Sword of Power

  They looked like ancient runes.

  Knees still wobbling slightly, Lukas made his way back to the tavern, carrying one of the arrows as evidence. He kept stopping and glancing around suspiciously, wondering whether that spooky archer would reappear out of nowhere again. What had he wanted? Surely not just Lukas’s coin purse. And what did these strange runes mean? They looked almost like some of the magical runes in the Grimorium.

  All of a sudden, terror shot through Lukas’s veins like ice.

  Elsa!

  Had the stranger been after her and the magic book? Had she been his intended victim?

  Lukas ran faster. He never should have left his sister by herself, not in this huge, strange city. What had he been thinking?

  He hoped desperately that it wasn’t too late.

  Heart pounding, Lukas dashed across the great stone bridge to the quarter below the castle. As he ran, he collided with a peddler carrying a large basket. The man shouted furiously after him, but Lukas didn’t stop. He kept running and running until he reached the Black Boar tavern. Frantically he hammered out the secret knock on the door, and finally Zoltan opened it, looking astonished.

  “Lukas!” The commander glanced up and down at the sweat-soaked youth, furrowing his brow. “Lord, look at you. Did something happen?”

  “Is Elsa with you?” Lukas gasped, ignoring Zoltan’s question.

  Zoltan nodded. “She just arrived, but she went straight to her chambers,” he said, pointing back into the tavern. “Something seems to have made her quite angry.” He gave Lukas a stern look. “You, perhaps? Can’t the two of you—”

  Lukas exploded into giddy, relieved laughter, cutting Zoltan off midlecture. “Thank God! I thought that awful archer got her!”

  “What archer?” Giovanni asked. He and the others were sitting at one of the old tables, sharing some bread, cheese, and wine. “What happened?”

  Anxiously, Lukas told them about the masked assailant and his almost unearthly skill with a bow and arrow. “Best archer I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said, laying the mysterious arrow on the table. “His technique is odd, though. He carries his quiver on his belt, not over his shoulder the way you’d expect. And he uses an odd bent bow and even stranger arrows that he fires off faster than anyone. I couldn’t see his face.”

  “Sounds almost like those infamous assassins back in the days of the Crusades,” Giovanni mused. “Though they usually fought with daggers rather than bow and arrow.”

  “And here’s something else unusual.” Lukas tapped the center of the arrow. “There are runes etched into this. Runes I’ve seen in the Grimorium! So I was thinking that Elsa—”

  “Let me see.” It was the voice of his sister. She’d just come down from the storeroom, apparently curious what all the commotion was about.

  Lukas was so relieved to see her that he didn’t even mention their earlier argument.

  Elsa, for her part, still looked sullen and withdrawn as she reached for the arrow and peered intently at the symbols on it. “They’re runes, yes,” she said at last. “Not magic runes, though. I believe they’re the type of runes the Welsh bards once used to write down their songs. The Grimorium does, indeed, contain a few of them as well.”

  Yet again, Lukas was astonished at how much Elsa knew about books. She’d lived with her father, Inquisitor Waldemar von Schönborn, for more than a year. During that time, he’d not only taught her sorcery, he’d also given her free rein in his enormous library and shared all manner of dark knowledge with her.

  “So what do these runes mean, then?” Paulus asked. Like the others, he was standing around the table, eyeing the arrow with curious interest.

  “That’s an F, and this is an E,” Elsa replied, pointing to each in turn. “Likely some sort of abbreviation.”

  “Frightening Essassins?” Jerome grinned. “Get it?”

  Giovanni groaned. “Thank you for that exceptionally brilliant suggestion, Jerome. Anyway, it’s more important to find out why the archer was after Lukas. It doesn’t seem that killing him was the goal—from the way Lukas describes his skill, I expect he’d have had no trouble shooting our friend full of arrows.”

  Bernhard nodded, stroking his beard with one massive hand. “Our little scholar is right.” He took the arrow and ran a finger over its sharp iron tip. “This is good workmanship, certainly no beginner’s arrows. If this is the same fellow who was eavesdropping on us from the storeroom, we definitely need to have a talk with him.”

