“Well, then, let’s stop him before it’s too late,” Giovanni said, buckling his rapier on and jumping from the boat to the shore. “We managed to outwit Schönborn once before. Why shouldn’t we succeed a second time?”
The others followed him in silence.
The meadow they were crossing now was swampy; Lukas’s feet kept sinking deep into the bog. As they stepped, the wet ground made gurgling noises as if laughing at them. It wasn’t long before Lukas’s boots were soaked through and he was struggling to walk. The others were having trouble as well. It felt like something was grabbing at their feet. And there was an eerie howling sound—distant at first, but growing closer.
“What is that?” Paulus asked. “Wolves?”
“This close to the city?” Giovanni shrugged. “I don’t think so.”
“Hey, look!” Jerome exclaimed. “There’s a light! Something’s moving through the meadow.”
Sure enough, a handful of tiny, fiery balls were flitting across the field. Sometimes they moved lightning-fast, sometimes more slowly. They came closer, but then suddenly shot away again, like curious little animals.
“What are those things?” Paulus grunted. “They’re far too big to be glowworms.” He stomped toward one of the balls to get a closer look.
“Don’t!” Lukas screeched.
But it was already too late. Paulus sank down into the meadow, which had given way to brown, peaty-smelling marsh. Within seconds, he was up to his hips in it. “Damn it!” Paulus shouted. “There’s something pulling and tugging on my feet.” He thrashed wildly about, and then finally pulled a rusty sword out of the muck. Paulus threw the sword as far away from himself as he could, his face white as chalk. “By my soul!” he whispered. “I could swear there was a skeleton hand on my leg just now. Is that possible?”
Lukas raked his hands through his hair. What was this place, and what horrible spirits were haunting them?
“Here, take this!” Gwendolyn called. She tossed Paulus a rope while the boys stood frozen in shock.
“What in the Devil’s name? There are hands grabbing at me!” Paulus gasped, clinging to the rope. “I can feel them. Well, come on, you lazy fools, pull!”
They all grasped the rope and tried to drag the heavy Paulus out of the moor. It felt like they were battling some invisible force living deep within the bog that refused to release its prey.
“Harder!” Jerome shrieked. “He’s already sunk to his chest!”
They pulled and yanked the rope for all they were worth, and finally Paulus slid out of the bog with a wet, smacking sound. He crawled as quickly as he could to a halfway-dry patch of grass, where he lay, exhausted. He was covered in black mire from head to toe.
“Let’s not do that again,” he panted. “What in God’s name was that?”
“I think we may have been seeing will-o’-the-wisps,” Giovanni replied. “The spirits of those who died here in the swamp. It’s said that they like to lure the living down into the bog. Most of them are people who died violent deaths.”
“Thousands of people died violent deaths around here, so I’m sure there’s plenty happening in these swamps.” Gwendolyn furrowed her brow. “Strange that I’ve never heard of will-o’-the-wisps around here. Maybe they have something to do with the ominous stars tonight.”
Paulus shuddered violently. “I felt slimy hands dragging me down. And then that rusty sword! Let’s leave here as soon as possible. I promise I’ll be good and stay behind our leader Gwendolyn from now on.”
“Our leader Gwendolyn!” She winked at Paulus. “Those words from your mouth, fat man? I never thought I’d see the day!”
“I swear, if you call me fat one more time, I’ll push you into the moor,” Paulus said. “Ghosts or no ghosts.”
“Stop fighting,” Lukas warned. “We need to focus on finding Elsa. If the marquis is right, she and Schönborn must be somewhere nearby.”
If not, I’ve probably lost my sister once again, he added to himself.
Then he trudged after Gwendolyn.
They stuck to drier patches of meadow. Gwendolyn took the lead again, hopping from one patch of grass to the next. Occasionally she turned around, backtracking and then pointing the others in a different direction.
Lukas couldn’t figure out how Gwendolyn managed to orient herself so well in the darkness, but her family’s sobriquet of “Falcon Eye” had obviously come from somewhere, as she’d demonstrated at the Prague Castle wall.
They were finding more rusted weapons and armor now. Rotten wood, likely from old wagon wheels, lances, and arrows, gave off an eerie green glow.
