The Changelings Series, Book 1 (14 page)

Izzy should have known that not whining was a promise her sister would never be able to keep.

“This sweater is so itchy!”

Hen tugged at the collar of the purple cardigan Tom had given her. She also wore wool pants cinched tight at the waist and a pair of Tom's house shoes with thick wool socks to make them fit better. She looked like a giant fluffy raisin. Izzy would have laughed, except she didn't look much better.

“I don't understand why we can't just wear our own clothes,” grumbled Hen.

“You'll thank me once we're under the mountain,” said Tom. He switched his rucksack to the other shoulder, rattling the equipment he had packed inside. “Where we're going, it's cold and wet, and that wool is going to keep you warm and dry.”

The storm had dragged all the remaining summer away behind it, and the cold mountain air was sharp in Izzy's nostrils. Just like Hen, she carried all her regular clothes in a wool bag. They were hiking downhill, farther into the deep bowl of Eidenloam Valley. Below them, ribbons of smoke rose up from the chimneys of the small villages of the Eidenloam.

It almost hurt to look at the pretty little valley. If the wyverns hadn't shown up, they'd be walking down there right now, with the Changelings beside them, heading back to the Edgewood, back toward home. Instead, home was farther away than ever.

At noon, they stopped to eat some biscuits and cheese Tom had packed. When they finished, Tom led them off the trail, through a lush pasture of violet milkwort—the delicate flowers his sheep grazed on. They climbed down a rocky hill until they reached a stand of laurel trees growing against the mountain. They ducked beneath the smooth branches as they moved forward through the laurel. Tom pushed aside a cluster of saplings to reveal a dark opening in the mountain wall. A symbol was carved above the entrance: two hands, clasped at the wrists.

Hen tugged Izzy's sleeve and pointed at the ground. “Hey, look at that.” A stack of five large stones stood on either side of the entrance. “Those are just like the ones we saw at Marian's house!”

“They're a sign of friendship between our worlds,” said Tom. “Stone for Earth, leaf for Faerie. You used to see them all over the valley.” He hung back from the opening. “There it is,” he said, pointing into the darkness. “The Eidenloam Tunnel. In Pa's time, there was so much traffic between here and Avhalon, you had to get a ticket to go through. But now, it's empty.”

“Why?” asked Hen, ducking under a laurel branch to get a better look. “Is it haunted or something?”

Izzy elbowed her in the back.

“Don't mention shades!” said Tom with a shudder. “It's bad enough we've got to go through there without imagining all the terrible ghosts we might meet!”

Good one
, Izzy mouthed to Hen.

“Tom, you can't be scared now,” said Hen. “We just battled a bunch of goblins riding on wyverns!”

“That's different. There wasn't time to think about it. And besides, the goblins were alive. Shades are—well, they're
shades
.”

“
I'm
not scared of ghosts,” said Hen, taking a step into the tunnel.

Izzy grabbed her by the back of the collar. “No, but you should be scared of whatever other creatures Morvanna has working for her. Tom, won't she be watching this tunnel?”

Tom shook his head. “I bet she doesn't even know it's here. She's come into the valley before, but every time, she's sent the wyverns up over the mountain. She wouldn't waste all that effort if she knew about this tunnel.”

“All right,” said Izzy. She grabbed Tom's shirtsleeve and pulled him along behind her. “Either we wait around for wyverns to spot us, or we take a chance with the ghosts. Personally, I'd rather meet the shades.”

“Easy to say in the daylight,” Tom said with a gulp, but he followed after her anyway.

Inside, the tunnel walls were slick with some kind of algae that gave off a faint phosphorescent glow. Otherwise, it was dark as midnight. Tom lit his headlamp. The beam cut through the darkness and illuminated a path that wound ahead into the black.

“OK,” said Izzy, her whisper echoing softly off the damp walls. “Now or never.”

She quickly realized she would have to go first if they were ever going to make any progress. Hen walked behind with Tom, holding his hand. The tunnel became colder the deeper they went. They walked a stone path worn smooth from heavy use and lined with deep wheel ruts. At times, the tunnel opened up to great rooms that extended beyond the reach of Tom's headlamp. The rooms glittered with stalactites that dripped watery melodies in the darkness.

