The Rose Cord

by J. D. Oswald

  ‘We were dead yet unreckoned. Our memories were leaching away with the passing months. You’ve changed that.’ The old dragon’s voice was fading fast now.

  ‘What do you mean? I don’t understand.’ Benfro longed for answers, but even as he asked the question the last flickering light of his fire guttered out on the breeze. The villagers were gone.

  ‘No, boy! Hold it properly.’

  The words were backed up with a sharp slap to the back of his head so that Errol almost dropped the soup bowl he was carrying to the table. Duke Dondal glared at him as if he was an imbecile but then allowed him to get on with his duties without further criticism. Errol carried bowls to all the other guests at the high table, bowing politely to each in turn. It wasn’t what he had expected to do as a page, but it was better than living in constant fear of Melyn.

  ‘Tell me, Dondal, where did you find this boy?’ One of the guests asked, blithely ignoring Errol himself.

  ‘Ah, well there’s a tale,’ Dondal said. ‘You remember my brother Edgar? Used to spend all of his time up in the mountains hunting. Well, it seems he wasn’t always hunting animals; caught himself a few wenches up there as well. This young fellow turned up a few weeks ago with a signet ring he claims Edgar gave to his mother as a token. More likely found it lying around and thought he’d take his chances, but he’s got the family likeness.’

  ‘Edgar,’ the guest said. ‘He died in the border wars a few years back, didn’t he? Fought alongside Prince Dafydd.’

  ‘Yes.’ Dondal’s voice went quiet. A silence fell on the room for a few moments, and Errol was painfully aware that all eyes were on him now.

  ‘He’s darker than his father,’ one of the guests said after a while. ‘I guess Edgar had a taste for the wild ones.’

  If anything the silence was deeper, as if everyone had taken in a deep breath. Errol felt the air turn cold and he wished he could sink through the floor or turn invisible, but he knew this exposure was essential if he was to be accepted into Llanwennog society.

  ‘Hah! He certainly did.’ Dondal roared with laughter. The moment had passed and with it the attention. Errol slunk off to the end of the room, taking his position in the shadows behind the huge chair at the head of the table.

  Not a day had passed since Errol had arrived in this backwater town, somewhere along the mountainous border between Llanwennog and the Twin Kingdoms, when he hadn’t thought about running off. Freed from the glamours that bound him to Emmass Fawr, he could easily have slipped away in the night, had he not been so hopelessly out of his depth he couldn’t even think about what to do. His duties as a page were so arduous that he had scarcely any free time to begin planning an escape, and besides he was far too busy learning his new role and trying not to give his true identity away.

  He had lost count of the days and weeks he had been at Tynewydd. In the main he was confined to the castle, given endless tasks to perform, though once or twice he had been out on lavish hunting parties with the duke. It was two days now since the last one had returned, and the guests were still making the most of Dondal’s hospitality. But deep snow had finally made it to the mountain passes and the season for hunting was closed. Soon it would be time for the duke to make his biannual trek to Tynhelyg to pay his tithes. As a gesture of loyalty to the throne, Errol would be presented as a page, to serve young Prince Dafydd and his newly betrothed Princess Iolwen. At least when he embarked on the trip to the capital he would be further still from Emmass Fawr and the inquisitor. And away from Dondal he might have more time to himself, time to learn about this new country and how to survive in it.

  ‘I said wine, boy!’ The duke’s harsh words interrupted Errol’s musings. Adopting his most subservient attitude, he took up a heavy pewter jug filled with dark mountain wine and hurried to do his latest master’s bidding.

  Benfro sat up and stretched his neck, trying to iron out the kinks that folded themselves from the top of his scalp right down to the tip of his tail. His legs and arms were stiff, his joints unwilling to bend the way nature intended. It felt as if he had lain motionless for months.

  The first thing that he noticed was that he wasn’t inside the great tree any more; he was lying in a patch of dry grass under a leafy canopy beside a sluggish stream. The sun had risen some time earlier, warming the air and stirring the gentlest of breezes. A light dew still clung to the ground in the shade.

