A Blackbird In Silver (Book 1) (35 page)

Estarinel pushed Shaell into a gallop, ducking to avoid low branches. His sense of dread was now verging on panic that he only controlled by telling himself it was the natural aftermath of the summoning, and therefore unfounded. Still, it was with great relief that he eventually saw Ashurek ahead. Vixata was dancing from side to side as the Gorethrian slowed her down. Estarinel caught him up and saw Medrian, ahead of them in the trees, still chasing the black horse. Patches of light showed through ahead, where the forest ended.

‘Go! I’ll have no more of your sort!’ she was shouting.

‘Come on,’ said Ashurek. ‘If we help drive that horse off, perhaps she’ll come to her senses.’

The black horse led her out of the trees, and vanished.

Ashurek and Estarinel rode from the forest onto a bare hillside and Medrian came trotting to meet them, hair and cloak streaming.

‘It’s gone,’ she said. ‘Thank goodness.’ There was a cawing of crows above them. ‘You needn’t have come after me. Did you think I’d gone mad?’ Her voice was very quiet and her eyes looked bleak and miserable.

Estarinel suddenly remembered her words, ‘
Don’t trust me
,’ and the feeling of dread was growing ever more intense. Whether it was the doing of Arlenmia, or Siregh-Ma, or Medrian herself, the Serpent’s inevitable, inescapable trap was closing on them.

Against the vast grey arch of the sky, three huge crows swooped down so fast that there was not even time to draw sword. They were gigantic and monstrous. Their wings were vast soot-black cloaks of barbed metal, and on their heads black spines bristled. They had huge saw-edged beaks the colour of rusted iron, and their eyes shone cornflower blue.

The horses began to gallop as the crows swept down on them. Ashurek heard great, heavy wingbeats behind him, and suddenly the bird’s claws closed around his body, lifting him from the saddle. The crow’s talons, like steel blades, pierced clean through his leather breastplate and into his stomach and chest. The pain was agonising and inescapable. He tried to draw breath and sharp pains shot through his body. He could not breathe. With the blood pounding through his head and exploding across his eyes, he fell unconscious.

The crows were gaining height with their three prisoners, wings beating, claws swinging beneath them, the air currents ruffling the black thorny blades of their feathers.

Tiny as flies, the horses galloped on below them. Unseen by the three captives, the pale apparition of a woman with dark golden hair hovered in the trees, staring at the sky with despairing eyes. She flickered and vanished.

#

That evening Setrel sat by his fireside, listening gravely as the neman, Benra, gave him a full report of the day’s events. The fighting had continued until mid-morning, when all the corpses had fallen to the ground as one, becoming truly dead again.

‘You should have heard us cheer!’ the neman said, and Setrel nodded, smiling. Around him sat Ayla and the children, Atrel and Seytra, eyes shining. There was another figure in the room, huddled by the fire, unsmiling but seeming at peace.

‘Skord,’ Setrel said to him. ‘You say they rode off north, but intended to come back?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Skord answered.

‘I can’t understand where they’ve got to. They should be back by now.’ Setrel turned a book over and over in his hands, his head bowed.

After a few minutes his son, Atrel, said, ‘Dad, you’re crying. What’s the matter?’

‘Oh – just relief. We never could admit how much danger we were really in, and how frightened we were. But now we are safe again–’ He sighed and rubbed his eyes, ‘I keep thinking of the three who saved us, and the prophecy: “They shall come from the gorge, and by dark birds be taken.”’

‘They’ve got to come back, Dad,’ Seytra said. ‘Because of the ship, remember?’ But her father only shook his head, grasping his grandfather’s book.

Eventually he said, ‘Benra, I want you to go on a long errand for me. The pay will be good.’

‘Of course, sir,’ the neman answered.

‘I want you to journey down through Tearn to Morrenland, and there take ship to the House of Rede. I’ve written a letter detailing all that has happened here. I want you to deliver it to Eldor; embellish verbally as you see fit, and add everything you see on your way there, as well.’

‘I’ll do it, of course, but can I ask why?’

‘I just think he ought to know. Perhaps he knows already, but I want to make sure.’

