The Golden Cage

by J. D. Oswald

  ‘So what was your father doing, looking for these missing jewels?’

  Benfro fell silent, peering through the flickering flame light at Errol with a look of puzzlement on his long face.

  ‘Did Corwen not tell you? But you were there.’

  ‘Tell me what? When?’

  ‘When Corwen left us, when he told me to find my father. He thought he understood the truth about Magog.’

  ‘What truth? He exists, doesn’t he? I mean, he’s dead, but he’s still about, like Corwen or Sir Radnor.’ Errol was about to say and like your mother, but he stopped himself at the last moment.

  ‘No, not like them at all. Magog’s presence is far more powerful, far more pervasive than that. But he exists, and if he exists, then Gog must have existed too.’

  ‘I never assumed he didn’t.’

  ‘But you know the story. How Gog and Magog fought over who would have Ammorgwm, and then when she died they couldn’t bear to be near each other, so they split the world in two and went their separate ways.’

  ‘Sir Radnor said it was a fable, meant to teach the perils of too much pride and too much power.’

  ‘And so it was, but like all our fables it seems it was also true, to an extent. Magog existed, we know that. It’s likely that Gog did too. So maybe they really did split the world in two. Maybe somewhere there’s another world where dragons haven’t been hunted almost to extinction, where men know nothing of the subtle arts and where Gog still lives.’

  Something stirred in Errol’s memory then, a feeling of connection as if he knew what Benfro was talking about.

  ‘But surely Gog would be impossibly old. How long do dragons live anyway?’

  ‘I really don’t know. Sir Frynwy was a thousand years old, or so he claimed. Even Frecknock’s two hundred.’

  Errol didn’t know who Sir Frynwy was, but the sadness in Benfro’s eyes as he spoke of him suggested he must have been one of the dragons Melyn had slaughtered. He tried to change the subject.

  ‘So your father was looking for Gog.’

  ‘Well, in a way. He was looking for a window between the two worlds, a place where he could slip through. I guess if he’d found it, he would have come back for the rest of us. We could have escaped. Corwen thought he was a fool, chasing fairy tales.’

  ‘But then Magog showed up. So maybe your father wasn’t as much of a fool as everyone thought.’

  ‘Yes, but he’s also been gone for more than fifteen years, so it’s likely this window never existed. Or if it did, he never found it. Likely he’s dead, his unreckoned jewels mouldering in the dark.’

  ‘Unreckoned?’ Errol remembered the word but couldn’t for the life of him recall its meaning. It was something Sir Radnor had told him or he’d learned before he’d been taken into the Order of the High Ffrydd, but like so many reollections of that time it was jumbled and unclear, mixed in with all the false memories Inquisitor Melyn had foisted on him.

  ‘When a dragon dies, his body is burned with the Fflam Gwir, the true flame. Only then are his memories set, and his jewels turned white. A reckoned jewel is still a powerful thing. It can influence you as long as you are in contact with it. But an unreckoned jewel is much more dangerous. It will attach itself to you, try to change you or destroy you as it seeks to be reborn.’

  ‘But the warrior priests collect the jewels from the dragons they kill. They don’t burn the bodies or anything.’

  ‘I don’t know what influence an unreckoned jewel would have on a man, but Magog’s jewel has its claws in me, and the only way I can undo that is to reckon it.’

  ‘So burn it in the Fflam Gwir. Better yet, I’ll throw it on the fire here.’ Errol reached around for his bag to pull out the gem.

  ‘If only it were that simple, Errol.’ Benfro laughed again, but it was a sad, tired sound. ‘I need a part of Magog’s body to burn with the jewel, and the place where his bones lie is protected by powerful magics. No one can hope to find it unless invited by one of the twin brothers hatched there. Magog invited me in once, but I doubt he’d do that again.’

  ‘So you need to find Gog. And to do that you need to find the window to his world. You need to follow your father.’

  ‘Exactly. But I don’t know if my father found it, or if he’s still alive. I don’t even know if there is another world, let alone a window that leads to it. And even if there is, the chances are that Gog died millennia ago.’

