Isle of Winds (The Changeling Series Book 1) (14 page)

Chapter Fifteen –
Advoco Cantus

Robin’s first instinct was to call the police. Woad scoffed at the idea. Robin had never actually heard anyone scoff before, and was quietly impressed at the accompanying toss-of-the-head. It was still irritating however.

“What?” Robin barked. “They’ve been kidnapped! We’ve got to do something! We’ve got to tell someone!”

Woad stood with his small arms folded. “And what would your city men do exactly, brontosaur brain? Think about it. This is no time or place for the people of the human world. What would we tell them?”

Robin started to stutter a reply, but faltered. What would he possibly tell the police?

“Okay,” he reasoned, pacing back and forth, running his fingers through his hair. “No human police. Okay. What about in the Netherworlde? Surely they have police there, or something like them?”

Woad sneered and spat on the floor. Even Hestia took a break from sobbing to look up and stare at Robin as though he had just swore.

“’Course they do, dimwit,” Woad said. “They’re called peacekeepers … and they work for Eris.” His face darkened, as serious as Robin had ever seen it. “You don’t want their attention on you.” He shivered his narrow shoulders. “You forget, Pinky, the panthea here at Erlking, we’re all outlaws. None of us are very popular in the Netherworlde. The peacekeepers would love you going to them for help. Oh yeah, I reckon they’d had a great old laugh about that. Right before they served you up to Eris with an apple in your mouth and a sprig of parsley up your—”

“Enough talk about the peacekeepers if you please!” Hestia quivered. “I don’t think I can take any more horror!”

Robin sat on the steps, looking from the statues to the crumpled parchment. He could almost hear Mr Strife’s cold voice rising from the scrawled words.

He balled the note tightly in his fist. “How could this happen?” he asked. “I thought no harm could come to anyone at Erlking?”

“As long as Mistress watched over,” Hestia affirmed gloomily.

“She’s not watching much of anything at the moment,” Woad observed.

This is all because of me, Robin thought bleakly. I’m the one they’re after. If I hadn’t come here, Henry and Mr Drover would be fine. Phorbas and Irene—

“I have to go after them,” he said out loud, surprising himself. “It’s because of me they’ve been taken.” He took a shuddering breath. “It’s my fault.”

To his surprise, no one argued. He had expected there to be an uproar, even if only from Hestia. Cries of “don’t be ridiculous” and “you’re not going anywhere!” but she only stared at him, her expression unreadable.

“Very noble,” Woad said, flatly. “Only … how? How are you going to get there? Strife has taken them to the Netherworlde, remember? Not down the road.”

“The locked room upstairs,” Robin answered. “Phorbas took me through it when I first got here, back in September.” He looked over to Hestia. “It’s a station, a pathway between the worlds. You’ve got the key right?”

The housekeeper stared at him. “I have no such key,” she stammered, confused. “I … I am just a housekeeper. I polish the floors, I count the silver. I’ve no business with the station!”

Robin gaped at her helplessly. All Henry’s plans. Every plot and scheme. And Hestia didn’t even have the key?

“It won’t work anyway, brainiac. The door won’t be there. She controls it,” Woad said, nodding at the statue of Aunt Irene. “It only opens when she says.”

“So we’re stuck here then?” Robin said. “I have no idea how to get to the Netherworlde apart from through this door.”

Woad looked at him. “There is another way,” he said.

Robin stared at the faun.

“Well, how do you think I got here from the Netherworlde?” Woad continued. “I certainly didn’t come through a station.”

“How did you get here then?”

“She brought me, didn’t she,” the faun said. “I told you before. She’s good at tearing through. She doesn’t need Janus.”

“‘She’ who?” Robin asked, confused. The mysterious letter writer?

Woad nodded, bobbing his spiky head. “She can help us. She’s good at finding people. She found you before Mr Strife knew who you were.”

“Who is ‘she’ though?” Robin asked. “Is she one of the fae? Panthea?”

