‘Who betrayed you, Schorde?’
‘The invaders… or our leaders. I don’t know, I don’t understand. They came among us at night and wounded us all. I think they only meant to wound–’ his tone became bitter, chilling. ‘But in the morning, my little sister is dead.’
‘Go on,’ Estarinel prompted gently, trying to mask the horror in his own voice. Skord gagged with the effort of finding words.
‘Forgotten… days go by… just a nightmare. We think it is over… waiting in fear, all of us crowded together, sick, injured rabbits. But no – the warriors are not satisfied–’ The flat tone of his voice escalated towards hysteria as he went on. ‘They come again, killing this time – slaughtering, mad – people falling, dying around us – but a few of us escape. I take Mother’s arm and run, dragging her along – we are beyond the forests, beyond the borders, safe – oh, would that we had died with the others!’ He began to rant in the native tongue of Drish, weeping and moaning in distress.
‘Skord!’ Estarinel said sharply. ‘Schorde! Speak the common language!’
Skord fell abruptly silent. Then he went on in a stilted, flat tone. ‘It’s my mother. She cannot forget my father and sister – she is mad with grief, insane. I can’t bear it! Nothing, no one can reach her. In despair I go off alone, self-pitying… as if my grief is worse than hers. When I return she has killed herself. If only I had stayed! Surely my soul is damned – grief and guilt and memories plague me. Surely I am mad myself… I want revenge! Yes! The dark invaders used demons – I will unleash one against them in return! I explore the old sorceries, find the knowledge…’ He uttered a moan. ‘I call for help – one comes. But oh – it is a creature of hell. It is silver and its mouth is red – I am terrified, my soul is damned. It won’t obey me – I am feeble with grief, I long to die. But it sends me to Her. She is kind to me. She tells me that if I help Her, She will help me in turn. She takes away my memory… I am happy for a time, I am Skord of Belhadra, son of a farmer… that is all I know… such peace. But then She makes me peform Her work: cast plague, take tribute. That which I called for aid win not leave me. She will not make it go, She torments me with the threat of giving back my memory. I loathe Her, I love Her, I fear Her – I revel in Her power and I despise it…’ Skord went on in this vein, growing hysterical again.
‘Quiet!’ Estarinel ordered. ‘Quiet, quiet… be still. Now Schorde, I will wake you.’ He held him in trance for five minutes more until Skord’s face became calm and his eyes dropped shut. Then, ‘Wake,’ he said.
He was unprepared for what happened next. Skord’s eyes flew open; he leapt forward, swung his hand in a blow across Estarinel’s face that sent him reeling backwards into the rock wall behind him. The boy staggered to his feet, teeth bared like a trapped wild dog.
‘Damn you! Damn you! Damn you!’ he hissed in fury and anguish. ‘You’ll pay! You’ll pay for this; all of you! Demon's bastards! Damn you!’ He turned and ran through the narrow pass between rocks and rock wall. They made no move to stop him.
Ashurek looked at Medrian and drew a breath through clenched teeth.
Estarinel had been knocked out cold. There was blood oozing from his mouth, and Medrian, lifting his head, felt beneath his black hair a lump where his head had struck the rock.
‘Poor Estarinel. I’m sure he did not have this in mind,’ she said quietly. Ashurek thought she was showing uncharacteristic tenderness as she made her cloak into a pillow, and then wiped the blood from his cheek.
‘I might have known there were demons behind it. I should have seen the signs,’ he remarked.
‘I won’t ask what the Gorethrians did in Drish, Ashurek,’ Medrian said tightly.
‘It was worse than Alaak,’ he said, his voice so rough with self-loathing that she looked up at him. ‘The non-combatants were promised safety and refuge, but they were lied to. Instead, the Gorethrians surrounded their camp and let demons run wild among them. Karadrek betrayed – no, I betrayed them because I let it happen. That’s when I turned my back upon Gorethria. Five years ago – yes, Skord would have been about thirteen then.’
‘Now we know his past, but we’re still no nearer to discovering who “She” is.’
‘Other than a powerful and malevolent summoner of some kind.’ Ashurek calmed the restless horses. ‘Ye gods, I feel sorry for the miserable wretch. As if he hadn’t suffered enough, without falling into the Shana’s hands.’
