The Drowned Tomb (The Changeling Series Book 2) (32 page)

“We were not advised that our Lady had seen fit to dispatch you yourself to oversee this operation, my Lord Strigoi,” Mr Strife said behind him, trying, and failing, to sound pleasantly delighted by the dark creature’s presence. “I can assure you, all is in hand here. The entrance to the valley is found. My brother, Ker, and his servants are working on the barrier, the great dragon. We will persist, and then the Shard will be ours. And as for the Scion, well, as you can see, the Scion is safe and sound. This is a great victory on all counts.”

Strigoi slowly reached out, like a black apparition, and stroked the bars of the hanging cage with one metal-gloved hand. The slow rasp of metal on metal made Robin’s teeth ache.

He was struck with the sudden certainly, that beneath the mask, the steel animal, that Strigoi was no man at all, but a great demonic beast. This was the hungry wolf that lurked in the darkness of every cautionary fairy tale. The creature who ate Grandmother, and drew the innocent from the light of the path into the darkest of brambles, where no one would hear their screams.

“If I may ask,” Strife ventured, his cold voice carefully kept light. “What it is that brings your noble self here to us? Surely the wolf of our great Lady Eris has higher matters to attend than—”

“There are no higher matters,” Strigoi replied, cutting off the Grimm utterly.

Robin hadn’t expected the demon to speak. And if it had, he would have expected a deep roar of a voice, something bestial and monstrous. The voice which emanated from behind the frozen black wolf mask however, was a deep, low whisper. It echoed in the air, ghostly and resonant.

Strife bowed his head in deference. “Of course,” he said. “I only meant—”

“Why is the creature bound?” Strigoi demanded in his deep and whispering voice. The metal head turned, steel in a bed of glossy feathers, to face Mr Strife, and Robin visibly sagged with relief. To have the focus of this being’s energy directed away, even for a second, was a relief. His heart hammered against his ribs. If Strife was a dangerous barracuda, this thing was a great white shark.

“Because he is devious,” Strife said with a sneer, glancing hard at Robin. “We give him no quarter to escape. He has slipped our leash before.”

“It is a Fae-beast,” Strigoi observed. “Nothing more. Nothing of consequence, despite what our queen believes.” The face whipped back to Robin, making him start. “A beast is a beast. And this? This one is a whimpering whelp.”

The dark eyes of the wolf mask bored into Robin. “It is disarmed?”

Strife nodded, indicating the bowl on the table. “We have taken his mana stone and weapon, my Lord,” he confirmed. “It is impossible for any of us to cast without one. He is no adversary here. Just a little boy.”

“And yet … you keep it caged,” Strigoi reasoned. There was something dangerous in his tone, dangerous to Strife. “Cages are for dangerous animals, Grimm. Tell me. Are you afraid of this filthy runt of a Fae-spawn?”

Strife’s face darkened murderously behind Strigoi’s back. He did not reply.

“Pathetic ghoul,” the Wolf of Eris whispered after a moment. He reached in through the bars, his dark metal fingers outstretched towards Robin, who scuttled back on his heels until his back slammed into the far side of the cage, desperate to keep away from his grasp. Strigoi’s fingers danced in the air before him, slowly and curiously. Robin saw that the metal tips of his gauntlets were sharpened to claws like black razors. He had the distinct feeling that the monster was trying to feel his aura, testing the boy’s mana with its own, which still pulsed out before it, the invisible beat of dark music unheard.

“Bars and ropes,” Strigoi said. “You Grimms. You are basic beasts. You have no … imagination. These bars of yours are nothing. If you wish to break a Fae, the best prison is the one you place its animal mind into, not its body.”

Strigoi removed his hand, scraping through the bars. He walked over to the table. “Release it,” he commanded, cool voice whispering in the dark. “I would have it walk by my side. It should see the forces of our Lady for itself, and know despair.”

In a swift motion, the man reached out and upturned the contents of the bowl which rested on the table with a clatter. Several stones rolled around on the dark wooden surface.

“You will never understand,” the Wolf said to Strife. “You do not rule a people by stopping them running from you, Grimm. You take away their will to run,” Strigoi whispered. With a long, grating hiss, he drew his cruel sword from its scabbard at his side. “You do not break their bones. You break their spirit,” he said. “You need not take away their chances, you need only destroy … their hope.”

