by James Fahy
“For the present time at least,” Strife said, stepping back from the cage. “You and your little human friend have nothing to fear from me. You and I have a common enemy. You have my word.”
Robin stared at the Grimm, disbelieving.
“Your word?” he asked. “You have to be kidding me.”
“A gentleman is nothing but the strength of his word, young man,” Strife hissed. “Had you even the slightest modicum of breeding you would know better than to question mine.”
“It's true, Rob,” Henry said. “Look, I’ve been with old ghoul-face the whole time since I got to this bloody wood, he could have killed me a hundred times over by now. He’s telling the truth. Come out. Let me explain everything. I know you don’t trust him, I don’t trust him either." He glanced at Strife. “No offence.”
“None taken,” Strife replied dryly.
“But … you trust me, right?” He held out his hand to Robin.
Robin decided that things were so strange, so beyond the natural order of things, that he had no choice but to give up and go with the flow. “Of course I do,” he admitted. “You’re my best mate.”
“Then get out of the bloody canary cage,” Henry said impatiently.
Robin did so. Every part of him aching and complaining as Henry helped him down out of the swinging prison. Not for a single second did he take his eye from the looming and ghastly figure of Mr Strife. Robin noticed that the Grimm’s bright green hair, usually so perfectly oiled, looked mussed and out of place, and that beneath his long and unusual battered cloak, the pinstripe suit he always wore seemed creased, dirty and damaged. It was spattered with dried mud and threadbare. Strife, Robin thought curiously, usually so perfectly presented, looked unkempt, frayed around the edges. He looked like a man who had fallen on hard times.
“You really are hurt,” Henry noted with concern, helping the wavering Robin to stand. “Rob, it looks like your arm is broken. And you have a lot of blood on you. You look in a bad way.”
“I can fix that,” Strife said simply. Robin shot him a warning look, filled with violent mistrust, which the old man noted.
“Listen to me, you tiresome child,” he said quietly. “This will be a lot smoother if you stop expecting me to lunge at you. I have told you already. I am not…currently…your enemy. And believe me when I say that this statement is as repulsive and abhorrent to me as it no doubt is to you. But you are of absolutely no use to me, or to your snivelling friend, if you are broken beyond repair.”
He reached into his robe and extracted a small black bottle.
“I’m not snivelling,” Henry argued quietly.
Strife held out the small bottle to Robin in the dark. “Drink this,” he instructed firmly.
“What is it?” he asked suspiciously. “Poison?”
Mr Strife sighed, his lip curling again in irritation. “Yes of course, Lord of Erlking,” he spat. “I have tracked you through the forest to the cage where you lie, wounded and bleeding out, trapped and helpless. A place where you would have been dead of exposure and your wounds had you been left but a single day longer … all for the sheer giddy joy of setting you free only to poison you.” He snorted. “I have better things to do with my time than to slip dark drinks to ungrateful Fae. It is powdered tartarus. Mixed in the juices of the firedrake, and it will heal your ills.”
Robin took the proffered bottle, this simple task taking an alarming number of attempts due to his wavering vision, and uncorked it, sniffing the contents. It smelled peppery and bitter. He stared at Strife with open distrust.
“Or if you prefer …” Strife spread his long white hands beneath his ragged cloak. “You can just stand here for the next few moments until you pass out from your terrible injuries, and fall down dead and helpless. I shall not force your hand, Scion. The latter choice, while of much less practical use to me at present, would at least provide me with some amusement.”
Robin considered his options. Realistically, he admitted, he didn’t have any. His legs were already feeling watery, and his head was hurting so badly. Strife was right. He was more injured that he had admitted, even to himself.
“It is the most powerful healing draught in the Netherworlde,” Strife explained in cold tones. “My own, personal supply. Incredibly difficult to come by and impossibly rare.” He snorted unpleasantly. “Not to mention outrageously expensive. To think the day would come when I would share it with a Fae. This is what I am reduced to.”
“Bottoms up, Rob,” Henry said encouragingly.
