by Fahy, James
Back downstairs, he found everyone waiting. Hestia gibbered something about foolish children getting themselves killed, but she thrust a large package at the three of them, a mass of sandwiches and cured meat wrapped in greaseproof paper, along with jars of preserves and drinks. They gratefully packed these away. Karya had picked up Phorbas’ silver dagger and handed it to Robin wordlessly. He took it reluctantly, remembering how the satyr hated anyone else to touch it.
“This is no time to be sentimental, Scion,” Karya said firmly, noting his expression. “Better to have a weapon if you need one. There’s plenty of danger in the Netherworlde beside Strife, you know. Hey, you can give it back to your tutor if we find them, eh?”
“When,” Robin said thickly. “When we find them.”
He slid the dagger into his belt, hoisted his pack and followed the others outside into the night.
Karya led them to the nearest tree and laid her small palm against the cold bark. With her other hand she grabbed Woad by the wrist, who in turn wrapped his fingers around Robin’s free arm.
“So … how does this work?” Robin asked nervously. “You can really tear, or whatever you call it, between the worlds? Without a Janus station I mean?” He was nervous at the thought of following Strife into the unknown but, despite himself, also quite excited. He was about to step into another world after all, away from everything he had ever known. This was something he and Henry had been daydreaming about for months. He paused. Just thinking about Henry gave Robin a sick feeling in his stomach.
He glanced back at the dark house. Hestia stood in the hallway between the statues looking lost and forlorn. She was clutching the snapped off nubbin of Phorbas’ horn. Robin looked away, across the wintry landscape. Down in the quiet valley below, warm lights twinkled cozily in the windows of the village. Normal people were settling down right now to their dinners or watching soap operas.
Robin felt an odd pang of envy.
“You want to know how it works, Scion?” Karya said, looking back at him over her shoulder. Her golden eyes twinkled and Robin saw a bracelet of amber flash at her wrist. “You hold on tight, that’s how. And bend your knees when we hit the other side, my aim’s a bit off sometimes.”
Woad gave a mischievous chuckle at this, flashing his small white teeth alarmingly.
“Here we go!” Karya grinned darkly. Her hand moved on the tree trunk. There was a loud cracking noise like ripping wood. A great wind came out of nowhere, the world folded swiftly away and Robin was pulled forward off his feet into a howling blackness, Woad’s giddy laughter still ringing in his ears.
Chapter Sixteen –
Through the Barrow Wood
Robin lay on his back, wheezing as though he had just been punched in the stomach, his eyes screwed shut as he fought the dizziness in his head. He felt as though he had just rolled down a huge hill, tumbling over and over.
From somewhere nearby came Woad’s piping voice. “Pinky! You okay? Anything broken?”
“Is he dead?” came Karya’s voice from somewhere nearby, sounding equally winded but also quite business-like.
“Ugh…” Robin managed, opening his eyes as the nausea subsided.
“He’s not dead … just clumsy,” Woad called.
“Oh. Good,” Karya muttered. “I did tell him to bend his knees. You heard me tell him.”
Robin ignored their chatter, staring up at the sky above him. All snow clouds had vanished. The sky was filled with more stars than he had ever seen, and the blackness behind them wasn’t black at all, but the deepest most velvety blue. He didn’t recognize a single constellation.
Sitting up woozily, the second thing he noticed was that there was no snow. He was lying in a large field, the grass so tall he was almost hidden in it. A breeze rippled softly around him.
“It’s … warm,” he said in disbelief. “We’re really here?”
“Nothing broken then?” Karya came into view, ploughing through the sea of grass like a small determined ship.
Robin glanced up at her and saw, at the top of the hill he had just tumbled down, Erlking Hall.
He stared, his mouth hanging open. Here, in the Netherworlde, it wasn’t just a grand stately home. It was transformed.
Atop the hill a castle loomed, massive and dark. Countless towers and turrets, roofs and bridges crowded together like a small town. It looked black and glossy in the moonlight, as though carved from shining obsidian. Every single window was dark. The place looked deserted. Haunted.
