by James Fahy
The dryad dragged his wide green eyes away from where the king had disappear, and stared at Peryl in horror. She was smiling at him, as though he were a naughty child she were indulging.
“I … I can get it back for you,” he spluttered. “I’ll find a way.”
“Darn tootin’,” she agreed, releasing his chin and clapping him warmly on the shoulder. “Bring it back to me here. And quickly. You won’t be able to take it from the king. Not now that he’s claimed it. Or rather, it claimed him.” She looked off into the forest thoughtfully, biting her own cheek. “There’s only one who can. You probably want to go search at Erlking. Find yourself a champion.”
“Erlking? The old Fae palace?” the dryad stuttered, clearly confused. “But it’s just a ruin. All the Fae are gone.”
She shook her head. “Not on the human-world side of the coin,” she assured him. “You can find a patsy there, trust me. They’re all over the Shards like white on rice. But if I were you, I wouldn’t waste too much time.” She looked up at the trees, hands on her hips, expression thoughtful. “Fires start so easily in the forest, don’t they?” she said breezily. “You’d be amazed how quickly they catch. I like to play with matches sometimes, you know, if I get bored, or if I’m kept waiting too long.”
In the morning mist, she grinned warmly at him, purple lips beneath dark eyes.
“Now, you’d better think up a convincing story to tell your fluttering friends. Cover up your dark deeds, eh?” she smirked. “I mean; it wouldn’t be the first time.”
*
Robin staggered backwards, pulling the mask from his face. In a flash, he was back in the dank and dark tunnel, Henry and Strife both staring at him as he caught his breath.
He stared down at the rather sad, ambitious and treacherous body of Splinterstem. “Power,” he said, a little breathlessly, reeling from all that he had seen. “He wanted power. It ate him away. And he lied, stole and murdered for it.”
“Power promised by my wretch of a sister,” Strife nodded, looking down also, but with considerably less humanity. “As if she’d share it. She’s not the type. I should know, look what she’s reduced me to. But I will give her this much, she always knows what people want. It is one of her few talents, the manipulation of others. She must not have this Shard.”
“I don’t understand you at all,” Robin said, still holding the mask in his hands. “Eris wants all the Shards, doesn’t she? Isn’t that your end goal? I don’t understand why you’re not working with Peryl. Why instead you’re creeping around the forest like some homeless wanderer?”
“Zombie Aragorn,” Henry muttered to himself, and then, under his breath with a slight snigger. “Araghoul.”
Strife bared his teeth at Robin, looking fearsome in the purplish gloom.
“Because I rule the Grimms!” he snapped. “Me! Strife!” Robin and Henry actually took a step backwards in the face of his sudden anger.
“Our cataclysmic failure at Hieronarbos was bad enough!” the old man hissed. “We failed to capture the valley, we failed to subdue the Undine. The only thing we achieved was that half of the Peacekeeper army was blown free of their husks! Even now, months later, Brother Ker still labours to rebuild his forces, to channel his mana into new soldiers and flesh out our decimated ranks. We were … disgraced!”
He calmed himself with some effort, leaning back and smoothing down his green hair with the palms of his long white hands, fingers splayed.
“But little Peryl, the runt of the litter?” he growled. “She returns to Dis with half a Shard. Holding the power of the Arcania proudly before her, filled with it, flowing with it, and with the blood of fallen Fae-scum on her hands. Suddenly, she is the toast of the court. My lady’s new favourite. And I?” He smoothed his lapels. “Well, I was lucky not to be thrown into the pits with dear Moros. Reduced instead to border patrols? This is my punishment. The great Strife, tasked to the hunting of stray and unimportant outlaws. Me!”
Robin and Henry nodded to show that, they too, found this clearly unacceptable. It seemed the safest thing to do, alone as they were in this underground place with the simmering Grimm.
“I need my station,” Strife explained. “I need the freedom to act which is afforded to the leader of the Grimms, in order to pursue my own … interests. And while Peryl lords it over all, reigning Queen of the Hive, I cannot do that.”
