by James Fahy
“A curious being,” Calypso observed, watching the girl go. She looked to Robin. “Scion of the Arcania, tell me, what are your intentions? There is no time to summon back your aunt from the city, this London to which she has travelled. Not if the Grimms have already located the doorway leading to the valley of my old homeland. Time is of the essence.”
Robin looked back at her. He hadn’t really planned anything. He was still a little shaken about almost being drowned an hour ago. But she was right. If the Grimms knew where the Janus station was that would deliver them to Hiernarbos, they had to act, and quickly. There wasn’t time to waste. Not when a Shard of the Arcania was at stake. “I … well, I suppose we have to stop them, somehow.”
“Your bravery and your foolishness are both indicative of your Fae blood, Scion,” the nymph replied, delivering this as though it were a compliment. “You will need your tutor by your side.”
Robin nodded. “I’d feel better knowing you were with us, of course,” he said gratefully. Calypso blinked, straightening up. “Oh no,” she said absently. “I didn’t mean me, goodness no. I cannot go back to the white tree.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “And I wouldn’t even if I could, I don’t think. It might be dangerous.”
Henry gave the woman a hard look and a rather judgemental shake of the head.
“My job here is to arm you against danger, Scion, not to throw myself between you and it,” Calypso explained. “I meant your other tutor.”
Robin was confused.
“Your knife, Phorbas,” she prompted.
“I’ll get him!” Woad volunteered, scampering out of the room, presumably to Robin’s bedroom to collect the weapon.
Presently, both Woad and Karya returned. The faun reverently carrying the blade, careful not to touch the mana stone pommel, and Karya holding a large, leather-bound book.
“You’ve been to the library?” Henry asked incredulously as she slammed the book down on the table by the scroll. The book looked familiar to Robin.
“I was verifying something with Wally, if you must know,” she replied curtly.
“Wally?”
“The black Knight of Walpurgis,” Robin explained to Henry.
“You mean that mental stag-headed suit of armour who guards the library?” Henry asked. “You two are quite pally these days. You’re always hanging around with that haunted old empty tuna can.”
“Well,” she replied breezily, flipping through the pages. “Between you and that haunted old tuna can, you know enough to solve this riddle. When you mentioned churches, you see. This masonry mark, the ‘centre of all things’ … It all makes sense.”
“Karya,” Robin said patiently, taking Phorbas from Woad and tucking the blade carefully into the belt loops of his jeans. “Absolutely none of what you’re saying makes sense. That book, is it the one I got from the library weeks ago? The one you thought was useless?”
“The guide to the Sidhe, yes,” she replied, distracted, as she finally found the page. “I’ve been using it for research, there really isn’t much in it. Or I didn’t think so anyway.” She held up a finger. “But … I did read that during the very early years of the war, when Eris’ campaign was gathering steam, the Fae Guard had several secret meeting spots. Safehouses. Most of them not in the Netherworlde since it was far too dangerous, but actually here, in the mortal world. Places they could gather and counsel, safe from Eris’ growing forces. This was before Eris declared all-out war, you understand – before Oberon and Titania went, as it were, poof.”
“Poof,” Woad repeated, spreading his hands out mystically and waggling his fingers.
Karya showed them an illustration on the page. “We know, from tracking the news and their movements, that the Grimms, Ker and Peryl, have been moving from city to city, right?”
They nodded.
“So they have information, clearly, from their own sources, that the lost Janus station is hidden somewhere in a city. This in itself is most unusual. Janus stations are usually somewhere remote, like the one we used on the moors, or the one on the beach in the Netherworlde. It would be hard to hide one in a city, but also clever, as it’s the last place you’d normally expect to find one. It would have to be somewhere hidden, where humans wouldn’t just run into it.”
“That’s the problem, though,” Henry argued. “We don’t know which city, neither did they. And cities are pretty big things you know. Even if we knew which city, how would we ever pin down the station?”
“This tells us which city,” Karya pointed to the glyph on the scroll. “In this book, it is mentioned that one of the secret meeting places here in the mortal realm was in an undercroft, a series of subterranean tunnels running beneath a city, and that the entrance to it was reached through a church.”
