by James Fahy
“Oh, you think you know so much, do you? You know more about weather and washing and what needs doing to keep this place ticking over, do you? Hasn’t rained for days? You mark my words, boy. And if my washing is ruined because you kept me here talking…” The housekeeper clucked, her eyebrows shooting up into her hairline. “There is a nymph under our roof, child.” She practically spat the word. “A nymph! And where the water folk go, storms and troubles follow. Every time. Storms and troubles. You mark Hestia’s words.”
She left the door open as she shuffled moodily away, still grumbling. Robin hadn’t thought to ask her where on earth the Lion Lounge was. He’d never even heard of it. As he made to follow her, a long deep rumble of thunder rolled across the clear sky outside. He could practically feel Hestia smirking to herself in a self-satisfied way on the spiral staircase.
When he finally found it, it was obvious why the Lion Lounge was so called. It was a small and cosy parlour, its walls hung with deep bruise-hued tapestries upon which countless gold embroidered lions pranced and pounced. Bookcases crammed with hundreds of yellowing scrolls lined the walls, the dark wooden floor was strewn with thick, furry golden pelts. One wall was entirely dominated, from floor to ceiling, by an enormous mantlepiece of black marble. It was taller even that his aunt. Robin could easily had stood upright in the fireplace, and it was giddily carved within an inch of its life into many and varied intertwining feline forms, blended one into another in a mass of frozen, snarling faces. A fire burned in the huge grate and Robin eyed it with sun-weary dejection as he walked into the room. Strangely however, the air was cool and crisp, even as he approached the hearth. The light from the flickering flames made the marble seem to buck and writhe as the shadows danced, tawny orange flashes rippling over the carvings, despite the fact that the rough stone didn’t look particularly reflective. He could have sworn he saw a tail swish.
Aunt Irene, who was standing at the fire deep in thought, turned and regarded him over the top of her half-moon glasses.
“Nephew,” she said in greeting. Over her pale dress, she hugged around her neck a delicate and intricate lace shawl. Her silvery droplet earrings flashed in the reflected glow of the flames. “Please, come in. You have made quite the discovery today. I trust no bones were broken?”
Robin closed the door behind him. Darkness had fallen at last outside and another peal of thunder, far off but long and low, rolled across the landscape beyond, echoing off the hills around Erlking in the dry sky.
“I wasn’t hurt, no. I landed on my cantrip, the Waterwings. They cushioned my fall. Just a few bruises,” Robin said guiltily.
Irene indicated a high wingback chair by the fire and bade him to sit. Like everything else in the lounge, the chair was feline in nature; it stood on carved brass paws, and across its high back was slung a striped, furry throw.
“I was referring not to your bones, but to the remains you discovered,” she said. “It is a terrible thing to have to disturb the dead, though sometimes, sadly, a necessary one. No finger bones were broken in your retrieval of the item your tutor brought to me earlier?”
Robin slunk into the chair sheepishly. “Oh. No. I don’t think so.” He was mildly alarmed for a moment when the deep and cosy throw he’d sunk into began to purr, vibrating across his back. Irene didn’t bat an eye at the noise and, after a moment, he found it was actually quite comforting.
“Well,” she nodded, peering back into the fire. “That is something at least. The last thing anyone wants is a dead Undine’s curse on us all.”
Robin glanced around the room, the countless faces of the golden lions in the wall tapestries peered back at him with embroidered eyes. As the fire popped and hissed, and Irene stoked it, the first soft patters of rain began to fall against the tall leaded windows. The storm which Hestia had balefully predicted had broken it seemed.
“Madame Calypso tells me that your first lesson in the Tower of Water was … instructive,” Irene said, still peering into the fire.
“Well, if you can call a total disaster instructive,” Robin said. His aunt glanced at him with her sharp eyes, tilting her chin down so that she could regard him over the top of her half-moon spectacles. He couldn’t tell from her expression if she was amused or reproachful.
