Isle of Winds (The Changeling Series Book 1)

by Fahy, James

  Robin took in all these details in a single heartbeat.

  “Henry!” Robin cried out, almost bursting with relief. The boy did not respond. He lay as limp and insensible as Karya, who Woad had laid carefully against one of the ivy tangled pillars.

  “Master Robin?” A weak voice came from the darkness. “It cannot be … Who is that? Who’s there?”

  “Phorbas!” Robin cried out. “It’s me, it’s Robin. We’ve come to rescue you. Are you hurt? It’s so dark in here.”

  “Only my pride is wounded, Master Robin,” Phorbas’ voice came again. He coughed dryly. “My body remains intact, I assure you.” He sounded wheezy and tired. “I cannot believe you are really here. I never imagined we would meet again.”

  “Hang on. I’m coming over.”

  “We’ve no time to lose!” Phorbas said urgently, coughing again. “Listen to me, Master Robin. They have been looking for something here I think. Something hidden. They have turned the place inside out. Whatever it is, we have to find it before they do. You have to find it, Master Robin. Perhaps only you can.”

  Robin dimly made out the horned outline of Phorbas supporting himself with one hand on the column’s rough surface.

  “That doesn’t matter,” he replied dismissively. “We have to get out of here. Are you chained up like Henry?”

  “An old goat on a short leash,” the satyr laughed humourlessly. “But listen to me, Robin. This is the Shrine of Winds. A legendary place. There is something of great power here. Something Eris wants as a weapon. If we can find it first … you must use your gift.”

  “Robin…” Woad said behind him. In his relief at finding Phorbas and Henry, Robin had almost forgotten his companions.

  “We have a girl here,” he said to Phorbas, cutting Woad off. “Strife has poisoned her. Can you help?”

  “Yes of course,” Phorbas said. “But first we must find…”

  “No, first we have to help her,” Robin interrupted. “I don’t care about the other stuff. I’m going to find something to get you and Henry out of those chains and then we have to see to Karya right away.”

  “Robin…” Woad began hesitantly. “Something’s not…”

  Phorbas cut him off, stepping forward out of the shadows. “I will not ask again!” he said sharply. “Unlock the magic, Robin! I am your tutor and you will do as I say. There are great things at stake here. The girl is not important!”

  Robin stared, shocked. Phorbas’ face, shadowy across the large room, was hard and grim. He looked so cold-hearted, utterly unlike his normal jovial self.

  “Robin,” Woad insisted, tugging the boy’s arm to get his attention. “That’s not…”

  Before the faun could finish his sentence, something large and dark barrelled into him, knocking him to the ground and sending Robin stumbling away.

  A skriker had bounded into the chamber and floored Woad, knocking him unconscious. Its great hulking shape stood over the fallen boy threateningly.

  Robin wheeled around in shock. Four other skrikers slunk into the temple behind him. Wicked yellow eyes glowed at Robin in the darkness as they circled by the doorway, blocking any escape.

  Beyond them, Robin saw the unmistakable form of Mr Strife, leaning nonchalantly against the wall with his long legs crossed at the ankles and his arms folded, as though he had all the time in the world. He had followed them after all.

  “Phorbas! Strife is here! We have to…”

  His words faded away as he looked back to his tutor.

  The satyr has stepped forward into the falling sunbeams, standing between him and Henry. He no longer looked injured. His face was a strange mixture of cruelty and mockery.

  “Yes, yes, he certainly is here, isn’t he, Master Robin? How terrible for all concerned. And look…” he gestured around the room, “… all of your little friends are either dead or dying. It would appear that you are very much on your own.”

  The satyr turned and crossed to the slumped form of Henry, roughly grabbing a fistful of his hair and pulling his head up. “Now then,” he said to Robin. “Charm and persuasion seem not to have worked, and frankly, I am weary of this entire charade. For the last time of asking, Young Master Robin, use … your … gift.”

  Robin stared at his tutor. “Why are you …? You never would …? … You’re not Phorbas! You’re using some kind of glamour. Woad could see through it, couldn’t he? He didn’t wipe the jam off his eyes. That’s what he was trying to tell me! You’re not Phorbas. Phorbas wouldn’t help Strife.”

