beauty, the prince confesses his love to the impostor, an act witnessed by Odette from a nearby window. Broken-hearted, she runs towards the woods crying. As she does, the prince catches a glimpse of her and realizes his error. Eventually, he catches up to Odette at Swan Lake and explains his mistake. As she accepts the prince’s apology, the sorcerer arrives and tells him he must keep his promise to marry his daughter. The prince says he would rather die with Odette than marry Odile. To prove his point, he grabs Odette’s hand and they jump into the lake together, where they promptly drown. But, thanks to his actions, the magic spell is broken and all the other swans turn back into girls.’
Jones interrupted him. ‘Wait a second! You’re telling me the character based on Ludwig drowns in a lake, and ten years later, Ludwig dies in a lake, too. That’s some freaky shit!’
‘Actually,’ Ulster said, ‘I’m not quite finished yet. There’s more drowning still to come.’
‘Really?’
Ulster smiled. ‘Angered by the two deaths, the girls force the sorcerer and his daughter into the lake and watch them drown. The ballet ends as the spirits of the prince and Odette ascend into the heavens above Swan Lake.’
Jones waited for a few seconds, unsure. ‘Are you done now?’
Ulster nodded. ‘I am.’
‘That’s some freaky shit, too!’ Jones blurted.
‘How so?’ Payne asked.
‘Weren’t you listening?’
‘Barely.’
Normally Payne was the serious one, and Jones was the jester. All it took was one story about a ballet for their roles to be reversed.
Jones smiled at the irony. ‘Don’t you get it? The sorcerer behind the deception drowned in the same lake as the prince - just like the doctor behind the deception drowned in the same lake as Ludwig. That can’t be a coincidence.’
Payne grunted. ‘You’re right; it does seem suspicious.’
Ulster shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Honestly, I don’t know if Ludwig’s murder was staged to mimic the ballet or not, but the story of Siegfried and Odette helped establish Ludwig’s nickname as the Swan King.’
‘How so?’ Payne asked.
‘If they hadn’t been killed, Siegfried and the Swan Queen would have been married, which would have made him the Swan King. And as I mentioned, the character of Siegfried was based on Ludwig, so …’
Payne nodded in understanding. ‘Throw in Ludwig’s obsessions with swans and that Swan Knight character you told us about earlier, and the nickname stuck.’
‘He was also called the Dream King, the Fairytale King and Mad King Ludwig, but the Swan King is used most often.’
Payne paused for a moment to consider everything he had learned. Swan Lake, one of the most famous ballets in history, was connected to Ludwig. The black swan logo had been designed by Ludwig. And the riddle about the swan had been written by Ludwig. Yet as far as Payne could tell, they still had no idea where a swan would go on his journey home.
Or what they would find if they figured it out.
25
From a distance, the King’s House on Schachen resembled a hunting lodge on top of a scenic crest. Painted beige and dark brown, the wooden post-and-infill structure was two storeys in the centre but only half as tall on the left and right, as if additional rooms had been added at the last minute. To Payne, the house looked like two capital ‘L’s, stapled back to back. It certainly wasn’t the worst design he had ever seen, yet it seemed out of place in the dream world that Ludwig had created for himself. Why build a house instead of a castle?
‘Remember,’ Ulster said as if reading Payne’s mind, ‘the interior is far more luxurious than the exterior. Don’t be fooled by the outside.’
‘Your friend is correct,’ said a feminine voice from the top of the hill. ‘The rough outer shell protects the pearl within.’
‘Petr,’ said Jones as he searched for the source, ‘the house is talking.’
‘And listening,’ she replied, her voice slightly tinged with a German accent.
Jones grabbed Ulster’s arm. ‘Petr, I’m scared … Hold me.’
Payne laughed and pointed out the speaker’s location. A series of decorative wooden beams ran from the top of the sharply peaked roof to the banister of the second-floor veranda. The mystery woman was standing underneath the overhang, partially hidden in the shadows. Though he couldn’t see her face, her naturally blonde hair and fair complexion had given her away.
‘How often do you scare tourists?’ he called out as he walked up the hillside.
‘Only when they scare us first. We thought there was