The Drowned Tomb (The Changeling Series Book 2)

by James Fahy

  Karya and Henry were perfectly civil to one another the following day when Henry appeared after school, and Robin, eager to keep the peace, made no further mention of the book about the Fae Guard.

  However busy and preoccupied she may appear, not much that happened under Erlking’s roof escaped Aunt Irene’s notice. She had clearly noticed that he seemed preoccupied with the riddle of the Fae Guard and the mysterious cylinder which she and Karya were working to open.

  Over dinner, between a course of devilled eggs, she lightly suggested that he put the business out of his mind for now. Answers would come when they came, she said. It was no good having every mind in the household fretting about the same things. Not when, as she stated, there was plenty of other, unattended fret to go around, which was in danger of being horribly neglected.

  Buttering toast with a silver knife and peering at Robin in rather a firm way, she told him that no matter how impressive his Featherbreath had been at the lake, even he couldn’t turn over every stone in the past at once. Answers have a habit of appearing on their own, and until such time, Robin needed to focus instead on improving his studies.

  Life fell into routine at Erlking for the next few weeks. Sultry July slid eventually into baking August. There was a hosepipe ban all across Britain as newspapers announced with feverish glee that it was the hottest summer on record in the last hundred years. Even at Erlking, a place far removed from the goings-on of the wider world, Mr Drover had stopped the fountains, and almost every window in the vast house was left open day and night, desperate for a cooling breeze.

  Robin, taking both his tutor’s advice and his guardian’s instructions to heart, knuckled down to his lessons with Calypso.

  On Mondays and Wednesdays, they met at the edge of the lake, just beyond the totems that marked the edge of Erlking’s influence. Calypso was teaching him combat and defensive magic during these classes. He soon found he could master Whippersnapper, which drew a thin whip of water from any nearby source, which one could wield as a weapon. This liquid whip was held in the hand but directed, he found, not with your muscles, but with your mana. He almost lost an eye more than once in the process of learning this, a development about which his tutor seemed typically unconcerned.

  He also began to form basic ice spears, like the one she had shown to him on that first day. This was a cantrip Calypso called Needlepoint. Hers were uniformly delicate and deadly, formed in the hand in seconds and thrown with grace and expert precision, several of them able to pierce rather alarmingly through the entire trunk of a lakeside tree.

  Robin, despite his best attempt, could not seem to grasp the shape at first. Drawing and bending his mana, he often found his hands filled either with sorry looking and crumbling slush, or delightfully cute and fluffy batons of compacted snow, which were universally acknowledged as being adorable, but which crumbled in mid-flight.

  “Your problem, Scion…” Calypso said lightly one breezeless afternoon, when Robin was a panting heap standing ankle deep in a hill of grey snow. “ … Is that you are still trying to think your way around the Needlepoint. These are not your practical lessons in the atrium. We are not moving water from cup to cup with emotional focus and freedom. Such things are mindful tasks. They require an artistic song in the heart. Combat casting on the other hand calls for quick wits, quick reflexes and quicker decisions.”

  The nymph had assured him at the end of the previous day’s lesson that he was well below age for the more aggressive spells. They would be starting out slow in the first few weeks of combat, with the basics. But standing here in the baking sunshine, his feet like ice in his own mini-snowdrift, Robin didn’t find this very comforting. His tutor seemed suddenly less like an elegant and serene water-spirit, and much more like a dangerously unhinged sociopath with no regard for personal safety. And she had instructed him this morning that they would be sparring. She would imminently be pelting Robin with dangerous magics.

  “If you are ready,” she said, standing roughly ten paces from him along the shore. Her pale hair toyed around her shoulders, despite the lack of wind. “I think your advancement may come less from repeated drills, and more from instinct.” She curtsied. The gesture was old fashioned and odd. Robin hadn’t been very good at duelling with Phorbas, and he didn’t feel much better about this either.

  “I’m ready … I think,” Robin said, returning a bow self-consciously.

