Read Online Heart of Stars by Kate Forsyth - Free Book Online

o’ this building? To the time when the Tomb o’ Ravens was built?’
    The Celestine hummed a negative, a sound of bafflement and indecision.
    Isabeau was trying to decipher the message written with twig and pebble. ‘What is this?’ she asked, pointing to a little stick that had been broken and arranged in a jagged line like lightning. There was a long silence, and then Isabeau saw a drop of water darken the pale stone. She looked up in surprise and saw the Celestine was weeping.
    It means goodbye , Stormstrider said.

No-one slept well that night. It was too cold. Even with the fire roaring away in its circle of stones, and their thick cloaks and plaids wrapped well around them, the cold bit up from the ground and tortured them. It was not a night to spend on the road.
    Rhiannon crawled out of her tent at dawn. The stick which formed the ridgepole of the tent was caked with ice, and snow rose in hillocks and hummocks all about, white and unblemished. The sky had a pale silvery radiance to it, which meant a fair day ahead. Rhiannon wondered whether the Dowager Banrìgh’s grief had at last worn itself out. She hoped so. All had been turned summerset, and that alarmed Rhiannon. When the world was broken asunder, it left cracks through which dark walkers could crawl. Rhiannon had not left her satyricorn past so far behind that this was a notion that did not terrify her.
    A raven called weirdly. Rhiannon spun on her heel, her heart pounding. A big black bird was perched on a branch nearby, observing her. It cried again, mockingly.Rhiannon bent and scooped up a hunk of snow and flung it. Her aim was good. The snow broke against the bird and almost knocked it off its perch. It spread its wings and flew away, uttering its harsh, mournful call a third time.
    ‘One for sorrow,’ a voice said behind her.
    Rhiannon turned to face Jay, huddling her hands into the sleeves of her coat.
    ‘It is a saying we have. One for sorrow; two for mirth; three for a death; four for a birth; five for silver; six for gold; seven for a secret, no’ to be told; eight for heaven; nine for hell; and ten for the devil’s own self.’
    The fiddler spoke beautifully. His words sent a shiver across Rhiannon’s skin and reminded her of the sorceress Nina the Nightingale, whose magic was all contained in her voice. If the tales were true, then this slight, gentle man had magic in his fingers, in the sound he could coax from the strings of his viola. There was magic in his voice too, Rhiannon thought, though perhaps it was only the terror implicit in his words which struck such a chord with her.
    ‘Any raven within twenty leagues o’ Laird Malvern is trouble,’ she said sourly, sitting down on the log and warming her hands at the embers.
    ‘Ye think that was his raven?’ Jay asked, turning to stare after the bird.
    ‘Could be,’ she replied, and thrust her numb feet into her boots. Bluey was perched on her tent rail, looking very cold and miserable, and she held out her hand to it. It flew across to her, and she lifted it to her shoulder, liking the feel of its slight weight there.
    One of the soldiers, red-nosed and morose, threw some more logs on the fire and began to make some mess out of oats and water that these humans called breakfast.Rhiannon whickered a satirical comment to Blackthorn, who whickered back. I’ll have it, if you do not want it , the mare said.
    Rhiannon’s eyes brightened when another of the soldiers came in with a brace of coneys which he began to skin by the fire. Finn was still lying in her bedroll, but she suddenly rolled over, crawled out the end, and retched, noisily and publicly, under a bush. When she had finished, she looked positively green. Without a word or a look to anyone, she crept back into her little tent and dragged her cloak over her face. Her little cat, who had pranced away most indignantly, returned to pat her with one inquisitive paw. Finn did not look up.
    Jay took her a cup of tea.
    At the smell