The Rose Cord

by J. D. Oswald

  ‘Sir Frynwy! Ynys Môn! Meirionydd!’ he shouted as if they were nearby. ‘Help me, please.’

  ‘Your dead friends can’t help you now, hatchling.’ The inquisitor’s voice speared through Benfro like a hot blade, like the sword of fire he had used on Morgwm the Green. The young dragon stopped in his tracks, unsure whether he had done so himself or some outside force had compelled him to. He whirled around, ready to face his enemy, seeing the terrible form of the inquisitor bearing down on him. Melyn’s eyes blazed fiery red and he held that fateful burning blade in his hands.

  ‘I have you now, abomination,’ Melyn screamed, and Benfro could see the flecks of saliva around the edges of his mouth. ‘I will kill your wandering spirit and leave your body to rot wherever it might be.’

  Benfro backed away from the approaching inquisitor, his hearts pounding in his chest and panic stripping all sense from him. He was caught; he was going to die. Why had he come to this place? How had he come to this place? The floor was cold under his feet and he felt the rough stone wall press first his tail and then his back as he retreated.

  The inquisitor lifted his sword high, ready to swing down and finish the job he had begun on Benfro’s mother. Benfro was transfixed by the blade, but then something beyond it caught his eye – at the top of the throne, where the twin spires of stone that formed its back speared up to the ceiling. There was something in the air, flickering and twisting like some wind-blown rag. But it was a rag of stars, a clear night seen through a rent in the fabric of nothing. Something in him surged at the sight. It was at once meaningless to him and deeply moving, as if he saw a face he had not seen in a thousand lifetimes, a great love lost. And this annoying little creature with its trick magic stood in his way.

  A terrible anger filled him, a familiar feeling that mixed despair and rage in equal measure. His stomach lurched, his throat glowed with inner heat and then with a ferocious roar he spat out a wall of flame. He wanted to see the inquisitor burn, wanted that terrible man to writhe in agony as the fire consumed him slowly. But the old warrior merely dropped his sword in an arc, deflecting the blast as he stepped back.

  ‘I’m impressed, dragon,’ Melyn said. ‘But you’ll still die.’ He raised his hands and the magical fire was swept into a ball in front of him, trapped like its creator. Benfro readied himself for the attack. He could feel more fire building up in him. But then, in that instant before the inquisitor used his own weapon to destroy him, he felt a hand on his shoulder and heard a voice in his ear.

  ‘Not now, Sir Benfro. You’ve much yet to learn.’ It was quiet, reasoned and measured, but it was unmistakably Magog.

  Benfro turned to face the great mage and felt himself pulled forward at great speed. Behind him the inquisitor roared, and it felt like hot claws were tearing at his brain. But Benfro was moving rapidly now, faster than the wind over endless green forest. Familiar places flashed past in the twinkling of an eye, then he saw the clearing, surrounded by undulating foothills covered in dark green woodland, the river running through it like a scar. Faster and faster he hurtled towards the open cave mouth, the howling of the wind in his ears like a scream of frustration as the claws in his brain finally gave way, the inquisitor gone from his mind.

  Benfro woke on his bed of dried grass. He couldn’t remember going to sleep, just the incredible rush of relief when he had found himself back in the clearing. His head ached as if someone had pelted it with rocks in the night. His whole body was sore, and his throat felt like he had been shouting for hours. He could remember vividly the details of what he hoped had been a dream, but where had those images come from? And to see Frecknock so badly treated, such a shadow of her former venomous self, saddened him even as he knew it was all just a figment of his imagination.

  The fire had burned down, leaving only the blackened stumps of the larger sticks arranged in a neat circle around the middle. Groaning at the discomfort, Benfro hauled himself out of his makeshift bed and limped over to the hearth. Poking about in the ashes revealed a few small lumps of charcoal still with an inner glow. With much blowing and handfuls of grass ripped from his bed, he soon had a fire flickering into life. He fed it with the remaining wood from the pile, building up a small compact blaze that would hopefully keep burning for the bulk of the day. Better by far to keep a fire going than have to go through the rigmarole of trying to kindle one from scratch. That was one of the many wise things his mother had taught him.

