Date: 2016-08-18 04:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Fantasy; Young Adult; Magic; Fiction
Description: War is coming. The summer heat is sweltering, and the young changeling, Robin Fellows, awaits further training. He has gained much skill in the Shard of Air, but what is coming next? After his previous tutor was revealed to be an agent of the mortal enemy of all Fae, Lady Eris, Robin is assigned a new mentor to continue his magical learning. Enter Calypso, a water nymph and member of the race of Panthea that also inhabit the mysterious, enchanted Netherworlde. Her job: to instruct Robin in the Shard of Water, a powerful magic with which the user can cast huge bolts of ice and command entire oc
Publisher: Venture Press

The Drowned Tomb

Book Two of the Changeling Series

James Fahy

Copyright © James Fahy 2016

James Fahy has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

First published by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd in 2016.

FOR MIL

THIS, AND EVERY ONE AFTER

MISS YOU

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE

GRIMM LODGINGS

DEAD TONGUES

A NEW ENGAGEMENT

THE MIDNIGHT POOL

ROBIN’S FOLLY

UNDINE UNDERFLOOR

LOST NAMES AND LOCKED BOXES

BURYING THE PAST

THE BLACK KNIGHT OF WALPURGIS

SIDHE-NOBILITAS

NYMPHS AND NEEDLEPOINT

GRIMM TIDINGS

THE PORTRAITS

PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS

THE SAD PASSING OF MRS CLEMENTINE

LUMINAQUA

BLOOD AND BONE

GOING UNDERCROFT

FAEFROST

JUST A NUMBER

MEMORIAM

KEEPING THE PEACE

WOLF AND WYRM

WATERWYRM

FIVE EATEN ALIVE

THE LAST UNDINE OF HIERNARBOS

THE DROWNED TOMB

BROKEN PIECES

BOONS AND BOXES

PROLOGUE

GRIMM LODGINGS

In a dark and shadowy room, a girl sat on the edge of a battered tabletop. She swung her legs back and forth idly in the flickering light of a single, guttering oil lamp. “You are looking…” she said, “in entirely the wrong place.”

Her voice dripped with disdain and a hint of deep satisfaction. Her head was tilted to one side with an air of resigned boredom. As heads go, it was a fairly arresting one – the girl was breathtakingly beautiful. Her skin was the colour of fresh snow, her eyes almost lost in smoky kohl, and her lips, curled into a dismissive sneer, crimson red. Her hair was the bright purple of crushed blackberries, falling around her shoulders and over one eye in a long sweeping curtain. The overall effect made her look like a very gothic porcelain doll.

“Entirely the wrong place,” she repeated in a slightly irritating, sing-song voice.

This ghostly youth hovered in the darkness, dressed in a rather unlikely but beautifully-tailored charcoal suit, like the world’s youngest and most eldritch lawyer. The only break in her monochrome clothing was a red brooch, a large bright blood droplet pinned to her lapel, glittering in the oil-light.

“Did you hear me?” she sighed, leaning forward. “Am I just talking to myself here? Wrong place, I said. Count on it.”

The person she was addressing, the person who was apparently looking emphatically in the wrong place, ignored her completely. He stood by the table upon which she perched, lost in the shadows. A monumentally large man. As massive as the girl was slight, with shoulders broad and hulking. He spread his huge pale hands across a large yellow parchment pinned on the desk. A map. It was covered in scribbled notes, lines of tied red cotton and tiny flags, as though he was planning a war campaign.

Which he was.

“Seriously,” the gothic teenager insisted, in her drawling sigh, clearly becoming irritated by her companion’s efforts to ignore her. “You are wasting your time there, Brother Ker … like, totally.” She flicked an imaginary bit of lint from her crisp shoulder.

The vast bear of a man flicked his cold gaze up at her. His eyes, like her own, were black, empty space. This was not unusual for either of them. Neither of the two were remotely human. Their eyes caught the guttering light from the lamp, reflecting it back like pools of shimmering tar.

His face was as ghostly-white as hers, although the similarity between the two ended there.

“Silence, Sister,” he rumbled at her. His voice was like a mountain landslide, felt in the chest rather than heard with the ears. He sounded more animal than man.

“Don’t growl at me, Mr Ker,” she said tartly, completely unimpressed. “I’m not cowed by your moody face. I’ve known you far too long, more’s the pity.”

Mr Ker did have a moody face, as large and rugged as the girl’s was smooth and delicate. He looked to have been carved from rock with a skilled but heavy-handed chisel. He was as tall and wide as a titan, his massive frame bunched with sinew and muscle. Unlike the girl perched on the edge of his table, he did not wear a smart business suit. The enormous Mr Ker wore black leather trousers, worn and patched in places, and a tattered, sleeveless vest, covered in dubious stains. He looked travel-weary, road-dusty and unkempt, especially next to his pristine counterpart. His hair was perhaps his most outlandish feature however. A mass of long red spikes, as bright and garish as a porcupine dipped in blood. They lent him a nightmarish appearance.

Unimpressed by his murderous glowering, the girl blew her cheeks out, rolling her eyes in the universal manner of bored teenagers everywhere, looking for a moment like every other sixteen year old in the world. “I’m just saying…” she trailed off, inspecting her nails, which were perfectly purple. “You are completely wasting your time there, seriously. You should listen to me. I have good information.” She raised her hands innocently as he dialled his murderous glare up a notch. “That’s all. That’s all … I’m … saying.”

He looked back to his map once again, his tall crimson spikes of hair casting odd slashes of light and shadow on his huge angular face. In the flickering gloom, he sneered, his lip curling like a hungry wolf. “The day you have anything good to offer to any of the rest of us will be a rare day indeed, Miss Peryl,” he rumbled. “Our Lady Eris gave this task to me, not to you. And I will complete it my way, not yours. What do you know of war?”

Miss Peryl made a childish face, sticking out her bottom lip. “Hmph, you say that like you’re all noble and loyal, but really you just don’t want to end up like Brother Moros,” she said petulantly, pleased to have gotten a rise out of him. He had been studiously ignoring her for hours now, but she was persistent by nature. If he was a solid rock, then she was the constant drip of water which patiently scored a groove. “Elder Brother Strife does not know how lucky he is to not share the same fate after their … well, let’s face it … their monumental failure.” She smirked with obvious relish and leaned in to her brother conspiratorially. “Y’know, I still can’t believe he got off so lightly, can you? After that business at the floating island … He should have been hung, drawn and quartered.” She shook her shimmering purple head in astonishment. “I swear by the fates, Strife has more lives than a cat. He always was her favourite.”

“Mr Strife is our elder,” Mr Ker grated, glowering at her dangerously once again. “He deserves your respect.”

“Why? Because I’m the youngest?” she spat, grimacing. “It’s so completely unfair.” Miss Peryl kicked her heels bad-temperedly against the table, making the lantern shudder and the shadows leap. “Our little family is so utterly dysfunctional! He should be languishing in the deepest pits of Dis along with that utterly cracked magpie egg Brother Moros if you ask me.”

Mr Ker only grunted, looking back to his map, clearly not interested. He was stoic to a fault. Or dim. She could never decide. Nothing got him going, except playing with his pets. And that never really ended well. It usually ended with a mop. “They are both an embarrassment to us,” she declared. “Dragging the good name of the Grimms through the mud. Moros gets the punishment, but not Strife, oh no. Instead, what’s he doing, eh? I’ll tell you what. He’s still lording around like he owns the whole Netherworlde. On his little quest to catch the lost seer. Pathetic.”

Her brother growled wordlessly like a thunderhead. He produced a pair of callipers and began walking them across the page, counting under his breath. He made a few notes in a small journal by his side, his massive white hand dwarfing the tiny stub of pencil quite comically.

Miss Peryl watched him for a few moments, a look of bored disinterest on her white face as the silence stretched around them in the darkness. “I don’t know why you won’t let me help, big brother,” she said after a while, narrowing her dark painted eyes. “I mean … I came all this way with you. I would think you’d appreciate the company. One of us should be the brains of the operation, right?”

He didn’t reply, which seemed to irritate her further. “You know what I think?” she continued, needling. “I think you’re afraid I will steal all your glory.”

Mr Ker stared at her flatly. “The will of our Dark Lady is done for duty, bratling, not for glory. I am the commander of the army of Peacekeepers. What are you? A waste of flesh.”

The youngest of the Grimms leapt down off the table. “Yeah, whatever,” she said lightly, brushing dust from her behind. If she was remotely offended, it didn’t show. “I still think you’re wasting your time though.” She flicked her eyes at the map. “There’s no way through the Mire for a start, so you will just waste everyone’s time. You will end up drowned in a bog and I will be there to see it and say ‘I told you so’.”

“Have you nothing better to do?” Mr Ker grimaced, veins bulging on his thick neck. “In all the Netherworlde, is there nowhere else you have to be other than here, in my room, in this tavern, irritating me? Your voice is like a bluebottle trapped under a glass!”

The girl cracked her knuckles and stretched like a cat. “Not really. Lady Eris has not seen fit to give me a quest. Of course, I’m just a useless child, aren’t I? Perhaps if I had big bulging muscles and a bad temper like you I might get more attention. Or maybe if I acted like a greedy spindly spider like dear old Strife.” She flicked a stray lock of purple hair out of her eyes. “Perhaps that’s where I’m going wrong. It’s hardly my fault that I’m so delicately understated. Honestly…” Her darkly-kohled eyes narrowed. “I get treated like wallpaper in the Court of Dis. No one even knows I’m alive. And me, a Grimm.”

“And yet for all your uselessness, you think you can plan strategy better than me,” Mr Ker snarled. “I do not want or need your help, little sister. I do not want or need your company. I will find what I seek on my own. I do not feel any inclination to help you raise your profile in our Lady’s court, which is why you are really here with me now.” He glared at her with his deep-set black eyes. “There are more important matters at hand than your childish ego.”

“Like what?” She folded her arms.

Mr Ker stuck a red pin in the map, a slow grin spreading chillingly across his face. In a ledger by the map was a list of towns and cities. He crossed another name off with his stubby pencil. “Like the finding of places lost, and the opening of sealed locks.”

“And the spilling of blood,” Miss Peryl added with a sudden happy grin. “Don’t forget the best part. Blood must be spilled in the dust or it’s all for nothing. And not just any old blood either.” She wagged her finger chidingly at him.

Mr Ker gave her a weary sidelong glance, as though every idiot knew this.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she said petulantly. “You sacrifice the wrong lamb in your bloodthirsty, numbskull way and you’ll be left to rot in the pits of Dis with poor old mad Moros.” Her eyes sparkled, looking mischievously amused. “Poor old orange-top. I’m sure he’s finding it quite … educational … entertaining the Shidelings.” She smirked wickedly. “Let them deal with his awful play-acting for a while. If you ask me, it’s so nice since he was banished. Blessed peace and quiet for once.”

“Leave the bloodletting to those with a talent for it, Sister,” the large man warned. Mr Ker was fond of blood. “You have never been the type to get your pretty little hands dirty.”

“I have other ways and means, Mr Ker,” she replied airily, with an affectation of great mystery. “Other ways.” She stared around the dank, shadowy room. “Other means.”

The anonymous tavern which her brother had selected as his base of operations was depressingly sparse. Just visible in the low light was a single bed, unslept-in, faded wallpaper, a small bedside table, tired-looking curtains closed against the windows, and a small glass and metal box on a stand in the corner, which neither of them had touched since they arrived. Miss Peryl peered at this box now, her face a study in jaded teenage boredom.

“What is that thing anyway?” she asked.

Mr Ker did not glance up from his study of the map. He had taken out a small device which looked like a golden Swiss army knife, and was using it to take some manner of arcane measurements, which he duly noted in his small ledger.

“The humans call it a ‘tele-vision set’,” he growled. “For far-off scrying, I assume.”

“How curious these humans are,” his sister said, sounding fascinated. She ran a white finger across the screen with a squeak, leaving a clear trail in dust. “And what, my knowledgeable and monosyllabic elder, is its purpose?”

“Constant … mindless … distraction,” Ker replied dryly. “Much as yourself, dearest sibling.” He grinned like a wolf. His teeth were very sharp. He had filed them all to points long ago.

She ignored him and crossed to the window, lifting aside the curtain with a whoosh. Bright sunshine suddenly streamed into the small room, making her squint and ruining the illusion that the two Grimm conspirators were gathered in midnight shadows.

This window looked out from the second floor of the building, the view showing a fairly quiet city side street in mid-afternoon. The backs of other buildings, office blocks by the looks of them, fire escapes, dustbins and skips, all filled her vision. It was a rather depressing sight. She blinked her heavily made-up eyes rapidly in the brilliant sunshine. Dusty parked cars below baked in the sizzling summer sun. An old lady was walking a small dog which looked set to expire in the heat. It was all so depressingly human. Miss Peryl peered down at the old lady with distaste.

“What is the name of this city again?” she asked.

“Stoke,” he replied. “As in, ‘take the poker and stoke the furnace.’ Stupid name.”

“I don’t like it.” She wrinkled her nose, letting the curtain drop back into place, shrouding them in gloom once more. “Too many humans … too much noise. Why we had to come here at all is totally beyond me. I mean, really … ew.”

“You did not have to come here at all,” he reminded her, eyes not leaving his chart. “You could have stayed in the Netherworlde. Stayed in Dis doing whatever it is you do all day.”

“At least I do something productive,” she countered idly. “All you do is pull pixies apart. It’s gross and annoying.”

“They’re my pets,” Ker muttered. “I like pets.”

She snorted in response. He looked up at her, irritated.

“I am here on our Lady Eris’ orders,” he rumbled. “Now for Tartar’s sake … go and find something to do. You are distracting me.”

The girl leaned on the windowsill for a while, peeking through the curtains and watching the modern city go about its business below her. A bendy bus roared by, twice as long as others she had seen, and joined in the middle by a rubbery concertina. What will these humans think of next? she wondered idly. How can a civilisation be so clever and so dreary at the same time? The air in the human world tasted flat. Like a fizzy drink left open too long in its can.

Somewhere beyond the drone of the inner city traffic she could hear the squeal of trams on rails. The smell of meat and spices floated up to her from a curry house which occupied the ground floor below the small and grubby hotel. A few straggly-looking students were milling around at its doors.

“I think I will take a trip,” she said eventually. “Three weeks we’ve been stuck in the human world, here in this concrete and glass city, and others. They’re all the same. You studying your maps, looking at sluices and drains and sewers and other utterly boring things. It’s awfully dull.” Her eyes narrowed as a sly smile crept onto her face. “I think I shall take a train; a trip out into the countryside will occupy my mind. This city is too noisy by far.”

“I don’t care where you go, Sister, as long as you go,” Ker grunted carelessly.

She shot him a peevish stare, turning away from the window. “Perhaps I’ll take a constitutional,” she said. “Tell you what, I will make you a deal, my sour, simpleton brother. You find what you are looking for on your maps, the hidden way…” She smiled sweetly, or what would have been sweetly on any other face but hers. “And I shall provide the blood.”

Mr Ker shot her a warning glare. “You’re not even supposed to be here,” he said darkly. “Do you think the dark Empress of the Netherworlde will be pleased with you if you interfere with her plans because you are simply ‘bored’, little one?”

Miss Peryl grinned. She didn’t give two hoots how pleased the dark Empress of the Netherworlde was. “You know what I think? I think you simply don’t want the competition. I will bring the lamb to slaughter long before you have found your door to unlock. And then we shall see who is and isn’t ignored at court.”

“I do not play your games, child,” Ker glowered.

“Everyone plays my games,” the girl replied loftily, sweeping across the room, scooping up a small clutch bag from the cabinet. “ … Sooner or later.”

She kissed her brother on the temple as she passed him, heading for the door. He winced and jerked away, annoyed by this utterly false show of affection.

“I think it’s time for me to go and play in the lovely English countryside. Have fun with your dusty old maps. And if you bring home any more stray cats, be sure to clean up the mess afterwards,” she chirped merrily, bouncing from the dingy room. A crisp, pale ghoul, filled with steely purpose.

DEAD TONGUES

It was June the sixteenth, and a blazingly sunny day. High on its hill above the village of Barrowood, the sprawling stone and timber mass of Erlking Hall baked in the heat. Open windows of shimmering glass flashed in the sunlight and the ivy hung breathlessly still. The few wispy clouds in the vast blue bowl of the sky rolled over the sun and away again.

In the large rose garden, enclosed on all sides by a tall stone wall and accessed by a warped wooden door, the heat flowed like molten lead, pooling in the bowl of this closed space. Here, in this breezeless oasis, the world’s last changeling, the Scion of the Arcania, the last of the House of Fellowes, lay on his stomach in the dry grass. A small, pale, and altogether unassuming figure amongst the vivid roses. He was sheltering under the thin and wavering shade of a small tree. Robin Fellows was reading a book, while the soil in the flowerbeds beside him baked as steadily as clay in a kiln.

“If it gets any hotter…” a voice came wearily from above him, “ … I honestly believe I might actually combust.”

Robin propped himself up on his elbows, looking upwards and shielding his eyes from the sun. He squinted into the dappled branches overhead. Another boy was lying in the tree above him, like a skinny leopard slung amongst the boughs, sprawled face down. He was ensconced among the branches with limbs dangling, looking for all the world like someone who had fallen from the sky and whose parachute hadn’t opened. This second boy was older and taller than Robin, though not by much, and his hair and skin were darker. Despite this, it seemed he was flagging in the heat much more than his pale friend below.

“It’s not that hot, Henry,” Robin said, squinting up at him. “We’re in the shade anyway. You were complaining two weeks ago because it rained all spring without letting up.”

Henry sighed breathlessly. “It is that hot,” he muttered miserably, looking down, his face squished against the tree bark. “It’s exactly that hot. In fact, Rob, it’s hotter. I reckon my brains are melting. There’s a funny smell up here as well.” He sniffed and made a face. “I think a squirrel died inside this tree and is slowly cooking.”

Down below, Robin closed his book. It was a large tattered-looking hardback, bound in crimson leather and emblazoned with the gold-leaf title: ‘My Year amongst the Chalpies: an expedition into madness’. He had been using the sunny afternoon to catch up on his Netherworlde reading. Robin was never happier than with a book.

“Do you want to go inside?” he asked the eternally dramatic boy above him. Henry was currently feigning death in the tree, but Robin had to admit, it was roasting hot outside today. The sun was burning through the back of his t-shirt. It wouldn’t be so bad if there was a cooling breeze or something, anything, just to break the oppressive heat – but no air moved. It hovered breathlessly still and stifling. A thick, smothering blanket.

“Hestia will probably make us some cold drinks if we threaten to hang around and get under her feet for a while,” Robin grinned. “You know she’ll give us anything to get us out of her kitchen.”

It was a favourite pastime of both boys to annoy Erlking’s perennially bad-tempered housekeeper.

“Nah,” came the listless reply. “I haven’t got the energy to breathe, let alone move. I’ll just stay here ‘til they find my corpse. It will be shrivelled and cooked, like crispy bacon.” He waved a hand down at Robin on the grass. “You just stay down there until all of your adorable summertime freckles finally join up, and your face is completely orange.”

Robin ignored Henry’s teasing. He shielded his eyes and looked out across the bright walled garden. The countless roses, red and white, some almost as large as his head, shimmered drowsily everywhere in the pollen-filled haze. They may as well have been in the Red Queen’s garden in Wonderland. Away on the far side of the garden, amongst the leafy bushes, Mr Drover, Henry’s father and Erlking’s all-round handyman, was busy weeding a border, and looking very red-faced and flustered. Mr Drover was a large heavy-set man, and not suited to heat-waves. It was like watching a polar bear trying to cope in a sauna. Robin could almost see steam rising from his balding head, which was rather burned-looking and shiny.

“I think your dad’s going to explode soon,” he said conversationally to Henry. “Perhaps it is a bit warm to be outside after all.”

“It would be better if we could go down to the lake,” Henry moaned, dropping a twig on Robin’s head deliberately. “Have a swim, cool off,” he sighed. “Bliss!”

“You know I can’t swim,” Robin said, a little embarrassed by this fact. “I don’t think I’d relax much drowning and flailing about in the lake.” Ever since the weather had cleared up, Robin had endured countless subtle and not so subtle hints about the lake which lay not far beyond the trees behind Erlking.

“Meh. What’s a little drowning? At least you’d be cooler,” Henry reasoned. “Or we could get you some arm bands. Maybe one of those inflatable rings with a duck on the front.” He cackled to himself evilly, before suddenly falling quiet. “Actually, dad made me wear one of those for swimming lessons once. Bloody nutter, never lived it down…”

“I wish we could go to the local pool,” Robin sighed. “Maybe Aunt Irene would let us go.”

“Nah mate, we’d have to be chaperoned and I don’t fancy seeing Hestia in a bikini. Anyway, it’s a death trap, the local pool. Full of wee and weird chemicals.”

“There’s a pool somewhere inside Erlking Hall itself though, isn’t there? I’m sure I heard Hestia mention it one time. Never actually found it, though, which is a bit ridiculous when you consider I’ve been living here for nine months now.”

Robin had lived at Erlking since the previous September and was still discovering new rooms every week. The place seemed to rearrange itself from time to time, like some kind of inter-dimensional rubix cube. Only the previous week, Robin had been ambling along the usual route from his bedroom to the large third floor bathroom, a walk he took at least once every day, when he had somehow taken a wrong turn and had found himself in a small passage with just two doors facing one another. They led into two identical rooms, parlours of sorts, he had supposed, although in truth he had no clear idea of what a parlour actually was.

Both chambers, down to the very last detail, had been entirely monochromatic in design. One room had white walls, black curtains, a white chandelier sparkling down onto white polished floorboards, and it housed a black marble fireplace and a large black grand piano, atop which rested two snow white candlesticks. The room on the opposite side of the passage, when Robin inspected it, was laid out identically, in reverse. With black walls, white curtains, a jet black chandelier gleaming down on black painted floorboards, a pale fireplace and a large white piano atop which perched two black candlesticks. Even the piano keys, black and white, were reversed. Robin had padded around the silent rooms for a while, one by one, wandering what on earth their purpose might be. He had accidentally knocked one of the black candlesticks from its perch. As it had fallen to the floor, a similar clunk across the hall had made him jump. Crossing from the one parlour to the other, he had been surprised to see that a white candlestick was on the floor in there, rocking back and forth, although the room, he was certain, was completely empty.

Robin had crossed the room and replaced it, and with an experimental hand reached out and played a couple of notes on the black piano. Instantly, strange, reedy echoes of piano music followed from across the hall. They sounded wrong somehow. If he was in this room, who … or what … was in the other? He’d run about halfway down the corridor when he’d heard both doors close themselves softly behind him in tandem. He hadn’t explored since then. It was just one of the many mysteries of Erlking.

The house was like that. Things seemed to come and go. Sometimes it felt as though the building itself were asleep and you were living inside its dreams – fun and whimsical on occasion, but other times, quite grimly worrying. Not all dreams were pleasant, after all.

Robin shook himself out of the memory. Getting back to the subject of un-findable rooms and swimming, he was sure he had heard Hestia mention something about an indoor pool somewhere.

“We could always go inside and try to find it if you want,” he said to Henry. “The pool room of Erlking? The pool that time forgot? You can have your swim in there, rather than down at the lake, I’ll finish my book or something.” He waved the book hopefully.

Henry half climbed, half fell out of the tree, shedding many leaves noisily on his way down. “Not anymore, mate. Technically anyway. They had to close the pool room off, I heard,” he said as his feet hit the dry grass. “A couple of years ago, I think I must have been ten or eleven at the time, when a kraken turned up. Stupid animal is still in there I think.” He rubbed tree bark off his hands. “You can hear it slithering along the walls now and then if you pass down the right corridors. Slopping about like … well, like a kraken.” He shrugged. “It must be massive by now. It’s not that the pool is hard to find really, it’s more that it’s completely off limits.”

Robin raised his eyebrows. “A kraken?” He mopped his hot face with the front of his t-shirt. “As in a giant squid? With tentacles and things? In the pool inside? Are you serious?”

Henry nodded. “Yes, kind of squid-like, bit of a sea-horsey face thrown in there too, just for good measure. They start off fairly small, kraken, or so your aunt told my dad anyways. People in the Netherworlde used to keep them as exotic pets apparently, but they get too big to look after and get flushed away. They end up in the sewers, going wild.” He scratched lazily at his tangled brown hair. “Bit cruel really. I never actually saw the one in the pool room here. My old man boarded up the doors before I could have a look, which I was gutted about, I can tell you. But I reckon it used to be someone’s pet or something because dad told me it had a little pink collar on it with ‘Inky’ spelled out in fake diamonds.”

Robin frowned. “Inky? I feel a bit sorry for it,” he said, slipping his trainers on. “Locking it up in that pool room forever.”

Henry shook his head. “I don’t. It would rip us all to shreds and eat us given half the chance. Vicious killers, they are. Kraken make bloodstained, dead-eyed killer man-eating sharks look downright cuddly.” He nodded knowledgeably.

“Oh. I feel a bit less sorry for it then,” Robin amended, raising an eyebrow. There was still so much he didn’t know about so many creatures of the Netherworlde.

“Kraken grow as big as the space they’re in,” Henry said, strolling away across the grass towards the far end of the garden, where his father was still toiling in the sultry heat. Robin followed him, gathering up his books.

“Or so I heard anyway,” Henry continued, brushing tree bark fragments from his sleeves. “That’s why you seal the room up, you see, if you get an infestation? You can’t drive ‘em out. All you can do is try and contain ‘em. Dad says if one ever escaped and got out into the open ocean, it’d mean the end of the world, because it’d grow so big it filled the entire thing. A bit gloomy, eh?”

They had crossed the baking lawn, the dry grass practically crunching under their feet, and drawn level with Mr Drover, who was fighting a losing battle, but was struggling on valiantly, trowel in hand.

“Hullo boys,” he gruffed absently without looking up, his face the colour of beetroot.

“Isn’t that right, dad?” Henry said, thrusting his hands into his pockets and rocking on his heels.

“Hmm? What’s that?”

“Kraken in the ocean. Armageddon,” Henry summarised lightly.

“Hmm? Oh yes, terrible business,” Mr Drover muttered into his moustache. “Shouldn’t be allowed. Here, I don’t suppose you boys fancy making yourselves useful and finishing up here while I get on with something else do you? There are only fifteen flowerbeds left to do. It’s just strangleweed. Giving me a bugger of a time though. I need to get round to the herb garden and start in on the screaming beets. Have to put my slippers on first, you know how easily startled that beetroot is. Gives me a migraine with its howling.”

“Sorry,” Henry said, thinking fast. “Robin here has tons of homework to do, and I said I’d help.”

Mr Drover looked up at them suspiciously. “Homework? In June? School is out for summer. I should know, my lad, I’ve had you under my feet at home for weeks.”

“No rest for the wicked eh, Mr D?” Robin said, smiling innocently. He waved his book in the air as supporting evidence.

“Hmph,” Mr Drover frowned. “Well, I suppose you’re hardly following the national curriculum here at Erlking are you?” he conceded. “More the Sorcerer’s syllabus, eh?” He chuckled at his own joke. “If that’s the case then, you’d better get along. Your aunt might still be trying to find you a replacement tutor, they’re not easy to come by, but that’s no excuse to go slacking, is it?”

Robin’s previous tutor, Phorbas, had been a satyr. Half man, half goat. A Panthea and an expert in the Tower of Air. It was a dangerous job, teaching the world’s last changeling. One risked the displeasure of the Netherworlde ruler, Lady Eris. Phorbas had paid the price for rebellion. He had been separated body and soul, and his essence was currently trapped, rather permanently, in an ornate knife.

There wasn’t much effective learning to be had from cutlery.

Robin had been enjoying the lazy lesson-free days of summer as best he could, and had been studiously ignoring the lengthy list of reading material his aunt had thoughtfully provided. Feeling slightly guilty for lying to Mr Drover, he made a mental note to at least make a start on the reading material Aunt Irene had given him tonight. Later would be better, when it was cool enough to think.

The two boys left the gardens for into the blessed cool shade of the house proper. It took a few moments for their eyes to adjust to the gloom within, so it was that they didn’t immediately see the small figure of Karya before them.

The young girl was sitting at a writing desk along one wall of the hallway, scribbling furiously on a telephone pad. Her wild mass of brown hair was pinned up haphazardly above her head with about a hundred clips, but this was the only concession she made to the sweltering heat. She still wore her large shaggy coat of animal skins. Robin had rarely seen her without it since their first meeting last year.

“Hello you two,” she said without looking up. “Finished baking your brains, have you?”

“Good morning to you too,” Robin said, wandering across the marble floor and over to her nook, trailing Henry behind him. “It is summer you know, Karya. Most normal people spend it outside mucking about. We haven’t seen you since breakfast.”

“Yeah,” Henry said scowling. Henry didn’t consider Karya to be normal in even the slightest way. “You’ve not been outdoors all week. You’re always lurking in the shadows, reading and writing. It’s unnatural.”

They hadn’t discussed it much, but Robin privately suspected that Henry was having trouble adjusting to this newest member of the Erlking family. Karya was a girl for a start, which made her in Henry’s mind instantly distrustful, and she was bookish and sharp tongued. She had helped to save Henry’s life from an inconvenient kidnapping, however, so he had decided gracefully not to kick up a fuss when Robin invited her to stay with them.

Robin was bookish too, but that didn’t seem to bother Henry.

Karya had seemingly taken to living at Erlking well. As far as Robin was concerned, she seemed to fit in well in a house full of misfits.

“Unnatural? Reading and writing is unnatural now?” the young girl said testily, flicking her eyes up at the boys. Henry’s misgivings were mutual as far as she was concerned. As far as the Scion’s strange human friend was concerned, Karya clearly found him a constant, low-level irritation. “I’m sure you think it’s far more productive to go kicking a rubber ball around on the grass pointlessly for hours on end. Or prattling on endlessly. But some of us have actual work to do.”

“What are you doing, seeing as you brought it up?” Robin asked curiously, looking over her shoulder. The pad on the desk before her was covered in indecipherable glyphs, symbols and calculations. “Henry has got a point you know; you’ve been hanging around the library for days. We’ve barely seen you.”

“I happen to find the library restful and a good place to work. It’s the one place I can almost guarantee not to run into certain loud and annoying distractions.” She peered at Henry pointedly. “As for what I’m doing, Scion, it’s the same thing I’ve been doing for two weeks now, while some people have been wasting time sunbathing and whatever else you two do. I’m trying to translate something for your aunt.”

“For Aunt Irene? Robin frowned, looking down at the girl’s scribbling covering the tabletop. “How come she’s got you working as her assistant then?”

“Because the thing that I’m translating, or trying to translate at least, is not one of the nine languages she can read write and speak herself,” Karya said. She frowned down at her own notes. “It’s much too old.”

“So why would you know it then?” Henry folded his arms. “You must be what, eleven years old?” Henry was a year older than Robin and didn’t like having his seniority challenged by someone younger and shorter than him.

Karya gave him a withering look. “I don’t know the language, but I do know a more modern version of it. I’m backtracking, piecing together this protean tongue from fragments of later-developed languages.” She huffed. “But it’s not easy. It’s as difficult as it would be for a human like you trying to understand monkey screeches.”

Robin found himself unsurprised that Karya might have a talent for ancient languages. She was a bundle of closely-guarded secrets.

To be perfectly honest, he knew precious little about the strange girl who had erupted into his life the previous year. Karya was neither one of the Fae, like Robin, nor Panthea, like most of the Netherworlde’s free inhabitants. It wasn’t entirely clear what she was, but as she had never broached the subject, Robin had thought it would be terribly rude to ask outright.

“What is it she’s got you translating for her though?” Robin wanted to know.

Karya wagged a finger at him. “Now that would be your guardian’s business, not yours,” she said mysteriously.

The two boys stared at her blankly and expectantly for a few silent moments, until finally she rolled her eyes and relented. “Although to be honest, I’m not being peevish or secretive, I honestly don’t know what it is,” she admitted. “She just gave me a copy of the text which she had written out herself from the original source, and asked if I could shed any light on it. I have no idea where it’s from or what it’s in regard to.” She sighed. “It could be a letter she owns, an old prophecy maybe, a piece of poetry, a ransom note. It could be an ancient shopping list for all I know.” She scratched at her temple with the blunt end of the pencil, looking irritated with herself. “I figured, seeing as I’m staying here for the time being, I may as well try and make myself useful. I’m not making much progress anyway. Two weeks’ work and I’ve only got two words so far.” She held up her scribbling for their benefit. “This symbol here…” she pointed out “ … the wiggly line with the sharp diagonal across the top of it, I think is meant to be the letter H … or maybe S,” she added uncertainly. “Which, when coupled with the rest of these letters makes this word here either ‘Shade’ or ‘Hades’.” She pointed to another collection of symbols. “And this here is almost certainly the symbol for the word ‘Dark’, but not the dark of a closed cupboard or a grave or anything like that. More a big, roomy dark, like space or the night sky. You can tell that by the little lines radiating out, see?” She frowned deeper. “Although it could also be taken to mean ‘shadow’.”

Robin and Henry didn’t see at all, but they nodded encouragingly nonetheless.

“So … Dark Hades then,” Henry said thoughtfully. “Or Shady shadows? Sounds cheerful. Whatever it is she’s got you working on, I don’t think it’s an old love letter.”

Karya sucked the end of her pencil. “I think, I think it’s a name … it has all the hallmarks of a protean pronoun, but it’s too early to say really. Still…” She looked up brightly. “It’s better than kicking a rubber ball around like some kind of dog doing tricks.”

“Oi! There’s a lot of skill involved,” Henry muttered mutinously, rising to the challenge. “I can keepie-upie to two hundred and fifty on a good day.”

“That must come in incredibly useful,” Karya replied dryly. “I can decline a noun.” She blinked at him. “I find my skills more practical.”

“I can decline a noun too,” Robin said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. “Noun? No thanks, I’m fine for nouns.”

Karya and Henry ignored him, neither breaking their defiant stare.

“I can swim ten lengths without needing a break,” the dark haired boy said challengingly.

“Very impressive. I can play seven different instruments,” Karya replied coolly. “But I don’t feel the urge to shout about it.”

“I can eat my own body weight in ham and not feel sick.”

“I can track a deer through a trackless bog.”

“I can belch all the way to T in the alphabet.”

“I can tear a hole between two worlds and jump between them.”

Henry paused, mouth half open. Karya raised her eyebrows expectantly. Henry shut his mouth and shrugged amiably.

“Fair enough,” he conceded. Karya smirked a little, shuffling her papers.

“If you two have quite finished,” Robin sighed. “I wondered if you wanted to take a break, Karya, and come with us. Henry and I are going to the kitchen to annoy Hestia. She might feed us to make us go away.”

“I am afraid that shall have to wait. For now,” a cool voice said from behind them. Robin whirled, feeling his face turn crimson with embarrassment.

His elderly Aunt Irene, a slender, dignified spire of a woman, was standing at the top of the great stairs. She looked mildly amused. But only very mildly.

“Your presence is required, my nephew, down by the lake,” she said.

“The lake?” Robin asked, surprised, as Aunt Irene descended the staircase in a stately manner and a swish of softly rustling silks. “But … I thought the lake was beyond Erlking’s boundaries?”

Erlking, he knew, came with certain boons and bonuses. Robin, and anyone else, was safe from intentional harm within its limits.

His aunt nodded. “Yes, it is. That is quite correct. I am glad to see your memory is intact. But you will be quite safe at this time. There is someone waiting to meet you there now. Your faun was supposed to give you the message almost half an hour ago.” She glanced around at the three of them gathered in the hall. “I assume, from your presence here, that this did not happen.”

Robin, Henry, and Karya all exchanged blank looks. None of them had seen Woad, Erlking’s blue-skinned resident faun, all morning.

“Evidently, he was waylaid by his own impulses,” Aunt Irene continued. “I have noticed his vendetta against the indigenous squirrel population of Erlking’s grounds has reached new and bloody heights of late.”

The three children exchanged glances once again. Woad hated squirrels.

“No matter. If you set off now, you can still be at the lake in good time,” his aunt said. It was a firm command, artfully phrased as a light observation, which was her usual manner.

“Let’s go then,” said Henry brightly, rubbing his hands together and clearly happy at the thought of finally getting a dip in the cool water after all, but Irene shook her head.

“Just Robin if you please,” she said firmly. “Henry and Karya, the two of you remain here. I daresay you will manage to annoy my housekeeper perfectly adequately without my nephew’s help.”

Robin and Henry managed to look sheepish. Karya indicated her notes sprawled before her on the tabletop. “I don’t really have time to entertain Henry,” the girl said loftily. “I haven’t made much more progress on this I’m afraid. I have a name … I think, or several variations of one, and I’m close to confirming whether the writer is male or female … I think female … but that’s all.” She looked apologetic. “It’s such a rare dialect. I’ve been working on it solidly.”

“Excellent work,” Irene said, coming around the two boys to stand at Karya’s shoulder. She raised her half-moon spectacles from where they rested on a chain around her neck and peered down at the paper. “It may be a long and arduous task that I have set you, Karya, but I cannot stress how imperative it is that this be translated correctly, even if it takes both of us months on end.” She seemed to have almost forgotten that Robin and Henry were there.

“Umm, Aunt Irene?” Robin said. He was loath to distract the imperious woman from her engrossment with Karya’s scribblings.

“Yes, Robin?” his aunt replied without looking around, a tiny frown line on her forehead as she roamed over the young girl’s findings.

“It’s just … you didn’t say…who exactly am I going to be meeting at the lake?”

Irene glanced back at him, her pale blue eyes filled with what looked like cool amusement. “Why, your new tutor of course. Now run along.”

A NEW ENGAGEMENT

Robin’s curiosity was almost overwhelming by the time he had crossed the long sloping meadow behind Erlking’s hill, the grass wavering in the heat haze. He made his way under the cool foliage of the woods, tramping along the dusty path which led down to the lake. A new tutor, he thought, warily.

Passing out of the long, winding tree-lined path, he headed back out into the baking heat and bright sun. The lake was laid out before him, a bright glittering disc under the blue sky, enclosed on all sides by the dense forest. Two odd and weathered stone totem poles lay at the end of the path just before the shingle, marking the boundaries of Erlking’s reach. Henry hadn’t been exaggerating about the lake. It was large and beautiful. Here in high summer, the expanse of water shimmered in its own mirage-light. A secluded oasis in the lush green woods. Off, in the middle of the green-blue water, there jutted the irregular hump of a small mossy island, shaded in thick trees. Robin knew that there was some kind of ruin out there nestled in the overgrowth, a ‘folly’. Henry had told him all about it. Just another of Erlking’s many oddities. Grey-black stones poking through bare branches like a jumble of broken mossy teeth. It was utterly hidden, lost behind a veil of bushy trees. The island itself seemed misty and bluish in the haze.

The lake looked sparkling and cold. It made Robin want to kick his trainers off and step out into the inviting water, cooling his blood in the baking heat. Only the slight worry about drowning horribly stopped him.

Robin halted in his tracks, his feet crunching in the gravel at the lake’s lapping edge. A tall slender woman was standing out on the water’s surface like some pale vision from King Arthur’s legends.

The woman was some distance from the shore, standing perfectly still like a pale ghost, halfway between him and the island with its creeper-covered ruins. She was wrapped in a long silvery blue dress which curled and twined around her sinuously, a ceaseless ripple of movement which shone in the sunlight. Her skin was milky-pale and her long hair was so fair it seemed almost translucent, floating around her shoulders.

They stared at one another for a moment, the distant woman and Robin, regarding each other wordlessly across the glittering expanse. It was, Robin felt, a surreal moment.

As he stared, disbelieving, she began to walk towards him, her movements slow, fluid and graceful, stepping languidly as though the lake were composed of smooth solid glass rather than liquid water.

Robin, unsure of what to do in such a situation, did nothing. He waited, feeling rather awkward and self-conscious as the ethereal woman made her slow and steady way toward him. Her eyes, which were a very calm deep green, never left his for an instant. His seraphinite mana stone beat against his chest beneath his t-shirt, like a deep second heartbeat. Whoever this lady was, besides being the single most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on, she was powerful, and her mana flowed before her in waves, echoing in the stone on his chest. Her energy pushed towards him like an invisible fog bank rolling off the lake.

As she finally reached the shore before him, Robin glanced down at her feet, which were bare and just visible beneath her shimmering dress, and saw that each time she placed a foot on the water’s surface, frost and ice gathered and appeared beneath her. She wasn’t walking on the surface of the water at all; she was somehow turning the water beneath her into tiny icebergs and using them like stepping stones. They melted away behind her as soon as she lifted her foot from them.

When she was standing right before him he looked up, realising just how very tall she was. She was taller that Aunt Irene even.

“You are the Scion of the Arcania,” she said softly.

“Um … yes,” Robin replied haltingly. “I’m Robin.”

Her sleepy eyes, which were peering into his own as though she were trying to read the inside of the back of his head, seemed to focus at the sound of his voice, and she looked him up and down slowly, a thoughtful look on her tranquil face. It was as though she had been looking at someone or something else before he had spoken, and the sound of his voice has snapped her out of a daydream. She seemed to see him properly for the first time.

“Robin,” she muttered, as though testing the shape of the word in her mouth. “Hmm.”

A tiny frown line appeared in her pale forehead. Even her eyelashes looked almost transparent. She seemed to be weighing him up.

“Such a small boy … for the Scion of the Arcania.” She did not sound particularly impressed. Her voice was not much more than a murmur. “Such a humble vessel for such a force. A splintered force, granted … but nonetheless…” She blinked at him once or twice, trailing off. Robin had no idea what to say. He felt rather grubby from the heat, his hair stuck to his forehead with sweat. There were grass stains on the front of his t-shirt where he had been lying on his stomach in the rose garden. As far as first impressions go, he had to admit, this wasn’t the best he could have presented. He wished Aunt Irene had given him more notice, and he made a mental note to have stern words with Woad later when he got his hands on the little blue creature.

“Like a storm hiding in a seashell … held to the ear … faint whispers…” the woman pondered aloud, speaking almost to herself. “Why hide your light under this child’s bushel, eldest? What crude camouflage is this?” She shrugged. “But mine is not to question why. Who, after all, can fathom the thoughts of the Fae? Minds like corkscrews, one and all.”

She flicked her soft green eyes to Robin’s mana stone on its cord around his neck. “Seraphinite?” she said, her eyes widening slightly. “Spirit stone. And whose was this, and who’s will it be? How interesting your kind are.” She smiled for the first time at him, and Robin was surprised to find she looked quite friendly for a moment. It felt like the first time she was actually paying attention to him. “Hiding like nested dolls, one in another … in another. Your ways do … amuse.”

Her eyes drifted from the mana stone, which Robin wasn’t quite sure how she had seen, hidden as it was under his t-shirt, and her smile became slightly lopsided.

“I am Madame Calypso,” she said. “You … are extremely late.”

Robin stammered. “I know … I’m sorry. I only just found out I was supposed to be here. My friend Woad was supposed to tell me, that is, my aunt gave him a message but—”

“Hush,” she said, rather matter-of-factly. “I’m bored already.”

Robin hushed.

“We shall start again,” she said. “And take things from there. I am Madame Calypso. I am no more human that you are, little Fae, and I am here because I owe your guardian a debt. The Lady Irene recently assisted me in … leaving my last engagement. She has contacted me to request my assistance in the matter of your … education.”

“Aunt Irene said you were going to be my new tutor. Is that right?” Robin asked.

Madame Calypso nodded drowsily. “Apparently. I have never tutored before, so we will have to see how that goes, I suppose. I am Panthea,” she said. “A Nymph. We are living in interesting times, Scion of the Arcania. Time was, not too long ago, when I would have regarded your kind, the Fae, as a lower class of being. Many Panthea do. Like wild animals, good only for menial labour, or…” She looked thoughtful. “ … sport. But that was before I met your guardian. She opened my eyes to the truth. To the lies of Lady Eris.” She looked away from him for a moment. “The dark Empress of the Netherworlde has something of a talent for sowing discord between peoples. Especially between the Fae and the Panthea. When I think back now…” Her already misty eyes clouded further. “ … I am ashamed of what I once thought of your people.”

She looked at Robin. “I owe your race an apology. All the Panthea do.” She glanced around the water and the trees. “But how does one apologise for genocide?” she said breezily. “I suppose this, agreeing to this position, aiding a known insurgent and wanted outlaw like your guardian, makes me one also. A traitor to the Netherworlde. A rebel. I will be on the Peacekeepers hunted list now.” She seemed to consider this a moment. “How curious. To be an outlaw. Life takes such unexpected directions. Like white water streams. Coils and turns…”

Robin couldn’t help but smirk at the thought of his elderly Aunt Irene as a dangerous outlaw. But this strange, distracted woman was correct in her way. Irene, and all those at Erlking, lived in defiance of Eris and her rule. They were Panthea, all of them, Irene, Phorbas, Hestia, Woad. And all had committed the ultimate crime. Aiding not only one of the Fae, but the most wanted of all the Fae, Robin himself.

“An unwise choice for me … perhaps. I hope I don’t regret it. It is done, however. For better or worse.” Madame Calypso sighed lightly, blinking at him with her deep calm eyes. “Your guardian called for me, and I answered. I honour my debts. It is perhaps the only honour I have retained. I have come to Erlking, the place of the Fae, perhaps the last place. I cannot go back now. My home in the Netherworlde…” She trailed off, looking troubled for a moment. Robin could guess what she was thinking. Whatever life she had left behind in the Netherworlde, by coming here, it was effectively over.

“I hope you are worth it, Scion,” she said to him, very directly. She glanced at the water’s edge, where her feet still stood floating in a bed of ice crystals. “Time to set foot on human soil, I suppose. For the first time.” She sighed a little.

Madame Calypso stepped forward out of the water delicately, placing her bare feet on the stones of the shore.

“What a curious sensation,” the nymph said absently, wiggling her delicate toes in the sand between the pebbles. “Well then, Scion of the Arcania,” she said, looking up at him and pursing her lips. “Show me what you know.”

Robin, a little taken aback, stammered at the strange, beautiful woman. “Know? Um … about what?”

“Your skills,” she said, peering at him as though he was stupid. She raised her eyebrows expectantly. “Come now. Don’t be shy. I hear Phorbas the goat-man tutored you in the Tower of Air. Or rather, someone did, at any rate. I wish to assess your aptitude.”

“Oh, ok,” Robin glanced around, at a loss. “Ah, here we go. Um, how about this?”

He raised a hand between them and, focussing his mana through his stone, concentrated and silently cast Featherbreath down into the stones before him. On the beach, a large white shingle rose from the ground, levitating and rotating slowly in silence between them, a large flat stone suspended weightless in the air.

Madame Calypso peered at the stone thoughtfully. “A basic Featherbreath?” She sounded rather disappointed.

Robin couldn’t help but smirk to himself. When he had first started learning the Tower of Air, he had found air magic quite difficult. A lot had happened since that first lesson, however, not least of which was coming into direct contact with the Air Shard of the Arcania. Strange things had happened during his … communion … with the Shard. Since then, he had honed his skills somewhat.

“I haven’t finished yet,” he said.

He closed his eyes and made a few mental calculations. Taking a deep breath, he focused and cast, throwing his energy and the full force of his mana into the ground at his feet.

A deafening roar rose all along the lakeshore. As far as they could both see in either direction along the water’s edge, every single stone, rock and pebble which made up the rough beach had risen into the air, floating at shoulder height. Madame Calypso’s eyes widened as she turned to follow the wave of rising, possessed stones. They hung suspended, countless in number and lifting themselves in a great rolling undulation all along the lake until the flow of motion disappeared behind the island. The stones on the distant far shore followed suit, lifting up in a great surge which rippled back to them along the other bank in full circle.

Soon, the entire beach of broken stones along the perimeter of Erlking’s lake was held suspended. Each and every small stone, pebble and chip of mica rotating and spinning in its own tiny Featherbreath. Numberless and hanging in mid-air like the slow majestic spinning rings of Saturn around the bowl of the water itself. Amidst this spectacle, Robin stood, his arm still outstretched, a look of deep concentration on his face. His fingers shook slightly.

“Impressive,” she granted, looking around and pursing her lips.

Robin closed his hand into a fist and moved his arm slightly to the left. All around the lake, every single one of the countless floating stones rushed to the left by a foot, making the landscape spin. An asteroid belt of swirling stone chips spun and caught the sun in glittering flashes. Then they stopped and hovered weightlessly again.

“You are casting Featherbreath on every one of these stones?” his new tutor asked. “That would mean calculating the weight of each one individually, casting to every separate point … the concentration and discipline involved alone … How many stones must there be?”

Robin felt around with his mana, letting the invisible energy slide over the lakeside like a breath of wind. “Erm … eight hundred thousand, seven hundred and fourteen … no wait … thirteen. I just dropped one by accident about a third of a mile around the shore.”

She put her head on one side. “Such a vast store of mana. Perhaps you really are the Scion after all.” She sounded a little impressed.

Beads of sweat had broken out on Robin’s forehead, icy cool in the blistering heat, but amongst the silent, undulating maelstrom of glittering stones, he couldn’t help grinning.

“Perhaps you should stop before you faint,” she suggested. “I’m certainly not carrying you back to the house. You will probably burn terribly if left unconscious in the sun, and I am likely to forget I left you here.”

Robin, whose vision had indeed begun to darken and waver ever so slightly around the edges, nodded and let his hand drop. There were a few moments of rattling cacophony, deafening, rolling thunder, as the host of stones fell back to earth on either side of them and all around the lake. There was a considerable cloud of dust.

“It was easier…” Robin tried not to stagger, coughing a little in the dust “ … when I had the Shard of Air.”

She smirked. “You should be a promising student,” she said. “Good at cantrips certainly, elemental manipulation magic, that much we have established already. Later we shall test your skills in combat. I look forward to discovering your offensive and defensive capabilities. And, of course, as I am to confer with your existing tutor, we shall need to decide how to divide your time for lessons.”

“Phorbas isn’t really conferrable,” Robin said awkwardly. “Eris’ people got to him before he ever made it to Erlking and killed him. He’s a knife these days.”

This didn’t seem to concern the woman in the slightest. “Of course. But still, you will need training in the Tower of Air no doubt, no matter how impressive your store of mana, or your focus or control. I can personally guarantee you that Lady Eris’ is more impressive.” She inspected her pale coral fingernails, looking completely uninterested. “Mr Phorbas, whether he is currently a satyr or a letter-opener, has not much skill in the Tower of Water however, unlike me. I am, as I said, a nymph. We have an affinity for water. We served the Undine once, before the war.”

Robin didn’t know what an Undine was. He was still getting his head around meeting a nymph to be honest.

“Would you like to come up to the house and meet everyone, Miss…”

“Just Madame will be fine,” replied Madame Calypso, gazing at him in a languid and ethereal way. “And yes, that’s probably unavoidable isn’t it?” She sighed again. “I suppose if I have agreed to do this for your guardian, I should know what I am getting myself into, and with whom.” She glanced behind her at the lake. She seemed to long to return to the water already. “Your lessons with me, Scion of the Arcania, will not take place in any dry house of stone and timber. We will conduct the majority of our sessions here, on the water. Out on that little island out there I think.” She stepped past him, treading with experimental caution on the grass at the edge of the stony beach, her slinky dress clutched delicately in her fists as if she didn’t quite trust solid ground. “Yes, that will suit our purposes fine. I shall expect you there at 9AM sharp. Come along now. There are introductions to be made and discussions to be had that I can’t put off any longer.”

Robin looked out at the lake in worry, and at the large expanse of water between here and the island. It looked an awfully long way out. “But … I can’t swim,” he said, which was a rather lame and embarrassing thing to say, especially when he had just used up nearly all of his store of mana trying to be impressive for this strange new woman.

“Hmm. That is a worry,” Madame Calypso said, setting off toward the trees and not sounding remotely worried. “I should learn rather quickly then, if I were you, Scion of the Arcania. You will certainly be of no use to me drowned.”

THE MIDNIGHT POOL

Predictably, Karya and Henry had been waiting for Robin in his bedroom, a large circular affair in the turret of Erlking’s tower. Both of them were itching to know what had occurred at the lake.

“A new tutor?” Henry had asked, frowning in confusion. “Only a matter of time I suppose until one came along. Are they like Phorbas then?”

“Nothing at all,” Robin said. He was lying face down on the bed, utterly exhausted. His limbs felt like lead. Henry was sitting on one of the deep windowsills, trying desperately, and unsuccessfully, to catch a breath of wind from the stifling heat outside. Karya was seated in a lumpy but comfortable chair by the empty fireplace, her knees tucked up comfortably, wrapped in her enormous shaggy coat like a cosy blanket, and seemingly impervious to the heat.

“Phorbas had his own particular strengths,” she supplied. “He was very skilled in the Tower of Air, but had only a basic grasp of the others. Most of us are that way. Fae or Panthea. Specialists in one particular field of magic. I imagine this new tutor of yours, being a nymph and all, is adept in water mana.”

“That’s what she said,” Robin mumbled into his pillow.

“A woman though?” Henry made a face.Karya shot him a deathly glare from her seat which he studiously ignored. “I still can’t believe you nearly killed yourself showing off to her like that though, mate. What was all that about, lifting half the lakeshore up? I’m surprised you didn’t strain a mana-muscle or something.”

Robin wasn’t quite sure why he had done it, to be honest. He shrugged bonelessly. Right now, he just wished his friends would both go away so he could have a good sleep. His mana was utterly spent. Between the two of them, they had already dragged every detail out of his meeting with their endless questions.

“She’s a nymph,” Karya explained, rolling her eyes. “It’s what they do. They don’t mean to I don’t think, it’s just their nature. They turn male minds to jelly. Frankly, I’m surprised you stopped before you fainted.” She smirked a little, tucking a dark brown strand of wild hair behind her head and turning the page of her book. “It’s all rather pathetic really. Not that it would have impressed her anyway. Nymphs don’t really care about other people. They’re not wired that way. It can make them seem cruel or cold, but that would be unfair. It’s not that they lack empathy completely, it’s more that they find it hard to be interested in what happens to others. Which makes for a very strange choice for a tutor if you ask me.”

Robin considered that Aunt Irene’s choice of willing tutor may have been severely limited.

Henry sniggered. “Is she a looker then?” he probed. Neither he nor Karya had met her yet. When Robin and his new tutor had reached the house, Hestia the housekeeper had materialised out of nowhere like a jack-in-the-box to whisk her off to meet Aunt Irene and shoo Robin away like a bothersome fly. She must have been peering out of windows, wishing Erlking had net curtains to twitch, Robin thought. He’d never met anybody as much of a busybody as Hestia. Madame Calypso had smiled politely at the housekeeper, in her distant half-asleep yet oddly aloof way, but Hestia clearly hadn’t been very impressed by what she saw. She had looked very unhappy about meeting the graceful woman, and had ushered her inside grimly, her lips pressed so thin with disapproval that they were almost invisible. Whatever her issue, she clearly wasn’t fond of nymphs.

“She’s … a bit weird I suppose,” Robin admitted. “She’s pretty enough.” She was in fact stunning, but he wasn’t about to say this out loud to Henry and Karya. “But she’s a bit spaced out. She talks to herself, mutters.” He pushed himself up off the pillows. “That’s not why I did it anyway. I wasn’t trying to show off because she was gorgeous.”

“Gorgeous now, is it?” Karya said lightly.

“It was ‘pretty’ a minute ago,” Henry teased. Robin ignored them both.

“I just … I suppose I just didn’t want to look rubbish. Make a good impression.”

“If you say so, Scion,” Karya said, inspecting her fingernails.

“Seriously, I think she had to give a lot up to come here and help train me.” Robin frowned at her. “She didn’t seem very happy about it. It’s hardly good for your social life in the Netherworlde, being connected to the world’s last changeling. I thought she should at least know I’m not a complete waste of time. From the impression I got, I don’t think she can go back to whatever life she left behind over there.”

“Tell me about it,” Karya sighed. “Consorting with the likes of you? Might as well paint a target on your head. We should know.”

“What I want to know,” Henry interrupted. “How do we know that she’s the real deal, then? Not some evil servant of Eris like last time you got a teacher? Don’t know about you two, but I don’t remember that working out very well last time. We had one of those weird creepy old men living under our roof for months without knowing it.”

“She’s not one of the Grimm organisation,” Karya said reassuringly. She glanced at Robin. “The same thought occurred to me when you left to meet her, so I asked your aunt. Irene told me she had means in place to stop any of their kind entering Erlking’s grounds these days, whether they’re in disguise or not. They physically can’t do it.”

“Enhanced wards?” Robin asked, intrigued, but the small girl only shrugged.

“She didn’t specify, to be honest. But I don’t think Lady Irene is the kind to be caught by the same trick twice.”

“Me neither,” Henry growled. Last year, he had been kidnapped by one of the Grimms, the dangerous and loyal lieutenants of Lady Eris herself. They were boogeymen of the highest order. He was still quite sore about it.

“I wonder why the sudden decision to start on the Tower of Water, though.” Robin had been wondering. “I mean, it’s not like I’ve even finished on the Tower of Air yet. Why the urgency to learn water magic? We never even had any warning this new tutor was coming.” He sat up on his bed, making the ancient springs squeak. “Don’t you think it’s a bit sudden? Why wouldn’t Irene have mentioned it before, rather than just out of the blue now?”

“It does seem a little … fishy.” Henry grinned. Robin and Karya both gave him a look. He held up his hands defensively. “Sorry.”

“I’m sure your guardian has her reasons, and I’m sure they are good ones,” Karya told Robin. “You should devote yourself fully to your studies,” she added piously.

“You’ve been spending too much time with the old girl, you have,” Henry said. “Working on this translation, or whatever it is. Speaking of … has this watery new lass given you a list of books as long as your arm to read yet, Rob?” He glanced at Robin’s bed, which was, as ever, covered in scattered books on the Tower of Air. He read some of the covers aloud.

“‘Nine White Winds’ by Professor Zephyr Muldoon, ‘A Treatise on the Art of Air Shaping’ by Gaseous Binge, ‘101 Cantrips for Gusts and Breezes’ Marietta Whelks, ‘Ethercraft volumes I - VIII’ by Harmonious Von Netherblast.” He sniggered at this last one.

“She hasn’t given me anything like that,” Robin said. “I don’t even know what we’re going to be doing. All I know is that she expects me to be down at the lake tomorrow morning, and doesn’t seem very concerned by the fact that I’m likely to be just drowning energetically. I can’t swim at all.”

“Really?” Karya peered at him with unconcealed disdain.

“Bit brutal that, Rob,” Henry said. “She sounds a bit harsh to be honest, saucy nymph or not, expecting you to just learn like that.” He clicked his fingers. “No one could do that overnight.”

“I’m aware of that, thanks,” Robin sank hopelessly back into his pillows again.

“Well, not unless they had black kraken seaweed and bile anyway,” Karya nodded in agreement, shrugging. “And that’s hardly easy to come by.”

Robin sat back up again sharply. He and Henry exchanged looks. “What do you mean?” they both asked.

The girl looked a little self-conscious under their twin stares. Her unearthly golden eyes flicked from Henry to Robin. “Well … nothing really. I was just thinking aloud. If you had black kraken seaweed and mixed it with bile from one of the beasts, you could brew yourself up a swimming draught, that’s all.”

“What’s that?” Robin pressed. “A swimming what?”

“It’s a concoction,” she explained, closing her book in one hand. “A potion, I suppose. Half liquid, half pure mana. It’s supposed to imbue the drinker with the knowledge of the strongest swimmer.” She shrugged. “It’s only a legend anyway, I was attempting to be glib and fanciful. Sailors in the Netherworlde used to say they made and drank it before long voyages, in case they got shipwrecked. Little old ladies used to sell it in tiny bottles on the docks in all the coastal towns, though I’m sure nine times out of ten it was almost certainly just water with a bit of ink and a twig in it.”

“And you just need seaweed and bile for it? Whatever that is?” Henry asked.

“Kraken bile, yes. According to tradition.” Karya nodded “And not just any old seaweed. Has to be black kraken seaweed. It grows naturally wherever kraken are.” She glanced from one boy to the other again, curious at being the subject of their rapt attention. “I was just being sarcastic really. It’s not like it’s a common shopping list item. I know old Hestia is quite the skilled herbalist, but I doubt even she has jars of black kraken seaweed and bile stashed about the place. It’s hardly like we can just order this stuff from the local supermarket in that little human village near here, even if it is a Waitrose.” She looked thoughtful. “Although I suppose there’s always the internet? I hear this Electronics-bay, or whatever humans call it, is quite good for this sort of boutique shopping?”

Henry grinned at Robin, ignoring Karya’s suggestion. Computers, telephones and anything too technological didn’t seem to work well in Erlking anyway. It tended to pitch a fit once it got on the grounds. Too much latent mana in the air. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, mate?”

Robin, who was suddenly feeling less tired and exhausted, nodded back. “I think we should take a night-time trip to the old pool room tonight.”

Karya, clearly confused, folded her arms. “What are you two talking about?” she demanded to know. “What’s in this pool room that’s so blasted important?”

“Hopefully…” Robin said. “A bile-filled, seaweed encrusted monster called ‘Inky’.”

* * *

It was midnight, and Robin, fully dressed and carrying a torch, padded silently through the quiet and moonlit corridors of Erlking Hall. He followed the shadowy figure of Henry, who had assured him he remembered the way to the old, boarded up pool room. Henry also carried a dark torch, as well as a large sack, which clinked ominously, filled as it was with empty jam jars he had earlier pilfered, at great danger of being caught, from Hestia the housekeeper’s pantry. He had a pair of swimming goggles pushed high up on his head. “Just in case,” he had explained to Robin as they had met after lights-out in the darkness outside his bedroom.

It was a strange feeling, stealing through the silent darkness, knowing that they should be tucked up in bed, and that everyone else in the house was sleeping. Hestia would skin them alive if she knew they were sneaking around in the middle of the night, exploring forbidden corridors and poking their noses into places she most certainly wouldn’t approve of. But the housekeeper was shut up in her own rooms for the night, playing reedy gramophone music, as was her habit.

At this late hour, their strange new guest, the enigmatic Madame Calypso had retired to the guest chambers which Henry’s father had arranged for her. Robin hadn’t seen her since they’d reached the house earlier in the day. Even Aunt Irene had turned in for the night, although Robin secretly suspected the old woman didn’t actually sleep. She always seemed too busy. She was probably locked away in a high study somewhere, scribbling away in one of her numerous ledgers by guttering candlelight.

Robin was just glad that it was the weekend, and Henry had been allowed to sleep over at the hall. It wouldn’t have been half as much fun on his own. He shuddered, remembering the monochrome rooms.

“Are you sure you know where we’re going?” Robin hissed in a stage whisper as he followed the padding Henry around yet another corner, into a long dusty gallery which was filled with old suits of dull armour. He’d never been in this part of Erlking before. Robin didn’t even know what floor they were on. He was fairly sure it was the ground floor, but there were so many little steps here and there it was impossible to be certain. Erlking within had a way of turning you around.

The walls here were hung with heavy gathered swags of velvet, deep reddish-brown like old wine. They might once have been tapestries, before time, age and dust had erased whatever patterns they had.

“As sure as I can be,” Henry said reassuringly, leading his pale companion through the swags of velvety darkness. “There’s been no reason for anyone to come to this part of the house for years. Don’t know if you noticed, but your great aunt is not really the type to throw half-term pool parties.” He stubbed his toe on an unexpected and apparently purposeless step in the middle of the corridor and cursed inventively under his breath. “Even Hestia hardly comes near the pool room unless she absolutely has to; look, there’s dust and spider webs and stuff. Where else you ever seen those in Erlking?”

Henry had a point. Hestia considered Erlking her solemn duty, and though she couldn’t be said to do it without constant complaint, she kept the manor spotless.

“I’m sure this place gets bigger the more I explore it,” Robin muttered. “How long have I lived here now? It takes me about ten minutes to circle the place outside, but we can walk for hours inside. What’s that about?”

Henry shrugged ahead of him, a shadow in the gloom. “They say Erlking has a foot in the human world and a foot in the Netherworlde, don’t they? Well, the Netherworlde is bigger than our world. Maybe a few of its Netherworlde toes are on the inside of the human world’s shoe, who knows?”

Robin couldn’t argue with this strange logic, so he didn’t.

They turned another corner in the dark corridor, only to find themselves suddenly and startlingly faced with two figures both leaning against a large set of double doors.

It was Karya, and with her, Erlking’s small blue-skinned faun, Woad.

“Or maybe you two dimwits just have no sense of direction and have been walking in circles for half an hour,” the small girl offered with a raised eyebrow.

“What are you doing here?” Henry grimaced, pretending he hadn’t just almost jumped out of his skin. “This is a top secret mission this is. Robin and I planned…”

“To get into the old boarded up pool room and extract some bile from the resident kraken?” Karya supplied. “Yes, amazingly I guessed you might. Believe it or not, your surreptitious looks earlier today and your whispered plan to sneak down here in the middle of the night wasn’t too difficult to figure out. You’re hardly the subtlest pair.”

Henry glared at the shadowy figure of Woad, who was sitting cross-legged on the floorboards before the heavily boarded-up doors, grinning. Woad was small and skinny, with a wild mop of hair and yellow, gleaming eyes. He was also electric blue, like all fauns, in possession of a happily swishing tail, and a neat set of small, sharp teeth, which were currently beaming up at them.

“You ratted us out?” Henry blustered in a loud whisper “Why, you little feral blue…”

“She’s the boss, Henryboy.” Woad cocked his head to one side. “Sorry, but she asked what you two were planning. Can’t lie to the boss. Wouldn’t be worth my tail to try.”

Robin clicked on his torch, sending a beam of dusty yellow light across the dark corridor into Karya’s face.

“Are you here to stop us?” he asked.

Karya rolled her eyes, pushing herself away from the wall. “Hardly, Scion.” She smiled. “I’m here to help out.”

Henry looked dumbfounded. He still didn’t fully trust the strange girl, especially since she had begun helping Irene with her little translation project. As far as he was concerned, she was fraternising with the grown-ups.

She noticed his look. “Believe it or not, I actually agree that this is a logical idea,” she said. “If the Scion is going to start learning the Tower of Water tomorrow morning, it would be preferable if he didn’t drown during the first five minutes. If he did, it’s pretty unlikely his new tutor would leap to his rescue. She’s a nymph after all. She’d just watch with interest. This little expedition to collect bile could work out well.” She glanced at Robin. “Unfortunately, the Scion does not always have the best advisors. It might be useful to have someone in the mix who has actually seen a kraken before, rather than just a boy in a pair of swimming goggles and bag full of…?”

“Umm … jars,” Robin said, lowering his torch.

“Jam jars,” Henry said defensively. “For … the bile,” he finished lamely.

“And how, pray tell, are you planning on harvesting said bile?” Karya asked.

Robin and Henry exchanged looks in the darkness, Henry lowered his goggles onto his eyes.

“We … thought…” Robin began.

“We might … you know … squeeze?” Henry said vaguely.

Woad cackled merrily. Karya shook her head a little, unable to suppress a smile. She turned to the door which was criss-crossed with large nailed planks. “Let’s just get in there, shall we?” she suggested.

It only took a few moments for the four of them to wrench the old boards from the doors, the wood squealing off the rusty old nails as they pried them free. Before long they had removed enough of the barricade to allow them to shove open the doors a few inches, and squeeze themselves through into the stale smelling darkness beyond.

Within the long abandoned pool room, Robin found himself in utter darkness.

“Light, Woad, please,” Karya requested in a whisper, and the faun’s mana stone, a small white opal on a thong around his neck flashed softly. A globe of watery bluish light appeared in his long-nailed hand, wavering like a glowing jelly cube. With a gesture he cast it upwards like a ball, and it floated high above them, casting its ghostly light down upon the four companions and their strange, stale-smelling, and silent surroundings.

The pool room, Robin saw by this pallid and spectral illumination, was a large chamber, with a long curved bow of a ceiling. There were tiered stone rows of seating around the edges of a large, almost Olympic sized swimming pool. The water which filled the pool was black and stagnant, like muddy oil. The light rippled off its surface opaquely.

“Well, this isn’t remotely creepy,” Henry whispered, looking around through his goggles.

“So,” Robin whispered. “Where’s the kraken then?” He’d been expecting it to be filling the room after Henry’s description, monstrous giant tentacles wrapped around pillars and a gaping razor-edged beak snapping at them. The pool room seemed instead eerily still and completely deserted.

“I’d imagine it’s in the pool,” Karya said, inching closer to the slippery edge, her footsteps echoing on the slippery, unpolished mosaic tiles.

“Do you think?” Henry said sarcastically. “Hey, mind you don’t fall in. Get too close and there’ll be tentacles whipping out of that sludge and dragging you under faster than you can scream. I know what I’m talking about, I’ve seen Jason and the Argonauts every Christmas since I was born.”

“Your friend Jason sounds like a master kraken-battler,” Woad said, sniffing around the pool cautiously on all fours, “Why didn’t you bring him with us, if he’s such an expert?”

“It’s just a film, Woad,” Henry explained.

“There is indeed a thick film on the pool,” Karya agreed. “I think its moss. Looks like the surface hasn’t been disturbed in … well … years.”

They were all talking at cross purposes, but Robin agreed. He clicked on his torch, shining its beam out over the dark and sinister water of the pool.

“She’s right,” he said to Henry. “That’s a bit weird, isn’t it? I mean, if there was a big octopus thing in there, surely it would disturb the water’s surface often enough to break this up?”

“So, maybe there’s nothing in the water at all,” Karya concluded. “Although look.” She directed Robin’s flashlight to the corner of the dank pool, where a rusted set of pool ladders lowered themselves into the muck. The rungs of the ladder were thickly strung with a vile-looking tangled weed.

“Black kraken weed,” Karya said. “So it stands to reason, it must be here.”

Robin eyed the black water dubiously, wondering whether, deep in its silent depths, there lurked a still and vast monster, watching them, listening to their hushed whispers.

The surface suddenly rippled with a loud plop, making both Karya and Robin flinch in surprise, but it wasn’t a kraken’s undulation. Henry had just fished a coin out of his pocket and flicked it into the pool. They both stared at him.

“What?” he said innocently. “I thought it might get the thing’s attention.” He shoved his hands deep in his jeans pockets defensively.

“It’s not a wishing well!” Robin hissed.

“Unless,” Woad said, “Your wish was to be dragged to your death and rolled around by lots of squishy suckers.” He smiled happily, standing up and making squishing noises with his cheeks to amuse himself.

“I’ll harvest some of the seaweed,” Karya said, shaking her head at Henry’s idiocy. “I just wish there was a way we could know what’s in there. A cantrip or some charm, but I’m no good with water I’m afraid.”

“There is one way,” Woad said with glee. They turned to question him but, before any of them could stop him, the blue faun had taken a deep breath, and leapt majestically out into the water, his knees drawn up to his chest as he executed a most impressive cannonball.

The splash was deafening in the silent room. It echoed and reverberated around the walls as he disappeared beneath the surface, sending up a great spray of rank dark water.

“Woad!” Robin yelled in alarm, skittering to the edge of the pool. The tiles were so slippery his trainers squeaked, and only Henry grabbing his arm stopping him from plunging into the murky depths too.

“What the bloody hell?” Henry gasped. Karya whirled from the ladders, eyes wide and a fistful of rank seaweed clutched in her hand.

“Is he insane?” Robin said. “Woad!” He scanned the surface of the blackness, the sloshing water dancing under the panicked strobe of his torch, throwing reflections up onto the curved roof high overhead.

Moments passed, and the surface of the pool quickly calmed itself.

“Where is he?” Karya said, sounding panicked. “Why hasn’t he come up? That stupid, brainless…” She trailed off, her face ashen as the three of them stood frozen.

Henry dropped to one knee and started pulling off one of his shoes.

“What are you doing?” Robin asked.

“I’m going in after him, suicidal little monster, what does it look like?!”

Karya was holding her hand out over the water’s surface, her amber bracelet glittering faintly, a look of furious concentration on her face.

“Heroic, but then we’d just have two of you to worry about,” she said. “Bugger! There’s nothing in there I can use! Not a scrap of wood, not a spot of soil! I could probably make the moss grow thicker but what good would that do?”

The ripples on the lake has almost subsided, and there hadn’t even been a bubble. What was Woad doing down there? Robin shone his torch around the room frantically. “Look for some rope or something we can tie!” he said. “We can lash ourselves together like mountaineers, that way…”

“That way, when the giant slithering death monster that’s probably squeezing the life out of our bloody reckless faun grabs one of us too, it can drag us all to our deaths with its massive scaly arms of doom?!” Henry yammered.

“Kraken don’t have scales,” Karya said, not dragging her eyes from the deathly still surface.

Henry stared at her wide-eyed. “Is that really the relevant point?!”

Robin gripped his mana stone firmly in his fist. His panicked mind was trying very hard not to picture Woad being crushed to death by a chthonic nightmare. He had some half-formed plan to cast his mana into the water. Maybe a combination of Galestrike and Breezeblock and he could part the waves like a young Moses, at least letting them see what kind of trouble the creature was in. Karya glared at him, startled. “What are you doing?”

“I’ve got to do something!” Robin yelled. “He’s my faun!”

“He’s our faun!” Karya countered. “Scion, you have no idea what’s in there with him, you could make it even angrier. Woad could be…”

There was a sudden splash, which made both Robin and Karya jump and Henry, who was balancing on one leg hopping around trying to pull off his second shoe, fall on his backside.

A small, oily shape had just flopped bonelessly out of the water on the far side of the pool. It rolled a little and unfurled, revealing itself to be a slime-coated faun.

