The Drowned Tomb (The Changeling Series Book 2) (7 page)

Robin took the ice-spear from his tutor, a little alarmed. She was still smiling sweetly at him.

The spear was freezing cold and numbed his fingers immediately. He turned it on end and jabbed it into the ground, where it shuddered like a tall flagpole.

“Let’s not eviscerate Henry though, eh?” he said, a little shakily. “Maybe you should let him down?”

Calypso blinked at him blankly for a moment, as though she had forgotten she had pinned the boy to the crumbling wall above them. “Oh, yes.” She nodded her head at Henry, stuck and shivering. The ice bands immediately dissolved, falling with splashes. Henry tumbled from the wall and landed with an ungainly ‘oof’ on the grassy earth.

“Water…” Calypso continued, clearly unconcerned with Henry’s wellbeing, “…can also guide and steer.” With a languorous wave of her slender arm, she summoned a long snake of water from the shore, it rose out of the lake like a thick whip, the questing tendril of some huge underwater beast, and sinuously made its way across to where they stood in the folly.

As Henry got blearily to his feet, brushing mud off his bare knees and looking very bad tempered, the water snake formed a wide loop around Robin and his tutor, floating in a glittering band as though they stood within a magic circle. “And of course,” she said, bringing her hands together in a clap as the liquid hula-hoop shimmered and shone around them. “It can conceal.”

The circle of water exploded, billowing into a cloud of cool, thick fog immediately, which rolled over the two of them, covering the island and blotting the bright sun from view.

Disoriented, Robin stumbled a little, blinded by the fog. He heard his tutor’s soft melodic voice drift out of the mist. “It is as mutable as mana itself, and of all the Towers, once mastered, it can be shaped and moulded, limited only by your own imagination.”

There was a gust of wind, and the fog cleared. Robin stared, wide-eyed.

“Wow,” he heard Henry say behind him.

The fog had cleared, Robin saw, because his tutor had acquired great shimmering wings of ice. They spread out on either side of her back, as clear as crystal, each sharp and carved frozen feather glittering like diamond in the sunlight. She beat them a few times, looking like an angel carved from ice. The fog dispersed completely in the wind, and she lifted from her feet, suspending herself slightly in the air above the staring boys, her bare feet dangling from beneath her rippling silks.

“This,” she sounded quietly pleased with herself, “…is called Waterwings, and takes a great deal of concentration. It is a two-level cantrip, and very advanced. With Waterwings, one can, for a span, fly, or dive.”

She lowered herself to the grassy soil softly, her great wings tucking themselves up behind her with a sound like a thousand musical knives folding in against one another.

“So, Scion of the Arcania.” She peered at him with her deep gaze. “Where would you like to begin?”

“That one please,” Robin stared, unable to suppress a grin.

Emboldened by his affinity with the water brought on by his recent kraken-based medicine, and strangely eager to impress and please his rather alarming new tutor, Robin found himself determined to master Waterwings immediately.

“That is some very advanced casting,” she told him. She seemed to consider for a moment, and then leaned forward and poked Robin rather hard in the centre of his forehead. A feeling of extreme cold rippled through his head, like the worst kind of ice headache. It was gone again in seconds.

“What did you just do?” he asked.

“I gave you a little knowledge,” she shrugged. “Perhaps your last tutor would have given you a list of books and a few months of hard study, but I really don’t have the patience. There’s no harm in sharing a little.”

Robin hadn’t known Panthea and Fae could do this. His face hung slack, aghast, as he realised he knew how to cast the cantrip. “You mean … Phorbas … the Tower of Air … all that reading, effort … He could have just … zap?”

“Yes, but I hear some tutors swear by the merits of hard work. I believe character building is involved, whatever that is. I never had the patience for it,” Calypso said airily. She glanced at Robin still spluttering on the grass. “The effects are only temporary but they should last long enough for you to gain an affinity for the element. Now watch.” She made a vague gesture. “Imagine the currents around your body, their potential parabolae, and form a design best suited to take advantage of them.” Robin stared.

“Off you go then.” She made shooing gestures with her hands.

Robin glanced helplessly at Henry, who just shrugged.

He concentrated on his newly acquired knowledge and focussed every inch of his mana, drawing from his stone more power than he had ever attempted before. The sheer force of will made his spectacle at the lake using Featherbreath feel like nothing at all in comparison.