“Most cities have churches, Karya,” Robin said doubtfully. “And underground tunnels, probably too.”
The girl nodded impatiently. “Yes, yes, I know! But this symbol appears on a specific church. A church that is, as Calypso translated for us, at the centre of all things.”
She turned the book towards them, pointing to a picture. The illustration showed a good-sized city-centre church, situated in an urban cobbled square. Tall buildings surrounded the old black and white image.
“It’s not Satan’s holy feet,” the girl exclaimed. “That’s a mistranslation. It’s ‘Saint Anne’s holy feet’.” She smirked at Calypso, who was looking down at the old picture with faint interest. “These old dialects can be tricky to translate. This church, St Anne’s, is in Manchester city centre. It is in fact, exactly in the centre – of the whole city. Dead on.”
“It says so in the book?” Henry asked, peering with interest.
Karya nodded. “This symbol you identified, it is a masonry mark as you say. You’re quite right, Henry. But on this particular church, its placement also marks the point in the city where all distances to other cities are measure from.” She snapped the book shut. “So if you wanted to know how far Leeds was from Manchester, or Brighton, or Chipping Norton, you’d measure from this church. From this exact stone in fact, the one with this carving.”
“And we think this is where the Fae used to meet?” Robin asked. “Where the lost Janus station is? Beneath the streets of Manchester in the undercroft.”
He vaguely recognised the church. He had lived in the city, or its poorer suburbs at least, most of his life with Gran. He was fairly sure he’d walked past this countless times with her on shopping trips. His mind whirled with the knowledge.
“Grimms travel fast,” Woad observed. “We have to be quick, or Undine and nymph blood everywhere.”
“Woad’s right,” Robin said. “But how on earth are we going to get to the city? There are only something like three trains a day from Barrowood, and we’re hardly incognito. It would take hours and hours to travel there from out here in the sticks. Barrowood is in the middle of nowhere; it took me forever to get here in the first place.”
“I can tear us there,” Karya declared. “A couple of flips, space and distance. It will take it out of me, and unfortunately, it will also telegraph our movements to anyone watching, and I can assure your Eris is always watching. But I can’t do it from Erlking. There’s no way to with your aunt’s new and upgraded wards.”
“Not from this Erlking,” Calypso observed, thoughtfully. She rolled up the scroll and floated out of the room, beckoning them to follow.
The nymph led them through the house, upstairs and along hallways until the five of them reached the familiar long corridor at the end of which stood the red door.
“That never opens,” Robin said doubtfully. “It’s no way into the Netherworlde. The only time it ever opened was for Aunt Irene, and she’s not here.”
Calypso looked at him thoughtfully, as though to peer through the back of his head. “Are you or are you not the Scion of the Arcania?” she asked softly.
“Well, yes … apparently,” Robin muttered.
The nymph reached out slowly,
her hand hovering above Robin’s chest, almost, but not quite, touching the seraphinite mana stone which hung around his neck. As though she were testing the magnetic field around it.
“You haven’t yet come to terms fully with what, and who, you are, Robin Fellows. Your aunt is steward here, but you? You are Fae. You are Sidhe-Nobilitas Fae, no less. Erlking runs through your blood as surely as you run through its hallways. The light catches your eyes and its windows, and its secrets, light and dark, are yours to discover. More than anyone else’s.”
Robin swallowed. Calypso could be oddly intense at times. As the others watched him, he reached out and tentatively tried the silver door handle. It was cold under his palm. His mana stone seemed to quicken like a heartbeat, and the knife at his hip shuddered slightly. There was a click, and the door to the Netherworlde swung open.
When last Robin had passed through this doorway, it had led to a circular chamber, overgrown with trees and bushes which looked down from a high place in the ruins of Erlking at the rolling landscape of the Netherworlde. This time, beyond the doorframe, a great arched and vaulted corridor of stone stretched away. Cloisters, lined with pillars and shadowy in the darkness, rolling away, long and grand. Robin didn’t know why he was surprised. The door to the Netherworlde may well open onto a different part of Erlking with each try for all he knew.
