The Drowned Tomb (The Changeling Series Book 2) (37 page)

There was a sound like thunder. It rolled along the valley, echoing from the walls. As one, they turned to stare.

The barrier across the valley, the solid mass of churning water, the only thing keeping the forces of Eris from them, collapsed. They watched it tumble, a vast wave of water, roaring along the rocks, spilling inward into the placid, ever-darkening valley in a riot of roaring foam that crashed among the cliffs like white water rapids. Waves rippled out over the lake, and birds took noisy flight from the many blossom trees along the sheer rock walls, startled by the noise and wheeling into the sky, scattering the agitated clouds of pyreflies.

“They are coming,” Flue said, with admirable calm. “I can no longer hold the tide of water, or the tide of Eris.” She thrust the parchment at Robin, who took it. “You must go, now. Find Tritea, protect the Shard, and discover this secret held by Nightshade. If you do not go now, there will not be another chance.”

“Where are we going?” Woad asked.

“Not you,” Robin said. “You and Karya stay here. Flue says the tree will hold Ker’s army at bay, for a while at least. You’ll be safe up here, high in the tree. Once I have the Shard, there’s no reason for them to attack. I’ll bring it back.”

“I want to come with you!” Woad yelped, affronted.

“There was only enough kraken bile for me.” He glanced at Henry. “And Henry.”

“Where are you going, needing kraken bile?” Karya asked, frowning. She looked equally horrified and annoyed at the two of them going off alone.

“Into the depths,” Flue said simply. “Down into the dark, to the drowned tomb of Tritea. We must hurry. Come, Seer, your skills are required also.”

She led them from the hollow. Robin glanced back out at the dark valley. There was a great movement in the canyon, pinpricks of yellow lights in their hundreds. They were distant, but he could make them out. Torches held aloft by Peacekeepers and centaurs as they approached the valley proper. Spilling out across the grass in the wash of the fallen barrier.

A long low howl rolled over the valley, distant, but mournful and chilling. The call of Mr Strife’s skrikers.

“Robin,” Karya snapped urgently. “Come on, there’s no time.”

He followed them, tearing his eyes from the sight of Mr Ker’s army flooding into the sacred vale like a spill of poisonous ink.

The great tree groaned and creaked as they walked, sounding like cracking icebergs.

“The tree is closing,” the Undine told them. “Hiernarbos is closing her doors. We will hold the tide.” They were retracing their steps back to the central shaft, where they had first risen through the multitude of sleeping Undine.

When they reached the edge of the vast trunk, staring down into the mists, into the wide deep shaft filled with fog, Flue stopped, her fluttering wings agitated, although her smooth face was calm still. Robin thought the light within her had dimmed. She had used up almost all of her mana.

“Why are we here?” he asked.

“Because we are too high for you,” she replied. She looked to Karya. “You can tear between the worlds, yes? It is part of what you are. Existing in both worlds at once. You must open a tear, but not for yourself. For these two. To the human world. And it must be down there, at the bottom of the inner tree.”

“The human world? Why? And why down there?” Karya looked deeply confused.

“Because if you tear them through to the human world from here,” the Undine explained. “They will appear rather tremendously high in the air.” She looked to Robin and Henry curiously with her milky eyes. “I know only something of the Fae, and nothing of these human creatures, but I am presuming that you both would be likely to hit the ground far below like water balloons if dropped from this height, yes?”

Henry and Robin looked pale.

“The tear, the passage between the worlds, will slow your entry,” she assured them.

“Now, Seer. Hurry.”

“It’s done,” Karya said simply. Her hand was outstretched over the yawning chasm. “There is a tear, at the floor. Well, about a foot above, give or take. I don’t know how long I can hold it for though.” Beads of sweat were standing on her brow, and her tiger’s eye mana stone bracelet blazed like magnesium. “It’s incredibly difficult to tear at a distance away from myself.”

“Wait,” said Henry, holding his hands up. “Waitwaitwaitwaitwait.” He stared at them all. “Just how are you thinking we’re getting to that tear down there then? I mean, you’re calling that lift thing back, right? The ice elevator that levitated us up here?”

Robin looked at the Undine. “She doesn’t have the mana left,” he realised. “We’re jumping, Henry.” He felt queasy at the thought.

“We’re what now?” Henry balked. “Are you mad?”

“I can’t hold this thing forever,” Karya said rather testily through gritted teeth. She looked up at Robin. “Be careful, Scion,” she said. “We will be fine here, just hurry, find the Shard and this locked box Irene has been searching for. And don’t do anything stupid like getting killed. We can hold out against the Grimms and their army here.” She managed a hard smile. “Just … you know … don’t take all day about it, okay?”

