The fissure from which they emerged ran back into a rugged mass of ice hills that stretched across the skyline from north to south. The polar cap had for countless years been cracked and forced up in gigantic, vertical slabs, then refrozen, the process repeated over and over again until there seemed to be massive, glacial teeth rooted in the landscape.
This range lay to the east of them. To the north and west stretched a mantle of snow, shining like a harlequin coat of argent and silver-blue and white. Over it arched a clear sharp sky the delicate hue of a harebell. The air was still but had a bitterly raw edge. The sun looked small and colourless, with no promise of heat in its dazzling rays.
It was now early autumn, but they still had the light season on their side. The sun, although close to the horizon, would not set for at least a month. The weather would be bitter, but more tolerable than the depths of winter. The odds could have been worse.
‘At least we don’t have to cross those ice crags,’ said Estarinel.
‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that,’ Medrian replied. ‘They may curve round and across our path eventually. M’gulfn has given me some vague concept of polar geography, but it’s very hazy, and it is always changing anyway. I wish I could be more definite.’
‘Any information is better than none,’ said Ashurek. ‘For the time being it will be useful to move parallel to those crags. They may afford us shelter if there is a storm.’
They began to tramp northwards across the snow. Their cloaks, chameleon-like, took on a shadowy-white quality, so that anything watching would barely see them. The snow was firm, with just a thin, fresh fall crunching under their boots and spraying in glittering foam around their ankles. As yet there was no real sense of the Serpent’s domain; it seemed a neutral, untouched territory.
Encouraged by this, well-rested and heartened by the freshness of the sky, they made good progress on the first day. When the need for sleep overtook them, they camped in a niche within the ice crags, cheered by the floating H’tebhmellian fire. Meanwhile the sun continued its slow circuit of the horizon, a floating fire of another sort. The moons appeared in the pale sky, two flakes of worn ivory.
As he tried to sleep, Estarinel began to feel a disturbing awareness that the sun was in fact stationary, while the Earth was spinning vertiginously beneath them, and they were very near to the centre of that spinning. It was an awesome and dizzying sensation, like the one he’d experienced in the Cavern of Communication. Again he glimpsed the true size and majesty of the universe, and felt at once infinitesimal and infinite; less than nothing, yet part of everything. He fell asleep without realising it, and his thoughts became dreams.
It was odd that he had previously been haunted by phantasms of snow; now, here they were amid snow and he was dreaming of something different. A dim place; something bulky but half-hidden in shadow, uttering dull grunts. Another shape, dark with moisture, struggling within a glistening membrane. And there was his mother, kneeling in straw, her head bent, her fair hair tied off her face. Her bare arms were slimed with blood almost to the shoulder, and as she raised her face, it too was streaked with gore, and tears.
As she looked at him, he saw that she was laughing with joy. ‘We are part of it, yet it reduces us to nothing,’ she said. And then he realised that the grey shape was a brood mare, and the dark, wet form over which his mother was bending was a new-born foal.
He had helped his mother with such births so many times. How ordinary this scene was, yet how precious, more to be desired than even the transcendent, crystalline beauty of the Blue Plane. And yet utterly unobtainable. Gone. Destroyed by something that could not even comprehend what was being lost, could only envy and loathe it.
‘Mother, the Worm is outside,’ he said in the dream, calmly as if mentioning a friend’s arrival. At the same time he felt rooted to the spot by panic, knowing that his mother was in mortal danger. Still she continued to smile calmly at him, with no trace of alarm.
‘Already?’ she said. Then, illogically, ‘Tell it I am coming back.’
‘Yes, I will. Everything I do is for this,’ he replied.
He must have spoken aloud because he woke up then and found Medrian, already awake, staring at him. ‘What did you say?’ she exclaimed.
‘I don’t know. I was dreaming,’ he replied, sitting up and trying to clear his mind of the dull pain induced by the images.
‘Do you often have such dreams?’ Medrian asked. ‘Prescient ones, I mean?’
