The Raven's Warning

by A. E. Rayne

  Marcus was starting to panic.

  Edela could feel it as she watched him. ‘Here,’ she said calmly. ‘Let me try.’ And bending down with a loud crack of her troublesome hip, she placed her hands on either side of Hanna’s head. Searching. Hoping to find her.

  Breathing deeply, Edela found herself drifting, her mind and spirit weary and distracted. She could sense Aleksander’s worry as he stood behind her with Berard. And then Edela saw the most beautiful field of wildflowers, with a babbling stream winding through it. She could hear birdsong and feel the warmth of a golden sun on her shoulders. It filled her heart.

  Golden light everywhere.

  And Edela opened her eyes, inhaling the smoke, blinking at the dull light in the tent. She peered up at the circle of worried faces. Jael was there with Eydis, Entorp too, and he held out a hand to help her up. ‘I think Hanna had one foot out the door, ready to leave us, so it will take her some time to return, but she is in there. She is in there, and she is coming back.’

  Berard spun around to find Karsten, who had heard the dreamer and was smiling at Berard, just as Berard turned back and smiled at Edela.

  Marcus was too shocked to speak; too broken and worn out to feel anything but upset. Tears rolled down his hairy cheeks. ‘You’re sure? You saw her?’

  Edela nodded, noticing the relief on Aleksander’s face. ‘I felt her, and she felt like life. She is on her way back, don’t worry. But perhaps do go and wash,’ she said, wrinkling her nose. ‘Which is my advice to all of you. The smell in here is making me cry!’

  Aleksander put an arm around her shoulder. ‘You had a busy night, then, breaking a curse and defeating the dragur. Not bad for a little, old dreamer.’

  ‘I’m not that little,’ Edela sniffed into his smoky tunic. ‘And I’ll have you know that I didn’t do it alone. If it weren’t for Eydis, I’d probably still be peering at that book, trying to find the right symbol. It was not written for a woman of my years, I tell you.’

  Aleksander turned to thank Eydis, but he saw her freeze, then spin around as though she had heard something. And into the tent came Thorgils and Isaura, with Ayla in between them.

  ‘Hello, Eydis,’ Ayla murmured, her voice barely a whisper. ‘Edela.’

  ‘Ayla!’ Eydis sobbed, her hands out in front of her as she hurried to find her. ‘Ayla!’

  Edela helped her, and soon Eydis had her arms around Ayla’s middle, squeezing her gently. She felt weak and limp, but she was standing, and Eydis couldn’t stop crying. Ayla looked up, blinking tears out of her own eyes, thinking that soon she would need to lie down again. ‘Thank you, Edela,’ she breathed, smiling at her over Eydis’ head. ‘Thank you.’

  Eydis stepped back, and Edela took Ayla in her arms. ‘No, my dear, thank you. If you hadn’t been so busy, we would never have known the truth. You worked so hard to save everyone. And you did.’

  Ayla stepped back and stumbled, Thorgils grabbing her arm. ‘I don’t think we’ve heard the last of that woman, though. Briggit Halvardar. She will find out that you broke the curse. Somehow.’

  ‘Or maybe she won’t,’ Jael put in, watching Aleksander sit down beside Hanna out of the corner of her eye. ‘Maybe we’ll be knocking on her walls before she has a chance to find out. The Following won’t survive, and nor will she. Not once we get to Helsabor.’

  Ayla blinked. ‘You’re going to Helsabor?’ She stumbled again, and Thorgils helped her to the nearest stool.

  ‘We are,’ Jael said. ‘We have a lot of business down South it seems. And there’s no point in waiting. Winter will be here before we know it.’

  ‘But will you have enough men?’ Isaura worried, not wanting Thorgils to disappear again. He was barely hanging together as it was.

  ‘We will,’ Jael sighed, wanting a stool herself. ‘Once Raymon Vandaal listens to what Axl and I have to say, we will.’

  ‘Have you thought about what I said?’ Garren murmured, leaning over Getta.

