A Blackbird In Darkness (Book 2) (56 page)

‘Yes, but he talks to you, doesn’t he?’ Falin asked.

‘Oh yes, he talks to me,’ Lilithea replied, an almost bitter note in her voice. ‘I think I know almost everything that happened. They had a dreadful time of it.’

‘He feels that his experiences have set him apart from us.’

‘Yes. But is he going to feel apart from us forever? If so, he’ll never be happy.’

‘And neither will you,’ Falin said gently, taking her hand.

Lili was silent for a moment. Then she said, ‘I know about Medrian. It’s all right, I understand why you didn’t tell me when he came back that time. I told E’rinel – and I meant it – that I would have loved her if I’d known her. And if she had come back with him, and he’d been happy, then I would have accepted it and been happy too. But she’s dead. Is he going to mourn her forever?’ She paused, biting her lip. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. But do you know how wretched it is to love someone who looks on you as – as a sister?’

Falin shook his head, trying not to smile. ‘Why don’t you tell him?’

‘I couldn’t. I shouldn’t have to.’

‘That’s not necessarily true. He gave me the same advice himself once, about Arlena. “Don’t tell me, tell her.”‘

‘But you were just being circumspect. This is different. Oh, I couldn’t tell him. It would make things worse. He would be forced to say that he doesn’t love me, and then I would be less than a sister to him. I’d have to go away.’ She looked up at Falin, her large eyes at once dark and bright. ‘Perhaps that would be for the best. To carry on like this is unbearable.’

#

Spring came, and the grass grew lush and the trees heavy with, blossom. Their branches were filled with nests and chirping fledglings apparently overnight. No foals were born that year, but there were many more lambs and smaller animals than they could have hoped for.

Yet to Estarinel, the life and beauty all around him made it more intolerable than ever that Medrian had had to die in that lonely, frozen wasteland. He looked on the happiness of others and felt objectively glad for them; he would not have wished things otherwise. But inside he felt cold and dark, as if nothing of Forluin could ever touch him or warm him again.

That spring, Falin and Arlena were handfasted at last, in the simple Forluinish Ceremony of Flowers, followed by a day of riotous celebration. Amid the rejoicing, Estarinel thought, I would have undergone the Quest a hundred times over for this. This makes everything worthwhile, this is what it was all for. But at every joyous sight – Falin and Arlena dancing past him, dressed in green, white and gold, his mother and Lothwyn laughing as they deluged the couple with blossom – he could not stop himself from wishing that Medrian had been there to share it. Every moment of sweetness brought its sibling, a cold stab of pain.

When the wedding was over he felt that he must be on his own for a time, before the contrast between his family’s joy and his own inner coldness drove him mad. He decided to walk to the Vale of Motha, a journey of several days, to fetch Shaell and Vixata.

To his surprise, Lilithea asked if she could go with him. ‘I was going to go on my own, but…’ he paused, reconsidering. Perhaps it was not good to be alone, and of all people, he found Lilithea’s quiet company the most soothing. ‘Yes, I would prefer it if you came as well,’ he said.

They wore the common garb of Forluinish farmers, brown breeches and soft boots, sleeveless jerkins belted over wide-sleeved white shirts, blue-grey cloaks. They took nothing with them, for every traveller in Forluin received hospitality wherever they went, and at this time of year it was no hardship to sleep in the open.

Lilithea had lost the strained, ill look that she’d had when he had first returned from H’tebhmella. Her delicate-featured face had regained its healthy colour and she was once more slender rather than thin. The spring sunshine lent a golden lustre to the rich bronze-brown of her hair.

Their walk took them through glorious woods and soft valleys. The last time they’d passed this way together had been just after the Serpent’s attack, when a grey haze had hung in the air like death. Now, all was green-gold and fresh, as Forluin should be. At first Estarinel thought Lilithea was so quiet because she was awed by this joyous contrast. Presently he realised that she was not so much silent as uncharacteristically morose, even tense. He asked her if anything was wrong.

‘I am worried about you. You are not happy,’ she replied.

