Dreamwalker

by Oswald, J. D.

  It was an old dance, formal and precise. Traditionally it was danced by a ruling monarch in recognition of his chosen heir, and so danced only seldom. Beulah could remember the endless hours of tedious training she had undergone as a child, the seemingly random steps and counter-steps, bows and curtseys. She had always been better taking the lead than following and now she had to allow her father to guide her about the floor whilst trying to maintain her delicate contact with him.

  Safe in the constraints of the dance, the assembled guests soon forgot the courtesies of rank. On the dancefloor they were equals. The Processional required that they each move from partner to partner within the set, always returning to the original as the music progressed. Each time Beulah was returned to her father, she renewed the contact, and each time she leached a little more of his life out of him. Never enough to make him stumble, but enough that he began to sweat, his bloodshot skin turning ever paler and greyer as he went. Still Beulah knew her father, he was too stubborn to stop the dance. He would carry on until the music ended or he dropped.

  The Processional reached a slower part of its progress and Beulah once more linked arms with her father, stepping slowly up the dancefloor towards the great empty bulk of the Obsidian Throne. Her hand clasped his and through that touch she could feel his confusion, his fear.

  ‘You’ll not sit on it again,’ she said, leaning close to whisper in his ear.

  Startled, the king missed his step, staggering to try and get back into the persistent rhythm of the music. Beulah could feel his heart racing, trying to pump sluggish blood through veins grown thick with decades of indolence. She reached out for it with a thought, slowing it until it matched the speed of the music.

  ‘I should thank you, really,’ she whispered. ‘You gave me to Melyn because you didn’t want to be reminded of mother. You sent us all away as if we were no more important to you than serfs. But I’ve learned so much from the Inquisitor, the power of the warrior priests is mine to wield.’

  The tempo of the music increased as the dance moved towards its end. Beulah once more released her father, leaving him just enough strength to keep going as she twirled around the set. She felt a curious surge of excitement as the seconds went past, building to an almost uncontrollable glee. She wanted to laugh, realised as she came face to face with young Merrl that she was grinning like a mad woman. It didn’t take a genius to see that the boy was infatuated with her, nor that his sister looked at her with ill-concealed hostility. Had she not other plans for this evening, she might have risen to that challenge. Perhaps she would later on, if the opportunity presented itself. Merrl would be easy to seduce, easier to discard, but Anwyn was another matter.

  The cycle of the music took her away from the pair, past other less memorable faces and finally returned her to her father. He looked extremely unwell, the sweat stringing his lank yellow-grey hair, his eyes red and bleary, his face ashen. He seemed to be having difficulty breathing and as Beulah once more took his hand she felt the trembling in his heart as it struggled to beat.

  ‘Not long now, father,’ she said, laughing. In her mind she took his heart in her hand, felt its warmth and the surge of blood that accompanied each pulse. The music swelled to the crescendo as they took the final spinning steps of the Processional and then, as the last chord rang out, all the dancers back in their original positions, all the spectators looking on with awe and regret, Beulah squeezed.

  King Diseverin did not cry out. In the end, Beulah knew, he didn’t even feel any pain. He looked at her with a mixture of surprise and understanding on his face and as the last echoes of the music were soaked up by the massive hall, he crumpled to the floor.

  A smattering of applause began, congratulating the band for their performance, the dancers for their skill. It quickly died away as Beulah dropped to her knees, letting a low wail escape from her lips. She clung to her father’s arm, feeling the last of his life ebb out of him, drinking the last of his being like the wine he had so enjoyed. Within moments others were kneeling beside her. She recognised Seneschal Padraig, bending towards the man who had been his king.

  ‘My lady,’ the old man said. ‘Please, let me near.’

  Beulah clung to her father, making sure that his heart had stilled, that there was no chance of recovery.

  ‘Please, Princess Beulah,’ the Seneschal said again. ‘I must attend to the king.’

  Beulah felt a familiar hand on her shoulder. Steady strength flowed from it into her, though she did not need the help.

