The Raven Heir

by Stephanie Burgis

  Commanding. Inescapable.

  Singing the truth:

  Burned-out houses

  Broken land

  Where our homes

  Should all still stand …

  His words were rich, golden bells that pealed down the hillside, into the city and across the field into every soldier’s ear. It was an incredible, overwhelmingly magical performance – and Cordelia recognised his haunting, melancholy tune immediately. It was the same melody he’d hummed for days as they’d travelled through the blasted landscape, witnesses to devastation.

  A loud, wet gulp sounded beside her as his song rang out. Cordelia turned and stared as Rosalind wiped a glistening stream of tears off her face.

  ‘Shut up!’ Rosalind hissed when she caught Cordelia looking. ‘Don’t you dare tell him. I just …’ She trailed off, brown eyes still suspiciously bright in her reddened face.

  She wasn’t the only one. A strange hushed silence had fallen over the sea of adult soldiers. As the triplets walked together down the wide dirt path into the valley, the armed men and women ahead watched in open-mouthed awe …

  … And Cordelia spotted more than one of them surreptitiously rubbing their own eyes.

  The land was listening too. Cordelia felt it tremble, deep at its core, as Giles’s voice rose and fell, filled with a pain and yearning that resonated perfectly with the earth below.

  His song carried the same message that the land had screamed for decades, desperate for anyone to listen:

  Broken. Broken. Broken. Heal us!

  Land in pieces

  Families lost

  So much death

  Too high a cost …

  A soldier at the front of the line dropped his pike to the ground as he toppled to his knees, scrubbing his fists across his lowered face.

  ‘Up!’ His commander’s face was screwed tight and angry, her shoulders held martially tight. ‘To your feet, man!’

  But all around her, dozens of other men and women fell to their knees like broken leaves from autumn trees, dropping their weapons as Giles’s song curled in lapping, wistful waves around them.

  There was a time—

  Could come again—

  When our cousins

  Were our friends,

  When the land

  Was ours to tend.

  If fighting stopped

  This all could end …

  Soldiers all across the field gave physical starts with the shock of sudden silence as Giles’s magically directed voice cut off, leaving them all stranded. His final word still hung in the air, a dissonant note waiting for resolution.

  He had left the song, like his message, wide open. Hurting. Begging them:

  Heal us – and stop this madness!

  Sobs sounded all the more startling when they came from deep adult voices all across the crowded field; so many different kneeling, weaponless bodies crying out under different flags. The land shivered beneath Cordelia’s feet … but not in protest this time.

  It was gratitude that rose in a great green surge through the ground and streamed through her veins.

  But not everyone had fallen under the spell of Giles’s song. All across the field, scattered leaders barked at their weeping subordinates, haranguing them to get back into formation. In the centre of the field, a small group of armoured men and women had gathered together to head purposefully towards the triplets.

  ‘They’re the pretenders to our throne!’ bellowed a tall, ferocious duchess with a boar on the shield that she raised into the air. ‘Don’t let them trick you with their mother’s magic!’

  She had to be the famous Duchess of Solenne, ready to attack them at long last—

  But the rest of her words were cut off by a long groaning creak as the massive iron-banded wooden door in the city walls swung open, revealing the Dukes of Arden and Lune within its entryway.

  The bearish Duke of Arden strode forward, fully armoured, massive and bristling with weaponry and fury. The Duke of Lune paced beside him, poised and ready, like a lean wolf waiting to leap upon his enemies.

  Behind them, with hands locked together by metal cuffs, flanked by two red-robed sorcerers as prison guards …

  ‘Connall!’ Giles’s powerful voice turned into a squeak, all his sorcery falling away in shock.

  ‘Your Majesties!’ cried the Duke of Lune across the field. ‘I believe we have a hostage here that you would prefer to see unhurt.’

  Rosalind raised her sword with murderous fury, ready to charge through all the hundreds of soldiers who still stood between them and their older brother.

