The Drowned Tomb (The Changeling Series Book 2)

by James Fahy

  “Kra … ken … b’uh … ile…” Robin gagged unintelligibly.

  “This is a deep magic, and a path which the Scion must tread alone,” the Undine said to Henry. “It may be very dangerous.”

  Henry frowned, thinking for a moment, then crossed quickly to Robin and snatched the bottle out of his hand. It was already half empty.

  “Henry!” Robin was shocked. “What are you doing?”

  The brown-haired boy ignored him. With eyes screwed shut, he upended the bottle and glugged down the remaining half of the liquid in three big swigs, gasping and wiping his mouth with the tattered sleeve of his shirt when he was done.

  “Wow,” he grimaced, coughing. “That muck is … seriously … vile.” He looked from Flue to Robin, who were both staring at him confused. He handed the now empty bottle back to the Undine, who took it from him with her glassy hands.

  “Robin might be the Scion,” Henry explained, stifling a belch. “But he’s not alone. None of this prophet ‘solitary chosen one’ nonsense. If it’s dangerous, what kind of a friend is going to let him go off on his own, eh? Wherever old blue eyes goes, I go too. End of story.” He folded his arms stubbornly.

  Robin looked at Henry bewildered.

  The taller boy gave him a sheepish grin. “Well, you did travel miles to rescue me when old Strife and Moros kidnapped me last year, didn’t you?” he said, a little gruffly. “Fair enough, it was a massive trap and you kind of played right into their hands, but still. Friends look out for one another. They don’t let friends go off into danger alone. Plus, you’ve got no common sense, you.”

  The Undine glanced between the human and the Fae curiously. “Perhaps I was wrong,” she mused to herself. “Maybe war does not only destroy families. Perhaps it also creates them.”

  She beckoned for the two boys to follow her, and they left the chamber of bottles and returned to where Woad and Karya sat waiting for them, both cross-legged on the floor and staring out at the deceptively peaceful valley through the vast open window of branches. The sun had set entirely now, and the sky was a bruise. Cobalt shadows were creeping between the rocks of the cliffs, and tiny pinpricks of light were appearing everywhere, green and bright, in their hundreds. The tiny lights danced and soared over the surface of the lake far below them.

  “Pyreflies,” Woad said, looking at the strange fluttering insects. “Beautiful. They come before a battle.”

  “Where’s Jack?” Robin frowned. The older Fae was nowhere to be found.

  “He left us,” Karya said, not looking up. Her golden eyes were fixed on the barrier across the lake. The great wall of water seemed thinner, as though it was only just managing to hold its shape. “He wants treasure, that one. Not companionship. Only what he can use.” She shrugged. “I can’t blame him, I suppose. It’s a practical approach. He wandered off into the branches down one of these walkways. Said he was going to find something of worth. Who are we to stop him?”

  “Something of worth? Yeah, clearly not us then,” Henry observed. “Good bloody riddance then. I know he helped us out and all, but—”

  “He followed a butterfly,” Woad said absently, his own gaze still trained on the mesmeric pyreflies. “It was on his shoulder. Followed it like a white rabbit down a hole.” He shook his head. “Shame for him, he’s missing the pyreflies.” The faun looked at Robin. “Where have you been then?

  “The Scion, and his friend here, were making preparations to retrieve the Shard,” the Undine said. “As I told you, Tritea is here, but not here. Our Lady, not long after the war began, left the valley. We were safe, we were hidden, and she knew that if she remained, she would eventually draw evil here with the Shard she carried.” She looked at Robin, eyes a little narrowed. “She loved a Fae. And their love was deep and true. She left to live out the rest of her days with him. Under secret names, quietly, far from Eris and her reach. And there she died, and there she is buried, in a tomb long since drowned.”

  “It wasn’t my father then,” Robin said, a little relieved. “We knew that she had this big love affair with one of Oberon’s guard, but we haven’t been able to figure out which one it was. I was worried that … well, you know.”

  “Wolfsbane Truefellow only ever loved one woman in all his life, Scion,” Flue said reassuringly. “You mother was a remarkable woman. Steeped in mystery, very alluring. How could he have had eyes for anyone but the woman he loved? No, it was another that Tritea loved. Another she escaped the war with.”