  “Very well,” Calypso smiled distantly. “We shall begin simply. I shall attempt to attack you. And you shall attempt to defend. To begin with, I shall tell you what I am going to cast. In a month’s time, I shall expect you to be proficient enough to anticipate my moves. Is this understood?”

  Robin nodded nervously, trying to remember one of the defensive magics from his fervent last-minute study. To his silent horror, not only could he not remember the slightest inkling of the various counters to Needlepoint which she had told him of during previous lessons, but for some reason he found he had the jingle to some inane children’s nursery rhyme stuck in his head. ‘Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear. One step, two step … bury me under there’.

  “I shall begin with a small Needlepoint attack,” she announced. “Not enough to kill, of course. Just enough to smart. How shall you defend yourself?”

  “I’d duck if it was me,” called Henry with a grin from the safety of the nearby trees. Woad chuckled beside him. The boy and the faun had attended every lesson they could so far, in theory at least to ‘cheer Robin on’ although he secretly thought they just found it entertaining. They were both sitting well out of the line of fire. Henry eating a bag of crisps without a care in the world. Calypso frowned at them, as though she had forgotten they existed.

  Robin tried to remember what she had told him about Needlepoint. It was quick and hard to dodge. These were the basics?

  Calypso noticed his hesitation to answer.

  “I see,” she said. “Well, the best way to learn is to show. Prepare yourself!”

  Before Robin had time to ask how exactly to do that, his tutor turned and flicked her hand at him, as though shooing a fly away. The hot summer air between them chilled swiftly, and Robin was immediately hit solidly by a sharp jab of ice. It felt like a very strong, extremely cold finger slapping against his chest. He made an ungainly ‘oughhhha!’ noise and flew backwards, lifted off his feet, to land some distance back, sprawled on the pebbles of the shore.

  Henry whooped and punched the air, unable to contain himself, but he had the decency to look abashed when Robin glared at him hotly.

  “Hmm,” Calypso said thoughtfully, narrowing her eyes as Robin picked himself up off the ground, rubbing at the front of his T shirt painfully. He brushed ice crystals off it. His chest was numb with cold.

  “Perhaps we need to start off a little slower still,” she mused. “That’s a little disappointing.”

  “Perhaps?!” Robin wheezed, standing shakily, staring wide-eyed across at her. He could feel his cheeks burning with embarrassment.

  “Needlepoint,” the nymph explained, “ … can vary in strength and shape. Had I thrown a larger one at you, it would have felt as though the entire front of your body had been hit with a javelin. As it is, I aimed a rather small Needlepoint at your chest, to test your resistance.”

  “Thanks for that,” Robin huffed. Henry had stopped grinning and was now standing with his arms folded, waiting to see what would happen next.

  “This time,” Calypso said helpfully. “Don’t fall down.”

  Before Robin could argue, she span like a dervish, pale silks billowing and arm outthrust, her hair whipping out behind her. Once more, a slim lightning flash of ice whipped across the shore with a whoosh towards Robin.

  It hit him hard in the right thigh, sending him spinning off balance and tumbling over once again to the ground heavily in a clatter of pebbles.

  “Strike two!” observed Henry, eyebrows raised. “Bad luck!”

  Woad grimaced, peeking through laced fingers.
“Pinky got grazed,” he muttered darkly to himself. “A grazed butt is a shameful wound for a warrior.”

  Robin glared at Calypso as pins and needles coursed through his leg. He had the feeling he was going to be covered with bruises before the morning was out. He had thought his last tutor had gone hard on him, but the nymph seemed positively intent on maiming him.

  “How am I supposed to dodge it if it’s too fast to even see it?” he growled, picking himself up unsteadily. He glowered at Henry and Woad. “And you two can give it a rest as well!” he snapped, burning with embarrassment.

  “One cannot ‘dodge’ a Needlepoint, Scion of the Arcania,” Calypso said mildly. “They move far too fast.”

  “Well then, what am I supposed to do?” Robin snapped, rubbing gritty mud off his hands. The sun was baking the back of his neck, making him feel all hot and bothered.