  ‘Come, your Highness,’ Inquisitor Melyn said. ‘There’s nothing more you can do here. Leave this to Padraig.’

  Beulah held onto her contact with her father for a few seconds longer, until she was absolutely sure that he was dead. There was no spark in the body at all, the connection she had made now nothing more than a touch on cooling, clammy skin. Slowly she let go, allowing herself to be lifted from the floor and led past silent revellers towards the stone steps that climbed to the Obsidian Throne. Behind her she could hear the increasingly desperate sounds of Seneschal Padraig trying to revive her father’s corpse. It really should have been a job for Archimandrite Cassters. The Order of the Ram were meant to be the healers, after all, but the old priest simply stood on the edge of the dance floor staring in disbelief.

  ‘Well played, princess,’ Melyn said as he saw her settled on the small chair beside the throne. ‘Now let us see how Padraig picks up the tune.’

  Beulah watched and waited as the huddle of people around her father’s body grew. She noticed the other members of her dance set hovering nearby, anxiety writ large across their faces. Merrl still clung to his sister’s arm and Beulah wondered whether he would be a tender lover, or try to dominate her. She doubted he had any experience at all in that direction, but that could be an advantage.

  The seneschal stood up, motioning everyone away from the body. His face was terrible, doom-laden as he walked away from the dance floor and climbed the steps to where she sat. When he was still several feet away from her, he fell to one knee, dropping his head in a defeated bow.

