The Rose Cord Page 17

  Benfro plunged his hands into the alcove, piling all of the jewels into his cupped hands. Almost instantly he heard the voice in his head, a voice that he knew from a childhood that seemed years distant although in truth it was only days.

  ‘Benfro, is that you?’ Meirionydd asked. ‘You’ve changed so much. Your aura is magnificent.’

  ‘You can see me?’

  ‘Of course I can, silly,’ she chided. ‘You’re standing here right in front of me. And where is this place? Why did you bring us here? Where are the others? I can hear them calling out, but I can’t reach them.’

  ‘This is the repository in Magog’s castle,’ Benfro said.

  ‘Ah, Benfro, you always were one for joking and mischief,’ Meirionydd said. ‘But it’s unkind to play tricks on the dead. Everyone knows the stories of Gog and Magog are just tales.’

  ‘But they’re real,’ Benfro insisted. ‘I met Magog himself. In a dream, true, but I saved his last remaining jewel. I have it with me. I can show you.’ His enthusiasm was unstoppable. He had always been this way with Meirionydd, desperate to please her. He would do anything for her praise.

  ‘Dear me, Benfro. You’re so like your father, you know. Always chasing after myths and legends. Never content to live in the now.’

  ‘But it’s true,’ Benfro insisted. ‘Look around you.’

  There was a moment’s pause which he could only assume was the old dragon taking his advice, then her voice came back, affronted.

  ‘This is a collection of memories and other treasure,’ Meirionydd said, ‘but it’s no dragon hoard. No wonder I can’t reach the others; they’re separated by dead stone. This is no repository. This is hell.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Benfro stared at the neatly stacked shelves and the endless palely gleaming alcoves.

  ‘Think, Benfro. You’ve seen the place where Ystrad Fflur was taken after his reckoning. You know how we are meant to go on. But a dragon’s jewels shouldn’t be kept apart. We’re gregarious creatures, Benfro. In death even more so. We should be mingled together, sharing our memories like we did before you brought us here. This stone is like a grave: it cuts us off from each other. Worse, it cuts us off from everything.’

  Benfro wondered what she was talking about, but something Meirionydd had said brought him up short.

  ‘I brought you here?’ Benfro protested. ‘I didn’t bring you here. I didn’t sort you all out into these boxes.’

  ‘Then who did?’ Meirionydd’s voice asked. It was a question to which he could find no satisfactory answer. And the more he asked it, the more an image came to him of sitting trance-like in front of this very wall, sorting through the muddled collection in his bag and placing each protesting memory in its own lonely place. He had no idea how he had got here before, but it made a horrible kind of sense. He had been here, and he had brought the last memories of the villagers to this prison.

  ‘What should I do?’ he asked finally.

  ‘Take us all out of these horrible cells,’ Meirionydd said. ‘Pile us all together. Heap us at the junction of the Llinellau, where we can watch over the world.’

  ‘I can’t see the Llinellau,’ Benfro said. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Forgive me, Benfro,’ Meirionydd said. ‘I should have more sympathy, I know. I remember the difficulty you had with your lessons. But I thought we were lost, our memories leaching away. Then you came back to us, conjured the Fflam Gwir, the reckoning flame. It was a magical moment, Benfro. Whoever’s been training you all these months must be a genius. Surely he can’t have taught you all this without first showing you how to see the lines?’

  ‘Months?’ Benfro said. ‘It’s been only days since the men burned the village. Two weeks at most.’

  ‘Not days, dear,’ Meirionydd said, her voice carrying that serious tone that Benfro knew well. ‘It’s been more than seven months since I died in that fire. Seven months of slowly fading away, of knowing all my friends are close but being unable to talk to them. Trust me, little dragon. That’s not something I’d forget.’

  ‘But I …’ Benfro began. He had no clear idea of how long he had tramped through the forest, but it was not much more than a couple of weeks, surely. He had no memory of months passing by.

  ‘Still, they have,’ Meirionydd continued as if she could read his thoughts. ‘There are things in the forest that can rob a dragon of much more than that. And you’ve changed far more than a few days could account for.’

