The Rose Cord

by J. D. Oswald

  Flying, food and sleep were the only things on his mind for most of the time. He lived for the thrill of soaring through the air in the early morning. It had become almost a ritual, to rise with the dawn and climb straight to the top of the cliff. If the weather was clear, he would wait until the sun began to poke its head above the trees, then throw himself towards it like some living sacrifice. He was growing stronger by the day, able to soar higher, further and longer. He could manoeuvre in the air as lithely as any bird and took great delight in chasing crows, buzzards, pigeons or anything else that flew too near. In many ways it was like swimming, something he had done so much as a kitling that it was second nature. He only had to think about what he wanted to do, not be concerned with how it could be done.

  Taking off was not so natural. He had managed it only once, and that had nearly ended in disaster as rapidly approaching treetops threatened to knock him out of the sky. Only a last-minute inelegant sharp banking turn had saved him from serious injury, and he had rather lost his nerve after that. The cliff was a safer option.

  Landing was coming along slightly better, possibly because once he was in the air there was no option but to come down some time. He could slow himself to the point where final impact only hurt a little and did no lasting damage, especially if he hit one of the soft patches of brown dirt he had worn with his repeated attempts. But he still could not keep his balance on landing, so he had developed a technique for minimizing the damage, dropping forward into a roll as soon as he felt his feet touch the earth. It was not elegant, but it got him down without breaking anything.

  Corwen did not come to him every day. Sometimes the dragon spirit would not show up for a week or more. He would set a task and then depart, not returning until it was completed. How he knew, Benfro couldn’t tell, but the old dragon was always there for the last few minutes of the job and always seemed to know exactly what he had been doing.

  And so it was, as he packed the last of the small stones into his wall, placing them carefully to fill the gaps and tie everything together, he sensed the presence of a watchful eye behind him.

  ‘You’re nearly done with the corral. Good.’ The old dragon spoke as if he were continuing a conversation from a few moments earlier rather than uttering the first words Benfro had heard in eight days.

  ‘It’s finished. Yes, master.’ Benfro turned to see the wizened old figure. He seemed so small, yet today there was a straightness in his back, a change in his demeanour that Benfro took to be a good sign. Either that or he had been alone for so long he was seeing things that weren’t there. ‘But I still don’t know what or who it’s for.’

  ‘As I said, it’s a corral, Benfro.’ Corwen stepped off the track and through the narrow opening into the middle of the enclosure. ‘It’s a safe place for farmed animals when the nights get long and predators come down from the mountain in search of a meal.’

  ‘Farmed animals?’ Benfro asked. ‘I don’t understand. What is farmed?’

  ‘Ah yes,’ Corwen said. ‘I’d forgotten how lush the forests of the lower Ffrydd are, and how temperate the clime. Up here in the foothills winter is an altogether harsher mistress. Haven’t you noticed how the sun takes longer each morning to raise itself above the trees? How it cuts a lower arc through the sky and is gone earlier each evening?’

  Benfro had to admit that he had. It had concerned him a little that this was happening much faster than it did back home. Back where his home used to be. He had noticed a chill in the morning air too, and the frequency of the rainstorms was growing steadily. Not the warm, washing rain he was used to, but a harsh, cold, wind-blown wetness that got between his scales and chilled him so it could send him scurrying back to the cave and the fire.

  ‘Ynys Môn taught you to hunt and to fish,’ Corwen said. It was not a question, Benfro noted; more a statement of fact. As if his master had been in conversation with the villager recently. ‘He taught you well too. But he taught you nothing of the seasons. And why should he? They hardly exist down there, save for a greater dampness in the springtime. Here there will soon be snow. There’ll be months when you’ll not be able to find the leaves and herbs you’ve been eating. I’ve even known the river to freeze, though only occasionally.’

  ‘But what of these farmed animals?’ Benfro had learned the hard way that Corwen was prone to wandering from the subject of any lesson. Usually the digressions were important in their own right, but just as often they merely left him more confused than before.

  ‘Where there’s plenty you can take what you need when you need it,’ Corwen said. ‘But this isn’t such a place. In the past, when dragons lived all over the land, we charged men with breeding animals that were docile, stupid, easily led. Some say that great Rasalene himself created mankind to do this service for us. That may be legend or it may be truth. It’s not important. But the men kept their animals in vast flocks, fattening them up on the lush hill grass all the summer long, so that when the winter came there would be food to eat. Corrals such as this one you have built were for the animals to shelter in when the nights grew long. They’d huddle together for warmth, and the walls would protect them from wolves and lions. During the day they’d roam the clearings, foraging for what food they could find, watched over by men. Or they’d be fed on grass cut and dried in the summer and stored in caves.

  ‘We dragons were wanderers then, and men respected us for the wisdom we brought and the magic we used to make their miserable lives more bearable. So they bred far more than they needed and gave willingly whenever we asked.’

  Benfro cast his eyes over the structure he had spent the last ten days creating. It wasn’t very big. Its only entrance was just wide enough for him to get through if he squeezed, and once inside he could do little more than turn round. The walls were not high, coming up to his chest. He couldn’t help thinking they would provide scant protection.

