The Tower of Ravens by Kate Forsyth Read Free Book Online Page A

a place, filled with sorcerers, nobles, merchants, thieves and faeries. The Rìgh had his palace there, protected on either side by two deep, fast rivers. In the grounds of the palace was the Tower of Two Moons, where the Keybearer of the Coven of Witches had her headquarters, and where the most famous school in the land was based.
    Although Lewen wanted desperately to be a Yeoman of the Guard, like his father had been, he had ambivalent feelings about Lucescere. He knew his mother had been unhappy there, shunned and mocked because of her faery blood. It was in the gardens of Lucescere that she had been attacked with an axe while sleeping in her tree-shape. Twenty years later she still walked with a limp, and the deep ugly scar still marred her smooth bark.
    Although Lewen had not inherited the ability to shapechange into a tree, as his sister had done, he was certainly unhappy if he spent too much time away from the forest. If it had not been for the palace’s famous gardens, Lewen would have left the Theurgia as soon as he got there. Although the gardens were very old and very beautiful, they were tamed and controlled, quite unlike the wild woods of northern Ravenshaw.
    When Lewen had first gone to the Theurgia, at the age of sixteen, he had braced himself for the same sort of mockery and disdain his mother had faced, but to his relief his tree-changer ancestry had never been a problem. Either things had changed since Lachlan the Winged had won the throne, or else, as his father had laughingly said, he was simply too big for any of the other students to dare challenge him. Certainly Lewen had inherited his father’s build, being a head above six foot tall, and broad across the shoulders. He had been taught to fight too, with fists and feet, dagger and claymore, and to shoot the longbow with uncanny accuracy. The longbowmen of Ravenshaw were famous, and Niall the Bear the most famous of them all. It was said only the Rìgh could bend a longer bow, or shoot as far or as truly, and Lachlan the Winged carried Owein’s Bow, an ancient and magical weapon.
    The cool, delicate touch of spray across his face roused him from his abstraction. Lewen glanced up, surprised, to see a wide curtain of white water tumbling down a high cliff. It fell sheer and foaming as a curtain of white muslin, the stone behind it dark and glistening. Here and there sunlight struck through the encircling trees and lit the spray as bright as diamonds, but most of the cliff-face and the pool below were in shadow and so the effect was curiously smooth and silent.
    Lewen grinned and stretched and swung his satchel off his back. He felt a pleasant euphoric tiredness after his long walk, his exasperation at Kalea’s antics having faded away. He pulled out the jar of ale first, uncorked it with his teeth, and took a long swig. After an hour in his rucksack it was not as cool as he would have liked and so he went down to the pool to set it in the icy water while he ate his bread and cheese. He knelt on the damp mossy stones and was just setting the jar securely between two rocks when he heard something that brought him swiftly to his feet.
    In the dark underhang of rock by the cliff a horse was lying, its head drooping. Its breath was harsh and laboured, rasping in its throat. Its coat was so black it was hard to make out its shape in the gloom of the deep little dell, but Lewen was able to see at once that someone was draped over its withers. He scrambled over the rocks, his concern growing as he noticed first the yellowish scum that streaked the horse’s damp hide, the trembling of its limbs and the twitching of its hide, signs that it had been driven to exhaustion. Then Lewen was close enough to see and recognize the blue jacket and cockaded hat of a Yeoman of the Guard, and he broke into a run. The movement spooked the horse. It shook its head, eyes rolling white in terror, and tried to rise but was too weary, collapsing back to the ground. The attempt to