The Golden Cage

by J. D. Oswald

  Errol ’s eyes widened in surprise, and he almost forgot to introduce himself.

  ‘Errol. Errol Balch. And thank you, but I’ve just recently eaten. Did you say lioncats?’

  Griselda laughed again. ‘That I did. Would you like to see them, Errol Balch?’

  ‘I … well … yes.’ Errol nodded his head, wondering why he was acting like an imbecile. He had read of lioncats as a child, knew that they were savage, untamable creatures that lived in the arid plains of the far east. He had never expected to see one.

  ‘Well then, come this way. They’re due a feed anyway.’

  Errol hesitated as Griselda marched off down a narrow alley formed by two lines of wagons. After about a dozen paces, she stopped, turned and saw him still standing at the roadside.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’m not going to feed you to them.’ She laughed again, beckoning him on.

  The circus animals were housed in large wagons arranged in a square. Errol recognized a few of the creatures lolling in their cages in the midday heat, but most of them were completely new to him. Griselda mentioned a few names as she led him past sleeping wolves, brown bears, gibbering apes. At one cage she stooped to pick up a bucket of water, throwing it through the bars into the darkness beyond. Something barked at her, a bit like a dog, and when she threw in a second bucketful a fat nose with thick whiskers poked out, snuffling the air. An overpowering odour of rotting fish wafted over him, making Errol cough and gag.

  ‘Ah, don’t mind the smell of old Bogey there. You get used to it after a while.’

  ‘Erm, what is it?’

  ‘That’s a genuine sealrus, from the Sea of Tegid, that is. Loghtan picked him up the last time we were in Kais.’

  ‘Loghtan?’

  ‘The circus master. Loghtan’s been running this show more ’n forty years now. His father and grandfather afore him. They’re a proud family of carnies, they are, even if young Tegwin don’t take much after his old man.’

  Errol let the information wash over him as Griselda spoke. He had only the vaguest idea of what she was talking about, but she was friendly and kind. Instead, he looked around at the wagons. Some were open-sided, with heavy iron bars keeping the beasts within from escaping. Others were solid, with tiny windows. One or two of the wagons rocked slightly, as if the creatures hidden within were pacing restlessly back and forth. Most were silent and still, the horses that pulled them hobbled and grazing the long plains grass a way off from the camp. Occasionally a strange moan or an ear-splitting roar would shatter the quiet, sending shivers down his spine even though the day was hot and sticky.

  ‘Here we are. Callias and Pello, my two mountain lioncats. We caught them as cubs, ah … it must be ten years ago now. Out in the wildlands to the west of Mount Arnahi.’

  Errol approached a low-slung wagon, open-sided at one end but with a closed area up where the driver would sit. Two lithe creatures lay in the shade of the roof, panting in the heat and flicking away flies with their long tails. They were the colour of burned sand, their fur smooth over strong muscles. Their heads were broad, pointed ears ending in long tufts of hair, whiskers short and thick, eyes yellow and piercing. He stared at them, entranced.

  ‘Aren’t they magnificent?’ Griselda’s voice was heavy with love and pride, like a mother clucking over her children. And yet there was something terribly wrong. Errol could feel the frustration of the animals as they looked through their bars to the endless plain beyond. He could see how they pined for the open spaces, and how their coats were not as glossy as they should have been, their muscles not as taut.

  ‘Here, would you like to feed them, Errol?’ Griselda knocked the lid off a small barrel beside the wagon, and the stench of rotten meat filled the air. She dug around inside, pulling out a haunch of some unidentifiable animal, and offered it to him. He could see flecks of white on it where the flies had laid eggs, and as he took it from her several plump yellow maggots fell to the ground.

  ‘Just push it through the bars. They won’t bite you.’

  Errol moved closer, anxious to get rid off the fetid meat but unsure whether giving it to the lioncats was any sort of kindness. He hoisted it through the bars, throwing it towards the nearest of the two animals, who yawned wide and revealed broken, chipped and blackened fangs. As the meat slapped on to the straw-strewn wagon floor, the poor beasts roused themselves, showing swollen joints and bone under thin skin. Errol could see sores through their fur where they had lain for too long, and his initial sense of wonder was erased completely.

