by J. D. Oswald
‘I … I do not think I have much longer to live.’ Gideon coughed again, dribbling something on to a blanket. It seemed to clear his airways at least a little. ‘I don’t fear death. In some ways it will be a blessed relief. But there is something I need to tell you before I go.’
Gideon fell silent again, exhausted by speaking. Benfro waited patiently for him to begin again; there was no point in trying to hurry the old man. He looked across the table to where he had placed his mother’s last jewel, saw it twinkling in the light from the fire, reached out for it then stopped himself at the last moment.
‘You are aware of the three religious orders of the House of Balwen, I take it?’ Father Gideon’s question surprised him, and Benfro realized that the jewel had been calling to him, dragging him back to it.
‘The warrior priests of the High Ffrydd you have met. My own order, the Ram, are healers and teachers, and then there is the Order of the Candle. These are dry, boring people but important nonetheless. They keep things organized, running smoothly. At least most of the time.’ Gideon coughed again, took a while to catch his breath before continuing.
‘These orders can trace their origins back to the earliest times of men, when Balwen was not a king so much as the strongest of a number of tribal leaders. A warlord if you will. But what most have long forgotten is that Balwen’s three religious orders were not the first. Men had no magic in those days; that was something only dragons knew. And they – you – were powerful indeed in the subtle arts. Some were too powerful, perhaps, as you now know.
‘Balwen was favoured by the Shepherd, who taught him the secrets of the Grym. Most of my people think that the Shepherd took the form of a man, but we both know better than that, I think. It is likely he was actually one of the two brothers, Gog or Magog, and that’s how men came to have magic, by and large. They were not the only dragons who sought to mould men though. There were others, not as powerful as those two brothers perhaps, but wiser. They knew what might come of such meddling, and they formed another, secret order, containing men and dragons both. They – we, for I am one of the few surviving members – had a simple task, and one reflected in the name we gave ourselves, the Guardians of the Throne. For thousands of years we have kept a watch on Candlehall and the Neuadd. The Obsidian Throne that sits within it was once the seat of one of the greatest dragons ever to live. Not Gog or Magog, but one who came long before even them.’
‘Palisander.’ Benfro spoke the name he had heard first in the tales of Sir Frynwy. As he did so, Father Gideon looked up in surprise, then fell to coughing again. It took him a long time to stop, and Benfro couldn’t help but notice the pink stain to the edge of the blanket where he wiped his mouth.
‘Great Palisander, the wisest of all. He built the throne at the point where the strongest rivers of the Grym intersect. It is the very centre of Gwlad. From it, one of sufficient skill can control every living thing. It truly is Gwlad’s greatest treasure, and our order was charged with protecting it until the time when he would return.’
Gideon fell silent again, taking in wheezy breaths and swallowing hard to suppress another bout of coughing. Benfro said nothing; his missing eye could see the old man’s failing aura, the wetness seeping into his lungs and the strength leaching out of him. There was nothing he could do to save him.
‘But my life of service to the Guardians of the Throne has been based on a lie.’ For all his weakness, Gideon’s voice was now strong with venom. ‘We have protected the throne when we should have destroyed it. We were wrong. What lies beneath it is not the work of a benevolent soul.’
‘Beneath it? What lies beneath it?’
Gideon seemed not to hear the question. He pulled himself as upright as he could, holding the blood- and spittle-soaked blanket tight around his chest. ‘Palisander’s greatest work has been corrupted, and now the whole of Gwlad is in danger. Something is coming, Benfro. I have seen it. Your mother saw it too. It is not dragon, nor man. Not Shepherd nor Wolf. I do not know what it is, but it must not be allowed to take the throne.’
‘I don’t understand. What lies beneath the—?’ Benfro’s words were cut off as Father Gideon forced himself to his feet. He staggered across the room, as much falling on to Benfro as reaching out to him. His face had turned blue, his eyes wide and staring as he grasped one finger of Benfro’s enormous hand.
