The Rose Cord

by J. D. Oswald

  And now it lay in ruins.

  The roof had collapsed and the massive oak frame lay twisted and black, although even the fire that had cracked the great foundation stones had not been able to get those timbers to burn properly. The glass windows were smashed; the lathe-and-plaster infill scorched and blackened where it had not fallen out entirely. From the midst of the mess, the last of the oily black smoke rose with an inevitable steadiness, lading the air with a heavy, sickening smell of roasted meat.

  Pushing aside charred timbers still hot to the touch, Benfro elbowed his way into the building. Slate from the roof lay everywhere, smashed and scorched. The smaller beams had burned merrily and were all but gone now. Their sooty remains lay strewn across scale and hide like a kitling’s finger drawings. He could not be sure whether fear had held the old dragons in their seats as they burned or whether they had unanimously decided to die with dignity. Benfro wanted to think the latter was the case, but he couldn’t be sure. Not from looking at them.

  They sat around the great table, each in the place they had habitually taken. Benfro could recognize them only by their individual bulk: great Sir Frynwy slumped at the head of the table, flanked by the smaller form of Meirionydd; there Ynys Byr, his frail hands covering his eyes at the end; there dark Ynys Môn, defiantly upright, staring straight ahead with eyes whitened by the heat. The others all sat in various contorted shapes, some crushed by the falling ceiling, some almost unscathed but for the look of terrified determination on their faces.

  Benfro lowered his head in respect for his extended family. He could feel a rage growing in him then, a righteous fury that demanded release. And yet he was powerless against an enemy that could force these dragons to sit still while they burned to death, an enemy that could conjure a blade of light so sharp it could cleave a head from a neck in one swift arc.

  Suddenly the terror was upon him once more. It was difficult to move, his arms and legs refusing at first to answer his call. Looking around at the assorted dead dragons, he felt the panic begin to rise and swamp him. Then he caught those staring white eyes of Sir Frynwy. They cut through him with an accusing glare. This was not how the great Palisander would have reacted to such a threat. The warring brothers Gog and Magog had split the world over who should win the hand of Ammorgwm the Fair. They would not have stood motionless, helpless while a powerful enemy crept up on them.

  Benfro could almost hear the old dragon’s voice. ‘Fight them,’ it seemed to say. ‘Live up to your birthright.’ He struggled, feeling his legs as things of stone. Slowly, painfully, he managed to inch one foot forward. Then the other. It was like wading through river mud, but with each tiny step it became easier. The panic began to subside, replaced by an angry grasping, as if someone were digging talons into his skull and dragging it back. Shaking his head, Benfro pushed past the charred remains of the dead and through into the great kitchen.

  The fire had not burned so much here and the roof still held. At the far end of the room the back door opened out on to the orchard and beyond that the forest. Benfro made his way as quickly as he could towards it. He knew he shouldn’t have come to the village. Head north, into the great forest, his mother had told him – if that had been his mother he had heard in the heat of her pyre. It didn’t really matter now. There was nothing for him here any more, and at least heading north would take him away from the realms of men. A new life awaited him far from these horrifying deeds, and the beginning of that path was just a few tens of paces distant.

  Melyn sat on his horse in the middle of the village, watching impatiently as the novitiates and warrior priests went from house to charred smoking house in search of the young dragon. One by one they returned to the green, their heads shaking. Only the big hall, where all the old dragons had gathered to die, was unchecked. Smoke still poured from the ruins of the roof, and he could feel the heat radiating from the blackened stone.

  ‘You two,’ he said to the nearest novitiates, ‘go and check the hall. It’s just possible he’s stupid enough to be in there.’

  He watched as the two young men, hardly more than boys really, crossed the trampled grass and approached the burning building. Then, settling himself into his saddle, Melyn closed his eyes and slipped into the aethereal.