  Connall’s voice shot into all their heads at once: Don’t listen to him, any of you. Run! Keep yourselves safe!

  Cordelia looked across the crowded field of soldiers at the brother whose long arms had scooped her away from so many dangers in the past. She shook her head at him as the last of her fears fell away. This time, Connall, it’s our turn to protect you.

  She reached into the makeshift sack that she’d carried all the way from Raven’s Nest and pulled out the broken pieces of the Raven Crown.

  Cordelia had worried that people might not recognise the silver shards.

  She’d been wrong.

  As she pulled out the three heavy pieces, each engraved with delicate starflowers, light pierced the heavy clouds overhead. It wasn’t the bright white lens of sunlight; it was a pale, shimmering green spear that caused breaths to catch all over the tumultuous battlefield as it shot down to illuminate the three fragments in her hand.

  ‘The Raven Crown.’ Giles’s voice bounced across every edge of the field, powered once again by his own sorcery, as he scooped up one of the pieces. It glimmered in that mystical green light, and he held it high for all to see. ‘Gifted to my sister on Mount Corve by the spirits of the land, who had held it for her, waiting, all these years.’

  There was a moment of awestruck silence … except in Cordelia’s head, where Connall’s voice shouted frantically, Cordelia, what have you done?

  Shh, she thought back at him. Find some faith!

  ‘Look! It’s still broken!’ The Duchess of Solenne strode forward across the field, her helmet bristling with angry iron spikes. ‘So what if these ragtag children have stolen its pieces for their own ends?’ she roared. ‘Soldiers, attack these pretenders to the throne!’

  A cloud of arrows shot across the field, aimed at the three children on the hill.

  It was an impossible array for anyone to defeat. They didn’t even have a shield to hide behind. Connall’s shout of despair rang out across the battlefield and inside Cordelia’s head, endless and echoing—

  But of course, Rosalind had come to grips with her own sorcery too, when she had claimed her sword at the gates of Mount Corve. Now she flung out her free hand beside Cordelia, and half of those attacking arrows whirled around immediately in mid-flight, flying back over the heads of the soldiers who had shot them. Her long sword cut through the air with incredible speed, slashing all the remaining arrows into splintering pieces that rained harmlessly across the grass.

  ‘Halt. Halt! Halt!’ The four dukes and the duchess were all bellowing the same word through the chaos – but as the cloud of arrows finally trickled to a stop, leaving the field in even more disarray than before, their own argument only grew louder and fiercer.

  ‘How dare—!’

  ‘Be silent—!’

  ‘The outrage—!’

  ‘Just sorcery—!’

  They all gathered together in the centre of the field, screaming and waving their heavily armoured arms in each other’s faces, but Cordelia ignored them all to shake her head at Giles. He had made one mistake in his earlier announcement. ‘They weren’t just holding this crown for me,’ she said quietly. ‘We have to do this together to make it work. Remember?’

  In her hands, the three pieces had lain perfectly quiet and still.

  Now, she passed the final piece to Rosalind, who lowered her sword … and a low, vibrating hum shiver
ed through each of the broken pieces.

  Giles gulped visibly as he turned away from the battlefield, his gaze fixed on the silver buzzing gently in his palm. ‘This … is new. Why didn’t it do this any of the other times we tried to mend it?’

  ‘Because I didn’t understand, then, what I had to do to seal our part of the bargain,’ said Cordelia.

  Rosalind squared her shoulders and met Cordelia’s gaze, her face still red and glowing from her victory in battle. ‘What do you need from the two of us?’

  ‘Heart and fierce protection.’ Cordelia took a breath. ‘We have to all agree to the contract. Together.’

  And I’ll make the sacrifice to seal it.

  She stepped, willingly, towards the triplets she had squabbled with and jostled against all her life.

  Her free hand landed on Rosalind’s strong shoulder. Giles’s long musician’s fingers gripped Cordelia’s shoulder as Rosalind’s free hand landed on his.

