The Rose Cord

by J. D. Oswald

  This wine was nothing like that.

  Its flavour brought to mind those stolen gulps, but there was none of the sourness. Instead this wine was thick and rich, like crushed raspberries with an underlying tartness that was at once refreshing and stimulating. He sipped, resisting the urge to tip the whole cup down his throat. The liquid coated his mouth and slid down his gullet, soothing the burning as it exploded into his empty stomach. Try as hard as he could to exercise restraint, the goblet was soon empty, and he placed it down where he had found it with a tinge of disappointment.

  Hunger still gnawed at him, and while wine was perhaps not the best thing he could take to assuage it, nothing else seemed available. There was another goblet, larger than the one he had emptied, at the place setting at the head of the table. Since to the best of his knowledge he was alone on the mountain, he slid up the bench and reached for it.

  Something stopped his hand, and a burning sensation whipped through his fingers and up his arm. The candles flared, going from yellow-orange to blue before settling back again as he withdrew his hand. He tried again, and the same thing happened. On a whim, he slid off the end of the bench and approached the great chair. It would have been comfortable for a dragon twice his size. A deep velvet cushion covered the seat and the arms were carved from great chunks of hard black wood, topped with padded leather. The back of the chair reached up for the dark ceiling like some forbidding edifice, with twin spires that looked like they could wound the sky. There was no way that he could move such an enormous seat. Yet it sat far enough from the table to allow access. Expecting to be rebuffed, as his hand had been when he reached for the wine, Benfro carefully stepped up to the great throne and clambered into the seat.

  It was very comfortable, almost soothing to his aching muscles. He had expected it to be too big, and yet it appeared to be just the right size. Somehow it, or the table, had moved, as his legs were now tucked under the boards, the place setting with its full goblet within easy reach. He stretched for the wine, fingers tentative as he tensed himself for the shock which didn’t come.

  If the wine that he had drunk before was a revelation, the blood-red liquid he sipped this time was even more exquisite. Maybe it was the combination of the comfortable chair and the alcohol, but with each swallowed mouthful his breathing became less laboured, the very air seeming to thicken. Too soon the goblet was empty, and he placed it back on the table with an aching regret that he had not eked it out more. To his surprise, by the flickering light of the candelabra he watched the empty vessel refill. The wine in it tasted just as good as it had the first time, but he wished there was some food to go with it.

  No sooner was the thought in his head than the silver platter in front of him was heaped with roasted meats. Beside it a smaller plate held dumplings, batter puddings and root vegetables. A silver jug, which he could have sworn was not there moments before, steamed with the heady aroma of rich gravy. Not one to pass up a gift, however unlikely it might appear, he grabbed a fork and began shovelling the food into his face.

  Benfro was unaware of the subtle flavours of the unfamiliar foods before him; neither did he care that he could not name most of what he ate. Such was his hunger that he just needed to get as much in as possible. Perhaps, in the back of his mind, he was aware that this meal was magical, impossible, and might disappear at any moment. Yet he could feel the weight in his stomach and the numbness crawling over his skin as the wine began to have an effect. He took another swig and felt his worries and cares slipping away.

  Finally the meal was over. Benfro felt a passing sadness as the plates disappeared and the goblet no longer refilled itself. Still, he was more full of food than he could ever remember. The thought of moving filled him with dread, so he just sat there, lolling back in the great throne and enjoying the sensation of bloat. He was weary beyond compare and looked around the room for somewhere he might sleep. There was nowhere that recommended itself to him. The floor was packed dirt with the occasional sharp boulder poking up through it. The walls were jagged and uneven. Only the chair itself was comfortable, but not for sleeping.

  He remembered the bed in the upper room. The fire might still be burning, he supposed. He tried to stand, thinking that after such a splendid meal he might have enough energy to climb the stairs down which he had earlier tumbled. The table seemed to edge away from him, shrinking rather than moving, but as he levered his suddenly heavy body off the seat, the world started to spin. His head was numb, uncomprehending, and it was all he could manage to do to push himself back into the chair, slumping against one of its massive arms. Perhaps sleeping here would not be such a bad thing after all.

