Free The Stones of Ravenglass by Jenny Nimmo

wizard didn’t return his greeting. He stared down at the boy, his black eyebrows drawn together in a scowl. Ignoring the children beside Timoken, Eri grunted, ‘You lied to me, boy.’
    ‘I don’t lie!’ Timoken sprang to his feet.
    ‘Then you didn’t tell me the truth.’
    ‘When?’ Timoken asked wildly.
    ‘When you told me the story of your life.’ Eri’s voice dropped a register and he ground his teeth as though he were chewing on bones.
    ‘There’s nothing of importance that I haven’t told you, unless it’s a brief thing, a meal I took, a place I saw, a coin I multiplied. I don’t know. My life has been so long .’
    Sila and Karli had woken up. They sat huddled together beneath the cloak, staring at the wizard in dismay. Even the camel got to his feet, spitting and snorting with anxiety.
    ‘Ahhh!’ groaned Eri. He thumped the ground with a staff he had recently acquired; a slim branch that he had stripped of its bark. It tapered at the top into a spike.
    ‘Eri, what have you learned?’ begged Timoken. ‘It must be something . . . dreadful .’
    The wizard strode away from him, turned and marched back. ‘You didn’t tell me about the ring.’ He prodded Timoken’s chest with the tip of his staff.
    ‘My sister’s ring?’ Timoken was mystified. ‘I did. I did tell you.’
    ‘You did not speak of its character, and that it’s in there .’ Eri jabbed the moon cloak with his staff. The two children leapt out, dropping the cloak and scuttling behind the camel.
    Timoken looked at the cloak. He picked it up and clasped it to him. ‘My cloak was made by the last forest-jinni. I can see him in my sister’s ring. And I know that a part of his spirit lives in this cloak. It is a good thing, Eri. It has saved lives.’
    ‘Ach!’ Again Eri thumped the earth with his staff. ‘It attracts danger. You must get rid of it.’ Reaching into a sack that hung from his belt, the wizard pulled out a dead hare and flung it at the boy’s feet. ‘Cook my breakfast and I’ll tell you why.’
    Timoken looked vacantly at the hare. Held close to his heart, the moon cloak calmed his racing pulse. He was angry with Eri, and afraid of him.
    While Timoken stood motionless, Sila crept from behind the camel and picked up the hare. ‘I’ll skin it,’ she said, looking fearlessly at the wizard.
    Eri scowled. ‘Who are you?’
    ‘I’m Sila.’ She glanced back at Karli, two paces behind her. ‘And that’s Karli.’
    ‘Rebels’ children,’ said the wizard.
    ‘Innswood was our home,’ Sila agreed. ‘Then we were forest-people, and now we belong to Timoken, because he saved our lives.’ She hesitated then added daringly, ‘With his cloak.’
    ‘Skin the hare, child,’ Eri said, a little more kindly. ‘You look starved. Boy,’ he pointed at Karli, ‘build up the fire.
    Timoken watched Karli busying about under the trees; he watched Sila take a small flint from her wet bag and begin to skin the hare. He felt dizzy with apprehension. His sword, his shield and his knife had all been left behind at the castle, but he still had his cloak. The best of all his possessions. He would never let it go.
    ‘Come and share our breakfast,’ the wizard said gruffly. ‘I won’t take the cloak from you, but you must know the truth of it.’
    Karli’s fire burned brightly, and the smell of cooked meat filled the small copse of trees. Cautiously, Timoken approached and took a place between the children. Eri stared at him from the other side of the fire. Timoken looked away from the wizard’s compelling gaze. There was wickedness in Eri. There had to be, for him to say such things about the moon cloak.
    They chewed in silence for a while, and when the wizard spoke again his voice took on the sound of the crackling fire and the soft pattering of leafless twigs.
    ‘My dreams are not always comforting,’ Eri began. ‘Sometimes they make no sense. They are a half-and-half sort of thing.’
    ‘So that’s why you went