  ‘Magnificent, aren’t they? I raised them myself. They treat me like their pack leader.’ Griselda spoke with quiet pride, and when Errol looked at her, he could see that she was completely blind to the suffering she inflicted. He looked back at the two lioncats, gnawing at the rotten carcass, withering away in their cage and taunted by the sights and smells of the unreachable wilderness just beyond their bars.

  I’d free you, if I could, he thought, and for a moment they both stopped their chewing and looked straight at him with intelligent sad eyes.

  Tearing himself away from their gaze, Errol looked around for something, anything at all, to get him away from the lioncats. Across the camp, set away from the other animal cages, there was a single wagon twice the usual size. It was a heavy construction, thick oak planks held together with black iron plates. Tiny windows, no more than air vents really, were set into the sides high up, where no one could peer inside, and from where he stood, Errol could see no way of getting in.

  ‘What’s in that wagon?’ He waited until Griselda tore her gaze away from her beloved lioncats and pointed. She looked momentarily annoyed, then her smile crept back on to her face.

  ‘That. Ah yes. I’m not surprised you noticed that. In there, young Master Errol, is our dragon.’

  ‘Dragon?’ Errol realized he sounded like an awestruck child, which was probably for the best. He hadn’t dared hope he would find a circus so soon after beginning his search, let alone one with a dragon in it. He wanted to rush over and speak to the creature, to ask it how it came to be here and whether it knew of others of its kind, but he had to contain his excitement.

  Trying to make himself sound slightly scared, he asked, ‘Can I see it?’

  Griselda’s smile faded from her face, but her voice was still kind when she spoke.

  ‘I’m afraid not, Errol. Only Master Loghtan can open up the dragon cage, and he rarely shows off old Magog between performances.’

  ‘Magog?’ Errol nearly fell over when he heard the name.

  ‘That’s him. Magog, Son of the Summer Moon. The greatest dragon who ever lived. They say he raised the Great Barrier Range of mountains, split Gwlad in two so that Llanwennog would be safe from the madmen to the south. Surely you must have heard the tale?’

  ‘Of course,’ Errol hastily agreed. ‘But the version I was told was a bit different. And surely Magog’s long dead. If he ever truly existed.’

  Griselda laughed. ‘Dear me, Errol. You take everything so literally. There never was a dragon called Magog. That’s just a myth. But this old creature claimed that was his name when Loghtan captured him. So Magog he is to this day.’

  ‘Is Master Loghtan here. Might I meet him?’

  ‘Why would you want to do that, Errol? Here, you’ve not run away from home hoping to join the circus, have you? Master Loghtan’s got no place in his circus for dreamers, you know.’

  ‘No, nothing of the sort. It’s just, well, a dragon. I’ve read so much about them, but I never thought I’d get the chance to see one. Or even to meet someone who knew about them.’

  ‘Well, I doubt there’s anyone knows more about dragons in the whole of Gwlad than does Master Loghtan. How else would he manage to keep one under control all these years, let alone track one down and catch it in the first place?’

  Errol doubted that anyone knew as much about dragons as Andro, and he himself was probably more knowledgeable than most, but if this Master Loghtan was an expert on the subject
, even if he did seem to use that knowledge to control and trap the creatures, then Errol could think of no better person to ask about the whereabouts of any dragons in Llanwennog.

  ‘He sounds like just the man I’d like to meet. Would you introduce me?’

  ‘I think I would, Errol. You seem genuine in your interest, not just some spoiled noble-born running away from the king’s service. But Loghtan’s not here. He stopped and made us camp this morning. Went off on some errand with his son Tegwin, and I’ve no idea when he’ll be back. Here, you could wait for him. I’ll introduce you to the rest of the troupe, if you like.’

  Errol was tempted, but he was beginning to feel the effects of a sleepless night and looking up he saw that the sun was well past the midway point in the sky. Benfro would be worrying about where he had got to.