‘Now, I presume, he will send the nemen to massacre us,’ said Medrian without emotion.
‘Yes, we seem to have upset him enough… but we will give them a fight for their money.’ Ashurek’s eyes glinted like burning ice. ‘Although I thought we were to be delivered to Her intact.’
Medrian shuddered. ‘Perhaps we are in Her domain already, and this is what She has decided to do with us. If so, my fears were unfounded.’
‘You mean you would rather be slain by some mercenary than go to meet Her?’ Ashurek asked, bemused. Medrian was an enigma. Did she really know something, or was she half-mad?
‘Yes, that would be preferable,’ she said with a self-mocking smile that, for some reason, made him feel less hostile towards her. ‘But impossible. The path must be pursued by the proper route to the very end, or – well, look at poor Skord. Ah, but he is right; death and forgetfulness would be the best of all.’
They planned to stay hidden until Estarinel regained consciousness, and then perhaps ride to escape, taking the nemen by surprise. When dawn came, damp and fresh, Estarinel was still unconscious. Medrian climbed up and looked over the top of the rocks.
Ashurek, kneeling beside Estarinel to see how he was, looked up at the slim, dark figure of the woman.
‘Ouch!’ he heard her say. ‘Some insect. We’re still surrounded, but they’ve not closed in yet. I can’t see Skord.’ Then she wordlessly fell backwards to the ground. Ashurek expected to see an arrow or spear sticking from her body, but there was no mark on her. She lay still, eyes closed, pale as death. Ashurek looked cautiously over the top of the rocks. The nemen were standing in a semi-circle below their knoll, tall, bronze-limbed, golden-haired. They were so like Silvren in colouring, he realised that they could easily be of Silvren’s race. He saw one of them holding a reed to its mouth and he felt something like an insect sting on his forehead.
It was then that he remembered something else about warrior nemen. They use drugged darts… The thought came into his mind as it fell away into a cavern of blackness.
#
Confusion – dizziness – movement. A great mushroom of crystal towering towards the sun that glinted silver and white on its millions of tiny facets. The roar of many waters. Spray. Mist. Damp, cold air. The ice-white walls of a chasm rising to jagged heights, sparkling with great curtains of molten glass and foam. Whispering. Laughter – malicious, joking laughter. And a mass of golden faces, sometimes one standing out clearly – laughing – then retreating into the mass. Estarinel’s voice saying, ‘I saw them as he saw them – staring, sick faces crowded together.’ Day – night – day – night. Blackness and whiteness and disorientation…
The next thing Estarinel remembered was crawling on hands and knees down a deserted street. Completely deserted – a vast and choking sense of emptiness, of many fair things that had ceased to exist. He was only half-conscious, with a searing pain through his head, his back and his limbs; blood half-blinding him in a warm stream from somewhere on his head; clothes torn; dirt crusted on his hands and face. How long he had crawled for, he did not know. The blood stung his eyes like acid and he gasped and sobbed with the pain as he went.
Presently he blundered headlong into a wall. Groping blindly, Estarinel found a handhold and agonizingly dragged himself to his feet. He rubbed his eyes with his palms. The pain in his head spun away with a sinking sense of dizziness, leaving him swaying and heavy-headed but able to see and – eventually – to think.
It was hot, but he shivered convulsively. He saw, as through a red mist, the nature of
the city he was in. It was a city of metal. Gold, platinum, steel, silver, copper. There were tall, round towers of all kinds of metal, all imaginable shapes. Shining tubes of gold and silver stretching towards the sky, twisted, filigreed, inlaid, or with smooth perfect surfaces, all polished like looking-glasses, pure and lovely. In each tower one great jewel was set: stones of deep, soft blue, of viridian, purple and crimson, bright as mirrors. Broad, airy streets ran between the towers. The streets were paved with diamond-shaped slabs of marble, in many pastel shades, rich with fine branching veins of purple and gold.
Beautiful as it was, the sun’s glare reflecting from the towers, as if from many metal mirrors, pained Estarinel’s eyes.
Think. Think.
