The Rose Cord

by J. D. Oswald

  There might be some way in which he could avenge his mother’s murder.

  ‘You’re too full of questions, little dragon,’ Magog went on. ‘And I’ve no time left to me in this place. I’ve already given you a great gift, although it’s one that no true dragon should need to receive. Perhaps, even after all these years, there may be some small thing of use in my memory. But that you will have to find for yourself. Now tell me ere I go: what is your name?’

  Benfro thought the answer before he remembered that he had struggled so hard the night before to keep that information secret. He was still not sure why, but it was the only thing of his he could protect, the only thing that was now his alone.

  ‘Benfro,’ Magog said, the name sounding absurdly grand. ‘You need not worry that I will use it against you, friend. I am bound for a place where none will be able to wrest it from me, save if they are themselves dead. And it is a noble name for a noble beast. You will do great things, Sir Benfro. Of that I am sure.’

  Benfro watched, a mixture of horror and pity, frustration and relief flooding through him, as the great Magog, dead for thousands of years, sank beneath the waters of the pool for the last time. There was no drama, no great surging tide, no struggle against the inevitable. It was almost as if the dragon turned to mist, faded to a sudden soft pulse of light that shot away from the river’s edge so swiftly that it was as if he had never been there, leaving Benfro with the after-image of a web spun wide over the land.

  He woke up, lying propped against the bush and staring out over the pool to the clearing and wood beyond. The scene was so exactly like his dream, the transfer from sleep to waking so subtle, that Benfro could not be sure it had been a dream after all.

  Without thinking he hauled himself up from the bush and headed for the water’s edge. His newly enlarged wings still ached at their base, but the muscle spasms had subsided into a dull ache that would hopefully ease in time. He paid it no heed as he waded out to where the sandy beach dropped into the depths below. Then, taking a deep breath, he plunged into the pool.

  5

  The conjuring of the blade of light is not to be undertaken casually. The light is a focus of all the energy of the land. In effect you are stealing a little bit of life from everything around you and concentrating it into one small space. To contain this force and mould it to your will requires both a rigid mental discipline and a perfect and intimate knowledge of your self. The wielder of such a blade must have both total control over his aura and complete confidence in that control. If he falters or hesitates for even an instant then the caged power will be unleashed. At the least this will result in a nasty burn. At worst the conflagration will consume anything within a twenty-yard radius. For this reason, the conjuring of such blades is forbidden to all novitiates under the age of fifteen and may otherwise only be attempted in the presence of a warrior priest until such time as the order considers your training complete. Breaking this rule will certainly result in expulsion from the order and may well end in death.

  Father Castlemilk, An Introduction to the Order of the

  High Ffrydd

  Beulah sat on the Obsidian Throne, her mind slipping back and forth between the aethereal and the real. She had noticed before that the great hall of the Neuadd appeared different in the dream state, but this was a distraction. Since Merrl’s death and the seizing of Abervenn lands she had lost some of her taste for palace intrigue. The plot had been so easy to discover and overcome she felt almost insulted by it.

  When the noise came, it took a few moments for Beulah to realize that it was in the aethereal and not the real. It gave her a strangely disjointed feeling as she hung somewhere between the two, but it was the most interesting thing to happen in hours, so she slipped out of herself and went off to investigate.

  The walls of the Neuadd slid past her as she headed towards the source of the sound, and flickering by on the periphery of her vision she thought she could see flying dragons in the jumble of colours. But it was too late to investigate that, for as she floated out into the sunlit space of the quadrangle she could see the real thing walking towards her.

  In an instant Beulah had conjured her blade of light, if anything brighter here than in the real plane. She dropped silently to the flagstone path that led up to the great oak doors, ready to do battle, and then stopped.

  This wasn’t the dragon she had seen before, with great wings and an arrogant air. Neither was it so much walking as shuffling. It was hobbled, with chains around its legs linked together somewhere beneath its dull belly, and it was being led towards her by a young man.

