A Blackbird In Silver (Book 1) (4 page)

‘Terror,’ muttered Lilithea. They all felt it but she, with an instinctive empathy for all plant and animal life, looked ill. Estarinel caught her elbow to steady her.

The flying thing disappeared from sight once more. This time it fell from sight for many minutes. Where it had landed, thin trails of vapour began to rise against the sky.

‘Smoke – can you see it?’ Estarinel asked. Behind them, Gellyn, the man bringing seedlings to Lilithea, came to see what they were looking at.

‘By the Lady,’ he said, ‘is that a forest fire down there? There’s not been one of those for many a year.’ They could see no flames; only heavy grey fumes hanging over the distant treetops. Suddenly, sending the vapour swirling, the object rose into the air again and flew on. Still they could see no details of it, only a basic shape. There was a long body and the tiny wings sticking out from it seemed barely able to support its weight.

Now they realised that it was flying very fast. Threads of some stuff that caught the sunlight fell from its head, and more wisps of smoke rose in their wake. It was less than a mile from them when it twisted and began a ponderous circling.

‘Oh ye gods,’ moaned Lilithea, as if she heard the noises a split-second before they became audible: thousands of animals, in sheer panic, rushing towards them. Sheep, horses, deer, gazelles, cats, foxes and all the rest; their stampeding feet and fear-stricken cries formed one swelling sound, through which were threaded human screams.

The creature’s circling brought it closer, and they could see it more clearly: a long, thick body tapering to a tail, a misshapen, heavy head. The small wings were a blur as they kept it airborne. As they watched, it swooped and plucked a tree from the ground, then dropped it. The tree fell, ashen and smoking, its foliage shrivelled to nothing. The first of the terrified animals burst from the trees. Estarinel and his companions watched, incredulous, as the ghastly Worm dipped and caught several in its huge jaws.

The four ran along the valley rim for a better view. And they saw half a sheep fall from the Serpent’s careless mouth, strings of blood and saliva whipping after it. They could hear the awful droning whirr of its wings, and a dreadful stench reached them. The atmosphere suddenly seemed warped by a mocking, diabolic evil.

In Forluin there was no crime, no murder, nor even dangerous animals to prevent the night being a joyous, star-filled time. Hatred, vengeance, cruelty, ambition had no place there; war was unknown, illness rare but skillfully cured by herbal arts. They were truly a people with everything to live for and nothing to fear. They were innocent, open-hearted and in total symbiosis with their beautiful land. And, indeed, there had been contact with the Blue Plane H’tebhmella, which they believed had bestowed protective blessings on the land. Thus they were very slow to realise what was happening and even slower to believe it; and fear, rising in each of them for the first time, felt like suffocating death.

‘Oh, it really is that monster in the book,’ whispered Lilithea, touching the page with her foot. ‘It’s killing our animals!’ she cried, hanging onto Arlena’s arm. They saw it drop like a stone behind a clump of trees.

‘That’s Falin’s farm,’ Estarinel said. And he felt knowledge and terror flood through him, and he was shouting, ‘We’ve got to help! Arlena – get down to the farm and warn our parents. Oh ye gods, where’s Lothwyn? Go on, hurry!' And his sister was on her cob and galloping down the valley. Gellyn had dropped his seedling trays and was running, running, as if in a nightmare, back towards the village.

Estarinel remembered running across the valley and down towards his friend’s farm only as struggling through a heavy grey sea. Whether it was the noxious exhalations of the Worm, or his own terror that made the journey so slow and painful, he didn’t know. Lilithea was behind him, trapped in her own cell of agony and fear. How could the world could be so normal, so full of sun and joy one moment, and drowning in horror the next? It was more incomprehensible than the worst nightmare.

‘Why us? Why send this thing to us?’ she kept gasping, the words escaping her lips in soundless screams.

Estarinel ran through the trees and gained the farm. Many images flashed before his eyes, but he didn’t take them in, for the Worm itself was before him and he saw nothing else. It was lying on what had been Falin’s house. Like a beached whale, a gross immovable slug it lay on the ruins, blood running from its fissured lips. The colours of its shapeless form were ghastly, like wet rusting iron overlaid by a filmy skin. In its ugly, heavy head two tiny blue eyes glinted malignly, while in a third, empty, eye socket, muscles twitched.

