‘Is it true, then, that there is an Entrance Point to the Blue Plane in Forluin?’ asked Ashurek, moving to his side.
‘Well, the particular orbits of the Entrance Points bring them across Forluin quite often. So yes, we have had more contact with them than the rest of the world. And they say the H’tebhmellians can use magnetism to deflect the Entrance Points, and make them appear where they want.’
‘Can they indeed? Silvren and I wasted much time and effort trying to reach H’tebhmella – and yet you can walk freely in and out?’
‘No, we cannot. It is rare that anyone visits the Blue Plane, and rare for a H’tebhmellian to walk in Forluin. I have never been there, nor seen an inhabitant,’ Estarinel said, deep regret in his voice.
‘In a few days, so you say, we will be there.’
Estarinel glanced at the tall Gorethrian, then stared at the sea once more. ‘I wish it had been in happier circumstances,’ he muttered. ‘First things first, though; how do we get this ship to set sail?’
At that moment there was a cry from Medrian on the forecastle. ‘Look!’
They ran up the steps to the deck to find Medrian staring down into the waves, one white hand on the figurehead’s neck.
‘Look,’ she repeated.
Harnessed to the prow of the ship were two horses, half-submerged in the water. They were strong, well-muscled beasts, with powerful, curving necks and broad backs. In the half-light they glistened greenish-grey, as if formed from sea-washed rock. Below the water their legs graduated into great fins, and their heads were attenuated, like the heads of sea-horses. From their small mouths, plaited leather reins ran up and were loosely knotted around the rail.
Ashurek’s verdant eyes came alive in his dark face. He unknotted the reins and made contact with the horses’ sensitive mouths. They responded instantly.
‘Ho! Forward!’ he called, and they began to swim, slowly at first, gathering speed. The Star of Filmoriel cut smoothly through the waves. Estarinel turned to speak to Medrian, but she abruptly walked away and went down onto the main deck and thence down into the hold. Her face was white and expressionless and she looked almost ill.
‘If only her hatred of me was open, I’d understand her,’ muttered Ashurek, glaring after her.
‘Why are you so sure that she must hate you?’ asked Estarinel. That two people should dislike each other on such slight acquaintance was an anathema to him. He wanted to understand as well. Ashurek only shook his head, grimacing.
‘How little you must know of world events. Still, the invasion of Alaak was nine years ago… I dare say you were hardly out of childhood then.’
‘I am twenty-three,’ said Estarinel, ‘and I believe Medrian is no more than two, three years older than me at most.’
‘Ye gods,’ Ashurek said softly, leaning back against the rail. ‘I was only twenty-three when Alaak… I believe she’s a Serpent-sent reminder. You, also, must have every reason to despise me. I knew I should have embarked on this mission alone.’
‘Listen,’ Estarinel said, his gentle eyes becoming purposeful, ‘I believe you’ve told me the truth about yourself, and we’re linked by a common purpose: to destroy the Serpent M’gulfn. I really don’t care about anything else; I only care that the Worm is stopped from slaughtering innocent people. Whatever our feelings about each other, we must have a working relationship.’
Ashurek looked surprised, and smiled suddenly. ‘Nobly spoken, indeed! For your philanthropic attitude, my friend, I have every respect.’
Estarinel shrugged. ‘I have no personal grudge against you. But you believe Medrian does?’
‘I don’t see how she could fail to. So why does she deny it? If I knew the truth I’d feel easier, that is all. Ultimately, only the Worm matters – as you rightly say.’
The ship carved ahead at incredible speed as the horses swam, their powerful shoulders heaving. Ashurek wrapped their reins around the figurehead’s neck and called, ‘Come on, come on!’ and the horses responded to his encouragement, swimming without guidance from the bridle. As they swam they dipped their slender muzzles into the waves, as if grazing on tiny sea creatures.
In fact the whole ship was a kind of lodestone, moving as sure as an arrow towards the Entrance Point, while at the same time drawing the Point towards itself.
The cliffs of the cold southern continent slid below the horizon. The darkness grew. The open ocean was all around them. The slim figure that was Estarinel and the tall one that was Ashurek stood motionless for a long time. After a while Medrian returned, quiet as a cat, to join them.