  Yet the bed still called to him. He could see it in his mind’s eye, a soft flat cushion by the fire that was surely warm and dry and welcoming. In his stupor he glanced about the room and noticed, for the first time since he had arrived, the Llinellau Grym criss-crossing their way about him. In the centre of the room, under the table, though he could somehow see right through, a pair of thick white bands intersected, but the greatest lines crossed under his chair. He couldn’t see them through his own body, but he could feel them. They hummed with a low sound, like the bees busying themselves in the laurel bushes where he used to hide when Frecknock was on the warpath. It was difficult to focus on anything – images kept slipping from his gaze, splitting in two and going off in opposite directions. He could see the dining table, but he could see the reading desk as well. By the wall there was a low dresser, but it was the bookcase too. The candles flickered and burned in their candelabra just where the fire was. His seat was a massive ornately carved chair, and yet it was the simple chair in the upper room.

  Snapping his head up as if someone had poked him with a pointed stick, Benfro woozily looked from side to side. Something ice-cold played across the back of his neck and head. Turning and trying to rest his weight on the side of the throne, he fell sideways. Someone had removed the arm. And why was he lying in a pile of snow? Why was he staring up at a window, pulled open to reveal a small square of evening sky against a frozen white border.

  Slowly it dawned on him what had happened. Drunk from the wine, he had ridden the Llinellau. For some reason he could not understand, Benfro found that incredibly funny. He started to chuckle, and the sound just made things worse. He gasped for breath, his head reeling from too much wine and the thin air, yet all he could do was lie in the snow and laugh. Not even the memory of his mother’s death could stop him as the fear and frustration and anger boiled out of him in a hysteria far more potent than tears could ever be.

  21

  There is an old saying among the simple farmers of the Hendry: ‘Never accept a dragon’s gift.’ In its most basic form it simply means be wary of unexpected generosity, which may come with strings attached. Quite why it is a dragon’s gift that should be denied, rather than a Llanwennog’s it is hard to say. Certainly the wars and enmity between King Balwen’s people and our barbarian neighbours to the north-east have been a fact of life for so long that they are now a part of our language. Who has never heard their mother call out, ‘Behave or you’ll be sent to Llanwennog,’ or cursed a travelling merchant for peddling shoddy goods with, ‘Never was a Llanwennog so fair.’? And yet it is dragons who are seen as the epitome of untrustworthiness.

  Father Charmoise,Dragons’ Tales

  Benfro woke with what felt like a thunderstorm raging inside his head. His mouth was full of sand and his tongue had swollen to twice its normal size overnight. He tried to move and the drumming increased tenfold. Pain lanced through him as if his brain had grown too big for his skull. Keeping still minimized the discomfort, so he kept still.

  He could hear the fire’s crackling and feel its heat on his side. For a long while he couldn’t work out where he was. It was unlike his mother to rise early and stoke the fire. Normally she would have shooed him out of bed, chided him for sleeping when there was wood to be collected, water to fetch and herbs to be sorted. He waited for her footstep
, the subtle change in the surroundings that meant she was near. He wanted to tell her of his headache, ask her for something to take the pain away. More than anything else he wanted just to see her, to hug her, to know she was there. And it was then that he remembered the inquisitor and the sword of flame appearing in the air. He remembered the fear that paralysed him and the dead, burned remains of the villagers. He remembered everything.

  With a groan as much of weary self-pity as of the pain of his hangover Benfro rolled over on the bed until he could see the fire and the rest of the room. It was almost exactly as he had uncovered it the day before except that the chair was lying on its side. Had he knocked it over? He could remember only vague disjointed images from his meal the night before, and laughing uncontrollably, painfully, unable to stop.