  Benfro dropped his head as if weighed down by the impossibility of his task. But something stirred in Errol’s memory.

  ‘What would Gog look like, do you suppose?’

  ‘I don’t know. Old. Far older than Corwen. But probably not small and withered like the dragons here.’

  ‘No. Corwen told me that dragons made a choice many centuries back, and had been shrinking ever since. And he showed me what he looked like when he was young. So it’s possible that Gog would be able to fly still.’

  ‘I’d think so, yes. Why?’

  Errol remembered his dream of the strange castle, climbing endless stairs inside the head of a boy called Xando, coming to a huge room at the top of the tallest tower. He’d seen an impossibly old yet still vigorous dragon there. And that was where Martha was trapped.

  ‘I think Gog is still alive, and I think there must be a way to his world. I’ve seen it in my dreams.’

  Benfro’s head rose at Errol’s words, and his ears swivelled forward.

  ‘Your dreams?’

  ‘Well, I say dreams, but they were more.’ Errol told the dragon all about his encounters in that strange world, and as he did a glint of hope, or perhaps understanding, shone in Benfro’s eyes.

  ‘I’ve seen this place too,’ he said. ‘I’ve flown over it. But I was attacked by a group of dragons.’

  ‘Four of them? Three male and one female?’

  Benfro nodded. ‘It was the last time I was in Magog’s repository. You were there too – just lying there. I tripped over you and found myself flying through mountains I didn’t recognize. But how could you have been in my dream?’

  ‘How could you be in Magog’s palace and yet still be sleeping in the cave? How could I be in a castle in another world? I can’t begin to explain it, but I know these aren’t ordinary dreams. Martha’s been calling to me, I’m sure of it. She’s trapped there, in Gog’s world, with Gog himself.’

  ‘Then there must be a way of getting there. But how? And where is it?’

  Errol didn’t answer at first. He was trying to sort all the pieces into some semblance of order in his mind. There was so much he couldn’t even begin to understand, but he knew that Martha was depending on him. He and Benfro both needed to find a way across to this other Gwlad, and if that meant trying to follow a fifteen-year-old trail, then that’s what they would have to do.

  ‘You said you saw a settlement a way off, just before we landed.’

  ‘To the east, yes,’ Benfro said. ‘And there’s a road not much more than a mile from here. I’m going to have to be careful from now on. I don’t want to escape Inquisitor Melyn just to be hunted down by men from a different country.’

  ‘Right. But I can speak their language, and I look like them. So tomorrow I’ll walk to this town and ask a few questions. If a dragon came through this way, even fifteen years ago, someone’s bound to remember.’

  24

  The dragon tongue, Draigiaith, is a rough and uncultured language. Little more than a sophisticated form of birdsong, it lacks the subtlety of the languages of men. This is most noticeable should you encounter a dragon and it try to converse with you in Saesneg. Its grasp of our language is like that of a young child, much like its understanding of the higher concepts of honour, loyalty and trust in the Shepherd. The study of Draigiaith is thus the study of the nature of these beasts. It does not take the student long to realize that dragons have no true intelligence, only an innate ability to mimic coupled with the moral sensibilities of an infant.

  Father Castlemilk, An Introduction to the


  Order of the High Ffrydd

  The road was narrow, dusty and straight as it cut a swathe through the endless long grass. Errol had been walking since dawn, and the sun was now well on its way to the top of the vast sky. His ankles hurt, his throat was dry and the makeshift cloth bag hanging over his shoulder weighed him down, its strap beginning to chafe through the thin fabric of his tunic.

  He had seen no one all day, heard nothing but the soft rustling of the wind as it played through the grass. Distant herds of the shaggy black cattle roamed across the plain, and now and then he would come across a small clump of trees, usually clustered around a spring or a dry gully. It was an empty landscape, but a strangely peaceful one too. The mountains rose at his back, distant and sharp, as if magnified by the clear air. They separated him from Inquisitor Melyn, and while Llanwennog was not much safer than the Twin Kingdoms, this remote, empty corner seemed to hold no threat for him.