#

The crows flew for hours over a landscape that was now tiny and far below them. A desolate night swept the daylight away, and two crescent moons, like half-closed eyes, stared through the clouds; and the crows flew on.

Pain roused Ashurek to consciousness suddenly, and he saw an estate of stone and ash, corpse-grey in the dull night, passing below them. There was a huddle of buildings on a peak – a farmhouse, perhaps?

Arlenmia had never meant them to arrive in the gorge and help Setrel; only a failure and misdirection of her power had allowed that. But now they were once more on their way to her intended destination. And it was, short of the Dark Regions, the most hideous place Ashurek knew: the castle of Gastada.

The castle was set on a shapeless plug of obsidian, like the broken stump of a tooth. The crows circled steadily down towards it, cruising on the sluggish wind currents.

Their three prisoners were too dazed with pain to know or care what was happening. But more than their breastplates stopped them from being gored to death by the crows’ talons. Gastada wanted his guests alive.

The castle was of bleak aspect, its jagged, decaying surface broken only by one door: a tall, triangular door, black and smooth but for two discs, one above the other, near its pointed arch. The discs were large and circular, and from each spewed a continual river of a viscous yellow fluid.

Ashurek was not aware of entering through the door, only of the crow releasing him; for the pain as it withdrew its claws from his body was so severe that he was aware of little else. Within the castle, they were carried through a network of hot, dark corridors and small rooms without windows. There was movement around them. Guards were carrying them into the heart of the castle.

‘Careful with them,’ a harsh voice shouted, ‘we don’t want them to bleed to death before they get there.’

The atmosphere alternated between stifling humidity and cold clamminess, and there was a thick stench like musk, sickly sweet and nauseating. All was as Ashurek remembered it from when he had been prisoner here before. Impressions drifted through his dimmed awareness: the motion of being carried; dark corridors closing around him; the sickening smell. All blended into a nightmarish dream such as haunts the twilight between sleeping and waking.

When he next became aware, he was half-lying on a damp stone floor. He and his companions were in a small, crooked room that was wet and filthy, furnished with one table and one chair.

A candle guttered on the table. There were two doorways, both triangular, each without a door so that a clammy subterranean gale was let through. This was no cell, but one of Gastada’s own living rooms. He cared nothing for luxury.

Estarinel and Medrian were both unconscious, with great holes gouged through their breastplates and their clothes tom. Blood poured from their sides. Ashurek could not understand what it was that kept them – and him – alive. He was weak from lack of blood and it was agony to breathe. Since he had formed a great resistance to pain over the years of battle and torture, he was able to stay conscious.

Ashurek – who had thought he cared about no one except Silvren – was intensely concerned about his companions. He had come to like and respect Estarinel, who’d shown uncomplaining courage and remarkable abilities throughout the journey. As for Medrian… he still did not know what to make of her. She had dismissed a demon, but then she had appeared to lead them deliberately into the crows’ claws. She was a perpetual contradiction and there was something deeply sinister about her. Nevertheless he saw her as a comrade, and at times he had shared a fellow-feeling with her that verged on understanding.

The three of them, so unalike and at first so uneasy and distrustful of each other, had become firm companions. We could have been a powerful force, Ashurek thought, if we had not met our end here…

He was roused suddenly from his thoughts. There were voices approaching. He tried to stand up, but could not move. It was actually not this pain, or torture, or the castle’s dark powers that he dreaded – but Gastada’s mockery and jubilation when he found Ashurek recaptured.

‘Here they are, your lordship, as you commanded,’ said a guard.

‘Await orders outside,’ said another voice, thick and soft as mouldering flesh. It was Gastada.

Ashurek closed his eyes as the man entered, delaying a first sight of him. ‘My present from Lady Arlenmia,’ the voice intoned. ‘You’re late.’

Reluctantly Ashurek reopened his eyes. Gastada was a short man but he carried his insect-thin frame with great arrogance. His small round head was almost bald, crusted with a little lichen-like hair; his features were puffy, sneering and corrupt, with cruel lines about mouth and eyes that were ingrained with dirt. His eyes were terrible. The whites showed above them always and the irises were a sickly, opaque pink with glaring white pupils. He looked blind but was not. He wore thin robes of some grimy, overdecorated stuff. His appearance made even Ashurek, who had met him before, feel physically sick.