  “And how do you propose to arrange that?” Jurek looked at him skeptically with his one eye. “Our boy Lukas just let him slip through his clumsy little fingers for the second time.”

  Lukas’s lips parted to make an angry retort, but Zoltan raised a hand to cut him off. “It’s time for us to set a trap for him,” the commander said. “Whoever it is, thanks to our inattention, he probably knows about the Imperial Regalia. We need to find out what he’s planning.” Zoltan smiled broadly. “And I’ve already got a plan. We’ll lure him into a real mousetrap. This very night, in fact.”

  “And what’s our cheese?” Giovanni asked.

  Zoltan laughed grimly. “What do you think? The imperial scepter, of course. The most valuable piece of cheese the world has ever seen!”

  IX

  Zoltan’s plan was as simple as it was brilliant.

  The past few days had brought the commander no closer to learning the whereabouts of the two remaining Regalia items, but while out on one of his searches, he had spotted an abandoned Protestant church. Since the Catholics’ victory at the Battle of White Mountain, the building had served as a stable and storehouse. It was in a run-down quarter full of poor folk and shady characters—and it was clearly visible from all directions.

  “This fellow is as curious as a cat,” Zoltan explained quietly to the others seated around the table. “And we’re going to take advantage of that. Our bait will be the imperial scepter. We’ll go out there with it tonight, and make sure that he notices us leaving. He’ll follow us there. The church has only two entrances, and both will be easy to guard. Once he’s in, he’ll have no way out. The trap snaps shut!”

  “What if he doesn’t come?” Jurek asked.

  “Trust me, he will,” Zoltan replied in a low voice. “He knows our hideout here, and he wants to find out more about our plans. He doesn’t dare return to the attic, but I suspect he’s sneaking around outside somewhere. So we’ll just dangle a carrot under his nose.”

  For the next several hours, as they waited for nightfall, they spent their time piquing their mysterious lurker’s curiosity as much as possible. They took turns stepping outside and conversing in whispers, or setting off to purchase lanterns, torches, and ropes. They wanted to give the leather-clad stranger the impression that they were staging some great coup.

  Elsa had retreated to her chambers with the Grimorium once more. Lukas had tried speaking to her several times, but she said she wanted to be alone. He figured she was still upset with him about the argument they’d had in the marketplace.

  Lukas didn’t join them at the market, either. The wound he had received fighting the guards simply refused to heal. Matthias had changed his dressing only the day before, but it was already beginning to soak through. Lukas removed his shirt, unwound the bandage, and regarded his shoulder. To his horror, he discovered that the wound had begun to fester. Matthias, who had remained at the tavern with Lukas and Elsa, came closer and inspected the injury with a worried look on his face.

  “I don’t like this,” Matthias said as he dabbed the wound with a scrap of cloth, pressing the pus out. “Not at all. You should have rested your arm, rather than battling that damned frozen one and then running all over the city like a madman. That has to stop!” He shook his head with such force that the pearls in his braided hair jangled softly. “Perhaps it would be better if you stayed here with me and Elsa tonight.”

  “And give Jurek something else to whine about?” Lukas gritted his teeth and shook his
head. “Never!”

  Matthias sighed. “I suspected you might react that way. Well, then, let me at least change the dressing and put some herbs on there before the infection gets worse.” He cleaned the wound and pushed a few sweet-smelling dried herbs beneath the fresh bandage as he wrapped it around Lukas’s shoulder.

  Lukas closed his eyes and tried to ignore the pain. He looked up again when he heard footsteps coming from the storeroom. It was Elsa. She approached and stroked his sweaty face sympathetically. The argument had apparently been forgotten.

  “Matthias is right,” she said with a caring expression on her face. “You do look quite ill. I’ll prepare a brew of linden blossoms and willow leaves for you. It won’t taste very good, but it will help.”

  Lukas tried to smile. “Has it already come to this? My little sister is mothering me?”

  “You should be glad you have a little sister who mothers you instead of wishing the Devil would take you,” Matthias said, pointing an admonishing finger at him. “My sister would never have done such a thing—though I suppose I was never particularly nice to her, either,” he added with a grin.

