The Drowned Tomb (The Changeling Series Book 2) (26 page)

JUST A NUMBER

The falling snow became heavier and heavier as the stranger led Robin and Henry further into the wind through the snows of the Netherworlde, passing beneath black bare trees and out again into the deep powder beyond. It was hard to see far ahead or behind. Occasionally, as they trudged laboriously onward, as the wind rose and fell and the snowflakes parted in a whirl, they caught misty glimpses of rock walls, far off and sheer. Gunmetal grey mountains lost in the moonlit haze. Robin was less concerned with the view, majestic mountains or not, and more concerned with not freezing to death. Dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, from the blazing heatwave of the human world, the icy air slapped and buffeted him relentlessly. They had to get out of this weather, and fast. He couldn’t stop shivering, his teeth clacking together as he ploughed through the ever deepening snow, which by now, as they made their way further into the drifts and trees, was above his knees. Henry kept turning and peering back worriedly the way they had come, but they had long since lost sight of Miss Peryl in the snowstorm and the darkness. She didn’t appear to be following them, and the powder was indeed falling so fast and thick it was swiftly obliterating their tracks.

The boy in the wolf skins didn’t slow or falter. Nor did he even once look back to see if they were following him. He strode onwards, his long legs deftly navigating the snow, seemingly heedless of their struggle and making no allowances for it. Karya was draped over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes, her hair dangling down in a dark, tangled curtain which was by now covered in a white sheen of flakes.

“Where are you taking us?” Robin called, breathlessly. He had attempted to cast a Breezeblock around them, a kind of invisible barrier of air to block out the wind, but his mana was still so depleted, drained from the energy needed to open the doors back in the sanctuary, that the only result has been that his vision had begun to darken at the edges and he stumbled. He needed to rest. They all did.

“My place,” the hornless Fae ahead called simply. “The storm is getting worse. It can fall fast and hard up here on the Glaciem. If we stay outdoors all night, we’ll die. If the cold doesn’t get you, the Frostburrows will.”

He graced them with a surly look back over his shoulder, his silver eyes cold. “Well,” he amended. “Not all of us. I’ll be fine. You’ll die. We need to get to shelter.”

Robin was so cold and tired he didn’t want to walk another step, let alone ask what in the Netherworlde a Frostburrow was. It would be easier if they just stopped to rest, just for a moment. The snow was soft, right? He was starting to stop shivering. He was fairly certain that was a very bad sign.

Henry caught his elbow, jogging him back to his senses.

“I swear,” the dark-haired boy stuttered in the cold night air, snow whipping around his face. “If I see a single sodding lamp-post in these trees, I’m going straight home.”

Jackalope led them off the tundra and under the cover of some scratchy black trees. The trees thickened as they walked onwards, tripping over twisted roots hidden in deep snowdrifts, until soon, the snow began to thin as the dead and winter wood around them blocked out the sky with a latticework of skeletal branches. The ground was scree and rocks, frozen and hard on their feet. Jackalope skipped over it carelessly, surefooted and swift, barely registering the weight of the girl he carried.

After a time, and several turns in the dark night-time thicket, they reached a wall, the base of a high cliff against which the trees hugged, its surface rimmed with shining ice. There was a narrow fissure, a jagged crack as high as a man, and the Netherworlder disappeared through it with Karya into the darkness beyond.

Henry gave Robin a worried look. Robin was frankly too cold to care.

“If he was going to try to kill us, Henry, he could have just hit us all with rocks,” he reasoned, stuttering in the icy air. “Why lead us miles from that spot through Hell-Narnia to some ice-age cave?”

Despite his words, he kept tight hold of his knife as he followed the strange Fae into the darkness of the narrow cliff-cave. Henry shrugged, dislodging small snowdrifts from his shoulder, and with one last look behind him, to ensure Peryl was not lurking in the dark trees, he followed Robin into the darkness.

