by J. D. Oswald
The oddness of the thought gave him pause. Why was fire-breathing such a hated, base ability? That was not him thinking, but Magog. Something of the act filled the dead dragon with shame, disgust, hatred. Or was it jealousy of an ability nature had denied him? Melyn pushed the idea deep into the recesses of his mind where thoughts of rebellion against his false god festered. That Magog had not yet reacted to them gave him some small hope that he might survive, somehow escape that influence yet with the mage’s knowledge and skill intact.
Distracted, Melyn almost didn’t notice the change in the air as several hidden forms shimmered into view. They sat, huddled in on themselves, arranged in a circle around the room. Seven dragons, unmoving. They had been there long enough for snow to settle on their shoulders and wings, their heads tucked close to their chests against the cold. Only now he saw them could he sense the power that flowed through them as they acted in harmony to soothe the disturbance that had threatened to break Gwlad entirely. He reached out for the Grym, ready to conjure his blade of fire and put an end to these beasts as they slept, but the Grym wasn’t there. Casting his sight out, he could see the lines arching up the walls and delineating the edges of the room, but they were twisted away from the centre where he stood, cutting him off from the source of his power.
Cutting him off from Magog’s influence.
She had known darkness before, but never something so total as the black that enveloped her now. Iolwen tried to breathe normally, but the total lack of anything made even something as natural as breathing hard. It was as if the absence of light was an absence of everything, even air. She could hear nothing, not even her husband, who should only have been an arm’s reach away.
‘Dafydd?’
Her voice sounded strange, as flat as if she stood in a open plain on a windless day. No echo greeted her, and neither did her husband.
‘Dafydd? Where are you?’ Iolwen inched one foot forward, feeling the floor through the sole of her boot. She held up a hand and waved it slowly from side to side. Nothing.
‘Dafydd?’ The word stuck in her throat. She turned slowly, feeling for the door through which they had entered, but her hands met only air.
‘Iol. Where are you?’ The voice was so close, so loud, Iolwen almost fell over. She moved her head from side to side, straining her eyes for any movement.
‘I am here, Dafydd. Why did you not answer me?’
A sensation at her side, and then Iolwen felt something brush her arm. Fingers walked down past her elbow to her hand, then gripped it tight. ‘I’m sorry, Iol. It was so dark, I thought I would try to see the room in the aethereal. I have never been good at it.’
‘And did you succeed?’
Dafydd didn’t respond straight away, which answered Iolwen’s question for her.
‘I’m not sure. It was … confusing.’
‘Let me try.’ Iolwen gripped her husband’s hand tight, calmed her breathing and slipped into the trance much as she had in the great chamber beneath the Neuadd. The room was still dark, but it was a darkness born of great size. There were features, walls, a ceiling impossibly high overhead, but they were so far distant it was all but impossible to make them out. At least she could see the floor nearby well enough to know there were no obstacles, but when she turned to see the door they had entered by, there was only a wall just as far away as all the others.
‘I think we must have travelled through another of those tunnels like the one that brought me here from Candlehall.’ Iolwen slid back into her body, feeling an uncomfortable sensation like submerging herself into a bath of black ink. The darkness was total, the empty silence swallowing her words as she spoke.
‘Can we find the way back?’
‘I don’t know. I couldn’t see it, and the lines …’ Iolwen paused, letting the lines of the Grym swim into her vision. She had been suppressing them before; the twisting, pulsing chaos of them made her feel sick, as it did any with the sight and many who were unaware they had the skill. Now they appeared as she remembered them of old: ordered, mostly calm although every now and then a spasm twisted them out of shape. But it was nothing compared to the way they had been.
‘I think Myfanwy must have done something to calm the storm.’ She reached out, drew the power in to her and conjured a small ball of fire. The light from it was dazzling at first, her eyes accustomed to the total darkness. Blinking, she looked at Dafydd’s face, soot-smeared and sweaty from their time in the chimney. His hair was a mess and his jacket would never clean up, but he looked more beautiful than anything she had ever seen before.
