A Blackbird In Darkness (Book 2) (7 page)

At last she lost sight of him. She ran to a gasping, sobbing halt, doubled up with pain in her ribs. She fell to her knees as she tried to recover her breath; and now she was weeping, tearing at her long hair with white hands.

For the first time, her grief found release without the mocking interference of M’gulfn, but she was hardly aware of that. Estarinel... her thoughts twisted in an incoherent mass of grief. Oh, by the gods, what can I do?

When she began to recover, she pulled herself upright and sat back on her heels, looking at the twilight descending over Forluin. She was trembling, her breath escaping in rough sobs.

‘And did I not have another reason for coming here?’ she said to herself. ‘It wasn’t just to be free of the Serpent. I needed to torture myself with guilt... to see the agony M’gulfn had caused so I could truly understand what it has done. What I have done, since I couldn’t dissuade from doing this. I couldn’t... oh, Estarinel, I should have tried harder. I didn’t know...’

She dragged herself to her feet, dusted off the pale blue dress and brushed back her hair with her shaking hands. Then she strode down the path that Estarinel had taken.

The path wound through fields whose northern edges were scorched with ash. Where the vista was clear of trees, she could see the dim greyness of the distance, and knew that the Worm had done its work thoroughly there. Whole tracts of Forluin had been laid waste; and its venom had the ability to spread, insinuating itself through the ground like fungus to continue the destruction long after the Serpent had returned to its Arctic home.

Cold and desolate, she found herself on the fringes of a small village. Six or seven stone cottages clustered around a green with a well in its centre. Lights danced in some of the windows as twilight fell, but outside it was deserted. She felt sure Estarinel had been heading for this village, and would reappear if she waited for him. Meanwhile she had no intention of knocking on a stranger’s door, so she wandered across the grass and stood by the well, looking about her.

The love and care with which the cottages had been built was obvious, as was the careful tending of the green and the paths that wound around it. Flowers and shrubs had been encouraged to grow everywhere. There was an atmosphere of warmth and gentleness about the village that she had never sensed anywhere before, least of all in Alaak.

She hugged herself against the chill in the air. Strange – she rarely felt cold, at least not physically. This is just the sort of place, she thought, that the Serpent would most despise and wish to destroy. Not the place, but the people and the feeling. I wonder why it waited so long? She shivered. She could make no sense of the turmoil within herself. Free of the Serpent, the ice she had held against it in her mind had melted. The comparative warmth made her feel she was burning inside, each flame a different emotion. Most consisted of a mixture of grief and anger – grief for Alaak’s fate, her family, for Forluin and Estarinel; anger at M’gulfn, Arlenmia, Gastada – the causes seemed endless. There was fear, too, dread so chronic that it paralysed her if she let her mind dwell on it. And somewhere there was love and concern for another human being. That feeling was so alien to her that she hardly realised what it was. The gentle strength of it hurt her more than the other emotions together

Medrian had never been foolish enough to imagine that in suppressing her feelings for many years, she had destroyed them – but neither had she expected them to return with such force. Since her outburst near the farm, after Estarinel had run from her, she had been stunned by that internal violence. Now she stood motionless by the well, thankful to have at least a few minutes to order her thoughts and re-establish her self-control.

How strong am I? she asked herself. It would seem not at all, without the Serpent to make my strength essential. Freedom! What made me think I was free for these few hours? I must steel myself against my own feelings, just as I have to against M’gulfn, before I betray myself.

Estarinel must not suspect I am any different. That would only make the rest of the Quest impossible. I have to be cold, as always.

She knew it would be difficult to show no sympathy and concern over the fate of Estarinel’s family. Her indifference, though, would only make it even harder for him to bear. He had never believed that she was truly as icily callous inside as she appeared externally, but perhaps he would believe it now. Perhaps he would begin to hate her. She swallowed against the knives in her throat. It would be better so. Then the Quest could be completed.

#

Falin, for no particular reason, got up and looked out of the window of his cottage. In the middle of the green, by the well, he saw what he took for a moment to be, not a human, but a statue. Surprised and puzzled, he stared at the figure in the twilight until he realised it was in fact a small and slender woman, standing very still and with an air of total self-containment. That alone told him she was not Forluinish, even before he noted her face and colouring.

He opened the door and went out to her. She looked up as he approached, but otherwise did not move. Her delicate-featured face was white, contrasting sharply with her large dark eyes and black hair. She looked familiar but he could not think how he knew her.

‘My name’s Falin,’ he began hesitantly. ‘Do you need any help at all?’

‘I’m looking for Estarinel,’ she said simply.

Falin felt as though the earth had tipped under his feet. His head swam with shock and confusion. What did she mean? Who was she?

‘Estarinel–’ he said, his mouth dry. ‘He’s not here. He went away months ago.’

‘You don’t recognise me, do you?’ the woman said.

‘I’m not sure...’ He was beginning to remember her, but that brought more incomprehension and growing fear.

‘We met at the House of Rede,’ she said. ‘You were one of his four companions.’

‘Then you must be Medrian. I’m sorry – you look different. But what are you doing here? I thought…’

‘It took us longer than we expected to reach the Blue Plane. When we got there, Estarinel wanted to come back to Forluin for a brief visit, before continuing the Quest. The Lady gave permission, and for me to come too.’

‘Oh, ye gods,’ said Falin, pulling his fingers through his long brown hair. He was very pale, Medrian noticed, with the tense, strained look of someone who could not sleep. ‘And did he take you straight to his farm?’

‘Yes,’ she answered flatly, ‘and the farm was not there. He ran this way, and I lost sight of him.’

‘Oh,’ Falin sighed in distress. ‘His family, they were all killed. Why didn’t he come to me? I know where he will have gone – we’d better go up and find him.’