  She jumped in surprise, quickly glancing around. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Getta had taken Lothar for a walk, wanting to enjoy the beautiful day. Ollsvik was a gloomy place, with persistently grey skies that often led to drizzle, so when a day dawned as blue and cloudless as this one, no one wanted to stay inside, including Getta who had been feeling like a prisoner in her chamber since giving birth. She was hoping that it would help Lothar too. He had been miserable, barely sleeping. Getta was barely sleeping either, and she didn’t know what to do to help him. She had no inclination to seek advice from Ravenna, though, and she found herself missing her mother for the first time in months. The baby started whimpering, and Getta frowned at Garren, patting Lothar’s back, feeling him vibrate against her chest.

  Garren smiled. He had followed Getta on her walk, down the road which led past the harbour and into the forest where they had often gone to be alone.

  Before Raymon.

  There were secluded groves hiding in the forest. Dense knots of yew trees surrounding them. All sorts of private places to get lost.

  ‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Getta tried again, becoming flustered. ‘I want you to leave. So does Lothar.’

  ‘Well, your son might,’ Garren laughed, pulling a funny face at the baby who didn’t appear to notice as he sobbed on his mother’s shoulder. ‘But you? I doubt that’s true. You want to know whether you’re safe on your throne. Whether your husband is,’ he said. ‘I know you. You always had an eye on the future. Wanting to rise. And now you have, but what will happen next? Perhaps that’s up to you?’

  Garren was standing too close, yet Getta was pleased that he was whispering in her ear and not carrying his voice for anyone else to hear. Her eyes darted amongst the trees, her hand still patting Lothar’s back. ‘And what do you know, then?’ she snapped impatiently, trying to hide her desperation for him to reveal everything.

  ‘I know that things in Rissna will not go well if Raymon chooses to offer his support to the Furycks. We are not here to provide men for whatever scheme your cousins are plotting, and Raymon will soon realise that if he does.’

  Getta shivered. Garren’s voice, at first playful, had quickly taken on an iron-sharp edge. It suddenly felt darker, the sun retreating above the tree canopy. Lothar stopped crying. ‘I must go,’ she muttered, looking away from Garren’s penetrating eyes. ‘I will try. Try to talk to him. I have been trying. I will continue to, but Raymon is a Vandaal. As stubborn as his father, and his grandfather.’

  ‘Yes, and look at what happened to those fools,’ Garren reminded her, not hiding the contempt in his voice. ‘They lost their heads. As your father did at the hands of your cousins. And now the man who took it is coming to claim our kingdom. Unless your husband stops him. Unless you stop your husband.’ Garren kept his eyes on Getta as he stepped away, sensing someone coming. ‘I will see you before we leave for Rissna, and we can talk again. Hopefully, you’ll have better news for me then.’

  Draguta was in a foul mood when she banged on Evaine’s door.

  Evaine struggled out of bed, covering herself in a fur as she sleepily shuffled towards the door, trying to wake up. She wondered how long she’d been asleep, remembering that Eadmund had wanted her to watch him train.

  Draguta’s dark eyebrows sharpened with displeasure as Evaine opened the door. ‘I do wonder what use you are to me, Evaine Gallas,’ she snapped, looking her over. ‘But I shall not kill you yet. Not unless you keep giving me reasons to. Now, get dressed and pack your things, for we are leaving!’

  Evaine gaped after Draguta as she spun around and headed away from the cottage. ‘Leaving? Now?’

  But Draguta was already well on her way, her fast-moving shoes scuffing up clouds of red dust into Brill’s face as she dutifully turned and trailed after her.

  Else couldn’t stop staring at Meena’s bruised throat.

  Nor could Morana who sat before them on a chair. There was no fire. It was an unbearably warm day, and even Morana’s usually cold chamber was muggy.r />
  Morana didn’t notice.

  But she did notice Meena’s neck.

  Dragmall kept trying to clear his throat. He had brought a basket with him and was busy foraging in it as Else listened to Meena tell the story of her dream.

  ‘A black rope?’ Else’s eyes widened.

  ‘He is bound to Draguta now,’ Dragmall declared, straightening up. ‘She needed to bind him before she could return to claim the book. To render him impotent. Unable to cause her any problems.’

  ‘Then we must get rid of the book quickly!’ Else insisted, glancing at Morana who appeared to be trying to shake her head.

  ‘It is far too late for that, Else. Draguta may already be on her way, and Jaeger will do her bidding in the meantime. If you touch or take that book, you will surely die,’ Dragmall warned, glaring sternly at Meena. ‘And that won’t help us. What we need is someone who can, and,’ he said with a sigh, ‘it appears that Morana is the only one who is capable of doing that.’

