‘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.
He sat up and looked round to see that Lilithea was awake, her dark eyes very wide. ‘I’ve just had such a realistic dream,’ he said, smiling at her.
‘E’rinel,’ Lilithea said, her voice somewhere between a gasp and a whisper, ‘E’rinel, I saw her too.’
The horses were standing with their heads up and ears pricked, startled by the bird. As the chirping grew more strident they saw the large female blackbird singing in the branches of a tree a few yards from them. Her beak was like burnished bronze and her feathers had the sheen of rich tawny-gold silk. And as she sang, she gazed at them with a dark, liquid eye in which leaves and trees and woodland animals were reflected. The look seemed to say, ‘What made you think such as I could perish? Am I not reborn with every sunrise?’
Tears were running down Lilithea’s face. She had never seen any creature more beautiful than that simple blackbird, who was the embodiment of love and hope.
‘Her name is Miril,’ Estarinel whispered, and Lilithea replied softly, ‘Yes… I know.’
They watched her without moving, hoping that she would come to them, or at least stay singing in the tree. But Miril was swift to follow the direction that Medrian had taken. With a last, sweet note she stretched out her sunlit wings and soared out onto the misty woodland air. Then she, too, was gone.
END
The next story set in the Earth of Three Planes begins with Book Three:
A BLACKBIRD IN AMBER
Read on for an extract of Chapter One: A Survivor of the Serpent
Author’s Note
It’s been a strange and eerie experience revisiting these books that I first began when I was only sixteen. They may not be the best-written fantasies in the world, but goodness, they are passionate! A Blackbird in Darkness now strikes me as sombre, serious, not full of wisecracks and therefore probably
unfashionable – but innocent and heartfelt. The ending still made me cry. Re-editing has taken me back to the roots of why I started writing in the first place; an urge to recreate the magical atmosphere that other writers had inspired in me, to express a sense of wonder, to explore all those questions of friendship and passion, bravery, suffering, heroism and myth.
Escapist wish-fulfilment? Maybe. Who wouldn’t love to visit the idyllic Blue Plane? Yet there is grown-up stuff here – about guilt, conscience, seeing yourself for what you really are and taking responsibility for it. In real life, of course, genocidal military commanders don’t become reformed characters, and dictators don’t suddenly recognise their own evil and destroy themselves in horror – deposed, they continue in wounded self-justification to the end – but wouldn’t it be great if they did? The purpose of A Blackbird in Silver/ Darkness is to suggest how things could be, if thrown into the light of self-awareness.
Although I created the blackbird Miril, I’ve often wondered what she is. I now realise that she’s a kind of goddess, embodying hope and compassion in a real being who is physically lost and found – and, more important, spiritually lost and found. She’s a symbol of attributes that matter in reality.
This is why critics who scorn fantasy and science fiction are missing the point. They don’t understand that fantasy fiction, like any fiction, is a journey through an inner landscape that we must explore. The power of fantasy is to distil big life issues into pure metaphorical form and come at it head-on, without the complications (or indeed the libel laws) of real life getting in the way. Fantasy writers are creating myth, and myth has a central and serious purpose. As the scholar Joseph Campbell puts it, ‘I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive… Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of human life.’ Campbell says that myths bring messages, ‘They’re stories about the wisdom of life.’ And his point about the hero’s journey – the staple of myth and fantasy – is that it applies to us all: ‘To evolve out of this position of psychological immaturity [childhood] to the courage of self-responsibility and assurance requires a death and a resurrection. That’s the basic motif of the universal hero’s journey – leaving one’s condition and finding the source of life to bring you forth into a richer or mature condition… When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness.’ The adventure of the hero is the adventure of being alive.
Furthermore, A Blackbird in Darkness strikes me as being oddly topical. The Serpent itself grew out of my subconscious horror at the idea of nuclear mass destruction. And the Grey Ones or Guardians… grey men and women whose main concern is balancing the books, who twist and mangle the truth in order to make themselves look good, who will trample on anyone to achieve their own ends, who equip people with dodgy weapons and send them to fight messy battles on their behalf, yet who still expect to bounce up reeking of roses at the end of it… remind you of anyone? I only wish I’d thought of giving them the power to raise taxes.
A Blackbird in Silver and A Blackbird in Darkness form a duet telling one complete story. The novel became a two-parter due to my original publisher suggesting I make it a trilogy. However, I didn’t want to write a middle volume of ‘padding’ and so it became a duo. The two books should ideally be read as one. If you would like to read the whole thing in real book form, Immanion Press publishes them as a paperback omnibus edition, A Blackbird in Silver Darkness. And the same applies to the second duo, A Blackbird in Amber Twilight, in which we meet Ashurek and Silvren’s formidable daughter Melkavesh.
Soon, I hope, there will be a brand new Blackbird novel telling a further tale that’s been in my head for more years than I dare admit: the story of Filmoriel, she who gave her name to the magical ship, The Star of Filmoriel. You will meet her in A Blackbird in Amber and A Blackbird in Twilight: available on Kindle in August 2015.
PS. If you have enjoyed this book, PLEASE WRITE A REVIEW!