  Outside the cave, the day was much further progressed than he had realized. The sun was already past the first quarter of its arc through the sky and well on the way towards its zenith. It was unlike him to sleep past the dawn and he felt disoriented coming into the day so late. He yawned and stretched, first his arms and then his wings, letting them soak up the morning rays. To his delight they unfurled like huge sheets, taking the breeze and battering it into submission. There was a reassuring strength in his back, despite the aches and pains, a feeling that he could leap into the air and fly anywhere he wanted. The freedom was intoxicating, a healing draught, and for the first time since he could remember Benfro tipped his head back and laughed.

  The river yielded fat fish for his breakfast. As he sat and ate them, he felt a chill in the air. The sky was clear, only a few wispy clouds high up, not thick enough to shade the sun, and yet its glow was weaker than he would have expected. Looking around the clearing he could see the leaves on the trees turning brown, preparing to fall. Spring had not come to the forest when he had fled the village, which seemed like only a few weeks ago, but in truth many months had passed. Winter was on its way, and it promised to be cold. He would need to gather supplies of wood for his fire. And he might have to start thinking about smoking some of the food he caught, though he would need to find somewhere to store it.

  It was nice to have a simple task to perform, and he set about it with gusto. The aches in his body soon disappeared as he broke dead branches from the trees all around the clearing and carried or dragged them back to the cave mouth. Working, he didn’t have to think. It was sufficient just to do. Once he had gathered enough to last a month, piled outside on the track, he set about sorting it into sizes, breaking everything but the thickest into pieces that would fit on the hearth. Stacking as much as he could in the cave, he piled the rest carefully around its mouth, forming a narrow corridor from the track.

  By the time he was finished, the sun was dipping towards the horizon and he was sticky with sweat and dust. As a kitling Benfro had hated stacking logs. To be fair he had hated any kind of strenuous manual labour, from preparing unguents for his mother to setting the table and washing the cooking pots. Yet now, with no one ordering him about or criticizing him, he looked upon his work with a sense of pride. He had set out to do something and had achieved it. With a lightness of heart he had not felt in an age, he plunged once more into the cool waters of the river to wash himself off and catch some supper.

  Later, clean, full of fish and with the fire crackling away merrily with its new supply of wood, Benfro lay back on his bed and considered the day. He ached still, but it was the soreness of hard labour rather than the tired pain that had greeted him on waking. Stiffly, he got up from his bed and walked to the other side of the hearth. There was considerably less room in the cave now, with his supplies of firewood piled around the walls, but the space where his mysterious visitor had sat was still clear. As it had been every night since that first visit. He was beginning to wonder whether he hadn’t dreamed the whole episode. Maybe everything that had happened to him since the men arrived had been a dream. It was a comforting thought, but cold. If this was a dream then he seemed powerless to wake.

  ‘And who’s to say what’s real and what’s a dream anyway?’

  Benfro whirled round, searching for the source of the voice. Through the low flickering flames he could see a familiar figure sitting on his bed. The old dragon was back. Yet there was no way he could have crept into the cave unnoticed. Outside was silent save for the constant quie
t rumble of the waterfall. Benfro was certain he would have heard even the softest footfall on the crumbly earth, smelt the sweet spicy perfume that pervaded the cave whenever it was disturbed. He should have sensed the presence of another dragon. Even the warrior priests he could sense at a distance by the hate and anger they radiated. Yet he couldn’t even sense his visitor now, when he could see him not five yards from where he was standing.

  ‘How—’

  ‘Tell me what you see,’ the old dragon interrupted in his annoyingly cryptic manner. Benfro sighed. Nothing, it seemed, was ever straightforward.

  ‘What do I see?’ He settled himself down on the floor, which, he noticed, was a great deal less comfortable than his bed. ‘I see the same cave I was in yesterday. It’s well stocked with wood now so the fire shouldn’t go out. I can see out through the entrance to darkness beyond. I can see a haze of smoke rising from the flames. It dulls the glow of the rock walls, but they still sparkle with a life of their own. I can see the bed I made from dried grass and at its head there’s my old leather bag, filled with gold coins. And I can see a dragon sitting in front of me whose name I don’t know.’

