The Golden Cage Page 15

  Benfro’s head pounded as if he had been drinking wine by the flagon the night before. It was worse even than the time he had first eaten at Magog’s table, in the retreat at the top of Mount Arnahi. Back then his whole body hadn’t ached like he had fallen down a mountainside, and his throat hadn’t been raw as if he had shouted at the top of his lungs for an hour. Now he could scarcely move without a thousand different parts of his body screaming at him to stop.

  Opening one eye slowly so as to avoid any more pain than was necessary, he tried to work out where he was. It was difficult to remember anything except talking to Corwen, then almost crashing when he had tried to fly. But that felt like it had been a lifetime ago. There were disjointed, jumbled images of things that had happened since, but he could put them in no logical order. Carrying Errol back to the cave, both of them soaking wet; flying with buzzards, reading the air currents to gain maximum height with minimum effort; seeing the whole of Gwlad spread out beneath him, a world to conquer; watching a winged dragon wheel around the broken towers of Cenobus.

  Benfro blinked both eyes open, sitting up too fast as all the memories tumbled into place. No wonder he felt like a tree had fallen on him. Of all the feelings that could have swept over him, it was embarrassment that heated his face. He had allowed himself to become so distracted, he had forgotten to fly. He was lucky to be alive.

  ‘You’re awake. Good. How do you feel?’

  Benfro looked over to the alcove where the grass bed had been. Only now there was just an empty space, the floor a mix of dark earth and black ash. The cave walls were black too, and he dimly remembered breathing fire. Too much fire. His leather bag leaned against the wall, its flap open, revealing the glint of gold within, and the last few bits of missing memory dropped into place

  ‘Dreadful.’ He looked down at the floor where he had lain, brushed soft red earth from his arms and breathed in that alluring spice smell. It was overlaid with something even better, a meaty soup aroma, and he finally looked round to where Errol was sitting between the fire and the back wall of the cave. He had propped the small cauldron against the banked-up fire and was stirring something within. Benfro rubbed at his face with his palms, easing away his headache, then shuffled closer to the flames. Every muscle in his body creaked and complained.

  ‘You fall from the sky.’ Errol’s command of Draigiaith was much better than Benfro’s ability to speak the language of men, but it was still far from perfect. At least they could communicate. He was grateful for that.

  ‘I was distracted. I saw …’ Benfro wondered how he could explain what it was he had seen. It made no sense to him as a memory. He was hundreds of miles from Cenobus, and yet he had seen the place as if he were just a few wing beats away. And he had seen the dragon’s features as if he were flying alongside him. ‘I saw another dragon, flying. But I don’t know how that can be.’

  ‘Are there no other dragons that can fly?’

  ‘I don’t know. I wish …’

  ‘No dragon has flown in this sphere for many hundreds of years.’ Benfro looked around to see Corwen sitting in the same spot where he had first appeared all those months ago. ‘Our legends tell of a time when we were lords of the air, and you know now that our legends have more truth in them than we thought. I grew up with wings far larger than those that burned with me when I died. But I never flew. We had made our choice long before my hatching.’

  ‘You said that before,’ Errol said. ‘About making a choice. What did you mean? Did you choose to become smaller?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking, I suppose we did. We chose to become less noticeable, and so we shrank physically, though our minds stayed sharp. Over time the difference became more and more ingrained. Frecknock is fully grown, but she would have been mistaken for a hatchling of one or two summers by my parents.’

  Benfro scowled at the mention of Frecknock’s name. He didn’t care if she shrank away to nothing, if Queen Beulah sliced her head off with a blade of light.

  ‘What of the dragons who took … What did you call it? The long road?’ Errol spoke in his own language and it took a moment for Benfro to grasp the meaning of his final words. He had heard something similar before but couldn’t place it.

  ‘Fewer and fewer of us made that choice, though it has always been open to us.’ Corwen switched to Draigiaith and turned to Benfro. ‘Your father was the last dragon I knew to make it, though I suppose you have too, in a way.’