Estarinel soon realised that he was unlikely to draw his companions’ minds from their dark labyrinths to dwell on more practical matters. In a way, the ship and the voyage to the Blue Plane were his responsibility. He decided to busy himself with the journey rather than let his mind dwell on horrors he would rather forget.
He arranged a system by which they took it in turns to keep watch, eat, sleep and tend to the horses. Whatever power had raised and lowered the gang-plank made no further appearances except to keep the lights on the mast-tops perpetually burning. It was as if the ship itself was sentient, and Estarinel found this reassuring rather than unnerving.
He hoped they would not be at sea for long. There was so little space to exercise the horses. On reflection it seemed cruel to have brought them, but Eldor, in his noncommittal way, had hinted that it was a wise plan. Horses might be needed on the first part of the journey when they left the Blue Plane. Besides, concern for Shaell at least kept Estarinel in tenuous contact with normality.
And so the Quest of the Serpent began. Estarinel found his companions morose and unfriendly; he had imagined they would be fearless and vigorous warriors, not these cold, introverted strangers. They were so unlike the warm Forluinish. In his own depressed, fearful state he did not feel inclined to offer them his own friendship. Inwardly he battled dread and homesickness; outwardly he remained – as Arlena and Falin would have expected – calmly practical. Already, as was Forluinish nature, he was coming to feel concern for his companions.
Ashurek at least was talkative, although be was obviously deeply embittered, and Estarinel preferred not to think about the terrible life he had led. Although he felt drawn to Medrian, she remained silent. Any attempt at conversation was met with short, icy replies, and she would even walk away in mid-sentence, as if it pained her to talk. She preferred her own company, but the sight of her – a slender, dark figure staring out to sea – moved him in a way he did not comprehend.
On their third day afloat he joined her at the rail by the figurehead and said, ‘Our horses are bearing up well. I think it will be no more than three or four days before the ship finds the Entrance Point.’
Instead of her usual terse reply, Medrian looked round at him, her face half in darkness.
‘Why did no one question the wisdom of us bringing horses?’ she asked quietly. ‘There’s little use in taking horses on a ship to the Blue Plane, and they cannot come to the Arctic with us.’
‘I suppose we all thought we might need them at some stage,’ he answered.
‘Yes, we will need them,’ she said, and he noticed her hands tightening on the rail until the bones shone white, ‘because we cannot keep secrets from the Serpent, and it will not let us go to the Blue Plane.’
Estarinel stared at her. ‘It will not–?’
‘Do you think it wants to commit suicide?’ she said angrily.
‘Eldor warned me that it would know,’ Estarinel said, trembling suddenly. ‘So if it should stop us reaching the Blue Plane, what will happen?’ Medrian shook her head, her dark hair falling across her face. ‘Oh, Medrian, look, we are aboard a H’tebhmellian ship. It cannot go astray, and surely the Serpent has no power over it?’
‘No power over it, exactly, but power over the elements…’ she bowed her head and clasped her arms around herself. ‘I’m trying to warn you in the only way I can.’ She bit her lower lip, turned away from him, and walked
towards her cabin.
He made to go after her, but stopped himself. Was she mad? he wondered. Perhaps she was simply frightened. He went to the prow and looked down at the sea-horses, who seemed totally calm as they swam on strongly.
Estarinel had the utmost faith in the H’tebhmellians, but the premonitions of disaster that Medrian had instilled did not diminish.
#
Ashurek, in his cabin, woke violently from a nightmare. He had been dreaming about his sister, Orkesh; she was shouting at him from a great distance, tearing at her long hair with emaciated fingers.
‘Why did you kill me? You could have saved me – if you had stopped and thought – not behaved as the automaton that Meshurek and the demon had set in motion. If you’d only had the courage to defy them, Ashurek. Oh, how I loved you, relied on you, my brother – my salvation – but do you know where I am now? Do you know? Do you know?’
She seemed to turn into Silvren, or was both women at once – a woman with dark skin and golden hair, who was at the same time his daughter.
