‘I’ve thought and thought,’ Medrian said, ‘but I always arrive at the same answer. I don’t know whether it is right, but it is all I can think of.’
‘Well, what is it?’ Ashurek asked. ‘We must do something. I would rather take a chance than stand here discussing it forever more.’
‘I think I know what should be done,’ Medrian said, ‘but I’m not confident of how to achieve it. Its body must be destroyed with ordinary weapons. It is not invulnerable to them.’
Ashurek looked at her with surprise. ‘Maybe not. But all the same, how do we get close enough even to touch it? It will snap us up as it did poor Skord. What about the Silver Staff?’
‘You know that we cannot use the Staff to slay its body without causing a cataclysm. It must – it must not be used until afterwards. Besides, if we approach the Serpent with the Staff, it may flee.’
‘So either we spend eternity chasing it about, or else we advance on it with earthly weapons only to be killed at once?’ Ashurek exclaimed. ‘Medrian, you are making less sense, not more.’
‘No, hear me out,’ she said. ‘I can see only one way for us to succeed. This will be the way of it: I will go first to the Serpent and speak to it. It’s all right, Estarinel – it cannot touch me, any more than I can physically harm it. I will induce it not to defend itself. Then you two must advance with axes and slay it.’
‘Induce it?’ Ashurek sounded incredulous. ‘Gaining your independence from it is one thing, but to convince it to lie quietly while we murder it–?’
‘But it is our only hope!’ Medrian replied flatly. ‘Can any of you think of a better way? Estarinel, take off the Silver Staff and leave it here.’ He unbuckled the red scabbard and Silvren took it from him. ‘Now, I will go to it. Stay twenty or so yards behind me, and only advance when I signal to you. The H’tebhmellian clothes will protect you from its venom. Are you ready?’
‘Yes,’ both replied, taking their axes from their belts.
‘Remember what Miril said. It must be done with gentleness. Try to kill it swiftly, as if–’ She swallowed, ‘as if you were putting an animal out of its misery.’
Medrian seemed icily calm and resolute, and in fact she was not feeling any fear in that moment. To her the physical presence of M’gulfn was no worse than the mental presence she had endured all her life. Ashurek felt something like battle-fever gripping him, driving out even the strongest doubt and terror. And Estarinel felt so sick and weak with dread that he was sure some outside force must be propelling him towards M’gulfn; perhaps it was simply that no fate could be worse than betraying Medrian’s and Forluin’s faith in him.
‘How should we best attack it?’ Ashurek asked.
‘Behead it,’ Medrian answered matter-of-factly, ‘then dismember the head.’
And the three who had set forth from the House of Rede now walked together towards the end of their Quest, in darkness.
The air swirled thickly about them as they went, like a sea of bromine gas. They moved through it in agonising slow motion, choking on the Worm’s stench, the snow sucking at their feet like viscid flesh. Before them, the Serpent M’gulfn lay waiting, grinning like an impassive cockatrice.
Presently Medrian signalled the other two to stop while she went on ahead. Estarinel found it terrible to watch her advancing towards that vile creature alone, a small, brave figure outlined by green-brown phosphorescence. The Worm was bigger than he had realised; she looked tiny by its head. How shameful his own fears seemed in the face of her courage. He held his breath, thinking, surely she is not going any closer?
All the time Medrian was talking to M’gulfn, trying to draw it from the depths of her mind where it was sulking and make it listen to her. For a time there was no response. Only when she drew so near that she could have reached out and touched its great, wrinkled head did it speak.
Ah, my Medrian. You have come to me at last.
‘Yes,’ she replied.
The loss of my eye was painful to me, but at least the hated bird was destroyed thereby. I devoured her. I have nothing to fear now. They dare not bring the silver weapon near me. I am safe, and you will stay with me forever.
‘Yes, I will stay with you, M’gulfn,’ she answered quietly. It seemed quiescent; not fully aware of what was happening. Arlenmia’s tricks had left it shaken and confused. Perhaps this was not going to be so hard after all.
You are not lying to me, are you, my Medrian?