Robin wondered what Strife meant by ‘his own interests’. He thought it safer not to ask.
“Imagine how much worse it will be,” Strife continued bitterly, actually grinding his teeth against each other. “Should the loathsome, idiotic girl deliver the Earth Shard to Eris too. I daresay she would surpass even Strigoi himself in our lady’s favour. It cannot be borne! It must not come to pass.”
“So what you’re saying is,” Henry said carefully. “You’ll happily backstab your own kind, and actually risk losing a Shard of the Arcania to the likes of us, just in order to spite your own sister?”
“It is more important to me that Peryl fail, than it is that the empress gain a Shard,” Strife hissed. His voice was incredibly low, as though he dared not say this louder. Robin could guess why. For his own personal reasons, Strife was willing to deprive Eris of a Shard? That seemed like a very dangerous move to make against a ruler who, by all accounts, was not famed for her powers of forgiveness or mercy. It was not the kind of plan you voiced openly.
“So … you’ll help us get the Shard, and our friends, back from Peryl?” Robin asked, still finding it difficult to swallow the fact that, at least temporarily, he and Strife were on the same side.
“I will do nothing of the sort,” Strife told them dismissively. “But your little friends, if they are still alive, will have been taken with the Shard to the Hive. There are no doors or windows in the great pyramid of the south. The Hive is an impenetrable fortress.” He smiled humourlessly in the dark. “Unless of course, you are me. What I will do, is open the door and leave it ajar. What you do next is entirely up to you. I myself must make myself as distant from this place as I can.” A cunning, scheming expression filled the old man's harsh face. “It would be wise for me to be in Dis perhaps, when the Hive is infiltrated by rebel Fae scum. I must place myself as far from the incident, and as visible to Eris as possible. The only skirts stained by this will be my sister's, I assure you of that. And her fall from grace … will be my ascent.”
“We should go up to Rowandeepling,” Robin said. “Tell the princess and the others what has happened, with the scourge, with Splinterstem.”
“You really are without the remotest modicum of intelligence,” Mr Strife sneered. “They are gone, you imbecile. There are no dryads in their treetop city. The princess and the rest have all been taken to the Hive. They are its prisoners now. The swarm has won. The forest is theirs for the taking. My sister with the Earth Shard in her possession? A force to be reckoned with, I assure you. The sacking of Rowandeepling, while you slept in a pool of your own blood and a cage of your own foolishness, was swift and brutal.”
Robin didn't want to believe it but it made a dark kind of sense. It explained why no one had come down while he was in the cage. Why there had been no lights in the city high above. The only dryad remaining in Rowandeepling was the dead one lying at his feet. The turncoat who had betrayed them all and doomed his own people to slavery and destruction.
“So, how do we get to this Hive then?” Henry asked. “It sounds like such a charming, welcoming place.”
Strife's mana-light bobbed ahead. “The only way into the Hive is through the Janus station which lies at its inner chambers.”
“Is there a Janus station in the forest we can use? Do you know how to open it?”
“Of a sort. And of course I can use it. We aren't all helpless ignorant scum,” he sneered. “It is in here.” He gestured to the cavern.
“What? In the Labyrinth? You want us to go in here?” Robin gawped. “What about the minotaur?”
“Whoa, hold on, mate,” Henry
butted in. “Minotaur? As in, minotaur minotaur?”
Strife took a long-suffering breath. “We can, of course, go to the other nearest Janus station if you wish,” he said, to which Henry fervently nodded his approval. “It's far beyond the borders of the forest, across the grasslands where the hills meet the ocean. There are countless centaur between here and there, and it would take weeks to reach on foot. Eris would have the Shard by then, and all your friends would be dead.”
He turned on his heel without a further word and walked off into the gloom. Robin and Henry looked at each other.
“Bugger,” said Henry emphatically.
“I'd have to be really unlucky to get eaten twice in the same week, wouldn't I?” Robin asked.
Henry raised an eyebrow. “Just like I'd have to be really unlucky to get kidnapped twice in my school uniform?”
Robin groaned, turning to follow Strife. “Bugger.”