Robin was astounded to find ice forming between his bare shoulder blades on his very first attempt, and encouraged by this progress, despite the fact that his mana stone felt so hot it might crack like a boiled egg, he redoubled his efforts, until within minutes, and after only a few shaky and spiky false starts, he had rudimentary wings of ice protruding from his back.

They were nothing like Calypso’s had been. Those had been a work of art, large and perfectly formed, the glassy wings of a swan. Robin’s on the other hand looked stubby and uneven, something between a bird and a bat, but they shone and were solid, and with a tentative flex of his shoulders, and to his great delight, they beat.

Henry actually gave him an astonished round of applause.

“It is likely,” his tutor said. “That to attempt such an advanced cantrip will have irreversible damage on your mana.” She spoke conversationally, as though discussing the weather. “But then you are Fae, not Panthea. I am less familiar with your physiology. You may be fine after all.”

“I feel fine,” Robin lied, exhilarated. In truth, he felt weak and shaky, but his mastery of this trick had him running on sheer adrenalin. “Watch this.”

He bent his knees and leapt upwards, beating his newly formed wings of ice as hard as he could. They lifted him from his feet, and with a rush of mana thrumming through his body like liquid fire, he shot into mid-air.

“Rob!” he heard Henry call in a mixture of alarm and sheer delight.

Robin thrust himself upwards into the sky. He had never felt so light and powerful. His wings roared behind him, feeling like the most natural thing in the world as the folly and the island fell away beneath him swiftly.

Upwards and upwards he pushed into the sky, delicious wind roaring across his face, wonderfully cooling on the hot, bright summer’s day. The whole shining expanse of the lake was laid out before and below him.

Robin span, folding his wings in tight against his body as the landscape whirled giddily, before opening them out again and feeling the warm currents of summer air roll invisibly beneath him.

This
is
what
magic
is
for
, he thought to himself, as he swooped experimentally, glancing down to see to his surprise that he’d climbed higher than he’d thought. Down on the island, in the broken stone circle of the ruined folly tower, Henry and his tutor stared up at him with upturned faces, their hands shielding their eyes from the sun.

Robin looked out over the landscape beyond the lake. At the lush green forests and woods, the sloping distant hills and behind them the rising cragged moors, lost in a purple haze. He could see the angular outline of Erlking Hall itself from up here, and wondered, with a moment of pride, how wonderful it would be if Karya and Woad were looking out of a window right now, and just happened to see him, soaring in the air, wings flashing in the sun.

Robin lurched.

His mana stone had flickered, and without warning, rather than the hot and burning sensation, it was suddenly a dead and lifeless lump of coal against his chest, as if someone had just turned his power source off. His arms and legs were suddenly heavy, and he flailed, unbalanced in mid-air.

“Wait … what…” he stuttered in panic, but before he could react, he found himself falling, plummeting out of the sky and back toward the island.

His mana was gone, utterly spent. His head rushed with the roar of blood and his eyes watered as he spun downwards, giddily out of control.

The wings he had formed so proudly were dissolving rapidly, become liquid, and he stared in horror as the ground rose up to meet him swiftly. He was going to hit the island. The solid ground. He may as well have jumped to his death from the tallest tower of Erlking.

The last thing he saw, as he spun out of control, towards the hard and unforgiving ground, was Henry’s horrified look of shock, and Calypso’s slight frown of detached interest.

Helpless, he braced himself for impact, at the last second drawing what was left of his watery magical wings around him like a rudimentary blanket.

Robin fell back into the folly. He hit the earth hard … and to his surprise and astonishment, instead of shattering every bone in his body as he collided with the ground, he instead broke straight through it into blackness beneath. The languid voice of his tutor drifted down to him. “Ah, so that’s why one must practice…”

UNDINE UNDERFLOOR

“Rob! Are you okay?!”

Robin coughed, spluttering in the darkness and the dust. The wind had been knocked out of him, but he felt only bruised, not broken…

“Have any timbers pierced your lungs or other organs, Scion of the Arcania?” Madame Calypso asked lightly, sounding as detached and unconcerned as always. “I can fetch assistance if so, although it will be most inconvenient to stop the lesson.”

“I’m … fine. I think,” Robin gasped, struggling up to his knees and blinking around.

He had fallen through the centre of the folly and found he was in a small and damp chamber, filled with tumbles of stones and mossy cobwebs. It might once have been a sub-basement or cellar for the strange and ruined structure above. A cramped dark space that clearly no one had ever realised was here.

