The Drowned Tomb (The Changeling Series Book 2) (20 page)

“He’s not breathing!”

That was Woad. He sounded panicked. Robin’s distant mind couldn’t bring himself to care. Everything hurt. Everything was so far away.

“His lungs are full of water,” the girl’s voice again. “Move back, let me get at him, will you?”

Something brushed his lips softly. Air was forced into his lungs, painful and sudden. It hurt so much it snapped him to his senses and he lurched, rolling onto his side and unceremoniously spewing a mouthful of icy water onto the ground. Coughing and spluttering, he vomited up brackish pond water, retching until his eyes watered. Then he took in a great wheezing gasp of air. It felt like the deepest breath he had ever taken. It hurt immensely, and it was wonderful. It was life.

“Pinky!” Woad yelled, incredibly close to his ear.

Robin’s eyes flinched open blearily. He was staring up at trees, their blurred swaying green branches bright above him, a dappled green curtain. He was lying on the grass, soaked and aching, but not dead. His head was elevated on something. He was drenched and freezing. As he blinked, coughing furiously, two faces swam into focus, staring down at him. One was bright blue and looked both terrified and jubilant. Woad. The other was pale and half hidden by a sweep of purple hair. He knew this face too, but he was so confused.

“They didn’t kill you then,” the girl said simply, blinking down at him. Her cool hand was resting on his forehead. It brushed his sodden hair out of his eyes.

“What … what happened?” he croaked. “The sirens…”

He tried to sit up, but the girl’s hand forced him down again. He realised she was kneeling on the grass, his head was cradled in her lap. Floating above the three of them, Robin noticed with disoriented wonder that there were moths. Hundreds and hundreds of black moths, dancing amongst the trees.

“She pulled you out, Pinky!” Woad said urgently. “Sirens were fast, had me trapped in their shiny. Stupid Woad standing like a tree stump, but she! She was out of nowhere and she pulled you out with shadows!”

Robin’s head was finally clearing. He knew where he recognised her from. It was the girl from the village.

“Penny?” He coughed again. His body was aching all over and he was shivering uncontrollably from the cold. “How did you … what are you even doing here?”

The girl gave a lopsided smile. He noticed for the first time how dark her eyes were. There was almost no colour at all, just black, under her pale makeup. “Well, you did say to come. It’s a good job I did. You would be rolled around on the bottom of that wet pit like a crocodile’s meal otherwise. Sirens have sharp teeth and take small bites. It wouldn’t have been pleasant, and it wouldn’t have been quick.”

None of this was making sense. How was the girl here? How did she know about sirens? Robin forced himself to sit up, suddenly acutely embarrassed that he was using her lap for a pillow. Still disoriented, he stared around. They were some distance from the pool. Woad and Penny must have carried him somehow.

How did she know about any of this? She certainly didn’t seem to be freaked out by the fact that Woad was squatting next to her, blue and be-tailed.

“She isn’t human, Pinky,” Woad said, pointing at the girl in an accusing way. “I’ve never seen mana like that before. The shadows, like a whirlwind, tearing into the water like black confetti! It was a whirlwind. She plucked you out like a fairground prize!”

The moths, Robin realised. They weren’t real moths; they were some kind of imitation. They filled the glade above them, shimmering and unsteady. Robin got waveringly to his feet, coughing. He saw the girl stand smoothly beside him.

“Well, don’t thank me all at once,” she said. “Although in truth, Scion. I didn’t save you out of the goodness of my heart. I’m just not that nice to be honest. Though any excuse to annoy sirens is a good one.”

Robin saw that in her free hand she was holding the rolled up scroll. The contents of the cylinder. “I’ve had a look at this.” she said, waving it at him tantalisingly. “Very, very interesting. I wonder if you’ll figure it out as quickly as I did?” She looked doubtful, narrowing her eyes at him. She also looked a lot paler than when he had met her in the village. Her skin was like chalk. She practically glowed, ghostlike in the dappled forest light. “I came for two things,” she told him. “This.” She tossed the scroll to Woad, who caught it, looking confused. “All done now. Your toy, enjoy.”

