The Drowned Tomb (The Changeling Series Book 2) (22 page)

The nymph led them through the house, upstairs and along hallways until the five of them reached the familiar long corridor at the end of which stood the red door.

“That never opens,” Robin said doubtfully. “It’s no way into the Netherworlde. The only time it ever opened was for Aunt Irene, and she’s not here.”

Calypso looked at him thoughtfully, as though to peer through the back of his head. “Are you or are you not the Scion of the Arcania?” she asked softly.

“Well, yes … apparently,” Robin muttered.

The nymph reached out slowly, her hand hovering above Robin’s chest, almost, but not quite, touching the seraphinite mana stone which hung around his neck. As though she were testing the magnetic field around it.

“You haven’t yet come to terms fully with what, and who, you are, Robin Fellows. Your aunt is steward here, but you? You are Fae. You are Sidhe-Nobilitas Fae, no less. Erlking runs through your blood as surely as you run through its hallways. The light catches your eyes and its windows, and its secrets, light and dark, are yours to discover. More than anyone else’s.”

Robin swallowed. Calypso could be oddly intense at times. As the others watched him, he reached out and tentatively tried the silver door handle. It was cold under his palm. His mana stone seemed to quicken like a heartbeat, and the knife at his hip shuddered slightly. There was a click, and the door to the Netherworlde swung open.

When last Robin had passed through this doorway, it had led to a circular chamber, overgrown with trees and bushes which looked down from a high place in the ruins of Erlking at the rolling landscape of the Netherworlde. This time, beyond the doorframe, a great arched and vaulted corridor of stone stretched away. Cloisters, lined with pillars and shadowy in the darkness, rolling away, long and grand. Robin didn’t know why he was surprised. The door to the Netherworlde may well open onto a different part of Erlking with each try for all he knew.

A cool wind blew out from the other world, ruffling his hair. It was dark in the long ruined tunnel before them. Moonlight fell down through missing stones in the crumbling ceiling in silvery beams, lost amongst the many pillars. On this side of the door, the sun was still baking the floorboards where it fell through windows.

“Wow,” Henry exclaimed. “It opened for you, Robin.”

“For us,” Karya corrected him. “I must go with the Scion. Who else is going to tear to the city?”

Woad nodded. “If you think I’m passing up a chance to go to the Netherworlde, even just to tear across the human world, then you have scrambled eggs for brains. I’m coming too.”

The three children looked at Henry expectantly.

“Well, duh,” he said after a moment. “When do we leave?”

“The Grimms may already be at the church,” Karya said. “Miss Peryl has clearly figured out where to go, and I’m guessing Mr Ker is with her now. We have to hurry.”

“You have to do no such thing!” a shrill voice cried from behind them. They turned as one. Hestia, looking shocked and horrified, had appeared at the turn of the corridor, her hand gripping the bannister rail as though she were likely to faint from horror. “What is the meaning of this madness?” Her eyes were flicking wildly from the children to Calypso, who remained completely composed.

“The Scion and his companions are going on a field trip,” she explained calmly.

“They are going on no such trip!” Hestia’s blustered, advancing down the corridor and looking appalled. “The young master has already almost died once today, and now … now you see fit to allow … no … to practically encourage these children to go chasing shadows in dark places? The mistress would not allow it! The mistress would not wish her charge to leave Erlking. Are you sending them off to their doom?!”

The nymph considered this. “Quite possibly,” she allowed. “But if I am, it is their doom, not yours or mine, house hob. The mistress of the house is not here. We have our parts to play and we all choose our own doom. I am not sending them anywhere. I am merely not preventing them from leaving.”

The housekeeper looked apoplectic to Robin, like a fury incarnate. “Nymphs!” she cried. “Hestia told the mistress, I did. No good will come of bringing a nymph to Erlking. I said it! They stir up the feelings of all like mud in water, until nothing is clear any longer. And all is murk and danger! They do not care for caution, or safety, or common sense! And they think nothing of the care of others.”

“And you do?” Calypso replied softly.

