A Blackbird In Darkness (Book 2) (11 page)

Exhal unhurriedly rounded up his herd and then followed, snorting and shaking his heavy head, like an animal trying to rid itself of pain. Ashurek was heading for the dark landmark again, but this time – with the ox-creature to guide them – they were rapidly drawing closer to it. It was shaped roughly like a broad obelisk, with its angles rounded off. Brown smokes wreathed it. As they reached it, they found it was blank and featureless and rubbery to the touch, like the swamp.

‘Show us the way,’ he said as Exhal caught them up.

‘Have you no patience, Ashurek of Gorethria?’ the beast grunted, raising itself on its hind legs and once more clutching the stick it had retrieved from Calorn.

‘We don’t have much time.’

‘Don’t you? I have forever,’ Exhal replied savagely. He began jabbing at the wall with the stick, searching back and forth along it. Eventually the stick slid halfway in. Then Exhal thrust a hoof in just below, and seemed to be struggling to force open a slit in the rubbery surface. His head and heaving shoulders disappeared into the wall and they could see the elastic opening stretched tautly around him, straining to close shut again.

Ashurek saw Calorn gritting her teeth, obviously afraid and revolted by the idea of forcing through the black rubbery wall. Yet he never again doubted her bravery after she unhesitatingly approached it and pushed her way through after Exhal without saying a word.

He followed, pushing his arms and shoulders into the reluctant substance, and leaving behind the eerie groans of the human herd behind him; then he was inside the wall. For a few long, nightmare seconds he could not see or breathe. He flailed desperately, feeling he was trapped in the gullet of some gigantic beast. Then, at last, he fell from the slit in the other side of the wall and found himself beside Exhal and Calorn.

They were in a cavern in which a malevolent, pale light shone through writhing steam. All was blue, like cyanosed skin, and there was a scent in the air so sweet it was a nauseating mockery of cleanliness. The cavern stretched as far as the eye could see, its floor sloping downwards and covered with a honeycomb maze of hollows and pits.

‘I must leave you here, lest my herd wander away and lose themselves,’ the ox-creature said. ‘Take yonder tunnel,’ he pointed with his stick to a pit from which a purplish light glowed, merging with the blue. ‘Keep to the ridges between hollows, don’t fall into the wrong one.’ Then Exhal was pushing his huge body through the wall again.

Calorn called, ‘We thank you, Exhal,’ but he did not seem to hear her.

Ashurek set out onto the honeycomb on hands and knees, finding the ridges as slippery and treacherous as a living mucous membrane. The hollows on either side yawned down into apparently endless vertical tunnels, all glowing and steaming with eerie bluish light. Each led, he guessed, to a different part of the Dark Regions. The pit towards which they were heading was some two hundred yards out, if distance could be measured in that strange, logic-mocking place. The wall behind them seemed to have disappeared and been replaced by another stretch of honeycomb. Above them, only bluish-white steam could be seen.

Calorn and Ashurek both slipped several times, and were shaking with the exertion of staying on the soapy ridges by the time they reached the pit. Like the others it descended near-vertically, winding out of sight.

‘There’s only one way down,’ said Calorn.

‘Yes,’ said Ashurek. And he let himself slither off the ridge and down into the tunnel, bouncing off its rubbery sides as he fell. She watched him for a second before launching herself into the hole.

Instead of the sensation of falling she had anticipated, there was something worse: a strange soft blankness in her mind. Her limbs felt so light and bloodless that the sensation was unbearable, and she was twisting her hands together and writhing and groaning like a child in fever.

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Had she been unconscious? Hours or days could have passed when she found herself lying on a dark crumbly surface. She had no idea where she was. She could have been a newborn child for all she knew or remembered.

Someone was holding her arms, pulling her upright like a rag doll. She coughed and instinctively tried to find some strength in her limbs.

‘Calorn,’ Ashurek was saying, ‘Come on, we’re there.’ Her eyes focused on him. Memory returned like splinters of black slate piercing her brain. He looked shaken, and she knew that only sheer determination had kept his sense of purpose intact through the disorientating tunnel.