She looked back to Robin. “And the second thing I needed. The magic ingredient of course.”

Penny ran a white finger along her bottom lip, and it came away red.

Robin raised a hand to his own mouth, noticing for the first time how tender his lip felt. He hadn’t noticed in the confusion of other aches and scratches. She had given him the kiss of life, breathing air back into him, but at the same time she had bitten him. It was his blood.

“What … are … you?” he asked, shakily. Penny smiled at him. Her black eyes twinkled. She raised her bloodied finger in the air, and in seconds, several of the shadowy moths had descended, fluttering against her skin, gathering the blood.

“I tried to be subtle,” she shrugged. “Hey ho. That failed, right? I thought just a drop would be enough, all we needed from you, but sadly nope. My little charmed keyring didn’t collect nearly enough Fae-juju for my purposes. I needed more, see?” She rolled her dark eyes between the two boys, staring at their confused faces. “Well, obviously you don’t see. This should be enough though. Sorry about the nibble. I can be a little opportunistic.” She grinned at Robin. “I guess you better hope to hell it is enough anyway, or I’ll be back for more. My brother isn’t nearly as patient as I am. He might come himself, and then he’d take it all. He has no self-restraint.”

Woad had scampered and picked up the cylinder which the girl had dropped and discarded carelessly. He retreated to behind Robin.

“Penny, what’s going on?” Robin asked, dabbing at his lip gingerly. The moths were gathering all around the strange white girl, descending from the trees in their hundreds. They flew past his face, batting against his cheeks like dark kisses. Woad waved his hands around as though shooing bats.

“What’s going on? What am I? Scion of the Arcania? So many questions. I’m the one collecting your blood, blood is the key you see. Opens the way and raises the spirits. Saving you from your own idiocy just now? Don’t read into that too much. It was just lucky for you that I needed you more that the sirens did.”

She grinned, a flash of white teeth as the moths covered her completely in a dark and whispering blanket. He saw a glimmer of dark eyes and a swish of purple hair. “I’ll tell you what I am. I’m the competition, kiddo. Catch us if you can.”

The moths flew apart, exploding in a dark cloud all over the glade, and rising up, a living plume smoke, to scatter above the branches and disappear into the blue sky. The girl was gone.

Robin and Woad stood silently in the clearing for a few moments. Birds chirped in the tree branches around them. In the distance, they could hear the tinkle of the waterfall at the dangerous sirens' pool, reassuringly far off. Of the defeated sirens, there was neither hide nor hair.

Eventually, Woad spoke. “Scary white ghost lady saved you from the sirens, sent them back to the deep.”

Robin nodded, dumbfounded, his finger still on his sore bottom lip. “She kissed me.”

“Bit your face. Stole your blood,” Woad agreed in a matter-of-fact way. He lifted the scroll, still tightly wrapped in his small hand. “Girls, eh? At least she didn’t take this. She just looked at it while I carried you up from the pool to here.”

Robin glanced at Woad absently. “You carried me?”

“I’m stronger than I look,” Woad assured him. “I could carry ten scions.” The faun looked up to the sky above them. There wasn’t the faintest sign of even one black moth.

“Girls around here are very odd,” he said, after some consideration.

“I don’t think she was a girl,” Robin shivered. He was still freezing and aching all over. “I think she was something else.”

Robin reflected on the sobering fact that his very first kiss, of sorts, had clearly been with a member of the Grimms.

BLOOD AND BONE

“A Grimm?!”

Robin winced. He had never heard Karya sound shrill before. She wasn’t the yelling kind, as a rule. He winced again as Hestia reapplied the strangely pungent rag to his shoulder. It stung like nettles.

“A Grimm!” Karya yelled again. She was staring at him, wild-eyed and scandalised. “An actual Grimm?!”

