Rocking Horse War (15 page)

The summer sun, which had been with Pearl all day, sank behind the Keystone Peak as they reached Landlaw Hold.

In the sudden dark, Pearl reached out for her sisters’ hands. She whispered, “We need a plan.”

Emmie answered, “No, we don’t. How can we have a plan when we don’t know what they’re doing?”

“Then we need to tell them that they don’t need a crown, because the whole peak is the keystone they’re looking for.”

“No,” said Emmie firmly. “We mustn’t tell them that. The Earl won’t let us leave here until we’ve crowned him, whatever we say to him. And we mustn’t give them the keystone’s power as well as the power of this crown. Let’s just wait and see what happens.”

“How can you be so naïve?” Pearl snapped. “Just because you can sing their music doesn’t mean you can match their power.”

“Don’t worry, Pearl. All you need to do is stand about with your hands in your pockets.”

“Is that all the thanks I get for spending this whole day chasing rocking horses, fighting swans and dodging earthquakes?” Pearl’s voice started to rise. 

“Shhhh. If the Earl notices you again, he might leave you outside, because he doesn’t want a Pearl who can’t sing in his crown!” Emmie laughed, an echo of the contempt Pearl had endured from Thomas all day.

Pearl dropped Emmie’s hand. She and Ruby followed Jasper and the Earl onto the final approach into the castle.

The girls couldn’t have crossed to the castle three abreast anyway. The path was so narrow that two slim children had to put their arms round each others’ waists to cross together. Armed men would have had to rush along the path one by one, exposed to the arrowslits in the two front towers for its full forty paces. Pearl imagined attacking the Horsburghs’ ancestors here, and shivered.

The ground at their feet, the castle ahead, the sky above, and the drop to the haugh below, were all different shades of grey. They headed towards the only patch of true black: the arched entrance of Landlaw Hold.

Jasper and the Earl entered first, then Ruby and Pearl together, then Emmie on her own, and finally the Laird, shoved through the arch by Thomas.

The courtyard was open to the sky, so they could see each other, but there wasn’t enough light for Pearl to see any hiding places or escape routes.

Thomas knelt down by the entrance, picked up a small box, and after a couple of short scrapes, produced a sharp orange spark.

“Jasper, there are dried reed torches behind that pillar. Could you hold them up so I can light them?” 

Thomas summoned everyone to take a torch. Pearl kept out of the way, remembering Emmie’s warning that the Earl might leave her outside if she made herself noticeable. Soon only Pearl and the Laird had no light of their own.

As the torches warmed and brightened, Pearl could see that the inside of the castle’s keep was crumbling too: heaps of rubble in corners, staircases ending halfway up flights, and rooms with missing walls, like empty boxes on their sides. She couldn’t see any way out apart from the arched entrance, which led to that dangerously exposed path; nor any places to hide that weren’t also traps.

The Earl led the way into the main castle building. Their footsteps sounded hollow as they trailed along a winding corridor towards the turrets at the back.

The Earl ushered them into a huge room, even bigger than the Laird’s ballroom, then Thomas twisted a rusty key in the door and put it in his pocket.

Pearl realised this room had been used for much older entertainments than stately ballroom dances. This was a feasting hall, with a raised platform at the end for the lord and his family, and a long stretch of bare stone floor for the rest of the guests, leading to a fireplace big enough to cook an ox on a spit.

There were no longer any tables or benches, but near the dais there was a large round hole in the floor, with a hinged cover made of one thick slab of rock lying flat at its side.

Ten paces away from the hole, nearer the fireplace, stood a tall stone carving. Pearl stepped softly over to it.

It was a throne: a throne built on a column, with rough steps, no more than footholds, curving up and round to the huge seat on the top. It was the height of two tall men, and only a little wider at the base than at the top.

Its rough edges and solid height reminded Pearl of the rock stacks carved by waves off the Scottish coast. It had been hacked from one massive boulder. All the way up the column, jagged mountain peaks had been scraped into the stone, but they looked like scars rather than decoration. She touched the rock with one finger. It was cold. The sun never reached in here.

The Earl grabbed everyone’s torches and jammed them into brackets round the walls. Then he clambered onto the dais, turned to face the floor of the hall and opened his arms wide. Pearl moved away from the pillar and stood quietly in a dark corner. After letting Thomas have his way at Swanhaugh Towers, the Earl was now taking charge.

