Rocking Horse War (11 page)

Pearl placed each foot carefully, arms out for balance, moving along the ridge only slightly faster than she would walk along a garden wall.

“Hurry!” said Emmie behind her. “Hurry! Thomas is catching up. If he gets really close he can aim round me and reach you.”

Pearl glanced back briefly. Thomas was moving with care, but with his eyes on Emmie, not on his feet. He was no more than sixty yards behind them. She looked ahead at the summit. It was about forty yards ahead.

Then she heard a clatter and a gasp.

Emmie had slipped and fallen awkwardly, with one leg bent under her and her hands splayed out, grasping the edge of the ridge. As Pearl bent down to grab Emmie, a wave of sound slid above her, rippling her hair.

Pearl pulled Emmie back up between herself and Thomas. He lowered his staff. “Nearly!” he yelled. “Give up now, girls, and we can all get down safely.”

“Are you alright?” asked Pearl.

Emmie nodded. “Just keep going.”

They set off again. With Thomas still further behind them than their goal was in front of them, 
Pearl thought they could reach the summit before he caught up.

The race to the top was the one race against Thomas she could win today.

But Pearl suddenly realised it was a pointless race to win: when they reached the summit, they would be exposed, with nowhere to hide or run from Thomas’s anger and power. Losing this race would still be a victory for Thomas, because he would have them trapped at the finishing line.

Unless they won the prize as well as the race. Unless they found the keystone, a treasure from a bedtime story which even the story’s heroes had never seen.

“What exactly are we looking for on the summit?” Pearl croaked at Emmie, almost choking with effort and fear.

“The keystone, of course.”

“But what will it look like?”

“I don’t know,” Emmie admitted. “I’m just hoping it will be obvious when we get there.”

“Couldn’t we just pick up any old stone, wave it at Thomas and see if it frightens him?”

“Does he seem easily frightened to you?”

Pearl was balancing too carefully to shake her head.

The ridge widened slightly as it tipped up towards the summit. They didn’t dare climb it side by side as it would give Thomas a clear shot at Pearl’s back. But with the safety of a few paces of rock on either side, Pearl broke into a run, pushing herself as hard as she could. Emmie stayed just one step behind. 

Suddenly Pearl reached the top. What looked like a sharp peak from a distance was as level on top as a billiard table, and twice as wide. But the true summit was at the northern edge, a point of rock higher than the rest by the height of Emmie’s shoulders.

“Hunt for the keystone!” ordered Pearl, walking swiftly to the centre of the mountaintop. Was it a building block? A crystal? Was it carved by hand or shaped by the weather? She kicked in panic at the few boring lumps of rock scattered around.

“Emmie!” she called urgently. Emmie wasn’t looking for anything. She was standing with her hand on the true summit of the Keystone Peak.

“Pearl,” Emmie said calmly, “please give me the flint from your pocket.”

Pearl put her hand in her pocket.

Thomas stepped onto the summit.

Pearl stretched out her arm and gave the arrowhead to Emmie, who held it in her right hand and grasped Pearl’s hand with her left.

“Don’t let go of me,” Emmie whispered.

Thomas walked towards them. “Were you searching for the keystone? Haven’t you found it? Bad luck, girls.”

He lifted his staff. “Pearl. I’m sorry you never heard the music of the land.”

He pointed his staff straight at her and smiled. Not a glittering smile, nor a charming smile, nor a wolfish smile. Just a slightly squint smile that actually wrinkled his eyes, and may even have been regret. “I am sorry, Pearl.”

Pearl gripped her sister’s hand tightly, and gulped a breath of cold air. 

“Don’t worry,” Emmie said confidently. “She’ll hear this.”

Emmie struck the true summit with the flint.

It rang like a bell. A bell the size of a mountain.

The whole mountain shook, vibrating and resonating. Pearl held onto Emmie, and Emmie held onto the flint. They moved with the sound, held safe within its waves.

So the keystone rang, and Pearl heard the land sing.

Thomas was rocked off his feet and thrown into the air. He fell backwards and out of Pearl’s sight, flying off the Keystone Peak, just like his
grey-haired
ancestor.

