The Golden Cage

by J. D. Oswald

  ‘Tell me about your kind.’ Melyn settled himself on to a squat barrel still sitting in the storeroom several feet away from where Frecknock sat in that oddly dog-like manner dragons had, her tail curled around her heavy feet. That was what made her look so docile, he supposed. It didn’t fool him; he knew she would dissemble as much as she could get away with.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘How many of you are there out there in the forest?’

  ‘I have no idea. None, I suppose. You killed us all.’ Frecknock’s voice was not accusing, not sorrowful either. It was just matter of fact, as if she were discussing one of Seneschal Padraig’s drier treatises on logistics. It put Melyn on edge.

  ‘And what about the rest of Gwlad? Where might this creature have come from? What brought it here, of all places?’

  ‘Again, Your Grace, I don’t know. Before you came, before you … Well, back then I thought our village the only dragons left in the whole of the Twin Kingdoms. I’d heard of a few living down in Eirawen, and it’s said that in Llanwennog they parade us like circus animals, but those of our kind who chose the long road are surely all dead now. I called and called for someone to come, but all I got was you – a man. Your warrior priests have hunted us so long. Never would I believe one of us capable of what you describe. It can’t be a dragon you’re talking about. It’s just so wrong.’

  ‘Do you think your queen a liar?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Frecknock seemed to shrink in on herself.

  ‘Then what would you say this was?’ Melyn nodded to one of the silent warrior priests who had accompanied him to the storeroom. The man stepped forward, carrying a wrapped bundle, which he laid on the ground in front of the dragon. ‘Open it up. Tell me what you see.’

  Frecknock stooped, seeming almost to sniff the package before gently picking it up. She unwrapped the cloth with slow, methodical movements. Melyn studied her face, looking for any telltale signs on those alien features. Dragons were difficult to read, but not impossible, and he had spent a lifetime studying them.

  ‘By the moon!’ Frecknock shrieked, letting the bundle fall to the floor with a dull slap. The severed hand and forearm of the beast that had attacked the queen rolled over, claws clenched into a fist as if it were trying to pull down the ceiling.

  ‘This … this came from the creature?’ She gestured towards the limb but seemed disinclined to touch it. ‘How did you … ?’

  ‘His Grace the Duke of Abervenn cut it off. I think he might even have killed the beast had it not turned tail and fled.’

  Frecknock looked again at the grisly remnant, only this time she leaned forward, peering closely.

  ‘Could I possibly have a little more light?’ she asked.

  ‘I know full well your capabilities. Make your own.’

  ‘Thank you, Your Grace.’ Frecknock lifted her hand and a sphere of white flame appeared in her palm. She held it over the forelimb, pinched between finger and thumb, then released it to hover exactly where she had placed it, casting a harsh light over her task.

  Bending down further, she took up the arm in both her hands, lifting it to her nose and sniffing it deeply from one end to the other.

  ‘It is definitely a dragon,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry for ever doubting your word, Your Grace. But I still don’t understand how such a creature came to be in the woods here. Nor have I ever encountered a dragon so large. Look.’ She held the forelimb alongside her own extended arm and even Melyn had to admit she had a point. The talons alone were as long as her entire hand outstretched; the muscle where the limb had been severed was almost as thick as her thigh. She put it back down on the cloth and re-wrapped it, then reached up and extinguished her light as if it were no more than a candle. For an instant, as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, Melyn thought he saw her bathed in a thin skein of light, as if he had seen her form in the aethereal, but this disappeared as quickly as it had come.

  ‘So where did it come from? Where might it have gone?’

  ‘I really don’t know, Your Grace. This is far beyond anything I’ve ever encountered before. A creature this size is something from legend, but the dragons of our tales never ate people. We never ate people. I can only assume this is something wild, a distant ancestor somehow brought here. A dragon in form, but mindless, soulless, a true beast.’

