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no danger at all. It clattered down a steep gully, right through a burn, and back up the other side. The dip in the water washed it bright gold again, so Pearl could see it easily. It was rushing towards the Twa Corbies.
    Pearl didn’t think the mossy grey boulders were big enough to hide people and horses. Then she remembered a gully marked on Peter’s maps, running along the side of the eastern Corbie, cut into the ground by a wide mountain stream. There might be enough shelter in there for a whole herd of rocking horses.
    She decided to let the ring go on ahead and follow at a careful distance. She didn’t want tomeet Ruby’s palomino again without warning. She lowered herself into the thick heather, where she was surrounded by the warm scents of honey, thyme and juniper, and sudden rank whiffs of fox and weasel.
    She watched the ring curve round the Twa Corbies and leap into the gully beyond. Now she had lost sight of it, perhaps forever.
    Pearl followed cautiously, not pressing her weight widely as she had on the bog, but moving lightly on hands and elbows, knees and toes.
    What would she see when she reached the edge?
    If the gully was empty, and the ring had spun out of sight, her caution would have cost Pearl her last link to the triplets and the horses that had taken them.
    Pearl tried not to hear the blood beating in her ears, and the dry rustling of the heather. She listened to the sounds in the empty space beyond the rocks. And she heard laughter.

Chapter 6
    It was Jasper’s laugh. Ringing, chiming, tinkling. Pearl thought he must be trying hard to make someone like him.
    She edged round the Twa Corbies, trying to creep as slowly as the glaciers she knew had formed this landscape. Her face was so close to the heather it pricked her eyeballs as she peered over the top of the gully.
    She grinned. The hunter had found her quarry. Two horses, and two boys.
    The chestnut stallion stood proudly over Jasper, horsehair tail swishing behind his glossy wooden rump.
    The palomino mare stood beside the boy from the gateway, her ripped bridle draped round her drooping head and twitching ears.
    The tall boy was resting on a large rock, with his legs stretched out. His gun and stick lay by his right hand and he was twisting the golden bridle ring in his left hand while he talked to Jasper, who was sitting by the older boy’s feet, gazing up at him.
    Jasper’s big green eyes were fixed on the tall boy’s face, and his mouth was partly open, his lips stained purple with blaeberry juice. At every dramatic pause in the story, Jasper nodded, giggled or asked an encouraging question.
    Pearl wasn’t near enough to hear the boys’ words. This gully twisted and turned as the water found the best way down from the mountain. If she crept round a bend she might get nearer to the boys without being noticed, then she could hear what was going on.
    Pearl retreated past the rocks, moved up the edge of the gully just out of sight of the boys and horses, and approached them again from behind. Now she couldn’t see them, but she could hear better.
    “So, if you bring me your sisters, I will bring you your destiny.”
    Pearl recognised the tall boy’s voice, though now it sounded inspiring rather than mocking.
    “Why do you need them?” asked Jasper. “You have me. They’re just girls. Ruby cries and Emmie asks awkward questions.”
    “We need them because the three of you are the jewels which will crown my grandfather Lord of the Mountains.”
    “Once we find the girls, once we’ve crowned your grandfather, what happens then?”
    Pearl nodded. Jasper had asked the question she would have asked.
    “Then you’ll have the honour of helping our family hold the power of the mountains as well as the moors.”
    “Why do you need us for that? Can’t you just buy the mountains?”
    “It’s not about money and legal papers, Jasper. It’s about taking responsibility for the land, listening to its music, using the lore to store