  He tried to sit up, but quickly decided that was a bad idea. Besides, he told himself, the bed was comfortable. Perhaps if he slept some more the pain would go away and he would be able to think straight.

  It was much later when he woke for the second time. His head ached less, but the pain had been replaced with a terrible thirst that clenched his throat almost as tight as the thin air. Sitting up was less fraught this time, although his head still felt both like it was muffled in a pillow and at the same time edged with flame. He stood, crossed the room unsteadily to the window and opened it wide. Scoops of snow shovelled into his mouth brought blessed relief, and he stuck his head out of the window, cramming it as deep into the miniature snowdrift as he could manage. The cold bit at his ears and chilled the scales on his face, fighting the fire in his head. It was wonderful.

  Closing the window, Benfro turned back to the warmth of the fire, noticing as he did so the writing table. He righted the large comfortable-looking chair, sat himself down and dropped his elbows on to the table. There was a single large sheet of parchment laid out on it, but he could not read it by the light from the fire.

  As if he had wished for them, lighted candles appeared in the twin sconces fixed to either side of the table. The writing on the parchment was faded almost to nothing, but peering at it closely, his eyes squinting at the challenge, he could just about make out the words, written in the archaic script his mother had taught him for labelling herbs and potions.

  Evening is here already and tomorrow I go to deal with my brother’s spiteful legacy. The men are everywhere, multiplying as only their kind can. And now they are possessed of an intelligence and magical ability that puts them head to head with the most powerful of my warriors. I have felt Palisander’s dying thoughts, heard the screams of Myfanwy and Geraint. It is as if these creatures knew all along what we did to them, how we kept them simple-minded to act as our unquestioning slaves. Only now they have the wherewithal to take their revenge.

  I will track down their leader, this so-called king. The scrying window has already shown me where they mass. Like flies around a rotting carcass, they flock to my brother’s most foul palace, his throne in its candled hall of pompous grandiosity. The very thought of that place brings a cold rage to my scales. Was it not enough that we split the world? Not enough for him to take his weak minions away from my sight but he had to put this abomination, this stain, on the land he left behind? How childish he proves himself, as ever he was, to destroy that which he cannot have, lest anyone else gain pleasure from it.

  There was a space in the parchment then, as if a picture was intended. Perhaps the author had not found the time to complete his tale. Benfro peered hard at the smooth yellowing surface, searching for any sign that something had been written or drawn, but it was blank the width of his hand. When the words continued, the writing was not so neat, not so assured.

  What has the fool done? How could he have given so much power to creatures that cannot know remorse, that have no guilt, no shame, no mercy? They tap the Grym like adepts, wield blades of fire that cut through stone and paralyse even the strongest-willed with irrational fear. Worse, he has given them an insatiable hunger – for power, for knowledge, for conquest. They covet our jewels yet lack the understanding of how to use them. They eschew the reckoning and take our memories raw. Would that I could take solace in the knowledge that this will be their undoing. Yet there are so many of them and multiplying every day. They breed so fast, grow to adulthood in the blinking of an eye. We are outnumbered a thousand to one. I fear they will destroy us all before we can overcome them.

  At the bottom of the parchment the writing was spidery and blotched, as if by a different hand altogether. This part had been written at speed, Benfro could tell, for he had often been chastised by his mother for rushing his letter work, desperate to finish so he could get outside. This hand could almost have been his own, were it not for the obvious age of the ink.

  Am I defeated? Is this what the world will become? I, who once proudly held sway over half a world, am reduced to fleeing from a man? And yet never have I met with such ferocity, such strength, such unrestrained joy in the wielding of absolute power for absolute cruelty.

  They have a king now, these men. How quickly they organize themselves into a parody of civilization. I sought to negotiate with him, to put an end to our needless war. We are few and do not need to eat their meat if they do not wish to share. A wily creature King Balwen, he suggested we meet at my brother’s palace. Only when I arrived at that hateful place, that dreadful town, did I realize this was where he had set up his court. The nerve of him, a creature scarce half again as big as my head, sitting on my brother’s absurd throne in his ostentatious hall. I am always at my weakest in that place, and he must have known that. I could feel him testing me as we spoke, trying to probe my mind, but he is not as skilful as he would like to think. His pathetic fumblings left him wide open to my suggestion.

