by J. D. Oswald
‘What … what happened?’ he managed to whisper after some minutes of wheezing had passed.
‘You tell me,’ Corwen said. ‘You were fine for a moment, and then I lost all contact with you. Tell me what you saw.’
‘I couldn’t see anything.’ Benfro latched on to the first solid memory that he could. ‘The sun was too bright, even in the shadows.’
‘But you closed your eyes.’ Corwen’s voice probed the mess of thoughts in Benfro’s head. ‘What happened then?’
‘I still couldn’t see any lines. I couldn’t see you, either. But I moved across to the waterfall. Then it all changed.’
‘I think we’d better go inside,’ Corwen said. ‘It’s getting late.’ And it was true. Benfro had not noticed before – he had been too busy vomiting on the road, too preoccupied with the war going on in his head – but the sun had dipped below the treeline, painting only the canopy top on the distant ridges in orange and green.
‘A drink first,’ he said, hauling himself to his feet. The world spun alarmingly around him and he sat back on his tail for steadiness. It was a struggle to cover the few short steps to the water’s edge. He knelt by the weir, grateful that it raised the water level by a few feet, not so far for him to bend down. The surface was mirror-smooth, reflecting back an image he could not believe.
He was staring at another dragon, so close their noses were almost touching. Instinctively he flinched away, and the other dragon did the same thing. It was a ferocious-looking beast, fully twice his size. Its face was a mask of shiny scales, each catching the light and refracting it in an endless variation of colours. Its upper fangs pierced its lips like two knives, curving down to sharp points as white as silver. Its lower fangs, shorter but no less menacing, locked with their cousins in an uncompromising grimace. Its ears were long and thin, scooped back at their feathery tips in an enquiring, almost quizzical fashion, and its eyes burned with a fiery red malevolence that was both intimidating and strangely exhilarating.
But it was something else that struck him most. Flickering in and out like a shadow in colour, a shape cast by firelight, was a pattern of colourful lights. They danced and writhed in time to his thoughts and the thumpity-thump rhythm of his hearts.
Benfro moved his head the better to see the swirling colours at their cat-and-mouse game. The other dragon moved in time with him, and he suddenly understood. He lifted a hand, marvelling at how much bigger and stronger it was than he remembered, and waved it between him and the image. His alter ego lifted the opposite hand and waved it too. When they met, the surface of the water split and the image was destroyed.
The colours faded away in a series of ripples that circled out of his view before returning as echoes and forming intricate patterns on the surface of the pool. For a moment he was transfixed by the simple complexity of it, but the chaos soon reverted to a mirror-smooth surface. Once more he could peer in fascination at what he now realized was his own reflection.
Benfro had never been one for looking at himself overmuch. He had seen the way Frecknock would spend hours in front of a glass or gazing into a still pool. She would pout and preen and sing little songs to herself, generally flying into a rage as soon as she realized that she was being watched. Still, he was generally aware of what he looked like. Even with the addition of his wayward wings, he had bulked out only a little. Or so he had thought. But the face that stared back at him from the water was a complete stranger.
Weariness tugged at him, but it was no match for the fascination he felt as he explored his new face, feeling those fangs with sharp-taloned fingers, stroking those scales and marvelling at the way the light played on their smooth hard surface. His forearms were as thick as stout tree trunks, his shoulders bulging and squared where once they had drooped. Indeed his whole upper body had filled out so that his wings no longer looked like artlessly tacked-on appendages, but rather as if they belonged where they were. He would have opened them out, flexed their vastness against the approaching night, but he was too drained.
With an enormous effort of will, he pulled himself to his feet. Only when he turned did he see the stooped figure of Corwen, standing by the cave mouth and watching him, intently.
‘I grew so big,’ Benfro said. ‘When?’
‘Ah, Benfro, it’s good to have you back,’ the old dragon said. ‘Please, step inside. I no longer feel the cold, but I can see that you do, far more than you’ll admit.’
