The Obsidian Throne Page 2

  ‘Beast is perhaps too strong a word. Sir Morwyr is intelligent, powerful in the Grym. I’ve felt his thoughts in my mind, as have you, Your Highness. He is not the leader of this party though.’

  ‘If we could contact him would he act as a mediator?’ the seneschal asked. ‘We cannot hope to drive them off, nor can we flee the city. We must do something, surely?’

  A silence fell on the room. Padraig was right. For the moment the dragons were mostly circling the Neuadd or prowling around the cloisters that surrounded the great hall, but it was only a matter of time before they set about the city again.

  ‘I will go and speak to them.’ Iolwen stood so suddenly Dafydd thought she might fall over. He rushed to her side.

  ‘Iol … You can’t … It’s too dangerous.’

  ‘I am the one claiming the throne, Dafydd. I am the one who would be queen to the terrified people down in the city. I cannot ask another to go in my stead.’

  ‘Actually, Your Highness, you can.’

  All eyes turned to Padraig, the changed tone of his voice cutting through the uncertainty that had dogged their meeting so far. He stood straighter, held his hands lightly together, no longer fretting.

  ‘Padraig—’

  ‘As seneschal of the Order of the Candle, it is my duty to represent the House of Balwen in all negotiations. I will present myself to these dragons, address this Sir Morwyr and press our case for peaceful coexistence.’ He turned to the medic. ‘I would appreciate your assistance, Usel. My Draigiaith is perhaps a little rusty. It is a long time since last a dragon was presented at court.’

  Without waiting for an answer, the seneschal bowed briefly to Iolwen, then turned and strode out of the room. Usel struggled to keep up, and Dafydd set off to follow them. Iolwen stepped down off the dais, Teryll just behind her.

  ‘You should stay here, Iol. I’ll take a couple of guards and make sure no one comes to any harm.’

  For a moment he thought she was going to argue; it wouldn’t have been the first time. But after a brief consideration, the princess just nodded. Dafydd took it as permission to leave, signalled the closest two guards to follow him and headed for the door.

  By the time they caught up with Padraig and Usel, the pair were almost at the top of the stone steps leading down to the reception rooms at the front of the palace. The seneschal paused just long enough to allow a troop of guards to form up behind him, then he set off down the stairs. For an old man who had affected a doddering manner since they first met, he now seemed full of vigour. Dafydd tried to skim his thoughts, but Padraig’s mental shields were tighter than any he had encountered since last he had sparred with old King Ballah. It was perhaps sensible, given how easily the dragon they had encountered before had pushed its way into his mind. Dafydd hung back in the shadows, drawing his own defences around him as he watched the seneschal step out into the daylight.

  The parade ground in front of the palace had seemed vast when Dafydd first saw it just days earlier. Now it looked cluttered and small, littered with the carcasses of half-eaten animals and the occasional crumpled form of what might once have been a man. Two enormous dragons lay a few tens of paces from the entrance, basking in the afternoon sun. Another even larger beast was pacing slowly around the perimeter, peering at the stone walls, reaching out occasionally to touch something or leaning in to sniff. Three more dragons sprawled closer to the administrative buildings that formed the far perimeter of the grounds, and as the sun caught them they sparkled like jewels, a million different hues highlighting the patterns of their scales. Overhead, yet more dragons wheeled and cried in the sky, and as he looked up at them, Dafydd could hear the thunder of their voices battering against his mental defences. It was as well he’d prepared himself; unshielded he would surely have been knocked senseless by the noise.

  ‘Sir Morwyr?’ Seneschal Padraig now walked with his head bowed, taking slow steps towards the nearest of the dragons. Dafydd could not tell if it was the same one they had seen earlier, the one that had warned them to leave before its companions arrived. Something suggested to him that this creature was bigger, although it was the same deep black colour. It had been lying with iteyes closed, massive head resting on the flagstone path that speared arrow-straight from the palace doors to the far side of the parade ground. Now it opened one eye, bigger than Padraig’s head, and sniffed the air as it focused.