  ‘I’d dearly like to, but my friend’s waiting for me back in the village. He’ll start to fret if I’m not back soon. Perhaps you could tell me where you’re going and I might be able to catch up with you later?’

  ‘Well, that’s easy enough. We’re headed south and east to Tynhelyg. Loghtan wants to be there in six weeks’ time so he can get a fortnight’s rehearsal in before the King’s Festival. I don’t think we’ll have much time to stop anywhere for long enough to put on a show before then.’

  Errol was about to ask what the King’s Festival was, his heart almost stopping at the thought of going anywhere near the capital, but just before he opened his mouth to speak he remembered the gold merchant, Tibbits, mentioning the same thing. At the time he had let it slip by as an unimportant detail, but from the way Griselda talked, it was an important occasion and something everyone would know about.

  ‘Well, my friend and I are heading for the capital,’ he said. ‘So I’ll look out for you when we get there. Or maybe we’ll catch up with you on the way.’

  Benfro lay for a long time in the cave, enjoying the warmth and the sense of security. It was low-ceilinged for his bulk, though a man would have found it spacious. The floor was flat packed earth washed in by ancient floods. At the thought of water his stomach gurgled. He had gorged himself the day before, but he had also breathed fire, and that always left him empty. He would have to see about finding some food before Errol returned.

  A slow river ran through the gully, and Benfro found a deep pool at the bottom where a rockslide had trapped the flow. Slipping into the cool water as quietly as he could manage, he swam to the middle and then let himself sink to the bottom.

  Unlike the fish in the river that ran through Corwen’s clearing, these had no memory of being hunted by dragons. Soon Benfro had a haul of five fat salmon, cleaned and filleted. He ate three raw, then took the others back up to the cave. If he found enough dry wood, he could probably make a fire without too much smoke and cook the remaining fish for Errol.

  The sun had climbed high into the sky by the time he had collected enough dead branches and twigs. Benfro piled them in the mouth of the cave and then retreated into the cool darkness to escape the midday heat. The woods were silent, all the animals hiding away until evening brought cooler air, and Benfro settled down to rest as well. Errol would be back soon, he was sure.

  A noise woke him. Or perhaps it was the smell of smoke. For a moment he thought that Errol must have returned, seen the wood and the fish and started a fire without waking him. That he could feel nothing of Magog’s presence reinforced this idea, but there was something wrong. The smoke smelled sweet, perfumed like the herbal preparations his mother had burned to cleanse the house. And when Benfro tried to see his aura, to check that it still knotted around the rose cord, he found he couldn’t focus.

  He tried to push himself to his feet, but his legs wouldn’t work. It was as if he had lain on them badly and they had gone to sleep. When he reached out to massage them back to life, his arms felt like they were made of stone. And now the sweet smell of the smoke was inside his head, making it hard to think.

  Darkness moved across his vision. Benfro looked up and saw a man standing silhouetted in the light from the cave mouth. It wasn’t Errol.

  ‘Well, well, well. It looks like we’ve got ourselves a mighty prize here.’ The man spoke Draigiaith with a strange accent. Benfro fought against the lethargy that pulled him down. He weighed ten times more than normal, but still he managed to haul himself off the ground. He tried to concentrate, to summon the fire in his belly, even as his head whirled and spun.

  ‘Oh, a fighter. Good.’ The man turned away and shouted something in another language. More smoke billowed around him, so that he looked like he was on fire. It filled the cave, making Benfro’s eyes water, his throat sore, his head even more muddled. He barely registered the movement of more people entering the cave, holding something between them. They threw it at him, and the weight of it on his shoulders made him collapse to the ground.

  Blackness flooded his vision, and Benfro could feel himself slipping out of consciousness. All he heard as he struggled in vain against the smoke that smothered him was the man’s voice, bold and sneering.

  ‘You are mine now, dragon. Remember that. You are mine.’

