The Obsidian Throne Page 11

  His head bumped against something soft, and Errol felt himself tumbled over a couple of times. Fine sand billowed about him, muddying his sight and stinging his eyes. He could taste the silt, and only then realized his mouth was open. Too much effort to close it. Too much effort to untangle himself from the cloak. It was easier just to be carried by the current. To finally rest.

  ‘Come on, Errol. Wake up.’

  The voice was in his head, but it sounded different somehow. Higher-pitched, it was more muffled too, as if the water had finished flooding his ears and was now working its way into his brain. Errol ignored it. He just wanted to sleep.

  The current wouldn’t let him. It tugged at his shoulders, rolling him over in the silty water. It lifted him up and shook him, his face breaking through the surface.

  ‘Don’t you dare be dead.’

  The words confused him. They were in his head, and yet not. They were spoken by the dragon whose jewel he still gripped tight, and yet they were spoken by someone much younger, much more human. Errol tried to focus, but his eyes were gritty. He tried to speak, but his mouth was full of water. And then he was choking, spasms forcing the water back out of his lungs. He dropped, the river once more folding him into her embrace. Then he was being pulled up again, dragged by something that wasn’t the current. More like a person.

  Tangled in his sopping-wet cloak, Errol was dropped to the ground still wheezing and spluttering and trying to take a breath. His lungs didn’t want to work. His arms and legs didn’t want to work. Even his head had stopped working. Then something hit him in the small of the back with the force of a felled tree. He coughed up a small lake of water, belching and retching like Tom Tydfil on his way back from the tavern late at night. He was just about to try to breathe in when another tree fell on him and he spewed up yet more water, coughed even more from his lungs.

  ‘You breathing?’

  This time Errol managed to suck in some air, groaned as he let it back out again. Panting was all he could manage for a while, and then slowly he rolled on to his side. For a while he had been warm, or at least things had been happening too fast for him to feel the cold, but now it seeped into his bones. Without thinking, he cast out for the Grym, found it in abundance all around him. Pulling it in had always been a struggle before, but now it flowed through him as if he were an empty pot thrust into a great vat. How long had he been deep underground, walled off from the life force by impenetrable rock? It was hard to gauge, though it felt like a lifetime since he had been in a much smaller cave, with a merry fire, seeking out along the lines for food so that he wouldn’t starve. Him and Nellore.

  The memories flooded in as if they were part of the Grym too. His eyes were still gritty, but Errol blinked as much away as he could before looking up to see the face he had expected to see as soon as he had recognized the bodiless voice. She was better dressed for the weather than him, heavy leggings and sturdy boots damp from wading into the river, a thick jacket made from the fur of an animal well suited to winter. She was cleaner too, but unmistakably the young girl from the village.

  ‘Nellore?’ Errol wasn’t quite sure why he made it a question, except that he couldn’t understand how she could have come to be here, now, when he most needed rescuing.

  ‘Who’d you think it was?’ She hunkered down a few paces away from him, tilted her head at a curious angle. ‘You going to stay lying in that cold water all day? Only you’re starting to steam.’

  Errol struggled with the soaked material of his cloak. Even with the Grym lending him strength and warmth, it was an effort to make his muscles work. Bruises cramped his every movement, reminding him of the battering he’d taken from the waterfall. Slowly he managed to get first one hand free, then the next, using them to lever himself upright and look around. He was lying half in the water on a sandy beach at the edge of a river not much wider than the one that flowed through Corwen’s clearing. The banks on the far side rose high, rock cliffs topped with tall pines, their branches drooped with snow still tumbling from a sky the colour of wet slate. The water reflected it, deep and fast-flowing, the surface smooth but undulating. The waterfall was a lot further off than Errol imagined it would be, a tall chute dropping a hundred spans or more into a wide bowl of froth and spume. Its roar was distant, muffled by the snow.

  ‘How?’ He turned slowly to where Nellore was still squatting, a curious smile on her lips. ‘How did you know I’d be here?’