  “You have no idea what Phorbas would or would not do, boy. You have never met him,” Mr Strife said behind him. “Enough of these illusions,” he said to the satyr. “They have served their purpose. I find your games tiresome at best.”

  As Robin watched, the image of his trusted tutor dissolved entirely before his eyes, drifting away into nothingness like multi-coloured smoke. It left behind a tall, impossibly thin man, wearing an identical dusty old suit to that of Mr Strife. His white face was grinning and atop his bright green eyes sat a wild shock of orange hair.

  Robin had met him once before.

  “Moros!” he said, as the glamour faded utterly.

  “Mr Moros, if you please, young Master Robin,” the pale man replied, his eyes twinkling brightly. “One must respect formalities, even in the direst of situations. It is indeed the mark of a true gentleman.”

  “What did you mean when you said I’ve never met Phorbas?” he said, taking hold of Phorbas’ knife. Strife sighed behind him in a bored way. Robin turned, trying to keep the two brothers in sight.

  Mr Moros waved a finger admonishingly. “Now, now, Scion,” he said. “Your tutor never made it to your first meeting, it’s that simple. Our aim has always been to get you to the Netherworlde, to bring you here.” He sighed theatrically. “We had hoped to intercept you as soon as the wards broke at your grandmother’s house, but things were … complicated for a time.”

  “Your grandmother was a wonderful dancer,” Mr Strife said darkly. “I have no taste for dancing myself, but one does what one must in the line of duty.” There was an unspoken laugh beneath his words.

  Robin turned to him, waving the knife in front of him. “What do you mean?” he said, staring at the cool, shark-like expression on the old man’s face, but it was Moros who spoke.

  “And then, of course, that interfering old traitor got involved!” he continued. “Whisking you off to the safety of Erlking, where she could keep you out of everyone’s reach. That posed a problem, let me tell you.” He steepled his fingers under his chin. “But we needed you here, you see. There were prophecies. The seers had discovered your existence. They spoke of such things. Of great secrets hidden in the Netherworlde, and of one who was born to find them.”

  “I doubt they understood that this ‘great one’ would be a snivelling child,” Mr Strife sneered offhand.

  “Indeed,” Mr Moros confirmed brightly. Robin turned back to him, his heart beating so loud he wondered that they couldn’t hear it. Perhaps they could.

  “Imagine my surprise at the train station,” Moros continued. “There I was, lurking in wait for the foolish goat man, when I stumbled upon the Scion himself, witless and clueless!” He sighed. “So close…”

  “You’ve never been missing…” Robin said.

  “Quite,” Moros continued. “I ambushed Phorbas and took his place. However, casting a glamour to make a person look like another is very, very advanced. The person you are impersonating needs to be incapacitated utterly, which is a difficult thing to do to a panthea.”

  “It involves the separation of body and spirit,” Mr Strife explained with sharp satisfaction. “And the disposal of both.”

  “What did you do to Phorbas?” Robin said through gritted teeth.

  “Disposed of him. Aren’t you listening?” Moros said. “His soul, however? Well, that I needed to keep close by, to keep the glamour working, you see?”

  Robin stared in disbelief down at the dagger he carri
ed.

  “You put Phorbas’ soul … in his knife?”

  Moros laughed.

  “Your poor tutor’s spirit was rather angry with me, I think.” He tittered briefly. “He can be quite lively, trapped in there, can he not?”

  The Oracle had known. The knife had saved their lives twice along the way. Phorbas … the real Phorbas … all along helping them find their way.

  The knife twisted now in his grip, like a struggling fish. “He wants to kill you,” Robin said grimly to Moros.

  Moros smirked. “Lucky I got there first then.”

  “Enough,” Strife snapped, humourless as ever. Moros rolled his eyes at his dour brother. “You will do what we have brought you here to do, boy,” he continued. “Or your little friends will all die for you, and have died for nothing.”

  Chapter Twenty Four –

  Unleashed

  Robin looked about the chamber desperately. “I don’t know what you expect me to do! I don’t know anything. I’m rubbish at magic, I can barely throw a Galestrike.”

