The soft grass smelt delicious, but Cordelia was too exhausted even to nose around and eat it. She had run as long and as far as she could, well beyond her new body’s limits of endurance. Now she tucked up her long legs and prepared to fall flat on to her side for the few remaining hours of darkness.
Giles’s voice stopped her. ‘I know you’re keeping secrets from us.’ He didn’t look away from the rippling dark water, but his fingers tightened against her. ‘Even Ros’ll figure that out soon enough.’
With a sigh of surrender, Cordelia slipped back into girl form. Cold, damp grass poked through her dress. Her human head ached.
‘I’m not keeping any secrets you need to know,’ she whispered softly. ‘I’ll tell you everything Connall said about our father – and about Mother too.’
‘So Connall isn’t the one who upset you. I knew it!’ Giles’s whisper vibrated with intensity. ‘Cordy, Grandmother’s our family just as much as yours. I know she turned out to be awful. You saved us, and I’m grateful for it! But whatever she said that you’ve been burning up about ever since – we deserve to hear it too.
‘And when it comes to Raven’s Nest – I don’t believe for one second that Connall wanted us to go questing halfway across the kingdom to some mythical, dangerous place in the mountains. I know our brother – so I know he must have told you we should hide and stay safe. Didn’t he?’
Cordelia’s shoulders hunched. ‘He did tell me about Raven’s Nest – and he said the spirits there hold all the deepest secrets in the land. If they can share any of those secrets with us – if they can tell us what we need to know to get Mother and the others free, and who … Well, we just have to go, Giles! It’s our only chance to save our family.’
‘But you didn’t take the time to talk us into it. You just dragged us here against our will.’ Giles shook his head grimly. ‘You can’t shut us out and make all the decisions! Otherwise, you’re acting just like Mother – and at least I trusted her to make those decisions for our own good.’
His words stabbed into Cordelia’s chest. Was she imitating everything that had always outraged her in Mother?
She was keeping secrets from the others. But she couldn’t help it! If she told Giles the other question that was hissing and coiling like a viper in her chest, it would change everything. She couldn’t bear it.
She needed a real answer from those spirits, or Grandmother’s words would poison everything for good.
‘We only have each other now, Cordy. Just the three of us.’ Giles let out a shuddering sigh. ‘If I can’t even trust my own sisters any more …’
‘You’re not even their real sister.’
She would never tell him that!
In a heartbeat, Cordelia was a horse again. She tipped her big body over and fell flat on her side, whiffling air pointedly through her lips. Horses didn’t have to answer questions. Even Giles couldn’t talk forever to an animal who wouldn’t answer back.
When he finally did fall silent, though, he stood up and moved three feet away from her before curling up on Rosalind’s far side … and Cordelia felt every inch of the new distance he had put between them.
The next morning, Cordelia woke to find her siblings huddled together, whispering to each other with their backs turned against her. The sight felt wrong – as painfully off-kilter as the fractured land that had creaked and moaned its misery into her dreams, leaving her fragile and desperate for comfort. Still sleep-fogged and aching in every muscle, Cordelia rolled up from the grass and shook herself off in preparation to shift back into girl form and join them.
Then she looked down and froze.
Tiny white starflowers dotted the grass where she had lain, springing up to catch the early morning light.
Sharp, cold fear pierced her chest as she stared down at them.
Coincidence?
No. They formed a perfect outline – but not of the big horse-body she wore. In the grass, she could see the outline of the small girl-body that was her true form.
Remembered voices whispered in her ears: ‘You are ours and always have been.’
No. I’m not! I won’t be! I have a family! She stumbled backwards, tripping over all four long legs.
Her triplets both turned at her movement. Their flat, identical expressions halted her mid-tangle, her mind still racing in panicked, useless circles.
‘You win,’ said Giles grimly. ‘We’re going to Raven’s Nest because you’re our sister and we want to trust you. But once we get there, you have to tell us everything. That is the only bargain that either of us will agree to.’