  Confused, he stood up, seeing for the first time two bags propped against the nearest tree trunk. The first was his bag, his mother’s bag, which he had taken from the ruined cottage. The second was woven from thick grass, with sturdy handles made from braided hemp. Opening it, he found a selection of vegetables, fruit and some nuts. Enough to last him at least a week, longer if he were able to hunt or fish. It was, he thought, a gift from the mother tree. He remembered her strange appearance, the food she had given him and the story she had asked for in return. Her kindness and peace felt like something from the distant past; another crueller memory had pushed her to the back of his mind.

  His dream came back to him in an agonizing series of disjointed images. It jumbled into his memory, blurring the boundaries of what was real and what was imagined. He had dreamed before, countless times, yet always come the morning he had known where dream ended and reality began. Now he wasn’t so sure. The tumble of emotions: elation on seeing the village whole, horror on seeing it destroyed, terror on seeing the great form of Magog, guilt and shame as he breathed fire like some feral throwback to a time when dragons were naught but great lumbering beasts – all these were real to him. They sharpened the focus of his recent experience, swinging him rapidly back and forth between happiness and hopelessness, hot and cold like Ebrill showers on a sunny day, the shadows of scurrying clouds.

  He recalled the image of Magog in the clouds, devouring the villagers one by one. Worried, he picked up his leather bag, rummaged around in it until he found the last remnant of Magog and plucked out the tiny pink fragment. It sparkled in the morning light, a pale crimson that radiated menace. His vision blurred as he stared at it. Were there really tiny tendrils of red light swirling around the gem like smoke, like thorny creepers growing around his fingers, gripping them tight so that he might never let go? How else had the terrible form of Magog invaded his dream?

  With a determined effort of will, Benfro drew back his arm and threw the jewel as far away from him as he possibly could. It arced through the air, a tiny missile that whistled as it flew, further and further, until it came to a rest in the long grass, hidden from view.

  ‘What Benfro do?’ The little figure of the squirrel Malkin dropped from the branches of the nearest tree, its hands clutched around a large acorn.

  ‘Getting rid of bad company.’ Benfro slung one bag over his shoulder and bent down to pick up the other. He was pleased to see the squirrel and was about to ask it about the tree, but suddenly the world dimmed around him. His head spun and the ground swayed alarmingly as if there were some great tremor underground, some massive earth-bound beast turning in its grave. He fell forward first to his knees, then on to all fours, half-expecting the trees to come crashing down around his ears. On the ground he felt a little better – at least the swaying of the blades of grass was in time with the gentle breeze.

  ‘Benfro all right?’ Malkin asked.

  He looked sideways at the little squirrel, its face a mask of apprehension as it sprang through the grass to his side. Its surefooted movements seemed to anchor him, and he was able to get a grip on the swinging trees and curious upward-flowing river.

  ‘Fine,’ he said after a while ‘Just a little light-headed. I must have bent down too quickly.’

  Slowly this time, he pushed himself up on to his haunches, resting the weight of his body on the thick stem of his tail. Things still felt unreal, his head fuzzy as if he had held his breath underwater until his vision started to swim away from him. He focused on the diamond patterns that blurred everything, trying to see through them, but a wave of na
usea rolled over him and he toppled back to the ground.

  He was on all fours, staring down at the long grass around the base of one of the trees. His first coherent thought was that this was not where he had fallen. The next was that Malkin could not possibly have moved him, given that he must have weighed close on five hundred times as much as his companion. Flopping over on to his back, he saw the squirrel eyeing him nervously from a few yards away. A long track through the grass led in a straight line away from where he was. With a sinking feeling he realized what direction he had come. Slowly, reluctantly, he lifted his right hand. It was clenched around something, and it took a positive effort of will to open his fingers, palm up to reveal what he knew was there. It gleamed a pale red and weighed more than its tiny size suggested. Magog’s jewel.

  ‘Benfro better now?’ Malkin asked.

  ‘I don’t know, Malkin,’ he said, still slightly breathless. ‘What happened?’

  ‘Benfro fall over,’ the squirrel said. ‘Lie very still for a long time. Then start to crawl to tree. Get here.’ It indicated the place where he lay. ‘Wake up.’

