The Obsidian Throne Page 25

  ‘Your Grace, I …’ he began, then clearly felt the healing that had been worked upon him. Amazed hands wandered up to his face, feeling his cheeks, his forehead, and slowly he looked up to gaze into the inquisitor’s eyes. His awe was perfect.

  ‘The Shepherd has returned, Jerrim. He is in me. Now I need you to seek out the lair of the Wolf. It lies somewhere to the north of Emmass Fawr, a city hidden by purloined magics. Take the warrior priests who rode with us through the Northlands. Seek out this city and map its bounds. Station men at its gates who know the hiding spell best, then return to the monastery. I will meet you there.’

  ‘You are not coming with us, sire? Osgal’s healed face creased into a worried frown, its youthful flesh at odds with the shock of white hair that covered the crown of his head where Melyn had touched him.

  ‘I have unfinished business I must attend to. You have your orders, Captain. Set to them swiftly.’

  Osgal scrambled to his feet, still shaking slightly from the pain of his healing. He clapped a fist to his chest, bowed and then without another word scurried from the room. Melyn turned back to the throne, beside which Frecknock stood, waiting patiently like an obedient dog. She looked up at his words. ‘You have the book? The Llyfr Draconius?’

  ‘I never let it out of my sight, sire.’ She reached for the leather bag slung around her neck, unbuckling it and pulling out the heavy tome.

  ‘Give it to me.’

  Melyn took the book, feeling the weight of it in his hand, a tightness in his chest where his wound had healed in a band of golden scales. The wound that Benfro had given him. It was a link to the young dragon, as was the throne, the location where the deed had been done. It was from here that Benfro had leaped into the Grym. Melyn knew how that was done now, could step through the lines as easily as crossing the threshold from one room to another. He just needed to open the door first.

  ‘Come, Frecknock.’ He reached out and took the dragon’s hand, feeling the warmth of it, the soft leather of her palms and the tiny serrations of the scales that covered her fingers. Much like the ones that covered his own. The book, the dragon and the throne. Together they were his anchor as he reached out along the lines, testing them for the scent he was looking for. So much time had passed since Benfro had escaped. Could he possibly hope to track him this way? And what if he found him? Would he let Magog finish the task he had begun, let the most powerful mage ever to have lived be born again? Or would he do what he had always intended and slay the abomination like he had slain its mother? Put an end once and for all to the madness. Melyn walled off the questions in his mind, hiding them away before they could take hold. There was no need to seek out Benfro anyway; the young dragon would come to him.

  And then he felt it, the faintest whisper in the Grym. Frecknock must have felt it too, for her grip upon his hand tightened.

  ‘Your Grace. Master Clun!’ Terror clipped the edges of her voice, and as Melyn turned his attention to her he saw why. The aethereal sight was never far from him now, and with little more than a blink he saw Clun’s body hanging palely in the air between them. He looked sickly, injured, a dull red glow surrounding him like a protective shield.

  ‘Neuadd … Danger … The queen … Caradoc …’ Barely a whisper, each word caught in his throat as if he were in great pain. Then he looked straight into Melyn’s eyes. ‘Help us.’

  ‘Keep calm, my lady. Help is on its way.’

  Clun had fallen silent for long moments after Beulah had told him of her injury, and she had begun to wonder if he was unconscious, or worse. Before she could understand his words, let alone ask what kind of help he meant, a spear of light appeared from above, bathing his face in gold. Beulah had quite forgotten the creature above them. Now she looked up to see pale blue sky. Then the light dimmed, replaced by an enormous eye. A dragon’s eye. Beulah froze, hoping that the corridor was dark enough for her to remain unseen, but soon enough the eye withdrew and the sound of rocks being pulled out of the way grew louder. Little runnels of dust spilled from the ceiling, covering her shoulders and matting her hair.

  ‘I’m going to try once more,’ she whispered. Beside her, Clun simply nodded, then put his arms out, hands palm down to the floor ready to pull himself free.

  Beulah leaned into the stone again, feeling along its edge for the best way to lever it. Ignoring the jabbing pain in her broken ankle as best she could, she braced herself against another rock lying nearby and heaved with all her might. As the stone shifted, further this time, the hole in the ceiling grew larger, lighting up the corridor all around them. Something shifted high above, and then a crashing noise shook the whole palace. Clun was struggling back, grunting in pain as he tried to drag his crushed legs out from under the rock. Beulah felt the air move above her. Instinctively she ducked, and a talon passed through the space where her head had been. It arced past her, catching the edge of the stone and flipping it aside as easily as if it were made of feathers. Freed from its weight, Clun scrabbled back until he hit the far wall.

  Beulah fell flat, all her pent-up strength suddenly pushing against air. Her leg twisted and she let out a shriek of pain cut short as she slammed into the flagstones, the breath knocked out of her lungs. Some sixth sense kicked in, and she rolled over as the jumble of stones above finally gave way, crashed down the broken stairwell and spilled out across the corridor. Somehow she managed to avoid being squashed, and ended up alongside Clun, hemmed in against the back wall by a ring of broken masonry.

  It took a while for the dust to settle, and then the earth shook again as the dragon began to descend, dipping its massive head low, sniffing the air as it came, and with a shock Beulah recognized the creature.

  ‘Caradoc.’

  Clun looked up at her voice, but she could tell he wasn’t seeing anything. Now there was enough light, she could see his eyes were glazed with white. She had occasionally seen something similar in the most ancient quaisters at Emmass Fawr, and more worryingly in some of the mindless. Great age could cloud a man’s sight, but so could the Grym if not handled properly. Had he lost his concentration when the ceiling had collapsed? Not managed to safely extinguish his blade of fire?

