Princess of the Midnight Ball - Jessica Day George [62]
It didn’t take long to locate them.
Bishop Angier, confident that no one would dare to rifle through his things, had simply left them on a table. There were other books: a notebook in Analousian that Galen guessed was the bishop’s, a book on the history of witchcraft, and a beautifully illustrated Bible.
Galen pushed these other books aside, picking up the tattered history book and the small blue diary that also littered the table. He started to put them in his satchel, but then realized that when their absence was discovered, it might raise a hue and cry.
Galen set them back on the table and began hastily leafing through the history, to see what he could find before Angier returned. Halfway through the book, he found a pansy pressed between two pages. Maude had used the flower to mark the chapter on Under Stone.
Galen sank onto the edge of the table and read about the King Under Stone, whose name had once been Wolfram von Aue, when he was an adviser to King Ranulf of Westfalin in the fifth century. When he killed Ranulf and made himself king, Under Stone had decreed that his name must never be spoken again, lest it be used against him as part of a spell. Every record, every piece of paper that contained his name had been destroyed, and the very memory of it had been wiped from the minds of his subjects. The magicians who imprisoned him had spent years trying to recover that name, which was the key to their spell of entrapment. It had also involved silver, blessed by a bishop, and wool from a lamb that had never before been sheared.
Galen reached into his satchel and stroked the woolen chain. He felt sure that this wool had come from a similar source. Who had that old woman been?
The answer was found at the end of the chapter. Twelve magicians had imprisoned the King Under Stone, as he was now called. Eight of them had died, but four remained alive, and more than that.
Never certain if a being so powerful and so wicked could truly be defeated, the four living magicians took upon themselves immortality, to walk the world until the end of time. Though diminished in strength, they are ever guarding against the dark king and those like him, lest they return to the world and cause more mischief.
Those like him? Galen shuddered at the thought that there might be other creatures like Under Stone out there.
He turned to Maude’s diary, feeling a bit embarrassed at perusing the private thoughts of a queen. Here Angier helped him: a bookmark of purple satin with the bishop’s seal embroidered on it had been placed in the pertinent part of the book. Maude had learned of Under Stone not only from the old history she found, but from one of the magicians she had consulted in her hunger to have a baby.
The “goodwife,” as Maude called her, had told the queen how Under Stone had managed to summon mortal princesses to him in order to father his twelve sons, which is where Maude got the idea that he might help her as well. The good-wife, though Galen wouldn’t have called her that, told Maude how to call to the king by placing a drop of blood on a white silk handkerchief, pressing it to the ground under a new moon, and calling his true name. Maude had done it at the far end of the garden, near an old oak tree that was one of the few original trees that had been left standing when King Gregor remade the garden for his bride. Galen wondered if that was also where Rionin and his brothers had entered the gardens.
She had made the bargain with the King Under Stone, only wanting one child, but the king had “graciously” promised her a dozen. Her original entries about her dealings with him had been elated; she had only to come to his palace and dance when the moon was full. Then Rose was born the day of the full moon, and Maude had not gone to dance. When next she went down the golden staircase, the King Under Stone had raged at her and told her to come twice a month. With every missed ball, he increased