Traitor's Chase

  To Greg’s surprise, his father shook his head. “Greg, we have much bigger problems than getting home.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, finding the stone and returning back to our own time is important, of course. At least, it is to us. But what’s happening is much bigger than us. If Michel Dinicoeur is actually plotting with the Spanish against France, then he’s hoping to alter all of human history. In the future we came from, Louis married Anne of Austria. Their son, Louis the Fourteenth, became one of the great kings of France. If Dominic prevents even that single event from happening—let alone does something colossal like helping Spain overthrow France—who knows what the ripple effects will be?”

  Greg stopped and looked at his father. “You mean … even if we returned to our own time, it wouldn’t be the time we knew anymore?”

  “Exactly,” Dad said gravely. “This mission is of far greater importance than anyone here can possibly imagine. The fate of the entire world is at stake.”

  Greg swallowed. His mission had seemed daunting before when he’d thought only his own life was at risk. Now it was completely overwhelming. And yet he knew he couldn’t back out. He pasted on a smile he hoped looked reassuring. “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’m off to Spain—and I’ll be back with the Devil’s Stone.”

  PART TWO

  THE

  CHASE

  SEVEN

  Madrid

  THE SOLDIER STATIONED AT THE FRONT GATE OF THE ALCÁZAR went on alert as Michel Dinicoeur approached. This was understandable, as it was three o’clock in the morning. “Stop,” he said, raising a hand. “What is your business?”

  “I am here to see King Philip,” Michel replied.

  “At this time of night?” the soldier asked, incredulous. “The king is asleep.”

  “That’s fine,” Michel told him. “I only want to see the fool. Not talk to him.”

  With that, he leaped at the soldier.

  The man was considerably bigger than Michel, and even though Michel was in extremely good shape for a four-hundred-year-old man, he knew there was no chance he could win a fair fight. But then, Michel had no intention of fighting fair. He had chloroform.

  The anesthetic wouldn’t be discovered officially for another two hundred and fifty years, but it wasn’t too hard to get if you knew how. It was produced naturally by certain types of seaweed—and a little went a long way. The small bit he’d dabbed on the rag in his hand was more than enough to render the other man unconscious.

  It wasn’t instantaneous, though. Even after Michel had leaped onto the soldier’s back and pressed the rag to his mouth, the big man clawed at him. But a few seconds later, he collapsed in a heap, and Michel dragged him into the shadows and slipped into the castle.

  There were other soldiers to confront on the way to the king’s quarters, but far less than there would have been during the day. Michel had studied the castle carefully over the past week, watching the soldiers on their nighttime patrols, determining the best time to attack. Now the castle guards were few and far between. Several had fallen asleep at their posts and were easy to dispatch. Others gave him considerably more trouble. One actually scored a hit with his blade that might have killed a mortal man, but then he’d let his guard down, expecting Michel to die—and Michel had quickly taken him out.

  Within fifteen minutes of entering the castle, Michel had reached the king’s bedroom, not far from the throne room. The door wasn’t even locked—what was the point of locking a door when you had an entire army to protect you? It creaked as Michel opened it, but Philip remained sound asleep.

  A single candle illuminated the room, burning low after being lit all night. Michel shut the door behind him and approached the small bed.

  In the gleam of the candlelight, Michel could see the silver links of the chain that bore the half of the Devil’s Stone around Philip’s neck. He stepped forward with the chloroform-soaked rag.

  Philip’s eyes suddenly snapped open. When he saw Michel, he reacted with confusion, rather than fear—as though unsure whether he was dreaming or not. “How …?” he gasped. “How are you here? You should be in France by now.”

  “I am,” Michel replied, then placed the rag to Philip’s lips.

  The king put up far less of a fight than any of his guards had. He was a much weaker man, and his screams for help were muffled by the rag. Within seconds, he was limp.

  His hands trembling with anticipation, Michel pulled the silver chain off Philip’s neck. The piece of the Devil’s Stone gleamed darkly as he lifted it into the candlelight.