“ … absolutely fine,” Karya finished, staring.

Woad sat up. He was covered in black, brackish goo, his hair plastered to his face and his coarse trousers squelching as he sat back. He looked like some horrible new-born monster.

“What … the … hell…!” Henry screamed at him.

Woad wiped his face into even more of a messy smear, his tail swishing back and forth behind him like a wet rope, throwing off spatters of goop.

“What were you thinking?!” Karya was practically shaking. “Of all the numbskull, idiotic stunts to pull, you could have been killed! I’ve seen ships attacked by kraken on the great river of Dis! Have you no common sense whatsoever?!”

Robin, letting his mana stone drop to his chest, was too relieved to see the small boy unharmed to add to the fury. “What were you doing?” he breathed.

Woad stood, a little wobbly, and the three companions saw he was clutching something to his bare chest. It looked like a small Greek urn.

“Well,” the faun grinned. “Getting the kraken of course.”

They made their way around the water’s edge to his side, their dropped flashlights forgotten. The only illumination came from Woad’s floating light, which still hovered around up in the roof space, like an errant will o’ the wisp.

“Henryboy told us, kraken don’t stop growing,” the faun said, holding out the urn. “Well the room wasn’t full of squishy fish-beast when we came in here, and the pool wasn’t a tentacle-fest either. Turns out there’s all sorts of junk down there at the bottom of the water. That’s where I found it.”

They peered inside the urn, which Woad held out proudly in his sharp-clawed hands.

Deep within, wedged firmly in the bottom of the watery terracotta pot, and looking up at them with baleful, rage-filled eyes, was a slithering tentacled mass about the size of a small hamster.

“The mighty kraken?” Henry mused.

Robin stared at the tiny squid-like beast. It must have been stuck in there, he reasoned. It had grown to fill the pot, and then couldn’t grow anymore. By the light of the floating charm, he could just make out what looked like a very old, weathered collar below its eyes and tiny beak, which might conceivably once have been a powder pink, studded with glass jewels.

“Inky?” Karya whispered in disbelief. “Woad, you mad little psychopath. You’ve captured the mighty kraken of Erlking.”

“That’s…” Robin faltered. The kraken was fixing him with the stare of death with its milky eyes. Its maw opened as it gave a shuddering hiss. It was more of a mewl. He took the pot gingerly from the faun’s slimy arms. “That’s just … bloody adorable,” he finished.

Woad swelled with pride, and then, to a chorus of complaints, shook himself like a wet dog, drenching his companions in pond slime and sludge.

ROBIN’S FOLLY

Robin hadn’t slept well. For one thing it was hot and humid and there hadn’t been a breath of fresh air in his room, despite all four of the compass-point windows being flung wide. For another, it had been rather a traumatic experience, once they had sneaked the tiny kraken back through the house in the dead of night to Robin’s bedroom, to try to ‘extract’, as Karya clinically termed it, the bile.

This had consisted, it turned out, of alternately poking the tiny creature with a stick and trying to tickle its tentacles, until it basically threw up in aquatic excitement. It had been, as Henry succinctly observed, the single grossest thing any of them had ever done. Even Woad. They all agreed never to speak of it again.

And after Henry, Woad and Karya had finally disappeared to their own quarters in Erlking, Woad insisting on looking after the tiny kraken for the night. Robin, too nervous to run a bath or shower for fear of waking the household, had been forced to clean up as much pond slime as possible using a dry facecloth, before falling asleep.

So it was with tired eyes and a lingering aroma of pond scum, that he found himself early next morning, wandering down to the lake for his first lesson in the Tower of Water.

It was early, but summer was relentless, and already breathlessly warm and sticky. The thought of the cool water was actually quite welcoming, nervous though he was. Under his arm he carried a rolled up beach towel and swim shorts. He had valiantly resisted asking Aunt Irene if there were any inflatable arm-bands in the house. Sweat trickled down his spine in the humid woodland air, and around his neck beside his mana stone, a small test-tube vial on a string clinked occasionally.

Karya, who had been up all night brewing the concoction, and extra grumpy at the breakfast table because of it, had instructed him to leave it as long as possible before drinking the potion. She hadn’t been sure how potent it would be, with the kraken being so small. It would be prudent, she’d advised, to wait until the start of the lesson, in case the effects didn’t take. Robin hadn’t argued. The liquid in the tube was black and gloopy. He didn’t relish the idea of drinking it at all and was glad to put it off.

As he finally emerged from the dappled, hazy shadows of the trees, blinded by the morning sunlight glittering off the surface of the lake, he saw his new tutor waiting for him. The nymph Calypso was seated in a white deckchair by the water’s edge, a pale, wide-brimmed hat shading her face. A small table by her side contained a teapot and she held in her lap a teacup and saucer.

“Good morning, Robin Fellows, Scion of the Arcania,” she said to him with the tiniest of hazy smiles. She was wearing huge dark sunglasses. Robin wondered where on earth she had procured them.

“I trust you slept well,” she said. “Although by the look of you, I suspect this not to be the case. Your face looks a size too large for your skull. Usually an indication of an ill-rested soul.”

Robin mumbled a guilty good morning in return. “Just Robin is fine,” he muttered, as she took off her sunglasses, standing so that the long gown she wore rippled in the soft breeze.

“What is that?” she asked off-hand, nodding to the bundle under his arm. Robin glanced down.

“Umm, swim shorts, you know, for swimming. And a towel.”

The Panthea woman regarded the towel with a kind of dreamy fascination. “A towel.” She rolled the unfamiliar word around her mouth. “And what is its purpose?”

“For, well, for getting dry afterwards.”

She blinked at him slowly. “Why on earth would you want to be dry?” she asked.

“Well … people do,” he faltered. “Generally, I mean.”

Madame Calypso sniffed and considered this. “How odd you people are,” she said. “I have always found that most people are decidedly dehydrated. And the shorts?”

Robin’s face flushed. “To wear!” he said. “I’ve got to wear something to swim in, haven’t I?”

She nodded a little after a moment. “Yes, of course. I understand. It would be far too hilarious otherwise. Come along.” She turned away before Robin could reply, or burst into mortified flames, and she led him down to the water’s edge.

“Your strange human companion seems to have the correct idea at least when it comes to water,” she observed. Robin followed her gaze, realising why he hadn’t seen Henry at breakfast earlier. He’d assumed the boy was still asleep, but as it happened, he was wrong. Robin could just make out the boy’s figure, out on the mossy island, in trunks, goggles, and what Robin feared was an actual swimming cap, bright canary yellow. Henry was clambering a low tumbled wall of the old folly like a spider-monkey. As they watched, he leapt gracelessly, a flailing mass of gangly limbs, and cannonballed into the water with an almighty splash.

“He’s been doing that all morning.” Madame Calypso said, her head tilted to one side. Her voice was filled with confused wonder. “He has all the skill and grace of a dropped potato, but I have to say, his love for the water is admirable.”

Robin sighed. “Yes, as you can see from that perfect swan dive there, he’s training for the Olympics.”

“Gird yourself appropriately, Robin Fellows, Scion of the Arcania,” his tutor said softly. “And then we shall begin your instruction out on the island.”

Leaving the towel on the beach by the deckchair, Robin scampered off to the privacy of the wooded edge to change into his shorts, taking the opportunity, while hidden by the foliage, to take Karya’s kraken-bile brew. In the shadows of the trees, he unstopped the tube and sniffed the contents dubiously. It smelled like low tide. Bracing himself, he gulped down the black muck.

For a moment, he felt nothing but instant revulsion and the urgent and pressing need to gag, but then, whatever strange potency the brew contained seemed to activate. There was a fizzing sensation in his limbs and a flickering in his brain. Robin shook his head, blinking rapidly as the strange sensation flowed over him, and then, as quick as it had come, it was gone.

In the dappled sunlight of the trees, Robin smiled to himself in surprise, flexing his hands. He knew how to swim. It was that simple. As though the knowledge has just been downloaded into his brain, or coded into his limbs as surely as if he were a fish.

If we could find a similar brew for algebra, he thought, we’d make millions.

Robin worried briefly if he was going to start sprouting gills or tentacles, but decided not to think about that for now. He could always worry about magical mutation later. Right now, for the first time in his life, the water was calling to him.

When he returned to the shore, bare feet skipping across the gravelly stones which were warm to the touch, he saw that Calypso has walked out some way into the lake. Unlike when he had first met her, when she had seemed to float atop the water’s surface, now she was knee deep, her long dress swirling about her pale legs in the water like the billowing of a jellyfish.

“Come into the water, Scion. To master an element, you must immerse yourself in it,” she instructed quietly.

The water was freezing. Much colder than Robin had anticipated, but he didn’t want to look like a mewling baby, so he made his best show of not gritting his teeth as he walked out into the lake, sloshing through to where she stood. After the initial shock, it was actually a blessed relief from the sultry summer heat baking the shore. The slope of the lake beneath the surface was shallow, and he found they could walk out quite far across the slippery stone bed, although Calypso was taller than he, and when he reached her, it was up to his hips, raising shivery goose bumps everywhere. Deciding it was best to get it over with, he ducked down and plunged himself fully under the water, trying to acclimatise to the temperature. It was cold enough to make his temples ache, but he felt exhilarated as he broke the surface again, blowing out air and pushing his wet hair back across his head.

His tutor looked at him oddly. “For one who cannot swim, you appear to hold little fear of the water, Scion,” she mused.

Robin grinned, wiping water from his face. “Oh, I can swim,” he mumbled. “I learned.” It was wonderful not to be nervous about the vast body of water surrounding him for the first time.

She nodded, completely unconcerned with his sudden mastery. “Very well. But it is right to be afraid of water.”

“It is?” he frowned.

“The Tower of Water is the most mutable of all the Towers of the Arcania, student,” the nymph said. “It is fluid in more than simply form. In intention also, and in mood. It is not always easy to control, or to predict. There are dark and dangerous currents everywhere, and no man is master of the sea. She swallows sailors whole.”

Robin was finding his new tutor equally hard to read, mood and intention. Everything she said was delivered in the same light and breezy tone, regardless of how macabre it may be.

“We will swim together to the island there,” she instructed him. “Where your skinny, noisy friend awaits us. And then I shall show you what you are going to learn first.”

His tutor didn’t wait, but turned and dived with lissome elegance beneath the water’s surface. It was so expertly done, like a sleek dolphin, that it barely made ripples.

Robin, eager to try swimming for the first time, followed suit.

The island with the folly was further out than it looked, and the bed of the lake soon fell away from under him as he swam, dropping away into cold and murky darkness below. His tutor swam the entire way beneath the surface, her arms flat at her sides, her long hair trailing like sleek silver seaweed and her legs, wrapped in the silvery dress, lashing like a mermaid’s tale. Robin on the other hand, had to occasionally come up for air and found it difficult to keep up with her. He cut through the water expertly, however, feeling bold and confident from the kraken-bile draught, and enjoying the unfamiliar and magical sensation of swimming over deep water. It felt a little like flying. Partway to the island he flipped onto his back and swam the remainder of the way staring up happily into the cloudless bright blue of the summer sky. Swallows danced and dived high above him. Robin found himself utterly content, thinking to himself that at times, there was simply no place he would rather be in all the world than here at Erlking.

When he reached the shore, and clambered, dripping and panting a little, out onto the island’s edge, Henry and his tutor were waiting for him. Oddly, Calypso didn’t look remotely wet.

“That worked then, didn’t it, Mer-boy,” Henry grinned, giving Robin a sneaky thumbs-up from the broken, moss-covered wall he perched on.

“What worked?” his tutor asked lightly, as the sun dried Robin off.

“Nothing, nothing,” Robin replied.

“If the human child is to remain during your lesson, Scion, this is permitted,” Calypso said. “However, know that should he be injured, fatally or otherwise, it is no concern of mine. I have very little skill in healing, and I have been engaged to teach you, not to care for the severed limbs of a grinning mortal.”

Henry looked a little offended. “Child?” he muttered. “I’m fourteen this year.”

“Severed limbs?” Robin repeated, thinking this was perhaps the more pertinent thing.

“Water…” the nymph said, leading them away from the water’s edge and into the middle of the ruined circular wall of the folly, which was open to the sky. “…Is dangerous. Drown, freeze, burn, crush.” Her voice was almost sing-song. “It can and will turn on you if it chooses. But it is also life, feeling and emotion, the irresistible pull of the moon moving the tides of mana throughout the Netherworlde.” She pointed back at the lake. “Water can scald and steam.” She flicked her wrist, as though shooing a fly, and some way out from the water’s edge, a tremendous geyser of steaming water erupted suddenly from the surface of the lake. The column of bubbling, boiling liquid roared high into the air, flashing in the sunlight, and making both Robin and Henry jump in surprise.

It fell back to the surface noisily, hot rain that steamed across the lake in thick clouds.

“An excellent barrier to repel oncoming enemies,” his tutor said, sounding quite pleased. “Or to cook a fish supper, of course.”

She glanced at Henry, the corners of her mouth turned up a little. “Water can also … fix,” she said, flicking her fingers at him as though shaking off droplets.

Bands of blue ice flew suddenly from her hands, mini-snowstorms which rushed towards Henry in a swift blur. They knocked the boy from his feet, and Robin watched in shock as his friend was lifted from his feet and slammed unceremoniously against the ruined folly walls, some ten feet in the air. When Calypso daintily lowered her hands, Henry had been fixed to the wall, thick and jagged bands of solid ice pinning him in place at the wrists and ankles as surely as iron manacles.

“Hey!” Robin protested as Henry wheezed.

“Bloody … hell,” Henry spluttered, looking furious, although his yellow swimming cap made him look rather ridiculously like a red-faced gnome. “Bit of … warning … next time … please.”

“See,” the nymph told Robin, utterly ignoring Henry, pinned like an angry butterfly. “Water exists in many states, steam, liquid and ice, and has as many uses.”

“This is really, really cold,” Henry’s voice came politely from behind Robin.

“Can you let him down?” Robin asked. His tutor held out her hands, palm upwards. There was a shimmer, and a long, wickedly sharp spear of ice appeared in them, as tall as Robin himself. “Ice is best for combat,” she confided in him. “You can pierce and slash as hard as any steel could. Once you have your enemy caught,” she glanced, unconcerned, at Henry. “Evisceration is a simple matter.”

Robin took the ice-spear from his tutor, a little alarmed. She was still smiling sweetly at him.

The spear was freezing cold and numbed his fingers immediately. He turned it on end and jabbed it into the ground, where it shuddered like a tall flagpole.

“Let’s not eviscerate Henry though, eh?” he said, a little shakily. “Maybe you should let him down?”

Calypso blinked at him blankly for a moment, as though she had forgotten she had pinned the boy to the crumbling wall above them. “Oh, yes.” She nodded her head at Henry, stuck and shivering. The ice bands immediately dissolved, falling with splashes. Henry tumbled from the wall and landed with an ungainly ‘oof’ on the grassy earth.

“Water…” Calypso continued, clearly unconcerned with Henry’s wellbeing, “…can also guide and steer.” With a languorous wave of her slender arm, she summoned a long snake of water from the shore, it rose out of the lake like a thick whip, the questing tendril of some huge underwater beast, and sinuously made its way across to where they stood in the folly.

As Henry got blearily to his feet, brushing mud off his bare knees and looking very bad tempered, the water snake formed a wide loop around Robin and his tutor, floating in a glittering band as though they stood within a magic circle. “And of course,” she said, bringing her hands together in a clap as the liquid hula-hoop shimmered and shone around them. “It can conceal.”

The circle of water exploded, billowing into a cloud of cool, thick fog immediately, which rolled over the two of them, covering the island and blotting the bright sun from view.

Disoriented, Robin stumbled a little, blinded by the fog. He heard his tutor’s soft melodic voice drift out of the mist. “It is as mutable as mana itself, and of all the Towers, once mastered, it can be shaped and moulded, limited only by your own imagination.”

There was a gust of wind, and the fog cleared. Robin stared, wide-eyed.

“Wow,” he heard Henry say behind him.

The fog had cleared, Robin saw, because his tutor had acquired great shimmering wings of ice. They spread out on either side of her back, as clear as crystal, each sharp and carved frozen feather glittering like diamond in the sunlight. She beat them a few times, looking like an angel carved from ice. The fog dispersed completely in the wind, and she lifted from her feet, suspending herself slightly in the air above the staring boys, her bare feet dangling from beneath her rippling silks.

“This,” she sounded quietly pleased with herself, “…is called Waterwings, and takes a great deal of concentration. It is a two-level cantrip, and very advanced. With Waterwings, one can, for a span, fly, or dive.”

She lowered herself to the grassy soil softly, her great wings tucking themselves up behind her with a sound like a thousand musical knives folding in against one another.

“So, Scion of the Arcania.” She peered at him with her deep gaze. “Where would you like to begin?”

“That one please,” Robin stared, unable to suppress a grin.

Emboldened by his affinity with the water brought on by his recent kraken-based medicine, and strangely eager to impress and please his rather alarming new tutor, Robin found himself determined to master Waterwings immediately.

“That is some very advanced casting,” she told him. She seemed to consider for a moment, and then leaned forward and poked Robin rather hard in the centre of his forehead. A feeling of extreme cold rippled through his head, like the worst kind of ice headache. It was gone again in seconds.

“What did you just do?” he asked.

“I gave you a little knowledge,” she shrugged. “Perhaps your last tutor would have given you a list of books and a few months of hard study, but I really don’t have the patience. There’s no harm in sharing a little.”

Robin hadn’t known Panthea and Fae could do this. His face hung slack, aghast, as he realised he knew how to cast the cantrip. “You mean … Phorbas … the Tower of Air … all that reading, effort … He could have just … zap?”

“Yes, but I hear some tutors swear by the merits of hard work. I believe character building is involved, whatever that is. I never had the patience for it,” Calypso said airily. She glanced at Robin still spluttering on the grass. “The effects are only temporary but they should last long enough for you to gain an affinity for the element. Now watch.” She made a vague gesture. “Imagine the currents around your body, their potential parabolae, and form a design best suited to take advantage of them.” Robin stared.

“Off you go then.” She made shooing gestures with her hands.

Robin glanced helplessly at Henry, who just shrugged.

He concentrated on his newly acquired knowledge and focussed every inch of his mana, drawing from his stone more power than he had ever attempted before. The sheer force of will made his spectacle at the lake using Featherbreath feel like nothing at all in comparison.

Robin was astounded to find ice forming between his bare shoulder blades on his very first attempt, and encouraged by this progress, despite the fact that his mana stone felt so hot it might crack like a boiled egg, he redoubled his efforts, until within minutes, and after only a few shaky and spiky false starts, he had rudimentary wings of ice protruding from his back.

They were nothing like Calypso’s had been. Those had been a work of art, large and perfectly formed, the glassy wings of a swan. Robin’s on the other hand looked stubby and uneven, something between a bird and a bat, but they shone and were solid, and with a tentative flex of his shoulders, and to his great delight, they beat.

Henry actually gave him an astonished round of applause.

“It is likely,” his tutor said. “That to attempt such an advanced cantrip will have irreversible damage on your mana.” She spoke conversationally, as though discussing the weather. “But then you are Fae, not Panthea. I am less familiar with your physiology. You may be fine after all.”

“I feel fine,” Robin lied, exhilarated. In truth, he felt weak and shaky, but his mastery of this trick had him running on sheer adrenalin. “Watch this.”

He bent his knees and leapt upwards, beating his newly formed wings of ice as hard as he could. They lifted him from his feet, and with a rush of mana thrumming through his body like liquid fire, he shot into mid-air.

“Rob!” he heard Henry call in a mixture of alarm and sheer delight.

Robin thrust himself upwards into the sky. He had never felt so light and powerful. His wings roared behind him, feeling like the most natural thing in the world as the folly and the island fell away beneath him swiftly.

Upwards and upwards he pushed into the sky, delicious wind roaring across his face, wonderfully cooling on the hot, bright summer’s day. The whole shining expanse of the lake was laid out before and below him.

Robin span, folding his wings in tight against his body as the landscape whirled giddily, before opening them out again and feeling the warm currents of summer air roll invisibly beneath him.

This is what magic is for, he thought to himself, as he swooped experimentally, glancing down to see to his surprise that he’d climbed higher than he’d thought. Down on the island, in the broken stone circle of the ruined folly tower, Henry and his tutor stared up at him with upturned faces, their hands shielding their eyes from the sun.

Robin looked out over the landscape beyond the lake. At the lush green forests and woods, the sloping distant hills and behind them the rising cragged moors, lost in a purple haze. He could see the angular outline of Erlking Hall itself from up here, and wondered, with a moment of pride, how wonderful it would be if Karya and Woad were looking out of a window right now, and just happened to see him, soaring in the air, wings flashing in the sun.

Robin lurched.

His mana stone had flickered, and without warning, rather than the hot and burning sensation, it was suddenly a dead and lifeless lump of coal against his chest, as if someone had just turned his power source off. His arms and legs were suddenly heavy, and he flailed, unbalanced in mid-air.

“Wait … what…” he stuttered in panic, but before he could react, he found himself falling, plummeting out of the sky and back toward the island.

His mana was gone, utterly spent. His head rushed with the roar of blood and his eyes watered as he spun downwards, giddily out of control.

The wings he had formed so proudly were dissolving rapidly, become liquid, and he stared in horror as the ground rose up to meet him swiftly. He was going to hit the island. The solid ground. He may as well have jumped to his death from the tallest tower of Erlking.

The last thing he saw, as he spun out of control, towards the hard and unforgiving ground, was Henry’s horrified look of shock, and Calypso’s slight frown of detached interest.

Helpless, he braced himself for impact, at the last second drawing what was left of his watery magical wings around him like a rudimentary blanket.

Robin fell back into the folly. He hit the earth hard … and to his surprise and astonishment, instead of shattering every bone in his body as he collided with the ground, he instead broke straight through it into blackness beneath. The languid voice of his tutor drifted down to him. “Ah, so that’s why one must practice…”

UNDINE UNDERFLOOR

“Rob! Are you okay?!”

Robin coughed, spluttering in the darkness and the dust. The wind had been knocked out of him, but he felt only bruised, not broken…

“Have any timbers pierced your lungs or other organs, Scion of the Arcania?” Madame Calypso asked lightly, sounding as detached and unconcerned as always. “I can fetch assistance if so, although it will be most inconvenient to stop the lesson.”

“I’m … fine. I think,” Robin gasped, struggling up to his knees and blinking around.

He had fallen through the centre of the folly and found he was in a small and damp chamber, filled with tumbles of stones and mossy cobwebs. It might once have been a sub-basement or cellar for the strange and ruined structure above. A cramped dark space that clearly no one had ever realised was here.

Sunlight fell down through the broken boards above him, filtering in slanted beams and dancing with golden dust.

“Bloody hell,” Henry’s voice echoed down. “All this water everywhere, the whole lake, and you have to crash land into the only solid part of it. You could have broken your neck. What were you thinking, trying advanced magic like that?”

“Yes, thank you, mum,” Robin grumbled, rubbing grit and dirt off his hands as he sat up. Everything hurt. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw that he had landed on some kind of stone table, a grey, weathered block, smack in the centre of the hidden room. He swung his legs off the side and stood up gingerly. “There’s something down here,” he called up to his friend and tutor, whose heads were both backlit shadows above him as they peered down with interest. His voice was oddly muffled in the gloom.

The stone was soaked and dripping. Robin’s Waterwings were gone. Clearly, he had landed on them when he hit the table with them wrapped, tightly and protectively around him. The impact had broken the cantrip, but also, rather luckily, cushioned the blow. He ran his hand across the wet stone, sending water spattering away into the darkness. There was something carved into the surface. Lettering of some kind, but it was gibberish stonework to Robin, like ancient Norse runes.

“Something like…?” Henry prompted as Robin silently took in the stone table, realisation dawning. He pulled his hand back, flinching involuntarily.

“I think,” he stared. “I think it’s a coffin.”

Henry had wasted no time in clambering down through the hole and into the chamber after that, still wearing his ridiculous swimming cap. Robin had expected Calypso to protest, in the way that adults often did in treacherous situations such as leaping into hidden and unexpected graves, but she had merely peered down with interest, her head on one side and her long hair trailing into the hole like creepers.

“What a curious thing,” she said thoughtfully. “Tell me, Scion, what does it say on the sarcophagus?”

“I can’t read it,” Robin replied, as Henry, dusty and breathless, scrambled the last few feet and appeared at his side in the darkness. “It’s all gibberish.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” his tutor said breezily. “You are the Scion, are you not? What does it say?”

Robin gave Henry a weary look. “I told you it’s all scratchy Thor-speak,” he called back. “Runes, or whatnot.” He glanced at the illegible stonework again to confirm this.

It wasn’t illegible. Clearly carved in the wet dark stone were words. Robin slowly read them aloud, disbelieving.

“Here lies Etrea of the Silver Bough. Trusted guardian among the maidens of The Pale Tree.”

Henry blinked at him, looking from the stone to Robin. “Are you making that up?”

“It’s … a minute ago it was all just … just lines,” Robin insisted, staring at the tomb.

“It’s still all just lines,” Henry insisted, staring at him oddly. “Rob are you having … you know … a moment?”

“He is the Scion.” Calypso’s voice rolled breezily down, as if the two boys were dim idiots. “The Arcania speaks to him. That is all.”

Robin was still staring at the words. It was like looking with two sets of eyes at once. His brain knew that what he was seeing was eldritch chicken scratch, but something inside him understood it. The ‘other’ who lived buried in his head like a worm in an apple, the inner self that he had playfully named ‘Puck’, was looking out of his eyes.

“How curious to find Etrea here, at Erlking of all places,” Calypso said. “I suppose it was the only place she could go. All those who didn’t come with us to Dis fled to the safety of the Fae. Not that it did them much good, in the end.”

“Traitors?” Robin looked up, shielding his eyes against the sunlight. Looking at the letters had given him a sharp headache. Or maybe that was the crash…

“This is the grave of an Undine. My people, the nymphs, we served them once. We lived alongside them. They are very ancient. When the war came, most Panthea joined Eris and fought against the Fae, against your kin, Robin. But there were those Panthea who stood against Eris. The Undine, Etrea here included,” his tutor explained. “Rebels who did not believe in the cause of the Empress, who wanted no part in her war. When Eris won, and the Netherworlde was conquered. The Undine fled back to the Pale Tree. A safe and secret haven. It was my home once, home to many nymphs. It had been lost to us now. Hidden from Eris by the powers of the Undine. They retreated from the world. Some of them also came here it seems.”

“This was someone who stood against Eris like you then,” Henry mused, looking back at the sarcophagus. He removed his swim cap with a snap of elastic. Calypso shook her head casually. “Oh no. I was no traitor to Eris. Like most of the Panthea, I was loyal to her. Nearly all nymphs were. We abandoned the Undine and went to her call. The decimation of the Fae was a necessary evil. To build a better world.” She noticed their silent, horrified stares and returned them with her unconcerned and dreamy expression. “Until recently, of course. I am a traitor to Eris now. I fled.”

“You fled here, though, to Erlking, not to this ‘Pale Tree’ place?” Henry pressed.

The woman shook her head a little. “Oh no. They would not have me back there. Even if I could find it, which I cannot. I was a traitor to the traitors you see. No going home. Not now. Not ever. Some of us have burned every bridge we had.”

For a moment, her façade of Zen detachment seemed to waver, like a ripple in a still pond. She smiled a little sadly, then shook it off. “Where do you go when nowhere is home? What place would take in those with nowhere to turn? When all paths are closed and all doors shut against you. Where can you expect to be taken in?”

“Erlking.” Robin said quietly in the darkness. He wondered what had changed in Calypso’s life which had turned her against Eris. It wasn’t his place to ask.

“Erlking,” she repeated, the word falling from the sun into darkness in a whisper.

Nothing but dust moved in the sunbeams for a moment.

“So what do we do with this then?” Henry prompted.

“We have discovered the last resting place of one of the handmaidens of the greatest Undine of all,” she said reverently. “Etrea was a noble and trusted warrior and this is her grave.” She nodded down and them solemnly for a moment. “Crack it open and let’s see what’s inside.”

Being instructed to desecrate a grave by your teacher was the kind of thing Robin told himself was all part and parcel of life at Erlking. The task could have been difficult for a normal boy, but he’d been training all summer. His water-work might not be up to much yet, but he was a dab hand with wind. His mana stone flashing around his throat like lightening in a thunderhead, Robin cast Featherbreath on the lid of the stone sarcophagus, feeling the weight of it as tendrils of air wrapped around the slab like a fist. He concentrated, and the lid rolled to the side with a loud a grating rumble. Henry jumped back, dodging his bare feet out of the way just in time to avoid them being crushed as the tombstone toppled to the floor with a sonorous thud.

“Watch it!” he muttered. “I wish you’d warn me when you’re going to use the force like that.”

Curiously, and a little apprehensively, both boys peered into the dark and musty interior of the grave.

“How does she look?” Calypso called down, sounding intrigued in a slightly grisly manner.

They stared at the cobweb-shrouded skeleton which lay within. It was dressed in the tattered grey remains of what may once have been a regal blue robe. The jaw of the skull had fallen away, resting on the ribcage and giving the grisly skeleton a look of shock. It looked like a dead moth’s husk. It also appeared to be made, not from bone, but from dark blue glass.

“Well,” Robin said after a moment spent taking in the grim spectacle. “I think she’s probably looked better.”

“At least she’s not gooey,” Henry observed. “If this is what they look like dead, what do Undines look like when they’re alive?” he mused. Then he noticed something. “What’s that?”

The object he pointed to was a small black cylinder the late Etrea clutched with both glassy hands to her chest. It was carved wood, roughly the length of a breadknife. Faded gold gilt threaded through the ornate tube.

“That,” Calypso observed with keen eyes from her perch above them at the lip of the gap. “Is something your aunt will very much want to see. This is a most interesting find. Pass it up to me, Scion.”

Robin reached out.

“No! Not with your hands.” It was the first time he had heard his tutor speak in anything more than a sleepy sing-song, and her voice made him jump. “If that is what I think it is, it could be warded or booby trapped.” She smiled a little. “We don’t want you losing an arm on your first day in my care. Not that I have any objection. They are your arms to lose after all. But I would hate to give your aunt’s housekeeper any more cleaning to do.”

Robin withdrew his hand gingerly. He didn’t like the idea of booby traps.

“Use Featherbreath,” she suggested from above.

Robin did so, his hands moving in a slow tai-chi gesture in the damp shadows as he teased the cylinder from the skeleton’s grasp. He managed to pry it loose without snapping any of its finger-bones, for which he was deeply relieved

They watched as it floated up, turning over and over slowly, end on end, as it ascended out of the hidden grave and into the daylight above.

“What is it then?” Henry wanted to know.

Calypso had produced a white silk handkerchief from somewhere in the folds of her slinky gown, and she deftly caught the tube with it, wrapping it carefully and avoiding touching it directly with her delicate hands. Her green eyes were glimmering softly.

“Quite possibly, it is a way to a Shard of the Arcania, a key to open a door which has been lost and hidden for quite some time,” she mused. “Come back to the house. The lesson is over for today.”

LOST NAMES AND LOCKED BOXES

Robin hadn’t known what to make of the events at the folly. Discovering a hidden grave, a morbid, alien occupant and lost treasure of some kind, was one thing in itself. His tutor’s apparent disregard for his personal safety and wellbeing, another entirely. Calypso was utterly unlike his former tutor, Phorbas. The jovial goat-man has always seemed to have Robin’s best interests at heart, whereas this strange, ethereal woman had barely raised an eyebrow when her student tumbled from the sky and crashed through the ground. Plus, of course, he was still digesting the revelation that she had only recently defected from Eris’ cause. He wondered if there was a way to find out why that was.

Sitting alone in his room, idly spinning his silver dagger on its tip on the worn table-top, Robin watched the garnet flash as it glinted in the last rays of the setting sun. He found he often toyed with it when worried or at a loss.

Robin had been dismissed by Calypso upon their return to the house, all thought of further training, and indeed of him, utterly forgotten as the nymph sought out his aunt, the curious cylinder still grasped in her hand, wrapped in its protective silks.

Henry had hung around for a while, throwing out some wild theories as to why an Undine from the Netherworlde would be secretly buried at Erlking, the most outlandish of which had involved Aunt Irene being a secret axe murderer and every dark corner of the house containing secreted remains of various Panthea, just waiting to be found.

Robin hadn’t thought this very likely. Aunt Irene was far too busy to go around murdering people.

Henry had to go home after a while, puttering down the leafy dappled avenue in his father’s ancient car back to the village. He made Robin promise to keep him updated with any developments.

Karya and Woad had been nowhere to be found, though he had been desperate to tell them of their discovery. Both the girl and faun came and went as they pleased at Erlking and, denied their company, Robin had been alone with his thoughts for the rest of the stifling afternoon.

He set the knife down, wondering if he was making the spirit trapped within it dizzy, spinning it so on its tip.

Phorbas hadn’t been kind and jovial, he had to remind himself, not for the first time. Phorbas had been killed long before Robin had even arrived at Erlking, his spirit trapped in this very knife, and his body, well, who knew how that had been disposed of? The tutor whom he remembered so fondly, and often grieved for, had been one of Eris’ men. Moros of the Grimms, under a very convincing glamour.

Perhaps, despite his concerns about Calypso’s rather unorthodox teaching methods, he should trust in his aunt’s judgement concerning Calypso’s appointment as tutor. It had to be better than his own judgement after all.

The door to his bedroom opened suddenly in front of him. Hestia, Erlking’s sour-faced housekeeper, stood framed at the top of the stone spiral staircase, her eyes narrowed as she scanned the room for signs of mischief. Robin clenched his jaw. Hestia was a pain. The housekeeper never knocked. She considered every nook and cranny of Erlking her own personal domain and responsibility. It was impossible to get any privacy. Considering she stomped, flat-footed up and down the corridors, she could sneak up those stairs as quiet as a mouse when she wanted to.

Robin suspected she lived in eternal hope of finding him doing something diabolical that she could report to his aunt, like juggling cats with Featherbreath or drawing on the walls.

Hestia sniffed, glancing for a second at the long silver knife that lay in the red sunlight.

“You’re wanted,” she said curtly, her nose in the air.

“What do you mean?” he asked. He knew Hestia hated being a messenger.

“The lady of the house,” Hestia snapped in explanation. “You’re summoned to the Lion Lounge. And do not think you can go throwing a barrage of questions at old Hestia. I do not ferry your words back and forth, I work for Lady Irene, not for you, boy. The impudence. The cheek of the young, to put upon old Hestia so. It is not to be borne!”

“I was only asking.”

“Well, do not only ask,” she snapped, turning away with one last scan of the room, just in case she’d missed something. “Only do. Your aunt wishes to speak with you, and I do not have time to find out why. I must fetch in the washing from the line outside before the rain comes. No one else is going to do it, are they? Oh no. Just another thing I get no thanks for.”

Robin glanced out of the window. It was still sultry as the last rays of the sun burned in the black treetops over Erlking’s woods. It wasn’t far off sunset, but there was hardly a cloud in the sky.

“It hasn’t rained for days, Hestia,” he said with a frown, swinging his legs out from under his chair and standing up. He slipped Phorbas back into the drawer where he lived.

“Oh, you think you know so much, do you? You know more about weather and washing and what needs doing to keep this place ticking over, do you? Hasn’t rained for days? You mark my words, boy. And if my washing is ruined because you kept me here talking…” The housekeeper clucked, her eyebrows shooting up into her hairline. “There is a nymph under our roof, child.” She practically spat the word. “A nymph! And where the water folk go, storms and troubles follow. Every time. Storms and troubles. You mark Hestia’s words.”

She left the door open as she shuffled moodily away, still grumbling. Robin hadn’t thought to ask her where on earth the Lion Lounge was. He’d never even heard of it. As he made to follow her, a long deep rumble of thunder rolled across the clear sky outside. He could practically feel Hestia smirking to herself in a self-satisfied way on the spiral staircase.

When he finally found it, it was obvious why the Lion Lounge was so called. It was a small and cosy parlour, its walls hung with deep bruise-hued tapestries upon which countless gold embroidered lions pranced and pounced. Bookcases crammed with hundreds of yellowing scrolls lined the walls, the dark wooden floor was strewn with thick, furry golden pelts. One wall was entirely dominated, from floor to ceiling, by an enormous mantlepiece of black marble. It was taller even that his aunt. Robin could easily had stood upright in the fireplace, and it was giddily carved within an inch of its life into many and varied intertwining feline forms, blended one into another in a mass of frozen, snarling faces. A fire burned in the huge grate and Robin eyed it with sun-weary dejection as he walked into the room. Strangely however, the air was cool and crisp, even as he approached the hearth. The light from the flickering flames made the marble seem to buck and writhe as the shadows danced, tawny orange flashes rippling over the carvings, despite the fact that the rough stone didn’t look particularly reflective. He could have sworn he saw a tail swish.

Aunt Irene, who was standing at the fire deep in thought, turned and regarded him over the top of her half-moon glasses.

“Nephew,” she said in greeting. Over her pale dress, she hugged around her neck a delicate and intricate lace shawl. Her silvery droplet earrings flashed in the reflected glow of the flames. “Please, come in. You have made quite the discovery today. I trust no bones were broken?”

Robin closed the door behind him. Darkness had fallen at last outside and another peal of thunder, far off but long and low, rolled across the landscape beyond, echoing off the hills around Erlking in the dry sky.

“I wasn’t hurt, no. I landed on my cantrip, the Waterwings. They cushioned my fall. Just a few bruises,” Robin said guiltily.

Irene indicated a high wingback chair by the fire and bade him to sit. Like everything else in the lounge, the chair was feline in nature; it stood on carved brass paws, and across its high back was slung a striped, furry throw.

“I was referring not to your bones, but to the remains you discovered,” she said. “It is a terrible thing to have to disturb the dead, though sometimes, sadly, a necessary one. No finger bones were broken in your retrieval of the item your tutor brought to me earlier?”

Robin slunk into the chair sheepishly. “Oh. No. I don’t think so.” He was mildly alarmed for a moment when the deep and cosy throw he’d sunk into began to purr, vibrating across his back. Irene didn’t bat an eye at the noise and, after a moment, he found it was actually quite comforting.

“Well,” she nodded, peering back into the fire. “That is something at least. The last thing anyone wants is a dead Undine’s curse on us all.”

Robin glanced around the room, the countless faces of the golden lions in the wall tapestries peered back at him with embroidered eyes. As the fire popped and hissed, and Irene stoked it, the first soft patters of rain began to fall against the tall leaded windows. The storm which Hestia had balefully predicted had broken it seemed.

“Madame Calypso tells me that your first lesson in the Tower of Water was … instructive,” Irene said, still peering into the fire.

“Well, if you can call a total disaster instructive,” Robin said. His aunt glanced at him with her sharp eyes, tilting her chin down so that she could regard him over the top of her half-moon spectacles. He couldn’t tell from her expression if she was amused or reproachful.

“You were supposed to be learning the basics, as I understand it,” she said lightly. “Forming Orbs, possibly progressing to a very basic Whippersnapper if you showed some aptitude, certainly nothing as advanced as a Needlepoint.” She clucked her tongue. “However, your tutor informs me that you took it upon yourself to attempt Waterwings?”

Robin felt his face burn. “Yeah … total disaster, like I said,” he muttered in a small voice.

Irene eased herself into a chair opposite his. The rain, after its first tentative patters, now began to thrum steadily on the dark windows as the storm grew in force outside. She took her glasses off, letting them rest around her neck on their chain.

“Waterwings is a very advanced cantrip, Robin,” she said. “Whatever were you thinking? I know that since your encounter with the Air Shard, your proficiency in that particular Tower has come on in leaps and bounds, but I hope you understand that this does not make you any kind of genius in the other disciplines.”

Robin didn’t feel particularly like a genius.

“You recall when you began your training in air?” his aunt continued. “It took many lessons before you could perform even the most basic of controlled Featherbreaths. You must take care not to treat the Arcania like a toy. Magic always has a cost. And the Tower of Water is perhaps the most … inconstant.”

“I just wanted to…” Robin wasn’t really sure what he had wanted.

“To show off?” Irene finished for him with a little smile. Robin flushed. “Well, you are a boy after all. It’s in your nature to do so. You had Henry there with you, which I’m not convinced is always a steadying influence. And of course, Calypso cannot help her nature. Nymphs do tend to bring out the chest-beating in the male species, heaven help us all. And they have little common sense as far as you or I would understand the concept.”

“She didn’t tell me not to try it,” Robin said, feeling he should defend his actions, however flimsily.

“Well, no, she wouldn’t have,” Irene nodded. “Nymphs are not truly concerned with the fates of others … on the whole. They are a self-centred people. They are drawn only to the strongest of emotions. Love, grief, hate. It is probably why so many of them fell to Eris’ cause in the war, drawn by her passion. I’m fairly certain, if you had asked your tutor whether you should run with scissors, she would have suggested you attempt to cartwheel also.”

She interlaced her fingers in her lap. “You, however, are not a nymph; you are the Scion of the Arcania, and, more than practical casting, combat training or mana-management, much more importantly, you must cultivate the skill of common sense.”

Robin nodded contritely, staring at the golden rugs as his yellow hair fell into his eyes.

“Now, don’t look so grim,” Irene insisted, her clipped tones softening a little. “Your tutor may be a little … unconventional as authority figures go, but I stand by her appointment. I hired her after all. She will teach you what you need to know. And it could be worse. Nymphs can be careless with the lives of men, but at least she isn’t a siren. Those creatures are malicious.”

Robin had always thought of nymphs and sirens as the same thing. “Was it a siren we found today?” Robin asked, referring to the grave and their grisly discovery.

“Fates, no!” Irene sniffed. “Sirens are base creatures. Wickedly clever, but mostly just wicked. They live in the dark places, and they are always hungry. What you found today is an Undine. A type of Panthea you have not yet met. Distantly related to nymphs like your tutor, but only in the way that lions…” She glanced at the flickering carved fireplace. “ … Are related to fluffy housecats.”

Robin was intrigued as she continued. “Undine are fierce and powerful beings. Wiser and more knowledgeable than you could imagine, and masters, true masters, of the Tower of Water. Beautiful to a one. They would make your rather glamorous tutor look like a dull dishrag in comparison, although she at least could pass for human in a pinch. Undine could not. They are a much older race.”

She indicated a tea-table by her chair. “Whether through accident or design of the fates, you discovered the last resting place of one of these elder-beings today. Right here under our noses. More importantly though, Robin, you discovered this.”

The cylinder of dark wood lay on the table top. The odd tube they had found the dead Undine holding so tightly. Irene reached out and picked it up, turning it over in her hands.

“It is quite safe,” she assured him. “Calypso feared it may be cursed, or protected, but it was merely … hidden. Whoever placed it there clearly thought that Erlking was protection enough.”

She passed it to him. It was surprisingly light. Clearly hollow.

“What is it?” he asked, turning it over in his hands. It was intricately carved with stylised waves, and what looked like swirling lettering worked into the design.

“It is a scroll case,” his aunt replied quietly. He was aware that she was watching him carefully, studying him. She frowned a little. “I have not been able to open it,” she admitted. “I believe there is a trick to it, most likely it is enchanted and there may be a clue in the casing.”

Robin traced the odd lettering with his fingertips. The rain outside was heavier now, and although the flickering firelight made the room feel snug and safe, a tingle of goose bumps ran up his arms nonetheless. There was a brief, silent flash of lightning in the sky, far off on the moors.

“Can you read it, Robin?” his aunt asked him, leaning forward in her chair with interest.

Robin shook his head. “I don’t think so, but…”

“Your mana stone,” she suggested. “You found this artefact. Perhaps only you were meant to.”

He glanced up at her. His aunt looked very solemn and serious. Robin rolled the cylinder in his hands.

“It’s important, isn’t it?” he understood.

She nodded. “Yes, I believe so. Extremely important, if it is what I think it may be. I will tell you what I know, my nephew. Erlking herself may well be full of secrets, but I endeavour to keep as few from you as possible.” She raised a finger. “But first, show me what you can see.”

Robin, holding the cylinder in one hand, slipped his other down the neck of his t-shirt and pulled out his mana stone on its leather cord. The seraphinite stone felt hot in his hand, flickering softly and silently like the intermittent lightning outside. He concentrated, trying to focus his mana, willing the carved shapes and decorative squiggles to resolve into legibility as the runes at the grave had done.

As he peered at the casing, a peal of thunder came, louder and rolling over Erlking’s hill. In the sudden flash of lightening which followed it, Robin felt his mana stone pulse, almost burning his fingers. The lightning seemed not just outside, but also within his head, a mixture of air and rain, shot with white fire. He was blinded for a second in the flash of it, and although, when the instant passed, the wooden tube still held unknown carvings, in the after image burned into his retinas, he saw a ghost of the shape, and clear writing in the hovering image.

Quickly, before the image could fade, he spoke, reading the words out loud for his aunt:

“Tritea’s Tomb, the frozen gates, opens after triple states.” His voice was a little shaky.

Thunder grumbled again outside, and Robin sat back in the chair, his hand shaking a little.

Irene reached out and gently took the cylinder from him. He blinked up at her. Still gripping his mana stone, which was already cooling and no longer felt alive in his hand.

She repeated the words softly, with a tiny frown.

“Well done,” she said to him, after a moment. “How did you…” She glanced up, clearly noticing how ashen her nephew had become. He felt drained suddenly. “Never mind,” she finished. “‘How’ is not always the important question, Robin. I have to say, though, I am most impressed.”

“What, what does it mean?” he asked. “Those words I saw?”

“What does it mean? Why, it’s a riddle, naturally.” She set the wooden tube back down on the table, as though it were of no further consequence for now. “The answer to the riddle will open the case, clearly. It will break the sealing enchantment. And no, before you ask, as I can see the question already forming on your lips, I have no idea what the answer is. It is something we must muse on.”

It had been a very strange day altogether.

“Aunt Irene,” Robin asked, tucking his mana stone away again. “What’s going on?”

The old woman sighed, sitting back in her chair and folding her hands in her lap. “I will tell you,” she said. “Of course I will. Perhaps I should have told you sooner, but you have been without a tutor for guidance and since your returned in January, I wished to give you a little time to rest, to be a normal boy for a while, whatever one of those is.”

Irene drummed her fingers on the arm of the chair, making the plush throw which covered the arms bristle and hiss softly. “Since your incident at the Air shrine back in December, when you woke the Shard of Air, the other Shards, six in all, one assumes, have…” She searched for the right word. “ … Quickened, I suppose. They want to be found, Robin. They want to be reunited and made whole once more. And in their own way, each of them, wherever they may be, are shining out like beacons. Prizes to be claimed, and powerful ones at that.”

“And the sudden training in the Tower of Water?” he prompted.

“Because Eris, my boy, is not the only one who has spies,” his aunt replied darkly. “I have my sources also, and of late they have revealed to me that Eris and her forces are searching for what may well be the last known resting place of the Shard of Water. I cannot stress enough that it would be disastrous should she succeed.” Irene sniffed a little. “And so I have been doing some detective work of my own. The servants of Eris are convinced that this Shard is held in the home of the Undine, a sacred place known as Hiernarbos. As your tutor has already told you, the Undine were fiercely against Eris in the war she waged. Their leader, the greatest of all the Undine, and master over all her kind, and over all lesser forms like nymphs and sirens, was named Tritea.”

“So Strife is looking for this Undine’s place? He found the Isle of Winds easy enough.”

“Not Mr Strife, no.” Irene shook her head. “At least, not directly I don’t think. He is engaged in the Netherworlde on other dark business as far as I know. Eris has sent other Grimms, and from what I gather, they have yet to pin down the location of Hiernarbos, though they are searching desperately for it. Undine are powerful, and their sanctuary, the last place in the Netherworlde where they are safe, is well hidden and closely guarded. What is important for you to know are the following facts.”

Irene spread her hands. “Tritea, first above all Undine, is dead. This we know for sure. So much else is lost to us from the chaos of the war. Many of the records were destroyed by Eris’ order. But I have managed to piece some information together. It is believed that Tritea, the Great Undine was in the closest counsel of Oberon and Titania, a trusted friend to the Lord and Lady of the Fae before their disappearance. Rumours abound that when the Arcania shattered, and its pieces were scattered, one Shard, the Shard of Water, was entrusted to Tritea herself, and that she protected it for the remainder of her life, short as that was, and took it with her to the grave.”

“But the Undine are Panthea aren’t they?” Robin asked, a little confused. “I know there were plenty of Panthea who were against the war, but do you really think Oberon and Titania would trust an actual Shard to one?”

Irene held up a finger, begging patience. “I have my reasons for believing so,” she said.

“How did this Tritea die?” Robin asked. Talk of the war which had torn apart the Netherworlde was rare at Erlking. His aunt usually encouraged him to focus on his studies instead. Robin secretly suspected that she avoided talking about it in an attempt to shield him from his own parents’ deaths.

If she was taking him into her confidence this way, it must be important.

“I don’t know how she died,” Irene admitted. “No one does.”

Robin frowned. “So, where is she buried then?”

“I don’t know.” Irene copied his frown with her arched brows. “No one does. You begin to see the pattern we face, my young ward.”

Robin sat back in his chair, thinking. “Well, I suppose it would make sense for her to have been buried at this hidden sanctuary, right? This Hiernarbos place?”

“Possibly,” his aunt conceded. “That is certainly what Eris and her Grimms seem to believe. But as I have said, wherever the sanctuary is, it is well guarded, from Fae as well as Panthea. Hiernarbos, and the valley in which it can be found, if it can be found, is accessible only one way. Through a Janus station.”

Robin had encountered Janus stations before. They were pathways, portals between the human world and the Netherworlde, or sometime between two different Netherworlde points. They were usually, though not exclusively, stone circles of one kind or another.

“There are loads of Janus Stations though, aren’t there?” he asked.

“This is a very specific Janus station,” his aunt said. “A closed line, if you will. One way into the sanctuary of the Undine, and hopefully Tritea’s tomb and the Shard she guarded in life, and one way only.”

Robin nodded. “So this is what the Grimms are searching for? This Janus station? Let me guess, it’s off the grid?”

Irene reached over and patted his knee once. “Bright boy. Yes. Much like Erlking’s own Janus station, this particular pathway between the human world and the Netherworlde is not linked to the greater network. A private network, as it were, arranged, as Erlking was, by Oberon and Titania themselves. A great boon to offer such safety to any Panthea opposing Eris in times of war. Tritea would have been honoured to have her sanctuary and her kin protected so.”

“And this riddle on the cylinder? ‘Tritea’s Tomb, the frozen gates, opens after triple states’, you think the frozen gates are this Janus station.”

“Indeed,” his aunt replied. “That was my thinking just now. I suspect that the contents of this cylinder, once we solve the riddle to open it, will point us to the location of Tritea’s own gateway. If we can open it, that is. Your timely discovery is of no small consequence. It puts us a step ahead of Eris. They have no such clue. They are following other trails it seems.”

Robin was still unsure. “But why would Oberon and Titania be so trusting of a Panthea? I mean, to give a Shard of the actual Arcania to her, then to create a hidden place she could live in peace? What did she do to earn their trust so much?” It seemed unlikely to him.

Irene pursed her lips a little. “Careful, Robin,” she said. “You forget that I am Panthea also, and Oberon and Titania saw fit to grant me custody of Erlking, seat of all things Fae in their … absence.”

Robin flushed. “Oh! No, no!” he said hastily, cursing himself inwardly. “I didn’t mean...that is, well, they didn’t give you a Shard did they? They didn’t even tell you where they were hidden, or what happened to them afterwards?”

Irene nodded, granting him this. “No, no, they didn’t,” she allowed. “That is the problem. They took no one into their full counsel. None that I know of anyway. I was as far from Eris as it is possible for a Panthea to be in thought and feeling, and still am, and so perhaps I was ultimately the only choice to watch over Erlking. But you are quite right, Robin. They did not entrust me with a Shard.”

She polished her glasses with the corner of her shawl. “I believe the reason that Tritea was granted custody of one is simple. She was the lover of one of the Fae Guard. The knights of Oberon, most highly regarded and beloved of all the King and Queen’s subjects.”

Robin wrinkled his nose. “A Panthea, in love with a Fae? I didn’t know that ever happened.”

“Probably more often that you realise,” Irene shrugged. “ … In times before the war, before Eris tore the races apart and set them at one another’s throats. If Tritea was the partner of one of these knights, all now … lost to us … then there would be no one better placed to take a Shard for safekeeping.”

Robin had read something in his book, ‘A Concise Genealogy of the Fae’, about the Fae Guard. There had been nine of them, if he remembered correctly. Kind of like King Arthur’s knights of the round table, only with horns and stranger names. “Do you know which one of them?” he asked. “Which of the Fae Guard Tritea was, you know, in love with?”

His aunt peered over his shoulder and out into the rainy night, her eyes narrowed and her face thoughtful. “That, dear boy, is something I am trying to discover as well. It is of utmost importance. And for all we know…” She glanced at him thoughtfully, her eyes sharp and unreadable. “ … It may have been your own father.”

BURYING THE PAST

The following day, the refreshing rains had passed and by mid-morning, the wet earth had baked dry again in the relentless heatwave, stealing any respite the night-time deluge had brought. Mr Drover was occupied with mending the broken dreamcatchers in the trees by the west gates. They had been torn to shreds by the heavy rains, and dreamcatchers, he explained, needle and thread in hand as he left the hall, were an essential ward against roaming revenants.

Henry was in school down in the village, and Robin, who didn’t have a lesson with his new tutor scheduled until the following day, leaned out of his bedroom window, watching the steam rise from the forests and up into the cloudless blue of the sky above. Behind him, Karya sat at his writing desk, scribbling away, the surface of the desk covered in papers and scrolls. Three different linguistic textbooks lay open around her: large, leather-bound things, each looking more arcane and complex than the last.

“You don’t really think this Tritea, this Undine who had a Shard of the Arcania, was in love with my dad, do you?” he asked her, without turning around. He was leaning out on the sill, his chin cupped in his hands as he peered across the landscape. Swallows whirled and dived above the trees. Darting in and out of the thin mist baking off the treetops like fleet spirits.

“I doubt it very much, Scion,” Karya replied, sounding a little distracted and not remotely concerned. She didn’t look up from her scribblings. “Of all the Fae Guard, Wolfsbane Truefellow was probably the least likely to stray. Your mother was, by all accounts, a remarkably beautiful woman.”

“Yeah,” Robin murmured. “I suppose. I’ve seen the painting. I just—I wish we knew more about them, I suppose.”

“I shouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” Karya replied, dipping the nib of her pen into an ink jar on the desk. She didn’t seem very sympathetic to Robin’s lack of living parents. It was a fairly well known fact that Karya didn’t think much of parents on the whole as a rule. “There’s a lot of broken history from before the wars. It’s always the way, especially when those who win said war take complete control of the history books.” She sighed. “Lady Eris has obliterated so many records in her quest for control. Tarnishing the true history of the Netherworlde, and especially your people.” She beetled her brows. “It’s extremely annoying trying to piece together what happened and who did what, when, and how.” She tutted under her breath, flipping a few pages and then underlining her own scrawl. “Which is why we only have scraps like this translation to go on.”

Robin turned from the window and leaned against it on his elbows, peering at the tangle-haired girl. She hadn’t even touched the plate of Banshee cakes he had managed to secure from Hestia as a snack. They were a delicious favourite, if you could endure the wailing when you bit into one. “You’re still working on that thing for Aunt Irene?” he asked.

She nodded absently, clearly not really listening.

“Not that I mind, but how come you’re doing it in my room, of all places?”

Karya glanced up and allowed a small smile. “Because Woad is in mine,” she explained, in an indulgent but world-weary tone. “He’s building something, and says my room is a bigger workspace.”

“Building something?” The thought of Woad in charge of tools was a faintly alarming one.

“It looks like a glass tank. Though there’s quite a lot of timber involved too. He says he’s got a pet now, and it’s very important that it has a ‘nice’ home.” She shrugged. “Needless to say, the little blue terror has completely trashed my room, so it was easier just to leave him to it.” She returned to her scribblings, the quill scratching across her parchment busily.

Karya had been invited to stay at Erlking indefinitely, following the events of the previous year. She had, at the time of Robin’s offer, made a show of utter nonchalance, as though she would be doing everyone involved a huge favour by agreeing to stay.

But when Henry’s father and Hestia had shown her to the room set aside for her, she had surprised everyone by standing for a few moments in the doorway. Not entering, just quietly taking in the room in silence, her face unreadable. At the time, given her reaction, Mr Drover had mistakenly thought she hadn’t liked it, and had gently assured her that it was only a small room, yes, certainly not Buckingham Palace or anything, really just one of the old storerooms in the attic space, but it had a bed, places to store her belongings, and there was actually a small balcony leading off from the tall glass windows which overlooked the lavender garden below. It smelled quite nice in summer, when the wind was right.

She’d shook her head, still staring into the chamber. “Oh no, the room is … fine. I don’t have any belongings to store. I don’t really own anything. Except myself … now. It’s just that, well … I’ve never had a room before. Not anywhere. Not … ever.”

Robin knew very little about Karya’s past. He knew she had been involved with Lady Eris at some point, although he had no idea in what capacity and it was almost impossible to find a way to bring the subject up naturally. What he did know was that the relentless Mr Strife, one of Eris’ chief henchmen, had been chasing the young girl across the human world and the Netherworlde for more than a year to ‘bring her home’. Somewhere she clearly didn’t want to go. She had been sleeping rough for a long time, never in the same place twice. Hunted and alone in the world. And for all her own troubles, she had been more concerned with Robin.

Karya had made little fuss about her new room at Erlking the time, simply saying it would do. But on her first few days living here, she had barely left it, and had mainly slept, long and deep, more than anyone would have imagined possible, with quiet but strict orders from Aunt Irene that she be left alone and not be bothered. Even by Woad. Robin imagined it had probably been the first deep, untroubled and safe sleep she’d had in an awfully long time.

The idea that Woad was now currently trashing the bedroom she clearly, if stoically, treasured, and that she was allowing him to do so, was an indication of both her fondness for the faun and her determination to solve this scribbled puzzle.

“What kind of pet?” Robin asked her now. “He’s not been bringing squirrels back into the house again, has he? You know Hestia goes off her nut about that. She keeps finding them everywhere. Tucked in drawers, under bed pillows. I think he smuggles them into the house in his trousers. You’ve seen how he walks sometimes. And that innocent whistling, like he’s fooling any of us.”

Karya shook her head, setting down her pen on Robin’s desk and finally taking a distracted bite out of one of Hestia’s cakes. A faint wail filled the room for a moment, despondent, haunting, and with a hint of cinnamon.

“I didn’t like to ask to be honest,” she said around a mouthful of crumbs. She gave Robin a lopsided smile. “I’ve learned over time, and often the hard way, that that’s more often than not the safest course of action with Woad.”

She could tell that Robin was still brooding over his parents. “Anyway, I need to take a break from this, and you need to stop worrying about your mother and father. No one was ever more in love than those two. We’ll check out the library, see if that gives any more information on the old boys’ club of the Fae Guard. If there’s anywhere in either of the worlds where there might still be books which Eris hasn’t managed to destroy or mangle, it’s a safe bet Erlking will be the place.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose, leaving an ink smudge that made Robin smirk.

“It’s too hot in here, even for me,” she admitted. “There hasn’t been a midsummer’s like this since the day Oberon married Titania. That was hot enough for the sun to crack the window glass.”

Robin frowned as the girl got to her feet, stretching.

“How on earth would you know that?” he asked. “You’re what, eleven? You were hardly there were you? Or are weather records the one thing that miraculously escaped Lady Eris’ purge of Netherworlde history?”

She shot him a withering look, which was only slightly watered down by the ink smudge. “Never you mind how I know what I know,” she said tartly. “I remember more things that even your Aunt Irene’s ever forgotten.” She sighed. “Though not always useful things, unfortunately. Let’s go down to the kitchens and bully some drinks out of that delightful housekeeper of yours. These cakes do leave you with a dry mouth, don’t they? I think it’s the ginger, or the gravesoil. And for your information, I’ll be thirteen soon, you’re only a year older than me, o great and noble Scion.” She performed a mock-curtsy and headed for the door.

Robin followed amiably, hands thrust in the pockets of his jeans. “Well, I’m still older, so I rank far above you, don’t I?” he grinned, teasing. “I am the great and one and only Scion after all, saviour of the Netherworlde or … whatever.”

“Whatever indeed, saviour,” she called over her shoulder sarcastically. “You’ve rubbed your elbow in bird poo on the window ledge.”

The planned trip to the library didn’t happen for three days. Life at Erlking, Robin had discovered, had a way of eating up your time. After lunch, which Hestia had indeed already prepared for the children, Karya and Robin sat on the stone lid of the covered well outside, watching the heat haze shimmer across the cobbles of the courtyard. The stone was warm under Robin’s legs, and once out in the open, it seemed too pleasant to go indoors in search of a book. He talked Karya instead into wandering off into the grassy slopes beyond the formal gardens, where she drilled him on his Air Tower combat manoeuvres. It wasn’t the same without Phorbas to guide them, but he had decided to try and keep up his studies as best he could, and he had brought his knife from his room, which he propped up thoughtfully on a rock so Phorbas could at least ‘watch’.

Henry didn’t come to Erlking that day – he had football club after school – and Karya had disappeared after supper to dive back into her translation, refreshed but already feeling guilty for taking the afternoon off.

Robin, exhausted after combat training in the heat all afternoon and unable to find even Woad to distract him (the sounds of hammering and sawing from the third floor were a little alarming), had elected to curled up in bed with a copy of Ethercraft, learning how to fine-tune his Galestrikes, though his mana stone had been so dull and heavy by nightfall, that despite his best intentions, he’d fallen asleep with it on his chest.

The following day, his new tutor summoned him to the atrium, a large domed space high in Erlking’s upper floors. Robin had enjoyed his very first practical lesson in the Arcania here and the room was much the same as ever, except that in place of a goat-legged man with a cheery face, there stood a willowy woman with a strangely distant look in her eyes. The nymph regarded him across the table set in the middle of the room, her head to one side.

“I have been talking with your aunt, Scion of the Arcania,” she said. “She instructs me that in light of your recent near-death plunge, we are to continue your training in the Tower of Water in more of a…” She glanced around at the sunlit stone walls, her displeasure evident. “ … Controlled environment. How dull. But there it is anyway.”

A silky sleeved arm swept across the table gracefully. “Here before you, you see six goblets.”

Robin did indeed. They were large, silver and crusted with jewels. Set in a neat, evenly spaced row.

“The cantrip we will master today is known as Silverstream,” she told him. “The movement of a body of water from one place to another. A simple focus and manipulation of molecules, shaped and guided through space. A baby could do it.”

“Simple?” Robin asked dubiously, as the nymph peered at him intently with her limpid eyes.

Without breaking eye contact, Calypso flicked her wrist. The clear, watery contents of the goblet on the far left leapt up out of its container and soared in a bubbling arc across the table, landing in the goblet at the other end without spilling a drop.

“Simple,” she said. “You do it.”

Robin stared at the goblets. “Um, I haven’t been given any homework … you know, reading? Books, theory? About water magic?”

Calypso came around the table, shaking her head softly, her skirts whispering on the flagstones. “Books? Words? Fixed things. Ideas stapled to paper like dead butterflies, mouldering and stale. There are no books on the Tower of Water, Scion. Water is an element of emotion, of feeling, not thought. There are no calculations, no graphs and charts and tiresome discussions.” With a pale fingertip she tapped the middle of his forehead lightly. “Here? Here is air. Thought and reason and logic. But here is water.” She slapped him on the stomach, making him actually leap back in surprise. “In your gut. This is water. Feeling, emotion, instinct.” She glanced back at the line of goblets. “Now, you. Silverstream the water back to the other goblet. You need not go from end to end, one goblet along at a time will be sufficient to start with.”

Robin stared at the table full of cups in alarm. “But how do I…”

“Feel it,” she suggested lightly, which he didn’t think was very helpful.

“But I don’t know how to…”

“Feel it,” she insisted, a little sharper. “From your guts, Scion, if you please. You are too mild. You overthink everything. Stop thinking about it, and simply do it.”

Robin closed his eyes, trusting to the familiar weight of his mana stone around his neck. He held out his hand at arm’s length towards the table before him, and tried to envision the water leaping majestically from cup to cup like liquid trout. He strained to feel it happening, to allow whatever strange Zen approach his tutor was expecting from him to miraculously appear.

His mana welled up inside him, tingling along his arm and vibrating invisibly through his fingers. He cast.

There was a clunk, and a spatter.

Robin opened one eye. One of the goblets had fallen over, and was rolling in lazy half circles on the table top, the spilled contents pattering messily onto the floor.

He lowered his arm, deflated, and gave his tutor a sheepish smile.

“Well,” said Calypso, peering thoughtfully at the cups with the tiniest of frowns on her clear brow. She was silent for a moment, tapping a finger thoughtfully against her perfect, cupid bow lips. “Perhaps we need only more … guts.”

The nymph spent the rest of the lesson showing Robin her skills with Silverstream. The water arced from cup to cup, back and forth along the line in perfect clear jets like a living thing. Her hands moved slightly, dancing in the air as though she was conducting a silent orchestra, her face was a rapture of meditation. The water flashed in the light streaming in from the many windows of the atrium, leaping two or three cups at a time, back and forth up and down the line, faster and faster until the goblets sang with the motion, the vibrating metal humming like a chorus of angels in the room, and Robin found it quite mesmeric.

She didn’t make him try again. It was enough for now, to watch, and to learn to not fear feeling.

When the lesson was over, he asked Calypso what the cantrip was used for.

“What do you mean?” she asked, tidying away the silver cups.

“Well, you know, what practical uses does it have in the field?” He was holding a wooden crate helpfully, into which she placed the goblets one at a time.

“Which field do you speak of, Scion?”

“No, not an actual … what I mean is, what is it used for?”

She blinked at him, looking completely perplexed. “What use?” she murmured, as though this was the silliest idea anyone ever had. “Why, Scion. Almost all magic is completely without use. Magic is not a tin-opener, or a feather duster. Magic is no dull, utilitarian tool made for purpose. Magic simply … is.”

She took the crate from him and smiled. “This was your first lesson, and you performed very poorly.”

Robin's face burned, surprised by her bluntness.

“I shall take this as a good sign,” she said lightly. “If you are this terrible, and you truly are absolutely appalling, then there is no direction in which to go other than improvement, is that not so? Take heart, my student. You can get no worse than you are today.”

Robin got the impression that nymphs were not very good at motivational pep talks. She seemed to notice his embarrassed expression, and to be a little interested by it.

“You are such delicate creatures, you Fae,” she mused, half to herself. “You are the song in the bird and the whisper in the trees. This is the Netherworld’s moulding. We creatures of the Tower of Water are hardier. We are the glaciers slicing mountains, we are the undertow which pulls you out to sea, and the darkness at the bottom of the frozen oceans.”

“Is that meant to be reassuring?” he asked.

The nymph nodded at his mana stone. “We must make you harder, Scion. Bolder. Your mana is a great lake, but right now it trickles like a crack in a dam. It is pent up behind your fussy thoughts. It must be let loose, to roar like a waterfall.” Her soft eyes narrowed as she smiled. “We must, and will, find your guts.”

* * *

The next day was Saturday, and Aunt Irene gathered everyone at the folly on the lake. The sky overhead was clear and the sun glittered on the lake in broken fragments, but for once, a light breeze came across the water, relieving some of the summer’s heat. Mr Drover and Henry were present, in sober black suits. Karya and Woad too, as Robin’s aunt and Calypso re-interred the grave of the dead Undine in a simple but heartfelt ceremony.

Irene had insisted that it wouldn’t be right to leave the grave undisturbed, and that everybody and everything deserved respect in death.

The hole which Robin had inadvertently made days before when he had crashed out of the sky was newly filled. Karya’s Earth Tower magic he presumed, though he hadn’t been present when she’d done it.

Hestia had made, at Irene’s instruction, a simple wreath of summer flowers, which his aunt now took from the housekeeper and lay gently on the fresh earth amidst the stony ruins. The old lady looked calm and sombre, and very odd in an uncustomary dark dress of thundercloud blue-black.

“We take a moment today to remember a fallen being,” she said to all present. “About whose life we know little, other than it ended here, in the quiet safety of Erlking, where so many things end, and so many begin.” She nodded in respect to the grave. “And we thank this Undine for her trusted guardianship of Tritea’s secrets, and for her brave and unwavering loyalty to the true rulers of the Netherworlde. May her bones and spirit rest now, in peace and unburdened by the responsibility she has carried for so long.”

She was referring, Robin knew, to the cylinder the Undine had guarded in life and death. He shuffled a little in the warm sunlight. He hadn’t been to anything like a funeral since his gran had died, and although this was more of a remembrance, a show of respect, it still brought back unwanted memories of that dark day. His life had been so very different back then. Gran’s death had been the tipping point which had changed things, irreversibly, forever.

Robin didn’t own a suit, so he was dressed in jeans and a dark pullover, the best he could muster for the occasion, and the sweater was thick and uncomfortable in the season. Henry had his Sunday church suit on, he guessed, and had even combed his hair. Karya’s customary tattered coat was dark enough to serve purpose as it was, and he doubted whether she could have been convinced to part with it at any rate. As for Woad, Robin didn’t think the small blue faun could ever be convinced to wear anything as human as a shirt. It was a struggle to convince him to wear pants at the best of times, but he looked uncharacteristically sombre and subdued as Irene spoke. Around his neck there hung a small jam jar on a string, filled with black liquid. Robin had asked, on the walk down to the lake, what on earth it was. “It’s my pet, Pinky. Mind your own businesses.”

The only splash of real colour in all of the assembled party on the sun-dappled island was his tutor. Calypso was robed in a diaphanous gown of layered silks as always, but they shimmered today in soft rainbow hues, the iridescent sheen of a pearl, a pink-white seashell. Her enigmatic expression was as unreadable as ever. Her hair was loose and toyed along her back as they listened to Aunt Irene quietly recite a suitable poem in the high tongue. Calypso had known this Undine, at one time, Robin thought. Long ago before the war. This Undine loyal to Tritea who had stood against the Dark Empress when Calypso hadn’t, and had remained in Hiernarbos, the haven. A place his tutor had revealed she was no longer welcome.

As Robin glanced over at her, musing on this, he saw a single tear escape her eye and roll softly down her calm, pale cheek. She glanced his way suddenly, making him feel tremendously guilty, as though he had invaded a very private moment.

Before he could avert his eyes, he saw the tear roll back up her cheek and disappear into her eye once more, recalled by water-mana and sheer force of will. She gave him an odd, small smile as Irene finished talking, and Robin, unsure what to make of it, stared down instead at his clasped hands.

THE BLACK KNIGHT OF WALPURGIS

On Sunday, while Mr Drover weeded the gardens and changed the Redcap wards (they were lunar powered, he had explained, and the relentless good weather had drained them of almost all potency), Robin dragged Henry inside to look up what he could about the Fae Guard. The library of Erlking was on the second floor in the west wing at the back of the house. It wasn’t one of Henry’s favourite haunts. The dust from the books made him cough, he said, and besides, the place smelled funny. Unfortunately, Robin pointed out, it was the only place, probably in the world or the Netherworlde, where they were likely to find even the most basic scrap of information worth reading, and Karya had been shut up in her room all morning, so Henry was simply going to have to suffer and cough.

“The smell will only be old books anyway,” Robin said, as they made their way along a portrait-filled gallery. “I quite like it. Gran was always at the local library. She used to get books out every week. Those large print ones though, where the writing’s massive.”

Henry sniffed. “I don’t like large print books,” he said decisively, walking along with his hands in his back pockets. “I can’t shake the feeling they’re shouting at you. I mean, it’s hard to get the feel of a good story when the words are bellowing off the page, isn’t it?”

Robin shrugged, smirking. “Well, your eyesight’s fine isn’t it, so you don’t have to worry about it.”

“Anyway, it’s not the smell of old books,” Henry argued as they ducked under a curtained archway in the corridor. “It’s more like smelly old men’s brains going off like bad eggs.” He wrinkled his nose.

Robin supposed this was a fair approval of some old books, but suspected that had Gran still been alive and here right now, she would have whooped Henry up the back of the head with a volume of Shakespeare for saying such a heresy against literature, and considering it would have been a large print folio of Shakespeare’s Bellowing Sonnets, Henry could very well have ended up unconscious.

“We could be out in the woods now, you know,” Henry muttered. “Woad said he found a pool in a glade somewhere. There’s a little waterfall any everything. He’s there now.”

“I’ve had enough water lately.” Robin rolled his eyes. “Bad enough I nearly killed myself at the lake, but I don’t reckon Calypso is too wild about my prowess. I tried to move my orange juice from the jug to my cup at breakfast this morning, and all I managed to do was somehow turn it from smooth to that rank stuff with bits in.”

Henry chuckled. “No one like OJ with bits in,” he said. “Except Lady Eris. I bet she does. She’s a weird one though, that new teacher of yours, isn’t she?”

They turned a corner in the corridor, passing a long parade of arched windows, slicing the view ahead into shadow and light.

“You sure you’re not just saying that ‘cause she pinned you to a wall with ice?”

“The pretty ones are always mental,” Henry said, with lofty knowledge of all things female. “I reckon she’s got more than a little fluid on the brain that one, even if she is a looker.”

Robin agreed the nymph was hard to get a handle on. She was stunning alright. Neither he nor Henry could look directly at her for any length of time, it was like staring into the sun. Or as Karya eye-rollingly observed, like watching two idiots dissolve into embarrassing mush. Still, he wished he could get a handle on the Tower of Water. It hadn’t been any easier with the Tower of Air, but at least he’d had books as a starting point.

