The Gathandrian Trilogy 01 - The Gifting

floating up and down across the notes.
    At the edge of where the birds stand, he stops. Immediately, the song ceases and the silence rests on them, like a blanket in winter. The birds are motionless, the only movement being the slight ruffle of a feather here and there as the wind passes. Together, they appear like a hillock of snow scarred occasionally with a dark slash of beak or eye, which glitters in the light. Long moments pass and still nothing moves.
    What is happening? Simon’s question comes directly to Johan but he cannot answer it. He shakes his head. I don’t know.
    With a flurry of feather and a single burst of notes, the snow-ravens surround them and Simon falls to his knees on the ground.

    Simon
    The nearest raven used his wing to make him kneel, so swiftly that his eyes had hardly processed the action. Simon could feel the sweat trickling down his body, even though the air was crisp and cold. Glancing to his side, he could see the others were still standing. That didn’t make him feel any better. The boy was trembling.
    Look.
    The word resonated in Simon’s head and he turned wildly from side to side to see from where it had come. He couldn’t recognise the speaker. Who else had followed them here? Who…?
    Look at…
    And then a flurry of other words and thoughts chopping, pecking at his blood. Simon put his hands up as if to protect himself, but couldn’t see who had given him the message. Not Johan, not Isabella—he would have recognised them at once. And the boy had no power to meld his mind with another. It was…
    Look at me.
    The sentence pierced the mind like a familiar object in a nightmare of impossible sounds. His head pulsated with the unexpected clarity before being plunged into a circle of noise again. At the same time, a far greater power than Simon had ever experienced before forced his eyes forward and he found himself staring into the bright, black eyes of the bird who had knocked him to his knees. The raven’s plumage was lighter in colour even than the surrounding birds in the flock, as if marking him out from them. His frame, too, was larger—he stood a head taller than the rest, a fact Simon noticed for the first time now. At the end of the three toes of his claws were curved talons, which could have brought a full-grown man down. His eyes marked Simon as his prey.
    Moments pulsed by. The silence made the different sounds separate out and become more evident—the hush-hushing of the wind through the oak leaves, the light breathing of the other travellers, the scratching of claws on soil.
    Three questions. You. We must ask.
    With each word, the bird’s eyes blinked. Once only, and in perfect unison. He’s speaking to me , Simon thought. The bird is speaking . But how could he hope to understand?
    YESS-SS.
    This time the single word was reinforced in the mind by the echo of his fellow ravens. The sibilant hiss sent a tremor through Simon’s head, filling his body with its own harsh demand. From somewhere, pain began to mount.
    What questions? He had heard none. The taste of blood flooded his mouth once more and he did not have strength enough to spit it out. The pulse of his heart raged louder.
    How could I…?
    Somebody touched him. Stepped up to him and laid a hand on his shoulder, resting it there. Without looking, he knew it was Johan. Simon could feel the strength, the solidity of his presence, like a wall to stand against in the fiercest storm. He clutched onto that strength and held it close.
    Concentrate, Simon . This time, the voice was Johan’s, not that of the wild, unknowable birds. I think you have the strength deep within you.
    Did he? Whether that was true or not, he would have been far happier if any strength he might have clasped at had been closer to the surface. Still, now wasn’t the time to argue. Slowly, so slowly he could barely understand the movement, Simon raised his hand and wiped the blood away from his lip where he must have bitten it. Then he gazed at the raven leader.
    “Yes,” he said aloud, voice sounding harsh to his own ears. “Yes, I will answer you. If I can.”
    As he spoke, Simon tried to make the words appear like writing in his head, so that what dwelt within corresponded to the outer reality of speech too, if it could be called reality. It was none he had ever seen. He could think of no other means by which the creature who stood before him might understand.
    The raven made no sign that he’d heard and Simon could sense