by J. D. Oswald
Benfro reached the cave about the middle of the day. He could have gone straight inside, but he’d expected the walk to take longer and wasn’t really ready. Instead, he climbed the escarpment above the cave mouth and sat out in the sun for a while. He had some food and there was water from the river nearby. His missing eye and the forest noises both told him there was no danger. It was the most at peace he had been for as long as he could remember.
It would have been easy to have stayed where he was. The woods were far from any people, too thick to be worth exploring. He could have built himself somewhere to live, hunted during the day and slept soundly at night, knowing that he would not be disturbed. It would have been perfect, had it not been for the insistent throb of the wound in his side. And if he stayed anywhere for long enough Melyn would come looking, or Magog, or both. Reluctantly he hauled himself to his feet and trudged back down into the forest.
The cave was cool when Benfro finally summoned the courage to step inside. He remembered well the last, and only, time he had come here. Back then his mother had been surprised he had found it, but in truth it had called to him. The whispering voices hovered just out of earshot as he felt his way deeper into the darkness. For a moment he worried he might not fit inside any more, but the walls seemed no closer than they had before, when he had been much smaller. Benfro smiled in the darkness, recognizing the touch of ancient magics about the place. That was why it had been chosen, after all, countless generations of dragons ago.
The chamber where the jewels lay was as still as a perfect morning. The jewels themselves were untouched, piled high in pleasant companionship. It was such a stark contrast to the horror of Magog’s repository and the chambers beneath both Tynhelyg and Candlehall that Benfro spent a long time just standing there, staring at them. It took him a while to notice that the voices were becoming clearer, longer still to register their curiosity and agitation. Only when a wispy figure formed above the pile did he realize he had been almost asleep, daydreaming.
‘By the moon, if it’s not young Benfro! But you have grown so large! And what magnificent wings!’
The lump in Benfro’s throat stopped him from replying straight away. He had not forgotten Ystrad Fflur, but time and events had blurred his memory of how the old dragon had looked. Even in death he was small, his wings no more than loose flaps of skin, his joints swollen. But he held himself more upright than Benfro remembered, a gleam in his once-milky eyes.
‘And what has happened to your face? Your eye. My dear fellow, you’ve been through the wars.’
‘I am fine, Ystrad Fflur. Do not worry about me.’ Benfro saw through the image of the old dragon, but where at first there had been just the rock wall of the cave, now other dragons began to appear, faces peering over shoulders, jostling for a better look.
‘Well, I can’t say it isn’t a delight to see you. But what brings you here? I thought Morgwm had sealed the cave so none would come looking.’
‘Morgwm is dead. Sir Frynwy, Meirionydd, Ynys Môn and all the others are dead too. Killed by Inquisitor Melyn and his warrior priests.’
‘Dead?’ Ystrad Fflur’s cry was echoed a hundred times and more by the ghostly dragons crowding behind him. ‘But how? Why? When? Where are their jewels?’
Benfro slumped his shoulders. The questions were bad enough, but behind them was a terrible sense of shock, of loss and bewilderment that echoed his own state of mind, amplified it.
‘They are safe, their jewels reckoned. But they are trapped. I need to rescue them, but before I can do that I must destroy the one who has trapped them. Only then can I bring them all back here, where they are supposed to be.’
The murmuring grew louder, pressing in on Benfro.
‘I have a question, Ystrad Fflur. It concerns the Llyfr Draconius and the reckoning of jewels.’
‘Dear me, Benfro. I’m not sure I am the one to ask about such things. Your mother knew more about the Fflam Gwir than anyone, and Sir Frynwy was the keeper of the book. Why on earth would you need to know about any of that?’
‘I must find a way to reckon Magog’s jewels, even though his body has long since gone to dust.’
‘Magog?’ Ystrad Fflur put so much doubt into that one word, Benfro knew then he would not find the answers he sought here, despite whatever his mother might have hoped. The rest of the voices fell silent, though Benfro could still feel the pressure of their thoughts. A wave of curiosity swept over him, the desperate thirst for experience that Benfro knew would drag him in, keep him here until he wasted away.