All this Estarinel took in, in a split-second, for immediately the thing leapt into the air with impossible speed for its bulk. Estarinel threw himself to the ground with a scream. Over his head the Worm took off with a deafening, groaning, continuous roar and its body seemed to pass endlessly over him as he looked up; an infinite tube of wrinkled, sickening, evil flesh.

A stream of searing fluid fell from its mouth, striking the ground only a few feet from him. He lay for a long time without moving, until he felt Lilithea’s hand on his arm, and heard her voice crying urgently.

‘E’rinel! E’rinel!’

He stood up, and saw the devastation around them. The trees through which they had just run were now blackened ash; the fields and plants all around were scorched and smoking. Pools of the steaming fluid lay everywhere, vile odours rising from them. And the farm where Falin’s family had lived was rubble, with spars of broken timber sticking out. Horror flooded Estarinel and Lilithea, and they stood clinging to each other. As they watched, they saw Falin and Sinmiel emerge from the ruins, weeping.

‘Our parents, our parents,’ Falin cried when he saw Estarinel and Lilithea. ‘My mother went outside – to frighten it off, she said–’ he began laughing in hysterical despair, ‘– it just seized her, like a doll–’ He trailed unintelligibly into tears.

Lilithea stretched out her hand as Falin and his sister began to stumble towards their friends. But Sinmiel missed her footing and stepped into one of the fluid pools. They watched, helpless and lost in disbelief, as she screamed in agony and collapsed. They all ran to help, but she was already dying, gasping convulsively as the acid consumed her.

They dragged her out, tried to hold her, but their skin blistered wherever the substance touched. In the end they could only watch, speechless with grief as she died between them; the same four who had that morning ridden joking and laughing through sunlight.

‘Oh – our farm, the village!’ Estarinel said hoarsely.

‘What can we do? Powerless to save even Sinmiel’s life.’ Falin lurched away, would have collapsed onto the poisoned ground had Estarinel not caught him.

The village itself had been spared, but many others had been seared and burnt, the blood of the people slavered on the streets. All over northern and central Forluin the Serpent spread doom and decay. It could not have happened to a people more disattuned to horror. Many survivors suffered Estarinel’s experience of seeing loved ones murdered and looking into M’gulfn’s dreadful eyes.

When he, Falin and Lilithea ran back to the Bowl Valley, they found the farm untouched. Estarinel’s sisters Arlena and Lothwyn were both there with his parents; the horses having been stabled before they bolted. They sat, close together and silent with dread, for many hours before they knew the Serpent had finished its evil work and gone.

People came from Maerna, Ohn and all the untouched parts of Forluin, to gather together the survivors and give them comfort. In some ways those whom the Worm had left alone were even more horrified by the devastation than those who had suffered. Surely the Serpent was only an ancient myth with superstitious origins in Tearn or Gorethria? That such a thing could happen was beyond reality.

The nearest Forluin had to a government was the Council of Elders, a nominated group of the oldest and most respected men and women who convened to mediate in disputes or other troubles. In the dim and terrible days after the Serpent, they called all survivors to a meeting in the Vale of Motha, many miles north-east of Estarinel’s home.

His parents and Lothwyn would not go, because there were animals to tend, and his father had developed a cough from the ash the Worm had left behind. Estarinel, with Falin, Arlena and Lilithea, set forth on horseback across their desolate land. They rode swiftly and in silence, the cause of their grief too obvious all around them to need any expression in words. It took them three days to reach the Vale, and in that time they missed the coming of the H’tebhmellian Lady.

The Vale was still whole, only the edges having been scorched by M’gulfn. There was a small cluster of cottages in the Vale, with a green stretching in front of them. Here the council was held, with scores of folk seated on the grass around the Elders. Estarinel and the others greeted many friends, but heard of the deaths of many others. And although the sun shone, there was a greyness in the air, and the stench of the Worm still hung over them. Many were falling sick with an unknown fever, and a sense of doom filled them, made far more terrible because they had never experienced such a thing in all the island’s history.