  Beulah wasn’t quite sure how she had missed him before, although it was most unusual for people to appear as recognisable images in the aethereal. As she stared, she realized that the man was accompanied by three others, all ill defined in much the same way as the majority of her people. They were little more than pale shapes, but their leader was fully formed, quite strikingly handsome. And familiar too, though she couldn’t immediately place him. It was obvious that he was no adept, for he couldn’t see her, but he was heading for the Neuadd and he brought with him a dragon. Slipping back into her body upon the throne, she opened her eyes.

  ‘Let them enter. Open the doors,’ she said to the guards, pitching her voice so that it would carry across the hall. They looked around at her, bemused for a couple of seconds, and then scurried to open the doors as a dull thud hammered on the ancient wood.

  He was younger than his aethereal presence, Beulah noticed at first, as if he were more mature than his years. It was difficult to tell if he was as handsome, since he was covered from head to toe in the mud of the road. To her surprise he wore the cloak and insignia of a novitiate of the Order of the High Ffrydd, not a full warrior priest. His companions wore the same, and for an instant she feared that something terrible had happened to the inquisitor. Had this dragon slain Melyn, then fallen upon the troop, only to be defeated at the last by this ragbag of novitiates? As they approached, their captive chained and head down, she let out a tiny laugh at the idiocy of the idea.

  Full twenty paces from the dais upon which the throne sat, the curious group stopped at an unspoken command from the young man. As one they knelt.

  ‘My queen, I bring this dragon, a gift from His Grace Inquisitor Melyn,’ the young man said, and with his voice she recognized him.

  ‘Bring it here for me to see, Clun Defaid,’ she said, enjoying the look of startled alarm that crossed his features at the use of his name. He rallied well, she noticed, ordering the other novitiates to bring the creature forward.

  ‘Her name is Frecknock, Your Majesty.’ Clun tugged hard on the chain around the beast’s neck and forced it to crouch. Beulah approached it with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. In all her life she had never seen a dragon except the one that had flown over the city in the aethereal. After that magnificently winged and iridescent animal, this mud-spattered thing was a bit of a disappointment. Its wings were far too small to support its weight in the air and its scales, even cleaned up, would be nothing better than a uniform slate-grey.

  ‘Look at me, Frecknock,’ Beulah said. The dragon raised its head in a slow uncertain motion. Its eyes seemed too heavy to roll up, fascinated with the polished floor. Finally it managed to match her gaze.

  ‘What would you have me do with you?’ Beulah asked.

  ‘Whatever you will, Your Majesty,’ the dragon said. Its voice was deep, resonant in the great hall as if the acoustics of the place had been designed for it. Yet it was unmistakably feminine. ‘I am yours to command.’

  ‘Really?’ Beulah asked. ‘How splendid. Roll over on your back and stick your legs in the air.’

  She had hoped that maybe the creature would have protested, but it didn’t. Without even a sigh, a shrug or anything which might have been taken as a sign of rebellion, it did as it was told. A dog would have been more fun, Beulah thought.

  ‘What use are you to me, dragon?’ she asked. ‘I’ve decreed that
all your kind be exterminated. Why should I keep you alive in my court?’

  ‘I can keep watch over you, Your Majesty,’ Frecknock said. ‘I can sense any threat long before it comes close enough to harm you.’

  ‘How? And how can I trust you?’ Beulah asked.

  ‘Trust has to be earned,’ the dragon replied. ‘As to how, I’ve some natural ability at what you call magic. I can sense the thoughts and feelings of your kind from a considerable distance. The guard now approaching, for instance, intends to do you harm.’

  Beulah looked up just in time to see one of the guards from the door approaching at a run. He held a small crossbow pointing straight at her. ‘For King Ballah and Llanwennog,’ he shouted, pulling the trigger even as Beulah conjured her blade of fire.

  It was dark and cold as Benfro struck out with steady strokes towards the bottom. Lungs filled with huge gulps of air this time, he had to fight hard to overcome his natural buoyancy, and, as the sunlight overhead weakened through the dark brown waters, he began to wonder if he would be able to find what he was seeking. Still he swam, down and down with nothing but the distorted sounds of his own movements for company.

