Dreamwalker

by Oswald, J. D.

  ~~~~

  Chapter Fourteen

  When using magic to influence your enemy’s thoughts, it is imperative always to complete the task before withdrawing. The spell should never be attempted if circumstances are likely to lead to distraction. At best, such an interruption will unravel any earlier workings you have made. At worst it will leave your mind open to your enemy should he wish to retaliate.

  Magic and the Mind by Fr Andro

  ‘Benfro. You must wake up!’ The voice was familiar, welcoming. But it was the voice of death. It brought to his mind an old empty carcass being consumed by flames that gave off no heat. He ignored it, trying to fight the pull of gravity with his pathetic, insufficient wings.

  ‘Come back to us Benfro. It’s not safe.’ Again the voice spoke to him. It was reassuring, it tasted of sweet ginger but it was flat, the emotion behind it long gone. Behind it a chorus of other voices chattered like the squabbling of crows over a piece of discarded meat. He was that meat, being pecked back and forth, pulled ever closer to the road, surrounded by a clinging darkness that froze him to the bones.

  ‘Benfro. Wake up!’ This time the voice was different, and as it spoke to him he felt a hand on his shoulder, shaking him. For an instant he was confused. How could someone shake him? He was flying, his wings outstretched as they tried to catch the last dying breaths of wind before he landed on that terrible road.

  Then the smell of dry heather filled his nose. The track and the building disappeared in a confusing whirl of images and it felt like he was being pulled backwards at incredible speed, past the great arch; past the dark, tiny cottages; along the ridge; down into the forest where the bare branches whipped past him yet somehow never connected. Faster and faster he flew, out of control, without his wings, backwards along the river as it dwindled uphill into a series of rocky pools climbing in great steps. Helpless, he rushed through the grove of leafless oaks towards the cliff and the cave and the jewels of all the dead villagers. And then with a motionless lurch he came to a halt, his eyes flicking open even though he had been seeing perfectly well before. He was lying on the bed of heather, his fire burned down to almost nothing in the cold cavern and another dragon was there with him. She swept him up into her arms and hugged him close.

  ‘Oh Benfro, thank the moon!’ Morgwm said, squeezing him with all her strength. Benfro held his mother tight, confused, tired but aware in the back of his mind that he had just escaped some terrible, awful fate.

  They started out from the cave before dawn had even blushed the eastern sky, making swift progress along tracks that Benfro had never seen before, and yet which his mother seemed to know like her wings. They had spent no more than five minutes in the cave from the moment he had woken to find Morgwm at his side and the whole episode had about it the same dreamlike quality of his flight over the forest. Walking swiftly through the dark, silent trees was just an extension of the chilling fear that had dragged him down towards that terrible road, the gaping maw of that impossibly large building.

  It wasn’t until the weak light was bleeding into the day that Morgwm led him out of the trees, through some dark shrubs still clinging to their shiny, bulbous leaves and onto the top of the first escarpment. The narrow stream, whose sound they had followed from the cave, trickled over the edge, falling to the rocky plateau in the first of many steps that would see it emerge hundreds of feet below as a river. From their vantage point they could see down the valley for several miles and all of it was trees, some dark green with needles, most stripped of leaves, their branches stretching to the sky like naked limbs, twisted and bent in torture. The air was clear, the sky a slate grey. Wisps of cloud clung to some of the upper slopes as if the trees themselves were breathing out great foggy gasps into the cold. Benfro’s own breath steamed from his nostrils in sympathy, bringing to mind the tales Sir Frynwy had told him of the oldest times when dragons were no better than beasts, breathing fire and killing one another for sport.

  ‘Let’s stop awhile Benfro,’ Morgwm said finally. She had been carrying his leather bag and now set it down on the rocks. She settled herself down beside it and began to take things out, arranging them on the stone slab as if it were the table back home. As if nothing untoward had happened.

  ‘Have they gone, the men?’ Benfro asked. It wasn’t the question he wanted to ask but his mother’s silence since leaving the cave, and the swiftness of that exit, made him wary of prying too deeply into that subject even though he longed to know more.

  ‘It was only one man, and an old friend at that,’ Morgwm said. ‘I haven’t seen him since the day you were hatched.’

