Isle of Winds (The Changeling Series Book 1) (11 page)

Robin, though hugely impressed with the authenticity of his costume, found it quite difficult both to eat and to speak with long fangs. To everyone’s amusement he kept biting his bottom lip, so as they eventually moved onto dessert he took off the vampire’s old mana stone, feeling the glamour lift. Henry had been attacking the food with such gusto that his own painted skeleton face was smudged beyond recognition, and he now looked rather un-spookily like a dishevelled panda.

After they had all eaten, Phorbas led everybody outside into the grounds where a large bonfire waiting, its crackling orange flames warming them all on the chilly October night. There were clear skies overhead, dotted with many stars, and they sat around the fire on hewn logs, although a garden chair had been fetched from the conservatory for Aunt Irene.

It was, Robin thought, extremely pleasant sitting by the crackling bonfire under the stars. He had enjoyed a wonderful night. Their stomachs were all straining contentedly from so much food and Phorbas produced a set of pan-pipes. He played a wild and merry tune, which chased the white and orange sparks of the bonfire high into the night.

“This has got to be the best Halloween ever,” Robin said happily to Henry.

“Couldn’t agree more. I’m stuffed,” Henry said happily, stretching the elastic of his waistband away from his stomach. “We never did this before you came here. I never thought your Aunt would go in for something like this. Perhaps it’ll be a new tradition? Do it every year.”

Robin grinned. He sometimes forgot that he would be here for years – that Erlking Hall was his home now. He only wished Gran could be here with them as well.

They sat and talked until their faces were toasty from the flames and their feet frozen from the ground, the bonfire crackling against the cold and the merry babble of Phorbas’ music floating into the clear dark sky.

Hestia had gone inside after an hour or so from the kitchen door. Robin and Henry watched her reappear, making her way across the lawns. She crossed to Aunt Irene, bending to speak low in her ear. Irene rose and followed the housekeeper back to the Hall without a further word to anyone. It was approaching midnight now, and the macabre glamour at last seemed to be fading. The sickly green light in the windows was slowly bleeding back to a warm orange-yellow and the creeping tendrils of mist were almost completely gone.

Robin, momentarily at a loose end, looked around. He was idly scanning the gorse bushes beyond the rose gardens, when from the corner of his eye he glimpsed something moving. A swish of activity beneath the trees. He blinked. No one else had seen anything. Mr Drover and Henry were talking and Phorbas was engrossed in cleaning out the bowl of his pipe.

Robin stared back towards the trees, just in time to see a bush rustle and a small arm frantically waving. It was gone as soon as he saw it.

Robin rose slowly from his log and stepped slowly out of the circle of firelight and off into the shadows of the grounds. Robin made his way across the dark lawns. The ground was hard and almost frozen solid, making it lumpy and uneven, and once or twice he almost stumbled, his night vision ruined after sitting in the glare of the fire for so long.

“Woad?” he hissed as he leaned forward into the trees, squinting to make out anything in the cold darkness.

He listened for a reply, but none was forthcoming. So after a moment’s hesitation, and wishing dearly that he was wearing something warm and woolly instead of a mini-tuxedo, he stepped between the trees, hands out before him in the blackness to ward off eye-poking branches.

“Psst!” came a whisper from the darkness between the trees. Robin squinted into the gloom.

“Stop saying ‘psst!’,” Robin said quite loudly. “Nobody actually says ‘psst’.”

A small shadow detached itself from the deeper darkness, mere inches in front of his face. Robin took a faltering step backwards in surprise, but as he stumbled, losing his balance, an arm shot out of the shadows and small blue fingers caught around his wrist, pulling him upright with surprising strength.

“Jumpy little pterosaur, aren’t you?” a familiar voice piped up, and Robin saw a flash of white teeth beneath the eyes. “Jumpier than a trampoline full of fleas.”

“What are you doing here?” Robin hissed, once he had gotten over the initial surprise.

