A Blackbird In Darkness (Book 2)

by Freda Warrington

  ‘It’s all right,’ Estarinel said, looking at him with a half-smile. He had not forgotten that when actually faced with the decision of slaying him and Medrian – by which means the Serpent certainly would have triumphed – Ashurek had turned aside. ‘It’s over and done with.’

  Ashurek nodded and gripped his shoulder briefly. Then he scrambled over the ice-blocks to the narrow opening in the cave wall, and his tall, lean figure vanished from sight.

  #

  Medrian found herself lying on a firm surface with softness pillowing her head. She felt warm. She lay with her eyes closed for a long time, half-asleep, not wanting anything to disturb the peaceful, gentle darkness in which she drifted.

  Where was M’gulfn? Ah, there it was, within her still, but very distant, like a child lost in the night. Let it stay lost. For the first time since the Blue Plane, she knew respite from torment.

  She wondered where she was, but felt it did not really matter. She knew she was safe. There were a lot of strange memories within her, all confused and overlapping, though no longer disturbing. There was something about a Plane of black crystal on which tall, four-armed philosophers walked; a viscous grey sea of terror; and then a sweet silver-gold light, driving back the sea until it shrank and shrank into nothingness.

  Miril had restored Medrian to herself. She had complete mastery of the Serpent, such as she could never have achieved alone. There was no need for a great glacier to protect herself from it now. No need to encapsulate her thoughts in ice, or to force emotions to lie frozen in the pit of her heart. She could say and think and feel whatever she wished, and M’gulfn might writhe in her mind and groan and whimper all it wished, but it would never touch her. Never, never again.

  She stretched and opened her eyes. The whiteness all around her made her blink, until she realised that it was ice. She propped herself up on her elbows, to find herself lying on a flat ridge, wrapped in her cloak and with her pack under her head.

  Floating near her, about three feet above the ground, was a sphere of starry blue light. She looked at it in surprise, unable to think what it was, but noticing that it gave out a wonderfully cheering warmth. Estarinel was kneeling by the sphere with a gold vessel in his hand, apparently heating some wine.

  Medrian stared at him as if she had never seen him before: his long, dark hair, fair face and gentle brown eyes. She found herself so desperate to speak to him that it was like an ache of starvation within her. As she gazed at him, he looked round and saw that she was awake.

  ‘Drink this,’ he said, handing the vessel to her. She swallowed the warm H’tebhmellian wine gratefully, feeling a pleasant heat and vitality spreading through her body. ‘Now, how do you feel?’

  ‘Better. Much better than I have for a long time,’ she replied, and smiled at him. ‘What’s that?’ She indicated the starry, floating lamp.

  ‘Oh, a device the H’tebhmellians gave us. Look.’ He reached into the sphere, which despite the heat it gave out was cool to the touch. At once the light vanished, and he showed her a small sapphire ball lying in his palm. ‘To light it, you press this indentation,’ and at once the cloud of blue stars appeared again. ‘It floats in the air wherever you place it. It’s to give us light and heat now that normal fires are impossible; works best in Arctic conditions. So Filitha told me, anyway.’

  ‘Where’s Ashurek?’ she asked, swinging her legs over the edge of the ridge and sitting up.

  ‘He went to find a way out of this cave, only a few minutes ago. Medrian, do you remember anything about the Black Plane?’

  ‘Hardly… There was something vague about nemen. But I remember Miril.’

  ‘Do you? Did you hear what she said to you?’

  ‘No. I couldn’t see or hear anything. There was a silver and gold light. Estarinel, will you come and sit by me?’

  He seated himself next to her on the ridge and said, ‘Miril told me to tell you this: although you think your feelings are a weakness, they will prove to be your strength.’

  She lowered her eyes and did not reply. Presently he noticed that her dark eyelashes, curved against her pale cheek, were glistening with tears.

  ‘There’s something I must tell you,’ she whispered. She slipped her cold hands into his and looked up, her shadowy eyes as brilliant as rain. Estarinel could tell that something had changed within her, as it had on H’tebhmella and in Forluin, but in a subtly different way. She had always been intrinsically self-contained, yet now there was also tranquillity about her, as if she had come to terms with a lifelong fear. ‘I always intended to wait until the very end of the Quest to say this... but things have changed. There’s nothing to prevent me from speaking now.’