The fissure led to a natural tunnel cut into the rocks. After a few twists and turns in the darkness, the howl of the blessed wind outside receded completely, and the only sounds were their uncertain footfalls in the shadows. Robin wished they had Woad’s ability to conjure light. Thinking of Woad – and how they had lost him in the confusion – made him feel sick to his stomach. They had to find a way to rescue him from the huge Mr Ker. It was horrifying not knowing where he was, or if he was okay.

There was light of some kind ahead though. Robin could now make out his hands on the narrow rock walls and the silhouette of Jackalope and Karya ahead, outlined against an ever-brightening bluish light. There was a dull roar, like rushing water ahead; it echoed in the rocks.

“This is my place,” the Fae called to them. “It’s safe. It’s secret. No one knows I’m here. I haven’t brought anyone before.” He sounded defensive. “No one.”

The tunnel opened up, and Robin stared around. They were in a vast cave, huge and echoing. The ceiling reared up high above them, hung with countless icy stalactites. One rocky wall of the cave was covered with a tall, clear waterfall, the source of the roaring noise, which entered the cave from a narrow gap near the roof and spilled crystal-clear water down the tall, shining rock face and into a pool which dominated one half of the floor space. The reason that they could see any of this in what should have been a pitch black cave, Robin now realised, was that clusters of vast mushrooms, some as tall as him, some large enough to walk beneath, their canopies like great pale umbrellas, grew everywhere, here and there in clumps on the ground, clustered in the walls, even nestled in the high roof. They glowed. Glimmering spectral fungi bathing the serene and jagged cave in a cool, eldritch wash. The light flickered and caught in the ceaseless motion of the waterfall, mixing with the spray which hung at its base and making the air dance with light. It made the place quite beautiful.

More importantly, it was much warmer in here, sheltered from the wind and snowstorm. Robin noticed that close to the edge of the glittering pool was a bedroll and a small campfire, above which hung an empty cooking pot, suspended on a tripod of three crossed sticks. Here and there were other signs of rough homeliness. Beneath a cluster of giant glowing mushrooms, what looked like a rabbit skin was drying on a wooden frame. Elsewhere, a washing line was strung between two icy rocks, hung with clothing and skins. This was clearly where the strange Fae boy lived.

Jackalope led them through the small forest of glowing mushrooms to the edge of the pool, where he lay Karya, with surprising care, on the bedroll. He crouched at her side, still ignoring the two boys, and lowered his hood, staring at her curiously. Robin couldn’t help but stare himself, at the flat stumps of horn nestled in his grey hair. Another Fae. A live one, right here in the middle of nowhere. Older than him, but his own race. He had only ever met one other. It was surreal.

The boy reached down and brushed Karya’s hair from her face. Henry bristled a little. “What’s he doing?” he said to Robin.

The Fae looked up at them. “Your companion is fine,” he told them. “She is merely spent. Whatever she did, it took every ounce of strength to do it, she just needs to rest.” He looked at the two of them with undisguised distaste. “As do you, by the looks of it. You all look weak. Soft. Fools to be here on the Glaciem. What did she do, this one?”

“She used mana that wasn’t hers,” Robin said, flopping down gratefully next to the bedroll. Jackalope left Karya’s side, moving with an odd fluidity, almost catlike. He passed to the campfire, dead and cold, and produced a flint, which he began to strike.

“That would do it I suppose,” the older boy muttered, not looking up from his task.

Henry and Robin watched him in silence for a while.

“Can’t you just ‘whoosh’ the fire alight?” Henry asked, still hugging himself from cold. “You know, like with magic. You’re a Fae. You guys are good at magic, right?”

The boy stared up at him, looking incredulous, then turned away, scoffing, bent over his task. “I have no mana stone,” he said flatly.

“I thought everyone in the Netherworlde had a mana stone?” Robin asked.

“Not the Fae. Where have you been? Under a rock for the last few years?” Jackalope tilted his head, small sparks flying from his flint into the tinder arranged in the small circle of stones. “Maybe the rebels, if they’re not already dead. Idiots. They probably are. What do I know about that?”

“You’re not part of the Fae rebellion?” Henry asked. He had shuffled nearer to Karya, and was looking down at her with concern. Her face was like ash.

