The Golden Cage Page 22

  Melyn laughed. ‘Magog is a myth, Cenobus too. And even if it did exist, it would be far more remote than this. Prince Lonk searched the forest for months, and when Father Keoldale left the party they still hadn’t found it. I’ve ridden these woods before and never seen anything like this.’

  ‘Can’t you see? It’s been protected by incredible workings. I’ve never seen such skilled use of the subtle arts.’ Frecknock stepped forward, looking at the air, her hands reaching out to things that weren’t there. ‘But something’s broken the spell. And recently, too. It’s slowly leaching away.’

  Melyn shifted his focus, letting the lines come to his view. Despite the absence of anything living, they covered the ground more densely than he had seen them anywhere outside the Neuadd or Emmass Fawr. It was almost as if this barren ridge, poking out of the middle of the forest, was a focus for all the life concentrated around it, sucking it in like he might tap it to conjure his blade of light. But why would a ruined building do that?

  ‘You’re looking at it wrong. How do you call the sight? The aethereal?’ Frecknock looked back at Melyn, who was wondering just how much of his magic she knew and understood. Still, he took her advice and slipped into the trance that would let him see the aethereal, viewing the palace as he had directed their passage through the forest.

  And then he understood why so many men had tried and failed to find this place, why so many had disappeared in the search. The whole ridge swirled with patterns of light. It was as if it were not rock but some sleeping giant, who had lain so long that the forest had grown up around him. There was no other way Melyn could describe it – the mountain was alive. But it was dying too. The colours were fading, their power seeping back into the land. The power of the Grym was reclaiming the rubble fields, pinpricks of light showing where mosses and lichens were beginning to grow.

  ‘Do you see it now, Your Grace?’

  Melyn looked at Frecknock and almost slipped out of his trance. She was still recognizably the dragon who had betrayed her own in search of a mate, who had made herself so pathetic that even he hadn’t the heart to kill her. But she was also a regal creature, glowing with an energy that surrounded her like a great halo. The assembled warrior priests were shadowy flickers in comparison, their self-images poorly formed. He doubted that they saw anything more than a jumbled mess of ruined buildings. The flow of power through this place was lost on them.

  Then he realized what it was that had been with him ever since he had begun the long slow climb up the mountain to this ancient ruin. He felt in the presence of his god. Not the all-enveloping peace, the healing power and sense of omnipotence, but more the comfort of prayer. This whole place was holy ground, sanctuary.

  And the beast Caradoc had sullied it by taking refuge here.

  Melyn pulled out of his trance. ‘With me, men. We’ve got a dragon to slay.’ To his normal sight the ruin looked dead, uninviting, almost daunting. It seemed to shrink in on itself as he stared at it, the last vestiges of its protective magic trying to turn him away.

  They picked their way across the rubble to climb wide shallow steps towards the arch. Cut into the steps were channels wide enough apart to allow wagons to negotiate the gradient but also designed to drain rainwater from the steps. All around lay the remnants of a settlement built on a vast scale: great halls delineated by the lowest stones of their walls; passageways wide enough to let a half dozen horses pass now choked with rubble; columns toppled, their constituent blocks stretching out for dozens of paces, exaggerating their already impressive length. Some incredible catastrophe had befallen this place; something had razed it to the ground in a single instant, casting blocks of stone as big as houses down the hillside for miles, turning almost everything up here on the summit to rubble and dust. And yet ahead of Melyn the arch still stood and the wall towered over his men. How could they have survived when all around had crumbled?

  It was the Grym, of course, the force that flowed through everything. But the workings that could have bent it to this purpose made him shiver. They were so far beyond anything he had ever imagined possible. No wonder this place reeked of the Shepherd; this had to have been a place of great importance to him, like Candlehall and the Neuadd.

  But that thought troubled him. If this place was the work of the Shepherd, then what had destroyed it? And why had his god allowed a dragon, a creature of the Wolf, to take up residence in this place, even if it was a ruin?