He shrugged diplomatically as they finally reached the rather grand old oak doors of the library, above which, etched in stone was the familiar motto:

Studio sapientia crescit.

By one side of the doors now stood a shining suit of armour. The helmet had been shaped by some demented metalworker to resemble not a human head, but rather that of a horned stag. The boys barely glanced at it as they walked up to the doors.

Henry reached out a hand to push them open. As he did so, there was a piercingly loud squeal of rusted metal hinges, making both the boys jump, and with uncanny speed the suit of armour flung out its arm in a silvery blur, its wicked-looking sword outstretched, effectively barring them from the doorway.

The movement had been so sudden and abrupt that Henry and Robin barely had time to let out manly squeals of shock.

“Bloody Nora,” said Henry in a rushed breath, clutching at his heart. They both stared wide-eyed at the suit of armour, now blocking their way like a much overdressed bouncer. The stag-shaped head had tilted slightly to one side, the empty eye sockets regarding them like some manner of predatory bird.

“Where did this bloody thing come from?” Henry spluttered. Neither of the boys had ever seen the strange suit of armour before.

The helmet squeaked in the direction of the boy’s voice, again, the movement almost too fast to follow. The metal antlers flashed in the light. There was no discernible mouth in the visor, but it still managed to speak, the words sounding far off and tinny, like a bad telephone connection in a storm.

“Who dares challenge the Black Knight?” it cried somewhat theatrically.

Robin stared at the haunted apparition in disbelief. Its rusty sword arm still hung before the door mechanically, the jagged-edged blade looked keenly sharp. Much sharper than say … anything else he had recently been threatened with.

“Erm … sorry,” said Robin hesitantly. “I think there’s been a bit of a mix up…”

The visor swung in his direction with a squeak.

“Who dares challenge the Black Knight?” it repeated.

Robin held up his hands innocently. “Not us, we’re not challenging anyone,” he said hastily.

“We came for some books,” Henry supplied helpfully from a wise if not hugely brave few paces behind Robin.

“Books? What are you speaking of boy? What books?” the tinny voice rang out impatiently. The empty gloved fingers twitched around the hilt of the sword.

“From the library,” Robin said, pointing helpfully. “Behind you? We live here.”

“Well, he does,” Henry pointed at Robin. “I just visit a lot.”

“Any that dare to pass the Black Knight shall meet with certain death!” the suit of armour warned in a deafening and slightly shrill bellow. “I am charged to guard forever the sacred chamber of…” The voice trailed off somewhat, as Robin’s words sunk in at last. The visor turned on the neck, quite slowly, until it was facing completely backwards like an owl. There was a pause, in which Robin was sure he heard a deep, resigned sigh inside the suit of armour. The head snapped forward again to face the boys.

“They’ve only gone and moved me, haven’t they?” the suit of armour complained.

“I’m … I’m sorry?” Robin said helplessly.

“They must have done it when I was sleeping,” the suit of armour mused to itself, lowering its sword arm with a squeak and raising its other hand to its metal chin in a thoughtful way. “Fancy that. I call that cheeky, I do. Most irregular. Most undignified.”

“Is everything … alright?” Henry asked tentatively.

The suit of armour looked up at him. “What? Oh, yes, yes quite. No, sorry, terrible mix up there you see. I am, as I may have said, the Black Knight, and you see I’m rather charged for all eternity to guard … well, something pretty dashed important anyway, only … the thing is you see…” It looked around the corridor. “ … I appear to have been moved from my place of eternal guard … and placed rather decoratively in this corridor instead. Awfully embarrassing. This is the mortal side of Erlking, isn’t it? Most irregular, really.”

Robin and Henry exchanged looks.

“So…” Robin tried. “Now you’re guarding the library?”

The visor looked at him a little absently. “Yes, yes I suppose I am, aren’t I? Well, that’s a bit of a step down and no mistake.” It straightened up, as though determined to make the most of the situation. “Ah well, mustn’t grumble I suppose – an eternal charge is an eternal charge by any name, I suppose.”

“Well,” said Henry, in a forced and business-like manner. “Don’t know about you two, but I know I’m glad that that’s cleared up. So … we just need to go and get some books about Robin’s dad and his pals and we’ll be on our way and out of your hair … or antlers or whatever.”

He started forward. The sword lashed out again to block the door with sudden ferociousness.

“Who dares to challenge the Black Knight?” bellowed the suit of armour.

“Bloody Hell! Watch it will you? You nearly had my arm off then!” Henry yelled in a shaky voice, backing up. “What are you playin’ at?”

The suit of armour wobbled its head a little. “Well, I may very well no longer be guarding the dashed important thing I was guarding last time someone woke me, but blast it all, I’m jolly well good at what I do, and I am going to guard this sacred…” It looked around again briefly, “ … library, as best I can.”

“Look,” said Robin. “This is silly, we just need to look something up, that’s all. Aunt Irene said we could—”

“Not without facing the wrath of the Black Knight, you shall not!” the suit of armour shrilled. It seemed to be rather enjoying itself now it had found its footing again.

Henry pulled Robin back by the elbow.

“Look, we’re not getting past this bloke, Rob,” he said in a stage whisper. “He’s about two sandwiches short of a picnic, if you ask me.”

“Well, I need to know more about this Tritea woman and her connection to the Fae Guard,” Robin said in reply.

“You need your legs more, Robin,” Henry hissed. “Which do you reckon would make your aunt angrier, having no leads, or having no legs?”

Robin shook the older boy off and turned back to the suit of armour, which was hopping slightly from one foot to the other with a series of clanks in anticipation.

“Look, Mr … Black Knight,” he said. “What do we have to do to get past you?”

The visor stared at him. “You must challenge the Black Knight,” it said in menacing tones.

“Okay, what kind of challenge?”

“Say what?” the suit of armour stuttered.

“What’s the challenge?” Robin asked politely.

The suit of armour lowered it arm slightly. “Hmm,” it said, thoughtfully. “To tell the truth, it has been many a moon since I set a challenge. Let’s see.”

It turned around secretively, and there was much shuffling and squeaking, as it reached into its chest plate and withdrew something.

It turned around, holding aloft what looked like a clay pot.

Looking satisfied with itself, if that was possible with such unmovable features, the stag-headed suit of armour set the pot on a small marble plinth which stood near the doors.

“What’s that?” Henry asked, peering at it.

“That, my dark haired and rather scruffy young varlet, is your challenge,” the suit of armour replied happily, in a genial manner. “In this pot lies the key to the door behind me. You must take it and open the doors yourself.”

Henry looked suspicious. “That’s it? Just take out the key? No funny business?”

The metal helmet squeaked in a nod. “That is the challenge.”

“It’s full of poisonous snakes, that vase, isn’t it?” Henry said accusingly. The suit of armour shook its head.

“Flesh eating beetles? Mousetraps? Battery acid?” Henry said suspiciously. The suit of armour shook its head briskly to each.

“There is nothing in the jar but the key,” it assured them smugly in its tinny voice. “You must claim it, and open the doors, using only your wits and what you have here before you.”

Robin approached the pot and looked cautiously within. At the bottom, there was a swirl of bright yellow-red light, a shimmering flickering form, breaking apart a little but somehow holding a regular shape.

“It’s … made of fire,” he said to Henry.

“What?”

“The key,” said Robin, as the older boy joined him and peered into the pot alongside his friend. “The key is made from fire!”

The suit of armour chuckled in what Robin thought was not a very chivalrous or honourable way.

Henry looked at it, annoyed. “How are we supposed to pick up a key made from fire then?” he asked, disgruntled.

The suit of armour raised a finger in a dramatic squeaky manner.

“Aha! That, my unkempt young page, is the challenge … as it were,” it said triumphantly.

Henry and Robin exchanged hopeless looks.

“Don’t suppose you’d settle for a game of rock paper scissors instead?” Henry asked hopefully. “Best of three?”

The suit of armour regarded him blankly with its empty stag’s eyes.

“Didn’t think so,” Henry mumbled. He turned to Robin. “Well, you’re the one with magical blood or whatever, fairy-boy, any great ideas? Wind magic maybe? Blow the fire out?”

Robin shook his head frowning. “If we blow it out, we’ll have no key,” he said. “Same for if we used water magic.”

Henry nodded. “Plus, of course, you’re pants at water magic, we could always ask your tutor to cry her tears of disappointment into the pot?”

Robin ignored him. He stared into the pot, where the key flickered and glowed in a very impressive, very magical, and above all, and most importantly, very hot way. The heat haze from within rolled up against his face. He could feel the empty stare of the suit of armour, which he personally suspected was rather unbalanced from years of solitude guarding whatever it had been guarding. Henry was looking at him expectantly too.

Robin sighed, feeling a sudden pang of nostalgia for the bungalow he used to share with Gran, where the biggest challenge he had had to face was trying to set the timer on the ancient and wilful video recorder, so that Gran could watch the ‘Eastenders’ omnibus on Sundays without missing the gardening program on the other channel with ‘that lovely little Titchmarsh chap’ as she called him.

“What would the famous five do?” he muttered to himself musingly.

“Eh?” said Henry, who was evidently not a big reader.

Robin shook his head. “Nothing,” he said, wishing he had a pair of very thick oven gloves. The image was a practical one, if not particularly heroic.

He glanced at the suit of armour, which was watching him expectantly like an animal-headed version of the Terminator, only with crisper diction. A thought had just occurred to him.

“So, let me get this right,” he said. “We have to get this out and open the door … using only what’s here?”

“That is correct,” the suit of armour said primly. “Thus is the challenge of the great and undefeated Black Knight of Walpurgis. Only what tools you have here before you.”

Henry rolled his eyes. “Silly us,” he said. “Not stopping off for a fire extinguisher on the way to pick up books. What were we thinking?”

Robin silenced him with a raised hand. “No, no. That’s fair enough,” he said. “We accept your challenge, Black Knight of…”

“Walpurgis,” the suit of armour bowed with a clank. “But you may address me as Wally, as we are all gentlemen together.”

Robin smiled and held out his hand for a formal handshake. “Great Wally,” he said as the suit of armour grasped his hand.

“Do you mind if we borrow this for a minute?” he added. Before the suit of armour could reply, Robin turned the gloved metal hand of the black knight in a circle. There was a brief squeak, and the black knight’s arm detached neatly at the elbow with a pop.

“I say!” declared the suit of armour as Robin backed up, holding the metal arm triumphantly.

“Thanks,” Robin said cheerfully, turning his back on the door guardian. Henry stared at him with wide eyes.

“What?” Robin said innocently. “There was nothing in the rules about him not lending us a hand, as it were.” He smirked, and holding the heavy metal arm carefully by the jointed elbow, he dipped it into the deep clay pot. The fiery key spluttered briefly, glinting in the dark interior against the metal.

Robin looked over his shoulder at the now one-armed knight.

“Would you mind?” he prompted.

The suit of armour, stunned into silence by developments, shook his head briefly in acquiescence.

The empty metal glove in the pot closed obediently around the fiery key, clasping it tightly.

“Thanks very much,” Robin said, withdrawing the arm. The key flickered and showered small red sparks in the open air. Robin walked carefully to the library doors, holding the arm with its clasped key like a pair of enormous tongs before him. He hovered the key in front of the lock triumphantly.

The gloved metal hand obligingly inserted the key and it turned with a click. The doors opened with a whoosh. The key in the lock extinguished with a fiery pop, leaving the ghost of a key-shape in smoke, which quickly dispersed.

Robin turned back to the suit of armour, holding out the arm with a smile. The Black Knight took it from him, a little petulantly.

“Thanks for the help,” Robin said. “Are we okay to go in now?”

The Black Knight looked at Henry and Robin, busying itself with reattaching its arm, the fingertips of which were glowing a dull red. Robin got the feeling that despite its inanimate features, it was trying to frown.

“I suppose if you must,” it allowed sniffily. “None have bested the Black Knight in a challenge for many a moon. You have earned my loyalty, sir.”

Henry walked past, giving it a hearty clap on its metal shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, Wally, good to meet you too.”

The suit of armour bowed as Robin and Henry made their way gratefully into the large room beyond, grinning happily.

When they had passed, the until-recently-undefeated Black Knight of Walpurgis resumed its inanimate position by the doors and tried to think of a new challenge, occasionally pausing to blow on its glowing fingers.

The library within was huge and chaotic. Robin had spent a good deal of time in here, studying Air books. It had been easier to find those. There was an enchanted lectern in the centre of the room, just before three great stained-glass windows, and all one needed to do was call out the name of the book you were searching for, and it would fly from wherever it hid on the shelves or tottering piles, and land before you with a thump. In this case, of course, they had no handy list of book names to go on.

“I’m going to have a word with my dad about that suit of armour,” Henry grumbled, following Robin into the stacks. “Bloody liability that is. Okay, so fair enough there are a couple of carved doorknobs on the first floor than can talk to you, but at least they’re polite. Well, one of them is. The other one knows some great dirty jokes. Dunno why your aunt is moving stuff around anyway.”

Robin ran a finger along the dusty book spines. “Maybe it’s to keep Hestia out. She’s probably been polishing the names off the books. Speaking of which, any ideas about what this book might be called?” Henry shook his head ruefully. “Ah well…” Robin said. He approached the lectern and thought for a moment.

“Erm … A history of the Fae Guard,” he tried, enunciating clearly.

Nothing happened.

“The Court of Oberon and Titania,” he attempted, a little uncertainly. Still not a page in the library fluttered. Dust danced like gold mist in the streaming sunlight.

“Scandalous romantic affairs of the noble Fae families,” Henry tried. Robin shot him a hard look, secretly glad that no book was summoned.

Robin tried for several more minutes, calling out every possible book name he could think of, from ‘fae heraldry’ to ‘courtly fae matters’ and even ‘Oberon’s inner circle’. This last attempt did bring a slim paperback volume thudding from the shelves onto the lectern, but on closer inspection it was only a book on how to make decorative doilies on a theme of embroidered kings and queens, a fiddly looking old book by the excitably named Prunella Fiddlebobbin. They put it to one side.

“We might have to do this the hard way,” he sighed to Henry. Henry gave him a worried, disheartened look.

“What, you mean like, internet message boards?”

“No, we want actual information,” Robin smirked. “If we wanted the ramblings of a madman we could just go back out in the corridor and talk to metal bambi there. What I meant is, I think we’re going to have to walk the stacks.”

There must have been thousands upon thousands of books in the library. Henry looked as mortified as Robin felt.

Both boys were distracted however from this daunting task by a tap at the window. Stepping over piles of books and old grimoires with a confused frown, Robin unlatched one of the tall, stained glass panes and swung it open with a creak.

Woad grinned in at them both with bright yellow eyes.

“Hey Pinky! I thought I smelled you in here.” He leapt up like an acrobat, swinging himself into the room and landing on the floorboards with his soft tail swishing. The jam-jar around his neck sloshed a little. Robin noticed the lid had little air holes drilled in.

“Don’t you ever use doors, Woad?” he asked, closing the window. “And anyway, I don’t smell.”

“Everybody smells,” Woad said in a matter of fact way, standing up. “Nose like a bloodhound, me. No one can sniff better than I can. I didn’t say it was a bad smell, did I?”

“I’ve often thought you smelled faintly of rather delightful lavender water, Rob,” Henry teased. He had picked a book up at random from a shelf and blew dust from it. “What do I smell like then, Woad old buddy?”

The faun wrinkled his nose in thought. “Sausage rolls,” he concluded. He unlooped the jam-jar from around his neck and set it with great care on the table.

“You two pink-skins are mad to be indoors today. You should have come to the pool I found in the woods. Much more fun than dusty old words. I’ve been making friends.”

“We’re looking for something important,” Robin explained. He couldn’t hold back the suspense any longer. “Woad, are you going to tell us what’s in the jar? You haven’t been without it for days. I swear, if it’s half a squirrel in formaldehyde or something gross…”

“It’s my pet,” Woad grinned with glee. He crouched by the table and tapped the glass with a sharp nail. “It’s his travelling jar, so he doesn’t have to be on his own when I’m not there. He gets very lonely. And you know I’m often not there. I’m usually busy being everywhere else instead. Can’t pin a good faun down.”

Robin crossed to the table and peered into the murky water. It was cloudy. A tiny sucker-covered tentacle suddenly slapped against the glass from within, making him jerk his head back, eyes wide.

“That’s … the kraken,” he said. “From the pool room. You kept it?”

“Him, not it,” Woad said petulantly. “Inky is mine. I tell him all my secrets. He’ll never blab, so don’t bother asking. He’s loyal to the end, is my Inky.” He looked at the two of them with a dramatically serious face. “I LOVE HIM.”

“Woad mate, you can’t keep a kraken as a pet. They’re killers,” Henry exclaimed, shaking his head in wonder. “If it gets bigger, it’ll go on a rampage.”

Woad glowered. He scooped up the jar jealously and hugged it. “Henryboy is wrong. Inky is just misunderstood. I take good care of him. He has a tank now. I put in some shells and things. And a ham sandwich, but I ate that later myself. He was just lonely in the dark, horrible pool room for all those years.”

Robin shook his head. He could see the determination burning in the faun’s face. “Well, just don’t let Hestia find out. You know she’d absolutely pitch a fit about having one roaming around.”

Woad grinned and sat cross-legged at the table, his tail swishing happily. “He likes me to sing to him at night. I sing all the old faun ballads,” he told them proudly. “He likes the ones about war and bloodshed most.” He tapped the milky jar affectionately. It shuddered in tiny rage. “Yes, you do,” he cooed to it. “Inky likes the bloodshed doesn’t he, my squishy baby? The Ballad of Dismembered Dorian? Is that our favourite? I think so.”

Robin and Henry raised eyebrows.

“So, if you two are stuffed up being stuffy in here with stuff,” he said. “And boss is locked away in her room scribbling away again on that love poem or whatever she’s writing, what am I supposed to do all afternoon? I’m bored with my secret place at the pool for today.”

“Well,” Robin suggested with a hopeful smile. “You could always help us look for the book we need.” He sounded a little desperate. “We’re going to have to turn the library upside down, it will probably take hours. We’ve no idea what it might be called.”

“What’s it about?” the faun said, wiping his nose.

“Anything to do with Oberon’s Knights of the Round Table,” Henry said, snapping his current book closed. “The Fae Guard they were called. Kind of like the celebrities, A-lister, ‘it crowd’ of the faerie world.”

Woad nodded, his eyes flashing. “Ohhhh, you mean the Sidhe-Nobilitas?”

There was a whirring flutter and a heavy thunk. A great black book had dropped out of the air and onto the lectern, narrowly avoiding crushing Robin’s thumb.

Robin stared at the book. The looping silver lettering swirling around an embossed gilt stag’s head, which occasionally shook its antlers a little.

“Sid-Nobilitas, the Consecration, Development and Hierarchical Organisation of the Court of the Fae. A study by Celia Harebell.” He raised his eyebrows at Woad. “How did you know what they were called?”

“I speak the High Tongue, obviously.” The faun rolled his eyes dramatically, padding over with Henry to look over Robin’s shoulders as he read from the book. “Unlike you. It’s pronounced ‘shee’, not ‘sid’.”

As it happened, Robin couldn’t read any further. It was written in an unknown language. The Scion waited a moment hopefully, to see if the words were going to magically become comprehensible to him, but they didn’t. They just sat on the page, being stubborn and illegible. The Puck was clearly fast asleep in his head.

“Hmm,” Woad said. “I speak the high tongue, but I can’t read it.” He scratched behind his ear absently. “I can’t read the low tongue either for that matter. But it’s overrated. I can roll my tongue, does that count?”

“Karya,” Robin said decisively, clapping the book shut. “She speaks something like eleven hundred languages, right? She can find out what we need from this.”

SIDHE-NOBILITAS

Karya had grudgingly agreed to look over the book after dinner. She had been holed up in her room with the translation scrap. The odd cylinder which Robin had discovered in the grave was resting innocently on her nightstand, he noticed, still resolutely unopened.

Aunt Irene herself was out of the house, as she often was, ‘looking into matters’, as she put it. She was not expected back until sundown, so after dinner, the children met together in the Red Study.

It was a cosy room to sit in during summer evenings. The blood red wallpaper changed with the sunset outside, mimicking the hues of nightfall from the first tinges of pink to flaring nuclear orange. The one naked window, currently flung wide and letting in a delicious breeze, was virtually indistinguishable amidst the panorama of colour. It was like sitting inside a slow motion supernova.

Henry had sprawled out on a battered and squishy sofa, Woad curled up on the floor in front of him, happily getting the occasional head scratch.

“You know,” he said absently, feeling a little queasy as he had eaten so much. “Hestia slapped the ladle of mash down so hard on my plate, I swear some of it flew up and got in my eye. I don’t know why your aunt keeps that old misery on here sometimes.”

Robin and Karya were each ensconced in a deep wingback armchair, digesting happily. Hestia had made a veritable banquet of Yorkshire pudding, mash and sausage, and, no matter how grudgingly she had served the fare to the children, Robin found he would put up with a lot of disgruntled mutterings just to eat her cooking. The lady herself came in and fussed around the room for a while, nearly giving Henry a heart attack at the thought of being overheard, but eventually, all the candles were lit and she couldn’t think of any further legitimate reasons to stay and spy on them in Irene’s absence. She stumped out moodily, muttering dire warnings about the dangers and recriminations of putting feet up on tables.

When the door had finally clicked shut, Robin drew out the book they had found in the library and passed it to Karya. She flicked through the pages, a thoughtful frown on her face.

“Well? Can you read it?” Robin asked eagerly.

“Of course I can read it, Scion,” she replied. “I’m not an idiot. It’s just that … I’m not really sure how useful this is going to be to you. It looks like a very dry account of how Oberon and Titania first set up the Fae Guard.” She flipped a few pages back and forth. “And details of their various responsibilities to the court, that kind of thing.”

“We need to know about this Tritea woman,” Robin said. “The greatest Undine of all time, or whatever Aunt Irene said she was. If she had a piece of the Arcania, a Shard, and she was involved with one of the Fae Guard, knowing who might give us a clue as to where to look for this doorway to the sanctuary Heri … Hari … Heni…”

“Hiernarbos,” Woad supplied helpfully from his spot on the floor. “The super-secret sanctuary of secrets,” he added dramatically.

Karya looked around at her three companions. “I don’t think we’re going to find any hidden Janus stations without opening that odd box you found. It’s hardly going to be in a book is it, not if the Undine went to so much trouble encoding it in that tube. Your aunt, Robin, is extremely interested in getting it open.” She looked troubled. “I get the feeling whatever she’s looking into, it has to do with more than a Shard of the Arcania. She’s given me that cylinder to work on, but to be honest, I’m still struggling with that scrap of nonsense too.”

Henry blew air down his nose. “You mean, that thing where so far you’ve only translated ‘dark-dark’ or whatever.”

Karya gave the brown-haired boy a hateful look. “If you think you can do any better, be my guest,” she hissed.

Robin leaned over and tapped the book in Karya’s lap insistently. “Okay, so there might not be anything here about Tritea and the Shard…”

“There won’t be,” she interjected firmly. “This book was written before the wars. Before the Arcania was shattered and before Oberon and Titania were killed, or disappeared or whatever happened to them.”

Robin felt a little uncomfortable.

“But … my parents. They were part of this, right?” he asked. “It’s just, I know so little about them. I have the one page in my book upstairs of the Fae families and that’s it.”

Gran had been the only family Robin had even known. And as it had turned out, he hadn’t really known her either. They hadn’t even been blood-related. He knew so little. He didn’t have Gran anymore. He was like something cast adrift. Searching for something, or someone, to anchor to.

Karya was looking at him thoughtfully, her amber eyes softened in the candlelight and deepening evening gloom. He knew what she was thinking. She probably thought he was a fool for wanting so much to know about his family. She had no love of them.

“Of course,” she said, a little mollified. She sank back deep into the armchair, the book in her lap and flicked through the pages. “Families are difficult things though, Scion. You don’t always like everything you find when you go poking around in the past. Trust me, I know.”

She cleared her throat a little as Robin sat back himself, eager to learn anything there was to know.

“It says here, and I’m loosely translating remember,” she began reluctantly. “ … That in times past, the great and beautiful Oberon, lord of all the Fae, and the fierce and bold Titania, lady of the land, possessed the Arcania. Mana flowed like sunlight throughout the Netherworlde, bathing all in its riches, and peace reigned, and so on and so on. The usual idyll.”

She flipped a page. “But there were adversaries,” she continued. “There always are, I suppose. It tells here how there was the battle of the Whitefolk, and then after that the Fae faced altercations with the giants of the north, and how many lives were lost and the king and queen wept.” She glanced up at her audience. “It probably doesn’t mean actually wept. Usually this means they got really, really angry.”

“They might have wept,” Woad offered, even handedly. “We don’t know.”

“They were neither of them the weeping type,” the girl muttered in response, mostly to herself. “Anyway, a decision was made, and the father of the Netherworlde…” She shrugged. “I guess that means Oberon, though I’ve never heard him called that before.”

“Big Daddy O, yeah, go on,” Henry prompted, jogging her along.

“The father of the Netherworlde decreed that the land shall be protected, and the Arcania vibrated with his words. Oberon and Titania gathered to them the wisest and most skilled of the Fae. Those trusted to guard the Arcania, the Netherworlde, and their peoples. Skilled warriors, wise counsellors, healers, mystics and men and women of science and art. Thus was born the noble order of the Sidhe-Nobilitas, keepers of the King and Queen, royal court of Erlking and defenders of the realm and its people.”

She read in silence for a while, her finger moving along the page. “It lists here the original members of Oberon’s set,” she said. “Coltsfoot, Nightshade, Wormwood, Truefellow, Peaseblossom, Hawthorn and Mudthistle. Seven great Fae chosen as knights and protectors. It doesn’t give first names, Scion, but I’m guessing Truefellow was your father, Lord Wolfsbane Truefellow. All it says about them really is that they were loyal and true. There were more than these though, I remember.”

“You remember what?” Henry piped up.

“I mean, I’m sure of it. There were thirteen members in the Sidhe-Nobilitas, not just seven, or at least there were at the time of the Great War.” She shook her head. “It’s annoying really, as there’s no note as to when this book was actually written. There’s certainly no mention anywhere in here of the Panthea at all, so I’m guessing this was all set down to paper before the Panthea came to the Netherworlde. The ranks of the Fae Guard must have swelled over time. You should feel especially honoured then, Robin Fellows, if your father was one of the original seven.”

“Is there no mention of my mother?” he asked, hopefully. “I thought maybe there would be. In my book of Fae families it said she was a healer and a master of the Tower of Water. But that’s literally all it says. Kind of ironic really as I’m pretty pants at it so far.”

The girl clucked her tongue, scanning the book again. “No, sorry. He must have met and married her later on down the line.” She shut the book and tapped the cover with her finger. “The more pertinent thing here is that if there are no Panthea mentioned in this book, then it does indeed predate their arrival amongst the Fae. Which means it won’t have any mention of Tritea, or which of the Fae Guard she was supposedly involved with. No clues then as to where she might be buried.” She huffed and laid the book in her lap.

Robin looked a little crestfallen. He slumped in his chair.

“Look, Robin,” she said. “I know you must want to know all about your mother and father, but to what end? You never knew them; you don’t remember them. You grew up with a stranger who filled your life with kindness. Your gran was more family to you than these names and pictures in books will ever be.”

Robin worked his jaw. “I have a right to know, I think,” he replied. “Even if you think it’s a waste of time. And it’s not that I didn’t love Gran. Or that anyone could replace her. But … well … she’s gone. I don’t have anyone left. I don’t know why it’s bothering you so much.”

“None of us have anyone left,” she replied, quietly but firmly. “That’s war for you. You think you’re the only one affected?”

“You have us left,” Woad muttered, glancing from Robin to Karya. “Remember? We’ve all got us left … Together?”

Robin and Karya were staring at one another over the book.

“Woad’s right,” Henry said, feeling the tension rising in the room and having no idea where it came from. “One for all and all for one, right? Wherever you all came from originally, you’re all Erlkingers now, right?”

Karya glanced over at him. “With all due respect, Henry, you’re the only one here who hasn’t lost their home, and still has a parent, so I hardly think you’re qualified to talk us all into a happy group hug.”

“Why are you laying into Henry all of a sudden?” Robin glared. “What’s got under your skin tonight anyway? If you didn’t want to help with the book, you should have just said so.”

“I just don’t see what good will come of it,” she countered defensively. “There’s nothing to be gained from memories that don’t matter. There’s nothing about Tritea in this book, and barely anything useful about your parents.”

“I think I’ll be the one to decide what’s important about my own parents, thanks.” Robin held out his hand for the book, feeling unreasonably annoyed with the girl. How on earth would she know what memories mattered and what didn’t?

She set her jaw, affronted by his tone, and slapped the book into his hand. “Have it your way. I’m not your keeper. If you want to keep looking elsewhere for a home, for somewhere to belong, that’s your business, wasteful enterprise as it may be.”

“Well, mine was taken from me,” Robin retorted. “I didn’t run away from mine.”

She stared at him wide-eyed for a second, and he instantly regretted it. He hadn’t meant to be so mean. It had been a stupid and thoughtless thing to say. He couldn’t think of anything to say to make it better.

Woad and Henry were uncharacteristically silent.

Karya stood up, calmly, shrugging her fur-skin coat onto her shoulders. “Not all of us have the benefit of shining noble families like yours, Scion. Some family trees are less trees and more tangled nests of vines. They grow in darkness and they’ll choke you if you don’t cut yourself free.” Her golden eyes were shining. “I’m sorry your parents are dead. I really am. I’m also sorry that Woad has no home and that Calypso can never be accepted back at her homeland. I’m sorry about your gran too. In fact, there’s an awful lot of things I could spend all day feeling sorry about, but frankly, doing so doesn’t make any of them any better. Not one jot.”

“Karya, look…” Robin began.

“What we should be doing is what we’ve been told to do,” she cut him off. “Erlking has taken us all in. The least we can do is pay our rent. Focus on learning the Towers of the Arcania, focus on working out this bloody puzzle box, and focus on working out what this letter says. Which is what I’m going to do with the rest of my evening. You three do whatever you want.” She walked to the door. “I’m going to try and help your aunt. Then maybe, when Eris comes knocking, and she will, one way or another, we might stand even the slightest chance.”

Woad jumped up and scampered after her as she left the room. “Boss, hold on, I’ll come with.”

“Wow,” Henry said when she had gone, blowing out his cheeks and sitting up. “What’s got her all twisted up like that? So there was nothing in the book about this Undine then. Big deal. There was no need to get all annoyed just ‘cause you wanted to know more about your mum and dad. Total overreaction, that, mate.”

Robin was still sitting with the book in his lap. His face felt hot. He knew Henry was trying to make him feel better. “I shouldn’t have said that,” he said. “About her running away from home. That was stupid.”

Henry made a non-committal sound through his nose and swung his legs off the sofa. It was well known to Robin that Henry had mixed feelings about Karya. She had helped to rescue him from Mr Strife and Mr Moros, but he didn’t like the air of mystery she carried around everywhere. Henry was a straightforward kind of person. He preferred a sausage wrapped in pastry to a mystery wrapped in an enigma any day.

“Well, maybe if she’d actually tell us anything at all about herself, she wouldn’t have to be so prickly all the time,” Henry muttered. “She’s so secretive.”

“She’s not secretive, she’s just private,” Robin replied, tossing the book down onto a table. “If and when she wants to talk about her past, that’s her business.”

“I just know if she was living under my roof, I’d want to know a lot more about her, that’s all,” Henry said.

“It’s not my roof.”

“Rob mate, you’re the son of one of the original seven Fae Guard, you’re basically royalty. And this is Erlking, home of the big cheeses themselves,” his friend argued. “If you ask me, that makes it more your roof than anyone else’s, even dotty old Aunt Irene.”

Robin smirked. “I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone less ‘dotty’ than Irene in my life,” he said.

“All I’m saying, and I’ve said it before to you…” Henry got to his feet and stretched like a lazy cat. “Is that you shouldn’t just go around trusting everyone you meet, here or in the Netherworlde. I think Karya’s probably a good enough egg and all, but still. I mean, you’ve already told me she used to work for Lady Eris, right?”

A voice spoke from the corner of the study, light and quiet, and completely unexpected. “Many people, human boy, used to work for Lady Eris.”

Henry almost jumped out of his skin.

Seated in an armchair, ensconced in the corner of the room, a slim paperback in hand, sat Robin’s tutor. Neither of them had noticed her in the dim candlelight.

“When did you come in?” Robin stuttered, as Henry’s face turned crimson. The nymph, who had her legs tucked up under her, placed her book, a battered old edition of ‘Mrs Dalloway’, down gently on her lap.

“I was reading in here when you and your friends arrived,” she told them.

“But … but we didn’t see you,” Robin said. Had she been sitting with them the whole time?

“No, you wouldn’t have,” she said simply, with no great concern. She stood up, her pale dress falling in whispering perfect folds around her. “That housekeeper of yours doesn’t seem very fond of me.” She shrugged a shoulder, as if to indicate that this fact was neither here nor there to her. “I can be still and quiet when I wish. As silent and invisible as a clear millpond in shadows. I had no desire to encounter the tiresome woman, or to interrupt you and your companions, and your … debate.”

Henry was looking very flustered. “Sorry about that Eris comment,” he spluttered, looking at his feet. “I only meant…”

“I know exactly what you meant, mortal boy,” she replied, walking across the room. Her long finger trailed on the back of a sofa idly. “It is a fact. Many Panthea support Eris. Irene and her supporters are mostly in the minority.”

She looked directly at them both in turn, her deep eyes clear. “But believe me when I tell you this. You can trust more in those who once served her and have left her service, than in those who never did.” She glanced at Robin with her distant liquid stare. “The people of the Netherworlde who opposed Eris from the very beginning are her foes, yes. But those, like myself, who once served loyally and have now betrayed her?” She gave a small smile. “Well, we are her deepest enemies. Eris is devoid of mercy, and forgiveness is a thing alien to her. She hates deserters and betrayers more even I think than she hates the Fae.”

“Of course,” Robin said, chagrined.

“You gave the girl sanctuary here, Scion,” his tutor said. “That is no small gift to give, not to an enemy of Eris. You both…” She glanced a little sharply at Henry. “ … Should trust her.”

Henry nodded eagerly.

“She is no Panthea like myself, but she is forever in your debt.” Calypso looked thoughtful. “I imagine this fact irks her somewhat. She strikes me as fiercely independent. Freed slaves often are.”

“I’d … I’d better get off,” Henry said, shuffling uncomfortably. “Dad will be heading home soon now that it’s dark, and it’s school tomorrow for us boring humans.”

“I’ll see you out,” Robin said, nodding a goodnight to his tutor, who still stood in the candlelight of the now dark purple room with one hand resting on the sofa, looking thoughtful. But as the two boys reached the door, she called out, “Robin Fellows. A word, if I may, in private.”

Robin closed the door behind Henry as he left, his face a Greek mask of tragedy, and turned to face his tutor. She crossed to the table and picked up the large black book.

“This history…” She stroked the cover with a small frown, her long fingers trailing. “ … From a time before my people’s own history, before the Panthea came into the Netherworlde.” She turned the book over slowly. “I understand why you wanted to know about it. About your parents.”

Robin shuffled uncomfortably. He didn’t know how to reply.

“I lost my family too,” she said. "The nymphs and the Undine of Hiernarbos. When I sided with Eris, when I made the wrong choice. Then, later on, I lost that new dark family too, when I ran from Eris and came here.” She glanced up from the book to him. “We are all of us searching, are we not? Trying to fill a hole within us somehow.”

“Gran was my family,” Robin said thickly. “When she … when she died, my whole life changed. I keep thinking if I can find out about the Fae, about my mum and dad, it might help things make sense, help me … I don’t know.”

“Fill the void,” she finished for him. She walked over and placed the book in his hands.

“The hearts of humans and the hearts of the Fae are so very similar,” she said, as he took it. “Nymphs feel differently. We are simpler creatures, and in some ways, stronger for it. But there is truly perhaps no greater magic, or no more fatal curse, Robin Fellows, than a mortal heart. You miss your grandmother.”

It wasn’t a question. Robin nodded.

“But you like your life.” She smiled a tiny smile. “And there is your conflict. Guilt.”

Robin swallowed. He couldn’t meet his tutor’s eyes. She was altogether too perceptive. “It’s … weird,” he said quietly. “I don’t think about it for ages, and then I’ll find myself having a laugh with Woad playing checkers upstairs, or lazing out in the sun with Henry, or listening to everyone bicker and argue over dinner, and I’ll be happy as anything, then it kind of hits me. That I’m only here at all because Gran died.” He sniffed. “And I feel terrible, like I shouldn’t be happy, that I’ve no right to be. It’s like I’m being disrespectful to Gran if I am.”

To his surprise, Calypso reached out and took his chin in her cupped hand, tilting his face up until he was looking into her eyes. She still looked distant and a little aloof, but not unkind.

“Listen well, Scion. People misunderstand grief,” she told him. “They imagine it is like being made of glass, cold and hollow always, with a roaring wind racing through you, endless and desolate.” She shook her head. “But that is not the way of it. Grief is not a constant wind to be borne. It is an ocean, and it falls upon you only in waves.”

Robin swallowed, still gripping the book with both hands.

“When the waves come, they can be unexpected, Robin, and they can be brutal, and they wash away every castle of sand you have built since the last wave.”

He didn’t meet her eyes.

“But know this. The wave recedes. It will come again. It will always come, but in the meanwhile, while the tide is out, you build new castles of sand in the sun. And your friends, they help you. Do you understand this?”

Robin nodded silently. The candles in the softly lit red room flickered and guttered.

Calypso stared at him a moment longer. “It is no sin against the dead to be happy, Scion,” she whispered, releasing his face from her gentle grip. “It is an insult to them not to be.”

She stepped past him and opened the door. “Build your castles strong, Robin,” she advised. “And let your friends help you build them high. Goodnight, my student. Your face is leaking.”

Robin sniffed and rubbed his eyes with the sleeve of his sweater as she closed the door behind her, holding the book tightly.

NYMPHS AND NEEDLEPOINT

Karya and Henry were perfectly civil to one another the following day when Henry appeared after school, and Robin, eager to keep the peace, made no further mention of the book about the Fae Guard.

However busy and preoccupied she may appear, not much that happened under Erlking’s roof escaped Aunt Irene’s notice. She had clearly noticed that he seemed preoccupied with the riddle of the Fae Guard and the mysterious cylinder which she and Karya were working to open.

Over dinner, between a course of devilled eggs, she lightly suggested that he put the business out of his mind for now. Answers would come when they came, she said. It was no good having every mind in the household fretting about the same things. Not when, as she stated, there was plenty of other, unattended fret to go around, which was in danger of being horribly neglected.

Buttering toast with a silver knife and peering at Robin in rather a firm way, she told him that no matter how impressive his Featherbreath had been at the lake, even he couldn’t turn over every stone in the past at once. Answers have a habit of appearing on their own, and until such time, Robin needed to focus instead on improving his studies.

Life fell into routine at Erlking for the next few weeks. Sultry July slid eventually into baking August. There was a hosepipe ban all across Britain as newspapers announced with feverish glee that it was the hottest summer on record in the last hundred years. Even at Erlking, a place far removed from the goings-on of the wider world, Mr Drover had stopped the fountains, and almost every window in the vast house was left open day and night, desperate for a cooling breeze.

Robin, taking both his tutor’s advice and his guardian’s instructions to heart, knuckled down to his lessons with Calypso.

On Mondays and Wednesdays, they met at the edge of the lake, just beyond the totems that marked the edge of Erlking’s influence. Calypso was teaching him combat and defensive magic during these classes. He soon found he could master Whippersnapper, which drew a thin whip of water from any nearby source, which one could wield as a weapon. This liquid whip was held in the hand but directed, he found, not with your muscles, but with your mana. He almost lost an eye more than once in the process of learning this, a development about which his tutor seemed typically unconcerned.

He also began to form basic ice spears, like the one she had shown to him on that first day. This was a cantrip Calypso called Needlepoint. Hers were uniformly delicate and deadly, formed in the hand in seconds and thrown with grace and expert precision, several of them able to pierce rather alarmingly through the entire trunk of a lakeside tree.

Robin, despite his best attempt, could not seem to grasp the shape at first. Drawing and bending his mana, he often found his hands filled either with sorry looking and crumbling slush, or delightfully cute and fluffy batons of compacted snow, which were universally acknowledged as being adorable, but which crumbled in mid-flight.

“Your problem, Scion…” Calypso said lightly one breezeless afternoon, when Robin was a panting heap standing ankle deep in a hill of grey snow. “ … Is that you are still trying to think your way around the Needlepoint. These are not your practical lessons in the atrium. We are not moving water from cup to cup with emotional focus and freedom. Such things are mindful tasks. They require an artistic song in the heart. Combat casting on the other hand calls for quick wits, quick reflexes and quicker decisions.”

The nymph had assured him at the end of the previous day’s lesson that he was well below age for the more aggressive spells. They would be starting out slow in the first few weeks of combat, with the basics. But standing here in the baking sunshine, his feet like ice in his own mini-snowdrift, Robin didn’t find this very comforting. His tutor seemed suddenly less like an elegant and serene water-spirit, and much more like a dangerously unhinged sociopath with no regard for personal safety. And she had instructed him this morning that they would be sparring. She would imminently be pelting Robin with dangerous magics.

“If you are ready,” she said, standing roughly ten paces from him along the shore. Her pale hair toyed around her shoulders, despite the lack of wind. “I think your advancement may come less from repeated drills, and more from instinct.” She curtsied. The gesture was old fashioned and odd. Robin hadn’t been very good at duelling with Phorbas, and he didn’t feel much better about this either.

“I’m ready … I think,” Robin said, returning a bow self-consciously.

“Very well,” Calypso smiled distantly. “We shall begin simply. I shall attempt to attack you. And you shall attempt to defend. To begin with, I shall tell you what I am going to cast. In a month’s time, I shall expect you to be proficient enough to anticipate my moves. Is this understood?”

Robin nodded nervously, trying to remember one of the defensive magics from his fervent last-minute study. To his silent horror, not only could he not remember the slightest inkling of the various counters to Needlepoint which she had told him of during previous lessons, but for some reason he found he had the jingle to some inane children’s nursery rhyme stuck in his head. ‘Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear. One step, two step … bury me under there’.

“I shall begin with a small Needlepoint attack,” she announced. “Not enough to kill, of course. Just enough to smart. How shall you defend yourself?”

“I’d duck if it was me,” called Henry with a grin from the safety of the nearby trees. Woad chuckled beside him. The boy and the faun had attended every lesson they could so far, in theory at least to ‘cheer Robin on’ although he secretly thought they just found it entertaining. They were both sitting well out of the line of fire. Henry eating a bag of crisps without a care in the world. Calypso frowned at them, as though she had forgotten they existed.

Robin tried to remember what she had told him about Needlepoint. It was quick and hard to dodge. These were the basics?

Calypso noticed his hesitation to answer.

“I see,” she said. “Well, the best way to learn is to show. Prepare yourself!”

Before Robin had time to ask how exactly to do that, his tutor turned and flicked her hand at him, as though shooing a fly away. The hot summer air between them chilled swiftly, and Robin was immediately hit solidly by a sharp jab of ice. It felt like a very strong, extremely cold finger slapping against his chest. He made an ungainly ‘oughhhha!’ noise and flew backwards, lifted off his feet, to land some distance back, sprawled on the pebbles of the shore.

Henry whooped and punched the air, unable to contain himself, but he had the decency to look abashed when Robin glared at him hotly.

“Hmm,” Calypso said thoughtfully, narrowing her eyes as Robin picked himself up off the ground, rubbing at the front of his T shirt painfully. He brushed ice crystals off it. His chest was numb with cold.

“Perhaps we need to start off a little slower still,” she mused. “That’s a little disappointing.”

“Perhaps?!” Robin wheezed, standing shakily, staring wide-eyed across at her. He could feel his cheeks burning with embarrassment.

“Needlepoint,” the nymph explained, “ … can vary in strength and shape. Had I thrown a larger one at you, it would have felt as though the entire front of your body had been hit with a javelin. As it is, I aimed a rather small Needlepoint at your chest, to test your resistance.”

“Thanks for that,” Robin huffed. Henry had stopped grinning and was now standing with his arms folded, waiting to see what would happen next.

“This time,” Calypso said helpfully. “Don’t fall down.”

Before Robin could argue, she span like a dervish, pale silks billowing and arm outthrust, her hair whipping out behind her. Once more, a slim lightning flash of ice whipped across the shore with a whoosh towards Robin.

It hit him hard in the right thigh, sending him spinning off balance and tumbling over once again to the ground heavily in a clatter of pebbles.

“Strike two!” observed Henry, eyebrows raised. “Bad luck!”

Woad grimaced, peeking through laced fingers. “Pinky got grazed,” he muttered darkly to himself. “A grazed butt is a shameful wound for a warrior.”

Robin glared at Calypso as pins and needles coursed through his leg. He had the feeling he was going to be covered with bruises before the morning was out. He had thought his last tutor had gone hard on him, but the nymph seemed positively intent on maiming him.

“How am I supposed to dodge it if it’s too fast to even see it?” he growled, picking himself up unsteadily. He glowered at Henry and Woad. “And you two can give it a rest as well!” he snapped, burning with embarrassment.

“One cannot ‘dodge’ a Needlepoint, Scion of the Arcania,” Calypso said mildly. “They move far too fast.”

“Well then, what am I supposed to do?” Robin snapped, rubbing gritty mud off his hands. The sun was baking the back of his neck, making him feel all hot and bothered.

“Well, there are various defences,” she replied, rolling a hand in the air speculatively. “It all depends on your proficiency. If you were skilled in the Tower of Earth for example, you could use earth magic and root yourself in the ground as solidly as an oak, but you are not. I am not wholly convinced you are even yet sufficiently trained in air. You must see the attack coming, and split the frozen current, as a rock divides a stream, so that the Needlepoint is shattered and flows around you, not through you. Observe.”

The nymph held her arms straight before her, palms pressed tightly together, as though she were praying, then she tilted her wrists so her fingertips were pointing towards Robin, then she flung his arms wide, her sleeves fluttering.

“You see?” she said. “You have to feel your mana focus. Use your stone.”

Robin repeated the move, feeling a little self-consciously, as though he were doing early morning tai-chi. The lake glittered in the sunlight behind him.

“How can I see it coming though?” he asked. “It’s too quick. Your ice moves like bullets from a gun.”

“You are looking with mortal eyes still, a lifetime’s habit. That will never do,” Calypso said breezily. “Humans go around with their eyes half closed all their lives. It’s a wonder they ever get anything done. Your problem, young Fae, is that you still think like a human.”

“I’ve only got these eyes, though!” Robin said in exasperation.

“Nonsense,” his tutor argued. “You were born in the Netherworlde, Robin Fellows, and so were those eyes in your head. You may have forgotten how to see, but remember this. Open your eyes, inside and out, and see as a Fae sees.”

They assumed fighting stances once again. Henry looked eagerly from one to the other. It was odd that of the two combatants poised before the glittering summer lake, the delicate, pale and willowy woman seemed by far the more dangerous.

Calypso cast another swift Needlepoint. The air between them parted with a whoosh of ice crystals.

Robin stared, focusing on his mana stone and his heart beating fast against it. He thrust his arms out and opened them wide, determined to stop the spear of ice …

… and welcomed it instead like a friendly hug.

Under the full force of it, he cannoned backwards, skittering down the pebbly beach, performing a swift and graceless backwards somersault, and coming to a breathless halt with a tremendous splash in the shallows of the lake.

Henry peered across at the prone figure lying spluttering in the water, a look of pained sympathy on his face.

“Three strikes … And you’re out, lad,” he said, wincing to himself. “Should I go get you some … ice?”

“What went wrong there do you imagine?” Calypso asked conversationally as Robin disentangled his limbs and fought shakily back to his feet, gasping. He was red in the face with frustration and anger. His clothes soaked and his blonde hair plastered to his face. The water was shockingly cold.

“I don’t know, do I?” he said ferociously. “I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, remember? There are no books on water magic. There’s nothing for me to study.” He spat water out of his mouth angrily. “At least with air magic there was some slim sense to it. This? I can’t even see your attacks.”

“You can,” Calypso said calmly to the drenched boy.

“I can’t!” Robin insisted. “I’m trying! Maybe you lot got the wrong changeling, I don’t know, but I am looking!” He was almost shouting.

“Steady on, Rob,” Henry said. Woad was looking a little concerned. He had taken a step behind Henry.

Robin knew it was bad form, and that he shouldn’t shout, especially not at his teacher, but he couldn’t help it. The anger was rising in him. Why on earth did everyone expect him to just be such a natural at these things?

“Don’t look for it,” Calypso snapped, a sudden gleam in her eyes. “See it!” Without warning she dropped into fighting stance again.

Robin’s anger flared. He was not going to be flattened again. Enough was enough. He hadn’t ever asked for any of this. He was about to open his mouth to shout something to the demented nymph, to make her stop, when suddenly he saw … something … leave his tutor’s hands. It was a spear of ice, white and insubstantial, but clearly visible against the morning light. The javelin of pale glittering light, no thicker or longer than a broom handle, left the woman’s hands and flashed across the pebbles, spinning rapidly towards him.

Without thinking, feeling nothing but anger that he was going to be knocked down yet again, Robin thrust his arms out in front of him, hands pressed tightly together. The bolt of faceted ice rushed toward him with alarming speed, but he seemed to have all the time in the world to watch it approach. As it neared his outstretched fingertips, he thrust them forward into its oncoming tip, then threw his arms wide.

An icy shiver of air ran up inside his sleeves, chilling him to his very bones, but he fought it down and the bolt of ice was ripped in half along its length, as though it had been sliced with a sword. The two halves sailed past him on either side, like murky ghost snakes, hissing and dissipating as they passed.

Everything seemed to have happened in slow motion.

“I … I did it!” Robin cried, half disbelieving, blinking and wide-eyed.

The Needlepoint which Calypso had thrown at him had disintegrated harmlessly, exploding around Robin’s fingertips like a silent, icy firework.

He stared through falling flakes of glittering, rainbow-coloured snow as they tumbled in slow motion around him, a rather beautiful halo of shimmering ice particles suspended in the baking summer’s haze.

Calypso was looking at Robin thoughtfully, her face, for the first time since he’d met her, almost held a glimmer of approval. “You stopped looking hard and saw hard instead. Good,” she said. “But you had to get angry to do it. Interesting.” She nodded at Robin gracefully, who was grinning despite his aching limbs, euphoric at managing to defend himself.

“It’s a step in the right direction,” Calypso said. “Finally.” She produced from the iridescent folds of her robes a small green flip-back notebook and scribbled some notes in it. “Primal mana, I see. The body knows at least, even if the mind and heart are untrained. We will have to bring that under control. There’s a lot of mana there, Scion of the Arcania. You need to learn to channel it. To tap it at will, on and off with your mind and your guts.” She snapped her fingers rapidly. “ … Not so chaotic. Mana Management lessons will help with that. I believe you had some of those last year, although you were being drugged at the time by a servant of Eris. Drowsing herbs in the pipe smoke, yes?”

“I didn’t find Mana Management very useful,” Robin said darkly, remembering.

She cocked her head, as though to indicate that his opinion counted for very little. “Well, I shall not be drugging you, so we will see how we go instead with a little gentle meditation. Perhaps a head massage to open your emotional centres.”

Robin was ridiculously grateful that his tutor could not see Henry behind her. The boy was giving Robin an enthusiastic double thumbs-up and waggling his eyebrows in what he clearly thought was a cheeky and suggestive manner.

The nymph put away her notebook and dropped into combat stance again.

“Now,” she said with a hazy smile on her cupid-bow lips. “You can try to knock me down.”

Robin cracked his knuckles and grinned.

GRIMM TIDINGS

August slid by in a drowsy, bumblebee-filled haze of lessons and training. When he wasn’t at the lakeshore or out on the folly island sparring with Calypso, Robin was up in the atrium, which had recently become his favourite place to spend time. Its position at the very top of the house and its long parade of open windows around the circular wall meant that it was the only place guaranteed a constant, delicious breeze.

While up here, in these peaceful heights, he managed eventually to wobble clumsy globes of water from one chalice to the next, although the effort of holding his mana steady made his head swim. On one occasion, when he had the bubbling orb delicately suspended in mid-air and threatening to decompose and fall with a splash between the cups, he sneakily cast with his other hand a tiny Galestrike, the jab of air magic shifting the waiting silver cup across the table to beneath the small liquid bubble, which fell into it gratefully. He had thought this quite clever, but it only earned him a raised eyebrow and pursed lips from his tutor.

Henry was at Erlking constantly, thanks to the school summer holidays, although he was taking extra classes twice a week down in the village to catch up on his appalling maths skills, a turn of events arranged by his father much to the scruffy-haired boy’s horror.

Robin was glad Henry was at Erlking more, however. His presence was probably the only thing that kept him sane between study and training. It was good to get away from the Towers of the Arcania every now and again, when his mana stone was cold and lifeless from a day of cantrips, or when Robin’s head was swimming from a mana management class where Calypso had instructed him to spend two hours silently meditating on the nature of a dolphin’s cry.

Sometimes, it was nice just to spend time being a boy, not a magical prophesied saviour.

Henry’s father, who gleefully interpreted ‘summer holidays’ as ‘free labour workforce’, was constantly ready to find things for idle hands to do, and so the two boys were roped into countless chores. Weeding flowerbeds, cutting down straggling ivy, dislodging birds’ nests from the chimneys of all the empty spare bedrooms, even repainting the large black wrought iron gates at the bottom of the long sweeping avenue which marked the entrance to Erlking’s grounds. It was exhausting work, day by day, but also strangely satisfying.

The afternoons which they had free were spent lazing in the long grass under Erlking’s trees, enjoying the play of the dappled summer sun on their faces and generally enjoying the weather. Woad taught both the boys how to cartwheel properly on the front lawns, and other such important life skills. The faun, who naturally spent most of his time out of doors anyway, had actually gained a summer tan in the passing weeks, and his skin was a deep cobalt blue. Inky the kraken, beloved unconditionally, accompanied him everywhere he went.

On the few occasions when they could occasionally tempt Karya into breaking out of her solitude and joining them, the four companions inevitably ended up in the sunny library. Karya taught Robin how to play chess, although Erlking’s board seemed to contain centaurs instead of knights, and an unfamiliar neutral piece which either player could choose to control every third turn.

Karya explained this chess-piece was called Fate, and could go wherever it wanted on the board. There was another piece usually, she explained, called Chance, but it appeared to have gone missing.

She hadn’t made much headway on her translation. All she had discovered further was that the handwriting was female, and something about Pax, high tongue for peace.

None of them, even Aunt Irene, seemed any closer to solving the odd riddle on the cylinder. She had advised them all to leave that matter to her, and the steward of Erlking was frequently away for days at a time. Whether she was abroad in the human world or the Netherworlde, Robin wasn’t sure. She consulted no one and came and went as she pleased without explanation, as was her way.

Robin suspected that Karya’s lack of progress was something of a sore point for the girl. He tried not to bring it up. She was such a proud sort. She, likewise, didn’t pester him about his lessons or progress with the Tower of Water. Weeks had passed since their spat over Robin’s family history, and both of them were eager to keep the peace. He hadn’t brought up the matter of the Fae Guard again. There was too much else to do.

One balmy evening, when the sky was the same deep shade as Woad, and stars were just beginning to peek out in the clearest of summer skies, they were all gathered together in Karya’s room. This sacred space, aside from Woad, was usually considered off limits for the large part. She had emerged earlier that day and found Robin, Henry, and Woad in the process of raiding Hestia’s larder while the housekeeper was engaged elsewhere. Looking rather frazzle-haired, tired and hopeful, she had asked if they wanted a night-time feast. Robin thought perhaps she was going a little stir crazy cooped up all the time, and he agreed. A little amiable company couldn’t hurt.

They had smuggled as much food and drink as possible to Karya’s room and enjoyed an evening picnic on the floorboards. The food had been good, in that way only illicitly obtained snacks are. Plus, there had been the added excitement that Hestia might find out and possibly explode from the double scandal of having her storehouse pilfered and also the unthinkable presence of boys in a girl’s room.

The food had long since been reduced to crumbs. Henry was lying on his back by the unlit fireplace, reading comics by candlelight, and Woad perched on the end of Karya’s bed, singing a lilting song to Inky in a soft high voice. It was actually quite soothing and melodic, as long as one was careful enough not to listen too closely to the words themselves, which seemed to be a lot about old battles, impaling and dismembered vanquished foes. Occasionally the kraken’s tiny beak would break the surface of the water in the jar and it would cluck happily like an excitable chicken, reaching out a tiny tentacle to wrap around Woad’s thumb.

Robin, drowsy in the best possible way from too much food and drink, stood and stretched, and wandered out of the open French doors to Karya’s balcony where the girl was standing, leaning against the railings and looking out into the night.

“Is this your idea of being sociable then?” he joked, joining her and peering down at the dark gardens below. Crickets were beginning to chirp in the twilight. “Not that it hasn’t been lovely. But how come you’re out here on the balcony?”

He glanced sidelong at her. Her amber eyes were narrowed and thoughtful as she stared out across Erlking’s domain and to the dark tree line beyond. “Something’s happening out there,” she said quietly.

He looked at her, curious.

“It’s all quiet here, which don’t get me wrong, Scion, is still a refreshing change for me, but there are things going on.” She pursed her lips. “I can feel it in my bones.”

“Things happening?” he followed her gaze. “What, in the forest?” he asked.

She nudged him with her elbow. “Idiot. No. Out in the world. This one and the Netherworlde. While we are here in Erlking, the agents of Eris are on the move.”

“The Grimms?” Robin felt goosebumps rise on his arms, despite the warm evening air.

“Yes. It’s all tied up with Tritea and her Shard. This hidden tomb of hers, the lost valley of the Undine, I don’t know.” She shrugged in irritation. “We’re here grasping at straws, Irene is guessing at riddles we cannot solve, while you train as best you can, and all the while, the Grimms are searching too. They’re looking for a way to find the Undine Valley, to get to the Shard.”

“What makes you so sure?” he asked, as she tucked a stray lock of wild hair behind her eyes.

“I overheard your aunt and Mr Drover talking yesterday,” she confided. “I didn’t intentionally eavesdrop,” she added conscientiously. “I was passing by your aunt’s study and the door happened to be open a crack. I caught some of what they said.”

Robin felt it prudent not to point out that Aunt Irene’s private study was the last door at the end of an otherwise doorless corridor in Erlking, and therefore not the kind of place one would happen to ‘pass by’.

“And?” he prompted. He had lowered his voice. Talking about the Grimms had that effect on people.

“Your aunt was mentioning that it had happened again,” Karya said. “She had seen it in the newspaper, and Mr Drover agreed. He had seen it too. Another unexplained death in a hotel room.”

“A death?” Robin’s eyebrows raised. Karya flicked her eyes to him. “They were saying this is the fourth one in six weeks. All reported in different cities, all only covered by local newspapers, as there was nothing particularly suspicious in any of them. No signs of foul play or anything. Not the sort of thing one would link together, unless you were looking for a pattern. Your aunt is the kind of woman who notices these things however. Patterns and happenings.”

“Four people have died?” Robin was still confused.

The girl nodded. “So they were saying. I didn’t catch everything they were discussing. As I say, I wasn’t eavesdropping.”

“No, well, of course,” Robin agreed supportively.

“Always shabby hotels, always where there has been a single guest, someone staying alone. And never anything you could actually pin murder on. So far in Bradford, Leeds, Huddersfield and Manchester. Your aunt and Mr Drover are convinced it’s the Grimms. Moving from city to city in the human world.”

“Doing what? Killing lonely people who happen to be staying in hotels?” Robin asked.

Karya shrugged. “Only as a by-product, sadly.” she said. “Your aunt believes they are searching the cities. Looking high and low for something. The Grimms are not the kind of people who ‘blend in’, Scion. You’ve seen them. If they are roaming human cities, they will use a base of operations, and they can hardly check into the Savoy with a MasterCard. Much simpler for them to target a long term hotel resident, someone with few ties, someone who won’t be missed immediately. Kill them, hole up in their hotel room while they do whatever they do, before moving on.”

Robin was chilled. “That’s horrible,” he said. “Killing people just to use their rooms. Sounds a bit…”

“Grim?” She smiled darkly. “They wouldn’t lose a wink of sleep over it, Scion. Trust me. I know them all.”

“So what does Aunt Irene think they are looking for in all these cities?”

“The same thing we are,” she replied. “The hidden Janus station that will lead to Hiernarbos.”

She drummed her fingers on the balcony railing. “The worrying thing is that they are being methodical. Why the cities? They clearly know something we don’t. They seem to have a starting point at least. Eris has a lot more sources that we do, although I think we still just have the upper hand, thanks to your grave-robbing find. I think it’s worrying your aunt. It’s why I’ve been keeping to myself, trying to figure out that bloody translation. There’s something bigger at stake here, Scion. I know it.”

“But like you said, we have the cylinder, they don’t,” he said, trying to cheer her up.

She looked at him wearily with a half-smile. “The cylinder we can’t open,” she said. “Not by any one of the roughly seven thousand magical and non-magical ways we’ve tried to far.”

“Not yet,” he countered.

Behind them in the cosy, dimly lit room, Woad’s high voice floated out as he started another loving ballad of warfare.

“This isn’t Strife,” Karya confided. “It doesn’t sound like him. He’s opportunistic and cruel, he’s a knife in the ribs in a dark alley that one. But this? The casual killing, the moving from place to place. It’s too methodical for him. I think it’s Ker.”

“Who’s Ker?” Robin frowned.

“A member of the Grimms you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting yet, and don’t want to, believe me.” She shuddered. “If Strife is an assassin then Ker is a general. He is both relentless, humourless and merciless. Eris’ juggernaut. Not really a big thinker. He sits over the army of all Eris’ forces. He’s in charge of the Peacekeepers, all of them.”

Robin had heard of the Peacekeepers, Eris’ army.

“In fact, the only part of her military that Ker doesn’t control are the Ravens. Those are Eris’ absolute finest, like your world’s SAS I suppose, and they come under another’s command.” She turned and set her back to the railing of the balcony, resting on her elbows and looking back into her room. “If Ker has been set this task, then it means that Eris is planning something large. Something military. I believe they mean to lay full siege to Hiernarbos. To take the Shard from the Undine there by force, once they find it. It will be a massacre.”

“This Ker chap sounds charming.” Robin made a face, trying not to look as concerned as he felt.

“He isn’t,” Karya said in a steely voice. “Ker would skin you alive and tan your flesh into a cloak if he was cold. Without blinking. He had odd hobbies. He collects creatures, and quite literally takes them apart to see how they work. He would chop off your legs and drag you on a chain back to Dis to avoid having to worry about your running away. Ker wouldn’t bat an eye at tearing off—”

“Okay! I get the picture.” Robin swallowed. “Enough imagery. I get it. Ker is bad.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “And he’s out there in the world trying to beat us to a Shard it seems.”

She nodded.

“So what can we do?” he asked.

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.

PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGHTS

There was mutiny at the breakfast table.

“But why not?” Woad demanded sulkily.

“Because I said so!” Mr Drover replied for the hundredth time, around a mouthful of ham and eggs.

“But it’s not fair.” The faun stabbed his gammon fiercely. They had discovered it was one of the few human foods he did not approach with distaste and open suspicion, as long as Hestia did not overcook it.

Karya, who was sitting opposite the faun in the sunny yellow breakfast room, sipping orange juice and scanning the morning papers, looked up calmly with a raised eyebrow. “I’m inclined to agree with Woad, Mr Drover. Robin has been like a prisoner up here, albeit a very luxurious and well-cared-for one. Since we returned from the Netherworlde in January, he hasn’t been anywhere beyond the grounds.” She laid her glass on the table. “Except for the lake, I suppose. Sanctuary or not, it doesn’t matter how wonderful Erlking is, I’m not surprised if he would be inclined to climb the walls.”

“It’s hardly like the house is being attacked every other day by dark forces!” Woad agreed, pointing a forkful of gammon at Henry’s father. It wobbled tenuously. “The last person who came at all was the postman two weeks ago, and Henry will be back from his jolly days soon. If Pinky is going to get out of the house, even just for one teeny-tiny day, it’s now or never.”

“‘Holidays’, Woad, not ‘jolly days’,” Karya corrected him dutifully.

Woad shook his hair out of his eyes and looked hopelessly at Robin, who was sitting at the far end of the table pretending not to listen. Robin buried his nose deeper into the book he had brought down with him, ‘Hammerhand’s Netherworlde Compendium’. Calypso was not the kind of tutor to set homework, but he was trying to learn more about the Netherworlde anyway. His aunt had suggested he look into it as a little ‘light reading’ between studying. There was a lot of history involving complicated wars and treaties, and towns and creatures Robin had never heard of. At the moment, he was using the book as an excuse not to be drawn into the argument again.

“It doesn’t matter, Woad,” Robin said quietly, ducking his head behind the pages until only a few tufts of blond hair peeked above the cover. “Leave it.”

“You bet my blue butt it does!” Woad cried, outraged.

“Language!” Mr Drover grumbled. “Look…” He set down his fork in a runny egg yolk. “I know it must be hard, lad, being cooped up here at Erlking. But there’s good reason for it, and there are worse places to be cooped up, young Master Robin, believe me.” He smiled sympathetically.

Robin had been hearing this exchange back and forth for the last few days, ever since Mr Drover had mentioned that Henry’s birthday was approaching. Woad had been constantly trying to wear Mr Drover and Aunt Irene down at every possible opportunity to allow Robin to go down into the village to be allowed to buy a present. Robin had since discovered that when the faun got an idea, he was like a dog with a bone. This was at least the tenth time they’d had this conversation in the last four days.

Robin knew full well that his guardians had good reasons for keeping him in the safety of Erlking and he had been enjoying himself lately, despite the punishing training schedule of his tutor, but deep down, if he was honest, he was longing for a wander outside his boundaries. But there was no moving Mr Drover. He was resolute.

“I’m not your father, lad,” he muttered to Robin. “But I feel responsible for you just as much as I do for my own boy. Unless your aunt allows it, there’s no point badgering me anymore.”

Woad thudded his head onto the tabletop, making everyone’s drinks wobble. “But you could speak to Pinky’s scary aunt,” he muttered into the tablecloth. “She would listen to you. She holds you in high up steam.”

“High esteem,” Karya corrected absently. “Irene does appear to value your counsel, Mr Drover,” she agreed, going back to her newspaper.

Mr Drover shook his head ruefully. “I doubt very much that a lady like your Aunt Irene, Robin, has ever had her mind changed against her will. If you want a day off, you’d need to take it up directly with the lady of the house. I’m just the gardener.”

After breakfast, Karya disappeared in search of Calypso, with whom she wished to consult over old Undine and nymph dialects. As this sounded like something so boring that Robin and Woad may actually die, they declined to accompany her. Instead, Robin and the faun wandered up to the tiny observatory room at the front of the house which held a large brass telescope and here they took turns looking down into the valley at the distant roofs of the village of Barrowood. The stone buildings shimmered in the summer heat haze. The place was so unreachable for Robin, it may as well have been the mirage it appeared to be.

“It’s not much of a village,” Woad muttered. “Not like the villages in the Netherworlde. I can’t even see any gallows. But at least it would be a change of view for you, wouldn’t it, Pinky? Erlking can’t be a Scion’s prison forever. What are they going to do? Keep you locked up here, rattling around like some old ghost?” The faun looked cautiously at Robin, a frown on his brow. “Do they want revenants? ‘Cause that’s how you get revenants.”

Robin twirled the telescope around to look at tiny sheep on the distant hills. They looked like cotton balls.

“I know,” he said. “It doesn’t matter though, Woad, not really, I like it here. Henry will be back soon, and I’ve got you and Karya.”

And he did love it. Erlking Hall was a wondrous place. He was lucky to live here. But if he was honest with himself, he wouldn’t mind a daytrip out. What he really wanted, in the secret compartments of his heart, was another trip to the Netherworlde, but that was even less likely to be allowed, considering how many different ways he had almost died last time they were there. But the village? That seemed reasonable. One day away from his lessons, free of responsibility.

“You’ve always got me, dumbasaurus,” Woad said, rolling his eyes. “And Boss too, ‘course, when she’s not too busy.” As though this settled everything. “Henryboy is going to have a super boring birthday if we can’t get him a decent present.”

Robin watched the few high white clouds scuttle over the moors through the telescope. Their shadows rolling beautifully over the hilltops.

“Have you even asked your aunt?” Woad needled, refusing to let the matter drop.

Robin stared at the faun. “Are you serious? Those eyes could burn right through me! I don’t want to push my luck.” What would he even say? ‘Hi Aunt Irene. I know you’ve devoted every ounce of your time and energy to keeping me safe here from nasty things, but do you mind if I just pop out for a bit? There’s a Sainsbury’s down in the village I’m just dying to see!’

Woad sighed again and collapsed bonelessly onto the deep window ledge, his tail swishing angrily. “I bet that miserable old housekeeper at least would be on our side. She’d love to get us all out from under her feet, if only for an afternoon.”

Robin couldn’t help but agree with that. Hestia had been complaining even more than usual lately, mainly about Woad and inexplicable patches of ink turning up everywhere.

Robin had already resigned himself. There was simply no way he was going to raise the subject with his aunt. Just like with the chess pieces in the library set, there was no chance.

His lesson the following day, practical casting in the atrium with Calypso was exhausting. The nymph had sat on the wooden table with her legs dangling, crossed at the ankle, as she idly watched Robin move water around. He was finally becoming more proficient, and could make the liquid leap back and forth between cups like those novelty fountain shows one gets in Las Vegas. She had now progressed him to the next stage, which was to alter the state of the water to ice or steam in mid-flow. This was mind-bendingly difficult, and so far Robin had only achieved slushies and ice-headaches. Calypso idly toyed with a strand of her long pale hair while she watched Robin’s efforts. At the end of the lesson, when his legs felt weak as jelly and his vision was just beginning to darken at the edges, she announced, seemingly out of nowhere, that in her opinion, they all deserved a rest.

“You have come a long way, my student Scion,” she announced brightly at the end of the gruelling lesson. “Or possibly several short ways all piled together, which nevertheless make for the same.” She crossed one of the many windows, looking out over Erlking’s domain. “I think after your human friend returns and you have celebrated with him this strange mortal tradition of congratulating each other on having continued to exist for a further year, there will be much for us to do.” She glanced back at him. “You are still terribly poor at control, and your form is shockingly bad.”

Robin raised his eyebrows. He was used to her blithe bluntness by now. “But you are better than you were,” she allowed gracefully. “A boy your age needs to recharge his marbles, does he not?” She narrowed her eyes. “Or too much work will make you lose your batteries?”

Robin smiled. “It’s the other way around. But I know what you mean.” It would be nice not to fall asleep exhausted every night for a while, and have his mana stone feel light for once and not like a lump of granite.

“I am given to understand…” Calypso said with hesitant enquiry, as together they descended the winding stairs back to the house proper. “ … That you and your faun have been getting itchy feet of late.”

“He’s not my faun,” Robin said automatically. “He’s his own faun.”

“If that faun is anyone’s, it is yours, I’m afraid,” she said. “You wish for freedom from Erlking?”

“Well, we’ve been talking about it, yeah,” Robin said wistfully. “I’d love to go down to the village, just for a look around, but I don’t reckon Aunt Irene would go for it.”

They had reached the corridor where Calypso always left Robin after practical lessons to go and do whatever it was she entertained herself with.

She stopped by a marble bust of what appeared to be a cyclops perched on a tall pillar, her elegant hand, with fingernails like pink seashells resting on the banister. She looked at Robin thoughtfully a moment. “I will have a word with your aunt if you like. See what I can do. I can see no harm in a quick trip, not if you are wearing your wards and have your wits about you. There seems no imminent danger, and you would not be alone. Safety in numbers and so on. As long as the proper preparations are made.”

Robin’s heart leapt. He knew from experience that Calypso apparently had no real concept of imminent danger anyway, but he was hopeful. Seeing the expression on the boy’s face, she held up a hand in warning. “Now, don’t go getting excited!” she warned. “You’ve just spent an afternoon using all your mana and are liable to faint like a Victorian girl in a violet dress! I am promising nothing.” Her face sobered. “The decision of course, will rest with your rather formidable aunt. But I think … yes … a small reward in is order for your diligence to learning your second Tower. You have come a long way. I shall suggest it to her, and we shall see, that is all I’m saying.”

Robin thanked Calypso several hundred times, and while the nymph went off to find Aunt Irene, Robin ran off in search of Karya and Woad.

At dinner that evening, Aunt Irene looked Robin levelly in the eyes over a bowl of carrot and cream soup.

“It has been brought to my attention, Robin, by both Mr Drover and your tutor, that there appears to be a strange noise in the house.”

Robin looked up. Across the table, Woad paused with a soup spoon halfway to his mouth, and Mr Drover glanced at them all darkly. By the sideboard, there was a rattle of cutlery from Hestia as she laid out the main course.

“A … noise?” Robin asked

“Yes,” she replied dryly. “A constant drone one might say. It appears that the only way to remedy this, and to bring some level of peace back to Erlking, is to remove, for a very brief span of time, the source.”

Robin and Karya exchanged confused glances. Woad started folding his napkin into various rude origami shapes and blinked at them both.