‘You look a mess,’ he said, embracing her in so fierce a hug that she had to lift her hand high to avoid burning him. As she did, so the light from the tiny flame rolled back the gloom to reveal a huge room. She would have said it was long and narrow, except that its width was still greater than any room at King Ballah’s palace in Tynhelyg. Her light was too dim to see how long it was, the darkness swallowing it up before it reached any wall, but for all its vastness, it felt more like a corridor than a hall.
‘Which way should we go?’ Dafydd asked.
‘I don’t think it matters. This is not some alcove off the meeting hall. We are somewhere else entirely, if we are even still in Nantgrafanglach.’ Iolwen set off towards the wall she judged to be nearest, one hand held aloft for light, the other pulling her husband along behind her. The closer they came to it, the more detail she could see. There were pictures and tapestries hanging at regular intervals, chairs of the kind favoured by dragons for any to sit and rest on their long journey from one end of the corridor to the other. Here and there were huge doors, all closed and with their handles set too high for her reach. Iolwen had noticed how many of the rooms in the palace had entrances more suited to her kind, presumably for the servants to come and go unnoticed. There were no such doors here; indeed the scale of the place was grand even by dragon standards, so that she began to wonder whether she and Dafydd had not shrunk somehow.
‘I think we must be underground. In the oldest part of the palace,’ she said as they finally reached the wall. Iolwen let go of Dafydd’s hand to pat the surface. It felt slightly damp and warm.
‘How so?’
‘There are no windows and no draughts.’ She walked over to the nearest door, bending down to peer through the narrow gap underneath. Only darkness lay beyond. Iolwen sniffed. ‘And it smells of mould.’
Dafydd sniffed a couple of times too. ‘Well, at least we are away from Melyn and his warrior priests. I only hope that Lady Anwen has made good her escape. I worry for our son.’
‘As do I.’ Iolwen swallowed hard, feeling the lump in her throat. It had not been easy to part with Prince Iolo and the rest of their retinue before she and Dafydd had gone to speak to the council. They had never thought Melyn and his warrior priests would penetrate the palace so deeply, so fast. During their escape there had been no time to worry, and she had been avoiding thinking about them ever since, focusing instead on the task at hand. ‘Merriel will take good care of them.’
Dafydd reached out, took Iolwen’s hand again but said nothing. Together they walked down the seemingly endless corridor, always keeping the wall in sight. They passed huge portraits of ancient dragons, dark tapestries depicting hunting scenes, battles and other less easily recognized stories. Doors every hundred paces or so stood closed, giving off a solid permanence that suggested they had not been opened in many years. This whole place had not been visited in decades, maybe centuries.
It was difficult to gauge the passing of time down in the darkness with nothing but each other and Iolwen’s conjured light for company. There was only the endless walking and counting the doors as they slowly came into view then slid into the darkness behind. The floor was shiny, some kind of polished marble that reflected the light and glinted in a thousand sparkles as if it were the still surface of a night-time pool reflecting the pale orb of the moon and the stars. For a while Iolwen was transfixed by the effect, which might have expla
ined how she failed to notice the light coming towards them. Only Dafydd’s insistent tug on her arm broke the stupor.
‘Iolwen. Look.’
She tensed, expecting to be surrounded by warrior priests, captured by Melyn and dragged off to the dungeons. Instead the light resolved itself into three people who appeared just as lost as they were. One of them, holding aloft a light almost identical to her own, Iolwen recognized at once. The young woman who had briefly befriended her at Tynhelyg, then disappeared as so many did who grew too close.
‘Martha? Martha Tydfil?’
‘Princess Iolwen. I had not expected to find you here.’
Iolwen looked at the young woman’s companions. A girl of perhaps twelve years who carried herself in the sullen manner of one who cared nothing for rank and privilege. Iolwen’s first impression was of someone she could probably like, especially if she was a friend of Martha. Someone who wouldn’t stand on ceremony. The other was a young man whose features were strangely familiar. Clearly a Llanwennog, he looked thin, as if he had gone for many weeks without proper food; in the light of the two conjured flames his eyes were deep-set and shadowed. At her name he had looked up, then glanced across to Dafydd. Something in that movement triggered a memory.
‘Errol? But how is this possible?’