‘Promise me you will destroy it. Destroy the Obsidian Throne.’
Benfro reached out to catch the old man as his legs went out from underneath him. Gideon’s grip on his finger loosened and he slid forward, then crumpled into the dragon’s hand. Slowly, delicately, Benfro lowered him to the floor. Using the blanket as a cushion, he gently arranged Father Gideon so that he was lying in what he imagined was a comfortable position. It seemed the right thing to do, even as his missing eye told him that the old man was dead.
How long he worked at the task, Dafydd could not have said. But eventually one column was cleared. Then another, and another. He should have been hungry, he knew. He should have stopped to drink, except that there was no water down here. Deep in his thoughts Dafydd knew that he was being pushed by the jewels, and none of the dead dragons cared whether he lived or died as long as the task was done. As the pile grew ever larger, so the wisps of white smoke swirled, twisting around the pillar, caressing the stone. Occasionally he would see a dragon’s form appear, only to dissolve again. Sometimes two would embrace, merge into one and then disappear. And all the while he could feel joy, relief at the end of torments that had lasted many thousands of years. It kept him going, that and the power of the Grym coursing through his body, but he knew that he was putting himself at great risk. And then finally he reached for an alcove and saw nothing but red jewels in front of him.
‘Hold, Prince Dafydd.’ Something stayed his arm, though whether it was the spirit of the long-dead dragon or just his utter exhaustion, he could not say. He sank first to his knees, then slid sideways until he was lying flat on the warm hard floor. His breath came in ragged gasps and his throat cracked with dryness as he tried to swallow.
‘Am I done?’ he asked, the words barely audible. For a moment there was no reply, and then the voice filled his head once more.
‘All but one, and I sense she is incomplete.’ Dafydd looked along the aisle, the carved alcoves glowing red with the jewels of the unreckoned dead. And there, at the end closest to the cavern entrance, was a faint white glow. Had he seen it before, when he and Iolwen had first come down here? He didn’t remember, but his task was not yet complete.
It wasn’t until he reached into the alcove and touched the jewels that he noticed his aura had faded almost to nothing. With that first touch, the memories overwhelmed him. He saw a small house in a clearing in the woods. More houses, a village but not of men. These buildings were oddly sized, and the creatures that lived in them were the kind of dragons he knew from his youth and visits to the circus. Small beasts, their wings just vestigial flaps of skin, not something that could ever hope to lift them into the air. They were impossibly old too.
Then the images changed and he saw a young dragon, just a kitling really. He watched it grow, still small but beginning to reach the size of its elders. And then one final memory burned itself into Dafydd’s mind. A white-haired man with mad eyes, conjuring a blade of fire and bringing it sweeping down in an arc that would sever his head.
‘Melyn!’
Dafydd tumbled back, knocking the wind from his lungs as he fell to the floor. He had recognized the inquisitor even though he had never before set eyes on the man. Now he recognized too the dragon who appeared, ghostlike, in front of him, even though he had never even heard of her before.
‘Morgwm the Green.’
She nodded slowly, eyes closed for a moment. Then she opened them and looked straight at him. ‘And you are Prince Dafydd, heir to King Ballah’s throne.’
Dafydd pushed himself upright, his back against the stone shelf opposite. Clutched in his hand was one white jewel, and
his aura was thinner than sweat against his skin, no protection from the contact at all.
‘How … how do you know this?’
‘I can see your thoughts, feel your exhaustion.’ Morgwm looked up the aisle between the two shelves to the pillar and the pile of glowing white jewels tumbled around it. ‘This is a noble thing that you have done, but I fear if you do not leave this place soon you will die.’
Dafydd could not argue with that. He needed to rest, he needed to eat and drink something. But the compulsion that had swept over him once he had started moving the jewels was still there.