  Explanation over, it hunched down beside Benfro and stared at him as if his head were about to explode or he was going to turn into some strange beast with too many arms. He found the squirrel disturbing but was nevertheless grateful for some company while he regained his strength.

  ‘I think,’ Benfro said after a few minutes’ companionable silence. ‘I think that I need to keep this close.’ He held up the jewel to the light. It glittered in the sunshine and he imagined he could hear the sound of shattering glass in the far distance. ‘But not too close.’

  ‘Benfro put in food bag,’ Malkin said. ‘With nuts and berries and fruit.’

  ‘Food bag?’ Benfro asked. And then he remembered. ‘Where’s the tree? Where am I?’

  ‘Mother come, mother go,’ Malkin said. ‘Mother say dragon need to rest a while. Dragon sleep. Now dragon awake, ready to find friends. Mother leave food to help on journey.’

  Benfro looked across to the spot from where he had crawled, and sure enough there were the two bags lying beside his sleeping place. Wearily, he hauled himself to his feet, noting that his balance seemed perfectly fine now. Mouthing a silent thanks to the mother tree, he wrapped the crimson jewel in some leaves plucked from a nearby shrub and placed it right at the bottom of the food bag. Then he turned to look at his surroundings again.

  It was not the clearing he had entered the night before, but a much smaller one, more of a thinning of the trees where a small river meandered through them. A hard-packed path forded the water in a babble of rapids over rocks, and downstream a deep pool moved sluggishly in the morning sunshine. There were bound to be fish in there, he thought.

  He waded carefully out into the stream having first placed the food bag with its concealed gem deep inside as close to the edge as he dared. He didn’t want to stray too far from the jewel in case it decided to incapacitate him again. The water was cold, fresh from the mountains and brown with upland peat. The pool was deep enough to dive and he plunged underneath the surface, striking for the bottom. Huge silver trout streaked past him as he pulled himself down to the silt and great swaying fronds of weed. He sat, holding his breath, keeping himself still until the fish calmed down, all the while letting a thin trickle of bubbles rise from his mouth. Soon, far sooner than he expected, the fish circled around him, curiosity overcoming their fear. In a flash he lunged, mouth agape, fangs catching a startled fin. He pushed up from the riverbed, swirling great clouds of brown, and rose to the surface like a cork.

  The fishing was good, and Benfro soon had six fat trout laid out on the bank, cleaned, headed, tailed and filleted. He ate two of the succulent slabs and wrapped the rest for the journey. All the while the effects of his earlier mishap wore off. His strength returned and the nagging headache ebbed away so that by the time the mid-morning sun had dried his back he was ready to set out.

  ‘Malkin come too.’ The squirrel broke the fascinated beady-eyed silence with which it had watched him all the while. Benfro looked down at the small creature and realized that he was glad of the company, however strange it might be.

  ‘Do you want to sit up here?’ he asked as he shouldered the bags. The little squirrel scampered on to his outstretched hand and up his arm, settling itself on his shoulder with a grasping of tiny claws in his thick hide.

  ‘Malkin see better from up here. Travel faster,’ it said. ‘Which way?’

  Benfro thought a while. He had no idea really, but he had been sleeping on one side of the river and had no memory of crossing it before. Enthusiastic for the first time since he could remember, he set off through the ford.

  9

  Gog, Son of the Winter Moon, built his palace in the low country, high on a rocky hill that rose out of a meandering bow in the great River Abheinn. Candlehall he called it, and his throne room was the Neuadd, lit with windows of coloured glass that depicted the stories of legend: great Rasalene himself and the courting of fair Arhelion. All about this massive hall he raised buildings, courtyards and galleries so that the whole was like a small city. His hospitality was legend and at times it seemed that all dragonkind flocked to that place.

  Magog, Son of the Summer Moon, was more restrained in his domain. Ever the more contemplative of the two brothers, he preferred the isolation of a sharp spur rising out of the centre of the great forest. Here he built Cenobus, a simple but grand palace, and underneath it, carved into the cold stone, he placed the repository of all his vast knowledge. Bards, warriors and those that would be mages came to this place in the hope of learning at the feet of the master, but few showed enough promise to catch his eye. Still it was a place of learning, for just to be in the presence of such power was an education in itself, and only the mountain retreat of Maddau the Wise rivalled it in this respect.