‘If that was prescient, I didn’t understand it. It was only some muddled memories. I have had some presentiments of the future… not always when I’ve been asleep, either. How did you know?’
‘I see it in your, eyes, sometimes. There’s no other look like it.’
‘Isn’t there?’ he said, vaguely disturbed by this thought. ‘But the things I think I see make no sense to me at all. It’s only after the event that I come to understand what the vision implied.’
‘Then what you see turns out to have a meaning?’
‘Yes, apparently. Do you know, Medrian, the night before the Serpent attacked, I dreamed of a woman with snow-white skin and black hair. I remember it vividly. It was you, yet I didn’t realise until I had known you for some time.’
‘Are you sure? The memory plays tricks.’
‘No, I am sure, because that night I also dreamed about Arlenmia’s horse.’
‘Taery?’ she exclaimed.
‘Yes, a blue-green horse with a gold mane and tail. That was something I could not possibly have mis-remembered.’
‘But nothing else to do with Arlenmia?’
‘No, I only have the most random glimpses of things. There was always snow, but that’s hardly surprising as I knew we had to come to the Arctic. I think I saw Silvren before I knew what she looked like... and Calorn before I even knew she existed. And the castle of the Guardians: red glass and grey figures. Yes, and the Silver Staff, before ever we reached H’tebhmella. And something to do with you and the Staff…’
‘Oh, don’t,’ she said, gripping his arm with a gloved hand. ‘Don’t go on. Listen, you mustn’t let these forebodings trouble you. I suffer it too, sometimes, and I promise you that it’s for the best that it seems meaningless until you see it retrospect. Otherwise it would only cause you pain, and make you try to change what cannot be changed.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right,’ he said, and kissed her.
‘We think we understand things,’ she said, ‘but that is to save us from going mad. Everything is beyond our comprehension really.’
They resumed their walk across the glittering snow plain. The air was as still and crisp as before, the sky a thin blue, bleached in the east by silvery sunlight. It was hard to believe that there was evil so close at hand.
‘We’ll be lucky indeed if this weather holds,’ Ashurek said. ‘Medrian, forgive me if this sounds a fatuous question, but may we not have been misled in thinking that the Serpent inhabits the North Pole? I have no sense of it.’
‘Be grateful for that,’ she replied shortly. ‘It cannot last.’
As if in answer, before they had walked for another hour, a discolouration rose into the northern sky like venom blackening the skin around a snake bite. They stopped and stared. Estarinel felt such depression and dismay that he almost turned and ran. Only with a great effort of will did he hold his ground, and restrain himself from crying out in fear.
It was a ghastly parody of the aurora borealis, a curtain of semi-transparent darkness rippling across the skyline. There was light of a sort within it; a grimy ochre phosphorescence that turned the sky behind it green. The sun seemed to flicker and quail before this violation of the atmosphere.
‘No,’ Estarinel protested faintly, closing his eyes and involuntarily gripping Medrian’s shoulder. He felt he would sooner die than take another step towards the foulness undulating across the sky like brownish smoke. What a fool he had been, he thought, to imagine that he could even face M’gulfn, let alone attack it
.
‘Now I believe it,’ said Ashurek. ‘Is this a warning, or a welcome?’
#
Brown winds mourned across the Earth, heralding the Serpent’s inevitable triumph. Everywhere, people huddled shivering within their dwellings while creatures howled and moaned outside and unnatural birds flapped overhead, shrieking. Sickness and darkness were cIosing on the world like jaws. Some said, If only we had believed the Serpent existed, and fought it! And some said, If only we had worshipped it. Now it is too late. This is its revenge.
In Excarith, Setrel looked despairingly at a storm-tormented sky the colour of dried blood and murmured to himself, ‘They have failed. Would that I had taken my family to the House of Rede with Benra.’
The House of Rede was the last bastion against M’gulfn on Earth, and refugees had flooded there from the Worm-racked continents. It had always been there, a house of sanity, kindness and wisdom. No one wanted to believe that its security had become a tragic deception. The House of Rede will be the last to fall, Silvren had said, but those words did not express what a very specific, gleeful act of vengeance its destruction would be, perpetrated by the Shana to celebrate the dawning of M’gulfn’s age.
