Princess of the Silver Woods

by Jessica Day George

  Conspirator

  Oliver had never had someone pray to him before. It had been slightly amusing until he realized that if Petunia was frightened enough of her maid to use such a ruse, Oliver really should be on his guard. When they first met, Petunia had pointed a pistol directly at his face without wavering for an instant, yet she was being terrorized by this Olga.

  Did the King Under Stone have human servants outside of his kingdom who were helping him? If he did, this maid was certainly suspect. Oliver’s experience with servants was limited, but it seemed to him that a good lady’s maid wouldn’t order her mistress around in quite the way that Olga did with Petunia and Pansy.

  Once he was sure that the maid was gone and the princesses were asleep, Oliver rolled out from under the bed. He found the plate of sandwiches and shoved one in his mouth whole, wrapping two more in a napkin and stowing them in a pocket.

  Chewing and swallowing quickly, he leaned over Petunia and kissed her inky curls. He just couldn’t help himself. His eyes had grown accustomed to the dark after a long day spent under the bed, so he could see her white face nestled in the blackness of her hair. He was sure she would wake if he touched her face, so he was careful only to press his lips to her soft hair, breathing in its scent of flowers and cinnamon, before he slipped out of the room.

  He made his way down the hall, not sure where to find Galen or Heinrich. His every nerve was on edge—even though he was invisible—in case he stumbled upon Grigori. He listened at each of the doors, hearing nothing, until at the fourth door there was the sound of a woman crying and a man’s voice speaking in soothing tones. He hated to interrupt such a scene but didn’t know what else to do, so he softly knocked.

  The voices went silent, then the man called out, asking who was there. It was Prince Heinrich, and some of Oliver’s tension drained away.

  “It’s Oliver,” he said, as loudly as he dared.

  The door was opened immediately, and Heinrich peered out into the corridor. Seeing nothing, he stepped back, opening the door wider. Oliver slipped in, tapping the prince on the shoulder so that Heinrich would know where he was. The prince quickly shut the door and locked it.

  Distinctly uncomfortable, Oliver undid the cloak and watched his body reappear. Princess Lily was sitting up in the bed in her nightgown, her eyes red from crying and her face pale and thin. Her hair, a rich dark brown, was loose and fell nearly to the bedclothes.

  “I’m so sorry to disturb you,” Oliver said, staring at his boots. “But I have information, and I needed to give it to you right away. I told Petun—Princess Petunia—but she hasn’t been able to speak to any of you privately, so I thought I would come myself.”

  “You’d better fetch Rose and Galen,” Lily said to her husband.

  Heinrich left so silently he might as well have been invisible.

  “If you don’t mind, I’m going to put my dressing gown on,” Lily said.

  “No, I don’t—oh!” Oliver quickly turned his back to the princess.

  He heard her slip out of the bed and the rustle of her putting on a dressing gown. There was a flapping noise as she put on slippers as well.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Oliver turned around to find her in a lavender silk dressing gown. She expertly braided her long hair and tied a ribbon around the end, smiling at him as he watched in a sort of dazed fascination.

  “Petunia’s hair is too curly to braid,” she said conversationally.

  Oliver wasn’t sure why, but that was what finally made him blush. Not barging in on her and her husband during a private moment. Not seeing her in her nightgown, but her mentioning Petunia’s hair.

  The hair he had just kissed.

  He made a noncommittal noise and almost collapsed with relief when the door opened a heartbeat later to admit Heinrich and the crown prince and princess. Galen was still dressed, though he was wearing a plain dark suit and not evening clothes. Seeing him, Oliver realized that Heinrich was dressed in much the same unobtrusive manner.

  Rose was in a dark-red dressing gown with Far Eastern embroidery. She gave Oliver a warm smile without a hint of self-consciousness as she sat on the bed. Lily sat beside her, and they all looked expectantly at Oliver, who cleared his throat.