  ‘My father?’ Benfro forgot his headache, his aches and pains, even the gurgling in his stomach that Errol’s cauldron of broth had provoked. ‘What do you know of him?’

  ‘A great deal, Benfro,’ Corwen said. ‘Sir Trefaldwyn was once a pupil of mine, like your mother. He was quite her opposite though. Impetuous and headstrong, impatient too, now I come to think of it. And his head was always full of the most wild nonsense. I guess he passed a lot of that on to you.’

  ‘What nonsense?’ Benfro felt a flash of anger that the old dragon could be so rude about his father, then wondered why he should feel that way. He’d never met Sir Trefaldwyn after all.

  ‘Well the last time I saw him he was full of some story he’d heard from a dragon who lived down in the Hendry boglands, far to the south of here. He said he was searching for the portal to another world, identical to this one, but where dragons ruled the air and men knew nothing of the subtle arts. It was a fool’s quest, and I told him so at the time. But he insisted on … Oh.’

  ‘What?’ To Benfro’s horror, Corwen had faded almost to nothing, his face contorting in apparent pain. Benfro hauled himself to his feet, heading across the cave to try and help his master, but the old dragon waved him away. He seemed to be struggling with something and Benfro had a suspicion he knew just what it was. He concentrated for a moment, shifting his view until he could see the Llinellau and his own aura, the long pale rose cord looping away from him to fuse with the nearest of the lines. It was unprotected, and instinctively he knotted his aura around it, cutting off Magog’s malign influence even though for once he had felt nothing of the dead mage’s presence. Looking into the corner of the cave, where the shrunken ghostly image of Corwen struggled against an unseen foe, Benfro realized why.

  Magog wasn’t attacking him; he was concentrating all his efforts on Corwen.

  Without a thought for his own safety, Benfro leaped forward. He didn’t know what he was going to do, but he wasn’t going to let the one friend he had left in the world be destroyed. He tried to see where Magog was mounting his attack from; there had to be a point, a connection like the one that tied him so tightly. But Corwen was not alive. He was a projection of memories, and as he struggled and faded, Benfro could see only a dull blood-red glow seeping over him, washing him away.

  ‘Find … Sir Trefaldwyn …’ Corwen’s voice was a distant echo in the back of Benfro’s mind. ‘Find … Gog.’ At the name Benfro felt a surge of anger, a hatred so visceral it almost knocked him out, even though his best defences were up.

  ‘I have to help you first.’ He moved closer to the almost invisible image. Part of it repelled him, as if the old dragon was pushing him away, but part of it drew him in. He could see beyond the fading figure into a dark cavern where a pile of jewels sat on a raised stone dais. They were white, but a miasma of red filled the whole cave, pulsing out from a familiar lone jewel placed on the edge of the dais. One small stone should not have been able to overcome so many, and yet it radiated an evil power that was like a wall of heat.

  ‘You … must … not …’ Corwen’s voice was forced, but it had about it something of that power that had once immobilized him completely. Benfro felt himself receding from the cave even as he understood that he had been travelling the Llinellau towards it. Then at the last moment he noticed one other jewel, pale and white, shielded from Magog by the bulk of Corwen’s memories. He knew without a doubt whose it was; knew also that he could not leave it. Reaching out as he had done when bringing himself food, he tried to summon his mother’s last
remaining jewel to himself.

  ‘No, Benfro. You must leave that here. It will only be a burden to you.’ Corwen’s voice was gone completely, his thoughts barely brushing the turmoil in Benfro’s mind. ‘We will endure, but I won’t be able to appear to you any more. I realize now what I should have seen years ago. Your father’s quest – he was looking for another world. I thought it a stupid fantasy, but it makes perfect sense. If everything else said about Magog is true, then why not this? His brother made a world apart, and he still lives there. Your father believed there was a way to get to it. He went north, to Llanwennog. You must find him. Find a way back to Magog’s bones.’

