The Drowned Tomb (The Changeling Series Book 2) (21 page)

“It could be a magical glyph,” Robin peered closely at it. “I’ve seen a lot of these in my study books, words of power. But nothing quite like this before.”

They were all clearly baffled.

“Maybe it’s the name of some terrible demon,” Woad said eagerly. “And saying it out loud will summon it here!”

“Nah, it’s none of those,” a voice over Robin’s shoulder said. They all looked around in surprise to see Henry standing just behind them, still in his school uniform and with his bag slung over one shoulder. “Afternoon all. I know what that is,” he said casually, nodding to the symbol. He dropped his bag onto a nearby chair. “What are you all up to then?”

“You?” Karya said doubtfully, not bothering to hide the disbelief in her voice. “You, of all people, know what this is?”

“Yeah, me, why?” he replied.

“A magical symbol, an ancient glyph, or possibly a word of great power, hidden on an ancient scroll that neither I nor this nymph can decipher, but you say you can?” she snorted.

“Is there a bloody echo in this room?” Henry said, frowning at her. “What’s up, Rob? Why’s everyone clustered round this old thing then. Have I missed much today?”

“Henry,” Robin urged, he tapped the scroll impatiently. “You were saying?”

“Oh, that. We’ve been doing about architecture, stuff like this in class. That’s not a magic spell, it’s just a masonry symbol that is.”

“A what?” Karya demanded, practically snapping.

“You know, masons, people who build things. Houses and that. That’s a tideline. Shows other craftsmen where on a building the flood level is, or something like that anyway. It’s on loads of old buildings.”

Karya stared at Henry in disbelief. “You’ve been … useful,” she said with an air of wonder. He gave her a look.

“It has been known to happen, you know, from time to time. What’s going on here then anyway? Why is everyone so agitated? And why does Robin smell like Christmas dinner?”

Robin shooed away Woad, who was trying to lick his elbow experimentally. “Hestia’s unguent,” he said by way of explanation. “Monsters in the water, nearly drowned, long story.”

“Pinky kissed a girl,” Woad piped up happily, with an air of delicious scandal.

Henry made a face. “Gross.”

“Not a girl … a Grimm,” Karya corrected.

“Grosser!” Henry declared. “Is this the sort of thing you lot get up to while I’m at summer school then? The most exciting thing that happened to me today was multiplication squares. And why I still have to wear my uniform is beyond me. It’s inhumane during summer.”

“Perhaps if you studied your lessons as studiously as the Scion,” Karya said loftily. “You would not be required to attend this ‘summer school’.”

Henry made a rude gesture. Thankfully, Calypso interrupted Karya’s indignation.

“I believe it to be another riddle, or so it seems,” she said.

Robin groaned. “Another!? What is it with Netherworlders and their ruddy riddles? It’s supposed to be the location of the lost Janus Station, isn’t it?” he complained. “I was expecting co-ordinates or something.”

“Well, whatever it is, Miss Peryl figured it out quickly enough,” Karya said darkly. “So we better had too.” The girl looked up at the nymph, as Henry grumbled to Robin,

“I’d probably pay more attention in class if my teachers looked like yours. Miss Windsor has a lazy eye.”

Calypso leaned over the unfurled parchment, tucking a floating lock of pale hair behind her ear as her delicate finger traced across the glyphs.

“In essence,” she declared. “We are told here that the doorway to the vale lies ‘at the centre of all things, beneath Satan’s holy feet’.”

“Nah, you’d just spend your classes making goo-goo eyes and not paying attention,” Robin muttered back to Henry with a grin.

Karya cleared her throat, pinning each boy with her death glare. “Pot, kettle, black?” She jerked her head in the nymph’s direction.

Calypso looked up at the boys expectantly with a wan and distant smile.

They returned her look blankly.

“Satan’s holy feet,” she repeated helpfully.

“Satan?” Robin was deeply confused. “As in, the devil?”

“The what?” Woad asked.