  ‘Then perhaps you can explain this.’ Melyn reached into his pocket and pulled out a heavy silver band, its circumference large enough to fit over his hand. He threw it at Frecknock, who caught it easily, even in the poor light. ‘We found it on the creature’s middle finger. Looks to me like a signet ring.’

  Frecknock turned the band over in her hand, feeling the figures let into its surface.

  ‘Your Grace, may I try something?’

  ‘What did you have in mind?’

  ‘A simple conjuring. There may be a message within this ring for those who know how to read it.’

  Melyn stared at the dragon, trying to decide whether she was up to some trickery. As always, her mind was almost impossible for him to fathom, though he could sense something of her thoughts. She looked on the world in so different a way, he found himself not knowing where to begin. And yet there was an underlying curiosity in her that reminded him of nothing so much as a classroom full of eager young novitiates. She truly had no idea where this other dragon had come from, and its behaviour appalled her in a profound way, but she was determined to solve the mystery.

  ‘Very well,’ he said finally. ‘But don’t do anything to upset your guards.’ He nodded to the two warrior priests, who responded by conjuring their blades of light and moving closer. Frecknock nodded her understanding, then bent to the ring, holding it in one palm, sweeping the other a few inches over it and muttering in Draigiaith under her breath. Melyn felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise at the sound. It seemed to be right inside him. And then he could hear other voices speaking in the language of the dragons.

  It was a strange sensation. He was sitting on the barrel in a storeroom beneath Castle Betel, but he was also in a clearing in the middle of a forest somewhere. Snow-capped mountains ringed the view, distant and glowing against a sky of deepest cloudless blue. And right in front of him a party of twenty or more dragons seemed to be engaged in some ceremony.

  A youngster, little more than a hatchling, knelt in front of a rude altar crafted from a fallen rock. Behind the altar several larger dragons stood tall and still, their heads bowed as if in prayer. In front of it a dragon so old and withered it seemed almost a dried husk mouthed the words he could hear, which overlaid Frecknock’s mutterings. Melyn knew Draigiaith, but this dialect was so thick, the words so ancient-sounding, he could only understand the barest minimum. It seemed to be a naming ceremony, the hatchling being welcomed into some kind of extended family. He heard a name, Caradoc, and then a list of what may well have been ancestors’ names. But as these continued they seemed to fade away, along with the scene itself, until he was once more in the storeroom staring at Frecknock. Her muttering had dwindled to almost nothing, and as he watched she fell silent and slumped forward as if exhausted. After a few moments of silence, she pulled herself together, straightened up, then rose on unsteady feet.

  The two warrior priests stepped forward to bar her way, but Melyn stopped them with a shake of his head.

  She walked up to him, holding out the ring. He took it from her, feeling a tingle of power in it not unlike the thrill he felt when he conjured his blade, or when he was in the presence of the Shepherd.

  ‘It’s a naming ring,’ Frecknock said, her voice trembling as if her resolve had finally left her, as if what she had seen was more terrible even than the slaughter of her extended family, her capture and enslavement. ‘The dragon you seek is called Caradoc, son of Edryd. He has a long and illustrious family history, according to the ring, but I don’t recognize any of it. I’ve no idea who he is or where he came from. But I can help you find him. At least, I can try.’

  ‘And why w
ould you do that, sweet Frecknock? Are you still looking for a mate?’

  Frecknock physically recoiled at his words, her face a picture of horror.

  ‘No, Your Grace. No! He is an abomination. By Rasalene and Arhelion, the moon and the sun, he cannot be allowed to walk Gwlad. He must be found. He must be stopped. He must be killed.’

  Benfro stood on the edge of the cliff, gazing down over the waterfall, the river and the clearing beyond. Low spring sunlight picked out the hollows and rock-strewn areas he would have to avoid, and was it his imagination, or were the trees taller than they had been the previous autumn? The spiky conifers were in flower, fluffy pale green tassels hanging from the ends of their branches. It made them look slightly softer, but he knew that a collision with any of them would be at least painful.

