A Blackbird In Darkness (Book 2)

by Freda Warrington

  Despite their increased speed, they seemed to be no closer to the dark edifice. It was as if the shape were slowly edging away from them. And now Calorn was hardly able to take her eyes off it. Colours were crawling across its surface – muddy blues, a parody of pure H’tebhmellian colours – that dissolved when she stared straight at them. She also began to notice the clamminess of the atmosphere, as if the air were the exact temperature of blood, and had not been freshened by any breeze for centuries.

  Her eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness and now, in the swamp and on the shapeless landmark, she could identify ashen greys, browns and sickly ochres, all tainted with the blue of bruised skin. Nothing was true black. Even the colours of the Dark Regions were corrupt.

  When she saw movement on the swamp ahead of them, she thought she was hallucinating. She blinked until her eyes hurt, but she was not mistaken; several pale figures were moving ponderously across their path, like a herd of cattle.

  She touched Ashurek’s arm and whispered, ‘Have you seen their like before?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ he replied, his voice like iron. ‘I won’t know unless we take a closer look.’

  ‘Is that wise? We should lie low until they pass.’

  ‘No. Coming voluntarily into the Dark Regions was unwise; the creatures may be dangerous, but they may also be our only hope.’ Even as he finished speaking, he was striding across the fleshy marsh towards them. Swallowing ruefully, Calorn made after him. Whatever Ashurek understood about the Dark Regions, he felt there was no time to explain to her, his uninvited companion.

  Now Ashurek and she were almost upon the strange beasts, and they both recoiled at the sight. Even Ashurek had never seen their like before. Their torsos and heads were human but they walked like cattle, each upon six human legs. They had no arms. Their skin was sickly pale and their faces were sombre, with closed eyes and mouths open as if frozen in mid-cry. Occasionally one would utter a groan, but otherwise they were silent.

  Ashurek confronted them and called, ‘Hail, creatures of the Worm!’

  The pale beings slowed and milled from side to side at the sound of his voice, but they showed no more intelligence than animals. Ashurek cursed inwardly and was about to stride past them, when from the shadows behind them another creature reared up.

  It was bovine in form and had evidently been moving on all fours among the others. Now it stood upright with its front feet dangling awkwardly across its chest. In one split hoof it held a short stick. Its head was a grotesque parody of a cow’s with glaring red eyes and a crooked, drooling mouth.

  ‘Who are you?’ it bellowed.

  ‘Ashurek of Gorethria. And who are you?’

  ‘I am called Exhal.’

  ‘And you are not, apparently, one of the Shana.’

  ‘No, not I!’ the creature roared angrily, revealing sharp teeth more like a wolf’s than a cow’s. ‘No demon I. I am but one of their sorry subjects.’

  Ashurek thought the beast looked anything but sorry or subjected. He said, ‘And what are these creatures with you?’

  ‘You should know them!’ Exhal growled, pushing the beasts aside to walk stiffly forward. He towered over Ashurek, who reached – for the tenth time – for the non-existent sword at his side. ‘Gorethria–’ he formed the word awkwardly, ‘that is in the upper world, the round world where we can never go. I have heard of it. What do you want here, man of the round Earth?’

  ‘I’ve come to take someone home,’ Ashurek answered. ‘You can tell me where to find her.’

  ‘What?’ the creature roared. Calorn involuntarily put her hands over her ears. ‘I, a mere creature of the Worm? Why should I know? The Shana keep all the live prisoners.’

  Ashurek saw, from the corner of his eye, something flap through the air and settle on the ground to one side of them. He ignored it and said, ‘Then where are the Shana, O Exhal?’

  ‘Ashurek of Gorethria,’ the beast answered, its voice rife with envy and its long white belly heaving, ‘you descend from your round world with utmost ease and come to us – us, who can never escape this pit – to insult and mock us with your good fortune, then you ask our help?’

  Ashurek gave a laugh of bitter irony and his eyes glittered with verdant fire as he replied, ‘You think me fortunate? Then I cannot begin to comprehend your misery, Exhal. To direct someone to the den of the Shana would not normally be construed as “help”. However–’ he stood his ground as the ghastly ox-creature made a threatening lunge of its head, ‘I have no choice. I must go there, and a few words from you would end this useless conversation.’