“Big bad guy in our world, traditionally,” Henry explained to the faun knowledgeably. “Enemy of light, daddy of demons. Cloven hooves, pointy tail, bright red.”

Woad wrinkled his nose. “What kind of ridiculous colour is red for a person?”

Karya filled them in on what they’d missed.

“Wait, this can’t be right,” Robin insisted. “That’s Christian mythology, isn’t it? It doesn’t sound very Netherworlde-y. What does the devil have to do with anything?”

Karya rubbed her chin. “Well, it might not mean that at all,” she mused. “The term Satan originally just meant enemy. It was anything or anyone who opposed. The word only got attached to Lucifer, the angel who rebelled against God, after he … well … rebelled. Maybe it’s talking more about the enemy of the Shard? Or of the Sidhe-Nobilitas?”

“Satan’s holy feet though?” Robin said, shaking his blond head. “It’s all wrong. Nothing about the devil is holy, right? I mean, Gran was never much of a church goer. We went at Christmas for the carols and she always sent me at harvest with about ten tins of sweetcorn to drop off for charity, but even so, I’m sure I would know if there was anything particularly holy about Lucifer’s feet.”

“At the centre of all things?” Karya was tracing the odd glyph with her fingertips. “Henry, you said this was a stoneworker’s symbol?”

The boy nodded. “S’right. They’re on all the old important buildings,” he added, knowledgeably. “Town halls, libraries, churches, that sort of thing.”

Karya’s eyes flashed. Robin swore he actually saw the gold in them grow brighter.

“That’s it!” she cried. “Wait here, I’ll just be a minute.” She bolted from the room.

“A curious being,” Calypso observed, watching the girl go. She looked to Robin. “Scion of the Arcania, tell me, what are your intentions? There is no time to summon back your aunt from the city, this London to which she has travelled. Not if the Grimms have already located the doorway leading to the valley of my old homeland. Time is of the essence.”

Robin looked back at her. He hadn’t really planned anything. He was still a little shaken about almost being drowned an hour ago. But she was right. If the Grimms knew where the Janus station was that would deliver them to Hiernarbos, they had to act, and quickly. There wasn’t time to waste. Not when a Shard of the Arcania was at stake. “I … well, I suppose we have to stop them, somehow.”

“Your bravery and your foolishness are both indicative of your Fae blood, Scion,” the nymph replied, delivering this as though it were a compliment. “You will need your tutor by your side.”

Robin nodded. “I’d feel better knowing you were with us, of course,” he said gratefully. Calypso blinked, straightening up. “Oh no,” she said absently. “I didn’t mean me, goodness no. I cannot go back to the white tree.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “And I wouldn’t even if I could, I don’t think. It might be dangerous.”

Henry gave the woman a hard look and a rather judgemental shake of the head.

“My job here is to arm you against danger, Scion, not to throw myself between you and it,” Calypso explained. “I meant your other tutor.”

Robin was confused.

“Your knife, Phorbas,” she prompted.

“I’ll get him!” Woad volunteered, scampering out of the room, presumably to Robin’s bedroom to collect the weapon.

Presently, both Woad and Karya returned. The faun reverently carrying the blade, careful not to touch the mana stone pommel, and Karya holding a large, leather-bound book.

“You’ve been to the library?” Henry asked incredulously as she slammed the book down on the table by the scroll. The book looked familiar to Robin.

“I was verifying something with Wally, if you must know,” she replied curtly.

“Wally?”

“The black Knight of Walpurgis,” Robin explained to Henry.

“You mean that mental stag-headed suit of armour who guards the library?” Henry asked. “You two are quite pally these days. You’re always hanging around with that haunted old empty tuna can.”

“Well,” she replied breezily, flipping through the pages. “Between you and that haunted old tuna can, you know enough to solve this riddle. When you mentioned churches, you see. This masonry mark, the ‘centre of all things’ … It all makes sense.”

“Karya,” Robin said patiently, taking Phorbas from Woad and tucking the blade carefully into the belt loops of his jeans. “Absolutely none of what you’re saying makes sense. That book, is it the one I got from the library weeks ago? The one you thought was useless?”

