Now the other bears were upon them, growling, striking out with steel-daggered paws. Medrian and Calorn were trapped beside the waning fire. They had only one brand left, and that was burning down rapidly. Medrian swung it at the bears’ noses, making them rear back. Calorn tried to retrieve her arrows, ducking as a bear lashed its claws at her head, using the dead creature’s body as a shield.
If she stood and fired arrows one way, that left her vulnerable to the beasts behind and to the side of her. The fire would die before long, and the little protection it afforded them would be lost. If only they had swords, spears, anything! She saw Medrian dodge and stagger as a blow caught her shoulder.
Hopeless. Exhaustion would fell them after a few hours, and then the bears would cease their toying and close in. Calorn felt the moist, rank breath on her neck too late. There was a flash of white in the corner of her eyes – more sensed than seen – and she felt a stinging blow across the back of her head. Claws raked through her hair as the ground raced up to meet her. She lay helpless, the weight of the bear’s paw pressing into her back, its muzzle snuffling hotly over her shoulders.
‘Medrian! Medrian!’ she croaked. Perhaps she had not called loud enough; her ears were ringing, giving the eerie illusion that all was silent. The moment extended, and she became acutely aware of tiny details, as if she had all the time in the world to contemplate them; red sparks floating from the fire, dazzling against the night; something hard like a stone digging painfully into her ribs. Against the crushing darkness, she sucked in half a breath and gasped with all her strength, ‘Medrian!’
Still there was no reply. She had also fallen, or –
Calorn writhed in denial of a sudden, horrible illusion that Medrian was not lying on the grass at all, but standing beyond the circle of bears, watching, smiling, far more the Serpent’s child than they.
Chapter Nine. At the Staff’s Mercy
Estarinel was falling, falling through blue infinity. For a time, following the initial shock of the leap, he could not breathe. Now, as he grew accustomed to the sensation, he began to draw uneven, convulsive breaths. The cliff-face was a sandy-brown blur as he plummeted, the sky changeless, impassive. After a few seconds that seemed an age, he became convinced that he was doomed to fall forever. Helpless terror swamped him. He writhed as he fell, fighting what was impossible to resist.
His movement only served to send him spinning towards the perpendicular face. He felt his hands scrape against it, and for a split second he saw it clearly: ancient brown rock, textured with cracks and fissures that ran vertically as if to mock his swift descent. Every muscle in his body was rigid as he fell with ever-increasing speed, now spinning out of control.
The first blow as he bounced against the cliff-face was painful, dealing a shuddering blow that reverberated agonisingly through his bones. He stretched out his arms to avoid a second, only to be sent in a somersaulting arc. Helpless, he wrapped his arms round his head, awaiting the next collision in a fog of numb anticipation.
It came, jarring and bruising him. Again and again, he bounced against the merciless face, limp as a broken doll. It was a long nightmare of pain before he became aware that he was no longer falling through empty space. The physical discomfort was continuous as he was buffeted by the rocky surface, but now it was curving away from the vertical, arcing under him to receive his bruised body and reduce the speed of his fall. Gradually he found that he was no longer rebounding off the surface, but rolling over and over. The pain lessened, the shocks eased. Yes, he was rolling... the movement became fluid, almost soothing. All his muscles relaxed, a blissful sensation. The descent slowed as the ground curved up to cradle him, bringing him to eventual rest.
Estarinel lay still. Slowly, very slowly, the pains stabbing his body subsided. Aching, exhausted, disorientated, he remained prostrate for a long time, unable to open his eyes or think. The relief of being on horizontal ground was indescribable. He wanted nothing to detract from that simple pleasure. In his mind’s eye he saw the expanse of sandy rock criss-crossed by fissures, the perfect blue sky overhead; they were supremely beautiful in their starkness.
Surely he should be dead after such a fall, or at least severely injured. The Silver Staff had its own rules, however. It might not be above cold-blooded murder, but it obviously did not wish him dead yet.
He opened his eyes, only to receive another shock.
