‘We’re not in the forest any more.’ Rosalind frowned. ‘Did those soldiers reach Grandmother’s house after all? Did she send us ahead while she fought them off?’
Cordelia opened her mouth … then shut it again. There was too much. She couldn’t possibly sum it all up, and her throat was too parched to talk comfortably anyway.
Rosalind was already clambering out of the chest, stepping carelessly across Giles and ignoring his grunts of protest along the way. ‘You could’ve at least taken the time to wake me first.’ She landed on the ground and put her hands to her waist, stretching out her back with a grimace. ‘I’m bruised all over from being rattled around in there. Couldn’t you have tossed in a pillow or two?’
‘You had a pillow, Ros.’ Still crouching in the crate, Giles cranked his neck from side to side. ‘I was the one stuck on the bottom with you bumping across me all the way.’
Rolling her eyes, Cordelia turned away from their squabble to keep on trudging up the steadily rising brown slope. It wouldn’t take much longer to reach the hills themselves; she’d been telling herself that for the last half hour, just like she’d been telling herself for ages that she didn’t need a drink. She was on two legs, not four any more, though, and she felt unbalanced by the shift – and by the loss of the harness she had worn. There was nothing tethering her down with the others any more; she could just soar alone into the sky and—
‘No!’ Strong hands seized her right arm. ‘No changing shapes! I can see you thinking about it.’ Short black hair mussed and cheeks bright red, Rosalind glowered at her ferociously. ‘You are not flying off and leaving us to work out everything for ourselves. Not this time! Just because we happened to fall asleep doesn’t mean you get to go all feral and—’
‘Oh, no.’ Giles stared at her, slack-jawed. ‘Please tell me you didn’t go into a panic and sneak us all away from Grandmother without telling her!’
Cordelia clenched her own jaw hard.
‘Cordelia!’ He clutched his rumpled hair, eyes squeezing shut in agony. ‘I know you didn’t take to her, but you have to use your brain sometimes, not just your almighty animal instincts. She’s—’
‘I saved you!’ The words burst from between Cordelia’s teeth. ‘You didn’t just fall asleep, you fools. It was a potion that she fed us! And Connall said—’
‘Connall was there?’ Rosalind’s head swivelled around, searching. ‘Where—?’
‘Connall found me in a vision, and Lady Elianora wanted to trade us to the dukes. That was her plan all along! She was going to use us to get back into power – just like she took Connall prisoner, years ago, to get Mother back under her control.’ Cordelia wrenched herself free from Rosalind’s loosened grip. ‘I got us away from her while you slept. You’re welcome. Now you can both take care of yourselves!’ She flung herself into the air in a furious whirl of feathers.
It should have been a satisfyingly dramatic escape – but Giles lunged upward and caught her by one thin bird leg.
She hated how tall he’d become!
‘Shh,’ he said as she screeched at him and flapped her wings in challenge. Ignoring all her struggles, he tucked her against his side, his grip firm and inescapable. She would have to genuinely hurt him to get free … and they both knew she never would.
‘Just shush, Cordy.’ His voice wobbled. ‘We didn’t understand what had happened. That was all.’ The bump in his long neck bobbed as he swallowed above her, his face pale. ‘We’ll talk it all over properly later on. Right now, though …’ He looked back and forth across the long, bleak landscape beneath the gradually darkening grey sky. ‘Those dukes are still going to be hunting us … and I suppose Grandmother will be too. Ros? Which way do you think we should go?’
Cordelia stuck her head under her left wing just to spite them. She’d had a perfectly good plan already. If they’d only bothered to ask …
‘Might as well keep going this way, at least for now.’ Rosalind’s brisk voice carried through all Cordelia’s shielding feathers. ‘Until we get over these hills, we won’t know what’s out there. And we’re too obvious here. There’s nowhere to hide.’
Well, they weren’t wrong about everything. Cordelia was too exhausted and thirsty to sort them out anyway.