  ‘But how can I find him? I don’t know where to begin. I don’t even know what he looks like.’ Benfro spoke out loud, and the sound of his own voice seemed to pull him back into himself. He was standing in the corner of the cave where Corwen had first appeared, staring at the rock wall, his hand reaching out for something that wasn’t there.

  Melyn had never much liked the great forest of the Ffrydd, not since the first time he had entered its uncharted depths as a novitiate too many years ago now to even try to remember. There was something oppressive about the endless ranks of trees blocking off a decent view of the sky. He preferred to be above the world, looking down, not skulking around in the undergrowth like some rodent.

  There were tracks through the forest. At the southern edge these snaked into the trees for miles and some of them were reasonably well mapped. Mostly they were used by hunters and trappers, though a few hardy woodsmen lived among the trees far from civilization. And dragons had taken to the woods of course, seeking their protection centuries ago. Few lived there now, only two that he knew of, and neither of them would survive this foray if he had anything to do with it.

  From his earlier expedition, and others like it that the warrior priests occasionally mounted, Melyn knew that the forest was not entirely close-grown trees. There were clearings all over the place, some as large as the agricultural estates of minor nobles, others no bigger than the rude garden that Morgwm the Green had tended. In places the wood was thick, the undergrowth all but impassable; then it might open up into good hunting country, huge ancient broadleaves each surrounded by hundreds of paces of clear grass, saplings kept down by vast herds of deer.

  The paths that wound their way uphill towards the interior of the forest were in the main narrow, although wide enough for a cart to make good progress. Three or four men could ride abreast along the clearest of them, narrowing to maybe only two at the worst. Still Melyn forced his small army on at a relentless pace, setting destinations from his memory and using teams of warrior priests to hack the path wider where necessary. From the air, he had no doubt, the mark of their passage would be a wide scar of destruction, spearing towards the heart of the forest. For some reason that image made him happy.

  They were a week into their long march before the tracks began to betray them. Melyn detected the subtlest play of ancient magics, tricking compasses, fooling even the most competent of navigators. Parties sent forward to scout out likely watering holes and good grazing would appear hours later, galloping from the rear of the column in confusion, certain they should be miles ahead. Still he pushed on, measuring the army’s progress by the position of the stars at night.

  This was the confused time. He had read enough of Father Keoldale’s account of Prince Lonk’s failed expedition to know what to expect. He even remembered it from his own journey all those years ago. Father Helnas, leading the troop of novitiates on what was meant to have been a month-long dragon hunt, had almost lost his mind as they looped back on themselves, headed east and ended up west, climbed hills only to find themselves looking down on the evidence of their earlier passage ahead of them. Melyn had learned more from the healer on the trip, Father Colter. He had known how to read the stars, and he was the one who had led them out of the forest, on to the calling road some three months after they had left.

  During the day, as the column made its slow progress, Melyn would slip into the aethereal and scout ahead. Freed from the constraints of his body, he could soar above the highest trees and look down on the mass of ill-formed self-images riding their solid-bodied horses through the woodland. He could see far enough ahead to plot out their course and pass adjustments on to Osgal, but it was exhausting work.

  The army started with first light and pushed on well into the gloaming of each day, and it was all Melyn could manage to sit up long enough to eat the rations prepared for him before he crawled into his bedroll and slept. Never before had he felt his age so much. He began to worry that he had made a rash decision. So many before him had tried to tame the forest, and all had failed. But he was different. He didn’t want to search out treasures or cut down the trees for cultivation; he wanted to pass right through and out the other side. As quickly as possible. If the rumours were true and the Ffrydd really did have a rudimentary mind of its own, then he hoped that it would realize its best course of action was to let him through. He had no intention of ever coming back.