“How many times are you going to say that dark name, wild creature?” Hestia fluttered, smearing more of the oily, greenish gloop none too gently onto Robin’s bare shoulder with a rag. “You are hurting Hestia’s ears with your noise! Like a little bird trapped! It is too much!”

Robin flinched as the housekeeper patted his back, the unguent she was applying to his many scratches prickling unbearably. She flicked her beetle-black eyes to his. “And you! Be still, you horrible, thoughtless child!” She clucked her tongue, shaking her head in bewilderment. “To go swimming with sirens! Sirens! You are trying to give old Hestia a heart attack! You think I have nothing better to do than pull poison from your body? Who is mopping the ballroom while poor Hestia is here? Tell me that? No one, that is who? And who will have to explain why when Lady Irene returns? Why there is…” Her lip quivered, “ … dust!” She spat the word.

Robin tried to hold still. It was bad enough that Woad had half carried him all the way back from the woods, hanging limply from his shoulder as the small but ridiculously strong faun held his stumbling frame upright. It was even worse to be sat here, bare-chested and perched on the tabletop in the great kitchen like a naughty child while Hestia, who had almost shrieked the house down on seeing him, attempted to tend the many scratches and bruises he had sustained with a bowl full of foul smelling crushed herbs. She had prepared the herbs at lightning speed, wailing all the time about the carelessness of children, and who would be blamed if he were to die while Aunt Irene was away.

Karya had been drawn to the kitchens by the commotion, having only just returned from her expedition to the village.

The girl now stood across the kitchen, staring at Robin and Woad in utter disbelief. She was ashen faced and Robin couldn’t tell if she was worried or furious with him.

“I leave you two alone for two minutes!” she said. “Two minutes!”

Robin, wrinkling his nose at the smell from Hestia’s medicine, looked at her sternly. “We didn’t know a Grimm was going to show up, did we?” he said. “We thought, well, Woad thought, and I agreed, that the sirens might be able to help us with the puzzle. It was worth a shot.”

Karya pursed her lips. “A shot that nearly got you killed,” she said. “Of all the stupid, foolhardy … Robin Fellows, you really are a hornless wonder!”

Woad has explained, in his own colourful way, to Karya and Hestia, the events that had transpired in the forest.

“It was the girl we met down in the village,” Robin said, gritting his teeth as Hestia, muttering inventively and constantly, dabbed none too gently at his grazed ribs. He shook his head in disbelief. “She was never a girl, she was a Grimm – but she passed for human, I swear.” He considered. “A very pale, kind of weird human, yeah, but lots of people are pale and weird. I mean, she didn’t look anything like Mr Strife or Mr Moros. How was I supposed to know? Strife and Moros were both creepy old guys! She was…”

Karya folded her arms, still staring at him furiously and wide eyes.

“She was what, Scion?”

“She was different,” he hissed a little, in pain.

“Oh hold still, you bothersome child,” Hestia insisted with little sympathy. “Unless you want the sirens’ barbs to leave enough marks to match your silver wings there!”

Robin already had scars on his back, four thin lightening pale stripes from shoulder to hip where he’d had a run in with a skriker’s claws the previous year. He felt very self-conscious sitting here in the kitchen, covered in herbal gunk and being glared at by everyone.

“She said her name was Penny,” he told Karya. “She’s been after my blood apparently, for some time now.”

“Not all the Grimms are old men,” Karya said. “You’d be surprised the forms the Grimms take. They’re an odd bunch of misfits, to say the least.” She unfolded her arms, sighing and shaking her head. She seemed to be trying to calm down.

“Young, you say. Or young looking at least, purple hair,” she muttered to herself.

“And pretty,” Woad piped up. He was sitting beside Robin on the tabletop in brotherly solidarity, his legs swinging happily. Karya blinked at him, her eyebrows disappearing into her hairline. Her golden eyes fixed on Robin like an inquisitive owl.

“Pretty?” she asked, spluttering.

Robin cringed a little. “Well, sort of, I suppose, in a weird way. Maybe a little intense. She didn’t look like a monster anyway.”

