And as the figure spoke, the child moved, its limbs elongating, its rosy skin becoming fawn-coloured. And the woman sat up from the floor, and stretched out her arms, transforming into something like a rough, flexible clay figure. Meanwhile the wolf’s coat flattened and its ears, muzzle and legs were absorbed into its body. Then the three shapeless beige creatures touched and melded into one humanoid form
It was the shape-changer that had haunted his whole journey. And it turned to Estarinel and gave a deep, mocking bow. Then it rippled like a reflection created by a heat-haze, and dissolved into nothingness.
‘You will follow me, please,’ said the figure, oblivious to Estarinel’s obvious consternation, ignoring his entreaties to be told what was going on. It raised a hand and pushed open a small, arched door. ‘It is time for you to be judged.’
Estarinel had thought they were at the top of the tower; he expected to see the pale mound below, and the two greenish suns. He was wrong again. They were at ground level, and before them was a sweep of rich green grass rising between an avenue of stately copper beeches rustling in a summer breeze.
And at the end of the avenue, on the summit of the hill, stood a castle, a beautiful, terrible, splendid castle of red glass. It was vast, towering above them in a glory of rich, translucent blood-reds and crimsons. Sunlight poured down upon it like red gold. Snow-white pennants flew gaily upon its towers.
Estarinel knew at once that it was a place of great power. He had often glimpsed it in moments of prescience, and those glimpses had filled him with intense dread.
‘Follow me,’ said the shrouded figure again. It began to walk briskly along the avenue towards the castle.
‘I think I am owed an explanation, after all I’ve been subjected to. What exactly is the idea of all this?’ Estarinel persisted angrily.
The Grey One ignored him for a time, but eventually replied, ‘You are owed one thing only, and that is a final examination to judge your worthiness to wield the Silver staff. You were told there would be tests. We are not bound to explain them to you.’
‘Tests? Murders!’ Estarinel exclaimed, trembling with an overwhelming sense of outrage at the Silver Staff’s atrocities. The shrouded one said no more. Estarinel subsided, awed by the closeness of the castle.
An oppressive sense of doom filled him at the prospect of entering. Swallowing his dread, he marched through a great arched doorway after the Grey One. Within, they passed through corridors and halls of red glass. Walls, floors and ceilings were transparent and he could see into the rooms beyond; all a confusing pattern of rubescent light, like the gleaming facets of a garnet. Beautiful though it was, the sanguine glow was unnerving.
Presently he could see figures ahead, shadowy figures seen through red glass. He could feel them looking at him. They were as faceless as the shrouded one by his side, yet he sensed that they were ancient beings with narrow eyes and long, pale beards. And they were powerful and heartless, just as he had seen them in the Cavern of Communication. Neutral, yet utterly without compassion.
They were the Guardians. The Grey Ones.
The figure at his side said, ‘Wait here,’ and he stopped like an automaton. They were in a many-sided room like the inside of a jewel. The Grey One continued through a doorway, and mingled with the others, swiftly becoming indistinguishable from them. Estarinel could hear a murmur of voices. He waited grimly, watching the shadows moving behind the translucent glass wall. The redness of the castle was the colour of the blood staining the Guardians’ hands, Calorn’s and Shaell’s and that of the countless other murders they had no doubt committed. The blood of their inhumanity swelled and ebbed in the air.
He waited an hour or more while the Guardians talked. He could pick a few words out of the general murmur, but could not make sense of them. The Grey Ones seemed puppet-like, distant and wooden, as if they had their reality in a plane far above his understanding. The knowledge that they were judging him filled him with revulsion.
‘Don’t be foolish. It is quite unnecessary.’ He heard these words clearly, and strained his eyes to identify the speaker.
‘I disagree. I say that he deserves an explanation,’ another voice replied.
‘With what purpose?’
‘That of his better understanding! He is not a child. Humans grasp more than you can possibly realise!’
‘Well, you alone of us should know. But still I say it is a waste of time.’
‘And I say you are wrong!’ answered the second speaker. ‘I must talk to him. Can you not understand, I owe him that at least?’
