by J. D. Oswald
‘I am afraid I don’t even know what a Mother Tree is,’ Dafydd said.
‘No.’ Earith shook her head, placed her melon back down on her plate uneaten. ‘No, I don’t suppose you do. And it’s not a Mother Tree. There is only one. She is the Grym, in many ways. She is Gwlad and all the living things within it.’
‘So how then? How can I get back home? Are there boats I could sail on? A crew willing to make the journey?’ Dafydd knew even as he said it how hopeless it was. He had no money to hire a ship, and working his passage would rely on someone else wanting to go that far north. That the idea of working his passage didn’t fill him with horror was a surprise. The carefree Prince Dafydd who had ridden out of Tynhelyg so many months before would have baulked at the idea of even getting his hands dirty.
‘It’s unlikely. And it would take months even if you could find a captain willing to try it. The Southern Sea is not easy to cross. We could try the Heol Anweledig that brought you here, but that will only get you as far as Merrambel, where Merriel left you. After your last journey on the hidden roads you’re probably not too keen to try that anyway, I’d guess.’
Dafydd slumped back in his seat, sipping the last of his bitter, dark drink. It matched his mood. ‘I have to get back. Iolwen needs me. Iolo needs me. What if something happened to them and I was sitting here in the sunshine, enjoying fine food and your generous hospitality?’
‘Do not blame yourself, Dafydd. It isn’t your fault. If any are to blame it is Gog and Magog, and their mad mentor Palisander before them. We are all touched by their cruel fate.’
‘Palisander?’ It was a name Dafydd didn’t think he had heard before.
‘The bards would have it that he was the greatest dragon ever to live. Second only to Rasalene himself, who was father of us all. Arrant nonsense, of course, but bards always love to dress stories up.’ Earith poured herself a much larger mug of the dark drink before topping up Dafydd’s cup.
‘Palisander was a great mage, but he was also reckless. He didn’t care what he did to increase his power, his hold over the Grym. It killed him in the end, but not before a lot of my kind went missing. He was old by the time Gog and Magog came along, but he doted on the pair of them as if he was their father. By the moon, maybe he was.’ Earith shook her head. ‘Nothing would surprise me any more. He died when they were both about two hundred summers old, but not before teaching them much of what he had learned.’
Dafydd sipped, unsure what to say. Earith’s stories were meaningless to him, her talk of events many thousands of years ago baffling. How could she have lived that long?
‘There is a way of getting you home,’ she said after a while.
Dafydd sat up straight, leaning forward in his eagerness to hear more. ‘There is?’
‘There is, yes. It’s the same way you came to the island, if I understand your telling of it right. But it is not an easy thing to do. It worked for you and Merriel because you had both seen that place before, were both linked to it by a shared experience. I have memories of Merrambel, but they are old and faded. And we have only met here before. Nothing else links us.’
‘You’re talking about moving along the lines. The Llinellau as you call them.’ Dafydd recalled the unpleasant sensation of his journey from the Neuadd to the island, the feeling of being torn apart, his essence pulled in every possible direction. He had been desperate then, and the island fresh in his memory from seeing the dragon. Could he maintain his sense of self again? He didn’t know, but it was worth it. Better to die in the trying than risk never seeing his wife and child again.
‘I …’ Earith began, then stopped, her head twitching to one side as if she had heard something, although Dafydd could not have said what.
‘Merriel!’ Earith set down her cup and stood in one motion. She moved swiftly, heading for the wide arch that led from the courtyard out to the gardens beyond. All but forgotten, Dafydd slid off his own seat and followed. He had to trot to keep up, but the bitter drink gave him energy and sharpened his thoughts.
Out in the gardens a group of men and a couple of other dragons stood in the middle of a wide lawn, neatly trimmed and dotted here and there with tiny white flowers. They were fussing over something but moved swiftly aside as Earith reached them. Dafydd had time to see another dragon lying prone on the ground, her wings twisted and slick with blood, and then Earith had gathered up her daughter in a fierce embrace, wrapping her own wings around the still body. For a moment it felt as if the whole world went dark, then he realized that the Grym was being sucked from everything close by, himself included.
He hurried towards them, moving in as close as he dared. Merriel had been injured in some terrible fight. He reached out, placed a hand on her arm, felt the stickiness of her drying blood. He reached out to the Grym, that small part of it that Earith was not already tapping, and added it to the healing flow.
‘Use my strength. Take all that you need.’
They flitted in and out of his vision like sprites from one of Sir Frynwy’s more fanciful tales. Were it not for his missing eye and the clear view of the aethereal it gave him, Benfro might not have noticed them at all. He had been pulling so much energy from the Grym himself he had not seen them as they crept stealthily through the snow-silent woods. How they had missed him, he couldn’t be sure, except that men had poorer vision than dragons and far less sensitive noses. They were concentrating on their concealment spells too, perhaps not expecting to meet anything sinister out here in the wild. It would only take one warrior priest to feel the tug on the Grym for him to be detected though, so slowly, reluctantly, Benfro let it go.
