The Drowned Tomb (The Changeling Series Book 2) (14 page)

Karya shrugged, an odd movement in her large, shaggy coat. “We can keep doing what we are doing. Only quicker and better.” She pointed at him. “You need to get your head around the Tower of Water. Or your guts, or your bladder, or whatever.” She rolled her eyes. It was no secret that Karya was not hugely enamoured with Calypso’s somewhat hazy teaching style. “As for me, I have to get something from this translation. I think it’s the keystone to what your Aunt Irene is after.”

“Well, we are trying,” Robin said. “We’re doing our best.”

The girl pulled her coat around her a little tighter, her mouth set. “Yes, I know. That’s partly what concerns me.” She frowned at him. “Because the Grimms are doing their best too. And their best is better.” She glanced into her room, the peaceful sanctuary of Erlking. In the cosy and cracking candlelight they could see Woad, still crooning to his kraken, and Henry, who appeared to have fallen asleep on the floor with a comic over his face. Karya gazed into her small but precious room. There was sweet pea weaved carefully in twining vines along the headboard of the bed. She’d placed it there herself, though she hadn’t told anyone and the three boys had been wise enough not to comment on it.

“We have so much to lose,” she said quietly.

THE PORTRAITS

A week later and Henry had gone, sent off for an annual two-week holiday with a distant aunt down in Dorset. He had tentatively asked if Robin might be allowed to come as well, but both his father and Robin’s aunt had insisted that Erlking was the only safe place for Robin at present.

Robin had felt it slightly unfair that he was possibly the only person in the country who didn’t get a break from studies, but given that innocent strangers were occasionally being killed by a shadowy and sinister organisation who wanted nothing more than to get their hands on him, he could hardly argue with their logic. He stoically sent Henry off with best wishes, and strict instructions to bring back treats.

Woad and Karya remained at Erlking, of course, but it wasn’t the same without Henry. Between his lessons, where he was making painfully slow progress, he found himself wandering around a lot on his own, taking the opportunity to explore Erlking.

If there was one thing he had learned living here, it was that there was always something new to be discovered. Especially when fleeing the attentions of an enraged housekeeper. Woad had temporarily lost sight of Inky this afternoon, and it had taken the two boys a solid hour of following black spattered trails through the house before they finally located him nestled quivering inside a trophy in a silverware cabinet. Hestia had discovered the stains and mess and was on the warpath, so Woad had made himself scarce, disappearing into the woods, kraken in hand, to his secret pool or wherever he went all day. Leaving Robin to turn his attention to the upper reaches of the hall.

Robin had never really been in the upper attics before, but he could barely hear Hestia’s hysterical shrieks from up here, so it was a good place to be at present.

It was here that he stumbled upon a large dusty room with no furniture at all. It had a closed up, abandoned feeling and the door was slightly warped, so that he had to lean his shoulder against it and jolt it open. Every one of the windows of the room beyond was covered with a large dustsheet, making the air gloomy and muted. A stillness and hush lay over the place as he closed the door behind him, thankful of the quiet and rubbing kraken ink stains off his hands onto his jeans. The attic room was also filled to the brim with dozens of stored statues. Many of them were covered in white storage sheets, looking like very poor Halloween ghost costumes. There were human figures, carved from stone and marble, as well as satyrs, fauns, centaurs, lions and several extremely ugly gargoyles. Many of the statues seemed to be damaged in one way or another. There was a stone satyr broken in several places and cast forlornly in chunks under a dust sheet on the floor. Other sculptures were missing arms or heads. Wandering quietly amongst them was like being in a very crowded party filled with silent people, giving Robin the creeps. He couldn’t help but notice that many of the humanoid figures had horns nestled in their curly marble hair, like ram horns, and that their ears were sharply pointed and tapered. Robin wondered to himself if these were statues of the Fae. Statues of his people. Several of them seemed to have his nose, or his cheekbones or chin. He had only ever met one actual Fae before. A wild and hunted creature named Hawthorn, who had helped them in the Netherworlde. He had sported horns too. It was odd for Robin, to be standing here in this quiet room surrounded by his people. Once, long ago, Erlking, the Netherworlde side of it at least, would have been filled with them. Now he was the last Fae at Erlking. The last Fae he knew of. Alone in a room of silent effigies.

