A Blackbird In Darkness (Book 2) (31 page)

‘You don’t still believe that she hates you, surely?’

‘I explained to you, a long time ago, about Gorethria and Alaak. Such deep-rooted loathing may be suppressed for a time, but never lost. Don’t misunderstand, I don’t resent her hatred. I think it is perfectly natural and I don’t hold her to blame in the slightest degree. But I think it is only part of something much worse. She cannot be permitted to jeopardise the Quest.’

‘What do you mean to do?’ Estarinel’s voice was apprehensive and guarded. He could not allow any harm to come to Medrian.

‘I don’t know. Talk to her,’ Ashurek said ominously, ‘for a start. I’ve suffered her deceptions and her precious silence for long enough. Cast your mind back. Remember when
The Star of Filmoriel
was being carried towards the Roseate Fire? The sea-horses were just starting to pull us clear. Medrian promptly jumped into the sea and unharnessed them, so that we were conveniently swept onto the White Plane.’

‘A misjudgement...’

‘You think so? And what of the time she lured us from the cover of a forest so that Gastada’s crows could get at us?’

‘Neither of us was forced to follow her,’ said Estarinel.

‘Then perhaps you’ll have a simple explanation of how it was possible for her to be stabbed in the neck, and her horse to die instead. Or how she dismissed the demon Siregh-Ma, apparently just by muttering at it? Or how she knows so much about the psychology of the Serpent? Or why she refuses to say a word about herself?’

‘If you’re implying that she’s in league with the Serpent – by the Lady, that’s an appalling accusation!’

‘Yes, it is. Well, what other answer do you have?’

‘But you’re remembering isolated incidents, forgetting all the rest of the time when she worked with us!’

‘You have a point,’ the Gorethrian said drily. ‘M’gulfn must have slipped up in sending an only partially adept dissembler.’

Now Estarinel began to feel angry. ‘When she dismissed that demon – however she did it – she saved us from it. You can’t have forgotten how horribly Gastada tortured her – the Serpent would not do that to one of its own.’

‘You’re wrong there. It treats its friends as nicely as its enemies.’

‘Then you should feel sorry for her,’ Estarinel said sharply, and all at once Ashurek’s expression changed from anger to a distant, unreadable bitterness.

‘In a way, I do,’ he replied quietly. ‘But that is no good reason to risk the Quest.’

Estarinel was remembering the times Medrian had obliquely warned him not to put implicit trust in her. ‘You may be most cruelly betrayed,’ she had said. And, ‘Half of me wants the Serpent destroyed, but half of me is in its power.’ However, he was not about to add weight to Ashurek’s case by repeating these chilling words.

He said, ‘She was different in Forluin. Completely different. She... Ashurek, she has no loyalty to M’gulfn. I would stake my life on it.’

‘It is possible to work for a cause without feeling loyalty to it. Can you also swear that you believe she has no connection with the Serpent whatsoever?’

Estarinel was silent. Then he shook his head. He said, ‘But surely the Lady of H’tebhmella would not have let her come, if her presence really did put the Quest in danger?’

‘How do we know? The Grey Ones lied to the H’tebhmellians. Who knows what other lies have been told? There may be no limit to it... Don’t you remember how vaguely the Lady answered certain very specific questions? Perhaps she had not the gall to actually lie, but truths have been hidden from us, nevertheless.’

They saw Medrian ahead, standing by a tree. She had put her cloak and her boots back on and appeared to be waiting for them, her head bowed and her arms clasped across her stomach.

‘Don’t be harsh with her, Ashurek,’ Estarinel said.

‘I will do whatever the continuance of the Quest requires,’ was the unbending response.

#

Thousands of miles away, at the southernmost tip of Morrenland, Benra was running – staggering, rather – along a cliff-top. Benra was a neman, a human of a third, asexual, gender that sometimes occurred in northern Tearn. The neman was close on seven feet tall and from his shoulders two pairs of arms sprouted, one above the other. His skin and hair were the same shade of gleaming golden-bronze, and he was naked except for straps that held his sword, shield, axe and knife. Normally there was a kind of beauty in Benra’s sombre features and symmetrical, long-limbed form, but now his face was streaked with dirt and blood, and he was sprinting along the cliff-edge like a gangling marionette.