  ‘Is that all you see?’ the dragon asked. There was no judgement in its voice, no sarcasm or humour. It was a simple question.

  ‘Would you have me describe the shape of the embers glowing in the fire?’ Benfro countered, a note of weary impatience in his voice. ‘Or perhaps I could describe the aroma of this dry soil.’ He picked up a handful and let it trickle through his fingers. ‘I could count and measure all of the logs I collected today, but I’d rather know more about you. Who are you? Where did you go?’

  ‘It’s a shame that you see so little,’ the old dragon said. ‘As to where I went, well I didn’t go anywhere. I was here. I’m always here. I was watching you, waiting for you to be ready.’

  ‘Who are you?’ Benfro asked again.

  ‘I think you know who I am.’

  ‘Are you Corwen?’ Benfro asked.

  ‘Corwen is dead,’ the dragon replied.

  ‘That’s not an answer,’ Benfro countered. ‘Are you Corwen?’

  ‘So you can accept that a dead dragon might appear before you, speak to you, teach you. Is that not mad?’

  ‘I spoke to Ystrad Fflur after he died, and I saw Meirionydd in Magog’s palace. She appeared to me as a young dragon, as she was in her prime. Yet I watched her die, burned to death by men. And I saw another dragon, the most beautiful and magnificent lady I have ever seen. She rose from the jewels I had piled up. Magog’s collection. He had them all separated, alone. They were his collection. That was mad, evil even.’

  ‘You saw the spirit of Gwynhyfyr.’ A slight dreamy quality came to the old dragon’s voice, as if he were drifting away in a reverie of his own. ‘They say she was the fairest dragon to live in this realm. If you don’t count Ammorgwm, that is.’

  ‘She thanked me for freeing them. Then Ynys Môn told me to take the gold coins. He said I would need it when I left the Ffrydd.’

  ‘Tell me, Benfro: where did you place all those jewels, those countless memories?’

  ‘At the nexus,’ Benfro replied. ‘Where the Llinellau crossed.’

  ‘Llinellau?’

  ‘The Llinellau Grym. They criss-crossed the room like a net, but there was a point where they all met. That’s where Meirionydd told me to pile the stones.’

  ‘And had you seen these lines before?’

  ‘I’ve tried,’ Benfro said. ‘Meirionydd was teaching me …’ He trailed off, not wanting to think about her death.

  ‘But you couldn’t see them before,’ the old dragon said. ‘How did you see them in Magog’s palace?’

  ‘I don’t know. They were just there. The power in that place was just so obvious.’

  ‘And it isn’t here? Look around you, Sir Benfro of the Borrowed Wings. Tell me what you see.’

  The old dragon’s voice was gentle, soothing, as if he knew hurt, had felt it himself many times before. Benfro looked around at the cave, marvelling at the way its walls glowed with the firelight. Or was it the firelight? The flames were low, little more than yellow-blue sprites dancing over the glowing embers. Yet the walls sparkled with a far brighter fire. Perhaps this was a place of power too.

  Benfro concentrated, squinting at the stone. Was it his imagination or could he make out a grid, the faintest of white lines covering the walls like the web of some vast spider? The floor too was a mesh of ghostly strokes like the ones he had seen in Magog’s repository. They were thin as gossamer, insubstantial as the air.

  ‘I can see Llinellau everywhere,’ he said with mounting excitement. The old dragon smiled at him from his seat. For some reason this was important to him.

  ‘You see them. Good. What else?’

  Benfro reached out for the nearest line, where it curved around his feet and folded tail. It was just out of reach, and when he leaned forward, he could have sworn it inched away from his grasp.

  ‘I can’t touch them. They move away from me.’

  ‘The Llinellau Grym never move, Benfro,’ the old dragon said, quiet earnestness in his voice. ‘They’re the one constant thing in the whole of Gwlad. Men live and die; dragons live and die; even the ancient trees will meet their end some day, but the Grym is the power of life. It’s constant. It flows through every living thing, every point of this world. It’s not the lines that move, Benfro, but you.’

  That made slightly less sense than some of his mother’s more obscure lessons on herb lore. He could see the Llinellau move as he reached for them. Frustrated, he lunged, trying to grab with speed what avoided him when he was slow. Tripping over his feet as he tried to stand too quickly, he pitched head first into the fire.