  ‘It doesn’t seem all that secure,’ he said.

  ‘For a start you’d guard the entrance, both to keep your stock in and anything else out,’ Corwen said. ‘And it’s true, this is a very small structure. But I’m not trying to teach you to be a farmer, Benfro. You’ll not starve here, with your hunting skills. Though you may find your diet becoming quite monotonous.’

  ‘Then why have I built this?’

  ‘Because I always meant to build one myself and never managed to get it done.’ A faint smile played across the old dragon’s face.

  ‘You mean it’s for no purpose?’ Benfro looked at the blisters on his hands, felt the ache of his arm and leg muscles from endless lifting and carrying. Above all else he remembered the long hot hours of toiling away to carry out what he thought was an important task, a vital step along his path to becoming a mage. He had undertaken the job without a question because he knew that Corwen was teaching him all he needed to know to take on the warrior priests and beat them.

  ‘And that’s one of the first lessons you need to learn.’ The old dragon cut into his thoughts as if they were words painted in the air above his head. ‘You must always question everything. Maybe not aloud – I’ve no doubt your mother taught you manners – but never, ever assume that anything is so just because someone tells you it is.’

  Benfro looked from the solid structure to the not quite physical image of the old dragon and back. He put a hand out to the wall, patting its reassuring bulk. Then, with a degree of trepidation, he reached out for his tutor, meaning to touch him gently on the shoulder but fully expecting his fingers to pass right through. He closed his eyes as his hand fell on the spot where it should have made contact, not wanting to trust his sight. He could feel the air, cold and damp with the promise of rain. A light wind played about his talons – and then Corwen was there.

  He could feel him.

  He snapped his eyes open to see his hand resting on a shoulder that still looked insubstantial but which did not yield to the slight pressure he put on it.

  ‘I thought you were a ghost,’ Benfro said.


  ‘Not a ghost, a memory,’ Corwen corrected him. ‘Look carefully and tell me what you really see.’

  Benfro paused a moment. Normally when Corwen asked him to look, he meant he wanted Benfro to look for the Llinellau Grym. But he was outside in the daylight. How could he possibly see their vague glow against the glare of the sun?

  ‘Forget the sun,’ Corwen said. ‘Ignore the light. See with your inner eye.’

  It was the kind of cryptic advice Benfro was used to receiving. He had no idea what the old dragon meant, but he knew that he had to try. Screwing up his eyes against the glare, he concentrated on the cave mouth. The piles of wood on either side shadowed it, and he knew that one of the thick Llinellau passed inside. Yet he could see nothing.

  ‘Why do you cling so hard to the physical?’ Corwen asked. ‘Close your eyes, picture the scene as you’ve seen it a hundred times before. Use that wonderful memory your mother gifted you with.’

  Benfro did as he was told, letting his lids drop lightly down and relaxing his forehead muscles out of their habitual puzzled frown. He built up a picture of the clearing as he remembered it, starting with the cave and working outwards. It was not a place he had studied hard, just somewhere he lived in from day to day. So it came to him as something of a surprise how easily he could recall details he had never noticed before: the position and shape of the bushes, the patches of worn earth, the kink in the track as it skirted a boulder as big as he was and too large to move; all these and more slotted into place as he cast his imaginary gaze over the landscape.

  But there were no Llinellau.

  He considered the space behind him, recalling with greater difficulty the shape and form of the corral he had just completed. It appeared bigger in his imagination, the walls closer and higher than they should have been. The part he had just finished was clear, each stone an individual, considered and placed with deliberation. But away from his immediate gaze it was indistinct, a sandy brown blur as if his eyes were filled with tears. Concentrating, he tried to recall the work he had done the day before, moving back along the wall as if he were inspecting it close up. Individual stones whose shapes had stuck in his mind leaped out of the blur, more and more building up to a mental picture of the whole as he slowly paced himself back to where he had started. The corral shrank to its normal size, its detail set solid in his mind.

  And still there were no Llinellau.

  He turned his attention to the river. There was no way he could remember the exact state of the water at any given time, but the arrangement of rocks in the weir and the patterns of wet and dry as the track undulated through the ford seemed clear enough. He could see up to the waterfall, its falling plume crashing into the pool with a familiar roar. Was that the real waterfall or his memory of it? In his mind he had moved in close, somehow hovering above the water. The noise had risen to match his distance, filling his ears and blotting out all else. He turned to view the clearing from his new perspective and everything was changed.

  It was glowing with a golden light that pulsed gently in time to some unimaginable rhythm. The sky was not the pale autumn blue that he remembered, but a shifting mix of purples and oranges spread over a background of black. Light speared from the distant treetops, piercing the heavens with innumerable pinprick stars. The sun hung heavily over the trees, a great swollen orb that sizzled and spat in its own heat haze. The grass was a sea of silver, reflecting an inner light that waved and twisted in the breeze. Shrubs and bushes were multicoloured explosions in the waves, green and blue and yellow like fire. But it was the trees ringing the clearing that were most magnificent. They shone like beacons, every conceivable colour swirling around their trunks and through their outstretched boughs to their leaves.

  And the Grym was everywhere.

