A Blackbird In Silver (Book 1) (36 page)

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The guards had dragged Estarinel along a labyrinth of corridors, down steep, perilous stairs, to a small, damp cell lit by a dying torch. For a while he thought that, out of the sight of their master, they were going to show him mercy. They let him sit down and gave him water to drink. But as soon as he had finished it, they seized him, roaring with mocking laughter.

‘Let us see what fevers that swamp-bilge will give you!’

They twisted wires around his wrists and tied him to rings on the wall. They extinguished the torch, and ignoring his entreaties to know where Medrian was, left him in the cold, suffocating darkness.

He slumped against the wall but with his arms bound painfully above his head, and he could not move. He swallowed against the tightness of his throat, thinking, I’ve never before wept out of fear, only for my country. How do I find courage now?

He felt he had no courage at all, and that if he had known the Quest was going to end in darkness and sickness and dread, he would never have set out. Despair possessed him, not only for his own situation, and the impossibility of helping Medrian and Ashurek, but for the whole world. It was all swamped in sickness and evil; attempting to destroy the evil ended in pain and death. He thought of his mother’s sorrow if she could see him now. And he thought of his beloved sisters, Arlena and Lothwyn, and of Falin and Lilithea, and all the others he so loved. Forluin seemed like a dream now, a perfect green jewel that could never have existed.

A persistent faint scratching penetrated the feverish twilight in which he drifted. He shuddered and recoiled, for it sounded like a rat’s claws on the flagstones. Or was it some worse creature, some thing of the Serpent? Yet it also, ridiculously, sounded like a bird hopping about.

‘It’s all right, it’s all right,’ a ghost of a voice lilted in birdsong. ‘You’ve forgotten again, haven’t you?’ Then Estarinel’s feverish dream continued, but his body became numb of pain and his thoughts clear as crystal. Forluin was real, and other lovely things were too… the Blue Plane was real. ‘Where are you, O Lady of H’tebhmella?’ he cried. It emerged as a whisper. ‘You said you would help us!’

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At last, the demon Siregh-Ma itself appeared to Gastada, alone in one of his cave-dank rooms. It laughed as it told him the news. ‘Your three prisoners made a bargain with me to de-animate your army of corpses. I did so, and you have lost Excarith! Their energy was delicious.’

Gastada became demented. His round, ugly head swayed on its insect-thin neck and his eyes were wild. The demon had betrayed him; it had delayed the information, and it had the cheek to bring the news itself. And worse, now probably Arlenmia would send her own messengers there and control Excarith, the filthy witch. Dancing with murderous anger, Gastada threw everything he could lay his hands on at the demon, but the silver figure simply shook with mirth as the missiles passed through it.

When Gastada’s fury had exhausted itself, Siregh-Ma said, ‘However, to make up in some way for my appalling behaviour, I bear some information concerning the loathsome woman Medrian…’ The demon explained in careful detail as Gastada listened, his face twisting with various emotions.

Then the demon left, saying as it departed, ‘Don’t fear that Arlemma will seize Excarith. She is putting a far greater design into motion!’

‘What?’ Gastada spluttered, but the silver creature had gone. He was trembling with fury still, but now it was all focused into one ghastly purpose.

He had lost interest in Ashurek. He had never had any in Estarinel. But Medrian, now, held endless possibilities for venting his rage and malice.

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Many miles away, in the House of Rede at the South Pole, Eldor put his head in his hands. The great frame of the sage shook with exhaustion, and his wife, Dritha, watched him sadly. She looked equally tired, her silver hair dishevelled.

‘I shall have to start turning them away,’ Eldor said sadly. ‘How can I? We call this a House where anyone can come for any reason, but it isn’t true, there just isn’t room for everyone!’

‘The other Guardians would say they told us so,’ said Dritha. ‘They never approved of this House, after all.’

‘Well, it’s too late for them to say anything! We are involved in human affairs too deeply to desert the world now.’

