The Drowned Tomb (The Changeling Series Book 2) (13 page)

Without thinking, feeling nothing but anger that he was going to be knocked down yet again, Robin thrust his arms out in front of him, hands pressed tightly together. The bolt of faceted ice rushed toward him with alarming speed, but he seemed to have all the time in the world to watch it approach. As it neared his outstretched fingertips, he thrust them forward into its oncoming tip, then threw his arms wide.

An icy shiver of air ran up inside his sleeves, chilling him to his very bones, but he fought it down and the bolt of ice was ripped in half along its length, as though it had been sliced with a sword. The two halves sailed past him on either side, like murky ghost snakes, hissing and dissipating as they passed.

Everything seemed to have happened in slow motion.

“I … I did it!” Robin cried, half disbelieving, blinking and wide-eyed.

The Needlepoint which Calypso had thrown at him had disintegrated harmlessly, exploding around Robin’s fingertips like a silent, icy firework.

He stared through falling flakes of glittering, rainbow-coloured snow as they tumbled in slow motion around him, a rather beautiful halo of shimmering ice particles suspended in the baking summer’s haze.

Calypso was looking at Robin thoughtfully, her face, for the first time since he’d met her, almost held a glimmer of approval. “You stopped looking hard and saw hard instead. Good,” she said. “But you had to get angry to do it. Interesting.” She nodded at Robin gracefully, who was grinning despite his aching limbs, euphoric at managing to defend himself.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” Calypso said. “Finally.” She produced from the iridescent folds of her robes a small green flip-back notebook and scribbled some notes in it. “Primal mana, I see. The body knows at least, even if the mind and heart are untrained. We will have to bring that under control. There’s a lot of mana there, Scion of the Arcania. You need to learn to channel it. To tap it at will, on and off with your mind and your guts.” She snapped her fingers rapidly. “ … Not so chaotic. Mana Management lessons will help with that. I believe you had some of those last year, although you were being drugged at the time by a servant of Eris. Drowsing herbs in the pipe smoke, yes?”

“I didn’t find Mana Management very useful,” Robin said darkly, remembering.

She cocked her head, as though to indicate that his opinion counted for very little. “Well, I shall not be drugging you, so we will see how we go instead with a little gentle meditation. Perhaps a head massage to open your emotional centres.”

Robin was ridiculously grateful that his tutor could not see Henry behind her. The boy was giving Robin an enthusiastic double thumbs-up and waggling his eyebrows in what he clearly thought was a cheeky and suggestive manner.

The nymph put away her notebook and dropped into combat stance again.

“Now,” she said with a hazy smile on her cupid-bow lips. “You can try to knock me down.”

Robin cracked his knuckles and grinned.

GRIMM TIDINGS

August slid by in a drowsy, bumblebee-filled haze of lessons and training. When he wasn’t at the lakeshore or out on the folly island sparring with Calypso, Robin was up in the atrium, which had recently become his favourite place to spend time. Its position at the very top of the house and its long parade of open windows around the circular wall meant that it was the only place guaranteed a constant, delicious breeze.

While up here, in these peaceful heights, he managed eventually to wobble clumsy globes of water from one chalice to the next, although the effort of holding his mana steady made his head swim. On one occasion, when he had the bubbling orb delicately suspended in mid-air and threatening to decompose and fall with a splash between the cups, he sneakily cast with his other hand a tiny Galestrike, the jab of air magic shifting the waiting silver cup across the table to beneath the small liquid bubble, which fell into it gratefully. He had thought this quite clever, but it only earned him a raised eyebrow and pursed lips from his tutor.

Henry was at Erlking constantly, thanks to the school summer holidays, although he was taking extra classes twice a week down in the village to catch up on his appalling maths skills, a turn of events arranged by his father much to the scruffy-haired boy’s horror.

Robin was glad Henry was at Erlking more, however. His presence was probably the only thing that kept him sane between study and training. It was good to get away from the Towers of the Arcania every now and again, when his mana stone was cold and lifeless from a day of cantrips, or when Robin’s head was swimming from a mana management class where Calypso had instructed him to spend two hours silently meditating on the nature of a dolphin’s cry.

Sometimes, it was nice just to spend time being a boy, not a magical prophesied saviour.

Henry’s father, who gleefully interpreted ‘summer holidays’ as ‘free labour workforce’, was constantly ready to find things for idle hands to do, and so the two boys were roped into countless chores. Weeding flowerbeds, cutting down straggling ivy, dislodging birds’ nests from the chimneys of all the empty spare bedrooms, even repainting the large black wrought iron gates at the bottom of the long sweeping avenue which marked the entrance to Erlking’s grounds. It was exhausting work, day by day, but also strangely satisfying.

