The Golden Cage

by J. D. Oswald

  Melyn increased his speed, thankful for the soft dry earth that muffled his footfalls. He dimmed his light, fighting against the surge of excitement that threatened to make it blaze out again. If he could get close enough to the boy without him realizing, then a swift blow would render him unconscious. He could drug him with wine and get back into his head, find out the secrets he held, the power that had helped him survive a stab to the heart and allowed him to move from place to place with just a thought. And with the old dragon’s spell book to help him, Melyn knew he could master those skills himself. Then no one would dare oppose him. He would take the whole of Gwlad in Beulah’s name.

  The rock caught him unawares, poking up from the floor to trip him. Melyn pitched forward. He released his light and made no more noise than the wind that was driven out of him as he fell to the ground, but in the otherwise near-silent passageway he might as well have been wearing fools’ bells and banging a drum. Pain screamed at him from his foot and from both hands where he had thrown them out to break his fall. Ignoring it, he scrambled back upright and hobbled on as fast as he could, running his fingers along the wall to get his bearings until he could collect his wits enough to conjure another ball of light.

  Ears straining against the hiss of silence, he listened for the slightest sound that might indicate Errol was still there. He had to believe that the boy had no control over his strange power. Hadn’t he only disappeared before when threatened with immediate physical harm – when Ballah’s executioner was about to swing his axe; when Osgal had thrown him into the Faaeren Chasm? Melyn knew he was deluding himself; fear would be enough of a trigger. Cursing under his breath, he pushed on faster, all too aware that if Errol could have escaped, he would have done so by now.

  The passageway opened on to a large cavern without warning, almost as if he had stepped through an invisible door. For a brief instant Melyn thought he saw movement darting away from him, a confusing shifting of perspective that made his head spin. He put his hand out to steady himself and looked up into the eyes of the largest dragon he had ever seen.

  It was impossible. The cave was not big enough to hold such a creature. It made Caradoc look like a kitling and could have swallowed Melyn whole. It stared at him with a curious expression, like one might reserve for a precocious child or a dog that has mastered a particularly impressive trick.

  ‘So you are Melyn, son of Arall.’ The voice was as loud as the creature was big, surrounding him, filling him entirely, squeezing out any other thought. Melyn tried to pull himself together, but he felt like a pile of dead leaves in a gale. His mental discipline, honed over a lifetime, disappeared as if he were no more than an empty-headed little girl.

  ‘Who … are … you … ?’ He couldn’t be sure whether he actually spoke the words or not. Melyn could feel himself slowly unravelling under that terrible stare.

  ‘I am Corwen teul Maddau. The last of her direct line. You know Maddau, of course. From your history. We call her Maddau the Wise. She was the gentlest, most studious of our kind. And your little proto-king, Balwen, slew her like a dog.’

  Melyn was transported back to his childhood, standing at the front of the class and being chided for his presumption by his teacher. He knew the burning sense of embarrassment, the mortification of being ridiculed in front of his peers even if he thought them no better than the mindless peasants who were their parents. He knew too the terrible feeling of injustice – that he should be rewarded for his achievement, not humiliated. He pushed against that humiliation, taking strength from his persecution. And as he did so, he felt his body around him. How long he had been trapped, caught by this most powerful magic of all, was anyone’s guess. But as it dawned on him what he had stumbled upon, so its power waned.

  He flexed his hands, feeling the rough stone of a carved pedestal under them, in front of him. He could still see the great form of the dragon, but it was shrinking in front of his eyes, its solidity fading away to a smoky wispiness, the cave wall showing through from behind. And then his fingers caressed something cold and hard and smooth.

  A jolt of energy shot through him. Melyn was thrown back, landing on his backside in the dirt. But the image of the dragon had gone, and now he could see what really filled the small cave.