Once, the point of Lukas’s boot caught on a broken rapier, and he fell on his face. Later, he passed a helmet with some sort of rotten swamp grass growing out of it. Bones were scattered here and there, many with scraps of clothing still clinging to them. A skull grinned at him from a rock, almost as though someone had placed it there as a landmark. Lukas couldn’t help thinking of the skulls placed along the Vltava Bridge as a reminder of the Bohemian uprising.
“Merde, we’ve been wandering around this battlefield for an eternity,” Jerome grumbled. “Where can Schönborn be? How are we supposed to find him here in the darkness? Maybe the marquis was lying to us before and sent us on a wild-goose chase.”
Lukas shook his head. “I doubt he was lying. Anyway, I sense that Elsa is somewhere nearby. This place is practically made for dark magic.”
“Best if we climb the hill so we can get a better view,” Gwendolyn suggested. “It’s light enough out tonight.”
After rounding several additional swamp fields, they finally reached the foot of the hill. White Mountain didn’t strike Lukas as particularly tall, but it was the highest elevation in the area. Blackberry bushes and low shrubs covered the ground like weeds. As they trudged up the hill, Lukas kept getting caught on thorns. Once again, it felt like something was trying to prevent their progress.
All of a sudden, fog rolled in again, as though out of nowhere, billowing white just around knee height. Then it changed, drifting back and forth, taking on the forms of human beings. More and more of them were appearing around them now! Lukas saw soldiers fighting to the death, and the outlines of bodies with spears, arrows, and swords sticking out of them. A man in ghostly white, wrapped in a torn leather doublet, came straight at Lukas. The specter’s eyes were wide with fear, his hands outstretched; a large, bloody wound gaped in his side. Lukas stepped back in horror, but the man followed him, staggering toward Lukas and . . .
. . . passed right through him.
A cold chill, like a draft of wintry air, was all Lukas felt. Then the man disappeared.
The Battle of White Mountain! Lukas thought. It’s happening again! With the ghosts of the soldiers who died in it!
Fear ate at him now, making him hasten up the mountain faster and faster, until he was completely out of breath. Horrible crying and shrieking sounds echoed all around, and an entire army seemed to be climbing the hill behind him. Lukas grew increasingly afraid—the ghost soldiers would soon catch up to them. He could already feel their cold breath on his neck.
Lukas hurried onward. Now the fog was so thick that he couldn’t see any of his friends. The tendrils of mist before him came together to form a cannon, and then a blast rang out. The ground seemed to burst beneath his feet, and Lukas somersaulted out of the way.
None of this is real! he thought. Please, God, let this not be real!
Men waving standards hurried past him down the hill to meet the enemy soldiers. The sounds of battle rang out: thundering cannon fire, shouted orders, screams of mortal agony. Another shout joined theirs now, growing louder and louder.
“Lukas! Hey, Lukas! Do you hear me?”
Someone shook him, and the ghostly figures around him disappeared as quickly as they had come. Lukas found himself staring at Jerome’s face.
“Everything all right with you?” his friend asked him.
Lukas shook himself as though waking up
from a nightmare. “The soldiers, the b-battle . . .” he stammered.
“What are you talking about?” Jerome gave him a light slap on the cheek. “There are no soldiers here. Only bones and rusted weapons.”
Lukas glanced around, blinking in confusion. He was near the crest of the hill, which was bathed in moonlight. Fog swirled around beneath them, but the view was clear up here at the top. There were no ghost soldiers, no cannons, no battle cries. The only sound was the howling wind.
“I guess something clouded my mind, as they say,” Lukas replied in a flat voice. “Thanks, Jerome. If you hadn’t been there, I probably would have gone mad.”
Jerome grinned. “You’re not the only one being haunted. Giovanni saw a ghost, too—he sprinted away from it like a rabbit. But Paulus caught up to him and calmed him down.” He glanced up at the hilltop. “The others are waiting up there.”
“To think that you were the one most afraid of ghosts earlier,” Lukas remarked, marveling. “And now I’m the one seeing them!”
Jerome shrugged. “Giovanni says I must lack imagination. None of us has ever been as interested in books as he is. Apparently, your imaginations run away with you faster.”
