The Golden Cage

by J. D. Oswald

  ‘Lord Beylin certainly has opulent tastes, my lady. And yet he spends little time enjoying his luxuries.’

  ‘You’d noticed that too?’ Beulah nudged her horse into a slow canter, relishing the feel of the wind in her hair and the smooth ride of a well-bred beast beneath her. This time Clun must have anticipated her; that or his horse didn’t want to lose its companion. They rode abreast on the wide road.

  ‘I’m used to rising with the first light, but I don’t think I ever entered his hall when he wasn’t already there, discussing some deal or other with the local merchants.’

  ‘He works hard, and he’s a clever man. I could do with more nobles of his calibre. Alas, most of them are like old Queln of Corris. Or worse.’

  ‘Worse, my lady?’

  ‘You never met Angor, your predecessor at Abervenn. Unless you saw his head on a pike at the Ffrydd Gate.’

  Clun said nothing, but Beulah could see his hands tense on his reins. His horse sensed his unease and stumbled ever so slightly, making him lurch forward and grab at the creature’s flowing mane. She chuckled under her breath, enjoying the sense of superiority her riding skills gave her.

  ‘Relax your hands on the reins a bit. Use your thighs to control the beast, not the bridle.’ She let go her reins, squeezed her legs just so, and her own horse dropped to a trot again. Clun pulled back like a novice, his feet pressing forward in his stirrups, reins held high. Beulah laughed again.

  ‘My love, you can ride better than that.’

  ‘True, but this horse has its own mind, unlike the old beast they gave me at the monastery.’

  ‘Well, we’ll have to work on your skills if you’re ever to master that stallion.’

  ‘I thought the whole point of Gomoran horses was that they couldn’t be broken.’

  ‘Any beast can be broken. You’ve just got to find the way. You’ll not tame a wild creature like that with ropes and whips, mind. You’ve got to treat it like your equal.’

  ‘My equal, is it? It’ll be a long time before I’m halfway there.’

  Beulah’s reply was interrupted by the arrival of Captain Celtin, who overtook her at a canter, his warrior priests surrounding both of them in a swift well-drilled manoeuvre.

  ‘Your Majesty, we have company. Riders coming fast.’

  Beulah looked ahead down the arrow-straight road, and sure enough a great cloud of dust rose from the ground. At the base of it she could make out the forms of mounted men.

  ‘Hostile or friendly?’ Clun moved his horse close to Beulah’s and they all stopped. With the river to one side and fields tall with corn to the other, there was not much they could do but flee the way they had come or fight.

  ‘I’m not sure, Your Grace,’ Celtin said. ‘Though I’d hazard a guess at the latter. I’ll go and find out what they want.’

  The warrior priests parted to let him through, then resumed their guard around the queen. Beulah watched, annoyed that her afternoon ride had been ruined, as the captain rode some distance towards the approaching group and halted. About half a thousand paces away, just as the noise of approaching hooves was beginning to rise above the rustle of the wind in the trees, all but two of the approaching riders stopped. Celtin waited for them; there was a brief conversation, then he turned, trotting back to his queen with the two riders behind him. As they drew near, Beulah saw that one wore the uniform of a captain, his tunic bearing the arms of Castell Glas. The other man was a herald, his tabard a blaze of colours. Both stopped a good twenty paces away, dismounted and knelt on the road. Celtin rode slowly forward to the line his warrior priests still held.

  ‘An honour guard from His Grace Duke Glas,’ he said. ‘And a messenger too, ma’am.’

  Beulah walked her horse forward through a gap between the warrior priests that appeared without command. The two messengers remained kneeling at her approach.

  ‘Rise, gentlemen. You are sent by Duke Glas. Why is it he feels unable to come and greet me himself?’

  ‘Your Majesty, His Grace would have liked nothing more than to have escorted you all the way from Beylinstown, but he has sustained a grievous injury and is currently confined to bed by his surgeon.’ It was the herald who spoke, continuing before Beulah could question him, ‘He has sent his most experienced men to safeguard your passage into the city.’

  ‘And does he not think his roads safe enough for his queen to travel unguarded?’