  ‘Probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you.’ She stood up, came closer, reaching out a hand to help him up. ‘Come on. Let’s get out of here before this snow gets any heavier. Never saw snow before. Not sure I like it much.’

  Errol reached up and took Nellore’s hand. She wore no gloves, but her touch was warm. Another mystery his mind wasn’t capable of processing. It was hard enough just struggling up on to his knees and then to his feet. Swaying dizzily from side to side, he took a moment to get his breath back, another to cough and hack up yet more of the river from his lungs. At least his soaking had washed the worst of the cavern filth from his face, hands and hair. Bits of it still clung to his cloak though, the smell a reminder that it hadn’t all been some terrible dream. He took a step, then another, his legs uncertain, as if he was only just learning to walk. His mind was full of too much strangeness, but he was certain he was missing something. Lifting his hand up to rub the last of the silt from his eyes, he realized what it was.

  His hand was open, palm still streaked with muck, and Morgwm’s jewel was nowhere to be seen.

  11

  Greatest care must be taken when using the Llinellau to travel from one place to another. This most complex of the subtle arts requires not just that you move yourself to your destination, but that an equal balance of matter take the place you have vacated. This need be no more than a volume of air equal to your own bulk. The Grym is unforgiving though, and should you fail to make this adjustment, as is so often the case when novices first attempt this magic, then it will fill the vacated space with whatever it can. You may find yourself stepping into another mage’s palace only for them to be whisked away to the place you have just left. Or worse, to some part of Gwlad known to neither of you.

  Corwen teul Maddau,

  On the Application of the Subtle Arts

  Warm air brushed his face, bringing with it the smell of burning hair and the reek of the charnel house. Melyn stepped out of nothing and on to the dais beside King Ballah’s throne. How long had it been since he had succumbed to the madness? How many days had passed since he had walked out of here and into Gog’s realm? He had seen the truth and for a moment it had been too much for him. Now he could accept it, understand it, use it. So his whole life had been built on a lie. That didn’t make the power behind the lie any less real.

  The throne room was empty, the throne exactly as it had been when he had left it. Even the heart stone still sat on one arm, dull and lifeless and almost pulled in on itself. Melyn saw through the magics that swirled around it, hiding it from all but the most skilled of mages. For a moment he thought the jewel had been hiding itself, something it was more than capable of doing, but then his enhanced aethereal sight showed him the weave of much more recent workings. Familiar workings. Someone had concealed the heart of the Shepherd, not wishing to touch it, nor for anyone else to claim it.

  The old anger stirred in his breast, that someone could interfere with this most important of all magical artefacts. But as he studied the workings that had concealed it, so Melyn began to understand who had sought to hide the jewel he had found and claimed for his own. Magog’s first jewel, pulled from his living brain by the most subtle of arts. This was his strongest link to the Shepherd and the Grym; holding it opened him up to the long dead dragon’s influence, but it also gave him access to Magog’s knowledge. And what wondrous knowledge that was.

  Before he could reach out and take what was his by right, Melyn was distracted by the crash of doors being thrown wide. A dozen warrior priests surged into the
throne room, blades of light conjured and ready. At their head, Captain Osgal scanned the room with wild eyes. His face was a mess of suppurating sores where the burns Benfro had given him still refused to heal, and he moved with an oddly rolling gait that suggested his injuries were not confined to his face. He was halfway to the throne before he saw the inquisitor, and came to such an abrupt halt two of his men stumbled into him.

  ‘Your Grace?’ Osgal walked forward more slowly now, coming to within a few paces before falling to one knee. ‘By the Shepherd. We thought you were—’

  ‘Dead, Osgal?’ Melyn grinned, feeling the fear that boiled off these battle-hardened warrior priests. What a sight he must be to instil such awe. ‘On the contrary, I have never been more alive.’

  ‘But … but sire? Where did you go?’

  Where did he go? There was a question indeed. To the end of Gwlad and back in the blink of an eye. Beyond it even, to the realm of the Wolf. To slay the Wolf. Except that the Wolf was no more real than the Shepherd.