“I have some errands tomorrow,” Irene continued. “Parcels which need dropping at the Post Office down in the village.” She dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her napkin. “Mr Drover, unfortunately, is needed here. The snapping foxgloves in the eastern gardens are encroaching rather dangerously on the henhouses, and need to be cut back, so I wondered if perhaps you…” She glanced at Woad also. “The two of you, would run down for me?”

Robin grinned. Woad’s eyebrows disappeared into his hairline.

Irene did not appear to notice any of this. “You may, of course, have a short look around while you are in the village, perhaps you could pick out something nice for young Henry’s birthday, but, and I want this understood most plainly…” She paused. “I want you both back in the house within the hour. Or there shall be … words.”

Woad gave Robin a look which suggested that ‘words’ was secret old lady code for being chased with a poker, but Robin was too happy to care.

“I would insist, of course…” Irene said. “ … That you indulge an old lady and wear that charming horseshoe chain I bestowed upon you. Think of it as a good luck charm.”

Robin promised he would, and thanked his aunt profusely. He didn’t need telling not to talk to strangers.

That evening, they all lounged around Robin’s room. Their main topic of conversation was how on earth to get Woad down to the village without people staring. Bright blue skin stood out a little.

“Leave that to me,” Karya said. “I’m not coming with you, as frankly I couldn’t be less interested in the village, and I’ve been chatting to that odd stag-headed suit of armour at the library. He seems to know a lot about the old days at Erlking, so I’m going to head down to the library again for another talk, see what I can find out. But I know a thing or two about glamours. I’m sure we can mute Woad’s natural faun-ness for a few hours at least.”

By 4pm the following day, lessons over and chores done, Woad, Karya and Robin were assembled in the hall. Karya, who was being mysterious and secretive as was her wont, held something in her hands roughly the size of an egg and wrapped in a white handkerchief. She had instructed Woad to ‘dress human’, and the faun looked very odd and rather uncomfortable in a borrowed pair of Robin’s shorts and a t-shirt that was altogether too big for him. He kept plucking at it unhappily. He was already displeased that Karya had made it quite clear that, as far as she was aware, almost no humans have tails and it must be kept out of sight. Woad had tucked and curled his tail away under his human clothes as best he could, but it was clear from his fidgeting that this was most irregular for decent faun behaviour.

Robin was more concerned by the fact that the faun was still rather strikingly and alarmingly blue. He had considered if it might have been easier to go to the village on his own but he wanted Woad with him. And it would hardly have been fair not to let him tag along, given that it was largely due to his relentless persistence that Robin was being trusted to leave the grounds at all. Karya, as it turned out, had thought of everything.

“Glamours,” she said simply, allowing herself a rather satisfied smile. “I was reading up on them last night, and after talking with your aunt, I learned all about what happened here last Halloween.” She carefully unwrapped the handkerchief, taking pains not to touch the contents, which both boys saw was an ornate ruby brooch.

“That’s the vampire’s brooch,” Robin exclaimed.

Karya nodded. “Your aunt told me how, last year, she altered your appearance using some rather advanced, albeit very temporary, glamours. With the help of Mr Moros of course who, as we all now know, was incredibly talented in that area.”

“That’s an understatement,” Robin muttered.

“Indeed,” said Karya. “But regardless of his motives, the glamours he created were excellent. This one…” She waggled the brooch at them. “ … is still intact.”

Woad baulked. “You want to make me look like a vampire?”

“Technically, we want to make you look less like a faun,” she replied, shrugging. “If you don’t want to be a vampire, fair enough. You can always ask the Scion here if he will lend you his mana stone and we can cast the glamours with that instead.”

Woad actually spluttered. “I’m not touching Pinky’s mana stone!” he cried. “Are you mad? That’s … that’s just … not acceptable!”

Robin, who wasn’t entirely sure what the big deal was, looked at Karya with raised eyebrows. Woad was standing defiantly with his arms folded, looking like an angry, scandalised Peter Pan.

“I didn’t think so,” Karya said. She looked from the faun to Robin. “It wasn’t all guff and nonsense, what Moros told you about never touching his knife. Yes, granted, he didn’t want you to break the glamour, but mana stones really are incredibly personal things. One never really touches another’s, ever.”

Woad’s face was indignant. “Never ever,” he said firmly. “It would be like reading someone’s diary. If the diary was written inside their heart and you had to climb inside and get your elbows all gooey making room to read.”

Robin still didn’t quite follow, but he nodded. “So, better a dead vampire’s stone than a friend's then, yeah? Less … intrusive?” He shrugged. “I wore it myself last year for the Halloween party. It was no big deal.”

The faun and Karya both peered at Robin as though he was insane. “No big deal…” Woad muttered, shaking his head in disbelief. “Only you would think something like that, Pinky.”

Karya sighed. “Cultural differences, that’s all. Robin wasn’t raised in the Netherworlde, Woad. He was human for most of his life, remember. Now. Are you going to let me pin this on you or not?”

Woad was clearly visibly torn between Netherworlde sensibilities and an urgent desire to go to the village and see the human world up close.

“Robin has worn it,” Karya said, encouragingly, holding out the brooch. “And he didn’t mind.”

“Yeah, but Pinky’s weird like that,” Woad mumbled to himself, but he reached out and took the mana stone brooch all the same. “The things I do for you people,” he grumbled.

Karya cast what Robin assumed to be a glamour. This was light magic, something about which he knew nearly nothing and he still had no real idea how they worked.

He watched therefore, with fascination, as before their eyes, Woad shimmered as though he was being beamed up. The blue faded from his skin, his hair darkened to a sandy brown, and his eyes paled from yellow to a much more human hazel. In seconds, he stood before them as a human boy. Albeit an incredibly white-skinned, slightly vampiric one.

“Not much we can do about the skin tone,” Karya said, appraising the newly ‘human’ Woad thoughtfully. “That’s vampires for you. They’re always pasty, so we’ll just have to say he doesn’t get out much.” She pointed Woad toward a large mirror at the foot of the stairs. “How do you feel, Woad?”

The faun, looking very surreal as a flesh-coloured human boy, stared at himself in the mirror, his face contorted in a mixture of horror and fascination.

“Absolutely naked,” he sulked. “Humans are not nearly as blue as they could be. I’ve got no Woadness left.”

Robin grinned, patting the disguised faun encouragingly on the shoulder. “You are an insane lump of solid Woadness, my friend,” he assured the smaller boy. “And no amount of magical Photoshop is ever going to change that. Genius idea this, Karya, well done.”

The girl folded her arms, looking pleased with herself. “Well,” she shrugged. “I’m not entirely without imagination.” Under her breath she added, “Just keep him on a tight leash down there, Scion. You know how excited he gets.”

Robin nodded gravely.

Aunt Irene appeared in the hallway when the two boys were ready to go and gave Robin a tall stack of parcels, wrapped in brown paper and covered rather haphazardly with stamps. She made Robin show her the silver horseshoe on its chain which he wore around his neck beside his mana stone.

“Never take that off outside of Erlking, my child,” she cautioned. “Silver keeps the darkness at bay, and the horseshoe adds a kick to the ward.” Thus forewarned, Robin and human-faced Woad set off in high spirits down the hill, under the long winding avenue of trees lining the driveway up to the house. It seemed to Robin eons ago that he had first driven up here in Mr Drover’s car. It was last year, he realised. And though he had travelled great distances in the Netherworlde, technically, here in the human world, he hadn’t passed down this path, out of the grounds and to the world beyond Erlking since last September, almost a full year ago.

It was a fine afternoon. The trees of the hillside avenue were thick with green leaves. The branches overhead laced together so tightly it was almost like walking through a tunnel and the light itself had a golden-green tinge as it fell in dappled pools around them.

They finally reached the gates at the edge of Erlking’s property line, with its wrought iron and odd totems.

“Looks like it’s just us two then, Woad,” Robin said as they passed through the gates and made their way down the lane. He was feeling oddly nervous about re-entering the human world, but he hadn’t been out of the grounds in so long and nothing was going to stop him today.

Woad gave him a look of brave determination, his face looking very odd in its current pale and human state.

“Fear not, Pinky,” he said. “I’ve been to many villages in the Netherworlde! I’m an expert on them!” He held up the stack of Irene’s parcels. “I will be able to help you find the Post Officer. I imagine he will have a badge of authority.”

* * *

As it happened, even without local boy Henry as guide, they still had a good time. Barrowood was a tiny, old-fashioned village, with winding cobbled streets and several homely pubs. It was good to have a change of scenery. They had no trouble finding the Post Office nestled between a greengrocers and a butchers because there was only one main street. Woad drew some odd looks from a few of the villagers, pale as he was. Robin guessed they must assume he was an albino. His skin was so pale he almost shone in the summer sun. During their exploration they found an ancient second-hand bookshop where, unlike at Erlking, the covers did not move, a few cafés and a quaint old tea shop, its windows hung with lacy half-net curtains, a florist and a toy shop. Quite a few of the cottages and tiny terrace houses they passed seemed to have small, rather sweet knitted hearts affixed to their door knockers, or tied around lampposts. Robin, overcome with curiosity, had stopped and asked a lady in the street about these, and the woman, laden with shopping bags and rolling her eyes, had explained that Barrowood had a phantom knitter. Yarn-bombing, they called it, she explained. Secret knitted goods left all over in the dead of night for no apparent reason other than the sheer heck of it. Everyone in the village was used to it by now, she told them with a shrug. Whoever was doing it was rather thoughtful though. If there was news of a newborn baby in a house, there would be a knitted stork tied to the door-knocker next morning. Or if someone got married, they found a double-heart, knitted together and left carefully on their doorstep. Robin thought this was very odd, but he had little experience of life in an English village. Perhaps such pastimes were more common than he realised. He thanked the lady and moved along, dragging Woad behind him as the faun had begun to sniff with interest at the lady’s shopping bags.

Robin had been given a rather generous allowance by Aunt Irene, who had no real concept of how human money worked, and so he dragged Woad into every shop he could find, looking for surprise presents for everyone.

In a cluttered old hardware-store, they bought a smart set of gardening tools for Mr Drover. In a gift shop owned by a tiny grey-haired old lady (who eyed them like a suspicious hawk as they browsed) they bought a large green glass paperweight for Aunt Irene.

They discovered a chemist tucked down a side street, where Robin, against Woad’s arguments, insisted on buying even Hestia a present.

“She’s always complaining about working her hands to the bone,” Robin reasoned, as the bored-looking cashier, a teenage girl reading a battered paperback book at the counter, bagged up some girly-smelling hand lotion. Woad predicted wickedly it would probably bring the housekeeper out in a rash and give her something new to complain about.

They wandered past the village school. It was closed for the summer holidays, but Robin eyed the building with interest, wandering vaguely if he would ever receive a ‘normal’ education again. He was vaguely concerned that at the rate things were going, he might reach adulthood without knowing enough about the convection cycle, or how to calculate the diameter of a circle, or the order of the last fifty kings and queens of England. All important information which adults relied on every day of their lives.

After nearly an hour’s exploring, in a cluttered toy shop, amidst a flurry of computer games and sports goods, Robin found himself utterly at a loss for something to get Henry. Woad’s present had been easy. He had picked out a pair of thick woolly socks for the faun (black with penguins on them) while Woad had been distracted by an old spinning top which he found hilarious and fascinating. He knew Woad wouldn’t actually wear them, they were just for his collection. But try as they might, it seemed there was nothing suitable for Henry.

Next door to the toy shop, on the end of the little street, there was a strange, higgledy-piggledy shop with crystals, incense and odd little statues in the window. The hanging sign read ‘Morgana’s Sundries’.

It looked like some kind of new-age shop, the kind that sold CDs of soothing pan pipe music, wind chimes and little porcelain fairies covered in glitter.

Woad shrugged, a vague gesture in his unfamiliar clothing. “Well, we can take a look, I suppose,” he said dubiously.

“Oh, you absolutely should,” came a voice behind them. Both boys whirled, to see a teenage girl standing beside them in the street, hands clasped behind her back as she leaned over them to peer in the window. “Morgana’s is an absolute treasure trove. It’s just peachy.”

The girl was older than Robin. Fifteen, maybe sixteen. She was dressed all in black, her t-shirt screaming the name of a band he had never heard of. She was remarkably pale, almost as white as Woad in his vampire-glamour, and her hair was a shocking shade of bright purple, falling over one eye in a silky wave. Robin stared, unable to think of anything to say. She was extremely pretty, in a gothic-pixie kind of way.

“Tourists?” she asked, smirking a little at the two speechless boys. “I’m not from around here either. There’s not much to do in a backwater like Barrowood, but Morgana’s is full of all kinds of neat junk.” She wobbled her head a little. “Well, you know, crappy stuff, but neat crappy, not crappy-crappy.” She blinked dark, heavily made up eyes at them. Robin thought she looked a little like a panda. His tongue was apparently dead in his mouth, paralysed by the typical eloquence of most thirteen-year-old boys faced with girls.

She stared at them a few seconds longer. “O … kay then,” she drawled. “I’m Penny. You guys look kind of, outsiderish?”

“Robin,” Robin spluttered, managing to make himself speak again. “Um, I’m Robin and, well, this is, my friend.”

Woad frowned at the girl with open distrust, his brows beetled. “I am W—”

“Wesley!” Robin interjected hastily. “My friend Wesley. So…” He rubbed the back of his neck. He had zero experience talking to girls. Karya didn’t count. She was part and parcel of the strangeness of Erlking, but this girl was different. He thought she was wearing a lot of makeup for the middle of a sunny day. Her ear was pierced in several place too. “Um … neat junk, eh?”

“Neato-potato,” Penny said encouragingly. “Whatcha looking for?” She pointed to Woad. “Lemme guess. Wes here wants an Enya CD and some sandalwood incense, right?” She smirked, wrinkling her nose.

“We are on an important mission to find a gift for the Henryboy,” Woad announced with great gravity. Robin cringed inwardly.

“Sorry,” he said to her by way of explanation. “He’s … an … exchange student.”

“Oh … okay.” She eyed Woad suspiciously.

“We’re actually looking for a present for my friend,” Robin said. “It’s his birthday, but I haven’t a clue so far.”

“Oh, well then.” Penny clapped her hands happily. She was wearing fingerless black lace gloves. “Awesome-sauce! Let’s go in. Morgana will have something, I just know it.”

Without waiting for a response, she pushed past them to the door and disappeared inside. Robin, a little startled, felt it would be awfully rude not to follow her, and so he dragged Woad in beside him.

Inside, the shop was a dark and dusty jumble of junk and antiques, piled haphazardly in the gloom. There were no other customers. It was deserted apart from a woman who appeared to be asleep behind the till at the back of the room.

Penny led Robin and Woad down the aisles of bric-a-brac, flicking through old action figurines and stacks of yellowing comics. “They have some good vinyl in here sometimes,” she murmured, browsing. “Depends.”

“You said you’re not local either?” Robin asked. She shook her purple head, not looking up from flipping through a stack of second hand CDs. “Nah, just visiting. Here with my bro, but he’s such a misery. Seriously, I can’t even tell you how much. So I’m off on my own. Saw you two looking lost too. Misery loves company, right?” She looked up briefly, flashing Robin a smile. He grinned back a little sheepishly.

“We looked lost?”

“Uh-huh,” she murmured. “Like little strayed lambs. So, see anything that takes your fancy?”

Robin stammered a little, looking around. “Um, I guess. There’s a lot of, well, interesting stuff in here.” He walked up to the counter at the back of the shop, where the shopkeeper was dozing on her hands, elbows propped on the desk. She startled awake when Robin coughed politely, blinking at him through round, horn-rimmed spectacles. Her face was round and smooth, with purplish lipstick that Robin thought looked a little silly. Her hair was a wild bird’s nest of towering flame-red frizz, piled haphazardly on top of her head and held in place, from what he could see, with a biro pen and a chopstick.

“You’re looking for a gift,” she said curtly, before Robin could speak. “For a friend … a boy.” Her voice was a little tremulous.

Robin nodded, frowning as she peered at him through her large glasses. This woman was even odder than his new friend with the purple hair and punk clothes. “Yeah, actually,” he said. “How did…”

“It’s that time of year, isn’t it? Present buying. Middle of summer, always lots of birthdays, aren’t there,” the woman babbled. “Nothing good on television in November is there? That’s the problem. And it had to be for a boy. Your brother perhaps, or a good friend. Wouldn’t be for a girl. Girls still smell funny and annoy boys your age.”

“Oi!” Penny called from an aisle of the shop. The woman ignored her, leaning across the counter to Robin. “Present buying for them comes in a few years, and you’ll have your hands full then, with those big blue eyes of yours.” She waved his question away with an indulgent cackle. Robin noticed her nails were very bitten down and painted purple. She looked like a faded hippy.

“My little buddy here needs something special, Morgana,” Penny said, appearing at Robin’s side and bumping him with her hip. The shopkeeper blinked at the girl several times, looking unfocussed and confused. “Do we … know each other?” she asked.

The girl leaned forward on the glass counter, looking over the pewter jewellery displayed beneath. “Dunno, don’t think so,” she said. “I’ve been in here a couple of times. Buying stuff, selling stuff, but there’s so much sandalwood in the air, who can remember, eh? Faces and places.”

The shopkeeper huffed, reaching behind the counter and rummaging around. While they waited, Woad sniffed cautiously at a jar of coconut incense sticks. Robin noticed the distant sound of a pan-pipes CD wafting rather depressingly through the gloom.

“Here!” the woman said decisively, re-emerging from beneath the counter and slapping down a large black box, long and thin. “This is what you get him.”

“Erm … what is it?” Robin asked. The strange girl leant in next to him, craning her neck to see. She was close enough that he could smell her hair. She smelled faintly of liquorice. Robin swallowed.

Morgana opened the box on its hinges. Within, resting on black padded velvet, was a bow and a quiver of arrows made from intricately carved white wood. The feathers on the arrows were pure black. It was beautifully detailed. Exquisitely made.

“Wow,” Robin was impressed, his eyes wide.

“A bow,” Penny said. “Well, I guess that’s kind of cool. Very ‘Lord of the Rings’. Your friend like bows, Roland? Is he a ‘Hunger Games’ fan?”

“Robin,” Robin corrected her absently. It really was a thing of beauty. Woad had appeared at his other shoulder and cooed appreciatively, standing on tiptoe to see over the counter. “That’s really … I mean, I bet he’d love that, but it looks…”

“Expensive?” the shopkeeper said, snapping the box closed with a loud snap. She shrugged, as though this was neither here nor there. “Well, I suppose it is old, and from far away, China or Mongolia or Wales, I forget…” She was already wrapping the box up with string. “But it’s been a slow day, I only get tourist trade mainly, and there are none of them in Barrowood at the moment. Not with that big music festival on up the road.” She glanced at the gothic Penny. “Are you from the festival? You look like the sort.”

Penny shook her head.

Morgana blew air down her nose. “Well, it’s only tourists really I make anything from. It’s not like the locals around here have a weekly need for channelling crystals or books on Zen meditation. Philistines.”

“How much is it?” Robin asked. “The bow.”

“Henryboy will love it,” Woad whispered with glee. “Everyone likes weaponry! It’s the gift that keeps on giving!”

Morgana peered at him through her thick glasses. Robin thought she would actually be quite pretty, in an oddball way, if she got better glasses and didn’t wear quite so much caked-on make-up.

“What you reckon it’s worth?” she asked sharply.

Robin rummaged in his pockets. “Well I’ve only got…” He pulled out some crumpled notes and a flurry of change. “Ten pounds … and um … forty pee left.”

She made a clucking noise with her tongue, then held out her hand. “Go on then, eh. Cross me palm with silver and all that.” She smirked at him lopsidedly. “Not buying anything for your girlfriend here too then?”

Penny laughed and Robin turned beetroot crimson. “She’s, she’s not my girlfriend,” he stammered. “She’s well, I … I mean we … Woah—I mean, Wesley and I … we just met her outside and—”

“I adopted them, Morgana,” Penny said sniggering. She tucked her silky hair behind her ear, turning her attention back to the junk in the shop. Robin watched her, still burning with embarrassment. “You crazy old flowerchild, you. Honestly. Don’t tease them. I should charge you commission for bringing in trade to this place.” She held up a keyring she had plucked from a barrel filled with bric-a-brac. “How much for this hello-kitty keychain? It’s good. In a so-bad-it’s-good kind of way.”

The shopkeeper frowned at the girl. “Are you sure I don’t know you, girl?” she asked again.

Penny shrugged. “Maybe in another life, eh?” She tossed the hello-kitty keychain to Robin, who caught it, surprised. “Here Robin-bobbin, you have that one, there’s a glow in the dark one here I want more, I’ll treat us both. How about you Wes-ster? Want a bauble?”

Woad was glaring at the girl from behind Robin’s elbow. “Pinky needs the bow, not tiny kittens,” he glowered.

They paid and took the package, thanking the odd woman. Morgana watched them leave, staring at all three children curiously through her sharp horn-rimmed glasses. Robin felt perhaps she had been inhaling a little too much incense stuck in her dingy shop.

As they left, she called out to them. “And be careful with that thing,” she said. “Don’t have anyone’s eye out. Unless they deserve it of course.” She cackled.

“Weird,” Robin said outside in the street, shaking his head as the door closed behind them with a tinkling bell.

“All humans are weird,” Woad muttered, giving Penny a very pointed look. “My tail is aching stuck in these ridiculous trousers,” he complained to Robin in a whisper.

Robin thought they had seen most of the village now anyway. They were laden down with many packages and had probably been over an hour. “We’d better be heading back,” he said to the odd, friendly girl. “It was nice meeting you though.”

She smiled and shook both their hands firmly. “Where are you guys staying? In the village? My bro and I have rooms at the Star and Child, that little pub off the main street. Dunno how long were here for though.”

“Oh, we’re up at Erlking,” Robin said. “On the hill, just outside the village.”

Penny’s eyebrows rode up her face. “That big old pile?” she whistled. “Wow, that’s kind of awesome. I thought that was one of those National Trust places, you know, with tours and things.”

“No, it’s my aunt’s house. Well, my great-aunt. I’m staying with her.” He shrugged. “It is kind of awesome. Wesley lives there too, most of the time.”

“Well now I’m completely, ridiculously jealous,” the girl said, thrusting her hands into the pocket of her black jeans. “I want to live in Castle Dracula too. I suppose at least the Star and Child has a pool table, though the jukebox is rubbish.”

“You should … I mean, if you wanted, if you were bored or whatever…” Robin said hesitantly. “You could come up, maybe, one day. If you like.” He shrugged casually.

“Sounds fun. If I can slip away from the family for five mins’ peace,” she said. “I’ll come a-knockin’.”

She punched Robin amiably on the shoulder. He admirably didn’t drop the parcels.

“Smell you later then,” she said to Woad and Robin, turning and waving over her shoulder as she ambled off, leaving them laden with gifts. Robin watched her go for a few seconds, until Woad huffed and tugged sharply at his shoulder.

They headed back, passing the tiny train station where he had first arrived in Barrowood. Robin didn’t like to admit it, but all day he had been looking out of the corner of his eye for a glimpse of trouble, half expecting to see Mr Strife or Mr Moros. His heart had skipped a little once when he thought he had seen a mop of green hair across the street, but it had turned out to be nothing more than a tall woman in a colourful hat.

The two boys spent much of the walk back arguing amiably over who was carrying more presents. Robin was feeling quite content, wondering vaguely how on earth he was going to sneak all these parcels up to his room. His stomach gave an insistent grumble, making him wonder vaguely about what Hestia was making for dinner. He hoped it would be something hot. Roast beef in steaming gravy, with crispy roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding would be just the ticket. He was pleased with the bow; Henry was going to love it. And although she had been a little odd, he was impressed that he’d met a normal human and even managed to hold a conversation. It was nice to know he didn’t always have to be the Scion of the Arcania, and could still occasionally be just Robin.

As they passed out of the village and up the lane to Erlking’s great iron gates, Woad complained that every human they had met, from the knitted hearts lady to the frazzled shopkeeper, had all being weird. “All humans are weird, Pinky,” he muttered, as they walked through the tree tunnel and his glamour began to fade, his skin darkening once more to the ever-familiar blue. “They’re just not normal like you and me.”

THE SAD PASSING OF MRS CLEMENTINE

Henry returned from his holiday in Dorset to a superb birthday party. Aunt Irene and Mr Drover had laid out a feast in the dining room with bunting, balloons and lots of other decorations, which made the boy both grin with delight and cringe with embarrassment at the same time. He was fourteen now after all, a gangly age of awkward elbows and frequent eyeballing rolling in some other teens. Luckily for all involved, Henry was, in many ways an old soul. Calypso had provided further decorations in the form of swirling frost patterns on all of the long windows of the dining room, a huge ice chandelier which hung from the ceiling, catching the sunlight and reflecting it around the room in fractured rainbows, and Henry’s personal favourite, a life-size ice sculpture of the boy himself standing heroically atop a slain dragon. Henry, who had never slain anything outside of a computer game, was suitably impressed, even when it began to melt in the heat and look a bit macabre.

“You have Icarus-face, Henryboy,” Woad observed with interest as he handed over his present, wrapped with admirable enthusiasm but little order in an entire newspaper and a whole roll of cellotape. He inspected Henry’s face from several angles. “Is the sun closer to the ground at the door set?”

Henry grinned sheepishly. “It was roasting down south,” he said. “Hotter than the Algarve, according to the telly, although I’m not really sure where the Algarve is. Somewhere bloomin’ hot though!” Under his mop of brown hair, Henry’s face was sunburned and peppered with new freckles. “What’s this then Woad, mate?” he asked, tearing the wrapping off the present eagerly, to reveal what appeared to be seven or eight large pine cones, carefully tied together into a rough ball shape with rushes for thread.

The faun beamed his white teeth proudly. “It’s a sculpture!” he cried with glee as the others gathered round to see. “It’s you!”

Karya eyed the haphazard mass of cones with interest. “A dirty ball of nonsense,” she smirked. “Wonderful. You’ve really captured his essence, Woad.”

Henry and Robin looked bemused.

“It’s abstract,” the blue boy declared, as though this cleared everything up, and gave Henry a cheery thumbs up. Henry clapped him on the back, making the glass jar holding Inky the kraken slosh around Woad’s neck on its lace.

“I love it,” he grinned.

Karya reached into the folds of her robe and brought out a small package too, which she thrust at Henry with a very serious and business-like frown. He eyed it suspiciously.

“Don’t get excited,” she said. “I don’t have any money, and I don’t really understand why we’re celebrating your existence specifically today, but here, take it anyway.”

Henry hadn’t been expecting anything from the girl at all, and peeled off the brown paper wrapping dubiously, half expecting a book borrowed from the library, ‘how to be less of an annoying prat, volume one’ or something similar. It was in fact a jewellery box, and when he flipped the lid, Henry found it contained a small flat stone, with a hole in the middle, like a smooth donut. It was deep, midnight blue. He looked up at her questioningly.

“Well,” she said, abruptly. “You’re the only one of us who doesn’t have a mana stone, being just a useless human boy, of course.” She sniffed. “It’s not a mana stone. There’s nothing special about it. I found it in a trunk upstairs ages ago in the hatbox room and Irene said I could keep it. It’s just a necklace. I thought you might want to feel less left out, it would be easier if you had an equivalent.”

Henry lifted the stone out of the box and weighed it in his palm appraisingly. “Wow,” he said, genuinely astonished and for once lost for words. “I don’t know what to say.”

“That’s a first,” Robin observed wryly.

Karya shrugged. “It’s just a token,” she insisted. “It’s completely useless really.” She gave him an awkward smile, unused as she was to social niceties. “So I thought it would suit you.”

Aunt Irene and Mr Drover had presented Henry with a host of much more usual birthday presents between them. From incredibly boring gifts such as new socks and a coat, to far more fun things like computer games and movie box sets, both of which Henry would have to save until he got home to the village, as technology was not friendly at Erlking.

But the prize present of the day was without a doubt Robin’s bow.

“This … is … ace!” Henry exclaimed, lifting the pale bow from its hastily torn wrapping and turning it over and over. “Seriously! Where did you even find something like this Rob? It’s awesome.”

“A little junk shop down in Barrowood,” Robin shrugged happily.

“A girl helped us,” Woad piped up. “She was pretty, but strange. She made Pinky’s tongue go all floppy in his mouth, it was funny.”

Robin shot the faun a harsh look. “She did not.”

“You been making friends in the village, eh?” Henry gave the bowstring a satisfying twang. “Nice one. She probably goes to my school.”

Robin shook his head. “Nah, said she was just passing through. Something about a music festival up the road. The lady in the shop was a bit odd though, is everyone in your village strange?”

Henry glanced around at the current company. Calypso was making the ice-cubes floating in the punch dance for Mr Drover’s amusement, Hestia was standing silently in a corner, dustpan and brush in hand, ready to leap into action should anyone have the temerity to loose a party-popper. “Not as strange as here,” he said, tactfully. “But I like here better, come on, let’s take this baby outside and give it a test run.”

“After we eat,” Aunt Irene called from the other end of the table, where she was standing in conversation with the other adults, holding a tiny glass of sweet sherry. Mr Drover was wearing a party hat quite merrily. Calypso had been offered one too, but had merely eyed it with vague disinterest.

“Not that I disapprove of gifting an excitable boy with weaponry,” Irene said. “But there is a time for firing arrow bolts into one’s own foot, and a time for eating. Please all come and take your places at the table.”

The feast was impressive, comprised as it was of all of Henry’s favourite foods, which largely consisted of pastry. Irene observed that it was a constant astonishment to her how a boy could consume so much food and still be as thin as a whippet. Hestia milled around the room, clearing plates and bringing out course after course until they were all stuffed. She complained and muttered moodily to herself the entire time, but Robin noticed that despite her protestations, she had still gone to the trouble of making a huge trifle, which was Henry’s favourite dessert. She unceremoniously slammed this down on the table, issuing stern and foreboding warnings to the four children of the serious and potentially fatal ramifications should any of them spill cream on the dining room parquet floor. She fixed her beetle-black eyes on Woad in particular. “Or … on … the … ceiling,” she said pointedly, before shuffling off to make a start on the washing up.

After the party, when the food was crumbs and the sculptures were puddles, the adults returned to adult business and Irene shooed Robin and his companions out into the gardens, suggesting that it may be safer for all involved if everyone kept well out of Hestia’s way while she cleared up.

Henry and Robin took turns with Henry’s new bow, using a collection of cans they had stolen from the party as targets, lined up neatly atop the rose garden wall. Here they remained, untouched, due to the chronically terrible aim of both boys. Karya watched their efforts with critical glee, the occasional world-weary shake of her tangled head doing nothing to soothe the macho hunter bravado of her companions. Woad had no interest in playing with the bow, but he did have tremendous fun bounding off excitedly on all fours and fetching the arrows back from various bushes, trees, and on one occasion from between the broken horns of the fountain-statue satyr where it had become lodged rather comically.

The sun was relentless, and they were soon happily exhausted. Henry told them all about surfing in the sea, how he had been banned from no less than two amusement arcades, and the disgusting truth about what you were required to do when stung by a jellyfish. Robin in turn filled him in on his progress with the Tower of Water, and Karya’s progress with the translation and her discovery that the Grimms were stalking the human world looking for the hidden Janus station.

“Well, if any Grimms come near me or my friends…” Henry said with mock seriousness, twanging his bow. “I’ll put an arrow through their leg!”

Later that evening, after Henry and Mr Drover had left, Woad disappeared into the woods to hunt. Karya announced she was quite possibly going to expire after eating so many pies, and had disappeared to bed, and so, happy and full, Robin lay on his bed reading.

One of his favourite times at Erlking were these quiet nights, lying alone in his circular tower room, with the windows open to the cooling night air, surrounded by books.

He was currently reading over Hammerhand’s ‘Netherworlde Compendium’, wondering if there might be something in here about the secret valley of the Undine.

There were indeed several entries regarding both Undine and nymphs, with some interesting trivia. He learned for instance that nymphs were pulled by emotion as tides were pulled by the gravity of the moon. He wondered if this was why Calypso seemed so utterly disinterested at the party when everyone was relaxed and amiable, but had been so nice to him when he had been upset about Gran previously. Perhaps this explained why so many nymphs were drawn over to Eris’ cause in the war, he considered. Nothing says strong emotion like power-hungry genocidal hatred.

There was less information on Undine. They were purer spirits, it seemed, powerful and primal water Panthea, and as for their home, although alluded to several times here and there in the book, there were no solid leads on where in the Netherworlde it might be. Vague allusions to a frozen valley, or a snowy plateau, that was all.

Sighing and stretching, Robin clapped the heavy book shut and rolled over onto his back. As he did so, he let out a yelp. It felt as though he’d just been bitten on the hip by an insect. Sitting up, he lifted his t-shirt, wincing.

The tiny hello-kitty keyring from the village had spent the last couple of days clipped to the belt loop of his jeans, like a lucky charm. He didn’t have any keys to clip it to after all. There was only one room in Erlking that locked, and that led to another world. He must have rolled onto it, and he saw that the sharp metal clip which threaded through the denim had somehow come loose and pricked him like a needle. A small drop of bright red blood was already welling against it.

Getting up and muttering some curse words which he was very sure his aunt and Hestia were too far from earshot to hear, he unclipped the little plastic cat, crossing to his dresser, where he dropped it into the small silver dish where he kept his mana stone and the silver horseshoe charm at night.

It was a silly little thing anyway, he told himself. He didn’t really know why he’d kept it.

Soon, he was asleep, remembering vaguely as he drifted off something about an old fairy tale where someone pricked their finger and fell asleep for a hundred years. He didn’t have any lessons tomorrow with his tutor. It was a ‘study day’ which was code at Erlking for ‘no studying whatsoever’. He could quite happily sleep through the day, if not for a hundred years.

The Scion fell asleep happy, watching dark moths flutter in and out of the window, pattering softly against the rafters above in the warm summer air, and flitting around the silver bowl, drawn by the light, or perhaps the smell of blood.

***

“Mrs Clementine is dead,” Mr Drover muttered around a slice of toast. It was Monday morning, the last week of August, and he had just arrived after dropping Henry off at his extra-tuition summer school (or Maths-Hell, as Henry called it) in time to join Irene and Robin for breakfast.

Robin’s aunt stopped spreading marmalade with her silver knife and set it down on her side plate. “And what, pray tell, is a Mrs Clementine?” she enquired.

“Lived in the village long as I can say,” Drover shook his head, winking up in a friendly way at Hestia, who poured tea at his elbow. She didn’t return the wink, but sniffed haughtily and moved around the table to Irene, pot in hand.

“Terrible shame,” Drover continued, “But she was no spring chicken, I’ll say that. Made me look like a babe in arms, she did. She had a good innings. Shame to go out on your own like that though, no family there.”

“Someone died in Barrowood?” Robin asked, looking up from his juice between the gardener and his aunt. Drover nodded. “Aye. Batty old bird really. Little old dear, bit of a village fixture. Used to say hello and how do you do in the butchers, you know, just in passing. Our Henry used to steal apples out of her garden when he was younger, and she was young enough to chase him off with her stick.” He picked up his teacup and slurped noisily. “Lived on her own, right out near the bypass. They only found her ‘cause the milkman noticed this morning that she hadn’t taken her milk in for days. Terrible shame really. Dead in her bed.”

“Is this really appropriate conversation for the breakfast table, Mr Drover?” Hestia fluttered. “All of this talk of death and these grim deliveries of news. It is most unpleasant when my lady is attempting to break her morning fast, honestly!” She put the teapot on the table with a thud.

Mr Drover looked abashed. “Oh, I do beg pardon, Miss Ester,” he said. “Forget I’m in the company of the fairer sex sometimes I do. Too rough around the edges for my own good. You’re quite right, quite right, terrible business.”

Irene patted Hestia’s hand absently. “Why don’t you go and put another kettle on, Hestia,” she suggested calmly. “I find there is rarely a ‘suitable’ time to speak of death. But there are indeed suitable times to eat and drink, so I see no harm in the two sharing space at my table.”

Robin would never understand why his aunt seemed to have a soft spot for the miserable old housekeeper. But the black-haired woman clomped out of the room obediently.

“How did she die?”

It was Karya, who was sitting opposite Robin, reading the newspaper at the table, who had spoken.

“I imagine her heart stopped,” Irene said. “That’s usually the case with humans. Am I right, Mr Drover?”

Henry’s father nodded. “Well, yes, obviously her heart stopped. They always do, eventually. They think it was natural causes.”

“Nothing suspicious at the scene?” Karya pressed, looking over at him. “Black marks? Soot? A smell of coal or sulphur?”

Everyone stared at her.

“No … not really,” Drover said, confused. “Not as I’ve heard anyway. Just a lot of old milk.”

“Hmm,” Karya replied, going back to her paper with a rustle. “Please do let me know, Mr Drover, if you hear of anything unusual with regards to the death of Mrs Satsuma, about which the lovely Hestia seems so terribly upset.”

Robin knew what Karya was thinking. She had been scanning all forms of media for signs of Grimm activity. Did she really think the Grimms were in Barrowood and had offed an old lady living alone? He wanted to get her alone so they could talk about it.

“And why should Hestia not be upset?” Irene asked Karya lightly, pouring herself a tea with the pot the housekeeper had left.

Karya blinked at the old woman, looking as though she had been caught off guard a little. “Well, it’s just … She’s always upset, isn’t she? Hestia, I mean. She seems to like a drama, that’s all I’ve observed. It’s hardly as though she knew the woman, is it?”

Irene did not reply immediately. She set down her teacup and using a pair of small silver tongs, dropped two sugar cubes into her tea.

“As a matter of fact,” she said softly, replacing the tongs with a clink. “Hestia knows everyone in this village. She takes an interest. You would do well not to assume too much about everyone here at Erlking.”

Karya looked embarrassed. Robin and the others were so used to making fun of Hestia and her hysterics between themselves, she had overstepped some invisible boundary.

“Do not forget that you, Karya, are a guest here yourself, at the invitation of my great-nephew, Robin,” Irene continued. “And we do not presume to know much of anything about you. A lady has died. It is perfectly appropriate to be sad.” She stirred her tea with a tinkling spoon.

Robin could tell that Karya wanted the ground to swallow her up. “I apologise,” she said, a little haughtily. “I can be a little … blunt sometimes, I’m aware. I meant no offence.”

Robin had known bricks less blunt that Karya, but his aunt seemed to accept this apology graciously.

The old lady turned to Robin. “My ward, Mr Drover is here today as I have asked him if he will be so kind as to serve as my driver. I have made very little progress with this.” She produced from the pocket of her dress the long carved tube they had located in the grave and she set the arcane artefact it on the table, beside the jam and marmalade. “And so I have made some enquiries, and I have found a specialist in London who, shall we say, deals in unusual artefacts. I am going to see him regarding this finding. He may be able to shed some light on its meaning.” She indicated for Robin to take the cylinder, and he reached over and picked it up.

“You’re not taking it with you?” he asked.

She shook her silver head. “It will be safest here in Erlking while I am gone. My contact in London is a Panthea who has lived in the human world for a long time now. He is quite an expert but of somewhat dubious character.” She allowed herself a small smile. “Let us say that I trust his judgement, but I do not trust him. I have assembled a selection of lithographs to take with me instead.”

“Lithographs?”

Mr Drover reached into his coat pocket and brought out his mobile phone. “Took some pictures of it on my phone,” he said happily, waggling the device.

“An ingenious contraption,” Irene allowed. “Robin, I am likely to be gone for three days. Should you need me for anything, I will be staying at a hotel in Mayfair. Hestia has the address. Your tutor of course will remain here with you, and I would suggest you look to her for any advice or guidance needed in my absence. Hestia will attend to your daily needs as usual.” She glanced at Mr Drover. “Henry, I am given to understand, is on instructions to come up to Erlking after his summer school class today. He will be staying here while his father and I are away.”

“I’ll look after this,” Robin said, rolling the tube under his hands on the tablecloth.

Irene looked pleased. “I cannot imagine safer hands,” she said approvingly.

Robin, Calypso and Karya stood at the foot of the steps at Erlking’s entrance, waving off Irene and Mr Drover as the handyman’s ancient car crunched out of the gravel circle and disappeared around the bend of trees off down the hill. Once the car was out of sight, his tutor announced that as there were no lessons scheduled for today, Robin was free to entertain himself. A tiny frown appeared on her forehead, as though she were struggling to get her head around an unfamiliar concept. “The Lady Irene has advised me that in her absence, you fall under my care, Scion of the Arcania,” she said. She regarded him coolly, as though this was something of a nuisance. “I’m not altogether very certain regarding the care of pale hornless young Fae, however. Are there specific needs you have which require urgent attention?”

Robin frowned up at the nymph. “Um, not really.”

Calypso looked visibly relieved to have the burden of responsibility lifted from her. “Excellent. In that case, I shall retire to my rooms for the day. Should you require food or drink, I daresay you will seek the help of the housekeeper. She is far more likely to greet any such request warmly coming from you than she would from me.”

Robin doubted that. Hestia had never, to his knowledge, greeted anything warmly.

“Why doesn’t Hestia seem to like you, Miss Calypso?” Karya asked. Everyone had noticed that she seemed even less friendly than usual around the nymph.

Calypso blinked her liquid eyes at the girl, unconcerned. “She is of the sort who feel my presence here is a poor influence, I believe,” she said. “She is of the opinion, I think, that nymphs are bad news. That we do not serve her sainted mistress with the same level of devotion as she.”

The woman shrugged her flawless shoulders elegantly. “She is not entirely wrong. I have no particular allegiance to your aunt or to Erlking, Robin, but then I had no particular allegiance to Eris either. Nymphs flow where they will. I am here as a favour returned and a debt owed, nothing more.”

“They do say water finds the easiest course,” Karya observed, a little waspishly Robin thought.

“Rain falls where it chooses to, friend of the Scion,” the nymph said to her. Something passed between the woman and the girl that Robin didn’t quite understand. “We have both of us spent time in Eris’ court, have we not? There is no black and white in the Netherworlde, nor in the hearts of the people who live in it. I go where there is safety, while safety remains. I have found it here, as have you, for a time.”

“No black and white, I agree, but plenty of red,” Karya replied.

“What a grim outlook you have for one so young,” the nymph responded lightly. She turned to Robin, and he could see that she was trying to think what a responsible adult would say to him.

“Entertain yourself, and try not to do anything which would blind or maim you. I suspect your aunt would be displeased should she return to a less functioning charge.”

Robin promised faithfully that he had no set plans today to sever a limb and Calypso, satisfied with this, disappeared inside.

As soon as she was gone and the front doors of Erlking closed behind her, Karya clapped her hands together. “Right, I’m off.”

“Off where?” Robin asked.

“To the village, of course,” the girl replied. “You heard what Henry’s father said this morning. A woman has died, she lived alone. I have to check if this is the Grimms.”

“It’s entirely possible that she was just an old lady whose time was up, you know,” Robin replied. He was a little concerned that Karya was starting to see Grimms in every leaping shadow. It was hard to imagine the grisly organisation on such a pretty summer’s day. The warm air out in the front of Erlking was filled with tiny puffs of blowing pollen.

“This is true,” Karya allowed. “But it’s equally possible that Grimms are repeating their earlier pattern and are somewhere nearby. If they needed a base of operations, what better than the house of an old lady who lives alone and doesn’t get many visitors.”

“Should I come with you?” he offered. She shook her head firmly. “No, with your aunt away and floaty Miss Daydream the only steward of the household, I think it’s safer for you to remain at Erlking.”

This annoyed Robin a little. “I’m not made of glass you know,” he said. “I’m thirteen, not seven. And I thought you said this Mr Ker guy would skin you alive if you ran into him?”

Karya was already walking off, boots crunching determinedly in the gravel. “No, I said he’d skin you alive, Scion. He’d have a hard time skinning me alive, I assure you. You keep the cylinder safe and sound. I’ll be careful, I promise, and I’ll be back in an hour or two. I just want to check it out.”

Robin stood on the steps, watching her wander off and gripping the carved cylinder tightly.

“Karya, wait,” he called after her. She stopped and turned to look at him, impatiently.

“What is it now?”

“Your coat,” he said. The girl was wearing, as always, her bulky, oversized coat of animal skins which practically drowned her. She looked at him, puzzled.

“You’ll draw less attention in the village if you look like a normal human,” he explained, jogging across the gravel to her. She nodded in understanding, shrugging off her outerwear. How she wasn’t constantly fainting in the summer heat was beyond Robin. Without the huge coat she looked odd, he thought. Hestia, on Irene’s instruction, had procured normal clothing for her when she had first come to Erlking, and she wore a blank green t-shirt and old jeans. She looked somehow smaller and a lot more vulnerable to Robin, almost like a normal girl. Until one noticed her usually steely golden gaze, that was.

“Look after that,” she told him firmly, as she piled the coat into his arms. “It’s the only thing I have that’s mine. Really mine, I mean. Woad made it for me.” And with that she turned and left.

Robin trudged back to the house, wondering what he was going to do with the rest of his day. Karya’s coat was heavy slung over one arm, and in his other hand he was twirling the cylinder over and over, lost in thought.

He almost didn’t notice the small blue smear of Woad waiting for him on the steps. The faun bounded up as he approached.

“No Henryboy, no Boss, no old lady,” the small boy grinned. “Let’s go do something fun, Pinky!”

LUMINAQUA

Robin, bewildered, had followed the scampering faun indoors and through Erlking’s many hallways until they reached the third floor, where, at the end of an otherwise rather unremarkable corridor, there was a blood-red door with a round silver door handle. He watched the faun struggle with it for several seconds, grunting and cursing as the door refused to budge, before speaking.

“Woad, what on earth are you playing at?” he asked. “You know this won’t open.”

The door was Erlking’s own Janus station. It was a pathway between the human world and the Netherworlde. The previous year, when he had first discovered his Fae heritage, Mr Moros, disguised as Phorbas the satyr, had led him through here, to explain his origins and help him choose his mana stone. It had been the first time Robin had ever set foot in the Netherworlde since leaving it as a baby. Now, when he thought of that day, it was always with a mixture of wonder and horror. Moros could have kidnapped him there and then if it hadn’t been so risky. He could still remember his ‘tutor’ expressing annoyance that Irene had insisted the door be left open while they were across the threshold.

“I thought with everyone gone, we could just have an hour in the Netherworlde,” the faun grunted, tugging persistently on the handle. He was gripping it with both hands and had his feet off the floor, braced against the crimson wood. “It’s been forever and ever and ever since I was there. We can stay close to Erlking, just on the hill. I miss the smells.”

“Woad, really,” Robin insisted, trying to dissuade the blue boy from tugging on the door. “For a start, there’s no use tugging, the door opens inwards anyway, and secondly, it won’t open if Aunt Irene isn’t here, no matter what you do.”

Robin was also pretty sure that a quick excursion into the Netherworlde, however well-intended, was something certain to send Aunt Irene ‘off her nut’, as Henry would put it. The Netherworlde was strictly off limits. It was a beautiful, but dangerous place. Especially for the world’s last changeling. He would be lying to himself, however, if he didn’t admit to longing to go back there just as much as Woad did.

The faun looked back at Robin over his shoulder, a look of frustration on his face. His tail whipped back and forth like an angry cat.

“Can’t you use your powers?” he asked. “I just wanted us to do something fun while we had spare time, that’s all. Inky is asleep. It’s hard looking after a pet all day, I’ve been playing him some flute music, but I’m not very good at it.”

“Where on earth did you find a flute?” Robin asked.

Woad looked a little guilty. “Just found one,” he muttered under his breath. “And anyway, it would be a good thing really, mean old Hestia won’t want us cluttering up the house all day. I overheard her say she has to wash all the wallpaper today. She always does on the last Monday of the month. Every room. Then tomorrow, it’s the annual check of all the lightbulbs.”

Robin patted Woad on the back affectionately, encouraging him to stop warring with the door.

“I know, she goes on a power-trip when Aunt Irene’s out of the house, but there’s no trick I know to open this door, honestly. I’ve only ever been through it once before, and she allowed it that time. We should think of something else to do, okay?”

The faun slid down the wall dejectedly. “Boghags and brontosaurs,” he grumbled. “Like what then?”

Robin had left Karya’s coat on the stand in the hallway downstairs, but was still holding the Undine’s unopened cylinder. “We could always have another crack at figuring this out?” He waved it at the faun in what he hoped was an enticing way. “Aunt Irene and Karya have been at it for months. Maybe it’s time the boys had a go, eh?”

Woad rolled his yellow eyes. “Homework? Haven’t you had enough of that yet? You’ve always either got your head buried in your books or you’re at the lessons with the wet lady.”

“I like my books,” Robin replied, a little defensively. It was true he had been practising hard and finally making significant progress in the Tower of Water lately. He had impressed his tutor during the last session in the atrium, when at his instruction, he had asked her to place the five silver cups at various points around the walls of the circular room and had then stood in the centre, proceeding to make water leap from cup to cup in soaring arcs across the room in great rainbow leaps, four and five streams at a time. They had criss-crossed above his head, shooting back and forth, a glimmering net, a moving, liquid spider’s-web lacing over their heads. As a finale, he had focused and slapped his hands together, freezing the entire structure immediately in a delicate lacework above them in the soaring heights of the atrium. It had held its form, pale and perfect above their upturned faces, a matrix of interlaced ice crystals, before crumbling into a fine snow which softly fell down around them and on to their upturned faces. Calypso had actually given him a genuine smile, and a rare nod of approval. He was beginning, she told him, to allow himself to use his emotions at last.

Woad now picked himself up off the floor and took the tube from Robin, rattling it alarmingly next to his ear. “What was the riddle again?” the faun asked.

“Tritea’s tomb, the frozen gates, opens after triple states,” Robin repeated from memory.

Woad scratched his chin as the boys made their way back along the corridor, flipping the tube end over end with his free hand.

“It’s bound to be something damp, right?” the faun said, as they reached the top of the stairs.

“Damp?”

“You know, watery, icy. Tower of Water stuff,” Woad elaborated. His face suddenly lit up. “I have the most best idea of all time!”

“You do?” Robin was dubious.

“I haven’t got a clue about this,” the faun declared, grabbing Robin by the wrist and pulling him down the staircase in a swift jog. “But I made some new friends who might! Come on!”

Woad dragged a confused Robin back through the house, out of the front doors, and away across Erlking’s wide lawns, pollen and leaves bursting up in in clouds from beneath their running feet as they headed away from the manor and toward the comparative cool of the shadowy trees.

Woad, excited and sniggering, would not be drawn on where they were going until they were fairly deep into the woods. Robin crashed through the undergrowth clumsily while the faun sped on ahead, dancing around bushes and under branches while Robin took the more direct route of straight into them.

“Where are you taking me, you maniac?” Robin called out, laughing, as Woad scurried on ahead. Erlking was well out of sight behind them now, and they scrambled up and down several leafy hills in the dappled light, the summer earth dry and crumbly under their feet. Robin hadn’t been this deep into the woods before. He wondered how far Erlking’s radius of influence reached. Were they beyond the perimeter here? He was guessing they were.

“It’s not far, this way,” the faun called back, excited.

Eventually, after a solid half hour of crashing through trees and beating their way through bushes, they arrived, panting and roasting. Robin stopped short before a deep open glade, where a hollow of sorts, a deep dip in the hilly woods, held a large, refreshing-looking pool. There was a steep jagged tumble of rocks beside, forming one side of the hollow, and down which flowed a decent woodland waterfall, splashing prettily into the inviting surface below. Stocks and tall bulrushes crowded the floor of the hollow, a colourful flowered carpet framing the water. The trees crowded overhead, almost covering the sky, making the glade seem secret and enclosed.

It felt a hidden place, and the light of the sun fell down in filtered green shafts through the leaves.

“Wow,” Robin said in admiration, as they stood on the lip, looking down into the small gully, listening to the splashing of the waterfall. White butterflies darted here and there amongst the tall, nodding stocks. “This place is pretty wonderful, Woad. But why are we here?”

Woad had been mentioning his discovery of a pool deep in the forest all summer long, trying to convince Robin and Henry to come and explore, but Robin had been too busy with his lessons at the lake and in the house. He had been imagining a little puddle in between the trees, not this verdant and lush grotto.

“We’re here, Pinky, because of the sirens,” Woad explained, grinning over at him, his face in dappled green sunlight. He scrambled down the grassy slope to the water’s edge below. “Come on. I bet they can help.”

“The sirens?” Robin asked, confused as he followed, slipping down and making his way through the bullrushes, “Woad, this isn’t the Netherworlde, this is Bronte country. You know that right?”

The faun gave him a pointed look. “And when did you become such an expert on the Netherworlde, pteranadon-brains? You think no one ever leaves the Netherworlde and comes to live here instead? There is a war on you know. Not everyone wants to play.”

“How could sirens be at Erlking?” Robin asked, joining Woad at the water’s edge. The noise from the waterfall was louder down here, and the agitated water threw choppy reflected sunlight back up onto the boys’ faces.

“This isn’t Erlking,” Woad confirmed. “We passed the border a while back. These are just woods. But we’re not really too far, so I don’t think you can get in trouble for it.” He considered this. “Well, you probably can, but only if the bossy ones find out. And to answer your question, the closer you are to Erlking, the more Netherworlde creatures there are, Pinky. It’s like a big magnet for us. Well, a big magnet with doors and windows and chimneys, I mean.” He was crouched at the water’s edge and reached out, dipping a hand briefly in the pool and swishing it about. “Sirens have been talking to me all summer. They’re a bit … weird, but it’s okay. They like me to come and talk to them. They helped me learn how to look after Inky. What songs he would like, what to feed him. They can help with this too. I bet they can. I’d bet my tail on it.” He stopped, pulling his blue fingers from the dark water. “Well, maybe half my tail. No! Wait, just an inch! I can spare that I suppose.”

“I thought sirens were supposed to be dangerous,” Robin said, a little concerned.

“Are we?” a voice had come, quite clearly, from behind the waterfall.

Robin whipped his head around in surprise. Standing just beyond the curtain of falling water, he could make out a shadowy outline. There must be a cave behind there, he thought. It’s been watching us. The voice was low and deep and soft.

“Everything is dangerous to something,” it said. “What have you brought us today, my blue friend?” The shadow shifted, and the voice became a little plaintive. “Won’t you swim with us?”

Woad looked over at the waterfall with his usual open and friendly face. “I’ve told you a million times, fauns don’t like to swim. It’s not that we’re not good at it. We are. I’m probably the best swimmer there ever was.”

Robin could see other shapes, two or three of them, moving below the surface of the water. He hadn’t noticed them until now. Silent large shadows, like huge koi. “Swim with us, swim with us,” they echoed faintly, voices rising in strange whispers somehow through the surface of the water. Robin, watching them circle lazily, took a wary step back from the edge. Into the flowers.

“This one…” The shadow behind the waterfall said. “Is no faun.”

“This is the Scion!” Woad said proudly. “The actual real Scion and everything. You can’t have him though, he’s mine. He belongs at Erlking, not in the woodsy woods. He’s a Fae. The only one left in the human world.” He thought for a minute. “And there’s probably not that many left free back home either.” He shook the thought away. “We have something we want to ask you, water-sisters.”

The shapes in the water became agitated, swishing back and forth faster. They echoed Woad’s words urgently. “The Scion?” Their voices overlapped one another like waves.

“The Scion of the Arcania,” the shadow behind the falls said, sounding both impressed and rather intrigued. Robin saw it tilt what he assumed was its head – it was so hard to make out. “How delicious. How simply marvellous,” it said. “A Fae, here amongst us, in our hallowed waters. Do you hear, sisters? A Fae no less. And a young one too. Young and strong and full of life.”

“A Fae…” The sounds rose from the water, sounding impressed and filled with odd longing. “Delicious, delicious, such an honour.”

“Woad,” Robin whispered from the corner of his mouth, not taking his eyes off the waterfall. “I think … we should go.” The hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end. Whatever these creatures were, Robin’s instincts told him they were predators. Woad seemed completely oblivious. He clearly didn’t have much judgement of character as far as Robin was concerned.

“What does he want?” the things beneath the water spoke. “What does he ask?”

“Speak, great Scion of the Arcania.” The shape behind the waterfall raised its hands, and reached out through the water, parting the torrent like curtains. Robin had been expecting hands, but what emerged from the darkness were mottled grey claws, large and hoary, like those of a crab. They were barbed with wicked looking black tines. They clicked, eagerly. “What would the Scion ask of the sirens?”

Robin was now quite certain this was a terrible mistake. He wanted away from the pool, and to drag Woad with him, dragging him off by the tail if needed, but he was busy trying to keep one eye on the siren reaching out from the waterfall towards them, and the other on its sisters, swirling underwater. The shapes seemed larger now, they were closer to the surface. Their movements reminded Robin of circling sharks.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, in as friendly a voice as he could manage. “Really. Look, we’re sorry to have bothered you, we really ought to get going, so, it was lovely meeting you … ladies … but—”

Woad looked confused. “But what about the riddle?” he asked loudly.

“Riddle?” the thing in the waterfall asked, its low voice rasping. The outstretched claws clicked eagerly again in a twitching manner, sharp and fast. “What … riddle?”

“Woad, I don’t think it’s safe here,” Robin said out of the corners of his mouth. He was inwardly cursing the faun for ever bringing them there in the first place.

Woad stood up. “Oh, don’t worry,” he said, utterly unconcerned and without bothering to lower his voice. “Sirens can’t leave water. They always want you to get in and swim with them, but they never come out.” He shook his head. “Swim swim swim, honestly, every time I’m here. But they are good at talking too. I told you, they helped me with Inky. Sirens are old and clever. They know lots of things.”

“You said you would swim with us,” the voices in the pool whispered, a little petulantly. “You said you would. You promised, little blue one.”

Woad grinned, raising a finger. “Aha! Yes. But I didn’t say when though.” He shrugged. “I mean, I probably will, one day, but I’m a very busy faun.”

“What is the riddle, Scion,” the siren in the waterfall asked again. It moved forward, so that its face was just on the other side of the falling curtain of water. It was still lost in shadow, but Robin could make out pale features, long straight hair which looked matted and flat to its long, angular head. The eyes were large, much larger than a human’s, and milky white. The eyes of a dead fish. Its countenance rippled like a mirage behind the moving water. Robin couldn’t see clearly, but there was something terribly, terribly wrong about its mouth.

“Your friend is right. Sirens are clever,” it said slowly. “We can help. We can help the Scion of the Arcania. Why doesn’t he come into the water? Speak with us? Come and swim, little Fae. Share your secrets and we will share ours.”

“Tender Fae,” the dark sisters beneath the surface whispered. “Come and swim in the dark with us.”

“Um, actually, I’m fine for swimming, right now, thanks very much,” Robin said carefully. The three sirens were certainly unnerving, but he had his mana stone on, he thought he could probably defend himself, as long as he stayed out of the pool. He had combat spells ready. Galestrike or Needlepoint would do the trick if it came to that.

Woad may well be right, perhaps these creatures could help them. They were water Panthea after all.

“Why would you offer to help me?” he asked the one above the surface, holding the cylinder carefully before him. “Why are you here in the human world anyway? You don’t work for Lady Eris? You don’t hate the Fae?”

The siren snickered, he saw its shimmering face split into something like a grin, rippling behind the falling water. “Work for Eris,” it spat. “Work for Eris? Hate the Fae? Child, do you think all of those who work for Eris do so out of hatred? Or is it more likely out of fear? If you want to keep out of Eris’ way, and not have her attention fall unfavourably on you, join her side, yes? That is the thinking of many. The darkest spot is often at the foot of the lighthouse.”

Robin could understand that, he supposed.

“We are here because we choose to be,” the siren told him. “We have made these woods our home since long ago, when the war came. There are ways and means. Pathways between the worlds that even all-powerful Eris, with all her stolen power, does not know. We left the Netherworlde. Sirens are not ruled. We are nobody’s slaves.” The claws retreated behind the waterfall, and the being moved backwards slightly into the shadows.

“Why would you help me though?” Robin asked again, making his way cautiously around the edge of the pool closer towards the waterfall. The long grass and bulrushes rustled around his legs. They would want something in return, he was sure of it.

“Swim with us,” the siren called, its low voice a rasp under the noise of the falling water. “Our water is fine and cool, little Fae. It will quiet your blood. It will calm your mind.”

“I don’t want to swim,” Robin replied, refusing to be distracted. “I need help with a riddle. It’s to do with the Tower of Water. With the tomb of Tritea, the Undine.”

There was a soft hiss from the darkness behind the waterfall, and the shadow of the siren seemed to bloom here and there with light, soft pinks and blues rippled along the edges of its form, passing over its skin in strange electric waves. Robin had seen the same thing on deep-sea fish on TV documentaries. Gran had loved those shows. “Those things are beautiful and ugly at the same time, Robin,” she used to say. “All pretty lights to lure the little fish in, and bloody horrible big fangs to keep ‘em there. That’s nature for you,” she had said. “Beauty and bloodshed.”

The lights of the siren flickered and strobed, captivating bioluminescence in the dark cave. Was that why it had stepped back into the shadows, the better to show off its colours? Robin blinked, focussing with some difficulty. They play of light drew his eyes. It was oddly hypnotic.

“Undine,” the sirens hissed, three voices at once. “The high ones. The elder sisterhood. They are wise fools, and their queen is dead.”

“Yes, we know she’s dead,” Robin said. “We need to know where she is, and for that we need to get to Hiernarbos. No one knows the way.” He held up the cylinder. “The way is in here.”

“Ran away with a pretty Fae, she did,” the flickering darkness rasped, sounding softly scandalised. The lights in her skin ebbed and pulsed. “Left her throne, left her charge, went to hide, to live and die in peace. No one knows where. No one.”

“We already know she was with one of the Fae,” Robin said. “We don’t know where the two eloped to, but the Undine in the hidden valley, at Hiernarbos might. She may be buried there, in her homeland. We need to find her. Will you help me or not?”

The lights of the siren brightened, swirling backwards across its form. Robin could see from the flickering outline that it was basically human shaped, but tall, very, very tall, with stooped shoulders and its arms were large and long like clubs. Powerful. Its claws clacking at its side. “What is the riddle, Scion of the Arcania?” it said eventually.

Robin told it. He was aware that Woad was crouched by his side, firmly planted rather protectively between him and the water’s edge.

“Three states, unlock the gates,” the siren cackled, a bubbling, throaty noise. “How simple. How simple you must all be. What do they teach the Fae these days?”

A claw shot out from the waterfall, making Robin flinch a little and take a step back. He hadn’t realised it, but he’d been slowly walking toward the cave, his feet sleepwalking while he watched the lights flicker in the darkness. He’d been moving without thinking, without noticing, drawn closer to the creature by its light show. The claw pointed at the grass between the rocks, where the waterfall hit the pool. “Drop it here. We will open it now.”

Woad and Robin exchanged glances. The faun shrugged, which wasn’t very helpful, so Robin, careful to keep his eye on the things swirling in the water, slowly dropped to one knee and placed the long tube gently on the tussocky grass. He stood and took a step back. Quite a big step.

“If you are thinking of tricking me,” he said, trying his best to sound stern and impressive. “You should know that I am the Scion, and Erlking is mine. You don’t want to be my enemy.”

The sirens all bubbled with laughter, the exact opposite reaction he had hoped for. Woad glared at them, furious on Robin’s behalf. “He is!” the boy piped up. “Any tricky business and he’ll throw a slush-spear at you! Trust me, that will be…” he hesitated. “Cold and unpleasant.”

“Yes, thank you, Woad,” Robin hissed, mortified.

“Three states, open the gates,” the sirens swirling in the water sang. They were glowing too, down there beneath the dark surface. Flickering in prismatic light, making the blackness of the pool into a whirling soft rainbow. It was very, very hard not to look at, Robin found.

The siren in the cave flexed her claw, and a small jet of water shot out from the waterfall, redirected by mana. This jet encased the tube in a floating bubble, flowing over it in rippling, caressing waves.

“State one, water,” it said.

There was another pulse of mana, and with a loud series of crackles and snaps, the water flowing over the tube clouded, becoming pale and white. Frost tinged the grass in a circle around the cylinder as the watery skin hardened. In seconds, it was solid and shining.

“State two,” the siren explained, still shimmering brightly in the gloom. “Ice.”

A third flick of its long claw, and with a loud hiss, the ice encasing the Undine’s case evaporated immediately, billowing up and dissipating in mid-air in a whooshing cloud.

“State three … steam.”

Robin stared at the tube. It had changed. Where before it had been covered in intricate carvings, now it was smooth and pale, like whalebone. As he and Woad stared, there was a click, and one end of the cylinder opened smoothly, as though on an invisible hinge. Rolled neatly and tightly inside, they saw, was a yellowed scroll.

Robin’s heart leapt. They’d done it. The three states of the Tower of Water, that was all that had been required. Without thinking he looked up, meaning to thank the siren. He hadn’t noticed, but while he had been watching the magic at work, the creature had slid out of the waterfall and stood now directly before him, a dark and shimmering shape. Its bodily lights flickered and blazed, catching and trapping his eyes. He was rooted to the spot, unable to turn away. Unable to move or do anything other than stare, idiotically and helpless, into the pulsing nebulae of lights rolling over the creature. It was beautiful, a rolling kaleidoscope, making his eyes dilate.

“Now, you swim,” it growled. With alarming speed, it lunged forward, its reach from the waterfall’s edge much greater than the boy had anticipated. With a heavy swing of its thick claws, it batted Robin off his feet. Dazed and entranced by the lights, he faintly heard Woad calling his name in panic, and then he hit the water, crashing into the pool, and everything was icy blackness.

Robin thrashed in the darkness, the water was cold as ice, and pitch black. It rushed in against him, shaking off the dizzying stupor of the siren’s lights and bringing him immediately to his shocked senses. The cold seemed to pierce his skin, knocking the air from his lungs in a shocked gasp which sent countless noisy bubbles rolling over his face. His heart felt as though it was going to explode, and his limbs were heavy with the weight of his sodden clothes. Robin had imbibed black kraken bile, he knew he was a strong swimmer, and in the past few months he had become utterly at home in the cool clear expanse of Erlking’s lake. But this was different. The water here was so cold and dark, and his disoriented brain couldn’t quite make his body work as it should. He kicked out, blind and freezing, starved of air, but his clothes and trainers were so heavy. He was sinking, deeper and deeper into the midnight waters, colder than the grave. Shapes brushed against him, unseen. Buffeting him around, over and over, large and heavy things. He felt the scrape of claws against his frigid skin, as the sirens in the water sought to entangle him.

I’m going to drown, he thought quite clearly. They’re going to drown me. Claws sought for purchase. In the blind darkness there was a flash of sickly light from the bodies of the sirens. A claw gripped his thigh like a cruel vice. Another bit into his shoulder, pushing him downward as a thick, slippery arm curled around his throat from behind. He brought his arms up, in nightmarish slow motion through the water, to grapple at the arm, but it was hard shell and he may as well have been battering against stone. It was like trying to fight in freezing, suffocating treacle. Blind and helpless. The sirens dragged him downwards, their limbs flashing and rolling with waves of beautiful cold colour. It was mesmerising. Pushing all reason and resistance from his oxygen-starved mind. A beautiful light show to soothe his soul. He wanted to lose himself in it. This silent song in light. The song of the sirens. Despite his lungs distantly screaming for air and the rolling sound of his last few bubbles around his ears. Despite the cold and the blackness, the lights soothed him.

They grew dimmer, and a small part of Robin’s mind knew that this was because his vision was darkening. He had to breathe, he had to. But through his open, gasping mouth, nothing flooded his lungs but water, agonisingly cold and brackish. He coughed instinctively, making him gasp, taking in more water, filling his lungs. He felt his grip loosen, his scrabbling fingers stop their fight, as consciousness left him.

Far off he heard voices, distorted through the water. Woad … and someone else? Someone was shouting. In the glimmer of distant light that remained above him, a ghost memory of the surface, as far from him and as unreachable as a supernova, something was moving against the sky. Out there in the world above, the sky above the pool was a great fractured maelstrom of shadow.

A shimmering claw closed over his face, cold and smooth as it covered his mouth and nose, and Robin passed out.

“Robin!”

“Robin Fellows!”

A female voice. Not Karya. How odd, Robin thought distantly. He was aware of something solid beneath him. Along his back. He was lying down. Prickly. Was it grass? And he was so cold.

“He’s not breathing!”

That was Woad. He sounded panicked. Robin’s distant mind couldn’t bring himself to care. Everything hurt. Everything was so far away.

“His lungs are full of water,” the girl’s voice again. “Move back, let me get at him, will you?”

Something brushed his lips softly. Air was forced into his lungs, painful and sudden. It hurt so much it snapped him to his senses and he lurched, rolling onto his side and unceremoniously spewing a mouthful of icy water onto the ground. Coughing and spluttering, he vomited up brackish pond water, retching until his eyes watered. Then he took in a great wheezing gasp of air. It felt like the deepest breath he had ever taken. It hurt immensely, and it was wonderful. It was life.

“Pinky!” Woad yelled, incredibly close to his ear.

Robin’s eyes flinched open blearily. He was staring up at trees, their blurred swaying green branches bright above him, a dappled green curtain. He was lying on the grass, soaked and aching, but not dead. His head was elevated on something. He was drenched and freezing. As he blinked, coughing furiously, two faces swam into focus, staring down at him. One was bright blue and looked both terrified and jubilant. Woad. The other was pale and half hidden by a sweep of purple hair. He knew this face too, but he was so confused.

“They didn’t kill you then,” the girl said simply, blinking down at him. Her cool hand was resting on his forehead. It brushed his sodden hair out of his eyes.

“What … what happened?” he croaked. “The sirens…”

He tried to sit up, but the girl’s hand forced him down again. He realised she was kneeling on the grass, his head was cradled in her lap. Floating above the three of them, Robin noticed with disoriented wonder that there were moths. Hundreds and hundreds of black moths, dancing amongst the trees.

“She pulled you out, Pinky!” Woad said urgently. “Sirens were fast, had me trapped in their shiny. Stupid Woad standing like a tree stump, but she! She was out of nowhere and she pulled you out with shadows!”

Robin’s head was finally clearing. He knew where he recognised her from. It was the girl from the village.

“Penny?” He coughed again. His body was aching all over and he was shivering uncontrollably from the cold. “How did you … what are you even doing here?”

The girl gave a lopsided smile. He noticed for the first time how dark her eyes were. There was almost no colour at all, just black, under her pale makeup. “Well, you did say to come. It’s a good job I did. You would be rolled around on the bottom of that wet pit like a crocodile’s meal otherwise. Sirens have sharp teeth and take small bites. It wouldn’t have been pleasant, and it wouldn’t have been quick.”

None of this was making sense. How was the girl here? How did she know about sirens? Robin forced himself to sit up, suddenly acutely embarrassed that he was using her lap for a pillow. Still disoriented, he stared around. They were some distance from the pool. Woad and Penny must have carried him somehow.

How did she know about any of this? She certainly didn’t seem to be freaked out by the fact that Woad was squatting next to her, blue and be-tailed.

“She isn’t human, Pinky,” Woad said, pointing at the girl in an accusing way. “I’ve never seen mana like that before. The shadows, like a whirlwind, tearing into the water like black confetti! It was a whirlwind. She plucked you out like a fairground prize!”

The moths, Robin realised. They weren’t real moths; they were some kind of imitation. They filled the glade above them, shimmering and unsteady. Robin got waveringly to his feet, coughing. He saw the girl stand smoothly beside him.

“Well, don’t thank me all at once,” she said. “Although in truth, Scion. I didn’t save you out of the goodness of my heart. I’m just not that nice to be honest. Though any excuse to annoy sirens is a good one.”

Robin saw that in her free hand she was holding the rolled up scroll. The contents of the cylinder. “I’ve had a look at this.” she said, waving it at him tantalisingly. “Very, very interesting. I wonder if you’ll figure it out as quickly as I did?” She looked doubtful, narrowing her eyes at him. She also looked a lot paler than when he had met her in the village. Her skin was like chalk. She practically glowed, ghostlike in the dappled forest light. “I came for two things,” she told him. “This.” She tossed the scroll to Woad, who caught it, looking confused. “All done now. Your toy, enjoy.”

She looked back to Robin. “And the second thing I needed. The magic ingredient of course.”

Penny ran a white finger along her bottom lip, and it came away red.

Robin raised a hand to his own mouth, noticing for the first time how tender his lip felt. He hadn’t noticed in the confusion of other aches and scratches. She had given him the kiss of life, breathing air back into him, but at the same time she had bitten him. It was his blood.

“What … are … you?” he asked, shakily. Penny smiled at him. Her black eyes twinkled. She raised her bloodied finger in the air, and in seconds, several of the shadowy moths had descended, fluttering against her skin, gathering the blood.

“I tried to be subtle,” she shrugged. “Hey ho. That failed, right? I thought just a drop would be enough, all we needed from you, but sadly nope. My little charmed keyring didn’t collect nearly enough Fae-juju for my purposes. I needed more, see?” She rolled her dark eyes between the two boys, staring at their confused faces. “Well, obviously you don’t see. This should be enough though. Sorry about the nibble. I can be a little opportunistic.” She grinned at Robin. “I guess you better hope to hell it is enough anyway, or I’ll be back for more. My brother isn’t nearly as patient as I am. He might come himself, and then he’d take it all. He has no self-restraint.”

Woad had scampered and picked up the cylinder which the girl had dropped and discarded carelessly. He retreated to behind Robin.

“Penny, what’s going on?” Robin asked, dabbing at his lip gingerly. The moths were gathering all around the strange white girl, descending from the trees in their hundreds. They flew past his face, batting against his cheeks like dark kisses. Woad waved his hands around as though shooing bats.