“Swanhaugh. Observe the oubliette.” He pointed at the hole in the floor. “From the French word
oublier
, to forget, because the people inside were forgotten. One of our ancestors, one of the lords of Landlaw Hold, was an unforgiving man. He liked to drop those who offended him down there, and let them hear the feasts above as they starved below. We’ve swept it out for you.”

“For me?” the Laird croaked. 

“We can’t have you wandering loose in our mountains with your nasty bloodlore. I can’t take complete control until you’re totally defeated. I’m impressed with Thomas’s green reed rope, but it wouldn’t last more than a day, would it? So we’re going to bind you into the foundations of Landlaw Hold.”

“You can’t!”

“I can, Swanhaugh, I can.”

“But I’ll fade away in there.”

“Don’t worry, you will be fed. Most days.”

“I mean, I’ll fade away without the sky to soar in. I’m a creature of the air, not of burrows and dens. Horsburgh, my cousin, please don’t do this to me.”

“You lost, Swanhaugh. I won. Will you jump, or shall I get my strong right arm,” he gestured at Thomas, “to throw you in?”

“I will jump,” the Laird said in a strained voice, but with his head high.

He stepped to the edge and glanced down, then turned to the triplets. “I gave you a gift, children. Perhaps it will save us all,” and he leapt into the hole. Pearl held her breath until she heard a dull thump.

Thomas flipped his staff over in his hands, like a sergeant major tossing a baton on parade. As the staff turned in the air, the lid of the oubliette lifted up on its hinge and crashed down to cover the hole.

The Earl rubbed his hands together and nodded at Thomas, who started to twist his staff.

But Jasper stepped forward. “Hold on, sir. Hold on a minute. How long is he going to be down there?” 

The Earl didn’t answer, but Thomas said in an offhand voice, “As long as you three are up here, your power will keep him down there.”

He swung his staff in wider circles, and Pearl noticed the huge rock carving starting to move. She rushed from her corner to drag the girls out of the way and called Jasper to join them against the wall, as the tall chair scraped round the stone floor.

Thomas twirled his staff, and the throne spun round the oubliette like a leaf caught in a whirlpool, grinding smaller and smaller circles, until it settled on top of the trapdoor.

The Earl jumped heavily off the dais, and Pearl stepped back into the shadows. As he strode towards the triplets, she noticed a narrow door in the far corner of the hall. She started to edge towards it.

“That was a little unpleasant, but now we get to have fun,” the Earl shouted jovially. “You three are going to sing me a crown.”

“Then we’ll go home?” sniffed Ruby.

“And the Laird too?” asked Jasper anxiously.

The Earl laughed. “My dear children, I give you my word that you will go home when the Laird goes home. Oh yes. At exactly the same time.”

Pearl thought the Earl’s vague answer must have satisfied Ruby, because she stuffed her snotty hanky up her sleeve and stopped sniffling. But it hadn’t stopped Emmie’s questioning gaze flying all around the hall.

Jasper was walking uncertainly towards the stone throne over the oubliette when Thomas 
called to him, “Jasper, can you give me a hand?”

Pearl was still moving towards the narrow door, but Thomas marched past her, grasped the handle and yanked the door open. Over his shoulder Pearl saw wooden shelves and a stone wall. A cupboard. She sighed, and looked round for other possible ways out.

Thomas jammed the cupboard door open with his heel and lifted a teetering pile of wide stone bowls off a high shelf. “They’re very heavy, Jasper. Do you think you can manage a couple?”

“I’m sure I can.” Jasper trotted towards Thomas, all his doubts gone now he was being useful.

Pearl counted as the boys brought out
twenty-one
bowls and arranged them in a circle round the throne.

Then Thomas fetched a bundle of kindling from a heap under the chimney. He twisted handfuls of wood slivers into bonfire shapes, and laid one in each bowl.

Emmie and Jasper watched him, fascinated. Ruby stood nearby, looking occasionally at the locked door. Pearl kept out of the way, hoping for a moment when she could intervene.

Soon Thomas had built pyramids of kindling in every bowl. “Shall I light the fires now, my lord, or wait until you’re seated?”

“Light them now, my boy, light them now.” The Earl beamed at his grandson then turned to the triplets. “Thomas is just lighting a few fires for us: fires to give light so we can see what we’re doing, and warmth so you little dears don’t get cold while you sing me a song. Shall we see if you can link 
your hands round the bottom of this throne?”