“Not all monsters do, stupid boy,” Hestia twittered to herself. “Spend enough time in the world, little man, and you will learn that for sure. The worst wolves hide their teeth in soft fur, until they want to bite.”

“She’s right!” Karya pointed a finger at Hestia, a little dramatically. “From the description, that was not ‘Penny’ you met. That was Miss Peryl. She is the youngest of the Grimm Organisation. In many ways, she’s the runt of the litter, but trust me when I say, Scion, that she is no less dangerous than Strife himself. She has the blood of countless on her hands. Countless. Fae
and
Panthea.”

“She has Pinky’s blood on her lips,” Woad corrected the girl. Karya looked confused.

“Get dressed in something dry now,” Hestia said, shooing Robin down off the tabletop. “You are not poisoned, and these little scratches and bites are less that you deserve for being so foolish!” She shook her head. “And do not make things worse by dripping all over my kitchen floor!”

Robin thanked Hestia. Despite her manner, she had leapt into action to ensure he was not hurt and tended his wounds expertly and quickly. The woman utterly ignored his thanks, shuffling off to wash out the herbal gunk from the bowl she held.

“Her … lips?” Karya raised an eyebrow.

Robin pulled on his shirt again, feeling tender all over and smelling a little like sage and onion stuffing from Hestia’s unguent. “She bit me. I told you, she wanted my blood. Bloody mental-case. If she’s as bad as you say, I don’t know why she didn’t just come at me with a knife.”

“You think Eris wants you dead?” Karya asked. “Trust me, if she did, you’d be dead by now. You’re her prize. You’re Eris’ lottery ticket, and woe betide anyone who damages the goods. Peryl wouldn’t dare harm you.” She considered this. “Maim a little, hobble, disfigure, incapacitate probably. She’s more than a little twisted in her head that one. Very odd idea of ‘fun’, but she wouldn’t have actually killed you. It wouldn’t have been entertaining enough for her. Peryl likes games.”

“She saved me from the sirens though,” Robin said, doing up his buttons clumsily. “That’s like being saved from a shark attack by … another bigger shark. And how did she manage to look human?”

Karya considered this, leaning back against the worktop and drumming her fingers. “She probably wasn’t wearing her mana stone, deliberately,” she guessed. “We are all … less of what we are without them. You’d be less Fae, she’d appear less Grimm. Quite a clever idea I suppose. For a mass-murdering, psychopathic monster, that is.”

“But she did magic. On the sirens. And those moths … Wait, I’ve been seeing them all summer,” Robin exclaimed. “What are they?”

“Totems, brain-death,” Woad said. “All of the Grimms have them. Tower of Darkness magic. Shadow made form. Will made mobile.”

“Woad’s correct,” Karya said. “Strife has his skrikers, Moros his grimgulls. Peryl, clearly, specialised in extremely morbid emo butterflies. They’ve been watching you, no doubt, waiting for the time to get your blood, from the needle in this keyring, or directly from your face, which is apparently how these things are done by preference.” She cleared her throat tactfully. “If one is a psychotic and evil shapeshifting agent of pure evil that is.” She shook her head in disbelief. “I can’t believe you kissed a Grimm.”

“I did not kiss her!” Robin said hotly. “I’d drowned, she gave me the kiss of life, it’s not the same thing!”

“How would you know?” she asked pointedly. “Done a lot of kissing have you?”

“That’s … you … what’s that got to do with anything?” Robin flushed. “She did it to bite me. Believe me, that’s not my idea of a good time either. Having your face chewed by a mass murderer from another world is not how I like to spend my weekends, thanks very much, and I’d appreciate it if you’d stop making fun of me.”

Karya gave him a look, but she reigned in her scorn a little. She seemed to have managed to calm down now that it was evident that Robin wasn’t seriously hurt.

“Well,” she said. “You’re safe anyway. Nobody died, even if she did get away with your blood. Though what on earth the Grimms need your blood for is a mystery to me. She said it was the key to something?”

