The Drowned Tomb (The Changeling Series Book 2)

by James Fahy

  “Go and see how dear Ker is getting along,” Strife suggested, in much calmer tones. "This many of his Peacekeepers in one place, he should be feeling quite gathered. I daresay he may be able to string together whole sentences, who knows. What is the use of his army, though, if he cannot break a simple magical wall? Check for progress.”

  Peryl left without another word, though from the corner of his eye (he dared not take his own away from Strife’s) he thought he saw her give the two of them a curious look.

  When she had gone, Mr Strife slowly removed his gloves, casting them aside on the table, next to the bowl containing the stones. He glanced, rather disinterested, at Henry, still unconscious in his prison, and then laced his fingers around the bars of Robin’s cage.

  “We are well met, Scion of the Arcania,” he said quietly. “Very well met indeed. When last we parted ways, you and I, you had the power of the wind running through your veins. Do you recall? You made a fool of me, and a fool of my brother, Moros. You told me back then you were not afraid of shadows.”

  The ghastly man, tall and skeletal, leaned close to the bars in the shadowy tent, his lips split in a humourless grin. His teeth were very small and even. “Tell me,” he said. “Do you still feel the same?”

  Robin didn’t answer. He stared Strife down, determined not to be riled.

  “You stink of fear, little Fae,” Strife said. He leaned back from the bars. “And so you should, if you have any brains in your head. I acknowledge your intelligence at least. You have no godly powers here and now. You are just a little boy. Alone in the wild, surrounded by enemies.”

  He left the cage and stalked over to the table. “How positively wonderful,” he said with a certain amount of dark relish. “Tell me, Scion. Do you know where you are?”

  “Where are my friends?” Robin demanded. “What have you done with them?”

  Strife cast a hand lazily at Henry’s cage. “The only ‘friend’ who did not abandon you is this useless lump of human flesh you see snoring here.” He looked at Robin. “The girl, my precious little seer, the rabbit who has evaded my hounds so carefully now for far too long, she slipped away with that rather odd young man. She does tend to do that, doesn’t she? I find it most annoying, and quite, quite rude.”

  Relief flooded through Robin. So Karya had gotten away, taking Jackalope with her. He couldn’t find it in him to be offended that she had left them. He had never met a more practical, less sentimental person in his life that Karya. If she had fled, it was because staying would have served no use. She would re-group and strategise.

  “Won’t your precious Lady Eris be angry with you, losing Karya yet again?” he said. “You do seem to keep disappointing her, don’t you? She must be very patient with you, Mr Strife. Who are you going to blame your failure on this time around? Peryl?” He snorted, feigning courage. “You don’t seem very family-oriented. Sounds like you let Moros take the blame last time around.”

  Strife’s shoulders visibly tensed. Very slowly he turned his head to face Robin, glaring from beneath his brows. His black eyes were filled with such a deep and fiery hatred that Robin actually leaned back from the bars.

  “You do not speak of my brother, child,” the old man said slowly, through his teeth. “Moros is my twin. He is in the pits at her Ladyship’s pleasure because of you. Not because of me. And as for the girl? Karya, as you call her?” The corners of his lips turned up slightly, in a cruel smile. “You think you know anything? My dark Lady Eris has no interest in her, not really. She is a footnote. All her will is focussed on you. You are the poem which Eris longs to sing.”

  He straightened up, smoothing down his lapels. “No, no, my interest in the girl is my own little project.” His eyes flashed. “I have such plans for her. And there is no rush. A rabbit cannot hide in its hole forever. Sooner or later it will find itself in the fox’s jaw.” Strife waved a hand across the table, close to where the dish holding the stones lay. The cloth-faced Peacekeeper had turned its head silently to watch him. The Grimm’s hand passed over the bowl, and as the shadow of his fingers crossed over Robin’s stolen mana stone, a cold sickly feeling rippled through the boy’s stomach. He was still linked to his mana stone, even if it was across the room. He scanned the table. There was no sign of Phorbas. Had he lost the dagger somewhere in the fight with the skrikers? Robin didn’t remember having it there either.

  “Oh, but she will be pleased with this catch,” Strife said. He lowered his hand to the bowl, his white fingertips hovering an inch above Robin’s seraphinite stone. “The Scion. Trussed and delivered like a Christmas turkey. Alive and…” His eyes flicked up, meeting Robin’s as his spider-like fingers hovered menacingly over his mana stone. “ … Relatively unspoiled.”

  “If Eris thinks for one minute that I’m going to help her locate the other Shards—” Robin began, but Strife cut him off by flicking the contents of the bowl sharply.

  The pain was immediate and immense. Robin collapsed, gasping in the cage, his tied hands clutching at his chest. It felt as though someone had just pushed a hot coal beneath his ribs.

  “Be silent!” Strife hissed, lifting his finger from Robin’s mana stone. “You are the most idiotic, clueless creature I have ever had the misfortune of being tasked with, really you are.”

  Strife crossed the space from the table to the cage in three long strides, peering down with cruel amusement through the bars as Robin struggled back up to his knees, gasping for breath, his hair matted to his forehead with sweat.

  “The Shards? Eris wants those. Of course she does. Who wouldn’t? We all, all of us, Master Robin, want something, do we not? But that is not your only purpose, little Scion! That is not what you are for.”

  “What … are you talking about?” Robin grated, the sharp pain dulling slightly now that the Grimm had moved away from his mana stone. He still felt sick, nauseous.

