‘Estarinel doesn’t look happy at the prospect of visiting Forluin,’ Calorn observed.
‘What have any of us to be happy about?’ Ashurek said gruffly.
‘Being in H’tebhmella?’ Calorn suggested.
‘This can last only a few days more. The idea of attacking the Serpent makes me far from unhappy, but there is still Silvren…’ he stared down at the soft blue-green moss beneath his feet.
Calorn could sense how powerless and restless for action he felt. She was eager for activity herself, and longed to find some way to help him regain Silvren. There was nothing more dear to her soul than a dangerous mission with a satisfying outcome.
Ashurek’s green eyes were bright with danger against his fine-boned, dark purple-brown face. He glanced at the H’tebhmellians again. Calorn’s thoughts dwelt for a moment on his evil and bloody past, then dismissed it. I know the man, not his reputation, she thought. The H’tebhmellians have spoken no ill of him.
She opened her mouth to speak, but at that instant Filitha called out that the Point was ready. Ashurek and Calorn went forward to watch their two companions leave.
‘In eighteen hours’ time, an Entrance Point will pass the place where you emerge. Be ready – you must not miss it!’ the Lady was saying. She kissed them both on the forehead. ‘Now go, with my blessing.’
Estarinel and Medrian stepped into the cloud of blue light and disappeared.
‘I don’t know that his decision to visit Forluin was wise,’ Ashurek muttered. ‘Still, as long as they don’t lose their courage to continue...’ He turned and strode swiftly along the finger of rock back to the shore without waiting for Calorn or the others.
Calorn watched him for a moment; then she made a decision, and started after him.
#
Estarinel and Medrian emerged from the Exit Point onto the soft floor of a wood. The change in their environment, in the very touch of the air, was so great that both stood amazed for several moments. The atmosphere lost its crystal clarity, but took on a warmer feel, pleasant and earthy. Late sunlight filtered down through the trees, outlining each leaf with silver and flooding the space between the trunks with a bronze haze.
‘It’s summer, just as if I’d never left,’ said Estarinel. ‘How strange to think a year has gone by. The voyage from Forluin to the House of Rede took months; I never really thought of the seasons changing here, while we were out on the sea.’
‘Do you know where we are?’ Medrian asked.
‘Yes. Trevilith Woods. My home’s about an hour’s walk, that’s all. I spent so much of my childhood in here–’ a rush of memories silenced him.
‘Come on, then,’ Medrian said, but Estarinel stood rooted.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t think this was a good idea – to go back in the middle of the Quest. I feel I’ve gone in a large circle and been nowhere. It’s wrong. I don’t want to see anyone – what can I tell them? That I’ve nearly been killed several times and achieved nothing? Yes, I’m back but the Quest still hasn’t begun, I have to go away again. Oh, they’ll understand when I explain… and then they’ll feel fear for me, and reliance on me, as if I could save them – all of them – just me. It was the easiest thing in the world to set out on this Quest… now it’s become the most difficult to carry on. It’s not fair on them to have to rely on me. I don’t want to remind them, when perhaps they’re starting to forget. I shouldn’t have come back.’
Medrian looked at him. She felt very strange, as if she were floating. The Lady had spoken truth: M’gulfn had no power over Forluin, and for the first time she was free of it on Earth. But she still dared not relax, dared not allow herself to feel or behave any differently. She could not let herself show sympathy for Estarinel.
‘It’s too late,’ she replied quietly. ‘You’ve made your decision. Come, we can’t stay here for eighteen hours.’
He stared into her dark eyes, wondering why he was able to hold her gaze when before it had filled him with coldness. She had always, in her own reserved way, supported him through the worst moments of the Quest; now she was in his land, and must be able to trust him as he trusted her. He sighed and tried to smile.
‘You’re right, as usual. This way.’ As they began to trudge through the glade, he added, ‘I’m glad you came with me.’