“The guide to the Sidhe, yes,” she replied, distracted, as she finally found the page. “I’ve been using it for research, there really isn’t much in it. Or I didn’t think so anyway.” She held up a finger. “But … I did read that during the very early years of the war, when Eris’ campaign was gathering steam, the Fae Guard had several secret meeting spots. Safehouses. Most of them not in the Netherworlde since it was far too dangerous, but actually here, in the mortal world. Places they could gather and counsel, safe from Eris’ growing forces. This was before Eris declared all-out war, you understand – before Oberon and Titania went, as it were, poof.”

“Poof,” Woad repeated, spreading his hands out mystically and waggling his fingers.

Karya showed them an illustration on the page. “We know, from tracking the news and their movements, that the Grimms, Ker and Peryl, have been moving from city to city, right?”

They nodded.

“So they have information, clearly, from their own sources, that the lost Janus station is hidden somewhere in a city. This in itself is most unusual. Janus stations are usually somewhere remote, like the one we used on the moors, or the one on the beach in the Netherworlde. It would be hard to hide one in a city, but also clever, as it’s the last place you’d normally expect to find one. It would have to be somewhere hidden, where humans wouldn’t just run into it.”

“That’s the problem, though,” Henry argued. “We don’t know which city, neither did they. And cities are pretty big things you know. Even if we knew which city, how would we ever pin down the station?”

“This tells us which city,” Karya pointed to the glyph on the scroll. “In this book, it is mentioned that one of the secret meeting places here in the mortal realm was in an undercroft, a series of subterranean tunnels running beneath a city, and that the entrance to it was reached through a church.”

“Most cities have churches, Karya,” Robin said doubtfully. “And underground tunnels, probably too.”

The girl nodded impatiently. “Yes, yes, I know! But this symbol appears on a specific church. A church that is, as Calypso translated for us, at the centre of all things.”

She turned the book towards them, pointing to a picture. The illustration showed a good-sized city-centre church, situated in an urban cobbled square. Tall buildings surrounded the old black and white image.

“It’s not Satan’s holy feet,” the girl exclaimed. “That’s a mistranslation. It’s ‘Saint Anne’s holy feet’.” She smirked at Calypso, who was looking down at the old picture with faint interest. “These old dialects can be tricky to translate. This church, St Anne’s, is in Manchester city centre. It is in fact,
exactly
in the centre – of the whole city. Dead on.”

“It says so in the book?” Henry asked, peering with interest.

Karya nodded. “This symbol you identified, it is a masonry mark as you say. You’re quite right, Henry. But on this particular church, its placement also marks the point in the city where all distances to other cities are measure from.” She snapped the book shut. “So if you wanted to know how far Leeds was from Manchester, or Brighton, or Chipping Norton, you’d measure from this church. From this exact stone in fact, the one with this carving.”

“And we think this is where the Fae used to meet?” Robin asked. “Where the lost Janus station is? Beneath the streets of Manchester in the undercroft.”

He vaguely recognised the church. He had lived in the city, or its poorer suburbs at least, most of his life with Gran. He was fairly sure he’d walked past this countless times with her on shopping trips. His mind whirled with the knowledge.

“Grimms travel fast,” Woad observed. “We have to be quick, or Undine and nymph blood everywhere.”

“Woad’s right,” Robin said. “But how on earth are we going to get to the city? There are only something like three trains a day from Barrowood, and we’re hardly incognito. It would take hours and hours to travel there from out here in the sticks. Barrowood is in the middle of nowhere; it took me forever to get here in the first place.”

“I can tear us there,” Karya declared. “A couple of flips, space and distance. It will take it out of me, and unfortunately, it will also telegraph our movements to anyone watching, and I can assure your Eris is always watching. But I can’t do it from Erlking. There’s no way to with your aunt’s new and upgraded wards.”

“Not from this Erlking,” Calypso observed, thoughtfully. She rolled up the scroll and floated out of the room, beckoning them to follow.