‘What makes you say that?’ he asked. ‘Forluin will soon be whole again. How could I not be happy?’

‘The way you ask me that betrays you!’ Lilithea exclaimed. ‘Where are you, E’rinel? You are not with us. You are with strangers in distant landscapes. Somewhere I can’t reach.’

Her words startled him, and he was quiet for a moment. He answered in a low voice, ‘I can’t help it, Lili. I’m not the same person I was. Part of me died with Medrian.’

‘But you are still alive. Are you going to stay in the cold forever, only half-living? How can that help Medrian?’

‘It’s not that simple. Yes, I feel apart. I no longer feel truly Forluinish. They want to call me a “hero” but that is false. They don’t know of the times I almost ran away, the blood on my hands–’

‘And they call me a healer,’ she said harshly, ‘but that is false too. There are some things I cannot heal, E’rinel.’ She strode ahead of him so he could not see her tears, but he caught her up.

‘Lili, don’t worry about me,’ he said, cursing himself for having upset her. ‘I am all right, really. It’s enough for me to see others happy.’

‘Do I look happy?’ she burst out. He stopped and stared at her. In the silence some young thrushes began to sing in the trees around them.

‘Lili, what is wrong?’ he asked concernedly.

‘You’re breaking my heart!’ she cried. She had been so determined to stay calm, but she had failed. ‘You say you’re not the same person. Well, none of us are. You’re far away in some bleak and miserable place and you don’t want to come back because you think only Medrian and Ashurek could understand you, and they are gone. But you are not unique! The Serpent happened to all of us! I was with you, don’t you remember? When it came, and we ran across the valley and saw it lying on Falin’s house. It was me with you!’

‘Yes – yes I know–’ Estarinel floundered.

‘And while you were away, I have been here trying to cure people of the Worm-sent illnesses, and failing, and watching them die. How do I know if I tried hard enough? I may have more blood on my hands than you. You are not the only one who has suffered. We have to go on living! It’s a sin not to! E’rinel, you’re giving up, you’re frightened to care about anything. Would Medrian have wanted you to give up? Did she die so that you could stop caring? Oh,’ she turned away from him, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t – please forget I said all that.’

‘Lili, I have never, ever known you to get upset like this before,’ he said, shaken. ‘Now I am as worried about you as you are about me; I’ve missed something, or I’m being very stupid… What is it, really?’

‘Isn’t it obvious? How long have you known me?’

‘Since we were six or seven…’

‘And why do you think I stayed in the cottage when my family moved away, instead of going with them? It wasn’t that I thought myself indispensable to the village.’

‘But you are,’ he put in quietly. She hardly heard him.

‘I stayed, because I loved you, the brother I didn’t have… but I’m not a child any more. I still love you. The reason I never handfasted was not for want of opportunity. I hoped – if you knew how much I have missed you, feared for you – E’rinel, I can’t bear being no more than a sister to you. Perhaps I’m wrong to want more. Oh, I swore I would never tell you this.’ With an effort she composed herself and said calmly, ‘It’s because I love you and you don’t love me that I can’t stay with you. Let the village find another healer. I can’t even heal myself.’

She turned away and began to walk slowly back the way they had come. Estarinel knew she was leaving him, but for a few moments he could not move. What Lilithea said was true.
The Serpent happened to all of us
. And he’d taken her for granted, because she had always been there, like Arlena and Lothwyn, but that did not mean he didn’t care about her, or that he wanted her to go. The Serpent should have taught him never to take anything or anyone for granted again. What a fool he had been, not to realise–

She was almost out of sight, her slender figure and waist-length bronze hair vanishing among the trees, when he began to run after her. He reached her, caught her arm so she had to face him.

‘Lili, I do love you. Why do you think you’re the only one I’ve told everything to? Why do I seek your company when I don’t want to be with anyone else?’

‘I really don’t know!’ she replied acerbically. ‘Because I am a good listener? There can’t be any other reason.’

