A Blackbird In Silver (Book 1) (37 page)

‘Estarinel, it’s me; are you awake?’

His eyes flickered but it was hard to tell whether he was aware of Ashurek’s presence. We’re both dying, Ashurek thought; the Worm wins. On the edge of his vision, he seemed to see a flash of blue light through the open cell door. He dismissed it, but Estarinel stirred and said, ‘Did she hear me?’ Ashurek supported him, realising he was delirious.

There followed a commotion in the corridor; a clash of swords, the guards uttering shouts and then deep, throat-tearing screams. There was a sound of running feet.

Ashurek lay Estarinel back against the wall and got to his feet, looking out into the corridor. There was only one guard there, silhouetted against flickering torchlight.

Ashurek approached him, calling, ‘Is something wrong?’

The remaining guard turned, holding his sword threateningly. ‘Get back!’ His pale eyes were wild with terror. ‘There’s been a terrible attack. They are in the castle!’

‘Where’s your comrade?’ Ashurek asked coolly.

‘Gone to raise the alarm – to fight them!’

‘Hadn’t you better go too?’

‘Have to stand by my post,’ the guard stammered in fear.

‘Very brave. Very commendable. But look, you go; I will take your sword and stand guard in your place.’ When the crimson-faced guard hesitated, Ashurek pointed to himself and added, ‘Gastada’s guest. He told you to obey me, did he not? Because he trusts me.’

The guard, confused and made even more stupid by fear, handed his sword in relief to the Gorethrian. Immediately Ashurek gathered his waning strength and plunged the blade into the creature’s stomach. The guard collapsed, spilling blood, and died.

Ashurek staggered back against the wall, fighting exhaustion and the sharp, aching pain of unhealing wounds. Then he returned to Estarinel and helped him to his feet.

‘Something’s happening,’ he said. ‘We must go; try to walk.’ Estarinel was barely conscious, but with Ashurek’s support, they progressed slowly down the corridor. The Gorethrian knew it could take hours to find Medrian, and there would still be no way to escape. But now curiosity drove him on. Something was in the castle, and although it was probably just a trick the demons were playing on Gastada, there might be some hope in it.

It was an arduous trek through the web of passageways. At last they reached broader corridors, but when they eventually gained the stairs leading to the upper level, Estarinel collapsed and could not go on.

‘Come on,’ Ashurek urged him. ‘A few more steps–’ he broke off.

There was someone coming towards them. It was the figure of a woman, tall and astoundingly beautiful. She had very long hair and it seemed she was dressed in white silk that was bathed in a soft and shining blue light. She appeared to glide rather than walk. She passed very close to them, so close that she brushed against Estarinel, yet she did not seem to notice them. She left sparkling trails of the lovely blue light behind her.

As soon as she had passed, Estarinel got straight to his feet as if suddenly recovered. ‘Tell me I’m dreaming!’ he exclaimed, beginning to smile. ‘I just saw a H’tebhmellian!’

‘Do you feel better?’

‘Yes – yes, I feel stronger… I thought I was dying. What’s happening?’

‘You tell me,’ said Ashurek.

‘If H’tebhmellians have come into the castle, they must be able to leave again. There must be an Entrance Point to the Blue Plane on orbit through the castle.’

Ashurek looked at him with amazement and growing hope. ‘Would it be visible?’

‘Yes, they say so – like a cloud of blue light.’

‘Then let us seek it!’

‘You go,’ said Estarinel. ‘I must find Medrian.’

‘Very well, though let us not raise our hopes too high. Can you manage alone?’ Estarinel was swaying on his feet and looked feverish, though Ashurek was no better.

‘I can now.’ Estarinel could still taste that soft blue light like fresh, lovely air, and felt suddenly clear-headed.

‘The guard said she was in the Great Hall. That’s where Gastada prefers to torture – I’m sorry, Estarinel, she may be in a bad state when you find her.’ Ashurek explained, as best he could remember, where the Great Hall was. Sighing, he turned to make his way to the higher levels of the castle.