  “I came to make sure that Princess Petunia and the rest of you were all right,” he began, wondering how much of an idiot he was going to feel like before this was all through. “I went to the hothouse I told you about before, the one that I saw the shadows coming from, and I looked around to see if I could find anything.”

  “I take it that you did,” Galen said, raising an eyebrow.

  “Yes,” Oliver said, encouraged. “At first I didn’t think there was anything to find, but then I noticed that the floor was swept clean from the table in the middle to the door, but it didn’t look like anyone had been in the hot house since I was there two weeks ago. When I looked closer, I saw that someone had written on the floor with wax, but I couldn’t decipher the writing.”

  The two princes exchanged looks.

  “Do you … want me to show you?” Oliver offered, wondering if they were now about to thank him and then send him away. He wasn’t going to leave Petunia, not while he still felt a pounding in his head that told him she was in danger.

  “Yes,” Galen said. “Just let me get something to light our way and we’ll go.” He took some of the tall white candles from a candelabrum on top of the desk and put them in a bag slung over his shoulder. “We’d better go out the window,” he said.

  “Do you want to wear the invisibility cloak?” Oliver held it out to him.

  “Oh, no, but you had better,” Galen said, clapping Oliver on the shoulder. “If Heinrich and I are seen, we’re still invited guests. But you’re supposed to be in Bruch.”

  “Have you been here all day, then?” Rose asked, getting up.

  “Um, yes,” Oliver said, praying that she wouldn’t ask him where he’d been hiding.

  “Are you hungry? Do you want us to find you something to eat?”

  “Oh, no,” Oliver said. “I have a couple of sandwiches … I brought with me.” He patted his bulging pocket.

  “That’s very clever of you,” Rose said. She had an amused expression on her face, though, that made Oliver wonder if she suspected where they had come from.

  He bowed to the two princesses and put on the cloak, glad that they couldn’t see his face anymore. Galen had turned out all but one small lamp and was pulling back the curtains so that they could go out the window.

  “Here we go,” Heinrich said with a groan.

  When all three had reached the ground, they set off across the lawns, Heinrich moving surprisingly quickly despite his limp. Oliver almost had to trot to keep up with them, the rustling he made crossing the winter-dead lawns telling the princes where he was. When they reached the little glass- paned house at the end, the one that Oliver was starting to think of as the Shadow House, he was panting, and Heinrich was rubbing his left thigh as though it pained him.

  “Were you badly injured, in the war?” Oliver couldn’t help but ask.

  “An Analousian bullet lodged in the bone,” Heinrich said. “But it’s mostly stiff these days.”

  “We’ll need to do this swiftly,” Galen warned them both, handing out candles. “Anyone looking will see the lights through the glass walls, and they’ll come to investigate at once. It will be a bit hard to explain what we’re doing.” He laughed.

  As soon as they were all inside, Oliver tossed aside the cloak while Heinrich took matches out of his pocket and lit their candles. Oliver immediately squatted down and showed them the wax writing on the floor. It was easier to see by candlelight, to Oliver’s relief. He’d been afraid that it would be too dark. Or worse, that he’d been imagining it all along.

  “Here, hold this.”

  The crown prince handed his candle to Oliver. He got down until his nose was nearly touching the tiles, while Oliver and Heinrich held the candles high. Galen moved ac
ross the floor like a crab, studying the writing.

  “Can you read it?” Oliver finally asked.

  “In a way,” Galen said. “It’s not so much writing as a combination of words and symbols that form a powerful spell.”

  “What—what kind of spell?”

  “Is it a summoning spell?” The shadows made Heinrich’s face look hard and old.

  “Worse,” the crown prince said shortly.

  “It’s a gateway.” “A gateway to what?” Oliver’s voice shook when he said it, but he wasn’t ashamed.

  “A gateway to the Kingdom Under Stone,” Galen said. “Or at least, a gateway out of it.”

  “We can’t use it to get there?”

  Heinrich sounded disappointed, and Oliver wondered if he was a little bit mad. Who would want to go to the Kingdom Under Stone?