The afternoons which they had free were spent lazing in the long grass under Erlking’s trees, enjoying the play of the dappled summer sun on their faces and generally enjoying the weather. Woad taught both the boys how to cartwheel properly on the front lawns, and other such important life skills. The faun, who naturally spent most of his time out of doors anyway, had actually gained a summer tan in the passing weeks, and his skin was a deep cobalt blue. Inky the kraken, beloved unconditionally, accompanied him everywhere he went.

On the few occasions when they could occasionally tempt Karya into breaking out of her solitude and joining them, the four companions inevitably ended up in the sunny library. Karya taught Robin how to play chess, although Erlking’s board seemed to contain centaurs instead of knights, and an unfamiliar neutral piece which either player could choose to control every third turn.

Karya explained this chess-piece was called Fate, and could go wherever it wanted on the board. There was another piece usually, she explained, called Chance, but it appeared to have gone missing.

She hadn’t made much headway on her translation. All she had discovered further was that the handwriting was female, and something about Pax, high tongue for peace.

None of them, even Aunt Irene, seemed any closer to solving the odd riddle on the cylinder. She had advised them all to leave that matter to her, and the steward of Erlking was frequently away for days at a time. Whether she was abroad in the human world or the Netherworlde, Robin wasn’t sure. She consulted no one and came and went as she pleased without explanation, as was her way.

Robin suspected that Karya’s lack of progress was something of a sore point for the girl. He tried not to bring it up. She was such a proud sort. She, likewise, didn’t pester him about his lessons or progress with the Tower of Water. Weeks had passed since their spat over Robin’s family history, and both of them were eager to keep the peace. He hadn’t brought up the matter of the Fae Guard again. There was too much else to do.

One balmy evening, when the sky was the same deep shade as Woad, and stars were just beginning to peek out in the clearest of summer skies, they were all gathered together in Karya’s room. This sacred space, aside from Woad, was usually considered off limits for the large part. She had emerged earlier that day and found Robin, Henry, and Woad in the process of raiding Hestia’s larder while the housekeeper was engaged elsewhere. Looking rather frazzle-haired, tired and hopeful, she had asked if they wanted a night-time feast. Robin thought perhaps she was going a little stir crazy cooped up all the time, and he agreed. A little amiable company couldn’t hurt.

They had smuggled as much food and drink as possible to Karya’s room and enjoyed an evening picnic on the floorboards. The food had been good, in that way only illicitly obtained snacks are. Plus, there had been the added excitement that Hestia might find out and possibly explode from the double scandal of having her storehouse pilfered and also the unthinkable presence of boys in a girl’s room.

The food had long since been reduced to crumbs. Henry was lying on his back by the unlit fireplace, reading comics by candlelight, and Woad perched on the end of Karya’s bed, singing a lilting song to Inky in a soft high voice. It was actually quite soothing and melodic, as long as one was careful enough not to listen too closely to the words themselves, which seemed to be a lot about old battles, impaling and dismembered vanquished foes. Occasionally the kraken’s tiny beak would break the surface of the water in the jar and it would cluck happily like an excitable chicken, reaching out a tiny tentacle to wrap around Woad’s thumb.

Robin, drowsy in the best possible way from too much food and drink, stood and stretched, and wandered out of the open French doors to Karya’s balcony where the girl was standing, leaning against the railings and looking out into the night.

“Is this your idea of being sociable then?” he joked, joining her and peering down at the dark gardens below. Crickets were beginning to chirp in the twilight. “Not that it hasn’t been lovely. But how come you’re out here on the balcony?”

He glanced sidelong at her. Her amber eyes were narrowed and thoughtful as she stared out across Erlking’s domain and to the dark tree line beyond. “Something’s happening out there,” she said quietly.

He looked at her, curious.

“It’s all quiet here, which don’t get me wrong, Scion, is still a refreshing change for me, but there are things going on.” She pursed her lips. “I can feel it in my bones.”

“Things happening?” he followed her gaze. “What, in the forest?” he asked.

She nudged him with her elbow. “Idiot. No. Out in the world. This one and the Netherworlde. While we are here in Erlking, the agents of Eris are on the move.”

“The Grimms?” Robin felt goosebumps rise on his arms, despite the warm evening air.

“Yes. It’s all tied up with Tritea and her Shard. This hidden tomb of hers, the lost valley of the Undine, I don’t know.” She shrugged in irritation. “We’re here grasping at straws, Irene is guessing at riddles we cannot solve, while you train as best you can, and all the while, the Grimms are searching too. They’re looking for a way to find the Undine Valley, to get to the Shard.”

“What makes you so sure?” he asked, as she tucked a stray lock of wild hair behind her eyes.

“I overheard your aunt and Mr Drover talking yesterday,” she confided. “I didn’t intentionally eavesdrop,” she added conscientiously. “I was passing by your aunt’s study and the door happened to be open a crack. I caught some of what they said.”