‘No, we cannot understand this apparently – ah – human obligation. However, if it is what you wish, you may go to him. We have no reason to gainsay it.’
Estarinel saw one of the shadows moving away from the group. It glided along behind the wall and passed through the doorway towards him. This figure was massively built, cloaked in pale robes that were steeped in the red light. It stopped in front of him and said, ‘Estarinel of Forluin. The Guardians have assessed your endurance of the various tests that were laid in your path. You have been judged and found clear of purpose. You will be permitted to wield the Silver Staff.’
Estarinel experienced no thrill of victory at this speech. His apprehension subsided abruptly, but he still felt bitter fury against the Guardians and the Silver Staff.
‘At what cost?’ he said, not expecting an answer.
‘I will take you now to the Silver Staff,’ said the Guardian.
‘Wait,’ said Estarinel, his voice low but insistent. ‘I want to know the nature of this – thing I will be wielding.’
The Guardian paused, looking at him through the gauzy veil hiding his face. ‘It cannot be described. When you touch it, you will know its nature.’
‘I believe it to be evil.’
‘No, Estarinel, it is not evil.’
‘How can I believe anything the Guardians say? I won’t know until I touch it, and then perhaps there will be no going back. Like the Egg-Stone,’ he spat.
‘No. Ah no, I swear to you it is not like the Egg-Stone.’ Human distress entered the Guardian’s deep voice.
‘You swear? And the tests – if they were set by the Silver Staff itself, why then do the Guardians stand in judgement on me?’
‘Oh, Estarinel, how you’ve changed. You have suffered much,’ the Grey One said sadly. He gripped the edge of the veil and raised it to reveal an old and noble face with a high forehead, broad nose, and clear grey eyes. White hair appeared, and a dishevelled white beard.
Eldor.
Estarinel was barely aware that he was backing away until he felt a wall against his back, and he was half-sobbing with a mixture of dismay and astonishment. He had one hand on his forehead as if to shield out the blood-red light.
‘Eldor. Eldor. By the gods, you are one of them,’ he was gasping. Eldor, the wise, kindly sage of the House of Rede. Eldor, who had advised them, helped them, told them that the Serpent must be destroyed and given them hope that it might be achieved. Who had been the one anchor-point on an insane Earth. Trusted. Completely trusted.
And now... Eldor revealed as a Grey One. An eyeless, heartless manipulator of destiny. A pitiless tormentor and murderer of Calorn.
On the Quest, Estarinel, Ashurek and Medrian had often felt that they were being manipulated by unseen beings, tossed back and forth between the Serpent and the forces opposing it. But never, never had he dreamed that they had been used from the very outset by the one kindly being in whom they had put absolute faith.
They had been betrayed. Betrayed, he thought. And it was Lothwyn he was thinking of, his little sister and all those others who had least deserved to die, even less deserved this betrayal.
‘Bastards,’ he whispered. ‘You bastards.’
‘Estarinel,’ said Eldor softly, approaching and placing one large hand on the Forluinishman’s shoulder. ‘I know what you are thinking. That is why I came out, and not one of the others, to try to explain.’
&nbs
p; ‘Explain? This is explainable?’
‘Yes. But please, trust me in this. I want you first to come and take the Silver Staff. Then we will go outside the castle, and talk.’
‘All right,’ Estarinel sighed. An unnatural calm and resignation came over him, so that he felt grimly self-possessed. ‘I can’t judge what’s right or wrong any more. I’ll do as you say.’
He followed Eldor out of the room, through a maze of halls and staircases, and along a gleaming, geometric corridor that led to the heart of the castle. There they entered a chamber of silver light.
It blinded him at first, his eyes having become accustomed to the deep redness within the castle. Then he saw that they were in a many-sided hall that was crimson in its furthest recesses, but with a heart of pure light, like a fountain springing from a pedestal of diamond.
At the centre of the brilliance was the Silver Staff.
It was lying on a base shaped like a giant ruby. It danced before his eyes, a rod of solid lightning with curves of silver radiating from it. All the glory of the star-filled night through which he had first entered the domain was concentrated here, fiery, searing, promising wild invincibility.
