by James Fahy
She raised her arms slowly, as though conducting an invisible orchestra. Her wings fluttered out around her, scattering the fog and causing the diffused light to break apart everywhere into rainbows.
The rush of meltwater increased around the circular inner wall, and as the water ran down, intensified in force, the pedestal on which they stood rose slowly into the air, supported on a thick column of water.
They rose, ascending on this frost elevator, careful to keep their footing. Leaving the ground far behind and pushing upwards through the cold and beautiful mist above.
Upwards they travelled, the mana of the Undine powering their circle of ice and stone onwards, to heights so dizzying that Robin was glad the mists were now all around them, and he could no longer see the ever-increasing drop below.
Rows and rows of Undine covering the walls passed them as they moved. Their silent, sleeping faces ghostlike and still.
“You keep strange company, Scion of the Arcania,” she observed as they moved through the mists. “A faun, a Fae without horns or mana.” She glimpsed curiously at Henry for a moment. “I am not sure what this one is,” she admitted.
“He’s a human,” Robin explained.
“How exotic,” the Undine replied thoughtfully. She looked to Karya. “And you,” she added softly, with an air of wonder. “I never thought I would see your kind again in the Netherworlde. Though you are different. You are … less than once you were.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” the girl replied. She was hugging her coat around her. The mist, though beautiful, was drenching them all as they soared upwards.
“As you will, one of seven,” the Undine said graciously. “Tell me, your sisters. They are living?”
“I have no idea,” Karya said quietly after a moment’s pause. “There’s just me.”
“You are not as old as once you were,” the Undine said. “Do you recall?”
Karya’s golden eyes were almost lost in the fog. For a while she did not reply. They moved silently upwards into the heights of the great tree. “Hardly ever,” she muttered eventually, half to herself.
As they finally reached the top of the great hollow tree, their rising pedestal broke through the misty spray of fog, delivering them into a vast open space, the branches of Hiernarbos. The canopy above them was a sparking silver sky, as wide and domed as an immense planisphere. The sunlight filtered down through the foliage in countless golden beams, reflecting off the lacework of branches that spread out from the main bough all around, wide walkways of clear, prismed glassy ice. The air up here danced with light, and the music of the leaves was waves crashing endlessly on an unseen shore. It was the most breathtaking and peaceful place Robin had ever been.
They stepped from the dais onto the boughs of the tree, immense corridors of frozen and alarmingly translucent ice. The vast latticework of the tree surrounded them, a glittering maze. The dais descended back into the fog as the Undine led them along one of the walkways.
“This place,” Jackalope said under his breath, mainly to himself. “It’s a treasure in itself.”
“And to think,” Henry observed. “You spent years hiding in a cave full of mushrooms, living the cliché. A fairy under a toadstool. And you could have been hiding here, with Flue, in a magical fairyland.”
The tall, silver-haired boy gave Henry a stern frown. Robin smiled to himself. He was beginning to wonder if the surly, hornless Fae knew how to make any expression other than a grumpy smoulder. Clearly, he had spent a lot of time alone.
“There are more treasures in the world than jewels and gold,” Karya agreed as they walked along, reaching up to run her hands along the underside of the foliage. It tinkled musically under her touch, like wind chimes, rippling and shining.
“Beauty will not fill a starving stomach,” the Fae said in retort. “I have gone days without food before now. Until you know real hunger, and real cold, keep your opinions about what is important to yourself.”
Karya glanced back at him. “It’s not just your stomach that starved in the wild then,” she observed. “You’ve been without company too long, Jackalope. You’ve forgotten how to speak to people.”
Jackalope stared back at her, challengingly, though to his slight credit, Robin thought he looked a little embarrassed. “I’m still not convinced you are people,” he said.
“Look,” Robin said to him. “You saved our lives out in the snow. And you said you wanted to come here with us, so stop acting like we dragged you along. I thought you were rid of us when we got here anyway? You’re under no obligation to stay you know.”