Robin screwed up his eyes and took a drink. The liquid was peppery and warm. No sooner had he swallowed than a heat began to flow through his body. An odd sensation like pins and needles. It was strange but not unpleasant, and he felt almost immediately better. His arms and legs were tingling, as was his scalp. He waited a moment to see if he was going to drop down dead.
When it was evident that he wasn’t, he corked the bottle and passed it back to Strife, who took it silently. “Aunt Irene never finds out I did that,” he said to Henry.
Henry nodded in earnest understanding.
“The sensation you are feeling will pass in moments,” Strife told him. He passed Robin his satchel. “Your bones and body are knitting back together. Soon, you will be a fresh and loathsomely healthy Fae once more.”
“Right.” Robin, who could actually feel the strange draught at work inside him, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked from one unlikely companion to the other. “I think you had better tell me, Henry, what on earth is going on.”
*
Henry and Robin sat on the ground, only a few paces from the hanging cages. Strife remained standing, silent, his long bony arms folded under his robe, staring darkly out at the forest. Henry wanted to know where Woad was, where Karya was, and why Robin was in a cage, but Robin insisted on hearing his side of things first. “And don’t leave anything out,” he warned. “I want to know how my best friend ended up on a nature hike with one of the bloody Grimms.”
He’d come home after school, he explained, meaning to get changed and then come up to Erlking for the planned Halloween feast, but his cottage, with his father gone, had been full of danger.
“Bloody redcaps,” he told Robin. “Out of nowhere, lurking in my own house!” He shook his head in disbelief. “They attacked me. I mean, I fought back, but redcaps are stronger than they look, and there were two of them. They were going on about how you had a job to do, and I was going to be their safety net. They overpowered me, said they were taking me to the Netherworlde, a hostage you see. Just in case you didn’t keep up your end of the bargain.”
Henry indicated his tattered clothes. “I hadn’t even had time to get changed,” he complained. He looked around at the dark wood. “I seem doomed to spend all my time in the Netherworlde in my bloody school uniform. Dad’s going to go mental when he sees the state of it.”
Robin dragged Henry back to his story. He'd been spirited away by the redcaps, over the moors and through Janus to the Netherworlde. He told how they had marched through the grasslands with him as their prisoner, headed for some place called Spitrot. The town was a wreck, destroyed by this dangerous dragon they kept going on about, but there was an entrance to their underground world there.
“I didn’t have a single chance to escape,” Henry told Robin grimly. “They had my hands tied up tight behind my back, marching me along like bloody cattle. And they were always watching me, one or the other, little red demons. I thought maybe if I could get my hands free somehow, I could at least send you a hex-message, let you know what had happened, where I was? But as it turns out, my scrap of enchanted parchment wasn’t even with me.”
Robin nodded to this. “Yes, Karya found it at the cottage, in the mess. She took it back to Erlking. I think it’s still there now, with Calypso or Hestia.” So far, Henry’s story was tallying with Karya’s earlier guesswork. “So, did you manage to escape the redcaps when the centaurs attacked you?”
Henry fro
wned at his friend in confusion. “Centaurs?” I don’t know anything about centaurs. I never saw any.”
This took Robin by surprise. “But …” he started, confused. "Karya saw their heads on spikes. And the ground was all messed up, trampled? We thought you'd been ambushed by centaurs."
“No mate, that’s not what happened,” Henry argued. “We were attacked, yeah, right by the edge of the forest, my friendly little kidnappers and me. But it wasn’t any centaurs. It was this big green bloke, all leaves and twigs. Massive guy. He killed the redcaps, barely noticed me. I’d legged it as soon as he burst out of the trees and they all started fighting. Saw my chance. The way I figured it, I didn’t owe the redcaps any help, evil little monsters. They were on their own.” He sniffed. “Serves them right to get attacked by some manic forest man. I ran for the trees and didn’t look back.”
The effects of Strife’s healing elixir were fading by now, and Robin felt the warmth in his mended body replaced with a foreboding chill.