‘Wait,’ said Estarinel, fumbling with numb fingers in a pouch on his belt. He drew out the lodestone from Hrannekh Ol. It was glowing pale blue. ‘It might help,’ he said, pressing it into Ashurek’s hand. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Wait with Medrian,’ said Ashurek. ‘I’ll find you.’

#

Estarinel, stumbling along and supporting himself with one hand against the wall, managed to follow Ashurek’s directions. At last he found Medrian in the long, damp stone hall.

She was no longer chained up. By the guttering, sickly flame of the torches he saw her, crumpled in a dark heap on the flagstones. There were no guards in sight. He went to her and gently touched her shoulder.

She was conscious. She jumped violently.

‘Medrian,’ he whispered. ‘It’s me, Estarinel. We must try to escape.’

She raised her white, dirt-streaked face and looked at him with desperation. She half-sat up, wincing with pain, and keeping one hand pressed to her ribs. Her mouth was torn and bloodied and tightly closed. The look in her reddened eyes was so hopeless and agonised that he could not meet it.

‘Medrian, what has he done to you?’ She shook her head slightly, not opening her mouth.

‘Can you not speak?’ he asked anxiously. Again she made a slight painful movement of her head. He caught a tiny gleam of black thread at the corner of her lips and he realised what was wrong. Gastada had sewn her lips together. He looked more closely at her mouth and saw a criss-cross of tiny black wire stitches, plastered with crusted blood, with many flesh-tears where she had tried to open her mouth to scream.

Anger and horror raged in him. He supported Medrian with an arm about her shoulders.

‘I’m going to unpick the stitches. Don’t worry,’ he said, as gently as he could. She shook her head again, almost frantic, and stared downwards in misery. ‘I won’t cause you any more pain. I have herbs to make you sleep. Wait.’

He laid her gently down on the flagstones and cast a nervous eye round the doorways. Setrel had given him a good supply of herbs, including ones from which he could make a sleeping vapour. Luckily Gastada had not taken them away. He found a discarded goblet and began to fill it with herbs from his pouch, crushing the leaves between his fingers until the sap oozed from them. His hands were bluish-white and numb from the wire round his wrists. At last he had crushed the herbs to a liquid pulp in the bottom of the goblet. He only hoped they would work...

Estarinel set the goblet down on the floor and sought Gastada’s instruments of torture. They were lying on an oak table like a maiden’s embroidery set: rolls of various wires and threads, a selection of steel needles, and the object of his search – a small pair of scissors.

He returned to the goblet and took three leaves from his pouch, bruising them between his fingers: He dropped them into the juice. After a few seconds, wisps of vapour began to drift from the goblet.

Taking it to Medrian, he lifted her up and made her breathe the vapour. She moaned. After a few seconds her sore eyelids dropped shut and she went limp in his arms. He lowered her tenderly to the floor, leaving the goblet beside her head.

He set to work with the scissors, inserting the point under the first thread and snipping it as delicately as if clipping the wing of a moth. There were many tight stitches of wire through her lips, and some he could barely cut without ripping her mouth. Blood ran from the scraps of torn flesh round her bruised lips. It took what seemed hours; only a few terrible minutes. Medrian sighed through torn lips in her sleep. His fingers became soaked with her blood, and as he worked, he wept.

At last he drew the last fragment of wire from her tortured flesh. When it was finished he sat back on his heels and with a damp hand pushed his plastered hair back from his forehead. His throat ached. He wished he had water to bathe her wounds.

It would have been better to have let her sleep on, but they could not stay in the Hall. He took the goblet away from her head and shook her gently. After a minute she began to stir. Then her eyes flew open and she sat bolt upright as if awakening from a nightmare. She let out several long, shuddering sighs and stared past Estarinel with dark, pain-dazed eyes.

He held her in his arms until she had recovered enough to move.

Leaning on him, she pulled herself to her feet, keeping a hand close-pressed to her side over her unhealing talon wounds. He stood up with her, supporting her, just as Ashurek entered.

‘Thank goodness you’ve found her,’ Ashurek said, wielding a flickering torch that he had pulled from its wall-bracket. ‘I’ve seen the Entrance Point, as you said. It’s moving slowly but there’s a commotion. I don’t know if we will reach it. By the way – the lodestone works.’