  The colours almost knocked him cold. He was used to the world appearing flat and drab when viewed with the mind’s eye. Here everything seemed to flow and pulse with life. The trees surrounding the village towered over him like great sentinels, leaning inwards as if to grab him and rip him limb from limb. The houses, burned and wrecked in real life, stood tall and proud as if nothing had touched them. The life shapes of the novitiates and warrior priests were pale and insubstantial things and even his own projection was a mere shadowy glimmer of the body form he normally conjured. For the first time in many years Melyn felt a frisson of fear not of his own making.

  It was a skilful working, he had to admit. But the more he probed it, the more he understood that it was as dead as the dragons who had no doubt woven it, the last dying remnants of the glamour that had protected their village from discovery. He had seen through that and now he pushed aside the unease like the slave it was, shifting his focus to the burning hall.

  The fire raged as if here in the aethereal it still feasted on the spirits of the dead. The building held its shape memory, flickering and insubstantial among the flames, and the two figures of the novitiates hovered anxiously around the edge, not daring to get too close.

  Melyn soared over the pyre, taking in every last detail, looking for signs of life hiding among the destruction and death. All he could see was flame, billowing up walls, bursting out of windows, feeding greedily on the wasted corpses of the dragons he had slain. With a savage glee tinged with disappointment at not finding the hatchling, he slipped back into himself and opened his eyes.

  ‘There’s nothing alive in there, Your Grace,’ one of the novitiates said. Melyn recognized him as Clun, Errol’s stepbrother. The boy had filled out in the months since his choosing: he was a fit young man now. Perhaps ready to be tested.

  ‘You checked the whole building?’

  ‘What we could get into,’ Clun replied. ‘There are parts where the roof has collapsed and it’s still burning. I tried to sense out any life, but I couldn’t feel anything.’

  ‘You have the sight?’ Melyn asked. ‘Quaister Ffermwyr has told me nothing of this.’

  ‘We haven’t begun our formal training yet, Your Grace,’ Clun said, dropping his gaze to his feet. ‘It’s something my stepbrother and I found out about in an old book. We tried it before our choosing. I hope I’ve not done something forbidden.’

  ‘Far from it, Clun. It’s a rare gift you have. I only wish more of my novitiates showed the same initiative. I’ll have Ffermwyr begin your instruction as soon as you return to the monastery. But for now, since you seem to show more ambition and drive than your fellows, I’ve a task for you. Take three novitiates and escort the dragon to Candlehall. You will present her to the queen.’

  Clun’s face lit up with excited enthusiasm, the boy showing through the young man’s face. He dropped to one knee and said, ‘Your Grace, you do me a great honour. I’ll not fail you.’ Then he leaped up like the ground beneath him was on fire and bounded off to round up his team. Melyn watched them gather their belongings together, collect up the bedraggled form of Frecknock and usher her at speed out of the clearing.

  ‘Was that wise?’ Captain Osgal asked. ‘None of them is experienced enough to deal with a dragon should it decide to be uncooperative.’

  ‘She won’t,’ Melyn said. ‘Her spirit’s broken. And besides, what sort of a test of his leadership potential would it be if it was easy?’

  ‘What of the other one?’ Osgal asked. How are we going to track it down in these woods?

  ‘We won’t,’ Melyn said. ‘He’s been hidden from us by magic, and I don’t have the time to try and sort that out right now. But it will wear off soon enough. We’ll make best speed back
to Emmass Fawr. I need to ride the Calling Road and rework its glamours. I know enough now about this Benfro to make it irresistible to him. Trust me, Osgal; he’ll come to us.’

  3

  Magog, Son of the Summer Moon, was drained by the great magic he had wrought in splitting the world in two, and he mourned for Ammorgwm, lost in the great battle between him and his hated brother. And so it was that he set off for his secret retreat to rest.

  He had not been gone long, however, before a new threat to his power became apparent. The men who lived and warred in the Hendry below the Ffrydd began to expand their influence into the great forest. Not the simple men of old; these new warriors were fanatical and ruthless. And more yet, they understood the subtle arts, wielding them with the same grim determination as they did any other weapon. When dragons tried to intervene in the war, they were soon cut down, their jewels hacked from their bleeding heads and taken off as trophies for the king.