  ‘Sir Morwyr, I come on behalf of—’ But on whose behalf he came, Padraig never said. With a swiftness that belied its great bulk, the dragon raised its head, opened its mouth and in one snap bit the seneschal in half. He didn’t even have time to scream. Dafydd watched in horror as the dragon lifted its head higher, gulping down the morsel like a dog eating scraps. Padraig’s legs and lower torso fell to the stone with a wet, bloody slap, and in an instant the dragon that had been lazing by the doors barged in and scooped it up.

  In the space of a few heartbeats, Seneschal Padraig was gone, nothing left but a bloody smear.

  A tense unease had settled across the camp, the army waiting, nervous. The common soldiers, drawn from the shires and hamlets, were a superstitious lot, and it had been in Beulah’s interests to keep them that way. The brightest lads were taken at each year’s choosing, trained to be Candles, Rams or warrior priests. The rest might learn a few letters, the rough calculations of the marketplace, maybe even a few words of Llanwennog if they were traders or seamen, but they weren’t encouraged to deep learning. To them, dragons were creatures of myth, or at most fleetingly glimpsed timid creatures, not much bigger than a horse.

  The two dozing on the plain looked like they could eat a horse in one bite.

  Only the sight of the third, lying dead a few hundred yards further away, was keeping the panic from spreading. Anyone with a pair of eyes could look up towards the Neuadd, sitting proud on top of the great hill of Candlehall, and see the dozen and more huge beasts wheeling in the air around it. Where they had come from was anybody’s guess, but that was unimportant. They were here, and they were more powerful than anything seen since King Balwen’s time.

  And Clun had bested their leader.

  Beulah tried to project an aura of calm as she walked down the lines of tents, inspecting her troops. The land here was strong in the Grym, and with each passing day her ability to manipulate it grew, the dampening effects of her pregnancy leaching away. Even so, she struggled to find the right state of mind; the dragons tainted the air with their smell and the Grym with something even stronger, even more disconcerting. It was unnerving even the warrior priests, and that worried her more than anything.

  ‘Is it true they fight on our side, Your Majesty?’

  It wasn’t the first time she’d been asked, nor would it be the last. The man who questioned her was a commoner, young and strong. A farm hand perhaps, judging by the colour of his skin and the set of his frame. He stood a little taller, a little straighter than the soldiers around him. And, of course, he had summoned up the courage to speak to his queen where all around trembled at her presence. She brushed his thoughts lightly, seeing only wonder and excitement there, a thrill at being part of this righteous war and pride at being in such exalted presence. He reminded her of Clun when first they had met.

  ‘They fight for His Grace the Duke of Abervenn, and since he has pledged his allegiance to me, then yes, they fight for us.’ Beulah put as much conviction into her words as she could manage, though in truth she had her doubts.

  ‘Then we cannot lose, thank the Shepherd.’ The young man bent his head and made the sign of the crook across his chest. It was a simple gesture, one Beulah had seen a thousand times and more, but something about it sent a shiver through her. Like a benediction for the condemned rather than a prayer of thanks.

  ‘What is your name, soldier? Where are you from?’

  ‘Siarl, Your Majesty. I come from the Hendry. Edge of the boglands south of Castell Glas.’

  Beulah began to correct the lad about how she should be addressed, then realized
just how silly the whole ‘Majesty’ and ‘ma’am’ thing was. ‘You came with Duke Beylin? Helped retake Abervenn?’

  ‘That I did. First ever fight I’ve been in and I never thought I’d be battling Hafod men.’ The young man’s face dropped, even as his eyes glanced briefly upwards to Candlehall and the Neuadd.

  ‘Do not worry, Siarl. Some of my people may have turned their backs on me, given their hearts to the Wolf, but the Shepherd favours us. King Ballah is dead, Llanwennog taken. And now we have dragons on our side the siege of Candlehall will be short.’ Beulah did not add that it would be bloody. She turned away from the young soldier, addressing one of the warrior priests who accompanied her wherever she went.

  ‘Captain, this lad shows leadership potential. See to it that he is trained and given a commission. I need more men like him in my army.’

