A Blackbird In Darkness (Book 2)

by Freda Warrington

  Calorn was to borrow the palfrey, Taery Jasmena. He was an unearthly-looking stallion, finely built with a coat like blue-green silk and a golden mane and tail. Medrian was busy with him, picking up his feet and running her hands over his legs for any sign of injury. Meanwhile Calorn slipped the bridle over his head. She and Estarinel would both have to ride bareback.

  In only a few minutes they were mounted and ready to leave. Both were travelling light, without cloaks, and Estarinel had only a small pouch of provisions strapped to his belt. Even at this moment of departure there was little communication between him and his two companions. They stood waiting for him to leave, but Medrian’s eyes were downcast and she stood like a wax figure, gripping her cut forearm with the other hand as though it still hurt. She looked ill, white and hollow-cheeked. Ashurek was looking straight at Estarinel as if he wanted to speak words of encouragement, but could find none. Instead, his green eyes seemed to contain terrible warnings against the consequences of Estarinel’s failure.

  ‘Would that I could go instead – or come with you,’ Ashurek muttered.

  ‘I’ll do my utmost. I can promise no more,’ Estarinel replied quietly. Then he turned Shaell to ride away.

  ‘Fare you well,’ the Gorethrian’s voice followed him.

  #

  Calorn led the way through the forest for several miles. Taery Jasmena danced as he went, starting at every real or imagined sound. Estarinel’s silver-brown, heavily built beast followed sedately at a high-stepping walk. He was still his usual willing, kind-spirited self. The trees grew closer together while the ground between them was choked with bushes, fallen logs, ferns glistening with dew. Calorn was having difficulty in restraining her exuberant mount to a walk. Only the thickness of the undergrowth prevented him from bolting.

  ‘It seems this beast is not content with being a ridiculous colour,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘He has to behave in an eccentric manner as well.’

  Estarinel grinned despite himself, and began to tell her of the remarkable leap Taery had made over a huge wall when they were evading Gastada’s army in Excarith. The tale kept his thoughts safely in the present.

  He thought nothing of it when Calorn turned off the already overgrown track onto one even narrower that disappeared into a mass of bushes. She made Taery forge straight into the tangle of waxy, dark green leaves. Estarinel followed, the branches yielding to Shaell’s massive shoulders. Within the bushes, he had a strange sensation of being underwater, in an emerald ocean full of ever-changing light and shade. Around them the rustling of foliage sounded like the movement of great, slow sea currents. Leaves brushed his face and body, pulling at him, letting him pass only with reluctance. He couldn’t see where he was going. Only the occasional glimpse of Taery’s tail ahead like a golden flag, and the faint gleam of the path, kept him on course.

  ‘There must be an easier way than this!’ he called. ‘Is it much further?’

  ‘Estarinel, we are there!’ Calorn replied.

  ‘What – you mean that this is the domain?’

  ‘Yes.’ They came at last to a clearing, like a small cave, where Calorn halted. ‘I am permitted to take you a little way into the domain.’

  ‘But – I thought we were still in the forest. I have no feeling of being other than on Earth... Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. Why, what were you expecting?’

  ‘Something sudden – like an Entrance Point.’

  ‘Ah, no,’ Calorn said, smiling. ‘This is all it is.’

  ‘Did you find the path easily?’

  ‘More so than I’d expected,’ she said casually, leaving Estarinel mystified as to how she had found it at all. ‘Now I think it’s best that we part ways here. Look, the bushes are thinner now and you can see the path clearly.’ She pointed and he saw the track, a faint silver thread winding into the green shadows of the undergrowth. He made to dismount, but she said, ‘No, you must ride.’

  ‘Why? I don’t want to take Shaell into unnecessary danger.’

  ‘You won’t. But he may be able to find the way when you cannot,’ Calorn answered enigmatically.

  ‘Well, I’ll be glad of his companionship,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, you will.’ She smiled and again he felt grateful for her bright spirit, the courage she gave him. They clasped hands and then she reined Taery back and gave a friendly salute. ‘I’ll return to the camp now. I don’t know how long you’ll be in this domain, but I will know when you return, and I’ll come to meet you. Now, you must go. Don’t turn aside, whatever happens. Promise.’