A cool wind blew out from the other world, ruffling his hair. It was dark in the long ruined tunnel before them. Moonlight fell down through missing stones in the crumbling ceiling in silvery beams, lost amongst the many pillars. On this side of the door, the sun was still baking the floorboards where it fell through windows.
“Wow,” Henry exclaimed. “It opened for you, Robin.”
“For us,” Karya corrected him. “I must go with the Scion. Who else is going to tear to the city?”
Woad nodded. “If you think I’m passing up a chance to go to the Netherworlde, even just to tear across the human world, then you have scrambled eggs for brains. I’m coming too.”
The three children looked at Henry expectantly.
“Well, duh,” he said after a moment. “When do we leave?”
“The Grimms may already be at the church,” Karya said. “Miss Peryl has clearly figured out where to go, and I’m guessing Mr Ker is with her now. We have to hurry.”
“You have to do no such thing!” a shrill voice cried from behind them. They turned as one. Hestia, looking shocked and horrified, had appeared at the turn of the corridor, her hand gripping the bannister rail as though she were likely to faint from horror. “What is the meaning of this madness?” Her eyes were flicking wildly from the children to Calypso, who remained completely composed.
“The Scion and his companions are going on a field trip,” she explained calmly.
“They are going on no such trip!” Hestia’s blustered, advancing down the corridor and looking appalled. “The young master has already almost died once today, and now … now you see fit to allow … no … to practically encourage these children to go chasing shadows in dark places? The mistress would not allow it! The mistress would not wish her charge to leave Erlking. Are you sending them off to their doom?!”
The nymph considered this. “Quite possibly,” she allowed. “But if I am, it is their doom, not yours or mine, house hob. The mistress of the house is not here. We have our parts to play and we all choose our own doom. I am not sending them anywhere. I am merely not preventing them from leaving.”
The housekeeper looked apoplectic to Robin, like a fury incarnate. “Nymphs!” she cried. “Hestia told the mistress, I did. No good will come of bringing a nymph to Erlking. I said it! They stir up the feelings of all like mud in water, until nothing is clear any longer. And all is murk and danger! They do not care for caution, or safety, or common sense! And they think nothing of the care of others.”
“And you do?” Calypso replied softly.
“Hestia does nothing but care!” the short woman spat furiously. “Hestia is care. Care of Erlking, care of Lady Irene’s needs. One of which, however happy or unhappy a task it may be, is the ongoing non-dismemberment or death of her occupants. What kind of a tutor are you, to be so cavalier with your charges?!”
“Only one of those present here is my ‘charge’,” Calypso replied, unfazed. “The others are not my concern, and the Scion is not a helpless, mewling infant. He can make his own choices. There is more at stake here than the safety of young creatures. A Shard of the Arcania hangs in the balance. Eris must not obtain it.” She glanced at the knife hanging from Robin’s belt briefly. “The last tutor, he would have felt the same.”
Hestia sneered, she was almost upon them, advancing down the corridor like an angry black and white bantam. “Oh, must she not? Mustn’t she, she says? Must stop Eris, eh? And yet Hestia does not see the nymph risk her own neck. The nymph stays safe! Safe and sound! How noble it is to risk life, and how easy when it is the life of another! I forbid it. I forbid this! Eris is not my concern!”
For perhaps the first time since meeting the nymph, Robin saw something dark pass across the woman’s face. “Eris is everyone’s concern,” she said, speaking sharply for the first time in his memory. “Everyone’s. You do not know Eris, you foolish woman. You know nothing outside of these walls, protected servant of Irene. You have not seen the things I have seen in Dis. You have not seen the holding camps. You have not seen the hills of bone and fire.” Calypso’s jaw worked silently a moment. “I see nothing but. Every time I close my eyes.” She lowered her voice. Her words had stopped the housekeeper in her tracks. The nymph tilted her head a little, visibly working to regain her serene composure. “Nothing but. Blood and bone. You have not been close to Eris. I have. She is like the sun. Brilliant and scorching, and like the sun she will blind you. She would blind us all and burn us to ash. What I did in the service of the dark Empress, what I saw? Erlking is my only refuge now.”