This novel is also available as an audio book from Audible
And in paperback from Immanion Press
Novels by Freda Warrington
A Taste of Blood Wine
A Dance in Blood Velvet
The Dark Blood of Poppies
The Dark Arts of Blood
Elfland
Midsummer Night
Grail of the Summer Stars
The Court of the Midnight King
Dracula the Undead
The Amber Citadel
The Sapphire Throne
The Obsidian Tower
Dark Cathedral
Pagan Moon
The Rainbow Gate
Sorrow’s Light
A Blackbird in Silver
A Blackbird in Darkness
A Blackbird in Amber
A Blackbird in Twilight
A Blackbird in Silver Darkness (omnibus)
A Blackbird in Amber Twilight (omnibus)
Darker than the Storm
For further information:
www.fredawarrington.com
About the Author
Freda Warrington was born in Leicester, England, and began writing stories as soon as she could hold a pen. The beautiful ancient landscape of Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire, where she grew up, became a major source of inspiration.
She studied at art college and worked in medical illustration and graphic design for a number of years. However, her first love was always fantasy fiction, and in 1986 her first novel A Blackbird in Silver was published. More novels followed, including A Taste of Blood Wine, The Amber Citadel, Dark Cathedral and Dracula the Undead – a sequel to Dracula that won the Dracula Society’s Best Gothic Novel Award in 1997.
So far she has had twenty-one novels published, varying from sword n’ sorcery and epic fantasy to contemporary fantasy, supernatural, and alternative history.
Her recent novel Elfland (Tor US) won the Romantic Times Award for Best Fantasy Novel of 2009. Midsummer Night, the second in the Aetherial Tales series, was listed by the American Library Association among their Top Ten SF/ Fantasy Novels of 2010.
Titan Books are republishing her vampire series – A Taste of Blood Wine, A Dance in Blood Velvet, The Dark Blood of Poppies, and a brand new novel The Dark Arts of Blood (2015) – with gorgeous new covers. The first three were originally published in the 1990s, long before the recent explosion of vampire fiction! (So – no teenagers, no kick-ass super-heroines, no werewolves… but a solid, dark, gothic romance for grown-ups, set in the shadowy, decadent glamour of the 1920s.)
Freda lives in Leicestershire with her husband Mike and her mother, where she also enjoys crafts such as stained glass and beadwork, all things Gothic, yoga, walking, Arabian horses, conventions and travel.
Read on for a sample of A Blackbird in Amber, and more book information…
A Blackbird in Amber: Book Three of the Blackbird Series
The Quest of the Serpent is over, but the Earth of Three Planes’ future is just beginning. In Gorethria, the young Duke Xaedrek plots to seize power – but he does not bargain for the arrival of Melkavesh, Ashurek’s daughter, a powerful sorceress with plans of her own. Will she prove an ally or an enemy? And together, will they save or destroy a world in turmoil?
Extract from Chapter One. A Survivor of the Serpent
Duke Xaedrek of Shalekahh struggled to wake from the dream, but it held him, a velvet trap.
He rarely dreamed. The last time, some years previously, had been a long, detailed nightmare about his mother and father. On waking a messenger had arrived to inform him that they were dead, lost in war. Since then he had dreaded dreams. Despite that, even in the throes of subconscious vision, some part of his mind remained detached, watching the strange scenes with analytical coldness.
There was a ship, delicately built of pale w
ood, drifting with obscure purpose in a pearl-green ocean. On the ship was a child with red hair. No ordinary red, but the dark, iridescent plum of copper beech leaves, mingled with the rose and gold lights of sunset. This vision seemed to have no beginning, no end, and no meaning. Yet it persisted as a glimmering backdrop to the rest of the dream, which was startlingly vivid, yet equally devoid of sense.
Xaedrek found himself in the Emperor’s palace, moving slowly between the marble pillars of a long, salt-white hall. The walls were lined with the portraits of all the Gorethrian rulers since the first Ordek; hawk-faced men and women, with dark brown-purple skin and luminous brooding eyes. The legendary Empress Melkavesh, her white hair the only sign of her great age. Ruby-eyed Surukish I, from whose female line Xaedrek himself was descended. Her son, Ordek XIII, and grandson Varancrek II, and Varancrek’s son, the eagle-fierce Ordek XIV, who was father of the infamous Meshurek II, wrecker of the Empire.
In the dream Xaedrek had the strange impression that he was underwater. He was drifting, not walking, down the hall, and everything was surrounded by an aureole of blurred light. A few feet ahead of him was a tall woman with long golden hair, and he observed without any sense of surprise that she was translucent, as if formed of a liquid slightly denser than the water. He could see straight through her to the portraits beyond, yet he knew that she was real, and should not be in the palace. In slow motion he moved to her side, purposing to challenge her.
She was staring at the painting of Meshurek; the broad chiselled face with its cold half-smile and deep-set, disturbed eyes. Next to it, Meshurek’s twin brother Ashurek was captured exactly by the artist. The brilliant green eyes in that dark, high-cheekboned face were lifelike in their intensity. Xaedrek felt an illogical need to stop the woman from looking at those portraits and attend to him instead. He shouted, and although his voice made no sound, she turned to him as if she had heard.
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