“What’s going on? What am I? Scion of the Arcania? So many questions. I’m the one collecting your blood, blood is the key you see. Opens the way and raises the spirits. Saving you from your own idiocy just now? Don’t read into that too much. It was just lucky for you that I needed you more that the sirens did.”

She grinned, a flash of white teeth as the moths covered her completely in a dark and whispering blanket. He saw a glimmer of dark eyes and a swish of purple hair. “I’ll tell you what I am. I’m the competition, kiddo. Catch us if you can.”

The moths flew apart, exploding in a dark cloud all over the glade, and rising up, a living plume smoke, to scatter above the branches and disappear into the blue sky. The girl was gone.

Robin and Woad stood silently in the clearing for a few moments. Birds chirped in the tree branches around them. In the distance, they could hear the tinkle of the waterfall at the dangerous sirens' pool, reassuringly far off. Of the defeated sirens, there was neither hide nor hair.

Eventually, Woad spoke. “Scary white ghost lady saved you from the sirens, sent them back to the deep.”

Robin nodded, dumbfounded, his finger still on his sore bottom lip. “She kissed me.”

“Bit your face. Stole your blood,” Woad agreed in a matter-of-fact way. He lifted the scroll, still tightly wrapped in his small hand. “Girls, eh? At least she didn’t take this. She just looked at it while I carried you up from the pool to here.”

Robin glanced at Woad absently. “You carried me?”

“I’m stronger than I look,” Woad assured him. “I could carry ten scions.” The faun looked up to the sky above them. There wasn’t the faintest sign of even one black moth.

“Girls around here are very odd,” he said, after some consideration.

“I don’t think she was a girl,” Robin shivered. He was still freezing and aching all over. “I think she was something else.”

Robin reflected on the sobering fact that his very first kiss, of sorts, had clearly been with a member of the Grimms.

BLOOD AND BONE

“A Grimm?!”

Robin winced. He had never heard Karya sound shrill before. She wasn’t the yelling kind, as a rule. He winced again as Hestia reapplied the strangely pungent rag to his shoulder. It stung like nettles.

“A Grimm!” Karya yelled again. She was staring at him, wild-eyed and scandalised. “An actual Grimm?!”

“How many times are you going to say that dark name, wild creature?” Hestia fluttered, smearing more of the oily, greenish gloop none too gently onto Robin’s bare shoulder with a rag. “You are hurting Hestia’s ears with your noise! Like a little bird trapped! It is too much!”

Robin flinched as the housekeeper patted his back, the unguent she was applying to his many scratches prickling unbearably. She flicked her beetle-black eyes to his. “And you! Be still, you horrible, thoughtless child!” She clucked her tongue, shaking her head in bewilderment. “To go swimming with sirens! Sirens! You are trying to give old Hestia a heart attack! You think I have nothing better to do than pull poison from your body? Who is mopping the ballroom while poor Hestia is here? Tell me that? No one, that is who? And who will have to explain why when Lady Irene returns? Why there is…” Her lip quivered, “ … dust!” She spat the word.

Robin tried to hold still. It was bad enough that Woad had half carried him all the way back from the woods, hanging limply from his shoulder as the small but ridiculously strong faun held his stumbling frame upright. It was even worse to be sat here, bare-chested and perched on the tabletop in the great kitchen like a naughty child while Hestia, who had almost shrieked the house down on seeing him, attempted to tend the many scratches and bruises he had sustained with a bowl full of foul smelling crushed herbs. She had prepared the herbs at lightning speed, wailing all the time about the carelessness of children, and who would be blamed if he were to die while Aunt Irene was away.

Karya had been drawn to the kitchens by the commotion, having only just returned from her expedition to the village.

The girl now stood across the kitchen, staring at Robin and Woad in utter disbelief. She was ashen faced and Robin couldn’t tell if she was worried or furious with him.

“I leave you two alone for two minutes!” she said. “Two minutes!”

Robin, wrinkling his nose at the smell from Hestia’s medicine, looked at her sternly. “We didn’t know a Grimm was going to show up, did we?” he said. “We thought, well, Woad thought, and I agreed, that the sirens might be able to help us with the puzzle. It was worth a shot.”

Karya pursed her lips. “A shot that nearly got you killed,” she said. “Of all the stupid, foolhardy … Robin Fellows, you really are a hornless wonder!”

Woad has explained, in his own colourful way, to Karya and Hestia, the events that had transpired in the forest.

“It was the girl we met down in the village,” Robin said, gritting his teeth as Hestia, muttering inventively and constantly, dabbed none too gently at his grazed ribs. He shook his head in disbelief. “She was never a girl, she was a Grimm – but she passed for human, I swear.” He considered. “A very pale, kind of weird human, yeah, but lots of people are pale and weird. I mean, she didn’t look anything like Mr Strife or Mr Moros. How was I supposed to know? Strife and Moros were both creepy old guys! She was…”

Karya folded her arms, still staring at him furiously and wide eyes.

“She was what, Scion?”

“She was different,” he hissed a little, in pain.

“Oh hold still, you bothersome child,” Hestia insisted with little sympathy. “Unless you want the sirens’ barbs to leave enough marks to match your silver wings there!”

Robin already had scars on his back, four thin lightening pale stripes from shoulder to hip where he’d had a run in with a skriker’s claws the previous year. He felt very self-conscious sitting here in the kitchen, covered in herbal gunk and being glared at by everyone.

“She said her name was Penny,” he told Karya. “She’s been after my blood apparently, for some time now.”

“Not all the Grimms are old men,” Karya said. “You’d be surprised the forms the Grimms take. They’re an odd bunch of misfits, to say the least.” She unfolded her arms, sighing and shaking her head. She seemed to be trying to calm down.

“Young, you say. Or young looking at least, purple hair,” she muttered to herself.

“And pretty,” Woad piped up. He was sitting beside Robin on the tabletop in brotherly solidarity, his legs swinging happily. Karya blinked at him, her eyebrows disappearing into her hairline. Her golden eyes fixed on Robin like an inquisitive owl.

“Pretty?” she asked, spluttering.

Robin cringed a little. “Well, sort of, I suppose, in a weird way. Maybe a little intense. She didn’t look like a monster anyway.”

“Not all monsters do, stupid boy,” Hestia twittered to herself. “Spend enough time in the world, little man, and you will learn that for sure. The worst wolves hide their teeth in soft fur, until they want to bite.”

“She’s right!” Karya pointed a finger at Hestia, a little dramatically. “From the description, that was not ‘Penny’ you met. That was Miss Peryl. She is the youngest of the Grimm Organisation. In many ways, she’s the runt of the litter, but trust me when I say, Scion, that she is no less dangerous than Strife himself. She has the blood of countless on her hands. Countless. Fae and Panthea.”

“She has Pinky’s blood on her lips,” Woad corrected the girl. Karya looked confused.

“Get dressed in something dry now,” Hestia said, shooing Robin down off the tabletop. “You are not poisoned, and these little scratches and bites are less that you deserve for being so foolish!” She shook her head. “And do not make things worse by dripping all over my kitchen floor!”

Robin thanked Hestia. Despite her manner, she had leapt into action to ensure he was not hurt and tended his wounds expertly and quickly. The woman utterly ignored his thanks, shuffling off to wash out the herbal gunk from the bowl she held.

“Her … lips?” Karya raised an eyebrow.

Robin pulled on his shirt again, feeling tender all over and smelling a little like sage and onion stuffing from Hestia’s unguent. “She bit me. I told you, she wanted my blood. Bloody mental-case. If she’s as bad as you say, I don’t know why she didn’t just come at me with a knife.”

“You think Eris wants you dead?” Karya asked. “Trust me, if she did, you’d be dead by now. You’re her prize. You’re Eris’ lottery ticket, and woe betide anyone who damages the goods. Peryl wouldn’t dare harm you.” She considered this. “Maim a little, hobble, disfigure, incapacitate probably. She’s more than a little twisted in her head that one. Very odd idea of ‘fun’, but she wouldn’t have actually killed you. It wouldn’t have been entertaining enough for her. Peryl likes games.”

“She saved me from the sirens though,” Robin said, doing up his buttons clumsily. “That’s like being saved from a shark attack by … another bigger shark. And how did she manage to look human?”

Karya considered this, leaning back against the worktop and drumming her fingers. “She probably wasn’t wearing her mana stone, deliberately,” she guessed. “We are all … less of what we are without them. You’d be less Fae, she’d appear less Grimm. Quite a clever idea I suppose. For a mass-murdering, psychopathic monster, that is.”

“But she did magic. On the sirens. And those moths … Wait, I’ve been seeing them all summer,” Robin exclaimed. “What are they?”

“Totems, brain-death,” Woad said. “All of the Grimms have them. Tower of Darkness magic. Shadow made form. Will made mobile.”

“Woad’s correct,” Karya said. “Strife has his skrikers, Moros his grimgulls. Peryl, clearly, specialised in extremely morbid emo butterflies. They’ve been watching you, no doubt, waiting for the time to get your blood, from the needle in this keyring, or directly from your face, which is apparently how these things are done by preference.” She cleared her throat tactfully. “If one is a psychotic and evil shapeshifting agent of pure evil that is.” She shook her head in disbelief. “I can’t believe you kissed a Grimm.”

“I did not kiss her!” Robin said hotly. “I’d drowned, she gave me the kiss of life, it’s not the same thing!”

“How would you know?” she asked pointedly. “Done a lot of kissing have you?”

“That’s … you … what’s that got to do with anything?” Robin flushed. “She did it to bite me. Believe me, that’s not my idea of a good time either. Having your face chewed by a mass murderer from another world is not how I like to spend my weekends, thanks very much, and I’d appreciate it if you’d stop making fun of me.”

Karya gave him a look, but she reigned in her scorn a little. She seemed to have managed to calm down now that it was evident that Robin wasn’t seriously hurt.

“Well,” she said. “You’re safe anyway. Nobody died, even if she did get away with your blood. Though what on earth the Grimms need your blood for is a mystery to me. She said it was the key to something?”

Robin nodded. Woad was stood very close, sniffing him with interest, as Hestia’s herbal poultice wafted through the room. He waved the faun away. “Give it a rest, Woad.”

Robin held up the scroll, tightly bunched in his fist. “Grimms aside though, the important thing is this!”

“She didn’t take it?” Karya all but leapt across the room and snatched the scroll out of Robin’s hands. “Why not? If it’s what she came for?”

“She already looked at it,” Woad said. “While we were dragging Pinky like a floppy fish away from the pool. After she’d used all her shadow flapping tornado magic. She looked at it, and then she said…” He tilted his head a little, frowning to remember. “Then she said ‘ah, bingo!’” he finished.

“So she didn’t need it anymore,” Robin said. “But she still left it for us? If it was me I would have scarpered and took it with me. Left my enemies clueless.”

“But where would be the fun in that?” Karya waggled the scroll at Robin. “Peryl is a game-player. She wants us to figure it out. I doubt her brother, Mr Ker, would agree with her on that, but she’s not the kind of Grimm to take advisement from others. We need to look over this right now! Are you well enough, Scion?”

Robin nodded, whatever mixture Hestia had salved his wounds with, they were already healing under his shirt, his skin tingled like pins and needles. “I’m fine,” he assured them.

Karya smiled darkly. “Right, Woad, clear this table. We need room to roll this out and—”

There was a clatter of dishes in the sink and Hestia whirled around, furious. “There will be no clearing of the kitchen table, thank you very much!” she said tremulously. “It is not enough for you that you interrupt Hestia in her duties with your mindless tangles with death? And that you steal her time to put your broken body back together again like an egg on a wall? Now you wish to mill around her kitchen? To move her things? To make the centre of this household into your … your … campaign room? I think most assuredly not! No, you must go. Everybody must go, and especially the little beast who has left buttock-prints in the rolled flour on my workspace! It is unsanitary!”

Woad pulled his tongue out at Hestia as soon as she turned her back. “I only sat on the table,” he said. “It’s not like I squashed her scones.”

A voice from the doorway made them all turn.

“I overheard,” Calypso said. Robin’s tutor stood casually in the doorway, a vision of calm in her flowing dress, her hand was resting lightly on the lintel. “Your voices are remarkably loud when you are all speaking together.” She regarded the children. “Robin Fellows, you almost died being eaten by sirens? Then you were, in specific order, rescued, bitten, robbed and abandoned by a Grimm, is this an accurate summary?”

Robin nodded sheepishly. Calypso blinked. “Are you likely to die imminently?” she enquired, as though asking about the weather.

“The boy will live,” Hestia grumbled, without turning around. She clattered pots and pans in her sink. “No thanks to his own stupidity. And no thanks, of course, directed to old Hestia. Has the nymph come hoping for grief? For tears to feed on? There’s nothing wet in here for you but suds.”

Calypso ignored Hestia completely. “You have solved the riddle in your aunt’s absence,” she observed, looking to the rolled up scroll Karya held. “And the Grimms have solved it too, I hear. In that case, be under no illusion. They will be headed already to the Janus station’s location.” She shrugged. “Come.”

They followed her out of Hestia’s domain, along a corridor and into an empty side parlour, filled with old, empty trophy cases, where she indicated with a sweep of her hand that Karya should lay out the scroll on a darkly polished tabletop.

The girl unrolled the yellowing parchment carefully, and they gathered around with interest. It was covered in hieroglyphic script weaved around an odd central symbol, a flat, horizontal line, and radiating down from it, three strokes, like sunbeams spreading out from the centre.

“These glyphs are the same as the translation I’m working on for Irene,” Karya observed. “No … wait. Not quite. It is the Undine language, but a later version, not as ancient. I think … I can actually translate this. But I’ve no idea what this symbol means.” She tapped the line and its three strange legs. She looked to the nymph, who shrugged.

“A curse, perhaps?” she suggested.

“Maybe a spell of some kind,” Karya guessed.

“It could be a magical glyph,” Robin peered closely at it. “I’ve seen a lot of these in my study books, words of power. But nothing quite like this before.”

They were all clearly baffled.

“Maybe it’s the name of some terrible demon,” Woad said eagerly. “And saying it out loud will summon it here!”

“Nah, it’s none of those,” a voice over Robin’s shoulder said. They all looked around in surprise to see Henry standing just behind them, still in his school uniform and with his bag slung over one shoulder. “Afternoon all. I know what that is,” he said casually, nodding to the symbol. He dropped his bag onto a nearby chair. “What are you all up to then?”

“You?” Karya said doubtfully, not bothering to hide the disbelief in her voice. “You, of all people, know what this is?”

“Yeah, me, why?” he replied.

“A magical symbol, an ancient glyph, or possibly a word of great power, hidden on an ancient scroll that neither I nor this nymph can decipher, but you say you can?” she snorted.

“Is there a bloody echo in this room?” Henry said, frowning at her. “What’s up, Rob? Why’s everyone clustered round this old thing then. Have I missed much today?”

“Henry,” Robin urged, he tapped the scroll impatiently. “You were saying?”

“Oh, that. We’ve been doing about architecture, stuff like this in class. That’s not a magic spell, it’s just a masonry symbol that is.”

“A what?” Karya demanded, practically snapping.

“You know, masons, people who build things. Houses and that. That’s a tideline. Shows other craftsmen where on a building the flood level is, or something like that anyway. It’s on loads of old buildings.”

Karya stared at Henry in disbelief. “You’ve been … useful,” she said with an air of wonder. He gave her a look.

“It has been known to happen, you know, from time to time. What’s going on here then anyway? Why is everyone so agitated? And why does Robin smell like Christmas dinner?”

Robin shooed away Woad, who was trying to lick his elbow experimentally. “Hestia’s unguent,” he said by way of explanation. “Monsters in the water, nearly drowned, long story.”

“Pinky kissed a girl,” Woad piped up happily, with an air of delicious scandal.

Henry made a face. “Gross.”

“Not a girl … a Grimm,” Karya corrected.

“Grosser!” Henry declared. “Is this the sort of thing you lot get up to while I’m at summer school then? The most exciting thing that happened to me today was multiplication squares. And why I still have to wear my uniform is beyond me. It’s inhumane during summer.”

“Perhaps if you studied your lessons as studiously as the Scion,” Karya said loftily. “You would not be required to attend this ‘summer school’.”

Henry made a rude gesture. Thankfully, Calypso interrupted Karya’s indignation.

“I believe it to be another riddle, or so it seems,” she said.

Robin groaned. “Another!? What is it with Netherworlders and their ruddy riddles? It’s supposed to be the location of the lost Janus Station, isn’t it?” he complained. “I was expecting co-ordinates or something.”

“Well, whatever it is, Miss Peryl figured it out quickly enough,” Karya said darkly. “So we better had too.” The girl looked up at the nymph, as Henry grumbled to Robin,

“I’d probably pay more attention in class if my teachers looked like yours. Miss Windsor has a lazy eye.”

Calypso leaned over the unfurled parchment, tucking a floating lock of pale hair behind her ear as her delicate finger traced across the glyphs.

“In essence,” she declared. “We are told here that the doorway to the vale lies ‘at the centre of all things, beneath Satan’s holy feet’.”

“Nah, you’d just spend your classes making goo-goo eyes and not paying attention,” Robin muttered back to Henry with a grin.

Karya cleared her throat, pinning each boy with her death glare. “Pot, kettle, black?” She jerked her head in the nymph’s direction.

Calypso looked up at the boys expectantly with a wan and distant smile.

They returned her look blankly.

“Satan’s holy feet,” she repeated helpfully.

“Satan?” Robin was deeply confused. “As in, the devil?”

“The what?” Woad asked.

“Big bad guy in our world, traditionally,” Henry explained to the faun knowledgeably. “Enemy of light, daddy of demons. Cloven hooves, pointy tail, bright red.”

Woad wrinkled his nose. “What kind of ridiculous colour is red for a person?”

Karya filled them in on what they’d missed.

“Wait, this can’t be right,” Robin insisted. “That’s Christian mythology, isn’t it? It doesn’t sound very Netherworlde-y. What does the devil have to do with anything?”

Karya rubbed her chin. “Well, it might not mean that at all,” she mused. “The term Satan originally just meant enemy. It was anything or anyone who opposed. The word only got attached to Lucifer, the angel who rebelled against God, after he … well … rebelled. Maybe it’s talking more about the enemy of the Shard? Or of the Sidhe-Nobilitas?”

“Satan’s holy feet though?” Robin said, shaking his blond head. “It’s all wrong. Nothing about the devil is holy, right? I mean, Gran was never much of a church goer. We went at Christmas for the carols and she always sent me at harvest with about ten tins of sweetcorn to drop off for charity, but even so, I’m sure I would know if there was anything particularly holy about Lucifer’s feet.”

“At the centre of all things?” Karya was tracing the odd glyph with her fingertips. “Henry, you said this was a stoneworker’s symbol?”

The boy nodded. “S’right. They’re on all the old important buildings,” he added, knowledgeably. “Town halls, libraries, churches, that sort of thing.”

Karya’s eyes flashed. Robin swore he actually saw the gold in them grow brighter.

“That’s it!” she cried. “Wait here, I’ll just be a minute.” She bolted from the room.

“A curious being,” Calypso observed, watching the girl go. She looked to Robin. “Scion of the Arcania, tell me, what are your intentions? There is no time to summon back your aunt from the city, this London to which she has travelled. Not if the Grimms have already located the doorway leading to the valley of my old homeland. Time is of the essence.”

Robin looked back at her. He hadn’t really planned anything. He was still a little shaken about almost being drowned an hour ago. But she was right. If the Grimms knew where the Janus station was that would deliver them to Hiernarbos, they had to act, and quickly. There wasn’t time to waste. Not when a Shard of the Arcania was at stake. “I … well, I suppose we have to stop them, somehow.”

“Your bravery and your foolishness are both indicative of your Fae blood, Scion,” the nymph replied, delivering this as though it were a compliment. “You will need your tutor by your side.”

Robin nodded. “I’d feel better knowing you were with us, of course,” he said gratefully. Calypso blinked, straightening up. “Oh no,” she said absently. “I didn’t mean me, goodness no. I cannot go back to the white tree.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “And I wouldn’t even if I could, I don’t think. It might be dangerous.”

Henry gave the woman a hard look and a rather judgemental shake of the head.

“My job here is to arm you against danger, Scion, not to throw myself between you and it,” Calypso explained. “I meant your other tutor.”

Robin was confused.

“Your knife, Phorbas,” she prompted.

“I’ll get him!” Woad volunteered, scampering out of the room, presumably to Robin’s bedroom to collect the weapon.

Presently, both Woad and Karya returned. The faun reverently carrying the blade, careful not to touch the mana stone pommel, and Karya holding a large, leather-bound book.

“You’ve been to the library?” Henry asked incredulously as she slammed the book down on the table by the scroll. The book looked familiar to Robin.

“I was verifying something with Wally, if you must know,” she replied curtly.

“Wally?”

“The black Knight of Walpurgis,” Robin explained to Henry.

“You mean that mental stag-headed suit of armour who guards the library?” Henry asked. “You two are quite pally these days. You’re always hanging around with that haunted old empty tuna can.”

“Well,” she replied breezily, flipping through the pages. “Between you and that haunted old tuna can, you know enough to solve this riddle. When you mentioned churches, you see. This masonry mark, the ‘centre of all things’ … It all makes sense.”

“Karya,” Robin said patiently, taking Phorbas from Woad and tucking the blade carefully into the belt loops of his jeans. “Absolutely none of what you’re saying makes sense. That book, is it the one I got from the library weeks ago? The one you thought was useless?”

“The guide to the Sidhe, yes,” she replied, distracted, as she finally found the page. “I’ve been using it for research, there really isn’t much in it. Or I didn’t think so anyway.” She held up a finger. “But … I did read that during the very early years of the war, when Eris’ campaign was gathering steam, the Fae Guard had several secret meeting spots. Safehouses. Most of them not in the Netherworlde since it was far too dangerous, but actually here, in the mortal world. Places they could gather and counsel, safe from Eris’ growing forces. This was before Eris declared all-out war, you understand – before Oberon and Titania went, as it were, poof.”

“Poof,” Woad repeated, spreading his hands out mystically and waggling his fingers.

Karya showed them an illustration on the page. “We know, from tracking the news and their movements, that the Grimms, Ker and Peryl, have been moving from city to city, right?”

They nodded.

“So they have information, clearly, from their own sources, that the lost Janus station is hidden somewhere in a city. This in itself is most unusual. Janus stations are usually somewhere remote, like the one we used on the moors, or the one on the beach in the Netherworlde. It would be hard to hide one in a city, but also clever, as it’s the last place you’d normally expect to find one. It would have to be somewhere hidden, where humans wouldn’t just run into it.”

“That’s the problem, though,” Henry argued. “We don’t know which city, neither did they. And cities are pretty big things you know. Even if we knew which city, how would we ever pin down the station?”

“This tells us which city,” Karya pointed to the glyph on the scroll. “In this book, it is mentioned that one of the secret meeting places here in the mortal realm was in an undercroft, a series of subterranean tunnels running beneath a city, and that the entrance to it was reached through a church.”

“Most cities have churches, Karya,” Robin said doubtfully. “And underground tunnels, probably too.”

The girl nodded impatiently. “Yes, yes, I know! But this symbol appears on a specific church. A church that is, as Calypso translated for us, at the centre of all things.”

She turned the book towards them, pointing to a picture. The illustration showed a good-sized city-centre church, situated in an urban cobbled square. Tall buildings surrounded the old black and white image.

“It’s not Satan’s holy feet,” the girl exclaimed. “That’s a mistranslation. It’s ‘Saint Anne’s holy feet’.” She smirked at Calypso, who was looking down at the old picture with faint interest. “These old dialects can be tricky to translate. This church, St Anne’s, is in Manchester city centre. It is in fact, exactly in the centre – of the whole city. Dead on.”

“It says so in the book?” Henry asked, peering with interest.

Karya nodded. “This symbol you identified, it is a masonry mark as you say. You’re quite right, Henry. But on this particular church, its placement also marks the point in the city where all distances to other cities are measure from.” She snapped the book shut. “So if you wanted to know how far Leeds was from Manchester, or Brighton, or Chipping Norton, you’d measure from this church. From this exact stone in fact, the one with this carving.”

“And we think this is where the Fae used to meet?” Robin asked. “Where the lost Janus station is? Beneath the streets of Manchester in the undercroft.”

He vaguely recognised the church. He had lived in the city, or its poorer suburbs at least, most of his life with Gran. He was fairly sure he’d walked past this countless times with her on shopping trips. His mind whirled with the knowledge.

“Grimms travel fast,” Woad observed. “We have to be quick, or Undine and nymph blood everywhere.”

“Woad’s right,” Robin said. “But how on earth are we going to get to the city? There are only something like three trains a day from Barrowood, and we’re hardly incognito. It would take hours and hours to travel there from out here in the sticks. Barrowood is in the middle of nowhere; it took me forever to get here in the first place.”

“I can tear us there,” Karya declared. “A couple of flips, space and distance. It will take it out of me, and unfortunately, it will also telegraph our movements to anyone watching, and I can assure your Eris is always watching. But I can’t do it from Erlking. There’s no way to with your aunt’s new and upgraded wards.”

“Not from this Erlking,” Calypso observed, thoughtfully. She rolled up the scroll and floated out of the room, beckoning them to follow.

The nymph led them through the house, upstairs and along hallways until the five of them reached the familiar long corridor at the end of which stood the red door.

“That never opens,” Robin said doubtfully. “It’s no way into the Netherworlde. The only time it ever opened was for Aunt Irene, and she’s not here.”

Calypso looked at him thoughtfully, as though to peer through the back of his head. “Are you or are you not the Scion of the Arcania?” she asked softly.

“Well, yes … apparently,” Robin muttered.

The nymph reached out slowly, her hand hovering above Robin’s chest, almost, but not quite, touching the seraphinite mana stone which hung around his neck. As though she were testing the magnetic field around it.

“You haven’t yet come to terms fully with what, and who, you are, Robin Fellows. Your aunt is steward here, but you? You are Fae. You are Sidhe-Nobilitas Fae, no less. Erlking runs through your blood as surely as you run through its hallways. The light catches your eyes and its windows, and its secrets, light and dark, are yours to discover. More than anyone else’s.”

Robin swallowed. Calypso could be oddly intense at times. As the others watched him, he reached out and tentatively tried the silver door handle. It was cold under his palm. His mana stone seemed to quicken like a heartbeat, and the knife at his hip shuddered slightly. There was a click, and the door to the Netherworlde swung open.

When last Robin had passed through this doorway, it had led to a circular chamber, overgrown with trees and bushes which looked down from a high place in the ruins of Erlking at the rolling landscape of the Netherworlde. This time, beyond the doorframe, a great arched and vaulted corridor of stone stretched away. Cloisters, lined with pillars and shadowy in the darkness, rolling away, long and grand. Robin didn’t know why he was surprised. The door to the Netherworlde may well open onto a different part of Erlking with each try for all he knew.

A cool wind blew out from the other world, ruffling his hair. It was dark in the long ruined tunnel before them. Moonlight fell down through missing stones in the crumbling ceiling in silvery beams, lost amongst the many pillars. On this side of the door, the sun was still baking the floorboards where it fell through windows.

“Wow,” Henry exclaimed. “It opened for you, Robin.”

“For us,” Karya corrected him. “I must go with the Scion. Who else is going to tear to the city?”

Woad nodded. “If you think I’m passing up a chance to go to the Netherworlde, even just to tear across the human world, then you have scrambled eggs for brains. I’m coming too.”

The three children looked at Henry expectantly.

“Well, duh,” he said after a moment. “When do we leave?”

“The Grimms may already be at the church,” Karya said. “Miss Peryl has clearly figured out where to go, and I’m guessing Mr Ker is with her now. We have to hurry.”

“You have to do no such thing!” a shrill voice cried from behind them. They turned as one. Hestia, looking shocked and horrified, had appeared at the turn of the corridor, her hand gripping the bannister rail as though she were likely to faint from horror. “What is the meaning of this madness?” Her eyes were flicking wildly from the children to Calypso, who remained completely composed.

“The Scion and his companions are going on a field trip,” she explained calmly.

“They are going on no such trip!” Hestia’s blustered, advancing down the corridor and looking appalled. “The young master has already almost died once today, and now … now you see fit to allow … no … to practically encourage these children to go chasing shadows in dark places? The mistress would not allow it! The mistress would not wish her charge to leave Erlking. Are you sending them off to their doom?!”

The nymph considered this. “Quite possibly,” she allowed. “But if I am, it is their doom, not yours or mine, house hob. The mistress of the house is not here. We have our parts to play and we all choose our own doom. I am not sending them anywhere. I am merely not preventing them from leaving.”

The housekeeper looked apoplectic to Robin, like a fury incarnate. “Nymphs!” she cried. “Hestia told the mistress, I did. No good will come of bringing a nymph to Erlking. I said it! They stir up the feelings of all like mud in water, until nothing is clear any longer. And all is murk and danger! They do not care for caution, or safety, or common sense! And they think nothing of the care of others.”

“And you do?” Calypso replied softly.

“Hestia does nothing but care!” the short woman spat furiously. “Hestia is care. Care of Erlking, care of Lady Irene’s needs. One of which, however happy or unhappy a task it may be, is the ongoing non-dismemberment or death of her occupants. What kind of a tutor are you, to be so cavalier with your charges?!”

“Only one of those present here is my ‘charge’,” Calypso replied, unfazed. “The others are not my concern, and the Scion is not a helpless, mewling infant. He can make his own choices. There is more at stake here than the safety of young creatures. A Shard of the Arcania hangs in the balance. Eris must not obtain it.” She glanced at the knife hanging from Robin’s belt briefly. “The last tutor, he would have felt the same.”

Hestia sneered, she was almost upon them, advancing down the corridor like an angry black and white bantam. “Oh, must she not? Mustn’t she, she says? Must stop Eris, eh? And yet Hestia does not see the nymph risk her own neck. The nymph stays safe! Safe and sound! How noble it is to risk life, and how easy when it is the life of another! I forbid it. I forbid this! Eris is not my concern!”

For perhaps the first time since meeting the nymph, Robin saw something dark pass across the woman’s face. “Eris is everyone’s concern,” she said, speaking sharply for the first time in his memory. “Everyone’s. You do not know Eris, you foolish woman. You know nothing outside of these walls, protected servant of Irene. You have not seen the things I have seen in Dis. You have not seen the holding camps. You have not seen the hills of bone and fire.” Calypso’s jaw worked silently a moment. “I see nothing but. Every time I close my eyes.” She lowered her voice. Her words had stopped the housekeeper in her tracks. The nymph tilted her head a little, visibly working to regain her serene composure. “Nothing but. Blood and bone. You have not been close to Eris. I have. She is like the sun. Brilliant and scorching, and like the sun she will blind you. She would blind us all and burn us to ash. What I did in the service of the dark Empress, what I saw? Erlking is my only refuge now.”

“These children’s lives,” the housekeeper said tremulously, pointing at Robin and the others. “These horrible, selfish, troublesome children. Their lives are not yours to gamble. If you want to stop seeing blood and bone when you close your eyes, then, Hestia says, you should keep your eyes open.”

“Their lives and choices are their own,” Calypso replied firmly. “There is no time to argue. I will answer to Irene herself for my decisions, not to her maidservant.” The nymph flicked a hand, and the corridor filled with a blizzard of ice crystals and a whoosh of air.

Hestia had been frozen to the spot, dusted with a fine sheen of frost, her face an icy sculpture of shock.

“Bloody hell,” Henry whispered in the silence that followed.

“Is she alright?” Robin asked, finding himself feeling guilty and worried. Hestia was a nightmare, but still, to freeze her like a snowman without even raising an eyebrow with concern. Calypso was cold inside and out.

“She will be fine,” the nymph told him. “It is temporary, and not important. We have no time, Scion, I am afraid. If you are to go, you must go now. Should the Grimms discover Hiernarbos, should Tritea’s Shard fall to Eris, it would be a terrible blow. I will not come. But I will not stop you leaving.”

Robin nodded.

“Remember what you learned from me, Robin Fellows,” she said. “The Waterwings, the whip, the other cantrips. Feel your way, do not be afraid to.” She glanced at his companions. “Your friends are important to you. I betrayed mine, long ago. It is a step you cannot take back. No amount of waves washes that footprint from the sand. Tread carefully, Scion of the Arcania. And please do not lose that knife.” She took his hands in hers, and for a moment, Robin thought she was becoming emotional and saying farewell, but she was simply pressing something into his hands. They looked like two small white pebbles. “When the way is a dam, flow through with these,” she said. “They are Neriedboons. The gift of a nymph. If you need help, and it is something I can grant you, ask with these. But ask only once. The promise of a nymph is something given only once in a life. Do not waste it.”

The children stepped over the threshold, Robin stealing a glance back at the sunny corridor beyond, and the blueish white figure of Hestia, frozen in perpetual fury.

“And try not to be dismembered by the Grimms,” Calypso added, almost as an afterthought. She closed the door behind them, leaving the young companions standing in the cool moonlit tunnel to another world.

GOING UNDERCROFT

“I can’t believe she froze Hestia!” Robin said, as he followed the others along the great vaulted tunnel of crumbling, black stone and through the ruins of the Netherworlde’s Erlking.

“Ah, she’ll be alright,” Henry replied, unconcerned. “She needed to cool off anyway.” He was peering around at the dark and silent ruins with undisguised wonder.

“It’s temporary,” Karya called back over her shoulder. “Your tutor is an oddball, Scion, but the keeper of the house meant to stop us.”

“Cool off,” Henry repeated hopefully. “Get it?” Everyone ignored him.

Robin wondered if Hestia would have been right to stop them. Irene would probably not be happy that he was diving off in pursuit of the Grimms, armed only with a haunted knife, an old book and some odd stones. But what choice did they have? They couldn’t wait for her to return. The Grimms could have found the Janus station already. If they did, they’d find the sanctuary of the Undine, and then they’d know where Tritea was buried. The Shard would be as good as Eris’. They had no choice. It was a race to this church.

“I still feel bad about it,” Robin said, skipping over tumbled stones and blocks of glossy masonry as Woad scampered ahead in the moonbeams falling through the broken roof. “She’s never going to let us hear the end of this, you know.”

Henry had removed his school tie and put it in his pocket as they walked. He cut a surreal sight, here in another world in his uniform. It occurred to Robin that his friend had never seen the Netherworlde side of Erlking before. In the human world, it was a rambling old house. Here, it had once been a great and splendid fortress, the home of the King and Queen themselves. Now, it was a vast skeletal ruin, jet black stones. Abandoned, silent, and still. Their scuffing footsteps echoed before and after them as they passed between the many pillars.

“Where are we going?” Robin asked to Karya’s back.

“Outside,” she replied. “I’m not sure I can tear us any great distance across the Netherworlde from within Erlking’s walls. There’s too much residual mana in the air. I need the sky above me and soil beneath my feet, or we’re never going to get anywhere.” She pointed ahead. “There, see, there’s a break in the wall where it’s crumbled away. We can get out, I think.”

There was indeed a gap, where much of the great arching wall had collapsed in a slurry of toppled stones. The moonlight was brighter here, and a sweet, unearthly smell floated enticingly in toward them. It was fresh grass with an undercurrent of cloves, and something rich and spicy. It made Robin breathe deeply and hungrily. The scents of the night-time Netherworlde.

“We could try it from here,” Henry reasoned. “What’s the worst that could happen?”

Karya glanced back at him. “Well, the physics of me tearing not just myself, but three others, back and forth not only between the two worlds, but also covering space and distance as well at the same time, with this much background interference? You could end up with one less leg, my eye in your elbow or Woad’s tail growing out of your chest, but if you’d like to try it…”

“Outside is fine,” Henry replied, hurrying to keep up. “What did your tutor give you?” he asked Robin, pacing at his side.

Robin opened his hand. Two stones, grey-blue and smooth as river pebbles. They looked like marbles. “I have no idea,” he said. “She called them Neriedboons. You know how vague she is. Something to help. They could be bath bombs for all I know.” He slipped them into his jeans pocket nonetheless, scrambling out through the broken wall into the starry night beyond.

Karya led them down the great hill on which Erlking stood, through tall wild grass, silver in the moonlight. It swayed around them in soft ripples. Henry walked the entire way down the hill backward, staring up open-mouthed at the vast broken tooth of Netherworlde’s impressive Erlking. The shadowy ruins loomed above them, dominating the landscape. A motionless sentinel. Beyond its great and jagged shadow, the sky was blazing with stars, across which scudded thin bruised clouds. It was cooler here than in the human world, Robin thought. The aromatic breeze was welcome and refreshing on his face. It was odd, but he felt lighter here than back home. More himself.

“Here should do it,” Karya announced, when they had put a significant distance between themselves and the imposing shell of the old Fae palace. They were almost at the base of the great hill. The dark and tangled Barrowood loomed at the edge of the silver grass, a mass of shadowy trees.

She had them form a circle, holding hands. Woad was practically bobbing up and down on his bare feet with excitement, sending up small clouds of pollen.

“Are we having a séance?” Henry asked, bemused.

“Just hold on tight,” Karya quipped. “We’re going to do this quickly, tear after tear, in fast succession. It has to be that way, if we want to get there before I run out of juice, so it’s going to be a bit…”

“Discombobulating!” Woad grinned.

Henry and Woad peered at him. His eyes flashed in the darkness. “You’re going to throw up.” He giggled with undisguised glee.

“Just … don’t let go,” Karya said sternly. “If you get left behind, I won’t know where, or how to come back to you.”

Robin nodded. The idea of being stranded alone in the middle of nowhere, in either world, was not an attractive one. He gripped Woad and Henry’s hands a little tighter.

“Let’s do it.”.

Henry looked around the circle. “Any words of advice? Should we bend our knees, close our eyes…?”

Karya smiled at him with narrowed golden eyes. “Just don’t throw up on me, human.”

Her amber bracelet flashed brightly, and the floor fell away from beneath them as howling darkness rushed up.

What followed was a series of nauseating lurches and a feeling of dizzying disorientation. Robin’s legs flailed beneath him as his stomach rolled inside, like the drop of a great dark rollercoaster, then suddenly there was brightness everywhere, and ground hit the base of his feet, making his knees jar. Blazing mid-day sunshine surrounded them. Grass, fields, a blue sky above, and hot sun on his face. They were somewhere in the human world. Blinking and bewildered, he just had time to take in his surroundings, and notice a small steeple behind a hedgerow, and then the world fell away again, plunging him back into weightless chaos, and a speeding sensation as they hurtled across distance in the space between the worlds.

Seconds later, another rush of air and a pop, and the four of them were standing, swaying unsteadily, but still gripping each other’s hands, in a deep, rocky gully of sharp stone. A black sky overhead and moonlit moss creeping over the jagged rocks. The Netherworlde then. Somewhere remote and silent. Henry made a quiet gagging noise, and Woad giggled, and they were gone again.

Several minutes passed in this way, as with each flash of Karya’s bracelet, they passed from world to world, hopscotching across reality and time. Each plunge into howling roaring darkness punctuated by a brief and nauseous break of alternating scenery. A sunny country lane, blackness. A twisted midnight forest, blackness again. A side street in some nameless mid-day suburbia, where a dog barked once before they were gone; a dark and wind ravaged moor, where it was raining heavily, icy in the night. A bowling green, a pebbled highway, some urban waste ground, a shadowy cliff, a sunny basketball court, an abandoned rail track. Each tear, each flash of Karya’s mana stone ping-ponging them between the Netherworlde and the human, until Robin lost track of which world was which, blinded by the flashes from the small girl’s bracelet and the speed with which they travelled, the constant sickening plummet into nothingness. Henry was making a rather un-manly high-pitched whine, which seemed faint and far off. His hand gripped Robin’s like a sweaty vice. Woad was laughing like a maniac, and Karya, when he briefly glimpsed her face, lit alternately as they flipped through the worlds, had her eyes firmly closed, frowning deeply in concentration and sweat beading on her brow.

The flashes were faster still, light and dark, almost a strobe as the worlds flipped by like a pack of shuffled cards – until at last, finally they stopped. The circle of companions found themselves abruptly standing, rather unsteadily, in a paved alleyway in bright sunlight. Karya broke the circle, staggering backward slightly. Quickly, she regained her balance, as though defiant to show any weakness. She was pale and drained, her mana stone bracelet dark and smoky.

Woad released Robin’s hand, tottering around on the cobbles a little, before falling over, laughing hysterically to himself. Happy tears were streaming down his face. Robin himself sat down hard on the floor, waiting for his head to stop spinning as he blinked in the light.

He was dimly aware of Henry leaning over a bin in the alleyway, heaving.

“Told you,” Woad cackled. “Vom!”

“Bloody … hell.” Robin said eventually, getting to his feet on watery legs and looking around. They were in the city, just off a large pedestrian square. He could see shops. Perfectly normal shops selling mobile phone upgrades, and made-to-measure suits. There was a large bookstore and a coffee-house, and everywhere people shopping and going about their business in the bright daylight as though four children had not just popped into existence next to them.

“I think…” Karya said, a little shakily, “ … that went … rather well.”

Henry wobbled back to the others, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his school shirt and looking green in the face. “Never … doing that … again,” he said queasily. “Did it work? Are we here?”

“Well, it’s not the Netherworlde,” Robin said. “Look, there’s Starbucks.”

Henry shook his head like a wet dog. Trying to get rid of the dizziness. “Doesn’t mean anything that. Starbucks get everywhere. There’s probably one on the moon.”

“This is the city of Manchester,” Karya assured them, nodding out of the alley in the direction of the shopping square. “And if my calculations are correct, which they always are, that is St Anne’s Square.”

“The centre of the city.” Woad sprung to his feet. He seemed to have enjoyed the whole thing. “I’ve never been in a human city before. It smells terrible. Are there Grimms about?”

Robin walked to the end of the alleyway and looked out into the square. There were a few red-jacketed charity workers armed with clipboards and pamphlets. A busker played a violin quite merrily, and a group of tourists were being led across the square by a tour guide with a large blue umbrella. He didn’t see any white-faced monsters though. “No Grimms, but look.”

There at the end of the square, across a small cobbled road, stood the church from the picture Karya had shown them in the book. Large and reddish-brown, behind a bronze statue on a plinth, presumably someone of importance. St Anne’s church dominated one end of the city square, between a bank and an old fashioned jeweller’s. It looked almost exactly as it had in the book, except that there was a large advertising banner currently affixed to its side, promoting some rather arty ballet currently on show.

“Beneath St Anne’s holy feet,” Karya said with a hint of pride. “Wow, sometimes I’m so good, I impress even myself.” She stumbled a little, grey-faced.

“I think you need to lie down for a bit,” Henry told her. “You’ve got about as much mana left as me, I think.”

Karya shooed him away. “I’m fine,” she insisted. “Let’s just get to the church, and be on the lookout for anyone who looks odd.”

Robin smiled at her. “A boy with a haunted knife, a schoolboy who looks like he’s going to throw up again any second, a girl wearing a bearskin, and a blue maniac with a tail.” He observed. “Odd like us, you mean?”

“Precisely.”

But they needn’t have worried how they were going to get Woad across the square without drawing too much attention. As it turned out, nobody batted an eyelid. Robin remembered shopping a lot with Gran in the city. There was always some gold-painted human statue or stilt-walking performance artist around. It was that kind of city. People clearly just assumed the same of Woad as they threaded their way through the crowds across the square toward the church. The violin busker seemed to be the only one who noticed them, and amused himself by speeding up his merry tune as they hurried by.

They reached the church without incident and regrouped behind a florist stall on the corner.

“Look! Here it is!” Henry exclaimed, rubbing his hand against the golden stone of the church wall. It almost glowed in the sunshine. “The mark from the scroll. The Undine’s puzzle.”

Carved into a cornerstone at hip height by the doors, the same symbol from the Undine’s tube sat innocently.

“Told you it was a masonry mark, didn’t I?” Henry waggled his eyebrows at them.

“At the centre of things,” Karya said. “We are at the centre of the city here, just as the scroll said.”

“Let’s go in,” Robin said, turning to the doors. He stopped in his tracks. “Oh. That’s not good.” There was a sign on the door. “'St Anne’s is currently closed for essential maintenance work while we restore the altar-piece. Services suspended until October'.” He deflated slightly.

“You’re right,” Karya said at his side. “That’s not good. That’s perfect.”

“Perfect?” Robin looked at her sidelong. “It’s closed up. Not open to the public.”

“Then we won’t be disturbed, will we?” the girl replied. “And anyway. I’m not the public.” She laid her hands on the ancient wooden doors. With some effort, Robin saw her push the last of her mana into them. They creaked and buckled a little, the wood warping just enough to pop the locks. Robin heard them clatter to the floor within the old building.

“Open sesame,” Karya said. “It’s time to get underground.”

A hush hung over the empty pews, the kind that made you want to tiptoe around. The only light was that which filtered through the stained glass, painting the vaults and stonework in a galaxy of colours. Dust motes rolled softly through the air like restless spirits. It was lovely and cool in here.

Robin had always loved the smell of churches. That odd mixture of candlewax, flowers, incense and furniture polish. At the far end of the roomy, deserted space, the entire altar was draped from ceiling to floor with a vast opaque sheet of white plastic. It looked surreal amongst the ancient stones.

“No grimm-grimms,” Woad sniffed, twitching his nose. “Not now anyway, but they have been here, not long ago. I can smell their shadows.”

“Their shadows?” Henry raised an eyebrow, as the four of them made their way slowly and cautiously along the central aisle of pews.

“He means their familiars, their Totems,” Karya muttered, running a finger along a dusty bench as they passed. All of their voices were hushed.

“What do they smell like?” Robin wondered.

Woad seemed to consider this for a second. “Sadness and spite,” he decided. “And burnt matchsticks. Although one of these Grimms also smells like liquorice.”

“Penny,” Robin said. “I mean, Peryl,” he corrected himself. “How did she get here so fast?”

“Somewhere around here is the entrance to the undercroft,” Karya mused, as they approached the shrouded altar. The huge plastic sheeting rustled and billowed slightly before them in quite a spooky way.

“What is an undercroft anyway?” Robin wanted to know. He was starting to regret bringing along the book on the Fae Guard. He didn’t have a backpack and it was cumbersome to carry. His Phorbas dagger clinked against his hip as they pushed their way through the rustling sheeting to the altar beyond.

“The city is riddled with them,” Karya explained, examining the old stone walls beyond with interest, stained glass light splodged on her face. “Lots of tunnels, they go on for miles. Pitch black, of course. A lot of them are flooded. Some of it was planned to be an underground canal that never got finished; some of it is old air-raid shelters from the war the humans had a while ago. There are plague pits down there too, where they stashed all the dead bodies during the Black Death. Piled them up floor to ceiling in stony rooms, like fish-fingers.”

“Sounds absolutely charming,” Henry muttered.

“Also where the Fae Guard used to meet,” Woad piped up. “Secret war councils, a way station from the Netherworlde to here, it’s not all bad stuff.”

Robin wondered how many of the Fae had escaped the war this way, fleeing persecution from Eris’ reign and escaping to live out their days in relative safety and secret in the human world, just like the sirens. Passing in secret through the hidden Janus station, like some underground railroad.

“Here!” Karya cried excitedly. She had dropped to her knees by the altar itself. “Look!” They gathered around. Carved into the stone, no bigger than her thumb, was a small glyph. A stylised eye.

“That’s the symbol for a glamour,” Robin said. He had seen one similar on the Isle of Winds. “We need glam roots to break a glamour, I remember that. We had some jam last time.”

“It had strawberries in it,” Woad nodded. “I got a pip in my eye.”

Karya sighed heavily. “Amateurs,” she muttered. Reaching into the depths of her bulky coat, she withdrew a small vial and unscrewed it. The lid had a pipet attached. “Glam-tincture,” she explained. “A drop in each eye please. No preserved fruits involved, I promise.”

They passed the clear liquid around, each dropping a smidgen of the mixture into their eyes.

Robin blinked rapidly as his vision blurred. When he could see again, there was a square hole in the stone just behind the altar, as though someone had lifted one of the floor slabs away. A rusty metal ladder, brown and flaky with age, led down into the utter blackness beyond. The hole at their feet was small and pitch black. It didn’t look inviting.

“Guess we found the entrance then,” Robin said. He passed the tiny bottle to Henry, who muttered but followed suit, flinching with each drop.

“Bloody hell,” Henry said, peering down with interest and a small frown on his slightly sunburned face. “Down, down to goblin-town we go, my lad.”

* * *

The ladder went down for a long while. Robin was surprised how cold it was. The subterranean air was chilly down here, like stepping into a freezer. He had insisted on going first, the others following, so his feet were the first to hit what felt like packed earth. He stumbled away blindly in the blackness, until his hands met cool dark stone, listening to the scuffling sound of his companions’ feet on the ladder as they followed him down one by one. The light from the church was nothing but a distant milky square, far above them now, and he rubbed his hands together, dislodging flakes of rusted powdery metal from the old ladder. It smelled down here. Dust and dead air. Possibly rats.

“Woad,” Karya said when they were all at the bottom. “A little light please.”

“I’m just a torch to you, eh Boss?” Woad muttered quietly in the suffocating blackness. There was a small flicker of pale light, as the floating orb appeared in the boy’s hand.

“Willo-light is my favourite cantrip,” the faun shared.

They stood in a long low tunnel of arched, plain stone with a floor of packed earth, a little like a dry sewer. It stretched away in either direction endlessly into the blackness. Oblongs of deeper shadow punctuated the walls, showing other passageways which branched off the main corridor.

“This place is supposed to be a bit of a warren,” Karya told them. “So stick together. We don’t want anyone getting lost down here, you might never find your way back up to the surface.”

Woad picked up a scent and led them on, pattering through the still and silent blackness, taking turns left and right as he led them deeper into the undercroft. Their footsteps echoed in the darkness as they walked. Robin couldn’t help but think of the famous catacombs of Rome, or the burial tunnels which ran under Paris, only here there were no bones or piled skulls. In fact, as they walked on, from passageway to dark passageway, sometimes descending, sometimes dog-legging through crumbling archways, there were stranger oddities to see than bones. They passed several shop mannequins, bald and pale, lying discarded and forlorn on the floor, most of them missing arms and legs. They looked macabre to him. He wondered why on earth anyone had brought them down here.

“People have been exploring the undercroft for years, according to my reading,” Karya told them in hushed tones, as Woad and his small glimmering light led them around yet another bend in the blackness and beneath a low lintel, which Henry almost brained himself on, into a squat, square room. “Some people say that homeless people live down here, that they came down generations ago and never came back up again. Living on rats.” She sounded quite interested.

“What people?” Henry asked dubiously. “What people say that? You don’t even know any people.”

“Just people,” Karya shrugged, a little defensively. “There are also supposed to be rats as big as dogs down here too.”

“Is this supposed to be making us feel any better?” Robin muttered. He had drawn Phorbas and held the knife gripped in his hand. He doubted it would do any good, but it was comforting to hold in the sepulchre-like space anyway. He made a point of not jabbing any of his friends with it.

Several of the tunnels they explored had collapsed altogether. Others led to dead ends, where Woad sniffed around for a while before doubling back. Occasionally they came to steps, sometimes metal, sometimes stone, always downward. Deeper beneath the city. And always leading them colder and darker, and into more silence. Woad’s flickering willo-light made their shadows leap silently on the walls as they walked.

At one point they passed through a room which was hung on one wall with a grubby, ornate and smashed mirror. Candle stubs and empty beer bottles surrounded it like some kind of odd shrine. They passed on wordlessly. In another dark corner, they found an ancient looking porcelain doll, its face cracked and chipped, the many petticoats of its dress grey and tattered, like cobwebs.

“Well,” Henry observed lightly, after they had all stared at if for a while. “That’s not the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen, honest.”

“Could be creepier,” Robin reasoned. “Could be a clown doll.”

They all muttered and nodded in unanimous agreement, and moved on, shivering.

More than once, as the companions moved stealthily through the undercroft, they heard movement. Scuttling in the darkness. Unseen rats, they hoped.

“This tunnel is flooded,” Woad said, after a while, when the narrow, claustrophobic passageway they were currently creeping along ended in steps descending into dark water. They peered down at the surface. There was a discarded gas mask floating just below the surface, looking like the severed head of some insect alien. It shimmered in Woad’s flickering light. “We should have taken that last left, I knew it.”

“We’ve been down here for hours,” Henry said, shivering slightly. It was cold as the grave, and his breath was visible in the ghostly light. “Wandering around like lost spirits. Are we even sure if we can find out way back?”

“We’re not going back,” Karya said. “And Woad knows what he’s doing. He can track a Grimm if he has their scent.”

Woad nodded, looking at Robin. “She’s here,” he said, his yellow eyes glittering. “I can smell her, your mental moth-girl.”

“She’s not my moth girl,” Robin replied.

“And one other.” Woad sniffed. “Dark and dangerous. Strong. He smells of cruel. They are close, very close. We need to be quiet as trilobites.”

“We’re kind of announcing ourselves with the light anyway though, aren’t we?” Henry reasoned in a whisper as they backed up and Woad led them down a different side tunnel. “Won’t we see the Grimms’ lights too?”

“The Grimms don’t need light to see,” Karya said, as though this were the most obvious thing in the world. “We could put out our light if you wished, and feel our way, but it will put us at a disadvantage. They can see just fine in the blackest of darkness. Mr Nyx saw to that.”

“Nyx?” Robin asked.

“Hmm,” Karya murmured. “Eldest of the Grimms. But that’s another story.”

Robin was already feeling uncomfortable enough prowling through these endless creepy tunnels filled with macabre and disturbing oddities and with the ever increasing weight of the far off city above them, pressing down. The thought of doing so in pitch blackness, hands scrabbling along walls, feet shuffling uncertainly on uneven ground while in the darkness behind them, a white faced ghoul like the grinning Mr Strife might be creeping up on them silently, breathing down their necks like a wide eyed grim reaper? It didn’t appeal in the least.

“Let’s keep the light,” he said decisively. “It might help us find—”

“—this?” Karya said, stopping in her tracks so suddenly that Henry and Robin both bumped into her.

Woad had reached the end of a colonnade of stone pillars. He stood, his wavering ghost-light floating above his head, before a large door set in the stone wall. It was unlike anything they had seen so far in the undercroft: a circular slab of stone, carved with intricate whorls and designs.

“What is that?” Robin asked, coming forward.

Karya was frowning at the door with interest. “That … is a redcap door,” she said with wonder.

“Redcaps? Here in the human world?” Robin was confused.

“Redcaps get everywhere,” the girl explained, lightly tracing the whorls with her fingertips. “Everywhere blood has been shed. Everywhere there has been misery. They burrow under it. Look at this lettering.”

“That’s the high tongue,” Woad announced. There was a circle of glyphs in the centre of the swirling stone. He glanced at Robin and Henry. “I don’t read it, but I know the shapes.”

“What does it say?” Henry asked.

“Squiggle dash, sharp pointy one, another squiggle, one that’s a bit snaky, pitchfork one—”

“What does it say, Karya,” Henry clarified loudly, talking over Woad.

“It’s the Sidhe-Nobilitas,” she said. “They must have used redcaps to make the sanctuary. Clever.”

Robin’s eyebrows raised. He’d met redcaps before. They hadn’t seemed like the most obliging of creatures.

“I’ve told you before, Scion,” Karya explained. “The Fae ruled the Netherworlde. And I mean really ruled it. In the old fashioned sense of having total dominion over all other creatures. The redcaps served the Fae.” She sighed a little. “Everyone served the Fae.”

“Except the Panthea, eventually,” Henry pointed out.

“The Panthea were not always in the Netherworlde,” the girl said. “Woad, bring the light down to me here.”

“Where did they come from then?”

She shrugged. “Don’t ask me, I’m not one of them.” Henry and Robin looked expectantly to Woad, who returned their expression blankly.

“Don’t ask me either,” he said. “I came from the Sodden Fens, that’s all I know. And I was glad to see the back of it, and the whole silly tribe. I might be Panthea, but so are around a million other Netherworlde beings. I don’t remember ever not being here.”

“Well, no Panthea, or any other kind of creature, can open this doorway,” Karya announced, inspecting the stone. “The redcaps are very skilled and the Fae sealed this sanctuary well.” She got up off her knees. “See here…” She read the carved script. “Tantum per tactum manus domini mei, Sanguinem tantum Fae.”

She looked at Robin. “‘This door will only open for one of the Fae. One with Fae blood’.”

Robin stepped forward. “So that’s what they needed my blood for. We better hurry.” Tentatively he reached out, palm flat, and touched the doors in the centre of the stone swirls.

There was an immediate flash, from both the doors and Robin’s mana stone, and the stone swirl flowed, spiralling in on itself in liquid movement. The door glowed, as though it held a storm deep within the stone and a series of deep, grinding clanks issued from beyond, echoing around the chamber.

With a great hiss of air, the door swung open before them.

Before they could take a step within, a noise behind them made the companions start.

It was applause, solitary and lazy.

Robin turned. There, dimly lit by the flickering of Woad’s light, stood Miss Peryl.

The girl was leaning casually against a pillar, looking relaxed and nonchalant. The human clothes she had worn in Barrowood were gone, replaced by a crisp charcoal suit with a glittering red brooch. Her hair fell forward, bright as a bruise. She was smiling at them warmly, red lips in a white face.

“Oh, well done!” she said crisply. “No, really. I do mean it. Who knew these things were so fiddly to open anyway? Thanks so much for all the trouble, you really are the best, but we can take it from here, thanks.” She flicked out a hand and Robin felt a blow to his chest, as though he had bit hit by a great invisible mallet. Tattered shreds of shadow had rushed across the chamber to collide with him. It knocked him off his feet, sending him flying through the open portal and into the sanctuary beyond, where he landed heavily on his back amongst a whorl of mosaic tiles.

“Robin!” Henry yelled in shock.

Peryl flicked her hand lazily in Henry’s direction. Shadows flew and he skittered across the floor, cracking his head hard on a pillar in the darkness and collapsing in a boneless heap.

“One potato … two potato.” Peryl smirked coldly. She stared at Karya, who had planted herself firmly between the Grimm and the secret sanctuary. Woad was hissing at her side like a feral cat. She pointed a long white finger at the faun, flicking it against her thumb. “Three potato.” The faun somersaulted upwards, trying to dodge the invisible strike, but the white girl matched his movements with a swish of her arm, giggling as he took the impact full force and crashed heavily into the door lintel, showering down dust and dropping to the ground like a sack of stones.

Miss Peryl levelled her merry black eyes on Karya, who glared back defiantly.

“ … Four,” she finished. “Are we going to dance, little witch?” She tilted her head to one side. “It’s awfully dark down here. My element. Not yours.”

Karya replied by bunching her fists and dropping to the ground, slamming her hands powerfully against the floor of packed dirt. There was a thunderous rumble and the entire floor of the cavern bucked, rippling toward Peryl in a tidal wave of black earth and grit. A fissure opened up, tearing wide and almost swallowing her, but the Grimm leapt to one side at the last moment, kohled eyes wide in alarm.

“Idiot,” Karya replied, glaring up at her enemy from her crouch, eyes flashing gold behind a tangle of hair. “Shadows everywhere, yes, but we’re under my element. We’re inside it.”

Several of the pillars supporting the arched roof of the chamber were now askew. There was an uncertain and ominous rumble of stone above them.

“Imbecile!” Peryl spat. “Are you going to bring down the house on top of us all? Squashing your precious Scion like a bug? Jeez, you guys are dumb!”

She flung out both arms and a whooshing belt of darkness shot through the dusty chamber toward Karya. It hit her full force, knocking her through the doorway and into the sanctuary within, where Robin was just blearily getting to his feet.

Peryl skipped playfully over the deep black cracks of the outer chamber as though she were playing hopscotch, striding over Woad and Henry carelessly as she followed Karya into the sanctuary.

Robin crossed over to Karya, dropping down beside her, but the small girl was already struggling to her feet, a positive fury in a bundle of furs. She shook off Robin’s arm.

“Nice hit,” she growled. “But I can do this all day, worm of Eris.”

Robin stared at Miss Peryl as she entered. She couldn’t remotely have passed for human anymore. Not down here in the underground, in the failing light of Woad’s mana. Her face was white as old parchment, her red lips set in a thin sneer, and her eyes were black pools, every bit as dark and deadly as Mr Strife’s had been.

“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” she said in a sing-song voice. She wagged her finger at Karya from the doorway as though she were a naughty child. “How did you get here so fast? I wonder. Did you tear back and forth, across the worlds? That’s bound to take it out of you, little seer. Then you must have broken through the church doors, and that little temper tantrum just now? Personally, I doubt there’s enough mana left in you to flick a pebble. I think you’re bluffing, kiddo.”

Robin saw that Karya was indeed pale and sweaty, her hair matted on her forehead. Her mana stone bracelet around her wrist was so dark and dull it might have been carved from jet.

“I, on the other hand, am well rested. I stretched even, before you got here. Wouldn’t want to get a cramp, would we? The station will open. And it will open for us, not for you.” She stared at Robin, and suddenly gave him a friendly smile. “Nice to see you again, blue-eyes. Very thoughtful of you to come. I didn’t get nearly enough blood, you see?” She flicked a thumb over her shoulder. “Brother Ker, he read the door runes too, we found a version in an old book, a very old book back in Dis. The Dark Empress didn’t dispose of every last scrap of old lore.”

Her boots tapped across the mosaic floor of the inner chamber like tap shoes. “We didn’t know where the door was, of course, until you nearly drowned finding out. But we knew what the doors said.” She rolled her eyes, patting her hands together lightly to rid them of dust. “Ker is so literal though, big old grumpy guts. Only by my master’s hand, only by the blood of the Fae will I open, blah, blah enigmatic inscription blah.” She shook her head, her purple hair shimmering. “That big old silly goose thought it meant actual blood. He’s a bit one-tracked when it comes to the stuff. And I’ve been stealing yours here and there for ages. We rubbed it on the doors, thought that would work, see? But, of course, they wouldn’t budge.” She pointed at him. “We didn’t need the sticky stuff. We needed you. The bloodline of the Fae. To use that as well.” She nodded behind Robin, her eyes glittering hungrily.

Robin glanced behind him. There was a rough arch of stone, freestanding and made from three huge slabs; two uprights, carved with swirling designs, and a long heavy dolmen balanced across the top of them. It looked like a piece of Stonehenge gone astray. It stood in the centre of a circular vault and it took Robin only a quick scan of the room to confirm his fears. There was no other way out.

“The Scion will never open this doorway for you,” Karya said defiantly. She gripped Robin by the forearm. He thought she meant to shield him, and indeed she was taking great pains to give that effect, but from the sudden weight of her he suspected she was bracing herself for balance. She really was almost tapped out.

“Good people share their toys,” Peryl sneered at her. “So what, he’s your key, not mine? That’s not very fair is it? Is that how it is? Does he have any idea how much you’re using him? Painting us as the bad guys here? Honestly, you should hang your head in shame.” She regarded the girl pityingly. “You know, instead of hanging it in fatigue. Mix things up a bit.”

“You’re the bad guys,” Robin said defiantly. “You’ve killed people. And for what? A Shard?”

“They were only humans,” the Grimm said flippantly. “That hardly counts. And yes, of course for a Shard. For treasure, Robin Fellows, and for power, real power.” She grinned, her eyes bright. “For that I would spill every last drop of blood in this world and the next. Wouldn’t you?”

“Of course not!” Robin retorted. He was backing up, pulling Karya with him as he went and the girl advanced smoothly. His heel hit the bottom step of the central pedestal.

Peryl rolled her eye dramatically. “Yeah, yeah right, you say that now…”

Robin was trying to see around her, back through the doorway to the crumbled room, to get a glimpse of Henry or Woad. Something moved out there, something large in the shadows.

Robin’s mind was racing. This girl had floored two of his companions without even blinking and had knocked Karya for six. Could he hold his own, with Galestrike and Waterwhip perhaps? He felt exhausted himself. Unsealing and opening the doorway to the sanctuary had drained his mana too. But he would damn well try.

“Why on earth would the Scion open the pathway to the hidden valley for you?” Karya snorted. “You think he’s afraid of you? Of any of you? None of you can even think for yourselves.” She snorted. “Grimms! You’re nothing but puppets. Eris’ little projects gone wrong.”

“Look who’s talking,” Peryl sniggered. “And yes the Scion will behave and do as he is told, because we now have something that matters to him.”

“There’s nothing I’d bargain with the likes of you for.” Robin shook Phorbas at her, the blade catching the ever-fading light.

“Oh really?” Peryl stopped, placing her hands on her hips.

Behind her, someone stepped through the doorway, out of the shadows. Robin stared. Another snow-white Grimm, but this was easily the largest man Robin had ever seen in his life. The giant had to stoop to fit through the doorway and was built like a ghostly Minotaur. He was dressed in black pants and a sleeveless jerkin, which looked patchy and dark, as though spattered with some noxious substance. Robin didn’t want to imagine what. It looked like long-dried blood.

The Grimm straightened up, his wide flat face rugged and carved with thick nightmarish features. His hair was a wild brace of blood red spikes, like fire atop his skull, and when his huge mouth split into a silent, humourless grin beneath his beetle eyes, Robin saw that his teeth were sharp and jagged, a grinning shark’s maw.

In the monster’s thick, sinewy arms, which were wrapped from wrist to elbow in pale wraps, there lay a prone, unconscious form, looking small and weak.

“Woad!” Robin cried.

The faun’s head lolled loosely. The boy looked like a tiny rag doll in the grip of the titan entering the room.

Peryl smiled. “Oh look! We have your little friend. Wesley, was it? I can’t recall exactly. He was pink the first time I met him. Blue at the pool. And in a moment…” She winked playfully at the huge, nightmarish man looming behind her. “Once my brother Ker here skins him, I suppose he’ll be red.” She glanced back at Robin and Karya, both frozen in horror. “Fauns’ hides fetch a pretty price to the right buyer, you know,” she said in light conversational tones.

“Leave him alone!” Robin shook the knife, fury building in his chest. Mr Ker didn’t even look at him. Instead, the ghoulish titan turned his dead, humourless eyes on the girl.

“Enough play, Peryl,” he growled, in a voice like thunder, which echoed around the circular walls. “I tire of your games. We will kill these three and take the Scion. Quick … simple.”

“Where’s the human one?” she asked him.

The huge Grimm shrugged his wide shoulders. “Out there, who cares? He’s of no worth. Humans break too quickly. Leave him here in the dark. The tunnel caved in, thanks to you playing with this little earth-witch. There’s no getting out for him anyway.”

“If either of you touch a hair on that faun’s head,” Karya said, shaking with anger. “I will—”

Quick as a flash, Peryl reached up to the faun lying in her brother’s arms and roughly seized his head and tugged, ripping out a handful of hair. She span on her heel and flicked it towards the children, blue strands fluttering through the air. “You’ll … what?” she asked, smiling. “You’ll watch, that’s all you’ll do.” The smile dropped from her face. “Now be a darling and open the doorway, Scion. Super-quick please. I’m so utterly bored already.”

“Let Woad go,” Robin said through gritted teeth. “Put him down, leave him alone, then … then we’ll talk.”

Mr Ker growled, deep and low like a panther, his beady black eyes flashing, his mouth downturned in displeasure. His sharp teeth shining wetly.

“You do not make demands, thing,” he spat. “You are a tool. Special or not, you are still Fae-scum. You will learn your place in Dis.” He looked down to the faun, his expression cruel and wild. “I think, in fact, I will not put this pathetic stick insect down. I think I will not skin it either.” He grinned darkly at Robin. “I think I will keep it. As a pet.”

Peryl gave her brother a dark look. “Is that really a good idea?” she whispered to him. “You know you always break them.” She looked across to Robin and Karya. “He’s so heavy-handed. Kills everything, sooner or later.” She considered. “Usually later. He tends to pull off arms and legs, don’t you, dear brother? Like that pixie you had, remember?”

Ker’s monumental visage darkened further still. “It tried to run away,” he rumbled. “Spiteful thing. Can’t run with no legs.”

“Yes dear, I’m sure you had your reasons, but the clean-up is horrible. I don’t want to be picking faun out of my hair for the next few days.” She patted her brother’s huge arm. “Just snap its neck now, and if the Scion still doesn’t open the doorway, we can go and do the same to the little human boy sleeping in the dirt out there.”

Ker nodded reluctantly, looking unhappy about it.

“No! No! Wait!” Robin threw his hands up. “Just … stop a second.” His heart was racing. These two creatures were more than just dark. They were clearly unbalanced. And here he was, trapped deep underground with them. No other way out of the chamber, no way back now that the tunnel leading here had collapsed. Robin and his friends were buried alive with these ghouls. He wondered if the people in the city above had felt the tremor of the tunnel’s collapse, as they went about their shopping in the sunshine. That seemed a world away. There was no one to help them down here. No one but themselves to rely on, and neither he nor Karya had any mana left.

Miss Peryl and Mr Ker were regarding him with interest. Ker’s huge white paw was poised above Woad’s slim blue throat.

“We all go through,” Robin said. “All of us, Henry too. No one gets left here. I’ll open the Janus station, or, well, I’ll try to, but just don’t snap anything or rip anything off, okay? Deal?”

“Can I have the tail when you’re done later?” Peryl asked Ker in a curious tone. “I think it would make a nice belt if I have it tanned.”

Ker growled possessively, and cradled the faun a little tighter, holding him away from his sister. Robin was sure Woad’s tiny ribs were about to snap in the grip of the ghoulish bear.

“Stop! Don’t! Let us all go through and I’ll help,” Robin said urgently. “There might be other things you need my help with, on the other side. Like that.” He pointed a wobbling knife at the redcap door. “Those are my terms, okay? It won’t cost you anything and I promise I’ll unlock the station.” He was pointing the knife from one Grimm to the other, unsure which of the two was most dangerous. Karya squeezed his arm.

“Are you mad?” she whispered shakily to him. “As soon as we get to the Netherworlde side, they’ll slit our throats anyway. Well,” she considered. “Everyone except you.”

“Oh, alright,” Peryl said indulgently, as if she was doing Robin a huge favour. “Fine, we have a deal. We’ll do it your way. Activate the Janus station. We’ll all go together, just one big happy family.”

“R … Rob?” a voice came from behind Ker. The entire assembled party turned to look.

Henry had appeared, stumbling in the doorway. His school uniform was covered in dust and his hair wild. He’d cut his lip and his chin had a smear of blood. “What’s going on? Where…” He trailed off, taking in the scene.

His eyes widened. “Woah! Where did the incredible hulk come from?” he said shakily. “I didn’t think I’d hit my head that hard.” He noticed Woad and his face instantly changed from confusion to outrage. “Oi! You put that faun down, Goliath. He’s not yours.”

Ker bared his teeth at Henry like an angry dog. “Mine!” he grumbled. “The faun stays with me.”

“Henry…” Robin was relieved to see his friend upright, even if he did look more than a little concussed. “Come here. To me and Karya, now. It’s okay, they won’t hurt you.” He glared with venom at Peryl, who looked back with an arched eyebrow. “We have a deal. Don’t we?”

She shrugged carelessly. “Oh please, like I’d waste my breath on this human gnat. He wouldn’t be worth the effort.”

Henry edged around the room warily, and a little woozily, not taking his eyes off the frightful and surreal pair.

“So…” he said unsteadily as he reached Robin and Karya, rubbing the back of his head gingerly. “Strife and Moros are the pretty ones in the family, eh?” He nodded to Eris’ servants. “So which one of these two lovelies is the one you snogged then, mate? Because to be honest, you could do better.”

“Silence that human or I’ll have his flapping tongue for a bookmark,” Ker growled.

“I’m serious, Scion,” Karya said to Robin. “There is no honour in Grimms. If you think for a second they will keep their word, you’re wrong. We’re dead as soon as we step through to the Netherworlde, and the Shard is as good as lost.”

Robin shook his head. He had a plan, of sorts. “When we hit the other side,” he whispered sidelong. “The second we arrive. I want you to tear us away. Don’t care how far, don’t care which direction, or whether you keep us in the Netherworlde or back here, just get us away from them. We’ll think of something then.”

“I can’t,” she hissed, as the Grimms steadily approached. She led him backwards up the steps to the monolith, Henry following. “I don’t have anything left in me. That pasty psycho is right: I don’t think I could move a blade of grass right now.”

“I have mana you can use,” Robin said.

“It doesn’t look like it,” she replied, frowning at him in confusion. “You look like you’re going to pass out. How much energy did it take you to open that doorway?”

“All of it,” Robin shrugged. He still hadn’t taken his eyes off their enemies, Ker lumbered up the steps, Woad in arms.

“I couldn’t possibly touch your mana stone anyway,” she said, exasperated.

“I wasn’t talking about mine,” he muttered to her. He wiggled his knife in his hand. The pommel stone flashed in the light. “Just … just be ready, okay? We’ll only get one shot to escape.”

Karya’s eyes widened in shocked understanding. She grabbed Robin and Henry’s arms, linking them tightly. Henry, still dizzy, looked down in confusion. Clearly mistaking the gesture for one of nerves, he gave her hand a small reassuring squeeze. She glared at him witheringly.

“Well?” Peryl said. “We’re waiting. Let’s all get back home.”

Ker nodded in agreement, the spikes of his blood red hair slicing his face into shadow and light. “Dis calls. And my army awaits us.”

Robin had never operated a Janus station before. The one he’d first encountered hadn’t looked like this. It had been a circle of stones atop a hill, and Karya and Woad had done all the work. The only other time he’d been through one, on a sandy beach, he’d been half possessed and unconscious.

He didn’t need to figure anything out, however. As soon as he set foot within the archway, a strange vibration seemed to ripple through the sanctuary, making dust fall from the domed roof above them. A strange feeling ran through his body, like pins and needles, and the air between the archway of stone seemed to grow thicker. His Fae blood was activation enough for this portal, it seemed.

