A Blackbird In Darkness (Book 2) (20 page)

‘It is the ultimate test. We have all failed,’ said a voice behind him. Starting violently, he spun round, almost losing his balance on the cliff edge. There were a number of people around him, gazing at him, slowly converging on him. They were men and women of diverse ages, clad in all manner of strange clothes. They all seemed to be of different places and times, certainly not of his world. He could not believe they were real. Yet the woman who had spoken seemed substantial enough.

She had yellow skin and brown almond-shaped eyes. Her dark hair was a wild tangle and she was wearing a long loose garment of purple that spread out like butterfly wings when she opened her arms. The fabric was dusty, threadbare in places.

‘What do you mean? Who are you?’ Estarinel said. He was trembling; he must look mad to them. Yet they showed no consternation at his appearance. He realised that he looked the same as they did; the same tangled hair and despairing eyes.

‘Who we are matters no more than who you are,’ said the woman. Beside her was a young blond man in bronze armour, an old man in a bottle-green robe, an ageing, moustached knight clad in a tabard of tarnished gold, a plump woman in dark blue velvet with her brown hair in two long braids... He counted twenty people in all. And as they surrounded him he felt their sympathy, their sorrow and despair. They offered him no threat. He was one of them. They were accepting him, showing that they understood and shared his misery...

‘Wait,’ he said, stepping backwards to avoid the almond-eyed woman’s touch. ‘I don’t understand you. What do you mean, the ultimate test?’

‘We saw what happened to your horse. The shape-changer drove it over the edge. When they murdered my love, I was steadfast; I thought, I have passed this test. What more can they do? Nothing, I thought. But I was wrong.’

‘You mean – you were all seeking the Silver Staff?’

‘Yes, all,’ said the blond man. ‘And here we have all failed. To think we began as rivals, each with our separate need for the Staff, each thinking his own need more desperate than anyone else’s. Each arrogantly imagining that he could pass the tests! Well, here we are humbled.’

‘Here the Silver Staff mocks our arrogance and our cowardice,’ the butterfly woman said. ‘Now come, walk and talk with us. Whatever you have suffered, we understand. Some of us will have suffered more. And we all understand your failure now. We do not condemn you. The Staff may, but we do not. We are no longer rivals.’

‘No, we are comrades,’ said the blond man.

‘Companions against the Silver Staff that has made us suffer. Companions in our sorrow.’ She took Estarinel’s arm but he resisted. He felt dizzy. Their gentle sympathy and talk of failure were confusing him. He felt that if he mingled with them, went with them, he would go mad.

‘You were all searching,’ he said, waving at the edge of the cliff, ‘but when each of you arrived here, no one dared–’

‘Yes, exactly,’ said the woman. ‘Well, would you have the courage?’

He looked out over the giddying void, the sheer wall of rock, the nothingness beneath. The thought of jumping filled him with a sickening, numbing dread against which he closed his eyes, and clenched his hands until the nails bit into his palms.

‘Don’t look,’ she said. ‘It’s all right. We all know how it feels. No one blames you.’

He wondered which of them had been there the longest, why they had each been seeking the Silver Staff, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask. They were too ordinary, too human. They made him want to weep. He did not want to hear their stories and their needs.

‘Why do you stay here?’ he asked. ‘If you can’t go on, why not go back?’

‘What is there to go back for?’ said the woman in blue velvet, and the others murmured agreement.

‘Better that those we have failed think us dead, than that we return empty-handed,’ the aged knight said morbidly.

‘So we wait here,’ said the old man in green, ‘to comfort such as you.’

‘Let me alone – I need to think,’ said Estarinel, but the woman continued to hang onto his arm.

‘No, you mustn’t be alone – you might go mad.’

‘Nevertheless...’ he shook off her hand, pushed past the others, and ran fifty yards along the cliff-top. He stood there, swaying, aware of those strange, lost people wandering towards him again. He must decide what to do before they reached him and his sympathy for them made him want to stay and help…

Clear of purpose.

Another test.