‘Ah, we can be cruel and selfish at times.’ Morgwm shook her head, leaned close to Dafydd and touched an insubstantial finger to his forehead. She was smaller than the other dragons, more in keeping with those in her memories. From this version of Gwlad, not the one where they ruled supreme. ‘I am not long dead, and so I have not been kept in this prison for long either. The others are confused, frightened, angry. They are coming to terms with what has been done to them and have no thought for anything else. I cannot believe otherwise that they would have put you through the ordeal you have endured. But it is over now. Add my jewels to the pile, and then you can leave. Then you must leave.’
‘But how? Where will I go? I cannot climb the stairs to the palace. It is too far, and it’s the house of my enemy. I will be caught and killed. Or worse, caught and not killed.’ Dafydd struggled once more to his feet, staggered across to the alcove and collected up the remaining jewels. As he carried them up the aisle towards the central pillar, he could feel there was something missing. A jewel. He looked back, but could see none that he had dropped.
‘You have the sight. It is true, I am incomplete. My remaining jewel is safe enough. My son has it.’
‘Your son?’ As Dafydd asked the question, the image of the young kitling swam into his vision. Only it wasn’t the young kitling any more, but a giant of a dragon with wings covered in the finest of scales that glinted in the sunlight and formed patterns that looked like the full moon. ‘Benfro?’
‘You know him?’ Morgwm asked.
‘No. But I see him in your memories. Only he is different. Bigger.’
‘Then hold that image in your mind, for it is not my memory but something else. It will guide you to him, and he will help you if he can. He is no friend to your enemies.’
Dafydd knelt down before the pile of jewels like a penitent at prayer. It towered over his head, heaped up against the black stone pillar with its blazing white runes driving away the dull red glow of the rest of the jewels still trapped in the chamber. Had he done all that? Had he moved all those jewels, handful by handful? He could scarcely remember any of it. All he wanted to do was curl up and sleep.
‘No. You must leave.’ The voice was so loud, he let go of the jewels, then watched helplessly as they fell into the pile. They all looked so similar there was no way he could have picked the right ones out again. Why did he even think he had to try?
‘You do not have much time, Prince Dafydd. Stay here any longer and you will wither and die.’ The words were Morgwm’s, but when he looked up, he saw the great dragon Angharad towering over him.
‘I cannot leave. The stairs …’
‘Take the Heolydd Anweledig. It is ancient and powerful. It will lead you to safety.’ The dragon threw out one hand in the direction of the cavern wall, and as she did so Dafydd felt the weight lift from his shoulders. A surge of borrowed energy filled him, sweeping away his exhaustion, his thirst and a dull, throbbing headache. He stood up, head light, staggered a little as he tried to find his balance, then turned in the direction Angharad had pointed. The last of the hidden tunnels that Iolwen had revealed now stood open, even though no one with the blood of King Balwen in their veins was anywhere near.
‘The Heolydd are older far than your King Balwen. Older even than mankind. Go now, prince of men. I can only hold this portal open for a short while. But know that the dragon hoard of Y Neuadd y Ganhwyllau is in your debt.’
Dafydd felt the compulsion behind the words even more strongly than the command to gather the jewels. He stumbled away from the pillar, past empty alcoves, through the red glow of the unreckoned jewels and on towards the open tunnel mouth. Yet even as he broke into a weary run, he fought the impulse. He had travelled this way before and it had almost killed him. How could he trust this road any more than the one that had taken him to Pallestre?
In the end, he had no choice. Such was the strength of the combined dragon jewels in the hoard and his own weakness, he could do nothing but stumble over the ground, churned by many feet, and fall headlong into the tunnel. Darkness enveloped him. Wind rushed past his face and ruffled his hair as if he were falling headlong through space, and with a shout of alarm he hurtled out into a world of white.
29
A mage might travel to a distant place using the Llinellau, or he might cast his aethereal sight along them in order to see and hear without himself being detected. Both skills are essential for any who would study the Grym and the subtle arts, but both also have their shortcomings. In the aethereal it is all too easy to become lost, distracted by the enormity of the whole of Gwlad. Many a master has spent days, sometimes months, gently coaxing his apprentice back from the Llinellau.