“Splinterstem …” he said, pieces falling into place. “He must have used Earth mana to churn the ground, make it look like a centaur attack … and then he waited for Karya to arrive, knowing full well that she was tracking you. He’s been playing us all for idiots from the start.”
Henry clearly had no idea who Splinterstem was.
“He needed us in the forest,” Robin told him. “He wanted us at Rowandeepling, to hunt the drake and retrieve the Shard so he could take it. He must have known that there was no way any of us would have left the grasslands if we thought you might still be out there somewhere, travelling with the redcaps. Karya, Woad and I would have kept you our first priority. So he killed the redcaps, eliminating their inconvenient kidnapping, giving us no reason not to go with him into the woods. That manipulative liar. Promising his people would help find you, once the scourge was dead.”
“The only person who found me,” Henry said. “Was old skin-and-bones over there.” He nodded towards Strife.
Henry leaned in close to Robin. “Look, I know what he is, and who he is. Believe me, I’d been lost in the woods almost a full day at this point. Running blind, it had taken me hours just to find a sharp enough rock to cut through the ropes at my wrists and free my hands. Believe me when I tell you, Robin, I was as terrified as you were when I stumbled onto him.”
"But why is he helping us?" Robin asked, equally surreptitious.
“Strife was already in the forest,” Henry told Robin. “He’s been here for some time. He has his own mission in the Elderhart, which I’m sure he’ll fill you in on shortly. When he stumbled upon me, I barely even recognised him. He looks a bit…threadbare…right?” Henry shivered. “I thought I was done for. Dead for sure. But as it turns out, Strife wanted me alive.” He nodded at Robin. “Or you, to be more accurate, and thought that saving me might convince you that, for once, he doesn’t actually want you dead.”
“You’re what? A show of good will then? Strife’s peace offering?” Robin raised his eyebrows doubtfully. “I don’t like any of this, Henry.”
“Neither did I!” Henry said emphatically. “Believe me, I’d have rather been with anyone else in the world. It was hardly like I’d stumbled on to some well-meaning ents here in the woods. But, I will say this for the evil old ghoul. He knows his way around this forest. He knew what was safe to eat. Where springs were that you could drink from. If it wasn’t for him, I’d be dead by now.” Henry shook his own head. “Never thought I’d say that. But he’s having troubles of his own, you see. Bit of a fall from grace, and from what I understand, you’re the ladder he’s going to use to climb back up.”
“I can hear each and every word the two of you say,” Strife’s voice carried over, crisp and cool. He didn’t bother turning around. He was still staring watchfully out into the night.
“He said that you were in the forest and that his skrikers could find you,” Henry said, ignoring the old man. “I didn’t really believe him. Couldn’t figure out what on earth you’d be doing here but, well … here you are.”
Robin digested all of this. And then, at Henry’s insistence, he filled his friend in on his side of things. There was a lot to tell. The centaurs and Briar Hill, Hawthorn and the Mask of Gaia, the dark revelations from Jackalope and his sudden departure.
Robin had expected Henry to leap on this particular bit of information, to triumphantly scream ‘I told you so’ or ‘aha!’, or some other loud and annoying way show how vindicated he was for not liking the hornless Fae. But at the news of Jackalope’s dark history, Henry merely paled, looking shocked.
When Robin was describing the battle with the drake and his unlikely alliance with Strigoi, Strife’s ears perked up and he actually glanced toward the two boys. “The Wolf? Here in the forest?” he sounded surprised.
Robin nodded at him. “Trying to capture the Shard, of course,” he said. “For your bloody dark Empress.”
Strife looked thoughtful. “No,” he said slowly. “The Wolf has no orders regarding this Shard. I can assure you of that. He is stationed far to the north at present, on the Gravis. If he is here, roaming the grasslands and stalking the forest, it is not on the orders of Eris. I doubt the empress even knows he is here. Under his own steam?” Strife glared thoughtfully at them. “This is of great interest to me. This could prove to be very valuable knowledge to have.”