Lukas had to laugh. “True. But if I’m seeing ghosts, then I wonder what Elsa . . .” He stopped short. “Come on, let’s go,” he said, striding off quickly. “Hopefully, from up there we can see where Schönborn’s brought Elsa.”
They reached the summit a minute or two later. Even though it was summer, the wind up here was unnaturally cold, and it howled so loudly that the friends could barely hear each other.
“Well, Schönborn isn’t up here, anyway.” Giovanni gestured around the bare mountaintop, looking disappointed. “Damn it! Maybe the marquis was lying to us.”
Lukas glanced around. The moonlight was bright enough that he could at least make out some of the surrounding area. Below them lay the meadows and bogs; farther on, the dark Vltava River snaked along through the landscape, and then the city lights gleamed on the other side of that. To the north, the hill ended at a small wooded area surrounded by a wall.
Lukas squinted in that direction, blinking. “There’s a building over there, on the other side of the wall,” he said. “It looks like a church or a chapel.”
“That’s the Church of Our Lady Victorious, which stands in memory of all those who died,” Gwendolyn explained. “The remains of the fallen are buried there. My father took me there a few years ago and told me all about the battle.”
Jerome shuddered. “The bones lying around here are more than enough for me.”
“Well, at least they stay lying around for you, instead of walking around like they do for me and Lukas,” Giovanni countered. “So, what’s that over there?” he asked, gesturing into the woods.
Lukas turned to look in the direction Giovanni was pointing. There was a clearing in the forest, with a large building in the center. It had a strange shape, but there wasn’t enough light to see more specifically.
Gwendolyn furrowed her brow. “As far as I know, it’s Castle Hvězda. It’s a summer palace that’s been here for a fairly long time. Father and I walked around in that overgrown park there, looking for a deer. The lodge is . . .” She broke off.
“What?” Lukas asked.
“I just remembered what ‘hvězda’ means,” Gwendolyn replied in a shaky voice. “If you look more closely, you’ll be able to figure it out for yourself.”
Lukas squinted and leaned forward, but all he saw was a black shadow. Gwendolyn simply had better eyes. Frustrated, he asked, “What does it mean?”
“Hvězda means ‘star.’ The lodge down there is shaped like a six-pointed star, like a hexagram.”
Giovanni groaned. “A symbol used in invoking demons! I’ll bet you all anything that Schönborn and Elsa are somewhere down in that accursed palace. Hopefully it isn’t too late!”
XXV
The friends ran down the hill toward the woods as fast as their legs could carry them. Lukas occasionally got snagged on the blackberry bushes, but at least no more ghost soldiers appeared. Here on the north side of the hill, a cold, wet breeze had blown the fog away. The closer they came to the woods, the more clearly they could see the outline of the palace towering behind the low trees. It really was shaped like a six-pointed star.
Lukas regarded the symbol more closely. It looked familiar. It was made up of two triangles—one upright, one upside down. There were smaller symbols inside it, but Lukas couldn’t make sense of them.
“We’ve seen this star before,” Lukas told Giovanni, panting. “At the synagogue, in the Jewish quarter. Remember?”
“The Star of David,” Giovanni replied. “Also called the Seal of Solomon. It’s an important symbol of Judaism, but alchemists use it a lot, too, and so do sorcerers when performing rituals.”
“A giant hexagram.” Lukas shook his head. “Schönborn couldn’t have picked a better place for an invocation.”
They reached the foot of White Mountain. The woods lay before them, surrounded by a crumbling wall about as tall as Lukas. A few paces away, there was a rusty iron gate hanging crooked on its hinges. There were hexagrams to either side of it as well.
“These stars on the gate weren’t there when I came here with my father,” Gwendolyn said thoughtfully. “They must be new.”
“During my time as a novice monk, I learned a few things about hexagrams,” Giovanni said, pointing to the symbol. The gate squeaked quietly on its hinges. “The two triangles represent unifying the opposites in life: fire and water, man and God, good and evil, black and white.”
“Black magic and white magic!” Lukas cried. “My mother was a white witch, and Schönborn is a black magician.”
Giovanni nodded contemplatively. “I suppose the hexagram helps that bastard unify the two powers. But what the hell would these letters mean?”