‘Farewell, old friend,’ he said and, hardening his mind to them, he took a step back, then another. It was like moving through a fast-flowing river, his legs heavy and his hearts heavier still. The wound in his side stung at the strain, but oddly that gave him the focus he needed. With a final effort, he turned and without another word strode towards the mouth of the cave.
The scent hit him before he emerged. There were men outside, waiting for him. Terror gripped him for an instant. How had they found him? Could they see the hidden entrance? Would they steal these jewels as they had so many others before? Then the fear turned to anger. How dare they desecrate this place? How dare they steal the essence of beings much wiser than them? And finally his brain caught up with his emotions, the smell sparking memories that filled him not with terror or rage, but with hope. His strides turned into a jog, then a run, and he burst out of the cave into the clearing beyond.
Four people stood there, three of them looking lost and confused as they stared up into the trees. Only one was facing his way, and she smiled as he appeared.
‘There he is. Told you he wouldn’t be far away,’ Martha said, and the other three turned as one. Benfro knew the boy with the broken arm, Xando, but had never seen the young girl before. The third was thin and pale, his hair shorn from his head, but nothing could stop the grin from spreading across his face as Errol recognized his friend.
‘Where …? Where did you come from?’ It was a stupid thing to ask, but Benfro could think of nothing else to say. Martha cocked her head in that annoying manner of hers.
‘The place you were looking for. We knew you couldn’t risk walking the lines to us. So we came to you.’
30
Fire and Grym
Jewel and Bone
Will ever set
The Summer Moon.
The Prophecies of Mad Goronwy
If only the sun had been shining, it would have been perfect. Benfro sat by the side of the river at the top of the familiar series of escarpments that dropped down towards the Graith Fawr, past the remains of the village where he had grown up and then on to the land of men. He had caught fish in the deep pools higher up, and even now they were cooking on a fire nearby, tended by the boy Xando and the girl whose name he had discovered was Nellore. Martha sat beside him, gazing out across the stream. Her long hair whipped around in the wind; it was cleaner now than it had been in the days they had spent trapped in Gog’s palace. She had found new clothes too, and Xando’s arm was set in a fresh sling. They had fared much better than him after being discovered.
‘What happened to you?’ Benfro asked. ‘They said you were going to be given over to Mister Clingle. It sounded like an unpleasant punishment.’
Martha picked up a small pebble from the ground by her feet, turning it over in her hand a few times before flicking it into the water. ‘And so it would have been, had it been just young Xando delivered to him. He’s a coward and a bully, Mister Clingle. Rules over all the people who live and work in Nantgrafanglach, a position given to him by the Old One himself and one he keeps simply by condemning any who cross him to the Anghofied.’
‘Anghofied?’
‘A tiny word for a very nasty place. Errol lost at least a month in there, possibly more. Came out stinking so bad they had to shave off his hair. It was beyond washing. Glad we never went there. Not that women ever get sent. Reckon Mister Clingle just gives them to the men to play with.’
Benfro wasn’t quite sure what Martha meant, but her tone was clear. ‘So how did you escape him then?’ he asked.
‘Well that was easy. They stuck us in a locked room down by the kitchens. Lines everywhere. It was easy enough to walk along them.’
‘Easy? It’s the most advanced of our subtle arts. There are dragons who never master the skill.’ Benfro remembered Ynys Môn and his love of hunting. The old dragon had not even been able to use the lines to bring things to him without considerable concentration.
Martha merely shrugged. ‘Always seemed obvious to me. It’s a bit more tricky taking someone with you if they don’t know what you’re doing, but we managed. Couldn’t go all that far though, cos the lines are all jumbled up at the moment. We hid out in the palace for a while; that’s a lot easier to do when you ain’t got a great lump of a dragon with you.’
‘How’d you find Errol? Where was he?’