Robin steadied himself on the lip of the pit. He had never liked heights. This was a whole different level of vertigo.

“Seriously?” Henry complained, panic in his voice.

“You did say I wasn’t to do anything dangerous on my own, remember?” Robin reminded him.

“Well, yeah, granted. But there’s dangerous and then there’s mental,” Henry began, and then Robin felt a small hand in his back.

“Get going, numbskulls!” Woad chirped. He had a hand on Henry’s back too, and unceremoniously pushed both boys off the edge and into the mist.

Robin’s stomach flipped. He tumbled through the icy fog, weightless and rapid, wind whipping past his face.

“And remember to bend your knees!” the faun called helpfully through the mist, his voice receding rapidly as they plummeted down the shaft. Robin was too shocked to cry out, his arms and legs flailing as he went into freefall. Henry, at his side, made up for his silence with a long and rather epic scream.

As he fell, his body tumbled over and over in the fog, so that he no longer knew which way was up and which was down. His mind gibbered in a flare of blank panic. Henry continued his wordless bellowing scream, and in the confusion of the fall, Robin thought he saw something in the mist. Another two figures above them, also falling. Woad and Karya? That made no sense. Why would they come in after?

There was no time for answers. The mists parted, and the floor of the base of the great tree’s hollow trunk rose up to meet them. Like falling without a parachute, Robin instinctively held up his arms in front of his face, as though that would make any difference at this height and speed. Squeezing his eyes closed and bracing for impact, He tensed. Afoot before they hit the floor, in a mirage like shimmer, they hit Karya’s tear and passed out of the Netherworlde with a dark and lurching whoosh.

THE DROWNED TOMB

Henry and Robin hit the ground with a bone-jarring slap.

Robin rolled onto his back, gasping. He felt beneath him not the wet, icy floor of Hiernarbos, but the crunch of wet and gravelly sand. He stared up, blinking and gasping, into a summer sky, duck-egg blue and threaded with high white cirrus. The sun beat down on his face, hot and bright. They were back in the human world.

A groan, long and self-pitying, at his side told him that Henry had made it through the tear too. Robin sat up woozily, his hands sinking into the warm, damp sand, to see his friend face down on the ground, arms and legs splayed. He looked like a flattened pancake.

“We made it,” Robin wheezed. “Henry, we’re back. We didn’t die.”

Henry’s voice was muffled by the sand. “Are you sure? I mean, I kind of feel like I did.” He struggled up to his knees, spitting out sand, and looked around. “Where are we?”

Robin stared too.

The heatwave currently gripping Britain was evidently still in force. It was baking hot and breathless, and though the sun had just set in the Netherworlde, it was midday here, with the sun high overhead.

The two boys were sitting on the shore of a large lake, its surface glittering in the light. All around rose high, rolling hills, craggy and dotted with sheep and heather. Beyond them, grassy green mountains, hazy in the sunlight.

From one lake to another, Robin thought. This is the human world equivalent of Hiernarbos.

There were people everywhere: Walking their dogs along a path which circled the large lake. Young families paddling in the water’s edge not too far off, the happy laughter of their children floating over to Robin’s ears.

A little way off from where they sat was a small hut with a playground attached, children milling happily on the swings and roundabout. Chairs set out on the decking housed people looking rather red and sunburned, enjoying ice cream, and on the surface of the large lake itself, several sailboats puttered serenely.

Henry stood, wobbling slightly, looking extremely conspicuous in this setting. His school uniform was tattered beyond repair, grubby and stained, one of the sleeves torn off to the elbow where he had rescued Robin’s mana stone after Strigoi’s mistake back in the tent. His messy brown hair, never tame at the best of times, stuck up all over his head. He looked like an extra from a zombie movie.

Shielding his eyes from the sun, he peered up. “Look, there are people hang-gliding up there.”

No one seemed to have noticed them yet. Two wild and bedraggled teenagers were bound to draw attention, and he was sure he looked just as trail-weary as Henry. Everyone around them was relaxed, enjoying the sun, completely oblivious of the fact that the width of a shadow away, a dark and dangerous army were racing like a tide of doom over the very ground they lounged on.

“I can hear an ice cream truck too,” Henry observed.

Robin was trying to clear his head. Where on earth were they? He assumed they must be north of Manchester, because they had only travelled north since entering the Netherworlde, very far north. He looked around but nothing identified his location. He was a long way from home.