“No, I’m not part of the rebellion,” the boy said, with a humourless sneer. “I’m trying to stay alive, not get myself killed. So who knows?” He shrugged. “They might still have their stones. But the Fae who were taken in the war, those of us who were put in the camps. We have none. The Arcania was taken from us.” The tinder caught, and the boy scooped up the brush in his cupped hands, blowing on it softly as he cradled it as gently as a baby bird. Small flames began to bloom in his hands, the light flickering in his strange hard eyes. “Everything was taken from us.”

Robin moved to Henry’s side, both of them huddling around the small fire as the stranger placed the smoky kindling back in the stones and began to build it up with sticks. The odd grotto loomed around them, eerie and magical, and oddly peaceful. The muted rumble of the waterfall was strangely soothing, echoing as it did around the mushroom-covered walls.

“Who are you, then?” Henry asked. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, we’re grateful you turned up when you did and everything, braining that maniac and bringing us in out of the cold, but—”

The boy’s face cracked into a smile. It fell from his face almost immediately. “I’m no one,” he said. “No one at all. I don’t exist, I never did, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

He felt them both staring at him, and looked over, chin held up defiantly while he poked the small fire with a stick. “Why else do you think I live up here on the Gravis Glaciem? No one comes here. It’s safe. I haven’t seen another soul in two years. Two years without another living thing.”

He looked sidelong at them. “Until three idiots fall out of thin air at my feet, dragging a Grimm with them.”

“The gravis what?” Robin rubbed his hands together as the fire gained in strength. After the icy cold outside, the meagre warmth of the fire was almost painful to his fingers. “Where in the Netherworlde are we?”

“You don’t even know where you are?” the grey-haired Fae stared at them, confused. “Three little children lost in the snow? You’re even more hopeless than I first thought.”

“Hey,” Henry said. “We’re not ‘little children’. I’m fourteen, Rob’s nearly the same. You’re what, sixteen, if that?”

“I have no idea,” Jackalope shrugged. “I stopped counting a while back. There wasn’t much point where I was. Day by day now. It’s simpler.” He looked from Henry to Robin.

“He’s not from here, your friend. He smells like a human,” he said bluntly.

“He is a human,” Robin agreed.

“But you’re not.” The boy peered thoughtfully at Robin, as though confused. He hesitated a moment, as though unsure how to phrase his thoughts. “You look like him, but you feel like me. Human or Fae. It’s like you can’t decide.”

“I’m a changeling,” Robin said, a little uncomfortable. “You know, born in one world, raised in the other. But I’m Fae, like you.”

“You’re nothing like me,” the boy replied immediately, turning back to the fire.

And then, after a pause, he asked: “A Fae, you say? You have no horns.”

Once the fire was crackling merrily, he stood, leaving its side and dropping down onto the floor across from the three companions. He was still eying them with undisguised caution. He unbuckled his heavy wolf pelt cloak now that the air was warming.

“Neither do you,” Robin pointed out. “Have horns, I mean.”

“I did,” Jackalope replied. “Once. A long time ago, when I was young. Like I said. Everything was taken from us. By Eris.”

At the sound of the name, the light from the mushrooms dimmed slightly, making the shadows in the cave longer. Henry and Robin looked around. Distantly, over the somnambulic thrum of the waterfall, they could hear the wind keening outside.

The moment passed, and the mushrooms returned to their usual glow.

“You don’t look familiar with hornless Fae, considering you are one,” the boy said. “Wherever you’re from, it’s clearly not the camps.”

“I don’t really know anything about the camps,” Robin admitted quietly. Though his tutor’s words echoed in his mind. ‘You haven’t seen what I have seen. The hills of blood and bone’.

“You don’t want to know then,” the boy said. “It isn’t just horns that are taken. In the camps. Even our names.” He shrugged off his wolf skin pelf. Without the cloak, they saw the boy was fairly thin. His forearms were bare and he showed Robin a mark imprinted on his inner arm. Roman numerals: MMMMCMXCVIII.

“This is what I am, clueless one,” he said, his eyes bright and challenging. “A number. That’s all they leave us with. That’s all we mean to them.”