The Drowned Tomb (The Changeling Series Book 2) Read online

  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 s
tuck 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.