THE CHAINS OF GAIA
The entrance was soon lost far behind them, the cool open night air of the great Elderhart forest nothing but a distant memory. The two boys followed their ghoulish guide, stalking ahead of them, mana flame flickering in his spidery hand and dark ragged cloak billowing out behind him with every long loping step. Robin felt like he was following the grim reaper into the claustrophobic pits of hell.
“I think I remember something about mazes,” Henry whispered behind him, as Strife led them along the dank and twisting corridors, their footfalls echoing. They had made many a left and right turn by this point, and by Robin’s reckoning, had been ploughing into the darkness for at least half an hour before any of them had spoken. So far, despite straining to, he had not heard the sound of chains clanking nor any other sign of the legendary minotaur.
“About labyrinths?” Robin asked. “Really? Henry, you get frustrated with the wordsearches in your dad’s newspaper. I have seen you swearing at the Sunday edition at the breakfast table.”
“No, really,” Henry insisted. “It’s something like, always turn left, and you’ll get to the middle.” He frowned in the dark. Both of them were constantly hurrying to keep up with Strife, who set a brisk pace and had not once looked back to check if they were following. “Or maybe it’s left always and you’ll find your way out?” Henry sounded uncertain.
“Well, we don’t want to find our way out, we want to find our way in,” Robin replied.
“And what about this bull-man then? Any plans? I didn’t think to pack a matador costume when I was so thoughtfully dragged out of my house by redcaps. Did you bring one?”
“No,” Robin admitted distractedly. “I didn’t. I don’t know. We’ll deal with that when we have to. That’s the way to deal with this whole thing … Socks and underpants … Just pick up one thing at a time.”
“What on earth are you babbling about?” Henry asked. “Are you sure your head isn’t still cracked?”
“Never mind,” Robin said, dismissively. “Just … keep an eye on Strife. I know he’s not done anything yet, but I don’t trust him one inch. If he can turn on us and get away with it, I know he will.”
“Oh, don’t you worry, mate,” Henry agreed. “I’m not actually stupid, you know. I’ve been alone with the guy in the forest remember. Have you ever slept with one eye open? It’s harder than it sounds, and bloody exhausting. I kept thinking I was going to wake up dead.”
“Henry, that doesn’t even begin to make any sense,” Robin smirked, despite their grim situation. He hadn’t realised how much he’d missed Henry’s company until now.
Strife led them onwards into the twisting dark. The corridors were endless. The only varying feature was the pattern of fallen blocks, here and there, and the spiderweb tracery of roots and vines clinging randomly to the walls, pale tubers following the lines of mortar like fingers following braille. It was as though the trees above were feeling their way through the silent maze in the absolute darkness. Slowly questing themselves toward the centre, towards the Shard's former resting place.
“You’re such a goon,” Robin told Henry, not unpleasantly. “But I’m glad you’re not kidnapped or dead.”
“Yeah yeah, love you too,” Henry muttered gruffly. “Can we save the hugs until we're not being buried alive? Honestly, I think I prefer the redcaps. And that's saying something. You wouldn't believe what those guys eat.”
Robin slipped on some scree, banging into the wall. “Ow … You would never have been kidnapped at all, you know, if you had just come straight up to the house after school, like you used to do. You’ve been avoiding the place, avoiding all of us, since Jackalope came. And yes, you get to say ‘I told you so’ about that.”
Henry stopped dead in the corridor behind Robin, his feet scuffling. “What are you on about?” he asked.
Robin stopped too, turning in the darkness. “Look, everyone noticed you’ve been coming up to Erlking less and less. You’re always busy, making excuses or having to leave early. It’s painfully obvious you didn’t want to be around the guy.” Robin shrugged a little awkwardly. “Or me. I figured you’d kind of fallen out with me…a bit.”
Henry actually rolled his eyes. “Is that really what you think?” he asked.
Robin frowned. What other explanation could there be.