They bunched up together within the stones. Robin held tightly to Karya. His knife was in the hand she clung to, so that they held it together. It made Robin’s skin crawl to be standing so close to the Grimms. Peryl was watching him carefully with narrow, amused eyes, and Ker loomed above them all like walking doom.

“No tricks now, little Fae,” he spat through sharp, gritted teeth. His massive gnarled hand was over Woad’s face. Robin couldn’t see if the faun was awake or unconscious.

The odd prickling feeling was intensifying, a sense of vibrating from within. The air was thicker still and seemed to be filling with a thin golden mist.

Robin steadied his feet, preparing to go once again deep down the rabbit hole. And then the mist rushed up and enveloped them, obliterating all from view, and the world fell away into darkness and silence.

FAEFROST

Everything was confusion in the moments that followed. Robin’s feet hit the ground, freezing and wet, icy powder flooding in over the tops of his trainers. The sensation was unexpected and shocking, and it took his brain a moment to register what it was.

Snow? Deep snow, almost to his knees.

An icy wind buffeted him as soon as they arrived in the Netherworlde, howling in his face like biting teeth and tearing through him. It roared around them, keening like a great lost spirit. As the golden mist disappeared, Robin got a glimpse of rocky walls, glittering, rugged and green, mountains perhaps, draped with ice, and overhead a white sky pregnant with enormous billowing snow clouds.

“Now,” he yelled to Karya over the wind. His face stung with the cold. Still gripping her hand, he barged into Miss Peryl as hard as he could, knocking the Grimm off balance as he lunged past her, driving through the thick white snow toward Mr Ker, meaning to reach out with his free hand and grab at Woad. At the same time, he heard Karya yell to Henry to hold on tight, her voice whipped away by the howling gale, and he felt her fingers slide down the knife he clutched until they closed around the garnet stone set in the pommel. Around Phorbas the satyr’s mana stone. There was a familiar lurch as Karya tore, and the world began to fall away again, as quickly as it had come. But at the last moment, his face a nightmarish fury, Ker dodged and turned aside, spinning the unconscious form of Woad out of reach so that Robin’s grasping hand closed on thin air. Robin’s eyes widened in horror.

An icy hand grabbed his shoulder painfully. Peryl had grappled him.

“You traitor!” she screeched, but her words were swallowed up by the tear. The wind, the snow, the mountains, all melted away, and Robin found himself once more hurtling through the blackness, aware of Karya’s hand gripping his own and the knife, and of Peryl’s painful grasp, monstrously strong, digging deep into his collarbone.

He hit the ground hard as the blackness suddenly receded.

Snow again, soft and freezing, but not as deep. It glittered between his fingers as his head stopped spinning. There was no wind here. Wherever Karya had torn them through to, it was a more sheltered place than the other.

Shaking off Peryl, Robin scrabbled to his feet, staring around wildly. They were on a perfectly white, gently sloping snowy plain, bright moonlight flooding down on them, making the landscape glow brightly enough to hurt his eyes. The sky was covered with pale clouds above them, through which the moon diffused, blanching the sky, and the still, silent air here, freezing and fresh, was filled with fat flakes of softly falling snow. Robin’s breath came in great gasping clouds.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Karya and Henry, also struggling to their feet, shaking off snow in clumps. Karya looked shaken and nauseous, as though she had been electrocuted. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably as Henry dragged her to her feet, his own hair already piling up with snowflakes and his teeth chattering in the cold.

Of Woad and Mr Ker, there was no sign.

No sign at all.

“Woad!” Robin called hoarsely, his voice breaking. He stared despairing and desperate at the others. “We left Woad! We left him! I tried to grab him but … Ker still has him. We left him behind—”

“Robin!” Henry cried in alarm. “Behind you!”

Robin was knocked off his feet as a heavy blow landed in the small of his back. He fell, splayed in cold powder, rolling over and staring up to see Peryl standing over him, white against the night sky.

She looked demented. Like a fury from hell, her purple hair wild about her head, glaring down at the boy she had just kicked to the ground with undisguised anger. Her teeth were bared, her eyes blazed and her expression was murderous.

“Worm!” she yelled, gusts of snow blowing in the air between them. “You horrible little liar! Where have you taken me? Where is my brother?” Robin tried to get up, but his feet slipped in the snow. The Grimm raised her arms towards him, shaking white hands outstretched. “I’ll kill you! How dare you! I’ll kill all of you!” she spat furiously. Shadows crept between her fingers like black snakes of smoke, thickening and building. Henry and Karya were too far away, he couldn’t get up in time, she was going to blast right through him in her anger.

“How dare you betray me, you Fae scum!” she hissed. “I’ll teach you the meaning of pain, you brat! I’ll—”

She stumbled. There had been an audible crack. Robin watched as the Grimm tottered a little, looking confused, and then her eyes slowly rolled back in her head and she collapsed to the ground, face first into the deep snow.

Standing behind her, holding a large rock between its mittened hands, was a figure, silhouetted in the snow. A stranger, bundled in pale furs and a deep shadowy hood, like a wilderness hunter.

Robin blinked up in confusion at their saviour. Whoever it was, they had just cracked a rock over the Grimm’s head, knocking her out.

The figure stepped forward, still holding the rock above its head.

It was a boy, a few years older than Robin. His thick, bundled clothing looked like wolf skin wraps against the cold, pale and thick. A leather pack on his back criss-crossed his chest with straps.

The boy’s eyes were narrowed with suspicion and as silver as mercury, his face serious beneath the thick fur hood he wore. He frowned down at Robin for a moment, standing there like judgement itself. Then he unceremoniously dropped the rock with a thud into the snow. It landed an inch from Peryl’s head.

“She was attacking you,” he said. It was more of an observation than a question. His voice was surprisingly deep and flat. The boy stared at the unmoving figure of the Grimm, his eyes still narrowed and intense, like some wild creature ready to bite or bolt. “Was she right to do so?”

“No,” Karya said weakly, breathless in the cold. “She’s a Grimm. A servant of Eris, and she meant to kill us.”

The boy considered this, staring at the three children. There was no hint of friendliness or warmth in his face. He looked as though he might decide to pick the rock back up. Snow fell around them all on the white moonlit plain in soft and silent clouds.

Eventually, the silver-eyed boy seemed to reach a decision.

“Then I made the right choice. It is lucky for you I was nearby,” he said gruffly. “No one comes up on the tundra.” He glanced around, as if to verify that they were alone on this snow-blasted plain. “No one travels the Gravis Glaciem. It’s a forgotten place.” His jaw worked silently. Robin saw his hands bunch in his mittens. They looked home-made, like everything he wore. “That’s why I’m here.” He held out a hand to Robin, to pull him to his feet.

Robin started at it, still confused.

“Take it then,” the boy snapped, and Robin did, pulled to his feet roughly.

“I don’t know where you all came from,” the boy said, frowning seriously at them all. “But this is my patch. If you are telling the truth, and that really is a Grimm, she won’t be down for long. We should get out of the open. It’s not safe out here anyway.” His critical eyes roamed over the three of them, his frown deepening. “You are all wearing stupid clothing. You’re going to freeze to death if I leave you here.”

He seemed to be struggling with something for a few moments. Eventually he sighed heavily down his nose. His breath a gust in the chilled air.

“Come, I know a place. A safe place. Safer than here anyway.”

As he had pulled Robin to his feet, the strange boy’s wolf skin hood had fallen back. His hair was messy and light grey, like ash or old snow, but what Robin noticed was not the colour, but that there were the two stubs nestled above his ears either side, almost lost in his hairline.

Each of these flat stubs was roughly the size of the palm of his hand. They were the stumps of sawn-off horns.

“You’re … you’re a Fae?” Robin said in wonder, his teeth chattering as he stood staring at the older boy. “Your horns are gone but—”

“It is not safe to be a Fae in the Netherworlde anymore,” the boy said curtly, looking visibly angered by Robin’s words. “I’m not a Fae. I’m no one.”

“We have to go back for Woad,” Henry insisted beseechingly to Robin. “We can’t just leave him with that … that troll. Did you see that thing? It was like Mr Strife on steroids.”

Karya looked as though she were falling asleep. Robin had never seen her so weak. “I can’t,” she said. “Can’t tear … no mana. Need to rest.” She managed a smile over at Robin through the falling flakes. “Genius idea, Scion, using your old tutor’s mana, but it’s all gone now. I can’t tear until I, until…”

“Karya?” Robin looked at her in concern. She swayed a little, and then collapsed, Henry catching her clumsily before she hit the snow. It was falling faster around them now, getting heavier, silently filling the air like confetti.

“She’s passed out, mate,” he said to Robin, looking worried. He glanced up at the grey-haired Fae, who was watching them all silently. “This guy’s right, we need to get her out of here, at least away from little Miss Murder-in-Mind there. The snow’s getting worse. But…” Henry looked devastated, shaking his head. “ … Woad.”

Robin nodded grimly. It had all happened so fast. His throat felt thick, knowing that their friend was still with the other Grimm. But what could they do right now? He had no idea where in the Netherworlde they had arrived through the Janus station. And he had no idea how far from that spot Karya had managed to tear them, or in what direction. Woad could be ten miles from here, or a hundred, or more. “We … we’ll think of something, Henry,” he said, his teeth chattering. He blinked snowflakes out of his eyelashes. “We’ll get Woad back.” He stared down at the unconscious form of Miss Peryl.

A very dark part of him wanted to pick up the rock.

Robin wanted nothing more than to get away from her. As far as possible. He looked back to the strange, wild boy who had saved them, the hornless Fae who was staring at them all cautiously, his face a mask of wary distrust.

“This place you mentioned. Is it far? Is it really safe?”

The boy nodded. “Safe as anywhere,” he said. “It’s my place. My secret place. No one knows it.” He stomped through the snow, dipping down and taking Karya easily from Henry. “You’re on my patch,” he repeated. “I’m out here to avoid trouble, and you strange travellers show up out of thin air, bringing a Grimm along. A Grimm! I want to know your business. Leave the dark thing.” He nodded to Peryl, his flashing silver eyes filled with cold fire. “She will come to no harm out here, more’s the pity. She’s probably making the ice feel cold.”

“I’m Robin,” Robin said. “Thank you … again. She almost killed us. If you hadn’t been nearby—”

The boy looked at Robin coldly. His mercurial eyes narrow. “I hope I didn’t knock out the wrong person,” he said. “Come on, this way. It’s not far, and the snow is falling enough to cover our tracks. I am Jackalope. But you can call me Jack.”

JUST A NUMBER

The falling snow became heavier and heavier as the stranger led Robin and Henry further into the wind through the snows of the Netherworlde, passing beneath black bare trees and out again into the deep powder beyond. It was hard to see far ahead or behind. Occasionally, as they trudged laboriously onward, as the wind rose and fell and the snowflakes parted in a whirl, they caught misty glimpses of rock walls, far off and sheer. Gunmetal grey mountains lost in the moonlit haze. Robin was less concerned with the view, majestic mountains or not, and more concerned with not freezing to death. Dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, from the blazing heatwave of the human world, the icy air slapped and buffeted him relentlessly. They had to get out of this weather, and fast. He couldn’t stop shivering, his teeth clacking together as he ploughed through the ever deepening snow, which by now, as they made their way further into the drifts and trees, was above his knees. Henry kept turning and peering back worriedly the way they had come, but they had long since lost sight of Miss Peryl in the snowstorm and the darkness. She didn’t appear to be following them, and the powder was indeed falling so fast and thick it was swiftly obliterating their tracks.

The boy in the wolf skins didn’t slow or falter. Nor did he even once look back to see if they were following him. He strode onwards, his long legs deftly navigating the snow, seemingly heedless of their struggle and making no allowances for it. Karya was draped over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes, her hair dangling down in a dark, tangled curtain which was by now covered in a white sheen of flakes.

“Where are you taking us?” Robin called, breathlessly. He had attempted to cast a Breezeblock around them, a kind of invisible barrier of air to block out the wind, but his mana was still so depleted, drained from the energy needed to open the doors back in the sanctuary, that the only result has been that his vision had begun to darken at the edges and he stumbled. He needed to rest. They all did.

“My place,” the hornless Fae ahead called simply. “The storm is getting worse. It can fall fast and hard up here on the Glaciem. If we stay outdoors all night, we’ll die. If the cold doesn’t get you, the Frostburrows will.”

He graced them with a surly look back over his shoulder, his silver eyes cold. “Well,” he amended. “Not all of us. I’ll be fine. You’ll die. We need to get to shelter.”

Robin was so cold and tired he didn’t want to walk another step, let alone ask what in the Netherworlde a Frostburrow was. It would be easier if they just stopped to rest, just for a moment. The snow was soft, right? He was starting to stop shivering. He was fairly certain that was a very bad sign.

Henry caught his elbow, jogging him back to his senses.

“I swear,” the dark-haired boy stuttered in the cold night air, snow whipping around his face. “If I see a single sodding lamp-post in these trees, I’m going straight home.”

Jackalope led them off the tundra and under the cover of some scratchy black trees. The trees thickened as they walked onwards, tripping over twisted roots hidden in deep snowdrifts, until soon, the snow began to thin as the dead and winter wood around them blocked out the sky with a latticework of skeletal branches. The ground was scree and rocks, frozen and hard on their feet. Jackalope skipped over it carelessly, surefooted and swift, barely registering the weight of the girl he carried.

After a time, and several turns in the dark night-time thicket, they reached a wall, the base of a high cliff against which the trees hugged, its surface rimmed with shining ice. There was a narrow fissure, a jagged crack as high as a man, and the Netherworlder disappeared through it with Karya into the darkness beyond.

Henry gave Robin a worried look. Robin was frankly too cold to care.

“If he was going to try to kill us, Henry, he could have just hit us all with rocks,” he reasoned, stuttering in the icy air. “Why lead us miles from that spot through Hell-Narnia to some ice-age cave?”

Despite his words, he kept tight hold of his knife as he followed the strange Fae into the darkness of the narrow cliff-cave. Henry shrugged, dislodging small snowdrifts from his shoulder, and with one last look behind him, to ensure Peryl was not lurking in the dark trees, he followed Robin into the darkness.

The fissure led to a natural tunnel cut into the rocks. After a few twists and turns in the darkness, the howl of the blessed wind outside receded completely, and the only sounds were their uncertain footfalls in the shadows. Robin wished they had Woad’s ability to conjure light. Thinking of Woad – and how they had lost him in the confusion – made him feel sick to his stomach. They had to find a way to rescue him from the huge Mr Ker. It was horrifying not knowing where he was, or if he was okay.

There was light of some kind ahead though. Robin could now make out his hands on the narrow rock walls and the silhouette of Jackalope and Karya ahead, outlined against an ever-brightening bluish light. There was a dull roar, like rushing water ahead; it echoed in the rocks.

“This is my place,” the Fae called to them. “It’s safe. It’s secret. No one knows I’m here. I haven’t brought anyone before.” He sounded defensive. “No one.”

The tunnel opened up, and Robin stared around. They were in a vast cave, huge and echoing. The ceiling reared up high above them, hung with countless icy stalactites. One rocky wall of the cave was covered with a tall, clear waterfall, the source of the roaring noise, which entered the cave from a narrow gap near the roof and spilled crystal-clear water down the tall, shining rock face and into a pool which dominated one half of the floor space. The reason that they could see any of this in what should have been a pitch black cave, Robin now realised, was that clusters of vast mushrooms, some as tall as him, some large enough to walk beneath, their canopies like great pale umbrellas, grew everywhere, here and there in clumps on the ground, clustered in the walls, even nestled in the high roof. They glowed. Glimmering spectral fungi bathing the serene and jagged cave in a cool, eldritch wash. The light flickered and caught in the ceaseless motion of the waterfall, mixing with the spray which hung at its base and making the air dance with light. It made the place quite beautiful.

More importantly, it was much warmer in here, sheltered from the wind and snowstorm. Robin noticed that close to the edge of the glittering pool was a bedroll and a small campfire, above which hung an empty cooking pot, suspended on a tripod of three crossed sticks. Here and there were other signs of rough homeliness. Beneath a cluster of giant glowing mushrooms, what looked like a rabbit skin was drying on a wooden frame. Elsewhere, a washing line was strung between two icy rocks, hung with clothing and skins. This was clearly where the strange Fae boy lived.

Jackalope led them through the small forest of glowing mushrooms to the edge of the pool, where he lay Karya, with surprising care, on the bedroll. He crouched at her side, still ignoring the two boys, and lowered his hood, staring at her curiously. Robin couldn’t help but stare himself, at the flat stumps of horn nestled in his grey hair. Another Fae. A live one, right here in the middle of nowhere. Older than him, but his own race. He had only ever met one other. It was surreal.

The boy reached down and brushed Karya’s hair from her face. Henry bristled a little. “What’s he doing?” he said to Robin.

The Fae looked up at them. “Your companion is fine,” he told them. “She is merely spent. Whatever she did, it took every ounce of strength to do it, she just needs to rest.” He looked at the two of them with undisguised distaste. “As do you, by the looks of it. You all look weak. Soft. Fools to be here on the Glaciem. What did she do, this one?”

“She used mana that wasn’t hers,” Robin said, flopping down gratefully next to the bedroll. Jackalope left Karya’s side, moving with an odd fluidity, almost catlike. He passed to the campfire, dead and cold, and produced a flint, which he began to strike.

“That would do it I suppose,” the older boy muttered, not looking up from his task.

Henry and Robin watched him in silence for a while.

“Can’t you just ‘whoosh’ the fire alight?” Henry asked, still hugging himself from cold. “You know, like with magic. You’re a Fae. You guys are good at magic, right?”

The boy stared up at him, looking incredulous, then turned away, scoffing, bent over his task. “I have no mana stone,” he said flatly.

“I thought everyone in the Netherworlde had a mana stone?” Robin asked.

“Not the Fae. Where have you been? Under a rock for the last few years?” Jackalope tilted his head, small sparks flying from his flint into the tinder arranged in the small circle of stones. “Maybe the rebels, if they’re not already dead. Idiots. They probably are. What do I know about that?”

“You’re not part of the Fae rebellion?” Henry asked. He had shuffled nearer to Karya, and was looking down at her with concern. Her face was like ash.

“No, I’m not part of the rebellion,” the boy said, with a humourless sneer. “I’m trying to stay alive, not get myself killed. So who knows?” He shrugged. “They might still have their stones. But the Fae who were taken in the war, those of us who were put in the camps. We have none. The Arcania was taken from us.” The tinder caught, and the boy scooped up the brush in his cupped hands, blowing on it softly as he cradled it as gently as a baby bird. Small flames began to bloom in his hands, the light flickering in his strange hard eyes. “Everything was taken from us.”

Robin moved to Henry’s side, both of them huddling around the small fire as the stranger placed the smoky kindling back in the stones and began to build it up with sticks. The odd grotto loomed around them, eerie and magical, and oddly peaceful. The muted rumble of the waterfall was strangely soothing, echoing as it did around the mushroom-covered walls.

“Who are you, then?” Henry asked. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, we’re grateful you turned up when you did and everything, braining that maniac and bringing us in out of the cold, but—”

The boy’s face cracked into a smile. It fell from his face almost immediately. “I’m no one,” he said. “No one at all. I don’t exist, I never did, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

He felt them both staring at him, and looked over, chin held up defiantly while he poked the small fire with a stick. “Why else do you think I live up here on the Gravis Glaciem? No one comes here. It’s safe. I haven’t seen another soul in two years. Two years without another living thing.”

He looked sidelong at them. “Until three idiots fall out of thin air at my feet, dragging a Grimm with them.”

“The gravis what?” Robin rubbed his hands together as the fire gained in strength. After the icy cold outside, the meagre warmth of the fire was almost painful to his fingers. “Where in the Netherworlde are we?”

“You don’t even know where you are?” the grey-haired Fae stared at them, confused. “Three little children lost in the snow? You’re even more hopeless than I first thought.”

“Hey,” Henry said. “We’re not ‘little children’. I’m fourteen, Rob’s nearly the same. You’re what, sixteen, if that?”

“I have no idea,” Jackalope shrugged. “I stopped counting a while back. There wasn’t much point where I was. Day by day now. It’s simpler.” He looked from Henry to Robin.

“He’s not from here, your friend. He smells like a human,” he said bluntly.

“He is a human,” Robin agreed.

“But you’re not.” The boy peered thoughtfully at Robin, as though confused. He hesitated a moment, as though unsure how to phrase his thoughts. “You look like him, but you feel like me. Human or Fae. It’s like you can’t decide.”

“I’m a changeling,” Robin said, a little uncomfortable. “You know, born in one world, raised in the other. But I’m Fae, like you.”

“You’re nothing like me,” the boy replied immediately, turning back to the fire.

And then, after a pause, he asked: “A Fae, you say? You have no horns.”

Once the fire was crackling merrily, he stood, leaving its side and dropping down onto the floor across from the three companions. He was still eying them with undisguised caution. He unbuckled his heavy wolf pelt cloak now that the air was warming.

“Neither do you,” Robin pointed out. “Have horns, I mean.”

“I did,” Jackalope replied. “Once. A long time ago, when I was young. Like I said. Everything was taken from us. By Eris.”

At the sound of the name, the light from the mushrooms dimmed slightly, making the shadows in the cave longer. Henry and Robin looked around. Distantly, over the somnambulic thrum of the waterfall, they could hear the wind keening outside.

The moment passed, and the mushrooms returned to their usual glow.

“You don’t look familiar with hornless Fae, considering you are one,” the boy said. “Wherever you’re from, it’s clearly not the camps.”

“I don’t really know anything about the camps,” Robin admitted quietly. Though his tutor’s words echoed in his mind. ‘You haven’t seen what I have seen. The hills of blood and bone’.

“You don’t want to know then,” the boy said. “It isn’t just horns that are taken. In the camps. Even our names.” He shrugged off his wolf skin pelf. Without the cloak, they saw the boy was fairly thin. His forearms were bare and he showed Robin a mark imprinted on his inner arm. Roman numerals: MMMMCMXCVIII.

“This is what I am, clueless one,” he said, his eyes bright and challenging. “A number. That’s all they leave us with. That’s all we mean to them.”

Henry frowned. “But you said you were called—”

“Jackalope was my brother’s name,” the wild Fae cut Henry off. “My older brother.” He glanced away from them, frowning at the fire. “I remember that. I was young, when they took us. Maybe six or seven. They came in the night, the Peacekeepers. They took everyone from my town. Every Fae.” The firelight glittered on the ice. “Nobody stopped them. None of the Panthea of the town. Nobody raised a hand or said a word to stop them.” He snorted, shaking his grey head a little, as if shaking himself out of a silly dream. “Stupid really. I remember my brother’s name. I don’t remember my own.” He poked at the fire with a stick. “He tried to make me remember it, to keep things in my head. They try to make you forget, you see. In the camps. To make you forget you’re a person.”

Robin’s hands were filled with pins and needles, his outstretched fingertips prickling as he held them out to the fire.

“Where is your brother now?” he asked.

Jackalope didn’t answer immediately. He looked away from the flames, out over the pool with its glowing haze.

“They took him away eventually. They separated us. They don’t let families stay together. It can be dangerous. It can keep you strong, blood can.” He sneered, scoffing at himself. “I forgot my own name, but I still remember his. How stupid is that? So now he’s dead. And now I’m Jack.”

He glared at them all, eyes bright. “What I want to know is, who are you, Fae with no horns? And what are you doing up on the most barren, empty tundra in the northern wastes?”

Robin didn’t really have a choice. As they warmed themselves by the fire in Jack’s glowing icy cave, with the soft thunder of the waterfall at their backs and Karya sleeping softly, he told the strange, brittle Fae what he knew. About the Shard of the Arcania, entrusted to the great Undine, Tritea. He explained how the Grimms had been searching for her last resting place, the fabled hidden valley of the Undine, Hiernarbos, and how they had found their way to the secret Janus station purported to lead there. Robin told the boy about the struggle at the underground waystation, and their escape here, to the middle of nowhere.

“So the Grimms are at Hiernarbos,” Jackalope shrugged. He had listened to their story without interruption or comment, barely looking at them. “I always figured that place was a myth. No one’s seen an Undine since before the war I think, and all the nymphs went over to Eris’ side when the war began. Heartless creatures.” He spat into the fire, which hissed. “They all serve the Dark Empress now.”

“Not all of them,” Robin said. “One of them came back. She helped me get here.”

“Helped us get lost in the snow in the middle of nowhere, yeah,” Henry sulked. His school shirt was steaming as it dried in the heat from the campfire.

“And the Grimms, they are seeking this treasure of the Arcania?” the boy said. “Is it worth much, this treasure?”

Robin blinked. “It’s a Shard of the Arcania,” he said. “It’s priceless. There are only seven of them in existence. They’re powerful.”

The Fae looked thoughtful. “My brother and I, when we were little, we were going to be treasure hunters, when we grew up,” he said. “Now, I scavenge. There is some treasure to be found in a snow-rabbit when you’re starving. A year ago, I was bolder, more foolish. I used to raid the old barrows when I found them, looking for loot and treasure. These mountains are riddled with them. Hardly anything ever found, but occasionally I would be lucky. Old coins, a scrap of a beaten silver jug. All things I could trade down in the villages below the snows.” He looked over past the bedrolls, at his meagre supplies piled up. “I never got much for them. Sometimes though, enough to trade for food for a month, maybe two, salted and cured. I wouldn’t have to leave the cave then. To go out there.”

“You stopped treasure hunting?” Henry asked. “How come?”

“I saw a Peacekeeper,” Jackalope said. “Vile spawn of Ker. Down in the foothills. It was too risky. I haven’t been off the plateau since then. I don’t want trouble.”

He looked from Robin to Henry. “And yet trouble, it seems, comes to me. A human and a Fae, soft as butter.” He smirked to himself. “And what is that?” He nodded to Karya, who was still sleeping soundly, though her face, thankfully, had finally started to regain its colour. Robin noticed that the palm of the girl’s left hand looked red and sore, blistered where she had gripped Phorbas’ mana stone.

“That’s Karya,” Robin said, confused. “She’s with us.”

“She’s a girl,” Henry explained, in case the strange Fae hadn’t met one before.

“It looks like a girl, certainly.” Jackalope sniffed. “But it doesn’t smell like anything I’ve ever smelled before.” The Fae had barely glanced at Henry since they had met in the snow, as though humans were below his interest. “Not one of us, fellow Fae, and not a human like your friend here either,”

“We know she’s not. We’re not really sure to be honest. It doesn’t matter. She’s with us, like I said. She lives with us.” The boy’s attitude was grating on Robin slightly.

The Fae looked puzzled. “You allow it to remain with you, knowing nothing about it? Are you a complete fool then?”

Henry sniffed. “He collects strays, Rob does. That’s kind of his thing. We have a faun as well.” He nodded at the older boy. “Careful Jack Frost, or he’ll collect you too. You’ll be living at Erlking in monogrammed slippers before you can say…” He glanced around for inspiration. “Before you can say … goodbye mystical glowy mushroom grotto, hello indoor plumbing.”

“The Erlking’s Hill is a blasted empty ruin,” Jackalope said. “Our Lord and Lady abandoned us. I have no reason to align myself with a changeling, I just want no trouble here. This is my place.”

“Yes, you keep saying so,” Robin agreed. He was staring at the prickly frowning boy. He looked hard, like the wind and ice of the mountain had stripped away everything from him, leaving nothing left but what was needed to survive. Maybe it wasn’t the mountains, though, Robin thought. Maybe it was before that, in Dis.

Jackalope noticed Robin staring at him. “I’ve spent the past few years since I escaped the camps, being very, very careful not to be caught. I keep hidden, I stay away from people. That’s why I’m here in the Gravis Glaciem. It’s a wilderness. No Peacekeepers here. No anyone here. No one to catch me. It’s safe.”

“Sounds pretty lonely to me,” Robin noted. He stared into the yellow, dancing flames of the campfire. “You know … it’s safe at Erlking too,” Robin began.

“Oh, here we go,” Henry said with a sigh. “Told you.”

“I’m not going back to the camps,” the Fae said sharply. “Not ever. I’ll never set foot near Dis again. That place is death.”

He had spoken so sharply, neither boy replied. Robin wondered about their odd host. He had been alone such a long time, he clearly had issues of his own.

“I didn’t help you because you’re such charming lovely folk. I just want you off my patch and away from me, as quickly as possible. Don’t bring any trouble here.” He pointed to Karya. “Trouble like that.”

Robin couldn’t think of anything suitable or comforting to say. It was Henry who spoke. “Look, mate. You saved us and that’s great, I mean really great. We owe you one, a big one. We get that you want to get us out of your hair, and trust me, we have other places we need to get to. One of the Grimms we left face down in the snow, yeah, but the other one has our friend prisoner, and we need to get him back.”

Henry rolled up the sleeves of his school shirt, still rubbing his hands together in front of the fire. “Plus, when we flipped over to the Netherworlde, before our little magical sidestep across the mountains, we were at this Undine place. The entrance to this secret hidden valley. We had found it, and the Grimm is still there. He’s in charge of an army, right? Believe me, if he gets to the Shard before we do, it will mean trouble for everyone.” He looked around. “And I mean everyone. Even people hiding in deep, mystical caves.”

The silver-eyed Fae stared into the fire for a while. He blew air out of his nose, irritated.

“What do you need,” he said eventually, after much quiet consideration. “Other than your enemies vanquished and the shelter I’ve already given you hopeless children already, I mean?”

Robin bit his tongue at being called a child again. “I don’t know,” he said. “We need to get back to wherever we were when we arrived in the Netherworlde, I guess. That will be Hiernarbos. That’s where Woad is, and the Undine’s secret hideaway.” He looked at the sleeping girl. “I don’t know where that was. She’d know better what to do, but she’s weak right now. I … I shouldn’t have made her do what I did.”

“It’s not like we had any choice,” Henry said. “She’s not the only one weak right now either, mate, you’ve got bags under your eyes too. And I got smashed across a room by your mental psycho girlfriend remember. We all need a rest, at least until you two get your mystical mojo back.”

Jackalope stood, reaching for his wolf skin cape. “Your mana is down. You need replenishing. Time will do this alone, but it sounds to me that you do not have as much time as it will take.”

He fastened his furred cloak around his throat. “I know this area well. There are certain herbs which can aid in speeding your recovery. The firefruit, it grows higher up, in the crags, lots of latent mana trapped in there. It soaks it up from the northern lights.” He looked thoughtful, frowning seriously. “There might be sourroot too, down by the frozen river. And if all else fails, there are always pixies.”

“Pixies,” Henry said, deadpan. “As in, small frolicking fairy creatures who wear dresses made from leaves and live in little mushrooms with doors and windows?”

The Fae frowned at him as though he were an idiot. “No. Pixies as in pixies. Roughly rabbit size, quick as lightening, bundles of furry teeth. Breed like, well, like pixies.”

He put up the hood of his cloak, hiding his scarred horn stubs. “I’ll return with supplies as soon as I can,” he said. He looked at all three of them suspiciously. “Don’t touch any of my things while I’m gone. And don’t leave the cave. You’ll die in the storm in those ridiculous clothes if you do.”

He left without another word, picking his way between the huge phosphorous mushrooms.

“Yeah, okay,” Henry called after him, but only when he was sure the surly boy was out of earshot. “We won’t touch your … well … dried rabbit skin, or any other of your Bear Grylls survival kit. Bloody Robinson Crusoe, don’t worry.”

He turned back to Robin. “I suppose while tall, grey, and broody there is gone, there’s not much else for us to do but get some rest.”

But Robin was already asleep, sitting up by the fire. His head nodding on his chest.

Henry stared for a second, and then, not unkindly, gave the blonde boy a gentle push, sending him toppling backwards to land flat on his back next to Karya by the fire, where he snored loudly.

Henry sighed, picking up Jackalope’s discarded stick and poking at the fire. “I’ll keep watch then, shall I?”

MEMORIAM

Robin awoke some time later, still feeling groggy, but thankfully no longer numb from the cold. It was surprisingly warm in the glittering icy cave. The eldritch blue motion of the waterfall rolled around him as he opened his eyes, disoriented, staring blearily at the countless icicles overhead on the distant ceiling. Karya was awake, sitting by the flames, and Henry had wandered down to the pool, where he was filling a few small pots with water. Of Jackalope the Fae, there was still no sign. He hadn’t yet returned.

Robin had no way of knowing how long he had been asleep. It had felt like a long time. The narrow tunnel which led to the outside world was hidden by the glowing fungus on the far side of the pool. He had no idea if it was day or night out there.

Pushing himself up on his elbows, he greeted Karya, who looked sleepy, but otherwise, thankfully, fine. He apologised for making her use mana from Phorbas’ dagger.

“There’s no point being sorry about it,” she replied, in her usual no-nonsense manner. “It was a good idea. It stopped us from being killed. Though I have to say I won’t be doing that again anytime soon. Using mana that isn’t yours is…” She looked around the huge cavern, searching for words as she sat with her knees pulled up to her chest, “ … intense.” She shook her head. “It’s like singing with someone else’s voice, or dancing with another person’s feet. Very weird and extremely difficult. Where is the one who saved us?”

“Herb gathering. Or pixie, I’m not sure.” Karya arched her eyebrows. “I don’t know how to feel about him.” he said. “He doesn’t seem to think much of us.” He told Karya what the boy had imparted to them, about his past in the camps.

“If he’s spent time in Dis as a Fae,” Karya reasoned. “It’s understandable he’d be wary. Not many escape the camps. The very fact that he did at all is impressive. I can’t say I blame him for becoming a hermit out here. I’d probably hide too, if that were an option for me.” She sighed. “Sadly, it’s not.”

She rubbed her temples, still evidently a little sore. “Rude and defensive as he might be, from what you say, he did rescue us, however grudgingly. He could have just kept out of it, passed on, and left us to the mercy of Peryl. He didn’t, despite his insistence that he wants to just be left alone. That seems rather heroic to me.”

Henry snorted from the side of the pool. “Yeah, and the fact he’s all broody and good-looking has nothing to do with it, I suppose.”

“I didn’t say he was good-looking, did I?” Karya said tartly.

“Older fellas, eh?” Henry muttered, filling his pots by the water. “Yeah, he’s a complete minger, what with those steely, brooding eyes and that wild, luscious grey hair blowin’ about in the breeze. I’m sure you haven’t noticed.” They heard him chuckling.

Karya turned her nose in the air, ignoring his teasing. “We’ve brought him trouble he didn’t want or need, that’s the important thing,” she said to Robin. “If it wasn’t for him, Peryl would probably have killed us all in her madness – you included, Scion. Eris would have destroyed her for that, of course, but I don’t think she was thinking about it at the time. She doesn’t seem like the most reasonable Grimm I’ve ever met.”

Robin frowned at her, deeply doubting that any of the Grimms could be called ‘reasonable’.

“How many of the Grimms have you met?” he asked.

“All of them.” She shrugged. “There are seven Grimms. Strife is their leader, kind of. First amongst equals as it were. Though he isn’t the oldest. Each one is worse than the last.”

Robin wondered about her. Jackalope’s observations regarding the strange girl were still rolling around his head. She looked serious and worried, as usual.

“It’s kind of beautiful here,” he said. He looked at Karya, indicating the cavern around them. “You know, peaceful, safe. You should take time to appreciate these things. You’re always so business-like.”

“What do you mean by that?” she said, glaring at him with a mixture of surprise and suspicion. “You’re the one so focused on the mission. I’m just trying to keep us all alive.”

Robin rolled his eyes. “Well, we are alive, so you might as well relax for a bit, even if it’s just until that guy gets back. We all need to be at full strength. We want Woad back, but going after him half-cocked is not going to help anyone.”

Karya pursed her lips primly. “I’ve been running from Mr Strife and his skrikers for a long time, Scion, before I met you and agreed to stay at Erlking Hall and watch over you. Since then, I have been working day and night on this silly translation your aunt seems so invested in. Believe me, I am used to being exhausted. And more importantly, I am used to being alert, which is why I am still around and living free, not languishing in some dungeon in Dis.” She shivered a little.

“What exactly is Dis?”

“Eris’ city,” Karya explained. “The City of Dis is the capital of all the Netherworlde. It’s where the dark Empress set up her seat of power after she won the war.”

She sneered. “I’m sure she would have liked to have ruled from Erlking, as the Fae king and queen had before her, but they saw to that before they disappeared. Even if your guardian Irene wasn’t looking after the place, Eris can’t harness Erlking. Too much power there. Too many enchantments. It’s what infuriates her most.” She smiled with grim satisfaction.

“Well, you can relax here for a moment, surely,” he said. “What’s going to happen to us in here?” he reasoned. She sat grumpily for a few moments.

They watched Henry at the water’s edge. The boy was humming a little tune to himself.

“I’m not serious all the time, you know,” she said after a while, slightly petulantly. “I know you and Henry think I’m an absolute snit. But I’m not.”

“No?” he grinned.

“There was frolicking and times were light-hearted once. All through the Netherworlde. I remember how it used to be,” she continued. “Everything changes.”

“I thought this war had gone on for a hundred years?” Robin asked. “How would you know what it was like before? You’re what … eleven years old?”

Karya glanced at him briefly. The light from the glowing mushrooms made her eyes more silver than gold. “Things are … complicated for me,” she murmured. “It’s hard for me to explain in a way you’d be able to understand.”

“Give it a shot,” Robin said dryly. “I’ll let you know if my head explodes. Come on, Karya. I’ve known you almost a year now. Trust me.”

“I can remember things from long before I was born,” she revealed with a sigh. “Sometimes … sometimes, I remember things that haven’t happened yet. It’s part of what … who … I am.” She sniffed, looking down at her hands. “It can be quite confusing sometimes actually.”

“You see the future?” Robin blinked in surprise.

Karya shook her head. “Not really. I don’t scry like the Oracle. But sometimes, the future … I remember it. It’s much more complex than you’d think though. The future hasn’t happened yet you see. So the things I see, when I see them, are like echoes or shadows. Sometimes, I remember things that are going to happen and sometimes I remember things that might happen, but won’t, or don’t. I remember things from the past as well that didn’t happen but might have.” She shook her head, as though to dislodge the thoughts. “And sometimes, if this doesn’t mess your little head up too much, I remember the present as it happens, only different to how it’s actually happening. Other ways things might be going. As though there are countless stories all playing at the same time, and I can flick between them.”

Robin’s brain was hurting.

“It’s part of the reason I can tear through from our world to yours and back, without using a Janus station,” Karya said. “No one else can do that, not even Eris herself. I don’t know why I can do it, not really. I only know that I can.”

“This is why Strife was after you?” Robin said quietly, realising at last. “Back when we first met, I mean? You saw something happen, in the future, or the past, didn’t you? With this strange sight of yours. Something Eris wants to know about. Like a vision, a prophecy?”

Karya stiffened slightly. She frowned over at the waterfall. “Something in the future … and the past, yes,” she said. “I can’t do it on demand. It’s more like an affliction than a skill. An uncontrollable sneeze. It happens when it wants to, not when I want it to. And I can’t stop it either.”

“What’s it like, having these memories?” he asked. “Of things that haven’t happened yet I mean, or having memories from things which happened way before you were even born?”

“When it happens, it’s like a waking dream.” She sighed. “I only see things, though. Images, pictures, impressions. I don’t always know what they actually mean. It can be very confusing.”

She looked down into the fire, her jaw set.

“Eris wants to know about something you saw?” Robin guessed. “Something to do with me, right? That’s why you sought me out. That’s how you even knew about me. Back when all this began.”

“Yes,” Karya replied. “Which is why I’m very valuable at the moment. I rather wish I wasn’t, but there you have it.”

“What did you see?” he asked.

She looked directly at him again, her eyes narrowed, her expression unreadable.

“You,” she said softly. “I saw you, Robin. The Scion of the Arcania, long before anyone else did. Before your guardian, the woman you called Gran died. Before anyone in the Netherworlde knew you even existed. I saw you … And more besides.” She looked away, tucking her hair behind her ears. “And don’t ask me what else because it’s nobody’s business but mine and I’m not saying another word about it. Not until I understand it myself.”

Robin was about to argue. It seemed horribly unfair that Karya had had some kind of vision involving him and he wasn’t to know about it, but she held her hand up.

“Don’t even ask,” she said. “Anything I tell you could alter what I saw. I don’t know whether that would be a good thing or a bad thing, but I know it wouldn’t be right. We’re not supposed to know too much about ourselves.”

Robin decided not to push it for now. At least now he knew why Strife had been set on Karya’s trail.

“So, you’re the world’s best tracker, a master of the Tower of Earth, the only person with the skill to cross two worlds without having to use a Janus station, and you also have crazy visions about the past and the future which may or may not be true,” he summarised. “Anything else I should know about you?”

She smirked at him. “Yes, I’m a bad tempered sod, and I don’t like questions,” she said.

This was hardly news to Robin.

“What are you though?” Robin wanted to know. “I’m sorry if that sounds blunt. I’m not sure if it’s polite to ask something like that or not. Woad told me you weren’t Panthea, and you’re not Fae … are you?” He wondered briefly if there were curled horns hidden in the mass of her hair.

“No. I’m not either,” she said. “There’s more in the Netherworlde than two warring races, you know.” She shrugged dismissively “You ask me what I am? Truth is, I don’t really know. I’m just Karya. One of seven sisters.” She looked a little sad. “I’m hardly anyone, really.”

She could see more questions forming on his face in the rippling, reflected light from the waterfall. “What did I just say about questions?”

“I have a question for you,” came a voice from between the small forest of mushrooms. Henry, Robin and Karya all looked up to see that Jackalope had returned, making his way into the cavern in long strides. He had a burlap sack strung over one shoulder, filled, presumably, with gathered herbs, and quite possibly, pixies.

“This treasure that everyone’s after, this Shard of the Arcania that is so valuable to you all.”

Robin nodded, as the tall Fae reached the campfire and dropped the bag with a thud. “I couldn’t give a bog hag’s fart about the Shard, or about any of you,” he said flatly. “But you say it’s in a secret sanctuary? The hidden valley of the Undine. The place which legend tells is a storehouse for treasures untold and things of shiny worth?”

“So they say,” Karya said, cautiously.

“Well,” he said to her. “As I was telling your two friends here while you were sleeping, I have been, in the past, an excellent treasure hunter.”

“A thief, you mean?” Karya asked, without a hint of judgement in her voice.

Jackalope nodded a little. “If you prefer, yes. I’ve lived out here on the ice like a hunted creature for two years.” He licked his lips, looking at them all shrewdly. “I will help you find your friend, this faun who was stupid enough to get captured by a Grimm, and I’ll show you the way down off the Gravis Glaciem, off the mountain to the valleys below, on one condition. That I come with you, and I get to choose one piece of whatever treasure we find as my own.”

“This isn’t a treasure hunt,” Robin frowned.

“But there will be treasures in Hiernarbos,” the Fae replied, his silver eyes sparkling. “Treasures no one’s seen since before the war.”

“Well possibly, but we’re not intending to steal them,” Karya explained.

The Fae sneered at her. “No, of course not. You children are just grave robbing instead, right? I really don’t care what your intentions are once you get there. I only know that anything of worth which I can trade for supplies down in Worrywort is worth the risk. I can’t live forever up here on snow rabbit and boiled pixie. But with decent treasure, I can fence things of worth in Worrywort, trade for a whole winter’s supply of dried goods to keep here. A whole winter of not being hungry, of being warm enough, of not having to risk capture.”

“Yes, you could really make your icy cave hideout homely,” Henry said, “I get it. What on earth is Worrywort?”

“It’s a village,” Karya said. “Well, more of an outpost really. I’ve heard of it, I think. I didn’t realise we were that far north in the Netherworlde.”

Jackalope shrugged. “Any further north and there’s nothing but ice drakes and the Whitefolk.” He shuddered.

Robin stood. “So let me get this straight. You’ll guide us down off this mountain, or glacier, or wherever we are, and get us to this village, but only if we let you come with us to Hiernarbos? I thought you wanted to avoid trouble?”

The Fae looked a little guilty. “Yes. I did. But it’s too late for that now.”

He looked worried for a moment. “There are Peacekeepers in the mountains. I saw them, while out getting this stuff for you. I’ve never seen them up here before. They must be drawn by that Grimm you brought. Or summoned by her, I’m not sure. Either way, it’s not safe to stay here now. Not for a while at least. I need to leave. For a time, until they go away.”

Karya had leapt to her feet. “Peacekeepers? Here?”

Robin had heard them mention Peacekeepers before. As far as he understood, they were something like the police force of the Netherworlde, under Eris’ command, but he didn’t really know much about them.

The silver-haired Fae nodded grimly. “Yes. Far off, nothing to worry about yet. But they will get here eventually. I cannot be here when they do. And neither should any of you be. I’m coming with you.”

He looked from Karya to Robin. “One piece of treasure, my choice, as long as it’s not the Shard. Do we have a deal?”

Robin shrugged. He had no real idea if there even was treasure at Hiernarbos. It was the last thing on his mind, and if there was, it wasn’t his to give away, but what could he do? They needed this boy to get them to safety and to civilisation. Without him, they doubted they could even get down out of the snowfields. He nodded.

“Fair enough. On my word as the Scion,” he said.

The Fae stared at him hard for a moment. “Scion,” he scoffed. “Saviour of the Netherworlde, right? There's no such thing,” he muttered.

Henry had returned from the water’s edge, carrying several water-filled pots in his arms, which he proceeded to pour into the large cauldron above the fire. Jackalope nudged the burlap sack with his foot. “Good. Stew these, and eat. It will restore you. And then we must go. Every moment we delay, the Peacekeepers get closer.”

KEEPING THE PEACE

They felt much rejuvenated after eating the strange stew. Robin hoped dearly that it didn’t include any pixie, although it had contained some suspiciously chewy parts. Jackalope had provided Henry and Robin each with thick, rough cloaks of animal hide against the cold, though Karya was fine as she was in her enormous coat. Soon, they were ready to leave the cavern.

It was pre-dawn when they emerged out onto the tundra. The wind and storm had gone and the snow had stopped falling, so that the dark and skeletal forest seemed as still and silent as a stage set. Fresh powder glowed under the black branches. Wordlessly, Jackalope beckoned for them to follow and led them away through the trees and out onto the expanse of white. The sky above them was almost golden, flickering with the promise of sunrise, and here and there between the clouds, the last fading stars could still be seen.

There were no signs of any Peacekeepers, though all four of them kept a careful watch. Indeed, nothing living seemed to move in the high snowfield as they marched onwards.

There were few settlements this far north in the Netherworlde. People were too worried about frostburrows and icewisps. The former, he explained, were worms of a kind, as long as your arm. They burrowed in deep snowdrifts and their harsh bite could cause instant frostbite. He hadn’t ever come across one himself, but none of them relished losing blackened fingers, so they were wary where they trod.

Icewisps were another matter. These creatures, the hornless Fae informed them, appeared as flurries of ice crystals, little miniature whirlwinds. They lived up on the highest peaks and rarely ventured down to the snowfields themselves. But occasionally, when the storms were bad enough, some would be blown this way. Icewisps were troublesome creatures. Spirits more than flesh. There had no innate malevolence, but they craved solid form, and had been known to attach themselves to errant and careless mountain travellers. Unless they wanted to go through the rest of their lives with a permanent ice storm fluttering about their heads and shoulders, he warned the others, they should take care.

He had seen a herd of them once, in their hundreds, rolling across the snows like a desert sandstorm, white and glimmering. It had been quite beautiful.

By the time the sun had finally risen fully over the craggy mountainous terrain, they had put some miles between themselves and the icy cliffs containing the Fae’s bolt hole. Its cliffs were now nothing more than a vague misty smudge on the horizon behind them, a grey wall of stone. They walked ever downwards, through valley and gully, snow and rock; several times Robin’s ears popped as they made their way down from the high tundra.

“Do you know how to get back to Woad?” Henry asked Karya, his tired breath coming in great clouds in the frosted air as they marched, furs pulled tight around them.

She shook her head, frowning. “I don’t know where we tore from,” she said. “So I have no way of knowing where to tear back to. Our best bet is to get to this village. We can get supplies there, and maybe someone will have seen something. If Ker has found the hidden valley, he’ll be massing his troops there. We already know Peacekeepers are in the vicinity, so it can’t be far.”

Jackalope insisted they keep going a little further, despite the fact they had walked for hours and none of them had really had any decent rest since they arrived in the Netherworlde. Aside from the occasional tired huff, Robin attempted to be silently stoic, wrapped in his makeshift fur pelts and his breath clouding like a dragon’s. His legs were aching, however, and he was certain there was now a large and permanent bruise on his back from the heavy book of the Fae, which Jackalope had secured in a rough sling for him, freeing his hands up. It felt as though with every rugged, snowy mile they put between themselves and the dark cliffs, someone was adding another brick to his bag.

“We can’t stop out here,” their guide explained, unmoved by their obvious exhaustion. He squinted into the sun. “We’re too exposed, too easy to spot for anyone looking.” He pointed to some small red berries growing in clusters at the feet of nearby trees. They had been seeing these sporadically for a while, here and there in the snow, cherries in icing sugar. “See? Firedrake berries. We’re headed in the right direction.” He looked ahead into the trees. “The land slopes down a few miles up ahead, the snow stops there too. There are valleys, there’ll be woods, real ones. We can rest there, amongst the trees, for a time at least.”

They journeyed on laboriously through the morning. By the time a large, dense forest appeared in the distance, the sun was high in the sky and the morning mist had long since been burned from the ground. There was a still an icy alpine nip in the air, but the sky above was clear and sheeny-blue. Robin was immensely grateful that it was warmer here. He felt a little ridiculous for having complained about the incessant heatwave back home for the past two months. The air wasn’t as thin here either. It was easier to breathe.

Eventually they reached the tree line, where the snow petered out into slush, then muddy puddles, but even once they reached the border of the woods, tough thick fir trees with rich dark green needles that smelled divine, Jackalope still insisted that the four of them forge their way deep inside before finally agreeing to stop and rest.

This forest was not as ancient or dark as the Barrowood. The trees here were slim and tall. The floor was a brown carpet of pine needles which crunched underfoot. It smelled remarkably like Mr Drover’s car. It could easily have been a pleasant woodland back in the human world, except that as they walked deeper into the forest, Robin saw that it was liberally scattered throughout with glimpses of old ruined walls and arches, scattered remnants here and there between the foliage, as though a town had once stood here, but had long since been swallowed up by nature.

By mid-afternoon, they made a rough camp in the moss-covered ruins of what once might have been a house, now nothing more than three crumbling rubble walls, green with ivy. Karya and Jackalope expertly lit a small camp-fire between them, and they divided the meagre supplies they had brought with them from the Fae’s home.

“This food here won’t last us much longer,” Henry noted with worry. “Not between all of us.”

Jackalope peered at him darkly. “Well, I’m only used to feeding myself, human,” he said with ill grace. “If I’d have been expecting company, I’m sure I would have baked a cake.”

Karya drank deeply from her water skin, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “If my sense of direction is anything to go by, then this village you told us about is a day’s walk, maybe a little more. It’s called Worrywort? Off the yellow road, yes?”

The grey-haired Fae nodded silently, scratching absently behind the stump of his horns,

Henry sniggered. “Worrywort, though? What kind of a name is that?”

Karya raised an eyebrow. “Oh and ‘Ramsbottom’ is perfectly normal, is it? I’ve been there in the human world.”

“Point taken,” Robin smiled, looking between the two of them. “So, we’re going shopping then, while we ask about for any Grimm news?”

Karya shook her head. “When we get close, we can just send Jack there to see if he can replenish our stock and see what’s on the local grapevine.”

“Send Jack?” Jackalope raised an eyebrow at her, though he smiled grimly, and she flushed a little.

“Well, you said you know the place. And because I don’t want to be seen, for one thing,” Karya replied. “I’ve been trying not to be seen for almost two years as it is. I’m hardly going to go waltzing into the middle of an actual Netherworlde village announcing my presence, am I?” She glanced at Robin. “And we certainly can’t send the Scion. The whole of the Netherworlde will be on high alert for him. It’s bad enough that he’s one of the few Fae walking around like there isn’t a war on.” She glanced at Jackalope. “Besides you I mean, but I’ll bet Eris will have informers everywhere, and Peryl and the Peacekeepers will be combing the mountains. Best if we all stay clear. I’ll give you some money and a list. I still have some Netherworlde coins somewhere.” She rummaged in her coat.

“I could go in disguise?” Robin offered. He was very curious as to what a village full of Netherworlde Panthea would be like, even a small remote one up in the alpine heights.

Karya shook her shaggy mane. “Not risking it. No arguments. There could be Peacekeepers in the village. If they get their hands on you, it’s all over. Might as well cover you in stamps, address you to Eris and roll you into the town square myself.”

Robin opened his mouth to protest, but Karya gave him a very sharp look, which reminded him unsettlingly of Aunt Irene. “Jack here is an unknown face. And with his hood up and those horn stumps covered, he could pass for Panthea. We can’t avoid delaying getting to Hiernarbos.”

“And Woad,” Henry added.

Karya was right, Robin knew. This was no time for sightseeing. If he got captured, they would never get Woad back, and the Shard was as good as already in Eris’ hands. He couldn’t allow that.

“We should all get some decent sleep,” Jackalope said. “It’s been a long night and we have a lot of ground to cover once the sun sets. It will be safer to move by nightfall, now that we’re out of the snow. We should be fine hidden here in the woods.” Karya nodded in agreement, settling down and using her pack as a makeshift pillow. She pulled her heavy coat around her like a blanket. “Henry, you can take first watch. You can wake me in a couple of hours.”

Henry looked a little appalled, but didn’t argue.

Despite his best intentions, unlike Karya and the strange Fae in the fur cloak, Robin found it difficult to get to sleep. He lay awake for a long while, idly twirling Phorbas’ dagger in his hands, and wondering about Woad, the location of Hiernarbos, and how on earth they were ever going to get there.

* * *

They marched at moonrise, making their way through the now dark wood, eventually coming out the other side and onto the lower slopes of what looked like moors. The view was far less wild and free from snow. Cold, craggy moorland rolled eventually into calmer hills and tall grass, studded periodically with huge single stones here and there, grey and silver menhirs, carried down out of the mountains by some ancient glacier long ago and left here like pebbles shaken from a giant shoe. The moon shone down as they made their way across the hills, the whispering grass coming almost to their shoulders in the deepest dips between the hillocks.

Every so often, their rustling steps would disturb large colonies of enormous moths, the landscape vanishing behind countless luminescent wings, floating skywards in great plumes like drifts of silent smoke. The first time this happened, Robin panicked that these were the familiars of Miss Peryl. But Jackalope explained they were native to the area, and besides they were much too large and light to be the Grimm’s shadow creatures.

Dangerous as it may be, Robin found the Netherworlde beautiful.

At dawn, Karya thought she saw something suspicious circling high overhead but later declared it a false alarm. It was nothing more than swooping owls feeding on the intermittent shoals of night-moths.

They camped again for much of the daylight hours in a shady hollow and saw no Peacekeepers. Robin was beginning to wonder if Jackalope had been mistaken. Or if he was just paranoid.

It was odd, sleeping in the daytime and moving at night, but they were so tired that it was an easy enough thing to drop off in the long grass, or under shadowy trees. When night fell once more, the sky threatening snow and the first thin flakes beginning to fall out of the darkness, they packed up camp and walked on.

Eventually, at the foot of a steep, wide rise, they came upon a road. It was really nothing more than a well-beaten track, but it was the first sign of actual civilisation Robin had seen since they had left the mountains. Being a former town boy, he found this wildly reassuring. He had never been in so much wilderness before.

Karya agreed they should follow it, though they kept well off to the side of the road, hidden in the long wild grass. She didn’t want them running into strangers.

Eventually, in the grey and misty hours just before dawn, Jackalope announced that the village they were seeking was over the next rise.

“That’s the village of Worrywort alright,” Karya said as they rounded a tree-lined bend in the road. “I knew I’d been here before. Or at least I seem to remember it, if that counts for anything.” The village, in a hollow ahead, was a tiny collection of thatched buildings, surrounded by a high stone wall. Fortified against the wilderness. “It looks safe,” Jackalope said, though there was suspicion in his voice. He looked inquiringly at Karya. “Anything?” he asked, his eyebrows raised.

Whether he thought the girl was dangerous or not, Robin noticed, the tall Fae seemed to recognise her natural competence as a tracker and survivor of the wilderness. The two of them seemed to be bonding on the march. He had whispered as much to Henry, who had smirked and pointed out it was probably because they shared common hobbies: frowning and being bad-tempered.

Karya stared towards the village in silence for a long time, before shaking her head. “Not safe,” she said. “Not safe at all. There are Peacekeeper horses in the stables of the inn. I can smell them from here. And a lot of them.”

The boy cursed under his breath. “Peacekeepers! I wonder what so many of them are doing out in a tiny backwater hamlet like this? They can’t all be just looking for you lot and Miss Peryl, surely?”

“I’m tempted to pass it by and take our chances in the wild,” Karya said from their hiding spot in the undergrowth. “But starving to death isn’t going to help anyone.” She looked at Henry and Robin “You two will need real clothes, boots. Otherwise your feet will fall off, and I’m certainly not carrying either of you.”

After much discussion, they reached a decision. Jackalope agreed to be dispatched into the village with a purse full of coins, a hastily scribbled list of supplies, and strict instructions by Karya, not that he needed them, to stay out of sight and out of trouble.

Karya, Henry, and Robin stayed hidden in the trees beyond the village wall. The odd, solitary Fae walked down the path and disappeared in through the gates in the stone wall. Karya seemed to be holding her breath for the entire time he was gone. Robin couldn’t help share her nervousness. With every passing minute he expected to see the strange, moody Fae come running out of Worrywort, chased by an angry mob of Panthea, possibly brandishing pitchforks.

“What do you make of this guy, then?” Henry asked Robin in a whisper. “He’s only with us for this precious treasure he’s imagining. You think he’s on our side?”

“He’s clearly on his own side,” Karya answered before Robin could speak. She was still staring down at the village intently. “At the moment, that aligns with what we need too, so let’s not complain, eh?”

After what felt like an eternity, they saw Jackalope emerge from the village, a large sack of supplies over his shoulder. But he wasn’t walking inconspicuously; he was running full pelt. He didn’t even try to make it down the road to where they waited, but instead dived into a bush outside the gates, disappearing completely from sight with admirable skill.

Moments later, they saw why. A group of figures rode out of the village on black horses. There were sixteen in all. Robin counted the large parade of horses, galloping fast. Karya hissed like a cat and threw herself onto her stomach in the grass, dragging Robin and Henry with her.

Peacekeepers, Robin thought, from beneath the dappled bushes. Surely they must be. Why else would the silver-headed Fae have run from the village and hid, and what else could make Karya react this way?

But they looked like no policemen he had ever seen. From his worm’s-eye view, hidden in the shadowy undergrowth like a commando, he stared at the riders. They were all clad in black armour which was twisted into spikes and barbs at every joint. Each of them was very tall and long-limbed. Their thin bodies, garbed in shining black carapaces, looked insectile. Over their faces, each Peacekeeper wore a curious mask of sorts. It was hard to make out too much detail from this distance, but from what Robin could see, whatever obscured their heads seemed to be half-mask, half-hood. It carried no recognisable features other than cruelly slanted holes for eyes. The masks were dyed in various clashing colours, stitched together oddly and haphazardly, like patchwork scarecrow faces. The only colour in their otherwise sombre getup. The overall effect was very disquieting. Robin didn’t know what lay beneath the rough masks, but each of the figures had tall black spikes of hair which rolled down their backs like dreadlocks, some kind of porcupine-inspired headdress. They reminded him of mockeries of Mr Ker, with his tall red spikes.

“Peacekeepers!” Karya confirmed in a muttered whisper, breathing heavily through her nose. “Snakes and ashes, it’s worse than I thought!”

Robin could not tear his eyes way from the menacing figures. They looked like spindly sinister clowns with their multi-coloured masks. Haunted scarecrows or a party of masquerade carnival-goers dressed in armour as dark and sleek as treacle. Their movements atop their black horses were strangely boneless, as though they were puppets.

“How is that not the worst of it?” Henry asked her worriedly in a low whisper. She pointed.

Behind the long phalanx of Peacekeepers leaving the village in a thunder of hooves, there had emerged another rider. Like the others, he was tall and clad in black armour with odd spikes and whirling curls of metalwork protruding here and there, but unlike the strange tribal-looking hair and patchwork masks sported by his companions, this figure instead wore a black helmet, hiding his face completely. The visor was shaped like the muzzle of a wolf, its jaws wide as though snapping in attack, and from either side of this alarming visage sprouted tall pale horns, making him appear like a demon. He was broad-shouldered and wore a long flowing cloak which seemed composed of countless inky black feathers. It rippled from his shoulders and away down his back as his dark horse moved forward. An air of terrible menace rolled forth from him. Robin felt his mana stone pulse in an agitated manner under his cloak.

“Who is that?” Robin asked, trying to make himself appear smaller under the bush. He couldn’t tear his eyes from the figure.

The horses’ hooves thundered as they flew right past Jackalope’s makeshift hiding place.

Karya, Henry and Robin stayed very still. The Peacekeepers and their wolf-headed leader galloped past them, pummelling hooves throwing up clods of mud as they roared by. The movement of the horses made the ground vibrate under the children. The Peacekeepers' armour jangling and clattering, their awful, nightmarish sackcloth faces flapping in the breeze, empty and hollow. Robin’s stomach was a cold knot as the demon-wolf passed by, an imposing vision in barbed armour, the long tattered black cloak of feathers whipping against his back. Torn wings.

They held their breath, hugging the earth beneath the bush, and were not discovered.

Eventually, the thunder of hooves died away, just as the first red rays of the rising sun broached the horizon.

“That, Scion, was the Captain of the Ravens,” Karya said shakily. “Eris’ own bloody fist. He rules over all the army, and more besides. Ker may be the general of the Peacekeepers, but the Ravens are a separate, elite force, and he answers only to her.”

Robin had never heard Karya sound so worried before. “Even the Grimms don’t bother him. If the Grimms are the servants of Eris, then he is her consort. And the most dangerous man in the Netherworlde. I don’t know his real name, none of the Peacekeepers have those, but he is known as Strigoi.” She looked worriedly at Robin. “Trust me, we do not want to be anywhere near him. If he’d seen us…” She shook her head in disbelief. “I’d rather face a thousand Grimms.”

“What was he doing in this tiny village? If he’s so important, I mean?” Robin asked, clambering shakily to his knees. He was still whispering.

“Strigoi goes where he likes and does what he wants,” Karya said. “I don’t think anyone would dare question what he is doing out here. Not if they wanted to keep their curious heads attached to their bodies that is.” It was several long minutes more before Jackalope re-emerged cautiously from his hiding place and made his way swiftly to where the others hid.

“Peacekeepers!” he spat as he joined them under the bushes, passing the large bundles of supplies and food around. There were meats and breads wrapped in greaseproof paper and tied firmly with coarse string, and traveling boots for Robin and Henry, which they slipped into gratefully, leaving their trainers abandoned. “They nearly had me. And not just any Peacekeepers. That was Eris’ wolf!” He glared angrily at Robin and his friends. “Who are you people? To attract the attentions of not only the Grimms, but of Strigoi himself?”

“They didn’t see you? In the village? You’re sure?” Karya asked him urgently.

He shook his head. “They were at the tavern. I came out of the supply shop and nearly walked straight into them! Straight into the arms of Strigoi. I saw him once, at the camps in Dis. He is death. Even the guards are terrified of him.”

Karya nodded grimly. “We saw. Bad business. Good job hiding from them. I can see you’ve had a lot of practice. I wonder what he’s doing out here in the middle of nowhere? He hasn’t been seen outside of Dis in so long. He never leaves anymore, not in person.” She shook her head dismissively, passing Robin a pack of fresh sausages, still strung together, which he stuffed into the pack Jackalope had given him. “I wonder if Eris herself has dispatched him to oversee the Grimms’ efforts?”

“I heard talk at the stables.” Jackalope said. “Not the Peacekeepers, of course. None of them ever speak. But two Panthea. There’s an army massing, beyond the Gravis Glaciem. High up in the far North, where no one ever goes. Close to the borders. Hundreds upon hundreds of Peacekeepers. Summoned by Ker. I’m guessing he really does plan an all-out assault on the Undine.”

“They looked like mercenaries to me,” Robin said. “If they’re the law, I’d rather be an outlaw any day.”

“Well, you are,” Jackalope said to him scornfully. “All Fae-folk are outlaws. Eris’ wolf and his men hunt the resistance like dogs hunt foxes, if there even is a resistance. I think that’s just a myth we tell each other in the camps. Hopeless dreams for hopeless times.”

Karya insisted they get moving. She didn’t want to linger too long anywhere that Strigoi and his men had been.

As they made their way around the village, giving its outer wall a wide berth, so as not to be spied by anyone within, she looked from Robin to Jackalope.

“There is a resistance,” she said to the grey-headed boy as they walked. “It’s not a myth. We met one of them last year. Robin and I, and … and Woad. A Fae named Hawthorn. It’s no fun that your kind are hunted and wanted by the law, but he told us that there really is some kind of central resistance somewhere, not just a lot of frightened Fae holing up in hiding on their own.” She shrugged awkwardly. “No offence.”

“None taken.” He looked at her sidelong through narrowed eyes.

“It’s hard to tell what’s going on, really,” Karya told them all as they moved off along the road. They were following the path the Peacekeepers’ horses had run, but they were long out of sight. It seemed the most logical direction for the moment. “Eris controls the news, so we only ever hear her side of what’s going on. If a stray Fae gets captured, it’s big news and so on. Deliberately disheartening for any remaining. She’s no fool, the Dark Empress.”

“They make out that there are only a few Fae left, stragglers living in the wild like myself,” Jackalope said, sounding cautious. “What chance have any of us got?”

“But what they don’t mention but what everyone has heard, rumours that the remaining Fae are actually fairly organised,” Karya said. “A real resistance movement, not just us few who live at Erlking. Hawthorn told us there’s a secret meeting place somewhere. A safe haven for Fae refugees.”

“There is nowhere safe for our kind,” Jackalope insisted, sounding very sure of himself.

“Like Robin Hood and the Merry Men,” Robin mused, as they left the cover of a small wood and began to climb a long grassy slope.

“Who?” the Netherworlders asked in unison.

Henry sighed. “Never mind, Rob.”

“Erlking is a safe place,” Robin said to Jackalope. “Safer anyway.”

The older Fae gave him a hard look. “If that’s so, why don’t you invite all the Fae to stay? Gather the resistance, round up the stragglers? You’re supposed to be the big saviour, right? The one who apparently we’re all counting on to save the world?”

“I’m just me,” Robin shrugged, meeting his glare. “Sorry if you were expecting some kind of messiah, but I was never consulted about this.”

“You can’t save anyone,” Jackalope said dismissively, looking away. “No one could save my brother, not even me. Especially me. And you? You’re telling us all about your cosy safehouse. Why don’t we all have a lovely sleepover there? You can’t even save yourself in the snow. I may be a hornless Fae, but you?” He stared at Robin. “You’re a clueless one.”

“Enough!” Karya snapped. “You two may be the only Fae walking free north of Dis right now, and you want to be at each other’s throats? Honestly. There are more important things to worry about.”

“Robin is the Scion,” Henry said quietly, surprising Robin a little. “I don’t really understand it. I don’t think he knows what it really means either. And you…” He pointed at Jackalope. “You’re clueless about it too, so don’t act so high and mighty. Robin and I might not know much about what’s going on in the Netherworlde, but at least he’s here fighting against Eris, not … not hiding under a glowing mushroom. The only reason you’re here at all is for some stupid treasure hunt. To buy you more time to hide?”

Jackalope squared up to Henry, his eyes blazing. He was significantly taller than him, but Henry didn’t back down an inch.

“You don’t get a say, human. This is not your war,” he said through gritted teeth.

“So? Humans are dying too! And it’s my friend whose been captured by the Grimms,” Henry replied hotly. “I’m sorry you couldn’t save your brother, but we’re going to bloody well save Woad.”

Karya touched Henry’s arm. “Yes, we are,” she said decisively. “But any more of this and the Peacekeepers will hear and be back for us. Woad is no fool, Henry. He’s clever and resilient. Even with Mr Ker, he’ll be okay. For a short while at least. Let’s just make sure it is a short while.”

“And how are we going to do that?” Henry demanded. “I thought you couldn’t zap us back to the way station.”

“I can’t,” Karya replied calmly. Robin began to speak, but she shushed him with a raised hand. “The last tear was too chaotic. I didn’t aim for anywhere … just away. But I can feel something, some familiarity. I can’t explain it. I just recognise that we’re not too far away.”

“And we have a Peacekeeper army amassing nearby…” Robin said pointedly.

“My thoughts exactly,” Karya nodded.

Henry shrugged. “It’s better than nothing, I suppose.”

They all looked at Jackalope expectantly. “Whatever,” he muttered, scowling. “Just keep up.”

He stomped off again up the hill. Karya sighed, looking up the steep incline. “What I wouldn’t give for a flying boat…”

“Have you picked up the scent yet?” Robin asked. “Your mana-trail, or whatever it is?”

“Faintly,” she said. She stared ahead. The land still rose up and up before them, but they had put a gratifying distance between themselves and Worrywart. “It’s a long way. I didn’t realise I’d torn us so far. Phorbas’ mana is stronger than I thought. You know it’s odd. Ever since I used the knife, I’ve had a hankering for crumbly Lancashire cheese.”

Henry rolled his eyes, stepping past her into the thick bushes that crossed their path.

“Could be worse I suppose,” he said. “You could be h—”

Henry didn’t manage to finish his sentence. Something huge and dark erupted from the bush in front of him without warning. A coiled mass of shadows and muscle, barrelling into him and knocking him backwards into the others, sending them all flying onto the grass.

Henry yelled in shock, and Karya cried out. Robin’s nose was filled with a terrible smell, rank fur, a deep violent, animal smell. His heart skipped.

The creature which had erupted from the bushes, shimmering around its edges like smoke was followed by another, then another. Large and black and sinewy, they prowled out from the bushes on thickly muscled paws. Larger than lions and blacker than midnight. Robin untangled himself from the pile on the floor, eyes wide in surprise and horror. He knew this smell.

“Skrikers!” Henry yelled. “It’s skrikers.”

One of the massive shadow dogs lunged for him, grabbing Henry by the forearm and shaking him like a rag doll. He cried out in horror and pain. Another two barrelled down the shallow hill towards the spot where Karya and Jackalope had fallen, getting between them and Robin and cutting his friends off from view. Startled birds erupted from the treetops, complaining in loud caws.

Robin’s mind whirled. How could there be skrikers here?

There was no time to think or act. The devil dogs gnashed and pounced around them. His mana stone flashed and Robin threw a Galestrike at the creature gnawing on Henry, filling it with as much mana as he could. The blast of air hit the monster full force, sending it flying and rolling off yelping into the bushes with an explosion of leaves. Robin turned and cast another two, throwing a javelin of powerful air at the two hulking beasts bearing down on Karya and Jackalope. The first strike missed, the blast of air hitting the bole of a nearby tree with a crack, sending bark and wood shards flying into the air. The roar and snapping jaws of the beast were deafening, but the second Galestrike hit the mark, knocking the huge dog off balance and sending it sprawling. It skittered to the side, falling at Karya’s feet in the long grass and churning a deep furrow of mud. It would have ploughed straight into her had not Jackalope whirled her out of the way. The tall Fae had a knife in his hand. Robin hadn’t seen it before. He hadn’t even known Jackalope was armed.

More skrikers were emerging from the bushes all around them. More than they could handle. Henry was staggering, staring around wildly, clutching his injured arm to his chest. Robin saw Karya and Jackalope turning in a circle back to back, keeping the circling beasts in view. A small avalanche of dirt and scree rolled down from the turned earth where Karya had buried the second dog.

Robin raised his arms again, shaking with adrenalin, ready to loose another barrage, when a cold presence behind him made him whirl instinctively.

“Hello again, Master Robin,” said a cold, crisp voice from beneath the trees. It sent chills down his spine. There were two figures standing there, one of whom was Miss Peryl. She looked sour.

The other, who now stalked forward out of the shadows, a huge and growling skriker flanking either side of him, was an old man, white and willow thin, in a dark suit, and with sleek hair oiled to his head, a bright funhouse green. He was smiling at Robin, lips tight, but his eyes were cold and murderous, and as black as the bottom of the ocean.

“How simply wonderful to see you again,” said Mr Strife, in a calm, unhurried tone. “Do you know, I feel we parted on such bad terms when last we met.” His diction was clear and cold. He sounded faintly amused.

As Robin stared, the tall man striding out from the bushes raised his hand, long and bony fingers splayed wide.

Behind him, Peryl smirked a little, her head cocked to one side as she enjoyed the show.

“Let’s see how well we fare this time, Scion of the Arcania,” Mr Strife said. “Far from the Isle of Winds. No magic Shard in your chest this time. How will we dance today? On my terms.”

Karya yelled something behind Robin, but he couldn’t make it out. A skriker was howling, a mournful sound, and his world was filled, edge to edge with the rictus grin of Mr Strife, looming before him. Strife flicked his fingers, sending thick ribbons of oily shadow flying swiftly from the tips to envelop Robin, wrapping around his face, blocking his vision, filling his world with darkness.

WOLF AND WYRM

Robin came to groggily, with straw prickling his face, and cold metal beneath it. It felt as though he had been asleep for a very long time. Somewhere cold and dark and remote.