  ‘We swear,’ Cordelia said, and the others repeated her words as the adult dukes and duchess squabbled obliviously on the field beneath them, ‘to love this land and to listen to its needs and to protect it with all our skills. We three seal ourselves to the land of Corvenne … forever.’

  Together, they set the three pieces of the broken crown in place … and inside her head, Cordelia added one more promise that only the land could hear:

  It’s all yours now. I’m giving it up for you.

  Will you make your own sacrifice for me in return?

  A thunderous boom erupted beneath them in deafening answer.

  Bright green filled Cordelia’s vision.

  Pressure filled her ears until they popped.

  Everything was noise. Everything was confusion.

  Blinded, deafened, Cordelia gripped Rosalind’s shoulder for dear life. Giles’s grip held her in place.

  Behind and around them, a thousand voices sang in chorus:

  You are ours.

  We are yours.

  Forever and ever in endless harmony.

  Together.

  Unified.

  Three in one.

  Home!

  ‘Cordy. Cordy! Cordy!’ Giles and Rosalind were both shouting at once, their words breaking through the triumphant song of the land.

  Cordelia blinked hard, swallowing again and again as she tried to break through to reach them – so close but so entirely untouchable. Green stems filled her veins, bursting into joyful blossom. The mountains around her were her steady guardians, anchoring her in place. The—

  ‘Cordy!’

  Giles’s face swam into focus before her, and she came back into herself with a jolt.

  Tears streamed down his grimy cheeks, but his smile was full of joy. ‘We did it! Look!’

  It seemed to take an eon to relocate herself in her too-small, limited body and to take control of all its different pieces. But once she finally managed to move her chin down …

  The Raven Crown glowed in the triplets’ three hands, heavy, silver … and without a single mark along its shining curves to show where it had ever been broken.

  Green light surrounded all three of them in a beaming circle underneath a beautifully sunny, cloudless sky.

  Leafy birch, ash and oak trees – vast and whispering – had erupted to march behind them, turning the path down the hillside into a thick, vibrant woodland.

  Before them, joyful starflowers covered the grass of what had once been a battlefield. Weapons lay scattered, abandoned, among the bright white blossoms.

  All across the starflower field, figures knelt now in their hundreds.

  … Every one of them paying deference to her.

  The Dukes of Arden and Lune were among them. The other dukes were kneeling too, and so was the Duchess of Solenne, her spiked helmet discarded on the grass nearby, and her rebellion at an end.

  Only Connall still stood at the far end of the field, staring at all those prone bodies with a lost, stunned look … but as his gaze finally rose to meet hers, he too sank down to his knees beside the two sorcerers who had guarded him.

  I’ve found that faith, he whispered in her head, voice full of wonder. I should have known that you’d dare anything, my wildest little sister. But oh, Cordelia, what have you sacrificed for our sakes?

  ‘There’s no denying it now!’ Rosalind raised the Raven Crown and set it firmly on Cordelia’s head. It fit there with supernatural precision. ‘You are the true Raven Queen for good, whether anyone else likes it or not.’

  Giles nodded enthusiastically, leaning in to admire the crown on her head. ‘No one can pretend they have a better claim to the throne – so no one can change what you are from now on!’

  ‘No. No one ever can,’ Cordelia echoed, her voice eerily distant in her own ears. Not even me.

  The crown bore down on her head with far more weight than those three sealed shards could account for on their own. The rustle of surrendered falling wings inside her body was too faint for anyone else to hear.

  Would it fade away completely, in time? Or would she hear its echo haunting her forever?

  Her human feet were heavy and solid on the earth, anchored by the crown she wore. Invisible green roots held her down almost as tightly as the trees of the brand-new forest in her wake. She had sealed her spirit to the land, it had grounded her and swallowed her into lifelong service as the true Queen of Corvenne …

  And she had promised away her own magic to seal the crown. She would never be able to change her shape again.

  Far too soon, every duke and duchess on the field was striding towards the triplets ahead of a jostling crowd of followers.