  “Neither is Lukas,” Elsa shot back teasingly. “When he runs out of ideas, he throws boiled eggs at me. Or sings me lullabies! That’s the worst of all.”

  They both laughed, and for one brief moment, things between them felt almost the way they’d been before.

  Soon after, freshly bandaged and carrying a mug of linden-blossom tea, Lukas went upstairs to one of the sparsely furnished guest rooms. It held a pair of beds with straw-filled, bug-infested pillows. The rushes on the ground smelled moldy, and Lukas saw a mouse scurry into a hole in a corner of the room.

  Wearily, Lukas dropped down onto one of the beds. How he wished he were a guest at Wallenstein’s palace—presumably he would have a far more comfortable bed to sleep in there. But he knew they needed to attract as little attention as possible in their search, so this hovel would have to do.

  Lukas shivered, and he realized that he had a fever. Matthias was probably right, he decided. Swimming in the cold Vltava, fighting the city guards and the frozen one, encountering that eerie archer, and then sprinting back to the tavern had all been too much for him.

  All of a sudden, he felt so weak that he nearly retched with exhaustion. He laid his hand on the throbbing wound—it almost felt like it had a steady heartbeat. Why, why had he let himself get distracted for that one moment when he was fighting the guards? Because he’d been hoping Elsa would cast a spell. For a fraction of a second, he’d stopped relying on his own talent.

  I could have been killed.

  He thought about his father, who had taught him that one lightning-fast thrust or stab was often the difference between life and death. Many wounds were not immediately fatal. Far more painful, and far more dreaded, was what they called “wound fever,” which carried a man off slowly. During the war, Lukas had known soldiers who were as strong as oxen, and he’d watched wound fever burn them from the inside out within just a few days. The only way they’d have even a shred of a chance was if the limb was amputated in time. The feldsher sliced off arms and legs using a bone saw, giving the unlucky soldiers only a bottle of schnapps to dull the pain and a piece of wood to bite down on.

  Is that where I’m headed now, too?

  Lukas wanted to call out to his sister, but he couldn’t muster the strength. Instead, he thought of his dead mother. He’d heard her voice from time to time, as though from some distant world, but it had been a long while since it last happened. He still dreamed of her on occasion, but the figure in those dreams was less distinct each time—her contours were fading, as though she were slowly sinking into the fog of oblivion.

  Lukas closed his eyes and took a deep breath, calming himself. He tried to picture his mother, to remember her laugh, her songs, her caresses. He drew new strength from his love for her.

  And just like that, the familiar voice of his mother spoke within him.

  It was as clear as if she were standing beside him in the room.

  The power is within you, Lukas. Feel it. Use it.

  Lukas jolted upright and glanced around, but he was alone in the room. The moment had passed again. Perhaps it had only been a fever dream? But the voice had been so real. His mother had helped him conquer his fears before. Her voice had once come to him and told him how to defeat the inquisitor’s phantom wolf. Would it help him now, too?

  There! Her voice sounded once more, softly now, as though carried on the wind from some distant shore.

  The power is within you, Lukas. Not only in your sister. The power is within you.

  “What power, Mother?” he murmured. “What power?”

  Lukas put his hand on the fresh bandage. His heart was filled with love for his mother—he missed her so much! Hearing her voice was like having her close again.

  “Mother . . .” he whispered.

  The power, Lukas . . . the power . . . the power . . .

  The voice grew fainter.

  Lukas took a deep breath and pictured his blood pulsing through his body, flushing the infection away, fighting off the malevolent forces inside him.

  He breathed deeply again, turning all his concentration inward, and all at once, the pain in his shoulder seemed to lessen. His fever had broken as well! Astonished, he unwrapped the bandage, and he could barely believe his eyes.

  Rosy skin now shimmered in the spot where the injury had been, and the exhaustion that was now spreading through him was like nothing he’d ever felt before.

  The wound was gone.

  The power is within me, too, he thought. I have it, too.

  Then his eyes fell shut.