‘No, I am with you now. Hush, be still,’ she whispered. She could feel its mind sliding away within her own, as if in torpor or sleep. She probed at it cautiously, but it seemed utterly tranquil. Slowly, never looking away from its tiny blue eyes, she raised a hand. Behind her she heard the crunch of Estarinel’s and Ashurek’s boots as they began to advance. Those few instants seemed to drag on interminably, as if a fleeting nightmare had been crystallised in time.
Suddenly she was on her back in the snow, while overhead the Serpent hurtled into the air, the whirring of its wings deafening. A scream died in her throat. Traitor! You think I did not know what you intended? Its thoughts raked into her brain like poisoned barbs. How dare you do this? I warned you I would make you sorry. You are going to suffer, suffer until you grovel for pity.
‘No!’ she cried, trying desperately to control and quiet it. But as the Serpent had lost its power over her, so had she lost what little power she’d had over it. It circled in the air, strings of blood and acid falling from its mouth. She struggled to her feet – skidding in the befouled snow – and saw Estarinel and Ashurek staring upwards, blank-faced and frozen, like figures of stone.
It dived over their heads, turning round and round in the air with hideous grace, like an eel chasing its tail in a murky sea. And Medrian knew that it was not going to kill them quickly, but very slowly and systematically, if at all. It wanted more than anything to humiliate them.
‘Stop,’ she gasped. ‘I won’t let this happen. M’gulfn, stop!’
They shall not slay me, not me! it was crying, and its emotions seared her lungs like acrid gas. I will give them confusion and pain and death, just as I promised when they took my eye!
Estarinel stood gripping the shaft of his axe, so numb and faint with terror that the Serpent itself seemed tiny, miles away from him in a grey-brown fog. He could do nothing to defend himself, it would spew its poison onto him as it had onto Forluin. He was trapped in a leaden nightmare from which there was no escape. And Ashurek stood determined to deal it at least one blow before if felled him, thinking all the time of Silvren.
The Serpent swooped. It did not touch any of them; instead it plummeted heavily onto the snow, sending up great pinkish-grey gouts of the stuff. It writhed there and they waited, petrified, for it to rise again.
Yet it did not. Medrian was standing rigidly upright in front of it, her arms by her sides and her head back, and she was singing. Her voice was low and the words of the song were strange, if they were words at all; but they seemed to have pinioned the Serpent. It lay thrashing on the snow, but could not rise.
#
Medrian had remembered the Guardian’s song. It was a deep, weird chant with which they had pinioned it all those millions of years ago in order to steal its eye. Perhaps they had forgotten the song, perhaps they hadn’t thought to suggest its use; but the Serpent had not forgotten. It still had nightmares about it. And now the song came directly from M’gulfn’s memory into Medrian’s mind, and she sang the slow, strange melody back to it until it sank helpless onto the ground, fear running like paralysis along all its muscles.
And there she held it, the song looping between their minds, until it became a cacophony of terror within M’gulfn’s skull; but she remained detached, not allowing herself to be drawn into the vortex of its fear. And, as she continued to sing strongly, she raised both hands and beckoned Estarinel and Ashurek to come forward again.
They saw that she had the Worm in check and once more they went cautiously forward. As they approached it, it
opened its mouth and gave voice to a terrible groan. The groan went on and on; and the utter desolation of it filled their heads, so that they cried out in horror and staggered as if buffeted by a gale. The Serpent was pinioned, but still swollen with fell power.
Its head was flat out on the snow, and its pale eyes – siblings of the Egg-Stone – glinted at them, filled with implacable malice. And it seemed to be looking down at them, as if towering above them, ballooned to many times its actual size, a grotesque parody of Arlenmia’s vision, while they were trapped by their own arrogance in the bottom of a slimy pit, helpless and humiliated.
Fires spat around the Worm, brown and ochre and olive-green; and in their glow basked obscene creatures; discoloured, malformed creations of the Serpent. Some were laughing, some weeping and some expressionless, but all were so pitiable and repulsive that merely to look upon them induced madness. Estarinel and Ashurek cried out in horror as awful thoughts began to crawl about in their minds. In danger of forgetting who or where they were, they wandered before the Serpent as if blind.