As the Keystone Peak vibrated, it was joined by the weaker off-key notes of the other mountains in the range. They sang with one voice, as Pearl and Emmie stood surrounded by the pulse of the rocks.

Pearl waited impatiently for the noise to stop. When the summit stilled, she rushed to the edge to look for Thomas, who was far too young to go grey into a grave.

He lay sprawled at the top of the ridge, where it widened out, looking clumsy for the first time since she’d met him. His staff was lying abandoned by his open fingers. His hair was black. But he wasn’t moving.

Pearl scrambled down to him, put her hand on his cheek and watched his chest. He was still breathing.

Emmie walked down to them.

“That explains why no one ever took the keystone off the mountain. It
is
the mountain,” said Emmie. 
“Could you pop this back in your pinafore? I don’t have pockets in this dress.” She handed the flint to Pearl, then she looked at Thomas. “Is he alive?”

“Yes, but he’s unconscious.”

“What was he going to do?”

“Kill me and take you.”

They looked at him silently.

Finally, Emmie asked, “What should we do with him?”

Pearl said quietly, “Perhaps it’s his destiny to die here.” She raised her eyebrows at her newly powerful little sister, wondering how Emmie would choose to use her strength and ambition.

Emmie pursed her lips and thought for a moment. “We have to help him.”

Pearl sighed with relief. “Of course we do.”

She turned back to Thomas and brushed the hair off his forehead.

His eyes opened.

Pearl moved faster than either her sister or Thomas, and pulled the staff away from his outstretched hand.

Emmie said in a sharp sweet voice, “I’ll take that. You help him up.”

“No!” Pearl stepped away from them both.

Thomas spoke hoarsely, “Please give me the staff. I need it to help me stand.”

“No!” repeated Pearl. “I’ll keep it, so we can get off this mountain without any loud noises or moving rocks.”

Thomas sat up and glared at her. Emmie put her hands on her hips and pouted.

Pearl held the heavy stick tightly. It pressed 
uncomfortably against her pinafore, forcing the blunt point of the flint into her leg.

Thomas stood up and dusted his trousers down. “Please give me my staff, Pearl. I do admit that you’ve defeated me, for now, but I can’t be without my staff.”

“No. It’s too dangerous in your hands, in the hands of anyone who thinks they have a right to power.” She glanced at her sister, then back to Thomas. “If you try to take it from me, I will drop it.” She dangled the staff over the edge of the ridge.

Thomas held his hands up in a gesture of acceptance, but his eyes were dark and angry.

“Now, Thomas, are you hurt?” Pearl asked, feeling more in control. “Can you walk?”

He rolled his shoulders and flexed his fingers. “I’m fine.” He took a long step towards her. “See?”

“Stay back!” ordered Pearl.

Thomas scowled. Pearl waved the staff over the edge again. Emmie giggled.

Thomas opened his mouth, but Pearl never found out if he was going to agree or argue, because his words were drowned out by the huge hooting of a horn. Like a hunting horn, but louder than thunder, and more exhilarating than a whole pipe band.

When the horn’s halloo ended, the joyful noise echoed round the mountains. Then Pearl heard more than an echo. A couple of high notes flew around their heads, chirruping and dancing, as if they were chasing the music of the horn.

Thomas stood taller, his angry face smoothed into a smile. 

Emmie turned pale.

“What? What?” Pearl looked at the two of them. Something had changed, but she didn’t know what. She still held the staff, but she seemed to have lost control.

“That was my grandfather,” Thomas said proudly. “He’s come to hunt the Laird. But who has he brought with him? You know, don’t you, Emmie? You recognised their voices, didn’t you?”

“Jasper and Ruby,” Emmie whispered. “That was Jasper and Ruby.”

“Jasper
and
Ruby?” repeated Pearl. “How did he get Ruby?” She turned on Thomas. “How did your grandfather get Ruby?”

He grinned at her. “You know I didn’t bring you into the mountains just for the pleasure of your company, Pearl. I did hope you would tell me where Ruby was, but I wasn’t sure I could persuade you.”

“Or force me.” She glared at him.