Over the past few weeks, refugees had been pouring into the southern continent from Tearn and the Empire, with tales of fierce fighting, demonic animals, and weird happenings of nature.

‘It seems to me the Earth has fallen through a hole in space and landed in hell,’ said one dark-skinned man of Vardrav. ‘Everything is falling apart! We always cursed Ashurek and his armies, but things are worse since he vanished – the Gorethrians have gone mad and so have the rest of us – it’s anarchy. And as for the volcano…’

A shipload of fearful people had come from the Empire, saying that they had seen ‘a golden bird in flames, falling from the sky’. One old woman still babbled that she had seen the death of hope and the end of the world. Others had come, saying that the ocean had frozen down to the north coast of the Empire, and that evil creatures of the Arctic stalked the lands, devouring people. And in Tearn, equally terrible events were taking place: senseless fighting, roving bands of savage wolves or bears, appearances of demons, plagues and countless other afflictions.

The people who had come to Eldor were only those few who had had the presence of mind to remember him and had managed to find ships to take them to the House of Rede. Even so, there were hundreds, filling the house and camping all over the cold hills round the valley.

They were afraid. He saw and felt their fear every day, and it was an ever-increasing, terrible burden. There was so little he could say.

‘It is the doing of the Serpent M’gulfn,’ he would try to explain. ‘Three people have gone to slay it. That’s all I can tell you.’

‘What if they fail?’ said one refugee.

‘I thought you were a sage,’ said another. Usually, though, they listened in silence, taking comfort from his presence, putting their burden of fear onto him.

Alone, he told Dritha, ‘I’m very worried. I’ve meditated and scried, but I can divine no news of them. It’s as if they left our shores and passed into a void.’

‘They never reached the Blue Plane, I know,’ Dritha said grimly. ‘We cannot have sent them to their deaths, can we? There cannot be so little hope?’

‘No,’ he tried to reassure her. ‘Dritha, the Guardians have summoned us. Even without knowledge of the three, we must ready ourselves to go and perform our task.’

‘Yes, blindfold,’ she stated with irony. ‘Although the other Guardians treat us as outcasts, and will not tell us what the great design is that they have set in motion, still they need us to help them!’

‘We are still Guardians,’ he reminded her gently, ‘and you know that while we are on the same Earth as the Serpent, even we cannot be allowed to know their plan, lest M’gulfn find out.’

‘I know,’ she sighed. ‘Beloved Eldor, I am not going.’ He started to protest but she silenced him. ‘Once you have that knowledge, you will not be allowed back on Earth – at least, not until the Worm is dead. Someone has to stay with the people at this House. I am only a Grey One, not even human – but I care.’

Eldor knew that once Dritha had made a decision she would not be swayed.

‘So be it,’ he said gravely. ‘I will go alone – but not totally without hope.’ They regarded each other sadly. For only a few evenings more would they sit together by the fireside. Eldor’s gaze moved to the tapestry of the bird. These days he looked at it more and more often.

‘Ah, always the blackbird,’ Dritha murmured. ‘The lost bird and the forgotten song.’

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There were two figures in a low chamber like a mausoleum. One was bound by hands and ankles to a purpose-built stone post: a small, slender, upright figure who stood motionless, like wind-carved ice. The other was thin, grotesque, manically active.

‘I know all about you, little Medrian, and your foolish, wicked activities,’ Gastada whispered, his voice soft as mould.

‘I think you know nothing at all,’ she answered icily.

‘Wretched woman! I am now going to teach you something very important: justice.’ Sickly torchlight flickered on his sneering face and terrible eyes. ‘I would not torture Ashurek; just for him to know will never escape again is perfect justice. And the Forluinishman, for him to find that life is not all joy as he ends his days in darkness, that is perfect justice. But Medrian, what is perfect justice for you?’

He grasped a needle with a fine wire thread and held it up so it caught the faint light. Medrian thought, there is no escape, I am afraid; here it all ends, in darkness, as I knew it would.