  ‘The king is dead,’ he said in a voice that was both quiet and carrying, seeming to echo around the silent hall like a whisper. ‘Long live the Queen!’

  ~~~~

  Chapter Seventeen

  Many have remarked on how dragons copy human ways, and one of the most notable is in the adoption of honorific titles. Thus an elder dragon might refer to himself as Sir Ystrad. It is only males who do this; females more often will append a descriptor onto their name, such as Angharad the Fair.

  To the casual observer, this may seem amusing or fanciful, but to dragons it is anything but. To be addressed as Sir is to be acknowledge the head of your family, and to be accorded a description is to be recognised as a master of your chosen skill or of possessing the most perfect form of a certain attribute. Thus dragons, who are essentially egalitarian in nature, pay respect to others of their kind.

  Dragon’s Tales by Fr Charmoise

  Errol had little time to reflect on his strange encounter with Inquisitor Melyn in the weeks that passed. Confined once more to his vast empty dormitory and the endless, lightless vaults of the library archives, the whole episode began to take on the same dreamlike quality of most of his existence.

  Andro kept him busy in a room whose walls were lined from ceiling to floor with racks containing rolled up parchments. Each of these had to be taken out, carefully unrolled and scanned to see what its contents were. He would make a note in a large leather-bound volume, assign the parchment a temporary reference number and return it to its place on the rack. The room was not large in comparison to some of the great spaces down in the depths of the monastery, but even so, Errol had made the mistake of estimating the number of parchments in the room at several thousand. On a good day he might manage a couple of hundred, if their subjects were not so dry as to be unintelligible, or so interesting as to absorb him for hours.

  There did not seem to be any patt
ern to the parchments save that they were unbound and all about the same width when rolled. There were sets of accounts for the royal household dating back several centuries; minutes of meetings of the Inquisitors, Seneschals and Archimandrites of the three religious orders; ornately scribed deeds of title to obscure tracts of land; field reports of hunting parties. One series of ten parchments detailed an expedition carried out some five hundred years earlier in search of the fabled Cenobus, seat of Magog, Son of the Summer Moon. From what Errol could piece together, this great beast of a dragon had lived thousands of years earlier still, and was the scourge of men until brave King Diseverin, the first King Diseverin, had slain him in an epic battle that had lasted days and shaken the earth. Fable had long held that the dragon had lived in a great castle in the depths of the forest of the Ffrydd, where great treasures were hoarded, lying undiscovered to this day.

  Something about the tale struck a chord with Errol. The theme was familiar, as if he had heard it before but told differently. The account given in the parchments didn’t seem right but he couldn’t pin it down; the details were slippery in his mind. Whatever the truth of the matter, the expedition had been an unmitigated disaster. Led by Prince Lonk, heir to the Obsidian Throne, it had been one misadventure after another, culminating in the party splitting into two, the prince heading on into the deep forest with most of the dwindling supplies and two warrior priests as guardians, leaving the rest to make their way back to Emmass Fawr. The writer of the report, one Father Keoldale, had been the only survivor of that band, discovered near death by a roving patrol as he tried to navigate the treacherous ridges of the Rim Mountains. Of Prince Lonk and his guards there had never been any sign.

  Errol knew from his history lessons that the disappearance of the only direct heir to the throne had plunged the twin kingdoms and the House of Balwen into the terrible events of the Brumal War. Had it not been for the bravery of Prince, later King Torwen the twin kingdoms might still be at war, or worse under the control of the Llanwennogs. At least that was how the story had been told to him before. Now he could read the account of how that dark time had begun, first hand, from the quill of the only man to survive the expedition.

  Errol was still reading the account of the fateful expedition when Andro came into the room some hours later. Guiltily, he looked across at the clean, empty pages of the reckoning book and the pile of parchments gathered around the reading desk.

  ‘Let me guess,’ the old man said, smiling. ‘Father Keoldale’s account of Prince Lonk’s search for Cenobus.’

  ‘How did you..?’ Errol asked, but Andro merely waved him silent.

  ‘It’s no sin to be curious, Errol,’ he said. ‘And of all the fascinating tales waiting to be discovered in this room, that one at least holds some historical relevance. There are lessons to be learnt from it. The folly of pursuing impossible dreams when there’s much to recommend the life you already have, for instance.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Errol said.

  ‘Lonk was heir to the throne,’ Andro said. ‘The Twin Kingdoms were experiencing a period of peace and prosperity such as they never had before. We even had a sketchy peace with Llanwennog. Our merchants travelled the world, dealing in the most exotic of goods. It was a time when Candlehall grew from a small citadel around the Neuadd into the great metropolis that it is today. Prince Lonk stood to inherit that, but instead he chose to follow a madman’s words on a fool’s quest. And his father let him. It was perhaps no bad thing that Weddelm’s line ended there. It was a weak-willed and idiot branch of the House of Balwen.

  ‘But I didn’t come here to give you a history lesson, Errol. It’s late and you should be getting your rest.’

  Was it late? Errol didn’t feel tired. His head was filled with Father Keoldale’s words, his account of the terrible journey they had made through the great forest of the Ffrydd and the weird creatures they had encountered on their way. It seemed like only a few hours since he had begun the day’s work. Still, if Andro told him it was time to go, he would have to go.

