A Blackbird In Darkness (Book 2) (38 page)

‘Miril, Miril,’ he uttered, tears falling from his eyes like blood. ‘What am I to do?’

‘Beautiful was I when I guarded the Egg-Stone, beautiful as the glad day with the joy of protecting your world from it,’ her sweet voice lilted, infinitely sad. ‘Oh, unhappy was the day when you took the Egg-Stone from me, for all was as I forewarned: the Earth was bathed in blood and pain and the sweetest of lands was fouled and the world rushes to its sad, sick end.

‘And deprived of joy, my golden feathers have withered to black, and hope has been lost, and the Worm pursues me through the darkness. Here have I mourned, and sung out my sorrow, and waited. I have waited for you, Ashurek, waited to be reunited with the Egg-Stone so that my pain may end.’

‘Miril – I no longer have the Egg-Stone,’ he rasped, flooded by sudden dread.

‘Ah – I know, I know. For if you still had it, you would never have come looking for me. Nevertheless, it must be found and I must be reunited with it, for it is a little piece of the Worm, and as long as it exists, the Worm will never truly die.’

‘It cannot be found,’ Ashurek said faintly. ‘It was lost in a volcano. It is gone from my life for ever.’

MiriI stretched out her wings and sang in her lovely, sad tone, ‘Gone from your life forever? Just to speak its name is to remember its look, its feel, its power, and the agony it causes. Gone? Gone?’

‘Yes, you are right!’ he cried, tormented. ‘But it cannot be recovered, never. You can’t ask me to go looking for it–’

‘Hush, be still,’ she trilled softly, resting her beak on his hand like a healing jewel. ‘That will not be necessary. All is not lost.’

‘Is it not? Miril, slaying the Worm will mean destroying the Earth. This is the culmination of the evil through which I have worked hand-in-glove with the Serpent to corrupt the world. Perhaps M’gulfn relies upon me turning aside at the last moment and abandoning the Earth to its rule. Or perhaps it revels in the knowledge that when it dies, all other life will die too. I know not. How can you tell me that all is not lost?’

‘Ah, Ashurek,’ Miril sang sadly. ‘You have found me – but have you found me?’

‘I don’t know how to find you,’ he admitted gruffly, forcing himself to look into her liquid, honest eye. ‘Tell me.’

‘I will frame the question, but you must know the answer,’ said she. ‘My name is more than Hope. My true name is something deeper and stronger than Hope, and when you understand what it is, then you will have found me. When first you saw me, what did you see?’

‘My guilt.’

‘Yes, but that was only the first step. Now you must cease to let it torment you, for who is helped by your guilt?’

‘It is not supposed to help anyone,’ he replied through gritted teeth.

‘Then is it driving you to put right what you have done wrong? Ah, no, it drives you to destroy, for you believe that only an ultimate fire can burn out your guilt, relieve your torment.’

‘Yes. That is what I believe,’ he forced himself, bitterly, to admit.

Miril rustled her wings, and her voice was stridently, piercingly beautiful. ‘Then I will tell you that it is not so. The last step is to take responsibility, which is a very different thing from guilt. The world need not die. But you must let go of your guilt, and learn to place trust in those who know my true name, and let them guide you to the Quest’s end.’

‘You mean Estarinel and Medrian?’

‘Yes. The Quest devolves equally upon all three of you.’

‘I have not put trust in them, it’s true,’ he said quietly. ‘I felt I dared not rely on anyone but myself.’

‘And for that you forsook every tender feeling that might have turned you aside from your doom?’

‘Yes. How do you know these things?’

‘Ah, Ashurek, I once told you; I know everyone, I can read your eyes and your heart,’ Miril sang gently. ‘Yet when you trusted Estarinel and Medrian so little that you would have killed them, you did not. Why did you stay your hand?’

‘Because I am not yet wholly evil, I suppose,’ he said mordantly. ‘I don’t know. I could not. It must have been some remnant of compassion.’