“Spying,” Woad replied, hunkering down on his haunches and looking sternly over Robin’s shoulder back at the house. “Keeping an eye out. Someone has to watch what goes on around here. You and the other pink one might as well have your eyes closed!”

“The other one?” Robin blinked. “You mean Henry? I haven’t seen you in weeks. Where have you been?”

Woad stood up straight again, sniffing the air suspiciously. “I’m good at not being seen,” he said. “I’m the best. I can not be seen for ages if I want to. No one’s better at it than me. That’s why she’s got me watching your back. And your front and sides, of course,” he added conscientiously.

Robin opened his mouth to question further but Woad held up a hand impatiently. “No time, Pinky,” he snapped. “I’ve come to warn you. I never thought he’d get in the grounds. But that old woman let him in. I could feel him nearby. I’m very clever at that.” He made a face. “He feels like ants.”

“Woad, what are you talking about?”

The faun’s eyes flicked to Robin, and he saw for the first time with some alarm that the small creature looked very worried indeed. “Eris’ man. Aren’t you listening? He’s come to Erlking. I saw him come up the path while you were all at your big fire. I’ve got the sharpest eyes in the Netherworlde. They’re so sharp you could whittle wood with them.”

“Eris’ man?” Robin asked, confused.

Woad nodded. “He had to leave the skrikers at the gates, of course. Even mad as she is, the old woman wouldn’t let them on the grounds. But he’s here all right. I saw him striding up here in his old suit looking like a scarecrow.”

Robin’s heart seemed to pound against his ribs. “You mean Mr Moros? He’s here at Erlking?” A chill had begun to crawl up Robin’s back as he followed the faun back through the trees.

Woad shook his head impatiently. “No, no, no. Not him. No one’s seen him in ages. Don’t you read your letters? Honestly, you’re as dim as a trilobite sometimes. The other one. The dangerous one! Mr Strife. They’re like brothers, I suppose. Only Strife’s nastier. Makes your Moros look like a puppy in a basket of flowers.”

Woad led the way across the dark grass, away from the bonfire, towards the front of the house.

“How can he be here?” Robin asked, as they half loped, half ran in a crouch. “I thought nothing bad could get into this place?”

“There’s nothing stopping him turning up if he wants to. He just can’t do any harm while he’s here.” Woad considered for a second. “Which is probably really going to annoy him. It’s his favourite thing, doing harm.” He vaulted a small sundial, the seat of his trousers barely clearing the gnomon. Robin wisely decided to circumnavigate it instead. “My guess is that he has asked to come and speak to her, and she said yes.”

“Why would she do that?” Robin whispered, stumbling over pot plants in the darkness. His night vision was not as good as Woad’s.

“Rules, rules, rules,” Woad explained in a sing-song voice. “She has to say yes, if he’s only come to talk. It’s only proper. It’s hospitality, isn’t it? Parley and whatnot. She probably wants to know what he’s after anyway. She’s a nosy old bird if you ask me.”

They had reached a ground floor window at the front of the house. Light spilled out onto the frost-glittered grass. Woad stopped so suddenly that Robin almost stumbled over him.

“In here,” Woad said. “I can feel him.”

Robin held his breath and listened. From within the room, he could hear the low murmuring of voices, muffled through the thick, wobbly glass.

“Open the window, so we can hear,” Woad said in a quiet hiss. Robin looked up at the window. It was latched from the inside, and for a moment he blinked at the small blue boy in confusion. Woad rolled his eyes and tapped at the pearly stone which hung at his throat.

Of
course
, Robin realised. He fumbled through the tuxedo shirt for his own mana-stone. He wrapped his fingers around it, reassured by the sudden warmth, and concentrated. Weeks of practise came in handy as he focussed his mana and with featherbreath lifted the latch until the window swung open half an inch. The voices within came out clearly.

“… do not know why you insist on this exile, my lady?” a man was saying. His voice rasped like a cutthroat razor down a leather strap. Where Mr Moros had sounded rather brittle and giddy, his brother Mr Strife sounded much more grim.