She’d dragged both of them for hours while they’d slept. It was time to close her eyes and let them take a turn. No longer struggling, she burrowed into Giles’s lean side and let sleep wrap dark, enveloping wings around her. It closed her off from all the terrible questions she couldn’t bear to ask or answer …
And dropped her into a nightmare not her own.
In the forest, Cordelia had slept surrounded by cool green whispers, soothing and healing her in her dreams. Here, all that she could hear in her sleep was endless, anguished screaming.
BROKEN! BROKEN!
This part of the land was in agony. Screams battered deafeningly at her ears. Blinding red filled her vision. Red everywhere.
Flames had raged across this patch of earth again and again, burning every plant that dared shoot out a green bud.
Endless blood had spilt across the ruined crops. Worse yet, it had been family blood that drenched them – cousins killing cousins again and again, poisoning the already-wounded ground.
All the old contracts broken. Betrayed!
No wonder plants wouldn’t grow nor animals venture on to this scorched plain. Trapped in the interminable screams of the earth, dream-Cordelia curled in on herself, covering her ears and squeezing her eyes shut. It didn’t work. Red bled through everything, turning her hands and eyelids transparent. She couldn’t escape the land’s pain. It was everywhere, shrieking for her to understand and do something.
BROKEN! BROKEN!
‘Ahhh!’ She jerked awake, flailing, and tumbled from Giles’s grip on to the rock-studded brown slope. She landed hard, in girl form, on all the wrong angles.
‘Careful!’ Giles stared down at her, shaking out the arm he’d used to carry her bird-body. ‘We’re safe now, remember? You don’t need to panic.’ He slid a quick glance down the barren hillside, towards the dark forest far in the distance. ‘No one’s spotted us yet, as far as we can tell, and we’re nearly to the top, so—’
‘Made it!’ Rosalind shouted the words from fifteen feet ahead. She was standing on the rounded summit above them, hands on her hips, glowing with triumph in the last fading light of evening. ‘There are so many places to take shelter nearby. Look! We’ll be safe here overnight, and then—’
‘We can’t stop anywhere near here! I can’t.’ Trembling convulsively, Cordelia picked herself up. Her fresh bruises ached with every awkward movement. The land’s screams echoed in her ears. Now that she’d heard them in her dream, she couldn’t shut them off again. They were battering at her from all sides, almost as loudly as they had in her sleep, stealing her sense of balance … and trying their best to suck her back under their red veil.
Giles had already started loping up the final slope towards Rosalind, but he paused between them now, frowning down at her. ‘What do you mean, you can’t? It’s getting dark. You know we’ll have to stop soon.’
Rosalind scowled impatiently down at them both from the top of the hill. ‘Are you two coming or not?’
Cordelia closed her eyes, fighting for clarity through the haze of echoed pain and fear and dizzying thirst.
Every fear of her own that she’d left behind in sleep was back again, even stronger than before … and the land’s screams were just one more unbearable sign of separation between her and the only family she had left.
They couldn’t hear those screams. If she told them that she could, then they would know she was even more different than they’d realised before. Even more wrong.
‘Not even their real sister …’
‘Cordelia,’ Giles said, his voice suddenly much closer. ‘What’s going on?’
Cordelia hated it when people wouldn’t answer simple questions. But she couldn’t explain. She’d lost so much alread
y. She couldn’t risk losing any more. She could barely even think through the screaming of the land.
And there was only one thing that she truly knew – one line that she had recognised in the nightmare the land had sent her.
All the old contracts broken …
Connall had called those old contracts the founding magics, hadn’t he? He’d said something else about the broken crown that was linked inexorably to them:
‘They just buried the broken pieces at Raven’s Nest, high in the mountains where the oldest spirits of the land are still hiding and holding all our deepest secrets safe.’
There was so little she could be certain of any more. They had so many impossibly powerful enemies and so little knowledge on their side.
Raven’s Nest, she thought now. That’s where all the secrets are …
And the land’s screaming stopped. For one glorious moment, she was surrounded in the hush of perfect silence. Then the sound of bells exploded all around her, ringing with glorious certainty.
Air gathered tangibly behind her, ready to push her forward if she wavered.
That way. Go!