Need gave them energy and, with Estarinel helping Medrian, they stumbled after Ashurek as he led them down a dim passage. And as they struggled on in pain through the evil-smelling darkness, an extraordinary sight met their eyes.

There were Gastada’s guards, some twenty of the un-human creatures, their red-raw faces deformed with fury. A pale sickly light streamed from their eyes and their swords glowed with supernatural electricity. They were enmeshed in a blue cloud. Two H’tebhmellian women stood before them, repelling their sword blows with shafts of azure light. The battle was unspeakably weird, unworldly, bathed in the light of another Plane, and ringing with strange sounds, hideous and beautiful.

The three watched, spellbound, as one by one the guards fell to the ground, stunned or overwhelmed by fear. When the last of them fell, the H’tebhmellians vanished, but the blue light drifted slowly on.

‘That’s it!’ Ashurek cried hoarsely. ‘We must reach it, before it leaves the castle.’

They started forward again, Ashurek realising vaguely that they were outside the room where the body of Gastada’s unfortunate wife lay. They had only gone a few paces before Gastada himself stepped out in front of them. There was an expression of disgust and annoyance on his small, banal features.

‘Where are you going?’ he intoned thickly. ‘Those damned people of the Blue Plane – how dare they come here? It’s your doing, I know – curse Arlenmia! Where are my guards, where are my demons?’

‘They have deserted you, as all creatures of the Worm desert each other,’ Ashurek hissed, and plunged his sword through the little man’s belly.

Gastada staggered backwards and sank to the floor, his pink eyes glaring insanely at them.

‘That was most unfair!’ he gasped in his thick voice.

‘Yes, unfair!’ Ashurek shouted. ‘You should have taken a week to die!’ He twisted the sword cruelly and wrenched it out.

‘I – I cannot die,’ Gastada moaned in fear. ‘The demons said I couldn’t…’ but he did, and his grotesque body was still.

‘Would that that blow had been mine,’ said Estarinel.

Ashurek was staring with revulsion at the body as if he had just trodden on some loathsome insect. ‘Would that it had,’ he said bitterly. ‘I will perform one kindness for the vile creature.’ Ashurek lifted Gastada’s thin frame and took him into the room. There he laid him on the bed beside his long-dead wife, and placed the sword between them.

They went on their way, Ashurek holding the torch and the lodestone to guide them along the warren-like passages. Medrian was coughing with pain as they hurried along and Estarinel, supporting her, felt his eyes were bleeding with the effort of looking out for the elusive light.

The lodestone did not misguide them. At last they had the Entrance Point in sight again; but, soaring on its orbit, it was heading for the outer walls of the castle. Stumbling, weak and desperate, they followed along a corridor and under a low arch.

They were not fast enough. Ashurek felt the torch knocked from his hand as it caught on the arch, and suddenly they were surrounded by black, wet stone and pitch darkness. The Entrance Point had vanished.

‘Oh ye gods,’ Ashurek said, ‘is it the Black Plane?’ He stretched out a hand and touched a wall. ‘We’re still in the castle. It’s a dead end. We’ve missed the Entrance Point.’

He stepped forward and struck at the wall with both hands in despair. Estarinel and Medrian came up beside him and touched the slimy stone, wretched with misery and disbelief; and in the same moment the wall became viscid and gave way beneath them. They fell forward onto their hands and knees.

#

There was light; gentle, soft blue light. They were on the shore of a tranquil lake that shone under an airy sky of bluish-mauve. Far across the lake was a beautiful rock formation with a broad, flat top and a thin stem, luminous and sapphire-blue. A delicate bridge arched from it, its far end obscured by small pinnacles of stone flowering from the water near the shore. Little bridges and spirals of rock led to the pinnacles, and lilies floated about their roots. The air was cool and sweet. They were kneeling on sparkling blue-green moss, and as they looked out over the lake, all their weariness and pain and illness fell from them.

The exquisite beauty of that lake, its calmness and gentility, were overwhelming. Estarinel, gazing across the scene, could have wept for joy.