‘Thought he was dead for a while.’ Martha stared off into the distance. ‘We’re close, him and me. I’ve always been able to sense him. But when he was in the Anghofied it was like he dint exist. Then all of a sudden he was there, bright as day. Course, it took me a while to work out how to get to him. The Grym’s all tangled up anyways, but where he was? There’s some old, old spells all a-twisting apart there. Would’ve been easier finding him in the caverns. If I’d known that was where he was all along.’
‘The caverns beneath the palace? I’ve been there.’ Benfro remembered his wandering in the dark, how he had followed that scent so faint he couldn’t even be sure it existed. And how he had found his mother’s jewel in the riverbed. Had Errol escaped the same way? ‘How long has it been since we were found?’
‘Four weeks, give or take.’ Martha picked up another stone, peering at it more closely than the last. Benfro cast his mind back over the days since he had escaped from the dungeons, found his mother’s jewel, walked through the forest to the village. Was it that long? He had been in something of a daze, but even so he couldn’t remember sleeping more than a dozen nights.
‘Time moves differently in the Anghofied. It’s a place of old magic, older even than the Grym. That’s probably why Gog built his palace there.’ Martha put the stone down again, picked up another one. ‘It’s all a-changing now, anyways. The broken world’s mending, but it’s going to take a while.’
‘The broken world.’ Benfro echoed the words. It made sense to call it that, he supposed. ‘Is that why there’s a storm in the mountains? Why the Grym is all over the place?’
Martha held out the hand with the stone in it, palm up and fingers splayed. Benfro felt a whispering in the Llinellau as she reached out in front of him with her other hand, plucking the stone from nowhere. His missing eye showed him how it was done while his good eye saw only a stone disappear from one place and reappear somewhere else in an instant. It was fascinating to see how effortlessly she manipulated the Grym.
‘How did you learn to do that?’ he asked.
‘Old Sir Radnor taught me most of what I know. And I learned a lot from Gog too. Mostly it just seemed obvious.’ Martha shrugged as if the most advanced of the subtle arts should be no more difficult than learning to swim. ‘Course it’s not so easy now. Nearly lost my way bringing us all here, and I can’t go back that way even if I wanted to.’
‘You can’t? How so?’
‘The tower’s the centre of it. Where he died.’ Martha didn’t need to say who. ‘Further we get from the centre, the calmer things are. You walked here though, dint you? Came from the river where Errol escaped?’
Benfro nodded, didn’t say anything. He was afraid he knew where the conversation was going.
‘So you could walk back there then. You know the way.’ Martha stated it as obvious, not asked it as a question. Benfro thought of the confusion the journey had thrown in his way, how he had thought he knew where he was going only to find himself back where he had started. But he remembered too the ruined buildings of Ystumtuen and the hunting grounds he and Ynys Môn had roamed in summers past. Once there, he was fairly confident he could find the route back to the river and the waterfall.
‘I reckon I could, if I had to. Why?’
‘Because we need to go back. To Nantgrafanglach, to Myfanwy’s house inside the walls.’
Benfro looked round to see Errol standing on the other side of him. He looked strange with no hair, just the lightest of frizz over his scalp where it was beginning to grow back, matching the tufts starting to sprout on his chin and upper lip. He wore an odd assortment of clothes, as if he had hastily raided a number of different closets. Like Benfro, he had a leather satchel slung over one shoulder.
‘But the forest by the palace is thick with warrior priests. Melyn can’t be far behind. Surely we should be getting as far away as possible. And I still need to find the place of the standing stone. Though if Gog is dead, then how I can hope to do that is anyone’s guess.’
‘We need to return there because that’s where I left Magog’s jewel.’ Errol sat down on the riverbank, tugging the leather satchel round until he could reach the clasps. Benfro’s hearts sank at his words. He had hoped, assumed even, that the jewel was in the satchel. But then Errol had managed to lose his mother’s jewel, so it was hardly a surprise Magog’s had gone missing too. The light seemed to fade, and looking up Benfro saw that the clouds had thickened, darkening the sky and threatening rain. Even as he thought it, his missing eye showed him how the turmoil in the Grym and the aethereal was spreading fast.