  ‘He knows about me?’ Benfro asked, a surge of panic running through him at the thought that his secret might be discovered.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Morgwm said. ‘But if there’s any man I’d trust with that secret then it’s Gideon. He loves knowledge far more than the prejudices of his kind. But he’s getting old now, men never live for very long.’

  ‘What did he come to see you about?’

  ‘He wanted to know about something I did for him years ago. A favour.’

  ‘What favour?’ Benfro asked, the cavern and his dreams momentarily forgotten. His mother sat quietly for a while studying him, as if trying to decide whether he was ready to know. It was a different look to the one she had given him in the past and for a brief moment he thought he might have passed some unspoken test, that the secrets of the world might finally be given to him.

  ‘It’s best you know nothing about them,’ Morgwm said finally. She held out a slab of bread and cheese for him to take. ‘Here, eat something.’

  ‘Why?’ Benfro asked. ‘What’s the point? It’s not as if I’m good for anything around here. I’m just in the way. You won’t tell me anything about the world out there. You won’t tell me anything about the subtle arts even though they seem to touch everything around me. Am I just going to live in the village all my life? Thousands of years of drudgery? Will you always control what I can and can’t do?’ He fell silent as much out of embarrassment as running out of breath. Morgwm still held out the bread and cheese, still looked at him with that half smile and those knowing eyes, only where once they had comforted and reassured him, now they merely annoyed.

  ‘You still need to eat,’ Morgwm said. ‘Even if I’ve done much to earn that outburst. But Benfro you have to understand that you can’t learn everything at once. You can’t learn everything at all. There’s always more.’

  ‘So why won’t you even begin to teach me?’ Benfro asked.

  ‘And what do you think I have been doing for the last thirteen years?’ Morgwm asked. ‘Were you hatched knowing your letters? Have you always been able to identify the seven variants of spottle fungus and know which ailments to use which for? I don’t think you always knew how to catch fish and hunt deer.’

  Benfro eyed the bread and cheese, not wanting to meet his mother’s eyes. She was right, as ever, but she was also missing the point. His resentment still bubbled under the surface. There was so much more that he was being denied.

  ‘I know you’ve taught me everything I know,’ he said. ‘You and the other dragons in the village. But it’s all such a waste of time. No one ever gets sick, so why endlessly prepare potions that just lose their efficacy and have to be replaced? And why hunt for meat when you can just steal it?’

  Morgwm laughed a gentle chuckle and threw the food to Benfro. Startled, he caught it.

  ‘You’re so young, Benfro,’ she said. ‘No, don’t fly off in a rage again. You are young. You were hatched only thirteen years ago. Even Frecknock’s seen over a hundred more. She apprenticed with me for seventy of those years and all the while she raged about how useless it was. But what if no-one bothered to learn about healing? Who’d make Sir Frynwy his liniment? Who’d have known how to set Ynys Môn’s wing the time he broke half the bones in it falling down that cliff? Who’d have performed Ystrad Fflur’s reckoning?’

  Benfro considered his bread and ch
eese for a moment before taking a bite out of it. He had heard this line before, many times, though it was news to him that Frecknock had once studied under his mother’s tutelage. Had she lived with Morgwm in the cottage in the clearing? Slept in his bed, in his room? Thinking of her only stoked his anger, but the food dulled it as much. He hadn’t eaten since they had left the cave, it was well after his normal breakfast time and he had spent half the night marching through the forest. That first bite reminded him of how empty his stomach felt. The rest of the slab went in quick gulps, scarcely chewed, and all the while his mother looked on with her half-smile and knowing eyes. By the time he had finished, he had regained some measure of composure, although the curiosity still burnt at him impatiently.

  ‘At least tell me what happened last night.’ Benfro said once he had finished his meal. ‘I dreamt of flying, and then it was real.’

  ‘No Benfro, it wasn’t real,’ Morgwm said. ‘You didn’t leave the cave. At least your body didn’t. But your mind flew. Tell me where you went.’

  Benfro told her about the trees, the mountains rising out of them like islands in an impossible sea, the great arch across the road and the enormous building smothering the mountain top.

