The Drowned Tomb (The Changeling Series Book 2) by James Fahy Page B

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