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Several minutes later, we emerged from the dark tunnel into another quiet space, bent over and wheezing. Thomas collected himself and held the lantern up; the dim light showed it to be an enormous stone room. I wanted to scan our surroundings, but couldn’t swallow enough air to steady myself.
Before fully catching his own breath, Thomas placed the lantern next to me and sat on his heels, examining my wounds. His hands were cool and precise as they peeled my ruined stockings down. A crease of worry worked its way between his brows.
“You’ve only been bitten by one spider—of the nonvenomous variety, from the look of it, no swelling or leeching to indicate venom—and cut your leg on a sharp rock.” He gently tapped the wounded area on my leg. “This needs to be rinsed. And a plaster would be rather nice.”
“I left my medical supplies in my other dress. How inconvenient.”
Thomas’s lips twitched, the first sign he was warming from that cold, isolated part of himself. He dug in his trousers and brandished a small roll of gauzy material. “Lucky for you, I remembered mine.”
Without wasting more time, he cleaned my wound as best he could and wrapped it with mechanical efficiency. Once he had addressed that matter to his satisfaction, he stood and scanned the cavernous room. Several passages marked by numbers spread out before us. None of them correlated to the poems we’d read in class.
“I don’t think we’ve been followed, or else we surely would have heard sounds of pursuit by now,” he said, holding the lantern up. “Which nasty little passage should we try first?”
“I’m not—” A thought struck and I couldn’t stop myself from exhaling. I pointed to the narrowest tunnel. Above its arched entrance were the Roman numerals VIII. “It’s almost a clue within a clue, Thomas.”
He raised a brow. “Perhaps it’s the dankness or the spiders, but I’m not exactly following the relation.”
“The Roman numeral eight very well might be code for Vlad the Impaler. V Three. Vlad the Third. Prince Dracula.”
“Impressive, Wadsworth,” Thomas said, turning his gaze to me. “If we weren’t about to face another terrible passageway filled with life-threatening danger, I’d take you in my arms this instant.”
SECRET TUNNELS
TUNELE SECRETE
BRAN CASTLE
22 DECEMBER 1888
Once inside the passageway, I grabbed the lantern from Thomas and played the light around the space, spinning slowly.
Words were hard to come by as I studied the walls. Instead of another forgotten tunnel far beneath the castle halls, this passage ended in a perfectly square stone room. The walls, floor, and ceiling were covered in carved cross patterns a bit smaller than my hand. Jewels and tiles glinted in the lamplight.
There were more riches in the glimmering mosaic than I’d ever seen. It reminded me of ancient temples where magnificent painters had spent a lifetime capturing each detail. What purpose such a chamber served here in Vlad Dracula’s former fortress was beyond me. Perhaps this was a secret meeting place of the Order of the Dragon. It certainly had a Crusader aura about it. I did not think it was another chamber of death.
I walked toward the nearest wall and traced the outer ridge of stone. Each and every cross was identical. I scanned the chamber, surprised to see algae growing in patches along the top and bottom corners of the room.
“This is… incredible.”
“Incredibly suspect. Look there.” Thomas pointed to another carved Roman numeral, XI. “Will you read that poem?”
“Yes, give me a moment to find it.”
Thomas slowly rotated in place, taking in as much of the damp stone chamber as possible. I opened Poezii Despre Moarte and scanned the poem correlating to the passage we were now in. I had no idea how to decipher it the way Radu had done, nor any clue what doom might be waiting for us here.
“Well?” he asked. “Is there anything more to it?”
“No. It’s the same verse from earlier,” I said. “‘Lords weep, ladies cry / Down the road, say good-bye. / Land shifts and caves dwell. / Deep in earth, warm as Hell. / Water seeps cold, deep, and fast. / Within its walls you will not last.’”
In the exact center of the room, a stone table stood about four feet high and was covered in more of the same cross carvings. A pang of anxiety struck as if it were a chime in my chest, but I breathed through the nerves. The table was likely an altar used for sacrifices.
Knowing to whom the castle had belonged conjured ghastly images of torture. How many people had been brutalized in the name of war here? How many boyars tortured and maimed for the sake of creating a peaceful nation? There were no winners during times of war. All suffered.
“I’m almost certain there’s a tapestry in the servants’ corridor that depicts a chamber like this one,” I said, cringing at how loudly my voice echoed. “The walls in that image seemed as if they were covered in blood, though.”
Thomas glanced in my direction. An expression that could almost be interpreted as fear crossed his face before he blinked it away. “Covered in blood, or filled with it?”
I conjured up a mental image of the artwork, the downward drips.