The cold seeped into him immediately. He had scarcely warmed himself up from the tumble through the waterfall, and now the icy water leached that heat away. Every instinct told him to wade out, find a sheltered spot away from the wind and the falling snow, but Benfro suppressed the urge, dropping lower still until the surface came almost to his nostrils. He edged out further into the river, legs stiff and reluctant. At least the distant roar of the falls and the babbling of water on the stones covered any noise he might have made. That and the muffling effect of the increasingly heavy snow. He gripped the tiny white jewel tight in his hand, terrified of dropping it here, where it would surely be lost for ever. It gave him a kind of warmth, lifting his spirits even as his body froze.
The light was fading fast now, though whether from the ending of the day or the heavy purple clouds overhead, Benfro could not tell. In the middle of the river the current was swifter, the water deep enough to give him buoyancy without his feet being lifted off the gravelly bottom. He let himself be swept gently downstream, his good eye always on the bank, missing eye scanning the aethereal for the warrior priests, counting them as if that intelligence might somehow be useful rather than terrifying.
There were far too many.
They spread out through the forest, each one keeping a good distance from the next. At first Benfro could not think why they weren’t marching together on a road, or at least keeping close. But then he realized they needed the distance to maintain their concealment. It was much like the simple spell that Ynys Môn had taught him all those years ago, more a trick than any working of the subtle arts. The same trick he had used to hide himself, Martha and Xando when Sir Nanteos and Cerys had almost caught them. It wasn’t so much a case of using the Grym as diverting it around you, distancing yourself from it so that your essence sank into the background. The warrior priests were using the technique with a twist, somehow letting the Grym flow through themselves without any disruption to the Llinellau. Benfro had no idea how they were doing it, but it seemed to take up much of their concentration. Otherwise he would surely have been spotted by now.
The river deepened and widened as he floated downstream, but it also slowed. The cold was almost unbearable; he had to clench his jaw tight to stop his teeth chattering, and he feared he would never feel his tail again. Ice began to form on the scales of his nose and the tufts of hair that
grew out of his ears. All the while the snow kept falling. As he rounded a bend in the river, the wind picked up and threw it at him. Benfro was glad then to be almost completely submerged. The water might have been cold, but the storm above it was colder still.
And still the warrior priests were making their stealthy way through the woods. Benfro lost count at around five hundred, and those were the ones his missing eye showed him. He did not know how many of the hated order there were, though having seen the size of the monastery at Emmass Fawr, he could only assume they numbered in the many thousands. They appeared to be working their way uphill, and he was moving slowly down. He hoped that he would pass through them shortly, but he was going to have to haul himself out of the water soon or risk not having any strength left at all.
He studied the banks, searching for a good spot for a quiet exit, and that was when he noticed that the current had sped up again. Steep cliffs of rock rose on one side, forming a wide arc as the river took another bend. On the other side the bank was a jumble of massive boulders, trees poking out from between them at strange angles as if they were drunk. The wind dipped and that was when he heard the roar echoing off the stone. Another waterfall, bigger than the last and not far away at all.
There were still warrior priests out there, some close by if his missing eye was to be believed. Should he risk being seen as he hauled himself out and climbed the boulders to the woods above? Or could he survive going over the falls? Without any idea as to their size, the latter option wasn’t really worth considering, except that he had no defence against warrior priests if they found him. Not in his weak and wounded state, with a stomach empty and unable to breathe fire.
In the end, cold desperation drove him from the river. Benfro struck out for the shore, muscles complaining. At least the current lessened the closer he came to the bank, and the boulders strewn across the bottom made it easier to find footholds. He tried to move as quietly as he could, but even over the sound of the waterfall and the roaring of the wind in the trees it felt like he was drawing too much attention to himself as he climbed out of the water. It cascaded off him, sloughing from his too-heavy wings and sliding down his numb tail to drip off the tip, each droplet exploding on impact with the surface.
No one heard him. It was all in his exhausted mind. He clung to the first boulder for several minutes, alternately reaching out for the Grym to warm himself, then shrinking back from it lest he be detected. Finally, when his trembling arms and aching fingers threatened to make him drop his precious jewel, Benfro gave in and let the warmth flow into his body. He couldn’t exactly remember when he had learned the skill, but it came naturally to him like no other aspect of the subtle arts ever had. Perhaps it was something to do with being reunited with his mother – that tiny stone clenched in his fist was a bright, warm point he could focus on, one that burned away all worry about Magog and his malign influence.
But the rose cord was still there. Benfro could see it with his missing eye, looping away into the darkness as the last of the warrior priests stalked silently through the forest. Somewhere out there the jewel was waiting for him, biding its time. As he had chilled in the river, so his aura had shrunk around him, the knot unravelling and leaving him dangerously vulnerable. He stretched it back out as best he could, struggling at the effort as he reset his defences.
