The Drowned Tomb (The Changeling Series Book 2) (33 page)

Ker stared at him in fascination. “Brave words for a hornless wonder with no mana stone.”

“Don’t worry, Pinky.” It was Woad who had spoken. Robin stared at him. “They’ll pay sooner that they think, Brickthick here and the Black Chicken of Eris too.”

The faun looked up at last and Robin saw that he had been mistaken. Woad didn’t look despairing, or broken, or even worried. He was smiling at Robin, his face mischievous, his yellow eyes filled with wicked merriment.

From the corner of his eye, Robin saw a Peacekeeper approaching them again from the crowd. Strigoi and Ker were both staring at the faun.

“Boss is coming,” Woad said. He grinned, showing small sharp teeth. His voice was high and filled with mischief. “They’re in for it now.”

Ker tugged at the chain angrily. “Blue dogs do not speak unless they are told to!” he growled, sharp teeth grinding.

Woad looked up at him with narrow eyes unafraid. “I’m not a dog. I’m a faun. And there’s nothing in this world or the next that can stop me from doing exactly what I want to do, whenever I want to do it, you dumb old slab of day-old meat.” He grinned at the Grimm. “And no pathetic iron chain can hold me either. I’m not your pet, and I’m not your prisoner.” He winked at Robin. “I’ve just been waiting for my friends.”

Woad spat suddenly at Ker’s feet, flame popping into life as it hit the ground, making the huge man stumble backwards in surprise, stamping at the fiery ground. Woad tugged and twisted his head, and the manacle fell from around his throat with a snap to land uselessly in the wet slush with a thud. “If you want to bind a faun, use a horseshoe next time, you diplodocus!” he yelled, rolling away nimbly as Ker lunged forward to try and grab for him.

Then several things happened at once.

Robin, still shocked at Woad’s act and sudden escape, heard a great roar from the water wall behind them, a crescendo of noise. At the same time the Peacekeeper who had been advancing steadily towards them, un-noticed by anyone so far, suddenly and quite inexplicably called out to him.

“Robin! Think fast, mate!” It threw something in his direction, and Robin, too shocked to do anything else, reached out and caught it. The object landed in his hands like a heavy egg. He stared in complete confusion at the Peacekeeper, who was running the remaining distance towards them. It held a spear, like many of its fellows, and before Strigoi could turn or react, it leapt and brought the tip of it fiercely down on the man. The blade glanced off the dark wolf’s solid armour in a flurry of bright sparks, but the unexpected blow was enough to send him whirling away, off balance and staggering, his feathered cloak fluttering furiously as it tangled around him.

“Anytime now, Rob!” the Peacekeeper yelled in a muffled and very un-spooky voice that sounded half-adrenalin and half-panic.

Robin opened his hands. The object he had caught glittered up at him. Impossibly.

It was his mana stone. Whole and undamaged.

There was no time. Thinking could come later. It couldn’t be his mana stone; he had seen it destroyed. Yet here it was, and he felt its familiar tingling warmth roll through him, as though he had been disconnected from a power source and someone had just plugged him back into the mains.

He was furious with Strigoi, appalled with Ker. His anger rolled through him like fire, and he thought of everything his tutor had taught him, Everything Calypso had ever said. Emotion is the key to the Tower of Water. Don’t think it, feel it. Find your guts.

Turning without a moment’s hesitation, his mana stone still gripped in his hand, flashing and shining, Robin cast a Needlepoint towards Ker. The spear of ice formed with a whoosh in mid-air, striking the massive man in his side, sending him flying into the slush amidst a tinkle of broken glass as the spell shattered into countless pieces against him. The Grimm’s flailing hands missed Woad who somersaulted out of reach, backing towards the wall of water gleefully.

Robin turned, crouched low, feeling more than seeing the dark lunging shape of Strigoi bearing down on him from behind. With a pulse of furious mana, he threw out a Waterwhip. A long lash of water cracked through the air with a snap. It was thick and strong. It tangled around the Wolf’s booted foot and Robin heaved with all his might, with all his anger, pulling the man’s feet out from under him. The Wolf of Eris toppled backwards, landing heavily on his pristine cloak in the slush and mud.

The running Peacekeeper, dropped the spear and tore the sackcloth from his face, revealing a wild-eyed and very red-faced Henry. “Bloody hell, it’s hot in that.” He grabbed Robin by the shoulder and dragged him into a run, towards Woad and the roaring barrier. Towards the Greatwyrm.

“Hurry!” he said. “Ker’s up.”

Mr Ker had indeed lumbered to his feet behind them with a roar of outraged fury, shedding mud and slush, and with an angry gesture, they saw the army of Peacekeepers, directed by the Grimm’s furious will, suddenly spring to life. As one, the army raced toward them, an advancing wall of possessed shadow.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry!” Woad gibbered.

