A Blackbird In Silver (Book 1)

by Freda Warrington

  He recounted their adventures, in as few words as possible. When he told her of Forluin, tears filled her translucent eyes.

  ‘Oh, curse the damned Worm!’ she exclaimed as he finished. ‘Nothing is spared – I wonder if it’s all worth fighting for. If only I was not bound and powerless, I would be on this horrible Quest with you.’

  ‘I know – I know that you began it.’

  ‘Yes, and now it may not end, because Arlenmia works for the Serpent.’

  At these words, Estarinel felt all hope emptying from him.

  ‘I suspected it… but how do you know?’

  ‘I know her – she brought another world to ruin before this. She used to be my friend, and it is my fault she came here, though that is another tale.

  ‘The Gorethrian Empire, the Shana, the Egg-Stone – all are the works of the Serpent. The world is falling slowly into its power, and now Arlenmia is continuing its work in the heart of Tearn. The Glass City is beautiful and ancient, a place of power that maintains the tenuous contact with the three Planes; but she has cast an illusion about it so that it seems to be something that reflects rather than something transparent, and its people have fled.’

  ‘And these people?’ said Estarinel, indicating the miserable faces staring through the glass walls of their prisons.

  ‘Only an illusion... but it is true that the souls of the Belhadrians are imprisoned while their bodies and minds wander hopelessly about their daily lives.

  ‘This is only the start. Her idea and dream is a world that exists in eternal worship of the Worm; and that would mean not only horrors far in excess of those created by any evil agent of Earth. It would mean the destruction of all joy and freedom, the loss of all will to live, but the escape route of death would be closed. No will of your own, but only the eternal singing of the Worm’s praises; and the horror of it would be worse than that of the Dark Regions, more terrible than hell itself.

  ‘The world would become immune to external forces, immune to reality. It would become as a – a bloated sac that can never expel its poison. Estarinel, that is the end the world is coming to; that is what we are fighting against.’

  ‘Oh, gods,’ he said, horror enfolding him. ‘I never realised it was so…’

  ‘Eldor didn’t tell you? Perhaps he thought it wouldn’t help. Arlenmia can control Tearn, for she has mastered the Glass City, and Gastada is helping her. She will try to get Ashurek in her power, return him to Gorethria and so destroy the Empire. Medrian, I don’t know; but she will use her for something.

  ‘The Worm could not gain a hold in Forluin except by attacking it physically,’ Silvren continued. ‘But Arlenmia knows that if she can control you, she can send you back there to instill all the people with the submissive misery that afflicts the Belhadrians. Can you now see why the Worm came to Forluin? It was not a random attack, but part of its plan.

  ‘The House of Rede will be the last to fall, though that will not be safe forever.’ Estarinel listened, speechless with despair and horror, as the sorceress Silvren went on. ‘She has no notion that the Worm is good or evil; she only loves it, worships it. Such people are more dangerous than the consciously evil or cruel, such as the Shana or Gastada.’

  Her form shivered, and the glass towers behind her rippled as if seen through warm, rising air. She uttered a sigh. ‘She may convince you that what she is doing is good and essential, because she believes it herself. She must have given you the drug to open your mind to her, so whether she can see us together or not, I’ve no idea. When the drug wears off she will try to entrance you. Fight! If you and Ashurek and Medrian use all your intelligence, you may escape. Destroying her is another matter. There is something that her life and vitality depend on... I can’t discover what it is... if you can, you’ll have a chance…’

  She sighed again, and this time it was almost a groan, that of a hell-tormented creature. ‘I can’t tell you how important it is that you reach the Blue Plane immediately…’

  ‘I know,’ he sighed. He reached out to her, but his hands passed through her now. ‘Silvren!’

  ‘E’rinel, I am glad that Ashurek has such a good and gentle companion. Perhaps you can talk some sense into him. I never could.’

  Her voice was growing fainter. ‘Tell him all I have told you, and that I will watch him whenever I can find strength. Oh, and one last thing, the most awful thing of all.’ She fixed him with bottomless eyes of deep gold, like beautiful lakes in which terrible things were reflected. He loved her and pitied her in that moment, and he knew he was watching the soul of a sorceress being dragged back down to hell. ‘E’rinel, you must know that the Worm also takes a human form.’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied voicelessly.