“These children’s lives,” the housekeeper said tremulously, pointing at Robin and the others. “These horrible, selfish, troublesome children. Their lives are not yours to gamble. If you want to stop seeing blood and bone when you close your eyes, then, Hestia says, you should keep your eyes open.”
“Their lives and choices are their own,” Calypso replied firmly. “There is no time to argue. I will answer to Irene herself for my decisions, not to her maidservant.” The nymph flicked a hand, and the corridor filled with a blizzard of ice crystals and a whoosh of air.
Hestia had been frozen to the spot, dusted with a fine sheen of frost, her face an icy sculpture of shock.
“Bloody hell,” Henry whispered in the silence that followed.
“Is she alright?” Robin asked, finding himself feeling guilty and worried. Hestia was a nightmare, but still, to freeze her like a snowman without even raising an eyebrow with concern. Calypso was cold inside and out.
“She will be fine,” the nymph told him. “It is temporary, and not important. We have no time, Scion, I am afraid. If you are to go, you must go now. Should the Grimms discover Hiernarbos, should Tritea’s Shard fall to Eris, it would be a terrible blow. I will not come. But I will not stop you leaving.”
Robin nodded.
“Remember what you learned from me, Robin Fellows,” she said. “The Waterwings, the whip, the other cantrips. Feel your way, do not be afraid to.” She glanced at his companions. “Your friends are important to you. I betrayed mine, long ago. It is a step you cannot take back. No amount of waves washes that footprint from the sand. Tread carefully, Scion of the Arcania. And please do not lose that knife.” She took his hands in hers, and for a moment, Robin thought she was becoming emotional and saying farewell, but she was simply pressing something into his hands. They looked like two small white pebbles. “When the way is a dam, flow through with these,” she said. “They are Neriedboons. The gift of a nymph. If you need help, and it is something I can grant you, ask with these. But ask only once. The promise of a nymph is something given only once in a life. Do not was
te it.”
The children stepped over the threshold, Robin stealing a glance back at the sunny corridor beyond, and the blueish white figure of Hestia, frozen in perpetual fury.
“And try not to be dismembered by the Grimms,” Calypso added, almost as an afterthought. She closed the door behind them, leaving the young companions standing in the cool moonlit tunnel to another world.
GOING UNDERCROFT
“I can’t believe she froze Hestia!” Robin said, as he followed the others along the great vaulted tunnel of crumbling, black stone and through the ruins of the Netherworlde’s Erlking.
“Ah, she’ll be alright,” Henry replied, unconcerned. “She needed to cool off anyway.” He was peering around at the dark and silent ruins with undisguised wonder.
“It’s temporary,” Karya called back over her shoulder. “Your tutor is an oddball, Scion, but the keeper of the house meant to stop us.”
“Cool off,” Henry repeated hopefully. “Get it?” Everyone ignored him.
Robin wondered if Hestia would have been right to stop them. Irene would probably not be happy that he was diving off in pursuit of the Grimms, armed only with a haunted knife, an old book and some odd stones. But what choice did they have? They couldn’t wait for her to return. The Grimms could have found the Janus station already. If they did, they’d find the sanctuary of the Undine, and then they’d know where Tritea was buried. The Shard would be as good as Eris’. They had no choice. It was a race to this church.
“I still feel bad about it,” Robin said, skipping over tumbled stones and blocks of glossy masonry as Woad scampered ahead in the moonbeams falling through the broken roof. “She’s never going to let us hear the end of this, you know.”
Henry had removed his school tie and put it in his pocket as they walked. He cut a surreal sight, here in another world in his uniform. It occurred to Robin that his friend had never seen the Netherworlde side of Erlking before. In the human world, it was a rambling old house. Here, it had once been a great and splendid fortress, the home of the King and Queen themselves. Now, it was a vast skeletal ruin, jet black stones. Abandoned, silent, and still. Their scuffing footsteps echoed before and after them as they passed between the many pillars.