‘What good is the jewel,’ Benfro asked, ‘if I can’t find the place where Magog’s bones still lie?’
‘You do not need to. Gog took us there already.’ Errol opened the satchel and pulled out something flat and white, like a stone that has been tumbled for aeons by a river. He passed it to Benfro, and as the dragon took it in his hands, he felt a jolt of energy, saw again the great skull hidden deep at the bottom of the pool. To his fingers it felt like rock, hard and cold, but his missing eye showed him the rest of the skull, the crashing blow to the head and the massive bird, the Roc sent by Balwen to vanquish his foe, as it rolled the carcass into the water. And at that moment the rose cord lit up in the daylight, crimson with rage. A scream echoed out across the river, so loud and fierce that birds took to the air in a clattering of panicked wings. A surge of pain blossomed in Benfro’s head so intense he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move. Except for his hands, which spasmed, tipping the fragment of skull away towards the river as he felt the full force of Magog’s fury hammer against him.
And then it stopped. With surprising swiftness, Errol sprang forward and caught the piece of skull. Benfro could only watch in astonishment as he slipped it back into his satchel, carefully closing the buckles to make it secure. Then Benfro looked up to where the rose cord speared towards his forehead. Martha stood on tiptoes, leaning close, her hand clenched into a tight fist around the line. It pulsed an angry red but could no longer reach him.
‘You should probably pay a bit more ’tention to that now,’ she said, a smile on her face and in her voice.
Benfro didn’t need telling twice. He pushed out his aura, twisting it into a tight knot around the cord. The thrum of Magog’s rage still echoed in his head, but it was something he could cope with. At least for now. ‘He will be looking for us. He’ll send Melyn and the warrior priests. Others if he can influence them.’
‘Then the sooner we get back to Nantgrafanglach and the jewel the better.’ Errol scrambled to his feet again, turned back to the fire, where Xando and Nellore were picking at the fish as they sizzled on the embers. ‘But first we must eat.’
‘It is exactly as you said, Your Grace. The fortress lies the other side of the Faaerem chasm from Emmass Fawr, about ten miles west, where the mountains begin to drop down into the Ffrydd.’
Melyn sat in his apartments high up in the monastery. Outside the wind roared, flinging snow against the thick glass panes of the window. The storm had eased a little, but he could see that it was jus
t a temporary lull.
‘What about a way in? Are there gates? How well protected are they?’
Captain Osgal warmed his hands at the fire. He was still dressed in his travelling robes, fresh in from scouting the location of Gog’s palace. It wasn’t often warrior priests needed a fire, but the fluctuations in the Grym made tapping it for warmth perilous. Two of the novitiates who had been keeping the courtyards clear of snow had self-immolated before Melyn had forbidden the use of magic unless specifically authorized by himself.
‘It is vast, sire. Surrounded by a wall so high we could not see the top of it in the storm. As yet we have found only one gate, which opens out on to a road pointing due west. It’s wide enough to ride twenty men or more through side by side, but it’s barred with heavy oak and iron. I do not think it will be easy to breach. There are other smaller tracks through the woods, from the river to the south and down through the mountains from the north, but they all simply end at the wall.’
‘There will be gates at each, hidden by magic.’ Melyn leaned back in his chair and let his senses ease out across the distance. He could feel the great palace close by, but it was too difficult to focus, impossible to pin anything down, even for him. The lines were nobody’s friend now.
‘How can it be? This fortress? On a clear day you could see it from your window, sire. I have led training expeditions through those very woods a hundred times and more, and never has there been any hint of such a place.’
‘Did I not tell you that the Shepherd was returned, Captain? Did I not say that the Wolf had returned also? Nantgrafanglach has been here all the time, but it has been hidden by the most powerful of stolen magics. Only now, with the Wolf himself dead, is it showing itself.’