by James Fahy
“People have been exploring the undercroft for years, according to my reading,” Karya told them in hushed tones, as Woad and his small glimmering light led them around yet another bend in the blackness and beneath a low lintel, which Henry almost brained himself on, into a squat, square room. “Some people say that homeless people live down here, that they came down generations ago and never came back up again. Living on rats.” She sounded quite interested.
“What people?” Henry asked dubiously. “What people say that? You don’t even know any people.”
“Just people,” Karya shrugged, a little defensively. “There are also supposed to be rats as big as dogs down here too.”
“Is this supposed to be making us feel any better?” Robin muttered. He had drawn Phorbas and held the knife gripped in his hand. He doubted it would do any good, but it was comforting to hold in the sepulchre-like space anyway. He made a point of not jabbing any of his friends with it.
Several of the tunnels they explored had collapsed altogether. Others led to dead ends, where Woad sniffed around for a while before doubling back. Occasionally they came to steps, sometimes metal, sometimes stone, always downward. Deeper beneath the city. And always leading them colder and darker, and into more silence. Woad’s flickering willo-light made their shadows leap silently on the walls as they walked.
At one point they passed through a room which was hung on one wall with a grubby, ornate and smashed mirror. Candle stubs and empty beer bottles surrounded it like some kind of odd shrine. They passed on wordlessly. In another dark corner, they found an ancient looking porcelain doll, its face cracked and chipped, the many petticoats of its dress grey and tattered, like cobwebs.
“Well,” Henry observed lightly, after they had all stared at if for a while. “That’s not the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen, honest.”
“Could be creepier,” Robin reasoned. “Could be a clown doll.”
They all muttered and nodded in unanimous agreement, and moved on, shivering.
More than once, as the companions moved stealthily through the undercroft, they heard movement. Scuttling in the darkness. Unseen rats, they hoped.
“This tunnel is flooded,” Woad said, after a while, when the narrow, claustrophobic passageway they were currently creeping along ended in steps descending into dark water. They peered down at the surface. There was a discarded gas mask floating just below the surface, looking like the severed head of some insect alien. It shimmered in Woad’s flickering light. “We should have taken that last left, I knew it.”
“We’ve been down here for hours,” Henry said, shivering slightly. It was cold as the grave, and his breath was visible in the ghostly light. “Wandering around like lost spirits. Are we even sure if we can find out way back?”
“We’re not going back,” Karya said. “And Woad knows what he’s doing. He can track a Grimm if he has their scent.”
Woad nodded, looking at Robin. “She’s here,” he said, his yellow eyes glittering. “I can smell her, your mental moth-girl.”
“She’s not my moth girl,” Robin replied.
“And one other.” Woad sniffed. “Dark and dangerous. Strong. He smells of cruel. They are close, very close. We need to be quiet as trilobites.”
“We’re kind of announcing ourselves with the light anyway though, aren’t we?” Henry reasoned in a whisper as they backed up and Woad led them down a different side tunnel. “Won’t we see the Grimms’ lights too?”
“The Grimms don’t need light to see,” Karya said, as though this were the most obvious thing in the world. “We could put out our light if you wished, and feel our way, but it will put us at a disadvantage. They can see just fine in the blackest of darkness. Mr Nyx saw to that.”
“Nyx?” Robin asked.
“Hmm,” Karya murmured. “Eldest of the Grimms. But that’s another story.”
Robin was already feeling uncomfortable enough prowling through these endless creepy tunnels filled with macabre and disturbing oddities and with the ever increasing weight of the far off city above them, pressing down. The thought of doing so in pitch blackness, hands scrabbling along walls, feet shuffling uncertainly on uneven ground while in the darkness behind them, a white faced ghoul like the grinning Mr Strife might be creeping up on them silently, breathing down their necks like a wide eyed grim reaper? It didn’t appeal in the least.
“Let’s keep the light,” he said decisively. “It might help us find—”
“—this?” Karya said, stopping in her tracks so suddenly that Henry and Robin both bumped into her.