And again he remembered Calorn’s advice: ‘Do not turn aside.’ And the promise he’d made. And that Shaell would know the way when he did not.

‘What is real here is what you believe...’

Shaell had jumped, showing him the way.

Bravery did not come into his decision. Despair drove him. He had no other choice. Estarinel closed his eyes so that he could not see the breath-stopping sheerness of the cliff wall, nor the dizzying blue void, and made a running dive into the sky.

Calorn was very much alive, and knew nothing of the realistic illusion that Estarinel had seen. She watched him ride away and then turned the impatient Taery Jasmena back into the bushes, never suspecting that anything unusual had appeared to happen.

She returned to the camp. Medrian was close to the fire, her hands clasped round her knees, as if she were freezing cold and had all but given up hope of getting warm. Ashurek, meanwhile, was bridling his mare Vixata.

Calorn greeted him, jumping from Taery’s back. ‘Estarinel is on his way,’ she said. ‘Where are you going?’

He glanced at her, unsmiling. ‘You realise, of course, that we are all unarmed,’ he said. ‘I do not intend to continue any further without a good sword at my side.’

‘Where do you hope to find weaponry?’

He vaulted onto Vixata’s back and answered, ‘We passed some belled goats on our way from the coast. There is certain to be a village or even a town nearby.’

‘Wait,’ Calorn said, unfolding one of her maps. ‘This shows a spot to the south-west of here. It could be a village, although it’s unnamed on the map. They may not have a swordsmith.’

‘They’ll have something.’

‘And how do you propose to purchase or barter for these weapons?’

Ashurek did not reply, and she recalled that he was a figure of fear in Tearn. She was chilled by the idea, and felt obscurely sorry for the people who were soon to encounter him. ‘Do you not want either of us to come with you?’

‘No,’ he replied simply, ‘I am going alone.’

He took the map from Calorn and tucked it through his belt. As he did so, he drew from a pocket the glass phial Setrel had given them, that had proved so helpful in the Dark Regions. He threw it to her. ‘Here, have this damned thing. I don’t want to see it again.’ He nudged Vixata into a trot.

‘Be careful,’ she advised lamely, watching him dwindle into the forest. Calorn looked at the phial, two-thirds full of pale gold powder. She wasn’t sure it was wise for the three of them to separate, but there was no dissuading Ashurek once he’d made a decision. He had a point, it would be better not to continue unarmed.

‘There is the question of hunting, after all,’ Calorn said, half to herself and half to Medrian. ‘The longer you can live on game and save your provisions for the Arctic, the better. Talking of which, I used to improvise an excellent bow when I was younger. If I still have the knack, and if this wood’s whippy enough...’ She was moving along the edge of the clearing, reaching up to test the resilience of the branches. ‘It won’t be very accurate, but it will do its job. We could have rabbit for supper. You know how to use a bow and arrow, don’t you? Medrian?’

There was no reply. Calorn looked at her. Medrian was sitting perfectly still with her knees drawn up, her chin resting on them, her dark hair spread across the grey fabric of her jacket. Her eyes were wide but so dark that for a second, Calorn got the horrible impression that the sockets were empty. She was as pallid as wax and looked as if she had fallen into a trance from staring at the fire.

‘Medrian, you haven’t been well since we left the Blue Plane,’ said Calorn. ‘How can you hope to finish the Quest in this state?’

How can you hope to finish the Quest?
said a taunting voice inside Medrian.

‘And how can any of us help you, if you won’t tell us what’s wrong?’ Calorn continued, feeling at once concerned and exasperated.

Let them help you,
urged the voice. Within her a struggle took place even as she remained impassive to Calorn’s eyes. Something was insidiously encouraging her to let in some kind of emotion – to snap at Calorn, to give way to self-pity, anger, anything. To surrender. Medrian fought strenuously to suppress these dangerous impulses. After a moment she was able to look at Calorn and speak, her voice steady but as dry as a dead leaf with the effort.

‘There’s nothing wrong with me, and no one can help me,’ she said, aware of contradicting herself. ‘I can’t speak of it. Please don’t question me.’

