Dreamwalker

by Oswald, J. D.

  ‘What is it Benfro? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  Morgwm’s voice snapped him back into himself. Benfro looked at his mother’s smiling face and felt the reassurance of her presence, her open, unquestioning love for him. Despite the cold, wet winter afternoon, the terrible premonition and the constant niggling hurt of what Frecknock had done to him, he was cheered by her presence and her strength.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ he said. ‘Just this moon-cursed rain and mud.’

  ‘Come on then,’ Morgwm said. ‘Let’s get inside. Ynys Môn will have built up the fire well by now.’

  They strode on and were soon crossing the wet grass of the green towards the great hall. A plume of smoke rose out of its chimney like a signal and the gusting wind brought splendid aromas to Benfro’s nose. His stomach rumbled in anticipation.

  The doors were closed as they approached them, which surprised Benfro, though he supposed it was just to keep the rain and wind out. Still a little matter like that was not going to keep him away from the feast. He stood in front of the great oak slabs, took a hold of the heavy iron handles and pushed.

  It was locked.

  Confused, Benfro turned to ask his mother what was going on.

  She wasn’t there.

  ‘Mother?’ He asked the wind, looking from side to side. There was nowhere she could hide and there had not been time for her to reach the edge of the building. Besides, she had been at his side, he had felt her presence as surely as he knew his own wings. And then she had just gone.

  A chilling sense of fear and loneliness gripped him as he stood in the cold, staring at the barred doors and the empty-faced cottages clustered around the green. With only the wind’s low, moaning song for company it felt like the whole world had deserted him. He was truly alone, a tiny speck in the vastness of all. For a moment it overwhelmed him completely. He was as paralysed as if he were made of stone, helpless and terrified. Then the swirling wind changed direction once more, bringing the aroma of cooking to his nose. Faint sounds escaped from behind the great shuttered windows and the spell was broken. This was some kind of test, he realised. Some strange ceremony that no doubt would give the villagers something to laugh about as the afternoon turned to evening and the party got into full swing.

  He considered walking around the building to the back, where the kitchens were, and coming in through the small door there. He could imagine all the old dragons, clustered around the door and waiting for him. It would be a great jest to creep up behind them and give them a surprise. On the other hand, this did not seem like one of Meirionydd’s jokes, and he couldn’t remember a time when his mother had done such a thing to him. He knew that the dragons were inside the great hall, he could sense them. There was nothing to be gained from standing out in the cold and the rain. Benfro lifted his hand and rapped hard on the oak doors.

  ‘Who goes without?’ Came Sir Frynwy’s unmistakeable voice in all its story-telling grandeur.

  ‘It’s Benfro,’ Benfro said, tiring of the game before it had even started. ‘Let me in, please. It’s wet out here.’

  ‘What brings you to our hall, Benfro?’ Sir Frynwy asked, his tone still serious and filled with pomp.

  ‘It’s my hatchday. I’m fourteen today,’ Benfro said, then added under his breath, ‘there’s supposed to be a feast.’

  ‘Fourteen, you say,’ Sir Frynwy said. ‘And under what sign were you hatched, Benfro?’

  ‘You know as well as I do, Sir Frynwy. I was born at the Confluence, when the Wolf Running was in the House of Northern Cross.’

  ‘A Hatchling of the Confluence?’ Sir Frynwy said, his voice deep and booming through the old wood. ‘And what would you take from us, Benfro?’

  ‘Take from you? Nothing. Well, some food I suppose, and perhaps a story?’

  ‘A story?’ Sir Frynwy said. ‘That is no small thing to ask. What would you give us in return?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Benfro was beginning to feel anxious. This exchange seemed like some kind of formal ceremony, at least on Sir Frynwy’s part. But Morgwm had not told him there would be anything like this. There never had been on his hatchday in the past.

  ‘Would you give us your respect?’ Sir Frynwy asked.

  ‘Of course,’ Benfro said. You already have that.’

  ‘Indeed? Would you give us your trust?’