“Indeed. So in the note Jasper took to Horsburgh Hall, I told my grandfather you’d probably hidden Ruby in the wood, because you hadn’t had time to take her home. I suggested Grandfather use Jasper as bait to lure her out. Why didn’t you tell her to stay hidden? Why didn’t you arrange a password?”

“I told her not to come out for anyone but me.” Pearl’s tired shoulders slumped, and the tip of the staff scraped on the rock. “But she doesn’t usually do what I tell her.”

Thomas smirked. “This changes everything. I’ve won now, haven’t I, Pearl? I have two triplets, and you only have one. So give me back my staff, and we’ll go safely and quietly down the hill, as you so sensibly suggest. Then Emmie and I will meet my grandfather and find her destiny. Pearl, my 
dear, you can go home for tea, or come and argue against fate. It’s up to you.”

He held out his hand for the staff.

Pearl tightened her fist round the stick.

“Fine.” Thomas shrugged. “You carry it if you like. It’s long and heavy and awkward, and you can’t make it work, and you’ll have to give it back eventually. But you keep pretending you’re in charge if you really want to.”

Pearl looked at Emmie, who said in a small voice, “He’s right. He has won. I have to go with him, so I can join Ruby and Jasper. At least we tried, Pearl, we tried our best, but the Earl and Thomas are stronger than us, and we’ll just have to do what they want.” She sniffed.

Pearl stared at her sister. Had she given up? Emmie sniffed again. Pearl dropped the staff on the ground. It clattered like a dead branch. She turned to walk down the mountain.

Then she looked back to see if her sister had been pretending and was about to ambush Thomas, but Emmie was standing passively as he waved his staff over her head and down her sides.

“Just checking that you don’t have lots of power stored somewhere, Emmie,” he explained. “You created an amazingly strong connection with the mountains for a moment, even without the lost keystone.”

Emmie glanced over at Pearl, and shook her head very slightly.

Thomas kept talking. “Your skills are even more unusual than your brother’s. But you don’t know how to use them yet, so I don’t want you carrying 
lots of power around, not before the ceremony.”

“I don’t have anywhere to store power yet,” Emmie said calmly. “Where did you get your staff?”

Pearl tried to stomp off in a huff, but that wasn’t safe on the narrow ridge, so she just walked on steadily. Emmie and Thomas followed, having a remarkably friendly conversation about the right way to store the power of the land. Pearl couldn’t move fast enough to escape from their cheerful voices.

“It’s called a lorefast,” Thomas explained. “Everyone who knows landlore needs one to store the power of the land’s music. The Laird has a bone because he still uses bloodlore. I have a staff from an old rowan tree. My grandfather has a bull’s horn.”

“Can you inherit them, or do you need to find your own?” Emmie asked.

“Everyone needs their own fresh lorefast to master the lore, but the ancient lorefasts are the strongest. The lorefast of the last Lord of Landlaw Hold stores centuries of power, and it’s been passed down in my family. But you have to earn the right to use the ancient lorefasts.”

Pearl forgot she was trying to ignore them and turned carefully round. “That’s what the Laird meant. That’s why you’re trying so hard to crown your grandfather. You want to earn the old lorefast.”

“Aren’t you clever, Pearl? Yes, if I deliver all the triplets and the Laird to my grandfather, he’s promised me the lorefast of Landlaw Hold. Then I will have all the power my family has ever 
gathered. My grandfather’s only interested in these small hills, but I want to use my landlore everywhere.”

He kept Emmie moving in front of him with a gentle hand on her shoulder. “So that’s how your destiny is bound up with mine, Emmie. You’ll crown my grandfather, and I’ll gain more power than he has ever handled.”

“I would like a lorefast too,” Emmie said in a chirpy voice. “If I could find a new one, not an ancient one like the one you want, would you teach me to use it? You’d be an inspiring teacher.”

“You’d be an interesting pupil. We could do a lot together. But … we’ll see.” His face hardened. “Come on,” he snapped at Pearl. “Hurry up. We must get all the triplets together.”

So Pearl led the way down the mountain.

The ridge didn’t seem so dangerous now. The weather was sunny and windless, the rocky path seemed wider than it had a few minutes ago. The way down is never as exciting as the way up, and she wasn’t being chased any more, so Pearl had plenty of time to think.