“Hestia does nothing but care!” the short woman spat furiously. “Hestia is care. Care of Erlking, care of Lady Irene’s needs. One of which, however happy or unhappy a task it may be, is the ongoing non-dismemberment or death of her occupants. What kind of a tutor are you, to be so cavalier with your charges?!”

“Only one of those present here is my ‘charge’,” Calypso replied, unfazed. “The others are not my concern, and the Scion is not a helpless, mewling infant. He can make his own choices. There is more at stake here than the safety of young creatures. A Shard of the Arcania hangs in the balance. Eris must not obtain it.” She glanced at the knife hanging from Robin’s belt briefly. “The last tutor, he would have felt the same.”

Hestia sneered, she was almost upon them, advancing down the corridor like an angry black and white bantam. “Oh, must she not? Mustn’t she, she says? Must stop Eris, eh? And yet Hestia does not see the nymph risk her own neck. The nymph stays safe! Safe and sound! How noble it is to risk life, and how easy when it is the life of another! I forbid it. I forbid this! Eris is not my concern!”

For perhaps the first time since meeting the nymph, Robin saw something dark pass across the woman’s face. “Eris is
everyone’s
concern,” she said, speaking sharply for the first time in his memory. “Everyone’s. You do not know Eris, you foolish woman. You know nothing outside of these walls, protected servant of Irene. You have not seen the things I have seen in Dis. You have not seen the holding camps. You have not seen the hills of bone and fire.” Calypso’s jaw worked silently a moment. “I see nothing but. Every time I close my eyes.” She lowered her voice. Her words had stopped the housekeeper in her tracks. The nymph tilted her head a little, visibly working to regain her serene composure. “Nothing but. Blood and bone. You have not been close to Eris. I have. She is like the sun. Brilliant and scorching, and like the sun she will blind you. She would blind us all and burn us to ash. What I did in the service of the dark Empress, what I saw? Erlking is my only refuge now.”

“These children’s lives,” the housekeeper said tremulously, pointing at Robin and the others. “These horrible, selfish, troublesome children. Their lives are not yours to gamble. If you want to stop seeing blood and bone when you close your eyes, then, Hestia says, you should keep your eyes open.”

“Their lives and choices are their own,” Calypso replied firmly. “There is no time to argue. I will answer to Irene herself for my decisions, not to her maidservant.” The nymph flicked a hand, and the corridor filled with a blizzard of ice crystals and a whoosh of air.

Hestia had been frozen to the spot, dusted with a fine sheen of frost, her face an icy sculpture of shock.

“Bloody hell,” Henry whispered in the silence that followed.

“Is she alright?” Robin asked, finding himself feeling guilty and worried. Hestia was a nightmare, but still, to freeze her like a snowman without even raising an eyebrow with concern. Calypso was cold inside and out.

“She will be fine,” the nymph told him. “It is temporary, and not important. We have no time, Scion, I am afraid. If you are to go, you must go now. Should the Grimms discover Hiernarbos, should Tritea’s Shard fall to Eris, it would be a terrible blow. I will not come. But I will not stop you leaving.”

Robin nodded.

“Remember what you learned from me, Robin Fellows,” she said. “The Waterwings, the whip, the other cantrips. Feel your way, do not be afraid to.” She glanced at his companions. “Your friends are important to you. I betrayed mine, long ago. It is a step you cannot take back. No amount of waves washes that footprint from the sand. Tread carefully, Scion of the Arcania. And please do not lose that knife.” She took his hands in hers, and for a moment, Robin thought she was becoming emotional and saying farewell, but she was simply pressing something into his hands. They looked like two small white pebbles. “When the way is a dam, flow through with these,” she said. “They are Neriedboons. The gift of a nymph. If you need help, and it is something I can grant you, ask with these. But ask only once. The promise of a nymph is something given only once in a life. Do not waste it.”

The children stepped over the threshold, Robin stealing a glance back at the sunny corridor beyond, and the blueish white figure of Hestia, frozen in perpetual fury.

“And try not to be dismembered by the Grimms,” Calypso added, almost as an afterthought. She closed the door behind them, leaving the young companions standing in the cool moonlit tunnel to another world.