  ‘How could I not remember?’ Benfro asked. ‘Where did the time go?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Meirionydd said. ‘But it’s been only a day since you reckoned us all and brought us to this place. Even so, a day is too long cooped up like this. Better to have faded away entirely. You must find the Llinellau. Put us all at a nexus. This place reeks of power – it must lie on a major source of the Grym. You can find it, Benfro. I know you can.’

  ‘But I never could before,’ Benfro protested.

  ‘You never had such a magnificent aura before,’ Meirionydd said. ‘Goodness me, Benfro, you never had wings. I’ve never seen a dragon with such wings. Think about them and the strength they give you. Open your eyes and see.’

  Benfro looked around the room, searching out anything that might be a source of great power. In most directions he could see only a few yards, the walls blurring into a jewel-lined mess like the moon shining through thick cloud. Only in one direction could he see any distance, back towards the reading table and its twin candles. They burned bright and clear, sharply focused even though they were distant. That had to be it. There was nowhere else.

  Slowly he began to spread his wings, feeling the sense of power in them. He remembered the thrill of flight, the perfect control over air currents and the feeling that he was somehow connected to it all. And as he rode a long-dead dragon’s memories, the Llinellau shimmered into view.

  Great thick cables of light speared along the corridors formed by the pillars, criss-crossing in a luminous grid. They were not so much lines of light as an imprint on the fabric of reality. Thin streaks ran across most of the floor in a tight pattern, building as they crossed, larger and larger, until one great trunk speared straight from the wall behind where he stood and on towards the reading table. Somehow he knew that a line of similar magnitude would intersect at that very point.

  ‘I see them,’ he said breathlessly. ‘I see the Llinellau Grym! They cross the floor. They’re everywhere.’

  ‘I knew you would, Benfro,’ Meirionydd said. ‘You just needed to find the right focus. Now you must take us from these prisons. Build a pile of our memories where the biggest lines meet.’

  ‘What about the others?’

  ‘Others?’

  ‘The other dragons. There are thousands here, all sorted into little boxes like you were.’

  There was silence. Benfro looked down at the softly glowing Llinellau and noticed Malkin staring up at him. The squirrel had a quizzical look on its face but had remained silent all the while he had been talking to the jewels. No doubt it had come to accept the strange behaviour of this wayward dragon it had decided to befriend. Only there was something about it that wasn’t quite right. Benfro could see that it was standing astride one of the Llinellau, almost as if it had chosen its place deliberately. The strange luminescence surrounded the creature totally, as if the squirrel were made of the same Grym as the lines. And behind it, almost a shadow of light, was the silhouette of the great mother tree, at once very small and impossibly big.

  ‘You must free them all, Benfro,’ Meirionydd said. He could hear the edge to her words, a seeping panic of claustrophobia.

  ‘No dragon should be held like this.’

  The dining hall was empty at this late hour, which was why Melyn liked to come for his meals now. Apart from important ceremonial feasts, he rarely ate with the novitiates, quaisters and warrior priests. Few dared talk while he was in the room. At times he was glad that his power was still such that it kept all around him in fearful a
we, but lately he had begun to wonder if there was anyone who might show a bit of backbone, answer back.

  He looked out across the hall from his seat at the top table. The food in front of him was half-eaten and unappetizing; his goblet of wine was barely touched. These days it seemed he needed less and less food, less and less sleep. It was just as well. Planning Beulah’s campaign against Llanwennog was taking most of his time, and there was still the matter of a dragon out there in the forest of the Ffrydd somewhere. Perhaps he would send a troop or two of his best warrior priests out. If they could make it through the Rim mountains and into north Llanwennog, they could draw half of Ballah’s army away from the border just by razing a few towns.

  ‘Your Grace?’

  Melyn looked up from his plate. He had been so wrapped up in his musings he’d not noticed anyone come into the dining hall. It was an unforgivable lapse, but whoever was there had managed to close their mind almost completely to him.