  “There are no facts,” Karya said suddenly. “There are no books left, I remember so little, here and there, like snippets of a song remembered in a dream. It’s so frustrating. All we have to go on are scraps and riddles!” She reached into her coat and drew out a piece of parchment. “Irene Fellows has had me working on a translation for this scrap of gods alone knows what for months now. She says it’s important. But I can barely read two words of it. And the history of what happened to everyone after the war is so muddled. How are we supposed to make sense of it? Who was Tritea in love with? How can she be here but not here? Did she elope and go into hiding or didn’t she? Was it Peaseblossom, Hawthorn? Who?”

  The Undine held out her hand calmly in the face of the girl’s evident frustration. “May I see?” she asked. She took the parchment from Karya’s fingers and read it in silence for a moment.

  “Do you realise what you have here?” she said at length. She was holding the scrap with something close to reverence.

  “Well, no, we don’t,” Woad said. “That’s kind of the problem, haven’t you been paying attention? It’s always best to when Boss is doing what I call her quiet shouting.”

  Karya was staring at the Undine. “You … you can read it? she said, haltingly, her eyes wide.

  Flue nodded slowly. “I am old, little seer. This is an ancient tongue. Used only in the very first times. Even the Fae do not speak it now, but they did once. This,” she told them, “is the writing of Titania herself.”

  Robin boggled. “Titania? As in the Titania? Titania and Oberon? The rulers of the Netherworlde? That’s her actual handwriting?”

  The Undine nodded. “It is a letter she wrote, in this ancient tongue that few Fae even could read, and fewer Panthea. A good way to use a secret code. It is a letter, Robin Fellows, from Titania, Queen of the Fae, to your father.”

  Karya scuttled over to the Undine, visibly excited. “Robin’s father?” she asked. “Really? I’ve only managed two words, and they both mean the same thing. Dark-dark. Although we also figured out Pax, we think,”

  “What do you mean, a letter to my father?” Robin was stunned.

  “Your father, Scion, was the most trusted of all the Fae Guard, first amongst equals in the Sidhe-Nobilitas. Titania wrote this coded message to him. Wherever your aunt obtained it, I can understand why she would deem it important. It may even give clues as to why Oberon and Titania disappeared from the Netherworlde in the first place.” She looked at Karya. “And you were very close with your translation, girl. Good work. But this word is not dark-dark. It names the Fae who our Lady Tritea loved and left us for. Two types of darkness yes. The night, and the shade.”

  “Nightshade?” Karya gasped. “Of course. Of bloody course! That’s who she ran off with, when the war came.” Pyreflies danced around her head like fairies in the deepening gloom. Glittering on the frozen branches in the twilight. “So, she was in love with Nightshade of the Fae Guard.”

  “What does it say? The note?” Robin wanted to know. “What was Titania telling my father about Nightshade for?”

  The Undine shook her head a little. “I am not fluent, but from what I can gather, the Queen of the Fae was instructing your father to hide something. A map, a story, I’m not sure which. ‘Take it to Nightshade’, it says. ‘The locked box must not find its way to the hands of the usurper’.”

  “She wrote this before Eris won,” Robin said. “So Nightshade had something hidden? Something important to Oberon and Titania? And then when the Arcania sha
ttered, his lover, Tritea took a Shard, and they disappeared. To a tomb long since drowned?”

  “Somewhere you need black kraken bile to reach,” Henry added woozily. He belched discreetly, pulling a face.

  There was a sound like thunder. It rolled along the valley, echoing from the walls. As one, they turned to stare.

  The barrier across the valley, the solid mass of churning water, the only thing keeping the forces of Eris from them, collapsed. They watched it tumble, a vast wave of water, roaring along the rocks, spilling inward into the placid, ever-darkening valley in a riot of roaring foam that crashed among the cliffs like white water rapids. Waves rippled out over the lake, and birds took noisy flight from the many blossom trees along the sheer rock walls, startled by the noise and wheeling into the sky, scattering the agitated clouds of pyreflies.

