A Blackbird In Silver (Book 1) by Freda Warrington

feathers shimmered with gold, and its small form contained more beauty and liquid grace than any living creature on Earth. He could not look at its eyes, though. Shining black and sad, they were the most beautiful eyes, the only honest eyes, he had ever seen.
    ‘I seek the Egg-Stone,’ he said, and climbed on.
    The bird followed. ‘If, only if you can find it,’ she sang. ‘If you can find it, then you can take it.’
    ‘Who are you?’ he asked gruffly.
    ‘You should know who I am, Prince Ashurek of Gorethria. No one should come here who does not know,’ the blackbird sang, her voice gentle and sad as tears.
    ‘How do you know my name?’ he gasped, feeling ever more deeply disturbed by the strange creature.
    ‘I know everyone,’ she replied. ‘Anyone can know a name. Mine is Miril. But do you know who I am?’
    ‘You are the Guardian of the Egg-Stone.’
    ‘I am. You know that and you know my name, but you do not know me. Alas, Ashurek – will you ever know me?’
    ‘I know not and I care not,’ he muttered, climbing faster. Something inside him was trembling, awakening. Worse than the grief for his father, fear for his family and all the torments of the Shana, he felt a terrible stirring within, like a chick struggling to break from its shell. He should care. He did care, but he fought the feeling as though it was killing him.
    ‘No demon can touch me,’ Miril sighed, like wind ruffling water. ‘No human can look at me but they turn back the way they came, weeping for mankind. So should you, Ashurek, except that you will not let yourself care until it is too late, too late.’
    ‘Let me be!’ he cried. ‘I have to find the Egg-Stone.’
    Above, he saw a sort of eyrie with a small nest upon it. He struggled up the sharp rocks and at last, breathless and bleeding, he gained the shelf of rock and looked into the nest. There he saw an object as small as a blackbird’s egg, silver-speckled blue.
    Forces welled within him. The shell of innocence became more fragile. There was a thunderous gathering of dark promise, terrible bloodthirsty lust, and it emanated from the Egg-Stone.
    Miril had flown ahead and perched on the other side of her nest, facing him.
    ‘I cannot fight one who does not know me’ she sang, her voice more strident and appealing than all the dawn choruses the world has heard. ‘So it has always been. I sing and they close their ears, I fly into their gardens and they throw stones at me. I have kept the world safe from the Egg-Stone for so long, but now the Worm’s time has come. Take it!’
    And Ashurek reached into the nest and took the Egg-Stone. It was as heavy as lead and it transfixed him, seeming to whisper to him. He felt the throbbing of its dreadful, dark power and knew that, even if he changed his mind, he would be unable to put it back.
    The bird’s lovely body shuddered and sagged, as if racked by terrible pain.
    ‘I know it for the evil it is,’ she said softly, ‘for it was given into my keeping, that the Earth be protected from it. Even so, it was as a child to me, the beloved egg that would never hatch. My pain on parting from it is unspeakable. And so will yours be.’
    Then Ashurek did look into her eyes; and amid the lead-dark, irresistible pull of the tiny gelatinous Stone, the shell of his innocence shattered. He knew who she was.
    ‘You look at me, Ashurek, too late,’ Miril sang, her voice unbearably sweet. ‘Am I not lovelier than the most beautiful creature or garden or flower you have ever seen? Am I not the longing of sunset and the joy of dawn? I am the Hope of the World.’ And in her eyes he saw his guilt. There, in the quicksilver shining depths of those black orbs was the misery and injustice, the blood and pain and hunger and utter wrong of Gorethria’s atrocities, and those of every other race like them throughout space and time. There was a child crying in hunger because its parents had died in battle, and that battle had not made the