‘We have no resources to draw upon,’ said Englirion, the most senior of the Elders. ‘We cannot ask how our ancestors faced this situation, or any other; for they knew only peace, as we have.’

The Elders looked physically no older than the rest, except that most of them had white hair; only there was a quietness and grace about them. ‘Ancient writings tell us that the Serpent resides in the snows of the far north, that it always returns to its lair and cannot be destroyed. More than that… we do not know. So it would seem we have no guidance but our own instinct and judgment. Now there are two foolish lines we might follow. One is to remain drowning in sorrow, wailing with grief and regret that the Worm ever came, and to dream of how sweet life would have been if it had not. The other, suggested to us by many of you, is to form an army and chase the Serpent, in mad anger, back to the Arctic. Where, I tell you, we would all perish and the Worm would live – if you can call its miserable existence “life”.

‘We must all accept that an appalling, senseless, dreadful attack has taken place on our home. That cannot be changed, it is already history. And to undertake a suicidal journey to the North Pole to destroy what is reputed to be an invincible monster would be useless. It is easy to forge off upon a journey fired by a desire for revenge – but when that desire evaporates amid freezing snows and ice-storms, and you die in greater despair than ever, how will that have helped your countrymen?’

There was a murmuring of agreement. ‘In truth there is only one course we can take. Our priority must be to restore our country to its former perfect state, eradicating all traces of the unspeakable Worm; to cure the disease it has left behind. To prevent it attacking us, or any other country, ever again.’ Englirion paused, and Estarinel looked at Falin, wondering if his friend knew what the last statement meant. Falin looked equally puzzled.

Englirion made to continue, but succumbed to a fit of coughing. A woman with long white hair went on in his place.

‘Most of you know, for many of you saw her, that a Lady of the Blue Plane came to us.’ At this there was a murmur of wonder from the fringes of the crowd. ‘Not the Lady herself, but one called Filitha. However, I know some of you only arrived today, and I sorrow that you missed her.’

Estarinel felt, rather than heard, Lilithea sigh beside him. ‘She came because of the Worm, and the sorrow and despair we are in. She grieved for us… and she said that although the H’tebhmellians have never been able to help the world directly, they can offer advice, and this we accept with the love and trust there has always been between us.

‘There will be a party to try to destroy the Worm. But only one of us will go, and he or she must first sail south to the House of Rede, there to find the rest of the party. It will be a long voyage, but necessary, the Lady said, to distance the one chosen from the immediate horror of the Worm.

‘For it must be understood, she said, that others in this world know of the Worm and wish it dead also, and a great circle of power moves according to whether it lives or dies. Therefore we cannot go selfishly north alone, but must go to the House of Rede for the help and companionship that we will find there. And then the H’tebhmellians will provide a ship to take the travellers to the Blue Plane, where they will be told what they must do.’

Englirion finished a long draught of water and stood up again, adding, ‘So we are not without guidance after all. This is what must be done. One person will sail south, with a few companions to man the ship. The rest of us will stay here and wait, doing what we can to repair the damage.’

Suddenly Falin jumped to his feet and cried out, ‘Surely one should go who has lost all his family, and has no one left to grieve should he not return?’

‘Please sit down, my dear child,’ Englirion replied gravely and sadly, and as Falin did so, Arlena held his arm and bowed her head against his shoulder. The Elder continued. ‘There will be no volunteering. I have the job of choosing who will go. For this purpose the Lady Filitha gave me a device, a lodestone that will point to the one who must go. You must therefore all form a great circle, so I can set up the device in its centre. Anyone who truly does not wish to go may stay outside the circle.’

‘We all want to go, and we are all afraid to,’ said someone. But as the circle was formed, the only ones outside it were children. The device was a small, slender gold tripod, with a pointed blue stone hanging under its apex by a thread. Englirion positioned it carefully, then set the stone spinning. It seemed an age before it came to rest, and then the Elder moved round the edge of the circle and peered through a sighting glass for several seconds before nodding solemnly and walking towards Estarinel and his friends.