  ‘Who is it?’ he asked the darkness. A tall figure stepped forward, slightly stooped and with hair as white as the frost that rimed the morning grass outside the monastery even in the summer.

  ‘Ah, Andro, I should have guessed,’ Melyn said. ‘It’s been a long time since you managed to creep up on me unawares.’

  ‘Longer still since I did it without trying,’ the librarian said. ‘You must have a great deal on your mind to let it wander so.’

  Melyn heard the words of his teacher, taking him back to his earliest years in the order. There was no chastisement this time, but he could do without Andro’s sympathy.

  ‘The queen’s war won’t plan itself,’ Melyn said, ‘and there’s the small matter of a dragon running loose in the forest.’

  ‘Can one dragon harm you so much?’ Andro stepped up to the table and settled himself into a seat. He had a roll of parchment in one gnarled hand. Melyn poured a goblet of wine from his jug and pushed it across the table.

  ‘Probably not. But it’s a bad omen nonetheless. And it wasn’t like any dragon I’ve seen before. It flew.’

  ‘I know,’ Andro said. ‘I saw it too. It was more like some of the beasts in their myths.’

  ‘But you didn’t come here to talk about dragons, did you, old friend? And I don’t suppose you’re all that interested in how I intend to invade Llanwennog.’

  ‘Interested, yes,’ Andro said. ‘But I came to give you this scroll. It was brought here by a coenobite. He’s in a bit of a bad way so I sent him down to see Usel.’

  ‘A Ram? Here?’ Melyn asked, noting the bloodstains on the parchment.

  ‘An old friend, actually,’ Andro said. ‘Father Gideon. He was pretty much dead on his feet when he arrived. His horse will be lucky if it lives, and he’s got a nasty arrow wound that’ll take some healing. It would seem even Rams aren’t welcome in Tynhelyg any more.’

  ‘Why did he come here?’ Melyn asked. ‘Why not report back to Candlehall?’

  ‘I suspect the reason lies in that scroll,’ Andro said. ‘And if he was trying to avoid the main passes, this is the first major stop on his route.’

  Melyn opened the scroll, reading the news it brought him with a rising sense of anger and frustration.

  ‘King Ballah has the boy,’ he said finally. ‘Dondal handed him over almost as soon as they arrived.’

  ‘Errol?’ Andro asked, his face dropping. ‘Is he –’

  ‘Dead? No.’ Melyn pushed the scroll across the table so that the librarian could read it himself. ‘At least he wasn’t when this was written. Damn, but this throws all our plans out. Half the army was meant to go through the pass at Tynewydd. Dondal will be waiting for us to march into his trap. And now he’ll have the bulk of Ballah’s forces with him.’

  ‘So, how can you use that to your advantage?’ Andro asked, and once more Melyn was transported back to the classroom.

  ‘Diversion,’ the inquisitor said. ‘We’ll mass our peasant levies on the border, keep them guessing when we’re going to strike. Make him think we still trust him. But I’ll send all my warrior priests north through the Ffrydd. We’ll cut back over the Rim and descend on Tynhelyg from the opposite direction.’

  ‘We? You’re intending going with them?’

  ‘I can’t fight this war from here,’ Melyn said. ‘Besides, I’ve unfinished dragon business in the forest.’

  Benfro emptied his few possessions on to the floor and then filled his bag with the jewels of the villagers, sweeping them from their niches into a big pile. He could feel their relief as a silent sigh, a release of tension that he had not realized was there until it went. He carried the weight back up the corridor to the writing table, then lifted the candles from their sconces and placed them beside the skeletons in the fireplace. The table was heavy, carved from some solid dark wood. He couldn’t lift it, but managed with much sweat and a great deal of squealing and scraping to move it away from the nexus.

