Sword of Power

  Elsa and Matthias stayed at the tavern while the rest of the group scouted the castle. It took them an entire day to stake out the massive enclosure from the outside. They disguised themselves as simple day laborers and farmers, laden with sacks, boxes, and handcarts. They cautiously approached the lower castle gate, where guards were thoroughly inspecting every single person trying to come inside—especially those planning to visit Golden Lane.

  “Golden Lane gets its name from all the goldsmiths living there,” Gwendolyn explained in a soft voice as they ducked behind the handcarts. “Which is why it’s so heavily guarded. The White Tower is at the far end.” She pointed to a beefy tower with narrow windows. “The torture chamber and Polonius’s laboratory are both in there. No one has yet succeeded at breaking in.”

  There were at least half a dozen of those fearsome Red Archers standing at the entrance to Golden Lane. All of them wore blood-red tunics over their chain-mail shirts. They carried longbows and swords, and each one had an extremely alert, serious look about him. The guards eyed the companions suspiciously as they pushed their handcarts over the bumpy cobblestones. Several scantily clad women were lurking near the watchmen, occasionally making mocking remarks.

  “What about the north side of the castle?” Zoltan asked. “It looks less guarded to me.”

  “It is.” Gwendolyn nodded. “But only because the castle wall drops so far down on that side. But yes, fewer guards are posted along there, so if we do get anywhere near the White Tower, it will have to be from that direction. The hook and eye are on that side, too.”

  In the distance, Lukas saw countless watchmen in shining chain mail up at the top of the wall. He bit his lip. If even one watchman spotted them and alerted the other guards, all would be lost. They would meet their end in the Prague Castle torture chamber, like so many others before them.

  “We need to know when the changing of the guard is.” Even in plain farmer’s clothing, Bernhard still cut an imposing figure. “If we can get up to the top of the wall at exactly that moment, we might have a chance. But we must figure that out quickly.” He kicked a handcart so violently that it nearly fell apart.

  “Oh, let me handle this.” Jerome winked at them. “For a job like this, you don’t need strength. You only need a little, shall we say . . . intuition.” He peeled off his farmer shirt, revealing his fashionable red doublet. After combing out his blond hair with his fingers, he marched off, heading straight for the gate.

  “God in heaven, what is he doing?” Zoltan hissed. “He’ll land us all on the gallows!”

  Paulus grinned. “I think I know his plan.” Jerome was walking toward the women standing near the gate. When he got there, he chatted a little with the girls, and the group could hear them laugh. Finally, one of them kissed Jerome on the cheek, and he came back to the others, humming as he walked.

  “No problem,” he said. “I know when the changing of the guard happens.”

  Jurek gaped at him. “You what?”

  Jerome shrugged. “Those girls stay there in hopes of spending a nice evening with one of the guards, so of course they know exactly which soldiers leave their posts, and when.” He grinned. “I just made eyes at the girls, and they started talking. It’s that simple.”

  Gwendolyn crossed her arms. “Just so you know, not all women are like that, you . . . you manicured swine!”

  Jerome whistled through his teeth, and Lukas thought he saw Gwendolyn blush slightly. Could she have taken a liking to Jerome? He felt a slight pang in his chest. Why did the girls all fall for Jerome?

  “Let’s go back to Elsa,” Lukas said curtly, turning away. “It doesn’t seem there’s anything else we need to do here.”

  Zoltan wanted to find out as much as possible about the infamous alchemist Polonius, so Lukas, Elsa, and Matthias went out on a particularly tricky mission the following day.

  Thus far, all they knew was that he was the Kaiser’s favorite alchemist, and that he lived in his own palatial home near the White Tower. Otherwise, Polonius was like a phantom.

  Near the castle grounds, there was an old cloister whose abbess was friendly toward Wallenstein and his officers. Zoltan had obtained the Mother Superior’s permission for the three of them to enter the heavily guarded Prague Castle, so they headed there to see what information they could uncover about Polonius and his experiments.