The demon Ahag-Ga made its way to the House of Rede, disguised as the neman, Benra. There Dritha was fooled by it for long enough to invite it over her threshold. But as soon as she recognised it for what it was, Ahag-Ga sloughed off the disguise and cheerfully eviscerated her.
Dritha was a Guardian, and could not be slain as such, but her soul was forced to flee her human body and take refuge in a distant domain. Then Ahag-Ga took on her corporeal form, and went smiling among the hundreds of refugees in and around Eldor’s house, and began to torment and slay them. And they thought it was Dritha herself who had suddenly turned upon them, betraying them, and they knew then that the Serpent had triumphed. Those who escaped the demon fled and flung themselves into the chill ocean.
So fell the House of Rede.
Chapter Fourteen. The Arctic
They stood transfixed for perhaps half an hour before the bromine-dark curtain vanished. Its dissipation was sudden; it seemed to collapse onto the horizon like a piece of filthy gauze, and at once the sky regained its ice-blue purity, as if it had never been sullied by the Serpent’s power. The sun gathered strength, and the snow once more shone like a sheet of white gold, scattered with handfuls of diamonds.
There followed a sense of absolute stillness, silence so overwhelming that it was beyond their power to disturb it by moving. They remained motionless, frozen with awe and apprehension. They felt as tiny as insects on an infinite, milk-white disc, set in a solid dome of pale blue glass that was bound to shatter and tear the universe from end to end if they so much as breathed.
‘Something’s going to happen,’ Medrian whispered. The sound of her voice broke the spell. Shaking his head grimly, Ashurek began to stride forward again. Hesitantly, Estarinel followed, with Medrian at his side.
‘Such as what?’ Ashurek said. His voice sounded strange, as if despite the eerie, vast stillness of the Arctic around them, he had spoken loudly in a tiny room.
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘Do you know what the Serpent is planning? I thought it had been somehow weakened by Miril.’
‘I can’t read its thoughts when it is determined that I shan’t,’ Medrian replied. ‘Its fear of Miril has not debilitated it. Miril has changed things in that the Serpent can no longer control me, but that doesn’t mean that I can control the Serpent. Its fear has only served to make it furious, and while its fear fades, its anger grows: Don’t imagine that it is less powerful than before because of Miril. Far from it.’
‘That’s encouraging,’ Ashurek said drily. ‘Was that foulness in the atmosphere a show of power, intended to dishearten us?’
‘I think it just meant to say, “I am here”,’ Medrian replied chillingly.
‘Well, it had the same effect,’ said Estarinel, his throat in a spasm of dread. ‘It must wish to fill us with such terror that we dare not approach close enough to attack it. And it knows it can.’
‘Don’t think of it, Estarinel,’ Medrian said. ‘Let us only think of the journey, while it allows us to move.’
‘Aye, we’ll save worrying about M’gulfn until it next shows its power,’ Ashurek agreed.
‘Yes. I’m sorry. It’s just that–’ Estarinel shook his head and fell silent. He knew why he was feeling this fear more acutely than the other two; it was because he had actually seen the Serpent. It had stared at him with its tiny, malign eyes as it lay on the ruins of Falin’s house and he had felt his soul branded by its pitiless grey evil. For a long time he had been able to forget about it… but now, every hint of the Serpent’s presence brought back that horror tenfold.
In many terrible situations he had acted with what others saw as bravery. He did not think himself courageous; he had merely done whatever seemed necessary at the time, need overriding any qualms he might have felt. But this was different; it was more than fear. He was beginning to feel that he truly could not face M’gulfn a second time. It would be easier to take his own life. He could no more look upon the Worm again than he could cold-bloodedly kill a friend.
Yet he did not want to believe he had come so far, only to turn aside and betray Forluin at the very end. He fell behind Ashurek and, fixing his eyes on the Gorethrian’s resolute back, forced himself to follow, step for step, like a glassy-eyed automaton.
