A Blackbird In Darkness (Book 2)

by Freda Warrington

  ‘The current is taking us north,’ said Medrian, closing her eyes and trying to sense M’gulfn’s thoughts. ‘The Serpent has not been disturbed; less than forty miles from here, the ice cap is undamaged. All we have to do is wait.’

  The Serpent-fire on the skyline had turned to vivid green. It danced and spat, sending coruscating sheets of acidic light across the clouds. Flecks of discoloured snow fell hissing into the waves around them. Now that the initial relief of survival subsided, Estarinel’s spirits sank once more in the face of the Worm’s grim power. Even retreat was impossible now. It was as if they were caught in a ritual dance of evil, drifting with a supernatural, leaden rhythm towards the heart of a nightmare.

  Again he felt that he could not confront the Serpent. He found himself wishing that he had drowned after all; and although he knew these thoughts to be self-destructive, and that for Forluin’s sake he should be facing the end with a bold and glad heart, it was completely beyond his power to feel anything but despair. Only the Worm’s sickness was real; everything else was dreamlike, distant and ineffectual. For the time being he could function outwardly, but he felt it was only a matter of time before this wretched sense of panic overcame him.

  From the expressions on Medrian’s and Ashurek’s faces, they felt it too, although they were perhaps better able to cope. We were mad to think we could destroy it, Estarinel thought. The hypnotic rhythm of the ice raft as it carried them towards the Serpent seemed suggestive of something deeper, profoundly terrible but incomprehensible, like a half-remembered nightmare. And Estarinel felt that he was not afraid of dying – but of continuing to live in the Serpent’s power.

  Medrian slid her gloved hand into his and said, ‘I know it’s hard, but we must try not to look north. M’gulfn would dearly like to replace our determination with despair. We should talk of something else.’

  ‘The Blue Plane, or Miril,’ Estarinel suggested, although the words sounded hollow to him, as if such things had no more power here than frost against fire.

  ‘There’s something else,’ Ashurek said quietly. ‘I thought I saw – well, just as we were hanging on to this piece of ice, and before we had rescued Estarinel, I thought I saw Silvren. Did you also see her, Medrian?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not.’

  ‘Ah, it is as I thought: my imagination. She said she no longer had the power to project her astral self out of the Dark Regions. Strange, it was very real, and she seemed to be trying to say something.’

  Estarinel was looking at Ashurek, startled by the memory that these words had awakened. ‘I don’t think it was your imagination,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ The Gorethrian stared intently at him.

  ‘Well, while I was more or less unconscious, I’m sure I heard a voice. I couldn’t place it at the time, but now I realise it was Silvren’s. She said, “Ashurek, I need to know the words, can you remember?”‘

  ‘You’re certain of this? And she said nothing else?’

  ‘That’s all I heard. Do you know what it means?’

  ‘No,’ Ashurek sighed. ‘Only that... if she somehow found the strength to contact me, it must mean that something has changed for her. What words? Oh, by the Worm...’ He stared broodingly at the ice, one long-fingered hand tangled in his dark hair. Estarinel found it beyond his power to say anything remotely encouraging.

  As his gaze was drawn inevitably to the north again, Medrian exclaimed, ‘Look, what’s that?’ and pointed across the sullen waves.

  To their right, perhaps five miles distant across the jostling ice floes, floated a massive iceberg. It was not alone, but it was by far the largest, dwarfing the others around it. Incredibly it was not drifting north but sailing towards them, as if caught in some deep cross-current.

  The iceberg resembled a great castle, rough-hewn yet beautiful, glowing beryl green, pale blue and amethyst where the light filtered through its translucent bulk. It moved with the stately grace of a majestic ship. As it drew nearer, they could see the ice-floes spinning and tossing along its sides as it nosed them out of the way.

  ‘We’d better be ready to jump to another floe if necessary,’ Estarinel said, ‘or we’ll all end up in the water. I don’t want to repeat the experience.’

  The iceberg was travelling hardly faster than a man might walk, and it was over an hour before it drew close to them. Its size was awesome, and it gave off a tangible aura of coldness. Its glass-white sides were ridged and faceted with uncanny symmetry. The three stood on their little ice raft, staring at it, trying to gauge just how much leeway it would give them as it passed.