  So the challenge is made. The day after tomorrow we will meet on the field at Cae Felin. He will send his most powerful inquisitor to do battle, and when I defeat him, another will take his place. I do not know how many he has, but even as ruthless and foolhardy a creature as this self-crowned king will think twice when twenty of his most powerful warriors lie dead at his feet.

  But what if I should fail? These inquisitors are formidable foes who do not hold with the rules of etiquette and chivalry. They have slaughtered innocents in their sleep, bashed open their skulls for the dangerous treasure within. They have drunk the blood of my cousins and found a taste for it. As I sit here and contemplate their next move, I cannot help but wonder how they will try to cheat. If they all attack at once, can I withstand such an onslaught?

  I must not dwell on such impossibilities. I will prevail as I have always done. But this retreat is not the place to rest and gather my strength. I will return to the Silent Stone, where it all began, where my foolhardy brother broke our pact and set this dreadful wheel in motion. Ammorgwm, I write these words for you, wherever you have gone. I fear that my brother has brought about the destruction of our kind even as he has built himself his own little world to rule. The door is open, though it should have been closed. Let us pray the men never find it.

  Benfro stared at the parchment, blinking occasionally but otherwise motionless. He was reading words written by Magog more than two thousand years ago. The greatest dragon ever to live had left this mountain retreat and gone back to his first home to prepare for the fight which should have ended the war between dragons and men. But King Balwen had planted doubt in the mind of the greatest dragon ever to live. Was it not possible that he had also found out the secret location of the Silent Stone? And if a sentient creature could not enter the clearing without being invited, what was to stop a mindless beast, a lammergeyer enraged and guided by the king’s meddling, from flying in and attacking the resting mage?

  ‘Finally, you’ve worked it out.’

  Benfro looked up from the table and parchment to see who had spoken. To his astonishment a great dragon stood between him and the fire. Had he been more observant, he would have noticed that he could still feel the heat of the flames, even though the image appeared soli
d. But it was impossible to notice anything else when confronted, in a small room, by the greatest dragon that had ever lived. Magog, Son of the Summer Moon.

  ‘Now all you have to do is take my revenge.’

  The floor was stone, hard and cold. Errol shivered in the feverish darkness, trying to work out where he was. He should have been in a bed in the infirmary. Or should he have been kneeling at a block in Tynhelyg, waiting for the executioner to chop off his head? He tried to look around, but the effort and pain of lifting himself off the ground was almost too much. Slowly he inched himself on to his side the better to take in his surroundings.

  It was a small room with stone walls and thin windows, little more than arrow slits, which let in a whistling draught. Outside it was dark; inside the only light came from two fat tallow candles that flickered on a stone altar. Something else glowed there, reflecting the light in red, but from his position on the floor Errol couldn’t see what it was. On the far side of the room a heavy oak door stood closed. It might as well have been a mile away for all that he could hope to reach it, but Errol gritted his teeth against the pain in his ankles and ribs and set about dragging himself over the threadbare rug towards it.

  ‘Don’t bother,’ a voice said. ‘You’ll only find Captain Osgal on the other side.’

  Errol looked around sharply, nearly passing out as his brain struggled to keep up with the motion. When he saw the face he knew he was going to see, he let himself collapse to the floor, defeated.

  ‘I was going to have the warrior priests who were meant to be guarding you thrown into the Faaeren Chasm, but it seems they really weren’t to blame,’ Melyn said. He was sitting in a simple wooden chair in the shadows at the back of the room. ‘Now perhaps you’d like to explain to me how a boy with two broken ankles can get from the infirmary to my private chapel in the blinking of an eye?’