  ‘Where I went is of no importance. Not now, at least. There is much work to be done here before we can return to the Twin Kingdoms. Where is Frecknock?’

  Osgal stood up slowly. ‘The dragon? She is in the dungeons, locked up so she can’t slope off.’

  ‘Slope off? I would have thought she would have run as fast as her little legs could take her.’ Melyn stepped down off the dais and headed towards the door. There were quicker ways to the dungeon for him now, but he didn’t want to unnerve his men any more than they already were. Not yet, at least.

  ‘She came to the doors here, flung them open and called for our help. That was ten days ago.’ Osgal had fallen in beside the inquisitor and for a moment at least it felt like old times.

  ‘She came to you?’ Melyn asked. That he had been gone ten days surprised him, but not as much as the fact that Osgal hadn’t slain the dragon in that time.

  ‘She did. Claimed you had just disappeared, sire. I half thought she might have killed you, but—’

  ‘You searched the rooms?’

  ‘I supervised the search myself, but we found no trace of a fight, nothing to suggest foul play. I thought perhaps it might have been a trap laid by King Ballah, but even the most skilled adepts could find nothing.’

  Melyn knew Osgal well. He had tutored the captain when he had been a novitiate. He was a good soldier, but not the strongest when it came to wielding the Grym. His blade of light was short, though effective, and he had never been able to slip into the trance that would let him see the aethereal. Melyn could read his thoughts as easily as if they were written in the air above his head. Captain Osgal hated the dragon and all she stood for, but he also knew she was useful and far too timid to be a real threat. And a tiny part of him admitted that Frecknock had saved Melyn’s life too. Much though he hated to acknowledge the fact. The captain also hoped that the dragon might be able to heal his wounds, but he hadn’t found the courage to ask. No, not courage. Osgal had not found the humility yet.

  All of this played across the captain’s mind, open to Melyn like it had never been before. And woven around it, so deftly as to be almost impossible to sense, was a foreign thread linking all the ways in which Frecknock alive would be more useful than Frecknock dead. How wily the creature was, and far more subtle than he had ever given her credit for.

  Faces stared as the small group marched out of the throne room and through the palace in the direction of the entrance to the dungeons. Melyn recognized some of the merchants and lesser officials who had been presented to him in the days after they had captured the city. Warrior priests were dotted here and there, but by and large Llanwennog people were running things. How long they could be kept in line was the question, and one he didn’t have a ready answer to. The sooner they could get more men to Tynhelyg, more of Padraig’s accursed Candles, the better.

  The dungeons were formed from a maze of tunnels carved into the rock beneath the oldest part of the palace. Long corridors with cells on either side met in larger rooms, some with skylights, others lit only by smoky torches hung from the walls. In one of them Melyn felt something strange, saw with his newly enhanced vision the way the Grym swirled and eddied as if it were still recovering from some great shock. The room itself was clearly a torture chamber, dominated by a heavy wooden frame to which a body could be strapped for numerous inventive purposes. Tools that would have looked more at home in a carpenter’s shop hung from racks on the walls, but where any self-respecting woodworker would keep his blades clean and free from rust, these were crusted with blood, some with pieces of flesh still clinging to their cutting edges.

  ‘He was here. The boy. Errol.’ Melyn stopped in front of the frame, picked up a heavy iron hammer that lay on a nearby table, hefted it. ‘They used this on his ankles.’

  ‘Your Grace. How can you possibly—?’

  ‘You doubt me, Osgal?’ Melyn fought the smile that tried to force itself on to his lips. Before, he would have been irritated with the captain, but now he felt no need.

  ‘No, sire. Not at all. I just don’t understand how.’

  ‘The Shepherd moves in mysterious ways, Jerrim. Now where have you put my dragon?’

