He had to find another way out.
And fast.
He could not go back inside the castle grounds. The guards would be on the move. To his left a rough cobbled path ran along the base of the castle’s outer wall. Another smaller wall paralleled the outside, overlooking the river a hundred feet below. This had surely once been a path from which men and artillery could be shifted around the outer walls without risk. He ran down the path, visualizing in his mind the map of the castle’s grounds he’d seen earlier outside the administrative offices.
There was another way down.
A popular spot, too.
The Dragon’s Den.
He knew the story.
King Krak had lived in a castle atop Wawel Hill. A village lay below, beside the river, on fertile lands, and would have been rich and prosperous if not for a fierce fire-breathing dragon that occupied a cavern below the castle. The dragon liked to roam the countryside, eating sheep, cattle, and people. It particularly delighted in the taste of virgin flesh, as what dragon didn’t. The beast devoured virgin after virgin, until only the king’s daughter was left. It was then that King Krak declared that the brave hero who could slay the dragon would receive half the kingdom and his daughter’s hand in marriage. Knight after knight tried to kill the dragon, and all were devoured. Then a poor young cobbler’s apprentice wanted to try his luck. A mere boy. No warrior. No armor or sword.
But he had a brain.
He took a dead sheep and stuffed it with sulfur, then sewed it back together and left it at the mouth of the cave. The dragon swallowed the stuffed animal whole and soon developed a dreadful bellyache. The suffering creature crept down to the River Wisła and began to drink. He drank so much water that he eventually burst into pieces.
End of dragon.
Earlier, back at the main gate, Cotton had noticed the three large bones hanging over the entrance, suspended on chains. For centuries these were believed to be the remains of the dragon. In reality, they belonged to a mammoth, a rhinoceros, and a whale. But the cave under the castle was real and, ahead, through the darkness, he spotted the narrow turret at the top of a brick tower that held a spiral staircase. An iron gate barred access, but when he approached he noticed that it was secured by a modern keyed lock.
He glanced around and saw no one.
He was now on the castle’s far west side, facing the river, which was over the wall to his right and a hundred feet down. He heard people below out walking the riverbank, enjoying the summer night. Lots of them. Just what he needed. He laid the wooden box down and picked the lock, quickly passing through the portal and relocking the gate behind him.
He descended the iron rungs in a tight circle and finally found himself standing in a limestone cave, nothing but blackness ahead, the attraction closed for the night. An electrical box was attached to one wall, and using his phone for light he tripped the breakers. The rocks came alive with back glow, exposing the Dragon’s Den in all its shadowy detail. He hustled through the first chamber and into the next, the walls narrowing and heightening, the ceiling thirty feet high.
He heard a noise from above.
Voices.
Most likely the exterior security cameras had revealed his presence. He kept going and headed into another chamber, this one with a stone vault supported by a set of brick pillars and decorated by rock projections, chimneys, and fissures, the ambience trying to evoke thoughts of the mythical dragon that supposedly once lived here. The two-hundred-foot-long cave attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, a place where superstition had evolved into folklore.
He spotted the exit.
A pointed-arch portal with another iron gate blocking it. Beyond, on the street that faced the river, a sculpture of the dragon stood. People congregated around it. He approached the gate and saw another lock, which was easy to pick. He emerged at the foot of Wawel Hill, the castle towering high above. He dissolved into the crowd, box in hand. A host of stray constellations circled overhead. He recognized the tangled silver chain of the Pleiades.
He kept walking.
And resisted the urge to turn back and glance up at the outer walls, where Sonia Draga was surely watching.
Mission accomplished.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Jonty walked over to Konrad, who was still staring at the salt wall.
“What is it?” he asked.
“There’s something odd here.”
He stared at the wall, too, comprising individual blocks mortared together, rising from the floor up five meters to the ceiling.
“These were built by the miners to block off unused tunnels. It was a safety measure against fires.”
He reached out and stroked the rough gray-green surface.
“They cut the blocks themselves,” Konrad said. “The mortar is salt mixed with water. It makes a good cement. The thicker the mortar lines, the newer the wall. The oldest used little to no mortar. But they were strong. I know of walls that are still standing after four hundred years. This one is different.”
The others walked over.
“How so?” Eli asked.
“The blocks are too perfect, and the mortar is thin.”
Jonty waited for more.
“The miners used anything and everything to build the walls. Trash, lumber, even horse manure. When they chipped the salt blocks into rough rectangles, no two were ever the same. They built fast, with little regard for craftsmanship. The idea was to get it up and done. So the mortar lines would be wavy, the layers all different. Nobody but them was ever going to see it, so it didn’t matter what it looked like.”
Jonty began to notice what Konrad was saying. The individual rectangles here were all remarkably similar, many of the edges impeccably straight. The mortar joints varied in width, but still crisscrossed in a defined pattern. “The mortar is thin, which would mean this is old. But the blocks are too perfect to be old?”
Konrad nodded.
“What are you saying?” Eli asked.
Konrad drew closer to the wall. “Vic, could you go back out to the main tunnel and get some of the iron pieces we saw lying around.”
Jonty caught his acolyte’s attention and nodded yes. Do it.
Vic left the chamber.
“You think there’s something on the other side?” Jonty asked Konrad.
“I’ve seen it before where chambers were walled up. It’s not unusual. But whoever did this wasn’t in a hurry. They cut the blocks from the salt and made sure they were all close to the same. If we’re assuming this is the Warsaw Chamber you are looking for, then there could be more to it on the other side.”
Vic returned with several pieces of rusted iron. Konrad grabbed one of the bars and started to work the thin mortar in one of the side joints, where the blocks met the main salt wall.
“This isn’t mortar. It’s just part of the wall collapsed into the block. They definitely built this in front of an opening.”
Konrad kept scratching the joint away, using the thin edge of the iron as a chisel. Salt dust sprayed away as a crease began to form. He then used the bar as a fulcrum and forced the iron farther into the seam, angling it away from the block, trying to pry it free.
Then he stopped.
“What?” Jonty asked.
“It moved.”
Was that a problem? Did it mean danger?
Everything was illuminated by the motion of their headlights, but Konrad settled his beam down and used it to trace a path about two meters up the block wall. A meter-long crack had formed. Konrad used the iron to deepen it into a valley. Vic worked with another piece to clear away more mortar from the crack to the floor, revealing the crude outline of a doorway.