Woad had reached the end of a colonnade of stone pillars. He stood, his wavering ghost-light floating above his head, before a large door set in the stone wall. It was unlike anything they had seen so far in the undercroft: a circular slab of stone, carved with intricate whorls and designs.
“What is that?” Robin asked, coming forward.
Karya was frowning at the door with interest. “That … is a redcap door,” she said with wonder.
“Redcaps? Here in the human world?” Robin was confused.
“Redcaps get everywhere,” the girl explained, lightly tracing the whorls with her fingertips. “Everywhere blood has been shed. Everywhere there has been misery. They burrow under it. Look at this lettering.”
“That’s the high tongue,” Woad announced. There was a circle of glyphs in the centre of the swirling stone. He glanced at Robin and Henry. “I don’t read it, but I know the shapes.”
“What does it say?” Henry asked.
“Squiggle dash, sharp pointy one, another squiggle, one that’s a bit snaky, pitchfork one—”
“What does it say, Karya,” Henry clarified loudly, talking over Woad.
“It’s the Sidhe-Nobilitas,” she said. “They must have used redcaps to make the sanctuary. Clever.”
Robin’s eyebrows raised. He’d met redcaps before. They hadn’t seemed like the most obliging of creatures.
“I’ve told you before, Scion,” Karya explained. “The Fae ruled the Netherworlde. And I mean really ruled it. In the old fashioned sense of having total dominion over all other creatures. The redcaps served the Fae.” She sighed a little. “Everyone served the Fae.”
“Except the Panthea, eventually,” Henry pointed out.
“The Panthea were not always in the Netherworlde,” the girl said. “Woad, bring the light down to me here.”
“Where did they come from then?”
She shrugged. “Don’t ask me, I’m not one of them.” Henry and Robin looked expectantly to Woad, who returned their expression blankly.
“Don’t ask me either,” he said. “I came from the Sodden Fens, that’s all I know. And I was glad to see the back of it, and the whole silly tribe. I might be Panthea, but so are around a million other Netherworlde beings. I don’t remember ever not being here.”
“Well, no Panthea, or any other kind of creature, can open this doorway,” Karya announced, inspecting the stone. “The redcaps are very skilled and the Fae sealed this sanctuary well.” She got up off her knees. “See here…” She read the carved script. “Tantum per tactum manus domini mei, Sanguinem tantum Fae.”
She looked at Robin. “‘This door will only open for one of the Fae. One with Fae blood’.”
Robin stepped forward. “So that’s what they needed my blood for. We better hurry.” Tentatively he reached out, palm flat, and touched the doors in the centre of the stone swirls.
There was an immediate flash, from both the doors and Robin’s mana stone, and the stone swirl flowed, spiralling in on itself in liquid movement. The door glowed, as though it held a storm deep within the stone and a series of deep, grinding clanks issued from beyond, echoing around the chamber.
With a great hiss of air, the door swung open before them.
Before they could take a step within, a noise behind them made the companions start.
It was applause, solitary and lazy.
Robin turned. There, dimly lit by the flic
kering of Woad’s light, stood Miss Peryl.
The girl was leaning casually against a pillar, looking relaxed and nonchalant. The human clothes she had worn in Barrowood were gone, replaced by a crisp charcoal suit with a glittering red brooch. Her hair fell forward, bright as a bruise. She was smiling at them warmly, red lips in a white face.
“Oh, well done!” she said crisply. “No, really. I do mean it. Who knew these things were so fiddly to open anyway? Thanks so much for all the trouble, you really are the best, but we can take it from here, thanks.” She flicked out a hand and Robin felt a blow to his chest, as though he had bit hit by a great invisible mallet. Tattered shreds of shadow had rushed across the chamber to collide with him. It knocked him off his feet, sending him flying through the open portal and into the sanctuary beyond, where he landed heavily on his back amongst a whorl of mosaic tiles.
“Robin!” Henry yelled in shock.