‘Take it,’ Eldor prompted gently.
Estarinel approached it hesitantly. The incandescent power of the Staff was real, dangerous, crackling white and silver with electricity. He felt waves of static dancing like fireflies against his face and hands. He outstretched his fingers to grasp the Silver Staff, braced in anticipation of a great shockwave.
The sensation as he touched it was surprisingly gentle, then quickly increasing to devastating intensity. The feeling was elation. In that moment Estarinel felt that the Serpent and all the demons of the Dark Regions held no fear for him; should he but turn on them and laugh, they would retreat before him and be consumed by silver fire, blackening and crumbling and blowing away on the wind before the Staff’s glory…
And the Silver Staff was speaking to him. The words were voiceless, rapid, indistinguishable, full of humour and delight, like a hundred children each singing a different song. The Silver Staff was a wild entity, as joyous and vital and carefree as a child. It was not evil, yet it had no concept of good. No conscience. It was simply itself: powerful, yet a total innocent.
Estarinel shared a strange fellow-feeling with it then. It seemed vulnerable in its innocence. The Silver Staff had been manipulated by the Guardians, and it did not even know. It, too, had been used.
It became quiescent under his touch, the flaring electricity fading until he was able to look at it without being dazzled. It lay in his hands, cool and heavy. He felt surprised at how plain it was, although he didn’t know what else he had expected. It was a silver rod three feet in length, about the width of a knuckle in diameter at one end and tapering to a needle-sharp point at the other. The thicker end was finished with a small silver orb. That was all. There was no engraving or decoration on it to mark it as unusual. He wondered how it could be used; it certainly could not be wielded like a sword, and seemed so delicate that it would surely break before it did harm to anything.
Yet, holding it, he felt euphoric, certain of power. He sensed a spirit of comradeship with the Silver Staff; for once he was confident, assured – whole.
Eldor gave him a scabbard, a slim rigid tube of red leather. Estarinel strapped this around his waist and slid the Staff inside, sharp end first. A leather flap fitted over the top so that it was completely enclosed.
‘Come, then,’ said Eldor.
They walked through the eerie castle of red glass until they passed under the archway to the outside. The green of the grass was brilliant, almost physical in its intensity in contrast to the red light. Eldor led him some distance down the hill and sat under one of the copper beeches, his great arms clasped round his knees. He still looked just as he had in the House of Rede – wise, kindly and human.
‘So, Master Eldor,’ said Estarinel, ‘what are you doing here?’
‘Ah, that is a long story. I want to tell it all in order.’ Eldor spoke thoughtfully. Estarinel could feel no animosity towards him, only towards the other Guardians. ‘Dritha and I were terribly worried about you. We discovered that the H’tebhmellian ship had not arrived on the Blue Plane, but we did not know what had happened to you. We thought the Serpent M’gulfn had won already. It wasn’t until I came here,’ he waved a hand at the blood-red castle, ‘that I heard, to my relief, that you were safe. Dritha still does not know, alas.’
‘Is Dritha–?’
‘Dritha is also a Guardian, yes. She chose to remain at the House of Rede to give comfort to the refugees.’
‘What do you mean – refugees?’
‘Ah, alas,’ sighed Eldor, ‘the world is falling rapidly into the Serpent’s power. Anarchy is running through Tearn and Vardrav, accentuated by the crumbling of the Gorethrian Empire. Beasts of the Serpent roam freely, instilling terror and causing plagues and famines. The very elements have turned savage, the Earth erupting with newborn volcanoes, its coasts lashed by tidal waves... A few humans – comparatively few, by which I mean hundreds – have escaped to the House of Rede, which is safe as yet.’
‘To think that when I began, I thought only Forluin was suffering.’
‘The Serpent is possessed by an overwhelming loathing of mankind. It wishes only to cause chaos and destruction until the Earth belongs totally to itself again.’
‘It seems to me,’ said Estarinel, a little sharply, ‘that the Guardians can only fight M’gulfn by being as cruel and callous as it is.’
