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

Estarinel increased his pace and they ploughed through the knee-high growth, through a small copse and out onto a hillside. A patchwork of fields and trees stretched before them, green and amber and honey-gold in the late sun. Nearby, a couple of sheep grazed, and a single bird called forlornly from the sky.
    Forluin, Medrian saw, was beautiful.
    But to their left, the sunset was a splash of garish carmine, a wound in the clouds. And she could not fail to recognise the greyish haze drifting along the horizon. She felt Estarinel shudder at her side.
    For a few minutes he could not speak, so sweet and familiar was this view to him. How often he had ridden, walked or run over this beloved landscape that was only less dear to him than his family. But he saw the Worm’s haze, polluting the sky and distorting the colour of the sunset. The curse had not left them.
    ‘This area – my home – lies just south of the worst of the attack,’ he began to explain, the words like grit in his mouth. The neighbouring farm was crushed – ours just escaped.’
    ‘I remember, you told us,’ Medrian said hurriedly, trying to spare him the pain of talking.
    ‘You can’t quite see the farm from here,’ he went on, ‘but it’s only a couple of miles more.’
    He led her down the hillside and along a path overhung by great golden beeches.
    Eventually Medrian said, ‘Forluin is beautiful, the loveliest place I’ve ever seen. Even now.’
    ‘Normally… before,’ he answered with hollow sadness, ‘the meadows and copses would be teeming with life. Birds singing, deer among the trees. There were sheep and horses everywhere…’ he shook his head, unable to continue.
    They skirted another clump of trees and followed a well-worn bridle path along a hedgerow. As they came out into a broad, undulating meadow, Estarinel almost broke into a run. Fixed in his mind was the image of the bowl-shaped valley when he had last seen it: still green, the old stone farmhouse sitting contentedly on the valley floor amid vegetable gardens and meadows, as if nothing had happened. And beyond, at the open end of the valley, had been blasted trees and the ruins of his friend Falin’s farm. His family’s escape had been that narrow.
    Suddenly, the prospect of seeing his beloved parents and sisters again swept all doubts from his mind. They were, at the last, all that was truly important.
    ‘Come on!’ he called to Medrian. ‘Here’s the rim of the valley.’ He ran ahead of her and gained the green lip of the Bowl Valley from which he could see every detail of his parents’ farm.
    Medrian, trying to keep up with him, saw him stop. She saw the sudden rigid disbelief shake his body; she gasped with the effort to make herself catch up, to see what he had seen.
    The valley was a bowl of blasted ash. Trees lay in grotesque ruin, like scorched bones scattered across ground that seemed to be rotting in acid. The ruin wreaked by the Serpent’s poison extended up the sides of the valley to within a few yards of where they were standing. What remained of grass and hedges was slicked with glutinous venom. A stench of desolation, tangible to the skin and eyes, came up from it. It carried the Worm’s hate; an undeniable destiny where sickness and misery became the same thing. And in the centre lay the crumbled remains of Estarinel’s home.
    The ruins looked still and sad, like a small animal that had died of fear.
    At first Estarinel was so devastated, so stricken by bitter incredulity, that he could not move. He felt paralysed, numb. A steel wire was tightening around his throat, causing blood to burst blackly across his vision. His head swam with confusion.
    ‘How?’ The whisper rasped from his throat. Then a tide of anger, of horror and grief flooded him like a scream of ultimate denial. No! No!
    The word became his being, animated him like a crazed puppet into a stumbling run down the valley. The soul-shattering shock of grief thrashed through his limbs as