  Magog rallied his followers against this new threat, but what the men lacked in strength and size they made up in numbers. Long-lived, dragons bred slowly and kept their numbers in strict harmony with the earth. Men multiplied in short years, each generation increasing their numbers more.

  The battles raged for years until even proud Magog was forced to admit that the dragons were losing. In an attempt at diplomacy he arranged to meet the king of the men so that some accord might be agreed between them. The day before the meeting the great mage retreated to the place of his hatching to rest and prepare himself. This place he had protected with powerful glamours so that none could find it who had not been invited there. Yet even these magics proved insufficient, for Magog did not meet the king. No dragon has seen him since, and as the years pass by so the deeds of Gog and Magog have passed into myth and legend.

  Sir Frynwy, Tales of the Ffrydd

  The further he travelled from the clearing of his childhood life, the denser the forest became. Benfro thought he had explored far from his home, thought he had ranged through the woods all about the village and the single track that wound its way from somewhere distant to somewhere even further away. In truth three days’ walking took him past the last recognizable tree. Soon he wasn’t even sure what some of the varieties were. Oak and beech he knew, and huge cedars that spread their needles out in vast dark circles, but here the trees grew straight up into a black canopy too far above to make out. Their trunks were tens of feet thick and spread out at the base with huge root-arches, some forming bowls big enough for him to hide in, should he wish.

  Somewhere overhead, Benfro knew, the sun was past its zenith and headed into the western sky to set. That would give him his direction, but at the forest floor it was cool and dark. Occasional strips of light broke through the canopy, their tracks marked by hardy ferns climbing up thick-ribbed trunks, but they were no help in pointing the way. It was many hours since he had crossed the last clearing, a swathe cut through the forest by a massive oak, top-heavy and dead. Even that had been too small a patch of sky to get any feel for the position of the sun. Now he walked on instinct, hoping he wasn’t going around in circles.

  Hunger was Benfro’s constant companion. It sat heavy in his stomach like some bloated bag of gas. He would have tried eating the leaves of any number of plants he came across, but every time he tried to recall one of his mother’s lessons, he saw the blazing arc of light swing down in its unstoppable sweep. When he saw any small animals he might have tried to catch, it was only their fleeing backsides disappearing into holes or rustling the thick underbrush around patches of light. He had tried to hunt, but that brought him the memory of past trips with Ynys Môn. The image of his extended family, all dead, was never far from his mind, and whenever it came to the front, walking was the only way to keep from breaking down entirely.

  Hunting in this deep wood was not an option anyway. Mostly in the forest floor murk there was nothing but endless hours of thick leaf mould and foot-tripping roots, deadening silence and the occasional bright, squawking flash of some disturbed bird.

  Night was well set in when Benfro came across a clearing. He was quite far into it before he realized that the air had a different texture, the silence an echo of gently stirring breeze. It awoke him like a slap in the face and he understood he had been walking half asleep, his mind switched off to dull the horror. He stopped, breathing deeply the cool air. It was sweet compared to the stagnant fug that he had been travelling through for countless hours, and he took a curious pleasure just drinking it in with great gulps, as if he had been holding his breath for too long. Slowly the fog lifted from his mind and he began to take in his surroundings.

  The clearing was at least as big as the one that held the village, although there was no obvious sign of any habitation in it. Underfoot lay a carpet of meadow grass pocked with clumps of thicker vegetation difficult to identify in the darkness. The ground sloped away from him down to where a small stream pooled around a great black rock that rose in a jagged point to the sky. As if drawn to it by a curious magnetism, Benfro found himself wandering down the slope towards the pool. Overhead, the waning moon climbed into the night sky, its silvery glow lighting the scene with eerie monochrome clarity.

  Close to the water the shadows took on a terrible blackness. The rock pointed up at the stars, as if it were an accusing finger cursing the heavens for the fate of the world. Still, Benfro was drawn to the stream’s edge. Pooling around the base of the rock, the water was still and deep and dark, a mirror image of the sky so perfect that it seemed a shame to break it. He knelt on the sandy beach that rimmed the pool and stared down into the night, transfixed by the peace of the place and the weary mixture of grief and fear in his hearts.