  Evidence of the town began a good couple of miles before he saw the first buildings. Stone cairns marked field boundaries, the grass much shorter here and grazed by goats. Closer in, drystone walls protected fields of vegetables from livestock, and here Errol spotted the first people he had seen since fleeing from Captain Osgal. None spoke to him as they laboured at their rows of carrots and cabbages, instead just pausing long enough from their toil to give him a suspicious stare. He tried to wish them a good morning, but got nothing in return.

  As he trudged past the first few ramshackle houses, Errol thought that he had come upon a small village, a crossroads and staging post, perhaps, between larger settlements. But the seemingly flat plain held many surprises, and as he crested a low rise, following the road between rough wooden barns, he was suddenly confronted by the sight of a medium-sized town, certainly far larger than Pwllpeiran.

  The bulk of the place was built on the gently sloping sides of a wide gully. There were no houses at its bottom, presumably because it flooded regularly, but a long stone bridge spanned the wide river that cut through a flat expanse of shingle and larger boulders. A few scrubby trees clung to the rocks, marking a recent high-water line. The bridge would have comfortably spanned even a swollen meltwater flow.

  Errol followed the road past two-storey wooden houses that, while faded and perhaps in need of a little maintenance, were nonetheless substantial homes. Halfway down the slope the ground levelled out into a wide flat area that formed the town centre, and here the buildings were of stone. He wondered what local enterprise could support such wealth; there was no sign of any industry here, and neither were there holding pens for animals.

  There were few people about, though at least here they responded to his greetings with polite if suspicious nods. He eventually managed to extract directions to an inn from an old lady washing her front step. Her accent was thick, and Errol hoped that his grasp of the Llanwennog language had not faded in the months since he had last heard it. He walked on to a central square, where the road he had been following met another travelling north and south. The inn was a large building on the west corner, and it was the only place in town showing any signs of life.

  Errol entered a bar where about twenty men sat drinking, clustered around tables in groups of four or five. For a moment the buzz of conversation dropped away, but it soon picked up again as the townsfolk decided he was of little interest. The barman eyed him with the same suspicion he had seen from everyone else, not rude but wary.

  ‘I’d be grateful for a pot of ale. And perhaps some food,’ Errol said. Behind him a half-dozen conversations tailed off again.

  ‘You’ve coin to pay for it?’ The barman’s accent was thick, like the old lady’s, but understandable. Errol reached into his bag, rummaging around for one of the smallest gold coins he had sorted out of Benfro’s hoard earlier. Now was the difficult part. This wasn’t Llanwennog money, and it was probably worth a year’s salary to a labourer.

  ‘After a fashion.’ Errol put the yellow disc down on the counter. ‘And I’d be looking for a place where I might change this. I used my last sovereign getting here.’

  The barman picked up the coin, weighed it in his hand, then peered closely at the markings stamped into it. He stared back at Errol with quizzical piggy eyes, as if trying to make a decision. Then he put the coin down on the bar, pushing it back.

  ‘You’ll need to see Querel, the gold merchant. He should be in his offices right now. You can’t miss them – it’s the big building on the other side of the square. Come back when you’re done with him and I’ll have a meal ready for you.’

  Slightly bemused, Errol thanked the man and headed back out of the inn. Sure enough, directly across the square stood the tallest building in the town. A short line of people sat outside, but they seemed more intent on basking in the sun than waiting for anything to happen. A set of large double doors lay open, and a brass plaque let into the stone architrave read: Mertimus Querel, gold merchant – by licence of the office of the royal house. The letters were etched in a flowing script that Errol doubted most of the men loafing about the square could read. He nodded briefly to those who looked at him, then quickly darted up the steps and into the building.

  It was dark in the hall after the brightness of the sun outside. Errol waited a moment in the entrance, letting his eyes accustom themselves to the gloom. Dark wooden panelling framed numerous doors leading off the hall, which was floored with polished stone that made the air echo to every small sound. A staircase climbed the back wall of the hall to a gallery above. As he stood there uncertainly, a slight cough caught his attention.

  It came from a small man in spectacles who sat at an enormous desk a few paces back from the door.