  He remembered all the times he had tried to persuade her to talk to him, and the despair he’d felt when she doggedly kept her pain to herself. And now here she was, about to tell him everything, and he found himself dreading what she had to say, almost not wanting to know. He sat clasping her hands, waiting wordlessly for her to begin.

  She hesitated. She was thinking of Forluin, which she had had to put from her mind of necessity, so M’gulfn could not use it to torment her. But now she recalled with acute longing how it had felt to be free of the Serpent, the sad ache of finding love while all the time knowing she was going to lose it again. And here was Estarinel, regarding her with the love and concern that he’d always shown her, steadfastly, no matter how strangely she had behaved or how hard she had tried to rebuff him.

  Would he still love her after she had told him?

  Perhaps he would pity her; but she did not see how he could fail to feel revulsion, or even bear to touch her. She hated herself for deceiving him, but she could not stop; she craved a few minutes more in which he did not know the truth, and still loved her.

  ‘Medrian? What’s wrong?’ he asked gently.

  ‘I have to tell Ashurek as well. I can’t say it twice.’

  ‘That’s all right; we’ll wait for him. Don’t worry.’

  ‘You have been very patient,’ she said faintly, and she leaned her head on his shoulder and put her arms around his waist. His astonishment only lasted a second, lost in the simple joy of holding her and kissing her. It was strange how effortlessly pain and loneliness could be eased, tragic that Medrian had for so long been trapped in bitter isolation.

  He could not have guessed how confused her feelings were at that moment. In a way she despised herself, but at the same time, how good it felt to love and know she was loved, to feel his arms round her, his hands in her hair. And M’gulfn not touching her. Distantly she observed its jealousy, and she did not care. The detachment on which she had based her life was ashes.

  But at the back of her mind, a small voice warned her, in this way the Serpent will win.

  Presently Ashurek returned, and Medrian drew away from Estarinel and sat stiffly upright, trying to regain her grim self-possession. But he kept hold of her left hand, and she made no attempt to release herself.

  ‘I’ve found the way outside. It is long, but not difficult,’ Ashurek said, stretching out his hands to the warmth of the H’tebhmellian fire. ‘Is there any of that wine left?’

  ‘We still have three flasks. We’d better make them last,’ said Estarinel.

  ‘I have something to say.’ Medrian’s voice was almost a whisper.

  Ashurek looked at her with surprise. He seated himself on a block of ice and said, with unusual gentleness, ‘Yes, go on.’

  Her head bowed, her dark hair falling around her face, and her eyes fixed on her right hand where it lay curved limply on her knee, she began, ‘The Quest is almost over. I was always going to explain myself near the end... not this soon, but eventually. I could not – could not–’ her voice was fragile and cold, a crust of ice. She swallowed, and made herself continue, ‘I could not tell you this at the beginning of the Quest, for two reasons. I was not allowed to speak of it, but even if I had been, I still would not have told you, because if I had... you would never have taken me with y
ou.’

  You are not permitted to speak of this. You will be silent, raged M’gulfn, but she ignored it. As if her mouth were flooded with poison, she said,

  ‘I am the Serpent’s human host.’

  She could hear the sighing of the Arctic wind and the distant creaking of ice in the silence that followed. She felt Estarinel’s grip on her hand lose its strength, as she had known it would, and she let her hand slide from his, and she felt metallic bitterness invade and petrify her soul.

  ‘Ashurek, don’t tell me you didn’t guess,’ she whispered.

  ‘I knew you were working for it,’ he replied quietly. ‘I should have known. Perhaps even I was unwilling to believe the very worst of you. And I suspected Arlenmia so strongly that it clouded my judgement. This explains everything, of course: how the Serpent always knew where we were, how it was able to thwart us so often...’

  ‘Estarinel?’ she said, her tone acidic with self-hatred. ‘Now do you understand why I warned you so often not to trust me or grow fond of me? The most selfish thing I ever did was to return your love in Forluin. Don’t you agree?’

