The Drowned Tomb (The Changeling Series Book 2)

by James Fahy

  Robin span, folding his wings in tight against his body as the landscape whirled giddily, before opening them out again and feeling the warm currents of summer air roll invisibly beneath him.

  This is what magic is for, he thought to himself, as he swooped experimentally, glancing down to see to his surprise that he’d climbed higher than he’d thought. Down on the island, in the broken stone circle of the ruined folly tower, Henry and his tutor stared up at him with upturned faces, their hands shielding their eyes from the sun.

  Robin looked out over the landscape beyond the lake. At the lush green forests and woods, the sloping distant hills and behind them the rising cragged moors, lost in a purple haze. He could see the angular outline of Erlking Hall itself from up here, and wondered, with a moment of pride, how wonderful it would be if Karya and Woad were looking out of a window right now, and just happened to see him, soaring in the air, wings flashing in the sun.

  Robin lurched.

  His mana stone had flickered, and without warning, rather than the hot and burning sensation, it was suddenly a dead and lifeless lump of coal against his chest, as if someone had just turned his power source off. His arms and legs were suddenly heavy, and he flailed, unbalanced in mid-air.

  “Wait … what…” he stuttered in panic, but before he could react, he found himself falling, plummeting out of the sky and back toward the island.

  His mana was gone, utterly spent. His head rushed with the roar of blood and his eyes watered as he spun downwards, giddily out of control.

  The wings he had formed so proudly were dissolving rapidly, become liquid, and he stared in horror as the ground rose up to meet him swiftly. He was going to hit the island. The solid ground. He may as well have jumped to his death from the tallest tower of Erlking.

  The last thing he saw, as he spun out of control, towards the hard and unforgiving ground, was Henry’s horrified look of shock, and Calypso’s slight frown of detached interest.

  Helpless, he braced himself for impact, at the last second drawing what was left of his watery magical wings around him like a rudimentary blanket.

  Robin fell back into the folly. He hit the earth hard … and to his surprise and astonishment, instead of shattering every bone in his body as he collided with the ground, he instead broke straight through it into blackness beneath. The languid voice of his tutor drifted down to him. “Ah, so that’s why one must practice…”

  UNDINE UNDERFLOOR

  “Rob! Are you okay?!”

  Robin coughed, spluttering in the darkness and the dust. The wind had been knocked out of him, but he felt only bruised, not broken…

  “Have any timbers pierced your lungs or other organs, Scion of the Arcania?” Madame Calypso asked lightly, sounding as detached and unconcerned as always. “I can fetch assistance if so, although it will be most inconvenient to stop the lesson.”

  “I’m … fine. I think,” Robin gasped, struggling up to his knees and blinking around.

  He had fallen through the centre of the folly and found he was in a small and damp chamber, filled with tumbles of stones and mossy cobwebs. It might once have been a sub-basement or cellar for the strange and ruined structure above. A cramped dark space that clearly no one had ever realised was here.

  Sunlight fell down through the broken boards above him, filtering in slanted beams and dancing with golden dust.

  “Bloody hell,” Henry’s voice echoed down. “All this water everywhere, the whole lake, and you have to crash land into the only solid part of it. You could have broken your neck. What were you thinking, trying advanced magic like that?”

  “Yes, thank you, mum,” Robin grumbled, rubbing grit and dirt off his hands as he sat up. Everything hurt. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that he had landed on some kind of stone table, a grey, weathered block, smack in the centre of the hidden room. He swung his legs off the side and stood up gingerly. “There’s something down here,” he called up to his friend and tutor, whose heads were both backlit shadows above him as they peered down with interest. His voice was oddly muffled in the gloom.

  The stone was soaked and dripping. Robin’s Waterwings were gone. Clearly, he had landed on them when he hit the table with them wrapped, tightly and protectively around him. The impact had broken the cantrip, but also, rather luckily, cushioned the blow. He ran his hand across the wet stone, sending water spattering away into the darkness. There was something carved into the surface. Lettering of some kind, but it was gibberish stonework to Robin, like ancient Norse runes.