  ‘May I help you, young … erm, man?’ After the thick accents he had heard since entering the town, Errol was surprised to find this man addressing him in the language he had grown used to in Tynhelyg, the Llanwennog of high society and the court. The man who had addressed him was considerably older than Errol. He had thin dark hair with grey beginning to show at the temples, and wore a loose gown of what looked like heavy silk, embroidered with interweaving abstract patterns. His hands were long-fingered and sported many heavy rings.

  ‘I was looking to sell some gold. Are you Master Querel?’

  ‘Oh dear me, no. No, no.’ The small man laughed with a wheezing sound as if he were out of breath. ‘Master Querel. Ha ha. No. I am Tibbits, Master Querel’s secretary. I deal with the day-to-day running of things. Gold, you say?’

  Errol pulled out the coin. It seemed very small and insignificant in the richly furnished reception hall. ‘It’s not much. A family heirloom. My grandfather gave it to me when I was a lad. Truth is I’d rather not part with it. But I’ve got no choice, really.’

  Tibbits took the coin, scarcely looking at it as he pulled open a drawer in his desk and took out a small set of scales. He was slow and meticulous in his weighing, making a note in the ledger open on his desk. Then he brought out a glass beaker and poured a clear liquid into it from a flask, peering through his thick-lensed spectacles as he made sure of the level.

  ‘To see how pure it is, don’t you know. I put this in here.’ He dropped the coin into the beaker. ‘And read off how much the level rises … So.’ With a flourish he noted down something more in his ledger, then picked up the beaker and gave it a swirl. ‘If there’re any impurities, the acid will eat them away. But it leaves gold untouched. Clever, eh?’

  Errol flinched at the mention of acid. He had assumed the liquid was water, but now he could smell a faintly acrid odour. There were chairs in front of the desk, he noticed, but Tibbits had not offered him one. Instead the small man carefully poured the acid back into the flask, leaving the coin at the bottom of the empty beaker. He tipped it into a small bowl, poured another liquid on top of it, then picked the coin out, wiping it dry on a cloth. Still without really looking at the coin, he returned to his notes, making swift calculations in his ledger. Errol waited patiently, trying to read the numbers upside down as Tib
bits crossed his first answer out and recalculated it three times. Only then did the man actually look at the coin.

  ‘It’s not pure,’ he said. And somehow Errol knew he was lying. ‘I’ve never seen the design before. Old, I take it? Pre-King Ballah, no doubt. Possibly even foreign. You might get more for it from a collector. Master Querel would only be interested in its value melted down. And as I say, it’s not pure.’

  ‘Would I find a collector in this town?’

  Tibbits laughed again, and once more Errol wondered if the man was going to expire. ‘I can tell from your manner of speaking that you’re an educated man, Mister … ?’

  Errol hesitated. He couldn’t very well give his real name, which was recognizably from the Twin Kingdoms. For an instant, perhaps too long, he could think of nothing at all. Then he remembered Princess Iolwen up in her tower, and the name she had uttered when first she had seen him.

  ‘Balch,’ he said. ‘Errol Balch.’

  ‘Well, Mr Balch, there aren’t any collectors of ancient coins in Cerdys. There aren’t any collectors of very much at all any more. Not since the last gold seam gave out. But Master Querel is always open to a business opportunity. Tell me, do you have any more of these?’ Tibbits picked up the coin, which gleamed after its acid bath and polish. Errol revised his opinion of the man’s accent. It was city Llanwennog, that much was true, but the refinement was a sham, put on to fool the locals, no doubt.

  ‘No. I’ve only the one coin,’ he said, and for a moment he thought Tibbits might have believed him. Right up until the point where the man stared down at the bag hanging from Errol’s shoulder and made a little ‘Hmph’ through his nose.

  ‘Well, as I said, it’s not pure gold. But there’s enough to make it worth melting down and refining. I could give you … let’s see … seventy-five sovereigns for it?’

  Errol tried not to laugh. From what little he knew of Llanwennog money, he knew that seventy-five sovereigns was a derisory sum. The coin might well be worth ten times that. But he didn’t want to raise too many questions, didn’t want to be noticed at all. And he could live a long time on less money than that. Still, he realized that if he took the first offer he would seem desperate, and that would make him just as memorable.