Tom kept stopping and curling up with his arms around his knees. Not only had Hen put the fear of ghosts into him, but it turned out he was also claustrophobic. To keep him from dwelling on “being crushed under a million pounds of stone,” Izzy tried to keep him talking.

“Tell us more about when your father was alive,” she said. “Were there really that many fairies traveling through here?”

“There were,” said Tom. “Eidenloam folk came this way to take their sheep and other goods to market in Avhalon. And the Avhalonians traveled in the other direction to consult with the humans.”

“You mean they came this way to go to Earth?”

“Some. You can get to the Edgewood from here, but it's a long trip. Mostly they came to our villages to learn from the humans who lived there.”

“Humans lived in Eidenloam Valley?” asked Hen.

“Lots of them.” Tom's voice had stopped trembling, and he talked more easily now. “The Eidenloam was a human settlement hundreds of years ago. Back then, the valley was home to the best farmers, the best ranchers—”

“—the best inventors,” said Izzy.

“That's right!” chuckled Tom. “Any human trade there was, Eidenloam had it.”

Izzy stopped and turned around. “Wait a minute. Tom, are you part human?”

“You couldn't tell?” Tom smoothed his hair away from his ears. For the first time, Izzy noticed they were pointed but much rounder than the Changelings'. “Having human blood may not be fashionable nowadays, but we in the valley have always been proud of it. Makes us what we are.”

They pressed on through the dark, with Tom telling Izzy about his lineage and the part-human, part-fairy villagers he grew up with in Eidenloam Valley. He explained that although humans didn't have magic powers, they had plenty of skills that didn't come naturally to fairies—logic, hardworking spirit, a desire to learn new things. The way Tom saw it, Faerie needed those qualities just as much as it needed pollenings and pixie dust.

Izzy began to see all her familiar stories in a new light: Cinderella's fairy godmother had plucked her pumpkin from the tidy rows of a human gardener. Rumpelstiltskin wove straw into gold on a human-made spinning wheel. Even Avhalon's famous apple trees would have stopped bearing fruit long ago if it weren't for human farmers who passed their knowledge down to their fairy cousins. Now Izzy understood that humans and fairies were part of the same story and had been for thousands of years. The Exchange might be keeping the two worlds connected, but even without it, Faerie and Earth were tied together.

“We've been walking for
ever
,” said Hen with a groan.

“Can't be far now,” said Tom.

“Now will you tell us your secret way into the castle?” asked Izzy.

“Pa told me all about it. I told you Morvanna sent wyverns over the mountain years ago to fetch some valley folk, didn't I? Well, my pa was one of them she took. It was back when she first started building her castle. She had big plans for it, but there's not many fairies in Avhalon that know how to build anything taller than a fruitcake.”

Izzy nodded, thinking about all the tilted, ramshackle buildings she had seen in the city.

“So she came to the valley to get ‘volunteers,'” Tom continued. “Slaves more like it. Pa was put in charge of the waterworks. The queen worked him down to the bone. He came back home but died that same winter.”

“I'm so sorry,” said Izzy.

Tom cleared his throat, and when he spoke again, his voice didn't shake at all. “I thought I could lay low in the valley, be a simple farmer, and forget all about Morvanna. But now I see that she aims to ruin everything she touches. Maybe if we can rescue the Bretabairn, we can finally put a stop to her.”

If there were any ghosts beneath Mount Mooring, they kept to themselves. The sound of dripping water had grown steadily louder throughout their journey. Now, the little subterranean streams joined up with each other and sloshed over the tunnel trail.

“It's from all that rain we got,” said Tom. “This mountain's as holey as a dragon-breeder's trousers.”

Hen stamped through the water, splashing Izzy in the back. “This is so cool—my feet aren't even wet!”

“Told you that wool would keep you dry,” said Tom. “My sheep are the very best.”

A faint, liquid light shimmered up ahead, and the sound of rushing water grew to a roar. Tom explained that the tunnel exit was hidden behind a waterfall. They carefully followed the slippery trail out from behind the cascade. Izzy blinked in the too-bright light. It took her a moment to realize it was only the moon. They had hiked the entire day away. She suddenly felt exhausted, but there was no time to rest.