  But it did not pass by. As if someone had thrown down an unseen anchor, the berg slowed down and came to rest a few hundred yards in front of them, rocking and turning slightly with the swell of the waves. Their ice floe, meanwhile, continued its northward drift, straight towards it.

  ‘This looks deliberate,’ said Ashurek, his hand on his sword hilt. Strangely, all the ice floes around them had floated too far away to be reached. They were stranded and could do nothing but wait, powerless, while they were carried towards the glacial castle.

  Now they saw someone descending the side of the berg.

  The figure reached a ledge just above the level of the water and stood waiting for them, hands on hips. Statuesque, enveloped in a full, flowing cloak of deep greenish-blues… Ashurek cursed, with great feeling, in Gorethrian.

  ‘Oh, I should have guessed!’ he exclaimed, and drew his sword. Medrian and Estarinel simply stared in shock and dismay at the figure.

  Arlenmia.

  Their floe crunched into the side of the iceberg and pitched wildly from the impact. They kept their feet, but the raft seemed in danger of breaking up beneath them.

  ‘Here, I’ll help you,’ Arlenmia called, throwing them one end of a rope. They all stared at it, as if at a snake. ‘Oh, come, take it! Ashurek, please put away your sword. I mean you no harm.’

  ‘Ah, still not perfected the art of lying?’ the Gorethrian said acidly.

  Arlenmia began to laugh. ‘Look, you can stay on that piece of ice if you wish, but it would be easier for us all if you would step onto my iceberg now, rather than be fished out of the water in a few minutes’ time. It’s not much of a choice, I’m afraid, but it is the best I can offer.’

  ‘She’s right, damn her,’ growled Ashurek, sheathing his sword and taking the end of the rope. He braced himself, pulling the floe tight in against the iceberg while Estarinel and Medrian reluctantly accepted Arlenmia’s free hand to help them step onto the ridge. Then Ashurek followed. The sorceress’s ungloved hand felt as strong as steel.

  A few seconds after they left the ice raft, it split neatly into several pieces and bobbed away along the side of the great iceberg.

  ‘What in hell’s name are you doing here?’ Ashurek demanded.

  Arlenmia smiled sweetly and beckoned them to climb ahead of her up a series of steps cut into the ice. At close quarters they saw she was clad from head to foot in a cloak of shimmering fur that was marbled with deep shades of turquoise, blue-green and black. She pushed back her fur-lined hood and her hair spilled over her shoulders in swathes of peacock silk.

  ‘I would ask the same of you, except that I already know,’ she said. ‘All will be explained to you in time. Turn to your left, Estarinel – there is a tunnel there. I know you will not believe this, but I am very, very happy to see you.’

  ‘You’re right. We don’t believe it,’ said Ashurek. ‘I dare say you were responsible for the break up of the ice?’ Arlenmia smiled but did not reply.

  The tunnel led into a huge chamber within the iceberg, illuminated by blue-green light that gave it an eerie underwater quality. On one side a massive spiral staircase hewn out of ice evidently led to further chambers above and below. In the centre was an arrangement of ice blocks and ridges that served as seats, covered in furs. Arlenmia motioned them to sit down.

  She was as beautiful as Ashurek remembered, with a strong, clear face, seas
hell skin, large innocent eyes of aquamarine, hypnotic swathes of glossy blue-green hair like a sea-goddess.

  ‘This is very impressive,’ he said.

  ‘Thank you. I had help, of course. One might as well travel in a reasonable degree of comfort. Now, can I offer you some refreshment?’

  ‘We have our own provisions,’ Medrian said flatly.

  ‘Oh, I am not going to poison you!’ Arlenmia exclaimed.

  ‘Nor drug us?’

  ‘No, I no longer have any need of drugs,’ she said, an ominous note entering her voice. ‘Listen, we shall only be within this iceberg for a few hours longer. We will have to walk the last stretch. Do you understand me? So you had better eat and rest while you can.’

  Arlenmia was pacing slowly back and forth in front of them as she spoke. In the instant when Ashurek knew he was out of her line of sight, he glanced at Medrian and Estarinel and touched his sword hilt. Almost imperceptibly they nodded. As Arlenmia turned, they moved as one and surrounded her; Ashurek with the tip of his sword at her throat, the others on either side of her with their knives at the ready.

