The Raven Heir

by Stephanie Burgis

  ‘What about you?’ Rosalind frowned. ‘We’ll need to take turns standing guard.’

  ‘No one will get past me tonight.’ It was the one thing Cordelia could still be sure of.

  It was a relief to turn bear a few minutes later. She stretched her big brown bulk across the entrance to the abandoned wolf den, forming a breathing wall of fur and claws between the wide-open outside world and the tiny, squabbling pieces that remained of her family.

  It was her job to protect them now.

  It was all that she had left.

  Shadows fell across her closed eyelids. Cool night air ruffled through her fur. Owls hooted softly to each other overhead, while mice and pine martens skittered through the thick undergrowth nearby.

  She was as free and unleashed as she had ever yearned to be.

  And she was so lucky that a powerful wild bear couldn’t cry … even when the girl inside had just had her entire world shattered.

  Cordelia turned bird again at dawn, taking flight in the morning chill before her grumpy, yawning triplets could even think to argue. She left them stumbling through the undergrowth, foraging for wild garlic and berries, kicking aside tangled obstacles and peering sceptically at every plant they saw.

  She’d nabbed three spiders before she’d even left the ground. Now her striped wings whirred, and her tiny firecrest body darted with ease between every leaf-heavy branch, drawn through the forest by a pull stronger than hunger.

  The walls of the castle had sung to her veins all night. She wouldn’t get too close now – she would be good; she would follow Mother’s orders – but she had to see them for herself in bright daylight.

  She had to know.

  What if Mother and Connall had turned out the invaders but couldn’t call to the triplets from so far away? What if—?

  A stick cracked sharply just ahead. Her body froze in mid-air, wings whirring as she hovered.

  That sound hadn’t been made by a forest animal.

  Neither was the curse that sounded after it.

  ‘Quiet!’ hissed a woman’s voice. It wasn’t Mother or Alys. It came from a knight without armour, creeping between the trees ahead with a quiver of arrows over her back. She carried a long, slender bow in one hand, and her tunic bore the image of a snarling wolf.

  She belonged with the smooth-talking Duke of Lune.

  The man beside her wore a bear on his tunic, the angry Duke of Arden’s symbol, and he growled at her like a bear himself. ‘I couldn’t help it. By my oath, that stick reached out and tripped me!’

  ‘Remember what Their Graces told us,’ she murmured. ‘This forest has belonged to the sorceress for years. We can’t trust anything we see or hear – and we can’t let anything hear us. Be a shadow, or we’ll never find them.’

  ‘There are too many shadows here already for my liking.’ His hand tightened around the vicious-looking spear that he carried … but at another look from his companion, he lowered it with an angry huff of air. ‘They’ll come running home soon enough on their own,’ he muttered. ‘What kind of witch-child could survive in this forest?’

  The woman shrugged, a sneer twisting at her lips. ‘Does it really matter? Your Duke of Arden may declaim all he likes about family loyalty, but we both know our lords will run the kingdom for themselves while our new king or queen is a child – and none of these children will live long enough to take control. Like it or not, the Duchess of Solenne and her allies will find some way to kill them off, sooner or later, in favour of her chosen heir. Then we’ll kill hers, and on and on it will go. But for now …’

  Her teeth flashed in a predatory smile. ‘We need a royal body to stick on to that throne and keep our own masters in charge for as long as possible. So, let’s hunt down our next glorious king or queen of Corvenne and get them to the Hall of Investiture whether they like it or not!’

  Oh, no, you don’t! Cordelia twisted in mid-air and shot back through the trees.

  Giles and Rosalind had already wandered too far from the safety of the den – and they weren’t even trying to be quiet. She could hear them from yards away, stomping and spitting out experiments.

  ‘Ugh! Leave that one for the—ow!’ Rosalind jerked back as Cordelia zoomed towards her and began to tug on Rosalind’s short hair with her beak. ‘Stupid bird! I don’t want to steal your food. I—’

  ‘Cordy?’ Giles spun around, eyes sharp.

  She couldn’t bear to shift. Humans were too slow! She danced with impatience in the air as she circled them, trying to herd them away.