He was not lying on the surface he had envisaged. Instead he was on a lawn of short grass. Before him was a raised area like a burial mound. Atop the mound was a squat, black tower. It was a malicious-looking building that immediately instilled him with intense depression. Twin suns glared down at the scene, bathing it in a sickly, greenish light. It was a bald, desolate, forsaken place and he loathed it instinctively.
He sat up, trying to rub some life back into his limbs. He took a piece of H’tebhmellian bread from his pouch and forced himself to eat it, which restored his strength and spirit a little. Weary, but determined to face whatever the Silver Staff had to offer, he rose and walked towards the malevolent tower.
As he climbed the mound, a figure rushed past him. With astonishment he saw that it was the almond-eyed woman from the cliff-top. Her purple garment streamed behind her like the wings of a giant moth as she ran and her hair was a tattered pennant. She gained the tower and entered through a black studded door that shut behind her with a great clang.
She must have found the courage to jump after all, he thought. So, now he had at least one rival in his quest for the Silver Staff, and she might easily prove more worthy than him, her need more pressing, her world facing something even more horrendous than the Worm...
Trying to put these thoughts aside, Estarinel grasped the iron ring in the door and pushed it open.
He was in darkness. After a moment his eyes adjusted and he found himself at the foot of a spiral staircase, the edge of each step glistening faintly in the gloom. He began to climb, feeling along the wall on his left.
He went cautiously. The tower felt as malevolent within as without, and the stairway was steep, uneven and claustrophobic. He could not suppress a sense of dread that the stairs might crumble beneath him, or that some fell creature was stalking down to meet him… There was something. Padding noiselessly down the steps towards him, a huge white bear with glaring cyan eyes, its wet-fanged jaws gaping like a snake’s.
Estarinel froze. Before he had a chance to defend himself, it was upon him – and gone, past or through him, without substance. He swung round, and for an instant he thought he saw Calorn and Medrian, and knew it was they who were in danger from the bear, not him.
The images were gone. It must be another trick to confuse him. He turned and continued upwards. Abruptly the steps ended at a small black door, which he pushed open and hesitantly entered the dark chamber beyond. For several seconds he could see nothing. Then, imperceptibly, his awareness changed and he found himself in another place, another time.
Forluin. And he was a younger self, not just recalling an experience but actually reliving it with no awareness of the Serpent or of the Silver Staff; the happy innocent he had once been.
He was walking through a wood with Falin and his younger sister, Lothwyn, who was then a child of eleven or twelve. There was rich, green grass beneath their feet, scintillating with rainbow colours from a recent shower of rain. Sunlight filtered through the trees and the leaves shone every shade of translucent green, like layer upon layer of gleaming lace. The sweet smell of wet grass and soil pervaded the air. They were laughing as Falin recounted how a goat had barged into their kitchen that morning and started on his mother’s cider apples, and how she had chased it round and round the table in a vain effort to shoo it out... his description had them helpless with laughter. And they were laughing because they were together – Lothwyn between him and Falin, arm-in-arm with them both – and because the morning was beautiful, and they were alive, and walking through it.
Then they came upon a gazelle, lying i
njured across their path. It had put its foot down a rabbit warren and broken its leg. It lay helpless, gazing up at them with a huge, liquid, brown eye.
‘I’ll run and fetch Lilithea. She’ll know what to do,’ said Falin. So Estarinel and Lothwyn knelt by the creature, doing their best to quiet it as they waited. Presently Falin and Lilithea came hurrying along the grassy path towards them, Lili carrying her sack of healing herbs and ointments.
Lili bent to examine the gazelle, her rich bronze-brown hair falling forward to conceal her delicate face. She whispered gently to the animal, smoothing its russet coat with calming hands until its breathing slowed. Then she straightened up and said, ‘I can do nothing for it. It has broken its leg in two places. Even if I make it a sling to bear its weight, it still would not heal. It would only suffer.’
‘Poor thing,’ said Lothwyn. Lilithea reached into her sack and took out a short bow and a small, sharp arrow. Estarinel saw what she meant to do. Her expression was resolute, but the rosy colour had drained out of her cheeks and her hands were unsteady.