‘Estarinel, it gives me sorrow to see you so embittered. Still, perhaps the Guardians have deserved your anger. Understand, when I try to explain their actions, I am not trying to excuse them. They were not going to tell you anything, but I insisted.’
‘Yes, I heard you arguing.’ Estarinel noted the care with which Eldor referred to them as ‘they’ and not ‘we’.
‘And there’s something else I want you to know, although I am not trying to excuse myself either: Dritha and I did not know about the Silver Staff. Because we were on Earth, the other Guardians withheld the knowledge from us. I didn’t know about it until I came here, having been summoned to help – and they insist it is the very nature of the tests to be irrational and arduous, so only the pure of heart would win through.’
‘Well, I’ll accept that it wasn’t your fault. But why was it necessary,’ his voice became choked with anguish, ‘for Calorn to be murdered? Just – savagely, pointlessly – by that shape-changing thing. And after that, as if scratching around for what little else they could take from me, they even lured my horse over that cliff.’
‘Estarinel,’ said Eldor gently, ‘Calorn is not dead.’
‘What do you mean? I saw–’
‘It was an illusion.’
‘And Shaell?’
‘Your horse is alive. To him, there was no cliff, just a little drop and an inviting meadow.’
‘I can’t believe it. It was so real. And those wretched people on the cliff?’
‘All illusions – or at least, only a temporary reality. This domain can make anything seem real: deserts, paradoxical buildings, people... murders. I swear to you that Calorn was not killed. She rode away unharmed.’
Estarinel was silent for a few seconds, thinking this over. ‘But I believed it was real! Why torment me with such illusions? Eldor, my family were killed. In that black tower, I saw it happen! It was worse than cruel. It was abominable,’ he finished in a whisper.
Eldor looked sad. ‘I agree. I did not approve of it, but it was only my voice against all the others. They had to be sure you could carry on, not only through physical perils, but against the most absolute despair. And not just carry on blindly, but with perception and intelligence.’
‘Well, I hope they were satisfied,’ Estarinel muttered.
‘The Grey Ones have no real understanding of human emotions, you see. A man watching the behaviour of an insect finds it fascinating, but has no concept of how
the insect may feel or suffer. They know that if you are treated in a certain way, you will react in a certain way, with anger, fear, grief, and so on. Yet they do not know how these things feel. In this way they are, I agree, cruel and inhuman.’
‘And it was the Guardians who required these tests, wasn’t it? Not the Silver Staff at all. I could tell when I touched it. It is innocent.’
Eldor sighed through his nose. ‘No, the Staff is pure. There is a difference. It’s pure, hard and demanding, and that’s why it demands purity from its bearer. It had to be sure of you, but so did the Guardians. The Silver Staff tried your mind and heart, but the Guardians manipulated reality to put flesh on those tests.’
‘All in it together, then?’
With the merest frown, Eldor expressed weary patience, and the heaviness of his conflict between being honest and defending the Guardians’ actions. ‘There is something they would not want me to tell you, Estarinel, but I shall. They do not know what the Silver Staff is. They do not understand its nature. They’ve used it as a vessel to contain the power that is opposite to the Serpent’s, but they are unsure of the Staff itself. Even a little afraid.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You see, the Silver Staff is like a child. It would have chosen or rejected you in a heartbeat. The Guardians needed more.’
‘As in, more bloodshed and torment.’
‘Estarinel. After all their pains to persuade it to their purpose, they could hardly risk giving it to a mere mortal without some proof that he was worthy to bear it. And if we’d let the Staff alone decide… if it had rejected you, it would have killed you the moment you touched it.’
Eldor’s words only inflamed him to fresh anger. ‘But why the pretence? The stories that thousands sought the Staff, and that it insisted on that ludicrous assault course? Why did the Lady of H’tebhmella lie to us?’
‘She did not. The Guardians lied to her.’
‘They – why?’
‘Because if she had thought that the tests were not inevitable, she would never have permitted them.’ Eldor’s words dropped like stones into a cold, dark pool. Estarinel stared at him, incredulous.
A Blackbird In Darkness (Book 2) Page 23