  “You are the key, Scion,” Strife said, hissing. “And you don’t even understand it. The key to finding and destroying them once and for all. Your missing gods. Oberon. Titania. Only you—”

  A noise behind them made Strife stop and turn. A Peacekeeper, almost identical to the one which stood silently and dispassionately watching them, had just entered the tent, lumbering in disjointedly. It swayed its sackcloth head toward Strife, who looked furious at the interruption.

  “What is it?” he snapped.

  A noise issued from the Peacekeeper. A kind of low, rattling wheeze. Robin was swiftly coming to the conclusion that none of the Peacekeepers were technically ‘people’. They seemed more like rag dolls, enchanted things. Haunted. Whether the strained and low noise issuing from the mouthless face was language or not, he had no idea, but Strife seemed to understand anyway.

  “What? Here? Now? Why?” He left Robin’s cage, looking suddenly anxious. He flapped out the coat tails of his suit, and with the palms of his hand smoothed down his oiled green hair. He looked agitated and annoyed. “Never mind. Never mind. Of course he will want to see the prisoner. But he is my prisoner. Mine. I will be the one to deliver him to our Lady.”

  The Peacekeeper tilted its head enquiringly, and Strife flapped it away angrily. “Yes, of course, admit him! What power have I to stop him? What power have any of us? Get out, both of you!”

  Both of the Peacekeepers left the tent. Mr Strife took a moment to calm himself and looked back to Robin. “Well, well, are you not honoured, Robin Fellows? It seems you command the highest of audiences. He wishes to lay his eyes upon the Scion for himself.”

  Robin didn’t have a clue what Strife was talking about.

  “Do you know where you are, Robin Fellows?” Strife asked, and then told him, without waiting for an answer. “You are in the middle of a war camp. The gathered forces of my dear, demented Brother Ker surround us, here on this godsforsaken mountain. Outside these cloth walls are thousands of our Peacekeepers, along with hundreds of our mounted guard, the centaurs. We are here, where Ker has summoned us, in this narrow, snowy valley
, a thin pass between two tall mountains.”

  He looked upwards, as though he could somehow see through the thick, rippling cloth roof overhead and to the skies above. “A place of no importance on any map, a place no one has ever had reason to come. At the northern wastes of the known Netherworlde. And why? Why have we gathered our forces here? Because it is here that you led us. To Hiernarbos. To the pale tree, the secret sanctuary of those final rebels again Eris, the Undine. A place which no one has been able to find, until now.” He grinned evilly. “And we mean to take it for our own.”

  “Why haven’t you then?” Robin frowned. “If we’re here, at the secret valley, why are you wasting time talking to a clueless idiot like me?” Strife’s lip curled. He did not immediately answer, and realisation dawned on Robin.

  “You … you can’t get in, can you?” he guessed. “For all your great big army. The sanctuary, something is stopping you. What is it?”

  “Ice, little boy,” Strife admitted. “Lots of ice, in living form. You will see, in time.” He shrugged elegantly. “If you survive your meeting, that is. Many do not.”

  A figure appeared in the doorway, pushing its way through the large heavy canvas flap of the tent with a raised arm clad in black steel. At the crunch of heavy boots, Mr Strife fell silent. Robin saw the old man’s eyes narrow to thin slits, as the newcomer entered their space. The pupils of Strife’s eyes seemed to hold a glint of red and hateful fire, but he turned regardless, and dropped a graceful and deep, if slightly sarcastic, bow.

  “My Lord Strigoi,” he said, carefully. “An unexpected pleasure, and an honour of course.” His voice was razorblades rolled in honey.

  Strigoi? Robin’s eyes widened, and he stared past Mr Strife.

  Strigoi, leader of the Ravens, Wolf of Eris, and apparent bane of all Fae-kind, stepped inside, letting the flap drop behind him, and seemingly ignoring the near-prostrate Strife completely.

  He was tall. Taller even than the Grimm, and broad in the shoulders. His armour was black as tar, darkness on darkness. About his shoulders his vast cape, composed of countless glistening feathers, rustled like a great mane. Jet and coal. Robin couldn’t tear his eyes from the creature’s face. The helmet obscured any features, but was in itself a demonic mask. A great black wolf, rendered in steel, jaws gaping for the kill. It seemed to leer at him hungrily from the shadows of the tent’s entrance.

  Strigoi silently approached Robin’s cage with slow and even footfalls. The noise outside the tent seemed muted, as though his presence demanded silence.

  The great man’s gauntleted hand, Robin saw, grasped the hilt of a long and wickedly jagged sword which hung at his hip beneath the cloak of feathers. A stone was set in the wristguard, silver-white and glittering.

  Robin, to his shame, was scared. An air of power and menace rolled off this dark presence in waves, stronger than any other mana he had ever felt before. It lent a deeper darkness to the shadows of the tent. The metal bars beneath Robin’s fingers seemed colder. When he had first met Calypso, out on the lake at Erlking, Robin had sensed her presence undulating across the water to him, strong like a wave. This aura was a tsunami. As the man approached, the wave of mana seared Robin, shrivelling his will. Strife stepped deftly, and most completely, out of the large man’s path. Strigoi made no sign of acknowledgement whatsoever to the pale Grimm. His metal wolf’s-maw was trained solely and hypnotically on Robin, whose heart pounded as he approached.

  “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.