  The young man dropped to his knees. ‘Your Majesty. You do me great honour.’

  ‘I do.’ Beulah looked down at him, a shiver of premonition running down her back like cold water. ‘See that you do not disappoint.’

  2

  Much has been written of the brothers Gog and Magog, who warred over the affections of Ammorgwm the Fair. It is said that when she died, the victim of one of their spells, so sickened were they that they split Gwlad in two. Rather destroy the world than have to share it with each other, they cared nothing for the incalculable damage their actions caused.

  So much the legend has it, a warning to all about the follies of power and arrogance. But there is more to the tale than the bards tell, more truth to the story than even they suspect. Gog, Son of the Winter Moon, and his twin hatchling Magog, Son of the Summer Moon, warred with each other from their earliest days. They grew powerful in the subtle arts under the tutelage of the finest mages of their time, raised magnificent palaces and plotted such schemes as would bend the whole world to their will. Their rivalry urged them to ever greater deeds, each straining to outdo the other with their magic. Indeed it was such potent working that brought them to the attention of Ammorgwm in the first place.

  The tale of their splitting Gwlad in two is often taken as a metaphor, a warning of the ultimate folly of those with too much power and too little responsibility. But like the rest of their tale it is in fact true. And not only did these two warring brothers somehow contrive to divide Gwlad into two separate realms, but each left in his brother’s half a little gift that haunts us to this day. Magog sowed the seed that would grow into the malaise that afflicts our youngsters, a disaffection with learning and discipline, a reversion to old times when dragons were no better than beasts. And Gog left his brother’s kin no better off, for he cursed them to wither even as he instilled in mankind, so long our friends and servants, a deep and irrational hatred of our kind.

  From the journals of Myfanwy the Bold

  The room at the top of the tower is always cold. The Old One doesn’t appear to feel it, and neither do any of his followers. Dragons seem somehow immune to the weather, which he guesses makes sense. They can fly, after all. But there’s more to it than that. Even on the coldest days, when he has to stoke the fire up high and dare not move away from it for long, the Old One still leaves the great glass doors open when he goes flying, sometimes even forgets to close them on his return. They are too heavy for the boy to shift. He knows; he has tried.

  It is something to do with the lines and the Grym. He knows that too, is beginning to understand them. That was why the Old One chose him, plucked him from a life in the kitchens far below and invited him up to this high tower. Because he could see something of the dragons’ magic, their subtle arts.

  ‘You have lit the fire. Well done, boy. You must have known I would be returning soon.’

  That is another thing he doesn’t quite understand – how the Old One can simply appear out of thin air, disappear too. True, the dragon mostly likes to leap from the top of his high tower and fly; who wouldn’t? But there have been times in his short apprenticeship when the boy has been talking to his master, turned his back for just an instant and the dragon is gone. His return is often the same. Abrupt, unannounced. These are the magics the boy longs to learn.

  ‘Where is it that you go to, master? When you disappear like that?’ He pauses a moment, wondering whether he has the nerve to ask, then asks anyway. ‘How is it that you disappear like that?’

  The Old One observes him with eyes turned milky white with age, tilts his battered head ever so slightly. Some days a question will be ignored, some days it will earn the boy a swift rebuke, and some days – just occasionally – it will merit an answer. Today is one of the good days.

  ‘Your first question is none of your business, clearly. My peregrinations are of concern only to myself. Had that been the depth of your curiosity I should have been most displeased.’

  The boy hangs his head, more in disappointment than shame. It is an honour beyond honours even to be invited to the tower, let alone to have been picked to serve the Old One personally, to perhaps learn at his side. And yet for all the honour and all the promise, so far the boy’s learning has been slow. He fears perhaps that the Old One has forgotten how humans live only short lifespans, fifty, sixty years. Perhaps a little more, but often much less. A dragon is barely adult in that time, and most of their kind in the palace number their years in the thousands. Or so they claim.

  ‘But your second question. Yes, well that’s the nub of it. That is a question that goes to the heart of all the subtle arts. I have been watching you, Melyn son of Arall. I didn’t choose you at random to be my servant here. Quite the opposite. I have no great need of servants, but those of your kind who can sense the Grym all around them are few in number. Fewer still can reach out to the Llinellau and draw that power to them, use it for their own ends.’