After that, he fell into the habit, quite unconsciously, of checking his head every night after his bath, for signs of sprouting horns.

It was late one night a few days later, after Robin had taken a bath in the large room with mosaics of a giant kraken feeding on shoals of wild mermaids, that he stumbled across the paintings.

He had dried his hair, feeling exhausted but relaxed, having checked for horns as always (still none). It had been a busy day of practical casting all morning. He could now at least move water from one end of the row of cups to the other, and his Needlepoint ice spears were actually solid and clear most of the time. He was exhausted from the day’s exertions and ready for bed.

Robin didn’t know if it was his tiredness that caused him to get lost or if Erlking had just rearranged itself again. Sometimes the place seemed to react to a person’s mood. Whichever it was, he somehow got lost on the short, straight route from the bathroom to his tower. He found himself standing in an unfamiliar corridor, wrapped snugly in an old robe which smelled faintly but not unpleasantly of mothballs. He stood, wide-eyed, all tiredness vanished, staring at the corridor. Every inch of is long walls was covered with portraits. Some large, some small, all arranged seemingly haphazardly on the tapestried wall so that there was barely an inch of dark velvety wallpaper to show between their heavy cluttered frames. There must have been hundreds of paintings.

As he made his slow way along, scanning the pictures with interest, he noticed that all of them, every single portrait, were Fae. Most of the figures were finely dressed, like courtiers. Many of the women had elaborate makeup around their eyes, colours which swirled down around their cheekbones or up over their brows like ink or feathers, so at first he had thought they were wearing carnival masks, like you saw the tourists wearing in Venice. Yet for all their variance and riot of colour, they all shared similar features. The figures in each portrait had straight noses, high cheekbones and long oval eyes. Their ears were tall and pointed and stuck out from their heads rather decoratively, and they all had horns of some kind, curled and close to their heads. Some of them had two horns, some as many as six. Long and short, curled and curved, decoratively entwining one another. Like the statues he had discovered earlier, they looked oddly natural to Robin, and he realised, as he made his way quietly along the dimly lit gallery, that he was looking at actual Fae. Not artistic statues, but portraits of real Fae who had once lived.

For the first time, barring the one painting he had of his parents, he was looking at countless pictures of his own kind. Many of the portraits had the same curve of the nose or lift of chin as he did, or some other small echo of his own face, making them all seem familiar. Were his parents’ portraits here too? Were they peering down at him from somewhere in this crowded gallery? Would some part of him know them if he saw them? He noticed that one of the frames he passed was curiously blank, as though the painting had been removed, leaving nothing but a dark space of bare, black wood. The name below the frame had also been scratched out, but Robin could still make out the letter ‘M’ in curling script. Many of the other portraits were named, but just as many were anonymous. He walked along slowly under their silent scrutiny, their faces impassive and unsmiling, and their eyes, brown, green, grey and blue, seeming to track his movements. The Scion of the Arcania, the last changeling, wandering through an arcade of his forebears. Barefoot and damp and not feeling particularly like the saviour of a lost people.

It was not until he reached the end of the corridor that he realised he was at the top of a small staircase, and that there were people standing in the small hallway below him, talking quietly. Robin, quite unseen by those below, approached the banister, pushing his slick, darkened hair back from his still damp forehead. It was Calypso and Aunt Irene, talking softly together.

“ … He is progressing, after a fashion,” Calypso was saying softly. “He is slowly mastering the Waterwhip cantrip and the Needlepoint. I believe in September I shall proceed the basic version of Waterwings. If he can ever manage to control his emotions that is.” She gave a delicate shrug and a small sigh “ … In combat? Well, he is a weak attacker, though his defence is very strong.” She sighed again, looking frustrated. “To be perfectly honest with you, Lady Irene, from the Scion, I must admit, I had expected something…” She cast a hand around, searching for words. “ … Spectacular.”