Peryl flicked her hand lazily in Henry’s direction. Shadows flew and he skittered across the floor, cracking his head hard on a pillar in the darkness and collapsing in a boneless heap.
“One potato … two potato.” Peryl smirked coldly. She stared at Karya, who had planted herself firmly between the Grimm and the secret sanctuary. Woad was hissing at her side like a feral cat. She pointed a long white finger at the faun, flicking it against her thumb. “Three potato.” The faun somersaulted upwards, trying to dodge the invisible strike, but the white girl matched his movements with a swish of her arm, giggling as he took the impact full force and crashed heavily into the door lintel, showering down dust and dropping to the ground like a sack of stones.
Miss Peryl levelled her merry black eyes on Karya, who glared back defiantly.
“ … Four,” she finished. “Are we going to dance, little witch?” She tilted her head to one side. “It’s awfully dark down here. My element. Not yours.”
Karya replied by bunching her fists and dropping to the ground, slamming her hands powerfully against the floor of packed dirt. There was a thunderous rumble and the entire floor of the cavern bucked, rippling toward Peryl in a tidal wave of black earth and grit. A fissure opened up, tearing wide and almost swallowing her, but the Grimm leapt to one side at the last moment, kohled eyes wide in alarm.
“Idiot,” Karya replied, glaring up at her enemy from her crouch, eyes flashing gold behind a tangle of hair. “Shadows everywhere, yes, but we’re under my element. We’re inside it.”
Several of the pillars supporting the arched roof of the chamber were now askew. There was an uncertain and ominous rumble of stone above them.
“Imbecile!” Peryl spat. “Are you going to bring down the house on top of us all? Squashing your precious Scion like a bug? Jeez, you guys are dumb!”
She flung out both arms and a whooshing belt of darkness shot through the dusty chamber toward Karya. It hit her full force, knocking her through the doorway and into the sanctuary within, where Robin was just blearily getting to his feet.
Peryl skipped playfully over the deep black cracks of the outer chamber as though she were playing hopscotch, striding over Woad and Henry carelessly as she followed Karya into the sanctuary.
Robin crossed over to Karya, dropping down beside her, but the small girl was already struggling to her feet, a positive fury in a bundle of furs. She shook off Robin’s arm.
“Nice hit,” she growled. “But I can do this all day, worm of Eris.”
Robin stared at Miss Peryl as she entered. She couldn’t remotely have passed for human anymore. Not down here in the underground, in the failing light of Woad’s mana. Her face was white as old parchment, her red lips set in a thin sneer, and her eyes were black pools, every bit as dark and deadly as Mr Strife’s had been.
“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” she said in a sing-song voice. She wagged her finger at Karya from the doorway as though she were a naughty child. “How did you get here so fast? I wonder. Did you tear back and forth, across the worlds? That’s bound to take it out of you, little seer. Then you must have broken through the church doors, and that little temper tantrum just now? Personally, I doubt there’s enough mana left in you to flick a pebble. I think you’re bluffing, kiddo.”
Robin saw that Karya was indeed pale and sweaty, her hair matted on her forehead. Her mana stone bracelet around her wrist was so dark and dull it might have been carved from jet.
“I, on the other hand, am well rested. I stretched even, before you got here. Wouldn’t want to get a cramp, would we? The station will open. And it will open for us, not for you.” She stared at Robin, and suddenly gave him a friendly smile. “Nice to see you again, blue-eyes. Very thoughtful of you to come. I didn’t get nearly enough blood, you see?” She flicked a thumb over her shoulder. “Brother Ker, he read the door runes too, we found a version in an old book, a very old book back in Dis. The Dark Empress didn’t dispose of every last scrap of old lore.”