‘Then listen to me now. We’ve always been friends and I’ve always loved you. But I didn’t know that you felt like this. It’s not that I don’t – oh, never mind.’ He stopped trying to explain and kissed her instead, not in a brotherly way but long and deeply on the mouth. She was so startled she almost jumped out of his arms. Then she pressed her slim body to his and responded, amazed.

‘I shouldn’t have said those awful things,’ she whispered eventually.

‘But they were true. I have been selfish and blind. Everyone’s been too kind to me. I needed you to shout at me, to bring me back to my senses.’ He smiled at her, and she realised that she had not seen him smile as if he meant it since the day of the Worm’s attack, more than eighteen months before. ‘I am not the only one guilty of isolating myself, Lili. Do you know that as long as I’ve known you this is the first time you’ve told me what you really feel?’

‘Yes, I know. We are both to blame in our way.’ She looked warmly at him. He wondered how he could ever have missed plain adoration in her eyes.

‘If you still mean to leave me, I deserve it,’ he said. ‘But please stay with me, Lili. If – well, I have nightmares sometimes. If you can bear that, please stay.’

‘I can bear it,’ she answered, and kissed him again.

#

They had fetched Shaell and Vixata and were on their way home again, several days later, when they saw her. They had spent the night in a wood, resting in the friendly shelter of trees. Estarinel and Lilithea were lying in each other’s arms on a bank of soft grass, while the horses grazed nearby. It was just dawn; soft light was filtering through the mass of young leaves, but the undergrowth was still deep in shadow. Lilithea was asleep, but Estarinel was in that pleasant state of being half-awake where all thoughts seemed limpid and painless.

Because of Lilithea, he had begun to feel that he belonged in Forluin again. She had brought him back to reality, shown him that the future was not to be feared. The Serpent had changed Forluin forever; nothing could be the same again… but it could be better.

He had wept in Lilithea’s arms that first night, as he had not wept since Medrian died. And he knew that he would perhaps never cease to dream of Medrian, and wake up crying out with the memory clutching his heart with an ice-cold gauntlet, but at least there would be Lili to bring him back to the present, make him forget. It was not that he loved Medrian less; rather, he loved Lilithea as much. There was nothing strange in this. No Forluinish man or woman believed that one love excluded all others.

It was as he lay there, gazing sleepily through the misty wood, that he saw the figure. The tree trunks were myriad shades of grey in the half-light. Yet clearly, as if she shone with a light of her own, he saw a woman walking between the trees.

She was small and slim with long black hair and she was clad in a white robe. Over it she wore a shimmering cloak of pale gold, and there were blue flowers glowing in her hair, their petals like glass. A corona of misty light enveloped her, and Estarinel knew that she was only a phantasm, but all the same she seemed vividly real.

She walked slowly through the trees until she drew level with him, and then she turned to face him, her face radiant. He was afraid he would wake up if he tried to move, so he lay utterly still, gazing at her without even trying to speak. It was the strangest dream about Medrian he had ever had, the first one that had not been acutely painful.

‘I had a nightmare,’ Medrian said. ‘A terrible, impossible nightmare that an ancient being lay coiled about the Earth and coiled within me at the same time. And everything the being touched turned cold and grey until the whole world became desolate. And I lay stained with blood and tears, alone in my pain, because I was that being, and although my existence was unbearable it was also eternal. And in this nightmare I witnessed horrors too great for any human to bear…

‘But it was only a dream. Someone who loved me more than I could have guessed woke me gently, and I saw that it had only been a nightmare after all, something that could never have happened, something that was over and forgotten. Then I smiled at my fretful dreams, and I rose and walked out into the light.’

For the space of three heartbeats she looked straight at him, her eyes no longer full of shadow but clear as starlight. Then she turned and went on her way through the trees.

Estarinel wanted to call out to her, but the words would not leave his throat. Trails of light lingered in the trees after she had passed out of sight… He realised that they were just wisps of mist, catching the first faint sunlight. Somewhere a bird began to sing, the first blackbird of dawn, an exquisite liquid melody that seemed to lift all the sadness from him.