Princess of the Midnight Ball - Jessica Day George [53]
The silver twigs gave him some proof of where he had been, but he didn’t know how to proceed from there. Galen suspected that merely telling the king where his daughters had been would do nothing to help them. The spell that was over them was powerful indeed, controlling them not only when they entered the underworld, but outside it as well. Otherwise they would have told their father by now. Galen’s hope was that, after three nights of following them, he would have learned enough to work out a plan that would free the princesses.
“Galen, please come to my study,” King Gregor said wearily when breakfast was over.
“I shall accompany you,” Angier said. He heaved his bulk upright and preceded the king and Galen across the hall and into the king’s private study. Dr. Kelling made as if to follow, but Angier dismissed him with a gesture. King Gregor began to protest, but the doctor shook his head.
The king sat in the chair behind the desk and the bishop took the comfortable chair before it. Galen stood calmly between them. His soldier’s training proved valuable here as it had so many times before: he was nervous, he was uncertain what to do next, but he would never let it show. With an impassive face and ramrod-straight spine, Galen reported to the king and the bishop that, after entering the princesses’ chambers, he had sat and talked with them for a while. Then, sometime before midnight, he had fallen asleep and not woken until a little after dawn. The princesses had all been in their beds, very peacefully asleep, but their slippers were worn through once more.
The king threw up his hands in despair. Had Galen been alone with the king, he would have been tempted to give the man some hint of hope, but he refused to do so in front of Angier. The bishop spoke Westfalian with a faint accent, and it had only been at breakfast that Galen had realized it was Analousian. Although as a man of the church he was supposedly above such politics, it still made Galen nervous. Galen bowed himself out of the study and went to find Walter.
The peg-legged gardener was cleaning leaves out of a fountain shaped like a dejected-looking mermaid. The water had been drained, lest it freeze and crack the pipes, and now the empty marble bowl was a catchall for stray leaves and other debris.
Walter greeted Galen with a nod. “How fare our princesses?” the old man inquired.
“Not well,” Galen said bluntly. He pushed back the sleeves of his good jacket and bent down to help gather the leaves into a basket.
Walter stopped and sat on the edge of the fountain. “The nightshade worked,” he stated.
“It seems so,” Galen said, “Tell me: what do you know of a black palace far underground, guarded by a gate of silver set with pearls, surrounded by a forest of silver trees, and built on an island in the middle of a black lake?”
Walter’s weathered face went white. “Foolish woman,” he breathed. “So she made a bargain with him.”
“Rose and the others—” Then Galen stopped. “Then you know of it?” He stared at Walter, angry. “Why didn’t you help them?”
Walter shook his head. “I didn’t know that Maude had gone so far. I knew that she had summoned help from some unseen source. But I didn’t know it was him.” Kicking his peg leg against the base of the fountain, Walter looked off into the distance. “Not him.”
Galen ran his hand over his short hair. “So Queen Maude really …?”
“Wanted children so badly that she made a pact with the King Under Stone?” Walter sucked his teeth. “So it seems. And I’ve no doubt that she meddled again, to make certain we won the war.”
Galen rejected this, shaking his head. “But we fought hard for that war. It took twelve years—”
“No one ever said that he plays fair,” Walter interrupted. “Creatures without honor—without souls—never do. Why should they? That’s something that Maude never could