Walking the lines is in some ways safer, but a far more difficult art to master. And going physically to a place also makes it harder to observe it without yourself being seen.
Dreamwalking is a compromise between these two. In the dreamwalk the mage leaves his physical self behind but takes with him enough of it that the distractions of the Grym fade away. And in the dreamwalk he remains invisible to all who do not have the aethereal sight, although he can manipulate objects as if he were truly there. A skilled mage can slip from the dreamwalk to the physical with but a thought, returning to his sleeping body or waking it in the place he has been observing.
A student of the subtle arts might ask why not use the dreamwalk at all times? The answer is simple. Where one in a hundred dragons might show enough aptitude to train as a mage, and one in a hundred of their number succeed, fewer than one in a thousand mages will ever master the skill of dreamwalking.
From the working journals of Gog, Son of the Winter Moon
A dark red sun painted the underside of the clouds as Benfro finished filling in the hole. He wasn’t sure what rituals men performed over their dead, but he knew they buried them in the ground. It seemed fitting; it wasn’t as if Father Gideon had any jewels in his brain that needed the Fflam Gwir to reckon. Better to place him in the earth, let his body become one with the Grym once more. The old man had been kindly enough, and Benfro remembered well his mother’s words so long ago. If there was any man that she would have trusted with the secret of his hatching, then it was Gideon. He deserved at least some respect in death.
All the while he had been digging the hole, and as he had wrapped the body in the purloined blanket and laid it in the earth, Benfro had been mulling over Father Gideon’s words. He knew of Candlehall, the Neuadd and the Obsidian Throne of course, but he had never seen them. At least not in the mundane world. To travel to such a place would have been suicide; it was the centre of Melyn’s power and Queen Beulah’s palace. But he had been there in his dreamwalk, and he had fought the inquisitor there too. He didn’t remember much of that experience though; it had been too sudden, too traumatic, and so much had happened since.
Something is coming. That was what Father Gideon had said. Well, Benfro wasn’t stupid. He could see the connections, knew all too well what that something was. He had watched it cut Gog’s head off, fight and kill Enedoc the Black. It wasn’t entirely dragon or entirely man. Inquisitor Melyn and Magog somehow merging into one terrifying monster.
At the thought, Benfro instinctively checked the rose cord and the knot in his aura that choked Magog’s malign influence. Both were still in place, but the cord itself was pale. He had not felt its pull for days now, and when he slept he had not dreamed of an
ything, let alone dreamwalked back to Cenobus and the repository. Was Magog too occupied elsewhere to bother with him? Had he abandoned his attempts to take over Benfro’s body in favour of his strange merger with Melyn? Relief and horror tinged that idea in equal measure, and besides, Benfro knew he could never be truly free until the rose cord was gone. Until Magog’s jewels were reckoned.
The fire was almost out when he returned to the cottage, the darkness heavy with memories. He put a few more logs on, caught himself thinking he would have to go easy on them or he would need to chop more for tomorrow. But he wasn’t going to stay here. Not for more than one night.
The remains of the soup took only a few minutes to reheat. Benfro would have liked some meat with his meal, but he wasn’t going to complain. It was good to eat something cooked for a change, and as he sat at the table where he had grown up, he stared at his mother’s single jewel lying in the middle. It would be so easy to pick it up and feel her reassuring presence. Just for a moment, to help him with the sadness. But he was so tired. Too weary to reach out, too weary even to stop his head from drooping to the scrubbed wooden surface.
Benfro knew he was dreamwalking the instant he found himself flying over the dark forest. He tensed, expecting to arrive any minute at Cenobus, there to renew his task of sorting the pile of dragon jewels for Magog, but he was not flying over the great forest of the Ffrydd. Nor was he powerless to control his own actions. His wings flexed and he drifted downwards. Sweeping them together brought him back up again. A flick of his tail and he was turning, spinning, diving. He let out a whoop of joy at the sheer pleasure of flight. It had been so long since last he had been able to do it without pain.