Robin was not the least bit surprised that the servants of Eris kept secrets from one another. The last time he had seen them all together in the war camp in the far north, there had been three Grimms and Strigoi, and they had done nothing but bicker and snipe at one another the entire time.
“… Anyway, the dragon was the king of the dryads and it was this Splinterstem who betrayed him. He's also the one who koshed me over the head and left me in the cage,” Robin went on. Henry dutifully growled some very choice names, making Robin smile.
“He wanted the Shard for himself, the whole time,” Robin guessed. “There’s no other explanation for it. He knew he couldn’t defeat the scourge himself, so he used us to get it for him. It was all planned.” He thought back to the battle in the hollow. “I’m pretty sure, now that I come to think of it, that it was him, not the drake, who tied up Woad and Karya with Earth magic. He took them out of the equation, then stood back and let me fight the monster for him. But why? If the king himself couldn’t control the Shard, surely he knows he can’t either? It doesn’t make sense.”
Strife walked over to them. “It only doesn’t make sense to you,” he snapped with disdain and irritation, “… because you are clueless idiots, with only half a story.”
Both boys looked up at the Grimm. He was staring at them with open distaste.
“You think this pathetic, treacherous dryad of yours is the big bad villain in your tale? You are hopeless. A worm he was, certainly,” he allowed. “A traitor, with his eye on the throne and the princess, yes. But the mastermind behind all of this chaos in the forest?” Strife sneered. “Hardly.”
“Then who?” Robin asked.
“The same person, blundering and blind little Fae, who has wanted the Earth Shard all along,” Strife said through gritted teeth. “The same person who, even now, as we squat in the mud like animals, sits on a throne in the Hive, miles from here, making schemes.” He pushed his bony hands together, popping his knuckles loudly. “Directing puppets like this dryad as though they were helpless chess pieces on a board. The same person who dethroned me in the eyes of our Empress and reduced me to wandering in ignominy, the lowest of the Grimms! Forcing me to make … decidedly unpalatable … alliances with the likes of you, in order to restore myself to my rightful station.”
In the darkness, Mr Strife looked away, his cruel black eyes roaming the forest until he lighted upon the dark stone archway which marked the entrance to the underground Labyrinth.
“My dearest little sister, of course,” he spat bitterly. “Agent of chaos and a blacker heart than my own. Peryl.”
THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING
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Robin demanded an explanation, but Mr Strife dismissed the boy utterly, motioning for them to follow him as he stalked away from the cages, through the dark grass toward the overgrown and crumbling entrance to the maze.
“There is little that I could explain to you that you could not learn more readily and easily from this ‘Splinterstem’ yourself,” he snapped. “I don’t have the patience to guide your baby steps and join your dots for you. The truth is better shown than told, and your answers, Robin Fellows, lie just within this doorway.”
“In the Labyrinth?” Robin peered into the darkness dubiously. His arm, as he tentatively flexed his fingers, felt fine, not even bruised. He reached up and gingerly felt his head, but beneath the crusted blood that had stuck in the short hair at his temples, there was neither a cut or a bruise. It wasn’t even tender. Strife’s potion really had healed him utterly. He would feel almost his own self, were it not for his lack of a mana-stone.
“You expect us to go into the Labyrinth?” Robin looked up at Strife. “So you are trying to kill us after all then? I’ve heard the stories. Only one person ever went in there and they were killed by the minotaur.”
Strife looked down at Robin for several silent seconds. Robin had the distinct impression that the ugly old man was mentally counting to ten.
“Is that so?” he said eventually.
“Yes,” Robin insisted. “It is … .so.”
“And who … pray, told you this?” Strife asked, his voice withering, raising his thin arched eyebrows expectantly.
Robin faltered. “Well … Splintertstem, the steward did … actually,” he admitted. “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Lots of other dryads knew about the death. It was the princess' true love who was killed. It’s not a made-up story. The princess herself told me it had happened.”
“Hmm,” Strife sounded extremely unconvinced. “And tell me, did your princess, or indeed any other dryad actually see this body?”
Robin paused. Henry was looking from the old man to his friend, clearly lost in the conversation.