  A few fronds of tangling weed rose up to greet him as he neared the bottom. Even with his keen eyes, it was all he could do but make out vague shapes, looming and frightening in the hidden world. Then something appeared, a glowing curved spear. It caught the small light that made it this far. A rib.

  Benfro’s mind filled with panic as he approached. Either the cold confining darkness made a mockery of size or Magog had been a true behemoth among dragons. It was almost a sign of disrespect, but he reached out and grabbed the bone, using it to pull himself down and what he hoped was forward. He had a map in his head, a memory of the previous night when the whole area had been lit by some unearthly light, and now in the darkness he felt his way towards the fractured skull.

  His lungs were beginning to hurt as he finally saw the ghostly glowing outline. It was huge, half embedded in the silt, the broken crack a black hole. Hurried now, Benfro shoved himself forward to a point where he could look inside. His hearts dropped when he saw nothing within. He reached a hand, a forearm, a whole arm into the skull, feeling almost sullied, or was it he who was doing the sullying? There was nothing but mud, fine and cold in his taloned fingers. No jewels left of the great Magog. No memories from that age when dragons had ruled the world.

  And then he saw it, a glow so faint that he couldn’t be sure it wasn’t his eyes playing tricks on him, his brain starved of air lighting sparks in his vision. A dull red glow a few yards away from the fractured skull. With the last of his strength Benfro pushed himself towards it. The water resisted him, wanted to lift him skywards as if it took exception to his presence in its midst. He kicked hard against it, years of practice helping him toward his goal.

  Now his eyes really were playing tricks, flashes and trills of light skeeting across his sight. But he knew where the glow had been. He could gauge his passage through the water. His outstretched hand reached the spot, clamped hard around mud and the small stone that nestled inside. With a swish of his tail and a kick of his legs, Benfro changed direction, pushing himself towards the surface.

  He burst from the water with such force that this time he actually took off. He managed to take a deep breath of sweet, fresh air before gravity brought him crashing back down with a splash that stung his belly and nearly knocked the clasped jewel from his hand. The silt had all but washed away, leaving nothing more than a tiny pebble. Yet he clung to it as if his life depended on it. With weary muscles he struck out for the far side of the pool, away from the beach and the way he had come. The bank was steeper here, but easy enough to climb. He dragged himself out and flopped on to the grass, spreadeagled to let the warm late afternoon sun dry his scales.

  After long moments of panting to get his breath back, Benfro finally lifted the tiny jewel to his eyes. It was palest pink, quite unlike the fiery dark red that had lit the pool the night before. It had about it a faint aura of magnificence, but he could not be sure whether this was due to his dream rather than any magical power. He was about to put it in his bag, retrieved from the bush where he had spent the night, but when he opened the side pocket to drop this last remnant of Magog inside, it felt wrong. The single white stone already lying there almost screamed in his mind, flooding him with a memory of scolding. Puzzled, he closed the pocket and slipped the tiny pink gem into the main compartment of the bag where it could lie alongside his few possessions.

  The afternoon was fast turning to evening when he finally felt ready to leave the clearing. He had eaten more fish and toyed briefly with the idea of wrapping some in leaves for the journey. After a day in the hot sun it was beginning to turn, not enough to trouble his digestion, but it would soon start to smell, so instead he settled on gorging himself as best he could. He would try his hand again at hunting if he had not found Corwen in a day or two.

  The sun was setting into the treetops when Benfro finally crossed the clearing and stepped into the forest. He had spent less than a day in the place, but it felt to him like weeks had passed. As he crossed from open space to dark cool woods it was almost as if he had stepped through a hole in time. His whole body tingled with static, and his newly sensitive wings trembled. For a second that was eternity he was in two places at once. Everything was split neatly down the middle of some dimension he could not grasp, and he stood in the void between the two halves. He could feel the gaze of the universe glaring down on him, more withering than a desert sun, more terrible than the mind-fear of the inquisitor. He was a naked creature, exposed to the endless now. And then his striding foot fell on forest loam. The contact was an anchor, dragging him back to the world he was meant to be in with a jolt that caught his breath, tumbled him to the ground.