He took the bow and arrow from her and said, ‘I’ll do it, Lili.’
‘Straight into its eye. Don’t hesitate,’ she said. Lothwyn hid her face against Falin’s arm. Lili gently held the gazelle still while Estarinel did as she said, and destroyed it.
Then he handed the bow back to her while her large, dark eyes held his face, shining with a mixture of sorrow and gratitude.
‘Thank you,’ she said quietly. ‘Sometimes it must be done, but I hate it.’
‘I couldn’t have done it at all!’ Falin exclaimed feelingly.
‘Well, we had better bury the poor creature,’ said Estarinel, putting an arm around Lothwyn, who was struggling not to cry. And they went among the trees, and found a place to dig, and with that the scene ended.
Estarinel was back in the chamber. He raised a hand and rubbed his forehead, trying to bring himself back to the present. That hadn’t been a memory, nor a dream; he’d relived an event that had taken place several years before, something he’d hardly given a thought to for a very long time. He wondered what it meant. Surely it could not be a test?
He shook his head. His throat was tight. Time had numbed the pain of remembering how Forluin had been before the Worm came. Now it had been brought back to him so vividly that the old agony reawakened. He kept thinking of Lilithea. At least she is still alive, he thought – or will she and Falin fall victim to M’gulfn before much longer?
He crossed the chamber, his hands outstretched, blind in the darkness. He found another door, another stone staircase winding upwards – and at the top, another room as dark as the first. He entered, closing his eyes.
Again, he was somewhere different.
Rain lashed down onto burnt, rotting timbers inside a half-ruined building of decayed stone. The roof was open to the sky, admitting a miserable twilight choked with wet ash and the smell of decay: the stench of the Worm. Ominous creaking filled the house. Estarinel was kneeling on the floor, shivering from the rain, sickened by the ash that was left wherever the Serpent had touched Forluin.
The house was horrifyingly familiar. It was his family’s farmhouse – and he was aware that this too was a real event that he was observing like a disembodied watcher in a dream. There was a faint cry, a woman calling for help. It sounded like his mother.
There was a clamour of running feet, two voices raised in panic. And now he could see two slender, rain-soaked young women bending over a shambles of timber. ‘Mother, Mother,’ they were crying. They were his sisters, Arlena and Lothwyn.
‘The wall fell on me, I couldn’t move in time.’ At the sound of his mother’s voice, Estarinel cried out and tried to crawl forward. Although he could see, hear and feel, he could not move, could not make himself heard. Because he was not really there.
His sisters, weeping pitifully, were trying to drag away the timbers that buried their mother. ‘We can’t move it, Mother, it’s no good’
‘Get out!’ their mother cried. ‘Go on, the whole house is falling. Save yourselves – go on, my loves, please!’
For the Lady’s sake, can’t you hear me? Can’t you see me? Estarinel screamed without sound, his powerlessness agony to him. Rain and ash and the Serpent’s sickness poured down upon him as he watched his sisters bending over their buried mother, weeping. And as they struggled ineffectually with the timbers, the rest of the wall collapsed and his sisters, coughing and crying out, were submerged in stone and smoking wood.
He could still see Lothwyn, but she cried no more, nor moved. Her hair was spread out like a splash of dark water across the rubble. And of Arlena and his mother he could only see hands. Three white hands sticking out of the rubble, limp, graceful, sculptural, as if frozen in different gestures of description. Strange trees growing on a bizarre desolate landscape.
Misery and impotent rage flooded him as he cursed the Serpent, struggling like a madman against nightmare paralysis. Indeed, he was insane in those moments of horror and grief.
Then the house was spinning around him, time whirling forwards. He was looking down into the Bowl Valley, seeing it submerged in venom, and somewhere through a thick fog he could hear Medrian saying, ‘It will kill you... it will kill you...’ and then, ‘I’m sorry, sorry...’