  “Saint George Cloister has an enormous library,” Zoltan explained to them before they left the tavern. “If there’s information to be found about that devilish alchemist, it will be there. The abbess knows you’re coming and will allow you to poke around. Matthias will accompany you to protect you.” He smirked. “Being the quack that he is, he can at least read the titles on the covers. Bernhard and Jurek can’t do much with books beyond wiping their asses.”

  The castle grounds were a hive of bustling activity. Peddlers sold their wares, and soldiers patrolled the spotless streets. Only Golden Lane was blocked from their view—separated from the rest of the property by a second gate, where even more soldiers stood guard.

  Lukas had been reluctant to go to the library at first. Elsa had always been the one interested in books, while he preferred tramping around the woods with his wooden sword and bow. But now that he was standing in the cloister library, the massive, towering bookshelves filled him with a deep reverence. So much knowledge had been collected here. Lukas glanced around the wood-paneled hall in amazement.

  It must have taken them many years to catalogue all these books.

  The gallery encircling the room at a height of around four paces held even more bookcases. Down on the main floor, the spaces between the countless bookshelves formed a labyrinth of winding, narrow aisles. The whole place smelled like dust, glue, and ancient parchment.

  Matthias groaned when he saw the thousands upon thousands of books. “If we want to find anything in here, we’ll probably have to split up, like it or not,” he said, knitting his brow. “Otherwise we’ll never finish. I’ll work my way through there.” He pointed to the right. “And the two of you look around upstairs.” With that, Matthias disappeared down one of the many aisles, while Lukas and Elsa went up a narrow spiral staircase to the gallery.

  The moment they reached the balcony, Elsa suddenly froze, as though rooted to the spot.

  Lukas blinked. “What’s wrong?”

  Anxiously, Elsa pulled the Grimorium out from the leather bag beneath her dress where she often carried it. “The book!” she hissed. “It’s heating up!” She clutched it in both hands and closed her eyes. “I think it wants to tell me something.”

  For a while she stood there motionless, moving her lips silently, while Matthias’s steps echoed between the shelves somewhere down below.

  “The Grimorium was here once before, many years ago,” Elsa finally murmured, as if in a trance. “It . . . it was hidden here, I think. For a long time.”

  “Do you suppose our mother brought the magic book from this library?” Lukas asked, excited. “She was a young novice here in Prague, living in a cloister. Maybe it was this one?”

  “Yes, she was here. But then . . .” Elsa shook herself, as though trying to escape a bad dream. “I see blood . . . lots of blood. A great battle . . .”

  “The Battle of White Mountain?” Lukas put in. “It happened right near here!” He furrowed his brow. “But what was our mother doing there? What would a nun be doing on a battlefield?”

  Elsa gripped the book tightly, eyes still shut. “Our mother . . . she is walking past many, many injured and dying people. She has the book with her. There are soldiers after her, wearing crested helmets, like the Spanish cavalry. They’ve caught up to her! They’re throwing themselves at her . . .”

  “The frozen ones!” Lukas whispered. Goose bumps stood up on his arms. “Those monsters have been after the book all this time? Go on, tell me more. What do you see?”

  “I see . . .” Elsa hesitated. “Our father, it’s our father!” she cried in astonishment. “He blocks the Spa
niards’ path, and he’s fencing with them like the Devil . . . He’s won! They’re retreating! He just picked up Mother. He’s carrying her on his back through rows of enemy soldiers. Now . . .” She fell silent.

  “What is it?” Lukas asked. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”

  “The image . . . it’s fading, it’s disappearing.” Elsa opened her eyes, breathing heavily. “Well,” she said after a while, “now we know that our parents met in Prague. It must have been at that Battle of White Mountain. Father was fighting in the Kaiser’s army. Maybe our mother was trying to protect the Grimorium?”

  “From Schönborn’s frozen ones.” Lukas nodded. “Even that long ago, he was already trying to get his hands on the book. Maybe on our mother, too. Schönborn was always fascinated by what she was capable of as a white witch.” He hesitated. He still hadn’t told Elsa about his newly developed magical powers. This was probably the right time to do it, but for some reason, he was still hesitant.