  “Something like…?” Henry prompted as Robin silently took in the stone table, realisation dawning. He pulled his hand back, flinching involuntarily.

  “I think,” he stared. “I think it’s a coffin.”

  Henry had wasted no time in clambering down through the hole and into the chamber after that, still wearing his ridiculous swimming cap. Robin had expected Calypso to protest, in the way that adults often did in treacherous situations such as leaping into hidden and unexpected graves, but she had merely peered down with interest, her head on one side and her long hair trailing into the hole like creepers.

  “What a curious thing,” she said thoughtfully. “Tell me, Scion, what does it say on the sarcophagus?”

  “I can’t read it,” Robin replied, as Henry, dusty and breathless, scrambled the last few feet and appeared at his side in the darkness. “It’s all gibberish.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” his tutor said breezily. “You are the Scion, are you not? What does it say?”

  Robin gave Henry a weary look. “I told you it’s all scratchy Thor-speak,” he called back. “Runes, or whatnot.” He glanced at the illegible stonework again to confirm this.

  It wasn’t illegible. Clearly carved in the wet dark stone were words. Robin slowly read them aloud, disbelieving.

  “Here lies Etrea of the Silver Bough. Trusted guardian among the maidens of The Pale Tree.”

  Henry blinked at him, looking from the stone to Robin. “Are you making that up?”

  “It’s … a minute ago it was all just … just lines,” Robin insisted, staring at the tomb.

  “It’s still all just lines,” Henry insisted, staring at him oddly. “Rob are you having … you know … a moment?”

  “He is the Scion.” Calypso’s voice rolled breezily down, as if the two boys were dim idiots. “The Arcania speaks to him. That is all.”

  Robin was still staring at the words. It was like looking with two sets of eyes at once. His brain knew that what he was seeing was eldritch chicken scratch, but something inside him understood it. The ‘other’ who lived buried in his head like a worm in an apple, the inner self that he had playfully named ‘Puck’, was looking out of his eyes.

  “How curious to find Etrea here, at Erlking of all places,” Calypso said. “I suppose it was the only place she could go. All those who didn’t come with us to Dis fled to the safety of the Fae. Not that it did them much good, in the end.”

  “Traitors?” Robin looked up, shielding his eyes against the sunlight. Looking at the letters had given him a sharp headache. Or maybe that was the crash…

  “This is the grave of an Undine. My people, the nymphs, we served them once. We lived alongside them. They are very ancient. When the war came, most Panthea joined Eris and fought against the Fae, against your kin, Robin. But there were those Panthea who stood against Eris. The Undine, Etrea here included,” his tutor explained. “Rebels who did not believe in the cause of the Empress, who wanted no part in her war. When Eris won, and the Netherworlde was conquered. The Undine fled back to the Pale Tree. A safe and secret haven. It was my home once, home to many nymphs. It had been lost to us now. Hidden from Eris by the powers of the Undine. They retreated from the world. Some of them also came here it seems.”

  “This was someone who stood against Eris like you then,” Henry mused, looking back at the sarcophagus. He removed his swim cap with a snap of elastic. Calypso shook her head casually. “Oh no. I was no tr
aitor to Eris. Like most of the Panthea, I was loyal to her. Nearly all nymphs were. We abandoned the Undine and went to her call. The decimation of the Fae was a necessary evil. To build a better world.” She noticed their silent, horrified stares and returned them with her unconcerned and dreamy expression. “Until recently, of course. I am a traitor to Eris now. I fled.”

  “You fled here, though, to Erlking, not to this ‘Pale Tree’ place?” Henry pressed.

  The woman shook her head a little. “Oh no. They would not have me back there. Even if I could find it, which I cannot. I was a traitor to the traitors you see. No going home. Not now. Not ever. Some of us have burned every bridge we had.”

  For a moment, her façade of Zen detachment seemed to waver, like a ripple in a still pond. She smiled a little sadly, then shook it off. “Where do you go when nowhere is home? What place would take in those with nowhere to turn? When all paths are closed and all doors shut against you. Where can you expect to be taken in?”