As Robin watched, helpless and horrified from the cage, Strigoi lifted his sword, and bringing the iron pommel down hard onto the tabletop with all his force, a whispering rush of feathers, he shattered the mana stone into rubble.

Even Mr Strife flinched, looking astonished as the table shook. Shards of glittering stone fell and span away. Destroyed chips and chunks pattered to the floor, a tinkling rain.

Robin’s heart was in his throat. His mana stone. His link to any Fae powers he had. In all the Netherworlde, each being only ever got one. And it had just been destroyed, casually, easily, and without hesitation, by this dark creature.

Robin’s lips felt numb. He didn’t feel anything. No pain, no sudden magical jolt. Was he in shock? Without his mana stone he was—

“Just a child,” Strigoi whispered, sweeping a gauntlet through the glittering stone dust on the tabletop, as though he had read Robin’s mind. He swept the remainder of the rubble carelessly and coldly onto the floor. “Nothing more. How easily one’s dreams are shattered. How delicate they are.” His whisper rolled around the tent like haunted wind. “All swept away. Dust … and memory.”

Robin watched Strigoi dust off his hands, his dark metal gauntlets rasping against one another. The boy’s heart was filled with pure, fierce hatred. Everything he was, all that he had trained towards, the Tower of Air, the Tower of Water, and anything beyond, had been snatched away from him in one simple motion. His casting days were over. He was defenceless.

“You will learn your place in our world, mewling creature,” Strigoi said softly. He waved a hand lazily, and the door to Robin’s cage snapped open, the door flung back on itself with a metallic clang, almost ripped off its hinges. Robin was dimly aware that Henry had woken, startled by the sound. The dark haired boy was sitting up and rubbing his head, disoriented.

The ropes hissed around Robin’s wrists and fell off, a jumbled heap of dead snakes on the floor of the cage.

Robin didn’t move. He stared at Strigoi with a bubbling feeling of rising hatred growing in him, stronger than he ever thought he was capable of.

“Is it going to remain in its cage?” Strigoi whispered. He sounded amused. “Comfortable already in its new home, is it?” The wolf-head lowered, glaring at Robin from across the tent. “So easily broken, just like its stone. But no. It will not stay here. I would have it walk with me. And it will learn to obey. Now … come.” He beckoned with curled fingers, and Robin found himself dragged from the cage by some invisible force, a chill nebulous energy that grabbed him from between the bars and tore him roughly from his prison, dropping him onto the floor of the tent in front of Strigoi.

He hastily scrambled to his feet. Afraid or not, devastated by the loss of his mana stone as he may be, Robin was damned sure of one thing: he was not going to kneel in front of this monster like a frightened child. Ever.

He stood, shaking with anger, forcing himself to stare up into the furious metal visage, which grinned down at him, a frozen menace.

“Defiance,” the Wolf observed, with light interest. “Even without its stone, the creature has some futile spirit. Ever a Fae, ever a fool.”

“R … Robin?” Henry’s voice was confused and groggy. Robin winced inwardly. He didn’t want Strigoi’s attention on his friend.

“The human child is awake,” Strife observed. “I shall kill it. It serves no purpose.”

“No,” Strigoi commanded. “Get out. Leave us, Grimm. You are of little use to me, shadow creature.” Mr Strife’s teeth peeled back from his lips in outrage and anger, but Robin saw that he didn’t dare speak out. The pale Grimm looked to Robin. “You and I shall meet again in Dis, Scion. I assure you of that.” He left the tent without another word, unsatisfied and with ill grace, leaving Robin alone with the most dangerous person he had ever met, and with Henry, who rattled his bars.

“Oi! Hey you, Darth Vader. What are you doing? Leave Robin alone!”

“Henry, don’t—” Robin began, but Strigoi merely looked at Henry’s cage, and the door popped open.

“Step outside, human thing,” the Wolf hissed softly. “I have no business with you. You are free to go.”

Henry didn’t move. He looked at the man suspiciously. Strigoi spread his hands.

“This is no kindness I do to you, mortal thing. There is nowhere for you to go, of course. You will not fare well with the centaurs outside, I fear, and the Peacekeepers are everywhere. There is no longer any need for cages.” He looked back to Robin before him. “This whole world is your cage now. And you must learn who holds the keys.”