  “There’s something you should know,” he finally began. In a soft voice, Lukas told his sister about Gwendolyn’s fatal wound, and how he’d healed it purely through the force of his own will. “Look at this,” he said, undoing the top buttons of his shirt and gesturing to the rosy skin underneath. “I was wounded fighting in front of Wallenstein’s palace, but it’s completely healed, my fever is gone. Mother spoke to me. She told me I have the power in me as well.”

  “Our dead mother talked to you?” Elsa eyed him suspiciously.

  Lukas nodded. “She’s done that before. Back when I fought Schönborn’s hell-wolf, do you remember?”

  “Mother’s never spoken to me.” There was an unexpected icy note in her voice, and her expression darkened. “So you want to do magic now, too? Is that it? You want the Grimorium for yourself?”

  Elsa’s fingers instantly tightened around the book like spider legs, and Lukas gave a start. For one brief moment, it was not his sister standing before him but a much larger, darker apparition—a demon with gigantic, bat-like wings. But then the terrifying shadow vanished, and she was just a little eleven-year-old girl again.

  An eleven-year-old girl with unbelievable powers, he thought.

  “No, Elsa,” Lukas replied gently. “I don’t want the Grimorium for myself. After all, I didn’t need it when I healed Gwendolyn.”

  “Gwendolyn, Gwendolyn!” Elsa mocked him. “All you ever talk about is Gwendolyn! That girl has knocked all the sense out of you, she’s put a spell on you. She’s the real witch!”

  “What are you talking about?” Lukas replied indignantly. “I admit I think she’s very nice, but I only stood up for her because I know she can help us.” He tried to sound casual, but even he knew that it was only half-true. Elsa was right. Gwendolyn really did have him under a spell, just not the kind that involved magic.

  “Let’s not fight anymore,” he suggested after a long moment of silence. “We’re here to find out more about Polonius.”

  “Fine.” Elsa nodded hesitantly. “But please, please stop talking about that stupid Gwendolyn all day.” She turned away and began poking through the bookshelves. The books were organized by topic, but they couldn’t find an “alchemy” section. After a thorough search of the balcony turned up nothing, they went back down the stairs. Finally, they stumbled upon several shelves of alchemy books in one corner of the hall. Elsa began flipping through one after another at random.

  “Many people think alchemy is only about transforming worthless metals into silver or gold,” she remarked. “But back when I spent all that time with Schönborn, he showed me other possibilities as well. Far more horrifying ones.” Her lips tightened. “Alchemists have tried again and again to create hybrid creatures. Artificial human beings, or chimeras with eagles’ talons and a lion’s head, or basilisks—terrible snakelike monsters that can kill with their gaze alone.”

  “Sounds like this Polonius fellow is trying something similar,” Lukas replied, shuddering. He went to a bookshelf farther to the left. “Look here! These books are all about famous alchemists, arranged alphabetically.” He ran his finger along their cracked spines as he read. “There’s someone named Avicenna, a Dr. Faust, an Edward Kelly, Paracelsus . . .” He stopped short. “Wait a minute! There’s a gap here next to Paracelsus. One book is missing.”

  “The book on Polonius!” Elsa began frantically searching the nearby shelves, but the volume on Polonius was nowhere to be found. “Of all the books, that’s the one missing,” she complained.

  “It’s almost like someone’s removed it from the shelf,” Lukas murmured. “Someone who doesn’t want us to find out any more about Polonius.”

  They heard footsteps approaching, and Matthias rounded the corner. “Well?” he asked. “Have you had better luck than me? All I found were boring treatises on plants and animals.”

  “Apparently, someone got here before us,” Lukas said, pointing to the empty space on the shelf. “The book on Polonius has disappeared.”

  “Disappeared?” Matthias furrowed his brow. “Who would do something like that? Nobody knows we’re here except the abbess, and Zoltan vouches for her. Maybe the book was simply misplaced?”