  A look of annoyance crossed her beautiful pale face but she stood quietly between them, losing none of her statuesque poise.

  ‘I know not what help you have on hand,’ said Ashurek, ‘but don’t even think of calling for it, or you will never speak again.’

  ‘This is very silly, and quite pointless,’ Arlenmia replied calmly.

  ‘Indeed? We have tasted your hospitality before. You have trapped us with admirable style, but we have no wish to be your prisoners a second time. You are going to be ours.’

  ‘That will be delightful,’ she said, and a look of defeat came into her eyes. Ashurek, realising that she was feigning it, became horribly apprehensive. He pressed the sword against her throat, making a bluish mark in the silky skin.

  ‘Now, tell us what you are doing here. Straightforwardly.’

  ‘I was going to tell you anyway – there really is no need for this. I am here partly to prevent you from murdering the Serpent M’gulfn, of course. But I never intended to use force or hurt any of you. You see, you stand no chance of success anyway, and I was hoping very much to make you share my point of view. You’ll be saved so much unnecessary danger and misery.’

  ‘We have had this conversation before,’ said Estarinel. ‘It got us nowhere then, and it’s not likely to now.’

  Arlenmia looked sideways at him. ‘I know, beloved, but I have not yet given up hope. However, I want to finish my explanation, and I am most uncomfortable with these blades pressing on me; so as violence seems to be in order...’

  There was a thud, felt rather than heard, like a silent splitting of the atmosphere, and for an instant the air was filled with a terrible dark light. When it faded, Arlenmia was still standing passively in the centre of the chamber, but Medrian, Estarinel and Ashurek were lying winded and half-stunned, in its furthest corners. The air was throbbing with a sickly, leaden power that was at once loathsome and seductively desirable.

  Estarinel was the first to regain his feet. He staggered to Medrian and helped her up, but Ashurek was still prostrate. As they went to him, he gasped, ‘The Egg-Stone. She has the Egg-Stone.’

  ‘Yes, that is correct, Ashurek,’ Arlenmia said. ‘I’m sorry I had to do that, but there was no other way to make you understand the futility of trying to capture or threaten me. Please, come and sit down again. We’ll have some wine. I hope you are not too badly hurt?’

  The three staggered back to the centre and sat down, weak and dizzy from the Egg-Stone’s power. Ashurek felt all his muscles straining rigid against the molten fire running through his veins, the dreadful metallic voice whispering within his skull of the unspeakable torment he was going to suffer until he held the Egg-Stone in his hand once more, and did its will.

  ‘But don’t try to touch it,’ said Arlenmia, as if reading his thoughts. She bent over him and he could sense it, hanging around her neck in a little pouch as he had used to wear it himself. ‘If you so much as think of taking it, I will blast you from North Pole to South Pole. Skord!’

  ‘Ashurek? Are you all right?’ Estarinel asked quietly.

  ‘I will be. Damn her,’ the Gorethrian gasped. ‘With that thing in her possession, none of us can touch her. She’s made herself invulnerable... and I cannot stop myself thinking about it. Its very presence weakens me.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘There’s nothing you can do,’ Arlenmia answered, handing their weapons back to them. ‘But perhaps now you will listen to me with a little more attention and respect. Ah, Skord. Will you bring us some wine, and some of those flat cakes, and the salted fish?’

  They looked up in astonishment and saw, emerging from the stairwell, the youth Skord. He was dressed in similar furs to Arlenmia. His cropped brown hair was growing ragged, and his face looked even younger than before, despite its dull, strained expression. He gave the three an impassive glance; his once-bold, foxy eyes had a distant look. He knelt to Arlenmia and kissed her hand, then descended into the stairwell again.

  ‘By the gods, Arlenmia, can’t you leave anyone alone?’ cried Estarinel, furious. They had rescued Skord from her and left him in the safe-keeping – so they had thought – of Setrel. ‘What on Earth is he doing with you?’

  ‘Oh, don’t make a fuss,’ she said, sitting down between him and Ashurek. ‘He wanted to come with me. He realises how privileged he is to be with me on this most wondrous of journeys. In fact, I want you all to share that privilege: you, see, I owe you so much. Everything you tried to do against me only aided me – this idea that you are working against the Serpent is but a delusion. We are comrades, all of us. We travel by different paths to the same goal.’