  “Erlking.” Robin said quietly in the darkness. He wondered what had changed in Calypso’s life which had turned her against Eris. It wasn’t his place to ask.

  “Erlking,” she repeated, the word falling from the sun into darkness in a whisper.

  Nothing but dust moved in the sunbeams for a moment.

  “So what do we do with this then?” Henry prompted.

  “We have discovered the last resting place of one of the handmaidens of the greatest Undine of all,” she said reverently. “Etrea was a noble and trusted warrior and this is her grave.” She nodded down and them solemnly for a moment. “Crack it open and let’s see what’s inside.”

  Being instructed to desecrate a grave by your teacher was the kind of thing Robin told himself was all part and parcel of life at Erlking. The task could have been difficult for a normal boy, but he’d been training all summer. His water-work might not be up to much yet, but he was a dab hand with wind. His mana stone flashing around his throat like lightening in a thunderhead, Robin cast Featherbreath on the lid of the stone sarcophagus, feeling the weight of it as tendrils of air wrapped around the slab like a fist. He concentrated, and the lid rolled to the side with a loud a grating rumble. Henry jumped back, dodging his bare feet out of the way just in time to avoid them being crushed as the tombstone toppled to the floor with a sonorous thud.

  “Watch it!” he muttered. “I wish you’d warn me when you’re going to use the force like that.”

  Curiously, and a little apprehensively, both boys peered into the dark and musty interior of the grave.

  “How does she look?” Calypso called down, sounding intrigued in a slightly grisly manner.

  They stared at the cobweb-shrouded skeleton which lay within. It was dressed in the tattered grey remains of what may once have been a regal blue robe. The jaw of the skull had fallen away, resting on the ribcage and giving the grisly skeleton a look of shock. It looked like a dead moth’s husk. It also appeared to be made, not from bone, but from dark blue glass.

  “Well,” Robin said after a moment spent taking in the grim spectacle. “I think she’s probably looked better.”

  “At least she’s not gooey,” Henry observed. “If this is what they look like dead, what do Undines look like when they’re alive?” he mused. Then he noticed something. “What’s that?”

  The object he pointed to was a small black cylinder the late Etrea clutched with both glassy hands to her chest. It was carved wood, roughly the length of a breadknife. Faded gold gilt threaded through the ornate tube.

  “That,” Calypso observed with keen eyes from her perch above them at the lip of the gap. “Is something your aunt will very much want to see. This is a most interesting find. Pass it up to me, Scion.”

  Robin reached out.

  “No! Not with your hands.” It was the first time he had heard his tutor speak in anything more than a sleepy sing-song, and her voice made him jump. “If that is what I think it is, it could be warded or booby trapped.” She smiled a little. “We don’t want you losing an arm on your first day in my care. Not that I have any objection. They are your arms to lose after all. But I would hate to give your aunt’s housekeeper any more cleaning to do.”

  Robin withdrew his hand gingerly. He didn’t like the idea of booby traps.

  “Use Featherbreath,” she suggested from above.

  Robin did so, his hands moving in a slow tai-chi gesture in the damp shadows as he teased the cylinder from the skeleton’s grasp. He managed to pry it loose without snapping any of its finger-bones, for which he was deeply relieved

  They watched as it floated up, turning over and over slowly, end on end, as it ascended out of the hidden grave and into the daylight above.

  “What is it then?” Henry wanted to know.

  Calypso had produced a white silk handkerchief from somewhere in the folds of her slinky gown, and she deftly caught the tube with it, wrapping it carefully and avoiding touching it directly with her delicate hands. Her green eyes were glimmering softly.

  “Quite possibly, it is a way to a Shard of the Arcania, a key to open a door which has been lost and hidden for quite some time,” she mused. “Come back to the house. The lesson is over for today.”