“You were supposed to be learning the basics, as I understand it,” she said lightly. “Forming Orbs, possibly progressing to a very basic Whippersnapper if you showed some aptitude, certainly nothing as advanced as a Needlepoint.” She clucked her tongue. “However, your tutor informs me that you took it upon yourself to attempt Waterwings?”
Robin felt his face burn. “Yeah … total disaster, like I said,” he muttered in a small voice.
Irene eased herself into a chair opposite his. The rain, after its first tentative patters, now began to thrum steadily on the dark windows as the storm grew in force outside. She took her glasses off, letting them rest around her neck on their chain.
“Waterwings is a very advanced cantrip, Robin,” she said. “Whatever were you thinking? I know that since your encounter with the Air Shard, your proficiency in that particular Tower has come on in leaps and bounds, but I hope you understand that this does not make you any kind of genius in the other disciplines.”
Robin didn’t feel particularly like a genius.
“You recall when you began your training in air?” his aunt continued. “It took many lessons before you could perform even the most basic of controlled Featherbreaths. You must take care not to treat the Arcania like a toy. Magic always has a cost. And the Tower of Water is perhaps the most … inconstant.”
“I just wanted to…” Robin wasn’t really sure what he had wanted.
“To show off?” Irene finished for him with a little smile. Robin flushed. “Well, you are a boy after all. It’s in your nature to do so. You had Henry there with you, which I’m not convinced is always a steadying influence. And of course, Calypso cannot help her nature. Nymphs do tend to bring out the chest-beating in the male species, heaven help us all. And they have little common sense as far as you or I would understand the concept.”
“She didn’t tell me not to try it,” Robin said, feeling he should defend his actions, however flimsily.
“Well, no, she wouldn’t have,” Irene nodded. “Nymphs are not truly concerned with the fates of others … on the whole. They are a self-centred people. They are drawn only to the strongest of emotions. Love, grief, hate. It is probably why so many of them fell to Eris’ cause in the war, drawn by her passion. I’m fairly certain, if you had asked your tutor whether you should run with scissors, she would have suggested you attempt to cartwheel also.”
She interlaced her fingers in her lap. “You, however, are not a nymph; you are the Scion of the Arcania, and, more than practical casting, combat training or mana-management, much more importantly, you must cultivate the skill of common sense.”
Robin nodded contritely, staring at the golden rugs as his yellow hair fell into his eyes.
“Now, don’t look so grim,” Irene insisted, her clipped tones softening a little. “Your tutor may be a little … unconventional as authority figures go, but I stand by her appointment. I hired her after all. She will teach you what you need to know. And it could be worse. Nymphs can be careless with the lives of men, but at least she isn’t a siren. Those creatures are malicious.”
Robin had always thought of nymphs and sirens as the same thing. “Was it a siren we found today?” Robin asked, referring to the grave and their grisly discovery.
“Fates, no!” Irene sniffed. “Sirens are base creatures. Wickedly clever, but mostly just wicked. They live in the dark places, and they are always hungry. What you found today is an Undine. A type of Panthea you have not yet met. Distantly related to nymphs like your tutor, but only in the way that lions…” She glanced at the flickering carved fireplace. “ … Are related to fluffy housecats.”
Robin was intrigued as she continued. “Undine are fierce and powerful beings. Wiser and
more knowledgeable than you could imagine, and masters, true masters, of the Tower of Water. Beautiful to a one. They would make your rather glamorous tutor look like a dull dishrag in comparison, although she at least could pass for human in a pinch. Undine could not. They are a much older race.”
She indicated a tea-table by her chair. “Whether through accident or design of the fates, you discovered the last resting place of one of these elder-beings today. Right here under our noses. More importantly though, Robin, you discovered this.”
The cylinder of dark wood lay on the table top. The odd tube they had found the dead Undine holding so tightly. Irene reached out and picked it up, turning it over in her hands.
“It is quite safe,” she assured him. “Calypso feared it may be cursed, or protected, but it was merely … hidden. Whoever placed it there clearly thought that Erlking was protection enough.”