It was only when Robin got over the initial shock of seeing it so transformed that he noticed it was largely a ruin. Crumbling in places and half-covered with straggling ivy.
Karya heaved him to his feet with a grunt. She followed his gaze.
“Big, isn’t it?” she understated.
Robin didn’t answer. He was scanning the castle, wondering which of its countless windows he had peered from in the locked room with Phorbas.
“Yep, the Erl King’s Hill.” Karya clapped him on the back. “Seen better days, of course. And that’s where we have come from, not where we are going.” She turned him around by the shoulders.
Beyond the grassy slopes, where Robin’s mind insisted the village should be, there was nothing but rolling silvery hills bereft of any sign of habitation, and a distant smudge of a shadowy forest.
“Ah, it’s good to be back,” Woad said, turning a few cartwheels around them, sending up sprays of pollen. “I’ve been stuck in the human world for far too long! Smell that Netherworlde air!”
Karya ignored him, scanning the hills and woods. Robin assumed she was searching for signs of Mr Strife or his skrikers.
“Where are we going?” he asked. “Can you tell where Henry and Phorbas were taken? Are there any signs? Tracks?”
Karya shook her head, though in Robin’s opinion she hadn’t looked very closely.
“There won’t be any tracks,” she said flatly. “Strife’s too sharp a knife for that. There are other ways to find them, though. Come on.”
She led the way further down the hill, away from the crumbling ruin of Erlking. At the very bottom there was a wide river. Karya knelt by the sandy bank, grabbed a nearby twig and began scratching strange shapes and symbols in the dirt.
“What are you doing?” Robin asked.
“It’s a finding spell,” she replied distractedly, laying the twig flat in the centre of the symbols. “It should point to wherever they are. Wherever they are standing, the ground beneath them will echo here, and then … well, we’ll know where to go.”
“So it works like a compass then?”
Karya ignored him completely. She waved her hand above the stick. The chunky amber bracelet she wore flashed yellow as she released her mana.
The twig rose slightly from the ground and hovered in mid-air. As they watched it began to spin slowly.
“Here we go,” Woad said, sounding pleased. “We’ll have them back before breakfast.”
No sooner had the faun spoken, there was a loud crack. The tiny spinning twig, rotating faster and faster until it was nothing but a blurred disc, had snapped into countless tiny splinters and fallen uselessly to the ground. There was a faint smell of burned wood as the shower of sawdust fell to the sandy riverbank.
“Hmm,” said Karya quietly, looking irritated.
“Um … what does that mean?” Robin asked.
“Apparently … wherever they are, they’re nowhere on Netherworlde soil,” she mused. Woad and Robin exchanged confused looks.
“But they are in the Netherworlde, which means…” Karya continued, getting to her feet, “… that the spell didn’t work. I don’t know why. I’m very good at the Tower of Earth. I’m in my element.” She folded her arms. “I don’t suppose you are proficient?”
Robin held his hands up sheepishly. “Sorry, I’ve only started on the Tower of Air, and I’m not too great at that yet.”
“Wonderful,” she muttered. She looked around at the horizon with narrowed eyes, biting h
er bottom lip as she considered. On the far bank of the river, the forest closed in, dark and shadowy. “Strife must have come this way. I can still smell the skrikers.” She glanced at Robin. “I’ve gotten very good at recognizing their scent. They’ve been hunting me all year.”
“Why?” Robin asked.
She ignored him scuffing at the symbols on the dirt with the toe of her boot, obliterating them. “There’s nothing else for it … we’ll have to go through the Barrow Wood,” she said, unenthusiastically.
“The village?” Robin looked around at the empty landscape in case he’d missed something.
“Boss means the forest,” Woad supplied, looking anxious. “That’s what it’s called.”
Karya looked to Woad. “We need help tracking. I’m good, but I’m not so good that I can find someone even a finding spell can’t even pin down. We’re going to have to go and see them.”