  Melyn stopped on the threshold and all his warrior priests hesitated too, as if something held them back. The power about the place was a heady sensation, like the befuddlement of too much Fo Afron wine. It was all too tempting to dive in, to lose himself. Only a lifetime of control held him back.

  ‘Captain Osgal, I want you to take two men and guard this gate,’ he said. ‘The rest of us will go inside, including Frecknock.’ He nodded at the dragon, who was still staring wide-eyed at things no one else could see. ‘If we’re not back in two hours, send one man into the courtyard, but only as far as you can see him from this gateway, and have him perform a summoning spell. Keep doing that every hour for two days. After that return to the main camp and take our forces back to Candlehall.’

  ‘Your Grace, surely you can’t –’

  ‘This place is a magical gold mine, Jerrim.’ Melyn used the captain’s first name to calm his obvious agitation. ‘Our dragon’s gone to ground in here somewhere. I aim to track him down and destroy him. But there are powerful spells beyond this archway, and they’re collapsing in on themselves. Don’t worry, old friend. I will come back, but I must plan for every eventuality.’

  Osgal nodded once, shouting to two men, who split off from the main group. Melyn turned to the remaining warrior priests, searching their faces for signs of trepidation and finding none. Good, he thought. I’ve trained them well. Now let’s put that training to a real test.

  Without a word, he stepped through the doorway into the courtyard beyond.

  For the briefest of instants Melyn thought he had stepped under an ice-cold stream of water. His whole body tingled and shuddered involuntarily, as if someone were walking on his grave. And then he was standing on the other side of the arch, looking across a nondescript courtyard towards what had no doubt once been a large building. One by one, as if they had pushed through heavy drapes, Melyn became aware of the other warrior priests entering the courtyard, and then the dragon Frecknock came through. Such was the power of her presence that he had to turn and face her, to reassure himself that it was the same slight self-effacing creature he had brought with him.

  She looked the same, still staring open-mouthed at things that weren’t there, and yet he could see a difference in her posture that should have infuriated him. She looked confident, unconcerned about the men surrounding her, any one of whom could have cut her down in an instant. She was no longer afraid, and that should have been reason enough for him to have her killed. Yet Melyn couldn’t help feeling a strange elation. He had won her over completely now. He could see it. No matter that he had killed her extended family; no matter that he represented all she had feared and despised for the whole of her life. He had shown her things she had never thought possible. She would follow him to the ends of Gwlad just for the chance of more.

  ‘Do you have any idea where the beast is?’ Melyn asked the dragon. It took her a while to realize she was being addressed.

  ‘No, Your Grace. I’m sorry. But this place is so confusing, so full of memories.

  ‘It’s no matter. We’ll just have to search the old-fashioned way. We know Caradoc’s large, so we can ignore the smaller passageways. We’ll split into groups. Return here in one hour regardless of whether you’ve found anything or not.’

  Melyn nodded to one of the warrior priests to follow him and gestured for Frecknock to join them. They set off across the courtyard for the door directly opposite the archway. Shards of ancient dried oak hung from hinges rusted almost to nothing, but the step was free of dust, no doubt blown clean by
the endless wind that whistled across the ridge. Stepping into the darkness, Melyn conjured a ball of fire to illuminate the room. The warrior priest with him did likewise, but the dragon hung back, seemingly unwilling to cross the threshold, certainly not about to use magic without permission.

  ‘Come, Frecknock. I have need of your expertise here.’

  She hesitated for a moment, then ducked through the doorway, even though it towered over her, easily big enough for a wagon, or an unusually large and feral dragon, to pass through.

  It was cool inside after the heat of the afternoon sun. Melyn sniffed the dry dusty air, hoping for some small scent of Caradoc, but he could make out nothing past the smell of cold stone. As his eyes adjusted to the low light, he could see he was in a large hall with a huge open fireplace at the far end. A long table, too high for men to use comfortably, stood by the cold hearth, with a single chair of the kind he had seen in the dragon village positioned at one end.