She did not reply. She walked in silence beside him, the hem of her H’tebhmellian dress brushing the earth. She felt dreamlike, but she had never had a dream like this before; it was at the same time heartrendingly real, making the rest of her life seem a bizarre nightmare. She could appreciate the feel of the leaf-mould beneath her feet and the touch of breeze on her face, the silver-bronze sunlight and the rough, rich texture of tree-bark without suffering the Worm’s mocking punishment for daring to love something. For the very first time, she experienced normality; and it was everything she had longed for.
They came from the ragged edge of the wood onto a broad meadow of grass and bracken. Green fronds filled the air with fresh aromas. Estarinel increased his pace and they ploughed through the knee-high growth, through a small copse and out onto a hillside. A patchwork of fields and trees stretched before them, green and amber and honey-gold in the late sun. Nearby, a couple of sheep grazed, and a single bird called forlornly from the sky.
Forluin, Medrian saw, was beautiful.
But to their left, the sunset was a splash of garish carmine, a wound in the clouds. And she could not fail to recognise the greyish haze drifting along the horizon. She felt Estarinel shudder at her side.
For a few minutes he could not speak, so sweet and familiar was this view to him. How often he had ridden, walked or run over this beloved landscape that was only less dear to him than his family. But he saw the Worm’s haze, polluting the sky and distorting the colour of the sunset. The curse had not left them.
‘This area – my home – lies just south of the worst of the attack,’ he began to explain, the words like grit in his mouth. The neighbouring farm was crushed – ours just escaped.’
‘I remember, you told us,’ Medrian said hurriedly, trying to spare him the pain of talking.
‘You can’t quite see the farm from here,’ he went on, ‘but it’s only a couple of miles more.’
He led her down the hillside and along a path overhung by great golden beeches.
Eventually Medrian said, ‘Forluin is beautiful, the loveliest place I’ve ever seen. Even now.’
‘Normally… before,’ he answered with hollow sadness, ‘the meadows and copses would be teeming with life. Birds singing, deer among the trees. There were sheep and horses everywhere…’ he shook his head, unable to continue.
They skirted another clump of trees and followed a well-worn bridle path along a hedgerow. As they came out into a broad, undulating meadow, Estarinel almost broke into a run. Fixed in his mind was the image of the bowl-shaped valley when he had last seen it: still green, the old stone farmhouse sitting contentedly on the valley floor amid vegetable gardens and meadows, as if nothing had happened. And beyond, at the open end of the valley, had been blasted trees and the ruins of his friend Falin’s farm. His family’s escape had been that narrow.
Suddenly, the prospect of seeing his beloved parents and sisters again swept all doubts from his mind. They were, at the last, all that was truly important.
‘Come on!’ he called to Medrian. ‘Here’s the rim of the valley.’ He ran ahead of her and gained the green lip of the Bowl Valley from which he could see every detail of his parents’ farm.
Medrian, trying to keep up with him, saw him stop. She saw the sudden rigid disbelief shake his body; she gasped with the effort to make herself catch up, to see what he had seen.
The valley was a bowl of blasted ash. Trees lay in grotesque ruin, like scorched bones scattered across ground that seemed to be rotting in acid. The ruin wreaked by the Serpent’s poison extended up the sides of the valley to within a few yards of where they were standing. What remained of grass and hedges was sli
cked with glutinous venom. A stench of desolation, tangible to the skin and eyes, came up from it. It carried the Worm’s hate; an undeniable destiny where sickness and misery became the same thing. And in the centre lay the crumbled remains of Estarinel’s home.
The ruins looked still and sad, like a small animal that had died of fear.
At first Estarinel was so devastated, so stricken by bitter incredulity, that he could not move. He felt paralysed, numb. A steel wire was tightening around his throat, causing blood to burst blackly across his vision. His head swam with confusion.
‘How?’ The whisper rasped from his throat. Then a tide of anger, of horror and grief flooded him like a scream of ultimate denial. No! No!
The word became his being, animated him like a crazed puppet into a stumbling run down the valley. The soul-shattering shock of grief thrashed through his limbs as if it could only find release down in the Worm-ruined house.