The climb up to the forest should have been easy. Back when he was still a kitling, shimmying up trees and rock faces had been his favourite pastime. Now, with the ache of the wound in his side, his muscles stiff from the cold and his empty belly weighing him down as if it were filled with stone, the slow ascent from boulder to boulder was torture. It didn’t help that he could only use one hand properly, the other clasped tightly around his mother’s jewel. The boulders themselves were an awkward size too, smooth-faced and covered in slippery green growth. The higher he climbed, the stronger the wind grew and the heavier the snow. Benfro could tap the Grym for warmth and some energy, but not enough to rid himself of the sticky white coat that stuck to his wings and back.
It felt like he had been climbing all night by the time he finally hauled himself up over the last block and slumped down. The tree above him was an old pine, spearing into the storm like a tall tower. Strong and healthy despite its age, he tapped it for more warmth, reaching out to the other trees all around so as not to put too much of a strain on any one. There was an odd feel to the essence flowing from them, and it took Benfro a while to understand that he could feel their stress, longer still to work out what the problem was. These trees were filled with summer’s sap, their needles fat and ready to drink from the sun. And yet the weather was something from the deepest winter. This storm was out of kilter with the seasons. Could it be that as the two worlds, Gog’s and Magog’s, merged back together even the weather was ruptured?
A question for another time. Now he needed to make good his escape. Bad enough that he had been fleeing the dragons who had thrown him in the dungeon, the sudden arrival of warrior priests made things even worse. Benfro pushed himself up on to weary feet, scanning the darkening twilight for any sign of movement. The massive trees stood sentinel, spreading away further than he could see, but their summer needles filtered out the worst of the snow, leaving just a light white carpet on the forest floor. With his missing eye Benfro saw the last of the hidden men working their way slowly up a slope to his right. Clutching the memory of his mother in his frozen fist, he turned left and started to walk.
24
When beast and man walk the forgotten roads
And empty minds are taken from their shells
When winter comes afore the summer’s done
The war to end all wars will be begun.
The Prophecies of Mad Goronwy
‘I have never seen such fury, such violence. It is almost as if they were being held back from their base natures before, but something has changed.’
Dafydd sat to one side of a massive sleeping platform piled with soft linens, upon which Merriel lay. She looked in much better shape than when she had arrived, cleaned of all the blood that had stained her scales and the worst of her wounds sealed up, but she was still battered and bruised.
‘I came across them in the Northlands, while I was searching for Princess Iolwen. She was at the Hall of Candles, where I found you, Dafydd. Only she was hidden from view, deep underground. I tried to reach her, almost made it, and then she disappeared.’
‘And the other dragons attacked you?’ Dafydd remembered the great beast that had smashed around inside the Neuadd.
‘Them? No. They were quite civilized in comparison. This was later. I had a sense of the princess in the north, the mountains that surround the Ffrydd. Only it was no Ffrydd I recognized. There were trees everywhere, ancient and huge. And there were old magics too, unravelling as if they had been held in check until just recently. It was a horrible, confusing place.’
Earith sat on the other side of the platform, tending to her injured daughter with the care only a mother can bring. Dafydd sensed how she was drawing strength from the Grym and feeding it gently into Merriel, building up her strength.
‘Who were they?’ she asked. ‘We know most of the folds that have abandoned the old ways. They’ve never given us any trouble before.’
‘They were a ragtag bunch,’ Merriel said. ‘But I recognized their leader. Caradoc seems to have left the Twmp fold.’
‘Caradoc.’ Earith’s eyes narrowed as she spoke the name. Dafydd had always considered her gentle and kind, but there was steel in that single word. Venom too.
‘You know him?’
‘Aye, too well. He is young, scarce five hundred summers old, but he has always been proud. Claims lineage back to Gog himself as if that was something special. All of the dragons hatched after the schism are of Gog’s line.’
‘He is worse.’ Merriel pushed herself upright, the pain showing in her movements. ‘It is as if he no longer cares for anything save himself. And those he has drawn about him are n
o better. They fight constantly among each other, unless there is someone else for them to pick on. They have razed every settlement of men within a day’s flying of their camp, and I did not like the feel of that place at all.’
‘Gwlad is changing. Your disappearance is evidence enough of that.’ Earith stood as Merriel eased herself off the sleeping platform, helping her daughter find her feet. ‘And young Prince Dafydd here too. We both know that the lands to the far north are frozen plains of ice and snow, but he speaks of lush ground where barley grows in abundance and gold can be found in the creeks.’
‘The Ffrydd is a mighty forest to the west of my grandfather’s kingdom,’ Dafydd said. ‘If that is the place you mean. It is a haunted woodland where few dare to venture. Legend has it that there is a hoard of jewels and gold hidden deep in the middle of it all, but none of the men who have set off in search of it have ever returned.’
‘Magog’s palace at Cenobus lay in the centre of the Ffrydd. And claerwen is not so far to the east of there. That is where they were both hatched, and where he and Gog fought their last great battle, where Ammorgwm the Fair sought them out, determined to put an end to their endless warring. It is where she died.’
Earith spoke as if these tales were things she had lived and witnessed, and in that moment Dafydd believed that she might well have done. She looked old, worn down and exhausted by the effort of healing first him and then her own daughter. And worn down by a life so long he could not even begin to imagine it.