Medrian knew they were struggling, but she could do nothing to help except to sing on above the Serpent’s groan, praying they would not lose their sense of purpose altogether.
#
Silvren was pacing up and down on the snow, clasping the cloak around herself with one hand, gripping the Silver Staff in the other. She was shivering involuntarily, unaware of how cold she really was. She watched as the three approached the Serpent, saw it take off and held her breath for ten heartbeats before it dropped to the snow again. Now they were trying to approach it, their figures rimmed by its baleful aura. Silvren felt as distressed by her helplessness as by anxiety.
Unable to bear watching alone, she went to sit by Arlenmia, who was kneeling in the snow with her back to M’gulfn.
‘Arlenmia,’ Silvren said. ‘I know how you feel.’ Arlenmia looked up at her, her face as white as alabaster.
‘Do you?’ she said without expression.
‘Well, I suppose I do not. What can I say?’
‘I don’t know why you want to say anything. It is no thanks to me that you are still alive, is it? You warned me, and I would not listen, and now you are proved right.’
Silvren took her hand, and held onto it when she tried to pull away. ‘It was a dream, Arlenmia. Only a dream. This is real.’ She held up Arlenmia’s hand in her own. ‘You and I, talking to each other. There is nothing else; but this is everything. This is what we are fighting to save.’
‘Must you be so forgiving?’ Arlenmia exclaimed. ‘You make things very difficult.’
‘They are difficult,’ Silvren replied. ‘My power is all but gone, but they need help. I must do something.’
‘Such as what?’
‘Their weapons. If I could only imbue their axes with some degree of sorcerous energy, it would give them a greater chance of killing the Serpent. I can’t do it alone, but if you would only link hands and help me…?’
She expected a flat refusal, but to her surprise Arlenmia turned to her and said, ‘Yes.’ Colour came back to her face and her eyes were burning. ‘M’gulfn has betrayed me. Yes, I would like to help them kill it.’
#
Medrian’s throat was raw, scoured by the Serpent’s acrid stench. Its groans were echoing in her ears and head, but still she continued the chant. She saw Estarinel and Ashurek stumble past her, going to the left and right of M’gulfn’s head. Its tiny eyes swivelled to follow them and it writhed frantically against Medrian’s restraint.
Ashurek’s axe was a dead weight trailing in his hands. With an effort he lifted it, balancing it ready for battle. He was trying grimly to shut his mind against the Serpent’s confounding aura and remember his purpose. Its head and neck loomed before him, thickly roped with muscle under the flaky membrane. Close to, it seemed huge, and he could not see Estarinel on the other side.
He swung the axe in an arc and it bit into M’gulfn’s neck, sending a shuddering, painful shock through his arms and shoulders.
The membrane parted like paper and the edge sank into its flesh as if through a putrescent gel, only to be stopped by an iron-hard sinew. Ashurek pulled the weapon clear and staggered back, gasping. The Serpent flung its head into the air and howled with rage. Its body contracted into an S-shape, and despite the restraining song, it tried to attack.
Its hideous mouth was gaping before him and Ashurek saw between its jaws a glistening scarlet cavern, with fangs like stalactites of ivory, glutinous with bloody slaver. Its hot-cold, foul breath caught him full in the face.
By reflex he hefted the axe and struck again. This time the edge cut into its lips and gums, and a virulent crimson liquid oozed from its mouth. The shock of the blow sent Ashurek reeling away onto the filthy snow, while the Worm half-rolled away in irritation.
On the other side, Estarinel was caught off-guard. He had aimed one blow at it, but it had barely nicked the membrane. The Worm’s creatures were sighing around him, worsening his disorientation. He felt that he was sinking slowly through a brown ocean, and that the corpses of those tragic monstrosities were drifting down with him… Even as he was struggling to shake off the illusion, the Worm’s thick body lurched into him and he fell with his legs trapped beneath it. The shock brought him back to himself, and he cried out in terror. The Serpent righted itself, releasing him, but before he could regain his feet, its head snapped round and he found himself caught in its lips.