  “They are coming,” Flue said, with admirable calm. “I can no longer hold the tide of water, or the tide of Eris.” She thrust the parchment at Robin, who took it. “You must go, now. Find Tritea, protect the Shard, and discover this secret held by Nightshade. If you do not go now, there will not be another chance.”

  “Where are we going?” Woad asked.

  “Not you,” Robin said. “You and Karya stay here. Flue says the tree will hold Ker’s army at bay, for a while at least. You’ll be safe up here, high in the tree. Once I have the Shard, there’s no reason for them to attack. I’ll bring it back.”

  “I want to come with you!” Woad yelped, affronted.

  “There was only enough kraken bile for me.” He glanced at Henry. “And Henry.”

  “Where are you going, needing kraken bile?” Karya asked, frowning. She looked equally horrified and annoyed at the two of them going off alone.

  “Into the depths,” Flue said simply. “Down into the dark, to the drowned tomb of Tritea. We must hurry. Come, Seer, your skills are required also.”

  She led them from the hollow. Robin glanced back out at the dark valley. There was a great movement in the canyon, pinpricks of yellow lights in their hundreds. They were distant, but he could make them out. Torches held aloft by Peacekeepers and centaurs as they approached the valley proper. Spilling out across the grass in the wash of the fallen barrier.

  A long low howl rolled over the valley, distant, but mournful and chilling. The call of Mr Strife’s skrikers.

  “Robin,” Karya snapped urgently. “Come on, there’s no time.”

  He followed them, tearing his eyes from the sight of Mr Ker’s army flooding into the sacred vale like a spill of poisonous ink.

  The great tree groaned and creaked as they walked, sounding like cracking icebergs.

  “The tree is closing,” the Undine told them. “Hiernarbos is closing her doors. We will hold the tide.” They were retracing their steps back to the central shaft, where they had first risen through the multitude of sleeping Undine.

  When they reached the edge of the vast trunk, staring down into the mists, into the wide deep shaft filled with fog, Flue stopped, her fluttering wings agitated, although her smooth face was calm still. Robin thought the light within her had dimmed. She had used up almost all of her mana.

  “Why are we here?” he asked.

  “Because we are too high for you,” she replied. She looked to Karya. “You can tear between the worlds, yes? It is part of what you are. Existing in both worlds at once. You must open a tear, but not for yourself. For these two. To the human world. And it must be down there, at the bottom of the inner tree.”

  “The human world? Why? And why down there?” Karya looked deeply confused.

  “Because if you tear them through to the human world from here,” the Undine explained. “They will appear rather tremendously high in the air.” She looked to Robin and Henry curiously with her milky eyes. “I know only something of the Fae, and nothing of these human creatures, but I am presuming that you both would be likely to hit the ground far below like water balloons if dropped from this height, yes?”

  Henry and Robin looked pale.

  “The tear, the passage between the worlds, will slow your entry,” she assured them.

  “Now, Seer. Hurry.”

  “It’s done,” Karya said simply. Her hand was outstretched over the yawning chasm. “There is a tear, at the floor. Well, about a foot above, give or take. I don’t know how long I can hold it for though.” Beads of sweat were standing on her brow, and her tiger’s eye mana stone bracelet blazed like magnesium. “It’s incredibly difficult to tear at a distance away from myself.”

  “Wait,” said Henry, holding his hands up. “Waitwaitwaitwaitwait.” He stared at them all. “Just how are you thinking we’re getting to that tear down there then? I mean, you’re calling that lift thing back, right? The ice elevator that levitated us up here?”

  Robin looked at the Undine. “She doesn’t have the mana left,” he realised. “We’re jumping, Henry.” He felt queasy at the thought.

  “We’re what now?” Henry balked. “Are you mad?”

  “I can’t hold this thing forever,” Karya said rather testily through gritted teeth. She looked up at Robin. “Be careful, Scion,” she said. “We will be fine here, just hurry, find the Shard and this locked box Irene has been searching for. And don’t do anything stupid like getting killed. We can hold out against the Grimms and their army here.” She managed a hard smile. “Just … you know … don’t take all day about it, okay?”

  Robin steadied himself on the lip of the pit. He had never liked heights. This was a whole different level of vertigo.