  “Maybe.” Lukas lapsed into a thoughtful silence. He recalled how Zoltan had told them all about the cloister library the night before, as they’d been sitting around the table. Had someone been eavesdropping on them?

  Then he remembered that Jurek had hurried off shortly thereafter, supposedly to scout out the Prague Castle ramparts once more. He hadn’t returned until late that night. What had he been doing all that time? Paying a visit to the cloister, perhaps?

  Could they perhaps have a traitor in their own ranks, someone who was working with Schönborn?

  Lukas decided to keep an even closer eye on Jurek.

  XIV

  The following night, heavy thunderclouds rolled in over Prague. Before long, torrential rain was hammering down upon the rooftops. The clouds enveloped the moon completely, leaving the city as dark as a dungeon, except for the occasional flash of lightning through the sky.

  At the Black Boar, Zoltan peered out the window and then turned to face the others. “I was hoping to wait a little longer, so we could find out more about the alchemist,” he muttered. “But opportunities like this don’t come along very often. Nobody will see us outside in this weather, and the guards will be glad if they don’t rust in place.” He clapped his hands. “So gather your weapons and equipment. We’re leaving in half an hour.”

  Lukas’s heart began to race. It was time. Now they would see whether Gwendolyn’s plan would succeed, and whether they could recover the second piece of Imperial Regalia, the crown.

  If not, Lukas feared that the castle dungeon and death awaited them.

  Or perhaps even worse, he thought, imagining the torture chamber in the White Tower.

  Skeptically, he regarded Jurek, who was sorting his equipment. Was Lukas mistaken, or did the one-eyed man seem a shade more excited than the others? Had Jurek already tattled on them to Polonius? Lukas had considered going to Zoltan with his suspicions, but he had no real proof—only a vague feeling that there was a traitor among them.

  They set off a short time later. It was still raining buckets, and within mere seconds, Lukas’s coat was soaked through and water was running down his collar. It was pitch-dark. They’d brought along a small firepot to light the torches, but decided to wait as long as possible in order to remain undetected. At least the alleys were completely deserted. In this moonless darkness, even his sister walking directly in front of him was only a blurry shadow.

  “Hurry!” Gwendolyn hissed from up front, where she was walking beside Zoltan. “Are you Black Musketeers or fat old men who fear the rain?”

  Paulus shook himself like a wet bear. “That girl is already getting on my nerves,” he snarled. “Acting like she’s the leader! She’s no older than I am.”

  “But a good deal prettier,” Jerome teased him.

  Paulus snorted. “Being pretty wo
uldn’t keep me dry.”

  Hunched over, they marched up the castle hill, then headed off to the right and made their way through the bushes until they found themselves in front of a stone wall around three paces high.

  “This is the lower castle wall,” Gwendolyn explained as she started climbing up. “In this weather, we don’t have much to fear, but we should still hurry before the guards spot us.” With catlike agility, Gwendolyn slipped over the wall and soon disappeared.

  The others followed, though Elsa had particular difficulty with the slippery stones, and it took her a while to make it over. At last, they were all standing on the other side. They found themselves in a wooded area with low trees and shrubs. It gave way to a small valley, which led to the moat and then finally the castle wall. Monstrous and black, it seemed to stretch straight up into the clouds. The lights jerking from side to side at the top told them that watchmen were patrolling the wall.

  “Pretty damned high,” Bernhard grunted. Fine rivulets of rainwater ran down from the end of his beard. “And pretty well secured. If you ask me, no army in the world could take the castle from this side.”

  “No army, but one girl,” Gwendolyn replied, grinning. “Now come on already. Or do you boys need a break?”

  They ducked down and ran through the woods toward the castle moat. The rest of the group trailed Gwendolyn, gasping for breath. Lukas noticed that Elsa was keeping a slight distance from the others. When he came closer, he saw to his astonishment that his sister’s hair and dress were perfectly dry.

  Elsa winked at her brother. “Gwendolyn may talk big,” she said in a scornful tone, “but the only thing that can truly protect you here is my magic.”