  ‘I promise,’ he said and returned the salute. ‘Farewell, Calorn.’

  Then he turned Shaell and sent him into a walk. They had only gone a couple of strides when he saw a weird figure on the other side of the leafy cave. It was roughly humanoid, about four feet high, thin and shapeless like a clay figure made by a child. Its face was a featureless blank. On its head bristled a crest of long white spines, and as he watched it plucked one of these out and threw it, like a spear, at Calorn.

  Estarinel looked around in alarm and saw the spine pierce her eye and bury its length in her head. Her hand came up to grasp it and she fell forward onto Taery’s neck with a dreadful groan. Blood was pouring from the eye socket. Her limbs jerked spasmodically, then flopped into the limpness of death. Taery threw up his head, snorting with fear. Then he wheeled and bore Calorn’s body out of sight among the bushes.

  Horrified, Estarinel urged Shaell to follow, but the usually amenable stallion turned recalcitrant. He sidestepped and set his head against the bit, determinedly facing forwards along the path. As Estarinel struggled with him, he saw the little shapeless figure running away in that direction.

  Enraged, he let Shaell have his head and gave chase, but the bushes were too dense and the tangled foliage hampered them. In seconds the murderer was out of sight.

  ‘Damn you!’ Estarinel screamed. ‘I’ll find you!’

  He pulled Shaell back to a walk. He was gasping with shock and disbelief. Torn between going back to Calorn or pursuing the murderer, he made another abortive attempt to turn Shaell. His horse continued stubbornly along the path. And he heard Calorn saying, ‘Don’t turn aside, whatever happens. Promise.’

  ‘Whatever happens,’ he repeated out loud. He put a hand up to his face, and felt tears there. In the midst of his outrage and grief, a thought came to him.

  This must be the first of the Silver Staff’s tests. What kind of entity would commit a bloody murder just to test someone’s ‘clearness of purpose’?

  He shuddered. Suddenly he saw the Silver Staff as he had seen it in his vision in the Cavern of Communication: an entity of vast, dwarfing power. Without conscience. He knew then that he did not want the thing, did not want to go even one step nearer to it. But what choice did he have? Perhaps this was another test in itself.

  Knowing he could do nothing to save Calorn, he went grimly on.

  The undergrowth gradually thinned, but grew no lighter. The atmosphere was now a deep liquid blue and still had a strange underwater quality. He knew for certain that he was no longer in the forest, where it had been early morning. There was a pungent, fresh smell in the air, like wild currant flowers. Around him the bushes swayed like seaweed, tugged by a breeze he could not feel. Anger and horror turned in him as he rode, mingled with uncertainty. Perhaps he had failed the first test. Perhaps he should have left Shaell and followed Taery on foot. How was he to know? He had never imagined that there would be ‘tests’ of this sort.

  Shaell jogged on with his great neck arched and ears pricked, impervious to the tormented thoughts of his rider. Estarinel felt that if the stallion could speak, he would have said, ‘Trust me.’ He seemed to know instinctively that he must follow the gleaming path.

  Abruptly, the undergrowth came to an end. They emerged into a deep blue night; there was a star-sprayed sky above them, a wide, undulating plain below. The path shone with faint radiance under Shaell’s hooves.

  For a m
oment Calorn was forgotten. The landscape was vast and empty, with an aura of mystery about it. The arching sky had a wildness that drew him while remaining unobtainable. The forlorn, barren beauty of the plain caught in Estarinel’s throat and he urged Shaell into a gallop.

  The stallion leapt forward eagerly and Estarinel gave him his head, not guiding him, drinking the soul-rending wild emptiness of the sky; there was space, space, blue and grey and star-filled, eternal and untouchable, drawing him on and on. Here was none of the suffocating evil that emanated from the Serpent M’gulfn, none of the Blue Plane’s tranquil perfection. There was infinity – vast, supreme, uncaring infinity, and Shaell was a mere spark galloping through it.