‘I am so pleased you’ve returned,’ Gastada said in his thick, whispering voice. He bent down, his stench washing over Ashurek, and began to laugh. ‘But you are late, late – Arlenmia can be so incompetent. Never mind. We have all the time we want. Are you not going to reply? How rude.’

Ashurek glared at him, unspeaking.

‘You are a fine fish for anyone to catch,’ Gastada went on. ‘Arlenmia could not hold you, nor could the Dark Regions, nor could I – but I have learned by my mistakes. There’ll be no little fair-haired sorceress to rescue you this time, will there?

‘Who are these friends you bring with you?’ He walked, quick as an insect, to look at Medrian. ‘A lady? She’s bleeding rather a lot. She is not very pretty – not as pretty as my wife.’ Then he went to Estarinel. ‘Oh – Forluinish. I do not like the Forluinish.’ He lifted the hem of his robe and pushed Estarinel onto his side with a gnarled bare foot, deliberately digging toenails into one of the talon wounds. Even his nails were disgusting, overgrown and black. Estarinel groaned faintly as he came round.

‘Leave him alone!’ Ashurek tried to say. It was agony to speak and it came out a whisper.

‘What? Why, have you changed your ways? Prince Ashurek, I am very distressed at your misjudgment of me. I am a kind and merciful man. For example, I will now let you all rest while I decide on your entertainment.’

Gastada’s awful voice whispered on, punctuated by thick chuckles, for what seemed hours. He had always loved his own voice, Ashurek recalled. It was like him to leave them collapsed with blood loss and pain, for as long as he cared to; Ashurek had expected nothing different.

He did not listen to the Duke’s monologue, but let himself drift into unconsciousness again. Once he thought he saw Estarinel drag himself to his feet and lean doubled up against the wall, blood spilling over his fingers. Some time later, he half-awoke again and Estarinel was lying on the floor once more.

At last he awoke fully and he was alone in the claustrophobic room. The candle had melted to a stump and cast cold, guttering shadows into the corners of the ceiling. Ashurek crawled to the table and used it to haul himself to his feet. The talon-wounds had stopped bleeding and his side was aching and so stiff that he could barely move. Each time he drew breath there was a stabbing pain through his chest.

Sinking despair flooded him as he realised that Medrian and Estarinel had been taken to the lower levels of the castle where prisoners were held and tortured. He did not understand why he had not been taken down there himself; perhaps Gastada had some even more inventive punishment for him.

His sword and axe had been taken. Crippled by pain as he was, he could see no way of helping his companions. He leaned against the slimy wall, trying to gather strength.

Gastada was the Duke of Guldarktal, a country which had once been a wild, cold, beautiful land. Gastada himself had once been a normal young man who had inherited the Dukedom from his father. But his power was tenuous, and the country was wracked by civil war. Determined to end the struggle and safeguard his authority, Gastada had summoned a demon.

Soon he was in full control of the country, but intoxicated with success, he summoned more demons to fulfil his various desires. The sacrifices they demanded in return grew ever greater, and he quickly became insane. First, all the enemies who had opposed his rule disappeared into his dungeons. Then other citizens began to disappear. At first there were plausible excuses, that he needed servants or soldiers, but later he gave up the pretence. His people lived in fear. The Shana gave him terrible creatures which he sent out across the land, burning forests and towns, devouring men and women.

The Shana, delighted at having found this willing tool, encouraged him to ever greater excesses. His insanity grew until, possessed by a monstrous hatred of all living things, Gastada had destroyed every human and animal in his country.

Guldarktal was laid waste, and became a taboo subject for its neighbouring countries. They never spoke of it, lest it happen to them.

It was said that when a man had lived by necromancy for so long that be had nothing left with which to pay the Shana, they would work for him for no reward; or only the reward of having utterly broken and corrupted him. So it was with Gastada, for he had proved himself a true and faithful servant of the Serpent.

Ashurek left the fetid room and began to make his slow and painful way along a corridor. Before he had walked even a few yards, Gastada came from a doorway and stopped him. ‘Ah, you have revived at last. Where are you going?’

