A Blackbird In Darkness (Book 2) by Freda Warrington Read Free Book Online

Empire.
    I will not rest, she told herself, until I have done my utmost.
    Even had she known it would be eight years before the Quest of the Serpent was initiated, she still would not have turned aside. Although in despair, she froze herself against all such feelings and went steadfastly on. She did not care if it took a lifetime to fulfil her goal. Her one aim was to stop M’gulfn’s evil and bring an end to her own misery.
    Her eight years in the Empire were weary and soul-eroding. It was a vast continent and she had other countries to cross on her way to Gorethria. She trudged through jungles and tropical forests teeming with strange creatures; she waded dangerous rivers, crossed volcanic mountain ranges and arid plains of sand. She met electric storms, burning winds and floods; she fought strange creatures and was once captured by dark warriors of the Empire. Her only companion through these dangers was another crow-black horse that had forced its sinister faithfulness upon her. She knew it was a creature of M’gulfn that the Worm was using both to protect and intimidate her. But she tolerated the beast, and a dark love-hate relationship developed between them.
    The horse died when, in one of her darkest moments, suicide seemed the only escape from a fierce blue-skinned tribe who had imprisoned her. When she tried to kill herself, it died in her stead. Crying in terror that she was a supernatural being, a demon, one of the Shana, the tribe drove her away and she ran into the hills, laughing with hollow irony at her plight.
    A few days later a third raven-black horse came to her. Grinning like a fiend driven mad by its own evil, Medrian mounted it eagerly and drove it at an exhausting gallop towards the heart of Gorethria.
    Each adventure only shaped her for the worse, and she felt she had aged twenty years in those eight. The Serpent never ceased to fight her, creeping at her in nightmares, whispering to her through the wall, its mutterings like shouts in the silence of her mind. Only in great danger or physical pain did it withdraw. Whether it was enjoying the spectacle of her external suffering, or actually afraid to share her pain, she did not know. Each battle left her more despairing, but also stronger, colder, and more determined.
    The most difficult task of all was moving unseen through Gorethria itself. At first she travelled only at night, but when she neared the cities she found herself clothes such as a slave would wear, and became adept at skimming through the streets as if on a vital errand for her non-existent master. The horse was no problem, for slaves were allowed to ride; a mounted, well-dressed slave was a sign of a wealthy master. And they were allowed in public buildings, even libraries.
    Medrian came at last to the first goal of her journey: the glittering capital city, Shalekahh, and the vast library annexed to the palace. Here she hoped to find knowledge, and perhaps an answer to her own need.
    The sight of the palace, with its porcelain-white walls, chilled her. If it was possible to feel colder than she already did, that edifice sealed her icy destiny. It stank of demons. The thought of Meshurek, hunched on his throne in the grip of the Worm-serving Shana, nauseated her. She did not at that time know Meshurek’s tragic story, but the demon-presence around the palace was tangible to her senses. It underlined what she knew, that the Serpent was behind this savagery and misery.
    She entered the vaulted halls of the library like a thief, but went unchallenged past the tall, ornately dressed librarians. She moved along shelf after shelf of books, searching for any information she could find about the Worm. But perhaps scholars had been afraid to write about it, or the works were not taken seriously enough to be kept under the history or science sections.
    She went deeper into the library, ignored by the dark-skinned Gorethrian men and women studying there. At last she found a small, dim side-room