  He did not speak, did not look at her.

  ‘So everything we have said to you, or in your hearing,’ said Ashurek, ‘has been like speaking to the Serpent itself? And is so now?’

  There was so much more she had to say to make them understand. She held herself steady and tried to ignore Estarinel’s tangible abhorrence. ‘No, no, you don’t understand. I am not the Serpent. I hate the Serpent! It did not send me on the Quest to sabotage it. I came against M’gulfn’s will, to kill it!’

  ‘Yes, I can also believe that,’ Ashurek said thoughtfully.

  ‘I have so much to explain. I want to start from the beginning,’ she said. And as she related her story she stared fixedly at her hands the whole time, and her voice was as low and chilling as the wind sighing across a desolate plain of snow. ‘The Serpent was within me from my birth. I never knew a moment without its presence. My earliest childhood memories in Alaak were of the rattle of looms in my family’s cottage, my mother and father working – sometimes laughing, sometimes talking in low voices about Gorethria. And there was a pile of unspun fleece – I think that is the very first thing I remember, sitting on it, feeling how soft it was, picking out the burrs and bits of twig – but before that, there was the Serpent. Before ever I had a thought of my own, it seemed I was a grey, ancient, mocking intelligence in the guise of a baby.

  ‘As I grew, I realised that this mind was something apart from my own, and utterly alien. But I still had no idea that I was different from anyone else. I only wondered how it was that other children could laugh and play, how my parents could smile and hug me, how my brother could return their affection... I don’t know how to describe to you the nature of M’gulfn. It is just – always there. And it is grey and reptilian and vast – as a nightmare seems tangible and frightening, even though it’s only something within your mind. And it is full of hatred – like a sickness – and because it has come to understand humans through its previous hosts, it knows the most subtle and insidious ways to torment us.

  ‘It spared me no torment as a child. It could make me weep and scream with fear, it could make me attack other children, destroy things, whatever amused it. Even so there was nothing to make anyone suspect that I was the host. To all appearances I was just a fractious, ill-tempered child. My mother must have loved me, to tolerate it.’ She fell silent for a few seconds, then continued, ‘I don’t know how I came to realise that not everyone had this nightmare presence within them. As I grew older I became aware that my real self was separate from M’gulfn and quite different from it. I realised that I was intensely disliked by the others in our village, even feared. And I think the Serpent itself had somehow explained to me that I was “special”. Chosen. I was an outsider, but my real self wanted to be loved, just as any human does.

  ‘I believe that by this stage most of its previous hosts had gone insane – I don’t know why I didn’t. Perhaps it’s just the stubbornness of the Alaakian character, which also made it impossible for us to accept Gorethria’s rule. I remember being angry, and going off alone into the hills to fight it. I was about seven or eight, I think. And I found that the angrier I became, the more it tormented me, and the harder I fought, the more easily it controlled me, laughing and raging within me. But for that Alaakian obstinacy I would certainly have gone mad.

  ‘But I didn’t. I experimented. I found that the less I allowed myself to feel, the less M’gulfn could hurt me. First I suppressed anger, then slowly – oh, it took months, years – every other emotion, unhappiness, love. Fear was the hardest, but that went too, eventually. I became utterly cold. This must have puzzled and upset my parents more than my previous behaviour; soon there were no more smiles, no more hugs. I think my mother grew to hate me. Ye gods. Do you know I can’t even remember what my parents looked like?’ Medrian paused, expressionless, knotting her hands together until the bones shone through the skin. ‘But I was in control. The Serpent could not read a single thought of mine, unless I permitted it. Oh, but it made me suffer for it. It never stopped fighting me, whispering and straining against the icy barrier I had set against it. Sometimes I was certain it would burst through and swallow me, and sometimes it could still gain control of me, just for a little while. And all the time I was thinking: how am I going to end this?

  ‘As soon as I was old enough – fourteen – I joined the army. Alaak was not supposed to have an army, as you know, Ashurek, but we trained in secret. Then came the uprising, and the massacre... and I survived, and I stood on the plain knowing that the Gorethrians had gone onwards to the village, and that I would never see my mother, father or brother again. That was when I realised that the Gorethrians were also the Serpent’s children, and that it was causing not only me to suffer, but the whole world. So I left Alaak, hardly knowing where to go or what to do, except that I must find a way to stop this damnable suffering.