  For a moment Benfro had to consider. There was one of the villagers that he would not trust as far as the end of his tail, but he was certain that she was not inside the hall.

  ‘Yes, again. I have always trusted you,’ he said.

  ‘Hmm, would you give us your loyalty?’ Sir Frynwy asked. Benfro could begin to see where this was going.

  ‘Always,’ he said.

  ‘And would you give us your love?’ The old dragon asked, flinging open the doors. He stood there staring down at Benfro with a curious expression on his face. Behind him the other dragons clustered around to see.

  ‘I can’t give you what you already have,’ Benfro said. ‘But I wouldn’t seek to steal it from you, either.’

  Sir Frynwy’s solemn face broke into a wide grin. ‘Spoken like a true dragon, Benfro,’ he said. ‘Welcome.’

  As Benfro stepped into the familiar hall he felt almost as if he were a stranger newly arrived. Ynys Môn produced a basin of warm water for him to wash his feet in.

  ‘Welcome to our village, Benfro. May your feet never forget its soil,’ he said.

  Sir Frynwy handed him a heavy leather-bound book. Benfro opened it up, revealing page after empty page of finest quality vellum.

  ‘Welcome to our family, Benfro. May your life with us fill this book and many more,’ he said.

  Meirionydd placed a long scarf of fine material around his neck. It was soft to the touch and shimmered in the light from the candelabras. She wound it twice over his head so that the ends did not reach the floor, then she kissed him loudly on each cheek, twice, much to his embarrassment.

  ‘Welcome to our hall, Benfro,’ she said. ‘May you find warmth and shelter in it whenever the need arises.’

  One by one the others presented him with gifts, each with a tie to the village and the dragons who lived within it. Finally his mother stood before him, empty-handed.

  ‘Welcome to Gwlad, Sir Benfro,’ she said and Benfro couldn’t help noticing the stir of surprise that murmured around the room. ‘May it be a kinder world for you and your heirs.’ Then she wrapped him in a fierce hug.

  After that the formality seemed to be over and everyone began to chat whilst plate after groaning plate of food was brought from the kitchens and laid out on the long table in the middle of the great hall.

  Sir Frynwy made his way across the room to where Benfro stood, surrounded by a small mountain of gifts.

  ‘Well, Sir Benfro,’ the old dragon said. ‘It looks like I have a rival.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Benfro asked.

  ‘Sir Benfro,’ Sir Frynwy said, making a mock bow. ‘It’s not often a dragon so young is granted such a title.’

  ‘But it’s just a word, isn’t it?’ Benfro knew as soon as he spoke that he had made a mistake.

  ‘Just a word? Indeed, I think not,’ Sir Frynwy said. ‘Do you think I insist upon my title out of some vanity?’

  ‘No, of course not. But… well… I thought mother was just doing it as a gesture.’

  ‘Of course she was doing it as a gesture, young dragon. She was giving you the greatest honour she could bestow. In front of our entire community, she recognised you as the head of your family. It’s not an easy thing for her to do, to accept that your father has truly gone.’

  ‘My father? What’s he got to do with it?’ Benfro asked.

  ‘Sir Trefaldwyn should be the head of your family,’ Sir Frynwy said. ‘In giving you his title, Morgwm has announced publicly that she no longer believes he will return.’

  Benfro looked around at his mother, who was chatting with Meirionydd at the head of the table. She didn’t look any
different to the dragon who had woken him early that morning and set him about his chores. He doubted that he would have any more say in how the house was run than ever he had. And yet she had given him something beyond price, he realised. She had given him a measure of responsibility that only an adult should have. It made him feel twice as tall as the cold, wet dragon who had stepped through the doorway only minutes beforehand.

  ‘Now, if my hearing’s not playing tricks on me,’ Sir Frynwy said, a mischievous twinkle in his old eyes. ‘You mentioned something about a feast?’

  Benfro let himself be led through the waiting dragons to the head of the table. For a moment he had been about to take his customary seat on the floor near the fire, but Sir Frynwy steered him towards the large chair that the old bard normally took for himself.