She passed it to him. It was surprisingly light. Clearly hollow.
“What is it?” he asked, turning it over in his hands. It was intricately carved with stylised waves, and what looked like swirling lettering worked into the design.
“It is a scroll case,” his aunt replied quietly. He was aware that she was watching him carefully, studying him. She frowned a little. “I have not been able to open it,” she admitted. “I believe there is a trick to it, most likely it is enchanted and there may be a clue in the casing.”
Robin traced the odd lettering with his fingertips. The rain outside was heavier now, and although the flickering firelight made the room feel snug and safe, a tingle of goose bumps ran up his arms nonetheless. There was a brief, silent flash of lightning in the sky, far off on the moors.
“Can you read it, Robin?” his aunt asked him, leaning forward in her chair with interest.
Robin shook his head. “I don’t think so, but…”
“Your mana stone,” she suggested. “You found this artefact. Perhaps only you were meant to.”
He glanced up at her. His aunt looked very solemn and serious. Robin rolled the cylinder in his hands.
“It’s important, isn’t it?” he understood.
She nodded. “Yes, I believe so. Extremely important, if it is what I think it may be. I will tell you what I know, my nephew. Erlking herself may well be full of secrets, but I endeavour to keep as few from you as possible.” She raised a finger. “But first, show me what you can see.”
Robin, holding the cylinder in one hand, slipped his other down the neck of his t-shirt and pulled out his mana stone on its leather cord. The seraphinite stone felt hot in his hand, flickering softly and silently like the intermittent lightning outside. He concentrated, trying to focus his mana, willing the carved shapes and decorative squiggles to resolve into legibility as the runes at the grave had done.
As he peered at the casing, a peal of thunder came, louder and rolling over Erlking’s hill. In the sudden flash of lightening which followed it, Robin felt his mana stone pulse, almost burning his fingers. The lightning seemed not just outside, but also within his head, a mixture of air and rain, shot with white fire. He was blinded for a second in the flash of it, and although, when the instant passed, the wooden tube still held unknown carvings, in the after image burned into his retinas, he saw a ghost of the shape, and clear writing in the hovering image.
Quickly, before the image could fade, he spoke, reading the words out loud for his aunt:
“Tritea’s Tomb, the frozen gates, opens after triple states.” His voice was a little shaky.
Thunder grumbled again outside, and Robin sat back in the chair, his hand shaking a little.
Irene reached out and gently took the cylinder from him. He blinked up at her. Still gripping his mana stone, which was already cooling and no longer felt alive in his hand.
She repeated the words softly, with a tiny frown.
“Well done,” she said to him, after a moment. “How did you…” She glanced up, clearly noticing how ashen her nephew had become. He felt drained suddenly. “Never mind,” she finished. “‘How’ is not always the important question, Robin. I have to say, though, I am most impressed.”
“What, what does it mean?” he asked. “Those words I saw?”
“What does it mean? Why, it’s a riddle, naturally.” She set the wooden tube back down on the table, as though it were of no further consequence for now. “The answer to the riddle will open the case, clearly. It will break the sealing enchantment. And no, before you ask, as I can see the question already forming on your lips, I have no idea what the answer is. It is something we must muse on.”
It had been a very strange day altogether.
“Aunt Irene,” Robin asked, tucking his mana stone away again. “What’s going on?”
The old woman sighed, sitting back in her chair and folding her hands in her lap. “I will tell you,” she said. “Of course I will. Perhaps I should have told you sooner, but you have been without a tutor for guidance and since your returned in January, I wished to give you a little time to rest, to be a normal boy for a while, whatever one of those is.”
Irene drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair, making the plush throw which covered the arms bristle and hiss softly. “Since your incident at the Air shrine back in December, when you woke the Shard of Air, the other Shards, six in all, one assumes, have…” She searched for the right word. “ … Quickened, I suppose. They want to be found, Robin. They want to be reunited and made whole once more. And in their own way, each of them, wherever they may be, are shining out like beacons. Prizes to be claimed, and powerful ones at that.”