  “Well, there are various defences,” she replied, rolling a hand in the air speculatively. “It all depends on your proficiency. If you were skilled in the Tower of Earth for example, you could use earth magic and root yourself in the ground as solidly as an oak, but you are not. I am not wholly convinced you are even yet sufficiently trained in air. You must see the attack coming, and split the frozen current, as a rock divides a stream, so that the Needlepoint is shattered and flows around you, not through you. Observe.”

  The nymph held her arms straight before her, palms pressed tightly together, as though she were praying, then she tilted her wrists so her fingertips were pointing towards Robin, then she flung his arms wide, her sleeves fluttering.

  “You see?” she said. “You have to feel your mana focus. Use your stone.”

  Robin repeated the move, feeling a little self-consciously, as though he were doing early morning tai-chi. The lake glittered in the sunlight behind him.

  “How can I see it coming though?” he asked. “It’s too quick. Your ice moves like bullets from a gun.”

  “You are looking with mortal eyes still, a lifetime’s habit. That will never do,” Calypso said breezily. “Humans go around with their eyes half closed all their lives. It’s a wonder they ever get anything done. Your problem, young Fae, is that you still think like a human.”

  “I’ve only got these eyes, though!” Robin said in exasperation.

  “Nonsense,” his tutor argued. “You were born in the Netherworlde, Robin Fellows, and so were those eyes in your head. You may have forgotten how to see, but remember this. Open your eyes, inside and out, and see as a Fae sees.”

  They assumed fighting stances once again. Henry looked eagerly from one to the other. It was odd that of the two combatants poised before the glittering summer lake, the delicate, pale and willowy woman seemed by far the more dangerous.

  Calypso cast another swift Needlepoint. The air between them parted with a whoosh of ice crystals.

  Robin stared, focusing on his mana stone and his heart beating fast against it. He thrust his arms out and opened them wide, determined to stop the spear of ice …

  … and welcomed it instead like a friendly hug.

  Under the full force of it, he cannoned backwards, skittering down the pebbly beach, performing a swift and graceless backwards somersault, and coming to a breathless halt with a tremendous splash in the shallows of the lake.

  Henry peered across at the prone figure lying spluttering in the water, a look of pained sympathy on his face.

  “Three strikes … And you’re out, lad,” he said, wincing to himself. “Should I go get you some … ice?”

  “What went wrong there do you imagine?” Calypso asked conversationally as Robin disentangled his limbs and fought shakily back to his feet, gasping. He was red in the face with frustration and anger. His clothes soaked and his blonde hair plastered to his face. The water was shockingly cold.

  “I don’t know, do I?” he said ferociously. “I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, remember? There are no books on water magic. There’s nothing for me to study.” He spat water out of his mouth angrily. “At least with air magic there was some slim sense to it. This? I can’t even see your attacks.”

  “You can,” Calypso said calmly to the drenched boy.

  “I can’t!” Robin insisted. “I’m trying! Maybe you lot got the wrong changeling, I don’t know, but I am looking!” He was almost shouting.

  “Steady on, Rob,” Henry said. Woad was looking a little concerned. He had taken a step behind Henry.

  Robin knew it was bad form, and that he shouldn’t shout, especially not at his teacher, but he couldn’t help it. The anger was rising in him. Why on earth did everyone expect him to just be such a natural at these things?

  “Don’t look for it,” Calypso snapped, a sudden gleam in her eyes. “See it!” Without warning she dropped into fighting stance again.

  Robin’s anger flared. He was not going to be flattened again. Enough was enough. He hadn’t ever asked for any of this. He was about to open his mouth to shout something to the demented nymph, to make her stop, when suddenly he saw … something … leave his tutor’s hands. It was a spear of ice, white and insubstantial, but clearly visible against the morning light. The javelin of pale glittering light, no thicker or longer than a broom handle, left the woman’s hands and flashed across the pebbles, spinning rapidly towards him.

  Without thinking, feeling nothing but anger that he was going to be knocked down yet again, Robin thrust his arms out in front of him, hands pressed tightly together. The bolt of faceted ice rushed toward him with alarming speed, but he seemed to have all the time in the world to watch it approach. As it neared his outstretched fingertips, he thrust them forward into its oncoming tip, then threw his arms wide.