  The boy waits. He has learned these past months not to be impatient, or at least not to show his impatience. He has used his time alone in the tower, when the Old One is away on his journeys, to study what he can. There are scrolls and books so heavy he can scarcely lift them and written in dense scripts that swirl and change as he tries to read them, but he is nothing if not persistent. How else would he know his letters at all, a kitchen boy, son of an unimportant gatekeeper in a palace where the doors are never locked and all are welcome?

  ‘The Llinellau Grym link every living thing in Gwlad. In some ways they are every living thing. When we are hatched – born in your case, I should say – we take some of the Grym into ourselves. And when we die – for all of us must die some day, even me – when we die we go back into the Llinellau to become one with all of Gwlad and for all of time. In that sense our lives are the aberration. Gwlad exists without us, the trees and the grass, the mindless sheep in the fields, the tiniest of insects and the largest leviathans roaming the wide ocean. These are all things of the Grym, but they do not know the Grym. That knowledge marks us out as different.’

  The boy knows this, but only because he has read it in one of the Old One’s books. This is the first time the ancient dragon has told him anything of the subtle arts. And yet it is not enough. It tantalizes him, knowing more already. What he longs for is to understand.

  ‘You see the Llinellau, do you not?’ The Old One moves closer to the fire, holds up his gnarled hands to the flames.

  ‘They are everywhere, master. Sometimes it is hard not to see them.’

  ‘Ah, you are rare among your kind, boy. To see with such ease what most men go their entire lives blissfully unaware of. There are even dragons who struggle to make that basic connection with the Grym. But tell me, what do you see of them here, in the flames?’

  The boy is uncertain at first. He has never been asked something so directly before. But he is eager too, wants to show his mastery of this task so he might move on to more sophisticated magics. And so he jumps at the chance to excel, to impress his teacher.

  The lines have always been easy for him to see, a constant companion on the edge of his vision. Now he summons them to the fore, thick and
clear. The major lines delineate the room, arch into the roof overhead and criss-cross the floor. Focusing on the intersections he can see thinner lines, less structured, that nonetheless speak to how much life teems in even this seemingly barren place. And then he turns his attention to the fire.

  A chaotic mess of Grym boils off the flames, lines arcing and snapping like the lightning storms he has sometimes seen through the great glass doors, so distant the thunder rumbles of their flashes take minutes to arrive. They jump and crack and flow out, mirroring the heat that he can feel on his face. He has never thought about it before, but he can sense the Grym leaping from the burning logs and into him just as much as the warmth from the flames. Perhaps more so. It is so easy just to reach out and bring a little more in, to push the deep chill from his bones.

  And then it is too much. He stands fully ten paces from it and yet it feels as if he has put his hands deep into the fire. It is almost as if the Grym senses him, feels his call and answers joyfully. Now he doesn’t know how to stop it. He pushes away, but that only makes things worse. He can feel the skin burning on his fingers, smell the stench of scorched flesh so horribly familiar from his earlier life in the kitchens.

  ‘Enough.’ The Old One’s voice is all around him, enveloping him in a cocoon that separates the boy from the Grym entirely. It is almost as painful as the fire, but in a different way. Like hearing comforting voices all your life and then suddenly realizing they are gone. For an instant he is completely alone, and then the sound comes back, gently this time.

  ‘You are too impetuous, Melyn son of Arall. Too hungry for the power. You will never control the Grym that way.’

  ‘I am sorry, master. I will try harder next time.’

  ‘Next time?’ The ancient dragon tilts his head again as if the possibility is something he has not considered before. ‘Perhaps. If you can learn to discipline yourself. You show great promise, but there is still a long way to go. Remember this lesson well, even after you have healed. The Grym is not your friend, neither your enemy. It is dispassionate, but it is more powerful than you can ever imagine. You must learn control. Learn discipline. Otherwise it will devour you. Now go and see the healer. You’ll be needing a salve for those fingers.’