The Drowned Tomb (The Changeling Series Book 2) (43 page)

“But
we
have the other half,” Calypso said, holding it out to Robin. The pulsing energy and flickering light had gone. It looked like a large and innocent crystal now, the size of a dagger. Robin took it carefully from her.

Robin peered at his tutor. “I thought nymphs were only concerned with themselves,” he said thoughtfully. “Hardly in keeping, throwing yourself on a dangerous rescue mission against the forces of Eris to save my friends. I think you care more than you let on.” He smiled.

“I care about remaining at Erlking,” Calypso told him. “Ultimately the safest place for me. If you and your friends were dead, it’s likely your aunt may end my engagement. That’s all.”

Robin wasn’t entirely sure he believed her.

“And here we are,” Woad said grinning. “All of us.”

“Not all of us,” Robin said, looking out to the water.

Karya looked grim. Silence covered the company for a moment as they all stared out at the deceptively placid lake. In the sunset, it was a bowl of liquid bronze.

“Henry told us, about Jackalope, what happened. He made bad choices. Fear can do that. Is he still … is he still down there? Under the water?” She hugged her arms a little, looking pensive.

“I don’t know,” Robin admitted. “I saw Peryl leave. She was as full of the Water Shard’s mana as I was. She used Waterwings and hightailed it out of there as it collapsed, same as me. She was too far away. Last I saw of Jack’s body, it was in the tomb as it flooded.”

He looked down at his hands.

“There’s something else,” Robin remembered. The small locked box was at his side. He patted the lid. “I don’t know what this is,” he said. “But something tells me Aunt Irene is going to be very interested in the contents.”

* * *

Aunt Irene was indeed very interested.

With Karya’s help, and many a tear, and searching of Janus stations, Robin and the others eventually made their way home, back to Erlking Hall.

His aunt, along with Mr Drover and Hestia, were all waiting to meet them as they finally walked up the steps in the middle of night and into the candlelit entrance hall.

Robin had never been more grateful to be home as he stepped inside. He was exhilarated about the Shard, relieved about the saving of the Undine valley, and still numb from Jackalope’s death. But mainly, more than anything else, he was tired and wanted to be home.

Erlking seemed so warm and welcoming. His aunt’s expression, however, was frosty and stern. She stood in the entrance hall with her hands clasped before her, back ramrod straight, appraising them all as they entered in their rather sheepish manner. Mr Drover, by her side, had no such self-restraint. As soon as he saw Henry, the large man rushed forward, looking furious, and for one moment as he descended on the boy, Robin thought he was going to give his son a hefty clout around the ear, he looked so angry. Instead, he dropped to his knees and pulled a startled Henry into a tight hug, squeezing the life out of him. At the same time, he set of a gruff tirade of chastisement about how stupid he had been to go off alone into the Netherworlde and how worried they had been. Henry looked terribly embarrassed, his arms pinned to his sides as his father squeezed the life affectionately out of him. Karya and Woad both stood nearby, looking travel-weary and awkward, until Mr Drover looked up and suddenly lunged for them too, pulling them both down to their shock and surprise into a large group hug. Woad cackled helplessly. Karya looked mortified.

Robin didn’t think that Aunt Irene looked beside herself with joy. In fact, the only person beside her was Hestia, who was shooting murderous looks with her little black hedgehog eyes at Calypso. The nymph, as usual, paid her no attention. Robin was guessing that Hestia still hadn’t forgiven her for the freezing incident, however temporarily, in the corridor upstairs. He doubted it had done anything to thaw relations between the two.

“Welcome home, my ward,” Aunt Irene said formally. “I see that you are not dead.” She nodded, a little awkwardly.

Robin opened his mouth to begin to apologise to her, but she raised her hand to silence him. “Understand this, Robin,” she said, strictly. “For leaving Erlking without my permission, I am … furious.” She lowered her hand. “However, I am given to understand that you made this decision based on sound advice, and with the blessings at the time of your tutor.” Her steely eyes flicked for a second to the nymph and back to Robin.

