Chapter 26
Resting With the Dead

At that very moment, the Necromancer reentered the abandoned cemetery, alone and hungry. He’d eaten the carrots he’d taken from the peddler’s wagon. Now there were only two potatoes left to gnaw on. These he’d stored in his empty sockets. After all, he mused grimly, potatoes have eyes.

He picked his way to Hans and Angela’s old coffin tunnel. Where is my prey now? he wondered. What will I tell the archduke when I return to Castle Schwanenberg?

The Necromancer knelt down by the hole. Where better to think and dream than cocooned in the dank earth? He slithered inside and lay very still. Worms came out of the tunnel walls and wriggled up his shroud. He relaxed as they crawled over his arms and legs. What peace, he thought, to rest with corpses.

His mind drifted to the moment of Hans and Angela’s escape. He knew there was no Wolf King nor monster horde: Magical creatures had no need for horses. Clearly, that meant the fellows were outlaws, using disguise to frighten the world from their hideaway. Harmless, too, or they’d have killed him and his Weevils, not just his crows.

So why had they taken the boy and the girl? Not for reward: The children could expose them. And not for slaughter: They could have killed the brats in the clearing. That left but one explanation: They were escorting them somewhere.

But why? Out of kindness? If the Necromancer had had eyes, he would have rolled them. Good-hearted thieves, like garrulous nurses and evil wizards, were the stuff of fairy tales.

Besides, the only important question was where. The place must be secluded, for no town could provide safe haven from his spies. And it was surely in the north, for north was the only direction they’d traveled. Indeed, far north, the peddler’s wagon suggesting a long journey.

But where in the far north could they find sanctuary?

A slug poked its moist horns into the Necromancer’s left earhole, as if confiding a secret.

“Ah.” The Necromancer smiled. “But of course!”