  Estarinel knew then that this was the domain of the Silver Staff, that here was the vastness that could crush the Serpent as a man crushes a fly, and never notice its passing.

  Shaell galloped tirelessly, as if the breath of the stars filled him as it did his rider.

  The glorious night did not last. After an immeasurable length of time, there was a strange dawn. First a blazing light rimmed the horizon, and presently a small white-hot sun curved swiftly into the sky, only to station itself directly overhead. There it remained, burning down upon a landscape of glaring white stone. Soon the day was unbearably, blindingly hot.

  Shaell jogged nobly on, apparently unaffected by the heat. Estarinel could no longer see the path; soon, all he could see was whiteness as the blazing light burned his eyes. Transient greens and purples burst across his vision.

  If the heat was an illusion, its effects were real enough. There was no shade, no water. The white desert surrounded them, endless and unchanging. The horse walked on steadily, but after a few hours the weird, motionless sun began to take its toll on Estarinel. His head ached and burned. Even squeezing his eyes shut could not keep out that white-hot light. He began to feel ill, dehydrated.

  What sort of test was this?

  Soon fever took hold of him. Voices whispered to him; his body felt burnt out and swollen to twice its size. He fell forward onto Shaell’s neck, exhausted. Consciousness came and went, distorted by a nightmare delirium. Again and again he thought he was with Calorn in the clearing, seeing the shapeless attacker just in time and averting the fatal spine from its target. Again and again he saw her ride off alive, only to remember that in reality she was dead. And so the dream would repeat itself, as if he could change the past by the strength of his thoughts. The pain of the sun on his head and back became the pain of Calorn’s death and his yearning to go back and save her.

  Eventually the vision subsided. Now all he could see was greyness, smooth and flat and somehow terrifying. In his delirium he became obsessed with the idea of getting Shaell out of the sun. Yet another part of his brain was aware that he was unconscious, helpless, and that his desperate struggles to save his horse were taking place only in his mind. He tried to cry out, to fight his helplessness, but even his cries, loud and real to himself, existed only in the fevered dream.

  He opened his eyes. He was lying on the ground near a small, circular stone hut. He must have slid from Shaell’s back while unconscious; now there was no sign of his horse. It was unlike Shaell not to have stayed by him; surely he had not gone on, riderless? He remembered a previous time when he had regained consciousness, desperately ill and with a fiercely hot sun beating down on him. Then Arlenmia had rescued him, after her own fashion. The thought of her filled him with reasonless terror; she must not find me, he thought, and staggered to his feet.

  The hut was the only solid object in the hostile desert. He stumbled forward and collapsed against the door. He had a sharp memory of Medrian pretending to faint against the door of Skord’s house; he could hear Skord’s voice saying, ‘Those of Forluin are harmless... those of Forluin are harmless...’ over and over.

  Now he was inside the hut. It was a small round room, empty but for a wooden pallet with a straw mattress. There was a water pump set in the floor. At the sight of it, his thirst brought him back to reality for long enough to kneel down, work the handle and feel the cold, clear water flowing over his burning head, pouring down his parched throat. He gasped with relief. Then, looking up, he had a bizarre hallucination.

  The path was gleaming like a snail track across the floor of the hut. Following it, Shaell trotted in through the door, across the room – and straight through the wall of solid stone opposite. It was as if either horse or wall had no substance. He was gone. The path had disappeared. Still in the grip of sunstroke, Estarinel staggered to the bed and collapsed into a feverish, dream-plagued stupor.

  Looking down at him was the formless figure that had murdered Calorn. He cried out and struggled to rise, but could not move. It was featureless, yet it had a voice.

  ‘I am the shape of your fear,’ it said. And as he watched, it raised its arms and absorbed them, like the processes of an amoeba, into its body. Its form elongated and its head gelled into a different shape. For a second it formed itself into a perfect effigy of the Worm. Then it became humanoid again, now squat and gnome-like. It pulled one of the white spines from its head and held the point against Estarinel’s throat.

  ‘No pain. Understand,’ it said.