The sweet dark bird turned her head to one side and looked at him enquiringly. And at last he understood. ‘Ah, you have found me, you have spoken my name, and I have never been truly lost to you, after all. Can you yet believe that there may be a gentler way to complete the Quest?’

He nodded, his throat aching as if stuck through with knives.

‘Then believe me when I say that only compassion can truly win. Not guilt, not heartless, blind ruthlessness. Only compassion. And above all, Ashurek, before the end you must learn to spare some mercy for yourself.’

‘I cannot – not as long as Silvren remains in the Dark Regions,’ he grated. ‘Miril, the Shana have almost destroyed her, made her think she is evil. I’ve lost faith in my ability to help her. Is there nothing you can do?’

‘Alas, I cannot go to her. Only if she were to feel a little hope for herself, my spirit might enter even the Dark Regions.’

‘No one could feel hope there!’ he exclaimed bitterly.

‘Still she must find hope in her own way, as must everyone,’ Miril answered sorrowfully.

‘She’d even lost faith that killing the Worm was the right thing to do. Miril…’

‘Ah, no more questions now. It is enough,’ she sang, ‘enough that you have found me again. We must go back to your companions now, and then will I answer your doubt. Come, Ashurek, let me perch on your hand, and I will guide you.’

No. Not there – not to her. I hate her – loathe her – she is poison to me. I forbid it – I will not let you go there
.

The Serpent raged within Medrian, on and on, like a thrashing grey sea continuing to pitch the body of a drowning man long after he has ceased struggling. Its fear was her fear, vast and extreme, like the terror she had shared in its nightmares, but this was infinitely worse. The remembered fear had only been a pale shadow of this.

The Serpent loathed and dreaded Miril.

M’gulfn had nearly possessed Medrian at the waterfall, and since then her control had been slipping inexorably, day by day. There were blanks in her memory; she could not remember walking over the tundra for two days. She could hardly recall being stung by the plant or crossing the sulphurous lake. Her only vague memory of that time was of being someone else – still the Serpent’s host – but someone who staggered on fractured limbs while the Serpent’s mockery seared her flesh like a brand. Defeated and weeping with humiliation... but it had only been a glimpse of a previous host’s life, brought on by fever... or by M’gulfn’s will, as a warning. When she had awoken at Estarinel’s side, she had known, instantly, that her precious wall of ice and steel was gone at last.

And yet... M’gulfn lay quiescent. It made no attempt to intrude upon her thoughts, though it could have ravaged her mind on a whim. It was laughing at her.
See, my Medrian, I have won. I do not even need to torment you. Your last defence against me is gone. And soon, very soon, you will be mine. There will be no warning... you must understand that every action you undertake of your own volition is by my grace only. When the time is ripe, I will enter your thoughts like a whisper. I will become you. It is almost over.

And with these words echoing venomously in her head, she had stood up like an automaton, and fought the flying things, and run to the Glass City, and listened to Hranna, all the time feeling her inward decay and defeat permeating outwards through her body. It was as if something had laid an egg in her flesh at birth, and from it a maggot had hatched and all this time it had been growing, feeding on her from within, so that now, all that was left of her was a tenuous outermost skin, and in one mouthful the Worm would swallow that skin, and she would be gone, and there would be only a grotesque, bloated monster in her place.

And there was nothing, nothing she could do to fight the feeling. Tearing her apart was the most awful knowledge of all – that if she had not surrendered to her feelings for Estarinel in Forluin, she would never have become so weak. Their love for each other had betrayed them both, and the Serpent was laughing at her.

So, my Medrian, you are no more than human after all. Almost over...

Ashurek was right. They should have left her behind. But that would not really have helped them, since the Serpent could motivate her to do exactly as it wished. Once it decided to make its move they would be as defenceless against it as she was. Even if she could have warned them, it would be futile.

Almost –

Then, suddenly, out of nowhere – the Serpent’s awareness that Miril was on the Black Plane, and the Entrance Point hanging in the air before them. Its terror filled her like vertigo; she felt the emotion discolouring her face and crabbing her hands. Her whole body became nerveless and weak. As violently as she desired to break away from Estarinel, she could not. Horror filled her like a torrent of viscous acid, bearing her mind away with it. It flooded her lungs and it overflowed and surrounded her. She was suffocating in a thick lake that stretched in every direction to the end of the universe: She had no self, but then, neither did M’gulfn. Together, they had become one amorphous mass of fear.