  ‘Today is your fourteenth hatchday, Sir Benfro,’ he said, a gentle mocking in his voice. ‘The head of the table is yours. And from this day onwards you’ll join us as an equal. It’s to be hoped we don’t have to wait so long until there’s another kitling to get underfoot.’

  Benfro sat in the great carved chair gingerly, as if there might be some elaborate joke played on him. No explosions or other loud noises accompanied his rest and gradually he relaxed into the unusual place. The rest of the villagers had taken their normal places along the benches, with Sir Frynwy squeezing on the end to Benfro’s right and his mother, who rarely attended the village feasts, sitting to his left. The whole table was laid out with food, but nobody was eating. Instead all eyes were on him. Then he remembered that Sir Frynwy always said something before each meal. He tried to remember the words.

  ‘Great Rasalene whose spirit watches over us in the night. Pure Arhelion who lights our path through the days. Encourage us in our loyalty. Honour us in our truth. Upbraid us in our arrogance. Deflate us in our pride. You have left Gwlad for your children, may we keep it a place fit and ready for your return.’

  The murmur of assent that went around the table was perhaps not as fulsome as it might have been. Benfro was painfully aware that he did not have the same bard’s voice as Sir Frynwy, nor could he command a fraction of his gravitas. Nevertheless, the old dragon leant towards him and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper that still managed to carry to all in the room.

  ‘I really am going to have to watch my back. Sir Benfro.’

  Ynys Môn let out a great barking laugh and he was soon joined by the others. The ceremony was over and now it was time to eat.

  *

  Terror gripped Errol as he was bundled along corridors and up stairs. Covered in his old potato sack he could see nothing, but he could feel the many hands that held him up, hear the hushed breathing of his captors. He wasn’t sure, but he thought that there were at least twelve of them, and something he couldn’t quite pin down gave him the impression that they were young, novitiates perhaps. It could have been the barely controlled excitement that ran between them, or maybe the inexpert way in which they carried him, banging his arms, legs and occasionally his head against walls, doors and anything else that got in the way.

  Despite the clammy fear that made his heart race and his breath come in ragged, insufficient gasps, a part of him remained detached, observing almost as if he floated above the scene. He could see a band of youthful novitiates in their dark brown cassocks carrying a smaller figure draped in an old cloth sack and bound with a short length of chord, doubtless borrowed from a curtain somewhere. He noticed that their route was tortuous, twisting first one way then another, but always heading upwards and always in the same direction. Errol did not know which way his dormitory faced, since it had no windows, but he was fairly sure that he was heading north.

  The journey seemed to go on for hours and with time the feeling of being disconnected from himself grew, diminishing the fear. It seemed unlikely that these novitiates meant him any great harm or they would have done it already. This was surely some prank, some initiation ceremony for one of their number. He tried to remember what Father Castlemilk’s book had said about the first years of being a novitiate, but it had touched only lightly on the day to day reality of the great monastery, focussing instead on the various stages of learning that needed to be mastered before one could become a warrior priest.

  From his detached vantage point, Errol watched as the group came out into the open, stepping into a courtyard that was walled in on three sides by tall buildings but open to the fourth. It was dark, but the first hint of dawn was making flat patterns out of the mountains, tingeing their edges with the merest hint of pink. The sight sent a thrill through him that nearly snapped him back into his body. If he could just stay this way a moment longer he would see the sunlight for the first time in… how long? He couldn’t tell.

  The group of novitiates carried him across the courtyard to the edge where it opened out onto the mountain vista. With each second the light grew, showing more of the view that must have been east, towards the rising sun. For a moment true terror ran through him as Errol thought he might be cast over the edge and into a black void; but as the group got closer to the edge, they slowed down, then stopped some ten feet on the safe side. Still curiously outside his body, Errol watched as he was carelessly dropped to the ground, noting almost as an afterthought that he was winded by the fall. Then rough hands once more grasped him by the arms and hauled him to his feet.