‘Very well... I won’t. I’m sorry.’

‘I’ll help you with the bow, if you show me what to do.’

‘All right.’ Calorn decided it was unwise to persist with questions. She had never met anyone as stubborn, as unfathomable as Medrian; not even Ashurek. Calorn was convinced there was something seriously wrong, and it was terrible to see her battling all alone. Yet Medrian remained adamant that no one could possibly help. Perhaps she was right. Calorn sighed inwardly and turned her mind to the bow. ‘These branches are about the right strength. Can you find a couple of sharp stones so that we can strip the bark?’

They seated themselves by the fire and set to work. Calorn had selected a good length for the bow and some straight twigs for arrows, which they began stripping down to the pale, slippery wood beneath. Medrian continued to respond in monosyllables to anything Calorn said, or not at all. Calorn got the impression that she was not listening, and not even concentrating on what she was doing. At one point the stone slipped and Medrian gashed her finger. Yet she did not seem to notice it, and carried on oblivious to the blood running over her hand.

#

Medrian’s struggle against the Serpent was the worst it had ever been. She had dreaded returning from H’tebhmella to Earth, knowing that as soon as she did so, the Worm’s mind – or that cognizant part of its being that resembled a mind – would resume its place within her own. But if she had known just how horrific that experience was actually going be, she felt that she would never, ever have had the courage to leave the Blue Plane.

She had stood on the deck of
The Star of Filmoriel
, watching the gleaming blue lake drift by on either side, her whole body held rigid against the apprehension that gripped her. She felt her freedom leaking away like a glistening, precious raindrop becoming pear-shaped, stretching and stretching yet taking forever to fall... She had the illusion that time itself was elongating so that every second was twice as long as the last and her freedom would surely never be stolen from her...

Then she saw the sea turn grey. And in a split second the Worm was back. She thought she had been ready, braced grimly for the shock. But nothing could have prepared her for this. As it plunged raging into her skull, the wall she had so painstakingly built to protect herself was demolished. She was defenceless. Grey, scaly, writhing, it filled her senses and her thoughts. Every nerve-ending in her body felt swollen as if her own form had suddenly become gross, Worm-like. There was a leaden weight pressing down on her skull. She was struggling, choking, retching, as if her lungs were full of viscid smoke.

The Serpent’s un-human emotions swamped her as she stood helpless on the deck of the Star. She was shrinking before that vista of desolation and anguish, until her own mind was no more than a tiny, wounded thing, like a bird with broken wings, fluttering helplessly against the leaden mass that was crushing her.

She was suffocating in its rage and its hate. Hate, overwhelming in its intensity, a tearing scream that reverberated along an infinite grey tunnel from the past and into the future, tormented, inconsolable, unceasing. There was nothing else. No hope, no future, only mindless, colourless hate made into a physical thing from which she shrank, weeping with revulsion.

She could not stand it.

Mindlessly, desperate to escape into death, she was suddenly running like a madwoman towards the side of the ship. The sea lurched up towards her, promising to swallow her into blissful oblivion – then the rail caught her across the stomach, and she hung there, unable to move.

However unbearable this nightmare, there could be no simple escape into death. The Serpent would not let her die. It was laughing at her efforts.

Two tiny, black thoughts came into her mind, as wretched and frail as crushed feathers. One was: how have I lived with this all my life? And the other was: if only I had killed myself in Forluin, while I had the chance...

She had no awareness of Estarinel pulling her back onto the deck. She only knew that she was fighting as desperately as a drowning man in a freezing cold sea. The Serpent had what it wanted: control of her. And now it would begin to take revenge for all the wrongs she had perpetrated against it over the years.

But Medrian had not spent all those years defying M’gulfn for nothing. Somewhere in her being her iron determination remained intact, a small, clear voice calling in the centre of a storm. It told her that she needed something to anchor her to reality: physical pain.