  ‘You went to Emmass Fawr, the fortress of the Order of the High Ffrydd,’ Morgwm said. ‘In all my years I’ve never seen it, but others have described it to me. By the moon, Benfro, why would you go to such a place?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Benfro said. ‘I was just flying and then it caught my attention. But how did I get there, if I was still here?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ Morgwm said. ‘That’s to say, I know how it’s done. I’ve done similar in the past, but it takes enormous skill and endless practice. Even then it shouldn’t be possible to sense all that you did, nor in such detail. You couldn’t have experienced things the way you say you did.’

  ‘I’m not lying,’ Benfro said. ‘It was exactly as I described. It’s not the first time I’ve dreamt of flying either. But it was the first time I’ve flown anywhere other than over the trees.’

  ‘I know you’re not lying, Benfro,’ Morgwm said. ‘It’s not in your nature. I’m just at a loss as to how you could’ve seen what you’ve seen. I need to talk to Sir Frynwy about this. He knows far more than I do. Meirionydd too.’

  ‘Ystrad Fflur called me back,’ Benfro said. ‘Or at least he tried to. His voice was all wrong though.’

  ‘You heard Ystrad Fflur? In your dream?’ Morgwm asked.

  ‘And the others. I couldn’t quite make out what they were saying though. How many dragons are there in the cave?’

  Morgwm placed her food carefully back down on the stone, fixing Benfro with that stare that made him squirm. It was not an unkind stare, but it felt like she was looking right into his thoughts, as if there was no part of him that could hide from her and whatever he had done wrong, she would surely know.

  ‘You’re a strange creature Benfro,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t have been able to find the cave at all, yet you walked through the wards laid around it as if they weren’t there. And without training of any form, you managed to talk to Ystrad Fflur’s spirit. Perhaps it’s time after all to begin teaching you about these things. Before your curiosity gets you into even more trouble.’

  Benfro’s hearts leapt. Was he finally going to learn some of the secrets he longed to know? There was so much he wanted to ask, about the line he had seen when Frecknock had made her calling. About the calling itself. And just how did the villagers get their food? Could he soon learn to do that himself? Not that he didn’t enjoy hunting and fishing with Ynys Môn, but it would be nice to just reach out and have whatever he wanted. Perhaps he could even get hold of some of the sweetened ginger root Ystrad Fflur had always given him, from far away Talarddeg. Better still he might not have to spend endless days scouring the forest for herbs and endless nights transcribing ancient potions and recipes.

  ‘Sweet Benfro, your youth shows all too clearly,’ Morgwm said, picking up the remains of their meal and putting it back in the bag before slinging it over her shoulder. ‘The subtle arts are not easily learned, even if you do show great potential. And even if Meirionydd and Sir Frynwy accept that you need to learn, that doesn’t mean you can skip your lessons with me.’

  They made their way back to the trees and a path that followed the hill downwards to the plateau where Frecknock had made her calling. The rock was empty now, standing in its pool of water like a small castle surrounded by a moat. Morgwm stopped to take a drink and Benfro joined her at the water edge, desperate to speak of the events that had occurred, yet still unable to make the words come out.

  ‘This is a powerful place,’ Morgwm said after she had drunk enough. ‘Many major strands in the Grym connect here. It would be a good place to lay a mage’s jewels.’

  ‘Would they not be better added to the pile up in the cavern?’ Benfro asked.

  ‘Ah no, Benfro,’ Morgwm said. ‘The nest is the final resting place for most dragons, it’s true. But mages are traditionally placed alone at points where the master lines, the Llinellau Feistr intersect, there to watch over the world. It’s important you understand this, since you seem determined to take up that mantle. True mages are solitary creatures both in life and in the eternity after death.’

  ‘Is Frecknock training to be a mage, then?’ Benfro asked. It was the only thing he could think of that might bring the young dragon into the conversation.

  ‘Goodness, no,’ Morgwm said. ‘Frecknock doesn’t have the skill or the application to come even close. No, she studies the art like all of us did when we were young. She’ll master some basic skills in time I’ve no doubt. At the moment she seems too pre-occupied with her appearance to get very far. What made you think of her?’