  ‘Are you sure you’re ready to do this?’ Benfro looked to one side, seeing the image of Corwen hovering in the air. The old dragon seemed somehow less solid than he remembered, which was strange given that he was no more than an apparition anyway. His appearances had become less and less frequent too.

  ‘I have to try,’ Benfro said. ‘I’m going mad stuck here all the time with nothing to do but scavenge in the forest for food.’

  ‘And treat Errol’s ankles.’

  ‘He’s doing that himself now. I just had to reset the bones so they knit properly, didn’t fuse together in one great big lump.’

  ‘What changed your mind, Benfro? Why did you decide to help him?’

  ‘I remembered when I was about seven. Ynys Môn broke his arm quite badly. My mother taught me about bones and how to heal them. She showed me how to mix up the right poultices, how to apply them and when to remove them. She was a good healer, but she didn’t just heal dragons. She would use her skill to help anyone who needed it. She wouldn’t have sulked around while Errol was in pain; she’d have taken on the job regardless of what she thought of him and his kind.’

  ‘Your mother could have been a great mage, if she’d wanted to. But she chose to be a healer instead. And a teacher, it would appear.’

  Benfro shrugged, feeling the breeze on his face and chest. ‘She tried to teach me to listen to what people were saying, but she failed there. You told me to ask Errol for help and I ignored you. If I’d done as you said, I could have saved hundreds of those dragons.’

  ‘Don’t punish yourself, Benfro. Your reaction was perfectly understandable, especially given your circumstances. How long had you been without proper sleep? How long has Magog been working away at you, building up your hate and shrinking your compassion? His influence is insidious. Trust me; I know.’

  Benfro looked more closely at the old dragon. The image was definitely less substantial, and as he let the lines ease into his vision, he could see a halo of sickly red surrounding Corwen’s head and shoulders. It shocked him to see how far Magog had spread his foul control. He reached out to touch his tutor, but Corwen drifted back from him like a ghost.

  ‘He’s destroying you.’ Benfro felt a stab of guilt as he realized that this was his fault. He had taken Magog’s jewel from the bottom of the pool. He had carried it halfway across the land to Corwen’s clearing. The old dragon would be fine if it hadn’t been for him.

  ‘I’m not finished yet,’ Corwen said. ‘Don’t worry about me, Benfro. I can look after myself. And I can keep Magog from giving you his full attention.’

  ‘But you can’t easily maintain your illusion any more, can you? You can’t appear to me at will. When you do, you risk losing a little bit more of yourself.’

  ‘It’s not quite that bad. Not yet, at least. I’ll be around for a good while yet. You just won’t be seeing so much of me.’

  ‘There must be something we can do. Some way to break the link.’

  ‘There are many things that you can do, Benfro. And the first of them is to learn to use those wings Magog gave you. I seem to remember that’s what you were working on before he whisked you off to Mount Arnahi. So if your back is really healed, you must get back to your practising.’

  Benfro felt the soft rebuke in Corwen’s words and realized how foolish he had been. The old dragon had lived thousands of years, forgotten more than he would ever know, understood the subtle arts in all their mystery. Who was he, Benfro, to worry about the likes of Corwen? The mage would not have willingly put himself into deadly peril, and even if he had, there was nothing that Benfro could do about it. He had to trust that Corwen knew what he was doing and accept what teachings the old dragon was prepared to pass on to him.

  Standing on the cliff edge, he unfurled his wings, let the sun warm them. The muscles in his back stretched and took their new load. The knot of pain that had been his constant companion these past months was no more than an area of stiffness, a slight limit to his mobility that felt good to be stretched. Bending his knees slightly, Benfro allowed his body to tip forward and launched himself into the air.

  His first thought was panic. He fell far faster than he remembered, the ground hurtling towards him like a falling tree. For far too long he was paralysed, unsure what he was supposed to be doing. In his dreams it had always come naturally, and when he had launched himself from this cliff before, he had managed to swoop majestically down before climbing effortlessly up again. But now he was as helpless as a hatchling.