Her boots tapped across the mosaic floor of the inner chamber like tap shoes. “We didn’t know where the door was, of course, until you nearly drowned finding out. But we knew what the doors said.” She rolled her eyes, patting her hands together lightly to rid them of dust. “Ker is so literal though, big old grumpy guts. Only by my master’s hand, only by the blood of the Fae will I open, blah, blah enigmatic inscription blah.” She shook her head, her purple hair shimmering. “That big old silly goose thought it meant actual blood. He’s a bit one-tracked when it comes to the stuff. And I’ve been stealing yours here and there for ages. We rubbed it on the doors, thought that would work, see? But, of course, they wouldn’t budge.” She pointed at him. “We didn’t need the sticky stuff. We needed you. The bloodline of the Fae. To use that as well.” She nodded behind Robin, her eyes glittering hungrily.
Robin glanced behind him. There was a rough arch of stone, freestanding and made from three huge slabs; two uprights, carved with swirling designs, and a long heavy dolmen balanced across the top of them. It looked like a piece of Stonehenge gone astray. It stood in the centre of a circular vault and it took Robin only a quick scan of the room to confirm his fears. There was no other way out.
“The Scion will never open this doorway for you,” Karya said defiantly. She gripped Robin by the forearm. He thought she meant to shield him, and indeed she was taking great pains to give that effect, but from the sudden weight of her he suspected she was bracing herself for balance. She really was almost tapped out.
“Good people share their toys,” Peryl sneered at her. “So what, he’s your key, not mine? That’s not very fair is it? Is that how it is? Does he have any idea how much you’re using him? Painting us as the bad guys here? Honestly, you should hang your head in shame.” She regarded the girl pityingly. “You know, instead of hanging it in fatigue. Mix things up a bit.”
“You’re the bad guys,” Robin said defiantly. “You’ve killed people. And for what? A Shard?”
“They were only humans,” the Grimm said flippantly. “That hardly counts. And yes, of course for a Shard. For treasure, Robin Fellows, and for power, real power.” She grinned, her eyes bright. “For that I would spill every last drop of blood in this world and the next. Wouldn’t you?”
“Of course not!” Robin retorted. He was backing up, pulling Karya with him as he went and the girl advanced smoothly. His heel hit the bottom step of the central pedestal.
Peryl rolled her eye dramatically. “Yeah, yeah right, you say that now…”
Robin was trying to see around her, back through the doorway to the crumbled room, to get a glimpse of Henry or Woad. Something moved out there, something large in the shadows.
Robin’s mind was racing. This girl had floored two of his companions without even blinking and had knocked Karya for six. Could he hold his own, with Galestrike and Waterwhip perhaps? He felt exhausted himself. Unsealing and opening the doorway to the sanctuary had drained his mana too. But he would damn well try.
“Why on earth would the Scion open the pathway to the hidden valley for you?” Karya snorte
d. “You think he’s afraid of you? Of any of you? None of you can even think for yourselves.” She snorted. “Grimms! You’re nothing but puppets. Eris’ little projects gone wrong.”
“Look who’s talking,” Peryl sniggered. “And yes the Scion will behave and do as he is told, because we now have something that matters to him.”
“There’s nothing I’d bargain with the likes of you for.” Robin shook Phorbas at her, the blade catching the ever-fading light.
“Oh really?” Peryl stopped, placing her hands on her hips.
Behind her, someone stepped through the doorway, out of the shadows. Robin stared. Another snow-white Grimm, but this was easily the largest man Robin had ever seen in his life. The giant had to stoop to fit through the doorway and was built like a ghostly Minotaur. He was dressed in black pants and a sleeveless jerkin, which looked patchy and dark, as though spattered with some noxious substance. Robin didn’t want to imagine what. It looked like long-dried blood.
The Grimm straightened up, his wide flat face rugged and carved with thick nightmarish features. His hair was a wild brace of blood red spikes, like fire atop his skull, and when his huge mouth split into a silent, humourless grin beneath his beetle eyes, Robin saw that his teeth were sharp and jagged, a grinning shark’s maw.
In the monster’s thick, sinewy arms, which were wrapped from wrist to elbow in pale wraps, there lay a prone, unconscious form, looking small and weak.
“Woad!” Robin cried.
The faun’s head lolled loosely. The boy looked like a tiny rag doll in the grip of the titan entering the room.