  ‘I know Arlenmia,’ Silvren’s voice became half-choked with tears, ‘and when she becomes devoted to something, her devotion is total – no half-measures for her. She serves the Serpent with such fanaticism that I believe it wouldn’t be beyond her to find a way to become the Serpent’s host.’

  ‘Do you believe–?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hope I’m wrong. I loved her… oh, my soul is so weary, sick, I must go back… tell Ashurek I love him.’ Silvren was gone, like a cat fading into moonlight, although her after-image danced before his eyes. There must be some way to follow and rescue her – but as she disappeared, reality vanished with her.

  Estarinel closed his eyes and his mind, and let the drug take him. It carried him, like spore on a wind, across fantastic landscapes, through blazing lights and infinite snow-tunnels, and it was many nightmarish hours before it left him.

  He was still sitting by Arlenmia’s heatless fireside when he awoke. It was daylight, well into the following morning. The ceiling had turned to metal once more. He glanced over the marble floor of the hall with its rich animal skins, the silver-and-glass table, the crystal globe of the Earth without really noticing them. His head ached and his mind seemed to have turned in upon itself so that he found it hard to adjust back to the physical world. He was alone. He felt fear pressing on him from all sides and wanted to run, run. Instead, he stood up and walked very slowly towards his room, where he thought to find some security. Then, he thought, I must find Medrian, must find Ashurek.

  The bright corridors with their exquisite tapestries and paintings ran past him in a blur as he walked. At last he gained the door of his room and entered gratefully.

  The first thing to greet his eyes was Arlenmia, sitting in stately beauty on a cushion at the little mirror-topped table. Her emerald hair shimmered with blue lights. One slender hand paused in enclosing a tall, delicately-carved chess piece that was milky-white, translucent as opal, shiny as alabaster. She turned and smiled with such loveliness of nature in her face that he suddenly doubted Silvren’s words.

  There were other pieces on the table, set up as for a game. Half were white and smooth, the opposing half honey-coloured, all beautifully carved, tall and highly polished. Estarinel stared at them and stood motionless at the door.

  ‘Come,’ she invited him. ‘Come and play a game of chess with me.’

  Chapter Eleven. Her Mirror

  ‘You are a dark one,’ she said, inclining her head to one side and searching his face with her blue-green eyes. ‘I have known the mind drug to fail before, but never so totally.’

  ‘In what way?’ Estarinel sat down facing her across the table, very much on his guard. The drug had left him feeling apprehensive and confused, but he was determined not to let her entrance him again.

  ‘It was to lay your mind open to me – and mine to you. Ah well, it does not always work,’ she said softly, smiling. He sensed that she was furious, but in no way did her face or manner betray it. Everything that Silvren had said about Arlenmia was in the forefront of his mind as he watched her smiling at him, her turquoise eyes glowing. Silvren’s words contrasted violently with Arlenmia’s view, but it was the golden-haired sorceress that he believed.

  Had Arlenmia, using the drug and her mirror, been able
to see him and Silvren together?

  ‘You must be exhausted, and hungry,’ she said when he was silent. ‘Let me have Gulla bring you something to eat.’

  ‘No, really – I don’t want anything,’ he replied. His mouth was so dry that he could hardly swallow, let alone eat.

  ‘Has the drug made you ill?’ She extended a hand as if to touch his forehead. He drew back and she smiled. ‘No cramps in your limbs and stomach, or dizziness?’ He shook his head. ‘Good.’ She sounded a little surprised. ‘Then you feel well enough to have a game of chess with me. Do you know how to play?’

  ‘Yes – though not without a board,’ he murmured through dry lips.

  ‘But there is a board,’ she laughed. ‘Look!’ On the glass, squares were etched in delicate lines of frost, barely visible. Arlenmia took up a white pawn and slid it forward. ‘Your turn. Come, what are you afraid of? I don’t play that well!’