  The beast’s eyes glowed like light through a film of blood. It craned its bovine head forward and Ashurek felt the heat of its breath. Its teeth glistened with saliva.

  ‘And what – what do I receive in return? That’s the way the Shana work, is it not? A bargain – a bargain, isn’t that it? Find me a way out of this pit – a way to the upper world, where animals can feed on grass and sleep at night, and are not cursed by a cognizant brain – show me the way, and I will take you to the stinking demons myself.’

  ‘I cannot do that. You would have to pass through the Blue Plane, and you would not survive,’ said Ashurek simply. He observed that the six-legged human cattle had surrounded him and Calorn, and were now swaying their heads from side to side. He noticed something else even stranger about them then: they were impossible to count. There could have been ten, a hundred or a thousand for all the sense he could make of their numbers. He tried to ignore them and concentrate on Exhal, who was hissing as if he had been struck.

  ‘You stinking spawn of hell! Then I will add you to my herd – though it will be a poor fight, since you are unarmed!’

  ‘I warn you, Exhal,’ Ashurek said calmly. ‘I am no ordinary mortal. I know the Shana. There is much they want of me – therefore they may be more willing to help me than you realise.’

  The creature hissed again and drew back. ‘There is your answer, then. Call one. Have me punished. Then see if you can pay their price.’

  A new voice broke in; the speaker had apparently been listening in amused silence for some time. ‘Oh, Exhal, do tell them. I can’t bear any more of your ridiculous prevarication.’ The voice had a metallic rasp that sickened the ears. Ashurek and Calorn turned to see the grey flapping thing that had screeched above their heads sitting near them. Calorn backed away and Ashurek found himself struggling to keep his ground.

  The aura of horror that emanated from it was far more powerful than that of Exhal, although it lacked the physical bulk. It was the size of an eagle yet only barely resembled a bird. A framework of grotesque bones was covered in a loose skin that stretched between its limbs to form wings. Its head bore a crest of flesh and its forward-facing, owlish eyes, set above a hooked beak, gave it a human look. Its face was harsh as iron, yet the horror of it was more than physical.

  ‘Have you been properly introduced to Exhal?’ the winged being continued. ‘He is a herdsman. He herds the souls of humans across the plains of hell. So they say. Small wonder he is so cheerless, eh?’

  Ashurek heard Calorn gasp.

  ‘Go back to your masters, Limir,’ Exhal bellowed. ‘Leave the humans to me – I will finish them, the Earth-dwelling scum!’

  The bird-creature stretched its wings and its voice cut the atmosphere like wire through ripe cheese.

  ‘You cretinous ox, Exhal. Can I believe my ears? Leave them to you? I have been tolerant of you – your self-interest, insubordination, whining talk of Earth – because the Shana considered you a good herdsman. But other herdsmen can be found.’

  The ox-creature shrank back slightly with the instinct of long fear, but its voice was loud with rebellion. ‘You’ve mocked and humiliated me for the last time, Limir. Do not think to threaten me. The two humans are mine.’

  ‘By the three eyes of the Serpent, yours, are they?’ Limir exclaimed with gleeful sarcasm. ‘You think I haven’t waited for a moment like this? You think I would miss t
his opportunity just to satisfy your whims? Now your stupidity has gone beyond my wildest imaginings. Move aside. Take your herd elsewhere, before I destroy you.’

  ‘I said, do not think to threaten me,’ Exhal answered, his gruff voice suddenly sinister. ‘My human herd is loyal to me. I will open their eyes.’

  This apparently meaningless threat had a devastating effect on Limir. The grim bird whirled into the air, screeching like the clashing of bronze claws.

  ‘Another herdsman will be found!’ it cried, swooping onto Exhal’s head. Whatever counter-attack the bovine beast had planned, he was too slow to carry out. His eyes red with fear and anger, he stood like an ill-formed statue while Limir sank claws and beak into his neck. Grey blood rivered down the white neck and belly.

  About them the six-legged creatures milled in panic, while their mask-like faces remained unchanged. Then they seemed to find a mutual direction and were running away, uttering their heart-tearing groans.