  Osgal stiffened at the use of his first name in front of the ranks. Melyn found he didn’t much care about that either. He had the aethereal trace of Frecknock now, something he couldn’t quite describe as a scent, but a haunting familiarity anyway. He headed down the passage just before the captain could lead him that way, seeing the violence carried out in this subterranean hell written into the patterns and swirls of the Grym. When he found the right cell, it came as no surprise to him that he could sense the echo of Errol there too. This was where they had kept him, and now Frecknock lay in the mouldering straw.

  He looked in through the iron-barred window at the top of the stout wooden door, seeing the shadows resolve themselves into her familiar form. Her scales were so dark as to be almost black, but they glinted in the torchlight from behind him, sparkling like tiny stars. She seemed to be shivering slightly, or perhaps weeping. Melyn couldn’t be sure which, but neither filled him with the joy it should have done. Not now he understood.

  ‘Unlock it,’ he commanded Osgal. The captain looked momentarily panicked, turning back the way they had just come.

  ‘The key, sire. It’s on a rack in the torture room.’

  Melyn let out a sigh, closed his eyes and looked at the door. His aethereal sight soon unpicked the secrets of the lock mechanism, and with little more than a thought he stretched his aura out, through the keyhole and twisted. The lock clicked and the door fell open.

  The dragon stirred at the noise, rising slowly with her back to the door. By the slump of her shoulders, Melyn could tell she had been waiting for this moment, certain that she would not be freed until it was time to put her to death. When she finally turned, her head was down, eyes to the floor in supplication.

  ‘Why so sad, Frecknock?’ Melyn asked the question in Draigiaith, perfectly accented. The language had always felt awkward in his mouth, but now it was as if he had grown up speaking it. With a wry laugh, he remembered that he had.

  ‘Your … Your Grace?’ Frecknock’s eyes grew wide as she recognized him and he took a curious delight in the mixture of confusion and relief that poured from her. ‘You came back for me.’

  Dafydd had been expecting the back route to the Neuadd to be through rough tunnels hidden behind secret panels in the oldest parts of the palace, but Usel led them to a wide corridor with a high ceiling, its shiny marble floor reflecting the sun from carefully constructed light wells. There were torches in sconces at regular intervals too, though none had been lit recently. Such a lapse in palace maintenance was perhaps understandable given the circumstances. All along the route, alcoves held sculptures of past kings and queens. At least Dafydd assumed they were kings and queens; certainly they bore some similarities in their faces to Iolwen. The high set of the cheekbones, the thin nose and narrow, piercing eyes seemed to be
something of a Balwen trait.

  ‘This passageway leads to an antechamber at the rear of the building.’ Usel spoke in a low whisper, slowing his pace as he approached a set of heavy wooden doors. He produced a key from the folds of his cloak, slipped it into the lock and turned it slowly. There was a heavy clunk, and he eased it open. It screeched like a cat whose tail has been trodden on, the sound echoing down the stone corridor for what felt like hours. ‘I think we should maybe try the hiding spell now.’

  Dafydd took Usel’s proffered hand, felt Iolwen grasp his other one. The air shimmered around them as they withdrew themselves from the Grym. Much stronger here than anywhere outside of his grandfather’s throne room or the cavern somewhere deep beneath their feet where hopefully the good people of Abervenn were even now fleeing the city, he felt its absence as a chill on his soul.

  ‘We should try to be as quiet as possible. Maybe the beast didn’t hear us.’ Usel didn’t sound like a man convinced, but he stepped forward anyway and Dafydd had no option but to follow.

  Steep marble steps led them to a small room, dark save for scant light coming in under a door on the opposite side. Heavy wooden wardrobes lined the walls, no doubt storage for ceremonial robes or some such. They approached the door nervously, ears straining for any sound of the dragon they had seen enter earlier. Dafydd could hear nothing, not even the sounds of a diversion from the newly appointed Captain Derridge and his band of misfits. He wanted to call them fools, but they were brave men truly.

  ‘Let us hope this is a little quieter than the one below.’ Usel cracked the door open just enough to be able to peer through the gap, stood there for a long while with his head held close. Finally he stood back, opening the door wide.