‘Shaell?’ he mouthed. Where was his stallion? Memories began to seep back into his mind; there should be two others with him. A battle… Skord… a vision of Drish, bloodied faces eaten with fear... a great mushroom of crystal. He remembered, but his head would not clear and he could not order his thoughts.
‘How did I get here?’ A piece of logic forced itself into his brain. ‘I was unconscious – the nemen must have brought me here and left me.’
Estarinel had no idea where to go, but he staggered on down the broad, shining street in search of water. He clung to buildings, his legs too weak to support him. Perhaps the nemen had been brutal with their prisoners, for he was in worse condition now than he had been after the battle. He passed out two or three times as he stumbled slowly on, whiteness clouding over his eyes, whiteness like that of Hrannekh Ol, or like snow…
‘Greetings!’ A clear, female voice hailed him from a distance. ‘Stay there. I’ll help you.’ He looked ahead and saw that the street opened into a square filled with shining fountains, and there was a lady on horseback at the street’s end…
Estarinel strained his misty eyes. There was something very strange about her colouring. Thick waves of blue-green hair, like hanks of sea-coloured silk, flowed over her shoulders, caught here and there with a jewel-threaded braid: agate, jade, amethyst. She rode side-saddle on a sea-blue horse with golden mane and tail, caparisoned in an ornamental saddle and bridle. Her riding habit was a full dress of blue silken material that shimmered as she moved, deepening to purple on the skirt, tight-waisted with wide sleeves that ended above slender beringed hands. The low cut of the bodice displayed her statuesque shoulders; her face was exquisite, proud-lipped with aquiline nose and large, luminous, turquoise eyes, and with a transparent pallor as if it were carved from white, green-touched onyx. She seemed at once statuesque, like a figure of marble, yet translucent.
Although Estarinel was confused, his impression of the woman, as she rode towards him, registered sharply. His head was spinning as she reached him where he was leaning weakly against a curved metal wall. She reined in the blue-green horse and bent down towards him. A rich perfume of honeysuckle and musk clung to her. She spoke, but there was a rushing sound in his ears and he could not hear what she said. As from a great distance, he heard his own voice saying, ridiculously, ‘I’m all right, really,’ as greyness flooded over his eyes and into his mind.
#
His second wakening was as pleasant as the first had been unwelcome. There was a soft, cool bed beneath him, with sheets of pale gold and a gorgeous animal skin of green and black fur thrown across it. The bed had four tall posts, gold-leafed and hung with rich tapestry fabric. This fabric was lovely, rich and silken… until it came into focus and he saw that the pattern was a repeating scene of gory battle.
Estarinel found he had been bathed and his wounds dressed. He was in some kind of loose night-robe, but he saw a new set of clothes laid out for him. He propped himself up on his elbows to look about the room. His whole body still ached, but not unbearably; he felt fresh and clean.
The room was semicircular, the curved metal wall opposite set with three oval windows of plain glass. The marble floor was strewn with animal skins of various strange hues: crimson and charcoal; blue, green and black. Estarinel was unused to such luxury and felt uneasy. Still, he sank back onto the pillows, taking the opportunity to collect his thoughts. His gaze came to rest on a low, mirror-topped table.
He went through all their adventures since leaving the House of Rede. Up to the battle with the nemen he could remember everything clearly; after that the memories grew vague. Talking to Medrian behind the rocks; hypnotising Skord, seeing his previous life in a vision as clearly as if he had experienced it himself. Then nothing. Like a candle extinguished.
An undefined passage of time, dreams and darkness swirling together; crawling half-dead through a city of gold; a beautiful, statuesque woman with sea-green hair. Then, waking in a luxurious room, feeling almost normal again but utterly confused.
A door opened to the left of the bed and there was the woman again, now entering with a tray of food. She glided to the bedside and set the tray on his lap, the silk of her dress rustling slightly as she did so. She paused and looked at him, a smile lighting her radiant pale face. ‘I brought you something to eat,’ she said.
He sat up, embarrassed. ‘Er – I have you to thank for nursing me?’