  ‘Not so grand now, Corwen teul Maddau,’ he muttered under his breath as he climbed painfully back to his feet and looked down on the pile of two dozen or so small white jewels. He reached out and picked one up, conjuring his light as he did so, the better to see it. Images, memories, the shadow of the creature that had left these powerful nuggets behind, brushed at his mind. Melyn was used to the way the white jewels called him, promised him great things. He was wise to them, though he knew many men who had fallen for their allure. He closed his mind to their song and studied them one by one as a gemsmith might appraise diamonds before setting about cutting them. Most were white, but of the twenty-four, six had taken on a pale pink tinge. There was a different quality to them too, as if they belonged to another creature. A puzzle for later, he put them all in a pocket of his robe before taking a last look around the small chamber.

  Aside from a few scratchy runes etched into the walls and around the stone pedestal, there was nothing of interest. Then he looked down, seeing how the soft dry earth had been disturbed by feet, recently if he was any judge. Crouching, Melyn held out his light, trying to make sense of the patterns of prints. They had been made by small boots. He didn’t know what size Errol wore, but Melyn was pretty sure they were his. The boy had stepped from the rock face opposite the entrance and then stumbled; there were two hand-shaped prints in the dirt, and Melyn knew there would be larger ones much the same back down the passageway where he had fallen. After picking himself up, Errol had walked slowly around the pedestal once, then stepped back into the cave wall.

  Melyn studied the rock, feeling it with his hand, then let himself slip into the trance that would show him the aethereal imprint of the place. In front of him was still nothing more than a solid wall of stone; no magics hid a second chamber or escape route. Indeed the magics that filled the place were fast unravelling, their centre disrupted when he had disturbed the jewels. Remembering Frecknock’s words, he concentrated on the Grym, and sure enough he could see the lines converging on the pedestal. But whereas before he had seen them only as conduits of power, now he could see how they diffused into the air, formed the shape of the cavern. There were subtle differences between the lines that criss-crossed the floor and those that ran through the rock, something he had never noticed in all his years of studying magic and the Grym.

  And then it hit him. He shouldn’t have been able to see the lines at all. Quite apart from being in an aethereal trance, he was deep underground, far from living things. Back at Emmass Fawr the basement levels, hewn into the granite of the mountain on which the monastery sat, were almost devoid of power. Even he struggled to conjure a light down there. But in here the Grym was as powerful as anywhere he had seen it, and it reached out in all directions, connecting this one spot to everywhere in Gwlad. From here he could eavesdrop on conversations in Candlehall. Or Tynhelyg. He could seek out Queen Beulah and check on her progress. Maybe even communicate with her as the dragons did. He could see where Errol had gone. Follow him.

  ‘Your Grace?’ The voice cut through Melyn’s concentration and he dropped out of his trance, spinning to see who had dared interrupt him. One of the damp warrior priests stood at the entrance to the cavern, his companion behind him. Anger made Melyn’s conjured light glow bright. The two men drew back from him, fear etched into their faces, as well it should be. He would strike them down where they stood.

  ‘Are you all right, sire?’ The nearest warrior priest was dripping on to the dusty earth, making a ring of damp darkness around him like a protective ward. Melyn’s rage turned off almost as instantly as it had come. He looked down at his own robes, soaked from his entrance. His shirt clung to his skin, cold and rough, sending an involuntary shiver through him. He could
see how he had trailed drips of water into the cavern, and yet he hadn’t noticed them at all when he had been tracing Errol’s footsteps. Crouching down again to inspect the floor, he could see no sign of the boy at all. A different shudder ran up his spine as he began to understand what had happened. He had been seduced by the strange potency of this place. He had acted like a novitiate on first being introduced to the lines, had almost been sucked into them, his mind ripped apart by their endless possibilities. If anything, the two warrior priests had saved him from a fate far worse than death.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said, his voice sounding strange to him in the echoing space. ‘I’ve got what I was looking for. Let’s get out of here.’

  They retreated swiftly along the passageway, stepping back into the main cave far sooner than Melyn expected. With Corwen’s jewels in his pocket, rather than resting in their place of power, the spells that had hidden the dead dragon’s home had rapidly evaporated and tendrils of mist were seeping into the dry space. It wouldn’t take long for the wooden furniture to start mouldering.