GOING UNDERCROFT

“I can’t believe she froze Hestia!” Robin said, as he followed the others along the great vaulted tunnel of crumbling, black stone and through the ruins of the Netherworlde’s Erlking.

“Ah, she’ll be alright,” Henry replied, unconcerned. “She needed to cool off anyway.” He was peering around at the dark and silent ruins with undisguised wonder.

“It’s temporary,” Karya called back over her shoulder. “Your tutor is an oddball, Scion, but the keeper of the house meant to stop us.”

“Cool off,” Henry repeated hopefully. “Get it?” Everyone ignored him.

Robin wondered if Hestia would have been right to stop them. Irene would probably not be happy that he was diving off in pursuit of the Grimms, armed only with a haunted knife, an old book and some odd stones. But what choice did they have? They couldn’t wait for her to return. The Grimms could have found the Janus station already. If they did, they’d find the sanctuary of the Undine, and then they’d know where Tritea was buried. The Shard would be as good as Eris’. They had no choice. It was a race to this church.

“I still feel bad about it,” Robin said, skipping over tumbled stones and blocks of glossy masonry as Woad scampered ahead in the moonbeams falling through the broken roof. “She’s never going to let us hear the end of this, you know.”

Henry had removed his school tie and put it in his pocket as they walked. He cut a surreal sight, here in another world in his uniform. It occurred to Robin that his friend had never seen the Netherworlde side of Erlking before. In the human world, it was a rambling old house. Here, it had once been a great and splendid fortress, the home of the King and Queen themselves. Now, it was a vast skeletal ruin, jet black stones. Abandoned, silent, and still. Their scuffing footsteps echoed before and after them as they passed between the many pillars.

“Where are we going?” Robin asked to Karya’s back.

“Outside,” she replied. “I’m not sure I can tear us any great distance across the Netherworlde from within Erlking’s walls. There’s too much residual mana in the air. I need the sky above me and soil beneath my feet, or we’re never going to get anywhere.” She pointed ahead. “There, see, there’s a break in the wall where it’s crumbled away. We can get out, I think.”

There was indeed a gap, where much of the great arching wall had collapsed in a slurry of toppled stones. The moonlight was brighter here, and a sweet, unearthly smell floated enticingly in toward them. It was fresh grass with an undercurrent of cloves, and something rich and spicy. It made Robin breathe deeply and hungrily. The scents of the night-time Netherworlde.

“We could try it from here,” Henry reasoned. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Karya glanced back at him. “Well, the physics of me tearing not just myself, but three others, back and forth not only between the two worlds, but also covering space and distance as well at the same time, with this much background interference? You could end up with one less leg, my eye in your elbow or Woad’s tail growing out of your chest, but if you’d like to try it…”

“Outside is fine,” Henry replied, hurrying to keep up. “What did your tutor give you?” he asked Robin, pacing at his side.

Robin opened his hand. Two stones, grey-blue and smooth as river pebbles. They looked like marbles. “I have no idea,” he said. “She called them Neriedboons. You know how vague she is. Something to help. They could be bath bombs for all I know.” He slipped them into his jeans pocket nonetheless, scrambling out through the broken wall into the starry night beyond.

Karya led them down the great hill on which Erlking stood, through tall wild grass, silver in the moonlight. It swayed around them in soft ripples. Henry walked the entire way down the hill backward, staring up open-mouthed at the vast broken tooth of Netherworlde’s impressive Erlking. The shadowy ruins loomed above them, dominating the landscape. A motionless sentinel. Beyond its great and jagged shadow, the sky was blazing with stars, across which scudded thin bruised clouds. It was cooler here than in the human world, Robin thought. The aromatic breeze was welcome and refreshing on his face. It was odd, but he felt lighter here than back home. More himself.

“Here should do it,” Karya announced, when they had put a significant distance between themselves and the imposing shell of the old Fae palace. They were almost at the base of the great hill. The dark and tangled Barrowood loomed at the edge of the silver grass, a mass of shadowy trees.