Henry actually laughed, shaking his matted mop of hair. “Robin Fellows, you might be the son of a Fae lord, practically a superhero and deliverer of the galaxy or whatever, but honestly … you can be such a fussy old woman sometimes.” He held his hands up. “Yeah, I admit, I had my reservations about taking in Jackalope after he split with us and went over to Team Evil.” He paused, peering past Robin to Strife, who had stopped, turning to see what the hold-up was. “Of course, after this, I realise there’s some irony in that. I might have to readjust my thinking a bit. But yeah, if my instincts were right and he did turn out to be a bad penny, murdering his big brother and all, I can’t say I’m happy about it.” He sniffed a little. “I would have been happy to have been proved wrong.”
“Yeah,” Robin said quietly.
“But that’s not why I wasn’t coming around as much!” Henry insisted. “Sulking? Really?” He shook his head. “No, I was busy…” He halted, as though unsure of how to continue.
“Busy doing what?” Robin asked. “You’ve been so cagey about it.”
“’Cause I reckoned you’d all laugh at me,” Henry said. “But what the hell now,” he sighed. “I’ve been taking classes.”
“Classes?”
Henry nodded. “Archery. Two hours a day, every weekday. Learning to use that bow you got me for my birthday.” He looked awkward. “And you know, self-defence stuff too. Bit of martial arts, bit of boxing, learning to fight.”
Robin peered at his squirming friend in disbelief. “Archery? Self-defence? What for?”
“So I could be useful, moron,” Henry blurted out hotly. He glared at Robin, almost defying him to say something. “So I could be part of the group.”
“Henry,” Robin stammered, utterly confused. “You are part of the group. Have you lost your mind completely?”
“No but … yeah … I know we're friends,” Henry tried to explain. “But you, and Karya and Woad, I mean, look at you, you’re like the magical triangle or something. You’re the bloody Power Rangers. You have all your Scion powers. You’ve mastered two and a half elements. You’ve just killed a dragon from the inside, for pete’s sake! And Karya? She’s such a badass. She speaks like a hundred languages. She’s stronger than anyone I know and she can tear between worlds. And Woad, well, he’s a bloody force of nature isn’t he, little acrobatic firework.” He threw his hands up. “What am I?”
Robin stared at his friend, totally taken aback by this outburst.
“I felt like …” Henry scratched at his head a little, trying to find the right words. “I don’t know, like that, in the great orchestra or Erlking, I’m the kid at the end of the row with no talent who gets given the triangle to play.”
Robin raised his eyebrows, trying very hard t
o keep a straight face. It was clear this was something that had been bothering Henry for some time.
“So, your solution was … to become a … ninja?” he managed.
“Har-di-har” Henry narrowed his eyes sarcastically. “I dunno, I thought, if I could at least fight well, I could be more useful. Feel like something more than just the one human in the band of merry Netherworlders.” He stuck his hands in his pockets. “Then when silver top woke up and started lording it around, showing off with his throwing knives and bloody scissor kicks, well…it’s like I could see my replacement right there in front of my eyes. I knew I had to step up my game.” He studied Robin's face in the gloom for a moment. Silence passed between them.
“Rob, if you start humming ‘eye of the tiger’, I swear to God I’m going to lamp you,” he growled.
Robin shook his head. “You, Henry Drover, are a prize idiot,” he said eventually. “Like we could ever replace you. You’re not the triangle player. How do you think I feel? I’m like the guy handed the conducting stick but without a damned clue what the hell I’m supposed to do with it. I’m just waving it about and hoping for the best.”
Robin sighed heavily, raking his hands through his hair. “But you … you're loyal and brave and confident. Nothing knocks you off your stride. You drank kraken venom and jumped into a bottomless well without a second thought. Just so I didn’t have to do it on my own. You dressed as a Peacekeeper and threw a spear at Strigoi. At Strigoi!” He shook his head in amazement. “And I’ve been worried you’re dead in the forest somewhere, choking on poisoned berries or tripping over your own shoelaces, and what have you been doing instead? Teaming up with a Grimm and turning into Bear Gryllis of the Netherworlde.” Robin shook his head. “I’m the one who was locked in a cage bleeding out of my skull like a helpless numpty, remember. You're tough as old boots.”