Woad raised an eyebrow “Neither. There are lots of types in the Netherworlde. More than you could count on your little pink fingers.”

“Can you get in touch with her?”

The faun shook his head. “Not being found is another thing she’s good at,” he said. “Strife and Moros and the rest of Eris’ brood have been after her for a long time. She’s on the run. She’s always the one to find me when she needs me to do something for her.”

Robin’s heart sank. What good was she then? “So we have no way of contacting this fabulously useful person of yours then?” He threw his hands up in exasperation.

“Honestly…” Woad scratched at the back of his neck absently. “You really are a diplodocus sometimes. Are you sure you’re the Scion?”

Robin looked at him blankly. Mentally, he was counting to ten.

“I can’t contact her,” the small boy said slowly, as though speaking to an idiot. “But you can.”

Robin wouldn’t have considered it possible but his confusion actually deepened.

“I … don’t … even … know … who … she … is!” he grated. “I’ve never even met her!”

“Count to five and twenty, Robbiecorum,” Woad said reproachfully. “You have met her, she told me. She found you on that long noisy thing that brought you here, and she gave you her calling card.”

Long
noisy
thing
? Robin thought for a moment. The grandfather clock ticked patiently in the background. The train? Surely not that odd little waif? He had forgotten all about her. What had she said her name was? Carla? Cora…? No, Karya. With a K.

The letter writer of foreboding doom, the employer of Woad, this mysterious and enigmatic figure … was a small girl?

“You must be joking,” Robin said. “She’s the one who can get us to the Netherworlde?”

Woad nodded grinning. “Yep.”

“But … but, she’s just a little girl!”

“So?” Woad frowned. “You’re just a little boy.”

“I’m taller than you!” Robin said hotly. He shook his head in disbelief. Well, why not? It was no stranger than anything else around here. But she hadn’t given him a calling card…

‘If you need to contact me…’ The memory of her sharp voice echoed in his mind. Of course! Not a card, but she had given him something.

Minutes later, Robin and Woad were up in the tower, the faun watching with interest as Robin rummaged through the large trunk at the bottom of his bed. His fingers closed at last around a long slim wooden box.

He pulled it out, slid back the lid, and emptied the contents into his hands.

“Ooh, a Summoning Beacon. Nice,” Woad said appreciatively, looking over Robin’s shoulder.

“I thought it was a flute,” Robin said, peering at it.

“Well yes … that too,” Woad conceded. “Come on, let’s take it outside.”

“Outside?” Robin asked, getting to his feet.

“Well, there are no living trees inside are there, brain-freeze,” Woad said, dragging him hurriedly down the spiral staircase by the front of his sweater.

Robin felt very foolish. He was standing outside on the dark snowy lawn with Woad by his side and a flute in his hands. Hestia stood shivering in the doorway, holding a tea-tray covered with far too many cups, looking worried and confused.

“So … what now?” Robin asked Woad.

“Play it. It should call to her. If she’s got her ears open, that is.”

“But I can’t play the flute,” Robin said, his teeth chattering in the cold.

“You can play this one,” Woad assured him. He had changed back into his old brown trousers, his freed tail swishing behind him with impatience. Snow was settling on his blue shoulders, but if he felt the cold at all he didn’t show it.

Reluctantly, Robin raised the flute to his lips in the darkness. Then an odd thing happened. As the flute touched his lips, a strange feeling flowed through him, that he knew how to do this. It felt like remembering.

His eyes closed and he blew, his fingers moving over the holes of their own accord. A simple, haunting tune rose up through the dark air, spiralling over and around them. Robin no longer felt cold. The music sounded somehow ancient. It made him think of forests, deep and old, where no one had ever walked, of rustling leaves in the wind, hidden birds.

Almost as suddenly as it had begun, the feeling passed. The music ended and Robin opened his eyes, lowering the flute from his lips and staring at his hands as though he had never seen them before.

“Not bad,” Woad said with reluctant admiration.