‘I could ask the same thing, Your Highness.’ He sketched a bow so slight that some might have taken it as rudeness, but Iolwen could see that it was more exhaustion that stopped him from being polite. Then she remembered the truth of his parentage that Usel had told her.
‘I do not think you need to bow to me, nephew.’ She smiled. ‘But what are you doing here? All of you? And where exactly is here anyway?’
‘Not where we thought we were going,’ Martha said. ‘We were at Myfanwy’s house, looking for something. It wasn’t there, but this was.’ She held up a crumpled white handkerchief trimmed in gold. ‘I thought it would lead us to Myfanwy, but instead it has led us to you.’
‘Myfanwy’s house?’ Iolwen’s heart thumped in her chest. ‘Did you see anyone there?’
‘No. It was deserted.’ Martha lowered her hand, the light glowing on her face picking out her fine features, her long black hair and piercing green eyes. ‘And before you ask, we saw no bodies either. I do not think Melyn’s men have been there.’
‘Who are these people, Iol?’ Dafydd eyed them suspiciously, and Iolwen could see him tensing, tugging at the lines as if readying himself to conjure his blade and strike.
‘Friends, Dafydd. This is Martha, who came to me in Tynhelyg, and you must remember Errol?’ She nodded at the young girl. ‘You I do not know.’
‘Nellore speaks only Draigiaith. She is of Gog’s world,’ Martha said in the language of dragons. Iolwen readied herself to speak the same, but the young woman interrupted her.
‘I knowing some Errol’s words. Yours not same.’
‘What were you looking for at Myfanwy’s?’ Dafydd asked in his native tongue.
‘A small red jewel, wrapped in a piece of stinking cloth,’ Errol said. ‘It was entrusted to me to look after, but I left it there not realizing I wouldn’t be coming back.’
‘A jewel?’ Iolwen asked. Beside her Dafydd was patting down his coat, checking his pockets, a frown upon his face. ‘Why would you need such a thing?’
‘Because it is the only thing that can put an end to all this madness. That much Myfanwy told me, though I don’t begin to understand any of it. This is what you’re looking for, I think.’
All eyes turned to Dafydd as he pulled his hand from his pocket and opened it. Resting in his palm was a scrap of dark brown cloth that gave off a faint odour of the privy. With delicate fingers, he unwrapped it to reveal a dull red rock no bigger than Iolwen’s thumb. She reached out for it, but in a flash Martha’s hand was around her wrist.
‘It would be best you didn’t touch it. No good will come from that.’ She let go, and Iolwen pulled back her arm as if she had been burned.
‘Bone and jewel. I never thought we’d have them both.’ Errol pulled the bag he had been carrying over his head, opened it and reached inside. After a moment he came out with what looked like a flat piece of thick ceramic tile, the sort of thing Iolwen had seen laid on the floor of the bathing rooms in her apartments back at the palace in Tynhelyg. As he held it up, the jewel in Dafydd’s palm began to glow the dull red of an iron taken from the blacksmith’s forge too soon. ‘Now all we need is the flame. All we need is Benfro.’
‘So you are Inquisitor Melyn, harrower of dragons and Magog’s favoured whipping boy. I must say I preferred the young lad Gog took under his wing. His potential was for greater good.’
Melyn turned at the voice, stepping sideways into the clear patch in the centre of the room. One of the motionless dragons had spoken, and now it raised its head slowly to stare at him. Not it, her. A part of him recognized her, unchanged in sixty years where he had aged a whole life.
‘Myfanwy.’
‘Oh, so you remember me. I should be flattered.’ Slowly the dragon unfurled her straggly wings and stood up on arthritic legs. She had been old when Melyn was a boy, but whatever magics she and her companions had woven to calm the storm in the Grym, it had taken a toll. He could see it in her aura, sickly and pale as it stuck tight to her chipped scales and dry, leathery skin. He could kill her easily. All he needed to do was walk across the room to where the Grym twisted away, up and overhead.
Overhead.
Melyn looked up and saw the cage of gold hanging from its chains, its open end pointed straight at him. He felt something invisible grip him tight. A click and the cage was falling towards him, mouth wide like a whale engulfing a fish.