Slowly, almost limping with the effort, Benfro dragged himself into the cave. The fire was nearly out, dull embers piled up neatly in the middle of an ocean of white ash. For a moment he just stood, surveying the distance between fire and bed, weighing the weariness that he felt now against the effort that would be needed to get a new fire started in the morning if he let this one go out. In the end a lifetime of conditioning took over. He could hear his mother’s voice chiding him for letting the fire get so low. He dropped to his knees once more, picking a few small dry strips of kindling from the pile he had laboriously prepared and cracking them into place over the coals. Taking a short breath in, he blew gently on the fire to get it going. He did all this with a weary acceptance that the job would take time and that it would be some hours before the cave was truly warm, so it was with some surprise that he saw a tiny jet of flame gush from his mouth and devour the twigs.
‘Oh!’ Corwen exclaimed. ‘How splendid.’
‘Is it?’ Benfro asked, too tired to be amazed any more. All he could see was his fire reduced instantly to ashes, his hopes of warmth dashed by a cruel trick. And on top of it all, the embarrassment at what he had done in front of another dragon.
‘But of course,’ Corwen said. ‘This is the real you now. I’m sure of it. The great Magog, Son of the Summer Moon, would never stoop to breathing fire. Not even if he was freezing. But this is a skill only a dragon true to his nature can hope to master. Many spend all their lives at it and never manage anything.’
‘I did it before, in my dreams,’ Benfro said. ‘Or at least I thought it must have been a dream. But the villagers’ bodies were reckoned by the flame and their jewels ended up in Magog’s repository.’ Absentmindedly he reached for some more substantial logs, piling them up like a miniature funeral pyre on the hearth. ‘I was so ashamed. I didn’t want to say.’
‘Ashamed?’ Corwen asked. ‘Why should you be ashamed?’
‘Breathing fire is a throwback to a time when dragons were no better than beasts, feral and wild,’ Benfro said.
‘Now that’s Sir Frynwy talking, if ever I heard him,’ Corwen said.
‘He told me, yes,’ Benfro said. ‘But my mother taught me too. When she was showing me the herbs and oils to use for the reckoning ceremony.’
‘Herbs and oils,’ Corwen scoffed. ‘Nonsense. And your mother knew it. True, the right mix will produce the flame, but it’s a pale shadow of a true reckoning. What you gave to the villagers was only your birthright as a dragon. There’s no shame in it. But this –’ the old dragon pointed at the smoking logs ‘– is a mark of true greatness. What you’ve just done is far more skilful than producing the reckoning fire. You’ve breathed a true flame.’
‘I only blew on the embers,’ Benfro said. ‘I never meant for anything to happen.’ He leaned forward and blew on the pile again. This time a great gout of flame spewed forth, catching on the dry wood and setting it instantly alight. It blazed with a merry warmth and he huddled close to it, too exhausted to be in awe. Too tired even to sleep.
‘Ah, Benfro, cherish this memory,’ Corwen said. ‘Remember yourself now. This is you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You carry with you the essence of Magog. It’s hard for me to tell where he ends and you begin. When you see the Llinellau Grym, when you disappear in your dreams, I don’t know whether it’s him doing it or you. Most likely it’s a combination of both. But this –’ he pointed at the flames ‘– is you and only you. Magog is nowhere in this magic.’
‘How do you know?’
>
‘Magog was great. He was a brilliant mage,’ Corwen answered. ‘But he was also arrogant and vain. Even Albarn the Bard agreed on that, though he left much out of his great telling. Magog despised all dragons for the limitations of their bodies. It was probably him who started this nonsense about fire-breathing that Sir Frynwy and your mother clung to. He’d never have sullied himself by doing it.’
‘Does it really matter?’ Benfro asked. He wanted desperately to lie down on his bed and go to sleep, but he wanted to sit in front of the fire and soak up its warmth even more.
‘Matter?’ Corwen said. ‘Young Benfro, nothing matters more. Every day Magog takes a little more of you away. I’ve tried to teach you what I can. Physical labour has earned you the strength that previously you borrowed without knowing it. Now at least when you fly or fight or just walk endless miles it will be your own effort, not his. He won’t be able to sink himself deeper into you that way.’