He sat up on his bunk, angrily forcing his mind to reason. He had no daughter, and Orkesh was dead. Perhaps she was right, he could have found a way to rescue her from Meheg-Ba. For killing his own sister he was certainly damned forever, damned by his own guilt and self-loathing. He shook his head to clear the nightmare.
He lay back, thinking of Silvren. He remembered how she had rescued him from the castle of Gastada, and that ghastly place came into his memory as he lay with the ship rocking gently beneath him. Against his will, he once again saw Gastada before him, and heard the thick, muffled voice of the hideous little man.
‘Ah, Ashurek,’ Gastada had whispered, ‘I believe only the Serpent itself could break your will… All my most refined and exquisite tortures I have used on you, yet you still resist me.’
‘If I knew what you wanted, perhaps I could help.’ Ashurek had spoken with malicious sarcasm, despite being prostrate with agony from Gastada’s ministrations.
Gastada had been Duke of Guldarktal, a once-noble Tearnian country, but was now an acolyte of the Serpent, made insane by communion with demons. ‘Isn’t it obvious? Surrender yourself to the Serpent. Surrender to the Shana, and to me. It is so ridiculous – you possess the Egg-Stone, the ultimate instrument of the Serpent M’gulfn, yet you oppose the Serpent! And the wonderful irony is that you cannot live without the Egg-Stone, although you so loathe it!’ Gastada waved a hand at the tiny squalid cell in which Ashurek was imprisoned. ‘Ah well, you will be pleased to know that you cannot escape from my home. The one door is held shut by demonic power – that is, if you should ever unshackle yourself and kill all my guards, and so reach it.’ Gastada chuckled madly at Ashurek, who lay chained to a wall and helpless with fever and pain.
The Egg-Stone had not helped him; it seemed the Serpent had withdrawn its power while trying to control Ashurek. He remembered the terrible darkness as he had neared death, and then the equally terrible brightness as Silvren had forced her way into the castle to save him.
He remembered it as a vivid, unforgettable dream: Silvren, bathed in white light, unleashing to the full her sorcerous power. Chains falling from him, Gastada’s guards dying, lightning flaring. The hideous castle trembling to its foundations. He saw again the dreadful pointed black door opening, straining against Silvren’s will, and then the terrifying descent of the rock face on which the castle sat, until they both lay exhausted at its foot.
The memory was so clear that it seemed Silvren was indeed there beside him, pushing her golden hair back from her golden face with shaking hands. Neither of them had spoken for a long time, until Ashurek saw that she was weeping.
‘Why are you crying?’ he had asked. She clasped his hands and looked across the desolate heaps of ash that surrounded Gastada’s castle.
‘I knew this country,’ she said, ‘before Gastada became involved with the Serpent. It was beautiful, and many people lived here. Now there is desolation. This is what the Worm wants – desolation!’ She shook with tears and he held her while she cried.
Eventually he said aridly, ‘I have caused such destruction also. Perhaps Gastada did this while the soldiers who might have prevented it were in the east, fighting the Gorethrian armies.’
She looked angrily up at him. ‘Why say that? Do you want to make me hate you, to assuage your guilty conscience?’
‘I have no conscience,’ he said.
‘It won’t work,’ Silvren retorted. ‘I still love you.’
‘You risked your life to save mine,’ he said more gently. ‘I had no idea your powers were so great.’
‘I was not sure, either.’ She half-smiled, but looked ashen. He realised she was in pain.
‘Silvren, are you well enough to carry on? You seem ill.’
‘Neither of us is very fit, are we?’ She smiled up into his dark face. ‘Ashurek… sorcery is not just a terrible drain on my strength. It actually hurts. It is not like the children’s stories where the wizard waves a wand. It is more like giving birth.’ She didn’t make the confession for sympathy; she seemed to have no thought for herself at all, except an occasional amused bitterness at her lot. ‘When the Serpent is gone, there will be more like me. I hope it will not be as difficult for them. At present, even for the smallest spell the power has to be dragged screaming into this world.
‘I don’t know whether my sorcerous power was a terrible mistake, or necessary for the evolution of the Earth. I think not knowing is the worst thing of all.’
