ISBN 978-5-0059-6044-3

      Created with Ridero smart publishing system

      Behind the Seven Seals

      The doors of the royal treasury were like gates to heaven, but their voices were hellish. Princess Estella ran her fingertips wistfully over the gilded angel wings, nymphs, titans, apple trees, and serpents. Who would think to decorate the entrance to the treasury as if it were the gateway to a temple? Estella’s fingers burned as if the dragon’s breath was burning the gilded flaps of the door on the other side.

      “Do you suppose there could be a dragon locked up in the treasury as a guard?” she asked Gisela timidly.

      “More like a prisoner! Dragons are only good guards if they are chained,” said Gisela, the young, lively governess, who had wanted to be queen from the first day she came to the castle. Now her dreams of marriage to the old king were dashed with the death of the latter.

      Since the king’s burial, Gisela had been sulking as if she had been deprived of her rightful inheritance.

      “If I’d known he was going to die so soon, I would have taken a governess’s job with another princess,” she muttered to herself. “He had only just begun to like me! My feminine charms worked only a week ago, when the King invited me to a game of chess. I am sure he wanted me as his wife, not his favorite. He’s too old to have a minion.”

      Estella merely nodded at her mentor’s scholarly speeches. She understood little of what was being said. What was a minion? And did the King, who had already been married once to her mother, have the right to marry a second time? Isn’t Gisela herself a princess from a ruined principality who came to Aluar for support and a position at court? Couldn’t she marry a duke or prince? Why would she want an old king?

      When Estella asked all these questions aloud, her mentor would get terribly angry with her. So the princess preferred to remain silent.

      “You’re so sweet!” Sobbing into a silk handkerchief, which for some reason was embroidered royal coats of arms, said Gisela. “You listen so attentively! You give the impression of a smart, when you do not say anything! And evil people say that the elves stole your mind, and that you have been a fool ever since.”

      “What do you mean?” Estella frowned. She was preoccupied with the gilt doors. She could certainly hear the sound of many angry voices whispering in the doorway:

      “Let us out! Come here! We have been waiting for you, Princess!”

      Gisela did not hear these voices. She was crying and blowing her nose noisily, as if she had just been widowed. Her black silk veil, thrown over her intertwined golden braid, was like a widow’s veil. Gisela would have liked a gold crown over the black veil. Estella would have given her a crown of her own, too heavy and pressing on her forehead, but Gisela said it could not be done. Only queens or princesses had the right to wear a crown, not princesses’ tutors.

      Even if there were demons hiding behind the treasury door, they were the only ones who didn’t call Estella a fool. That was nice! The word fool sounded insulting, though Estella didn’t know exactly what it meant. But the courtiers whispered in such sly tones about the empty-headed princess, whose mind had long been taken by magical creatures. It made Estella uncomfortable.

      “Ever since you inherited the kingdom, many people have been looking at you like you’re game. You must be more careful,” Gisela warned her.

      “I don’t think so! I have suitors who run away as soon as I open my mouth to say something nice to them.”

      “It used to be like that. You were considered a princess, not a queen. An unmarried Aluar’s queen is a temptation for everyone. Now many dowry hunters will seek your hand as I sought your father’s. And I almost did! A brutal death has shattered all my plans like a house of cards! And they say death is merciful!”

      “In the case of the lepers on the moors, it is,” she reminded her. “When people who have been to the Demon Lands begin to suffer so much that even the Court wizards cannot help them, then death is merciful. But it does not come for them for a long time. Those who are sick turn into monsters as long as they give up the spirit.”

      “Don’t tell me such horrors,” Gisela sighed theatrically.

      “But I’ve seen the sick ones myself. Their skin cracks like parched heat, their eyes scarlet. They keep saying curses. One of them whispered something in my father’s ear, and my father died thirteen days later.”

      “You’d better keep quiet about it, or people will start saying again that an evil spirit has stolen your mind, and that your head is as empty as a cave.”

      “It is worse when a mischievous devil gets into your empty head,” someone hissed from around the corner. “That would be a laugh! The man would move like a puppet at the mercy of the demon and smash everything.”

      Gisela did not hear the voice, but Estella heard many voices behind the golden doors.

      “There are wings of angels, seraphim, cherubim, feet of giants and titans, basilisks, snakes, golden apple trees with monster roots,” she began to list all the creatures she discerned in the bas-reliefs on the door. “There’s even mandrake engraved here. It’s a sacred root. And then there are tritons and leviathans and sirens and mermaids and beautiful fairies. And it’s as if they’re all guarding some kind of evil, not treasure.”

      “Are you sure you’re not confused,” Gisela frowned. “I remember mythology a little differently.”

      “The six-winged angels are surely guardians of evil.”

      “The treasury probably contains the bones of that sorcerer king your father defeated in battle in his youth,” Gisela boasted of her erudition. “He was known as a fearsome sorcerer, wasn’t he?”

      Estella looked at her hand. Her fingers and palm were burned. There might be a dragon imprisoned in the treasury.

      “Let me out!” A voice outside the door shrieked. “I will find you a demon consort to put sense back into your witch-devastated head.”

      Once again Gisela heard nothing, and Estella became alarmed.

      “Where are the keys to the treasury?” She inquired, noticing between the bas-reliefs on the door a number of keyholes at once.

      “They are with the king’s key-keeper, perhaps.”

      “But my father had him executed a month before he died.”

      “So someone else has the keys.”

      “Could you find out him for me? And find out why there are so many locks on the doors at once?”

      “The last one is obviously! There must be a great treasure in there!”

      “But the keys aren’t even in the king’s things! Look for them right now! I can only entrust such a delicate task as finding the keys to the treasure to you. You are like a mother to me.”

      “I would have preferred to be a stepmother!” Gisela sighed and went to run the errand. Her black silk skirts rustled like fallen leaves. Beautiful, thirty years old, unmarried, and quite sensible, she would have been a far better heiress to the kingdom than the simple-minded princess who had supposedly had her mind stolen from her by elves. Estella sincerely wished the king had married her young tutor. Gisela would have made a model queen. Now, wearing all black, she resembled an elegant widow.

      A chorus of eerie voices echoed from behind the door again. With Gisela’s departure they revolted. The cacophony of shrieking, growling, and squeaking grew stronger and stronger.

      “Let us out! You don’t need the key! Just let us out!”

      Estella ran her finger over the six-winged angel and burned herself again.

      “I can’t,” she moaned.

      “Open