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

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