  “But the seers have spoken,” Mr Strife said. He took another step towards Robin. The skrikers wove restlessly in and out of the shadows between the ancient pillars. “You are the key, Scion. Lady Eris believes it. It is your purpose.”

  “Do you remember what I told you – about the Arcania?” Moros said.

  “I know what you told me. That the fae destroyed it so that Eris couldn’t get her hands on it,” Robin said.

  “The pieces were not destroyed,” Moros said. “They were scattered, hidden away.”

  “The Arcania can be made whole once more, Scion,” Mr Strife said, his face filled with uncharacteristic zeal. “The ultimate power. Waiting to be reunited.”

  Robin looked from one pale, eager face to the other.

  “You think there’s something here? A shard of the Arcania? That’s what this has all been about?” he demanded.

  “We do not think,” Strife said. “We know.”

  “We even know where it is hidden,” Moros said, gesturing grandly at the tall winged statue behind him.

  “Then what do you need me for?” Robin said. “Why haven’t you just smashed the statue to pieces and taken your prize yourself?”

  Moros tittered a little. Strife’s face darkened with anger. “No force, no strength, no dark magic can extract the shard. Only the Scion can call to it.”

  Moros clapped his hands. “Sheath your little knife, Master Robin, and come forward.”

  Reluctantly, Robin forced Phorbas’ knife back into his belt, where it lay still. His legs felt heavy as he crossed to the statue, glancing around him at his fallen friends as he walked to the base of the plinth. Moros gripped the fallen Henry possessively by the shoulder as Robin passed him.

  “No tricks now, Scion,” he said. “I’m not sure young Henry here would survive any surprises.”

  Robin climbed the dais and stood before the statue. He wondered distantly what he was supposed to do. He didn’t feel any tingle or vibration of nearby power, no sudden inspiration or revelation. The statue was silent and enigmatic.

  He brushed his hand over her shield, searching for inspiration. The pale alabaster was light and warm to the touch.

  His mind raced. What was he supposed to do? He didn’t understand anything about his so-called powers. Aunt Irene may have said that he had more mana than anyone else she had ever met, but that meant nothing if he couldn’t use it.

  Robin cursed himself inwardly. He had been relying so much on Karya and Woad, dragged along for the ride into the Netherworlde like a clueless tourist. But they couldn’t help him now.

  Robin was utterly alone, here with his enemies. He had never felt more useless.

  His eves roved over the statue. Her blind white eyes offered no clue or comfort. His hand went to his mana stone, hoping for some kind of inspiration, but it lay inert against his chest, nothing more than a pretty lump of stone.

  “Is there a problem?” Mr Moros asked politely from behind him.

  Robin scowled. It was just possible he hated Moros more than he hated Strife.

  “Perhaps the Scion is stalling,” Strife suggested wanly. “Perhaps the Scion needs reminding that the poison currently coursing its way through his little companion’s body is getting stronger by the moment, and that neither she nor he have the luxury of time.”

  “I’m thinking!” Robin snapped.

  “It would be a terrible waste, Master Robin,” Moros said lightly, “were it to be discovered that you were of no further use. Our Lady Eris deplores useless things.”

  Robin ignored them and looked back to the statue, at the carved tousled locks of hair, the pale feathered wings reaching out behind, the tall spear and stone shield with its carving of a stylised bird and the swirling decorations. The swirls looked oddly familiar to Robin. He traced the lines with his fingers. His lips moved silently as his fingers followed the shape. “This is…” he began haltingly, unsure of himself. “I think … this is script.”

  “Nonsense?” Strife snapped. “We have examined every inch of that statue. There is no script.”

  “No. There’s writing around the shield,” Robin said, wondering how he knew that. It certainly wasn’t in English. “All around the Halcyon bird.”

  Come to think of it, how did he know what type of bird it was?

  “What does it say?” Strife asked impatiently. Robin opened his mouth to reply that he didn’t have a clue, but found oddly that that he did. He could read it just fine. He traced around the edge of the shield with a shaking finger, deeply confused and a little unsettled.