  Michel felt a flow of warmth surge through him as he laid the chain around his own neck. It had been nearly four hundred years since he’d last held this piece of the stone—save for an all-too-brief few minutes in the Louvre two months earlier, before Greg and his parents had ruined everything. But now it was as if no time had passed at all. He needed both halves of the stone to make Dominic immortal, but this piece alone still had power. It made him feel strong again, like he could do anything.

  Michel took a dagger from its sheath and placed it at the king’s neck. No point in leaving any loose ends.

  Before he could do anything, however, he heard footsteps racing toward the bedroom. Soldiers yelled in Spanish: “We have been invaded!” “Get to the king!” “Make sure he’s safe!”

  Michel quickly withdrew the dagger and darted from the room. There was another way out through Philip’s private quarters, and as he ducked through the door, he heard the guards burst into the king’s bedroom, then cry with fear when Philip didn’t wake. The anesthetized king distracted them while Michel slunk through the castle. He kept to the shadows, and soon he was back out on the streets of Madrid, the half of the Devil’s Stone clutched to his chest.

  He felt fantastic with it. Immortal. The wound where the soldier had stabbed him before barely hurt anymore. It was already healing quickly, thanks to the stone’s power.

  But as good as the stone made him feel, he knew he would have to give it up soon. Once Dominic was immortal—and the Musketeers were dead—Dominic would have the life Michel had longed for: an eternal life of wealth and power. In making that happen—in altering Dominic’s course—Michel would then change his own. There would be no need for Michel to return through time. In essence, the person he was now might even vanish from existence, but he didn’t care. His life had been miserable, thanks to the Musketeers.

  Michel paused for a moment, thinking about them—and that meddlesome Greg Rich. If all had gone well, Valois and the assassins should have taken care of them by now. Michel had assumed he’d know when the boys were dead—as though their deaths might somehow send a ripple through the space-time continuum that he could feel. Now he began to wonder if something had gone wrong.

  Michel quickened his pace through the dark streets. Perhaps it didn’t matter whether the Musketeers lived or not. He had half the Devil’s Stone. He had to get to Dominic, who was in France. Then they would recover the second half of the Devil’s Stone—and Michel’s work here would be done.

  His horse was tethered close to the Alcázar. Even though it was the middle of the night, there was no time to lose. The king’s soldiers would soon be searching the city for him. He climbed astride his steed and rode north, toward France.

  EIGHT

  THE FOREST SEEMED TO GO ON FOREVER.

  The Musketeers had been traveling for four days now, and they’d seen almost nothing but trees.

  The other boys weren’t surprised by this, but Greg found it astonishing. The world had changed far more than he could have possibly imagined over four hundred years. Back in modern times, he’d stared at this land from the window of a plane on approach to Paris. There had barely been any forest at all. The entire swath from Paris to the Rhône River had been a giant patchwork of tilled fields dotted with hundreds of towns and crisscrossed by a thousand roads.

  But now, in the past, it was all forest—thick, dark, primordial fores
t. Many of the trees were staggeringly large, with trunks as big as houses and branches that soared high above and blotted out the sun. The underbrush was an impenetrable tangle of bushes and vines. There was only one route through it, a thin path that meandered between the huge trees.

  “This isn’t what I thought it’d be,” Athos confided to the others on the fourth day. They were riding their horses single file along the narrow path. Even in the middle of the day, the woods were so dark it seemed like twilight.

  “And what did you expect?” Aramis asked.

  “I don’t know, exactly. I’d heard the woods went on a long ways, I just didn’t think it’d be this long.” Athos gave Aramis an accusing look. “Perhaps we made a wrong turn somewhere.”

  “We didn’t,” Aramis said curtly.

  “You don’t know that for sure,” Athos argued. “We might all be riding in circles.”

  “If we were riding in circles, the sun would be moving around us,” Aramis told him. “But it’s not. It’s rising on our left and setting on our right. Therefore, we’re heading south, which is the correct direction.”