He thought of Karya and Woad, and the Undine, Flue, trapped in the dubious bastion of the great ice tree back in the Netherworlde. Was Mr Ker’s army of Peacekeepers and centaurs assailing them right now? Was the dark and deadly Strigoi already tearing down the sealed doors? It all seemed too surreal, sitting here in the sunshine, watching two young girls playing Frisbee in the distance with a golden retriever, not a care in the world.

He would have given anything at that moment to be able to contact his aunt or tutor. To get help. They would know what to do. But there was none to be had. They were on their own.

“Where’s the tomb?” Robin stood, aching. He turned full circle in the sunshine, looking around desperately. “There’s no tomb here, Henry! Flue said that Tritea and Nightshade were here.” He pointed at the ground at their feet in agitation. “Here, the spot in our world where Hiernarbos stands over there. But how? Look around. This place is a tourist trap, not a secret! I can see a National Trust hut right there.” He pointed.

Henry was equally confused. “Can’t you use your scion-powers or whatever?” he ventured. “You know, sniff out the Shard.” He waved his hands in a hopefully mystical manner. “Use the force, Robin.”

“I’m not a bloodhound,” the blonde boy countered. He stalked off urgently through the sand away from the lake, headed towards the pathway. There was a sign there, one of those tourist information points. If nothing else, at least they could find out where they were. Henry followed in his wake. “Oi, hold up, will you?”

“I thought I saw someone else in the mist, as we fell. Someone coming after us,” Robin remembered. “It doesn’t make sense though. Woad and Karya wouldn’t leave the Undine on her own. They’ll stay and fight, if they have to. Why would they jump in after us?”

Henry shrugged as they reached the sign, Robin gripping it with both hands and looking down through the protective Perspex cover. His hair was still damp from free-falling through the mist and the hot sun was already burning it off, making his head steam slightly. There was a coloured map of the lake beneath, with bike trails, footpaths and dog walks picked out in different helpful colours. Picnic sites and nearby car parks were highlighted with useful symbols. But, as Robin had expected, nowhere on the map was there a symbols for a hidden tomb of an otherworldly creature and her Fae lover guarding a Shard of the Arcania.

He supposed even the National Trust couldn’t account for everything. But there was at least text alongside the map, so at least they knew where they were.

“Loch Morlich-Katrine,” Robin said. “We’re in Scotland, Henry. Says here that Loch Morlich-Katrine enjoys one of the finest settings of any lake in the country. It is surrounded by forests and fringed by beaches.” He read on, his lips moving silently in his urgency. “Those hills and mountains are the northern Cairngorms apparently,” he said.

“Fascinating.” Henry stared over his shoulder. “Does it say where the magic alien glass woman and the horned and mystical Fae who loved her might be buried then? I’m guessing not under the cornetto shop over there.”

“No,” Robin said. “This doesn’t make sense. This isn’t a place Tritea and Nightshade would have come and ‘settled down in’ after the war. The circuit of the loch is a very popular walk apparently. This isn’t a secluded hideaway, it’s a bank holiday weekend destination.”

“Not the best place to hide out the rest of your days then,” Henry noted. “Hardly a hidden cottage in the woods, is it?”

He suddenly leaned in. “Wait, hold up Rob, what’s this?”

He jabbed his finger at a separate section of writing. There was an old grainy and sepia photograph of a village, dark shingle roofs and a church with a pointed steeple.

“The history of Morlich-Katrine,” Robin read with interest.

“Henry,” he said after a moment. “This Lake, or loch, or whatever it is. It’s not natural.”

Henry glanced at his companion sidelong. “Nothing we ever have anything to do with is natural, Robin. Our best mate is blue and sings to a squid.”

“No, I mean, it wasn’t always here. It’s only existed for the last ten years! Listen.”

Robin ran his finger over the tourist information. “It says here that the lake is artificial. It was created by damming the valley, to provide a water source and hydroelectric for the nearby towns. There was a village here once. Just over a decade ago. It was bought out and abandoned. The whole area was sealed off and then deliberately flooded.”

“I’ve heard of that elsewhere too,” Henry agreed.

Robin pointed to a grainy photograph showing the lake surface, and something like a shark’s fin standing proud of the water. “It says here that during that big drought we had the other year, the water level in the lake was so low, that the top of the old church steeple could be seen poking out of the surface.”

He looked up at Henry. “An abandoned village, flooded and forgotten. It’s still down there, Henry. The whole village. Under the water.”

They stared back at the lake, innocent and shimmering in the rare Scottish sunshine. There were a few windsurfers out in the distance, their sails white and blue.