  ‘Had you travelled them just a moon’s phase ago, ma’am, then the answer would have been yes, though he would have wished to offer you his protection anyway. But these past weeks our lands have been harried by a great flying wyrm. Our cattle have been slaughtered, crops destroyed.’

  Beulah felt a chill in her heart. Was it possible that Melyn had not succeeded in tracking down and killing the beast? The inquisitor had not contacted Clun since the day he had ridden north into the forest, though she hadn’t truly expected that he would until he reached Llanwennog. That would not be for at least a week yet, but the dragon should have been slain over a month ago. So what was it doing down here in the Hendry?

  ‘Have you seen this creature?’ Beulah addressed the question to both men. The herald shook his head.

  ‘No, ma’am. I’ve not, though I have seen the destruction it has wrought. Captain Tole here has, though.’

  ‘Describe it to me.’

  The captain took his time replying, as if he needed to gather his memories. Or maybe he was simply in awe of his queen.

  ‘It was big, Your Majesty. As big as a house, mebbe bigger, but I don’t need to describe it; you can see it fer yerself.’

  ‘I can what?’

  ‘Tha’s how His Grace was injured, y’see, ma’am. We cornered the beast in the swamps to the south. Hunted it down.’

  ‘It’s dead?’

  ‘No, ma’am. Better’n that. We captured it. Well, Duke Glas did. It’s in chains in the city waitin’ fer you.’

  ‘Have we got a head count yet, Captain?’ Melyn walked among his men, camped in the long grass a good distance up the valley from the great barrier that had separated them from the magic storm. Melyn had decided that a day’s rest was in order; they needed to reorganize and redistribute their provisions, as well as tend to the injured men and horses.

  ‘Most have reported back now, Inquisitor. So far we’ve lost twenty men and three dozen horses.’

  ‘Twenty men, by the Shepherd, is that all?’ Melyn scanned the camp. ‘I thought we’d lost at least a hundred.’

  ‘No, sir. Most got through before …’ Osgal trailed off as if he didn’t want to think too hard about what had happened. Melyn dismissed him with a wave of his hand, noticing for the first time the blisters on his own palm. He felt no pain, in fact felt nothing at all, but as he looked at the mess of red shiny flesh, a wave of nausea swept over him and his knees started to buckle. A steady hand caught him.

  ‘Delayed shock, Your Grace. Perhaps you’d better sit down somewhere.’

  Melyn looked around to see Frecknock just behind him. Her support should have angered him – she was too familiar – and yet he couldn’t muster the energy to punish her. Had her constant presence over these long weeks on the road, their shared adventures, so inured him to her presence?

  ‘It’s nothing.’ He pulled away from her. Nearby several troops of warrior priests clustered around their fires or tended their horses, but none of them paid either him or the dragon any heed.

  ‘It’s not nothing, Your Grace. You’ve serious burns to your hand. If you don’t do something about them, and soon, then you’ll lose it.’

  ‘Why are my men ignoring me? They should have cut you down for laying a finger on me.’

  ‘They can’t see you, sir. I’ve hidden us both.’

  ‘You’ve what? How dare you?’

  ‘I thought it would be bad for morale, after what your warrior priests have just been through, for them to see their inquisitor collapse.’

  ‘Why would you care?’

  ‘I sw
ore a blood oath. I am bound to that until one of us dies. As long as I’m useful to you, that time may yet be some way off. If I don’t help you, then you’ll just kill me. I want to stay alive, Inquisitor Melyn. I can’t embrace my death calmly like the others. They’d lived for centuries, made peace with Gwlad and settled down. If you hadn’t killed them, they would all have faded away soon enough. But I’m still young; I’ve not been given the choice they all took.’

  Her logic was as cold as his own. Meanwhile Melyn was not so stupid as to ignore her obvious power, and the fact that she seemed willing to do his bidding opened up all manner of possibilities.

  ‘This enchantment that makes me invisible to my men. This is the same spell that you use to hide yourself?’

  ‘It’s similar, yes.’

  ‘Show me how it’s done.’