  Athos considered this a moment, then shook his head. “That can’t be right. These woods are too big. We must have made a mistake.”

  “We didn’t!” Aramis snapped. “Athos, I know what I’m doing. The world is simply much larger than your tiny brain can comprehend.”

  Porthos laughed. Athos recoiled, offended, although he didn’t say anything in response. Instead, he glowered at the others, angry with Aramis for the insult—and with Porthos for laughing at it.

  Greg turned away, doing his best to hide his concern. He’d expected the journey to be long and dangerous, but something had arisen lately that worried him even more: His fellow Musketeers weren’t getting along.

  Greg had assumed that the one good thing about this trip would be the camaraderie. He’d imagined Porthos regaling them with funny stories, Athos relating his adventures in the King’s Guard, Aramis pointing out the constellations around the campfire every night. Instead, Athos and Aramis had been at each other’s throats since the first day, while Porthos had spent most of the time complaining. They simply weren’t working as a team.

  “D’Artagnan, you’re the best traveled of us all,” Athos said, unwilling to let his disagreement with Aramis drop. “Is it truly possible that these woods could be this large? Or are we going in circles?”

  Greg winced. “Well, like I’ve said, I haven’t been through these woods before....”

  “Yes, we know.” Aramis looked at Greg expectantly. “But you have traveled great distances and know how big France is, correct? So answer Athos. Who is right?”

  Greg looked to Porthos for help, but his fellow Musketeer deliberately avoided his gaze, staring off into the woods.

  Greg reluctantly turned back to Aramis. “You’re right,” he said.

  Athos shot him a wounded look, as though Greg had betrayed him.

  “It’s the truth,” Greg tried to explain. “France is a very big country. It could take us several weeks to get to Spain on horseback.”

  “What?” Porthos asked, suddenly jolted into the conversation. “Several weeks just to get there?”

  “I told the king this would be a very long journey,” Aramis chided. “Exactly what did you think that meant?”

  Porthos lowered his eyes, embarrassed. “A week or two.”

  “We’ll be lucky if we make it to Arles in a week or two!” Aramis said. “We don’t merely have to get to Spain. We have to track down Michel and Dominic and find out what they’re up to. After which we’ll have to get all the way back to Paris. How on earth did you think this would only take fourteen days?”

  “Math isn’t exactly my strong suit,” Porthos admitted.

  “Thinking isn’t your strong suit,” Athos muttered. “What do you think we packed all this gear for?” He waved a hand at the four horses behind them, heavily laden with food and supplies.

  Porthos shrugged. “I thought we were just being over-prepared.”

  The horses carried food and water, which the boys were supplementing by hunting and gathering. There were also some coarse blankets to sleep on and fashion crude shelters from, weapons ranging from crossbows to broadswords, emissary notes, a small bit of silver to purchase additional supplies, and a cage with five homing pigeons to send messages of their progress back to the king. That was the extent of their supplies. They didn’t even have so much as an extra set of clothes. After four days in the heat, everyone’s uniform already stank of sweat and horse.

  “Porthos,” Greg said, “I don’t want to alarm you, but it might be months until we return to Paris.”

  Porthos gasped in horror. “Months? Maybe this mission wasn’t such a good idea. I have things to do back in Paris, you know. Family matters. Dances I have agreed to attend. Women to woo …”

  “I’m sure we’d all like to be back in Paris, but we have things we must do in Spain.” Aramis spoke with surprising confidence. “The king himself chose us to find out what Michel and Dominic are plotting. If we turn our back on our responsibilities, who knows what trouble they will wreak?”

  “Yes, but one of our responsibilities is to protect the king,” Porthos said. “So perhaps one of us should go back. Just to make sure he’s safe.”

  “If you don’t want to continue with us, you’re welcome to go.” Athos pointed behind them at the path through the dark woods. “It’s only four days back through this forest. Alone.”

  Porthos swallowed. It was obvious he hadn’t thought that part through as well. “On second thought, maybe I’ll stay with all of you.”