Hurry
to
where
? Robin thought desperately, his heart hammering. He turned his back on the army to face the watery barrier, now right before him, and his heart almost stopped. They were close enough to the roaring wall that spray was raining hard on their faces, cast off from its sheer, undulating sides.

But Robin had gasped because the great ice wyrm was before him, its immense head at ground level, just beyond the sheeny curtain of water dwarfing the three boys. It pushed its great snout of carved, clear ice out of the wall of water with the creaking, deafening thunder of a glacier, throwing off great waterfalls of spray, and opened its huge jaws wide, as tall as a house.

Within the throat of this clear, enchanted construct, this tunnel of glittering, rainbow-hued ice, against all odds and reason, two figures stood.

Karya and Jackalope. Their arms braced against the sides of the ice dragon’s mouth.

“Are you waiting for a royal invitation?!” Karya yelled over the deafening roar of the water. Robin glanced back. The Peacekeeper army descended on them, a stampede. He dropped into a spinning crouch, casting a wide sweeping Galestrike, cutting across their front ranks like a scythe cutting down a row of corn. They fell, and those behind them stumbled over their fallen shadowkin, a mass of limbs and confusion. Robin saw centaurs rearing on their hind legs in the chaos, and then Henry and Woad grabbed one arm each and dragged him into the mouth of the dragon. It snapped shut around them. The companions found themselves enclosed in a great dry frozen cave, clear as glass. Robin watched the creature draw back into the depths of the torrent, and the curtain of the barrier fell back into place, cutting them off from the sight and sound of their enemies.

FIVE EATEN ALIVE

Robin stared at his companions, panting heavily, bent almost double, with his hands braced against his thighs. He felt dizzy. They all looked back at him. It was too surreal. Around their living cave of clear ice, the roar of the water gurgled, rolling along the walls as the wyrm ploughed through the dark and churning depths, holding them in its clenched, clear mouth.

There was plenty of room for them all to stand. It was like being inside a crystal submarine.

“Is he going to upchuck?” Woad asked, with a hint of concern. He looked at Karya with concern. “I’m pretty sure that’s really bad manners, to be sick inside a dragon’s mouth. Even one that’s made of ice. Plus … ew.”

Karya was standing a few steps from Robin, looking concerned, but otherwise unhurt. The fur-wrapped Fae, Jackalope, loomed just behind her, his face cross and lips thin.

“Scion, are you okay?” she asked. “You threw a lot of mana around out there, if you feel like you’re going to pass out, you should put your head between some knees.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be his own knees, specifically,” Henry’s voice came at his side, he was struggling out of the Peacekeeper armour he wore, dropping bits of clanking black shin-guard to the icy floor. “Ugh. This stuff smells like the dust under beds,” he complained, acting, in his usual blithe way, as though being swallowed by a colossal dragon of ice and carried away through dark water was the sort of thing that happened every day.

“Are you all okay?” Karya asked Robin, ignoring Henry’s complaints. The wyrm banked a little, threading its way through the icy river, and she had to steady herself on the wall.

Robin just stared at her in disbelief.

“Look, I know this is a bit odd-” she started.

Robin threw his arms around her, hugging her fiercely. He laughed a little hysterically into her shoulder.

“A bit … odd?” he spluttered, releasing the rigid girl. “A bit odd!?” He stared around at his friends in disbelief. “We’ve just escaped an army, three Grimms, and possibly the worst and most hateful person I’ve ever met. Woad is fine, Henry is fine, you two are here, out of bloody nowhere, and in case no one else has noticed, we have just been eaten by a great big sea snake made out of ice.” He shook his matted blonde hair out of his eyes, taking a deep breath. “I’m not entirely convinced that ‘a bit odd’ covers it!”

“It’s not actually alive you know,” Karya said, rapped her fingers against the roof of the gargantuan dragon. It rang out quite musically “It’s a construct, a vessel really, for navigating the deep. Undine design. They’re very, very clever, aren’t they? In case you haven’t noticed, we haven’t been chewed to death or anything. It’s just a way through the barrier, or…” She looked back the way they had come. “ … As a deterrent too. Stopping anything getting in.”

“But how?” Robin asked, trying to get used to their current location. He was gripping his mana stone tightly with both hands, as though he couldn’t believe it was real. “How are you here? How did you and Jackalope come out of the barrier, from inside Hiernarbos? And how is Woad okay?” He whirled on Henry. “And why are you dressed like that?” Finally, he looked down to his cupped hands.

The flat, egg-shaped seraphinite stone really was unharmed. It lay in his hands, pulsing softly with its usual energy, innocently challenging Robin’s sanity. “And this? I saw this destroyed. Strigoi, that great bloody nazgul back there, he smashed it to pieces. I saw him do it. This is impossible.”