She had them form a circle, holding hands. Woad was practically bobbing up and down on his bare feet with excitement, sending up small clouds of pollen.

“Are we having a séance?” Henry asked, bemused.

“Just hold on tight,” Karya quipped. “We’re going to do this quickly, tear after tear, in fast succession. It has to be that way, if we want to get there before I run out of juice, so it’s going to be a bit…”

“Discombobulating!” Woad grinned.

Henry and Woad peered at him. His eyes flashed in the darkness. “You’re going to throw up.” He giggled with undisguised glee.

“Just … don’t let go,” Karya said sternly. “If you get left behind, I won’t know where, or how to come back to you.”

Robin nodded. The idea of being stranded alone in the middle of nowhere, in either world, was not an attractive one. He gripped Woad and Henry’s hands a little tighter.

“Let’s do it.”.

Henry looked around the circle. “Any words of advice? Should we bend our knees, close our eyes…?”

Karya smiled at him with narrowed golden eyes. “Just don’t throw up on me, human.”

Her amber bracelet flashed brightly, and the floor fell away from beneath them as howling darkness rushed up.

What followed was a series of nauseating lurches and a feeling of dizzying disorientation. Robin’s legs flailed beneath him as his stomach rolled inside, like the drop of a great dark rollercoaster, then suddenly there was brightness everywhere, and ground hit the base of his feet, making his knees jar. Blazing mid-day sunshine surrounded them. Grass, fields, a blue sky above, and hot sun on his face. They were somewhere in the human world. Blinking and bewildered, he just had time to take in his surroundings, and notice a small steeple behind a hedgerow, and then the world fell away again, plunging him back into weightless chaos, and a speeding sensation as they hurtled across distance in the space between the worlds.

Seconds later, another rush of air and a pop, and the four of them were standing, swaying unsteadily, but still gripping each other’s hands, in a deep, rocky gully of sharp stone. A black sky overhead and moonlit moss creeping over the jagged rocks. The Netherworlde then. Somewhere remote and silent. Henry made a quiet gagging noise, and Woad giggled, and they were gone again.

Several minutes passed in this way, as with each flash of Karya’s bracelet, they passed from world to world, hopscotching across reality and time. Each plunge into howling roaring darkness punctuated by a brief and nauseous break of alternating scenery. A sunny country lane, blackness. A twisted midnight forest, blackness again. A side street in some nameless mid-day suburbia, where a dog barked once before they were gone; a dark and wind ravaged moor, where it was raining heavily, icy in the night. A bowling green, a pebbled highway, some urban waste ground, a shadowy cliff, a sunny basketball court, an abandoned rail track. Each tear, each flash of Karya’s mana stone ping-ponging them between the Netherworlde and the human, until Robin lost track of which world was which, blinded by the flashes from the small girl’s bracelet and the speed with which they travelled, the constant sickening plummet into nothingness. Henry was making a rather un-manly high-pitched whine, which seemed faint and far off. His hand gripped Robin’s like a sweaty vice. Woad was laughing like a maniac, and Karya, when he briefly glimpsed her face, lit alternately as they flipped through the worlds, had her eyes firmly closed, frowning deeply in concentration and sweat beading on her brow.

The flashes were faster still, light and dark, almost a strobe as the worlds flipped by like a pack of shuffled cards – until at last, finally they stopped. The circle of companions found themselves abruptly standing, rather unsteadily, in a paved alleyway in bright sunlight. Karya broke the circle, staggering backward slightly. Quickly, she regained her balance, as though defiant to show any weakness. She was pale and drained, her mana stone bracelet dark and smoky.

Woad released Robin’s hand, tottering around on the cobbles a little, before falling over, laughing hysterically to himself. Happy tears were streaming down his face. Robin himself sat down hard on the floor, waiting for his head to stop spinning as he blinked in the light.

He was dimly aware of Henry leaning over a bin in the alleyway, heaving.

“Told you,” Woad cackled. “Vom!”