  One of the group of novitiates stepped away, closer to the edge. His hood was up over his head, but something about the way he moved was familiar to Errol. He seemed to be watching the horizon, though his eyes darted back and forth between the three great buildings that overlooked them, as if he feared being seen. No longer held aloft by many hands, Errol could feel the weight of the earth supporting him, smell the dirt in his head-covering potato sack. The bruises of his many bumps against corridor walls and doorjambs began to drag him away from this flying freedom and back into his body so that as the light gradually grew, he slipped more and more into the semi-darkness of his rough, hessian hood.

  ‘Is it time yet?’ One of the novitiates asked and Errol found that he was once more completely himself.

  ‘Nearly.’ The voice was hauntingly familiar. A rush of memories burst through the dull drudgery of Errol’s existence in the library archives. He saw trees in the daylight; fields of newly cut corn, stacked into castles for small boys to battle around; a great rock jutting out over a river; a cottage in a small clearing in the woods; a young woman, scarcely more than a girl, dressed in a long green riding cloak, its hood pulled up to obscure her face.

  ‘Now,’ the voice said and Errol recognised his stepbrother Clun. An instant later the ropes were untied from his middle, the sack pulled off his head, and he stood, blinking and staring into the rising sun.

  It was magnificent, the rising sun painted an orange strip on the snow-capped ridge of mountains so distant he could not focus properly on them. To a boy who had never seen anything more than a mile or so away it was an impossible, dreamlike thing, but more so was the great expanse that spread out from where he stood, reaching across that vastness from a dark point so far below him it made his stomach clench just to look at it. Errol had read about the forest of the Ffrydd in countless books, he had even seen maps of it drawn out on old parchment. He had lived all his short life on its southernmost fringes, where the trees burst through the Graith Fawr, that cataclysmic rift in the rim mountains, like a wave bursting through a mud dam. Yet nothing could have prepared him for that first glimpse of its enormous, splendid beauty.

  ‘Happy Birthday Errol,’ Clun said. ‘Andro said you might enjoy this. Now let’s get out of here before one of the quaisters sees us.’

  ~~~~

  Chapter Eighteen

  King Brynceri settled his capital on the hill overlooking the middle reaches of the river Abheinn at the centre of the Twin Kingdoms. In his lifetime he built the great hall of the Neuadd and began work on the surrounding palace and fortifications. He also built his personal chapel, away from the hubbub of palace life
, and it was to here that he increasingly retreated in his latter years, the better to converse with his Lord, The Shepherd. Nestling against the great wall that surrounds the citadel, the chapel is small in comparison to the splendour of the Neuadd, but it is a masterpiece of the mason’s art, exquisitely carved with reliefs depicting the first times, when The Shepherd walked amongst his flock and gave the gift of magic to King Balwen.

  When Brynceri finally died, it was his wish that he be interred within the defensive wall that towered over his chapel. Since then, all rulers of the Twin Kingdoms have been placed in alcoves within this wall, the Wall of Kings.

  A History of the House of Balwen by Barrod Sheepshead

  After his mother’s solemn gift and Sir Frynwy’s ceding of the top seat, all the other dragons of the village treated Benfro like a hero of the old times. One by one they addressed him with kind words and predictions of a long and prosperous life, rounding off each declaration with a toast to Sir Benfro. The only possible disappointment was that whilst the villagers all drank wine from a large wooden cask that sat at in the far corner of the hall, he was allowed only one goblet of the thick red liquor, heavily diluted. Once that was finished only the water was replaced. He had complained, of course, but Sir Benfro or no, his mother’s all-too familiar look of reproach soon silenced his protest.

  Sir Benfro. The name sounded so important, and yet so insignificant. For a while, whilst they ate and talked and laughed, Benfro considered why he felt no different. Then he remembered the old man, Gideon, with his strangely formal speech. Gideon had called him Sir Benfro and at the time he had thought it no more than a simple error on his part, a result of his poor grasp of the dragon speech. But it hadn’t been his mother who had first addressed him as Sir Benfro, and for some inexplicable reason that mattered to him. Even the enthusiastic recognition of the villagers didn’t make it seem real.