  ‘You see it now, don’t you?’ a voice said in his ear. Benfro felt a touch on his hand, as if someone had placed their own over it. Eyes still closed, he looked over at his master. But this wasn’t the old dragon he had come to know. This was a creature only slightly less splendid than Magog himself. He was huge, towering above the cliff, and his scales glistened with an iridescence that was painful to look at. He had wings so large that, even folded, their joints rose above his head, held high and proud. He was suffused with a glow every bit as golden as that which filled the whole clearing, save for a dull redness that spread around his magnificent head – an alien thing, out of place and jarring. But what caught Benfro’s attention more was the way the redness spread like a canker down one side of the dragon’s neck, to his shoulder and the hand, his own hand, clasped there.

  An idea began to grow in the back of his mind then, a dawning realization that scared him even though it was only half formed. But before he could complete the thought, something hit him like a punch to the gut, driving wind and sense out of him like pulp from a squashed fruit. He pitched forward, knees buckling beneath him, and crumpled to the ground.

  19

  Quite where the myths surrounding dragons come from, nobody knows. It is believed that dragons are fire-breathing creatures with great powerful wings capable of bearing them over vast distances; that they can swoop down on the unwary and carry off whole cattle in their talons; that when cornered they can belch forth a magical flame which consumes only flesh, leaving a victim’s bones and even his clothes untouched. All these and more myths about dragons abound, no doubt the invention of some or other parent anxious to instil a little discipline in the family. All are untrue.

  Many believe that dragons do not exist at all. That too is untrue. I have encountered numerous dragons on my travels and found them in the main to be unexceptionable beasts, humble to the point of obeisance and quite unprepossessing. It is true that a dragon is bigger than a man, but then so are many creatures that walk this earth. If you do not fear the gently lowing dairy cow on her way to the farmyard for milking then neither need you fear a dragon.

  A dragon’s wings, for they are indeed possessed of such appendages, are a sorry thing to behold. Anyone who has read the works of Barrod Sheepshead will be most disappointed at the pathetic flappings of skin that hang from the backs of these creatures. Never could they have been used for flight, and it is the opinion of many dissectors that they in fact serve to cool the beast’s body in hot weather, it being unable to sweat.

  Dragons possess a rudimentary intelligence that sets them perhaps a little higher than the other base beasts of the forest. They congregate in small communities and affect an almost human lifestyle, perhaps in imitation of their betters. By some freak of nature they breed only seldom and live to a great age. In all my travels I met just one creature who claimed to be less than a hundred years old, but since they measure such things by counting the seasons and seem to have no writing at all, time perhaps has different meaning to them. Of one thing there can be no doubt: there are few dragons left in this world and their numbers are dwindling.

  Father Charmoise, Dragons’ Tales

  The sight of Emmass Fawr rising from the mountain ridge always raised Melyn’s spirits. It had been his home for many decades now, the seat of his power. Its vast size at once made him feel all-powerful and yet humbled him. And more important than anything else, it was here that his god chose to speak to him. Weary from weeks on the road, he wanted nothing more than to spend some time in contemplation and prayer, to feel the warmth of the Shepherd wash away his aches and pains.

  Smoke was pouring from the chimneys of the rude houses clustered around the great arch. Melyn scarcely felt the cold, warmed as he was by the Grym, but he recognized the onset of winter. Another year almost gone. It was too late now to begin the campaign against Llanwennog, even if he had wanted to. His warrior priests could survive the bitter cold, but their horses would suffer in the mountain passes, their supply wagons would get bogged down in the snow. Better to wait until the year had turned. By the time they had made their way across the forest and taken care of the dragon, the passes would be clearing.

  The troop rode through the arc
h and on up to the monastery complex with Melyn at its head. Groups of novitiates were drilling in the main courtyard; warrior priests went about their daily routines; quaisters bustled novitiates between lectures; and the monastery staff went about their unseen business of maintaining what was as much a small city as the headquarters of a religious order.

  All seemed normal, calm and as it should be when Melyn handed his horse over to a stable boy. He hauled himself up the stairs to his personal quarters, noticing not for the first time how much more his joints creaked and moaned at the climb. A visit to the bathhouse for a soak and steam would soon sort that out, but first he needed to go over the reports from his time away.

  Andro was waiting for him at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Your Grace, it’s good to see you returned safely,’ the old librarian said.

  ‘And you, Andro,’ Melyn said. ‘But you didn’t come up here just to welcome me home. What’s the bad news?’

  ‘It concerns Errol,’ Andro said, and Melyn saw that the old man was unusually agitated. He wrung his hands constantly. Melyn was aware that the librarian had taken a liking to the boy, but the death of a novitiate serving the order and the queen should be seen as a fine example to his fellows.

  ‘I’ll miss him too, Andro,’ Melyn said. ‘But he’ll graduate to the priesthood posthumously. He died honourably.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ the librarian said. ‘He’s not dead; he’s here.’

  Benfro heaved the contents of his stomach, mostly semi-digested fish and wood sorrel leaves, on to the hard-packed stones and dirt of the track. His head was reeling as if someone had hit him with a tree and his lungs didn’t seem to want to work.