  ‘What’s this?’ A voice spoke, clear and strong. ‘A dragon should not be so sad.’

  Benfro whirled round, losing his footing in his hunger-weakened state. Tripping on his own tail, he fell backwards into the pool with a splash that sent flocks of roosting pigeons clattering up into the darkness from their perches on the towering rock.

  ‘Not very graceful,’ the voice said. ‘But each to his own.’

  ‘Who’s there? Who are you?’ Benfro stood up, aware of how heavy his body felt, how sore his feet were even on the soft wet sand.

  ‘No, no, no, that’s not how it works.’ The voice had a mad mischievous humour in its tone. ‘I was here first. I’ve been here the longer. You tell me who you are and then I might think about telling you about me.’

  Benfro waded out of the water, walked around the rock, peered up its obsidian flanks. He might as well have looked for a black stone underground for all the light the moon was casting on the scene.

  ‘Where are you?’ He sniffed the faint breeze in the hope of catching a telltale odour. At least he could not smell men, which was some solace.

  ‘Nah, nah. You first. Tell me your name, little dragon.’

  Benfro reached up to the rock, looking for a handhold. It was rough and pocked with holes made slimy with pigeon dung. Gritting his teeth, he hauled himself up the steep climb to the top.

  ‘Where are you going? You won’t find me up there,’ the voice said, a delighted chuckle giving the lie to its words. Benfro ignored it and continued his task. It was not too difficult a climb for one who had spent his childhood scrabbling up trees. Nevertheless he was out of breath when he reached the top. It was a small flat area, just big enough for his adolescent frame. A fully grown dragon most likely would have ended up taking a quick dive into the pool below. He looked down at the water’s surface, perhaps forty feet beneath him, and gasped.

  The whole pool was shaped like a dragon’s eye staring up at him. The black sky reflected off the water was a shining star-pocked iris, the waning moon a piercing glow of intelligence lurking within. Even the sandy beach contrived to look like the folds of a lower lid.

  ‘Good, isn’t it?’ the voice said, louder now. It was right by Benfro’s side, and he foolishly spun round. He was smaller than an adult dragon, but still plenty big eno
ugh to fall off the narrow platform. Especially as the previous occupants had left a considerable amount of greasy droppings underfoot.

  ‘Oops’, said the voice, glee obvious in that one simple word.

  For an insane moment Benfro teetered on the brink, arms whirling. Even his wings stretched out in a creaking painful reflex spasm, for all the good they would do him. But hunger had robbed him of more than just strength, and it was with a curious weary resignation that he allowed himself to plummet towards the staring pool.

  ‘You have failed your order. You’ve failed your country. And worst, you’ve failed me.’

  Queen Beulah of the Speckled Face sat upon the Obsidian Throne in her massive hall and scowled at the two guards prostrated in front of her. From their attire they were Candles, Seneschal Padraig’s men. He stood beside them, his face a mask but for his eyes, which stared transfixed like a rabbit’s before a hawk.

  ‘Your Majesty, is it fair to blame these men when the betrayal came from …’

  Beulah’s stare was enough to silence the seneschal.

  ‘I need to make an example, Padraig,’ she said. ‘If not these men, who were supposed to guard me, then who? Would you like to have your neck stretched?’

  Padraig shifted nervously on his feet, his composure leaking away under her unblinking gaze. Beulah knew that he favoured closer ties with Llanwennog, peaceful dialogue over war. But he had been as surprised by the plot as anyone. His hold on power was fast slipping away, his influence a pale shadow of what it had been under her father’s ineffectual rule. She knew she had won her battle with him; perhaps it was time to throw him a bone.

  ‘You’re right, of course, Seneschal,’ she said, noting with satisfaction the look of confusion her change of tack threw across his face. ‘These men were following orders. It was Merrl and his cronies who started this. Merrl won’t be troubling us any more, but I need to know how deep this canker runs. I expect your order to turn all its energies to the task. And we’ll have no more talk of peace with Tynhelyg. This plot came straight from Ballah, despite anything his embassy might say to the contrary.’