  “I suspected as much.” Athos snapped his reins and rode on. The others obediently followed.

  Porthos pulled up alongside Greg a few minutes later and confided, “I don’t know if I can do this. This trip was daunting enough when I thought it would only take a fortnight. But now …” He glanced around the forest warily. “I hate these woods. I’d rather face Michel and Dominic than spend another day in them.”

  “Why’s that?” Greg asked. He was dreading the moment when he’d have to confront Michel and Dominic again.

  “Because the woods are dangerous!” Porthos said emphatically. “They’re crawling with thieves, bandits, and vagabonds who’ll happily slit our throats in return for all our gear.”

  Athos laughed mockingly. “Don’t worry yourself about that. No band of thieves stands a chance against me.”

  “While you’re awake, maybe,” Porthos shot back. “But you have to sleep sometime. And that’s when they get you. They lurk in the woods, waiting for the chance to kill you.”

  “The stories about the woods being full of thieves are merely rumors,” Aramis chided. “They’re not true.”

  “Really?” Greg asked, feeling better to hear this.

  “Really,” Aramis said. “What we need to worry about are the wolves.”

  “Wolves?” Greg suddenly felt worried again.

  “Yes. They surround men, hunting as a team, and pick off people one by one, ripping open their gullets and feasting on their entrails.”

  Porthos gulped. “Thank you, Aramis. I was only worried before. But now I’m downright terrified.”

  Aramis shrugged. “Ignorance of the truth is a recipe for disaster.”

  “I’m not worried about any wolves.” Athos unsheathed his sword and slashed at imaginary beasts. “They are only flesh and blood. I can handle them. We have nothing to fear on this journey.”

  “What about the assassins?” The words just slipped out of Greg’s mouth. He couldn’t control it; the assassins had been weighing on his mind for days.

  He could tell from the looks in the others’ eyes that the same held true for them. Even Athos seemed concerned, though he tried to cover it with his usual bravado. “We took care of them last time. I think they’ve learned not to mess with us.”

  “We got lucky last time,” Aramis countered. “If D’Artagnan hadn’t realized they were about t
o ambush us, we’d all be dead. They know that. They’re not going to give up because they failed to kill us once. Especially not with Valois commanding them.”

  Porthos and Greg nodded agreement, though Athos remained unswayed.

  “If they’re targeting us, where are they, then?” the swordsman asked. “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of them over the last four days.”

  “You’re not supposed to see hide nor hair of them,” Porthos muttered. “That’s what makes them assassins.”

  “I don’t know,” Aramis told Athos. “Perhaps we left Paris so quickly, they didn’t notice. But if that’s the case, it won’t take Valois long to figure out that we’ve gone—and where we’re going. Or maybe they’re well aware of what we’re doing and are just waiting for the right moment to attack.”

  “Are we all sure we shouldn’t just turn around and go home again?” Porthos asked weakly.

  “We can’t turn back,” Greg said as the others shook their heads. “This mission is far too important.” He caught Aramis’s gaze as he said it. Of all the Musketeers, Aramis was the only one who knew enough about Dinicoeur and the Devil’s Stone to fully comprehend how much was at stake.

  “D’Artagnan’s right,” Aramis agreed. “We swore to protect the king and France, and that is what we must do now, no matter how daunting. We have a duty to learn what Dinicoeur is up to and send word of it back to the king.”

  “And what if it’s not that simple?” Porthos asked. “What happens if we go all this way, and finally track down Dinicoeur and Richelieu—and find that their plans are already well under way? What if there’s no time for us to send a pigeon back to Paris and wait for reinforcements to arrive? What are we supposed to do then?”

  Greg grimaced. This thought had occurred to him plenty of times along the way. Now he could see in the others’ faces that the same concern had plagued them as well.

  “I pray that such a situation will not arise,” Aramis said finally. “But should it, I have faith in our abilities. We rescued Greg’s parents from a prison everyone believed was impenetrable—and defeated our enemies to boot.”