  Griselda was all for making Errol stay. She led him back through the camp a longer way, taking him past the fire and the two large tents, introducing him to a strange bunch of people. He finally managed to escape half an hour later, and hurried back up the road to the village. The horses of the circus men still stood outside the tavern, patiently waiting for their owners to finish drinking. As Errol passed he could hear raucous laughter that made him think it would be a long wait.

  The smell of smoke wafted faintly on the breeze as he approached the trees. He couldn’t see anything in the air and wondered if Benfro had caught some food. Ducking under some branches, the smell of smoke was stronger, and it was a strangely sweet aroma, like burning herbs rather than the acrid taste of woodsmoke. A tingle of fear ran up Errol’s back. He slowed, trying to be as silent as possible, listening for any sound that might be out of the ordinary.

  He hadn’t even reached the mouth of the cave before he realized that something was very wrong. The ground had been churned up as if a tree trunk or suchlike had been dragged along, sweeping aside all the leaves and other litter, taking the topsoil off in places. It swept in a wide curve from the cave, turned sharply back up the hill on the opposite side from where Errol made his way down.

  Two small fires had been lit just inside the cave. They were all but burned out now, but Errol could smell the sweet taint coming from them. A faint bluish haze filled the air, made his head swim. He took a deep breath away from the fires, held it and walked into the darkness.

  The cave was empty. Even Benfro’s bag had gone. As he was about to leave Errol spotted something glinting in the dirt. Stooping, he picked up a small ring. It was simple in its design, three bands of different-coloured gold wound in a tight spiral and flattened at one point to bear a tiny coat of arms. He remembered finding it among the gold that Benfro had brought from Magog’s repository and putting it in the smaller haul as something which might be easily pawned for coin. Whoever had taken the bag must have spilled its contents and missed this when they were collecting everything up. Numb with shock, he palmed the ring, bunching his hand around it into a fist.

  Errol scurried out, following the torn-up ground as it wound through the trees. Even in his agitation he could piece together what had happened. Somehow someone had tracked Benfro to this place, and that person knew how to put a dragon to sleep. There was no sign that Benfro had put up a struggle in the cave, and then he had been dragged away. It had to be the smoke, though it seemed strange that something which only made him light-headed could knock a dragon the size of Benfro out cold.

  It was too much of a coincidence that the circus had stopped so close to their hiding place just a few hours after they had arrived. This must be the work of Loghtan; hadn’t Griselda said he knew more about dragons than any man in Gwlad? But how had he known about Benfro? How had he tracked him?

  T
hese questions still unanswered, Errol pushed past the last of the trees and stepped out on to a well-made road. He hadn’t realized that the copse adjoined it, but this must be the same road that passed through the village, the same road the circus was travelling on its way to Tynhelyg. Its surface was still slightly damp here, shielded from the drying sun by the trees. Errol stooped and peered, making out the hoof prints of several horses. Some of them were wider than his splayed hand, and they sank deeper into the wet dust than the smaller ones. Carthorses would make such marks, he reckoned. And now he looked, he could see parallel tracks where the wheels of a heavy wagon had passed.

  Errol straightened up, looking both ways along the road in the vain hope that he might catch sight of the wagon. Not that there was anything he could have done to help Benfro. There was nothing to be seen. And then he felt something, a familiar sensation but one mixed up with the confusion of false memories that Melyn had filled his mind with. It came to him a fraction too late: there was someone else nearby. Very close.

  ‘I thought you’d be along soon enough, if I just waited.’

  Errol started to turn, caught a fleeting glimpse of a man’s leering face. Then something hard connected with his skull, and everything stopped.

  Acknowledgements

  It’s my name on the cover, and if you don’t much care for tales of talking dragons and evil sheep then I’m the one to blame, but a vast army of people have helped take my initial story and mould it into the book you have just read.

  Writing acknowledgements is always fraught with difficulty, as no matter how hard I try, I always forget someone and end up insulting them. That said, this book wouldn’t have appeared in the form it’s in without the tireless work of my agent, the admirable Juliet Mushens. Neither would it have been as polished without the boundless enthusiasm of my editor Alex Clarke and the rest of the team at Penguin. A huge thanks to all of you.