  A place had been laid at the table. Melyn hoisted himself on to the chair and peered at the remains of a meal. It had dried rather than rotted, leaving desiccated vegetables and a curled piece of what looked like fish laid out on a wide gold plate. A heavy tankard sat empty beside it.

  ‘Do you think it was here, sir?’ Melyn looked down at the warrior priest who had joined him, noticing as he did that Frecknock had moved to the far side of the hall and was peering into a darkened doorway. He thought of the cottage in the woods back at Pwllpeiran, the bowl in the ground formed by the roots of an overturned tree and filled with the rotting carcasses of dozens of sheep, cattle. The two human skeletons picked clean.

  ‘No, this is too civilized.’ Melyn jumped down from the chair, feeling a bit like a child, dwarfed by its size. ‘And whoever started this meal did so many months ago.’

  ‘It was Benfro.’ Frecknock was perhaps thirty paces away, but her voice carried as if she were standing right beside him.

  ‘Benfro?’

  ‘He came through here some time ago.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Melyn walked swiftly across the room to where Frecknock was standing. The doorway opened on to deeper darkness with the faintest of breezes stirring the air, bringing up with it odours of dry emptiness.

  ‘It’s hard to explain. He left his mark here. Something happened. Something extraordinary. You’ve seen how the wards and protections are dissolving. Somehow that was Benfro’s doing. Or he was involved.’

  ‘You’re making no sense. Can you smell him? Did he leave some kind of sign?’

  ‘Not a physical one, no.’

  ‘Then what are you sensing?’ Melyn tried to curb his anger at Frecknock’s vagueness.

  ‘I can’t describe it. I just know he was here.’

  ‘And what about the other dragon, Caradoc? Can you sense him too?’

  ‘He’s been in here more recently. I can smell him all over this room. But he didn’t stay long.’

  ‘Where did he go?’

  ‘Down there.’ She pointed into the darkness. ‘I can’t tell if he came back the same way.’

  Melyn raised his arm, the light from his conjured flame pushing the shadows back enough to reveal a wide spiralling stairway. Upwards, it was blocked with fallen rubble; the only way was down.

  There were several openings as they descended into the heart of the hill – entrances into basement levels that leaked chill darkness. Frecknock stopped at each one and sniffed before shaking her head and continuing down. Finally they reached the bottom, and a long corridor stretched out ahead. The floor was laid with smooth flagstones, and lifeless iron sconces hung from the wall at regular intervals. Walking forward, his light only ever reaching a few paces ahead, Melyn could feel the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. While the vaulted ceiling was high over his head, and the walls were more than fifteen paces apart, the space was relatively confined for a dragon the size of Caradoc. He wasn’t sure he wanted to corner it without the back-up of the rest of his warrior priests.

  ‘Can you still smell him?’ Melyn asked. Beside him Frecknock paused for a moment before answering.

  ‘Caradoc? He came this way, but I don’t think he’s down here any more. He was bleeding when he fled from you this morning, but there’s no smell of blood here. His scent’s faded too. Like he came here a while back. Perhaps he was exploring and didn’t find a suitable place to sleep.’

  ‘So what’s down here that’s so interesting?’ Melyn’s irritation grew as he realized they had been wandering the depths of the ruined castle for no reason. Why could Frecknock not have told him earlier that their quarry was not down here?

  ‘Can’t you see it? Aren’t you looking?’

  ‘See what? There’s darkness apart from my flame, and that’s hard enough to conjure down here, so far from the lines.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Your Grace. I assumed you would be using your aethereal sight.’

  ‘To see the aethereal requires a great deal of skill and even greater concentration. I can’t just drop in and out of it at will.’ Melyn wondered about the dragon. She seemed to know of the aethereal, obviously had a means of seeing it herself, and yet she had no conception of the effort it took for him to achieve the necessary trance. Was it something she could do with barely a thought?

  He put the idea aside for later consideration and slowly centred himself, letting the trance take him. His conjured light faltered and went out, leaving the party in total blackness. And then the familiar sensation passed over him as the higher world of the aethereal swam into his perception.