  Her blue-green eyes were shining as she spoke; again Estarinel felt her languid, enthralling quality beginning to ensnare him. He had forgotten that the magnetic aura of her personality was so powerful; with the Egg-Stone’s force added to it she seemed omnipotent.

  Last time, she had inadvertently broken the spell herself by making a careless remark about Forluin; but this time he knew that there could be no simple release. A sudden pain in his hand startled him, and he found that Medrian was holding his fingers in a vicelike grip.

  ‘You see,’ Arlenmia said, ‘if you three had not come to me, I might have stayed in the Glass City for ever, struggling through my mirrors to extend the tiny boundaries I had set for myself. I was furious with all of you when you left, it’s true. Your departure drained all my power out of the Glass City. Years of work, lost! I was faced with starting again from the beginning. Well might I have given up in despair. But I did not. I used that twilight time to think... to reflect, literally.’ Her lips curved in a smile. ‘Through all of you, and most of all through you, Ashurek, I saw that I had only been scratching at the surface of what I wanted, and that to achieve it I must go right to the heart. And I am grateful to you all for that. Suddenly I knew that I had been a fool, that the answer had been before me all the time. I did not need the Glass City, messengers, and the rest. All I needed was the Egg-Stone.’

  ‘How did you get it?’ Ashurek asked hoarsely.

  Arlenmia smiled and said, ‘I had help. But once in possession of it... oh, what freedom! I had no more need of mircam or mirrors; all the power I had ever dreamt of was mine, flooding me like a life-giving fire! But what should I do with it? Use it to conquer the Earth, as you did, Prince Ashurek?’ Her tone was mocking. ‘Ah, no. I spoke to the Serpent M’gulfn, and asked it what I should do.’

  ‘You did what?’ Medrian gasped, leaning forward to stare at her. ‘That is impossible. It was a delusion – an hallucination.’

  ‘You think so? You are wrong, Medrian. I spoke to M’gulfn. What it told me was so simple, something I should have known all along. The Egg-Stone is the Serpent’s eye, and once the eye is returned, M’gulfn’s power will be complete.’

  Yes, so obvious, Ashurek thought, closing his eyes. Once the Serp
ent had possession of its missing eye, even the Silver Staff would not prevail against it. He could only wonder that the Shana, after sending him to fetch the Egg-Stone, had not taken it to the Serpent themselves.

  ‘Have none of you anything to say?’ said Arlenmia. ‘Are you not going to inform me of how misguided, how evil I am? No persuasive speeches, no heartfelt pleas?’

  Skord came into the chamber and set a crystal table laden with food before them. Again he bowed to Arlenmia.

  ‘Skord, please pour us some wine,’ she said. ‘And stay with us, have some yourself. Skord is sharing the honour of this journey, by the way, because it was he who first brought you three to me. If you still have any thought of trying to stop me, I can only ask you not to waste your energy. I want you to understand that I could easily have killed you all by now. But why should I, when you are no danger to me?’ She passed them goblets of wine. ‘The reason I intercepted and rescued you was not to harm you, but simply so that you could come to understand and share in the glory that awaits us. Won’t you try these excellent cakes?’

  Medrian forced herself to eat, knowing that they could not afford to be weakened any further by hunger. Ashurek and Estarinel followed suit.

  ‘There’s a lot I could say, Arlenmia,’ said Ashurek. ‘Unfortunately I doubt that I could persuade you to agree with any of it. It seems to me that you will find out how wrong you are only when it is too late.’

  ‘But I am not wrong,’ she said, somewhat venomously. ‘I have work to do. I suggest that you take this opportunity to rest and reconsider your attitude.’ She made her way to the spiral staircase of ice and ascended to the chamber above, leaving them alone with Skord.

  Ashurek turned to him and asked, ‘What are you doing with Arlenmia? Why didn’t you go back to Setrel?’

  Skord looked up at the Gorethrian, his eyes glittering with a mixture of emotions. They had seen him arrogant, murderous and half-crazed with the power Arlenmia had given him. Later, when she had dismissed him from her service, they had seen him abject and mindless with fear. Now he seemed to be caught between those two extremes.