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

with a sign over the doorway that read, Astrology, Religion and Superstition. The shelves were crammed with manuscripts and books, many in rough unmarked covers as if they had been bound only when they arrived at the library. Volumes were even stacked on the floor, but the dust that plumed from every book she touched showed how little the section was used.
    She soon found out why. Many of the books were mere myth and speculation. Others, more sinisterly, were in Gorethrian so ancient that only scholars could have deciphered it, but all the same, they had an aura that terrified her. As her eyes glanced over the alien text, the odd word she understood would scream out at her, filling her with dread of perceiving the meaning behind an incomprehensible nightmare. Laboriously she worked her way through the books, fighting a panicky sensation that she would never escape the room.
    In the writings of ages past, [she read in a great calf-skin volume] we find mention of a mythical creature called the Serpent or Worm M’gulfn. The origins of the belief in this creature are obscure. It is possible that such a being did once live, and certain people saw it and told others; in the retelling, such stories inevitably attributed the being with ever more awesome supernatural qualities. So myths are born. Even in the author’s lifetime there came a tale from the far North of the Empire, that a great grey monster had flown down from the Arctic and devoured many of them and laid waste their land. It can only be assumed that they were using symbolism as the best way to describe a devastating storm.
    Medrian slammed the book shut in disgust. The pompous rationality of the author made a sickening contrast with the hideous reality that she knew. The words were like the laughter of a ghoul. In abhorrence she dropped the volume. Her heart sank as she began to realise that none of the authors had the knowledge she needed: what the Serpent was, and if it could be killed. They did not even understand that the need existed.
    The light was failing when she at last found a book she could understand. It explained, straightforwardly, the creation of the Earth and Planes, and how the Serpent itself had come into being – just as, years later, the Lady of H’tebhmella was to explain it. Medrian read avidly, and she knew, from the faint reactions of M’gulfn suppressed deep within her, that it was true.
    Men, animals and plants have evolved upon the Earth. Their existence owes nothing to the Serpent. So where do the Shana, whom men call ‘demons’, fit into the plan of things? Undoubtedly they are not natural beings and they live in a separate Region that is not of the Earth or Planes. We conclude that the Serpent made them itself. It has abundant energy; it has every reason to resent man’s presence on Earth; and so it has created beings of its own to torment and eventually master the human race which it hates.
    Now this to me offers conclusive proof that the Grey Ones, or Guardians, do exist and have intervened on Earth at times. The Shana have great power and are loathsomely evil. There is no reason why they should not have run riot upon the Earth and destroyed everything millennia ago (then, of course, they would have risen up against the Serpent and it, in turn, would have destroyed them); except that the Grey Ones, for the Earth’s sake, have placed what constraints they can against them. The Shana’s Region has been moved from under the Earth to outside it, and they can only come when men call. The summoning is arduous, and but few have the knowledge of it; and the Shana must offer something more than torment to the summoner, or they would never be called at all. But they are still dangerous, and the Grey Ones’ intervention has only made both them and the Serpent more vengeful in the long run…
    This was all new to Medrian. She read to the end of the small book, feeling that she had at least learned an external truth, even if she never