When she glanced behind, Emmie was looking as cheerful as a child going to a picnic, and Thomas was looking triumphant.

But Pearl felt miserable. Yet again, she had nearly rescued a triplet; yet again, she had ended up doing exactly what Thomas wanted.

What else could she have done? She had hidden Ruby and told her little sister to stay in the hut until she returned, but Ruby must have opened the door for Jasper and the Earl. She had rescued 
Jasper, but he had bitten and betrayed her. She and Emmie had knocked Thomas off the summit and disarmed him, but now they were being herded tamely towards his grandfather.

As they reached the foot of the ridge, Pearl heard Emmie ask Thomas politely how he’d moved the heavy plateau stones. Pearl shook her head. Didn’t Emmie remember that Thomas had nearly killed them both here?

Pearl jumped off the ridge onto the squint slabs of the plateau. This violent landscape hadn’t been created by geological forces many millennia ago, but by an arrogant ambitious boy just an hour ago.

She knelt down and searched the gaps between the nearest slabs. The pale roots of a small plant pointed up to the sky. There were no flowers left.

Thomas and Emmie stepped onto the slab.

“You killed the flowers!” accused Pearl. “You destroyed everything when you forced the land to move, just to trick Emmie into using up her power. If you really loved the land, rather than the power it gives you, you would never treat it like this.”

To Pearl’s surprise, Thomas knelt beside her, and looked urgently around at the crushed plants and tumbled rock.

Then he shouted, “Here! Here are some that survived!”

All three heads bent over the dark gap between two slabs. In the warm shelter was a tiny plant with half a dozen bright blue trumpet-shaped flowers. A sudden smile swept round all three faces.

“See! I didn’t destroy it, I just shook it up a bit.” Thomas patted the stone. “The whole plateau 
will be blooming by next year. Especially once the crowning ceremony allows us to sing with the mountains properly again.”

He leapt up, filled with new confidence. “Come on.”

Pearl and Emmie stood and watched as he moved over the land, crossing whole slabs with every stride.

Pearl whispered, “I’m trying to think of an escape plan …”

Thomas whirled round. “Come with me, Emmie.” He held out a hand. “You can go your own way, Pearl, or you can come and see your brother and sister again.”

Emmie walked towards Thomas, but looked back at Pearl. “Please come, Pearl. I’d like you to see my destiny. Will you come with us?”

Pearl couldn’t understand why Emmie was being so co-operative, but she nodded reluctantly.

She trailed behind, her pockets heavy and her legs tired, snorting as she listened to Emmie chattering to Thomas about landlore. He was twisting his hands and staff, growing more extravagant every time Emmie said “Oh how fascinating!” and “Gosh, really?” and “My goodness, aren’t you clever!”

Thomas might believe he’d beaten Pearl already, but he still needed all three triplets together to crown the Earl. If she could get Emmie away, the Horsburghs couldn’t complete their crowning. If she could get Emmie really far away — to Perth or Edinburgh or London or Paris — then Thomas could never crown his grandfather and Pearl would have time to rescue the others. 

They reached the edge of the plateau. Through the clear air, they could see the Grey Men’s Grave below and the Anvil opposite; the river to the south and the moors to the north; and far to the north and west, the silky smudges of even higher mountains on the horizon.

Thomas lifted his hands high above his head. “All these mountains were created by movement deep under the earth’s crust, which thrust layers of rock over each other into great folds and ridges.” His hands sank down again. “Now they’re being worn away.”

Emmie gazed at him. “Really! How amazing.”

Pearl stared at her sister. Emmie always got top marks in geology. She knew all about mountain uplift and erosion. Why was she playing daft like this?

“So the land is used to movement.” Thomas scuffed his boot on a slab. “Pearl’s angry that I shook the plateau, and she’s right to accuse me of breaking my own rules, but I will heal any damage as soon as we’re linked to the mountains again. Anyway, I haven’t wrecked it forever, because all land is used to change: change by earthquakes, by volcanoes, by ice ages. By man too.”

“Which man?” chirruped Emmie.