  The glow intensified as he carefully tipped the last memories of the village on to the floor exactly where the two great Llinellau met. They made a small pile and took on the same ethereal light. Mist-like tendrils rose in a spiral from the heap and for a moment Benfro feared the gems were alight, would burn away to nothing. But the mist only grew more solid, coalescing into a familiar form until a ghost image of Meirionydd stood before him. Not the old dowager dragon of his recent memory but the figure of youthful grace and beauty he had seen on his hatchday, when she had entered his thoughts to lift Frecknock’s clumsy spell.

  ‘O Benfro, this is truly a wonderful place you’ve brought us to,’ she said. ‘But you must free the others quickly. I feel their frustration and fear all around me. They’ve been alone for so very long. I fear some may be beyond rescue. Hurry, please.’

  Unable to disobey, Benfro picked up his bag and, watched over by the luminous vision of beauty, he worked his way along the nearest wall, scooping jewels from their alcoves into his bag. When it was full he added them to the pile before heading off for more.

  ‘Malkin help,’ the squirrel said when it realized what he was attempting to do. It scampered back and forth, collecting gems as if they were acorns to hide away for the winter. Slowly the pile grew, spilling out from the central point in a heap that cast ever more light over the scene. With each touch of hand to stone, Benfro would catch a fleeting memory, an image perhaps or more often a feeling. Names sprang into his head, unbidden and unknown. Places too, and how to get to them, but only from other places he had never heard of. And all the while the pile grew and grew and the walls with their endless little carved pockets became emptier and emptier.

  The hours passed, coalescing into each other in a seamless rush of activity. With each added essence, the pile seemed to radiate an ever greater urgency, demanding that he finish the task. His muscles ached, his belly rumbled and he felt a weariness that should surely have floored him, yet somehow Benfro took strength from the task, took encouragement from those he freed. And so he toiled, unthinking and uncomplaining in a manner he would not have thought possible.

  Finally it was done. He swept the last stones from the last alcove, carried them over to the enormous pile and tipped them as best he could on to the top, though he could scarcely reach it now without clambering up the stack, and that seemed to him oddly disrespectful. Malkin had stopped some time earlier, when the lower tiers of alcoves had been emptied, and the squirrel now stood, motionless and staring up at their handiwork. A general aura of excitement filled the room, a soundless hubbub of voices in conversation. The smoke image of Meirionydd faded away, melding in and out of a hundred different shapes until it reformed into one solid image. She was the most magnificent dragon Benfro had ever seen, rising over the pile of stones like a mother protecting her eggs. Her long neck curved with the ceiling and dropped back down towards him, its head staring at him with intense glowing eyes.

  ‘We thank you, Sir Benfro, for freeing us from the tyrant Magog,’ the vision said. Its voice was mighty like a storm in the treetops. ‘Our wisdom and o
ur folly belong to the earth now, as it should have been aeons ago. Your fallen comrades tell me you seek the one known as Corwen. His place is to the north of here, only half a day’s flying. Now we must go. There is much bitterness and resentment to be eased, much madness to be soothed. Some of us have been imprisoned here for thousands of years.’

  Benfro was about to ask the image who it was, but it disappeared, the mist sucking back into the heap like the smoke from the after-dinner pipe he had watched Sir Frynwy take a thousand times. He stood for long moments just staring at the great pile, waiting for someone else to appear, but nothing came. His work here was done, he realized. It was time to go. And yet just as he was turning to leave a voice came to him, gruff and familiar. Ynys Môn.

  ‘I always thought you’d come to something, young Benfro,’ the old dragon said. ‘But this astonishes even me. Still, you’ve a lot more surprises ahead of you, of that I’m sure. You’re going to be heading out into the real world and there’s something here you might want to take with you. Go through this treasure and see if you can find coins. You’ll need money once you travel beyond the Ffrydd. A map would be a good idea too, if you can find one.’

  ‘Beyond the Ffrydd?’ Benfro echoed. It had never really occurred to him that there was anything beyond the Ffrydd. Even the maps he had seen earlier that night had been meaningless. But the old dragon did not reply. The pile of gems hummed with activity but it was voiceless, expectant and drawn in upon itself, a great melting pot of emotions and ideas kept locked away for far too long.