  “Seriously?” Henry complained, panic in his voice.

  “You did say I wasn’t to do anything dangerous on my own, remember?” Robin reminded him.

  “Well, yeah, granted. But there’s dangerous and then there’s mental,” Henry began, and then Robin felt a small hand in his back.

  “Get going, numbskulls!” Woad chirped. He had a hand on Henry’s back too, and unceremoniously pushed both boys off the edge and into the mist.

  Robin’s stomach flipped. He tumbled through the icy fog, weightless and rapid, wind whipping past his face.

  “And remember to bend your knees!” the faun called helpfully through the mist, his voice receding rapidly as they plummeted down the shaft. Robin was too shocked to cry out, his arms and legs flailing as he went into freefall. Henry, at his side, made up for his silence with a long and rather epic scream.

  As he fell, his body tumbled over and over in the fog, so that he no longer knew which way was up and which was down. His mind gibbered in a flare of blank panic. Henry continued his wordless bellowing scream, and in the confusion of the fall, Robin thought he saw something in the mist. Another two figures above them, also falling. Woad and Karya? That made no sense. Why would they come in after?

  There was no time for answers. The mists parted, and the floor of the base of the great tree’s hollow trunk rose up to meet them. Like falling without a parachute, Robin instinctively held up his arms in front of his face, as though that would make any difference at this height and speed. Squeezing his eyes closed and bracing for impact, He tensed. Afoot before they hit the floor, in a mirage like shimmer, they hit Karya’s tear and passed out of the Netherworlde with a dark and lurching whoosh.

  THE DROWNED TOMB

  Henry and Robin hit the ground with a bone-jarring slap.

  Robin rolled onto his back, gasping. He felt beneath him not the wet, icy floor of Hiernarbos, but the crunch of wet and gravelly sand. He stared up, blinking and gasping, into a summer sky, duck-egg blue and threaded with high white cirrus. The sun beat down on his face, hot and bright. They were back in the human world.

  A groan, long and self-pitying, at his side told him that Henry had made it through the tear too. Robin sat up woozily, his hands sinking into the warm, damp sand, to see his friend face down on the ground, arms and legs splayed. He looked like a flattened pancake.

  “We made it,” Robin wheezed. “Henry, we’re back. We didn’t die.”

  Henry’s
voice was muffled by the sand. “Are you sure? I mean, I kind of feel like I did.” He struggled up to his knees, spitting out sand, and looked around. “Where are we?”

  Robin stared too.

  The heatwave currently gripping Britain was evidently still in force. It was baking hot and breathless, and though the sun had just set in the Netherworlde, it was midday here, with the sun high overhead.

  The two boys were sitting on the shore of a large lake, its surface glittering in the light. All around rose high, rolling hills, craggy and dotted with sheep and heather. Beyond them, grassy green mountains, hazy in the sunlight.

  From one lake to another, Robin thought. This is the human world equivalent of Hiernarbos.

  There were people everywhere: Walking their dogs along a path which circled the large lake. Young families paddling in the water’s edge not too far off, the happy laughter of their children floating over to Robin’s ears.

  A little way off from where they sat was a small hut with a playground attached, children milling happily on the swings and roundabout. Chairs set out on the decking housed people looking rather red and sunburned, enjoying ice cream, and on the surface of the large lake itself, several sailboats puttered serenely.

  Henry stood, wobbling slightly, looking extremely conspicuous in this setting. His school uniform was tattered beyond repair, grubby and stained, one of the sleeves torn off to the elbow where he had rescued Robin’s mana stone after Strigoi’s mistake back in the tent. His messy brown hair, never tame at the best of times, stuck up all over his head. He looked like an extra from a zombie movie.

  Shielding his eyes from the sun, he peered up. “Look, there are people hang-gliding up there.”

  No one seemed to have noticed them yet. Two wild and bedraggled teenagers were bound to draw attention, and he was sure he looked just as trail-weary as Henry. Everyone around them was relaxed, enjoying the sun, completely oblivious of the fact that the width of a shadow away, a dark and dangerous army were racing like a tide of doom over the very ground they lounged on.