Robin nodded. Woad was stood very close, sniffing him with interest, as Hestia’s herbal poultice wafted through the room. He waved the faun away. “Give it a rest, Woad.”

Robin held up the scroll, tightly bunched in his fist. “Grimms aside though, the important thing is this!”

“She didn’t take it?” Karya all but leapt across the room and snatched the scroll out of Robin’s hands. “Why not? If it’s what she came for?”

“She already looked at it,” Woad said. “While we were dragging Pinky like a floppy fish away from the pool. After she’d used all her shadow flapping tornado magic. She looked at it, and then she said…” He tilted his head a little, frowning to remember. “Then she said ‘ah, bingo!’” he finished.

“So she didn’t need it anymore,” Robin said. “But she still left it for us? If it was me I would have scarpered and took it with me. Left my enemies clueless.”

“But where would be the fun in that?” Karya waggled the scroll at Robin. “Peryl is a game-player. She wants us to figure it out. I doubt her brother, Mr Ker, would agree with her on that, but she’s not the kind of Grimm to take advisement from others. We need to look over this right now! Are you well enough, Scion?”

Robin nodded, whatever mixture Hestia had salved his wounds with, they were already healing under his shirt, his skin tingled like pins and needles. “I’m fine,” he assured them.

Karya smiled darkly. “Right, Woad, clear this table. We need room to roll this out and—”

There was a clatter of dishes in the sink and Hestia whirled around, furious. “There will be no clearing of the kitchen table, thank you very much!” she said tremulously. “It is not enough for you that you interrupt Hestia in her duties with your mindless tangles with death? And that you steal her time to put your broken body back together again like an egg on a wall? Now you wish to mill around her kitchen? To move her things? To make the centre of this household into your … your … campaign room? I think most assuredly not! No, you must go. Everybody must go, and especially the little beast who has left buttock-prints in the rolled flour on my workspace! It is unsanitary!”

Woad pulled his tongue out at Hestia as soon as she turned her back. “I only sat on the table,” he said. “It’s not like I squashed her scones.”

A voice from the doorway made them all turn.

“I overheard,” Calypso said. Robin’s tutor stood casually in the doorway, a vision of calm in her flowing dress, her hand was resting lightly on the lintel. “Your voices are remarkably loud when you are all speaking together.” She regarded the children. “Robin Fellows, you almost died being eaten by sirens? Then you were, in specific order, rescued, bitten, robbed and abandoned by a Grimm, is this an accurate summary?”

Robin nodded sheepishly. Calypso blinked. “Are you likely to die imminently?” she enquired, as though asking about the weather.

“The boy will live,” Hestia grumbled, without turning around. She clattered pots and pans in her sink. “No thanks to his own stupidity. And no thanks, of course, directed to old Hestia. Has the nymph come hoping for grief? For tears to feed on? There’s nothing wet in here for you but suds.”

Calypso ignored Hestia completely. “You have solved the riddle in your aunt’s absence,” she observed, looking to the rolled up scroll Karya held. “And the Grimms have solved it too, I hear. In that case, be under no illusion. They will be headed already to the Janus station’s location.” She shrugged. “Come.”

They followed her out of Hestia’s domain, along a corridor and into an empty side parlour, filled with old, empty trophy cases, where she indicated with a sweep of her hand that Karya should lay out the scroll on a darkly polished tabletop.

The girl unrolled the yellowing parchment carefully, and they gathered around with interest. It was covered in hieroglyphic script weaved around an odd central symbol, a flat, horizontal line, and radiating down from it, three strokes, like sunbeams spreading out from the centre.

“These glyphs are the same as the translation I’m working on for Irene,” Karya observed. “No … wait. Not quite. It is the Undine language, but a later version, not as ancient. I think … I can actually translate this. But I’ve no idea what this symbol means.” She tapped the line and its three strange legs. She looked to the nymph, who shrugged.

“A curse, perhaps?” she suggested.

“Maybe a spell of some kind,” Karya guessed.