  “No, I think it can only bring the princes out, and not in their real forms,” Galen said. Oliver thought he saw him sniff at the wax.

  “Where—what—where is the Kingdom Under Stone?” Oliver wasn’t sure how to ask the question, or what question he wanted to ask.

  “The Kingdom Under Stone is the prison where Wolfram von Aue and his followers were exiled,” the crown prince explained. “He was too powerful to be killed at the time, so he was locked into a place between worlds. I was fortunate that he had expended so much energy building his palace and stretching his bonds in order to father his sons. I was able to kill him with blessed silver inscribed with his real name, something that wouldn’t have worked two hundred years earlier.”

  “I see,” Oliver said, though he wasn’t sure that he did. “So, his sons can only appear as shadows here in the … real world?”

  “Yes. Although they’re not really shadows, they’re … well, they’re not really shadows,” Galen said with a small laugh.

  “Could one have killed me?”

  The crown prince looked up at Oliver, all traces of laughter gone. “Yes.”

  He took a clasp knife from his pocket and unfolded it. Grimacing at the sound it made, he began to scrape away the wax writing. “The princes were born here, but the king whisked them away moments later, otherwise they would have died when the sun rose. At night, though, if they can create a gate, they can reach our world in their shadowy forms.”

  “Why would you want to go to their kingdom, Your Highness?” Oliver looked at Heinrich, who also took out a knife and squatted down.

  “To kill them,” Heinrich said, his voice flat.

  “Barring that,” Galen said, pointing to a tile for his cousin to scratch at. “To seal them in their prison for good and all.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “I did it once before,” Galen said. “But my lock is breaking, or so I assume, judging by what’s happening to my wife and her sisters. These shared nightmares,” he went on, shaking his head, “they shouldn’t be possible. And now a gateway, to allow the princes to leave … it’s only a matter of time until they can make a gateway to draw the girls in. We must reseal the prison.”

  “I don’t want to reseal their prison,” Heinrich said, beginning on another tile. “I want to kill them.”

  “Heinrich, you know that killing them may not be the best option,” Galen said in a quiet voice.

  “Fine then,” Heinrich said. “I won’t kill all of them. Just enough to make it easier to contain the rest.”

  “I want to help you,” Oliver said.

  “Why?” Galen looked up at him. “Because of Petunia?”

  Oliver was relieved that the prince didn’t seem to be skeptical about his conviction. He simply looked like he wanted to know, and so did Heinrich, when Oliver dared to look at the other prince. Oliver was very aware that Heinrich had known his father. Had known him better than Oliver had, in fact.

  “Because of her,” Oliver said at last. “Even though I have only met her twice, really … I just …”

  “I risked my life to save Rose after only speaking with her twice,” Galen said with a small smile.

  Encouraged, Oliver went on. “But also because of my family. If it hadn’t been for the King Under Stone and the trouble he caused with the worn-out dancing slippers, I would have been able to claim my title and take care of my people without resorting to banditry.”

  Both princes nodded as though this made perfect sense. And then the crown prince added fuel to Oliver’s ire by saying, “And you have the King Under Stone to thank for the Analousian War as well. We don’t know if he actually started it, but he kept it going for twelve years in order to further entrap Queen Maude.”

  Oliver stared at him, aghast. “Do you mean,” and his voice was barely a whisper, “that the King Under Stone was responsible for my father’s death?”

  “And my father’s,” Galen said. “And my mother’s, and my little sister’s.” He looked down at the tiles. “I think that’s enough to prevent this gateway from working. Whoever did it will have to scrape all the tiles clean and start over.”

  Heinrich blew out his candle. After a moment Oliver blew out the ones in his hands as well. In the dark he felt something soft shoved into his arms.

  “Take the cloak, lad,” Galen said. “I hope you’ve got more sandwiches in your pockets. I’m sending you to Bruch.”

  “You are?” Oliver felt numb. They were sending him away from Petunia, away from the heart of the crisis? And what was he supposed to do, try to plead his case to King Gregor again?