Medrian saw that he was struggling, but she said nothing.
The silence around them grew no less weird as they trudged on. Contrary to Medrian’s forecast, nothing happened, but the awful sensation persisted. Strange colours began to gleam in the sky, not only in the north but in all quarters. In the west was a pale green and lemon glow, shot through with points of rose light. A white-mauve radiance, imbued with a nauseating quality, insinuated itself across the eastern skyline. Presently the whole sky was a-swirl with uncanny pastel hues such as were never seen in any natural sunset. The snow reflected them like a mirror.
Then sounds began to fill the silence. A multi-voiced, disharmonious sighing rose above them, like the wailing of hell-warped creatures bemoaning their lost humanity. The three trudged on, trying in vain to ignore it.
Only when they saw white peaks lying along the northern horizon, like glittering fangs tearing at the sky, did they realise that the moaning was caused by a distant wind in those crags. As Medrian had predicted, the jagged line of ice hills curved round in front of them. They walked on doggedly, and the discordant sighing grew more eerie.
Soon they walked into the wind. It lifted the surface of the snow into spirals of white frost and sent them streaming and whirling across their path. It numbed their faces with its frozen needles. Swiftly they fastened their hoods against it and walked with their heads down, grateful for the warmth of the H’tebhmellian clothing. Even their eyes were protected by a panel of transparent crystal. Totally enclosed by their cloaks and moving like pale shadows across the snow, they appeared no less spectral than the landscape that contained them.
‘I suggest we gain those peaks and find shelter there,’ Ashurek shouted above the wind, pointing ahead.
Suddenly all the strange tints fled the sky, leaving it colourless. Clouds began to stream overhead until solid white gloom enveloped them and thick snow filled the air. By the time they reached the beginning of the glacial slopes the wind had become a blizzard, sending whirlwinds of snow raging around them. Hints of aching cold penetrated even the stout H’tebhmellian clothing.
All the ways into the crags looked steep and forbidding. Ashurek chose a path that wound upwards between two spurs of ice and they began to climb in single file, bent against the storm. Soon they were surrounded by towering walls of ice, albumen-white and harder than glass. Here there was a certain amount of protection from the wind, although it still caught them in gusts when the path turned at different angles.
Streamers of snow were blowing ou
t onto the wind from the peaks above them. On lower ground the snow was drifting, and they were soon crunching through knee-deep mounds of it. The way steepened, presenting them with a treacherous series of steps and sharp ridges. Searching for foot- and hand-holds, they clambered slowly upwards until they gained a level stretch of ice.
At once the blizzard caught them full force, allowing them no chance to catch their breath or rest their numb limbs. With the wind wailing savagely and hurling darts of steely snow at them, they ploughed on in search of shelter. Presently they found a crevice in an ice wall, well-protected from the blizzard. They entered it gratefully, lit the H’tebhmellian fire, and sat watching the flakes drifting through the gloom beyond their refuge.
‘Even this bitter weather is preferable to Serpent-sent apparitions,’ said Ashurek, pulling his hood back from his face and brushing rime from the folds of his cloak.
‘Isn’t this storm M’gulfn’s doing?’ Estarinel said, feeling too tired to judge for himself.
‘I think it’s natural, but M’gulfn may choose to take control of it,’ Medrian answered. ‘If it does, it will swing round to the south.’
‘Not the north?’ Ashurek asked.
‘No. If M’gulfn meant to stop us, it would use some more drastic means than a storm. But, if it meant to speed us towards itself, it would put the wind behind us.’
‘Meaning that it’s in as much hurry as we are to end the Quest, but rather more confident of the outcome?’
Medrian did not reply to this.
They ate and rested in the crevice, hoping that the snowstorm would blow over within a few hours. It continued unrelentingly while they tried to sleep, huddled around the blue sphere. After a few hours they were faced with deciding whether to brave the blizzard again, or to delay indefinitely in their shelter.
A Blackbird In Darkness (Book 2) Page 36