  At the last possible moment instinct kicked in. He swept his outstretched wings forward in a desperate lunge and felt his fall slow, his motion turn from the vertical to the horizontal. Whipping them back, he repeated the action and felt his wing tips brush the grass. It tickled his belly scales and tugged at his tail until with a couple more wing beats he finally began to climb. Only then did he remember the trees.

  Looking ahead, Benfro could tell that they were too high for him to clear. He would have to bank and turn, head back the other way and try to leave the clearing on the other side. But he had never before turned so sharply, so close to the ground. He wasn’t particularly scared of heights, but his momentum was such that he knew hitting anything, even with the tip of a wing, would hurt and probably do serious damage.

  In the end there wasn’t much time for thought. The approaching trees focused his mind quite enough. He banked hard, felt the temperature drop as he flew into shadow, then warm again as he levelled out and sped towards the centre of the clearing. He was low, almost too close to the ground. Wings working as hard as he could remember ever having worked, he fought his way up into the sky. And then with a few great sweeps of his wings Benfro was above the clearing. He scanned the canopy, marking the shapes of nearby hills and holding them in his mind. He didn’t want to lose himself, nor stray too far from home. The last thing he needed was to run out of strength and end up crashing into the trees.

  A screech overhead diverted his attention. He looked up to see two buzzards wheeling in the warming air. Not sure whether he was still tapping into another dragon’s experiences or simply doing something innate, he climbed towards the birds, who eyed him with suspicion, and spread his wings wide. He felt the warmth of the updraught on the undersides of his wings almost as a pleasure. Like having his brow stroked by his mother, or tucking into a feast in the great hall with Ynys Môn sitting on one side of him, Meirionnydd on the other. What would all three of them have made of him now, circling in the rising air, testing the edges of the invisible column with wing tips far more sensitive than he had realized.

  By the time the thermal had grown too weak to lift him further, he was high above the forest. He could glide for a hundred miles in any direction, lock his wings open and just go. East, the sun cast shadows on the cliff-like wall of the Rim mountains, far closer than he had thought them. West, the forest rolled on into hazy distance. To the north Mount Arnahi was a siren call, even blanketed in cloud. South, and he fancied he could make out the stone mount of Cenobus climbing out of the endless undulating green.

  Benfro was struck with the idea of flying there now. He could force his way into the repository and undo the work of his dream self. Pull all t
he jewels from their alcoves and return them to the pile. Before he had even begun to dismiss the thought as foolish, his wings were turning him that way, angling into the long slow glide that covered the ground with such deceptive speed.

  ‘No!’ He had to shout the word to make himself obey. He didn’t have the strength to make it that far, even if he could find other thermals on the way to help him along. With an effort of will, he banked and turned again, heading back for the clearing. It wasn’t far, still safe and familiar just a few wing beats away. He circled, losing height as he sized up the ground, looking for the best place to land.

  Something made him look up, back to the south and invisible Cenobus, too far for even his sharp vision. And yet in that moment he saw it as clearly as if it were just a few hundred paces away. It was unchanged from the time he had left, the ruined buildings poking from the top of the mount like the rotted stumps of teeth on the jaw of some gargantuan beast. Only there was something moving around the ruined tower, circling it like a moth around a candle.

  It was another dragon. And it was flying. It appeared to be looking for a place to land, hugging one hand to its chest as if it were injured. It looked strong, bold, and Benfro was reminded of the dragons who had attacked him in his strange dream. This wasn’t one of them, but he radiated the same aura of difference, the same casual mastery of the air, the same impression of violent rage.

  It was as he was wondering how he could see this beast from so far away, how he could know so much about it, that Benfro realized he had stopped beating his own wings. Too late, he looked down to see the ground rushing towards him. He thrashed and twisted at the air in a desperate attempt to slow himself, to position himself over the river.