Henry, who had given up trying to keep his balance as the wyrm bucked and swooped through the dark, sat down on the smooth icy floor of the mouth. “God, this thing is worse than the London Eye.” He tentatively poked the ‘tongue’. “Well, it seems that old dog-face back there is as stupid as he looks,” he said to Robin. He passed Robin some broken shards and pieces of what looked like painted glass. “When you two left the tent, well, I wasn’t going to stay there, was I? Nope. I followed you. But I saw your mana stone, safe and sound on the table in that tent, rolled off to the side didn’t it, behind one of those jugs. This is what the whispering menace smashed, for all the good it did him. He must have thought it was yours.”

“Is that…?” Karya peered down at the shattered pieces Robin held in his hands, and Henry nodded. “Yeah, it’s my mana stone. Well, you know, the pretend one you got me for my birthday, remember?” He shrugged. “I supposed when Strife caught me and Robin and brought us here, he took them both from us. He must have thought we had one each. A real one I mean, not just my pretend one. He wouldn’t have known any different, would he? They must have been together in that little dish.”

Karya peered at Henry. “You’ve actually been wearing it?” she asked him with wonder. “You never mentioned it again after your birthday. I’d assumed you’d forgotten about it.” Henry looked a little uncomfortable. “Yeah, I suppose I’ve been wearing it. I wear it every day. Or, well I did. I guess I’m not doing anymore though. Unless we get some crazy glue.”

The girl folded her arms, frowning at the tousled-haired boy, as though she didn’t understand him at all. “Well then,” she said eventually. “Lucky for us that you’re a sentimental idiot, isn’t it? Saved Robin’s mana stone that did.” She took the broken and useless shards from Robin, rolling them in her hand. “I suppose now I’ll have to get you another one, won’t I?” she muttered. “Or you’ll only sulk.” She looked quite put out, but Robin thought, oddly pleased as well.

Henry grinned. “Well, I saw your stone there, I wasn’t leaving it, and I certainly wasn’t waiting around for Mr Strife or his nutcase sister to come back and make me into a kebab skewer, was I? So I picked it up.” He looked apologetic. “Don’t worry, I used a ripped off bit of my shirt. I didn’t touch it or anything. I know you magic folks are weird about that.”

“Strigoi doesn’t seem to be,” Woad observed with great distaste. Clearly the wanton destruction of another’s mana stone was as bad as murder itself in the Netherworlde. The faun looked scandalised and repulsed by Strigoi’s act of violence.

“Anyway, I followed you two, at a distance. None of the Peacekeepers bothered me. They didn’t even seem to see me at all. It’s like they were all just milling around aimlessly, waiting to be told what to do.”

“That’s exactly what they were doing,” Robin explained. He told them all what he had discovered, that the Peacekeepers in their multitudes were nothing but shadow made living. Same as skrikers, grimgulls and gloommoths. Ker’s own brand of shadow familiar, dressed in metal and cloth. If Ker’s attention was elsewhere, they would be nothing but husks.

This revelation was news to all, even Karya.

“Although,” Henry continued. “I did almost have a run in with a centaur. Those things are big! I had to duck down and crawl through a gaggle of Peacekeepers to get away from it. Do you have any idea how freaky that is? To deliberately push your way into a crowd of creepy, animated scarecrows, all heavily armed, when every sensible bit of your brain is telling you that you should be running away in the opposite direction?” He puffed out his cheeks and shook his head. “Bloody Netherworlde! So when I found you, Rob, out there in front of that massive wall of water, with Woad and Ker, I didn’t know what to do. But then Ker emptied one of his toys. I saw the smoke fly up to the sky, then across and into his fingers. When you were all busy talking, I snuck over and put on this getup. It was just lying on the ground empty after that display. Reckoned I stood a better chance of getting close to you that way, without being detected.”

“And what, strange human boy…” Jackalope said, with an air of interest, “ … were you hoping to achieve? What was your plan when you got to your Fae friend here?” He folded his arms expectantly, frowning at Henry, who thought for a moment, then shrugged.

“Hadn’t really thought that far ahead, to be honest,” he said casually. “Had a spear though. Reckoned I might give someone a poke.”

Robin didn’t even want to think about how very certainly Henry would have been killed had he tried that, without the others showing up. But he grinned like a mad fool. He would have done the same. “That still doesn’t explain about you two,” he said, demanding an explanation.

“Psh,” Woad shrugged. “Silly big old Grimm thought he’d caught a faun. I get knocked on the head in the human world, and wake up in the middle of an army camp with a chain around my neck and that great red-headed pachyderm ordering soldiers about. You can’t hold a faun with chains, anyone knows that. But I thought I’d better play along for a bit.” The small boy blinked around at them. “Didn’t know where any of you were, and I could smell that I was at Hiernarbos. Bided my time, didn’t I? Knew you’d be back. In the meantime, I pretended to be the prisoner Ker thought I was, and watched, and listened.”