“Henry, j-just stay there, it’s okay,” Robin insisted. It wasn’t okay. It was about as far from okay as he could imagine it ever being. He saw Henry take in the shattered bits of stone on the table, the overturned bowl, his face filled with confusion as he pieced together what had happened.

“Stay or go, human,” Strigoi said without concern. “Take your chances with the centaurs – they enjoy bloodsport – or sit and rot in your cage. You are of no interest to me.” He turned his head toward Robin. “But you, little Fae thing. You come with me. You will walk of your own accord, or I will drag you.”

Strigoi marched Robin out of the tent, sweeping him helplessly before him in a flurry of black feathers. Robin got only a slim glimpse of Henry before the tent flap closed. His friend, muddy and dazed, was slipping down out of his cage and headed towards the ruined shards on the tabletop, a look of despair and confusion on his usually happy face.

WATERWYRM

Outside of the tent, snow and sunlight whipped Robin’s face. It was bright daylight and bitterly cold, snowing heavily. The ground beneath their feet was a mass of churned mud and slush. Robin stared around, slipping unsteadily as he followed the stalking figure of Strigoi, whose feathered cloak billowed out behind him like a living thing, quickly accumulating a dusting of flakes. He hated leaving Henry, but what else could he do? If it meant getting him away from Strigoi and Strife, he would have done anything. They were, he saw, in a narrow mountain pass. On both sides, sheer rock walls, grey and slate, rose up immensely, craggy peaks sheened with blue ice, bare of any vegetation and dusted with skirts of blinding white snow. The entire pass was filled with tents, pitched here and there, grey artless canvas, hundreds of them. But what made Robin stare were the sheer number of Peacekeepers. There must be a thousand or more, he thought. Everywhere he looked, they milled around, crowds and crowds of insectile, silent ghasts, each indistinguishable from the next, black faces and cloth eyes twisting to follow the passing of Eris’ Wolf and the boy at his side. This was an army. An advance force waiting to storm the hidden sanctuary of the Undine. Robin didn’t understand what they were waiting for.

“If you value your hide, Fae-thing, you will steer clear of the centaurs,” Strigoi said, his odd echoing voice whipped away by the wind.

Robin caught sight of them here and there, amongst the massed Peacekeepers. He had seen centaurs in books of course, back in the human world. Noble creatures with the bodies of horses and the torsos of men. The centaurs of the Netherworlde were quite different.

Stalking through the crowds of Ker’s forces, who scattered bonelessly before them wherever they stepped, the beasts were huge. Larger and more muscular than any horse Robin had ever seen. They were uniformly white, pale as old bone, their sleek muscles bunching in knots on their flanks as they strode, their heavy hooves stamping into the cold, churned mud. The horse-like body melded into the torsos of men, powerfully built, but whether they had human-like heads or not, Robin couldn’t tell. Their heads were covered. Where faces should be, the creatures wore great long pyramidal masks, looking for all the world like the long beak of a plague doctor, only made from bleached bone, and sprouting antlers that were strapped to the skull artlessly with leather and twine. The creatures were a chaotic and unsettling mixture of stag, horse, and man. Their eyes, lost deep within the blackness of the skulls, tracked the passage of Strigoi and Robin, glowing red like smouldering coals.

“The centaurs are our cavalry,” Strigoi told him. “They are murderous, violent beasts. Ker does well to control them, for a Grimm. When we break into Hiernarbos, their white flanks will be painted red with the Netherworlde’s last Undine blood.”

One of the creatures stopped its stalking as they passed, staring at them over the heads of the Peacekeepers. It blew great powerful gusts of air through its nose as it towered above the scarecrow army, its breath clouding in the frigid air. Robin saw to his disquiet, that the muscular arms of the creature bore long curved blades, like scimitars, lashed to its forearms, serrated steel glinting wickedly in the bright snow and sun.

There were dozens of such creatures milling around the camp. Robin saw several locked in combat with one another far off across the tents. Antlers clashing as they bellowed at one another, rearing up, territorial and brutal.

Strigoi led the boy on a winding course through the tents, his strides long and sure, so that Robin had to trot to keep up, his feet slipping in the freezing slush and mud. Not once did the dark man look back to check the boy was following. Of course he was. Where else could he go?