He shook his head, forcing his consciousness up from blackness. He became dimly aware that he was lying on his side somewhere dark, in a rough foetal position, his hands clasped before him. His head felt full of cotton wool and his whole body ached. Robin forced his eyes to open and tried to move his arms, only to find they were bound tightly at the wrist with thick rope.

The image of Mr Strife, emerging from the shadowy trees and flanked by smoky skrikers rose in his mind, bringing his memory back in a panicked flash. He coughed, spitting out rank straw, and wriggled onto his side, sitting up with a grunt. Where on earth was he?

The answer, he discovered as he looked around, blinking blearily as he came to his senses, was a cage. A large cage, big enough to sit up in, but not to stand. It was circular. Comprised flat black bars. The metal base was strewn with straw, and it domed overhead, like an oversized birdcage. This small prison hung around two feet off the floor, swinging softly with a metallic creak as his movement caused it to lurch. It was affixed to an enormous wooden truss via a thick and ugly chain, over which had been spread a tarpaulin, a rudimentary tent. The tarpaulin was billowing softly, rippling in a wind, as though it were breathing.

Robin struggled with the ropes around his wrists but they were expertly tied, cruelly tight and digging into his wrists, making them raw. His hands ached with pins and needles. He stared around, frantic to see Karya or Henry or Jackalope. What had happened in the glade? There had been skrikers everywhere, and Strife had just knocked him out. Plunged him into an inky nothingness.

He had no idea what had happened to them. He didn’t remember anything after that.

There was a second swinging cage beside him. Henry lay huddled at its base, his clothes muddy and bedraggled. He wasn’t moving.

“Henry!” Robin called out, his voice hoarse and breaking in his throat. His head ached terribly. Had he hit it when he fell? Or was Mr Strife’s dark magic still in his mind like poisonous ink? Where had Strife come from anyway?

Henry didn’t respond. Robin stared, trying to see if he was breathing. Henry’s face was hidden by his tangled mass of hair, a tiny bit of which fluttered in his breath.

Relief washed over Robin, but it was short-lived. Where were the others? There was no sign of Karya or Jackalope.

Robin turned around full circle in the cage on his knees, shuffling in the straw. He found the door, set with a heavy lock, and bracing himself against the other side, the bars cold against his back, kicked as hard as he could.

Nothing happened, other than his shinbones jarred and he set the cage swinging back and forth slightly, squeaking on its chain. Swearing under his breath, he kicked again and again. It was no use. It was locked fast. Robin stopped. He was breathing heavily and forced himself to calm down. Okay. This was bad. He was captured, trussed up like a turkey and locked in a cage like Hansel and Gretel by his worst enemy, but panicking wasn’t going to help. He had to think.

There was a great deal of noise outside the tent. All around them, a constant muted rumble of activity. It sounded like a tremendous number of people. A regular thud of hooves passing the walls. Horses? But they sounded heavy. A heavier tread than any horse he could imagine. Where was he? Where had Strife taken them?

Robin forced himself to be logical. He scanned the tent, looking for anything that might help, and that was when he saw the Peacekeeper.

It had been standing so still, between one of the dark upright timbers, that Robin hadn’t noticed it at all. It made him jump.

The Peacekeeper didn’t move or react to Robin’s motion. It was simply standing, thin arms limp at its sides, clad in the strange, glossy armour, like a creepy rag doll. Its face – or lack thereof – was even more disturbing close up. It was sackcloth, stitched together roughly and clumsily in patches of dirty, mismatched fabric. There was no mouth or nose in its lifeless scarecrow face, only two ragged and threadbare holes for eyes. Robin couldn’t see any movement in the darkness of the sockets. It seemed utterly lifeless.

Except it isn’t. I can feel it watching me, he thought with a shiver. Experimentally, he back away to the far side of the cage, keeping his eye on the Peacekeeper the whole time.

Almost imperceptibly, it turned its silent, expressionless head to follow his movements.

Robin shuddered. The eyes were wide circles, making it look eternally surprised. Empty and cold as a midnight winter’s sky.

Forget it, he forced himself to think. Just forget it. Pay no attention to the Peacekeeper. It’s not doing anything; it’s just standing there … being freaky.

He focused on opening the cage. One thing at a time, Robin … Featherbreath might do it, might be able to move the mechanisms around inside, lift the tumblers, pop the lock.

And then what? A deceitful little voice inside him mind said. Then you’ll be out there with the armoured mannequin from hell. Is that really a good idea? These bars are the only thing separating it from you. It’s still now, yes. But what it it’s just … waiting for you?

Robin ignored the voice. He needed to get out. To get Henry out too. He reached determinedly for his mana stone around his neck.

It wasn’t there.

He stared down in alarm. His chest empty.

“Lost something?” a chirpy voice asked behind him. Robin spun on his knees, his bound hands still both clasped to his empty chest as though he were praying.

Miss Peryl had entered the tent. She was dressed immaculately in her charcoal suit, her hair a sleek and shiny curtain, and her eyes and lips dark. She looked a far cry from the wild murderous banshee she had been when last he’d seen her out on the snowy plateau.

“Has the wickle Scion lost his wickle mana stone?” she asked in baby voice, approaching Robin’s prison, her hands clasped behind her back. “No magic for you, little man.” She frowned crossly. “Doesn’t matter how much you gimme those big blue puppy eyes. You...” She wagged a finger, “...are in a time-out.”

“Where is it?” Robin asked, furiously. “Where are Karya and Jack? If you’ve hurt them—”

Peryl looked irritated, she puffed out her cheeks. “Oh, pipe down, blondie,” she said. “Big Brother Strife took your mana stone. It’s over there, don’t pitch a fit about it.” She flicked a thumb at a table. Several stones and laces were gathered together in a dish. “Guess he didn’t want you slipping away again. Can’t really blame him for that, can you? I mean, you got away on the silly flying island. Then you ran away from me and Ker too. Then you leave me out in a snowstorm. All on my own, I might add.” She shook her head. “You really are a slippery little fish, aren’t you?” She gripped the bar suddenly, her face darkening. Robin scooted away as far as he could to the other side, away from the Grimm, glaring at her.

“I can’t believe you tricked me back there,” she said, in a wondering voice. “You are quite the devious little beast, Robin Fellows. Trying to escape me and Brother Ker, when we had a deal and everything. A deal you broke. Then trying to kill me … with a rock.” Her dark eyes narrowed. “That,” she said slowly, “is not … very … heroic.”

“You tried to kill me first,” Robin said hatefully. “Or did you forget?”

She made a raspberry noise. “Huh. Kill you? As if. How stupid do you think I am? Do you have any idea what the Dark Empress would do to anyone who actually killed you?” She shook her head. “No, no, I’m not that brave. Satisfying as it would have been, I was only going to torture you a little. No need to be such a baby about it.”

She pushed away from the bars, setting the cage swinging. She turned her back on Robin and walked over to the still and silent Peacekeeper. “I’m very cross with you, though, you should know that. You tear away from us, dragging me with you, leaving my idiot big Brother Ker to discover the secret valley of the Undine, alone. And so stealing my glory.”

She reached up and absently stroked the sackcloth face of the Peacekeeper. It didn’t react. “It should have been my glory. Not his. You have no idea how much that irks me,” she said sulkily. “I mean, really. Do you have any idea what it’s like being the runt of the litter? Finding this Shard, delivering it to Eris?” She turned, folding her arms and frowning at him. “This was my stepping stone. My chance to actually matter at court, and not only did you snatch it away from me, after I was good enough to save your miserable life from the sirens, but you leave me for dead in the snow and disappear, making me do the one thing I really didn’t want to do.”

Robin glared at her.

“You,” he said, “are certifiably insane.”

She ignored him. “You made me call Captain Super-Sour!”

Robin blinked. “Strife?” he asked. “He’s your boss though, right?”

Her eyes flashed furiously, and she stalked back to the cage, grabbing the bars so fiercely it made the prison shake.

“He is…” she hissed through gritted teeth, white against her dark lips. “ … my elder. Nothing more.”

“One must always respect one’s elders, Miss Peryl,” came a voice behind her, cold as a mountain stream and clear as a bell. For a second, Robin thought it was the Peacekeeper, that silent sentinel, who had spoken, but he was wrong.

He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but Peryl’s face actually paled. He saw her visibly compose herself.

Mr Strife, looking like a slender undertaker, had silently appeared in the tent. He was smiling at them, his cold, thin lips conveying a convivial warmth that never reached his black hard eyes. He was holding a fob watch, set with a blood red stone, which he consulted briefly, in a genteel manner, before snapping it shut and tucking it away deftly in a pocket behind his dusty, grey lapel.

“Respecting your elders is the natural order of things,” he continued. “Where, after all, would we be, without order? A place for everyone yes, and everyone in their place.”

Peryl turned to face him, and Robin got the distinct and confusing impression that she not only hated him, but feared the old man too.

“Our Lady Eris is not fond of order, big brother,” she said sweetly. “It isn’t her nature.”

Strife’s smile dropped. “You are a fool, youngest,” he said coldly. “There is order even in chaos. Our Lady has not taken the Netherworlde and made it her own by sheer happy chance. She has strategy, she has campaign. She rules by the order of chaos.” He inclined his head at the younger Grimm. “You disturb that order, child, with your pitiful ambitions and your petty games. You would make fools of us all. And you drag me from Dis. Me? For what?”

“To capture the Scion, of course,” Peryl draped an arm across the cage, like a game show hostess displaying a prize. “Don’t act so put upon; you’re glad I called, admit it. What better reason is there to leave our Lady’s side?”

He frowned at her. “I have other duties,” he snapped. “I am not at your beck and call. This task, the finding of the Water Shard, was trusted to you and to Ker.” Mr Strife wore dark gloves, and now he dusted off his hands, removing imaginary lint from his exceptionally long fingers. “Well,” he amended. “To Ker anyway. And yet here I am, cleaning up your mess for you.” A corner of his mouth turned up. “Ker has discovered the hidden vale – even now his army swells here. This may assuage our Lady’s anger … a little.” He looked up through his eyebrows, still fiddling with his gloves. “But you?”

Peryl raised her chin – defiantly, Robin thought – though she did not speak. Her fingers were still gripping his cage, and her knuckles, he saw, were white.

Strife shook his green head. “ … As I said, a place for everyone … I wouldn’t be surprised if your utter, monumental failure here landed you in the pits, with poor brother Moros.” His beetle black eyes glittered. “How would you enjoy that, little sister? Entertaining the Shidelings? Perhaps that at least would still your flapping tongue. Fates know, nothing else will.”

Peryl’s mouth was set in a thin line. “If it wasn’t for me being thoughtful enough to call you here, you wouldn’t have the pleasure of obtaining the Scion, eldest brother,” she said. “Really, you should thank me.”

Strife raised a thin eyebrow on his ghoulish face. “I never can tell, Miss Peryl, whether you are trying to deceive others, or to deceive yourself,” he said slowly. “If you expect me to believe for even one moment that you decided, out of the goodness of your little black heart, to call me in order to give me any glory, then you take me for a bigger fool than I take you. And that, my dear, is saying something.”

His eyes slid across to Robin, looking hungry and filled with malice. “Oh no. You called on me because you had failed. Utterly and completely. You had the Scion in your grasp, and the missing seer too, and you let them slip through your fingers because … let me ensure I get this correct.” He stared at the younger Grimm witheringly. “Ah yes, you were hit by a … rock.”

He pushed Peryl aside, stalking like an elongated shadow towards Robin’s cage. “Your ridiculous gloommoths,” he sneered. “Flittering, irritating nuisances, much like yourself. Good for nothing but spying and scheming. You needed my skrikers for the hunt. My hounds for…” He leaned his ghastly face close to the bars and breathed deeply, nostrils flaring in what Robin found an alarming manner. “ … This vile scent,” he finished, looking in at Robin.

Robin stared back defiantly. He refused to be cowed by Mr Strife, even if it did feel as though all of his skin wanted to crawl off to get away from the ghastly man.

“Leave us,” Strife said to Peryl dismissively, without breaking eye contact with Robin. “I would have private words with the Scion of the Arcania.”

Peryl looked put out.

“I think given my assistance in the matter,” she began. “I should at least—”

“Leave us!” Strife snapped, his voice a furious bark so sharp it made both Robin and Peryl flinch. Several small black shadowy moths had materialised around the pale girl’s head, and they flitted back and forth in silent, nervous agitation. She nodded, folding her arms.

“Go and see how dear Ker is getting along,” Strife suggested, in much calmer tones. "This many of his Peacekeepers in one place, he should be feeling quite gathered. I daresay he may be able to string together whole sentences, who knows. What is the use of his army, though, if he cannot break a simple magical wall? Check for progress.”

Peryl left without another word, though from the corner of his eye (he dared not take his own away from Strife’s) he thought he saw her give the two of them a curious look.

When she had gone, Mr Strife slowly removed his gloves, casting them aside on the table, next to the bowl containing the stones. He glanced, rather disinterested, at Henry, still unconscious in his prison, and then laced his fingers around the bars of Robin’s cage.

“We are well met, Scion of the Arcania,” he said quietly. “Very well met indeed. When last we parted ways, you and I, you had the power of the wind running through your veins. Do you recall? You made a fool of me, and a fool of my brother, Moros. You told me back then you were not afraid of shadows.”

The ghastly man, tall and skeletal, leaned close to the bars in the shadowy tent, his lips split in a humourless grin. His teeth were very small and even. “Tell me,” he said. “Do you still feel the same?”

Robin didn’t answer. He stared Strife down, determined not to be riled.

“You stink of fear, little Fae,” Strife said. He leaned back from the bars. “And so you should, if you have any brains in your head. I acknowledge your intelligence at least. You have no godly powers here and now. You are just a little boy. Alone in the wild, surrounded by enemies.”

He left the cage and stalked over to the table. “How positively wonderful,” he said with a certain amount of dark relish. “Tell me, Scion. Do you know where you are?”

“Where are my friends?” Robin demanded. “What have you done with them?”

Strife cast a hand lazily at Henry’s cage. “The only ‘friend’ who did not abandon you is this useless lump of human flesh you see snoring here.” He looked at Robin. “The girl, my precious little seer, the rabbit who has evaded my hounds so carefully now for far too long, she slipped away with that rather odd young man. She does tend to do that, doesn’t she? I find it most annoying, and quite, quite rude.”

Relief flooded through Robin. So Karya had gotten away, taking Jackalope with her. He couldn’t find it in him to be offended that she had left them. He had never met a more practical, less sentimental person in his life that Karya. If she had fled, it was because staying would have served no use. She would re-group and strategise.

“Won’t your precious Lady Eris be angry with you, losing Karya yet again?” he said. “You do seem to keep disappointing her, don’t you? She must be very patient with you, Mr Strife. Who are you going to blame your failure on this time around? Peryl?” He snorted, feigning courage. “You don’t seem very family-oriented. Sounds like you let Moros take the blame last time around.”

Strife’s shoulders visibly tensed. Very slowly he turned his head to face Robin, glaring from beneath his brows. His black eyes were filled with such a deep and fiery hatred that Robin actually leaned back from the bars.

“You do not speak of my brother, child,” the old man said slowly, through his teeth. “Moros is my twin. He is in the pits at her Ladyship’s pleasure because of you. Not because of me. And as for the girl? Karya, as you call her?” The corners of his lips turned up slightly, in a cruel smile. “You think you know anything? My dark Lady Eris has no interest in her, not really. She is a footnote. All her will is focussed on you. You are the poem which Eris longs to sing.”

He straightened up, smoothing down his lapels. “No, no, my interest in the girl is my own little project.” His eyes flashed. “I have such plans for her. And there is no rush. A rabbit cannot hide in its hole forever. Sooner or later it will find itself in the fox’s jaw.” Strife waved a hand across the table, close to where the dish holding the stones lay. The cloth-faced Peacekeeper had turned its head silently to watch him. The Grimm’s hand passed over the bowl, and as the shadow of his fingers crossed over Robin’s stolen mana stone, a cold sickly feeling rippled through the boy’s stomach. He was still linked to his mana stone, even if it was across the room. He scanned the table. There was no sign of Phorbas. Had he lost the dagger somewhere in the fight with the skrikers? Robin didn’t remember having it there either.

“Oh, but she will be pleased with this catch,” Strife said. He lowered his hand to the bowl, his white fingertips hovering an inch above Robin’s seraphinite stone. “The Scion. Trussed and delivered like a Christmas turkey. Alive and…” His eyes flicked up, meeting Robin’s as his spider-like fingers hovered menacingly over his mana stone. “ … Relatively unspoiled.”

“If Eris thinks for one minute that I’m going to help her locate the other Shards—” Robin began, but Strife cut him off by flicking the contents of the bowl sharply.

The pain was immediate and immense. Robin collapsed, gasping in the cage, his tied hands clutching at his chest. It felt as though someone had just pushed a hot coal beneath his ribs.

“Be silent!” Strife hissed, lifting his finger from Robin’s mana stone. “You are the most idiotic, clueless creature I have ever had the misfortune of being tasked with, really you are.”

Strife crossed the space from the table to the cage in three long strides, peering down with cruel amusement through the bars as Robin struggled back up to his knees, gasping for breath, his hair matted to his forehead with sweat.

“The Shards? Eris wants those. Of course she does. Who wouldn’t? We all, all of us, Master Robin, want something, do we not? But that is not your only purpose, little Scion! That is not what you are for.”

“What … are you talking about?” Robin grated, the sharp pain dulling slightly now that the Grimm had moved away from his mana stone. He still felt sick, nauseous.

“You are the key, Scion,” Strife said, hissing. “And you don’t even understand it. The key to finding and destroying them once and for all. Your missing gods. Oberon. Titania. Only you—”

A noise behind them made Strife stop and turn. A Peacekeeper, almost identical to the one which stood silently and dispassionately watching them, had just entered the tent, lumbering in disjointedly. It swayed its sackcloth head toward Strife, who looked furious at the interruption.

“What is it?” he snapped.

A noise issued from the Peacekeeper. A kind of low, rattling wheeze. Robin was swiftly coming to the conclusion that none of the Peacekeepers were technically ‘people’. They seemed more like rag dolls, enchanted things. Haunted. Whether the strained and low noise issuing from the mouthless face was language or not, he had no idea, but Strife seemed to understand anyway.

“What? Here? Now? Why?” He left Robin’s cage, looking suddenly anxious. He flapped out the coat tails of his suit, and with the palms of his hand smoothed down his oiled green hair. He looked agitated and annoyed. “Never mind. Never mind. Of course he will want to see the prisoner. But he is my prisoner. Mine. I will be the one to deliver him to our Lady.”

The Peacekeeper tilted its head enquiringly, and Strife flapped it away angrily. “Yes, of course, admit him! What power have I to stop him? What power have any of us? Get out, both of you!”

Both of the Peacekeepers left the tent. Mr Strife took a moment to calm himself and looked back to Robin. “Well, well, are you not honoured, Robin Fellows? It seems you command the highest of audiences. He wishes to lay his eyes upon the Scion for himself.”

Robin didn’t have a clue what Strife was talking about.

“Do you know where you are, Robin Fellows?” Strife asked, and then told him, without waiting for an answer. “You are in the middle of a war camp. The gathered forces of my dear, demented Brother Ker surround us, here on this godsforsaken mountain. Outside these cloth walls are thousands of our Peacekeepers, along with hundreds of our mounted guard, the centaurs. We are here, where Ker has summoned us, in this narrow, snowy valley, a thin pass between two tall mountains.”

He looked upwards, as though he could somehow see through the thick, rippling cloth roof overhead and to the skies above. “A place of no importance on any map, a place no one has ever had reason to come. At the northern wastes of the known Netherworlde. And why? Why have we gathered our forces here? Because it is here that you led us. To Hiernarbos. To the pale tree, the secret sanctuary of those final rebels again Eris, the Undine. A place which no one has been able to find, until now.” He grinned evilly. “And we mean to take it for our own.”

“Why haven’t you then?” Robin frowned. “If we’re here, at the secret valley, why are you wasting time talking to a clueless idiot like me?” Strife’s lip curled. He did not immediately answer, and realisation dawned on Robin.

“You … you can’t get in, can you?” he guessed. “For all your great big army. The sanctuary, something is stopping you. What is it?”

“Ice, little boy,” Strife admitted. “Lots of ice, in living form. You will see, in time.” He shrugged elegantly. “If you survive your meeting, that is. Many do not.”

A figure appeared in the doorway, pushing its way through the large heavy canvas flap of the tent with a raised arm clad in black steel. At the crunch of heavy boots, Mr Strife fell silent. Robin saw the old man’s eyes narrow to thin slits, as the newcomer entered their space. The pupils of Strife’s eyes seemed to hold a glint of red and hateful fire, but he turned regardless, and dropped a graceful and deep, if slightly sarcastic, bow.

“My Lord Strigoi,” he said, carefully. “An unexpected pleasure, and an honour of course.” His voice was razorblades rolled in honey.

Strigoi? Robin’s eyes widened, and he stared past Mr Strife.

Strigoi, leader of the Ravens, Wolf of Eris, and apparent bane of all Fae-kind, stepped inside, letting the flap drop behind him, and seemingly ignoring the near-prostrate Strife completely.

He was tall. Taller even than the Grimm, and broad in the shoulders. His armour was black as tar, darkness on darkness. About his shoulders his vast cape, composed of countless glistening feathers, rustled like a great mane. Jet and coal. Robin couldn’t tear his eyes from the creature’s face. The helmet obscured any features, but was in itself a demonic mask. A great black wolf, rendered in steel, jaws gaping for the kill. It seemed to leer at him hungrily from the shadows of the tent’s entrance.

Strigoi silently approached Robin’s cage with slow and even footfalls. The noise outside the tent seemed muted, as though his presence demanded silence.

The great man’s gauntleted hand, Robin saw, grasped the hilt of a long and wickedly jagged sword which hung at his hip beneath the cloak of feathers. A stone was set in the wristguard, silver-white and glittering.

Robin, to his shame, was scared. An air of power and menace rolled off this dark presence in waves, stronger than any other mana he had ever felt before. It lent a deeper darkness to the shadows of the tent. The metal bars beneath Robin’s fingers seemed colder. When he had first met Calypso, out on the lake at Erlking, Robin had sensed her presence undulating across the water to him, strong like a wave. This aura was a tsunami. As the man approached, the wave of mana seared Robin, shrivelling his will. Strife stepped deftly, and most completely, out of the large man’s path. Strigoi made no sign of acknowledgement whatsoever to the pale Grimm. His metal wolf’s-maw was trained solely and hypnotically on Robin, whose heart pounded as he approached.

“We were not advised that our Lady had seen fit to dispatch you yourself to oversee this operation, my Lord Strigoi,” Mr Strife said behind him, trying, and failing, to sound pleasantly delighted by the dark creature’s presence. “I can assure you, all is in hand here. The entrance to the valley is found. My brother, Ker, and his servants are working on the barrier, the great dragon. We will persist, and then the Shard will be ours. And as for the Scion, well, as you can see, the Scion is safe and sound. This is a great victory on all counts.”

Strigoi slowly reached out, like a black apparition, and stroked the bars of the hanging cage with one metal-gloved hand. The slow rasp of metal on metal made Robin’s teeth ache.

He was struck with the sudden certainly, that beneath the mask, the steel animal, that Strigoi was no man at all, but a great demonic beast. This was the hungry wolf that lurked in the darkness of every cautionary fairy tale. The creature who ate Grandmother, and drew the innocent from the light of the path into the darkest of brambles, where no one would hear their screams.

“If I may ask,” Strife ventured, his cold voice carefully kept light. “What it is that brings your noble self here to us? Surely the wolf of our great Lady Eris has higher matters to attend than—”

“There are no higher matters,” Strigoi replied, cutting off the Grimm utterly.

Robin hadn’t expected the demon to speak. And if it had, he would have expected a deep roar of a voice, something bestial and monstrous. The voice which emanated from behind the frozen black wolf mask however, was a deep, low whisper. It echoed in the air, ghostly and resonant.

Strife bowed his head in deference. “Of course,” he said. “I only meant—”

“Why is the creature bound?” Strigoi demanded in his deep and whispering voice. The metal head turned, steel in a bed of glossy feathers, to face Mr Strife, and Robin visibly sagged with relief. To have the focus of this being’s energy directed away, even for a second, was a relief. His heart hammered against his ribs. If Strife was a dangerous barracuda, this thing was a great white shark.

“Because he is devious,” Strife said with a sneer, glancing hard at Robin. “We give him no quarter to escape. He has slipped our leash before.”

“It is a Fae-beast,” Strigoi observed. “Nothing more. Nothing of consequence, despite what our queen believes.” The face whipped back to Robin, making him start. “A beast is a beast. And this? This one is a whimpering whelp.”

The dark eyes of the wolf mask bored into Robin. “It is disarmed?”

Strife nodded, indicating the bowl on the table. “We have taken his mana stone and weapon, my Lord,” he confirmed. “It is impossible for any of us to cast without one. He is no adversary here. Just a little boy.”

“And yet … you keep it caged,” Strigoi reasoned. There was something dangerous in his tone, dangerous to Strife. “Cages are for dangerous animals, Grimm. Tell me. Are you afraid of this filthy runt of a Fae-spawn?”

Strife’s face darkened murderously behind Strigoi’s back. He did not reply.

“Pathetic ghoul,” the Wolf of Eris whispered after a moment. He reached in through the bars, his dark metal fingers outstretched towards Robin, who scuttled back on his heels until his back slammed into the far side of the cage, desperate to keep away from his grasp. Strigoi’s fingers danced in the air before him, slowly and curiously. Robin saw that the metal tips of his gauntlets were sharpened to claws like black razors. He had the distinct feeling that the monster was trying to feel his aura, testing the boy’s mana with its own, which still pulsed out before it, the invisible beat of dark music unheard.

“Bars and ropes,” Strigoi said. “You Grimms. You are basic beasts. You have no … imagination. These bars of yours are nothing. If you wish to break a Fae, the best prison is the one you place its animal mind into, not its body.”

Strigoi removed his hand, scraping through the bars. He walked over to the table. “Release it,” he commanded, cool voice whispering in the dark. “I would have it walk by my side. It should see the forces of our Lady for itself, and know despair.”

In a swift motion, the man reached out and upturned the contents of the bowl which rested on the table with a clatter. Several stones rolled around on the dark wooden surface.

“You will never understand,” the Wolf said to Strife. “You do not rule a people by stopping them running from you, Grimm. You take away their will to run,” Strigoi whispered. With a long, grating hiss, he drew his cruel sword from its scabbard at his side. “You do not break their bones. You break their spirit,” he said. “You need not take away their chances, you need only destroy … their hope.”

As Robin watched, helpless and horrified from the cage, Strigoi lifted his sword, and bringing the iron pommel down hard onto the tabletop with all his force, a whispering rush of feathers, he shattered the mana stone into rubble.

Even Mr Strife flinched, looking astonished as the table shook. Shards of glittering stone fell and span away. Destroyed chips and chunks pattered to the floor, a tinkling rain.

Robin’s heart was in his throat. His mana stone. His link to any Fae powers he had. In all the Netherworlde, each being only ever got one. And it had just been destroyed, casually, easily, and without hesitation, by this dark creature.

Robin’s lips felt numb. He didn’t feel anything. No pain, no sudden magical jolt. Was he in shock? Without his mana stone he was—

“Just a child,” Strigoi whispered, sweeping a gauntlet through the glittering stone dust on the tabletop, as though he had read Robin’s mind. He swept the remainder of the rubble carelessly and coldly onto the floor. “Nothing more. How easily one’s dreams are shattered. How delicate they are.” His whisper rolled around the tent like haunted wind. “All swept away. Dust … and memory.”

Robin watched Strigoi dust off his hands, his dark metal gauntlets rasping against one another. The boy’s heart was filled with pure, fierce hatred. Everything he was, all that he had trained towards, the Tower of Air, the Tower of Water, and anything beyond, had been snatched away from him in one simple motion. His casting days were over. He was defenceless.

“You will learn your place in our world, mewling creature,” Strigoi said softly. He waved a hand lazily, and the door to Robin’s cage snapped open, the door flung back on itself with a metallic clang, almost ripped off its hinges. Robin was dimly aware that Henry had woken, startled by the sound. The dark haired boy was sitting up and rubbing his head, disoriented.

The ropes hissed around Robin’s wrists and fell off, a jumbled heap of dead snakes on the floor of the cage.

Robin didn’t move. He stared at Strigoi with a bubbling feeling of rising hatred growing in him, stronger than he ever thought he was capable of.

“Is it going to remain in its cage?” Strigoi whispered. He sounded amused. “Comfortable already in its new home, is it?” The wolf-head lowered, glaring at Robin from across the tent. “So easily broken, just like its stone. But no. It will not stay here. I would have it walk with me. And it will learn to obey. Now … come.” He beckoned with curled fingers, and Robin found himself dragged from the cage by some invisible force, a chill nebulous energy that grabbed him from between the bars and tore him roughly from his prison, dropping him onto the floor of the tent in front of Strigoi.

He hastily scrambled to his feet. Afraid or not, devastated by the loss of his mana stone as he may be, Robin was damned sure of one thing: he was not going to kneel in front of this monster like a frightened child. Ever.

He stood, shaking with anger, forcing himself to stare up into the furious metal visage, which grinned down at him, a frozen menace.

“Defiance,” the Wolf observed, with light interest. “Even without its stone, the creature has some futile spirit. Ever a Fae, ever a fool.”

“R … Robin?” Henry’s voice was confused and groggy. Robin winced inwardly. He didn’t want Strigoi’s attention on his friend.

“The human child is awake,” Strife observed. “I shall kill it. It serves no purpose.”

“No,” Strigoi commanded. “Get out. Leave us, Grimm. You are of little use to me, shadow creature.” Mr Strife’s teeth peeled back from his lips in outrage and anger, but Robin saw that he didn’t dare speak out. The pale Grimm looked to Robin. “You and I shall meet again in Dis, Scion. I assure you of that.” He left the tent without another word, unsatisfied and with ill grace, leaving Robin alone with the most dangerous person he had ever met, and with Henry, who rattled his bars.

“Oi! Hey you, Darth Vader. What are you doing? Leave Robin alone!”

“Henry, don’t—” Robin began, but Strigoi merely looked at Henry’s cage, and the door popped open.

“Step outside, human thing,” the Wolf hissed softly. “I have no business with you. You are free to go.”

Henry didn’t move. He looked at the man suspiciously. Strigoi spread his hands.

“This is no kindness I do to you, mortal thing. There is nowhere for you to go, of course. You will not fare well with the centaurs outside, I fear, and the Peacekeepers are everywhere. There is no longer any need for cages.” He looked back to Robin before him. “This whole world is your cage now. And you must learn who holds the keys.”

“Henry, j-just stay there, it’s okay,” Robin insisted. It wasn’t okay. It was about as far from okay as he could imagine it ever being. He saw Henry take in the shattered bits of stone on the table, the overturned bowl, his face filled with confusion as he pieced together what had happened.

“Stay or go, human,” Strigoi said without concern. “Take your chances with the centaurs – they enjoy bloodsport – or sit and rot in your cage. You are of no interest to me.” He turned his head toward Robin. “But you, little Fae thing. You come with me. You will walk of your own accord, or I will drag you.”

Strigoi marched Robin out of the tent, sweeping him helplessly before him in a flurry of black feathers. Robin got only a slim glimpse of Henry before the tent flap closed. His friend, muddy and dazed, was slipping down out of his cage and headed towards the ruined shards on the tabletop, a look of despair and confusion on his usually happy face.

WATERWYRM

Outside of the tent, snow and sunlight whipped Robin’s face. It was bright daylight and bitterly cold, snowing heavily. The ground beneath their feet was a mass of churned mud and slush. Robin stared around, slipping unsteadily as he followed the stalking figure of Strigoi, whose feathered cloak billowed out behind him like a living thing, quickly accumulating a dusting of flakes. He hated leaving Henry, but what else could he do? If it meant getting him away from Strigoi and Strife, he would have done anything. They were, he saw, in a narrow mountain pass. On both sides, sheer rock walls, grey and slate, rose up immensely, craggy peaks sheened with blue ice, bare of any vegetation and dusted with skirts of blinding white snow. The entire pass was filled with tents, pitched here and there, grey artless canvas, hundreds of them. But what made Robin stare were the sheer number of Peacekeepers. There must be a thousand or more, he thought. Everywhere he looked, they milled around, crowds and crowds of insectile, silent ghasts, each indistinguishable from the next, black faces and cloth eyes twisting to follow the passing of Eris’ Wolf and the boy at his side. This was an army. An advance force waiting to storm the hidden sanctuary of the Undine. Robin didn’t understand what they were waiting for.

“If you value your hide, Fae-thing, you will steer clear of the centaurs,” Strigoi said, his odd echoing voice whipped away by the wind.

Robin caught sight of them here and there, amongst the massed Peacekeepers. He had seen centaurs in books of course, back in the human world. Noble creatures with the bodies of horses and the torsos of men. The centaurs of the Netherworlde were quite different.

Stalking through the crowds of Ker’s forces, who scattered bonelessly before them wherever they stepped, the beasts were huge. Larger and more muscular than any horse Robin had ever seen. They were uniformly white, pale as old bone, their sleek muscles bunching in knots on their flanks as they strode, their heavy hooves stamping into the cold, churned mud. The horse-like body melded into the torsos of men, powerfully built, but whether they had human-like heads or not, Robin couldn’t tell. Their heads were covered. Where faces should be, the creatures wore great long pyramidal masks, looking for all the world like the long beak of a plague doctor, only made from bleached bone, and sprouting antlers that were strapped to the skull artlessly with leather and twine. The creatures were a chaotic and unsettling mixture of stag, horse, and man. Their eyes, lost deep within the blackness of the skulls, tracked the passage of Strigoi and Robin, glowing red like smouldering coals.

“The centaurs are our cavalry,” Strigoi told him. “They are murderous, violent beasts. Ker does well to control them, for a Grimm. When we break into Hiernarbos, their white flanks will be painted red with the Netherworlde’s last Undine blood.”

One of the creatures stopped its stalking as they passed, staring at them over the heads of the Peacekeepers. It blew great powerful gusts of air through its nose as it towered above the scarecrow army, its breath clouding in the frigid air. Robin saw to his disquiet, that the muscular arms of the creature bore long curved blades, like scimitars, lashed to its forearms, serrated steel glinting wickedly in the bright snow and sun.

There were dozens of such creatures milling around the camp. Robin saw several locked in combat with one another far off across the tents. Antlers clashing as they bellowed at one another, rearing up, territorial and brutal.

Strigoi led the boy on a winding course through the tents, his strides long and sure, so that Robin had to trot to keep up, his feet slipping in the freezing slush and mud. Not once did the dark man look back to check the boy was following. Of course he was. Where else could he go?

Robin was still in shock, mourning the loss of his mana stone. It didn’t seem real. His friends were scattered to the wind, and he was here, defenceless, at the side of a creature which even the Grimms feared. Many Peacekeepers followed them at a safe distance, looking curious in their silent droves, as though drawn along in the Wolf’s wake.

“Before we get where we are going,” Strigoi said, as he led Robin between two tents, in a narrow place which was relatively concealed from view.

He stopped so suddenly that Robin almost walked into the back of him. The Wolf turned and stared down at him. Frost was gathering in the carved wrinkles of the metal muzzle.

“Tell me now. What have you heard of her?”

Robin stared up at him, confused.

“Speak!” Strigoi demanded, his voice rising above a whisper for the first time since they had met. “Her whereabouts? Has she contacted you? In this Fae-palace you hide in?” His voice was a hiss.

Robin had no idea what the dark demon was talking about. “Whose whereabouts? Karya?” he asked. “I don’t know what you mean.”

The Wolf reached out in a flash and caught Robin by the arm above the elbow, none too gently. He shook the boy roughly. “Do not lie to me, Fae. I will know if you do. You have been at Erlking. You must know something. Where is she? And where are the resistance?”

“I don’t know where Karya went.” Robin tried to shake loose, but his arm may as well have been caught in stone. The waves of powerful mana were rolling off his captor in pulses, making his head spin. The sheer focus of the creature’s will bore down on him.

“And I don’t know anything about the resistance!”

“Do not play the idiot with me,” Strigoi said, the metal fingers of his glove biting into Robin’s arm. “I don’t care about your little world-tearer. I will have answers from you. What do you know? About the Silent Halls? About the book? I saw your stone! Do not take me for a fool, little Fae.”

Robin didn’t know anything about a hall, silent or otherwise, or about any book. “You destroyed my stone, remember?” he spat. “You shattered it, like you’re going to shatter my arm! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

The masked face regarded him in silence for a second or two. There was no sound around them but the slapping of tent-cloth in the wind and the far off bellows of centaurs, echoing from the high rock walls of the valley.

Snow fell softly on the two figures, gathering in Robin’s blonde hair. He stared up at the mask balefully.

Strigoi seemed to reach a decision. He released Robin roughly, with something close to disgust.

“You are as clueless as you are useless,” he said. “You will need to be stronger and faster, Fae, if you hope to live much longer.” He turned away. “Come then, and see the last great work of the damned Undine.”

The man led him onward, to a place where the tents stopped, and the Peacekeepers, in their hundreds, gathered close together in a crowd, like a surreal music festival. They parted silently in a wave for Strigoi, who never broke stride. There was a low and constant noise ahead, like the roar of a distant jet engine. Robin followed in his wake. When they reached the front of the crowd, he stared. The roar was deafening here and he finally saw its source, his head tilting back as he stared upwards in awe.

The two rock sides of the valley came to a narrow point, closing together like the prow of a ship to form a bottleneck in the frozen canyon. Between the two soaring walls of black, frozen rock, there was a space roughly the width of a football pitch. This space, in its entirety, and upwards as far as Robin could see into the rocks and sky above, was filled with a solid, churning wall of water. It roared and roiled, a great perpetual tidal wave of dark, churning liquid. Immense chunks of ice, like mini-icebergs, some as big as cars, rolled around inside it. Giant pale ice cubes rough and raw as boulders. This huge, impassable barrier reared oppressively over them, and in its depths, something colossal and sinuous roiled and coiled. Robin faltered in his steps. Strigoi grabbed him roughly by the collar of his t-shirt, stopping him from falling, and all but shook the boy at the water. “Behold, spawn of the Fae,” he hissed darkly. “The waterwyrm.”

The gargantuan monster, a draconic snake-eel hybrid, long and looping, coiled over itself in continual, dizzying and massive loops within the wall of thunderous water. It was like peering into the world’s largest and most terrifying aquarium. The creature was completely clear, glassy, and, Robin suspected, formed of enchanted ice, but on a scale he could barely comprehend. It was a colossus, something from prehistory and larger than the vastest dinosaur.

“It bars our way,” Strigoi said. “The guardian of the Undine. The last great defence of Hiernarbos.”

Good, thought Robin bitterly. I hope it eats you all. He shielded his eyes against the frozen tidal wave. Its rippling walls were ever in motion, and they caught the sun and threw it back in dazzling fractals. He was so awed by the sight that it took him a moment to register the figures standing before it, closer than any of the amassed Peacekeepers dared approach.

It was Mr Ker, the rugged and monstrous man-mountain of a Grimm, his hair like pointed flames, whipped about his head in the snow and wind blowing from the roiling water. And by his side, on a thick metal chain like a dog, was a creature Robin’s heart leap to see. A small blue smudge, sitting sadly on the floor on its haunches, tail thrashing back and forth dolefully.

“Woad!” Robin cried. He was so relieved to see the faun alive that he even forgot Strigoi for a moment. He made to rush forward, and it was only the cruel grasp of the Wolf’s gauntlet that pulled him back.

Ker turned at the sound, ponderously, and Strigoi approached, dragging Robin with him.

The Wolf of Eris was tall, but the huge bulk of Ker towered over even him. Despite this, at the dark man’s approach, the Grimm respectfully, though grudgingly, Robin thought, dropped to one knee and bowed his head low.

“My Lord Strigoi,” Ker rumbled, his voice as coarse and raw at the roaring water at his back.

Strigoi nodded to him. “Grimm. You make no progress.” It was a whispered observation, but somehow the words carried over the sound of the falls.

Robin stared desperately at Woad. The faun did not appear to be hurt, other than being chained around the neck, as Ker’s latest vile pet. But he did not look up. Robin couldn’t make out Woad’s face as the faun sat on the floor, looking listless and dejected. He had never known Woad to despair. The sight of him here, subdued and broken, brought acid to his throat. He shook himself, trying to free himself from Strigoi’s iron grasp.

“The way is barred,” Ker grunted. “We will get through, and the Shard within will be ours. I have oathbreakers working on it now. We have tried to feed it also, but nothing gets through.”

“Show me,” Strigoi commanded, his firm grip holding the struggling boy easily.

Robin watched in shock as Ker raised a massive hand above his head, signalling to the army of behind them. A dozen Peacekeepers broke from the crowd, advancing toward the wall. Silently, and without complaint, they passed around the gathered figures and continued onwards. Robin saw them walk straight into the wall of water, passing through it as though through a waterfall. The water churned in a frenzy, and he stared in horror as the limp and thin bodies were caught in powerful currents, dragged upwards into the suspended maelstrom as surely as leaves tossed in a white-water flood. The immense, coiled wyrm roared and bucked inside it prison, icy flanks shining and tearing through the water. Each of the Peacekeepers, to a one, were torn apart, tatters of metal and cloth breaking apart and scattering into the eddies of dark water, nothing but flotsam.

“How?” Robin gasped. He stared at Ker frantically. “How can you do that? Those were your own men. You just sent your own men to their death!”

Ker stared down at the boy for a moment in stunned silence, then his face split in a strange and ugly mockery of laughter. “Men? Men, he says!” He rattled Woad’s chain, making the faun’s head wobble, though he still didn’t look up. “Peacekeepers are no men, you fleshy nothing!”

Strigoi released Robin, dropping him like a sack of garbage. “The Peacekeepers, little Faespawn,” he explained in his dark voice, “are Ker’s shadows. He is the commander of Lady Eris army. And this is his skill. His endless totems.”

As if to explain, Ker raised a hand again. A Peacekeeper detached itself from the front rank of its brothers, and as Robin stared, it fell apart, empty armour and sackcloth clattering to the ground in a pile. From the hollow eye sockets, a great plume of black, shadowy smoke billowed, whipping across to them, elongating like an eel. Ker caught and absorbed it into his hands.

He grinned down at Robin, his large pale face filled with monstrous pride. “Brother Strife may have his skrikers, fast and fleet, but none but Ker can fashion an entire army from shadow.”

Robin was aghast. All of these, every last Peacekeeper, here and in the Netherworlde, they were all Ker’s will made solid? This huge and lumbering brute, his mind and will fractured, spread out all across the land, focussed into countless pinpoints of consciousness.

“Find a way through, Ker,” Strigoi commanded. “Or you will answer to Eris.”

Ker grunted. “I know my business, my lord,” he said. He tugged cruelly on Woad’s chain again, making the faun twitch.

“Leave Woad alone,” Robin shouted angrily. He stared furiously at Strigoi and Ker. “You are both going to pay. I swear it. If it’s the last thing I ever do, I’ll see you suffer.”

Ker stared at him in fascination. “Brave words for a hornless wonder with no mana stone.”

“Don’t worry, Pinky.” It was Woad who had spoken. Robin stared at him. “They’ll pay sooner that they think, Brickthick here and the Black Chicken of Eris too.”

The faun looked up at last and Robin saw that he had been mistaken. Woad didn’t look despairing, or broken, or even worried. He was smiling at Robin, his face mischievous, his yellow eyes filled with wicked merriment.

From the corner of his eye, Robin saw a Peacekeeper approaching them again from the crowd. Strigoi and Ker were both staring at the faun.

“Boss is coming,” Woad said. He grinned, showing small sharp teeth. His voice was high and filled with mischief. “They’re in for it now.”

Ker tugged at the chain angrily. “Blue dogs do not speak unless they are told to!” he growled, sharp teeth grinding.

Woad looked up at him with narrow eyes unafraid. “I’m not a dog. I’m a faun. And there’s nothing in this world or the next that can stop me from doing exactly what I want to do, whenever I want to do it, you dumb old slab of day-old meat.” He grinned at the Grimm. “And no pathetic iron chain can hold me either. I’m not your pet, and I’m not your prisoner.” He winked at Robin. “I’ve just been waiting for my friends.”

Woad spat suddenly at Ker’s feet, flame popping into life as it hit the ground, making the huge man stumble backwards in surprise, stamping at the fiery ground. Woad tugged and twisted his head, and the manacle fell from around his throat with a snap to land uselessly in the wet slush with a thud. “If you want to bind a faun, use a horseshoe next time, you diplodocus!” he yelled, rolling away nimbly as Ker lunged forward to try and grab for him.

Then several things happened at once.

Robin, still shocked at Woad’s act and sudden escape, heard a great roar from the water wall behind them, a crescendo of noise. At the same time the Peacekeeper who had been advancing steadily towards them, un-noticed by anyone so far, suddenly and quite inexplicably called out to him.

“Robin! Think fast, mate!” It threw something in his direction, and Robin, too shocked to do anything else, reached out and caught it. The object landed in his hands like a heavy egg. He stared in complete confusion at the Peacekeeper, who was running the remaining distance towards them. It held a spear, like many of its fellows, and before Strigoi could turn or react, it leapt and brought the tip of it fiercely down on the man. The blade glanced off the dark wolf’s solid armour in a flurry of bright sparks, but the unexpected blow was enough to send him whirling away, off balance and staggering, his feathered cloak fluttering furiously as it tangled around him.

“Anytime now, Rob!” the Peacekeeper yelled in a muffled and very un-spooky voice that sounded half-adrenalin and half-panic.

Robin opened his hands. The object he had caught glittered up at him. Impossibly.

It was his mana stone. Whole and undamaged.

There was no time. Thinking could come later. It couldn’t be his mana stone; he had seen it destroyed. Yet here it was, and he felt its familiar tingling warmth roll through him, as though he had been disconnected from a power source and someone had just plugged him back into the mains.

He was furious with Strigoi, appalled with Ker. His anger rolled through him like fire, and he thought of everything his tutor had taught him, Everything Calypso had ever said. Emotion is the key to the Tower of Water. Don’t think it, feel it. Find your guts.

Turning without a moment’s hesitation, his mana stone still gripped in his hand, flashing and shining, Robin cast a Needlepoint towards Ker. The spear of ice formed with a whoosh in mid-air, striking the massive man in his side, sending him flying into the slush amidst a tinkle of broken glass as the spell shattered into countless pieces against him. The Grimm’s flailing hands missed Woad who somersaulted out of reach, backing towards the wall of water gleefully.

Robin turned, crouched low, feeling more than seeing the dark lunging shape of Strigoi bearing down on him from behind. With a pulse of furious mana, he threw out a Waterwhip. A long lash of water cracked through the air with a snap. It was thick and strong. It tangled around the Wolf’s booted foot and Robin heaved with all his might, with all his anger, pulling the man’s feet out from under him. The Wolf of Eris toppled backwards, landing heavily on his pristine cloak in the slush and mud.

The running Peacekeeper, dropped the spear and tore the sackcloth from his face, revealing a wild-eyed and very red-faced Henry. “Bloody hell, it’s hot in that.” He grabbed Robin by the shoulder and dragged him into a run, towards Woad and the roaring barrier. Towards the Greatwyrm.

“Hurry!” he said. “Ker’s up.”

Mr Ker had indeed lumbered to his feet behind them with a roar of outraged fury, shedding mud and slush, and with an angry gesture, they saw the army of Peacekeepers, directed by the Grimm’s furious will, suddenly spring to life. As one, the army raced toward them, an advancing wall of possessed shadow.

“Hurry, hurry, hurry!” Woad gibbered.

Hurry to where? Robin thought desperately, his heart hammering. He turned his back on the army to face the watery barrier, now right before him, and his heart almost stopped. They were close enough to the roaring wall that spray was raining hard on their faces, cast off from its sheer, undulating sides.

But Robin had gasped because the great ice wyrm was before him, its immense head at ground level, just beyond the sheeny curtain of water dwarfing the three boys. It pushed its great snout of carved, clear ice out of the wall of water with the creaking, deafening thunder of a glacier, throwing off great waterfalls of spray, and opened its huge jaws wide, as tall as a house.

Within the throat of this clear, enchanted construct, this tunnel of glittering, rainbow-hued ice, against all odds and reason, two figures stood.

Karya and Jackalope. Their arms braced against the sides of the ice dragon’s mouth.

“Are you waiting for a royal invitation?!” Karya yelled over the deafening roar of the water. Robin glanced back. The Peacekeeper army descended on them, a stampede. He dropped into a spinning crouch, casting a wide sweeping Galestrike, cutting across their front ranks like a scythe cutting down a row of corn. They fell, and those behind them stumbled over their fallen shadowkin, a mass of limbs and confusion. Robin saw centaurs rearing on their hind legs in the chaos, and then Henry and Woad grabbed one arm each and dragged him into the mouth of the dragon. It snapped shut around them. The companions found themselves enclosed in a great dry frozen cave, clear as glass. Robin watched the creature draw back into the depths of the torrent, and the curtain of the barrier fell back into place, cutting them off from the sight and sound of their enemies.

FIVE EATEN ALIVE

Robin stared at his companions, panting heavily, bent almost double, with his hands braced against his thighs. He felt dizzy. They all looked back at him. It was too surreal. Around their living cave of clear ice, the roar of the water gurgled, rolling along the walls as the wyrm ploughed through the dark and churning depths, holding them in its clenched, clear mouth.

There was plenty of room for them all to stand. It was like being inside a crystal submarine.

“Is he going to upchuck?” Woad asked, with a hint of concern. He looked at Karya with concern. “I’m pretty sure that’s really bad manners, to be sick inside a dragon’s mouth. Even one that’s made of ice. Plus … ew.”

Karya was standing a few steps from Robin, looking concerned, but otherwise unhurt. The fur-wrapped Fae, Jackalope, loomed just behind her, his face cross and lips thin.

“Scion, are you okay?” she asked. “You threw a lot of mana around out there, if you feel like you’re going to pass out, you should put your head between some knees.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be his own knees, specifically,” Henry’s voice came at his side, he was struggling out of the Peacekeeper armour he wore, dropping bits of clanking black shin-guard to the icy floor. “Ugh. This stuff smells like the dust under beds,” he complained, acting, in his usual blithe way, as though being swallowed by a colossal dragon of ice and carried away through dark water was the sort of thing that happened every day.

“Are you all okay?” Karya asked Robin, ignoring Henry’s complaints. The wyrm banked a little, threading its way through the icy river, and she had to steady herself on the wall.

Robin just stared at her in disbelief.

“Look, I know this is a bit odd-” she started.

Robin threw his arms around her, hugging her fiercely. He laughed a little hysterically into her shoulder.

“A bit … odd?” he spluttered, releasing the rigid girl. “A bit odd!?” He stared around at his friends in disbelief. “We’ve just escaped an army, three Grimms, and possibly the worst and most hateful person I’ve ever met. Woad is fine, Henry is fine, you two are here, out of bloody nowhere, and in case no one else has noticed, we have just been eaten by a great big sea snake made out of ice.” He shook his matted blonde hair out of his eyes, taking a deep breath. “I’m not entirely convinced that ‘a bit odd’ covers it!”

“It’s not actually alive you know,” Karya said, rapped her fingers against the roof of the gargantuan dragon. It rang out quite musically “It’s a construct, a vessel really, for navigating the deep. Undine design. They’re very, very clever, aren’t they? In case you haven’t noticed, we haven’t been chewed to death or anything. It’s just a way through the barrier, or…” She looked back the way they had come. “ … As a deterrent too. Stopping anything getting in.”

“But how?” Robin asked, trying to get used to their current location. He was gripping his mana stone tightly with both hands, as though he couldn’t believe it was real. “How are you here? How did you and Jackalope come out of the barrier, from inside Hiernarbos? And how is Woad okay?” He whirled on Henry. “And why are you dressed like that?” Finally, he looked down to his cupped hands.

The flat, egg-shaped seraphinite stone really was unharmed. It lay in his hands, pulsing softly with its usual energy, innocently challenging Robin’s sanity. “And this? I saw this destroyed. Strigoi, that great bloody nazgul back there, he smashed it to pieces. I saw him do it. This is impossible.”

Henry, who had given up trying to keep his balance as the wyrm bucked and swooped through the dark, sat down on the smooth icy floor of the mouth. “God, this thing is worse than the London Eye.” He tentatively poked the ‘tongue’. “Well, it seems that old dog-face back there is as stupid as he looks,” he said to Robin. He passed Robin some broken shards and pieces of what looked like painted glass. “When you two left the tent, well, I wasn’t going to stay there, was I? Nope. I followed you. But I saw your mana stone, safe and sound on the table in that tent, rolled off to the side didn’t it, behind one of those jugs. This is what the whispering menace smashed, for all the good it did him. He must have thought it was yours.”

“Is that…?” Karya peered down at the shattered pieces Robin held in his hands, and Henry nodded. “Yeah, it’s my mana stone. Well, you know, the pretend one you got me for my birthday, remember?” He shrugged. “I supposed when Strife caught me and Robin and brought us here, he took them both from us. He must have thought we had one each. A real one I mean, not just my pretend one. He wouldn’t have known any different, would he? They must have been together in that little dish.”

Karya peered at Henry. “You’ve actually been wearing it?” she asked him with wonder. “You never mentioned it again after your birthday. I’d assumed you’d forgotten about it.” Henry looked a little uncomfortable. “Yeah, I suppose I’ve been wearing it. I wear it every day. Or, well I did. I guess I’m not doing anymore though. Unless we get some crazy glue.”

The girl folded her arms, frowning at the tousled-haired boy, as though she didn’t understand him at all. “Well then,” she said eventually. “Lucky for us that you’re a sentimental idiot, isn’t it? Saved Robin’s mana stone that did.” She took the broken and useless shards from Robin, rolling them in her hand. “I suppose now I’ll have to get you another one, won’t I?” she muttered. “Or you’ll only sulk.” She looked quite put out, but Robin thought, oddly pleased as well.

Henry grinned. “Well, I saw your stone there, I wasn’t leaving it, and I certainly wasn’t waiting around for Mr Strife or his nutcase sister to come back and make me into a kebab skewer, was I? So I picked it up.” He looked apologetic. “Don’t worry, I used a ripped off bit of my shirt. I didn’t touch it or anything. I know you magic folks are weird about that.”

“Strigoi doesn’t seem to be,” Woad observed with great distaste. Clearly the wanton destruction of another’s mana stone was as bad as murder itself in the Netherworlde. The faun looked scandalised and repulsed by Strigoi’s act of violence.

“Anyway, I followed you two, at a distance. None of the Peacekeepers bothered me. They didn’t even seem to see me at all. It’s like they were all just milling around aimlessly, waiting to be told what to do.”

“That’s exactly what they were doing,” Robin explained. He told them all what he had discovered, that the Peacekeepers in their multitudes were nothing but shadow made living. Same as skrikers, grimgulls and gloommoths. Ker’s own brand of shadow familiar, dressed in metal and cloth. If Ker’s attention was elsewhere, they would be nothing but husks.

This revelation was news to all, even Karya.

“Although,” Henry continued. “I did almost have a run in with a centaur. Those things are big! I had to duck down and crawl through a gaggle of Peacekeepers to get away from it. Do you have any idea how freaky that is? To deliberately push your way into a crowd of creepy, animated scarecrows, all heavily armed, when every sensible bit of your brain is telling you that you should be running away in the opposite direction?” He puffed out his cheeks and shook his head. “Bloody Netherworlde! So when I found you, Rob, out there in front of that massive wall of water, with Woad and Ker, I didn’t know what to do. But then Ker emptied one of his toys. I saw the smoke fly up to the sky, then across and into his fingers. When you were all busy talking, I snuck over and put on this getup. It was just lying on the ground empty after that display. Reckoned I stood a better chance of getting close to you that way, without being detected.”

“And what, strange human boy…” Jackalope said, with an air of interest, “ … were you hoping to achieve? What was your plan when you got to your Fae friend here?” He folded his arms expectantly, frowning at Henry, who thought for a moment, then shrugged.

“Hadn’t really thought that far ahead, to be honest,” he said casually. “Had a spear though. Reckoned I might give someone a poke.”

Robin didn’t even want to think about how very certainly Henry would have been killed had he tried that, without the others showing up. But he grinned like a mad fool. He would have done the same. “That still doesn’t explain about you two,” he said, demanding an explanation.

“Psh,” Woad shrugged. “Silly big old Grimm thought he’d caught a faun. I get knocked on the head in the human world, and wake up in the middle of an army camp with a chain around my neck and that great red-headed pachyderm ordering soldiers about. You can’t hold a faun with chains, anyone knows that. But I thought I’d better play along for a bit.” The small boy blinked around at them. “Didn’t know where any of you were, and I could smell that I was at Hiernarbos. Bided my time, didn’t I? Knew you’d be back. In the meantime, I pretended to be the prisoner Ker thought I was, and watched, and listened.”

“We were worried about you!” Robin told him. “We were coming for you, Woad – you know that, right? We wouldn’t have left you with the Grimms, not ever. We had the other one chasing us at the time. Peryl.”

“Was she trying to kiss you again?” the faun teased. “Charmer.”

“Kill, not kiss,” Robin explained.

Henry snorted. “Typical woman.”

“Shut up, Henry,” Karya said. “Jackalope here found us in the snow, Woad. He took us in, let us heal, and even guided us to a village. We were tracking you, until Strife attacked that is.”

“Yeah, I saw cabbage-top bring Pinky and Henryboy into camp,” the faun nodded. “‘Oh hello’, I thought to myself. Here they are at last. And that’s when I knew. It was time to act. We had to get away, and I saw that you weren’t with them, Boss.” The faun looked up at Jackalope with undisguised interest. The silver-hair boy glared sternly back at the small blue creature.

“There’s a new shinyhead with us? I didn’t know you were off making new friends,” Woad said to Karya. “What is it with you and Fae-boys, eh, Boss? You’re like a magnet.”

“Woad,” Robin interjected, getting the boy to focus.

“Oh yes,” he continued. “Well, Ker had dragged me up to the water wall. We’d been there all day. He was trying everything to break through it. Marching droves of his little puppet men into it, he had dark magic users in the army too. Mancers, I think. I didn’t see them, but I could smell them, even over the stench of the centaur droppings. A bad sort that lot. They were working on countless charms, trying to dispel the barrier that had popped us as soon as we arrived in the valley’s entrance from the Janus station.” He hung his head in an affectation of sad and slump-shouldered dejection. “I was playing the broken-spirited faun, which I think Ker found funny. But I’d already sent for Boss, as soon as I saw you and Henryboy coming, Pinky.”

The wyrm seemed to have slowed in speed. The water was deep and long, Robin guessed that the full length of the pass between the canyon and beyond must be flooded with this strange barrier, but they seemed to be approaching the end. The water was getting less choppy outside, less turbulent.

“What do you mean, you called her? With what?”

Woad grinned and produced from the pocket of his ragged trousers a small simple brown flute.

“With this, course.” He grinned, managing to look a little sheepish. “I kind of … borrowed it … a while back.”

The flute held Robin’s attention. He remembered what it was, and where it was from.

“Is that…” he asked pointing. “Is that thing…?”

“The summoning beacon, yes,” Karya confirmed. “I didn’t know Woad had it either. Good job he did really, or I’d never have found any of you.”

When Karya and Robin had first met, long ago on a rattling train, Karya had given him this flute, long before he had known who she was, or who he was himself, for that matter. He had used it later, to summon her to Erlking. He hadn’t really thought about it since.

“Why do you even have that?” Robin asked Woad in confusion. “I thought that was locked in the trunk at the foot of my bed back home?”

Woad looked a little guilty. “Well, it was,” he said. “But fauns are good with locks, and I’m the best there is. Nobody can jimmy a lock like me.” He puffed his skinny blue chest out proudly.

“You stole it?” Robin was bewildered.

“Borrowed,” Woad corrected quickly. “Inky likes songs at night,” he explained with a shrug. “I thought a bit of music would help him sleep. He gets all antsy and tentacle-thrashy if he doesn’t get a lullaby.”

“Who … or what,” Jackalope asked quietly, confused and suspicious at Karya’s side, “ … is an Inky?”

“Woad has a pet kraken,” Henry explained, pulling off his Peacekeeper boots. This didn’t seem to clear anything up for the older Fae.

“Of course, I couldn’t play any music on it,” Woad continued, flipping the flute from hand to hand. “Forgot I had it to be honest. I never clean my pockets out. But it worked today, when Ker was busy. I remembered what it was for. Really for, I mean. I played it, and it brought Boss.” He grinned.

“Jack and I had been tearing around the mountains since Strife ambushed and took you,” Karya said. “Quite literally tearing, covering miles at a time, looking everywhere for you and Henry. But I’ll give the Undine this, they know a good place to stash a secret hideaway. There are more canyons and valleys in these snowy peaks than you can count. We were having no luck. We didn’t know where Strife had taken you. We didn’t have a single lead.”

“The girl was beginning to panic,” Jackalope said.

“I was not!” She shot him a harsh look. “I was just … gathering my thoughts.” She nodded to Woad. “But when Woad used the beacon, well, I have no choice but to come when called. That’s the power of the thing. It just so happened that Jack and I were due west of here, only a few miles. We were mid-tear when Woad played the beacon, and I was quite literally pulled toward it, as far as I could go at least. To the barrier of water we’re currently inside.”

“But the Hiernarbos side of it,” Jackalope added. “The barrier stopped us being pulled all the way. We found ourselves in the valley of the Undine.”

“It’s real then?” Robin asked. “The Undine are really still there? Did you see the Shard?”

“We saw no treasure,” Jackalope sounded irritated. He folded his arms. “That was our deal, remember? I get you off the mountain, down from the Gravis Glaciem, and you bring me to this magical place full of treasure.”

“I never said it was full of treasure,” Robin said, irritated by the surly boy, and finding himself wondering at what point he had stopped being Jackalope and started being ‘Jack and I’.

“Silver-top here’s a treasure hunter,” Henry said to Woad in the background, bringing the faun up to date.

“I spend years being careful,” Jackalope said. “Evading Eris’ people, staying quiet, hidden, out of sight. I didn’t want any trouble, and here now this friend of yours…” He jabbed a finger in Karya’s direction, “...drags me out of the hidden valley as soon as we’d reached it to come and grab you three from the middle of what looked like a who’s who of dangerous people at a monster army rally.”

Woad cackled. “If you didn’t want trouble, you should really probably stay away from us.”

“Believe me,” the Fae replied darkly. “I fully intend to. Once we get back to the valley, our ways part, I assure you.”

Robin still couldn’t believe they were all back together. Things had looked so hopeless. He found he couldn’t stop himself from grinning. “The Shard is as good as ours,” he said to the others. “Strigoi and the Grimms, they’re trapped on the other side of the water, right? They can’t get through.”

Karya looked serious. “The Undine may have lent us the use of this rather alarming and unique craft to come and fetch you, Scion, but I’m afraid it’s not as simple as that.”

He looked at her questioningly. “What do you mean?”

There was a huge splash of white foam outside of their hard, prismatic craft, as the monumental dragon’s head finally surfaced from the water on the other side of the great barrier. Sunlight flooded into what Robin had begun to think of as the cockpit, where they stood and sat, filling the space with dazzling, dizzying light.

“You’ll see,” Karya said. “Welcome to Hiernarbos everyone.” The great jaws opened like glass portcullis, and the company emerged into a surprisingly sultry heat.

THE LAST UNDINE OF HIERNARBOS

The waterwrym had deposited them on a grassy bank. Bright sunshine hit Robin’s eyes, making him squint. The sky on the other side of the barrier, out there in the camp, had been white and full of snow, a pale ghostly blanket scraping high gunmetal mountains.

This was a different place altogether.

“Wow,” Henry breathed, as they stepped from the obliging icy mouth, walking down an unfurled and glassy tongue like a runway.

They were in a large circular valley. High sheer cliffs rose up, enclosing on every side, encircling them with rock that was blueish grey and which glittered with mica-like flickering constellations. The great, soaring walls reared up and up all around them, so that the grassy valley floor stood in a deep and protected bowl. The sky overhead was blue, pale as mint and completely cloudless.

From every quarter along the circle of shimmering cliffs, thin waterfalls fell in their hundreds, endless ribbons of motion and light all around them. Robin tried to count them, his astonished gaze roaming over the beautiful sight. Here and there around the cliffs, fed by the countless waterfalls, there were clumps of beautiful twisted trees, boles as dark as spun liquorice and capped with great shaggybeards of blossom in pink and white. The mist raised from the multitude of cascades hung in the air, a refreshing and glittering spray, and where the sunlight hit, prismatic colours threaded through the haze. A borealis in every rainbow colour.

The hundreds of blossom-covered trees shed their petals in constant clouds, drifting across the hazy landscape, dancing in the updrafts from the falls.

“Welcome to the last sanctuary of the Undine,” Karya said, stepping onto the grass.

Robin was only dimly aware of the great construct of the wyrm sliding back beneath the wall of water behind them, disappearing into the barrier, presumably to return to its guardian watch at the other side. All of his attention was focussed on the sight in the centre of the beautiful hidden vale.

The encircling waterfalls, tall and thin, fed into the centre of the grassy bowl, where a great lake stood, as shining and still as a mirror, its surface reflecting the blue of the sky overhead. In the centre of this lake was an island, dominated by one feature, a great white tree, pale as ash.

It was the largest tree Robin had ever seen, vast in its girth, wider that a cathedral and as tall as a skyscraper. Its colossal grey-white trunk was dotted with hundreds of holes, slim windows, spiralling up and up, and its vast branches spread out, an enormous mushroom cloud of silver leaves, to cover almost the entire lake from above.

“That,” Henry said quietly, with an odd reverence, “is one hell of a big tree.”

“Hiernarbos,” Woad said with a smile, his eyes glinting as they craned their necks to watch the huge silver canopy whisper and shimmer in ripples of soft motion above them. It was as though a cloud had dropped from the skies, filled with shattered shards of lightening.

Karya walked through the long grass at their feet to the shore of the lake, where she crouched, bunched in her coat, and gently dipped a hand in the water. It was clearer than the highest mountain stream.

It was warm here, and Robin shrugged off his wolfskin cloak, draping it over his arm. The air itself seemed drowsy, a late day in some eternal springtime.

“I’ve returned,” Karya said. “And I found my friends. Thank you.”

There was a shimmer in the air, and from the island, across the expanse of water, a walkway formed, rolling out towards them. It was made of frost, swirling fernlike patterns which solidified as they reached the shore, until they formed a long and narrow bridge of ice.

“Come on,” she said, and stepped out onto the bridge. It held her weight quite firmly, and the others followed. Jackalope first, peering around the enchanted and peaceful vale with open suspicion. He tapped his boot heel several times on the bridge, before grunting, apparently satisfied, and stalked after the girl. Robin and the others followed.

It took several minutes of walking before they reached the island and the great tree. Robin saw that the walkway was melting silently away behind them. Silvery fish darted in the deep clear water at their sides in inquisitive shoals.

The tree, which had seemed immense from the far shore, loomed bigger and bigger the closer they got. And it was not until they stepped foot on the shore, that Robin saw how the massive trunk, whorled and gnarled, glittered and shone.

“It’s ice,” he realised. “It’s packed white ice.”

High, high above them, the great silver canopy, which from here filled the entirety of the sky, glimmered and shook, a maelstrom of softly undulating mirror shards. The leaves were ice also. Every one of them. And even over the constant, soothing and sonorous roar of the countless waterfalls, Robin could hear their musical tinkle, a distant chorus, like multitudes of tiny bells, up there above them.

“Rob, the tree has doors in it,” Henry jiggled Robin’s elbow in wonder.

The great frozen bole of Hiernarbos did indeed have doors, four stories high and arched in gothic ice. Wide icy steps led up to them. They stood open and inside, awaiting them, looking dwarfed by the immensity of its surroundings, was an Undine.

Following Karya, they walked to the steps, and the Undine waited to greet them. Robin hadn’t really given any thought to what an Undine would look like. He had only ever seen one dead, under the folly at Erlking, and that hadn’t been really something to go off.

He supposed he had kind of expected them to look like nymphs. Beautiful women, long flowing hair, rippling dresses, the kind of thing you tended to see in mythology books. But the being who met them at the foot of the stairs was far stranger than he had imagined.

She, for a she it was, was tall. Taller than anyone he had ever met, in either world. She would have dwarfed even Ker.

She wore a simple white pleated gown, bare at the shoulders, which made Robin think of old Greek statues, thought it was threaded through with filaments of silver. But her most striking feature was not her attire but her skin. Or rather, he corrected himself, her lack of it.

In place of flesh, the odd and slender being seemed to be fashioned from green-blue blown glass, somehow animated with life. Her face and bare arms were translucent, and deep in the depths of her glassy insides there rolled a blueish rippling light. Sunlight on water. It shimmered through her, from the tips of her clear blue fingers to the line of her shining lips. She was a walking sculpture, painted in depths of light and shade. Her eyes, long and almond shaped, were a soft, mother of pearl white from lid to lid, devoid of pupil, and the glassy dome of her tall head was entirely without hair.

From her shoulders, there sprouted what Robin at first had taken to be wings, but as she drew nearer, he saw they were rather the great nebulous skirts of a jellyfish, flowing out behind her weightlessly as she moved. When they reached the doors and she stood before them, towering silently over them all, the wings fell softly around her shoulders and draped down her back, a gossamer curtain.

“You are not the tools of Eris,” she said simply, appraising them one by one, her long head turning smoothly on its alien neck as her white eyes rolled over them. Her voice had a strange undertone. The sound one gets when a wet finger is run around the lip of a glass. “But you bring them with you.” She looked back across the lake, her features calm and composed, toward the canyon entrance and the great churning barrier of water which led back to the outside world.

“The way will hold shut,” she said. “But not for much longer.” She glanced down at them. “My mana is all but spent, young travellers. They work dark magic outside, chipping away at my will. When the waters fall, and they will, so too will Hiernarbos.” She did not seem overly concerned about this. Her smooth face was placid. “We have, I think, until nightfall. You must come, and tell me who you are. And why you are here.”

She turned away and passed regally and silently within the doors, into the depths of the great ice tree.

“If we only have until nightfall before that barrier falls and all of Ker’s army spills into this place,” Henry said to the others. “Shouldn’t we be thinking about evacuating? Getting all the Undine somewhere else? Somewhere safe?”

The woman paused, and without looking back, raised a hand and beckoned them to follow her within.

“There are no other Undine,” she said softly. “None waking. I am the last. My name is Fluensaltuma. Come with me.”

They passed within the great tree, exchanging bewildered glances. Robin had been expecting something out of the snow queen within, that old fairy tale with the cold-hearted queen who lived in a palace of ice. Arching staircases perhaps, clear as crystal, great carved and decorative columns of ice, glittering and resplendent. Maybe icicle chandeliers.

The interior space of Hiernarbos, however, was as strange and alien as their unusual, unearthly host.

The trunk was entirely hollow, a vast shaft reaching up dizzyingly above them. Great sheets of meltwater ran continually down the insides, a shifting skin of water, flowing endlessly along the walls. The wide floor was a shallow pool, in the centre of which was a wide, circular dais onto which the translucent being led the assembled children. Her bare feet, shimmering and dark as green ice, clicked on the floor as she walked. Her shifting billowing wings floated out behind her in the warm breeze which blew through the huge space, causing a low and continuous howl, haunting to hear.

It must be like an igloo, Robin thought. In principal of course, not design. Made of ice but warm inside. The continually falling sheets of water pushed air upward along the wide empty tube of the tree trunk, carrying with it a thin fog. Suspended water mist hung in the air all around them, giving everything a diffused misty quality.

The walls, which he had at first thought to have been intricately carved, he now saw were lined not with sculptures, but with row upon row of Undine. They stood, affixed to the walls like statues. Calm, composed, their skins various depths of blue and green ice, eyes closed, hands clasped in laps, every head bald and identical. They covered every inch of the walls, encircling them and standing on one another’s heads, stacked like glacial sardines and spiralling up onwards in endless columns beyond the reach of his sight into the rainbow-laced mists above.

There were thousands of Undine here. Silent and still, as cryogenically frozen as space travellers from a deeply surreal b-movie.

The meltwater flowed over them all constantly like a rippling blanket and the mist curled around their limbs. None of them shone from within as their guide did.

“There are so many of them,” Henry said, staring around. “Are they, are they all dead?”

The Undine, Fluensaltuma, looked at him curiously. “When lakes freeze, are they dead? Is not life continuing, deep beneath the surface? Waiting, hoping for the thaw, for the spring to come and for life to return?” She swept a hand graciously around the encircling sentinels, the multitude of icy figures. “My brothers and sisters wait, still as the glacier. They wait for the thaw. For Eris’ dark war to die. For her cruel reign to come to an end, and for the majesty of the Fae to return once more to the Netherworlde.

“Well, one of them has returned already,” Woad said encouragingly, presenting Robin with a majestic wave of his arms. “This here is the Scion. The actual really real Scion. He’s not even a myth or anything, Fluid-satsuma!”

“Fluensaltuma,” Karya corrected him quietly and tactfully.

“I’m just going to call you Flue,” the faun said decisively. He seemed to remember something. “Oh, yes, and look, this is another one! We’ve only just found this one.” He pointed to Jackalope. The older boy shuffled uncomfortably under the inscrutable, milky gaze of the Undine. “I don’t know his name, I only just met him, but from what I gather, he’s okay. Boss seems to like him anyway, the tips of her ears are all pink, and that only happens when—”

“Oh, be quiet Woad!” Karya hissed, her hands involuntarily disappearing into her hair around her ears. She folded her arms, and looked to the Undine.