They were in a landscape of soft black rock, with a gritty path stretching ahead and rows of squat, round hillocks on either side. There was a ceiling of darkness only a few feet above their heads, creating a sense of inescapable claustrophobia, and just enough dim light to make out their surroundings.

‘I was here, once,’ Ashurek said distantly. ‘They keep the prisoners here.’ He made to walk down the path, then paused. ‘When we find Silvren, she may be very ill, thin… not herself.’ He tailed off and Calorn knew he was not telling her, but trying to prepare himself for what he might find.

There were no demons or other creatures of the Serpent about, but despairing cries and moans issued from many of the dark mounds. Calorn ran to the nearest and peered into the grim cell within it. It was no more than a roughly-made, roundish burrow in the mound with a transparent membrane stretched across the entrance. There was just room for a human to lie inside, like a bee grub within its cell. The man lying there was skeleton-thin, skin and hair the same dull grey. Calorn tore at the membrane, but could not break through.

She went to the next cell, and the next, and on the other side of the path Ashurek was doing the same, calling, ‘Silvren! Silvren!’

In almost every dark, fleshy cell a prisoner lay, starved, tormented and aged by the Shana’s treatment, some weeping and shouting in desperation, others slumped unconscious or staring blankly out and muttering to themselves.

It took Calorn every ounce of her self-control not to scream and run, but for Ashurek it was worse. He had never realised the Shana had so many prisoners. In his time here, he had thought himself totally alone. The prisoners were all unaware of each other’s existence and could not even seek comfort in their mutual plight. He ran on, fighting desperate terror, shouting, ‘Silvren! Silvren!’

Meanwhile, Calorn slowed down in her search, disheartened. Even if Silvren were here, somewhere, in this apparently endless labyrinth of cells, would Ashurek even recognise her? Would she hear him? Panic began to swamp her – she who was renowned for her calm tenacity – and she could see the same thing happening to Ashurek. She ran to keep up with him, lest they lose each other and all hope of escape – all hope of everything.

Then, all at once, a figure was coming towards them, clear to see because she was dressed in white. Ashurek and Calorn halted in the centre of the path, watching and waiting. The figure was slender and upright and walking with steady, assured steps. Her long, dark golden hair was glossy, her skin clear and healthy. She bore no signs of ill-treatment.

She came to Ashurek and the two stared at each other, lost in amazement.

‘Silvren? It is you?’ Ashurek said hesitantly. She was wide-eyed, but seemed at the same time aloof and emotionless. It was hard to believe she was not imprisoned, not ill.

‘Yes. I heard you calling... I...’ Then suddenly she fell forward into his arms and was clinging on to him, shuddering as tears of relief and misery poured from her soul. It was, indeed, his Silvren.

‘I thought you were an illusion sent by the Shana,’ he said, so relieved to find her he could hardly speak.

‘I thought that of you,’ she sobbed, ‘but, oh, you are real.’ Calorn tactfully distanced herself and kept a look-out for the approach of any demon or other creature.

‘You look… well,’ he said. ‘Is it possible?’

‘Yes. The Shana have not treated me badly. I have been lucky. Oh, Ashurek,’ she wept.

‘Beloved, I don’t know how we are going to escape from this pit, but I have something that may–’

‘Escape?’ Silvren pulled back from him, confused. ‘Ashurek, how did you get down here? Have you gone mad? It must be a dream.’

‘Silvren, it’s all right. We came through from the Blue Plane. Calorn guided me – she works for the H’tebhmellians.’

‘Oh – H’tebhmella,’ Silvren gasped, as though a memory had revived that caused her intense guilt and pain. ‘You found your way there, at last?’

‘Yes,’ said Ashurek, smiling, suddenly confident that somehow it would be possible to outwit the Shana and escape. ‘With my two companions, Estarinel and Medrian, we eventually reached the Blue Plane.’

Yet Silvren did not seem overjoyed. ‘Then why are you here? What do you mean, you came through?’ she questioned, understandably – Ashurek thought – puzzled and distressed.

‘The Dark Regions hang from the opposite side of the Blue Plane,’ he explained gently. ‘I thought you must know. You gave me the first clue when you appeared to me and said that this hell-hole was blue, not black.’