  Scooping up the scrolls, Errol placed them in the rack on the side of his reading desk, ready for archiving properly the next day. He extinguished the covered lamps that had been his daylight and followed the old man out of the room.

  ‘How did you know what I was reading?’ He asked as they walked the long dark corridors of the library archive, the only light coming from Andro’s covered lantern, its glow revealing row upon row of dark-spined books in black-oak shelves.

  ‘I remember the first time I came across that parchment myself,’ the old man said. ‘Back when I was a novitiate, oh, too many years ago to even think about.’

  ‘You’ve already archived that room?’ Errol asked, astonished that he could have spent the uncounted days of his labour on a task already completed.

  ‘Oh don’t look so shocked, Errol,’ Andro said. ‘Archiving is not something done once and then finished with. It’s endless. Many years have passed since I last sorted that room. Parchments have been taken out and returned to the wrong stacks, or not returned at all. New scrolls have been added and some things just put there because whichever librarian was on duty that day couldn’t be bothered walking any further. Time has a habit of making chaos from the most perfect order. You’d do well to remember that.’

  They had reached the refectory and Errol noticed it was unusually empty. Was it really so late that all the other librarians had eaten already? It was so hard to keep track of time down in the depths of the great monastery, away from the sun and the true passing of the days.

  ‘I have to leave you now,’ Andro said. ‘Inquisitor Melyn has need of my services. Don’t tarry long, Errol. Tomorrow will be a long day and it will begin earlier than you’re accustomed to.’ Smiling as if at some inner joke, the old man hung his lantern on the hook by the door that led to Errol’s lonely dormitory and then left the room.

  Errol grabbed himself some bread and cheese from the store cupboard, wishing that there were some stew in the pot by the fire. Empty, the refectory was a depressing, lightless place and he had no great desire to sit there eating on his own. Part of him was tempted to take the lantern and return to the room. There were still several parchments of Father Keoldale’s account to read, but he knew that he would be in trouble if he were found out. Reluctantly he took up his meagre meal, lifted the lantern off the hook and made his way along the corridor towards his bed.

  It felt different even before he reached the dormitory door. He had grown used to the quiet presence of the other librarians over time, forgetting the sense he had always relied on to tell him when others were nearby. The monastery was full of people, four thousand or more he had heard tell. But there was something at once familiar and foreign that made Errol pause before stepping into the empty dark room.

  It happened in a whirling instant. Someone snatched the lantern from his hands, knocking the food to the floor. Someone else grabbed his arms, pulling them up sharply behind his back. A heavy cloth sack dropped down over his head. The smell of earth and raw potatoes filled his nose as a rope was swiftly wound around his middle, trapping him. Hands too numerous to count pushed and jabbed at him, spinning him around and around until he lost all sense of direction. He stumbled, tried to reach out but could not, his arms trapped by the rope. Something caught his foot and he fell headlong into darkness, but before he hit the stone floor, the hands caught him, lifting him up into the air as if he weighed nothing at all. However many people were tormenting him, they were silent, their purpose united. Errol was helpless, trapped and terrified as he was born along, out of his lonely dormitory and away to whatever fate awaited.

  *

  Flurries of winter rain lashed across the clearing carried by the cold northerly wind that had been blowing for a week now. Benfro looked out of the window from his seat near the fire and shuddered. It wasn’t that the cold and wet affected him, just that they made the day seem so miserable. He had hoped for sunshine and even the first snowdrops of
spring appearing under the still leafless trees. Perhaps to be able to go outside without getting his feet covered in mud. This was, after all, his special day. Today he was fourteen years old.

  ‘Come now, Benfro. It’s time to leave. You don’t want to be late for your own party.’ Morgwm opened the door, an oiled leather bag slung over one shoulder. Benfro stood up, placed the heavy grating in front of the banked up coals and headed outside.

  A brief lull in the rain saw them across the clearing and heading up the track towards the village. Heads down against the wind, it was difficult to hold much of a conversation, but as they neared the spot where Errol had met Frecknock so many months before, where she had cast her terrible spell on him, he stopped in his tracks.

  ‘What is it?’ His mother asked.

  ‘I… I can’t say,’ Benfro said, the compulsion as strong as ever. It was a constant niggling in the back of his mind now, a worry that made it increasingly hard for him to concentrate on his studies. He even found it hard at times to remember where certain herbs and potions were stored. Whenever he tried to conjure up his mental image of the store room instead all he could see was those pink, fleshy hands reaching for that silver goblet.

  ‘Well don’t dawdle now, Benfro,’ Morgwm said. ‘The others will all be waiting.’

  ‘Frecknock won’t’ Benfro said.

  ‘What? Of course she will,’ Morgwm said. ‘Frecknock may not like you very much, but she would never miss a feast.’

  ‘She won’t be there,’ Benfro said again. There was a lot more he wanted to say, about how he knew where Frecknock would be and what she would be doing, but it would not come out. Even saying her name gave him a dull ache at the back of his head.

  ‘Well, never mind. It’s rude to keep your guests waiting, even on your hatchday.’

  They trudged on through the constant wind and occasional showers, reaching the village in companionable silence. There was no-one about, the assorted houses appearing dead and empty. A shiver ran down Benfro’s spine as if he were seeing a terrible portent; his home, his world stripped of life. For an instant, in his mind, he saw the whole village blackened and charred, smoke lofting lazily from the wrecked homes and climbing into a hazy blue sky.