It was despair that gave her enough fragile control to ask Ashurek for a sharp implement. Grimly, she held on to that control as if clinging to the edge of a precipice by her fingers, her whole body in spasms of exertion. And slowly, the simple, blissful pain of the blade incising her flesh brought her back to herself and, inch by inch, forced back the Serpent.

It was so hard, harder than it had ever been before. The further away she forced it, the more viciously it fought. But the excruciating pain of her arm kept her will intact.

Gradually she became reaccustomed to the horror of the Worm’s being. Every gruesome aspect of its amorphous, monstrous psyche became once more familiar to her. Strange, that familiarity... she had never been aware of it before. Neither had she realised how deeply ingrained was the feeling of icy coldness that now permeated her brain, slowly numbing her emotions. Fear, revulsion, desire for escape were all frozen until her mind resembled an Arctic wilderness. M’gulfn was separate from her. The mental wall, like a great glacier, had been rebuilt against it. As long as she felt nothing, the Serpent could not touch her.

Yet her control was more fragile than it had been before they’d gone to the Blue Plane. She could feel the Worm writhing against the wall, shattering holes in it and lunging at her with its malevolent thoughts. She found it a constant battle to keep the barrier intact, one that eroded her strength and exhausted her mentally and physically.

Why was it so much harder?

It would have been better if she had never gone to H’tebhmella, let alone Forluin. That blissful, tormenting experience of freedom had affected her more deeply than she had feared. Emotion had always been the danger, and now, thanks to her insane surrender, the self-containment that sustained her whole existence had been damaged. It was almost the same as surrendering to M’gulfn. I knew this would happen, she thought. I knew – and still I did not take heed! I might as well have given in to M’gulfn in Alaak, and never begun the Quest...

There was something else. The Serpent was angry with her. Its anger was as devastating as its hate, and that alone kept it lashing at her when ordinarily it would have subsided into a sullen torpor.

It was the personal quality of its anger that revolted her. Sometimes it left her so sickened that it took all her will to fight an impulse to wrap her arms around her head and scream. There was only one way she could define the emotion: jealousy.

Now, as she sat by the fire with Calorn, the struggle continued. She was grateful for the bow to work on, because it helped to concentrate her mind. Yet she could feel the tremor in her hands, and kept finding herself staring at them as if they did not belong to her – oscillating white things outlined by red firelight. She knew how strained and ill she must look to the others; perhaps they thought she was losing her mind. There was nothing she could do about it. At least Estarinel was respecting her need to be left alone – she dared not spare a single thought for him – but Calorn’s warmth and concern made her feel there was a black abyss yawning at her feet, and it would be easiest to jump screaming into the darkness...

She could not deny it. She was losing her self-control. Every day it grew more tenuous, as if the glacier to which she clung was gradually slipping away from her. Her whole body ached with the cold, but she dared not let go. Had she been able to acknowledge any emotion, she would have found that she was terrified.

Even when she slept, she was continually haunted by phantasms and could find no peace. She and the Serpent shared each other’s dreams. Then they did not fight, but drifted together through torpid nightmares, sometimes towards a grey shape that filled her with dread of ever reaching it; sometimes towards a small, bright-eyed, brown and gold creature that was the embodiment of life, but which filled the Serpent with such loathing that it flooded Medrian too. These nightmares were worse than the waking conflict.

Now that its initial fury had subsided, it spoke to her. It did not use words as such, yet the meaning of its thoughts was as sharp and precise as a snake’s fangs, curved and glutinous with venom, striking repeatedly into her brain.

How dare you?
it said.
How dare you go to that place where you knew I could not follow? The part of me that lives in you was left in limbo. Limbo, vile nothingness. For that, I cannot let you go unpunished, Medrian. And for denying me, for hiding your thoughts, for setting out upon this evil Quest, you must be punished also.

‘And how will you punish me?’ Medrian asked.

By defeating you. By possessing you
, the Worm answered simply.
By whatever means will hurt you the most. Hosts have rebelled against me before; you are not the first. But none has prevailed.

‘I know,’ she said. She had the miserable stories of all those hosts imprinted on her memory.