“I am not your lady, Mr Strife,” Aunt Irene replied. Robin had never heard her sound so unfriendly. “And my presence here in the mortal realm is not of your concern, I am sure.”

“The ruined palace of a defeated people,” Strife interrupted rudely.

“Hardly a defeated people, as I hear,” Aunt Irene replied. “And as for exile, you know as well as I that there is no place for me in the Netherworlde while your mistress rules. We can no more coexist there than oil and water can mix.”

“Be reasonable,” Strife said. “There can never be an end to our war without your help.”

“Is this why you have come here? To beg me in your mistress’ name to return to the fold? Surely even such a simple creature as yourself can understand, there can never be peace where chaos reigns.”

“It is a shame,” he said in a low voice. “My Lady Eris is not without mercy. She wishes it to be known that she is offering forgiveness and pardon to all panthea who renounce this mindless warmongering, recant their sins and swear fealty to their own people, to her.”

“How convenient,” Irene replied. “And I suppose the fact that Erlking would then fall under her control would have nothing to do with this offer?” She scoffed humourlessly. “Lady Eris is, as we both know, utterly without mercy. It is a concept as beyond her as are the pleas of a ship to the ears of the tempest which beats it against the rocks. Do not insult my intelligence. I agreed to your request for an audience, did I not? If this is all you have to say I shall replace the wards at once and—”

“Without mercy?” Mr Strife interjected angrily. “You say this, though you know full well that the very captain of the peacekeepers was once—”

“I have no time for your history lessons,” Irene snapped, furiously angry.

“We shall not speak of him then…” he said toadily.

“Is this all you came for?” she asked. “I rather think not. Do not insult my hospitality, Mr Strife. We both know you are really here about the boy.”

“It is true … he is the Scion,” Strife hissed, and his eager tone made Robin feel queasy. “A valuable tool to any who know how to wield it. The seers in the sacred grove have lately whispered of his coming.”

“He is not a ‘tool’. He is a boy, and I am well aware of his potential. It is lucky we got him here to safety before you got your claws into him. You and your skrikers are not the hunters you once were, perhaps? Or is it more than you are merely losing your edge? Some kind of problem with one of the seers, I understand, was involved in your … sloppy timing?”

Strife hissed furiously. “Everywhere we are betrayed by our own kind, yes. The oracle spoke in the wind, and the seers, as always, heard the future. But one of the Seven has … uprooted.” he spat the word out like poison.

“You have lost part of your prophecy?” Irene mused. “How frustrating for you, when you cannot even trust your own soothsayers. Unprecedented, I believe.”

“It will be dealt with,” Strife said, his voice dangerous. “It matters not. We found the boy at last. We know you are holding him here, keeping him from his destiny!”

“Keeping him safe you mean,” Irene corrected. “Until he can defend himself against you and your mistress. What you want him to do…”

“
Debetis
velle
quae
velimus
!” Strife spat. A chair scraped on the floor.

“But I do not,” she replied calmly after a moment. “I wish only for peace, as you know. Not domination. Your dark desires are not mine. They are not even your own. You have no desires other than those of your mistress. You are nothing but echoes of her mind.”

“So,” Strife glowered. “You will not release this boy, this faechild, this traitor to the realm?”

“No sooner than I would throw a fox to a pack of wild hounds, no,” she replied levelly.

Strife hissed at her like an angry snake. “If he is truly the Scion, if the seers speak true, you know what he is capable of, what he can do. The source can yet be reunited!”

“
Hoc
fonte
derivata
clades
in
patriam
populumque
fluxit
,” she whispered quietly. “Perhaps it is best that what is lost remains lost.”

“You are not worthy to use the high tongue any longer, my lady,” he snarled. “Exile that you have chosen to become. Conspirator of the fae. Traitor to the panthea. You hold the Netherworlde’s only hope from his true purpose. With the source reunited, the Netherworlde could be reconciled with the mortal world.”

“Or torn utterly from it,” Irene replied. “You have had a wasted journey, Mr Strife. And you have outstayed your welcome.”