A Blackbird In Darkness (Book 2) by Freda Warrington

dropped the book into her lap with a stifled cry, then sat white-faced and swaying. Another emotion flared from M’gulfn’s mind into hers: loathing of Miril. More than loathing – it was the repulsion of complete opposites, tainted with hate and even fear. M’gulfn despised Miril, would tear her from the sky and devour her if ever it could. Medrian cringed, trembling, under the force of that hatred, feeling she was the one being devoured.
    She reopened the book and read on. The next hand was spiky, wild and demented in form. But she recognized, in acute detail, the fractured images of his suffering.
    ‘This black snake comes to me, it came out of my childhood, hiding in the corners of my room and in my head, I see the Worm-form of it, the grinning Snake that bites my head with razor-teeth…’ As she forced herself, shuddering, to read to the end, she seemed to be drifting down a long twilit tunnel of horrific revelation – and at the end M’gulfn was waiting, waiting for her to see the truth and surrender in despair.
    The next writer seemed to have written her account in secret and in a great hurry, having no time for detailed explanations, nor anything but objectivity.
    I am a woman of Morrenland. I am in prison. No one will believe my experience, but as it is true I must write it. I was in the army that went north, at the King’s command, to destroy the Serpent. The King thought it a heroic exploit to add to his glory. How little he knew of the truth. Still, I had no power to tell him.
    We sailed to the Arctic and marched across the snow. The others went proudly, joking and laughing bravely at the cold and at the spectres the Serpent sent to haunt our path. But it was tormenting me, and I could not speak aloud to warn them all and turn back the insane mission.
    In due course we found the Serpent. It was smaller than we had thought, grotesque, lying in the snow as if it could not move. The others grew arrogant, thinking they could overpower it. But at our first attack, the Serpent rose up on wings and circled us, spitting down acid. Several died in that first foray. All the time it was raging its furious glee in my head. I could stand no more. I prayed to be killed quickly. At its second attack it snatched the rest of the soldiers in its jaws in several swoops, chewed them and dropped their broken bodies in the snow. I did not escape, but alas, I did not die. When I came to myself, lying in the bloody snow, all my comrades were dead and the Serpent was staring at me like an impassive gargoyle amid their crushed bodies. I was in terrible physical agony. My arm and leg were broken, my head cracked, and my body rent from throat to abdomen by its stinking teeth. My skin burned with its venom. Then I understood that I should be dead, except that the Worm was keeping me alive.
    I cannot bear to describe what it said to me as I stood there, how it laughed at my misery and pain. I don’t know why I didn’t go mad, but that would have been too easy an escape. It berated me, then it forced me to walk – with my leg broken and my skin in shreds – all the weary miles through the bitter Arctic, across the tundra and down through Tearn to Morrenland. I felt every detail of the pain. I was a walking corpse, animated by the Serpent.
    I came to Morrenland and stood before the King. The Serpent forced me to report the failure of the mission, with all its derision my voice. Their fear of me was obvious; I must have looked and behaved like a Serpent-possessed ghoul. The only thing they could do with me was to imprison me, and impose the sentence of death upon me.
    Now I await the hanging. I hope the Serpent will let me die, although if I do – sorrow for the hangman! I feel composed now. The Serpent is distant. Strange that I am so calm and rational, as if my very lucidity is a manifestation of madness. I am only sorry that I will die having learnt nothing, except that fighting the Serpent is foolishness. I have never suffered