Thomas laughed. “All of us. The deer forests, grouse moors and pheasant woods of our land are as man-made as the fields and cities further south.”

He crouched down and picked up a fragment of jagged rock. It was plain grey at first glance, but when Thomas twisted it in the sunlight it glittered with pink and white and black crystals. 

“When the land is shaped by hot rocks shifting deep in the earth, it has a pulse and a rhythm, it has its own music. When it’s exposed on the cold surface, the memory of that rhythm keeps the land supple so it can adapt to change. Weather and time; shifts in temperature and sea level; man’s farms and factories: these can become part of the landscape, rather than destroy it.

“But if no one listens to the land, if no one stores and shares the rhythms, then the land forgets its music, forgets the movement. It becomes brittle, it fractures rather than flows under pressure, and it’s worn away too easily by ice or rain or wind.

“For the land, movement is life. For the land, erosion is death.”

He stood up again. “These mountains are silent because our ancestors lost the keystone, and forgot how to sing to them, so these peaks are crumbling faster than normal. If I don’t win, they’ll become scree …” he glanced at Pearl, “… scree and pebbles, sand and clay. Then there will be nothing here but a flat gritty desert.”

“A desert? In Scotland?” Pearl laughed uncomfortably. She’d finally found a statement of his which she could challenge. “It would be a very cold wet desert.”

“Cold but not wet,” said Thomas. “Without the mountains, there’d be less rain. They reach to the clouds and pull down the water which wears them away. But if we can link to the mountains’ music again, it’ll take much longer to wear them down.”

Pearl was determined not to crumble under Thomas’s contradictory weapons of strong science 
and convenient nonsense. But before she could challenge him again, Thomas and Emmie strode off down the heathery slope below the plateau. Pearl trudged after them, wondering how to stop this boy and his dangerous plans for the triplets.

She had no magic, no lore, no fancy powers. But she was walking behind her enemy on a mountain, and anyone can harness gravity. She speeded up to get closer.

Emmie was asking, “So, Thomas, does all the land in the world need songs?”

“Once, every piece of land had its own songs, sung by its own families. In most places, the families still sing quietly, the land prospers and no one notices. But a few families have left or died out, and some land has been forgotten or fought over. That silent land is eroding faster, just like our mountains. But even long neglected land still holds a few echoes, like you found on the Keystone Peak, and I think I could hear those echoes and help that land.

“Most landlore families can only hear their home, the land they’re connected to, but I can hear more. I’ve sung with the grounds round my school, because I spend half the year there. So, with a stronger lorefast, I think I could sing with any land that has been abandoned and forgotten.”

“How wonderful!” Emmie said enthusiastically. “And of course, once the land is singing again, you’ll find other people who can hear the land to share it with, won’t you?”

Thomas stopped, and Pearl stopped too. She needed to stay behind him. 

Thomas stared at Emmie. “What do you mean?”

Emmie smiled innocently. “Don’t you think it would be fairer? Surely people would love their land best if they only had a small piece each?”

“You think I should do all the work: babysitting the three of you, fighting off protective big sisters, learning my landlore, earning my lorefast, practising skills day and night for years, building up my strength and power, waking and nurturing and loving the land, then give it away? Just give it away?”

“Oh, I’m sure you know best. I was just wondering …” Emmie shrugged and walked on, followed by Thomas, then Pearl.

Pearl was wondering too. What was her sister doing? Perhaps she wasn’t being quite as co-operative as she seemed. Perhaps she did have a plan.

But Pearl had a plan too, and she had to act soon or lose her chance forever.

They were leaving the plateau at an angle, heading towards a corrie which led straight down to the Laird’s land, avoiding the Grey Men’s Grave. The corrie was a steep bowl of space scooped out of the side of the Keystone Peak: the most direct way down, but not the easiest. As they arrived at the highest point of the corrie, Thomas stopped and looked around.

“My grandfather has wanted to hear these mountains all his life. But I want,” he swept his arms out to pull in the entire landscape, “I want to hear the whole island, the whole planet.”

Thomas balanced elegantly on the top edge 
of the corrie, looking not at his feet, nor at his audience, but at the world he wanted to conquer.