“You are the only Undine who doesn’t sleep?” she asked, changing the subject quickly. Jackalope was paying no attention. He was eying the rows and rows of still and silent Undine with interest and narrowed eyes, as though wondering if their crystal skin was worth anything.

“One must watch,” the being replied softly. “One must tend Hiernarbos. Once, long ago, the nymphs lived with us. We were attended, we were worshipped. But the nymphs fell into darkness. Their hearts can be cold and thoughtless. They are flighty creatures, and are drawn to strength. We lost them all long ago to the Empress’ vicious cause.”

“Not all of them,” Robin told her. “There is a resistance against Eris, people who are brave enough to stand against her. One of them is a nymph. She’s taught me a lot. I don’t believe they are heartless.”

The Undine looked at the assembled company one by one. Her face was unreadable.

“I know why you have come here,” she said eventually. “When the wars began, we hid this place. We lived in peace, but our lady, our greatest, Tritea. She held a treasure. A gift that we all knew would eventually be the doom of our home. We have hidden here, secret and safe, for so long. But I knew one day someone would find us, someone would come looking for the Arcania.” She gestured for them all to join her on the strange circular pedestal. “I thought it would be Grimms, those puppets of cruelty and darkness, or some other unnatural beast from the stable of Lady Eris. I admit, I did not expect it to be children.”

She peered at Robin hard, her alien eyes feeling as though they were looking right into his thoughts. Light reflected under the glassy surface of her skin, ever shifting.

“I would not have believed the Scion was real, had I not seen it standing before me.” She nodded slowly at his chest, where his mana stone lay, back in its rightful place. “But I know your people of old, child. And I have seen this stone before. Long ago. You are of the line of Fellows.”

Robin nodded.

“I knew your father once,” the Undine said. “And your mother. We knew all of the Sidhe-Nobilitas. Our Greatest, Tritea, loved one of them deeply. Deeply enough to doom us all. Let me take you to where I can explain.”

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 water. 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?”

“Kra … ken … b’uh … ile…” Robin gagged unintelligibly.

“This is a deep magic, and a path which the Scion must tread alone,” the Undine said to Henry. “It may be very dangerous.”

Henry frowned, thinking for a moment, then crossed quickly to Robin and snatched the bottle out of his hand. It was already half empty.

“Henry!” Robin was shocked. “What are you doing?”

The brown-haired boy ignored him. With eyes screwed shut, he upended the bottle and glugged down the remaining half of the liquid in three big swigs, gasping and wiping his mouth with the tattered sleeve of his shirt when he was done.

“Wow,” he grimaced, coughing. “That muck is … seriously … vile.” He looked from Flue to Robin, who were both staring at him confused. He handed the now empty bottle back to the Undine, who took it from him with her glassy hands.

“Robin might be the Scion,” Henry explained, stifling a belch. “But he’s not alone. None of this prophet ‘solitary chosen one’ nonsense. If it’s dangerous, what kind of a friend is going to let him go off on his own, eh? Wherever old blue eyes goes, I go too. End of story.” He folded his arms stubbornly.

Robin looked at Henry bewildered.

The taller boy gave him a sheepish grin. “Well, you did travel miles to rescue me when old Strife and Moros kidnapped me last year, didn’t you?” he said, a little gruffly. “Fair enough, it was a massive trap and you kind of played right into their hands, but still. Friends look out for one another. They don’t let friends go off into danger alone. Plus, you’ve got no common sense, you.”

The Undine glanced between the human and the Fae curiously. “Perhaps I was wrong,” she mused to herself. “Maybe war does not only destroy families. Perhaps it also creates them.”

She beckoned for the two boys to follow her, and they left the chamber of bottles and returned to where Woad and Karya sat waiting for them, both cross-legged on the floor and staring out at the deceptively peaceful valley through the vast open window of branches. The sun had set entirely now, and the sky was a bruise. Cobalt shadows were creeping between the rocks of the cliffs, and tiny pinpricks of light were appearing everywhere, green and bright, in their hundreds. The tiny lights danced and soared over the surface of the lake far below them.

“Pyreflies,” Woad said, looking at the strange fluttering insects. “Beautiful. They come before a battle.”

“Where’s Jack?” Robin frowned. The older Fae was nowhere to be found.

“He left us,” Karya said, not looking up. Her golden eyes were fixed on the barrier across the lake. The great wall of water seemed thinner, as though it was only just managing to hold its shape. “He wants treasure, that one. Not companionship. Only what he can use.” She shrugged. “I can’t blame him, I suppose. It’s a practical approach. He wandered off into the branches down one of these walkways. Said he was going to find something of worth. Who are we to stop him?”

“Something of worth? Yeah, clearly not us then,” Henry observed. “Good bloody riddance then. I know he helped us out and all, but—”

“He followed a butterfly,” Woad said absently, his own gaze still trained on the mesmeric pyreflies. “It was on his shoulder. Followed it like a white rabbit down a hole.” He shook his head. “Shame for him, he’s missing the pyreflies.” The faun looked at Robin. “Where have you been then?

“The Scion, and his friend here, were making preparations to retrieve the Shard,” the Undine said. “As I told you, Tritea is here, but not here. Our Lady, not long after the war began, left the valley. We were safe, we were hidden, and she knew that if she remained, she would eventually draw evil here with the Shard she carried.” She looked at Robin, eyes a little narrowed. “She loved a Fae. And their love was deep and true. She left to live out the rest of her days with him. Under secret names, quietly, far from Eris and her reach. And there she died, and there she is buried, in a tomb long since drowned.”

“It wasn’t my father then,” Robin said, a little relieved. “We knew that she had this big love affair with one of Oberon’s guard, but we haven’t been able to figure out which one it was. I was worried that … well, you know.”

“Wolfsbane Truefellow only ever loved one woman in all his life, Scion,” Flue said reassuringly. “You mother was a remarkable woman. Steeped in mystery, very alluring. How could he have had eyes for anyone but the woman he loved? No, it was another that Tritea loved. Another she escaped the war with.”

“There are no facts,” Karya said suddenly. “There are no books left, I remember so little, here and there, like snippets of a song remembered in a dream. It’s so frustrating. All we have to go on are scraps and riddles!” She reached into her coat and drew out a piece of parchment. “Irene Fellows has had me working on a translation for this scrap of gods alone knows what for months now. She says it’s important. But I can barely read two words of it. And the history of what happened to everyone after the war is so muddled. How are we supposed to make sense of it? Who was Tritea in love with? How can she be here but not here? Did she elope and go into hiding or didn’t she? Was it Peaseblossom, Hawthorn? Who?”

The Undine held out her hand calmly in the face of the girl’s evident frustration. “May I see?” she asked. She took the parchment from Karya’s fingers and read it in silence for a moment.

“Do you realise what you have here?” she said at length. She was holding the scrap with something close to reverence.

“Well, no, we don’t,” Woad said. “That’s kind of the problem, haven’t you been paying attention? It’s always best to when Boss is doing what I call her quiet shouting.”

Karya was staring at the Undine. “You … you can read it? she said, haltingly, her eyes wide.

Flue nodded slowly. “I am old, little seer. This is an ancient tongue. Used only in the very first times. Even the Fae do not speak it now, but they did once. This,” she told them, “is the writing of Titania herself.”

Robin boggled. “Titania? As in the Titania? Titania and Oberon? The rulers of the Netherworlde? That’s her actual handwriting?”

The Undine nodded. “It is a letter she wrote, in this ancient tongue that few Fae even could read, and fewer Panthea. A good way to use a secret code. It is a letter, Robin Fellows, from Titania, Queen of the Fae, to your father.”

Karya scuttled over to the Undine, visibly excited. “Robin’s father?” she asked. “Really? I’ve only managed two words, and they both mean the same thing. Dark-dark. Although we also figured out Pax, we think,”

“What do you mean, a letter to my father?” Robin was stunned.

“Your father, Scion, was the most trusted of all the Fae Guard, first amongst equals in the Sidhe-Nobilitas. Titania wrote this coded message to him. Wherever your aunt obtained it, I can understand why she would deem it important. It may even give clues as to why Oberon and Titania disappeared from the Netherworlde in the first place.” She looked at Karya. “And you were very close with your translation, girl. Good work. But this word is not dark-dark. It names the Fae who our Lady Tritea loved and left us for. Two types of darkness yes. The night, and the shade.”

“Nightshade?” Karya gasped. “Of course. Of bloody course! That’s who she ran off with, when the war came.” Pyreflies danced around her head like fairies in the deepening gloom. Glittering on the frozen branches in the twilight. “So, she was in love with Nightshade of the Fae Guard.”

“What does it say? The note?” Robin wanted to know. “What was Titania telling my father about Nightshade for?”

The Undine shook her head a little. “I am not fluent, but from what I can gather, the Queen of the Fae was instructing your father to hide something. A map, a story, I’m not sure which. ‘Take it to Nightshade’, it says. ‘The locked box must not find its way to the hands of the usurper’.”

“She wrote this before Eris won,” Robin said. “So Nightshade had something hidden? Something important to Oberon and Titania? And then when the Arcania shattered, his lover, Tritea took a Shard, and they disappeared. To a tomb long since drowned?”

“Somewhere you need black kraken bile to reach,” Henry added woozily. He belched discreetly, pulling a face.

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.

“There’s no handle, there’s no way in.” Henry said. “They just walked through the door like it wasn’t there!”

Robin stopped, and stepped back, his eyes roaming all over the front of the hut.

“You’re right, Henry,” he said.

“What?”

“It isn’t there. The door.”

Henry stared at Robin as though he’d lost his mind. “Did you hit your head harder than I thought when we fell through from the Netherworlde, Rob?” He rapped his knuckles against the rusty steel door. It clanged solidly. “It’s very definitely there.”

“No,” Robin was still searching, his eyes roving all over the hut, around the warning signs, with their dribbles of orange rust, in between the stones. “It’s not.” It had to be here somewhere.

“Here!” he said, dropping to his knees, his hands reaching out to the stones. Henry, frowning, bent down beside him.

“Here what?”

“This,” Robin tapped with his finger. There was a small triangle, with an eye inside. It looked as though it had been drawn on the stonework in spray paint, if that had been possible, considering the whole thing was no bigger than his little fingernail. “It’s a glamour, Henry. Same as the one on the altar back in the church at St Anne’s. The whole thing is an illusion.”

“It looks and feels pretty real,” Henry argued stubbornly.

“Well, it’s meant to. That’s kind of the point of a glamour,” Robin said, frustrated. “You can’t just break them by knowing they’re not real. You need a bloody potion.”

He stood up, looking more desperate than ever.

“Peryl must have Glam-juice,” he said. “She would be able to pass through, and Jack too, if she’d shared.” He kicked out at the door suddenly in anger, making Henry jump back in surprise.

“Steady on, Rob,” he said, worriedly.

“But now she’s in there, and she’s after the Shard, and we have no way of following her!” He groaned in exasperation. “After everything we went through to find this place! Finding the Undine on the folly at Erlking! Figuring out the puzzle box, nearly being killed by sirens!” He kicked the door again angrily. “Working out the location of the Janus station! Escaping the Grimms, fighting off Strife and Ker, and bloody, bloody Strigoi! We were nearly killed by an army of centaurs! We were eaten by a dragon! We found the hidden valley of the Undine! We jumped into that bloody sodding chasm!”

He ran his fingers through his hair in desperation. He had never felt so utterly helpless. “For nothing? To get this far and have the Grimms win, just because, on top of everything else, we didn’t have the presence of mind to bring some damned Glam-juice with us?”

In anger, he cast a Needlepoint at the hut. The javelin of ice erupting from his fingers was larger and thicker than any he’d managed to produce before. It howled the short distance and clanged noisily against the steel door, shattering into countless shards and raining a flurry of snow onto them.

Perhaps Calypso had been right, he thought furiously. Water was ruled by emotions after all.

“Rob,” Henry, who had stepped back cautiously in the face of his friend’s rage, waved a little to get his attention.

Robin glared at him, lips tight, looking rather desperate.

“You mean this stuff?”

Henry had produced a small dark bottle from the pocket of his school trousers. He waggled it in front of Robin hopefully, with a lopsided smile on his good-natured face.

Robin stared. “Is … is that … where did you get that?”

Henry shrugged, casually tossing the bottle to Robin, who caught it in both hands, eyes wide.

“Back at the church in the city,” Henry said. “Karya had it, remember?” He imitated the girl’s voice. “Always be prepared, blah blah blah … She passed it round and I must have pocketed it.” He shrugged. “I’d kind of forgotten about it to be honest.”

Robin couldn’t believe it. “Henry, I could kiss you!”

“Ummm, please don’t. I know where you’ve been,” Henry said. Robin uncorked the bottle, examining the tiny pipette attached to the lid.

“There’s still enough. Come here, quick.”

The two boys applied the eyedrops, blinking and grimacing at the familiar sting.

When his vision cleared, Robin looked back to the small service maintenance hut.

“Well,” he heard Henry say behind him. “That worked.”

The tiny hut was gone. What stood before them instead was a large stone mausoleum of dark marble. Carved figures flanked the open entrance on either side, their stone robes flowing, their heads bowed low in respect, eyes closed. The heads of the statues were hooded, but the boys both saw that the carved women had no hair beneath the stony shadows of their head-covering, and from their backs, marble wings, outstretched and diaphanous. Not feathered, but styled after the odd, jellyfish petticoats they had seen sported on the back of Flue. They soared up from their shoulders, meeting each other and forming the arch of the magnificent entrance. Beyond was empty darkness.

“We’re definitely in the right place, then,” Robin said, staring in wonder. He took one last look around the sunny lakeside. Not too far off, two men were rollerblading and an elderly lady was jogging alongside a spaniel by the shore. None of them looked in their direction. Even if they had, they would have seen nothing more than two young boys exploring a boring-looking old hut.

“Let’s go,” Robin said, and stepped inside.

The interior of the marble chapel was small and completely empty, save for a hole in the ground, down which disappeared wide spiral steps.

“I guess we’re going down,” Henry said. “Under the lake.”

“I hope there’s nothing down there less friendly than Peryl,” Robin murmured as they descended into the darkness, leaving the world of the light and living above them.

“Me too, mate,” Henry agreed. “We come in Pax.”

The staircase spiralled down and down into dizzying darkness, until the light above them was all but gone, and the heat of the sun nothing but a memory. They felt their way uneasily downward, hands stretched out and sliding over the curving circular wall. The light grew dimmer and dimmer until they were almost blind, corkscrewing down into the darkness below, the only sound their footfalls and the faint hushed whispers of their palms sliding along the circular wall for guidance.

“Don’t you hate walking down a load of stairs, and you feel like your legs have forgotten how to walk?” Henry mumbled behind him.

Robin agreed, and was relieved when faint light began to creep up from below and he could once more see his feet and the steps before him.

They reached the foot of the staircase and looked down the long wide corridor stretching away before them. Tiny lights fluttered on the walls. Robin stared at one, and slowly reached out to nudge it with his finger. It lifted from the wall and fluttered hysterically for a moment before settling back where it had been. A tiny glowing moth.

“Peryl has lit the way for herself,” Robin said. “How thoughtful of her.”

“Robin, look up.” Henry directed his friend’s gaze away from the moths.

The long sweeping corridor arched above them, and the roof, they saw, was not stone, but glass. Or, more likely, given the weight of water pressing down from above them, tempered crystal of some kind. They were beneath the lake. A vast expanse of dark water hung above them, the distant surface glimmering far away. Shoals of silvery fish darted around in the depths, skimming pockets of quicksilver in the oppressive silence.

“I don’t like being underwater,” Henry said. “I’m the same with lifts and aeroplanes. Feeling closed in and all. It’s horrible. There’s an awful lot of water up there.”

“Why on earth did you want to come, then? Didn’t you assume that water would be involved if we needed kraken bile?”

“Didn’t know what it was. Just drank it.” Robin stared at his friend, who shrugged. “All for one, et cetera.”

“Well, we can be ‘one with’ the water, remember?” Robin assured him, shaking his head. “I’m assuming she meant we’d be able to breathe underwater or something like that.”

“Something like that?” Henry gave him a look. “You mean she didn’t actually say so?”

Robin shrugged apologetically.

“It’s not the sort of thing to be vague about you know,” Henry complained as they made their way along the silent corridor beneath the lake. “You really want to pin down those details first.”

It was vast and seemingly endless. There was no sign of Peryl or Jackalope as they hurried along, their footsteps hushed on the stone floor. They passed moth after glowing moth. It reminded Robin of cat’s eyes on the strangest highway he had ever travelled. The smattering of lights stretched ahead to tiny pinpricks.

The tunnel around them was changing. It became less and less stoney the further they got from the shore and more clear crystal, until eventually they were walking through an almost entirely transparent tunnel. The dark, sandy bed of the lake was just visible beyond the walls, ghostly light penetrating the waters from the surface far overhead.

“There’s the village,” Robin said with wonder after a while. Out beyond the crystal walls, through the deep and silent murk, shadows loomed. The skeletal remains of houses swam out of the darkness, and they began to make out streets, peaked roofs and roads, long since covered with drifts of sand and undergrowth, reeds swaying endlessly in the current. It looked like a ghost of a town, wavering before them. Robin supposed it was.

Their endless tunnel led them right through the village, passing crumbled and barnacle-studded houses, their dark windows long since gone, filled now only with dark, cold water, moss and algae, and the occasional darting fish. The wavering light distorted the outlines of the cottages and old shops, making them waver and shift around them. Robin was reminded of old documentaries he had seen, where divers swam down to sunken ships, to find the sea slowly absorbing the husks, eating into the hulls and covering them with barnacles and sea-ferns. This was the same, only a whole village, softly, slowly and silently crumbling under the water.

“I guess normal people can’t see this tunnel,” Henry said, as they walked along, through the ruins of the place Tritea and Nightshade had once called their home. It was strange, Robin observed. To come from water, to live out the remains of your life in a different world in secret, only to have water cover you once more when you died. It was as though the element was claiming Tritea back to where she belonged, and taking the whole village with her.

“And they certainly wouldn’t see that, I’m guessing,” Henry said. They both stared outside.

Beyond, in the sunken village, shimmering in the dark water, something huge loomed behind what had once clearly been the village church. A much taller and wider structure. It looked for all the world like a cathedral. Deposited in this dark and secret place, amongst the shells of other, human remains. It was ornamental and grand. Wide columns, sweeping buttresses. They shone in the dark. It was the polished sheen of blue glass, glowing softly in the dark under-waters.

“It’s ice,” Robin said, wonderingly. “A great big ice-church.”

“Not a church, a tomb,” Henry said. “Bloody hell. They don’t do things by halves, do they?”

The tunnel curved right towards it.

“What are we going to do when we run into those two?” Henry wanted to know.

Robin wasn’t sure. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. He only knew they had to protect the Shard and find Nightshade’s locked box. The thing which Aunt Irene had been looking for since the start of this whole business.

“My father hid something here,” Robin said to Henry quietly, as they walked the silent corridor. “In this silent place beneath the waters. And I think it was something I was meant to find.”

He didn’t know how he knew this, but he felt it with every fibre of his being. Whatever Titania had instructed his father to deliver to Nightshade, it was important to Robin.

Ahead of them, the tunnel finally came to an end in a large circular door. It was a sea of stone and crystal rubble. They saw that it had been smashed apart. Evidently, Peryl had skills other than mere trickery up her sleeve. They passed through and found themselves face to face with the great tomb of ice. Between the tall shining door and the boys, there stood two things. The first was a churning wall of what appeared to be thousands of ice shards, filled the tomb’s doorway entirely in ever constant maelstrom of wickedly sharp flying knives. Most of them were as long as Robin’s arm, and they were packed into the entrance archway, rolling constantly over one another with a great scraping noise, the sound of a thousand blades grinding against one another.

Secondly, standing before this impassable barrier of churning death, and surrounded by a small halo of flittery glowing moths, stood Jackalope and Miss Peryl.

The unlikely pair turned as Robin and Henry entered. Jackalope frowned at them in an unfriendly way.

Peryl merely stood with her hands on her hips, looking rather put out.

“Oh, you came after all, did you?” she said conversationally, as though not remotely surprised to see them there. “Well, fat lot of good it’ll do any of us. Have you seen this nonsense?” She swept a hand beside her at the churning sea of ice-knives blocking the entrance. “Gor-ram Undines. They’re so dramatic. I mean, really. Icy blades of death? That’s just rude, don’t you think?” She looked back at the wall thoughtfully.

“Gotta be a way in though. There’s always a way, somehow.”

Robin shook his head in confusion. She was chatting light-heartedly to him, as though there were not sworn enemies. He looked over to the tall Fae boy.

“What are you doing with her?” he demanded of Jackalope. “Whose side are you on, anyway? We thought you were with us.”

“I’m not on anyone’s side,” Jackalope sneered, unapologetic. “I’m on my own side. I had nothing but trouble when I met you misfits. I got a better offer from her.” He pointed at Peryl, who winked at him playfully.

“From her?” Henry said. “You do realise who ‘her’ is, don’t you? That’s a Grimm! The bad guys, remember? She’s one of the people who put your kind in camps and give you numbers instead of names.”

“Oh hush, you silly boy,” Peryl said. “I’ve never had anything to do with the camps at Dis. Frankly I couldn’t give a hoot either way. All this Fae-hate. It’s all incredibly boring. I stay out of all that. Some of my elders may take a very unhealthy interest in the persecution of the Fae, but don’t tar us all with the same brush, please.” She rolled her eyes. “Rude.”

“Rude?” Robin said. “You killed how many people in the human world, you and your brother, moving around towns, trying to find the Janus station?”

“Now be fair, Scion,” she said, holding up an admonishing finger. “Those were not Fae. They were only humans, for goodness sake. There’s no need to be so dramatic.”

“Only humans?” Henry said furiously.

“Why would I of all people hurt a Fae?” Peryl said, looking to Jackalope. “Well, beyond reasonable repair, I mean. I never break anything that’s useful. Leave that to Brother Ker. He likes breaking things. And anyway, don’t throw stones in glass houses.” She snorted in amusement. “It’s hardly like I’m the only killer in the room.”

Her hand went to her mouth, in an affectation of shock. “Oops, sorry, didn’t mean to let that slip.” She grinned wickedly. “But things do get so very dark in the camps of Dis, don’t they, dear-heart? The line between right and wrong is easy to miss when it’s scuffed in the dirt beneath your starving feet.”

Jackalope had paled.

“You can’t side with her, Jack,” Robin said. “You just can’t. She’s more trouble than we are, believe me.”

“I told you,” Jackalope said. “I’m on my side, no one else’s.” He looked frustrated. “All I wanted was to be left alone, but you all dragged me back into your war. There was no treasure at the Undine’s tree. Nothing that was any use to me anyway.” He pointed to Peryl. “She promised me actual reward. Something I can use. To get away from the war, to come here, to the human world with her, and with treasure enough for me to disappear forever.”

“That’s all he wants,” Peryl said. “Just to disappear. To be left alone. Completely reasonable. You leave the poor boy alone, you two troublemakers. I just need his help with one teeny-tiny thing first, and then the treasure of the tomb is all his.” She smiled at the scowling Fae. “Rubies galore.”

Robin took a step toward them, watching the portal of spinning ice churn noisily at their backs. “Jack, there are no rubies! Or diamonds, or gold. Look … we don’t care what you did in the past, whatever it was – now is not the time. But I guarantee, she is just using you.”

“Of course she is,” Jackalope shrugged. “Do you really think I’m stupid? So what if she is? I’m using her too. Once I get what I want, I’m gone. Away from you, away from the Grimms. Away from the Netherworlde.”

“You really do only care about yourself, don’t you?” Henry said, annoyed. “You’re a piece of work you are.” He nodded to Peryl. “And you, Miss a Few Marbles Short, how did you get into Hiernarbos in the first place?”

“I came in with you lovely chaps, obviously,” she said. She raised both hands, darkness suddenly crackling between her fingertips. Both boys had been advancing across the chamber as they spoke, but now they stopped dead in their tracks. Her mouth split in a grin.

“Good boys. That’s quite far enough, thanks. No need to get all up in my personal bubble. Unless, of course, you want me to throw you around the room again? Might not end so well this time around if we play rough. I’m not sure how strong these pretty crystal walls are. Might let the lake in if we crack them.”

She twitched her fingers, thin black snakes of shadow dancing over her pale hands and dark nails. “Want to find out?”

“How did you get in with us?” Robin said, trying to distract her. He was fairly certain that Miss Peryl was unstable in more ways than one. He wouldn’t put it past her not to smash the walls and bring the freezing lake water crashing down on all of them, just for kicks.

She tilted her head to her shoulder, the long purple sweep of her hair falling over one jet black eye.

“Oh, it was easy,” she said merrily. “Glamour. Quite an advanced one too. I was very pleased with myself. When you were making fools out of my brother and scary old Strigoi back at the barrier, I was there too. I disguised myself as a moth. I rode it on Jackalope here, hidden in those lovely wolf pelts at the back of his neck, and then I hid and waited.”

“You can turn into a moth?” Henry gaped.

“No, not really … duh,” she said. “A glamour, like I said. But very effective if you’re good enough to pull one off. It’s the most advanced kind there is. Hard when the person you have to convince of a lie is yourself, but I could think my way around a corkscrew if I had too. So I shrunk myself down into one of my own shadow moths, no bigger than a pepper pot, quite adorable, and rode the Jackalope train to the pale tree. None of you noticed. I’m surprised you didn’t hear me giggling.”

“Glamours are from the Tower of Light,” Robin challenged. “You’re a Grimm, your power lies in darkness. I know your brother Moros was good at them, but he had the knife, the ingredients. I didn’t know it ran in the family.”

She shot him a withering look, as though he was the dimmest creature on the planet.

“Well, well, look who thinks he knows so much,” she said. “Light and dark. Do you honestly think they’re two separate things, numbskull? You can’t have one without the other. It’s two sides of the same coin, and one I’m extraordinarily good at spinning.”

“You’ve certainly flipped,” Henry said.

She pointed at the swirling circle of sharp ice. “I want what’s in there, Scion of the Arcania. I want it more that Ker, who never had an original thought in his dumb head. He’d walk off a cliff if Eris told him to. I want it more than Strife; he has his own ideas. I imagine he’s already busy looking for your little golden-eyed friend at the pale tree. Pray he doesn’t find her before I get my Shard.”

The Grimm stroked Jackalope’s arm in a friendly way, making the Fae flinch away, glowering at her. “Tall and pouty here, though?” she went on. “He’s my meal ticket. I will be the toast of Dis. No more the runt of the litter. I will claim my rightful place when I bring the Empress her Shard. Everybody wins.”

She turned and indicated the wall of ice in motion. “But our immediate problem, boy and Fae, is this doozy of a booby trap. We all want to get through it and you don’t have the luxury of time to fight me. Every moment you spend here arguing with me, my brothers and their army are tearing your magical valley of twinkle-dust to shreds.” She stroked her chin. “I wonder if all your friends are dead yet? Might still be time to save them, maybe.” She looked back at them over her shoulder. “Trust me, I wouldn’t want to be your little blue friend when Brother Ker gets his hands on him. He doesn’t like being made a fool of. He’s going to crush your little faun like a squishy blueberry, believe me.”

Robin knew she was right. There was no time left. In his imagination, he saw Hiernarbos burning, saw the countless hordes of Undine at the mercy of the mindless Peacekeepers, and the ghasts of Strife and Ker looming like shadows over his trapped friends.

“I don’t know how to get past this,” Robin said. “No more than you do.”

“Well, we better think of something, blondie.” Peril sighed in a put upon way. “I have no affinity for ice or water. I’m out of ideas.”

Something clicked in Robin’s mind.

“Wait,” he said.

Peryl, Jackalope, and Henry all looked at him expectantly. It had been the Grimm’s words. Affinity with ice and water.

“I think … I think I can pass through it,” Robin said. He looked over to Henry. “You too.”

His friend stared wide-eyed. “Robin, that’s a garbage disposal made of whirring icy death. The only way anyone is passing through it is as a pulp!”

Robin stared back at the sea of churning ice, frowning. Its endless spikes and blades glittered and whirled at him challengingly. “No,” he shook his head. “I’m sure.”

He started to walk towards it.

“You’re sure? What does that mean?” Henry said desperately. “I’m pretty sure you’ll be torn to shreds if you try!

“I’m sure,” Robin insisted, as both Peryl and Jackalope stood aside to let him pass. He shrugged a little. “Well … I’m pretty sure I’m sure anyway.”

“That’s not reassuring!” Henry said.

Robin looked back at him. The circular maelstrom of icy shards was so close now he could feel a slight wind rushing off them against his face. It was like leaning into an upturned lawnmower.

“Karya and Woad are waiting for us, Henry,” he said. “You wouldn’t abandon me, and I won’t abandon them.”

He turned his back on the three of them and closed his eyes. His heart was pounding against his chest, making his mana stone shift. If he was wrong, this was going to be very painful and extremely messy. But Calypso as had told him, emotion is the key to water. She had told him to find his guts. He had to trust them. His gut instinct told him to believe this would work.

Robin braced, held his breath, and stepped forward into the ice storm.

He had expected to be sliced to ribbons, if he was honest. He had hoped, but hope was a small creature sometimes, and fear could roar so much louder. It was harder to hear hope. He had to listen for it though, to block out every other voice and just trust its whisper.

The ice whirled around, and through him. Not piercing or slicing his flesh, but passing through him as dust passes through sunbeams. He felt like a ghost, walking forward as the blades of ice roared around and through his limbs and torso, as painless and soft as breezes. It was like walking through a cloud of silver butterflies, brushing his skin softly with their wings.

Robin opened his eyes, and stepped beyond the barrier, into the tomb of the Undine, Tritea.

It was beautiful.

Ice covered everything, hanging from the ornate ceiling of the long gallery in countless shimmering stalactites, crusting the surfaces of the tall, slim pillars and walls in fernlike patterns of whirling frost. The floor was a shining mirror of ice. Long windows ran along either side, arched and glowing with shifting light from the lake water just beyond. At the far end of the gallery, on a raised step, there lay two sarcophagi. Side by side, almost, but not quite touching.

Nightshade, Robin thought, and Tritea. I’ve found you at last.

The hushed air itself glittered with ice crystals, lending the tomb a strange dreamlike feeling. Robin stood in wonder and reverence, taking in the solemn silent beauty of it all.

A noise from behind made him turn.

The barrier of ice had melted away. Evidently, his action had deactivated whatever charm had held it in place. Henry, Peryl, and Jackalope entered tentatively, staring around.

“You,” Henry said breathlessly to Robin, “are the most mental hornless wonder I ever met.”

Robin smiled. “Black kraken bile,” he said. “Worth every lingering moment of grossness.”

Peryl has stalked past them, ignoring both Robin and Henry as though they didn’t exist, dragging Jackalope along in her wake and heading for the sarcophagi.

“Here, it’s here. I’ve found it!” she cried joyfully.

Robin and Henry slipped hurriedly after them across the frozen floor.

“The tomb of the Undine at last,” Peryl said with relish. She looked as giddy as a young girl who couldn’t wait to open her birthday presents. She pointed her finger between the two ornate coffins.

“Let’s see now. Eeny, meeny, miney, mo … catch an Undine by the toe…” She chose one at random and flicked her hand. There was a roar and screech of ice, and the heavy lid was ripped off, tossed into the air and cast carelessly aside. It clattered down the steps and hit the floor heavily, smashing the sheeny ice into a white and intricate spider web. Robin flinched at the desecration.

“And behind door number one,” she said in a sing-song voice, leaning over with interest, the palms of her hands resting on her thighs as she peered within.

Robin saw that it contained the skeletal remains of what was clearly a man, judging by the dusty dark suit he had been buried in. If Tritea and Nightshade had lived out their days in this village, under glamours to appear as simple humans, the quiet and reclusive Mr and Mrs Paxton, then clearly any such magic had died with them. The skeletal corpse had horns, curling close to his head like barley sugar twists of bone, two on each side on his head. Robin peered down at the remains of Nightshade, great and trusted member of the Sidhe-Nobilitas, a one-time friend of his father. In his bony hands, he ceremoniously clutched a box to his chest. It was black and unadorned, roughly the size of a breadbox. The only marking on it was a paper seal, pressed with dark wax.

“Blah,” Peryl said, clearly disappointed. “Nothing here but a lovelorn coward Fae who ran from the war with his tail between his legs.” She glanced up at Jackalope curiously. “Not literally – I mean, you guys don’t actually have tails, do you? Right? I never really paid much attention.”

Jackalope looked into the coffin with interest. “What is that? Is that the treasure?”

The Grimm gave him a weary look. “My, you are tiresome,” she said. “So mercenary. Talk about a one track mind. And no, this is just a worthless husk. Here.” She reached in, wrenching the box from the dead man’s grip without a second thought or a shred or respect. She handed it to her silver-eyed companion. “You hold it.”

“That’s mine,” Robin said thickly. The sight of the traitorous Fae, holding the box entrusted to Nightshade by his father for secret and safe keeping, filled him with anger. The older boy looked back to him, frowning.

“You think so?” he said. “I’d love to see you come and try to take it from me, brat. You think you’re so special just because you’re the Scion? Consider this payment for all the trouble you brought me.”

“Now now, children,” Peryl said. “There will be plenty of time for you boys to arm wrestle over spoils later. Focus please.”

She flicked a hand at the other sarcophagus, ripping open the sanctity of the coffin and sending the lid flying away. The noise echoed around the icy, underwater tomb like booms of thunder. The countless stalactites which hung from the ceiling tinkled musically, and rather dangerously, Robin thought. They were countless swords waiting to fall from the sky.

“Ahh,” Peryl breathed happily. “Here we are at last … sleeping beauty.”

The remains of the greatest Undine, Tritea, lay serenely in the coffin. She was remarkably well-preserved. Her glassy skin devoid of the flickering light Robin had seen in Flue. She was smoky and dark, like an old lightbulb, but there was no sign of decay. She was dressed in simple robes.

“Where is the Shard?” Jackalope wanted to know. “I thought this woman had a powerful Shard of the Arcania. Isn’t that what you’re here for, Grimm?”

Robin also stared. Other than the body of the Undine, the coffin was empty. There was no sign of a Shard anywhere. Robin had only ever seen one once before, hidden inside an enchanted statue on a faraway island in the sky. It had been kind of hard to miss. There was certainly nothing there. Nothing in her hands or around her neck. Just a pretty, dead Undine.

And yet something stirred in Robin. A tug inside his stomach. It was the feeling you get when an aeroplane hits turbulence and you suddenly lurch. The small, quiet voice which lived deep inside him, the same one who had been able to read the runes at the folly grave of Erlking, and had been able to see the markings on the cylinder when he had sat in the Lion Lounge with his aunt, whispered wordlessly to him now.

“Oh, it’s here alright,” Peryl said, sure of herself. She had pulled from her pocket a long silver knife, which glinted in the rippling light of the tomb. She and Jackalope leaned over the tomb, and Robin had the horrible thought that she meant to do something terrible to the remains of Tritea.

“That…” she said to Jackalope, in a friendly voice, “ … is exactly what I need you for, my little snow-rabbit.”

He looked over at her confused, and before Robin or Henry could react, as quick as a flash, Miss Peryl grabbed Jackalope by the shoulder and with one thrust, buried her knife in his stomach.

Silence echoed through the chamber.

Jackalope stumbled backwards, his hand going to his stomach and his face a white mask of confusion and shock. Peryl pulled back her blade, holding it up for inspection. It was dark and slick, red as roses.

The hornless, grey-haired boy lost his footing, falling backwards down the steps onto the icy floor in a heap, where he lay on the ice, gasping and coughing. His lips were stained bright red, his pale eyes wide as they stared up at the pointed roof above in shock.

Lying sprawled on his back, abandoned on the ice, he lifted his shaking hand from his stomach and stared at his red palm.

Miss Peryl glanced down at him with a happy smile. She twirled the knife in one hand, absently tucking a lock of purple hair behind her ear with the other.

“I promised you rubies, didn’t I?” she said to the fallen boy. “There’s your treasure, my beautiful little friend. Rubies galore. No one will bother you again, just like we said.”

Henry and Robin ran to Jackalope, Henry skidding to his knees, his face white with shock. “Oh, this is bad. Robin, this is really bad. There’s so much blood,” he stammered. Jackalope coughed faintly.

“Hey, hey, just hold on,” Henry said. “It’s … there’s something we can do, right? Right, Robin?” He looked up to Robin, his face painted with panic. Henry’s hands pressed down on Jackalope’s stomach, staining themselves red.

Robin stared at the Grimm girl. “Why?” he asked, his voice shaking.

Peryl held the knife over the open coffin. “Don’t you remember, back in the sanctuary under the city, the carvings above the doors, that only the blood of Fae would grant access? Well, there was a whole lot of research I didn’t bother telling you about. We were quite busy at the time if I recall, throwing each other about in the dark.” She shook the blade over the coffin. Robin watched as bright droplets of Jackalope’s blood fell from the blade. “Blood will bring back the Undine, for a short time at least. The blood of the Fae, or so the spell cast on this place says. I guess they didn’t want any of Eris’ folk to have easily access. I had hoped to use you, originally, but you never would have come here with me of your own accord, not after our little squabble in the snow.” She looked down at the fallen and ashen-faced figure of Jackalope. “But this one here, he was like a gift from the gods. Another Fae, all sad and lonely, easy to draw away from you all, easy to convince. And just chock-full of delicious, delicious Fae-blood. Lucky me.”

She smiled down at the boy, who didn’t hear her, Henry was cradling Jackalope’s head in his hands, looking terrified. The Fae’s eyes were glazed and unfocused.

“Rob … I think he’s dying,” Henry said quietly.

“I really can’t thank you enough, Jackalope,” Peryl told him.

There was a noise from within the coffin, a stirring. The tomb itself shook ominously, making Robin and Peryl both stumble. The drops of blood had started something.

Robin was frantic, he cast around, looking for anything he could do, any way to stop the Grimm. Lying close to Jackalope’s fallen form, Robin’s dagger, Phorbas lay, just beyond the bloodied and limp hands of the Fae. He must have stolen it, Robin realised. He was a treasure hunter after all. When Strife had attacked them in the wilds outside of Worrywart, he had seen the boy with a knife. He hadn’t realised at the time it was Phorbas. Robin dropped down and grasped it, meaning to at least defend Henry and Jackalope from the pale woman. But as soon as he gripped the handle, it twisted and buckled in his hands like a thing alive. Robin struggled to control it as another tremor thundered through the tomb, and soft light began to grow inside the coffin, lighting Miss Peryl’s wide-eyed face from below.

The blade in Robin’s hand twisted like a dowsing rod until it pointed to his own hip, it jerked forward, making Robin leap back, to avoid stabbing himself in the thigh. He felt the blade knock against the side of his jeans, and clatter against something in his pocket.

“What are you doing?” Henry stared, watching Robin and the knife.

“It’s not me,” he replied. “The knife, it’s…” The blade jabbed forward again, once, again striking Robin’s pocket. He realised suddenly. “It’s trying to show me.”

Robin dropped the blade to the floor, where it suddenly lay, quite inert, and forced his wiggling fingers in the tight side pocket of his jeans. He had forgotten he even had anything in there. His fingers closed around what felt like marbles, and he pulled out two stones.

“What are they?” Henry stared. “Robin, this guy is … it’s really bad. He can’t stay here.”

Robin stared at the stones. Small, round and smooth. Calypso had given them to him, as they had entered the Netherworlde. Boonstones, she had called them. ‘Only use them when you have no other choice. A boon from a nymph is granted only once, and never freely,’ she had said.

“Henry, catch,” Robin threw one to his friend, across Jackalope’s form. Henry caught and stared at it.

“What do we need? Robin said. “It’s a boonstone, Henry. We have one use each.”

The light from the coffin behind and above them was growing, and the air was getting colder. Something was building, a door, unlocked by silver and Fae-blood, was opening slowly somewhere.

Henry gripped the stone tightly, nodding. “I need a weapon!” he said loudly, as though making a wish to a genie from a magic lamp. He was glaring up at Peryl, his face furious.

There was a shimmer in the air, and as Henry unfurled his hand, the stone disappeared and wavering like an illusion, a long pale shape appeared.

“My … my bow,” Henry exclaimed. It was the one Robin had bought him for his birthday from the strange shop down in Barrowood village. It sat in his hands, white and elegant, and on his back, there appeared his quiver of arrows, notched with black feathers.

Robin stared in amazement.

Yet another tremor rolled through the chamber, larger this time, and several large icicles fell with a whoosh from the roof far above, slicing down through the air to shatter into countless deadly shards on the floor with cacophonous crashes.

Robin gripped the stone he had been given too, but before he could form a thought, Peryl’s spell exploded.

There was a great and deafening roar, and a vast thick column of water, blue and turbulent, erupted up out of the coffin, splintering the ice like balsa wood as it surged towards the roof above, a fluid, powerful cyclone. The powerful column of water shone from within, and Robin was almost bowled over by the waves of mana which streamed from it. In its centre, just visible through the twisting water, whipping around and around in a chaotic frenzy, there stood a figure.

Robin was rooted to the spot. Henry had sighted along his bow, still kneeling at the head of fallen Jackalope. He pulled back the string alongside his face, arrow notched, and let loose a bolt, aimed at the Grimm who stood silhouetted against the roaring waters. Her long purple hair was flying straight upwards from her head in the roaring wind caused by the motion.

The arrow struck the back of her thigh, driving deeply into her leg, and with a cry, she buckled and fell back. Tottering from the steps of the dais and landing sprawling on the icy floor. Several of the huge icicles dislodged from the roof, slicing down through the air and crashing into the ground of the great tomb. One of them narrowly missing her as it shattered into heavy chunks.

Robin began to turn to Henry, but before he could act or speak, the whirlwind of water expanded, throwing itself towards him, and he was engulfed by icy, deafening liquid, lifted off his feet and thrown into its midst.

For a second, all was confusion, the water tossed him around like a rag doll, suffocating him. It was colder than a glacial lake, prickling at his skin as it roared all around him, making his face burn. He felt his boon slip from his grasp, the tiny stone torn away and lost in the maelstrom.

And then, as suddenly as he had been lifted by it, he was unceremoniously spat from the water into the air. He landed on his hands and knees, drenched, his hair plastered over his eyes, coughing and spitting out water.

“Scion,” a voice said softly. Robin pushed his hair out of his eyes, getting unsteadily to his feet. The voice, he realised, hadn’t actually come from in front of him. It has been inside his head. A woman’s voice, speaking directly to him.

Robin got his bearings, panting. He was inside the twister of roaring water, the hollow calm in its centre. The eye of the storm. All around him, the walls of water roared and span, fast and furious, but strangely they were utterly silent from within.

Before him, at the centre of this calm space, stood a ghost.

He had seen ghosts once before. She was slightly translucent, shining softly from within, like light through the projection of old film grain. She was an Undine, tall and beautiful. She hovered slightly off the floor, arms parted as she controlled the watery tornado that engulfed the two of them. Her diaphanous skirts of billowing wings floated out around her back. She was very beautiful, solemn and sad.

“Tritea,” Robin gasped in a whisper, aware that he was dripping water copiously on the floor.

She nodded, her milky eyes fixed on his. Her mouth remained still, but in his head he heard her speak.

“You are the one they foretold,” she said, her voice was as soft as the hushed waves on a calm shore. “You really are the Scion of the Arcania.”

Robin, unable to bring himself to speak, nodded at the ghost.

“You have come seeking that which was lost. That which I have guarded all my life and beyond. To stop it falling into darkness.”

“The Shard,” Robin whispered, shivering on the spot. Through the water spinning around and around them, he was dimly aware of distant shapes moving beyond the odd shifting wall. Henry and Peryl were out there.

“There is more here than just the Shard of Water, young Fae,” Tritea’s voice said in his head. “You are truly the son of your father. I hear his blood sing in your veins. He was a magnificent man. His death broke our spirits. My love, Nightshade, never quite recovered. They were as brothers.”

Robin took a step toward the ghost. “My parents are dead. Like you,” he said quietly.

“But I see they have not left you alone in the world after all.” Her eyes were fixed on Robin’s chest, and he glanced down, looking at his mana stone.

“It’s … it’s the same as the one my mother wore,” he told her. “I’ve seen a picture. She had one just like it. They’re rare. That’s what everyone tells me anyway.”

The ghost of Tritea shook her head, her ghostly form flickering slightly. “No, Robin Fellows. It is not rare.” She smiled. A small and secretive smile. “It is unique.”

Robin stared.

“There is only one seraphinite stone in all of the Netherworlde, Robin Fellows. There has only ever been one. It was the first ever created, a stone of decoration for your mother long before it served its current purpose. It was hers, and now it comes to you.”

Robin gripped his mana stone. It had been his mother’s? Not a similar stone, but the actual same one.

“The first mana stone?” he said shakily.

The Undine nodded. “When the Arcania shattered, when Oberon and Titania vanished, the power of magic was lost to all beings, until we learned to channel mana. This stone had existed for a long time before then, before the war. It was a gift to your mother, from the Queen herself. The two were closer than you know.”

Robin couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

“Our time together is short, Robin Fellows,” the Undine said in his head, her voice soft and calm. “Your mother, the Lady Dannae, was a powerful healer, and a strong woman. I see her compassion in you, it sings through your losses like a clear note. I feel your concern, even now, not for your own safely. Your thoughts are with your friends. With the human boy beyond this space, the dying Fae, with your other companions, besieged in the Netherworlde, and even with my own sleeping kin at Hiernarbos, to whom you owe nothing. You want to protect them all, don’t you? You want to save them.”

“Of course,” Robin said, water dripping of his chin. “I have to.”

The Undine smiled. “You wish to save the world?” her voice said in his head. He couldn’t tell if she sounded pleased, or only amused. “You really are the Scion.”

Robin watched as she lifted a flickering, ghostly hand and with it, reached up and into her own chest. Her fingers disappearing into the insubstantial mist of her own form.

Light blazed from within her, flickering like the brightest sun.

“Be wary, Robin Fellows, of what it will cost you to do so. Your road is long, and all power comes with a terrible price.”

She removed her hand, and pulled from deep within her an object that blazed with light and power, flickering and cycling through every prismatic rainbow colour. Its shape and form shifted ceaselessly in her hand, folding in and in on itself, a loop of movement and energy. It blazed into his eyes, and the pulse of raw power from it rolled over towards Robin and through him, churning the spinning waters at his back to white foam.

It was a Shard of the Arcania.

“Hurry,” Tritea said. “Take it, child of the Fae. It calls to you. It yearns for you. It wants to be home. I do not have much time. This world is not my world any longer. My love awaits me in the Everafter, and I long to return to him.”

She was already fading, dissolving away from his vision like crumbling papyrus in water. The Shard pulsed and blazed. Robin felt his own mana stone reacting, burning on his chest like a vibrating, glowing coal.

He stepped towards it, the Undine now nothing but a thin sketch, an outline suspended in the air as she faded away to peaceful nothingness. He reached out his hand to claim the Shard.

His fingers tingled and burned, scorched and soothed at the same time from its raw and primal energy.

As the last trace of Tritea vanished, the last blink of her milky eyes fading into nothing, and Robin made to grab for the Shard, his wet face blazing in the rainbow light of it, a dark shape erupted from the water.

Miss Peryl, soaked and gasping, had thrown herself in through the maelstrom. Her hair flying out around her, pale hands outstretched and her wide black eyes fixed desperately on the magical object.

Robin’s fingers closed around the Shard, and at the same time, so did the fingers of the Grimm.

BROKEN PIECES

A shockwave tore through the tomb, blasting outward from the two figures as their fingers met on the Shard. As though they had completed some great electrical current.

The blast tore away the cyclone of water, sending it spraying outward in a great dissipating explosion, clouds of steam rushing up to the ceiling. It shattered and cracked several of the columns, a great wind tearing through the chamber, as icicles above exploded like fireworks, raining down a shower of glistening ice over all.

Henry was bent low over Jackalope, trying to shield the Fae with his own body. Ice fell in a glittering rain onto his back. The tomb blazed with light, and at its centre, rooted to one another and transfixed to the spot, Robin and Peryl stood facing one another, their fingers interlaced, the Shard between their palms, howling with primal energy.

The Tower of Water roared through Robin’s brain, ice through his blood, great cold depths in his lungs, all the power and majesty of the greatest tidal wave poured over his brain, engulfing him, consuming him. He couldn’t move or speak, only feel the Arcania flowing through his body, scattering his thoughts until nothing remained but power, sheer deafening power. He stared over the Shard, his eyes wide, and into the face of Miss Peryl, whose frozen and gaping expression told him she was experiencing the same.

But her eyes were not the eyes of a Grimm.

They were not black and cold. They were wide and blue and startled. They were his own eyes, staring back at him. Robin’s eyes in the girl’s face. They were linked through the Shard. And he saw from her face, that she saw her own eyes in his.

Blackness roared up from deep within him and filled Robin in an overwhelming flood. He felt things which were not his own to feel. Hatred, fear, a desperate, keening sense of loss so great it left him breathless, and he would have fallen to his knees, broken with the power of it had not the force of the Shard held him frozen in its grip.

Robin closed his eyes against the strange emotions, the blackness. Trying to shut them out. Feeling that had never been his, and with them, a flood of disjointed images came.

He saw a dark and rainy sky over a grim city, lit by night.

He heard a child crying, somewhere distant, a harrowed wail going unanswered. More images flowed unbidden through his mind’s eye. Bare rooms, a dirty mattress on the floor of what looked like an abandoned warehouse. Huddled figures gathered in an alleyway around an old trashcan which had been made into a makeshift fire, warming filthy and frozen hands in fingerless gloves.

He saw a girl, lost and dirty, wrapped in old clothes and slumped in a shop doorway, sheltering against the rain. He felt her cold, her loneliness. She was sick, dying even. And so alone. The images shifted. The same girl, standing on a bridge at night, cars and buses like ghosts behind her. She was almost invisible to the passing people of the city as she contemplated the dark water far below. The metropolis glittered around her, cold and uncaring.

Robin’s hand burned with the Shard. It glowed through this skin of his hand and Peryl’s, shaking his bones.

Again the images moved, and now he saw the child again, lying in an alley, makeshift sheets of newspaper and rags half-covering her starving, delirious form. He had never felt such hunger, the hunger of the starving. It consumed him. A car had stopped at the mouth of the alleyway. Sleek and black. Like none this child had ever seen before, certainly not here in her world. It was out of place, a limousine at the mouth of the filthy alleyway, framed by overflowing dumpsters.

Through her hazy, delirious eyes, Robin saw a man, tall and thin, crisply dressed, walking into the alley through the rain. His face was hidden in shadow, beneath a wide black umbrella, but he bent and spoke with the girl. She tried to ignore the stranger, she wanted to sleep, just to sleep and never wake up. A coldness rolled from him, a wrongness. But he spoke with her. And after a time, too weak to argue, she nodded.

The images shifted again, and now she was being carried in the arms of the strange thin man. Surprisingly gentle, but his long white fingers gripped her limp and sickly form tightly. She was placed in the back of the car. It smelled of leather and warmth, and a deep, rich perfume. In the back seat of the great car, where the man left her, returning to the wheel, the girl wearily lay her head in someone’s lap, soft and comforting, and a gentle hand stroked her wet hair from her face. Muttered murmurs. It would be alright now.

Robin saw through the girl’s eyes, through the hazy image, no face of this passenger, but a pair of eyes, in the darkness of the tinted windows, large and almond shaped, and as blazing and brilliant as staring into the sun.

She would not die. She was home.

The blackness rolled up and swallowed him as the girl in the car lost consciousness.

Robin’s eyes shot open, reeling as he stared around. He was in the tomb, still facing the Grimm, still frozen in this moment of power, as the Arcania flowed and rushed around them both, blending them together, bleeding their thoughts into one another.

Her eyes were her own again. Whatever she was seeing, she looked horrified.

The part of Robin which seemed to instinctively understand the Arcania, Puck, had reared up and taken control. With a simple decision, he allowed the power in and the connection broke. Robin and Miss Peryl stumbled back from one another. The Shard of the Arcania, solidified at last into a long diamond-shaped spike of flickering hues, broke cleanly in two with an echoing snap.

Robin looked down at his hand, at his half of the Shard. He felt all the power of the oceans, all the yearning ache of the storms flowing through him. In wonder, speechless, he stared up at Peryl.

She was staring back, her own half of the Shard gripped so tightly in her hand that small ribbons of blood were running between her knuckles.

“What are you?” he whispered, his voice flowing from his mouth like the sound of the ocean in a shell.

The power of the Arcania flowed through her too, he saw. She was as filled with it as him, overflowing with its energy. With surprise, he saw her cheeks were wet with tears.

“How … dare you,” she whispered shakily. “How dare you show me that.”

“Show you what?” Robin asked. He had no idea what Peryl had seen when their hands had met on the Shard. He had been too lost in his own confusing whirl of images.

“Your … your … feelings,” she said through gritted teeth, as though it were a dirty word. “Your grief, your love … your humanity. Get it out of me! I don’t want it!”

“I don’t understand,” Robin replied, honestly, shaking his head in confusion.

He was aware that the light was fading, the crumbling towers holding up the roof around them were falling one by one, powdered ice, as though in slow motion. Cracks were appearing in the floor and the high arched ceiling was groaning and creaking above them. The drowned tomb, relieved finally of the Shard, empty of the power of Tritea, was collapsing.

“How dare you make me feel,” she spat, shakily. Her face was a horrified grimace. She stared beyond Robin, seeming to notice Henry and Jackalope for the very first time. The frozen floor around the wounded Fae was rosy pink where his blood had stained it, seeping into the ice. Her hand flew to her mouth, horrified, and she shook her head wildly. “No,” she whispered. “I don’t want to face this.”

Robin watched as she crossed to the two boys, blazing with the energy of the Shard. The icy floor groaned and creaked under her footsteps, crackling with power. Henry was staring at the two of them.

“Get away from us!” Henry said angrily, his voice shaking. “He’s dead! You’ve done enough damage, okay?”

Robin stared out from the small corner of his mind that was still himself. The one part of him not consumed by the euphoria of the Shard.

Jackalope was dead? He certainly looked white as marble. His eyes were closed and he was as still as the ice he lay on. It was their fault he was even here. If he hadn’t helped them in the snow … he’d still be alive.

The majority of Robin, however, watched impassively. Puck was concerned only with Peryl and with her half of the Shard, which she still gripped as she walked towards the two boys. Her white skin looked glassy, infused with Shard-energy, and Robin stared down at his own hands. They were the same. Slightly translucent, as though he were some half-Undine crossbreed. He could see his veins, through which he felt the power of the Tower of Water rush ceaselessly. At his feet, in the shining ice, he saw his own reflection staring up at him. He was pale, his eyes a bright and shining green, and his blonde hair now as white as snow. From either side of his head there sprouted long antlers, crowning his head, noble and surreal. They were fashioned of solid white ice and they caught the light like diamonds.

“Leave him, human boy,” he heard Peryl say. She sounded weary and shaky, her voice filled with pain. She waved a hand and Henry skittered away on the ice in a hail of frost.

Robin reached out a hand and caught his friend from afar before he hit the wall with a cushion of pure frozen mana.

The great high ceiling of the tomb cracked further and water now rained down on them all, freezing and fast. Nearer the doors, larger cracks had appeared, and the lake was gushing into the large space. Soon, it would be flooded. They had to leave. Immediately.

Peryl was crouched over Jackalope, ignoring the crumbling tomb around them. Her face was unreadable. She moved his wet hair from his forehead, staring down at him curiously, as though she had never seen such a creature before.

“Henry, to me,” Robin said in the voice of Puck. He saw Henry pick himself up. He had lost his bow. The boy staggered over to Robin across the rapidly flooding floor. The water was already ankle-high, and he sloshed through it, shivering, staring at Robin.

“We have to get out,” Henry said, chattering in the cold. “This place is coming down. Robin? Are you Robin or not?” He was looking at the Puck worriedly.

“I am always Robin,” he replied simply. He opened his hand, showing Henry the Shard, snapped clean in half. “We have what we need.”

Henry stared at Peryl in confusion. “Jackalope,” he said, his teeth chattering as the icy water rose around them. Another pillar fell, and more icicles rained down like spears into the water around them. “I know he was a turncoat, but—”

“This is a tomb,” Robin replied. “It is the right place … for things so lost.”

Peryl looked up at him. There was another resounding and thunderous crack above their heads, and water began to gush down in great torrents from above. Henry shielded his head, but Robin merely raised his arm above his horns, and the deluge split and flowed harmlessly around them.

He looked at the Grimm with his glittering green eyes, and she stared back, seeing the Scion for the first time for what he was.

“You can come with us,” he said to her. “If you choose to.”

She didn’t reply for a moment, and then, slowly, she smiled bitterly. “No. I can’t,” she said. “There’s no going back from where I’ve been. I will take care of myself.” Still crouched over Jackalope, she opened her hand and looked down to the broken Shard she held. “Half a prize is better than none.”

Robin nodded. “As you wish.” He glanced at Henry. “Hold on to me.”

Henry gripped Robin’s outstretched arm. “But – she has half of the Shard,” he said. His words were almost lost in the roar of water flooding into the tomb. The walls creaked and buckled. The last of the icy pillars fell and toppled landing in the rising water with a resounding splash.

“Yes, she does,” Puck replied. “And I have the other. It is enough. To turn Ker’s army, to save Hiernarbos.” He waved a hand in the air, and a small wave sprung up, carrying something small and dark across the water’s surface to his feet. Henry grabbed it. It was the small locked box from Nightshade’s tomb.

“And we have other spoils.”

He turned to look at Peryl again, but at that moment the ceiling collapsed utterly. The lake, in a roaring, all-engulfing tide, crashed in on top of them, obliterating the scene, washing Peryl and Jackalope from view

BOONS AND BOXES

Henry later remembered only confusion and rushing motion. The roar of water all around, being lifted from his feet, and soaring through a chaotic, primordial space at great speed, upwards and upwards in an air bubble formed of pure will. He clung to Robin’s outstretched arm for dear life, eyes squeezed shut and the locked box held tightly to his chest with his free arm. The roar of the water was deafening. The darkness and cold absolute. And then, with a mighty explosion of foam, they were out, fresh air whipping past their faces, sunlight blazing on his closed eyelids as they shed water, still soaring upwards, into the sky.

Henry opened his eyes, and saw that they were above the lake, its surface receding beneath them as they flew, choppy and glinting in the sun. He stared at Robin, or Puck, or whoever the Scion currently was. The boy’s face was set and stern, alien and glowing with power. Green eyes, icy horns, and from his back there sprouted two enormous wings, shimmering, perfectly formed and clear as crystal. The Waterwings cantrip, expertly mastered. The ice from which they were formed ground together, a chorus of knives as they beat, and the two boys soared towards the distant shore.

Henry found himself actually giggling with pure nerves.

“What is it?” Robin asked, as they swooped low over the shore, wind whipping through their wet hair. His voice was the ocean crashing against cliffs.

“I always joked … you fairies should have wings,” Henry said, through cold chattering teeth.

Robin grinned.

They landed on the bank, and Robin stumbled a little as Henry let go. The power of the Shard was already leaving him. But it was more than that, there was something mixed up in it, like a cocktail. The snapped Shard. The power broken and shared. He was still feeling some of Peryl’s emotions, still remembering things he should have no memory of. It made him dizzy, and a little nauseous.

They had landed some way around the lake from the tourist centre, in a secluded and private spot, ringed by trees. There was, thankfully, no one around. The sun still beat down on them, and Robin wondered absently to himself if anyone had seen them erupt from the lake, fleeting spirits of ice. If so, they would probably be added to the local legends.

“Robin, look.” Henry pointed out. Back across the lake, something else had erupted from the surface, tiny at this distance. They watched as the shape soared up high into the sky, icy wings glittering in the light. It sped away, over the hills away from them and was lost from sight.

“Peryl,” Robin said. His Waterwings were melting. He could feel the strange horns of ice dissolving too, tiny crystals floating upwards from his head and dissipating in the warm air. “The Shard, our half of it. We need to get it to Hiernarbos,” he said unsteadily. “It can power the valley, it can repel the Grimms, and turn back the army, I know it can.”

“Rob? Are you going to faint? You don’t look too clever,” Henry gripped the Fae’s elbow for support.

“We need … we need help,” Robin said, feeling his legs collapse under him. Henry lowered him down onto the grass. “You look really weird. One of your eyes is blue and the other one’s green.” Henry pushed something into Robin’s hand.

Robin looked down. A small round stone. His boon. He’d never used it. Henry had saved it in the tomb. He must have found it when Robin had been sucked into the water-whirlwind.

“What would I do without you, eh?” he said dizzily to the older boy. He gripped the stone tightly. “We need … help,” he said clearly. Nausea overtook him, and he lay back on the grass, staring unseeing up into the trees.

The sky beyond was high and blue. He felt the stone disappear from beneath his fingers, melting away into nothingness as Henry’s had.

A moment later, a face appeared in his field of vision, staring down at him with the tiniest frown of curiosity. A woman with long pale hair, strikingly pretty and looking rather unfocussed. She was silhouetted against the sky.

“Calypso?” Robin said. He heard Henry talking too, but his voice was strangely distorted, as though coming from the bottom of a deep well, and the nymph disappeared from his field of vision. Robin was too weak to stand or care. A high ringing noise was building in his ears. He was either going to throw up or to pass out.

Calypso reappeared. “Scion,” she said, snapping her fingers to get his attention. “My student. The Shard. Your fragment. You must give it to me.”

Robin felt incredibly sleepy. He thought of Jackalope’s foolish betrayal, fuelled by fear. “You … used to work for her … for Eris…” he said, feeling half-drunk as the power of the Shard drained out of him.

The nymph nodded. “I did,” she agreed, looking down at him. “But now I work for you. You can trust me, Scion of the Arcania.” She held out her hand. “Do you trust me?”

Robin found, against all odds, that he did. He opened his hand, and let her take the Shard, and a moment later she was gone, and he slipped into blackness.

* * *

Robin floated. It was peaceful and still. The sound of soft water lapped nearby, and he had the sensation that he was lying on a floating piece of ice in a dark, still and silent sea, black water under a black and starless sky. The sense of great space all around him made him breathe heavily, filling his lungs. He could stay here forever. It was so dark and quiet. But he didn’t feel entirely alone. Somewhere out there, countless miles away, another figure was floating silently on the dark ocean with him, and they were the only two beings in the entire world. He knew this in the implausible yet completely certain way one does in dreams. Despite the distance and the calm sense of isolation. They were connected, the two of them. Was that a bad thing? He lay there breathing peacefully, trying to make his mind up.

In the end he decided not to decide. It wasn’t important. Not yet. Maybe it would be one day, but there was an awful lot of dark water between here and there, and hardly any current. Time enough for that.

My mana stone was my mother’s. Not just similar. Her very own, he thought to himself, in a calm, wondering tone. It was an oddly comforting thought. Like having a piece of her with him. And it’s the only one. The only one in the world.

In the vast gaping blindness of the sky overhead, something monumental passed above him. Bigger than the sky itself, silent and slow. He couldn’t see it, it was darkness against darkness, but he could feel it up there. Vast and unknowable. And it was interested in him. Golden eyes and the smell of Italian leather.

“You best wake up, Robin my boy.”

It was Gran’s voice, soft and kind, and playful as it had always been. He didn’t really hear it, he knew that. It was only in his head. But it made him smile all the same. “If you don’t wake up,” she said, “it’s going to melt.”

He wondered if she meant the ice he floated on. It was blessedly cool against his skin. But he supposed she was right. It was time to go back. And anyway … the other one, out there somewhere in the quiet, unfathomable blackness, was thinking the same.

* * *

“Scion!”

“Rob mate, come on.”

“Pinky? Really, it’s going to melt if you don’t.”

Robin opened his eyes blearily and looked around. He was sitting, propped up against a tree. It was sunset, the sky above him was threaded with gold and red, a wash of burnished amber which poured over hills and down to the great lake. He had been moved. They were much nearer the populated area of the loch here. Close to a group of picnic tables. All the tourists seemed to have gone home for the evening as the light failed, and the landscape around was peaceful and beautiful. Standing or sitting around him were his tutor, Calypso, Henry, still looking as though he had been dragged through a hedge backwards and then half drowned, and impossibly, Karya and Woad. Alive and well and not remotely killed by an evil army.

Woad, who squatted on the balls of his feet on the grass between Robin’s splayed legs, was eagerly holding up an ice cream cone, right under his nose. It was covered in sprinkles. It had a chocolate flake in it.

“Told you that would wake him up,” the small blue boy grinned, looking around at the others. “Come on, it’s melting. Henry got it from the man in the musical van just before he drove off for the night. There’s only us here now.”

Robin took the ice-cream from the faun with unsteady hands. Karya, who was looking down at him with folded arms, actually smiled a little, grudgingly.

“You’re really here?” Robin asked, sitting up properly. His head hurt a lot, and he was still woozy. He looked around at the setting sun and the deserted lake. The only things now on the calm surface were birds. “How long have I been out? How are you here?”

He was so relieved to see them, he leaned forward groggily and grabbed Woad in a fierce hug that was half headlock. The faun struggled. “Oi, leave off!” he yelped. “That ice cream is freezing! Are you mad?” He scuttled away, hiding behind Karya’s legs cautiously. “Is he mad? Did snapping a Shard snap his mind, like you said it might?” He was looking up at Calypso.

The nymph shook her head softly. In the setting sun, her pale hair looked afire. “He appears to be fine. He is made of stern stuff indeed. It seems, Robin Fellows, that you found your guts after all.”

Robin demanded an explanation, and Henry demanded he eat something first. It was the best thing, he said, when you’d hit your head or had a funny spell, according to his dad. Robin hadn’t technically done either of these things but, he reasoned, being possessed by half a Shard of the Arcania and morphing into a young ice god for a while probably amounted to the same thing ultimately as ‘a funny spell’.

So, Robin sat on the grass, feeling surreal and eating his ice cream, while they explained what had happened.

Calypso told how she had been at Erlking, with his aunt and Mr Drover, who were both tremendously worried by the way, when she had felt Henry use his boon. A boon from a nymph is a service that cannot be refused, she had told them. Henry had called for a weapon, and so a weapon he had got. And when Robin had later called for help, he must have been thinking about Calypso, as she had found herself dragged to him, immediately and without argument.

She folded her arms here. “And a good job you did call me too,” she said. “When I found you, and your human friend told me what had happened with the Shard, how my old homeland was under siege, I knew I needed to go. I had promised myself I would never return, knowing I would be turned away.” She shrugged. “But with the Shard fragment, I knew I would have the power to help, whether they wanted my help or not.”

“She left me with you and disappeared off up into the mountains,” Henry said. “You were out for so long, Rob, I thought you’d slipped into a coma or something.”

Calypso explained how there was a Janus station, not fifteen miles from here, up in the Scottish mountains. Only a small back and forth, but once in the Netherworlde, with Henry’s directions, she could use Janus after Janus to get to the army camp of Ker, now deserted, and into the valley of the Undine.

“Of course, Ker hadn’t left the pass completely unguarded,” she said lightly. “There were a contingency of centaurs blocking the way. Presumably to stop anyone from escaping.”

“What did you do?” Robin asked the delicate sylph-like woman. She shrugged.

“I killed them, of course,” she said lightly. “And then I took back the valley.”

“We saw her from the tree,” Karya said. “The army of Ker had routed the valley. They couldn’t get into the tree itself, and any fires they set, and they tried plenty, the tree didn’t burn. It’s ice after all, and old … old ice. We were reasonably safe in the boughs, but it was just a matter of time before they breached the doors.”

“They had strong Mancers,” Woad nodded. “Dark magic, smells like fish guts. And that scary man, the one like a dark crow with a demon’s face. He was stronger than any other. He made my head hurt, even all the way up in the tree.”

Karya told Robin how Calypso, using the power of the Shard, had commanded the great lake. Flooding the entire valley, end to end, cliff-face to cliff-face, with powerful white water. She had washed the army off its feet and swept them out of the valley.

“The water came up so high,” Woad said, impressed. “Almost to the lower branches of the big tree, it was like the end of the world, Pinky. The sky full of the Peacekeepers’ fire, and the whole world below churning like a furious ocean!”

“They’re all gone then? Dead?” Robin wanted to know.

“The centaurs who didn’t escape, yes, and the horde of Peacekeepers, but they are just mana made solid. Ker will make more, though it will take a long time for him to gather his strength again.” Karya frowned. “Ker and Strife escaped. And the Wolf. Flew off on skrikers. We didn’t know what happened to the other Grimm. We had no idea that she was with you in the human world.”

Calypso explained how once the valley was emptied, and the waters drained away, she had filled the entrance canyon, where the Undine’s barrier had stood, with solid ice. “Stronger than stone or steel, and half a mile thick. No one will get through there again in a hurry.”

“Not that there’s any reason to, now,” Karya observed. “The Shard was never at Hiernarbos anyway. It was here, in the human world all along. And now … well, now it’s gone. There’s no reason for Eris to bother with the Undine, not for a while at least. She will have more pressing matters to attend to. Peryl will present her with half a Shard.”

“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.

“Will you go?” Robin had asked.

She had sipped her soup thoughtfully and delicately for a moment, and then shrugged.

“I think not,” she said, without looking up. “You are still terrible, Scion, and need much training. And besides,” She dipped her spoon again. “I am already home.”

That evening, when Henry was away down in the village on errands with his father and Woad was off in the woods, Robin and Karya, making the most of the summer while it lasted, found themselves walking down by the edge of the lake. Close to Erlking’s border.

“Do you think Miss Peryl will be rewarded by Eris?” Karya asked. “For obtaining half a Shard?”

Robin shrugged. He had no idea.

“Karya,” he said haltingly. “I’ve been meaning to say, but I didn’t know really who to say it to.”

She looked at him with interest as they walked. “It’s about the Grimms,” Robin continued. “Something strange happened down in the tomb. I … saw some things … and I think…”

“Yes?” she prompted when he faltered.

“I’m not sure the Grimms were always … Grimms,” he said, trying to explain himself. “Not as they are now.”

Karya didn’t react for a moment. They walked in silence. “Does it matter what they were?” she said eventually. “What any of us were? You were a normal boy, now you’re the Scion. Your tutor worked for Eris, now she’s on our side. And me? Well, I’m not what I once was either. Maybe none of us are.” She stared for a moment, her golden eyes unfathomable as the lake water lapped the shore nearby.

“What’s important isn’t what you’ve been. It’s what you are now. And what you’re going to be. That goes for all of us. The Grimms are the Grimms. They are the servants of Eris, and they are dangerous as all hell.”

Robin looked thoughtful. She slapped him on the arm. “Hey, it just means we have to be more dangerous too.”

“The flute of yours,” Robin said. “I know you’re not fond of talking about the past, but tell me just one thing. Why does it work, how can it compel you to come when played? Like it did back at the barrier?”

Karya smiled half-secretive, half-sad. “Because it’s bloody powerful magic, that’s why, Scion. Because it was the leash around my neck.” She looked up into the hot summer sky. “The beacon, or the flute, as you call it, belongs to Eris herself, Scion. She fashioned it. It’s her mana which powers it. It’s how she kept me. It’s how she called me to her.”

Robin didn’t know what to say.

“And stealing it from her and running,” Karya said. “That’s how I got away.” She grinned at Robin. “And this is how I get away from unwanted questions…” and vanished, tearing away.

He grinned too, turning towards the lake.

There, on the folly of the small island, beyond the invisible boundary of Erlking’s influence, stood a figure, staring back at him.

It seemed to have been waiting to be noticed. It gave a cheery little wave, and was gone, a flash of purple in the summer haze.

Robin stared, wide-eyed.

Shrugging out of his jacket and kicking off his trainers, he waded out, and once the cool water was deep enough, he dove and swam. Since bonding with the Shard of Water, he was a strong swimmer, and he reached the small island in minutes, pulling himself up onto the shore, dripping wet, and staring around frantically.

It was no use. Peryl was gone.

A soft movement in the bushes drew his attention, and Robin ran barefoot up the small hillock to where the ruined walls of the folly lay. Beyond the bushes, he stopped dead, not quite believing his eyes.

There, on the stones within the ruined circular wall, lay a boy. Older than he was, sleeping deeply, his torso swathed in bandages, and rolled wolf furs carefully placed under his head. His hair was ash grey, and placed carefully on the floor by his side was a long white bow.

It was Jackalope.

Robin hurried to his side, dropping to his knees, his fingers questing on the Fae’s throat. There was a strong and steady pulse.

Robin noticed a note, tucked carefully into the boy’s hand, deliberately stickling up, waiting to be found. He pulled it free, unfolding the paper. In spiky black writing it said:

Scion.

This is as good as I could fix him. You have better healers at Erlking so he’s your problem now. I can’t keep him. Brother Ker would tear him apart.

Half a Shard each, half a good deed.

Don’t get used to it. When next we meet, I get to shoot an arrow through your friend’s leg in recompense.

I’ll be back for the rest of my Shard. Let the games begin.

P

There was a doodled smiley face and several ‘x’ kisses, rather sarcastically drawn.

Robin folded the note, staring down at the sleeping boy, at Jackalope, alive and peaceful under the sun of Erlking. A single butterfly flitted away, high up there in the evening sky, heading back into the wilds.

Although, Robin reasoned, it could have been a moth.

If you enjoyed The Drowned Tomb, we would be really grateful if you could leave a review on the Amazon page and Goodreads.

You might also be interested in Hell’s Teeth, Book One of the Phoebe Harkness series:

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