Medrian said nothing as she followed him between the cottages and along a path winding up a grassy slope. Falin was trembling as he walked, shattered by the arrival of Medrian and the news that Estarinel was here. It was only a few days since the farm had collapsed, undermined by the Serpent’s poison, killing Estarinel’s family – including his own beloved Arlena. Since then he had barely slept – dreading the moment when Estarinel would return and he would have to tell his friend the awful news. He dreaded facing his dearest friend’s grief. He knew he would be unable to bear it, after everything else.

Even more he had feared that Estarinel would never return at all. Falin’s thoughts raced; he had never, ever expected him to come back so suddenly, and if he understood Medrian correctly, they would be going away again, a second parting in so much more pain and despair than the first.

His thoughts then moved to Medrian, and he glanced sideways at her. He noticed how controlled she seemed, how icy and emotionless, as if nothing had happened, and she did not care if it had. Just who was she? Had he really entrusted his friend to this person who seemed as uncaring and treacherous as ice?

These thoughts were becoming unbearable, so he broke the silence.

‘There’s a long barn – it was the wheelwright’s but he gave it over after the Serpent came, for use as a – well, a place of rest. We have lain all the dead there. I’m sure E’rinel will have gone up to see if his family–’ he fought the tightness of his throat.

‘And are they there?’ Medrian asked in the same matter-of-fact, chilly voice.

‘Yes.’

They reached the low stone barn and entered. Each side of the long building was lined with wooden pallets where many of those slain by the Serpent had been placed. All were covered in cloths of pale green and had leaves and yellow flowers twined in their hair. There was nothing grim about the barn; the atmosphere was like the clear twilight of a spring evening, cool and peaceful.

At the far end, Estarinel was kneeling by a pallet, grasping his mother’s hand. His face was whiter than any of the corpses and he looked too numb with shock to weep. Very slowly, Falin approached him, Medrian a little way behind.

‘E’rinel,’ Falin said softly. He flinched as his friend looked up. The terrible grief in his eyes was just as Falin had imagined it would be, time after time. Falin went to him and Estarinel stood up, and the two embraced each other without speaking.

Medrian looked at the bodies of Estarinel’s family. She recognised Estarinel’s sister Arlena, a tall silver-fair girl who had also been at the House of Rede. Their mother was similar, though fair in a warmer, more golden way. Next to her lay a man who was obviously Estarinel’s father, he was so like his son and did not look much older. The younger sister, Lothwyn, also resembled her brother in her darker colouring. Her face was gentle and sweet.

Strange how suddenly and infinitely more real Estarinel seemed to her amid his family, as if before he had been no more than a spectre whose path had happened to cross hers. How different her perception was without M’gulfn in her skull. It was both painful and wondrous to know that people mattered to each other, existed and suffered in a vital way that she had not understood before. It was as though she had known, abstractly – but only now did she feel the truth of it. She no longer felt detached.

I must stay detached! she thought, turning her back on Estarinel and Falin so that they could not see her face.

She recalled how his family must have died, crushed by the collapsing farmhouse. The others there had, presumably, died in the Serpent’s jaws, or been consumed by its venom, or died of illness caused by the ash it had left. Yet there seemed not to be a mark on any of them, nor any sign of decay even in the bodies that had been there the longest.

A terrible feeling swept through her, a terrible vision hung crucified across her brain; figures in a colourless landscape, frozen under topaz glass in eternal, agonised worship of the Serpent…

She then found out just how hard it was to hide her feelings, without the Serpent’s dreadful presence to make it essential. She had to struggle not to run or cry out, steeling herself until at last her horror subsided and her face was expressionless again.

It’s only a feeling, only a feeling, she told herself. There must be another reason why the bodies are perfect. Don’t think of it, she told herself. They are dead – even the Serpent could not –

‘E’rinel,’ Falin was saying, ‘come back to the cottage. We can talk there. You’ll feel better after a drink.’

‘Tell me how it happened,’ Estarinel said hoarsely.

‘Yes – when we get back. Come on.’

Darkness was falling as the three left the barn and gently closed the wooden double doors behind them. Falin supported Estarinel as they went; he was too faint with shock to walk unaided. Medrian walked ahead of them as if they did not exist, cold as alabaster.

Falin found himself disliking her, though it was a most un-Forluinish reaction to dislike someone on sight. Still, nothing had been the same since the Serpent’s attack. It was also un-Forluinish to feel fear and misery, to know hunger and illness – to find that even the love he shared with his many friends in the village was edged with the pain and dread of losing them also.

But at least that most Forluinish of traits, the love and concern they felt for each other, had not been diminished by the Worm. In that respect it had not conquered them, and never would. So he could not understand this strange woman, who had come with Estarinel, yet had not spoken a word to him, who kept her back turned to him, and whose face clearly showed – he thought – that she felt nothing, absolutely nothing at all.

Perhaps Falin’s feelings towards her were also tinged by jealousy of a sort. She had been Estarinel’s companion for several months, while Falin and his other loved ones had been separated from him, not knowing how he fared or whether he was alive or dead. And he had an idea that whatever they had been through together, they were not going to tell him. Falin felt excluded by their relationship, and angered to think that Estarinel might have come to feel love and friendship for her while she was apparently quite indifferent to him.

He must try not to pre-judge her, though that was difficult when Estarinel’s life was at stake.

In a few minutes they were inside Falin’s cottage. He moved around the room lighting lamps, and then stoking a dying fire until warm light flooded away the darkness. The floor was covered with rugs of russet, gold and green, and the creamy walls bore several small tapestries. On either side of the stone fireplace, dark wooden doors led off to other rooms.

Estarinel sat in a chair by the fire and gratefully drank the wine that Falin offered. Medrian sat opposite. He glanced at her but she was not looking at him, just staring into the fire.