Robin was still in shock, mourning the loss of his mana stone. It didn’t seem real. His friends were scattered to the wind, and he was here, defenceless, at the side of a creature which even the Grimms feared. Many Peacekeepers followed them at a safe distance, looking curious in their silent droves, as though drawn along in the Wolf’s wake.

“Before we get where we are going,” Strigoi said, as he led Robin between two tents, in a narrow place which was relatively concealed from view.

He stopped so suddenly that Robin almost walked into the back of him. The Wolf turned and stared down at him. Frost was gathering in the carved wrinkles of the metal muzzle.

“Tell me now. What have you heard of her?”

Robin stared up at him, confused.

“Speak!” Strigoi demanded, his voice rising above a whisper for the first time since they had met. “Her whereabouts? Has she contacted you? In this Fae-palace you hide in?” His voice was a hiss.

Robin had no idea what the dark demon was talking about. “Whose whereabouts? Karya?” he asked. “I don’t know what you mean.”

The Wolf reached out in a flash and caught Robin by the arm above the elbow, none too gently. He shook the boy roughly. “Do not lie to me, Fae. I will know if you do. You have been at Erlking. You must know something. Where is she? And where are the resistance?”

“I don’t know where Karya went.” Robin tried to shake loose, but his arm may as well have been caught in stone. The waves of powerful mana were rolling off his captor in pulses, making his head spin. The sheer focus of the creature’s will bore down on him.

“And I don’t know anything about the resistance!”

“Do not play the idiot with me,” Strigoi said, the metal fingers of his glove biting into Robin’s arm. “I don’t care about your little world-tearer. I will have answers from you. What do you know? About the Silent Halls? About the book? I saw your stone! Do not take me for a fool, little Fae.”

Robin didn’t know anything about a hall, silent or otherwise, or about any book. “You destroyed my stone, remember?” he spat. “You shattered it, like you’re going to shatter my arm! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

The masked face regarded him in silence for a second or two. There was no sound around them but the slapping of tent-cloth in the wind and the far off bellows of centaurs, echoing from the high rock walls of the valley.

Snow fell softly on the two figures, gathering in Robin’s blonde hair. He stared up at the mask balefully.

Strigoi seemed to reach a decision. He released Robin roughly, with something close to disgust.

“You are as clueless as you are useless,” he said. “You will need to be stronger and faster, Fae, if you hope to live much longer.” He turned away. “Come then, and see the last great work of the damned Undine.”

The man led him onward, to a place where the tents stopped, and the Peacekeepers, in their hundreds, gathered close together in a crowd, like a surreal music festival. They parted silently in a wave for Strigoi, who never broke stride. There was a low and constant noise ahead, like the roar of a distant jet engine. Robin followed in his wake. When they reached the front of the crowd, he stared. The roar was deafening here and he finally saw its source, his head tilting back as he stared upwards in awe.

The two rock sides of the valley came to a narrow point, closing together like the prow of a ship to form a bottleneck in the frozen canyon. Between the two soaring walls of black, frozen rock, there was a space roughly the width of a football pitch. This space, in its entirety, and upwards as far as Robin could see into the rocks and sky above, was filled with a solid, churning wall of water. It roared and roiled, a great perpetual tidal wave of dark, churning liquid. Immense chunks of ice, like mini-icebergs, some as big as cars, rolled around inside it. Giant pale ice cubes rough and raw as boulders. This huge, impassable barrier reared oppressively over them, and in its depths, something colossal and sinuous roiled and coiled. Robin faltered in his steps. Strigoi grabbed him roughly by the collar of his t-shirt, stopping him from falling, and all but shook the boy at the water. “Behold, spawn of the Fae,” he hissed darkly. “The waterwyrm.”

The gargantuan monster, a draconic snake-eel hybrid, long and looping, coiled over itself in continual, dizzying and massive loops within the wall of thunderous water. It was like peering into the world’s largest and most terrifying aquarium. The creature was completely clear, glassy, and, Robin suspected, formed of enchanted ice, but on a scale he could barely comprehend. It was a colossus, something from prehistory and larger than the vastest dinosaur.

“It bars our way,” Strigoi said. “The guardian of the Undine. The last great defence of Hiernarbos.”

Good
, thought Robin bitterly.
I
hope
it
eats
you
all
. He shielded his eyes against the frozen tidal wave. Its rippling walls were ever in motion, and they caught the sun and threw it back in dazzling fractals. He was so awed by the sight that it took him a moment to register the figures standing before it, closer than any of the amassed Peacekeepers dared approach.