‘Yes – myself and my servants. I’m afraid you were dragged to the city without dignity by the nemen. I’m sorry. They’re not gentle folk. They probably drugged you as well.’ She sat on the edge of the bed. ‘Do you feel any better?’
‘Yes, thank you, my lady.’
‘What is your name?’
‘Estarinel.’
‘I am Arlenmia. You must be from Forluin, or Maerna?’
‘Forluin, my lady.’
‘Ah yes.’ Her voice was soft, clear and refined, and she spoke the language common to Forluin and most of Tearn with no trace of an accent. Her strange colouring, however, was surely not of that Earth. She had a naturally regal bearing which accentuated the sculptural quality of her beauty. Yet there was a slight languidness in her movements, only the faintest hint, as if she were slightly drunk.
‘Lady Arlenmia… I had two companions with me who must also have been taken by the nemen. Are they here?’
She took one of his hands between her own slender ones. ‘You must have many such questions. Don’t worry. I will try to help you. Now, will you please rest and not be anxious? You are more in need of healing and sleep than you realise. If you require anything, ring this bell and a maid will attend to you. I wish to make you feel welcome in my house.’ She smiled, rose gracefully and left, leaving a warm exhalation of perfume behind her.
Estarinel lay back on the pillows, bemused. He tried to imagine what impression she would have given, had he not had the gravest reasons for suspecting that Arlenmia was She. A warm, charming and gentle woman who had given the best of care to an injured stranger as a matter of course. His instinct to give people the benefit of the doubt had not yet been eroded. Yet she had evaded his question about Medrian and Ashurek. In truth, there was really no doubt about where he must be.
The knowledge of how external powers had manipulated them chilled him. The Worm had, it seemed, sucked them from the care of the H’tebhmellians and spat them into Skord’s lap to be delivered to some unknown and uncontrollable fate. Yet they had escaped the White Plane when the Serpent might have let them die there… so were the forces opposing M’gulfn, the supposed ‘good’ powers, manipulating them also?
He had a brief vision of two figures, one light grey, one dark grey, tossing a ball one to the other with blank-eyed impassiveness. He and his companions truly had no allies, no friends; they were nothing, just instruments in a great design.
He sighed. He was too tired to think, so he stopped trying, and ate the good food Arlenmia had brought. It was the first time he had eaten for days.
Then he rose from the bed and began to dress. Arlenmia was right; he had been more badly injured than he realised. Once out of the comfortable bed he felt stiffness and pain in all his limbs as well as the particular discomfort of each of his injuries. His back and head ached and he felt so exhaust
ed and weak that he knew resuming the Quest would be impossible for several days at least.
The clothes were odd and ornate; breeches and a padded jacket of dull purple silk, embroidered with gold. There was also a lavish, matching robe of the sort that Skord wore. Estarinel did not touch it. He looked at the mirror-topped table and a pallid, battle-scarred face stared back, framed by a tangle of black hair. For a moment be thought he saw a glass ceiling reflected in the mirror, but he looked up and it was only plain gold metal like the walls. He shook off the illusion, and the feeling that there had been another face, the ghost of a face, superimposed on his own in the mirror.
He looked out of each of the windows and found that his room was in the second storey of a tower, part of a house with walls of polished gold. The first window overlooked a private courtyard with an ornamental pool and fountain in the center. He noticed there were no plants there, nothing except water, marble and metal. The other windows gave panoramic views over the weird city; that certainly had been no fevered dream. The towers of silver and gold dazzled in the burning sunlight while the huge jewels set into each one glittered with breathtaking colour. He could see no end to the city and could not guess at its size, or what lay beyond it. The brightness of it pained his eyes.
He sat on the bed. He did not like to leave the room and wander about the house without permission; indeed, he was really in no fit state to do anything but lie down. He was pondering what to do when the maid entered.
She was an attractive woman of middle years, wearing a long dress of purple trimmed with white. Her brown hair was braided and contained by a net of blue jewels.
‘My lady has sent me to see if you require anything, sir.’ She spoke pleasantly, with no air of servility. ‘My name is Gulla.’
‘Yes, you could show me to the rooms of my companions, if you would be so kind, Gulla,’ he said, watching her face.
A Blackbird In Silver (Book 1) Page 19