‘What ails you, good sir?’ said a voice.

The neman turned, gasping raggedly through contorted lips, to see an old man clad in a soiled cream-coloured robe. His skin was dull yellow like old brass, and he was almost bald but for a stiff wisp of grey hair. His eyes were as pale as milk.

‘Ships – why are there no ships?’ demanded Benra, waving at the ocean below the chalk cliff.

‘Alas, they have all gone,’ said the old man impassively.

‘They can’t have done! I must travel to the House of Rede!’

‘Good sir, you sound demented. Be calm, I pray you. Every ship that was seaworthy has already departed for the House of Rede.’

‘This cannot be – I must fulfil my mission!’

‘I also wished to go to the House of Rede, but I could not, because no one asked me to go with them. Tell me, friend, if you were to find a way there, would you take me with you?’

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Benra muttered abstractedly. ‘What are you babbling about? How can we get there without a ship?’

‘There might be a way, if you will only tell me why you need to go there.’

‘What?’ Perhaps the old man was a dotard, but the neman was too crazed with fear and desperation to care. He needed to tell someone; the words began to tumble over one another. ‘I am Benra, formerly of Sphraina, now in the service of Setrel, the village Elder of Morthemcote in Excarith. Excarith was beset by an army of walking corpses, but Ashurek of Gorethria came to our aid and vanquished them – but then he and his two companions vanished – so Setrel sent me south to tell Eldor that Ashurek and the others were lost, and to relate the terrible things that had happened to Excarith, and whatever else I saw on my way–’

‘Now who’s babbling?’ muttered the old man with a gap-toothed grin, but Benra paid no heed.

‘–and on my way here I have seen terrible things, I have seen people stricken with a plague but walking about, mad with fever – this in Belhadra – complaining that the great Sorceress to whom they paid tribute had left them to the mercy of the Worm, and I saw people bent in postures of obscene worship of the Worm, trying to appease it in their terror. When they tried to make me join them I ran, but then I was trapped for three days in a fell storm that spat red lightning at me whenever I tried to emerge from my shelter. When it abated and I came out, there were creatures of the Worm roaming the lands. Some vile thing, like a great bald dog with too many mouths, attacked me. I slew it, but there were more, things that seemed to have heaved themselves up from the sea, things that were ill mockeries of true animals... and I have run the rest of the way, all through Tearn to Morrenland, forgetting to eat and sleep. But the worst thing…’ Benra gripped the old man’s arm, eyes wild. ‘The most horrible thing is that a demon has been following me.’

‘A demon?’ said the old man as if he thought Benra mad.

‘You don’t believe me? You’ve never seen one, I can tell.’

‘No, I’ve never seen one.’

‘They pretend a human form, but they crackle with a silver light, like lightning. Their mouths are red, their eyes shine like coins. And they – they – do you know how it is never to have feared anything in particular, and then to find Fear standing at your side, laughing, giggling at you? It is not the fear of death, or even of pain... but fear of Fear itself. I must get to the House of Rede before it catches up with me.’

Benra’s face blanched under the golden tint of his skin, and now he was gripping the old man involuntarily, with three of his four hands.

‘You’re a neman!’ The old man exclaimed. The surprise and disgust in his voice hit Benra like a whiplash.

‘Yes,’ said Benra, withdrawing his hands. ‘I thought you had noticed.’

‘No. I’m blind, you see.’

‘And I did not perceive it, any more than I recognised you as Sphrainian,’ Benra said, long-buried bitterness surfacing in his voice. ‘I must apologise.’

‘What are you then, a mercenary?’

‘Yes. In Excarith’s pay, as I said. An exile, like my siblings.’

The old man was backing away, and the expression of disdain on his face began to anger Benra beyond reason. Benra should have realised by the colour of his skin, although faded with age, and the familiar accent, that the old man was Sphrainian. But the neman had been too distressed to notice.