  ‘Something’s wrong,’ Giles said.

  Finally! They understood.

  Rosalind grabbed for her sword-stick and planted her feet wide apart in defence position.

  ‘Argh!’ Cordelia let out a muffled shriek of frustration as she landed on two human feet in front of her stupid, stubborn sister. ‘Go, go, go! Don’t stay and fight!’

  That bear-man was twice Rosalind’s height, at least. And that hard, focused look in the wolf-woman’s eyes …

  ‘Where?’ Giles looked around, eyes wide. ‘The den?’

  ‘Too far!’ They would never get there in time.

  If only her triplets could shift bodies too! She would have given anything to fly away with them now. Instead, she pointed desperately towards the east. ‘There’s a fallen oak that tumbled down in the last storm. Go and hide under its leaves. Now.’

  Rosalind’s eyes blazed. ‘I’m not afraid of any—’

  ‘Protect Giles!’ Cordelia hissed.

  Giles’s jaw dropped open in outrage. ‘What?’

  ‘You can write a song about it,’ she promised. ‘Later.’

  She couldn’t wait any longer. She dropped into wolf form and ran from her triplets, straight in the direction of the knights creeping towards them.

  They were still out of sight, but they weren’t out of scent. In wolf form, she could smell the fear and aggravation that pulsed off them in waves – and the determination too. A mere howl in the distance wouldn’t frighten these predators away.

  The fur on her back rose. Her upper lip lifted in a snarl.

  She was a predator now too. They were coming for her pack.

  The wolf knew exactly what to do.

  Her world was made of infinite shades of grey and instinct like a guiding star. Her paws left no imprint on the ground as she sped unerringly through the trees towards her prey.

  Closer, closer—

  There.

  Just ahead. Two humans, stopping to confer.

  Her back legs sank down into a crouch. Her whole body prepared to spring.

  They turned together.

  She leaped.

  She wasn’t aiming to attack. Her fierce bark was a warning any animal would recognise: Stay away! Even the fiercest bear or wild boar would take the hint and back away.

  But the man lunged forward instead, his sharp spear arcing towards her neck …

  And the tip of the woman’s arrow sliced through Cordelia’s side, sending her spinning and tumbling through the air.

  It hurt so much! She barely heard the piercing howl of pain that erupted from her throat.

  She landed hard on the ground. The man took a quick stride to follow her—

  And Giles’s voice sang out from twenty feet away. ‘Hey! Over here! Aren’t you looking for us?’

  What was he doing? Cordelia fought to pull herself upright. She had to stop the knights from finding him and Rosalind, no matter what it took …

  But both of the knights were already running, following Giles’s voice through the trees as it rose, high and mocking. ‘Can’t you even hear me? Over here!’

  Cordelia whimpered as she dragged herself to her feet. The rich scent of blood filled her nostrils. The knights had disappeared into the trees. Pain stretched jaggedly through her side as she stumbled heavily after them.

  ‘Cordy, stop!’ It was Rosalind who hissed just behind her and Rosalind’s hand that grasped the fur around her neck to halt her when Cordelia trie
d to keep on moving anyway …

  But Giles caught up with them only a moment later. ‘It’s all right, Cordy! I’m here! I’m safe, and it worked. I did it!’ He let out a laugh of shocked delight.

  At the same moment, in the distance – much further than before – his voice sang out again, turning high and plaintive. ‘Isn’t anyone there? We’re so helpless! We can’t protect ourselves! Won’t anybody come and save us?’

  Cordelia shook her head hard, trying to make sense of it. None of her senses matched up any more … and her brother sounded like a fool!

  ‘Good news,’ Rosalind told her gruffly. ‘Giles figured out how to control his magic all on his own.’

  ‘… And it was my greatest performance yet,’ Giles finished with deep satisfaction.

  Shaking her head at both of them, Rosalind peered down at the wet, matted fur around Cordelia’s arrow wound. ‘Too bad you didn’t figure out how to fight at the same time. What were you thinking, attacking two armed knights without any training?’