Before Pearl could move, the Earl shoved the triplets round the base of the rock chair and ordered them to hold hands in a circle. They had to stretch their arms as far as they would go to reach all the way round, then the Earl checked that each handclasp was firm.

“Well done, well done. It would have been easier in a couple of years when your arms were longer, but as the Laird tried to steal you today, we just had to move everything forward.

“Ready, Thomas?”

“Just a couple more, Grandfather.”

Pearl watched as Thomas used a torch to light the small fires in a wide circle round the triplets, who were in a tight circle round the base of the pillar.

The Earl eased Jasper and Ruby’s hands apart so he could step onto the stone carving, and barked an order to close the circle again. He didn’t climb up, he just stopped and waited on the lowest carved foothold.

Pearl saw Emmie whisper quickly to her brother and sister. Pearl was sure that neither Thomas, with his attention on the fires, nor the Earl, balancing on the carved stone, noticed that when Jasper and Ruby closed the circle again, they held each other by their sleeves not their hands.

Then all the fires were lit. And suddenly it began.

The Earl ascended the throne, climbing with slow steps that looked regal but were probably an attempt not to slip on the narrow footholds.

Once he had sat down and thumped his huge hands on his wide thighs, he called to the circle of triplets at his feet, “Sing me a crown! Sing me a link to these mountains!”

He closed his eyes.

Pearl stood against the wall, not sure, even after a day of seeing music move mountains, what harm this request for a song could do to the triplets.

Thomas sang a note, and Jasper repeated it. Then Thomas sang a phrase, and Emmie and Ruby copied it. Thomas moved away, as the triplets picked up the music for themselves and started creating their own harmonies and lyrics. Pearl still couldn’t grasp the words, couldn’t even remember them from one moment to the next, but she got a sense of heat and forging and metal and jewels and swirling endless circles. As he listened, the Earl’s face glowed with victory and pride.

Pearl, watching from outside the ring of burning bowls, saw that when the melody moved round the circle of singers, the bowls, balanced on their bases 
on the stone floor, started to spin. As the song speeded up, the bowls spun faster.

The base of each fire was being pulled round in a circle as the bowl turned, while the length of the flames tried to burn straight upwards. So the flames were twisting and whirling around each other, making patterns like plaits of hair or tartan ribbons.

As the bowls spun even faster, the flames were flung higher, swirling into pillars of fire. At the tip of each pillar, little sparks and flames were torn off to burn in the air.

Pearl stared at the fires, sure she should be coming up with a plan, taking some action. But watching the flames dance and feeling the tiredness in her legs and back, she slid down to sit against the wall. Perhaps the right moment would come soon.

The song grew in intensity and volume. Emmie was leading, Jasper and Ruby’s voices dancing round her.

The Earl demanded, “Sing a crown of fire to celebrate my power! Sing a crown of jewels to link me to these rocks! The flame crown will only burn tonight, but so long as you three stones stand here in a circle of song, the crown and the power will be mine for ever. Forever!”

“Forever?” Pearl repeated in a whisper. The triplets had to stay here forever?

“Forever?” she asked more loudly.

She pulled her gaze away from the flames, dragged herself up the wall and staggered out from the shadows. 

“Forever?” she shouted over the sound of the music and the roaring of the fires.

“Of course, forever,” bellowed the Earl, his eyes still closed. “For us to control the mountains, they must be a crown for ever. Destiny is always for ever!”

Emmie, Ruby and Jasper were still singing, eyes closed, mouths wide. They didn’t seem to be listening to anything except each other, flinging notes back and forward.

“Forever!” Pearl turned to Thomas, who was leaning against the opposite wall, staff held loosely in his left hand.

“Did you know you were bringing them here forever?”

He met her eyes steadily. He nodded.

Pearl needed to be sure. “All day, you knew they would be trapped here forever?”

“It was necessary. It’s their destiny.”

“It wouldn’t have been their destiny if you’d said no, if you’d refused to hunt them down.”

“It is their destiny to be here,” Thomas insisted.

“It won’t be their destiny if they stop singing right now.”

“They can’t stop. It’s too late …”

He gestured upwards.

The tips of the flames, ripped off by the fires’ twisting, were being drawn into the centre of the circle, joining together above the Earl’s head, creating a jagged and flickering crown of fire.