“L-I-L-I-T-H,” Jerome read aloud, clockwise. “Hm, sounds like a girl’s name.”
“A girl you don’t know?” Paulus teased. “I didn’t think there were any of those left.”
“That’s a terrible thing to name a girl,” Gwendolyn said.
“Why?” Lukas asked.
“Lilith is the mother of all witches, a winged demon who eats children. In my country, we call her the Devil’s grandmother.”
“Wonderful.” Jerome gripped his forehead. “We’ve found the Devil family’s summer residence.”
“The name is probably part of some sinister spell,” Lukas murmured.
“There’s only one way to find out.” Paulus pushed the rusty gate open. “Come on, before it’s too late.”
They all went into the dark forest, which they soon discovered was actually an overgrown park, just as Gwendolyn had claimed. A boulevard flanked by scrubby, stunted oaks led directly north, to the center of the property. They crossed a stone bridge completely carpeted in moss. Black water gurgled beneath it. Statues of old, long-forgotten warriors lined the path, crumbling and covered with ivy.
After a while, Lukas came to a rotting, collapsed arbor, nearly unrecognizable beneath the ferns and other foliage. He tried to picture how beautiful the park must have been once. Dukes, counts, and baronesses had probably hunted and feasted out here. Lukas could practically see the noble lords and ladies galloping along the paths and over the bridges on white stallions, hunting for foxes, does, and bucks. But nature had reclaimed the park in the meantime; the woods were gloomy and impenetrable. Branches and twigs had pushed their way in front of the moon, leaving everything underneath as dark as a grave.
Now Lukas became aware of the noises around him. First only whispering and rustling, then a soft growling sound, the screech of a tawny owl, and the bellowing of a distant buck. Smaller paths and deer passes branched off from the main road. The onetime boulevard was so overgrown with grass and bushes that the friends kept losing their way.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you can’t even see your hand in front of your face here,” Paulus complained. “Someone
light a couple of those torches the rabbi gave us.”
“You might as well wave a flag and shout, ‘Here I am,’” Gwendolyn retorted. “Trust me, we’re safer in the dark.”
“I keep running into trees every ten seconds,” Paulus grumbled.
“I suggest we use just one torch,” Lukas said to end the argument. “That ought to be enough.” He pulled out the tinderbox, and soon the warm glow of a single pine-pitch torch was spreading around them. They could at least see a few feet in every direction. The eyes of small wild animals gleamed around the edges of the path.
“That’s more like it,” Paulus declared. “All right, then, let’s—”
“Shhh!” Giovanni frantically waved his hand. “Do you hear that?”
There were whistling and hissing noises in the air, and they sounded like they were approaching rapidly. A fluttering sound accompanied them, like the wings of a hundred birds.
“The torch!” Gwendolyn shrieked. “Put out the torch!”
Just as Lukas dropped the torch, a black, hissing cloud descended upon the group. Lukas felt tiny teeth on his face, and leathery wings brushed his cheeks.
“Merde, it’s those disgusting bat-cats!” Jerome cried. “A whole swarm of them!”
Lukas flailed and boxed wildly in every direction. He managed to grab hold of a few of the beasts and throw them to the ground, but new ones took their places immediately—all cheeping, hissing, and biting. It felt like a thousand needle pricks.
“Put the damn torch out already!” Gwendolyn shouted. “The light is drawing them!”
Indeed, the torch on the ground was still lit. Lukas stomped it out, and immediately the hissing grew quieter. Now Lukas heard the hum of Gwendolyn’s bowstring over the infernal noise as she fired off arrows, nearly one a second. Something let out a pitiful squeak, and then everything was finally still again. For a long moment, the only sound Lukas heard was his friends’ heavy breathing.
“If anyone had any doubts about Polonius being somewhere nearby, I presume they’ve been put to rest,” Giovanni panted. He’d run dozens of the bat-cats through with his blade, as had Paulus and Jerome, but most of the beasts had been brought down by Gwendolyn’s arrows. All around them, the forest floor was covered with the winged creatures, some of which were still in their death throes, stretching toward their feet, trying to bite them. Lukas and the others all had bite marks on their faces and arms, but luckily, they were mostly just minor scratches.