“And the sudden training in the Tower of Water?” he prompted.
“Because Eris, my boy, is not the only one who has spies,” his aunt replied darkly. “I have my sources also, and of late they have revealed to me that Eris and her forces are searching for what may well be the last known resting place of the Shard of Water. I cannot stress enough that it would be disastrous should she succeed.” Irene sniffed a little. “And so I have been doing some detective work of my own. The servants of Eris are convinced that this Shard is held in the home of the Undine, a sacred place known as Hiernarbos. As your tutor has already told you, the Undine were fiercely against Eris in the war she waged. Their leader, the greatest of all the Undine, and master over all her kind, and over all lesser forms like nymphs and sirens, was named Tritea.”
“So Strife is looking for this Undine’s place? He found the Isle of Winds easy enough.”
“Not Mr Strife, no.” Irene shook her head. “At least, not directly I don’t think. He is engaged in the Netherworlde on other dark business as far as I know. Eris has sent other Grimms, and from what I gather, they have yet to pin down the location of Hiernarbos, though they are searching desperately for it. Undine are powerful, and their sanctuary, the last place in the Netherworlde where they are safe, is well hidden and closely guarded. What is important for you to know are the following facts.”
Irene spread her hands. “Tritea, first above all Undine, is dead. This we know for sure. So much else is lost to us from the chaos of the war. Many of the records were destroyed by Eris’ order. But I have managed to piece some information together. It is believed that Tritea, the Great Undine was in the closest counsel of Oberon and Titania, a trusted friend to the Lord and Lady of the Fae before their disappearance. Rumours abound that when the Arcania shattered, and its pieces were scattered, one Shard, the Shard of Water, was entrusted to Tritea herself, and that she protected it for the remainder of her life, short as that was, and took it with her to the grave.”
“But the Undine are Panthea aren’t they?” Robin asked, a little confused. “I know there were plenty of Panthea who were against the war, but do you really think Oberon and Titania would trust an actual Shard to one?”
Irene held up a finger, begging patience. “I have my reasons for believing so,” she said.
“How did this Tritea die?” Robin asked. Talk of the war which had torn apart the Netherworlde was rare at Erlking. Hi
s aunt usually encouraged him to focus on his studies instead. Robin secretly suspected that she avoided talking about it in an attempt to shield him from his own parents’ deaths.
If she was taking him into her confidence this way, it must be important.
“I don’t know how she died,” Irene admitted. “No one does.”
Robin frowned. “So, where is she buried then?”
“I don’t know.” Irene copied his frown with her arched brows. “No one does. You begin to see the pattern we face, my young ward.”
Robin sat back in his chair, thinking. “Well, I suppose it would make sense for her to have been buried at this hidden sanctuary, right? This Hiernarbos place?”
“Possibly,” his aunt conceded. “That is certainly what Eris and her Grimms seem to believe. But as I have said, wherever the sanctuary is, it is well guarded, from Fae as well as Panthea. Hiernarbos, and the valley in which it can be found, if it can be found, is accessible only one way. Through a Janus station.”
Robin had encountered Janus stations before. They were pathways, portals between the human world and the Netherworlde, or sometime between two different Netherworlde points. They were usually, though not exclusively, stone circles of one kind or another.
“There are loads of Janus Stations though, aren’t there?” he asked.
“This is a very specific Janus station,” his aunt said. “A closed line, if you will. One way into the sanctuary of the Undine, and hopefully Tritea’s tomb and the Shard she guarded in life, and one way only.”
Robin nodded. “So this is what the Grimms are searching for? This Janus station? Let me guess, it’s off the grid?”
Irene reached over and patted his knee once. “Bright boy. Yes. Much like Erlking’s own Janus station, this particular pathway between the human world and the Netherworlde is not linked to the greater network. A private network, as it were, arranged, as Erlking was, by Oberon and Titania themselves. A great boon to offer such safety to any Panthea opposing Eris in times of war. Tritea would have been honoured to have her sanctuary and her kin protected so.”