“Who’s them?” Robin asked, seeing Woad’s eyes widen and feeling rather out of the loop.
“The redcaps,” Karya replied. “They live in old barrows, deep in the forest. But nothing escapes their notice. If Strife or his lackeys came this way, the redcaps will know. They don’t miss a trick.”
Woad put on his bravest face, which Robin found worrying. He had never seen the faun look ruffled.
The forest, however, was on the other side of the river. Robin wondered how on earth they were going to get across but Karya merely told them to stand back and, after muttering a few words, a great writhing tree root, pale and snake-like, erupted from the wet earth in front of them. While the girl muttered under her breath, the root grew tall, creaking like a ship in a storm. With an immense groan it bowed over, spanning the river and dug into the far bank, burrowing deeply into the earth.
Karya lowered her hands. Beads of sweat stood out on her brow. Her amber bracelet looked dark and smoky, its brightness gone. They now had a crude but perfectly serviceable footbridge in front of them.
“That was amazing,” Robin said, deeply impressed, as Woad scampered fearlessly over the wide root. “You’re really good at this earth magic stuff.”
“I should be,” Karya replied in a brisk tone, but Robin noticed a tiny smile on the girl’s face.
When they had made their way across the bridge and all were on the far bank, Karya turned and clapped her hands. The dark root immediately began to whiten, crumbling like chalk and, falling into the river, was quickly washed away.
“We have to be careful, Scion,” Karya explained in a quiet, stern voice as they reached the borders of the forest. “The redcap’s burrow is quite some distance through the wood. We’ll be lucky to reach it before morning. But there are other things in the wood to be wary of. This isn’t one of your human forests.”
“Bog hags,” Woad said grimly.
“And lantern-jacks,” Karya nodded.
“Not to mention Creeping Dread,” Woad added.
Seeing the look of confusion on Robin’s face, Karya explained as she led the way under the night-darkness of the trees. “It’s a plant,” she said. “Looks like black vines, but sneaks up on you. It gets you tangled so you can’t move and its poisons seep into your mind, filling it with hopelessness until you stop struggling. And then you just … well, eventually you become part of the forest.”
“Ah,” Robin said anxiously, pushing aside tree branches.
“Then there are the mireflies,” Woad said. “Nasty little creatures. Snapping Foxgloves too. They don’t look dangerous but they can give a nasty nip. Once, I was absolutely desperate for a pee and didn’t notice that…”
“That’s enough, Woad!” Karya snapped. She smiled hastily at Robin. “Don’t want to scare the Scion off now, do we?” She patted his arm, a gesture Robin didn’t find very reassuring coming from a girl a head shorter than him. Woad muttered on to himself quietly.
“Don’t worry, Scion,” Karya said. “The worst thing we’re likely to run into is redcaps, and we mean to find them, so at least it’s not a nasty surprise, eh?”
“And that…” muttered Woad grimly to himself, as the three of them disappeared into the woodland gloom, “… is when I decided to start wearing trousers.”
* * *
All night, they walked through thick woods. Karya led the way, frowning as she followed a path Robin couldn’t see. Woad darted back and forth constantly as they went, dashing off ahead like an excitable dog. The faun made almost no sound as he scampered about. Robin on the other hand, made plenty of noise, stumbling along in the darkness. There was a full moon over the forest, much larger than he had ever seen back in the human world, but its light was caught in the canopy. It only reached the leafy floor in dappled shafts of sieved moonbeams. Robin lost count of the times he caught his foot on a root. Compared to the swift-moving and silent pair ahead of him, he felt like an elephant crashing through the wood.
“Where are we going?” he asked breathlessly. “Did Strife come this way? Are you tracking their … um … tracks?”
Karya didn’t look back at him, but plunged ahead, stepping lightly over a stream and forging up a leaf-strewn hill. “Strife left no tracks, I told you earlier,” she said. “He would know better than to try and lose me of all people in a forest.”
Robin attempted to leap the stream, slipping and plunging an already soggy trainer into the dark icy water. From somewhere in a dark bush, Woad sniggered.