When he came round inside the dark tower he was lying on the floor, shaking convulsively. It took him a long time to remember where he was, what he was supposed to be doing. He sat up, his knees bent, his head on his arms. How could the Silver Staff have such insight, such power, as to show him a scene that could destroy him? What he had seen was undeniably real; the actual death of his mother and sisters. It was unbearable. Of all he had been through, this was the worst. Unbearable.
Calorn had told him that the tests would be arduous and even unfair. But this was cruel, worse than cruel, monstrous, ghoulish in its callous extremity. The Silver Staff was a pitiless entity. He loathed it. It was no better than the Serpent.
He gave up then. He felt that he, Medrian and Ashurek had been tricked. So had Calorn, and so had even the H’tebhmellians. They should have known that there was nothing to help them against the Serpent. And something had given them false hope, in order to mock and torment them further. Desolate, he surrendered to the darkness, wishing only to die.
When he felt something sharp against his hand, he did not even start, let alone try to escape it. It felt like a claw… a bird’s claws, closing on one of his fingers. And a soft, sweet voice, so faint that he might have imagined it, said, ‘This is not the whole reality. I am not yet destroyed, only lost. If you would find hope, you must look for it.’
He kept very still, feeling that if he moved the creature would vanish. She disappeared anyway, as if she had been no more than a wisp of darkness. Then he got to his feet, thinking, however hard this is, it is only another test. I can and I will withstand it. And he walked calmly across the room until he found the door, and continued up the next twisting section of steps to the topmost chamber.
As before, it was dark. This time no vision came to claim him. He could see lights flickering in the darkness, ghostly and elusive, and a soft breeze full of malice was sighing past his face. He felt cold, instilled with a dread that was at once illogical and paralysing, as in a bad dream. But he had already endured so much that he felt strangely detached from his own fear, and stood calmly waiting for something to emerge from the weird gloom.
The light grew stronger. Pale candlelight illuminated the round, plain chamber, filling its recesses with dancing shadows. On the far side a tall figure, concealed from head to foot in a shroud, was holding a huge candelabrum and lighting each wick from a taper. In the centre of the room lay the butterfly woman from the cliff-top, who had rushed into the tower ahead of Estarinel.
She was dead.
She lay on her back, her eyes staring sightlessly into the air, purple fabric draped in folds around her thin form. From chin to collarbone, her throat was a mass of torn flesh, glistening with dark
red, congealed blood.
To the left of her stood a huge wolf. Its glowing eyes were fixed on Estarinel and its tongue lolled over its great fangs, drooling bloody saliva onto the floor. On the right stood a child of about three, blond and rosy and innocent. His huge wondering eyes also were intent upon the Forluinishman.
‘Now, your final test,’ said the shrouded figure in a toneless voice. ‘This woman, as you see, has been savagely killed.’
‘Nothing you do would surprise me now,’ Estarinel whispered, his voice bitter with disgust.
‘All we require is that you correctly identify the murderer so that they may be justly executed. The wolf,’ the figure moved a hand to indicate, ‘or the child?’
‘You’re mad!’ Estarinel exclaimed, exasperated and weary with despair.
‘You must choose. Otherwise you will have failed.’
‘This is a trick. It must be the wolf, mustn’t it? But that is too obvious... so knowing that, and knowing the child would therefore be chosen, perhaps it is the wolf after all.’
‘Just so,’ said the grey figure.
‘And if I choose rightly, the murderer will be executed?’
‘Yes.’
‘What if I choose wrongly?’
‘Then you will suffer the same fate as this woman, and be used to test the next one who passes through this tower.’
‘But you know – you know that I cannot choose the child!’
‘Choose as you will,’ was the impassive reply.
‘Very well, I’ll tell who it is!’ cried Estarinel furiously. ‘I am the murderer! If not for me, this test would not have been set up! Stop this evil charade – stop it now!’
The grey one uttered a noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. ‘You have answered well,’ it said.
‘What?’
‘I said, you have answered well. You have passed the test. No one is going to be executed; it was, as you said, a charade. A philosophical riddle. To test your wits.’
A Blackbird In Darkness (Book 2) Page 22