Thick, heavy folds of soft flesh enveloped him and its stench was overwhelming. He could see every detail of its skin: the ridges and furrows crusted with dried venom, the pores like pits clotted with dark blood. Somehow he held onto his axe; in fact it was dragging painfully on his free arm, but he could not let go, his fingers were in spasm. He waited for the Worm’s jaws to crush him.
Instead, the Serpent spoke to him. Each word seemed as tangible as a monolith of fossilized bone, and each letter of each word was in itself a terrible image. Forluin, Medrian, Skord – all real yet distorted and imbued with a nightmarish, profound meaning, as if he saw them with super-conscious perception. He saw the Earth itself groaning in immedicable despair as it drifted through eternity under the Worm’s rule, and Miril, lying dead in the snow… On and on the Serpent spoke. The images were weights, crushing him with insufferable pressure. And at the same time, he felt that he was himself the words that M’gulfn spoke.
Medrian saw Estarinel caught in the Serpent’s maw, Ashurek prostrate on the snow, and it seemed to her in that moment that she had misjudged everything. There was no easy way to slay M’gulfn. Her only hope now was to retreat towards Silvren and take the Silver Staff from her, chanting all the while so that M’gulfn remained pinned to the snow. Then she must approach M’gulfn with the Staff and pierce its throat. Their lives would be lost and the Earth torn apart, but at least it would all be ended.
No. Even that last, drastic solution was beyond her power. She was exhausted, her grip on M’gulfn slipping. She knew that she could not slay it herself; and at that moment she could not even believe that the Silver Staff possessed the necessary power. She felt that they were all victims of some ghastly joke played on them by the Grey Ones, who were now smiling down at them, their impassive, callous amusement worse even than the Serpent’s mockery.
Ashurek regained his feet. He could not see Estarinel, but he knew something had happened to him. Perhaps M’gulfn had killed him. Fury possessed him and he determined to do it some dire harm before it destroyed them all. He struck at its neck, once and twice, his blows stopped short by its wire-hard muscles. He was gasping for breath, choking on the thick atmosphere. To bring the axe down a third time seemed a monumental, impossible task. It was dragging at his arms like an anchor, while his whole body felt nerveless, as if some paralysing fever had drained all his strength. He managed to half-lift the weapon, only to stagger and almost fall, put off his stroke by astonishment.
There were golden fires running up and down the length of the axe, stars scintill
ating on its sharp edge. He recognised Silvren’s sorcery, and it was for her sake that he made a renewed effort. Bracing his feet apart, he hauled the axe into the air and brought it down onto the Serpent’s neck with the full weight of his body behind it. This time the sinews split like fruit, while Medrian and the Serpent screamed in unison.
Estarinel was still glued to the Serpent’s lip, helpless, but as it shrieked with pain he became vividly aware of his situation and desperate to escape. Almost involuntarily he swung up his free hand, which held the axe. Showering silver-gold sparks, the edge caught M’gulfn across the eye. It flung up its head in agony, hurling Estarinel into the snow.
He rolled clear and leaped to his feet, experiencing a wonderful exhilaration; he was no longer afraid. He bore down on the Worm, axe held two-handed above his head, scattering sorcerous light. He was thinking, what gave this loathsome Worm the right to destroy people whose gentle lives were beyond its understanding; the right to cling like a diseased tick to a world whose beauty is outside the compass of its mean soul? It has gone far enough.
In unison, he and Ashurek hacked at its neck, and at each blow they felt the snapping of blood vessels and tendons. Medrian had collapsed barely two feet from its cavernous mouth, and she was no longer singing, but crying out with shared pain. Ashurek and Estarinel were too intent on their work to see her, and the Serpent’s terrible moaning drowned her cries.
The ghastly creatures that thronged around it were dying, collapsing shapeless onto the snow, and the virulent Worm-fires were burning as pale as dead skin. The sky throbbed like a bruise.
Now a hideous greenish-white light began to stream from M’gulfn’s body. Its wrinkled membrane glistened with moisture, as if it had broken out in a dark sweat of fear. Viscid blood was pouring from its wounds, steaming like acid as it fell to the snow. Ashurek and Estarinel struck again and again, their axes blazing like suns as Silvren poured sorcery into them.
A Blackbird In Darkness (Book 2) Page 44