  Picking himself up, Benfro turned to take one last look at the final resting place of Magog, Son of the Summer Moon, but it wasn’t there. Only endless trees met his gaze, tall as a thousand years.

  Time seemed to slow down. Beulah watched the quarrel as it left the bow and headed straight for her. She knew that she could not dodge it or cut it from the air. Then the motion snapped back to real time, catching up with itself in a blur. She felt something heavy smash into her and she fell to the floor, pinned down by an enormous weight.

  She took a few moments to realize that she was neither dead nor injured. The weight across her front was Clun, who had thrown himself in the path of the attack. He wasn’t moving, but he groaned painfully as she heaved his bulk off her. The bolt stuck out of his back an inch from his shoulder blade.

  The dragon still lay on its back, but now two of the novitiates were with it. The third was giving chase to the guard.

  ‘Stop him!’ Beulah yelled, stepping off the dais. At the same time as she realized that her blade of light had gone, she heard the dragon utter something in a tongue that hurt her ears, and by the open doors the would-be assassin dropped to the floor as if he had run into a wall.

  The dragon rolled over on its side and clambered awkwardly to its chained feet. It bowed to Beulah and held out a long clawed hand.

  ‘Your blade,’ it said, and Beulah felt the returning sensation as the light sprang once more from her hand. ‘Such a concentration of the Grym is a dangerous weapon, especially when released without the proper control.’

  ‘I know that.’ Beulah was unnerved by the calmness of the beast. ‘Many novitiates have lost hands, arms or more trying to master the blade of light. You have my thanks, dragon, and your life. For now.’

  She walked over towards the open doors, where her failed assassin was sitting in a semi-conscious daze. With a flick of the wrist, she beheaded him, then reabsorbed the power from her blade before turning to the very pale novitiate who had pursued the traitor.

  ‘You. Run for help,’ she said and with a whimper the boy complied. At the doors two guards lay unmoving in small pools of their own blood where the assassin’s knife had done its work and, lying
on the dais at the feet of the Obsidian Throne, Clun had passed out. The dragon, Frecknock, crouched in the midst of the carnage, hunkered down as if she was trying to look small.

  Benfro’s wings chafed. Every time he took a step they rubbed his back and sides. He could feel the blisters at the roots of his scales, a hundred tiny pricks of pain to accompany each jarring footfall. The muscles in his back had gone beyond aching, bunched up into a knot so tight not even a knife could cut through them. His hands were raw with brushing aside endless low branches, and the bag, with its weight of memories, hung heavy around his neck. In short he was miserable.

  The rains had come on the second day of his march through the seemingly endless woods. He had woken to a dripping dampness and an empty stomach, although the fishy belches that had repeated on him for so much of the previous forty-eight hours had abated. It had taken a grim determination to get going that morning, gauge the position of the rising sun and try to set a northward course. Now he trudged through the incessant trees, his mind blank, his eyes blind to anything but the endless unyielding forest.

  Quite how long he had been walking along the road, Benfro could not have said. The realization crept into his consciousness like the dawn, slow but ultimately impossible to ignore. Perhaps it was the light, filtering through the cloud that settled like a thin mist to the ground. Or maybe it was the smooth worn grass underfoot, no roots to trip him up, the pain in his back and sides slowly fading to a dull ache that could almost be ignored. Whatever it was, he suddenly found himself standing on the road and couldn’t for the life of him recall reaching it.

  The road was wide, presumably cleared many years before. It stretched, arrow straight, in either direction, although the mist made it hard for Benfro to tell how far. Neither did he know what those directions were. The sky was a greyish-white thick cloud refracting the sun and effectively cloaking its position. The trees to either side were close-packed narrow-trunked pines that speared up like two walls. Thin, spidery undergrowth eked out a precarious existence at their edge. They would provide no cover should someone else happen along the road, and he felt a frisson of fear as he realized that he was trapped.