to burn, and burn out of control, from green wood on down a list of household items he thought she might try her matches on.