“Then how do we know we’re going the right way?” Robin asked, hurrying to catch up.
“We’re not following Strife. Please try and pay attention. We need information. That’s why we’re going this way,” Karya replied. “This is the Barrow Wood. You know what a barrow is?”
“Erm … a kind of grave?”
“A burial mound.” Karya nodded, glancing back at him. “There was a great battle here. This forest is full of barrows. We’re going to see the redcaps, like I said. They like battlegrounds. They make their homes in the graves of the dead.”
“They sound lovely,” Robin said weakly.
Karya snorted. “Hardly. But they have eyes everywhere. Strife can’t simply have entered the Netherworlde and then vanished into thin air. The redcaps will know what happened.”
“Will they help us?” Robin wanted to know, as she led them on through the tangled undergrowth.
“Hmm,” Karya replied, which he found a tad evasive.
“Redcaps are bad news, Pinky.” Woad’s voice came from somewhere in the darkness above him. He looked up to see that the faun was keeping pace with them up in the canopy. “They want, want, want, all the time. Greedy, they are. They’d take the shine out of your eyes if you let them.”
“Hush, Woad,” Karya hissed. “It’s not wise to speak so freely here.”
Woad gave a muted raspberry and disappeared ahead in a flurry of leaves.
“We have a long walk ahead,” Karya said to Robin. “I doubt we’ll reach the barrow until close to dawn, so save your questions for now.”
Robin nodded. “Sorry, I just don’t know anything about this place. Or about you. Who are you anyway?”
“Didn’t I just say no questions?” the girl replied bad-temperedly.
“But…”
“I’m on your side alright? I’m certainly not in league with Strife, if that’s what you’re worried about. He’s been chasing me as well as you.”
Robin opened his mouth to ask why, but thought better of it.
Hours passed before they stopped to rest. The Barrow Wood was hilly and dense and Robin’s legs were aching from trudging through the darkness. He was grateful when Karya called a halt. “Are we here?”
Karya shook her head, dropping to the floor to clear a patch free of leaves. “No, but we’ll rest for a while. You look like you can barely stand and you’ve been wheezing like a village elder for the last few miles.”
“We can’t stop!” Robin said indignantly. He was indeed tired, but there were more important things right now. “Strife already has a head start on us. If we stop for a breath
er they’re only going to get further ahead!”
Karya looked up at him. “Well, you’re not going to be any use if all you can do is cough and wheeze with exhaustion, are you? Sit down.”
Woad appeared out of the foliage, carrying an armload of branches. He bounded over and dropped it into the patch of bare earth Karya had cleared.
“Campfire!” the faun said brightly, and without further ado, hawked and spat into the wood, which flashed and promptly burst into merry crackling flames.
Robin stared, astonished. “I didn’t know you could do that,” he said wonderingly at Woad, who puffed his skinny chest out proudly and grinned.
“The things you don’t know would fill five of those books you’ve got in your bag,” he teased. “Trilobites know more than you.”
“Woad has a little skill in each of the towers of the Arcania,” Karya explained, warming her hands on the crackling fire. “He’s too undisciplined to focus on one in particular, as most panthea do, but his skills come in handy.”
“Can you do that as well?” Robin asked, flopping down on the ground on the other side of the flames.
“I have no skill for fire,” the small girl muttered. “But I’m the best tracker around, and I have other talents elsewhere.”
“Boss has strange memories sometimes,” Woad began proudly, but the girl gave him such a murderous look that he snapped his mouth shut.
They ate a little of the food Hestia had packed for them. Woad sniffed it suspiciously but decided against risking a meal from the human world. After a while he wandered off to find a squirrel. When he had gone, the silence at the tiny campfire became uncomfortable. Robin cleared his throat. “So … um … how do you and Woad know each other then? He called you ‘boss’. Does he work for you?”
“He is bound to me,” she replied with a shrug. She gave a weary half smile. “He’s more like a tiring pet, I suppose, in some ways.”