  ‘That dragon’s beginning to annoy me.’

  Beulah sat on the Obsidian Throne, toying with the silver chain that hung from Frecknock’s collar. Melyn watched her from his own seat, set a little lower than the throne and to the front.

  ‘It’s the same one you saw before?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Beulah said. ‘There can’t be more than one like that, surely.’

  ‘You, Frecknock,’ Melyn said, staring at the ragged creature he had gifted the queen. It was a pathetic beast, cowering behind one massive leg of the throne like a mouse that has escaped from a cat but knows it’s still doomed. Looking at it and remembering the vast spread wings of the dragon that had leaped from Ruthin’s Grove, he found it hard to believe they were from the same species.

  ‘Your Grace?’ the dragon answered. Even its voice was feeble.

  ‘You said you knew the dragon,’ Melyn said.

  ‘I thought I did,’ Frecknock said. ‘I thought it was Benfro, Morgwm’s kitling. But he’s smaller even than me, only fifteen years old. A dragon will appear in the dream state as it sees itself, but not even Benfro would think himself so grand. I’ve never seen a dragon so magnificent. And Benfro could never hope to master the subtle arts in so short a time. He can’t even see the Llinellau Grym. What you call the lines of power.’

  ‘Then why did you think it was this Benfro?’ Beulah asked.

  ‘Because it felt like him. Only it felt like someone else as well. I’m sorry, Your Majesty, this visitation has confused me.’

  ‘The dragon that escaped from Ruthin’s Grove was easily as big as you,’ Melyn said to Frecknock. ‘It had wings large enough for it to glide. Who could that have been?’

  ‘Sir Trefaldwyn had large wings,’ Frecknock said. ‘He was Benfro’s father, but he disappeared years ago. Before Benfro was even hatched.’

  ‘Where did he go?’ Melyn asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Frecknock said. ‘Morgwm would never say. She didn’t like to talk about it. But before he went he was always asking Sir Frynwy about the old times. I remember he used to discuss our stories at great length, as if he believed they’d really happened.’

  ‘And you don’t believe that?’

  ‘Our legends and myths are just lessons, that’s all,’ Frecknock
said. ‘We dress them up as if we were once great mages and bards, but we’re nothing special.’

  Melyn wasn’t completely convinced by Frecknock’s words, nor by her apparent resignation to her fate. He recalled all too easily the vain creature who had sent her call out to the world in search of a mate. It was possible that another dragon had come searching for her, maybe even Benfro’s father returning home. If that was the case then it was likely there were two of the beasts roaming the Ffrydd. He had tried to follow their uninvited guest as it had fled, but he had never known anything move so fast. He had only managed the most fleeting of glimpses of its destination. He needed more to be able to pinpoint it.

  ‘Where would Benfro go?’ Melyn asked. ‘We’ve quartered the forest around your old village, and he’s disappeared. If he were aimless we’d have caught him by now. He must have been heading somewhere.’

  ‘I don’t know where any other dragons live,’ Frecknock said. ‘If there are any left at all. But Morgwm used to go north into the forest, sometimes for months at a time. She stopped when Benfro was hatched.’

  ‘North, through the forest,’ Melyn said. He tried to picture it from the times he had travelled in his youth. The north of the great forest of the Ffrydd was largely unmapped, a wilderness, but there were paths that ran through it, and passes other than the Graith Fawr that cut through the Rim mountains, or so he had heard.

  ‘Have you ever been that way?’ he asked the dragon.

  ‘Not since I was a kitling. When we fled from the north we came through the pass just below Mount Arnahi. I remember the snow and the bitter cold. And an old, old dragon who lived in a clearing, all alone. He told me some funny stories, but I can’t remember his name.’

  It was enough. Melyn knew the great mountain, the highest peak on the Rim. He had only seen it from a great distance, but its distinctive shape brought an image to his mind. He tried to recall all that he had seen the night before. It had been a clearing in the forest, with a small river cascading over rocks. That had been the focus for the fleeing beast, but now Melyn could put it in context. He could pull back and try to guess its location, if he could just see a little more.