  ‘You two. Take that chest and throw it out into the river.’ Melyn cast his eyes quickly over the cave to see if there was anything else worth investigating or taking, but there were no books, no gold trinkets, no hoard other than the small pile of jewels. He let himself down into the icy water as the warrior priests hauled the chest across the floor. They tipped it over the edge, jumping in after it, and he followed them through the deluge out into the clearing beyond.

  Darkness had almost completely fallen, the first few stars pricking the pink sky. Someone had built a fire close to the stone corral, and the smell of roasting meat wafted across to him as Melyn waded out of the river. He squeezed out his robes as best he could while he walked, but he would have to dig fresh clothes from his pack. At least the water had washed the road dust from his face and hair.

  ‘Where’s Frecknock?’ He swung his sodden riding cloak off, draping it on the wall of the corral to catch the heat from the fire. The light from the flames made everything else dark. He moved closer, warming his hands.

  ‘In the cave, sir. She hasn’t moved in hours.’

  ‘Hours? What are you talking about, man? I left her in there just a few minutes ago.’ Confused, Melyn went to his horse and pulled dry clothes from a pack before stepping into the small cave. It was pitch black in there now, just a thin band of firelight falling on the seated form of the dragon.

  ‘How can I lose hours and not realize?’ Melyn threw his dry clothes down on to the bed of grass and began pulling off his wet ones. Frecknock’s eyes were two shining points in the darkness across the cold hearth.

  ‘This place is alive with the Grym,’ she said. ‘There are powerful wards everywhere. Breaking them might well have put you outside normal time for a while.’

  ‘But I’d know, surely. I’m not some wet-eared novitiate; I’ve studied magic all my life.’ Melyn pulled on his dry clothes, reaching out to the lines for warmth as he did so.

  ‘I didn’t begin my studies in the subtle arts until I was seventy years old, Your Grace. I’m almost two hundred now. It’s possible I’ve been learning the subtle arts even longer than you. Corwen may well have studied them ten times as long as me. More, even.’

  Melyn wanted to scoff. It was common knowledge that dragons lived longer than men, but not nearly as long as they claimed. Still, he couldn’t deny the sheer sophistication of the spells that had protected the cave behind the waterfall, nor the enormously complex workings that made navigation through the Ffrydd so difficult.

  ‘I found a pile of jewels in a cavern behind the waterfall. How could a pile of jewels maintain such magic? Surely only a living creature could manage that.’

  ‘You found jewels? White jewels?’ Frecknock shifted her great bulk, leaning forward so that her head fell within the band of orange light cast by the fire outside.

  ‘Is that significant?’

  ‘A single dragon’s jewels, laid to rest in a place of power. That is how we honour our most powerful mages. They lie for ever at a nexus in the Grym, watching over Gwlad and offering their wisdom to any who would ask for it.’

  ‘Well, they won’t be handing out dragon wisdom any more. Not unless they’re prepared to give it to me.’

  ‘What … what did you do with them, Your Grace?’ Frecknock’s voice was quiet, timid. She was afraid to ask, Melyn could tell. She didn’t want to upset the delicate balance between them. And yet she needed to know so much she was prepared to push the boundaries a little. He went to pick up his cloak, then realized that it, and the contents of its deep pockets, were drying on the warm stone wall of the corral outside. The pause was enough for him to change his mind. He had been intending to show them to her, to impress her with his skill at breaking down the magical barriers to the final resting place of a great mage. But he realized that such bragging was unnecessary.

  ‘That’s not your concern.’ He went to the cave mouth. ‘Come. Have something to eat, then get some rest. Tomorrow morning we rejoin the main army. Then you’ll show us this pass through the mountains to Llanwennog.’