‘Is that why you made me fetch all that wood, build that what-do-you-call-it? Corral? Just so I’d be less scrawny?’
Corwen sighed. ‘Benfro, when you arrived at the mother tree, you were barely alive. Yet all you felt was a bit tired. You’d walked for days without food, flown for hundreds of miles on wings you could scarcely lift, survived a fall from the topmost branches of a truly vast tree. You simply don’t have the stamina to do these things. No Ffrydd dragon has had that kind of power for thousands of years.’
‘So it was Magog keeping me going,’ Benfro said, his voice barely a whisper.
‘Exactly so,’ Corwen said. ‘But he couldn’t keep you going for ever. And he wanted you to survive. That’s why he sent you to the mother tree. She’s always had a soft spot for our kind. She took you in and gave you the rest you needed. It took half a year for you to recover.’
‘But it was only one night,’ he protested weakly.
‘The mother tree exists in her own time and place,’ Corwen said. ‘To her time is just another illusion to be manipulated. You remember only one night, but she will have entertained you, nursed you back to health over many more.’
Benfro stared into the flames, soaking up their warmth. He was still dog-tired, as if he had built the corral in a day, not the weeks the task had taken him.
‘What happened back there? When I collapsed?’
‘You should know better than me,’ Corwen replied. ‘It happened to you, after all.’
‘I … It felt like someone had punched me. But there was no one there. I was looking at the Grym, then you spoke. And then there was just pain.’
‘Sometimes it happens that way, if you push too hard too soon. Still, you’re feeling better now,’ Corwen said. It was not a question. ‘That’s good. I’d hoped the exhaustion would wear off. And it hasn’t taken as long as I’d feared. You’re progressing well.’
‘I need to eat something,’ Benfro said, stooping for the door. ‘There’s a side of venison in the other cave that’ll cook nicely on this fire.’
‘So why get wet?’ Corwen asked.
‘What?’
‘You intend to fetch your meal by swimming through the waterfall,’ the old dragon said. ‘Why?’
‘Because …’ Benfro started to say, then stopped. It was as plain as the day what he should really do, what he could do. The realization made him tingle with excitement as much as it made him curse the endless times he had swum to his makeshift larder, especially on rainy days when getting dry again had been all but impossible and he had slept damp. He quickly closed his eyes, anticipation chasing away the last of the weariness. The Llinellau were there in an instant, his memory of them as sharp as his rising hunger. He focused on the one that he straddled, standing in the doorway, and followed it to the point where it intersected at the hearth, under the flickering flames. He could follow the path, turning and disappearing through the rock wall to the cave beyond. Already he could see the familiar room with its ancient furniture. And there, in the last evening light still flickering through the waterfall from the darkening sky outside, hung his food. He could step from where he was to there with just a thought.
But he didn’t.
It was the memory of the flames that caught his attention first. Or at least he thought of it as a memory of the flames, but it didn’t behave like a memory should. The flames were motionless, as if caught in a bubble of time, and they were a myriad different hues, blue and purple and silver-white, none of the colours a flame should be. The logs on which they fed were unburned, just as they had been when he piled them up, before he breathed the fire.
His mind straying from the meat hanging in the other cave, Benfro found himself focusing on the intoxicating Grym that ran from where he stood, through the bizarre flames and on into the hillside. He had never really thought about the other Llinellau, but now he realized that they must all lead somewhere. And something about this one pulled him in, beckoned him to explore. Curious, as he ever had been, he took a step forward, realizing too late the other strange thing about his memory of the cave.
Corwen was nowhere to be seen.
Blackness enveloped Benfro and with it an incredible cold. He couldn’t breathe; some great weight was clamping him like an iron fist. It smothered his face, clasped his hands to his sides, flattened his wings against his back. Motionless and helpless, he wondered if he had materialized deep in the rock. Would he die here, buried under the mountains? Would his unreckoned jewels fester and burn in the darkness?