  They were making camp in a vast clearing, the horses enjoying a rich feed of spring grass and plentiful water from a wide river, when Osgal came to Melyn in the deepening gloom one night. If he had to make a guess, Melyn would have said they’d been in the saddle for almost three weeks. They should have been roughly halfway across, but he was too tired from a day battling against waves of disorienting colours that flowed across the aethereal like some improbable camouflage. Little things like where they were and how long they had taken to get there were not nearly as important as sleep to him right now. The sight of the captain approaching with what was probably bad news put him in an instant ill humour.

  ‘What is it, Osgal?’ Melyn’s voice was too tired even to show the anger and irritation he felt.

  ‘Your Grace, the dragon Frecknock has asked if it might speak with you.’ Osgal’s dislike of their captive was unwavering, a constant rock in a sea of change. Melyn found himself oddly grateful for that small certainty, even if he had no intention of ever voicing his gratitude. Still, mention of the dragon bothered him. He had meant to speak to her weeks earlier, to force her to swear an oath to serve him just as the Shepherd had commanded, but he disliked her presence and hated even more the thought of letting her touch Brynceri’s ring. If there were any other way to bind her to his will …

  ‘What does she want?’

  ‘It says it has information regarding the feral dragon that attacked the queen, sir.’

  Melyn took a swig of water from his bottle, wishing it were wine. He could do with something to lift the cloud of weariness from his mind. He needed his wits about him.

  ‘Bring her to me,’ he said, then slumped against the trunk of the large oak tree under which he had unrolled his bedding. The evening was warm, the sky part obscured by high cloud that promised a mild night, so he had not bothered with his tent. Noises from the growing camp spoiled what otherwise might have been an idyllic spot.

  ‘Your Grace?’ Melyn looked up to see the dragon standing beside his fire. Weeks on the road had slimmed her down, turned some of her flab to muscle, but she was filthy with dust and the very sight of her disgusted him.

  ‘You have information for me?’

  ‘Indeed yes, Your Grace. I have been around this clearing and I believe the feral beast, Caradoc, was here not more than two days ago.’

  ‘What makes you think that?’ Melyn wanted to ask by whose authority she had been wandering around the camp, but that was a question for someone else. A punishment for someone else.

  ‘Over where the track fords the river there is a hearth. There are freshly blackened logs on it. The fire was left to go out by itself, not banked up. And it only burned out recently.’

  ‘So there have been woodsmen here. This is a good place for a camp. There’s water and fish from the river, plenty of dry wood under these old trees, grazing for horses.’

  ‘This hearth is about the size of one of your arm spans, sir. I
don’t think a trapper would build something so large. Nor would he easily have lifted the logs that have been burned.’

  Melyn looked at the dragon, his hatred of her kind mixing with irritation and, oddly, gratitude. He would have to see this hearth for himself. His bedroll would stay cold for an hour or more still. But this was something that none of his highly trained warrior priests had noticed. Or more likely had been too tired, too preoccupied with finding forage for their horses, a meal for themselves and somewhere to lay their heads to notice.

  ‘Show me.’ He hauled himself to his feet. For her part, Frecknock seemed light-footed, full of energy as she walked back through the camp towards the river. The warrior priests ignored her as if their sacred oath to King Brynceri’s charter and the teachings of the Shepherd meant nothing. Most of them, Melyn realized, had stopped thinking of her as a dragon. Forced to march at the rear of the column, with the packhorses, she had become part of the army. It was dangerous thinking, he knew, but also seductively appealing. An army that marched with a tame dragon in its midst was surely invincible. But was she tame?

  ‘See, here.’ Frecknock stopped in the shade of a tree whose canopy reached out over the flowing river. The hearth was much as she had described it, perhaps even larger. One vast stone had been dragged out of the river and dug into a hole in the ground. Smaller but still substantial boulders were arranged around it in a circle to form a fire pit, now choked with black ash and chunks of dried logs twice the width of a man’s thigh and at least ten paces long. This was no trapper’s campsite fire.

  ‘So what does this tell me?’ Melyn asked. ‘Other than that this beast was here and that it had a good meal of fish from the river.’ He nodded towards a pile of fish bones in the grass beside the fire pit.