  Ashurek and Calorn exchanged a glance and moved as one. She seized the short stick that Exhal had dropped, Ashurek lunged forward and dragged Limir off Exhal and thrust him down into the swamp. Together they set upon Limir, Ashurek holding the creature down and Calorn striking its malformed head again and again, possessed by a loathing and bloodlust she had never felt before.

  Limir refused to die. He thrashed in the Gorethrian’s grasp as if the blows were a mere irritation, his vicious talons and iron beak drawing blood from his hands and Calorn’s. Finally Calorn knelt bodily on the beast and pressed the stick across its thin gnarled throat.

  ‘Break its neck!’ she cried to Ashurek, her voice, as in a nightmare, rasping from her throat as a whisper. ‘Kill it!’

  His face was full of the same murderous revulsion that she was feeling as he clasped his hands about the bird’s wiry neck. Then Exhal lumbered forward, knocking Calorn – apparently by clumsiness, not design – off Limir and into the swamp. He thrust one hoof into Limir’s belly, staggering and hopping to keep his balance. The air was full of screams – Limir’s, Exhal’s bellows – and Calorn herself was screaming, long, deep screams of fear and anger as she fought the swamp, fought to get near to the hellish bird and attack it again.

  Then Ashurek was swaying to his feet, gasping, ‘It’s done. I’ve broken its neck.’

  Calorn dragged herself out of the black swamp, staring at the body of Limir, which lay, harmless and pathetic, like a rain-rotted sack before them. The bloodlust had faded but she seemed to be staring at the emotion as if it were a real object physically retreating from her. She was shaking with disgust. She was no stranger to conflict, and she had killed before, but only from necessity, swiftly and with sombre respect for her defeated adversary. She had never, ever felt that sickening, sensual surrender to desire for blood and death before.

  She knew that if she ever felt it again, it would be time to end her own life.

  ‘This place corrupts,’ she said, and Ashurek nodded in full understanding.

  Exhal had dropped onto all fours and was uttering soft, deep coughs that shook his whole body and sent drops of pallid blood flying into the air. It seemed he was not badly injured. After a minute he ambled forward and faced the two humans.

  ‘Come then, Ashurek of Gorethria. I will take you.’ He spoke almost meekly.

  ‘You’ve had a change of heart?’ Ashurek said, surprised.

  ‘A bargain, a bargain. Escape from this pit may be impossible – but at least Limir’s death makes my existence here more bearable. For that I have to thank you, humans of the round world,’ Exhal said gruffly.

  ‘You know where Silvren is, then?’ Ashurek asked with renewed urgency.

  ‘Of course. I am the herdsman. I know each and every prisoner – for most of them, eventually, join my herd.’

  Ashurek heard Calorn breathe, ‘How horrible.’ Her comment angered him. The implications of the herdsman’s words were, indeed, too terrible to contemplate. He needed no one to confirm and accentuate the nebulous swirling of horror within him.

  Now the human herd was slowly wandering towards them again with the obtuse curiosity of cattle. Eyes blind, mouths open in continual silent screams, it was as if they were utterly directionless, yet on a desperate search. Even the way they held their pale, cruelly malformed bodies was pathetic. Tears came to Calorn’s eyes; she no longer felt curious, or revolted, or afraid of them. Only their misery, as tangible as the warm, slow breath of cattle in the ‘real’ world, touched her. If only she could embrace their despair, comfort it in some way – but the evil of the Dark Regions was too powerful to allow expression of any feeling that was not cruel and base.

  As the herd approached, Ashurek said, ‘Come on, then.’ and began to stride across the marsh ahead of them. Calorn caught up with him. She had the useful ability to dismiss complicated issues from her mind and concentrate on vital, immediate matters.

  Ashurek, by contrast, tended to brood. He was deeply disturbed by the six-legged human-beasts. What had Exhal meant, ‘I will open their eyes’? In what way was that a threat, serious enough for Limir to try to kill him?

  Exhal unhurriedly rounded up his herd and then followed, snorting and shaking his heavy head, like an animal trying to rid itself of pain. Ashurek was heading for the dark landmark again, but this time – with the ox-creature to guide them – they were rapidly drawing closer to it. It was shaped roughly like a broad obelisk, with its angles rounded off. Brown smokes wreathed it. As they reached it, they found it was blank and featureless and rubbery to the touch, like the swamp.