He tried to remember what he had done, but his mind was a rushing of jumbled thoughts, red dots whirling around in his sight. He tried to shake his head to clear it, an instinctive reaction that struck him immediately as futile. How could he possibly move his head if he was stuck in solid rock? Yet something gave way, and a tiny space opened in front of his mouth. He tried to breathe in and realized that his lungs were already full. He must have taken a deep breath before stepping into … Where?
Red-hot stabs of pain grabbed at his chest as if there were needles in his lungs. He thrashed his head from side to side, back and forth as much as he could to make a space, hoping against hope that it would somehow fill with air. And then he could hold his breath no longer.
The flame billowed out in the darkness, too close to his eyes and face. It hit whatever surface bound him and carried on through as if it were no more substantial than mist. Benfro felt the grip around him loosen, first his upper body, arms and wings, then his abdomen and legs. For a brief moment he could see something resembling the inside of a dome painted in orange and white. Then the flames died away, leaving him blind.
At least he could move now, and breathe. He took a great lungful of air, tasting a sharp moistness in it. Still he was out of breath, as if someone had stolen half of what he had just taken in. He gulped more, trying to get rid of the spots that were the only thing he could see. Unsupported by whatever it was that had held him up, it was easier to sink to the floor on his all-too-weak knees. It was wet there, little pools of ice-cold water on what felt like stone, as if it had just rained in his little prison.
Slowly, hesitantly, Benfro reached out for the nearest wall. His hand came into contact with a surface but it was not rock. Whatever the material was, it was as cold as ice, but it was not hard. Soft and powdery, it crumbled under his fingers, robbing them of warmth as it melted to form great drops that fell to the floor, adding to the growing puddles. He could hear a constant drip, drip, dripping now as the roaring in his ears died away with each successive breath. And behind the noise of the water, far off or muffled by this strange wall, the wind wailed a storm like none he had ever known.
Struggling into a seated position, Benfro tried to gather his wits about him. The air in his little cage was turning sour – he could feel each lungful doing less good, smell the taint of his own odour. It was also getting warmer, as if his body heat were trapped. He didn’t know if he could breathe more fire but he had to make more space for himself somehow.
He sat perfectly still for a moment, listening
to the moan of the wind. Was it louder in one direction? It seemed so. Carefully he shuffled that way until he could feel the cold press of the strange surface. He leaned down to the floor, listening hard, and lifted his head slowly until he reached the point where he was sure the sound was greatest. Reaching in the darkness, he took a great handful of the powdery substance and scooped it aside. The exertion brought the spots back before his eyes. He had to pause and take deep but unsatisfying breaths before he felt strong enough to continue. His head ached and his arms felt like lead, but he pressed on, scraping away at the wall until it became more of a tunnel, its material dumped in the space behind him. There was no turning back.
It seemed to take hours. Each tiny handful was the effort of a lifetime, but slowly he inched forward to his goal. The wind roared at him, so close but impossibly distant. Sometimes it dipped and he was convinced he had gone the wrong way, was busily tunnelling away from his salvation. Then it would speak to him again, sing that violent song that convinced him he was right. Shifting the soft material seemed to free up more breathing space, banishing the taint of his own smell, though each inhalation left him wanting, light-headed as if there were something missing.
Benfro was colder than he had ever known. As he dug, sensation left his fingers first, freezing them in a scoop-like claw that he could not unclench. Then his hands and forearms went dead. On the floor his knees and legs were stiff and heavy, but still he pushed on, relentless. He would not give in, could not give in, until with a lunge he was through.
The wind immediately blew powder into his face, stinging his eyes. The darkness had been so total, he had forgotten they were open. Now he quickly snapped them shut against the storm. Feeling as best he could with his frozen hands, he made out a rough opening about twice the size of his head and filled with the same material he had tunnelled through. At the edges of this aperture he met with hard resistance – stone. It was all so confusing, so alien. He had to breathe fire, clear more of a space, see. But he needed a good fill of air. Desperate, he shoved his whole head through the aperture and opened his mouth.