Medrian was after him in an instant. She threw herself sideways at him to knock him off course, seized his arms and tried to pull him to a halt. He struggled with her, eyes wild. He did not seem even to recognise her.
‘Stop!’ she cried.
‘Let me go,’ he whispered hoarsely. He tried to break free, but she hung grimly on to him.
‘No!’ she shouted frantically. ‘If you step in that stuff, it’ll kill you. Don’t you understand? It’s acid, it’s poison!’
He stared at her, shaking convulsively; but he was seeing Sinmiel, Falin’s sister, dying in a pool of venom. Dying, because she had not watched where she was walking and had stumbled into the Serpent’s flesh-eroding effluent. With a hoarse cry, he broke away from Medrian and ran raggedly up to the top of the valley, then started around the rim towards a small, undamaged, stone cottage.
Medrian raced after him. The Serpent’s smell caught in her throat and she was coughing, gasping for breath. She could not match his hell-driven pace. She saw him enter the cottage, only to dash out again a moment later. She cut across towards him, but he still outran her, tearing across the meadow and down a path between dark trees that looked like skeletons rigid with dread.
At last she lost sight of him. She ran to a gasping, sobbing halt, doubled up with pain in her ribs. She fell to her knees as she tried to recover her breath; and now she was weeping, tearing at her long hair with white hands.
For the first time, her grief found release without the mocking interference of M’gulfn, but she was hardly aware of that. Estarinel... her thoughts twisted in an incoherent mass of grief. Oh, by the gods, what can I do?
When she began to recover, she pulled herself upright and sat back on her heels, looking at the twilight descending over Forluin. She was trembling, her breath escaping in rough sobs.
‘And did I not have another reason for coming here?’ she said to herself. ‘It wasn’t just to be free of the Serpent. I needed to torture myself with guilt... to see the agony M’gulfn had caused so I could truly understand what it has done. What I have done, since I couldn’t dissuade from doing this. I couldn’t... oh, Estarinel, I should have tried harder. I didn’t know...’
She dragged herself to her feet, dusted off the pale blue dress and brushed back her hair with her shaking hands. Then she strode down the path that Estarinel had taken.
The path wound through fields whose northern edges were scorched with ash. Where the vista was clear of trees, she could see the dim greyness of the distance, and knew that the Worm had done its work thoroughly there. Whole tracts of Forluin had been laid waste; and its venom had the ability to spread, insinuating itself through the ground like fungus to continue the destruction long after the Serpent had returned to its Arctic home.
Cold and desolate, she found herself on the fringes of a small village. Six or seven stone cottages clustered around a green with a well in its centre. Lights danced in some of the windows as twilight fell, but outside it was deserted. She felt sure Estarinel had been heading for this village, and would reappear if she waited for him. Meanwhile she had no intention of knocking on a stranger’s door, so she wandered across the grass and stood by the well, looking about her.
The love and care with which the cottages had been built was obvious, as was the careful tending of the green and the paths that wound around it. Flowers and shrubs had been encouraged to grow everywhere. There was an atmosphere of warmth and gentleness about the village that she had never sensed anywhere before, least of all in Alaak.
She hugged herself against the chill in the air. Strange – she rarely felt cold, at least not physically. This is just the sort of place, she thought, that the Serpent would most despise and wish to destroy. Not the place, but the people and the feeling. I wonder why it waited so long? She shivered. She could make no sense of the turmoil within herself. Free of the Serpent, the ice she had held against it in her mind had melted. The comparative warmth made her feel she was burning inside, each flame a different emotion. Most consisted of a mixture of grief and anger – grief for Alaak’s fate, her family, for Forluin and Estarinel; anger at M’gulfn, Arlenmia, Gastada – the causes seemed endless. There was fear, too, dread so chronic that it paralysed her if she let her mind dwell on it. And somewhere there was love and concern for another human being. That feeling was so alien to her that she hardly realised what it was. The gentle strength of it hurt her more than the other emotions together
Medrian had never been foolish enough to imagine that in suppressing her feelings for many years, she had destroyed them – but neither had she expected them to return with such force. Since her outburst near the farm, after Estarinel had run from her, she had been stunned by that internal violence. Now she stood motionless by the well, thankful to have at least a few minutes to order her thoughts and re-establish her self-control.