“Yeah,” Henry added grumpily. “Go play in the fog with the other stone-faced statues if you want.”
Karya glared sternly at both Robin and Henry, looking irritated at their needling. “He has spent enough time alone already, don’t you think?” she said. “No one is going off anywhere on their own.”
“I’ll go where I wish, when I wish,” Jackalope said. “But I’m sticking with you until I get my treasure.” The sun sent dappled shadows over his dour face as they followed the Undine through the maze of branches. “Real treasure, that is. Things I can trade in the villages for food and tools.”
They passed through an archway formed by crisscrossing branches into a hollow, an area where the boughs made a natural nest. The latticework interlocked, creating a wide, flat-ish bowl, the walls rearing up, vast, encircling and, Robin noticed with a queasy feeling, just as transparent as the branches. Below their feet, the world dropped away, down to the island and the lake far beneath them.
From this height, they could see the whole landscape, laid out before them. The lake, the far shore where they had entered, the soaring cliffs all around, threaded with waterfalls and hazy blossom, and the gap filled with the colossal barrier of water, silent from this distance.
“They are breaking through,” the Undine said quietly. She looked composed, but an air of quiet sorrow surrounded her. “I am holding the waters, but they are strong. They chip away endlessly with dark magic, like ants in my mind. I feel them now. They are relentless.”
Robin was impressed by this creature, that she could form such a barrier, such scope and strength, from such a distance, and at the same time talk to them. She must be very powerful. But her power was not like Strigoi’s, which had scorched his face. It was a gentler warmth.
“Is there nothing we can do to stop them?” he said. “There must be something.”
She shook her naked head, its glassy surface shining. “Eris is determined,” she said. “She has sent many. Very many. There are three Grimms beyond my waters. One, perhaps I could manage. But three? There are none who could stand.” She held her glossy arm out, towards the water, as though feeling for something from afar.
“And another is with them. Something more powerful than I have ever felt. I recognise the presence.” Her voice became thoughtful, and a little sad, Robin thought. “Though I have not felt it in an age, and it has altered much. Terribly much.”
“Eris’s Wolf himself has come to oversee the taking of the Shard,” Karya confirmed. “We saw him outside Worrywort, the village not twenty leagues from these mountains. He is the darkest of all her shadows.”
“He is powerful,” Robin admitted, grudgingly. He looked to the Undine. “He seemed to use a magic I’ve never seen before.”
The Undine looked down at him enquiringly, her milky eyes thoughtful.
“It wasn’t water or fire or air,” Robin said. “Something else. He dragged me from the cage I was being kept in by sheer will alone. That’s what it felt like anyway. Like he could move things with his mind or something.”
“It is the most advanced and difficult of all the Towers of the Arcania,” Flue explained. “The Tower of Spirit. The force of the mind and soul, of will itself. I cannot hold the barrier much longer against them all. There is time to rest, and for me to heal you all. You are so weary. And then you must leave this place. Before they come.”
“Leave?
As if,” Woad scoffed. “We’re not the running away types, us. Do you have any idea how much we went through to find this place? We’ve been drowned, buried under cities, kidnapped and captured, nearly died to death in the snow. No chance. We’re not leaving you to face that army out there of horsemen and shadow puppets on your own.”
“Plus, of course,” Karya noted, with a serious tone. “We came here for a reason. To see the tomb.”
The silver leaves rustled musically above them.
“The tomb?” the Undine looked puzzled.
“The tomb of the Undine, Tritea,” Robin explained. “She was a guardian of a Shard of the Arcania, right? My tutor, Calypso told us that she died, after the war started. We’ve come for the Shard.”
“As have the dark ones,” the Undine observed.
“We want it to keep it from them,” Robin assured her. “To keep it safe. It’s not safe here anymore.”
She stared at him for a long time in silence, her undulating gossamer wings of clear skirts billowing at her back.
“And you believe it would be safer with you, Scion?” she asked eventually.