  It was too much. Cordelia shifted back into her own body with a growl of fury that turned into a horrible moan of pain. She couldn’t help curling tightly around the wound in her side, but she glared up fiercely at her rough-handed sister from the ground. ‘I was trying to protect you two! If you had only let me …’

  Her head spun, horribly. She let it fall against the moss as she mumbled, ‘I thought you two didn’t do magic any more.’

  They hadn’t for years, as a point of principle, ever since they’d forced their way free from Mother’s early lessons to choose their own paths in life – and the most that Cordelia had seen from either of them even in those few months of study was levitating a salt cellar or two at the supper table.

  ‘Apparently, that magic in our blood has been growing along with us, even though I didn’t pay it any attention until now.’ Giles sank down beside her, sickly pale, and summoned up a rueful smile when she looked up at him. ‘Mother always said it ought to be all or nothing if we wanted to be proper mages, and I never wanted the kind of training Connall had … but when I heard you scream, I panicked – and the magic just exploded out of me, casting my voice exactly where I wanted it. It’s as if it was waiting all along for me to finally remember it was there – or to really, desperately need it.’

  ‘Where are you? We’re right here! Won’t you even try to find us?’ Quieter and further away with every moment, his other voice receded into the distance.

  ‘How long can you keep it going?’ Rosalind asked as she tugged firmly at the arm Cordelia used to hide her wound.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Giles sighed, drawing his knees up to his chin. ‘That’s the problem with not having enough training – I don’t know how to tell how much strength I’ve really got. Enough to get us away from here, I think, if I push myself … but you’d better figure out first whether we can safely move her.’

  ‘Ugh!’ Giving up, Cordelia pressed her eyes shut, let Rosalind push aside her arm, and buried her face against the damp, mossy ground.

  Giles hummed anxiously beside her while their sister pushed up her bloodied but untorn gown and undertunic and prodded at Cordelia’s burning wound.

  ‘It doesn’t look too bad,’ Rosalind finally said. ‘Connall could sort it out easily enough if he were here.’ She sighed. ‘We’ll need a bandage, though.’

  Giles snorted softly. ‘You can’t turn yourself into one of those, can you, Cordy?’

  Cordelia didn’t even bother to roll her eyes at the weak joke. Her own abilities had stayed the same ever since the first time she’d shifted into a bird and flown away from the mashed-up dinner of beets that Alys had been trying to force upon the three of them as infants.

  She wished that she had stayed wolf now, so she could run and hide in a burrow to pant out the pain in privacy. It felt even harder to bear in human form, especially with Giles and Rosalind now both pushing their fingers around the wound. She gritted her teeth tightly together, breathing through the stabs.

  Cloth ripped behind her. A moment later, she felt it being wrapped like a wide belt around her waist.

  ‘Please tell me that didn’t come from anybody’s undergarments,’ she mumbled into the moss.

  ‘Only your undertunic – which was dirty enough.’ Rosalind sighed. ‘We should’ve cleaned your wound too, if we had a well out here.’

  ‘There’s a stream,’ Cordelia mumbled. ‘It’s not too far away.’

  She didn’t move, though. Moving would hurt.

  ‘Or …’ Giles let out a deep breath as he stood. ‘We could just surrender to them and let their healers treat you. If we tell them that they have to—’

  ‘No.’ Cordelia pushed herself up on to her hands and knees, panting through the agony of the movement. A wild pulse beat against her throat; all her senses felt raw and overloaded. ‘You didn’t hear what they were talking about,’ she said fiercely, ‘but I did – and I can tell you, they don’t mean us to survive. We’re only puppets to them, to keep their own dukes in power for as long as possible. Arden and Lune are planning to run the country themselves. They won’t listen to a word we say – and we’ll be dead long before we’re grown.’

  ‘What?’ Giles’s jaw dropped open. ‘But—’

  ‘There’s no time to talk it over.’ Rosalind jumped to her feet, her fists clenching and unclenching by her raggedly torn tunic. ‘Those knights are bound to circle back here eventually, once Giles’s magic runs out. Let’s get moving and find Cordy’s stream right now.’

  Unfortunately, that stream wasn’t as close as it should have been. Or was it? Cordelia kept losing track of the space around her as she forced herself along the bumpy, mossy ground, balancing every other step on her sister’s long sword-stick and breathing through the pain. Time blurred around her, stretching off into unexpected directions.