He realised how alone she was. He had thought himself alone: sundered from his people by fate and circumstance. But Silvren was alienated from the whole of humanity by powers she did not want, and the awful burden of having to use them.
He remembered the warmth of her body and the softness of her hair on his hands as they lay below Gastada’s castle, comforting each other while they gathered strength to go on. And just a few weeks later, the demons Meheg-Ba and Diheg-El, with the help of his brother Meshurek, tore them apart and sent Silvren to the Dark Regions…
Ashurek cursed and leapt from the bunk. There was nothing to be done; he was already doing what he could, which was to try to kill the Serpent. And as well as grief at the loss of Silvren, which never lessened, there was also the burning hole left when he parted with the evil Egg-Stone.
Estarinel saw him stride up to the prow and furiously urge the sea-horses to greater efforts, his face grim with anger and his whole frame alive with dangerous energy.
I wish this voyage was over, Estarinel thought, and went down into the hold to attend to his horse. Shaell was apparently the only sane being on board.
#
For two more days they made a straight, smooth course north. The twilight deepened to permanent night. Sky and sea were clear, calm, cold. The lights on The Star of Filmoriel’s masts cast a pure glow about the ship. The powerful sea-horses never tired or faltered.
On their fifth day afloat, dark clouds began to stream across the sky, obscuring the stars. The atmosphere became thick and stuffy. It was difficult to draw breath and the air felt clammy on their skin. The waves were rising, dragging the ship slowly up to each crest then sending her plummeting down at sickening speed. Salt spray flew, stinging their faces and crusting on their skin. Then the rain began, falling in great oily drops that had a bitter taste. Horribly, there was no wind, but powerful currents beneath the waves dragged the ship faster and faster northwards.
There was nothing fresh and wild about this storm. It was sullen, sluggish and menacing. No thunder, no lightning. It felt… unhealthy.
The three stood at the rearing and plunging prow, gripping the rail.
‘Perhaps the Serpent does know we’re coming,’ Estarinel said faintly. Medrian shot him an unfathomable sideways look and Ashurek smiled with grim humour.
‘Probably,’ he replied.
The ship cut the top of a wave and they gasped as a wall of spray hit them. The small vessel pitched and rolled, careered down one black wa
ve and was heaved to the top of another. The sea-horses were cruising with the current, plainly uneasy, upset. In the hold, too, the three horses were restlessly moving about their stalls.
‘Nothing we can do except wait for it to die down,’ said Ashurek. ‘At least it’s carrying us in roughly the right direction.’
The ship was tossed from side to side as wall after wall of seawater broke over them. The Forluinishman – hanging onto the rail as he made his way to the hold – went below to quiet the horses. When he returned to the forecastle there was a strange heat in the air. Ashurek was pointing out to sea. It was difficult to see anything through the rain and spray half-blinding them, but he could make out a faint pink glow stretching across the horizon.
‘What is it? Surely not sunrise?’ said Estarinel, squinting through the storm. Ashurek pulled his hood over his helm.
‘No. I believe it is what they call the Roseate Fire. A natural phenomenon: a ring of fire on the water.’
Looking to the south they found that the glow encircled the horizon.
‘Natural, indeed?’ said Estarinel. ‘There is nothing natural about this storm.’ The bitter rain grew heavier. ‘Can we sail through it?’
‘I don’t know. We can only try,’ Ashurek replied with a humourless grin.
Medrian’s dark eyes were very wide and, as she stood rigidly by the figurehead, her lips moved as if she were whispering to herself. She seemed oblivious of the other two. She was staring at something on the horizon.
Pitching and rolling, The Star of Filmoriel rushed towards the rosy glow. She leaned onto her side and righted herself, leaving the three clinging wildly to the rail, gasping with the force of the oily waves. The light from the masts seemed muffled by the brownish clouds boiling low in the sky. The waves were carrying them forward at a sickening rate and the heat in the north grew fiercer.
Ashurek stumbled, cursed, and dragged himself back onto his feet. The Roseate Fire was ahead of them, a thick, transparent wall that coloured the sea pink. There were no flames, but they could feel heat scorching their faces. The rain that hit the glow exploded into steam.
A Blackbird In Silver (Book 1) Page 11