Robin nodded without hesitation. “At Erlking, yes.”
The Undine looked to Karya. “And you, seeker. Your eyes are lost in time. Tell me, what have you seen in the future of the Scion. Have you seen safety, as he says?”
Robin stared at Karya, confused by her expression, she was looking at him with a strange mixture of caution and worry. It flitted across her face and was gone, hidden as always under her businesslike demeanour.
“What I see is my business,” she said. “And what I see doesn’t always make sense, out of context.”
“That does not answer my question,” the Undine said.
The girl stared at the keeper of the pale tree. “I trust the Scion.” She glanced at him. “I trust Robin Fellows. His heart is true. Erlking is safer than here.”
“Many a heart used to be true,” the Undine countered, looking back out across the watery valley. “It does not take much to sway the course of a river. Especially amongst the Fae. Their hearts so easily fall into darkness.” She glanced over at Jackalope, who was standing a little way back with Henry and Woad.
“Although with some, they leap, and others are sadly … pushed,” she said.
Jackalope did not meet her eyes. Scowling, he turned away to examine the silvery leaves.
“If there is not much time,” Robin said. “Can we see the tomb? Can we see the Shard? Please?”
“The way to the Shard will never open in daylight hours,” the Undine explained. “Water is ruled by the moon. The tides and the night are where we are strongest.”
“We don’t have time to wait for night,” Henry said, practically hopping. “Unless we want to be battling off centaurs and Peacekeepers. It’s all well and good swanning around in shiny trees, but time is kind of an issue, right? Just take us to where Tritea is buried and we’ll get the Shard, job done.”
“Tritea is not here,” the Undine said.
They all gaped at her. Wind whispered through the clear branches peacefully.
“She … she has to be,” Robin said. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“The Lady Tritea was a woman in love,” the Undine said. “She rests at Hiernarbos, yes. But not here.”
“That…” Henry actually pointed at her, “ … makes no sense whatsoever. You do realise it makes no sense whatsoever right?”
Woad nodded in eager agreement. “Everyone and their smoky devil dog is trying to find this place, to get into shiny water-lady land looking for a Shard, and it’s ‘not-here-but-it-is’?” he whispered to Henry, not remotely quietly. “I think she’s been on her own a bit too long this one. She’s gone a bit ‘Jackaloopy’, if you know what I mean.”
Jackalope and the Undine both stared at the faun.
“The sun is setting,” the Undine said. “Rest for now here, all of you, there is power and peace at Hiernarbos. It will heal your wounds, and balm your aches.” She looked to Robin. “But you, Scion of the Arcania. I would speak with you alone. I have something you will need.”
Given no real choice in the matter, Henry, Woad, Karya and Jackalope made a rough camp in the great branches of the trees, peering out worriedly at the peaceful dreamy valley as the sun lowered in the sky.
Robin followed their strange host away, deeper into the twisted boughs, until after a time they came to a secluded twist in the glassy trees, where the silvery curtains of leaves fell all about them.
The Undine turned to face him in this enclosed and private space.
“You are a strange creature,” she said, not unkindly. “You have a foot in both worlds, and yet you belong fully in neither. Such is the fate of a changeling, I suppose.”
Robin didn’t know what to say to this. It was odd being called a strange creature by this beautiful alien being, with translucent skin beneath which light rippled and unfathomable oversized eyes.
“But you remind me of him. Of your father. You have the same jaw, the same cheekbones, and most tellingly, the same fire behind your eyes. Tamped down, by years in the human world no doubt, but it is still there. Like glowing embers, waiting to be rekindled.”
Robin smiled despite himself. “You knew my father well?”
She nodded. “I was chief handmaiden to the Lady Tritea. Long before the war. She moved in the circles of your Fae court. As such, I knew all of Oberon’s Fae Guard, the Sidhe-Nobilitas. Your father was a brave and striking man, Robin Fellows. You are very like him in so many ways. I see his strength in you, his values.”
