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

discovered the internal.
    The next book slid into her hand as if it had been waiting for her. It was a volume of only twenty thick, handwritten sheets carefully bound in dark leather. There were three or four different handwritings, all very old but more or less legible. Even in the fading light she could read the words easily, as if they were glowing with their own ghostly light, and they conveyed to Medrian the feeling of a distant, haunting dream whose subject was forgotten, but whose terror and mystery still called to her across an abyss of years. The book was called The First Witness of the Serpent .
    I walked with Eldor across the snow, [the first writer said]. I don’t know where I was. We could have been in the Arctic, or anywhere. The snow was flat and the night sky like crystal. I felt that the Earth was very young, though I know this cannot have been, so perhaps the whole thing was a dream. But at least in the dream Eldor attempted to make rational the rest of my life, which has been a phantasm of terror, and for that I bless him. I asked him why the Worm has made my life a nightmare.
    Medrian read the words with a thrill of dread, suddenly knowing that they had been written by a previous host of the Serpent. It was as though she had written them herself, so intimately she knew the pain behind them. At the same time, she felt M’gulfn stirring within her. Its emotions revolted her, but this one was new. She cautiously lifted the mental screen between them, so that she could glimpse its thoughts. Grimly, she read on.
    ‘Understand,’ Eldor said to me, gently as to a child, ‘the Serpent is not just a living creature. It is a solid manifestation of unearthly power. When the Earth itself was curdled from the vast cosmic forces of the universe, the energy produced by that creation struggled to separate itself into two parts. In that dreadful conflict the Planes were struck into existence; and when they at last diverged, the negative part of the energy spun in upon itself, until it birthed itself into a creature of cosmic powers – the Serpent. And the positive energy whirled outwards into an infinite ring that long ago passed beyond helping us…’
    Within Medrian, M’gulfn’s strange emotion became stronger. She could not yet identify it, but gasped at its intensity; it was like a frantic possessive jealousy, yet there was more to it than that.
    Even the Guardians [the writer continued] have been unable to destroy or even to restrain it. Eldor told me, ‘They tore an eye of power from its head, but that has only filled it with rage and malice, made it aware that it has enemies, and thus more dangerous. So do not torture yourself with thoughts of destroying it, for such a thing is impossible, and it would only revenge itself on you for thinking of its death.’
    I despaired when Eldor said this, thinking there was no hope. I could only hope for death, though with the knowledge that the Worm would then seek a new host for itself, make another’s life agony, and another’s, and on and on. But Eldor did give me hope – only a small thought, intangible, but it has kept me sane enough to write these words, if ever they may be of use to another.
    He told me of the bird Miril. ‘She is a tiny fraction of that lost positive power,’ Eldor said. ‘The Guardians captured the dot of energy to guard the stolen Eye, but they did not create Miril from it; she created herself. She is beautiful, and sad, for she knows she cannot keep the eye safe forever. One day the Serpent will find a way to unleash it upon the world, and at last regain it, and dominate the Earth with its horror. But she is still the World’s Hope. The sun does not shine brighter than her outstretched wings, and the crystal rocks of the Earth are her tears…’ So said Eldor.
    Sweet Miril, Hope of the World, I keep you in my thoughts; you alone the Serpent cannot dominate, you are our only symbol of love and freedom until the end of time.
    Medrian