  Melyn could see the passageway clearly now, stretching away to a point some hundred paces away. The iron sconces held short oil-burning torches, their flames strangely motionless yet casting light over the rough-hewn stonework. Leaving his body behind, he floated to the nearest torch, seeing up close that the whole thing was formed from a swirling mass of colours. The stone walls, too, pulsed and glowed quite unlike anything he had ever seen before, everything streaming towards the end of the corridor. Looking back, Melyn almost fell out of his trance. He could see his own body, lifeless now that he had moved away from it. Beside him the warrior priest was a hazy form, and Frecknock was that strangely regal and elegant dragon he had noticed before. But it wasn’t his companions that drew his attention, it was the corridor itself.

  The colours that defined it faded away to blackness as they stretched back towards the stairs. And as they did so, the definition of the passageway altered, becoming an unformed, spiralling circle. It reminded Melyn of the way water ran down the hole in a sink, but it was as if he was sitting in the drain rather than watching from above. The aethereal view was being sucked towards him, and as he watched, a torch on the wall a dozen paces behind twisted and bent. It stretched like it was made of tar, the unmoving light of its flame still bright but elongated and curved. Then it became just another part of the smear of colour, slowly spiralling inwards.

  Then he noticed the pull. It was a subtle thing, the lightest of breezes tugging him away from his motionless body. His aethereal self had no need to touch the ground, but whereas normally he delighted in the freedom of flight, now he felt helpless and adrift as that gentlest of forces moved him along the corridor towards its end.

  Melyn tried to move back to his body, but some unseen hand prevented him. For the first time in many decades he felt a frisson of real fear. He knew all too well what happened to adepts who failed to return to their bodies after travelling the aethereal. Their empty husks would fade away and die eventually, but it could take many years. He would rather be devoured by a feral dragon than become one of the mindless. But he was being pulled further and further away from himself, and there didn’t seem to be anything he could do to stop it. And meanwhile the tunnel itself was being devoured, that cone of darkness getting closer and closer to where they had all stopped.

  Holding back the edges of this unaccustomed panic, he looked around, trying to fix himself in the shifting scene, all the while moving further away from his body. He could s
ee a stout wooden door at the far end of the passage, great gouges scratched out of its surface as if it had been attacked by a wild beast or a man wielding an axe in a frenzy. The slow spiral of colour leaching out of the aethereal view of the corridor sank into the great door, making it pulse with a life of its own. Melyn could feel it pulling him in along with everything else, but now a presence radiated from the door that relaxed him completely, soothing away his growing panic and giving him back the courage that had so uncharacteristically failed him. The Shepherd was close by, all around him, watching over him as he always did. Melyn sensed the power of his god just beyond the door, locked away behind it. Could this really be the fabled spot where King Balwen received his instructions before the Shepherd withdrew from Gwlad? Suddenly hungry for answers, where before he had been near-paralysed with fear and self-doubt, he reached out for the wood, speeding towards it, intending to pass right through and into the arms of his god.

  The impact came as a shock to his very soul. In his aethereal form he had no physical presence, so to be solidly rebuffed was a blow unlike anything he had felt. Where before he had been pulled inexorably towards the door, now he was propelled away from it with alarming speed. He could see his body, the wispy half-formed image of the warrior priest and alongside them Frecknock. They were frozen, as if all that had happened had passed in an instant, but the spiral of colours twisting away into blackness had almost reached them.

  As he hurtled towards himself, wondering whether he could find his way back into his body, Melyn saw the darkness take the warrior priest and start to pull at his own image, twisting and stretching it as if it were warm toffee. He reached out for his own arm, hoping that contact would snap him back to himself, but he was moving too fast, passing his flailing aethereal arm, heading for oblivion. At the last moment he felt a tingling in his hand, another unexpected sensation, and he saw Frecknock, her arm outstretched, reaching for him. She rose from the ground even as the darkness ate it away, and he stretched as far as he could, grasping her leathery hand.