“The Shard of the Arcania,” Henry said, wonderingly. “Not hidden in the Netherworlde, in the secret valley of Hiernarbos, but here, in the same spot on the human world side of things.” He grinned. “Who’d a thought, eh? All that guff about mystical doors and secret valleys, and it was lumped in a lake in Scotland all this time.”

“This must be where they lived. And died,” Robin nodded. “They could be buried down in that village. And then the village was flooded. What better hiding place? Do you think they knew of the plans to flood the valley when they moved here?”

“It says that the entire village was deserted at the time of the flooding … obviously. Bit cruel otherwise,” Henry said, his eyes scanning the text beneath the perspex. “Everyone was relocated. Oh, there’s a local legend. Listen. It says the last occupants were an old hermit and his wife, who nobody could find. The village was searched high and low, but of old Mr and Mrs Paxton, no sign could be found. Rumours had been told in the village for years that the old lady was a witch, and her strange husband her familiar, and when they failed to appear, the decision was eventually made to flood the valley. Everyone assumed they had left.”

“Some say that they didn’t though,” he went on. “That their ghosts still haunt the waters at night, the couple who refused to abandon their homeland, and who still haunt the depths.” Henry glanced up. “Mr and Mrs Paxton?” he said with raised eyebrows. “It’s all a bit hokey, these touristy things always are. There’s even a ghost walk you can do at Halloween, in hope of seeing the old recluses who were never seen again.”

“Flue told us that Tritea and her lover, Nightshade, wanted to escape the war, to live in peace, or in Pax, as she said.” He looked out over the water. “Tritea and Nightshade never left the village, Henry. I know it. They’re still down there. They died here, keeping the Shard, and whatever my father gave to them on Titania’s orders, safe.”

“We have to go down there, don’t we?” Henry said glumly.

Robin’s blue eyes narrowed. “Somewhere down there is a ghost who guards a Shard,” he said grimly. He absently reached up and closed his fingers around his mana stone. Seraphinite. Good for spirit magic, good for ghosts.

“And we’re going to wake her up.”

They were almost back at the shore, where the soft edges of the lake lapped at the pebble sand, when Henry caught Robin by the elbow.

“Robin, look!”

Robin followed Henry’s gaze. A little way along the beach, in the opposite direction of most of the day-tripping families, there was a quieter spot by the water’s edge where the treeline came right down to the water. Half hidden by the tree trunks was a small stone hut by the shore. It was flat-roofed and utilitarian, windowless, not much larger than a port-a-cabin, and its only feature was a steel door, looking sturdy and firmly locked.

Henry and Robin were staring in disbelief as two figures had just darted from the shadows and disappeared through the closed door, as though it had been nothing but smoke. For a second, Robin thought he had seen ghosts. The spirits of Tritea and Nightshade themselves. But the truth was even harder to believe.

“That was Jackalope!” Henry said in disbelief.

“And Miss Peryl,” Robing agreed, gobsmacked. “What are they…? How did they?”

Henry had already set of at a run towards the hut. This made no sense. How were they here, either of them? And why on earth would they be together?

They reached the hut, gasping for air. The Fae and the Grimm were gone. There was no sign of them.

“They came through the tear,” Robin said, staring around. “I knew someone had.”

“But how could that demented girl have been there?” Henry wanted to know. He had run right up to the steel door. It looked old and rusted. There was no handle, only a small maintenance keyhole and a bolt which was rusted shut. No one had been inside this place in a long time, despite the fact they had just seen Jackalope and Peryl melt into it.

“She
couldn’t
have been there,” Henry insisted. “The only ones who got in when the barrier fell were us. I think we would have noticed a grey-faced ghoul girl as we made our way through the waters. I mean, it’s not like there’s a lot of places to hide inside a clear dragon’s head made of ice, is it?”

Robin didn’t know either. He joined Henry at the door. There was no visible way to open it. He tried to work his fingers around the steel edges, but he achieved nothing more than skinning his knuckles.

“Never mind how they’re here,” Robin said. “I don’t know why Jackalope is with Peryl, but Peryl is after the Shard. This place must be something. We have to get inside.”

“Robin, it’s just a maintenance hut,” Henry said. He pointed to warning signs, rusted and faded with age which declared just this. The usual ‘keep outs’, ‘no unauthorised access’, and ‘danger of death’ signs which both boys had seen countless times on other such buildings and electricity substations. Henry was right. This kind of shed, old as it was, was nothing more than a toolbox for whatever government subsector was responsible for the dam nearby. Hydroelectric power, the tourist info had said. What possible interest could it be to the Grimm? And how had she, and the apparently traitorous Fae from the death-camps, have gotten inside it anyway. What could they be doing in there? It was a tiny hut, barely big enough for two people to stand up in.