  ‘Your Majesty.’ The Duke of Lune swept a low bow to Cordelia as the Duchess of Solenne hurried to catch up with him, the three other dukes wrestling for position behind them. ‘I am delighted to reunite you with your brother at last! As your loyal regents, Arden and I will of course be—’

  ‘No.’

  The land and its spirits had made their own sacrifice to mend the Raven Crown, giving up to Cordelia as much as she had given up to them. Now, all their vast green power lay in Cordelia’s control, just as it had for the Raven kings and queens of old … and she would never be anyone’s helpless pawn again.

  ‘I’m not having any regents, and you’re not taking control of this kingdom.’ Spiky bushes of thorns erupted from the grass around her as Cordelia stalked forward in her bloodstained old green linen gown, the earth rumbling underneath the dukes’ and duchess’s feet. ‘You will release Connall from those cuffs right now,’ she snarled, ‘free Alys from wherever you’ve put her, and take off that horrible collar from my mother, or I’ll pull down that castle to do it myself!’

  ‘She can,’ Rosalind told them, ‘and she will. But even if she didn’t …’ She lifted her square chin proudly. ‘I’d get Mother free with my sword, no matter how many soldiers stood against me!’ The memory of victory rang in her voice, until Cordelia could almost see the remnants of those shattered arrows before them.

  ‘Actually,’ said Giles firmly, ‘we would do it together. Our family will never be separated again. Not by anybody. We will all be safe and respected in my sister’s court.’

  Every duke and duchess opened their mouth at once to argue … but the ground leaped up beneath them before they could utter a word and tipped them all into obedient bows.

  As they reluctantly lowered their heads in acceptance, Giles’s best performing smile broke across his face. ‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Now you may all lead us to our mother.’

  It took an absurdly long argument before Cordelia could finally start up the circular staircase to the castle tower where Mother had been imprisoned. The dukes – Arden and Lune in particular – were adamant that, as queen, Cordelia should sit in state in the grand throne room and wait for Mother to be summoned to her side. Nothing that any of the children said made any difference – until Rosalind finally cut through all their bluster.

  ‘Don’t waste any more of your breath,’ sh
e snapped. ‘We already know exactly how the two of you have kept her, so there’s no point in trying to hide the ugly details. The three of us saw her in that prison cell days ago.’

  ‘You … did?’ Lune’s eyebrows shot up.

  The Duchess of Solenne looked smug.

  Arden’s face reddened with furious chagrin.

  The sidelong looks that they all gave each other were anything but reassuring.

  At least the dark and gloomy stairwell that led up to Mother’s tower was too narrow to fit the whole entourage that had marched the siblings through the town. It took Giles’s smooth tongue to persuade the Duchess of Solenne and her two allies to stop at the bottom of the stairs. When Cordelia reached the locked and ironbound door at the very highest level of the tower, she turned to Lune and Arden with her jaw firmly set.

  ‘Pass me the key.’

  ‘Your Majesty, we would be more than happy to—’

  ‘The key,’ she snapped, infusing her voice with the full power of the land far below her feet.

  She had endured everything else today. She had accepted the anchor of the Raven Crown. She had given up her wings for the sake of the kingdom and everyone inside it, and she had stepped voluntarily into this cage of a stone castle.

  But she would not face her mother at long last with these two dukes as interested onlookers. It was too much to ask.

  The Duke of Arden opened his mouth to object. The Duke of Lune stilled him with a swift headshake. ‘Of course,’ he said smoothly, ‘you’ll want a moment of privacy. We’ll wait out here, for your convenience.’

  Cordelia turned the key in the lock with shaking fingers … and then stepped back to let Giles and Rosalind rush in first.

  She slipped into the shadowy room behind them and Connall, closing the door firmly behind her and keeping the big iron key clenched tightly in her fist. Her eyes stayed fixed on the dirty stone floor while her triplets flung themselves into their mother’s startled embrace.