In Sphraina, the third sex was regarded with hatred and suspicion. Every pregnant woman dreaded to bear one, and if she did, it would be left out to die. Few nemale infants actually did die, because they were hardy, and there were groups of nemen who would take in and raise the abandoned ones. Most nemen chose self-inflicted exile rather than remain within a society that hated them, and because they were tall and strong and four-armed, most became mercenaries. As such they ceased to be despised and became respected as formidable fighters, highly valued by their paymasters.

Yet, confronted with the scorn of this Sphrainian man, frail though he was, Benra felt the old humiliations reawaken.

‘I suppose now that you know what I am, you will refuse to travel with me,’ said Benra.

‘I want to go to the House of Rede. I’m afraid we must travel together, albeit under sufferance,’ said the man, exaggerated distaste in his voice.

‘So here we stand, supposed compatriots, on a white cliff upon the edge of the world, with drooling beasts and demons closing in on us, from which the rest of the world has already fled, leaving us trapped by a shipless ocean,’ Benra exclaimed furiously, ‘and still you can think only of the disgust you feel for nemen?’

‘I can’t help it. I’m old, I can’t change my ways. No, don’t touch me!’ The man cringed as Benra gripped his shoulders and arms with all four hands.

‘This world is decaying before our eyes! We might be the last two people left alive! Yet still you cling to the old, irrational hatreds!’

‘You’re out of your mind! Don’t hurt me!’

‘Yes, I am out of my mind. I’d like to see the human who can be chased by a demon and stay sane. I am human, you see, just like you, born of a man and woman as you were.’

The old man was shaking in Benra’s hands as if racked by a convulsion. No, he was laughing. Astonished, Benra stared into the grinning red mouth, suddenly aware – too late – that the old man was changing. Before Benra’s eyes the robe fell away like wet paper and the yellow skin split and curled back from the man’s torso like a rind. Benra recoiled, stunned and nauseated. Wet gleams of silver showed through the cracks, like the new skin of a snake as it discards the old one. Gradually the moist figure eased out of the rind and there stood the demon – the one Benra had been fleeing – glistening argent, a laugh hissing from its blood-red mouth. The skin of the old man lay on the ground in a heap of leathery flesh, the face, horribly, still intact.

‘I am Ahag-Ga,’ said the demon.

‘Why are you pursuing me?’ stammered Benra, retaining a trace of oddly cold reason through the enveloping fear. ‘Why?’

‘Why not?’ the Shanin leered.

‘I wish you would kill me quickly, and not torment me,’ Benra said. ‘What do you want?’

‘I have what I want, my dear neman,’ Ahag-Ga replied. ‘Someone commissioned me to go to the House of Rede. Alas, due to the peculiar laws governing my actions, I cannot go there unless I am legitimately invited by a human.’

‘And I–’

‘Yes, while I was disguised as the old man, you said you would take me with you! By the way, your description of me was very pretty. I am flattered. “Fear of Fear”! Very eloquent.’

‘Oh, Setrel, forgive me,’ Benra groaned, falling to his knees, feeling a terrible pressure like a metal vice on his head. ‘Demon, tell me, why did you pretend to be Sphrainian?’

‘Oh, you were so touchy, I simply could not resist baiting you. It was a rare delight,’ said Ahag-Ga. ‘Well, I am sorry that your errand for Setrel has been such a waste of time – for you, I mean, not for me. Incidentally, Ashurek is not lost. Would that he were. I have particular reason to dislike him. Still, that doesn’t concern you any longer. Stand up, my dear neman.’

Benra did so, now glassy-eyed and almost completely in the Shanin’s power.

‘It is time to go to the House of Rede. Thank you for asking.’

‘We still have no ship,’ Benra said woodenly.

‘That’s all right. I don’t need one. All I require is you.’

‘I will not serve you. I would rather die,’ the neman whispered.

‘Would you? Oh, all right.’ The demon shrugged, then in one swift movement it seized Benra’s shoulder with one hand, and with the other rent the neman’s belly so that the vitals spilled out in a red gush.

A few minutes later the demon, Ahag-Ga, was trotting towards the ocean, wearing the guise of Benra.