I warily extended my arm over the counter toward Petar, who gingerly took hold of my hand with cool, dry fingers and inspected my palm over the tops of his tortoiseshell eyeglasses. He flipped my hand over and ran a slow finger down my veins.
The shop fell into silence... just for a moment. Then he released me and nodded firmly at his brother. “Yes.”
“Yes?” Mihai said.
Both of them were pleased.
Did they know? Could Petar hear whatever Lovena had detected in my veins?Old blood...
And was it the same thing Dr. Mitu had discovered when researching my mother’s bloodline?
“We told you Mr. Fox hadn’t been to our shop,” Mihai said, “but it may be of interest to you that we have heard his Hungarian employer arrived in town yesterday.”
“Mr. Rothwild is here?” Huck said, a distrustful look on his face.
“He was seen last night,” Mihai confirmed. “It’s not the first time. He comes here every now and then, a dragon, returning to his lair.”
“I thought his, uh, lair was in Hungary—in Budapest?” Huck said.
That was where Father first had a meeting with Rothwild, in his home in Hungary, across the northwestern border of Romania, past Cluj and the horrible Hoia Forest... at least a day’s ride from here by train.
“Budapest is his home, yes,” Mihai said. “But he has... a lair, of sorts—here, inside the mountain.”
Huck and I both stared at the old men.
“Perhaps it’s best to show them,” Petar murmured to his brother.
Huck shot me an anxious glance as Mihai tottered back to his overflowing bookshelves and ran his finger across the spines of several oversize books, making a happy noise when he found what he sought: an old atlas, bound in vellum. With no small amount of effort, he hauled the large tome to the counter in arms that were as thin as spring branches.
“Let’s see,” he mumbled to himself, turning thick parchment pages that made crinkling noises. “Ah, here we are. Bra?ov, 1712. There are many castles in Romania, and several are concentrated in this region. This is the thirteenth-century citadel of Rasnov,” he said, holding a large magnifying glass over a drawing of a fortress on the old map. He then moved it to a blank spot on the map. “A little farther away on the other side of the mountains is the future site of Pele?, the fairy-tale castle that would later be built for King Carol. And, of course, there is the famous Castle Bran... here.”
“Said to have been captured briefly by Vlad ?epe?,” Petar remarked.
“Yes,” Huck said. “We read that on the information sign at the railway station.”
“Three castles,” Mihai said, tapping his finger on each location again. “But there is also a fourth castle—Barlog.”
His magnifying glass moved to a mountain in the middle of the city... and a drawing of a black dragon.
“What is that?” I asked, bending over the atlas.
“The mountain standing here in the heart of our town is called Tâmpa,” Petar said. “Heavily wooded. Beautiful views of Bra?ov. After ascending to the summit on a secret path, it is said you walk through the woods until you come to Castle Barlog, Lair of the Dragon.”
“Rothwild owns a castle on a mountain in the middle of Bra?ov?” I said.
“He inherited it from his grandfather, a Hungarian nobleman who owned several pieces of property in the Southern Carpathians.”
“You mean we can walk right into it like tourists?” Huck asked.
Mihai shook his head. “No. It is private property. And no one can just walk into it. The path up the mountain is hidden. The castle is hidden. This was the last public map printed with its location, more than two hundred years ago. And you can see, it wasn’t even marked clearly on a map at that time.”
“The town has forgotten it was even there,” Petar said.
We all stared in silence at the map until Huck cleared his throat. “Do you think Fox, I mean... Mr. Fox. Do you think there’s a chance he knew about this castle?”
“Anything’s possible,” Mihai said. “But I would hope not.”
“Most who journey inside Castle Barlog don’t come out,” Petar warned. “And Mr. Fox doesn’t have what Mr. Rothwild wants, so he is not useful to the Hungarian. Mr. Fox has nothing to bargain with.”