She saw nothing of the Black Plane. She did not hear a word that the nemen said. She knew nothing of the flight in the sphere. All she knew was a terrible, measured pounding like the footsteps of a malevolent giant approaching, slow but unstoppable, from a great distance. And each beat sent ripples through the lake of fear, shockwaves that filled Medrian-M’gulfn with an excruciating discomfort that was worse than physical.

Each beat was louder and more terrible than the last. Miril was drawing nearer and nearer.
I hate her, don’t make me–

And suddenly Miril was there, a silver-gold fire of unbearable sweetness. She instilled the Serpent with the same dread and disgust that it inspired in humans. Theirs was the repulsion of opposites, for she made the Serpent look where it could not bear to look.

Now Miril’s breast was pressed to that of M’gulfn-Medrian, and at the touch the Serpent recoiled, screaming its cosmic abhorrence and misery. It contracted like an amoeba. From being a mass of fear filling the universe, it continued to shrink inside Medrian, falling away into a void until it was but a speck, a mindless mote of terror. And Medrian fell with it, helpless, until at last she was in the centre of a gentle, quiet darkness. Here she found release from torment and, for once, dreamless sleep.

#

Estarinel felt horribly alone on the Black Plane, frantic with apprehension at Ashurek’s disappearance. Somewhere behind him were the nemen. He could hear them talking, their melodious voices chillingly calm as they debated Miril’s nature and other abstract topics. He didn’t trust them not to get tired of waiting and silently abandon them to the darkness.

After about an hour, although it seemed to Estarinel four times longer, he saw Ashurek approaching. His first reaction was overwhelming relief and not a little anger. His second was amazement that he could see the Gorethrian. A faint silver radiance glowed round him, emitting from the small bird perched on his right hand.

‘Miril,’ Estarinel gasped, feeling an urge to weep. Somehow, the idea of finding her had been totally abstract to him. He had never expected it to be so literal, so heartrendingly real.

But her feathers were black – not tawny-gold.

He stood holding Medrian’s arm, watching as Ashurek and Miril came slowly towards them. And when they reached Estarinel at last, neither of them felt able to say a word. Even the nemen fell silent.

‘Estarinel,’ Miril chirped, flying to him. ‘You know me, you know my name.’

‘Yes,’ he whispered. ‘You’ve helped me so many times.’

‘You understand that I was not destroyed, only lost. I am recreated in the hearts of men with each new sunrise, when they hear the piercing sweetness of the dawn chorus, and know that the previous night’s darkness was not the whole truth of the world. And I give myself wholly again and again, for as long as life endures – but only where I am wanted.’

‘Here you are wanted and desperately needed, Miril,’ said Estarinel, tentatively stroking her silky head. ‘Ashurek said your feathers were golden. Why are they so dark?’

‘Sorrow had taken my colour. Only when this world reaches the sunrise beyond this night will I find my true appearance again,’ she sang. ‘Estarinel, you know love and compassion, but do you know that there is a difference between them?’

‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

She replied, ‘Love may be selfish, but compassion is not. Remember this.’

She touched his hand with her beak and then flew to Medrian. She settled on her cloak and at once Medrian uttered a gasp and fell to the ground.

For a long time Miril remained over her heart, uttering soft, sorrowful cheeps. Presently she said, ‘Ah, alas, Medrian cannot hear me. But she will be well. When she awakes, tell her these words. She believes that her feelings are a despicable weakness, but it is not so. They will be her strength.’

Then she flew back to Ashurek’s hand, and said, ‘Ashurek, you spoke to me of Silvren’s doubt that it was right to continue the Quest. Do you share this doubt?’

‘Naturally,’ he answered quietly. ‘She was the only human who ever inspired me with faith, rather than cynicism. If she doubts, so do I.’