  They all turned to Morana, whose right eye burned with desperation.

  Dragmall bent towards her. ‘But if we try to break the curse, what will you do to us, I wonder? Those who would help you? Who would be your allies?’ It was not what he wanted to say, but he did not want to unlock Morana’s prison cell to find his throat cut in the night, and he certainly didn’t want anything to happen to Else or Meena. ‘Would you stay loyal? Protect us from Draguta?’

  Morana closed both eyes, screwing them up tightly, her body shaking with the effort, and eventually, she managed the slightest of nods.

  Amma knew that she was fussing, but Axl had only just survived the dragur attack and after seeing to his men, and checking over the fort, he was already preparing for their departure to Rissna. ‘But how will you ride?’

  Axl ignored her as he limped towards the broken wall. He wanted to talk to the stonemasons who had quickly been put back to work.

  ‘Perhaps I should go with you?’ Amma suggested, following him, trying not to stare at the gruesome dragur corpses being loaded onto carts. Pyres were being built in the valley where the majority of the dragur lay. Those pyres would be burning for weeks, Axl was sure, but the dragur had already risen from their graves once, and he would not take the risk that they would again.

  He turned to her. ‘I don’t think you should come.’

  Amma didn’t look disappointed, but she did look worried.

  ‘I need you here. Running the fort with Gisila. Organising the repairs. Turning all the dragur to ash. There is much to do. I need you here.’

  Amma felt the weight of responsibility drop onto her shoulders, but as terrified as that made her feel, she was also pleased that Axl thought she was capable of such a thing.

  ‘When I kill Jaeger Dragos, you will be my queen, so you need to learn how to lead and look after our people as much as I do,’ Axl said, taking her hand. ‘We have to do this together. You coming to Rissna makes no sense. I don’t imagine Raymon Vandaal will bring your sister, if that’s what you were hoping?’

  Amma quickly shook her head. ‘Oh no, I wasn’t hoping for that.’ And she smiled as he wrapped an arm around her, pulling her close. ‘Getta is the last person I want to see. I don’t envy you if Raymon does bring her along.’

  ‘You want to come?’ Raymon was stunned. ‘To Rissna? But what about Lothar? Surely he’s too young?’

  Getta was on her knees in their chamber, already packing. ‘Are you saying it’s not safe for us to come? You’re expecting trouble?’

  Raymon couldn’t keep pace with his wife’s moods. ‘It is perfectly safe. The army will be with us, but I can’t say what’s lurking out there. The creatures Axl Furyck spoke about could come at us from anywhere. I’d much rather you stayed behind. In the safety of the fort.’

  Getta ignored him. She wasn’t about to let him out of her sight. Not while she still had a chance to change his mind about the alliance. ‘But didn’t Axl say their fort was attacked? By a dragon? Surely we’ll both be safer with you, my love?’ Looking up, she stared into his eyes. ‘I want to be with you.’

  Raymon was surprised to hear it. ‘You do?’ It was all he’d been wanting to hear for weeks. She had drifted so far away from him. ‘Really?’

  Getta nodded quickly, turning back to the chest. ‘I do. Besides, I don’t want to be a queen who gets stuffed away, out of sight, like my mother was. My father never once let her have an opinion about anything. Or perhaps, she never tried. All I know is that I have no intention of being a silent queen. I don’t think you would have married me if you’d wanted one of those. I want to be by your side, helping you, guiding you. Just as your mother helped your father.’ She smiled sweetly, holding Raymon’s eyes, until finally satisfied that he had come around to her way of thinking, she looked away, trying to remember where she had put her other cloak.

  ‘It’s good news about Hanna,’ Jael said as she walked to the pyres with Aleksander. Gisila was ahead of them with Axl, Branwyn, Aedan and Kayla. Gant and Amma were walking with Edela and Biddy. ‘That she’ll recover.’ She was trying to take her mind off what they were about to do.

  Aleksander nodded.

  He felt too sad to speak.

  Fyn was on Jael’s other side, limping along with his crutch. He had known Aron and Kormac only briefly, but they had been kind to him, welcoming him into their family. He felt their loss, and he could hear the painful weeping of Branwyn who did not want to be going to the pyre at all.