Irene made a non-committal noise through her nose, shifting the weight of her inevitable load of books and scrolls in her arms. “He needs time, Calypso,” she said softly. “Have patience. He was raised in the mortal realm, remember. Even the most gleaming gold will appear dull after years spent unpolished and badly thumbed. I daresay it will take more than a month or two of the Tower of Water for him to adjust. He achieved great things with the Tower of Wind already, if you recall. I trust to your continued instruction, or else you would not be here in the first place. I engaged you due to your … past with our dear lost Mr Phorbas.”

“Even so…” Calypso interjected, “I know Eris, I worked for and with her. This boy is just a child, no matter how much training you give him. You must know, that in the end he doesn’t stand—”

Irene cut her off with a wave of her hand, peering at the beautiful nymph with cool blue eyes.

“Time will tell, I assure you. With training and guidance, he will learn. With study…”

Calypso seemed to become exasperated. “
Ego
nec
studium
sine
divite
vena
,” she said swiftly in a low whispering voice. “
Nec
rude
quid
prosit
video
ingenium
!”

“You may yet discover some small spark of genius there,” Irene replied coolly after a moment of uncomfortable silence. His aunt was seemingly ruffled. “Please do not use the high tongue in anger, Calypso. I assure you I have nothing but the highest faith in the boy.” She took a deep breath, looking lost in thought. “I knew his parents, and I believe they knew what they were doing. Indulge me.” She clasped the nymph’s hands in her own, quite a feat with all the books resting on her forearms, and graced her with a thin smile. “Have patience, my friend. The boy is young, but his store of mana is greater than yours and mine combined. It is quite remarkable.”

Calypso shook her head. “Forgive my doubts,” she said. “You are right, of course. I am used to Netherworlders. Folk who have lived with the Towers of the Arcania their whole lives. Phorbas always did have so much more patience that I do. I shall try harder. I know how much is at stake.”

Irene straightened up. “Very good,” she said. “Now why don’t you get some rest? You know you get more … unfocussed the longer you are out of water, my dear. Tomorrow is a fresh start after all.”

Calypso replied, but Robin didn’t stay to hear more, his cheeks burned with fury.

Well
,
I’m
trying
! he thought to himself angrily as he climbed the spiral steps to his bedroom. Everyone seemed to expect so much from him. For weeks now he had been focusing his mana in those tiresome lessons listening to whale song and other nonsense, battling back and forth out on the island folly with Calypso until he was black and blue, and testing his control and willpower to the limits in practical casting up in the atrium. He had lost track of how many hours he had spent in the bathroom, trying to divert water streams from the taps until his eyes swam. What more could he do? What more did they want from him? Back in the real world, if Gran had lived, he’d be in school, learning about rainforests and volcanoes and growing cress on a coffee filter like every other kid. Or he’d be off in Dorset with Henry. He wouldn’t be here training in the arts of magic to defend himself from otherworldly creatures who wanted him dead – or worse – for reasons he didn’t understand.

He thought of the mysterious letter he had first received from Karya when he had arrived at Erlking the previous year. ‘If what the prophecies say is true, you could be our last chance’. Whose last chance though? The Fae’s? The Panthea’s? He thought of all those paintings in the dark gallery, looking down at him expectantly. Their strange, piercing eyes demanding. People were being killed. Innocent bystanders in hotels who didn’t even realise they were caught up in a war from another world. He couldn’t help anyone. He could barely form a shard of ice that wasn’t unintentionally and obscenely shaped, for goodness sake! Robin threw himself into bed wearily and, despite the cosy crackling fire, which Hestia insisted on setting every night no matter the weather, he did not manage to fall asleep for a long while. Above him in the rafters, a large sooty black moth had found its way into the room and batted its wings softly against the ceiling like uneasy whispers.