  “I need you to find Bishop Schelker,” Galen said, to Oliver’s surprise. “Tell him we need him. It’s time.”

  “You have the spell ready?” Heinrich’s brow creased. “I thought you and the others were still working on it.”

  Galen sighed. “We have something,” he said. “There’s no way to test it, of course. I can find a thousand excuses to read more books, spend another de cade exploring more complex magic. But this,” he gestured at the markings on the floor, “tells me that we’ve run out of time.”

  “And Schelker will know to bring the others?” Heinrich asked.

  “Of course,” his cousin replied. To answer Oliver’s questioning look, he added, “The good bishop is a dab hand at magic, but we’re going to need all the help we can get. There are others with a stake in this who will be coming.

  “And make sure the bishop arms you as well,” Galen continued. “Bishop Schelker is also a dab hand at blessing silver daggers and bullets. Lily and Poppy are good with guns—all the girls are—but we can always use one more.”

  Gardener

  Petunia dreamed of Oliver that night, a refreshing change from her usual nightmares.

  They were walking in the forest, and everywhere they looked there were roses blooming. Blackened winter leaves were cold beneath their feet, but perfect yellow roses glowed from every bare bush. Petunia, laughing with glee, ran from one to the other, taking cuttings that Oliver gathered up in a flat basket. When she had taken a cutting from every bush that she saw, she stopped by one heavy-laden bush to catch her breath. Oliver picked several of the enormous flowers and tucked them into Petunia’s hair.

  “I wish that they were scarlet, to match your cloak,” he said.

  “But I like yellow roses best,” she told him.

  “Then I will fill your room with yellow roses,” Oliver said, and leaned close as though to kiss her.

  “Stop giggling,” Pansy said, standing there in her nightgown with her hands on her hips.

  Petunia turned in embarrassment to apologize to Oliver for her sister intruding on them, but Oliver was gone. The forest was gone. Petunia was suddenly awake, lying in her bed in the grand duchess’s manor, and Pansy was standing over her, glaring.

  “It’s bad enough that we have the nightmares most nights,” Pansy said crossly. “But now you’ve woken me from the best sleep I’ve had in weeks with your giggling!” She made a disgusted noise and stomped into their dressing room to use the water closet.

  Petunia looked around groggily. Judging from the light coming in through a crack
in the curtains, it was just after dawn. Then she had to gape: the curtains were not only closed, but the warmth of the room told her that the windows were still closed as well. What had come over Olga?

  As though the thought had summoned her, Olga burst into the room and marched over to the window, yanking aside the curtains. Petunia covered her face with a small moan as the winter sun stabbed into her eyes. The maid ignored her and tied back the curtains, humming as she tidied the room.

  “Isn’t it rather early?” Pansy had come back from the dressing room and didn’t seem all that thrilled with the open curtains either.

  “But you’re to have a very big day today, Your Highnesses,” the maid said.

  “We are?”

  Petunia blinked at the maid. So far as she knew, they were going to get a more thorough tour of the gardens … and that was more or less the extent of their plans.

  A stab of anxiety went through her as Olga began to fiddle with the coverlet. Was Oliver underneath her bed? She hadn’t heard him come back, but then, this was the best night’s sleep she’d gotten in weeks as well—she prayed silently that Oliver hadn’t heard her giggling in her sleep. And that she hadn’t said his name aloud.

  “What precisely is happening today?” Pansy asked.

  Petunia got up and started sorting her knitting basket. It was on a chair across from the bed, and she contrived to drop a ball of yarn so that it rolled underneath.

  “Clumsy!” She started patting around under the bed before Olga could offer to help.

  “Prince Grigori has arranged quite the outing for you all,” the maid said. “First you are to go riding in the forest with him, and then have lunch at his hunting lodge.”

  Petunia had writhed her way across the underside of the bed, but hadn’t found any sign of Oliver. She crawled out from under the bed on the other side, making Pansy jump as she appeared, holding a ball of yellow yarn.