Pearl guessed when that crown settled on the Earl’s head, the ceremony would be complete, and the triplets would be trapped here forever. 

She swung round to step between the fires, and pull their hands apart. But Thomas stood in front of her, swinging his staff as he had done that morning at the gate, blocking her way.

“No! Let me past!”

She dodged left, but he was quicker than she was, with a longer reach. He laughed as she dodged right, then left again. His arm and the stick were always there before her. Pearl was trapped on the other side of the fires as her family sung themselves into a crown forever.

Suddenly, in one beat, in one note, the song changed. With a discordant shriek, Emmie stopped the fires’ motion dead. She leapt high into the air, flying right through the crown, kicking the points of flame apart, dragging Ruby and Jasper with her.

The children couldn’t let go of each other’s hands, but the weak bond at Ruby and Jasper’s sleeves ripped apart. Now Emmie sang not of fires and circles, but of flying. Her notes swung higher and higher, passing her power and skill to her brother and sister, so they weren’t dangling from her hands but floating and swooping with her.

The Earl yelled in anger and drew his horn from his jacket.

Thomas turned his back on Pearl and rushed to the base of the throne.

Emmie, Ruby and Jasper stopped singing. There was silence, apart from the hissing of flame and the whistle of breath.

The two Horsburghs stared at the three children bobbing above them in a line.

Emmie laughed down at them. “Thanks for 
the power you let me gather when we did the Laird’s gardening. Had you forgotten I could do that, Thomas, or did my sweet smiles and stupid questions make you think I was your servant already?”

Thomas shook his head. “You can do your flying circus tricks with a small handful of power, Emerald, but you can’t protect yourself from the force of our lorefasts. You certainly can’t protect Ruby and Jasper.”

The Earl put the bull’s horn to his lips, aiming its dark oval at Jasper. Thomas pointed the staff at Ruby.

“Come down now, and we’ll just go back to the start.” Thomas’s voice was as gentle as his gesture was threatening. “Come down now, and no one will get hurt.”

“No. We won’t.” Emmie spoke softly, but everyone heard her. “We don’t want to be your tools. Let us all go now, and neither of
you
will get hurt.”

The Earl laughed, clambering down the throne to join Thomas at its base. “How could you hurt us?”

“Because I found the keystone. Because I stored the music of the mountains. Because I already have a lorefast of my own.”

Pearl understood before anyone else. She thrust her hands in her pockets and threw handkerchiefs and pencils and string and ribbons on the floor. Did she still have it? Or had it been lost on the journey, during the rocking horse ride to the castle or the swans’ attack on the ballroom or the balancing act on the rippling grass? 

“I have a lorefast of my own,” Emmie repeated. “Pearl? The flint, please.”

As Pearl found the arrowhead in the last pocket, Emmie sang a high sharp note to rip her hands from her siblings’ grasp, then shouted, “Throw it to me!”

But Thomas had understood too; he was already standing in front of Pearl. Before she could lift her hand to throw the flint, he grabbed her wrist.

“Drop it,” he ordered.

The Earl blew his horn straight at Jasper, flinging the boy across the hall, crushing him against the wall, dropping him to the floor.

“Thomas!” Pearl pleaded.

The Earl blew his horn again, as Emmie and Ruby flew in circles above him, trying to avoid the ringing blasts.

“The flint!” yelled Emmie.

The Earl was whirling on the spot, his broad face red and shiny. “If you won’t crown me, changeling, then you won’t get out of here alive!” He blew again and again.

Thomas ignored the noise behind him and gripped Pearl harder.

“Let go of me,” said Pearl, making a
heart-bursting
effort to stay calm.

Thomas shook his head.

“Look at Jasper!”

They both looked at the crumpled boy on the floor. They both looked back at the flint in her hand.

“Thomas. Let go of my wrist.”

“No. This is my destiny.” 

Ruby screamed, as the Earl’s echoing notes smashed her against the rafters. Thomas and Pearl looked up. Ruby fell out of the air, but Emmie caught her and started dodging about the roof space with her sister clutched in her arms.

“Thomas, he is going to kill her. He is going to kill them all.”

“This was their choice.” His voice was still strong and calm, but his eyes flicked fast between the girls struggling above him, the boy on the floor and the flint in Pearl’s fist. “It was their choice to fight against their destiny.”

“No, Thomas.” Pearl remembered the last time he’d had a firm grip on her wrist and she had forced him to make a choice.