  She didn’t want it to be real.

  Gisila had her arm around her sister’s heaving shoulders, remembering how it had felt to walk to Ranuf’s pyre. It had taken many days for his body to be returned from Ollsvik, and by then he hadn’t looked or smelled like her husband anymore. ‘Ssshhh,’ she soothed. ‘It’s alright. It’s alright.’

  But for Branwyn it was never going to be alright again. She wanted to throw herself to the ground and rage at the gods, begging them to send her son and her husband back to her. ‘Aron!’ she wailed hopelessly. ‘Kormac!’

  Axl moved up to help Gisila, sensing that Branwyn was becoming hysterical.

  He didn’t blame her.

  His mother had fallen apart at his father’s funeral, he remembered. The shock of his death had been too much. He couldn’t imagine how she would have coped if he had been lying on the pyre beside his father as Aron was.

  Axl tried to shut it all out himself. His wasn’t the only family to be broken by grief, walking to the pyres lined along the stretch of ground that ran from the harbour gates to the piers; where the piers would have been, he reminded himself, suddenly anxious about how broken the fort was.

  The ruined harbour. His devastated people.

  And now he would have to leave. Follow Jael. Take the bulk of their army far away from the fort and the people he was responsible for.

  Hoping he would return.

  Hoping they’d all still be alive when he did.

  22

  Dragmall stood next to Morana, flicking through the pages of the Book of Darkness, convinced that Jaeger would burst into her chamber at any moment. And by the look on Meena’s face, she did too. She stood by the door, ready to distract Jaeger before he could see what they were doing. Else sat on a chair in front of Morana, looking for any sign that she recognised something.

  They had been at it for hours, and Dragmall was ready to conclude that getting Morana to help him break the curse was the wrong approach. But then suddenly her eyes widened, the dark one blinking with urgency.

  Else hurried up from her stool. ‘That page!’ she exclaimed before Dragmall could turn it. ‘She recognised something on that page!’

  Meena’s eyes were just as wide as she came over to see what Morana had spotted.

  ‘Do you know it? Can you read it?’ Dragmall asked.

  Meena peered at the page. ‘Some of it, I think,’ she mumbled without confidence. Leaning over, she touched the symbol, running her fingers around its delicate edge. ‘If you are to break a curse, you n
eed to know the symbol that was used,’ she said slowly, remembering Varna’s words. ‘You must discover it’s opposite. Every symbol has an opposite...’ She stood up, suddenly losing her confidence. ‘At least, I remember my grandmother saying that. I didn’t see Draguta drawing a symbol that night, but she was chanting. Perhaps she didn’t need to use a symbol?’ Meena’s words petered away to nothing, and she dropped her eyes to the flagstones.

  Else could see the interest in Morana’s eye and she turned to Dragmall. ‘Can you find the opposite symbol?’ she wondered, peering at the volka whose watery eyes were blinking double time.

  Meena looked at him too, and she was sure that if Morana could move her head, her eye would be trained on Dragmall as well.

  But the old volka didn’t say a word.

  Gant had been quiet. Feelings of guilt, sadness, and relief mingled inside him, leaving him with a permanent frown, which wasn’t new, he supposed, though it was getting harder to find a reason to smile.

  They had been preparing to leave on their journey to Rissna for days, and now it was almost time to go, but he wanted to stay and look after the fort, and Gisila who was distressed, trying to support her grieving sister while worrying about what would happen to those left behind.

  Gant felt worried too. Not wanting to return to more broken walls.

  Or worse.

  Making decisions could be a heavy weight to bear.

  His decision to send Oleg down into the fort had kept him from sleeping; that and the choking stink of sea-fire smoke and burning dragur. It was in his lungs, up his nose, in his throat. He couldn’t escape it.

  Jael had been right about that, he thought as he saw her approach.

  ‘You went to Ollsvik countless times with Ranuf,’ Jael said, flopping down onto the bench beside him with a newly filled water bag. She had been in the training ring, working with Fyn for a short time and was struggling to catch her breath. ‘You must have gotten to know Ravenna Vandaal.’ Jael had only been to Ollsvik a few times herself, but she hadn’t bothered with making conversation or friends. Now though, she was beginning to realise that conversation was actually a useful tool.