  ‘I…’ Benfro wanted to say that he had seen her sitting on that very rock with the Llyfr Draconius, calling to any dragon mate she could find, but the words wouldn’t come out.

  ‘Well, never mind,’ Morgwm said. ‘We can’t hang around here all day anyway, it’s a long way home.’ She stepped back up to the path. Benfro took one last look at the rock and the pool, still fighting the compulsion that would not let him speak of what had happened there. It would not budge and he gave up in disgust, clambering up where his mother had gone and running to catch up with her as she passed through the endless winter trees.

  *

  Errol lay on his bunk staring at the rough slats that held the thin mattress of the bed above him. The vast dormitory was dark and so he had to assume it was night time. As he had not seen sunlight since the day before entering the great stone expanse of Emmass Fawr, he could not be sure.

  After his initial surprise introduction to Danno and the stables, Errol had quickly settled into a routine in the monastery. He would spend a couple of hours in the morning helping out with the horses, and then the rest of the day in the library. Or at least he assumed it was morning when he was woken.

  For uncounted weeks now he had been happy, in a melancholic sort of way. Danno was a simple-minded man, not much given to conversation. Nonetheless, the exercise kept Errol focussed and he learnt a great deal about horses. But it was once the stable work was done that he really came alive.

  Surrounded by books, writings, maps and pictures, it felt like he had died and gone to the gathering fields. There was so much knowledge to be gleaned here that he could have easily spent ten lifetimes and only scratched the surface. And that was only the books written in saesneg. There were dozens of other languages whose meanings he could only guess at, though he was beginning to learn. Andro, the head librarian, had seen to that from day one, as soon as the old man had realised that Errol could read and understand the ancient scripts from the early centuries of the House of Balwen.

  Errol liked Andro. He was impossibly old, his skin and hair white with a lifetime spent in the dark vaults. But he was full of knowledge, both mundane and obscure. He knew about distant lands, about foreign people, about magic and about dragons. And he seem
ed happy, delighted even, to answer Errol’s endless questions even as he taught him the ways and rules of the library.

  Errol had learned about the different filing systems used. He had recited the rules about naked flames until they tripped around his skull like meaningless sounds. ‘You will never carry an unguarded flame beyond the first portal. Covered lanterns may be used in the second and third portals. Only adepts of the fifth order may enter the higher portals. The punishment for any transgression of these rules is to be cast from the Elden Tower into the Faaeren Chasm.’ Errol had no idea where either of these places was, but he didn’t doubt the fall would be fatal. It seemed a harsh punishment until he saw, and smelled, the endless racks of dusty dry parchment that filled the racks. A stray spark could set a fire that would likely burn for decades.

  Every day was hard work: lifting and carrying tomes that weighed almost as much as he did; deciphering spidery hands; compiling indexes and trying to catalogue subjects that had no meaning to him. And all the while he was kept in the dark, his only light a hooded lantern. By the time Andro released him from his duties, presumably at the end of a day, all Errol cold think of was getting a quick meal from the librarians refectory and then crawling into his bed in his cold dormitory.

  No one else slept here. He had to himself a room big enough to house a hundred or more. There was a great fireplace at one end of the room, though he had never seen a flame burning in it. Like all the other rooms he had seen so far in the vastness of Emmass Fawr, this one had no windows and its walls were formed from huge, square blocks, perfectly cut and set. The ceiling was higher than many of the ancient trees Errol knew from home, its vaulted arches cast in strange shadows by the one torch he was allowed. The floor was stone, smoothed by the tread of uncounted feet. Everything was cold with the constant chill of a cave. For the first few nights he had lain awake shivering in misery, huddling into the one inadequate blanket that had been given to him. Searching the room had yielded nothing, so he had slept in his rough cassock. Then after a day hugging the heat of a single lantern whilst he struggled with a book written in a very ancient form of saesneg, barely recognisable as the same language he spoke every day, he had finally summoned up the courage to speak to Andro about his miserable nights. The old man had simply smiled at him and said. ‘You wouldn’t have been chosen to be here if you didn’t know how to cope with a little cold. Think about it Errol. You’ve dealt with it before.’