  ‘Don’t think I hadn’t thought of suicide: I attempted it, but the coal-black horse M’gulfn had sent to me died instead. Such horses have protected me from other death blows, as you know. When one is dead, another always comes. I suspect the one that came through the forest when I was with Calorn now lies dead from the sting of a venomous plant. M’gulfn does not want me to die. It has a kind of possessive attachment to its hosts. If anyone should succeed in killing me, the killer would instantly become the host. But I think that to relinquish its hosts before extreme old age claims them is agony to it. Nevertheless, it happily allows me to be wounded and tortured. The strange thing is that physical pain makes it shrink from me, so that I have greater freedom and control in those times. I came almost to revel in battle and danger because of that.’ There was a note of disgust in her voice.

  ‘I went into the Gorethrian Empire, and I was there for years, seeking an answer. I went to the palace library in Shalekahh, and found some books about the Serpent there. They weren’t much use, except to teach me that I had access to the knowledge I needed within my own mind. M’gulfn’s thoughts contain the memories of all its previous hosts. All I had to do was look there... and there were thousands, stretching back to the very beginning of mankind, one after another. All had suffered, most had gone insane, one had even tried to slay the Serpent and had been grossly tortured and humiliated for her efforts. And I learned that the Serpent is immortal and unassailable, filled with loathing of mankind. The only reason it hadn’t destroyed us all long since was that the Guardians had taken one of its eyes, the Egg-Stone, so lessening its power.

  ‘But the stealing of its eye also sparked its hatred. It feared that they’d come again and slay it. So it decided to take a human host, which would work in this way: if ever anyone succeeded in destroying its body, its spirit could flee and hide in the human body, until it regenerated itself. Only once has it had to do this. Hundreds of years ago, a party went out from the north of Vardrav and injured it so seriously that they thought they’d sl
ain it. And M’gulfn itself was afraid, and hid within its host, but its wounds were healed by its gross energy, and it soon returned to life, and ravaged northern Vardrav in return. All others who set out to kill it died without touching it.

  ‘And after I had learned this, there was the attack on Forluin.’ Again she stopped, biting her lip. ‘Sometimes I feel I am half in its body, and I can see through its eyes and...’ She stretched her fingers out, rigid, and stared at them. ‘I couldn’t stop it, I tried, I offered it myself, anything... It paid no heed to me. And I knew – I think I’ve always known – that it’s no good seeking only an end to my own suffering. The Serpent must die. There must be no more hosts, no more witnesses to its depraved cruelty... I decided I was going to be the last.

  ‘I had no idea how it might be done. All I knew was that the Serpent and the host, somehow, must die together. I was its ultimate protection, so any venture against it stood no chance at all without my presence. In the end I went to the House of Rede, wretched, with M’gulfn fighting me every inch of the way. I had no real hope. But when I met Eldor, he knew who I was, and he told me that others would soon arrive to form a Quest against the Serpent, and we were to go to the Blue Plane. The Lady of H’tebhmella knew me as well. Yes, she knew, but she and Eldor agreed that no one should tell you this except myself. That was why she could not answer your question.

  ‘You understand, Estarinel, that although I was in the deepest despair, I could find no comfort for it. If I had tried, M’gulfn would have swept away my defences and possessed me. Even to be offered help tormented me.

  ‘Of course, M’gulfn was enraged by my setting out upon the Quest. It did everything it could to stop me. Sometimes my control would slip and it would force me into acting against you. I was always aware of this danger, and did my best to warn you... But there was one occasion when I managed to bend its will to mine. When you summoned the demon Siregh-Ma, Ashurek, and it refused to obey you, I persuaded M’gulfn to send it back to the Dark Regions. But the demon recognised me as the host, and told Gastada, and Gastada purposed to seal my mouth so that I should never speak of who I was, and to keep me imprisoned so the Serpent wouldn’t be endangered.