‘Connall told me where to go next,’ she said. ‘We need to find Raven’s Nest.’
They were still arguing ten minutes later, as all three stood on the high hilltop gazing down through thick sapphire air at the vast kingdom spread before them. It was all so much bigger than Cordelia had expected! Farms and marshes and high-walled towns dotted the dark landscape, along with burned-out fields and ruined castles rotting in broken solitude. Silver rivers snaked across the horizon, while tiny wounded woodlands clumped in patches.
In the distance, Cordelia glimpsed a line of moving shadows that might have been another army, marching.
There was so much waiting for them in the land beyond, like it or not … and a line of high mountains rose beyond all the rest, their distant peaks hidden by clouds.
‘So Raven’s Nest is just “up in the mountains”, eh?’ Rosalind waved furiously at the horizon. ‘Well, that’ll be easy to find, then. Just an hour or two of wandering around, d’you think, before we’ll spot it? Or maybe a month or two? While we leave the others to rot so we can chat with a bunch of mythical spirits who might not even exist any more?’ Her voice rose to a roaring bellow.
‘Connall said—’ began Cordelia.
‘Connall isn’t here,’ Rosalind spat. ‘If we do what you want, he never will be again! Bah!’ Rolling her eyes, she stomped down the other side of the hill and disappeared into the growing shadows.
There was green grass on that side of the hill. There were knotted tree roots too, and tangles of brambles that swarmed treacherously across the ground. A moment after Rosalind had disappeared, a loud thump sounded through the evening air. The grumbling that came afterwards was even louder as Rosalind picked herself up from her fall.
Giles sighed. ‘We’d better give her a minute to cool down.’
The argument still seethed, unresolved among them, as they all staggered and slid down the far side of the hill in the deepening darkness, bumping into stones and roots and brambles along the way. Cordelia’s head was still full of those looming, impossible mountains, and her whole body ached with the remnants of those final screams from the brown land they’d escaped. She didn’t dare turn animal again, not yet – not even to see better in the dark. She couldn’t bear to be separated from her triplets again, not even simply in her shape.
It was a relief to hear birds rustling nearby at their bumbling movements, and to catch the soft whisper of a fox slipping past them. At least this part of the land hadn’t broken.
So many burned-out patches across the kingdom …
Would their own forest look like that when the dukes were through with it?
‘Oi, Cordy.’ Catching up, Giles bumped her arm companionably with his. ‘Can you guess what I’m thinking about?’
Cordelia rolled her eyes, glad to be shaken out of the dark forest of her thoughts. ‘Food? As usual?’
‘Even better. This would make a perfect ballad. Admit it! The three of us questing to save our family; one of us maybe ending up as the king or queen—’
‘No!’ Cordelia flinched, stumbling to a halt in the darkness. ‘No one can stay king or queen while the Raven Crown is broken – and Connall says they’ve all given up on even trying to fix it. Anyone who gets pushed on to that throne now will die.’
‘Well, a lot of the best ballads do have tragic endings.’ Giles gave a melodramatic sigh, his voice turning into a soft, lilting croon. ‘I could be the great lost king, the flower of the land, the fairest son who e’er sung—’
Cordelia snarled, ‘That isn’t funny!’
Bracing herself against the call of the land around her, she shifted into wolf form after all and loped ahead to scout for hidden dangers in the night.
Giles’s voice floated plaintively after her. ‘Has anyone spotted any berries we could eat yet?’
Cordelia scented no berries on that dark, tangled hillside. Further down, though, she scented plenty of people – and danger too, waiting for the triplets at the bottom of the hill.
A camp of humans was hiding near the bottom of the hill, taking shelter within a patch of pine trees. They were speaking in whispers too low for Cordelia to catch, but the scent of aggression floating through the air was unmistakable.
‘Bandits,’ Rosalind pronounced, when Cordelia ran back to the others to report. She had been scowling and muttering to herself when Cordelia arrived, but she brightened at this news, and started scouring the ground in the darkness for a new sword-stick. ‘Lying in wait for rich travellers to pass, I’d guess.’