  LOST NAMES AND LOCKED BOXES

  Robin hadn’t known what to make of the events at the folly. Discovering a hidden grave, a morbid, alien occupant and lost treasure of some kind, was one thing in itself. His tutor’s apparent disregard for his personal safety and wellbeing, another entirely. Calypso was utterly unlike his former tutor, Phorbas. The jovial goat-man has always seemed to have Robin’s best interests at heart, whereas this strange, ethereal woman had barely raised an eyebrow when her student tumbled from the sky and crashed through the ground. Plus, of course, he was still digesting the revelation that she had only recently defected from Eris’ cause. He wondered if there was a way to find out why that was.

  Sitting alone in his room, idly spinning his silver dagger on its tip on the worn table-top, Robin watched the garnet flash as it glinted in the last rays of the setting sun. He found he often toyed with it when worried or at a loss.

  Robin had been dismissed by Calypso upon their return to the house, all thought of further training, and indeed of him, utterly forgotten as the nymph sought out his aunt, the curious cylinder still grasped in her hand, wrapped in its protective silks.

  Henry had hung around for a while, throwing out some wild theories as to why an Undine from the Netherworlde would be secretly buried at Erlking, the most outlandish of which had involved Aunt Irene being a secret axe murderer and every dark corner of the house containing secreted remains of various Panthea, just waiting to be found.

  Robin hadn’t thought this very likely. Aunt Irene was far too busy to go around murdering people.

  Henry had to go home after a while, puttering down the leafy dappled avenue in his father’s ancient car back to the village. He made Robin promise to keep him updated with any developments.

  Karya and Woad had been nowhere to be found, though he had been desperate to tell them of their discovery. Both the girl and faun came and went as they pleased at Erlking and, denied their company, Robin had been alone with his thoughts for the rest of the stifling afternoon.

  He set the knife down, wondering if he was making the spirit trapped within it dizzy, spinning it so on its tip.

  Phorbas hadn’t been kind and jovial, he had to remind himself, not for the first time. Phorbas had been killed long before Robin had even arrived at Erlking, his spirit trapped in this very knife, and his body, well, who knew how that had been disposed of? The tutor whom he remembered so fondly, and often grieved for, had been one of Eris’ men. Moros of the Grimms, under a very convincing glamour.

  Perhaps, despite his concerns about Calypso’s rather unorthodox teaching methods, he should trust in his aunt’s judgement concerning Calypso’s appointment as tutor. It had to be better than his own judgement after all.

  The door to his bedroom opened suddenly in front
of him. Hestia, Erlking’s sour-faced housekeeper, stood framed at the top of the stone spiral staircase, her eyes narrowed as she scanned the room for signs of mischief. Robin clenched his jaw. Hestia was a pain. The housekeeper never knocked. She considered every nook and cranny of Erlking her own personal domain and responsibility. It was impossible to get any privacy. Considering she stomped, flat-footed up and down the corridors, she could sneak up those stairs as quiet as a mouse when she wanted to.

  Robin suspected she lived in eternal hope of finding him doing something diabolical that she could report to his aunt, like juggling cats with Featherbreath or drawing on the walls.

  Hestia sniffed, glancing for a second at the long silver knife that lay in the red sunlight.

  “You’re wanted,” she said curtly, her nose in the air.

  “What do you mean?” he asked. He knew Hestia hated being a messenger.

  “The lady of the house,” Hestia snapped in explanation. “You’re summoned to the Lion Lounge. And do not think you can go throwing a barrage of questions at old Hestia. I do not ferry your words back and forth, I work for Lady Irene, not for you, boy. The impudence. The cheek of the young, to put upon old Hestia so. It is not to be borne!”

  “I was only asking.”

  “Well, do not only ask,” she snapped, turning away with one last scan of the room, just in case she’d missed something. “Only do. Your aunt wishes to speak with you, and I do not have time to find out why. I must fetch in the washing from the line outside before the rain comes. No one else is going to do it, are they? Oh no. Just another thing I get no thanks for.”

  Robin glanced out of the window. It was still sultry as the last rays of the sun burned in the black treetops over Erlking’s woods. It wasn’t far off sunset, but there was hardly a cloud in the sky.

  “It hasn’t rained for days, Hestia,” he said with a frown, swinging his legs out from under his chair and standing up. He slipped Phorbas back into the drawer where he lived.