“It was a castle before it became a monastery,” the Countess said. “In fact, it is the burg represented on my husband’s coat of arms. But as the wars died down and the Procházkas grew prosperous with peace, they built Snovin Hall to be their legacy. We can leave the horses here,” she announced as we approached what appeared to be the charred remains of a stable.
“Is it safe?” I asked, eyeing the rotted wooden beams.
“It’s stood for three hundred years like this, so it can stand for at least another three hours. Now, be a dear and help me dismount,” she ordered.
I scarcely knew how to gracefully get off my own horse without tumbling to the ground, but somehow I managed it without cracking a skull. I moved to help the Countess, but she seemed much more nimble than I despite the club foot.
“Otto doesn’t like it when I come here alone,” she admitted. “He thinks I’m not careful enough of my step.” Her smile was wry. “But I love it up here. There is a certain allure to this place, some dark, shameful part of me that thrills at the beauty of death and decay.”
Walking arm in arm with the Countess, I understood what she meant. The notion of finding death and decay beautiful should have sounded ridiculous and morbid, yet it resonated with me with a sort of romance of its own. I thought of the leaves of the Goblin Grove decomposing into mulch, dissolving into soil, that rich, fertile earth waiting to give way to life with the right touch of sunshine and rain. I thought of Snovin Hall, with its former grandeur slowly moldering into ruin, reclaimed by the land. The difference between sorrow and melancholy, the razor’s edge that divided aesthetic pleasure and emotional devastation.
Again, I felt those green eyes upon my face. “I always knew you were one of us,” she said with a smile. “Those of us who are Der Erlk?nig’s own know that we all return to the Underground’s embrace in the end.”
We all return in the end. I thought of Josef, and shivered. “But I thought you—she—the first Goblin Queen—escaped. Free and clear.”
We passed a threshold and into a colonnade surrounding what was once a garden or a lawn. It was overgrown with weeds and wildflowers now, surprisingly green despite the light dusting of snow that covered them. I wondered where the Countess was taking me.
“The view is best from the southeast tower,” she said as though reading my thoughts. We picked our way through the fallen rubble. “Nothing is free and clear,” she said softly. “Not with the old laws.”
I frowned. “Then how did she do it? How did she walk away?” We passed the colonnade and through the door at the base of the tower in question and began climbing a narrow spiral staircase.
Her face grew grim. “When my foremother walked away from the Underground, the Wild Hunt chased her over hill and dale, hither and yon. But she could have escaped their notice if she had been content to merely walk away. After all, a life for a life; Der Erlk?nig could have simply found another bride.”
Another bride. Jealousy, sorrow, and hope chased each other through my blood. “Why didn’t he?”
The Countess smiled. “He loved her. He would have no other. And for his love, the old laws punished him.”
My stomach gave a jolt. I remembered the vision I had had leaving Vienna, when the Procházkas had drugged me, when I awoke with the Goblin King’s ring in my hand. The darkness crawling over his skin, the bleached-pale eyes, the horns curing from his feathery hair, the tortured, spindly, multi-jointed hands.
The covenant is undone. It is corrupting us. Corrupting him.
“Then what happened?” I asked.
“She returned Underground.”
“What?” It was a twist to the story I had not anticipated. “Why?”
“There is power in a name,” the Countess said. “She found his. His true name, the name he had given up when he became Der Erlk?nig. He had placed it within her heart, so that a piece of him would live on so long as her blood still beat and her lungs did breathe. His name was the key that unlocked her shackles, and so they walked together in the world above.”
My own breaths came short, my pulse skipping and fluttering with excitement, fear, joy, and not a little exertion. “How?” I whispered. “How did she find his name?”
“She cut out her heart and laid it bare before her.”
I wasn’t sure if the Countess was being poetic or in deadly earnest. Her expression gave nothing away, and I resisted the urge to reach for the Goblin King’s ring.
I would walk the world and play, until someone called me by name and called me home. My throat constricted, and the tears that were all too close to the surface threatened to spill over once more. My austere young man, trapped Underground and being slowly corrupted—punished—for the sin of loving me more than the old laws. If I could find his name, if I could just free him . . . it seemed too good to be true. A life for a life. But then who became Der Erlk?nig after the first was freed? And how?
“Ah, here we are,” the Countess said.
We had reached the top of the stairs, and the space widened around us into a long, high-ceilinged corridor. The fire seemed to have barely touched this part of the monastery. The floor beneath our feet was made of marble, and the walls were lined with a yellow silk brocade. The doors to the monks’ cells were paneled with a rich, dark wood and between them stood some porcelain statues of Christ, which remained intact, as well as a few paintings.
“This room has the best view,” the Countess said, opening a door at the end of the hall. “I envy the brothers who lived here.”
The room was small and dark, with a small window cut some few feet above our heads into the thick outer stone wall of the tower. Panes of glass had filled that window once, but they were smashed and broken, and the wind whistled in, a high, keening sound. There were two narrow beds placed on either side, with a scant foot between them, although I wasn’t sure if more than one monk had lain his head here. The bed opposite the window had a deteriorating coverlet, the threads picked clean by birds and rodents to build their own nests, and a few dusty, moldering robes were piled atop the chest at the foot of the bed. A Bible still rested on the table beside the bed, along with a half-burned candle with wax melted into a pool at its base.
By contrast, its brother bed was entirely bare. No coverlet, no pillow. No mattress, even. The Countess gestured to the frame, indicating I should climb atop it for a better view.
“I’m getting too old for such acrobatics, even without the club foot,” she said. “You go ahead, child. Lean on me.”
Hesitantly, I braced myself against her shoulder and pushed myself up on my toes for a glimpse through the window. I spied something scratched into the mortar surrounding the window frame. Words, etched in a surprisingly clear hand: Wolfgangus fuit hic. Latin. I traced my fingers over the letters, and for the briefest moment, I was connected to the brother who had left just a little bit of himself behind in this world.
Then I looked out over the valley.
“Oh,” I breathed.
“Marvelous, isn’t it?” Below me, I could hear the pride in her voice.