I look at Liesel, watching us from the flames. “Is the council capable of finding Dieter?”
She shakes her head. “They’ve been trying all their magic. He’s hidden.”
Cornelia puts her hand on Brigitta’s arm. “We have to be smart about this. If we can’t track him, and he could be anywhere…”
“We have totry!” Brigitta says, her voice cracking on the last word. It breaks us all. The futility of it.
“I’ll get Philomena to pester Perchta,” Liesel offers brightly. “That’sthe thing with the goddesses—they’ll eventually just give you what you want, you just have to—”
“Drive them mad with questioning?” I offer.
“Be persistent,” Liesel says, sticking her tongue out at me, flames spurting in my direction.
Dieter has more power than any of the witches here. He’s already ahead of us.
We can only hope to find the next stone before him.
After filling our bellies, Fritzi and I fall into an exhausted sleep early. When I open my eyes again, it’s not quite dawn. The light between the trees is paler than before, but not bright enough to see beyond our camp.
Fritzi’s already awake.
“Good morning, hexe,” I whisper.
She kisses my nose, then lets out a heavy sigh and curls into the curve of my body. My arms tighten around her.
“I’m sorry about Johann,” she whispers to my chest. A crack of pain jolts through me, but I force my body to still, to not let her see how deeply wounded his loss has left me. She knows anyway. I can feel it in the way her body tenses even when mine doesn’t, in the soft touch of her hand over my heart.
My chin drops to the top of her head. I almost think she’s fallen asleep again when Fritzi pushes against me, lifting her head to meet my gaze. “How can we find the third stone?” Her voice breaks in desperation. “We only knew to come to Trier because Holda left her stone here. But we don’t know where Perchta hid hers.”
“On the bright side, Dieter probably doesn’t know either.”
Fritzi frowns. “But out of all the tunnels in the aqueducts of Trier,Dieterdidfind the stone. Holda wasn’t helping him. And even if he knew it was in Trier, how did he know to look in the aqueducts?”
I can sense the question she’s not asking—was it magic? Did he pull power from her and use it to find the stone that a goddess’s champion hid centuries ago?
“He didn’t know where it was,” I remind her. “Remember what Johann said? Dieter’s been tearing apart the aqueducts for months. If heknew,he would have gone straight there.”
“But then how—”
I snort bitterly, no amusement in the sound. “History.”
Fritzi’s brow furrows, but everyone in Trier knows Saint Simeon locked himself up in the Porta Nigra and became a hermit, imprisoning himself so that he could dedicate his life to prayer. Soon after, Trier flooded, and the citizens blamed him, calling him a witch who sent the rising waters to curse the people.
“Dieter knew of Saint Simeon. He knew the legend of the floods. Perhaps he connected that to the water stone. Maybe there was something in the books he read in the council’s library that helped, but… I think he knew about this one. Perhaps for a long time. Perhaps that’s the reason why he settled in Trier in the first place, because he knew there was an important relic in the city.”
“Abnoba’s stone in the council represents the element of earth; Holda’s is water. We just need to find Perchta’s before Dieter does. You don’t happen to know of any historical connection with a city of wind, do you?” Fritzi asks sardonically. “Or some temple full of air?”
Perchta, the Mother. The most severe of the goddesses, the one who adhered to the rules more than the others. Holda was the somewhat rebellious Maid, much like Fritzi herself. Abnoba had chosen Liesel as her warrior, and had trusted the council to hide the earth stone.
I think, judging from what I have learned of Perchta, if the goddess had any choice in the matter, she would have kept the stone or hidden it herself. But she had to have a champion do it.
I sit up, pulling Fritzi into my lap, and see that some of the others are starting to wake up as well. I stroke Fritzi’s hair, thinking. Holda seemed to have entrusted a champion who used Catholicism to hide the water stone, adding a sacred reliquary as additional protection. Dieter had tossed it aside, but had a Christian stumbled across the golden box, I have little doubt the artifact would have been brought into the cathedral and worshipped, even if the archbishop couldn’t have known what it was.
Perchta, I guess, would not have wanted to ally herself with the Catholics, not even for a level of protection.
I lean forward, drawing the rough shape of the Holy Roman Empire on the forest floor. Cornelia, now awake, shifts closer to us. “The Romans brought Christianity, but they were terrified of the Celts,” I say.
“As they should be,” Fritzi murmurs. I snort.