He stalked off to wash his face and hands in the stream, while Rosalind strode off in the opposite direction to stand guard without a word … and the delicate white starflowers waved in the morning breeze, a silent but unmistakable reminder.
Even the land knew that Cordelia didn’t really fit in with the others, no matter how hard she tried to hide.
She stayed in horse form for the rest of that morning, even when they stopped for rests. Neither of her triplets asked her to change back. They only spoke to each other. They barely even looked at her.
It was exactly what she’d wanted. No arguments. No interference. She didn’t have to share any terrifying truths.
If she had been a wolf, she would have bitten them. Hard!
She trotted instead on long, strong legs, hooves pounding against the rutted dirt roads that stretched past abandoned farms and watchtowers. Half the crops had been left rotting in the fields, while burned-out husks of stone buildings rose like skeletons nearby. Rosalind’s legs clamped tighter and tighter around Cordelia’s back with every new wreck that they passed, while Giles hummed a low, unhappy melody, gangly legs twitching in time with his wordless tune of discontent.
From time to time, his voice echoed around them from random angles as he practised more of the sorcery he’d managed in the forest – but at least half the time, the sound faded within seconds. The rest of the time, it didn’t emerge at all.
‘It’s no use!’ Panting hard, he slumped over Cordelia’s neck. ‘I can’t do it on command. I should have stuck with Mother’s training after all!’
At that, Cordelia snorted grumpily through her muzzle. Atop her back, Rosalind made just as sceptical a sound. ‘You always said you’d dry up into a husk if we didn’t let you spend enough time singing. Remember?’
‘It’s true,’ he mumbled dolefully, ‘but at least then I’d have some way of being useful. Cordy can turn herself into a lion. You know how to fight with weapons. I don’t even have a lute here to mistune! What am I supposed to do the next time we’re attacked if I can’t figure out how to use my magic? Sing a bunch of soldiers into giving up?’
If Cordelia had been in girl form, she would have laughed at that image. But she couldn’t speak through her horse muzzle, and after a long silence, Rosalind said, ‘Who do you think is going to attack us?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. There are too many possibilities!’ He laughed painfully against Cordelia’s mane, his shoulders shaking. ‘The Dukes of Lune and Arden, maybe? They want to force one of us on to the throne just so they can run the kingdom for themselves. But if we’re unlucky enough to stumble across the Duchess of Solenne or her allies, they’ll want us dead to get us out of the way of their own heir. Oh, and then there’s that wicked sorceress grandmother of ours who wants to trade us to the dukes in our own family!’
He let out a heavy sigh that ruffled against Cordelia’s skin. ‘Arden and Lune, at least, must know by now that we’ve left the forest. It’s not as if anyone else could have been those three children who came running out and got spotted by everyone along the way.’
Rosalind grunted. ‘That man who reported us to the soldiers thought we were demons.’
‘Ha.’ Drawing a deep breath, Giles straightened in his seat. ‘I don’t think the dukes will be so easily fooled.’
Grandmother wouldn’t be fooled either, if she heard. Cordelia chewed over that thought unhappily
as she trotted onwards, dust kicking up around every step.
Grandmother hadn’t had any stables behind her cottage to hold a horse ready to ride. She certainly couldn’t catch up with them by foot.
But Cordelia remembered the blaze in those dark eyes – ‘I’ve had twelve years to learn from my mistakes.’
Even in horse form, she shivered hard.
Lady Elianora would never give up at her first setback … and next time, she wouldn’t be nearly so easy to surprise.
The attacks that Giles had predicted didn’t come that day, though, or the next.
Soldiers on horseback swept up and down the road four different times as they journeyed. The triplets found hiding places every time. They skirted around high-walled towns surrounded by massive stinking piles of refuse and rivers polluted with the townsfolk’s leavings. Army camps sprawled across abandoned fields. The flags that flew above those camps shifted symbols and colours as the long days passed, but the devastation left behind was universal.