  Night was fully upon them now. Melyn took his place by the fire, accepting a plate of roasted meat augmented with a few forest herbs and roots boiled into a sharp-tasting mush. Trail food was always unpleasant, but he knew that it was necessary to keep his strength up. Frecknock emerged from the cave and hovered behind the ring of warrior priests sitting around the fire until they had finished eating, then took a surprisingly small amount of the remaining carcass. He was watching her settling down with her meal beside the corral when a commotion from the far side of the ford grabbed everyone’s attention. The warrior priests leaped to their feet, blades shimmering into brightness in the dark as a band of riders swept noisily through the ford. Melyn recognized the lead horse almost instantly, as did his men, who extinguished their blades and went to meet the troop.

  Captain Osgal dismounted, letting his horse put its head down and graze as he came up to Melyn. His face was black, his eyebrows and a chunk of hair from the top of his head missing.

  ‘By the Shepherd, Osgal. What happened to you? Did you get them?’

  ‘No, sir.’ Osgal dropped his head, then went down on one knee. ‘I’ve failed you, Inquisitor. They were there, just where you said they’d be. The dragon was flying when we arrived, and the boy … just appeared. We were almost upon him when the dragon swooped and gathered him up.’

  ‘You had bows, didn’t you?’ Melyn found that his anger had failed him. In its place he felt a weary resignation, a fatalistic understanding that he would have to try a lot harder if he wanted to catch Errol and Benfro. ‘Why didn’t you shoot at them?’

  ‘We did, sir. But …’ Osgal fell silent as if lost for words. His eyes darted past Melyn’s and the inquisitor looked around to see Frecknock looking their way, her eyes wide, her ears swivelled forward to catch every word. She had the decency to look embarrassed when she saw she had been noticed, but Melyn didn’t much care if she heard.

  ‘Go on, Captain. Explain to me how my best warrior priests suddenly lost the ability to aim a crossbow.’

  ‘Their aim was true, Inquisitor. Every quarrel would have hit its target, but the dragon burned them all up.’

  ‘Burned?’

  ‘He breathed fire, sir. It melted our bolts. Hotter than the Wolf’s lair it was, but it didn’t touch the boy.’ Osgal held out a black lump, which Melyn took from him. It was heavy and looked a little like a crossbow bolt might if it had been dropped back into the blacksmith’s forge and forgotten about.

  ‘He used it on us as well.’ Melyn could hear the distress in Osgal’s voice as the captain recalled the events. ‘And that time it burned. Any closer and it would have killed us. By the time we calmed the horses, he’d gone, taken the boy with him.’

  Melyn weighed the melted quarrel in his hand, looking back at Frecknock, who had given up pretending she wasn’t listening. ‘What is this? Since when did dragons breathe fire?’


  ‘Your Grace … there are legends. When we were feral beasts. Before great Rasalene showed us … the wonders of the Grym.’ Frecknock’s words came out in short squeaky bursts, as if she were gulping for air, horrified at what she was hearing. ‘But never … in ten thousand years. More. No. No.’

  20

  Beware the beast that knows no master

  Beware the husband who has no wife

  Beware the dead but ever living

  Cold fingers twined through every life

  The Prophecies of Mad Goronwy

  Errol was too terrified even to look down. He scrunched his eyes shut and hung on to Benfro’s scaly arms with all his strength. He could feel his legs dangling beneath him, battered by the wind. He was dazed and confused and very, very afraid.

  After a while he opened his eyes a tiny fraction, then wished that he hadn’t. They were high above the trees and moving at a dizzying speed. The canopy beneath them was changing from spreading broadleaves to dense patches of conifer, though from this new angle it took him a while to realize that was what he was seeing. Twisting his head to one side, he saw past Benfro’s steadily beating wing to the bulk of Mount Arnahi, its western flank painted orange-pink by the setting sun. Straight ahead he could make out the lower peaks of the eastern arm of the Rim mountains, clear in the evening light and much closer than he had expected.

  He tried to speak, but his voice was whipped away by the wind which tore tears from his eyes and blew through his clothes as if they weren’t there at all. As he took stock of his situation, Errol felt the cold loosening his grip. Benfro still held him tight, but that wasn’t something he wanted to have to rely on. The dragon was carrying all the bags as well. Surely he couldn’t manage all that weight for long?