  Hesitantly, he moved a honey-coloured pawn. As she watched him, she took a sip from a small glass of water.

  The game progressed, but Estarinel played badly, unable to concentrate. She must be leading him towards some final trap; he could see no possible escape. If he made any attempt to resist, he knew, she and her servants would bind him effortlessly.

  The drug seemed to have fragmented his thoughts. Watching the reflection of the chess pieces in the table’s mirror surface, he noticed that although they were opaque, in the mirror they appeared as long droplets of clear glass hanging inverted from a thin film of water. The metal ceiling again looked like glass.

  Arlenmia saw him staring at the reflection and paused with one finger resting on the white queen’s head.

  ‘It makes everything look different, doesn’t it? Appearances can be deceptive, but a mirror cannot lie, or so they say.’

  ‘Then you should take a lesson from your mirrors. What do you want of me, Arlenmia?’

  ‘I only want you to help your own country,’ she replied. She moved her piece and captured his queen. ‘That was a foolish move; if you had done this instead, you would have won.’ She slid the pieces to a different position, and as she did so, shapes began to form and swirl in the glass.

  ‘You will let us into Forluin one way or another, eventually. I’m only trying to make it easier for you. I’m asking you to open your mind, invite us in so that we need not force our way in. Save yourself needless suffering. Look at the mirror!’

  ‘Oh no,’ he said, averting his eyes, though he could still perceive colours writhing on the edge of his vision. And he remembered the Serpent’s attack on Forluin, ‘… invite us in so that we need not force our way in…’ His hands were shaking.

  ‘Look,’ she said again, this time more gently. ‘I did promise to show you what is happening in Forluin.’ She slid the white king forward, and the scene in the mirror grew clearer.

  ‘There’, she said. ‘It is done. By manoeuvring the pieces I control the image. I can see thoughts, places, events; the past and the future. Look, and I will show you Forluin.’

  Estarinel stood up.

  ‘No, I won’t look. You’ve deceived me in every way, with mirrors and drugs. I don’t know what you’ve done with Ashurek and Medrian, but I know you are our enemy.’

  She rose to her feet and faced him, her exquisite eyes an irresistible mixture of innocence and fervency.

  ‘Have you not listened to a word I have said to you? Did you not put your arms about me and say you would stay with me forever rather than leave at that moment? And now you refuse this chance to understand and share what I love.’ Again her sincerity was swaying him, eroding his judgment. ‘I thought you were unlike Ashurek and Medrian, not blind, not stubborn. Now I am not sure. You seem different, and I do not know why.’

  So she had not seen Silvren, Estarinel realised with a faint thrill of relief. ‘You betrayed yourself,’ he answered hoarsely. ‘You said that Forluin did not matter. You must realise that even if you were right, I could never, ever forget that desecration; never stand at your side and worship the evil I’ve sworn to destroy.’

  She stared at him, her passion as awe-inspiring and inescapable as an onrushing tidal wave. The memory of her embrace was that of an icy-green muscular snake squeezing out his life.

  ‘Now you’ve betrayed yourself,’ she said. ‘I knew, of course, but what a long time you’ve taken to admit it – as if you were safeguarding your precious mission by your silence! I despair of humankind,’ she continued, opening her perfect, pale arms in a gesture of exasperation. ‘You are all the same; too afraid to see the truth. I will give you one last chance for Forluin’s destiny to be delivered in gentleness, not violence. For you can see what happens if you try to resist–’ She pointed at the mirror.

  Estarinel was nearly caught out, and barely refrained from looking. From the corner of his eye he saw a flash of an awful colour, which for its terrible associations had burned itself into his brain. It was the colour of the Worm. Then he did look at the mirror, and saw the events of months ago: the Serpent passing over Forluin. His throat tightened to an aching knot of terror and he bit his lip until he tasted blood.

  Arlenmia watched the scene too, smiling dispassionately. The mirror cleared and she waited until the fear had subsided in the young knight’s face, leaving only bitter misery.

  ‘No wonder you want it destroyed,’ she said sadly. ‘You would have to kill me, too, before you ever reached it. Could you do that?’