‘Did I? I don’t remember,’ she said miserably. ‘I remember speaking to Estarinel, warning him about Arlenmia... oh, Arlenmia... but that was before... Oh, alas for H’tebhmella...’

‘It’s one more cruel trick of the Serpent,’ Ashurek said. At this, Silvren visibly winced as if from an unbearable burden of grief and despair – something he’d never before seen her do. He realised that although she seemed lucid and physically well, no one could be unaffected by the nightmare confusion induced simply by being in the Dark Regions. Perhaps her irrepressible spirit had been crushed by the Shana; it was no worse than he should have expected. At least she was alive, and sane, and now he must take her out of this appalling domain before it was too late.

Not realising, yet, that it was already too late.

He pulled Silvren to his side and called, ‘Calorn! We’d better make a move. Have you seen anything?’

‘There don’t seem to be any Shana-creatures about,’ she replied with a grin. ‘I think I’ve found the beginning of a way back.’

‘What does she mean?’ Silvren asked, distressed. ‘I used to try to escape. It’s impossible. Oh, Ashurek – how are you going to get back?’

‘Three of us are far stronger than one,’ he said reassuringly. ‘Come on, let’s follow Calorn. Somehow we will escape.’ He began to walk along the dull, gritty path behind the chestnut-haired woman. She was looking this way and that, sensing which way to go. As he led Silvren along, he felt her growing more and more tense at his side.

Suddenly she jerked away from him and stood as if rooted in the corrupt ground, crying, ‘No!’ She was trembling violently. ‘I can’t go. I can’t ever…’

Ashurek turned and held her, saying, ‘It’s all right. I’m with you now. Trust me, Silvren, we’ll soon be out of this accursed Region!’

She pulled back again, and he saw that the clear light in her beloved eyes had been replaced by such desolation that he could not look into them.

‘No – you don’t understand, I can’t go there – I can’t go back to Earth. I’m…’ she faltered. Her shuddering stilled, like the last tremor of a dying bird. ‘Oh, my love, why did you come here? You were safe. I was content.’

A terrible, cold sense of foreboding came over him as she spoke those strange words. Content – in the Dark Regions? He didn’t know what she could mean – except that whatever the Shana had done to her, it was something more devastating than physical torment or insanity.

‘Beloved, no need to fear the Shana now,’ he said quietly. ‘You must come.’

‘No,’ she repeated, as if the word was an amulet against madness. ‘No. I have to stay here.’

Calorn came forward suddenly and grasped Silvren’s hands, trying to instil her with her own clear courage. ‘Who says so? Only the Shana, and they are not here. Please come. We need you to help us.’

‘Don’t speak to me as if I were a child!’ Silvren flared. ‘I say I can’t leave – do you think I don’t know what I’m saying? I don’t want to stay – oh, ye gods, I don’t want to – but I have to, for all our sakes.’

‘What have they done to you?’ Ashurek breathed.

‘Go back without me. Go quickly, before the Shana come. Leave me!’

Her voice was fervent with the force of her will; she truly did mean Ashurek to go back without her. And because he had always trusted her judgment, and because of the love and anguish he felt for her, he had to know why before he rescued her against her wishes.

‘Have they taken away your sorcery?’

She stared up at him, her eyes clear but lightless, like shaded water. ‘No, although it is weak and I cannot use it here,’ she sighed, ‘that burden still clings to me.’

‘Then, Silvren, what? I don’t understand you.’

‘They have taught me,’ she said, as if stricken by horror, not at the Shana, but at herself, ‘a fundamental truth about myself. I am evil. For the sake of the Earth, I cannot return there – I’ve already done too much harm.’

‘What are you saying?’ Ashurek spoke between gritted teeth, anger and desperation seething darkly in his face.

‘It’s true. They haven’t turned my brain. They simply explained it to me and I understood. It’s my fault that Arlenmia came to this Earth, my fault the Egg-Stone has wreaked its havoc and may be unleashed again. Because of my evil, the Serpent will win.’

‘Because – how can you believe that? You’ve spent all your life fighting it.’