  Alys’s green eyes hardening in the quiet herb garden. ‘If I know the houses of Arden and Lune …’

  Black smoke sweeping around their windows …

  Mother sinking to her knees …

  ‘Look out!’ Giles grabbed her free arm.

  Cordelia shook off his hand with an irritable grunt. Rosalind was stronger, though, and she grabbed the collar of Cordelia’s gown, yanking her backwards. Cordelia’s gaze finally cleared and skidded downward as she slipped on the muddy ground and …

  There was the stream at last. She had nearly stepped into it.

  ‘We need to clean out that wound, now,’ said Giles.

  Cordelia rolled her eyes. ‘I’m not delirious,’ she said with dignity. ‘I was just thinking.’

  ‘Ha,’ said Rosalind. ‘That’d be a first.’

  Gritting her teeth, Cordelia lowered herself carefully to the ground. The pain was good for one thing, at least. It distracted her from the annoyance of her triplets.

  She’d thought that the wound had stopped bleeding by then, but once they unwound – and horribly unstuck – the makeshift bandage, it opened up and bled more, after all, into the cold, clear water that the other two splashed over her. They cleaned the ragged bandage too, soaking it in the stream before squeezing it out and wrapping it back around her waist, then tightening it so much that she gasped. Between her wet, cold-pebbled skin and the deep burn of the wound, her balance swooped off and disappeared entirely. She staggered as she pushed herself upright, and when Rosalind grabbed her arm this time, she didn’t protest.

  ‘Lie down, now,’ said her sister. ‘Don’t you dare go animal on me! I’m not letting you ruin this bandage. And there’s no point going any further with you stumbling like this.’

  She wouldn’t have stumbled if they’d given her the sword-stick. But the soft grass beyond the muddy bank felt too good for her to argue as her triplets jointly pushed her down. The ground wrapped around her in a warm, comforting embrace, and her eyes fell closed with pure relief. The earth hummed contentedly beneath her head. Insects buzzed busily above her, while the stream splashed a steady lulling tune nearby.

 
For the first time in her life, she fell into sleep on the unshielded ground in her own original form, with no thick stone floors between her body and the earth and no animal transformation to disguise her true self.

  Her last defences slipped silently away … and a new set of voices began to whisper in her head.

  Shhhhh, a hundred voices seemed to murmur as she drifted, unsure if she was dreaming or awake. Shhhhh, young one. We have you, now, after all our years of waiting. We will heal you.

  You are ours and always have been.

  It was too much for her tired brain to untangle. Letting out a long, defeated sigh, Cordelia fell the rest of the way into deep sleep, cradled by the rustling green forest. In her dreams, the hundred voices kept on whispering to each other, but this time they were too low for her to make out any words. A giant heartbeat drummed deep in the soil underneath her, keeping perfect time with her own. Green grew up through her body, spreading rich, vibrant tendrils along her limbs. Birds kept watch in the trees, guarding her rest, while insect sentries buzzed through the air.

  She was loved. She was safe. She was part of a whole. She was …

  She woke with a sudden jerk of warning. The insects’ hum had halted.

  Her eyes snapped open. ‘Something’s coming,’ she said with flat certainty.

  Rosalind had been pacing a silent perimeter around the space where Cordelia slept, while Giles sat nearby, his fingers tapping a pattern in mid-air as if he were strumming an invisible lute. His hand stilled as he repeated blankly, ‘Something?’

  ‘The forest isn’t happy.’ Cordelia wasn’t even thinking about her words; she was straining with all her senses for clues as she pushed herself up to a sitting position. Her side ached when she moved, but not as much as it had earlier. The pain was much better. Surprisingly better.

  But Giles sounded even more alarmed than before. ‘The forest isn’t happy?’ he repeated. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Your magic,’ Cordelia said impatiently. ‘Is it still going, drawing those knights away from us?’

  ‘Ah … no. It ran out, actually. A while back.’ His shoulders hunched. ‘Well, that’s the problem with not training, I guess. I can’t keep it under control for very long. But they were running in the opposite direction, so—’