Sunlight fell down through the broken boards above him, filtering in slanted beams and dancing with golden dust.

“Bloody hell,” Henry’s voice echoed down. “All this water everywhere, the whole lake, and you have to crash land into the only solid part of it. You could have broken your neck. What were you thinking, trying advanced magic like that?”

“Yes, thank you, mum,” Robin grumbled, rubbing grit and dirt off his hands as he sat up. Everything hurt. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that he had landed on some kind of stone table, a grey, weathered block, smack in the centre of the hidden room. He swung his legs off the side and stood up gingerly. “There’s something down here,” he called up to his friend and tutor, whose heads were both backlit shadows above him as they peered down with interest. His voice was oddly muffled in the gloom.

The stone was soaked and dripping. Robin’s Waterwings were gone. Clearly, he had landed on them when he hit the table with them wrapped, tightly and protectively around him. The impact had broken the cantrip, but also, rather luckily, cushioned the blow. He ran his hand across the wet stone, sending water spattering away into the darkness. There was something carved into the surface. Lettering of some kind, but it was gibberish stonework to Robin, like ancient Norse runes.

“Something like…?” Henry prompted as Robin silently took in the stone table, realisation dawning. He pulled his hand back, flinching involuntarily.

“I think,” he stared. “I think it’s a coffin.”

Henry had wasted no time in clambering down through the hole and into the chamber after that, still wearing his ridiculous swimming cap. Robin had expected Calypso to protest, in the way that adults often did in treacherous situations such as leaping into hidden and unexpected graves, but she had merely peered down with interest, her head on one side and her long hair trailing into the hole like creepers.

“What a curious thing,” she said thoughtfully. “Tell me, Scion, what does it say on the sarcophagus?”

“I can’t read it,” Robin replied, as Henry, dusty and breathless, scrambled the last few feet and appeared at his side in the darkness. “It’s all gibberish.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” his tutor said breezily. “You are the Scion, are you not? What does it say?”

Robin gave Henry a weary look. “I told you it’s all scratchy Thor-speak,” he called back. “Runes, or whatnot.” He glanced at the illegible stonework again to confirm this.

It wasn’t illegible. Clearly carved in the wet dark stone were words. Robin slowly read them aloud, disbelieving.

“Here lies Etrea of the Silver Bough. Trusted guardian among the maidens of The Pale Tree.”

Henry blinked at him, looking from the stone to Robin. “Are you making that up?”

“It’s … a minute ago it was all just … just lines,” Robin insisted, staring at the tomb.

“It’s still all just lines,” Henry insisted, staring at him oddly. “Rob are you having … you know … a moment?”

“He is the Scion.” Calypso’s voice rolled breezily down, as if the two boys were dim idiots. “The Arcania speaks to him. That is all.”

Robin was still staring at the words. It was like looking with two sets of eyes at once. His brain knew that what he was seeing was eldritch chicken scratch, but something inside him understood it. The ‘other’ who lived buried in his head like a worm in an apple, the inner self that he had playfully named ‘Puck’, was looking out of his eyes.

“How curious to find Etrea here, at Erlking of all places,” Calypso said. “I suppose it was the only place she could go. All those who didn’t come with us to Dis fled to the safety of the Fae. Not that it did them much good, in the end.”

“Traitors?” Robin looked up, shielding his eyes against the sunlight. Looking at the letters had given him a sharp headache. Or maybe that was the crash…

“This is the grave of an Undine. My people, the nymphs, we served them once. We lived alongside them. They are very ancient. When the war came, most Panthea joined Eris and fought against the Fae, against your kin, Robin. But there were those Panthea who stood against Eris. The Undine, Etrea here included,” his tutor explained. “Rebels who did not believe in the cause of the Empress, who wanted no part in her war. When Eris won, and the Netherworlde was conquered. The Undine fled back to the Pale Tree. A safe and secret haven. It was my home once, home to many nymphs. It had been lost to us now. Hidden from Eris by the powers of the Undine. They retreated from the world. Some of them also came here it seems.”

“This was someone who stood against Eris like you then,” Henry mused, looking back at the sarcophagus. He removed his swim cap with a snap of elastic. Calypso shook her head casually. “Oh no. I was no traitor to Eris. Like most of the Panthea, I was loyal to her. Nearly all nymphs were. We abandoned the Undine and went to her call. The decimation of the Fae was a necessary evil. To build a better world.” She noticed their silent, horrified stares and returned them with her unconcerned and dreamy expression. “Until recently, of course. I am a traitor to Eris now. I fled.”