For a moment, there was silence and stillness. The wind whispered softly across the snow and the snowflakes seemed to hang motionless in the air. Then there was a loud CRACK! and against all sense and reason, a small girl in a large ragged fur coat appeared out of thin air in the branches of a nearby tree. She stood for a moment, silhouetted dramatically against the snow clouds, her tangled hair whipping about her shoulders. And then she slipped on the wet branch and with an ‘oof’ fell out of the tree to land with a muffled thud in the deep snowdrift at its base.

“Boss!” Woad cried in alarm, running over the lawn to help her, but the girl was already getting unsteadily to her feet, shaking snow out of her hair.

“Yes, not my most graceful entrance, that,” she muttered. She took Woad’s hand and heaved herself free of the snow, blinking her golden eyes and looking over at Robin.

“Hello, Scion,” she said. “It’s colder on this side, isn’t it?” She looked past the dumbfounded boy at Hestia, and the statues of Irene and Mr Drover beyond her, taking the scene in quickly and quietly.

“Strife?” she asked Woad succinctly.

“With skrikers, yeah, boss,” Woad nodded.

“Right then.” She made her way across the lawn towards the house. “Looks like the fat’s well and truly in the fire now then. Good job you called me.” The girl clapped her hands together decisively. She nodded to Hestia. “Is that tea?” she asked. “Good. I could murder a cuppa. Then you three had better tell me what’s going on.”

* * *

Hestia made a fire in the parlour, and Robin and Woad sat with the strange girl, drinking tea while they explained their plan to go after them.

“You do realise, don’t you,” she said darkly, “… this is a clearly a trap? Strife wants you in the Netherworlde where you won’t be protected. Little horseshoes don’t cut the mustard over there, Scion.”

“I don’t care!” Robin said hotly, irritated by this strange girl’s bluntness. “I can’t just leave them! Woad says you can get me to the Netherworlde. Just get me there. I’ll figure out the rest.”

“What? All on your own, eh?” Karya scoffed. “You wouldn’t last two minutes.”

“I’m going!” Robin said determinedly. He was finding this girl quite annoying.

“Fair enough.” She shrugged. “If you’re that hard-headed … I can get you there, but I mean what I said. You wouldn’t last a day alone.” She narrowed her golden eyes at him. “There’s only one option. I’ll come with you.”

“I don’t need a babysitter,” Robin frowned.

“You need a tracker,” she argued. “I’m the best you’ve got. We’ll go together.”

“And me,” Woad piped up. Robin and Karya both peered at the faun.

“Henryboy is my friend too,” he said defiantly.

Karya nodded. “That’s settled then.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Honestly, I try my best to keep the Scion of the Arcania out of the Netherworlde and here I am now, giving him a guided tour. Maybe the prophecies cannot be denied after all.”

She left the room to go and speak with Hestia, mumbling about supplies. Robin went back to his room to pack a few things. He had no idea what he would need. He threw some socks and a sweater into his bag, and defiantly picked up the horseshoe pendant. As an afterthought, he grabbed a couple of books from his shelf: ‘Hammerhand’s Netherworlde Compendium’, as well as the book of fae lineology.

Back downstairs, he found everyone waiting. Hestia gibbered something about foolish children getting themselves killed, but she thrust a large package at the three of them, a mass of sandwiches and cured meat wrapped in greaseproof paper, along with jars of preserves and drinks. They gratefully packed these away. Karya had picked up Phorbas’ silver dagger and handed it to Robin wordlessly. He took it reluctantly, remembering how the satyr hated anyone else to touch it.

“This is no time to be sentimental, Scion,” Karya said firmly, noting his expression. “Better to have a weapon if you need one. There’s plenty of danger in the Netherworlde beside Strife, you know. Hey, you can give it back to your tutor if we find them, eh?”

“
When
,” Robin said thickly. “
When
we find them.”

He slid the dagger into his belt, hoisted his pack and followed the others outside into the night.

Karya led them to the nearest tree and laid her small palm against the cold bark. With her other hand she grabbed Woad by the wrist, who in turn wrapped his fingers around Robin’s free arm.