‘Justice,’ Gastada whispered on. ‘I am going to close your mouth so that you may never speak of who you are, or ask for help in your wicked, evil intentions. You shall be silent and invisible, as you were meant to be.’ He sneered in triumph, but Medrian was smiling.

‘You laugh!’ he exclaimed thickly. ‘You have something to say, perhaps? Speak! It is your last chance!’ That she had made him suddenly uneasy was obvious. Her eyes were dark and fathomless in her frost-pale face, and her hair was a black flame. The sight of her, her cold, humourless laughter, filled him with disproportionate fury. He was trembling.

‘You are a damned fool,’ was all she said.

Then she closed her eyes and rested her head back against the post, waiting for the torture to commence.

#

Ashurek knew Gastada had lost interest in him when he felt the demonic force that had kept him alive waning. His wounds were not healing, and he was weak with loss of blood and hunger. Alone in a black, stinking corridor, he tried to analyse coolly how long be had to live.

Gastada’s power has kept me alive for – what? Three or four days? Time does not pass here. I have no fever. If I can find water, I might last two days more…

It seemed Medrian had foreseen this from the time in Beldaega-Hal; they had truly come to a dead end in their journey. They were doomed to rot away with the great black walls of the castle closing ever in on them.

Was there anyone, anything out there to fight the Serpent now that the Quest had failed? He thought of Silvren; her terrible sorrow for the world’s fate. For a moment she seemed to be hovering before him, her hands stretching out to him in despair, her mouth open in a silent cry. And he thought, I am not dead yet! Much can be done in two days…

Stiffly he stood up, and began to limp along the corridor.

He decided to find his way down to the cells where Estarinel and Medrian were held. Then he remembered the confusing network of lightless corridors that led there. He might never find his way through, but die in that black web; still, what did it matter?

He found his way down to the lower levels, seeing only one guard on his way. The creature sneered as he passed but did not stop him. Then before him was a small black archway. Ashurek plunged into the claustrophobic maze. He felt the slimy, rough stone of the walls, rank with some dark-loving algae. He made his way blindly forward; but as he took the first few steps, there seemed to be a faint green light glowing ahead. Was it his imagination, or was there really a hazy patch of luminescence on the wall, showing him the way?

Then he remembered.

Silvren, even when you are not with me, you help me! he thought. There had been clumps of luminous green fungus growing in the wall, and when she had rescued him she had used it to mark the way through the labyrinth so that they could find their way out again.

He reached the patch and touched it, wondering if it still held some of her sorcery. And he could see the next glowing marker, leading him surely through Gastada’s hellish maze.

There were two guards at the entrance to the dungeons. Behind them was a corridor lit by guttering torches, with many black iron doors leading off it.

Ashurek approached them and said, ‘I wish to visit my two companions.’

‘Very funny!’ one guard spluttered. ‘Get lost, before I lose this sword in your guts.’

‘Gastada would not be pleased at that. I am his guest. You are supposed to obey and honour me, remember?’

They looked at him, a thin, dark figure with bright cruel eyes and long, tangled hair. Ashurek looked as wild as a wolf about to attack.

‘That’s as may be. But you’ve no business here,’ retorted the guard with less certainty.

His companion said, ‘I don’t see why he shouldn’t come in.’ The words were guttural and distorted through mouths unsuited to human speech. ‘The woman’s not here anyway, he took her to the Great Hall. And the other one’s dead, as good as.’

The ape-like guards stood aside, laughing and giving mocking salutes as he passed. Then one followed him and unlocked an iron door, letting him through with sneering politeness.

In the cell the young knight was lying on the floor against the wall. Wires twisted around his wrists suggested that he had been strung up on the wall for some time. The wires had bitten into the flesh, left it bruised and bloodied. His face was pale and hollow, moist with a fevered sweat, and his eyes were sunken. The only sign that Estarinel was alive was his rapid and shallow breathing. The talon wounds in his side were festering.

Ashurek slowly unwound the wire from his wrists and raised him into a sitting position.