It was Mr Ker, the rugged and monstrous man-mountain of a Grimm, his hair like pointed flames, whipped about his head in the snow and wind blowing from the roiling water. And by his side, on a thick metal chain like a dog, was a creature Robin’s heart leap to see. A small blue smudge, sitting sadly on the floor on its haunches, tail thrashing back and forth dolefully.

“Woad!” Robin cried. He was so relieved to see the faun alive that he even forgot Strigoi for a moment. He made to rush forward, and it was only the cruel grasp of the Wolf’s gauntlet that pulled him back.

Ker turned at the sound, ponderously, and Strigoi approached, dragging Robin with him.

The Wolf of Eris was tall, but the huge bulk of Ker towered over even him. Despite this, at the dark man’s approach, the Grimm respectfully, though grudgingly, Robin thought, dropped to one knee and bowed his head low.

“My Lord Strigoi,” Ker rumbled, his voice as coarse and raw at the roaring water at his back.

Strigoi nodded to him. “Grimm. You make no progress.” It was a whispered observation, but somehow the words carried over the sound of the falls.

Robin stared desperately at Woad. The faun did not appear to be hurt, other than being chained around the neck, as Ker’s latest vile pet. But he did not look up. Robin couldn’t make out Woad’s face as the faun sat on the floor, looking listless and dejected. He had never known Woad to despair. The sight of him here, subdued and broken, brought acid to his throat. He shook himself, trying to free himself from Strigoi’s iron grasp.

“The way is barred,” Ker grunted. “We will get through, and the Shard within will be ours. I have oathbreakers working on it now. We have tried to feed it also, but nothing gets through.”

“Show me,” Strigoi commanded, his firm grip holding the struggling boy easily.

Robin watched in shock as Ker raised a massive hand above his head, signalling to the army of behind them. A dozen Peacekeepers broke from the crowd, advancing toward the wall. Silently, and without complaint, they passed around the gathered figures and continued onwards. Robin saw them walk straight into the wall of water, passing through it as though through a waterfall. The water churned in a frenzy, and he stared in horror as the limp and thin bodies were caught in powerful currents, dragged upwards into the suspended maelstrom as surely as leaves tossed in a white-water flood. The immense, coiled wyrm roared and bucked inside it prison, icy flanks shining and tearing through the water. Each of the Peacekeepers, to a one, were torn apart, tatters of metal and cloth breaking apart and scattering into the eddies of dark water, nothing but flotsam.

“How?” Robin gasped. He stared at Ker frantically. “How can you do that? Those were your own men. You just sent your own men to their death!”

Ker stared down at the boy for a moment in stunned silence, then his face split in a strange and ugly mockery of laughter. “Men? Men, he says!” He rattled Woad’s chain, making the faun’s head wobble, though he still didn’t look up. “Peacekeepers are no men, you fleshy nothing!”

Strigoi released Robin, dropping him like a sack of garbage. “The Peacekeepers, little Faespawn,” he explained in his dark voice, “are Ker’s shadows. He is the commander of Lady Eris army. And this is his skill. His endless totems.”

As if to explain, Ker raised a hand again. A Peacekeeper detached itself from the front rank of its brothers, and as Robin stared, it fell apart, empty armour and sackcloth clattering to the ground in a pile. From the hollow eye sockets, a great plume of black, shadowy smoke billowed, whipping across to them, elongating like an eel. Ker caught and absorbed it into his hands.

He grinned down at Robin, his large pale face filled with monstrous pride. “Brother Strife may have his skrikers, fast and fleet, but none but Ker can fashion an entire army from shadow.”

Robin was aghast. All of these, every last Peacekeeper, here and in the Netherworlde, they were all Ker’s will made solid? This huge and lumbering brute, his mind and will fractured, spread out all across the land, focussed into countless pinpoints of consciousness.

“Find a way through, Ker,” Strigoi commanded. “Or you will answer to Eris.”

Ker grunted. “I know my business, my lord,” he said. He tugged cruelly on Woad’s chain again, making the faun twitch.

“Leave Woad alone,” Robin shouted angrily. He stared furiously at Strigoi and Ker. “You are both going to pay. I swear it. If it’s the last thing I ever do, I’ll see you suffer.”