“And given that before I departed, I gave you strict and explicit instructions to follow the advice and instruction of your tutor, I see that technically, you were only doing exactly what I told you to do.” Her eyes softened a little. “So, the person I am furious with is not you. It is myself.”

She bade Robin to follow her from the great entrance hall and into a side study, which he did, trailing apprehensively in the wake of her silk skirts. He closed the doors behind him, cutting them off from the others. “I am, however, appalled to hear that you have been in such danger. I am, at the same time, immensely proud that you overcame every challenge you met and most importantly, you managed not to be killed or to lose even a single limb.” She sat at her desk and indicated for Robin to sit opposite her. He did so without a word. His instinct told him that silence was the best course of action right now. “I am also worried, that Eris has half a Shard of the Arcania in her possession, and at the same time, I am greatly overjoyed that we have the other half.” She sighed, steepling her fingers under her chin and peering at Robin for several long seconds over the rim of her half-moon spectacles.

“In short, then, and to summarise: I am furious, understanding, worried, relieved, appalled, proud and overjoyed. All at once.” She sighed, rubbing at the bridge of her nose and replacing her half-moon spectacles. “If this is what parents feel like most of the time, then I am glad, my young ward, that I never had any children of my own.”

Robin couldn’t suppress a small smile.

She smiled a little too. The tiniest twitch in the corners of her mouth. Her eyes, as ever, were sharp as diamond, but there was something in them. Pride perhaps. “Welcome home, Robin Fellows. You immensely brave fool.”

Robin slept for almost a full day and night. So too, he learned later, did Henry and Karya. Woad was eager to check on Inky, who he discovered to his relief, had been fed and cared for by Mr Drover, who’d had the sense to keep the kraken’s existence secret from Hestia.

Before long they felt more themselves, and had been fed back to health, rather aggressively, by the muttering housekeeper, who kept complaining that they had all gotten shamefully thin on their travels, despite Robin pointing out several times that it had only been a couple of days. She seemed not to hear him, pushing more plates of sausage rolls at them during every meal, accompanied by murderous oaths that she was most certainly not going to have anyone accuse her of not feeding the people of Erlking properly. Nobody would bring such shame on Old Hestia, least of all thoughtless, reckless children.

When they’d had sufficient time to rest and recuperate, Aunt Irene gathered them all in the library. She stood at one of the great tables, having cleared the cluttered surface of books, as though giving a presentation. Robin, Henry, Karya and Woad were arrayed around her, a faint echo of the Sidhe-Nobilitas. The new generation of Erlking’s guardian knights.

Calypso sat in the corner, reading peacefully in a sunbeam, as though she didn’t seem particularly interested in the proceedings. On the table before them, resting tantalisingly under Irene’s hands, was the locked box.

“The Water Shard of the Arcania…” Irene said to them all, “was a wondrous find. A true triumph to add to our arsenal. The enemies of Eris are in a stronger position than ever before. I understand it came with a high price.” Robin stared at the tabletop, thinking of Jackalope, and how the ice had stained pink beneath him, down in the tomb.

“Power always does,” Irene said, not unkindly. She indicated Robin. “With the agreement of Robin here, I have placed our fragment in safe keeping, along with the Air Shard we already own. It may prove very useful in the future.” She shrugged. “It may not. The important thing is that Eris does not have it. Not all of it anyway.” She drummed her fingers on the lid of the box.

“That is not why I asked you all here. As you know, since the beginning of the summer, I have been engaged, with the help of Karya here, in the attempted translation of an ancient script. How this script first came into my possession in the first place is important in itself, but it is a tale for another, later time.” She eyed them all carefully. “The important thing is to know what it
was
, and why we needed it.”

