A Blackbird In Darkness (Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

head and four limbs but each was shrouded in an ashen robe. She had never seen – never seen anything but snow. One of them was singing. She had never heard –
    The song seemed to pinion her long Worm-body to the ground as if each word was a lead arrow. All the appalling power of the Serpent was rendered impotent by the song; she could not fly – could not even raise her head – could do nothing but groan.
    She saw them flinch back at the terrible sound of M’gulfn’s voice, but the song grew stronger and she weaker. They advanced upon her. The words of the song made no sense, for she had never heard words before, but still they purged her every sinew of its strength. Now a throbbing, sick sensation filled her dim consciousness, terrifying in its very unfamiliarity.
    For the first time, the Serpent felt fear.
    To the Serpent, fear was not a word; it was a feeling. An image of bones crushed to dust, skin flayed from nerveless muscles. Medrian thrashed in the prison of her dream, rocked her Serpent body and groaned as the figures glided closer, filling her trinary vision.
    Her three eyes twitched and rolled in their sockets, muscles in spasm as if trying to draw the orbs back into the recesses of her skull, there to hold them safe. The effort speared her with pain, but her eyes remained vulnerable –
    Pain!
    M’gulfn-Medrian saw the flash of metal before it cut under her centre eye, continued to see it even as the eye was dragged from its socket. And when the nerves and muscles were severed, the flash continued as a scream of white fire shafting through her head. Through that blazing agony, her two remaining eyes saw the figure step back, clutching the small blue orb as if it were a deadly creature that would inflict a fatal bite if he did not hold it firm. No flesh-fibres hung from it. It did not bleed.
    My eye!
    The white sword of pain rent her skull with impossible pressure. Her struggles were useless. A long, long age passed before she knew that the hurt was not caused by metal struck through her head, but by nothingness. The socket was empty, there was no knife. No eye.
    Now there was no dread song to pinion her against the snow. The Serpent’s vast energy was returning. Soon pain was forgotten, fear a blurred, hollow memory. And Medrian-M’gulfn felt rage. With a roar, she lifted the thick body into the sky on trembling, primeval wings. But beneath her, the only witness to her ponderous, dreadful circling was the wind sighing across the ice-plains like the weeping of the world.
    The figures had gone. And with them, her precious eye. The Serpent screamed its torture, its frustration and rage; screamed until even the wind dared not challenge its voice. Images exploded across its primitive mind.
    They have taken my eye, the thought-pictures said. Men will come to the Earth. The world will teem with their small, frail bodies that are made in the image of the Guardians – head and limbs and torso. I have always known that men will come, I have always waited for their coming and I can still wait – what is a million years to me but the drifting down of a single snowflake? They have taken the eye with which I could have looked into the hearts and minds of men, bent their petty wills to mine and made them see that I am supreme on Earth; I am the Earth.
    They have tried to take my power. The next time they come, they will try to slay me.
    They shall not slay me, not me!
    Emotion tore apart the Serpent’s mind then. It sparked and ran like fire along every sinew of its body, as if the fibres were tinder poised for the ignition of insult and pain. Its body thrashed, scored and engulfed by the flames.
    The emotion was hate.
    Hate. Medrian writhed in the dream, the cosmic intensity of the Serpent’s malice filling her lungs with burning pain. The Guardians, I hate. Men, in their image, I loathe also. When they come into existence, I shall despise them doubly. The image of hatred was more terrible than that of fear. It was