It was no wonder the land was crying out for mercy.
Colourful flags of boars, badgers and falcons flew high in triumph above the latest field of dying crops. Cordelia bared her teeth when she saw them: the symbols of Lune’s and Arden’s rivals, the Duchess of Solenne and her allies, who all wanted a different heir for the Raven Throne … and who would kill Cordelia and her triplets to achieve that goal.
They can have the stupid throne, she thought bitterly. But, of course, it made no difference what she thought. Lune and Arden wouldn’t listen even if all three triplets begged on their knees to give it up. All they cared about was seizing power for themselves … and keeping the Duchess of Solenne’s alternate heir from gaining it.
Who was that other possible heir, anyway? Would they care about this broken kingdom?
Someone had to do something, for the sake of every innocent pawn in the dukes’ and duchesses’ schemes … and for the sake of the land itself, whose pitiful moans echoed endlessly through Cordelia’s ears.
Broken. Broken. Broken!
The triplets camped out of sight of the farmhouses that still stood. They foraged for their food in abandoned fields. They didn’t talk to anyone else along their journey … but then, after everything they saw on their first day, they barely even spoke to one another.
The only sound that accompanied them across the miles, apart from the steady thumping of Cordelia’s hooves along the road, was the mournful tune that Giles hummed to himself over and over throughout the days. For once, neither of his sisters asked him to stop. Its melancholy lilt perfectly echoed the wreckage that they passed.
Rosalind brooded in dangerous silence, her body growing more and more rigid atop Cordelia’s back with every burned-out castle or farm that they passed. Cordelia stayed animal and tried with all her might to shut out the cries of the land around her … but every night in her dreams, they wrung her out and left her reeling, groggy and half deafened by endless screams, pleas and demands.
BROKEN. BROKEN. DO SOMETHING!
And every night as she slept, white starflowers grew beneath her in her true shape, as if to taunt her. We know what you truly are.
This wounded land expected her to somehow fix it. Mother, Connall and Alys needed her to rescue them from their powerful captors. And with every step towards that highest cloud-wreathed mountain, she was drawing closer to the moment when she would have to let her own most terrible words out into the air, to fulfil the bargain that her triplets had demanded.
Then they would finally know the truth about her, and—
No!
She couldn’t even let herself think it.
She kept her eyes trained on the thickly forested slopes of Mount Corve as they drew closer with every passing minute. She kept her hooves moving steadily as she trotted up steep, sloping dirt roads and around jutting boulders, and she squeezed her inner ears shut as hard as she could to the cries of the land on every side.
So she almost missed the trap that was waiting for them.
The closer the triplets came to Mount Corve, the more the landscape rippled with obstacles, like giant shoulders rising from the earth to shrug off irritating human invaders. Every time Cordelia made it to the top of one slippery loose-soiled hill with her triplets still safely clinging to her back, she found yet another hill waiting between her and that high green mountain like an endless series of tests that she had to pass.
But she couldn’t keep moving forever. As the sun blazed in a cloudless sky above them, they all stopped, yet again, to eat and rest for a solid hour. They were so painfully close to Mount Corve by then that Cordelia could have wept with frustration at the delay – but her legs were trembling uncontrollably. Her endurance as a horse was so paltry!
She dutifully filled her stomach with fresh grass but then turned girl, flopping back against the rocky hill where they’d stopped while Giles and Rosalind wandered off to forage. The three of them had left behind the last signs of human habitation over an hour earlier, and for once, there was no sign of any devastation to explain it. Apparently, no humans had ever dared to build this close to Mount Corve, much less hold any battles here.
The land here felt dangerously unsettled beneath Cordelia’s body. All across the kingdom, as hard as she’d tried not to pay any attention, she had felt the transition in each patch of land they’d crossed, like multiple pieces of a larger patchwork quilt – all of them sewn together into a whole, but each one individual and distinct. Each area held its own particular chorus of voices … and its own vivid history of pain.