‘They’re out of luck with us, then,’ said Giles. ‘We don’t even have any food for them to steal. Do you think we should warn them we’re bad pickings? I could sing very loudly about how much my stomach’s rumbling. I’ve been practising a song about it in my head for the last few hours.’
‘I expect I’ll just have to fight them off.’ Rosalind straightened, holding a fallen branch, and started busily stripping off the leaves. ‘Don’t worry, Giles. You can write an even better ballad about that. In the meantime, though, I don’t want either of you hurt – so, you stand back and hide with Cordy while I take care of all the fighting.’
‘What? No!’ Giles squawked. ‘Why would you pick a fight with grown-up bandits? That makes no sense! You don’t even have a real sword!’
Cordelia didn’t bother to argue. She just shifted into bear shape, big and clawed, looming over both of them … and not about to hide from anyone.
Rosalind shook her head pityingly. ‘Oh, I know you look fierce now, Cordy. But if any of those bandits had ever practised wrestling with you—’
Cordelia growled down at her arrogant sister and lifted her muzzle in a sneer.
‘Couldn’t we just walk a different way and avoid them?’ Giles was still protesting as Rosalind stalked down the hillside five minutes later with Cordelia padding in her wake. He followed well behind them both, streaming complaints at his sisters with every lagging step. ‘If we only went around instead—’
‘They probably have lookouts waiting to ambush travellers at several different points.’ Rosalind didn’t even slow her confident stride. ‘Best to face them head-on so we know exactly where they are.’
‘But what travellers could they be waiting for?’ Giles tripped over a rock, but it didn’t slow his argument. ‘How many travellers ever come out of our forest? We’re the only ones who live there!’
‘Well, then maybe they’re hoping to kidnap their new queen.’ Rosalind smacked her stick menacingly against her side. ‘We’ll see how they like the ransom we’ll give them!’
‘But—’
‘Who goes there?’ It was a man’s warning shout, high and angry.
Cordelia’s bear nose caught something unexpected in the air: the scent of fear beneath the anger. She tilted her big shaggy head, sniffing harder.
Why would ferocious bandits be frightene
d of any passers-by?
‘Stand back if you value your lives, villains!’ Rosalind shouted. ‘You’ll regret it if you try to face us down, I promise you!’
Giles let out a heartfelt groan.
Cordelia huffed warningly at her sister. There was more going on here than they’d realised …
But as usual, Rosalind was barrelling ahead without bothering to ask any questions first. ‘Lay down your weapons, now!’ she bellowed.
‘Never!’ the man bellowed back. Agitated rustling sounded in the trees – more humans hurrying to take up places behind him. Metal clanked ominously. Voices whispered. Fear filled the air.
And then—
Cordelia couldn’t have caught it with human ears: the sound of a hastily muffled cry.
Wait. There were other children here. Babies too – she could smell them. That was why these strangers were afraid! They were hiding in the dark, trying to protect their own families.
‘Come on, Cordy.’ Rosalind started forward. ‘Attack!’
The strangers started towards them in return.
Cordelia slammed herself in front of Rosalind in her big bear form. Then she shifted back into a girl. The shock of her transformation made the adults jerk back, breaths hissing loudly through their teeth.
Rosalind’s mouth dropped open too. ‘What are you doing?’ she hissed. ‘You can’t do us any good like that!’
It was true that Cordelia had no claws in girl form. But she needed distraction, not physical strength, to defuse this particular battle … and luckily, she knew someone who was always happy to be the centre of attention.
‘Giles,’ she said, ‘you can sing us that ballad now.’
It was the moment that Giles had been born for. As Cordelia watched in awe – and Rosalind groaned in despair – he flung both long arms out in a dramatic flourish and bounded to the centre of the confrontation.
Both sisters knew exactly what that deep indrawn breath heralded.
‘My stomach!’ His bell-like voice pealed at top volume through the air, throbbing with intensity and sending onlookers lurching involuntarily backwards. ‘Oh, the tale of my stomach is a tale of woe, of pain even greater than my throbbing toe …’
The Raven Heir Page 8