  For the first time he wished he lacked Forluinish gentleness and had instead Ashurek’s callousness. But he doubted that even Ashurek could contemplate the cold-blooded disposal of this beautiful, misguided woman, especially not after his sister… Besides, there was every indication that she had the Serpent’s power at her command, or was even its host.

  The mirror was alive again.

  ‘Now,’ she went on, ‘now that you have looked once, you cannot look away, is that right? Estarinel, I abhor violence; I tolerate it only as a necessary evil, a cleansing process to ready the world for its future. But it need not be necessary.’ She gave special emphasis to the last words, giving him a pleading, ardent look that again made it hard to disbelieve her. ‘Forluin has two alternative futures. I will show you them both. Then it is in your hands to decide what will be her fate. First!’ She shifted a white bishop, a honey castle and three pawns.

  In the mirror a long sunlit glade appeared, slumbering quietly under a soft breeze. Two men, a woman, and two girls on horseback were crossing the glade, talking and laughing. As they passed from the mirror’s view, a flock of small blue-grey birds spiralled singing into the air. ‘Now isn’t that Forluin as all your countrymen wish it to remain? But watch her other possible fate.’ The picture remained still, but the glade seemed to sicken, its soft greens becoming vulgar, the sunlight becoming harsh. The same five people began to cross again, but all on foot, running, stumbling, crying out in stark terror. A darkness overtook them and there was a glimpse of the Serpent’s vile head, vomiting fluid that seared grass and flesh. It swooped and the five were snapped into its maw. Then the Worm flew on and nothing remained of their burned and broken bodies but a few tattered pieces of clothing. No birds rose.

  ‘Which one is real? Which is real?’ cried Estarinel.

  ‘Your choice. If you return to Forluin to do my bidding, the latter can be avoided.’ She rested a slender hand on his shoulder, but he shuddered under her touch. ‘We are talking of the great and terrible Serpent M’gulfn. It must have dominion over Earth, and it will. Only this foolish struggle is causing you all so much pain. Surrender, and all will have eternal life and joy. I will leave you to meditate upon this.’ With a rustle of green silk, she left the room.

  So Silvren was right; Arlenmia truly believed that the appalling evil was a supreme good. The scenes in the tabletop were running wild, filling his mind… Ashurek was a bloodthirsty madman with a gold-haired witch at his side, Medrian a subverter dedicated to destroying the world, and himself an innocent, helping their wicked work wit
h well-intentioned ignorance. Arlenmia’s fanaticism was deeply persuasive.

  This was the final trap, her last resort: the mirror would mesmerise him, instilling his brain with whatever images she chose. Now he realised that ever since he had first come to her, she had been drugging him and practising a slow, tender brainwashing. Perhaps it was a matter of pride for her to feel that he had come to her side more or less of his own free will. She had failed in that, but the mirror could not fail.

  He was fighting the Serpent – perhaps even face to face – in a way he could never have foreseen. That thought alone kept his mind coherent as he sank to his knees, leaning over the table as if it were about to swallow him.

  Arlemnia could not be right. However deeply she believed that M’gulfn was good, that did not make it true.

  A terrible projection was swirling in the glass, the beginning of Arlenmia’s dream of a world singing eternal worship of the Serpent. Overlaid on it in his own mind was Silvren’s view: eternal desecration and misery. He could not bear to see Arlenmia’s vision, could not bear to have it distilled into his mind so that he believed it, betraying the land and people he loved for the sake of an horrific, ecstatic fantasy. Slowly he forced his hands towards the chess pieces, felt them cold and heavy beneath his fingers. Reflections spun dizzily as he began to shift them. There must be a danger that the images would race out of control, leaving him insane or mindless.

  Yet as he pushed the pieces to their original positions, the mirror became still.

  Estarinel took a deep breath and sat back on his heels. He felt sick with dread at the choice she had given him, for he had no doubt of her power. If he did not co-operate, she could cause the Serpent to visit Forluin a second time and complete the devastation.

  They say the Serpent cannot be destroyed, he thought. Maybe this is why. It enmeshes all who go near it. More than ever it seemed possible that Arlenmia could be M’gulfn in human form.