  The last thing he heard was a soft ringing sound that seemed to come from another world.

  X

  Lukas awoke to chatter at the foot of his bed.

  “. . . has me worried. I looked at his wound before, and the infected blood may have already reached his heart. You all know what that means.”

  Blinking sleepily, he saw Matthias and Zoltan standing there, along with his friends, Giovanni, Paulus, and Jerome. All five of them looked extremely concerned. Night had already fallen, and several candles on the windowsill bathed the room in muted light. It took Lukas a while to get his bearings again, but then the memory came back to him.

  My mother’s voice! he thought. The wound!

  Cautiously, he prodded the bandage, but the pain was gone. In fact, he felt refreshed—a little tired, though, as if he’d been working hard all day long.

  “During the war, in a case like his, we would have amputated the arm just to be safe,” Matthias went on in a whisper. Then he stopped, realizing that Lukas was watching him, and forced a smile. “Ah, Lukas!” he cried, attempting to sound cheerful. “I’m glad you’re awake. Are you thirsty? I’ll get you something to drink.”

  “Thanks,” Lukas replied. “But I don’t think that’s necessary. I can get it myself.” He moved to stand up, but Paulus held him back with his strong, massive hands.

  “Lukas, you have a bad fever. Stay in bed. We’ll take care of you.”

  “Damn it, I don’t have a fever! Now stop treating me like I’m a small child. I’m fine!”

  Astonished, Matthias came closer and felt Lukas’s forehead. “It’s true,” he murmured. “His fever is gone, his cheeks are rosy. How is that possible? It’s some sort of miracle.”

  Lukas pushed Matthias’s hand away. “I told you, I feel much better. When are we leaving?”

  Laughing, Zoltan clapped the dumbstruck Matthias on the shoulder. “Bernhard is right. You really are a damn quack, Matthias! And here I was thinking this little whelp was done for.” He turned to the door. “Get ready, all of you. We’ll leave in half an hour.”

  Matthias shot Lukas one last, baffled look before following his commander down to the tavern. Paulus, Jerome, and Giovanni breathed sighs of relief.

  “Mon dieu!” Jerome exclaimed, grinning. “Matthias gave us quite a fright. We thought
you were going to have to start wiping your ass with your right hand.”

  “Matthias must not be as good a field surgeon as he thinks,” Lukas replied, rising to his feet. He felt bad about having to lie to Matthias, but he decided it would be better not to tell his companions about his miraculous recovery just yet. He didn’t know what to make of it himself. His dead mother had spoken to him, and apparently, he had managed to heal himself through some sort of magic. Or had the whole thing simply been a feverish hallucination? Hastily, he picked up his doublet and rapier belt and put them on.

  As he walked downstairs, Lukas sneaked another glance underneath the bandage. It was true—the wound had disappeared.

  The others were already waiting for him down in the tavern. Elsa was standing with them, looking equally baffled to see her brother so healthy.

  “I thought you were deathly ill!” she cried, embracing him tenderly.

  “Must have been that bitter linden tea of yours.” Lukas smiled, smoothing back her hair. “I suppose you should take care of me more often, little sister.”

  Elsa’s expression turned suspicious.

  Lukas thought back to what his dead mother had said. The power is in you, Lukas. Not only in your sister.

  He decided not to say anything to Elsa yet, either. He shoved his rapier into its hanger and turned his attention to the others, who were already carrying their weapons, lanterns, and torches. “Shall we go?”

  Zoltan looked at him uncertainly. “Are you sure you want to come with us? The injury may not be as serious as we feared, but if we end up in a battle . . .”

  “I can fight as well as anyone here,” Lukas broke in. “Maybe even better,” he added defiantly.

  “Now that’s the angry little half-pint I know!” Zoltan grinned. “You certainly do remind me a lot of your late father sometimes.” He reached for the imperial scepter, which he had just removed from the chest and wrapped carelessly in a few scraps of cloth, making sure that the gold and silver were visible underneath. “Well, then,” Zoltan growled. “Let’s draw this strange bowman out of his hiding spot. I can hardly wait to find out who it is we’re dealing with.”