  ‘Of course, Your Grace. But first you need to heal that hand. May I?’ Frecknock held out her own hand. For the first time he noticed that the palm was not the thick leathery skin he had thought, but hundreds of tiny flexible scales that rippled as she moved her fingers. Not quite knowing why he did it, he let her take his injured hand.

  Her touch was gentle, but even so it brought an explosion of pain that tensed his muscles. Then she muttered something under her breath and the pain vanished. Holding his palm open, she waved her free hand back and forth in the air above it, still mouthing those strangely soothing words. He felt a tingling warmth in his fingers, not unpleasant so much as mildly irritating, like a faint itch that won’t respond to scratching, and a somehow disturbing sensation ran over his skin, rippling it like water pulled by a light breeze. The tightness in his knuckles eased, letting his fingers flex properly for the first time in weeks. Looking down, he saw the blisters dissolve in front of his eyes, as if his hand were absorbing them, healing with a speed far faster than even his skill at magic could have managed.

  Finally Frecknock stopped her murmuring and let go of his hand. Her release was like a huge disappointment. He almost reached out to touch her again, but at the last moment he stopped himself, instead lifting his hand to his face the better to inspect her working. There was no sign of the burns and no lingering pain. If anything his hand felt better, freer than before, no longer cramped by long hours clutching his reins.

  ‘You still need to rest, Your Grace. I can heal your hand, but I can’t do anything about the shock. That will take time to pass.’

  Melyn wondered what she was talking about. Then he realized that his knees were damp. Looking down, he saw that he had sunk to the grass. Or had she lowered him? He couldn’t be sure, and that bothered him more than anything else. Slowly he hauled himself back on to unsteady feet, turned to look for his campfire, saw it at least a hundred paces away and suddenly felt very old.

  ‘May I help you once more?’ Frecknock asked, holding out her hand to give him support. Melyn looked at it, then at the dragon’s face.

  ‘No. I can get there on my own. And I don’t need you to hide me any more.’ He felt the air ripple around him as she dropped whatever enchantment it was she had worked.

  ‘You’re going to teach me that spell, remember,’ he said, and hearing his voice the nearest troop of warrior priests leaped to their feet. Melyn turned his back on Frecknock, muttered, ‘At ease,’ and walked slowly to his fire and bedroll. And all the way he tried not to look at his hand, tried not to think about the dragon’s healing power, tried not to think how much it had felt like the touch of his god.

  Errol decided early on that he didn’t like flying. There was certainly a thrill in sweeping down the mountains at high speed, but it was nothing compared to the sheer terror. Benfro held him tight, and in turn he gripped on to the dragon’s enormous scaly arms with all his strength, but his feet still dangled in the buffeting wind. He felt like he might slip out of the dragon’s embrace and plummet earthward at any moment.

  Benfro had recovered fairly quickly from being frozen, as soon as Errol gave him the remaining food. Neither of them had said anything about the events which had led to the dragon stalking off on his own in the first place; Errol suspected that Benfro was embarrassed about it, and about being saved yet again. But neither did he ask for his mother’s jewel back. Errol had wrapped both gems tightly and put them in the bottom of his clothes bag along with the hoard of gold coins.

  They had set off on foot at first, heading down the gully and out of the deep snow. It was hard going, pushing through the tightly packed conifers, clambering over rock falls and scrambling down scree slopes. The view Errol had seen of the grassy plains laid out to the east disappeared behind lower mountains and foothills as they descended, and then finally they reached the end of a hanging valley, where a vast waterfall tumbled into an abyss, and could walk no further.

  It had been awkward trying to work out how best Benfro could carry him. They hadn’t given it any thought before; there hadn’t been time. But standing on that cliff top Errol had needed every ounce of his self-control to let the dragon pick him up. It had reminded him all too much of Captain Osgal hauling him to the edge of the Faaeren Chasm like a sack of rotten potatoes to be dumped. In the end he had closed his eyes tightly and tried not to gasp too much when Benfro had grabbed him. Only much later, after the initial feeling of falling had been replaced with the steady up-down motion of proper flight and the regular whooshing beat of huge wings, had he dared to open his eyes.