“You fled here, though, to Erlking, not to this ‘Pale Tree’ place?” Henry pressed.

The woman shook her head a little. “Oh no. They would not have me back there. Even if I could find it, which I cannot. I was a traitor to the traitors you see. No going home. Not now. Not ever. Some of us have burned every bridge we had.”

For a moment, her façade of Zen detachment seemed to waver, like a ripple in a still pond. She smiled a little sadly, then shook it off. “Where do you go when nowhere is home? What place would take in those with nowhere to turn? When all paths are closed and all doors shut against you. Where can you expect to be taken in?”

“Erlking.” Robin said quietly in the darkness. He wondered what had changed in Calypso’s life which had turned her against Eris. It wasn’t his place to ask.

“Erlking,” she repeated, the word falling from the sun into darkness in a whisper.

Nothing but dust moved in the sunbeams for a moment.

“So what do we do with this then?” Henry prompted.

“We have discovered the last resting place of one of the handmaidens of the greatest Undine of all,” she said reverently. “Etrea was a noble and trusted warrior and this is her grave.” She nodded down and them solemnly for a moment. “Crack it open and let’s see what’s inside.”

Being instructed to desecrate a grave by your teacher was the kind of thing Robin told himself was all part and parcel of life at Erlking. The task could have been difficult for a normal boy, but he’d been training all summer. His water-work might not be up to much yet, but he was a dab hand with wind. His mana stone flashing around his throat like lightening in a thunderhead, Robin cast Featherbreath on the lid of the stone sarcophagus, feeling the weight of it as tendrils of air wrapped around the slab like a fist. He concentrated, and the lid rolled to the side with a loud a grating rumble. Henry jumped back, dodging his bare feet out of the way just in time to avoid them being crushed as the tombstone toppled to the floor with a sonorous thud.

“Watch it!” he muttered. “I wish you’d warn me when you’re going to use the force like that.”

Curiously, and a little apprehensively, both boys peered into the dark and musty interior of the grave.

“How does she look?” Calypso called down, sounding intrigued in a slightly grisly manner.

They stared at the cobweb-shrouded skeleton which lay within. It was dressed in the tattered grey remains of what may once have been a regal blue robe. The jaw of the skull had fallen away, resting on the ribcage and giving the grisly skeleton a look of shock. It looked like a dead moth’s husk. It also appeared to be made, not from bone, but from dark blue glass.

“Well,” Robin said after a moment spent taking in the grim spectacle. “I think she’s probably looked better.”

“At least she’s not gooey,” Henry observed. “If this is what they look like dead, what do Undines look like when they’re alive?” he mused. Then he noticed something. “What’s that?”

The object he pointed to was a small black cylinder the late Etrea clutched with both glassy hands to her chest. It was carved wood, roughly the length of a breadknife. Faded gold gilt threaded through the ornate tube.

“That,” Calypso observed with keen eyes from her perch above them at the lip of the gap. “Is something your aunt will very much want to see. This is a most interesting find. Pass it up to me, Scion.”

Robin reached out.

“No! Not with your hands.” It was the first time he had heard his tutor speak in anything more than a sleepy sing-song, and her voice made him jump. “If that is what I think it is, it could be warded or booby trapped.” She smiled a little. “We don’t want you losing an arm on your first day in my care. Not that I have any objection. They are your arms to lose after all. But I would hate to give your aunt’s housekeeper any more cleaning to do.”

Robin withdrew his hand gingerly. He didn’t like the idea of booby traps.

“Use Featherbreath,” she suggested from above.

Robin did so, his hands moving in a slow tai-chi gesture in the damp shadows as he teased the cylinder from the skeleton’s grasp. He managed to pry it loose without snapping any of its finger-bones, for which he was deeply relieved

They watched as it floated up, turning over and over slowly, end on end, as it ascended out of the hidden grave and into the daylight above.

“What is it then?” Henry wanted to know.

Calypso had produced a white silk handkerchief from somewhere in the folds of her slinky gown, and she deftly caught the tube with it, wrapping it carefully and avoiding touching it directly with her delicate hands. Her green eyes were glimmering softly.

“Quite possibly, it is a way to a Shard of the Arcania, a key to open a door which has been lost and hidden for quite some time,” she mused. “Come back to the house. The lesson is over for today.”