This chunk of land, just by Mount Corve, wasn’t screaming like so many others had along the way. It wasn’t even calling for her attention. Instead, it felt somehow as if it were … waiting.
Holding its breath?
As she lay on the sloping grass and dirt, her eyes shut to bask in the warm sunshine, she found herself scratching again and again with one finger at the side of her head. There was a subtle tickle of sensation there, inside her ear, like a squirrel trying to sneakily scratch its way through a door, or …
No! It was the land itself trying to wriggle through her defences. She sat up with a jerk, shaking herself off vigorously. I’m not listening! I won’t hear you!
‘… was a time … could come agai—Cordy!’ Giles’s song cut off as he rounded the hill, his eyes widening as he watched her shuddering movements. ‘Is everything all right?’
‘It’s. Fine.’ She gritted out the words, using all her energy to hold her inner defences strong.
She wouldn’t let the land distract her now; wouldn’t let it separate her from her triplets in these last few hours before the truth came between the three of them.
‘Are you sure?’ He frowned, starting towards her. ‘If you’re not feeling well—’
‘I said I’m fine!’ She bared her teeth in a ferocious forced smile. ‘Why don’t you keep singing? I can listen to your new song.’
He paled behind his freckles. ‘Ros!’ he yelled. ‘There’s something wrong with Cordy!’
‘Ha, ha. Very funny.’ Rolling her eyes, Cordelia pushed herself to her feet. Every muscle in her body ached with the effort she’d been through … and when she looked down at the grass where she’d lain, she spotted a single white starflower poking its head up through the green.
She jerked backwards as if it were an adder preparing to strike.
‘What’s wrong with Cordy?’ Rosalind rounded the hill at a run.
Giles pointed at Cordelia accusingly. ‘She said she wants to hear me sing.’
Snorting, Rosalind slowed to a halt. ‘Has she lost her hearing? Or only her mind?’
‘Oh, shut up, both of you!’ Cordelia backed hastily away from the tell-tale flower. ‘Let’s just get moving.’
‘Can you? Already?’ Rosalind frowned, catching up and peering into her face suspiciously. ‘I thought you needed more rest than that. Horses—’
‘I can’t carry either of you,’ Cordelia mumbled, ‘but I can walk on
my own two legs. And it’s not as if we’re far from Mount Corve. So there’s no point waiting any longer, is there?’
Giles looked more than ready to offer several points, quite possibly set to music, so Cordelia turned her back on them both and started forward without letting her brother’s loud groan of frustration – or her own aching legs – stop her.
She could feel that starflower waving mockingly in the breeze behind her.
As they trudged further and further up and down the rocky paths through the bumpy foothills, the voice of the land beneath her feet stopped subtly scratching at her ear and started hammering outright at her head instead. She clenched her jaw tight. La-la-la – I can’t hear you!
Her triplets were talking again now, in low, worried tones, about what dangers might lie ahead. She tried to listen to them – she really did. But the voices of the land formed an angry blur in her ears, all demand and distress and something sharp at the edges almost like a warning, and—
‘What do you think, Cordy?’
‘Sorry?’ Breathing hard, she blinked out at her siblings. Only one more slope rose before them now until they would reach the real mountain at last.
… Where everything would change.
Giles stared at her. ‘Who were you listening to, just then?’
‘Nobody,’ she snarled – then caught herself. ‘I mean, you?’
Rosalind let out a huff of a laugh. ‘Nice try. She was off in her own world, as usual.’
‘No!’ Cordelia said. ‘I’m right here. With you.’ She forced herself to meet her sister’s gaze full on, even as the voices in her head rose to ear-piercing screams. ‘I just—’
SOLDIERS AHEAD!
She doubled over, her vision whiting out with pain as the combined voices smashed through her internal walls.
‘Cordy!’
The Raven Heir Page 10