‘You cannot catch me that easily.’ He fought back against the force that held him, throwing himself to one side as the cage smashed into the floor, toppled over, its door bent out of shape. His tumble brought him close enough to the twisted lines to reach out and tap them for power. It rushed into him on a wave of Magog’s fury. That these feeble creatures could hope to entrap him, even in a cage of gold. That they sought to remove him from the Grym when he was not its servant like the rest of them but its master.
The gloom turned crimson as his twin blades of fire burst into life. Melyn leaped to his feet with the agility of a man a third his age, arms swinging so swiftly that the lines of flaming energy blurred into sheets. He cut all the obstacles out of his way on his path towards Myfanwy. The consort of his hated brother.
‘I will cut you all down and add your jewels to my collection.’ He sprang forward the last few paces. For an instant he felt his wings snap open and catch the air, saw his talons extended ready to rip open that ancient, blind face.
‘You are not Magog, little man.’
Melyn slammed into something unseen with such force it knocked the wind out of him and he fell to the floor. His blades sputtered and disappeared, the Grym sucked up by two more of the dragons surrounding him. Something forced its way into his thoughts as if he were no more skilled than a newly chosen novitiate. For a moment he understood what it must have been like for Errol when he had rifled through the boy’s memories, discarding those of no use to him, changing those that would mould him into the perfect spy. Then his training kicked in and he closed down his mental barriers, pushed back against the dragon who had entered his mind so easily. Myfanwy rocked on her heels, her eyes widening in surprise, then narrowing just as swiftly.
‘So you have some spirit, I see.’ She stood up, ruffling her wings like a recently woken bird. ‘It will do you no good. This is Gog’s place. There is nowhere here for his brother.’
Melyn turned slowly on the spot, seeing the dragons for what they were. Ancient and powerful, true, but also blinkered. They had spent almost their entire lives within the confines of the walls that surrounded the palace buildings. Reading histories, learning the ways of the Grym, having endless meaningless discourses on matters of no importance whatsoever to the rest of Gwlad beyond their tiny demesne. Over the uncounte
d centuries those of an adventurous or rebellious nature had left, gone to join the folds of dragons in the wild, slowly losing touch with their magic but gaining an enviable freedom in the process. Only these dusty old beasts remained, too fearful of life to live properly. Did they really pose any threat to him? To Magog? Of course they did. Their very existence was an affront.
‘You are right, Lady Myfanwy.’ As Melyn spoke, so he saw that the storm outside had abated, the wind died down until it whistled rather than howled. The lines were slowly shrinking back to their normal size as the turmoil in them eased away. These crusty old dragons had done the job he had come here to do, and if Gog’s body was nowhere to be seen what did that matter now? ‘I do not belong here, am not welcome here. So I shall take my leave of you.’
He turned his back on the aged dragon and walked towards the doorway and the top of the long spiral stairs. As he did so, he reached out to the Grym once more, pulling in the power easily. At the top step, his troop of warrior priests hammered blindly at nothing, as if there were a solid door between him and them. It was easy enough to see the magic that confounded them, cast by one of the dragons in the circle. He reached out and snapped the spell in two at the same time as he barked his command.
‘Use your blades of fire. Kill them all.’ And turning, he released all his accumulated rage in a ball of flame as hot as the sun, flung straight and true at the dragon Myfanwy.
36
The Fflam Gwir is most commonly associated with the sacred ceremony of reckoning. Properly conjured, the flame will consume all flesh, scale and bone, leaving only a fine white ash while it renders the jewels of the recently deceased clear white and set. Such indeed is the most important task for which the Fflam Gwir is used, but it has many other properties.
Applied to an infected wound, a small Fflam Gwir will sear away only that which is rotten, leaving fresh, clean flesh to heal. As it does this, so too will it aid the patient in their recovery. As a weapon, the Fflam Gwir will burn those who mean harm to one who has conjured it forth, leaving them with wounds that will not heal without the application of the subtle arts. It can melt iron even though it casts no heat beyond that metal, or it can strike down a foe while leaving friend untouched. More, it can give strength or take it, depending on the whim of the one who has conjured it. It can even be used to heal the body of the mage who has created it.