  Sir Frynwy, Tales of the Ffrydd

  Duke Dondal’s city residence was as run-down as his castle in the mountains, but it sat cheek by jowl with the sprawling palace complex, testament to how his family had once been both rich and important at the royal court.

  From their first approach through the great southern gate right up to the courtyard of the house Errol stuck close to his patron, terrified he would get lost in the maze of alleys, vennels and closes. There was nowhere he could get a bearing from, no open vista and no instantly recognisable building he could use as a reference point. Tynhelyg was a chaotic mess of noise and smells, people, animals, machinery all jostling together in too little space. For a boy whose life had always been defined by trees and fields, it was an overwhelming and unsettling place.

  From what he had read, Errol knew Tynhelyg was built on seven low hills, with five tributaries flowing into the great River Hafren, which bounded three sides of the palace complex. The older houses of the nobles clustered around the defensive wall that formed the fourth side. He recalled seeing a picture of the place in one of Andro’s books before he left Emmass Fawr, but now he was here he couldn’t begin to guess where the artist had stood to compose the image. There was no room within the encompassing walls to escape the crush of people and buildings.

  They had ridden as far as the gates, but there the duke had insisted on dismounting and walking to his town house. Whether this was another way of introducing him to Llanwennog society or just one of Dondal’s long list of eccentricities, Errol couldn’t be sure. If he wanted people to believe Errol a simpleton from the back country, then it had certainly worked. Several times on their long journey the duke had reached out and snapped his jaws shut with a low chuckle.

  Now they were inside and for a moment at least Errol could relax a little.

  ‘So what do you think of our great city, eh Errol?’ Dondal asked. ‘Better than Candlehall, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘I’ve never been to Candlehall, sir,’ Errol said truthfully.

  ‘Come now, lad, there’s no need for subterfuge here. Nothing to be ashamed of having travelled Gwlad, seen a bit.
’

  ‘No, sir, honestly. I’ve never been to Candlehall. This city’s very impressive though.’

  Dondal looked as if he had been insulted by Errol’s lack of worldliness. He was about to say something when a light tap on the door interrupted them. A smartly liveried young man entered the room on Dondal’s barked command. He was not one of the duke’s servants, of that much Errol was sure. Most of them were surly elderly men, and their uniforms were, in the main, older and more threadbare even than them.

  ‘Your Grace, I have a message from His Majesty King Ballah.’ The man gave the slightest of bows. He had a permanent sneer on his face, his nose wrinkled as if the room smelled of something he’d rather not have stepped in, and he looked at Errol, dressed in his page’s clothes, as if he were the source of that smell.

  ‘Well, what is it, man?’ the duke demanded.

  ‘His Majesty hopes you have had a pleasant journey and requests that you join him at your earliest convenience.’ The messenger turned and left without another word.

  ‘Time was I’d have skewered him where he stood,’ Dondal said, his face purpling with anger. He fumed for a moment and then let out a great sigh. ‘But my influence in the court isn’t what it once was, and King Ballah doesn’t much like it when you kill his messengers, however rude they are.’

  ‘How did he know you were here? The king, that is?’ Errol asked.

  ‘Oh, nothing happens within ten leagues of Tynhelyg that Ballah doesn’t hear of. Part of the reason I walked here was to give his spies time to report. I knew he’d want to see me as soon as I arrived. Oh well, I guess we’d better get it over and done with.’

  ‘What, now? But we’ve not had time to change. Or eat.’

  ‘Exactly. Keeps us on our toes, don’t you think? Come on.’

  They left the house by a back door, walking down a narrow alleyway towered over by buildings that must have been eight storeys high. After two or three turns they arrived at a closed and guarded gate. Dondal reached into his pocket and produced something which Errol couldn’t see, after which the guard stepped aside. The duke stooped to the door and fumbled at the lock.