“You try now. Yes?” asked Draska. “For daughter?”
Daisy took Grace’s hand in hers. She pressed it gently but urgently.
“You love your daughter,” Daisy whispered. “I do, too. Please try. Please?”
Grace closed her eyes. She nodded.
“Come outside,” said Draska. “Come. We help you.”
The two girls took Grace gently by the arms, helping her to the door of the dungeon.
“You can’t leave,” said a police officer. “We have to question Dr. Path. We must get a statement.”
“She has to find her daughter. Now!” said Daisy.
The police officer raised his eyebrow. “The woman who fell into the underground river? There is no—”
Grace looked at the man, her face crumpling.
“You really don’t want to complete that sentence,” said Daisy, her teeth clenched, exposing her canine tooth.
“No,” said the police commander, motioning the officer away. “I will accompany them. Let me get you coats. Come, Dr. Path,” he said offering his arm. “Come upstairs, please.”
PART
-4-
Chapter 119
BATHORY CASTLE
HIGH TATRA MOUNTAINS, SLOVAKIA
DECEMBER 30, 2010
John stood, paralyzed by uncertainty, ice crystals forming in his hair. In the gray predawn light he could see the tall iron fence and his rented car beyond the gate.
“Come in,” called a policeman who had taken over the guardhouse. “Come in and rest.”
“I can’t. I have to find her—”
“Hot coffee,” said the policeman. “Help you think.”
The Slovak led John into the guardhouse. “Here, drink,” he said.
John nodded, accepting the cup. His hands moved with the jerky stiffness of a puppet.
The policeman pointed. “They come.”
John saw two figures emerge from the castle entry. Then a third, much larger. He recognized Daisy, then Grace. Then the National Police Captain.
“They’re trying to find her,” he murmured.
“But—there is no track,” said the policeman. “How can they find body with no—”
John turned, shaking with emotion.
“I am sorry—” said the guard, putting his hand on John’s shoulder. “But chance of survival—”
John said nothing. He just stared into the milky gray light. Tears welling in his eyes, he left the guardhouse, staggering blindly after them.
Grace fought through the deep snow. The pale light exposed earlier tracks, but she did not notice them. She walked almost without seeing, searching without looking, stumbling with a blind certainty toward a place she knew from the one and only dream she had ever remembered. The dream she had told her husband so many years ago, the night before Betsy was born.
And then she was there. The frozen pond. A graceful place, the boughs of the weeping willows coated with ice and snow. It was dawn, and the rosy glow of the sun burned through the remaining clouds, a mist of vapor rising from the silver surface of the pond.
A few ducks paddled between broken patches of ice. They plunged their heads under the water, looking for food. At the edge of the pond a river flowed over rocks polished smooth from millennia of rushing water.
She felt a swell of sorrow. She knew this place. She remembered this spot where she had never been. It was not a happy memory.
“Here,” she murmured.
She struggled to the frozen shore where the river met the ponds.
The white, perfect form of a woman lay face up beneath the ice.
Chapter 120
ČACHTICE CASTLE
DECEMBER 30, 1610
Somewhere in the castle above, a bell tolled a mournful early-morning hour as Janos was lowered into the ice cave on a rope, clutching a burning torch, ignoring the pain in his wounded arm. Thurzo’s men fed the slack slowly as he descended.
The rippling formation of the walls were a wolf’s mouth closing around him, undulating and raw. Diamonds of light glittered. Ice crystals sparkled. Milky white sheets of ice shimmered in the torchlight.
He winced, seeing the brown blood staining rocks below. Zuzana was not the first to fall into the abyss. He thought of all the families who had searched in vain for their beloved daughters.
They lay here, hidden in an icy tomb.
The air was much colder, blowing over the coursing water carving through the blue-white ice. Mighty columns gleamed in his torchlight. Hanging chandeliers of ice arched to meet with sharp pillars thrusting up from the cave floor.
And below this glittering beauty, strewn across the rocks, lay the bodies of girls, like broken porcelain dolls, ghostly pale and coated in ice. Their frozen features sparkled, stars shimmering from their translucent skin. In these depths, there were no wolves to ravage their flesh, no rats to gnaw their bones. They were perfectly preserved.