  An icy shiver of air ran up inside his sleeves, chilling him to his very bones, but he fought it down and the bolt of ice was ripped in half along its length, as though it had been sliced with a sword. The two halves sailed past him on either side, like murky ghost snakes, hissing and dissipating as they passed.

  Everything seemed to have happened in slow motion.

  “I … I did it!” Robin cried, half disbelieving, blinking and wide-eyed.

  The Needlepoint which Calypso had thrown at him had disintegrated harmlessly, exploding around Robin’s fingertips like a silent, icy firework.

  He stared through falling flakes of glittering, rainbow-coloured snow as they tumbled in slow motion around him, a rather beautiful halo of shimmering ice particles suspended in the baking summer’s haze.

  Calypso was looking at Robin thoughtfully, her face, for the first time since he’d met her, almost held a glimmer of approval. “You stopped looking hard and saw hard instead. Good,” she said. “But you had to get angry to do it. Interesting.” She nodded at Robin gracefully, who was grinning despite his aching limbs, euphoric at managing to defend himself.

  “It’s a step in the right direction,” Calypso said. “Finally.” She produced from the iridescent folds of her robes a small green flip-back notebook and scribbled some notes in it. “Primal mana, I see. The body knows at least, even if the mind and heart are untrained. We will have to bring that under control. There’s a lot of mana there, Scion of the Arcania. You need to learn to channel it. To tap it at will, on and off with your mind and your guts.” She snapped her fingers rapidly. “ … Not so chaotic. Mana Management lessons will help with that. I believe you had some of those last year, although you were being drugged at the time by a servant of Eris. Drowsing herbs in the pipe smoke, yes?”

  “I didn’t find Mana Management very useful,” Robin said darkly, remembering.

  She cocked her head, as though to indicate that his opinion counted for very little. “Well, I shall not be drugging you, so we will see how we go instead with a little gentle meditation. Perhaps a head massage to open your emotional centres.”

  Robin was ridiculously grateful that his tutor could not see Henry behind her. The boy was giving Robin an enthusiastic double thumbs-up and waggling his eyebrows in what he clearly thought was a cheeky and sug
gestive manner.

  The nymph put away her notebook and dropped into combat stance again.

  “Now,” she said with a hazy smile on her cupid-bow lips. “You can try to knock me down.”

  Robin cracked his knuckles and grinned.

  GRIMM TIDINGS

  August slid by in a drowsy, bumblebee-filled haze of lessons and training. When he wasn’t at the lakeshore or out on the folly island sparring with Calypso, Robin was up in the atrium, which had recently become his favourite place to spend time. Its position at the very top of the house and its long parade of open windows around the circular wall meant that it was the only place guaranteed a constant, delicious breeze.

  While up here, in these peaceful heights, he managed eventually to wobble clumsy globes of water from one chalice to the next, although the effort of holding his mana steady made his head swim. On one occasion, when he had the bubbling orb delicately suspended in mid-air and threatening to decompose and fall with a splash between the cups, he sneakily cast with his other hand a tiny Galestrike, the jab of air magic shifting the waiting silver cup across the table to beneath the small liquid bubble, which fell into it gratefully. He had thought this quite clever, but it only earned him a raised eyebrow and pursed lips from his tutor.

  Henry was at Erlking constantly, thanks to the school summer holidays, although he was taking extra classes twice a week down in the village to catch up on his appalling maths skills, a turn of events arranged by his father much to the scruffy-haired boy’s horror.

  Robin was glad Henry was at Erlking more, however. His presence was probably the only thing that kept him sane between study and training. It was good to get away from the Towers of the Arcania every now and again, when his mana stone was cold and lifeless from a day of cantrips, or when Robin’s head was swimming from a mana management class where Calypso had instructed him to spend two hours silently meditating on the nature of a dolphin’s cry.

  Sometimes, it was nice just to spend time being a boy, not a magical prophesied saviour.