Robin felt it prudent not to point out that Aunt Irene’s private study was the last door at the end of an otherwise doorless corridor in Erlking, and therefore not the kind of place one would happen to ‘pass by’.

“And?” he prompted. He had lowered his voice. Talking about the Grimms had that effect on people.

“Your aunt was mentioning that it had happened again,” Karya said. “She had seen it in the newspaper, and Mr Drover agreed. He had seen it too. Another unexplained death in a hotel room.”

“A death?” Robin’s eyebrows raised. Karya flicked her eyes to him. “They were saying this is the fourth one in six weeks. All reported in different cities, all only covered by local newspapers, as there was nothing particularly suspicious in any of them. No signs of foul play or anything. Not the sort of thing one would link together, unless you were looking for a pattern. Your aunt is the kind of woman who notices these things however. Patterns and happenings.”

“Four people have died?” Robin was still confused.

The girl nodded. “So they were saying. I didn’t catch everything they were discussing. As I say, I wasn’t eavesdropping.”

“No, well, of course,” Robin agreed supportively.

“Always shabby hotels, always where there has been a single guest, someone staying alone. And never anything you could actually pin murder on. So far in Bradford, Leeds, Huddersfield and Manchester. Your aunt and Mr Drover are convinced it’s the Grimms. Moving from city to city in the human world.”

“Doing what? Killing lonely people who happen to be staying in hotels?” Robin asked.

Karya shrugged. “Only as a by-product, sadly.” she said. “Your aunt believes they are searching the cities. Looking high and low for something. The Grimms are not the kind of people who ‘blend in’, Scion. You’ve seen them. If they are roaming human cities, they will use a base of operations, and they can hardly check into the Savoy with a MasterCard. Much simpler for them to target a long term hotel resident, someone with few ties, someone who won’t be missed immediately. Kill them, hole up in their hotel room while they do whatever they do, before moving on.”

Robin was chilled. “That’s horrible,” he said. “Killing people just to use their rooms. Sounds a bit…”

“Grim?” She smiled darkly. “They wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep over it, Scion. Trust me. I know them all.”

“So what does Aunt Irene think they are looking for in all these cities?”

“The same thing we are,” she replied. “The hidden Janus station that will lead to Hiernarbos.”

She drummed her fingers on the balcony railing. “The worrying thing is that they are being methodical. Why the cities? They clearly know something we don’t. They seem to have a starting point at least. Eris has a lot more sources that we do, although I think we still just have the upper hand, thanks to your grave-robbing find. I think it’s worrying your aunt. It’s why I’ve been keeping to myself, trying to figure out that bloody translation. There’s something bigger at stake here, Scion. I know it.”

“But like you said, we have the cylinder, they don’t,” he said, trying to cheer her up.

She looked at him wearily with a half-smile. “The cylinder we can’t open,” she said. “Not by any one of the roughly seven thousand magical and non-magical ways we’ve tried to far.”

“Not yet,” he countered.

Behind them in the cosy, dimly lit room, Woad’s high voice floated out as he started another loving ballad of warfare.

“This isn’t Strife,” Karya confided. “It doesn’t sound like him. He’s opportunistic and cruel, he’s a knife in the ribs in a dark alley that one. But this? The casual killing, the moving from place to place. It’s too methodical for him. I think it’s Ker.”

“Who’s Ker?” Robin frowned.

“A member of the Grimms you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet, and don’t want to, believe me.” She shuddered. “If Strife is an assassin then Ker is a general. He is both relentless, humourless and merciless. Eris’ juggernaut. Not really a big thinker. He sits over the army of all Eris’ forces. He’s in charge of the Peacekeepers, all of them.”

Robin had heard of the Peacekeepers, Eris’ army.

“In fact, the only part of her military that Ker doesn’t control are the Ravens. Those are Eris’ absolute finest, like your world’s SAS I suppose, and they come under another’s command.” She turned and set her back to the railing of the balcony, resting on her elbows and looking back into her room. “If Ker has been set this task, then it means that Eris is planning something large. Something military. I believe they mean to lay full siege to Hiernarbos. To take the Shard from the Undine there by force, once they find it. It will be a massacre.”

“This Ker chap sounds charming.” Robin made a face, trying not to look as concerned as he felt.

“He isn’t,” Karya said in a steely voice. “Ker would skin you alive and tan your flesh into a cloak if he was cold. Without blinking. He had odd hobbies. He collects creatures, and quite literally takes them apart to see how they work. He would chop off your legs and drag you on a chain back to Dis to avoid having to worry about your running away. Ker wouldn’t bat an eye at tearing off—”

“Okay! I get the picture.” Robin swallowed. “Enough imagery. I get it. Ker is bad.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “And he’s out there in the world trying to beat us to a Shard it seems.”

She nodded.

“So what can we do?” he asked.