How strong am I? she asked herself. It would seem not at all, without the Serpent to make my strength essential. Freedom! What made me think I was free for these few hours? I must steel myself against my own feelings, just as I have to against M’gulfn, before I betray myself.
Estarinel must not suspect I am any different. That would only make the rest of the Quest impossible. I have to be cold, as always.
She knew it would be difficult to show no sympathy and concern over the fate of Estarinel’s family. Her indifference, though, would only make it even harder for him to bear. He had never believed that she was truly as icily callous inside as she appeared externally, but perhaps he would believe it now. Perhaps he would begin to hate her. She swallowed against the knives in her throat. It would be better so. Then the Quest could be completed.
#
Falin, for no particular reason, got up and looked out of the window of his cottage. In the middle of the green, by the well, he saw what he took for a moment to be, not a human, but a statue. Surprised and puzzled, he stared at the figure in the twilight until he realised it was in fact a small and slender woman, standing very still and with an air of total self-containment. That alone told him she was not Forluinish, even before he noted her face and colouring.
He opened the door and went out to her. She looked up as he approached, but otherwise did not move. Her delicate-featured face was white, contrasting sharply with her large dark eyes and black hair. She looked familiar but he could not think how he knew her.
‘My name’s Falin,’ he began hesitantly. ‘Do you need any help at all?’
‘I’m looking for Estarinel,’ she said simply.
Falin felt as though the earth had tipped under his feet. His head swam with shock and confusion. What did she mean? Who was she?
‘Estarinel–’ he said, his mouth dry. ‘He’s not here. He went away months ago.’
‘You don’t recognise me, do you?’ the woman said.
‘I’m not sure...’ He was beginning to remember her, but that brought more incomprehension and growing fear.
‘We met at the House of Rede,’ she said. ‘You were one of his four companions.’
‘Then you must be Medrian. I’m sorry �
�� you look different. But what are you doing here? I thought…’
‘It took us longer than we expected to reach the Blue Plane. When we got there, Estarinel wanted to come back to Forluin for a brief visit, before continuing the Quest. The Lady gave permission, and for me to come too.’
‘Oh, ye gods,’ said Falin, pulling his fingers through his long brown hair. He was very pale, Medrian noticed, with the tense, strained look of someone who could not sleep. ‘And did he take you straight to his farm?’
‘Yes,’ she answered flatly, ‘and the farm was not there. He ran this way, and I lost sight of him.’
‘Oh,’ Falin sighed in distress. ‘His family, they were all killed. Why didn’t he come to me? I know where he will have gone – we’d better go up and find him.’
Medrian said nothing as she followed him between the cottages and along a path winding up a grassy slope. Falin was trembling as he walked, shattered by the arrival of Medrian and the news that Estarinel was here. It was only a few days since the farm had collapsed, undermined by the Serpent’s poison, killing Estarinel’s family – including his own beloved Arlena. Since then he had barely slept – dreading the moment when Estarinel would return and he would have to tell his friend the awful news. He dreaded facing his dearest friend’s grief. He knew he would be unable to bear it, after everything else.
Even more he had feared that Estarinel would never return at all. Falin’s thoughts raced; he had never, ever expected him to come back so suddenly, and if he understood Medrian correctly, they would be going away again, a second parting in so much more pain and despair than the first.
His thoughts then moved to Medrian, and he glanced sideways at her. He noticed how controlled she seemed, how icy and emotionless, as if nothing had happened, and she did not care if it had. Just who was she? Had he really entrusted his friend to this person who seemed as uncaring and treacherous as ice?
These thoughts were becoming unbearable, so he broke the silence.
A Blackbird In Darkness (Book 2) Page 6