“The scrap was part of a letter, so I believed, and my belief proved true, written by Queen Titania herself, once ruler of the Netherworlde, to one of her most trusted advisors, Robin’s father, Wolfsbane Truefellow. It was written in a very ancient script. One which only a select few, even back then, were privy to understand. And for good reason. My sources and investigations proved correct. If we are to ever to best Eris … If ever we are to end her reign and reunite the Arcania, freeing the Fae and the rest of the Netherworlde from her tyranny … It is essential that we discover two important things.”

“What things?” Karya asked.

“Firstly,” Irene said. “Why did Titania and Oberon, at the height of the war, when everything hung in the balance, disappear? And of equal importance,
where
did they go?”

“You think this letter explains it?” Robin wanted to know.

Irene shook her head. “Nothing so simple I’m afraid. But what I hoped, is that it may offer a clue to set us on the right path. Was it the fates who also brought us into contact with the tomb on the folly at the same time my research was going on?” She shrugged. “We may never know. Perhaps Erlking herself is trying to help us. Nevertheless, this letter told of a delivery of some secret and sensitive information to another member of the Sidhe-Nobilitas. We needed to find out which member, in order to find out what this sensitive information may be. This was written just before their disappearance you see.” She looked at Robin. “Your mother was pregnant with you at the time, we believe.”

“Well, we know now
who
Robin’s father was delivering this so called sensitive information to now, don’t we?” Karya offered. “Thanks to the Undine at Hiernarbos, who finished the translation for me. He was taking it to Nightshade, for safe keeping.”

Irene nodded. “Indeed. And knowing what we now know, this makes sense. Nightshade and his lover, Tritea, had fled the war by this point, and they were living under assumed human names in a village in the human world. What safer, more secret place could there be to keep it, whatever it is?”

“Sooooo…” Henry said, his hands thrust in the pockets of his jeans. “What, actually, is it?”

Robin wondered too. They were all curious to know what could be so important to the King and Queen of the Fae, to demand such wartime secrecy. Was it a weapon? Some great treasure?

“We are about to find out,” Irene said. “I thought you should all be present, given what you went through to retrieve both the Shard, and it.”

They watched as Irene opened the lock and swung back the lid on its oiled hinge. Her face was blank for a few moments, as she scanned the contents. Silence rolled through the library.

Eventually, tentatively, she reached in and withdrew two things. One was a rolled scroll, and the other, a long piece of what looked like cardboard. She unfurled the scroll.

“It is … a list of names,” she said after a moment’s pause. “Four of them. All members of the Sidhe-Nobilitas at one point or another.” She frowned. “Your father, Robin, Wolfsbane the bold, Peaseblossom the architect, Matthias the Illusioner, and Hemlock the sly.” She scanned the scroll with interest. “There is nothing more, except here at the bottom.” She read aloud: “‘The construction of the cubiculu-argentum must be secret. Only those named here are privy to its purpose and place, and each must only know their part in it, for the sake of both the Fae and the Panthea. This list is kept as record, and the relic enclosed herein must be preserved at all costs. It is the key to all things'.”

She looked up. “It is signed by the Queen. And the King also.” She frowned. “Though his signature is shaky.”

“What’s a cubiculu-argentum?” Woad asked, looking confused.

None of them, Irene included, knew.

The other item, which she laid out before them reverently, was more confusing than ever. Irene laid it carefully on the table top.

Robin saw it was a library book frontispiece. Nothing more. Old and yellowed and a little frayed. Some of the stamped dates were still just visible, in blue and black ink, though they had been smeared and smudged over time through wear and tear, that they were illegible. There was no name for the book, nor confirmation which library it had come from. It was most certainly not Netherworlde in origin. It was very human. There was even a trace of cellotape along the top still clinging to the cardboard where it had been torn from whatever book it had once belonged in.

They all stared at it.

“This…” Irene mused after a few moments of confused study and silence, “is a new mystery altogether.”

Days later, life at Erlking returned to normal – or as normal as Erlking ever was. Calypso had revealed over breakfast one morning that she had been invited back to Hiernarbos; her assistance in protecting the valley from the forces of Eris had apparently wiped clean her blighted record of treachery for abandoning them for Eris so many years ago.