“We were worried about you!” Robin told him. “We were coming for you, Woad – you know that, right? We wouldn’t have left you with the Grimms, not ever. We had the other one chasing us at the time. Peryl.”

“Was she trying to kiss you again?” the faun teased. “Charmer.”

“Kill, not kiss,” Robin explained.

Henry snorted. “Typical woman.”

“Shut up, Henry,” Karya said. “Jackalope here found us in the snow, Woad. He took us in, let us heal, and even guided us to a village. We were tracking you, until Strife attacked that is.”

“Yeah, I saw cabbage-top bring Pinky and Henryboy into camp,” the faun nodded. “‘Oh hello’, I thought to myself. Here they are at last. And that’s when I knew. It was time to act. We had to get away, and I saw that you weren’t with them, Boss.” The faun looked up at Jackalope with undisguised interest. The silver-hair boy glared sternly back at the small blue creature.

“There’s a new shinyhead with us? I didn’t know you were off making new friends,” Woad said to Karya. “What is it with you and Fae-boys, eh, Boss? You’re like a magnet.”

“Woad,” Robin interjected, getting the boy to focus.

“Oh yes,” he continued. “Well, Ker had dragged me up to the water wall. We’d been there all day. He was trying everything to break through it. Marching droves of his little puppet men into it, he had dark magic users in the army too. Mancers, I think. I didn’t see them, but I could smell them, even over the stench of the centaur droppings. A bad sort that lot. They were working on countless charms, trying to dispel the barrier that had popped us as soon as we arrived in the valley’s entrance from the Janus station.” He hung his head in an affectation of sad and slump-shouldered dejection. “I was playing the broken-spirited faun, which I think Ker found funny. But I’d already sent for Boss, as soon as I saw you and Henryboy coming, Pinky.”

The wyrm seemed to have slowed in speed. The water was deep and long, Robin guessed that the full length of the pass between the canyon and beyond must be flooded with this strange barrier, but they seemed to be approaching the end. The water was getting less choppy outside, less turbulent.

“What do you mean, you called her? With what?”

Woad grinned and produced from the pocket of his ragged trousers a small simple brown flute.

“With this, course.” He grinned, managing to look a little sheepish. “I kind of … borrowed it … a while back.”

The flute held Robin’s attention. He remembered what it was, and where it was from.

“Is that…” he asked pointing. “Is that thing…?”

“The summoning beacon, yes,” Karya confirmed. “I didn’t know Woad had it either. Good job he did really, or I’d never have found any of you.”

When Karya and Robin had first met, long ago on a rattling train, Karya had given him this flute, long before he had known who she was, or who he was himself, for that matter. He had used it later, to summon her to Erlking. He hadn’t really thought about it since.

“Why do you even have that?” Robin asked Woad in confusion. “I thought that was locked in the trunk at the foot of my bed back home?”

Woad looked a little guilty. “Well, it was,” he said. “But fauns are good with locks, and I’m the best there is. Nobody can jimmy a lock like me.” He puffed his skinny blue chest out proudly.

“You stole it?” Robin was bewildered.

“Borrowed,” Woad corrected quickly. “Inky likes songs at night,” he explained with a shrug. “I thought a bit of music would help him sleep. He gets all antsy and tentacle-thrashy if he doesn’t get a lullaby.”

“Who … or what,” Jackalope asked quietly, confused and suspicious at Karya’s side, “ … is an Inky?”

“Woad has a pet kraken,” Henry explained, pulling off his Peacekeeper boots. This didn’t seem to clear anything up for the older Fae.

“Of course, I couldn’t play any music on it,” Woad continued, flipping the flute from hand to hand. “Forgot I had it to be honest. I never clean my pockets out. But it worked today, when Ker was busy. I remembered what it was for. Really for, I mean. I played it, and it brought Boss.” He grinned.

“Jack and I had been tearing around the mountains since Strife ambushed and took you,” Karya said. “Quite literally tearing, covering miles at a time, looking everywhere for you and Henry. But I’ll give the Undine this, they know a good place to stash a secret hideaway. There are more canyons and valleys in these snowy peaks than you can count. We were having no luck. We didn’t know where Strife had taken you. We didn’t have a single lead.”

“The girl was beginning to panic,” Jackalope said.

“I was not!” She shot him a harsh look. “I was just … gathering my thoughts.” She nodded to Woad. “But when Woad used the beacon, well, I have no choice but to come when called. That’s the power of the thing. It just so happened that Jack and I were due west of here, only a few miles. We were mid-tear when Woad played the beacon, and I was quite literally pulled toward it, as far as I could go at least. To the barrier of water we’re currently inside.”