  ‘Show us the way,’ he said as Exhal caught them up.

  ‘Have you no patience, Ashurek of Gorethria?’ the beast grunted, raising itself on its hind legs and once more clutching the stick it had retrieved from Calorn.

  ‘We don’t have much time.’

  ‘Don’t you? I have forever,’ Exhal replied savagely. He began jabbing at the wall with the stick, searching back and forth along it. Eventually the stick slid halfway in. Then Exhal thrust a hoof in just below, and seemed to be struggling to force open a slit in the rubbery surface. His head and heaving shoulders disappeared into the wall and they could see the elastic opening stretched tautly around him, straining to close shut again.

  Ashurek saw Calorn gritting her teeth, obviously afraid and revolted by the idea of forcing through the black rubbery wall. Yet he never again doubted her bravery after she unhesitatingly approached it and pushed her way through after Exhal without saying a word.

  He followed, pushing his arms and shoulders into the reluctant substance, and leaving behind the eerie groans of the human herd behind him; then he was inside the wall. For a few long, nightmare seconds he could not see or breathe. He flailed desperately, feeling he was trapped in the gullet of some gigantic beast. Then, at last, he fell from the slit in the other side of the wall and found himself beside Exhal and Calorn.

  They were in a cavern in which a malevolent, pale light shone through writhing steam. All was blue, like cyanosed skin, and there was a scent in the air so sweet it was a nauseating mockery of cleanliness. The cavern stretched as far as the eye could see, its floor sloping downwards and covered with a honeycomb maze of hollows and pits.

  ‘I must leave you here, lest my herd wander away and lose themselves,’ the ox-creature said. ‘Take yonder tunnel,’ he pointed with his stick to a pit from which a purplish light glowed, merging with the blue. ‘Keep to the ridges between hollows, don’t fall into the wrong one.’ Then Exhal was pushing his huge body through the wall again.

  Calorn called, ‘We thank you, Exhal,’ but he did not seem to hear her.

  Ashurek set out onto the honeycomb on hands and knees, finding the ridges as slippery and treacherous as a living mucous membrane. The hollows on either side yawned down into apparently endless vertical tunnels, all glowing and steaming with eerie bluish light. Each led, he guessed, to a different part of the Dark Regions. The pit towards which they were heading was some two hundred yards out, if distance
could be measured in that strange, logic-mocking place. The wall behind them seemed to have disappeared and been replaced by another stretch of honeycomb. Above them, only bluish-white steam could be seen.

  Calorn and Ashurek both slipped several times, and were shaking with the exertion of staying on the soapy ridges by the time they reached the pit. Like the others it descended near-vertically, winding out of sight.

  ‘There’s only one way down,’ said Calorn.

  ‘Yes,’ said Ashurek. And he let himself slither off the ridge and down into the tunnel, bouncing off its rubbery sides as he fell. She watched him for a second before launching herself into the hole.

  Instead of the sensation of falling she had anticipated, there was something worse: a strange soft blankness in her mind. Her limbs felt so light and bloodless that the sensation was unbearable, and she was twisting her hands together and writhing and groaning like a child in fever.

  #

  Had she been unconscious? Hours or days could have passed when she found herself lying on a dark crumbly surface. She had no idea where she was. She could have been a newborn child for all she knew or remembered.

  Someone was holding her arms, pulling her upright like a rag doll. She coughed and instinctively tried to find some strength in her limbs.

  ‘Calorn,’ Ashurek was saying, ‘Come on, we’re there.’ Her eyes focused on him. Memory returned like splinters of black slate piercing her brain. He looked shaken, and she knew that only sheer determination had kept his sense of purpose intact through the disorientating tunnel.

  They were in a landscape of soft black rock, with a gritty path stretching ahead and rows of squat, round hillocks on either side. There was a ceiling of darkness only a few feet above their heads, creating a sense of inescapable claustrophobia, and just enough dim light to make out their surroundings.

  ‘I was here, once,’ Ashurek said distantly. ‘They keep the prisoners here.’ He made to walk down the path, then paused. ‘When we find Silvren, she may be very ill, thin… not herself.’ He tailed off and Calorn knew he was not telling her, but trying to prepare himself for what he might find.