‘Such a pleasant day, I thought I’d take a walk,’ Ashurek gasped.

‘Are you in pain?’ Gastada asked, looking almost affectionately at him half-doubled over, clutching his wounds.

‘Yes, thank you,’ Ashurek said through clenched teeth.

‘You still have that morbid sense of humour, I see. Come with me.’ Gastada beckoned with a stick-like finger and led him along low-roofed, damp corridors. Even if he had had the strength, there would have been little point in jumping Gastada and strangling him. It would not help them escape. And how – how could he ever have revenge on this evil little man for his abuse of the dead Gorethrian soldiers?

‘Why am I not downstairs in the cells, with the others?’ he asked.

‘I have nothing left with which to entertain you! Still, I know that just to spend the rest of your life with me will give you the utmost delight,’ the Duke cackled. ‘It’s very lonely here, except for my Duchess.’

‘I didn’t know you were married,’ said Ashurek, wondering what poor girl he was keeping prisoner.

‘Did I not introduce you last time? I’ll take you to meet her. But there’s no hurry – you’ll be here a long time, after all.’ Gastada began to chuckle and wheeze.

Ashurek knew there was no escape now. Last time, Silvren’s sorcery had opened doors, disposed of guards and shaken the castle to its decaying foundations; but without sorcery, even should he kill Gastada and every guard in the castle, escape was impossible. The only exit was that triangular black door, and it was drenched in dark powers. Only Gastada could open it. Not even a demon or the Serpent itself could do so.

Yet Silvren had opened it. Small wonder the Shana so feared her.

‘Do make yourself at home here! Your only home, your last home,’ Gastada choked through his laugter. ‘I grant you the freedom of my castle.’

Granting a captive the freedom of his prison! It was the kind of contradiction that Gastada loved. Refusing to be goaded, Ashurek remained silent. They walked on down the narrow, stench-filled corridors, thick with darkness. The castle was airless and the only light came from a few sickly, faint torches.

‘
Darkness is there – I can see no escape
,’ Medrian had said, and at last Ashurek believed her. This was what she had foreseen – not Arlenmia’s domain.

‘I am expecting good news soon. It is taking a long time to arrive, but it will be soon. I will have a new country to add to my estate.’

This brought an involuntary, malicious grin to Ashurek’s mouth. Gastada appeared not to notice. Obviously the demons had chosen not to tell him the unfortunate news about his Dead Army as yet. What would Gastada do to the three when he eventually found out?

He led Ashurek on through dim rooms and corridors, muttering incessantly. Ashurek did not listen to his insane ramblings, and only took notice when he stopped to speak to a guard, saying that Ashurek was to be attended and obeyed as an honoured guest. He had forgotten, but now he remembered. The guards were not human. Though they stood upright and were clad in leather and metal, they walked in a shambling way, like apes. They were large and strong, heads and hands covered in a brownish, bristling hair. Some had long hairy tails trailing behind them, but the most inhuman thing about them was their faces. The skin was red and looked raw and naked, with a long nose fused into a cleft, pendulous upper lip. Their small, pale eyes were too close together, almost touching.

He also recalled that they were grossly stupid.

At last Gastada took Ashurek to a room in which there was an ageing four-poster bed, heavy with dusty, decayed hangings.

The Gorethrian looked with longing at the bed, for he could hardly walk.

‘Do you wish to lie down?’ Gastada asked, face twisted.

‘Not if you’d rather chain me to the wall,’ Ashurek gasped, leaning against the door jamb. ‘But there’s already someone lying there.’

‘Ah yes – now you may meet my wife.’ Gastada bent over the slight figure on the bed and kissed her face. Ashurek stumbled over to the bed and hung onto one of the posts of soft, rotting wood.

‘No one will ever lie on this bed beside her except me, and that not until I am dead,’ Gastada said, looking at Ashurek with his awful pink-and-white eyes. ‘Isn’t she pretty?’

Perhaps she had been once, but now her eyes stared unseeing at the ceiling, her jaw hung open, and the flesh was falling away from her long-dead face.

Ashurek saw then the most ironic tragedy of all, that even the Serpent’s agents were its victims. Along with all the things Gastada loathed, the one thing that had been precious to him had perished also.