  Now they soared over the foothills, looking out across a landscape of open grassland and occasional copses. The contrast with the endless forest on the other side of the mountains was very marked, as if this were the true face of Gwlad, clean and unblemished. The forest of the Ffrydd was a mess of scars and ancient wounds poorly healed, a rent in the fabric of the world caused by some cataclysm he couldn’t begin to understand.

  They flew on for what seemed like hours, until the rolling hills smoothed out to flat plains intersected here and there by deep gullies cut by rivers and streams. A herd of animals that looked like great shaggy cattle spooked at the sight of the dragon flying overhead, some ancient instinct triggering them into stampede. Benfro stooped into a dive, dropping low over the backs of the running beasts. Errol, apparently forgotten, choked and coughed on the thick dust kicked up by thousands of frightened hooves.

  The cattle scattered, some turning back the way they had come, others flooding down a series of shallow cuts that dropped into a deeper gully with a sluggish brown river running through its middle. As they shot over it, Errol saw one of the creatures trip, tumble down a cliff and come to a halt at the bottom. From the angle of its neck and the way it had landed, he assumed it was dead.

  Benfro banked sharply, wheeling so that Errol’s legs swung forward. His heart leaped as for a moment he thought he was going to fall. They were close to the ground, not more than thirty paces or so up, but the drop would still have killed him. He held on tighter still as the dragon continued to turn, losing height all the while. And then, with a final lurch, Benfro pulled his head up, dropped his legs and landed. Two steps forward, his wings beating the air to counteract the force of his landing, and they were down.

  ‘My thanks indeed. But next time could you maybe give me a little more warning.’ Errol rubbed at his chest, sore from being held so tight for so long, and stamped his feet on the ground to get some circulation back into them. It came on a wave of pins and needles that made him hop and shuffle. ‘If there is a next time, that is.’

  ‘I thought we could eat. And this is as good a place as any to make a camp for the night. Looks like there’s a settlement a few miles east, so I couldn’t have flown much further anyway.’ Benfro turned away, and Errol looked back past him to where the dead beast lay. It was bigger than any cow he had ever seen before, with black shaggy hair and huge shoulders. The rest of the herd had disappeared, no thought in their flat-faced heads but flight.

  Errol found some long-dead dry branches on the shingle bank of the stream and built a fire while Benfro gutted and butchered the cow. He cooked a
nd ate a large slab of the rich pungent-smelling meat, trying to ignore the unsettling noises as the dragon set about the rest. By the time the sun had set and the stars begun their wheel over the night sky, they had both descended into a contented silent stupor.

  ‘How are we going to find him?’ Benfro’s deep rumbling voice roused Errol from his half-asleep musings.

  ‘Find who?’

  ‘My father. Sir Trefaldwyn. That’s what we came here for, isn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose.’ Errol cast his mind back over the past few days and their flight from Inquisitor Melyn. Now that he thought about it, he could remember Corwen’s last words to Benfro before he had disappeared: ‘Find your father, find Gog.’ But in the ensuing turmoil he’d completely forgotten about Benfro’s father and the quest to find him. Everything had been lost in the need to escape, and then he’d been struggling just to survive. ‘Do you know where he was going?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about him at all. He left before I was even hatched. About the only thing I do know about him is that he was called Sir Trefaldwyn of the Great Span. He had unnaturally large wings and could use them to glide short distances. I wonder what he’d make of me.’ Benfro stretched his own enormous wings out, their scales catching the firelight and reflecting back a thousand shades of orange and yellow. Errol stared at the patterns, trying to work out what they reminded him of. Maybe two dragons fighting.

  ‘Why exactly are we looking for him?’

  ‘Ah. I don’t know. It’s a fool’s errand really. But it’s the only hope of getting rid of Magog.’

  ‘How so? Can’t you just destroy the jewel. I don’t know, crush it or something?’

  Benfro laughed, a deep-throated hollow chuckle that nevertheless had no mirth in it. ‘If it were that easy, don’t you think I’d have done it already? Magog’s jewels are spread throughout Gwlad. I’ve no idea how he did it, but he managed to extract them while he was still alive. I found a whole pile of them in a cavern at the top of Mount Arnahi, but I’d be surprised if there weren’t more.’