“I … I never knew him,” he said haltingly. “Or my mother.”
“War takes everything from us,” she nodded in agreement. “It is a bleach which washes away family and life, leaving little to cling to. But we find the finger holds we can, do we not? Your friends. You value them more than they know. I see this in your eyes. I hear it in every beat of your heart. We all of us long to belong.”
She crossed to the screen of leaves and brushed a portion aside. Behind, nestled in amongst the branches and twigs were bottles and books.
“Take caution however, in the company you keep, Robin Fellows,” she said, selecting a dark bottle with a rounded base and long neck. “It is not only the legions of Lady Eris who wear masks.”
Robin frowned. “You’re talking about Karya?”
The Undine turned, the bottle clasped in her hands, and shook her head gently. “No. I speak of the other Fae. The disfigured one.” She held a hand up to the side of her head by way of explanation. Jackalope and his missing horns. “He has trouble in his heart, and blood on his hands.” She frowned deeply. “Such dark blood. It stains his soul. I feel it pour from him in a keening wail. He carries such pain with him.”
Robin didn’t know what to make of this.
“He has seen and done terrible things, that one. And they haunt him. He must take care.” She handed Robin the bottle. “It is so easy to fall into darkness, and you must take care of him. No one else will. There are few free Fae in the world since Eris came into her throne. Those who remain at large must look out for one another.”
“What do you mean, blood on his hands?” Robin wanted to know, examining the bottle. It seemed to be filled with a dark and brackish liquid.
“That is his tale to tell, not mine,” she said.
“What is this?” he asked, looking at the bottle.
“Black kraken bile,” she told him. “I smell it on you already. You have tasted the kraken, yes? To become more one with the water.”
Robin blinked in surprise. “Well, yes actually, when I first started learning the Tower of Water. I couldn’t swim, you see, and my friend said if I took some—”
“You did not take enough,” she interjected. “Taking enough of the essence of the kraken will allow you not only to navigate the water, but to merge with it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Drink these contents, and you will be able to become one with the wa
ter. You will need this, where you are going.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Robin insisted. “It’s like Woad said. If Ker’s troops are coming through that wall, we’re not going to leave you and the rest of the Undine defenceless.” He didn’t know what exactly he could do, other than be slaughtered in a show of winning solidarity, but it didn’t feel right, escaping the coming wave of invasion. His blood ran a little cold at the thought of encountering Strigoi once more however. It had been bad enough in the snowy, bleak camp of his enemies. But at least that had felt a fitting setting for his dark and powerful presence. Meeting the Wolf of Eris here, in the sun dappled and verdant lake of the valley of Hiernarbos, surrounded by beauty and peace, would somehow be more nightmarish. He couldn’t help but picture Eris’ chosen one, stalking through the lush grass, jagged sword in hand, numberless Peacekeepers at his back.
“You are brave to offer to stay, Robin Fellows, but we are not entirely without defences here,” Flue told him, with a small smile. “The tree closes fast. And the ice of its bark is harder than permafrost. The Undine can make this into a bastion if needed. I will protect my sleeping brothers and sisters until you find what you are looking for. It is my duty, not yours.” She noticed his worried face and smiled. “You cannot save everyone yourself, Son of Wolfsbane. Yours is, I think, another path. Now drink. Before the moon rises.”
The sun had indeed grown low in the sky, and the shadows in the valley beyond their screen of leaves were growing longer. The beautiful valley was painting itself in the orange blazes of sunset, and the surface of the lake began to shimmer like fire.
Robin uncorked the bottle, trying not to wrinkle his nose at the brackish smell. Steeling himself as bravely as he could, he swigged deeply from the bottle.
“What are you doing?” a voice said behind them.
Henry pushed through the leaves, swishing the silver curtain aside. “We’re all wondering what happens now. It’s getting dark out there.” He looked at Robin suspiciously. “What are you drinking?”