Tom pointed at the waterfall behind them. “This feeds into the Liadan River. We're close to Avhalon now.”

Izzy took a breath and let her lungs fill with the scent of pine sap. They were back in the evergreen forest but on the eastern side of the river this time. Tom and the girls picked their way around the trees, staying close to the swollen river. When they were still fifty yards upstream from the Liadan Bridge, they crouched in the ferns on the riverbank. Avhalon's ancient city walls cast deep shadows over the dark water.

Being so close to Avhalon again put Izzy's whole body on edge. She listened for the sounds of Unglers shrieking or goblins shouting.

Tom pointed across the river. “You see that hole in the stone?” he whispered. “Look close, right at the waterline. That's our way in.”

The circular hole was barely visible above the rushing water. A grate of vertical bars covered the dark opening.

Tom swung his bag off his shoulder and started digging through it. “That was Pa's project when he worked for the queen. All the other city folk haul their water out of the Liadan in buckets, but that wasn't good enough for Morvanna. She wanted it piped into the castle directly. Pa designed the whole thing. Water rushes in through that opening and flows under the city to the castle pump room. From there, it's piped all through the castle.” He reached down into the bottom of his bag. “Now where'd I put that thing?”

Out in the middle of the river, a broken branch floated quickly past. Izzy was a decent swimmer, but she didn't know if she'd be able to make it across by herself. The current would definitely sweep Hen away.

“Tom, I don't know if this is going to work…”

“Now, don't give up till you hear me out.” He dumped his bag out onto the grass. Ropes, pulleys, and half a dozen small wooden contraptions tumbled out. “Ha, knew I packed it!”

He picked up something that looked like a crossbow. He fit the bow with a strange-looking arrow. The tip had a spring-loaded clamp attached to it instead of an arrowhead. Tom tied a thin rope to the shaft. He took aim at the grate. The bow twanged. The arrow flew across the river, the rope unfurling behind it. The arrow clanged against the metal grate and fell into the water.

“Shoot!” whispered Tom. Izzy and Hen helped him reel in the rope. “It's too dark. I can barely see what I'm aiming for.”

Fireflies began to flicker around them. Tom took another shot. This time, the clamp latched onto one of the bars like teeth.

“You did it!” said Hen.

Tom took the free end of the rope and fed it through another one of his machines: a jumble of pulleys with wooden handles on either side.

“This is the Zipper,” he said. “I made it to get feedbags up to the barn loft without killing my back. With this, you girls won't have to do a thing. Just hold on tight to the handles, and it'll take you to the other side all by itself. Once you reach the grate, just send it back across. When it's my turn, I'll pull myself hand over hand. Izzy, I think you'd better go first. That way, you can catch your sister when she comes across.”

Izzy slung the strap of her wool bag across her chest, then grabbed the handlebars of the Zipper and stepped into the river. She sucked in a breath when the frigid water spilled over the top of her boots.

Tom held the other end of the rope taut. He nodded to her. “Go on. Just pull that switch on the side.”

Izzy waded farther in. When the water was up to her stomach, she flicked a metal switch on the Zipper. Something inside it clicked, and the machine whizzed along the rope, dragging her with it. Air bubbled out of her woolen clothes. They made her so buoyant, she floated almost entirely on the water's surface. When the Zipper reached the grate, Izzy grabbed the bars and wrapped her legs around them. The water flowed swiftly past the bars into the dark channel. Izzy's hand brushed against a heavy padlock submerged below the surface. She hoped Tom had brought something in his bag that could break it. Shivering, she reached up to the Zipper and flipped the switch to send it back to the shore.

Izzy watched nervously as Hen came across. But her sister held tight, and a few minutes later, she had reached the grate too.

Just as Tom stepped into the water, they heard shouting from the bridge. Metal clanged, and the city doors swung open. Goblin boots pounded over the stone, followed by the unmistakable shrieks of the Unglers. Izzy made Hen duck down until only their heads bobbed above the water. The goblins held the Unglers on leashes like bloodhounds. Another dozen goblins on horseback thundered after them, riding out in the direction of the Edgewood.