“Bloody … hell.” Robin said eventually, getting to his feet on watery legs and looking around. They were in the city, just off a large pedestrian square. He could see shops. Perfectly normal shops selling mobile phone upgrades, and made-to-measure suits. There was a large bookstore and a coffee-house, and everywhere people shopping and going about their business in the bright daylight as though four children had not just popped into existence next to them.

“I think…” Karya said, a little shakily, “ … that went … rather well.”

Henry wobbled back to the others, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his school shirt and looking green in the face. “Never … doing that … again,” he said queasily. “Did it work? Are we here?”

“Well, it’s not the Netherworlde,” Robin said. “Look, there’s Starbucks.”

Henry shook his head like a wet dog. Trying to get rid of the dizziness. “Doesn’t mean anything that. Starbucks get everywhere. There’s probably one on the moon.”

“This is the city of Manchester,” Karya assured them, nodding out of the alley in the direction of the shopping square. “And if my calculations are correct, which they always are, that is St Anne’s Square.”

“The centre of the city.” Woad sprung to his feet. He seemed to have enjoyed the whole thing. “I’ve never been in a human city before. It smells terrible. Are there Grimms about?”

Robin walked to the end of the alleyway and looked out into the square. There were a few red-jacketed charity workers armed with clipboards and pamphlets. A busker played a violin quite merrily, and a group of tourists were being led across the square by a tour guide with a large blue umbrella. He didn’t see any white-faced monsters though. “No Grimms, but look.”

There at the end of the square, across a small cobbled road, stood the church from the picture Karya had shown them in the book. Large and reddish-brown, behind a bronze statue on a plinth, presumably someone of importance. St Anne’s church dominated one end of the city square, between a bank and an old fashioned jeweller’s. It looked almost exactly as it had in the book, except that there was a large advertising banner currently affixed to its side, promoting some rather arty ballet currently on show.

“Beneath St Anne’s holy feet,” Karya said with a hint of pride. “Wow, sometimes I’m so good, I impress even myself.” She stumbled a little, grey-faced.

“I think you need to lie down for a bit,” Henry told her. “You’ve got about as much mana left as me, I think.”

Karya shooed him away. “I’m fine,” she insisted. “Let’s just get to the church, and be on the lookout for anyone who looks odd.”

Robin smiled at her. “A boy with a haunted knife, a schoolboy who looks like he’s going to throw up again any second, a girl wearing a bearskin, and a blue maniac with a tail.” He observed. “Odd like us, you mean?”

“Precisely.”

But they needn’t have worried how they were going to get Woad across the square without drawing too much attention. As it turned out, nobody batted an eyelid. Robin remembered shopping a lot with Gran in the city. There was always some gold-painted human statue or stilt-walking performance artist around. It was that kind of city. People clearly just assumed the same of Woad as they threaded their way through the crowds across the square toward the church. The violin busker seemed to be the only one who noticed them, and amused himself by speeding up his merry tune as they hurried by.

They reached the church without incident and regrouped behind a florist stall on the corner.

“Look! Here it is!” Henry exclaimed, rubbing his hand against the golden stone of the church wall. It almost glowed in the sunshine. “The mark from the scroll. The Undine’s puzzle.”

Carved into a cornerstone at hip height by the doors, the same symbol from the Undine’s tube sat innocently.

“Told you it was a masonry mark, didn’t I?” Henry waggled his eyebrows at them.

“At the centre of things,” Karya said. “We are at the centre of the city here, just as the scroll said.”

“Let’s go in,” Robin said, turning to the doors. He stopped in his tracks. “Oh. That’s not good.” There was a sign on the door. “'St Anne’s is currently closed for essential maintenance work while we restore the altar-piece. Services suspended until October'.” He deflated slightly.

“You’re right,” Karya said at his side. “That’s not good. That’s perfect.”

“Perfect?” Robin looked at her sidelong. “It’s closed up. Not open to the public.”

“Then we won’t be disturbed, will we?” the girl replied. “And anyway. I’m not the public.” She laid her hands on the ancient wooden doors. With some effort, Robin saw her push the last of her mana into them. They creaked and buckled a little, the wood warping just enough to pop the locks. Robin heard them clatter to the floor within the old building.