  “‘The gift which does not exist until given’,” he said. “‘The giver has no use for it but wishes to give; the receiver cannot keep it but yearns to receive’.”

  “A riddle,” Moros said merrily. “There is a riddle upon the Shrine of Winds, my brother. Why is it that we did not find this?”

  “Because … clearly…” Strife said, speaking each word with great weight, “… we are not the Scion.”

  “What is the answer?” said Moros to Robin eagerly.

  “I don’t bloody well know, do I?” Robin replied angrily. “I can barely understand it. I haven’t got a clue!”

  Moros’ face fell immediately, and he grabbed Henry by the neck, quick as a snake. He shook the boy roughly like a limp rag doll. “Well, perhaps, Master Robin, you should bend your mind toward it wholeheartedly. We are not famed for our patience, after all.”

  “Kill the human boy,” Strife said in a business-like tone. He looked quite bored. He had taken out an old pocket watch and was peering at it with heavy lidded eyes. “We don’t need all three of them after all. It may motivate him.”

  “No!” Robin said desperately as Moros grinned, revealing a mouth full of very white teeth. “I’ll solve it, don’t kill anybody! Just … just give me a minute.” He read the riddle aloud again.

  Silence descended in the shrine. His mind was a total blank. Gran had loved puzzles. She would have solved this in a minute. He could still remember her poring over her puzzle books when he had been young enough to sit on her knee, trying to help with the crosswords and word searches. She had been so good at cryptic clues. Whenever Robin had managed to get something right, she had always been so delighted, and had cackled and given him a smack of a kiss on the forehead.

  Robin’s finger paused tracing the lines.

  “I think … I know the answer,” he said quietly.

  Robin looked up at the statue’s white face. Its unseeing eyes, the line of its delicate nose. Its carefully carved and slightly parted lips.

  “A kiss,” Robin said.

  The statue is hollow, the small voice in his head said. The Statue of Winds.

  “Air unlocks the Shrine of Air,” he said wonderingly, as realisation dawned.

  “What?” Strife snapped, but Robin ignored him.

  “Breath,” he said in response to Strife. He placed his lips against those of the alabaster statue, feeling the same c
alm sensation as when he had played the flute back at Erlking. The same feeling of knowing exactly what he was doing.

  He took a deep breath and, very softly, breathed into the hollow statue, putting all of his mana behind the breath.

  Pure energy pulsed from the statue like a shockwave, the force of it hitting Robin like a fist in the chest, throwing him backwards through the air. He soared over Strife and Moros, landing painfully on his back amongst the rubble.

  Air was roaring deafeningly through the temple, shaking aeons of dust from the high ceiling. Robin’s ears popped. The grim brothers were staring at the statue. Its four wings were aligning with a great crunching of stone. The stone hair writhed and the carved folds on the dress rippled. Robin saw the newly animated woman lower her spear and shield, her head inclined, taking in each member of the gathered assembly. He felt those blank eyes pierce him from across the large room. His hair stood on end. And then, the statue raised its white glowing arms above its head and with a final deafening thrash of its great stone wings, it exploded blindingly, disintegrating into a cloud of dust.

  Robin, Moros and Strife blinked in the aftermath of the roaring explosion. Robin rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands.

  Where the statue had stood only moments ago, there was now a shape, no bigger than an egg, hanging impossibly in mid-air. It looked like a jewel, spinning slowly in place, throwing out light and painting the shadows and walls with rippling rainbow colours. It kept changing shape before his eyes, elongating, then turning, revealing more planes and facets, as though it were continually folding in on itself without getting smaller – a tiny stable supernova. After the roar of the wind, it was utterly silent, and power emanated from the object in humbling waves, which made Robin’s teeth ache. Robin forgot about Mr Moros and Mr Strife. He even forgot about Henry and Karya and Woad. The ever-moving object demanded his full attention.

  “The Shard of Air,” Moros breathed, his voice hushed and reverent.

  Strife, ignoring Moros, took a step forward, his eyes wide and rapt. He pushed his brother roughly aside and approached the dais, reaching out before him.