  Yet it did not kill him; it replaced the spine onto its head. ‘What is real here is what you believe,’ it said. Then it bent forward and rose upon four equine legs, metamorphosing into a nightmare horse. And as Estarinel stared, the apparition dissipated into the air.

  Other visions followed, ones he had seen before, but now promising an understanding that had remained beyond his grasp before. There was red glass, layer upon layer, and behind it, inhuman grey figures that paralysed him with dread. He longed to flee but knew he must approach them. And as he went slowly forwards, the red glass shattered and behind it stood Silvren.

  ‘The House of Rede will be the last to fall,’ she said.

  ‘No!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Yes.’ She took his arm and turned him round. They were standing at the edge of a vast, glittering expanse of snow. Very distant from them was a figure, but he could see quite clearly that it was Arlenmia, standing with her arms raised to a towering edifice of blue and green ice.

  ‘Her vision is false. Damn her, she was my friend!’ Silvren said. And then she was not Silvren, but Calorn, brave, laughing, alive, uninjured. She raised a hand to point across the snow, but before he could speak she had vanished. And now it was Medrian beside him, one white hand raised, her terrifying dark eyes fixed on his face.

  ‘There is something I have not told you,’ she whispered. ‘Know that it is not without good reason.’ And then he was running, floundering through the snow, and Medrian was gone, and he was weeping, searching desperately for something he had lost.

  He had searched for years, it seemed, before he found the dead bird lying in the snow. And at last he understood...

  Estarinel awoke violently and sat up, gasping. His visions were lost immediately. What had seemed profound in the dream was no more than fevered delusion. He shook his head, realising that it no longer ached. He was still in the hut. Experimentally he sat up, finding that he felt weak but clear-headed. The fever had abated at last.

  He stood up, wondering how long he had been lying on the pallet, and if time had the same meaning in this domain as it did on Earth. He took a long drink from the pump, then gazed around the room. He had an uncanny sensation that something was out of place. Then he started in incredulous dismay.

  The door by which he had entered had vanished.

  The hut was a stone cell with no escape.

  Estarinel rushed to the only window, a mere slit. The white desert glared back. Panic ran through him. His fingers gripped the edge of the window-slit, while he cast his gaze frantically over the stone ceiling and the hard, sandy floor. There was no gap, nothing to offer him hope. Dread of being trapped threatened to suffocate him. He shut his eyes, trying to force himself to calm thought.

  This was another test... but with what purpose? To test his i
ngenuity in escaping? Or to see whether he could withstand the simple fear of being enclosed?

  He ran his hands over the wall where the door had been. It was solid. He rested his forehead against the cool stone, thinking, ‘If I escape, I will only be out in the desert again... that’s almost worse than being in here.’

  Then he remembered. Calorn had said that Shaell might find the way when Estarinel could not. And the shape-changing being of his nightmare had said, ‘What is real here is chiefly what you believe.’ He remembered the illusion that a silvery path had lain across the floor of the hut; and that Shaell had followed it, melting like a phantom through the opposite wall.

  At once he crossed to the place where Shaell had vanished and pressed his palms to the stone. And in that moment, such was his conviction that he was not going to remain imprisoned in the hut, that he could feel not stone, but smooth wood beneath his fingers; and his right hand was lifting a heavy latch; and although he could not see the door, he was suddenly outside the hut.

  Long fronds of grass, shimmering with pollen, reached to his waist. He was in a narrow, overgrown lane between tall hawthorn hedges, sweet with the scent of white-flowered weeds. Relief flooded him. No desert. He hadn’t realised how weak he had been until the fresh, summery air swept the remains of the fever from him.

  Looking back, he saw that the hut had vanished. He felt no surprise at this. He felt calm now, resolute. Time enough to grieve for Calorn later; for now, he must regard her death only as another aspect of the evil against which he must win the Silver Staff. He set off along the lane.

  Slanting afternoon sunlight delineated each grass stem with light and turned pollen dust to a golden haze. He might have been somewhere in Tearn or even in Forluin. Soon the hedge on his right-hand side grew lower until he could see over it into a patchwork of fields stretching to a clear-cut, blue horizon. The sweet smell of new-mown hay was in the air.