  There was no time to speculate. The great dragon shoved itself further into the hole it had created, reaching towards them with its enormous head. Fangs the length of her arm speared down from its upper jaw, those jutting upwards only slightly shorter. Was it possible that the beast was larger than she remembered, from back when it had snapped her beloved horse Pathia in two? The fog then had made it hard to gauge size, but she had no such problem now. It opened a mouth that could easily swallow her whole and spat out a string of sounds that screeched in her ears, breath souring the already stale air with the taint of rotten meat and unclean teeth.

  ‘Ah, I understand now.’ Clun spoke quietly, letting his head drop to his chest. He took a couple of deep breaths, then began to speak in a loud, clear voice. Beulah couldn’t understand the words, but recognized the language as the same he had spoken with Sir Chwilog and Angharad the Red. The language of dragons. How could a merchant’s son with scarcely twenty summers behind him know such things? It wasn’t the first time she had wondered.

  ‘He blames me for the injury to his arm, of course. He wants his naming ring back.’ Clun coughed, a horrible bubbly sound that suggested it wasn’t just his legs that had suffered in the rockfall. ‘And he’s not too happy about Inquisitor Melyn using Frecknock to lure him in, let alone the attempts to kill him. He’s most angry with us because we killed his mate, though.’

  ‘His mate?’

  ‘Morwenna the Subtle. The dragon who nearly put an end to Duke Glas.’

  Beulah remembered then, back on their grand tour. The beast Glas had captured, whose head Clun had cut off when it had broken free of its chains and tried to kill them. She knew little about these creatures, and most of it was demonstrably false, but it surprised her they cared so much for one another.

  ‘So it wants revenge.’ She re
ached out and took Clun’s hand. ‘I am sorry, my love. I never meant for it to end this way.’

  ‘I am sorry too, my lady. I swore I would protect you, and I don’t intend to stop now.’

  Beulah felt the air chill around her as Clun tapped the Grym, his blade of fire appearing once more, red and angry. He held it high and shouted something at the dragon, waving the blade this way and that. Perhaps the effect was meant to be frightening, but it merely underlined the fact that he was blind. Still she thought it might be working, as Caradoc withdrew slowly from the hole, screeching in that foul language all the while. Beulah had a moment to almost relax, and then with a speed quite at odds with its size, the dragon struck.

  She couldn’t see what happened, almost passed out as the Grym was sucked from the room, the lines and deep within her self. Clun’s blade blazed, swinging with swiftness and deadly accuracy. Caradoc howled in pain, his head glancing off the remains of the ceiling as he reared back. Something hot spattered across Beulah’s face, burning her skin like acid, and then with a wet thud a severed dragon’s forearm slapped on to the ground beside her broken leg.

  Sunlight flooded the corridor as the dragon withdrew completely. Even if she couldn’t understand its language, Beulah could hear the pain and outrage in the noise it was making, and something more, as if it were calling for help.

  ‘You are full of surprises, my love, but I fear we have only bought ourselves a brief respite. Unless we can get deeper into the palace, where even these creatures cannot reach us.’

  ‘Fear not, my lady. Help is here. I merely had to distract the beast a while.’ Clun slumped back against the wall and for a moment Beulah thought he was dead such was the pale stillness about him. Up above, she heard the sound of Caradoc screaming again, felt the air chill as something pulled in the Grym from all around. Her ears filled with a buzzing noise like a million angry bees, and then the dragon’s voice stopped abruptly. A moment later something massive smashed into the cloisters above her. Cracks crazed across the ceiling, pouring more dust and rock over her and Clun. Something blocked the light, and for confused seconds Beulah thought the rocks jammed at the top of the stairs were tumbling down to crush her. But it was just one rock, rolling and bouncing and spraying something harsh and wet over her face and body. It somehow missed both her and Clun, coming to a halt a few paces off. Not a boulder, but the head of a vast dragon, its eyes staring blindly in death. The head of Caradoc.

  Beulah opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again as she could think of nothing to say. Clun stirred beside her, a pained smile sliding slowly on to his face. He opened his eyes once more, staring up the steps towards the cloister even though he could not possibly have seen anything. ‘Welcome, Your Grace, Lady Frecknock.’

  Beulah followed his blind gaze up the rubble-strewn steps to the hole above where once there had been cloisters. A dragon looked down at them, but not one of the beasts that had sacked the city. This one was smaller, though seemed less timid than the last time they had met. And standing beside her, glowing with Grym and far healthier than Beulah had seen him in years, was Inquisitor Melyn.

  21

  When healing a fractured bone, it is important both to immobilize the patient and to fit the broken pieces back together as close as possible to how they were before whatever accident led to the break. Common practice is to bind the limb tightly, often with a splint of wood or similar. While in theory this is sound, in practice it is often done far too soon, before the break has been correctly aligned and the patient is sufficiently well sedated. Pain can cause muscles to contract, making a break all but impossible to set, and too tight a bandage will restrict the flow of vital healing humours.

  In time, even an ill-set bone will knit back together, but it will be weak and a source of constant pain. Better to break a bone again and set it properly than allow such poor healing to go unchecked.

  Archimandrite Boreray,

  A Guide to the Healing Arts

  Benfro lay on his side in mouldy straw, staring at a tiny square of light high overhead. The torchlight from outside shone through a small iron-barred window in the cell door, painting the distorted shape of the bars on the rough-hewn rock. It was impossible to get comfortable, partly because the cell was so small, but mostly because the wound in his side ached terribly in the cold. He was deep underground, cut off from the Grym, and while that meant he was for the moment safe from Magog’s influence, it also meant he could neither keep himself warm nor speed his healing.

  His captors had not cared that he was wounded, forcing him down here with kicks and prods. He could only guess that his two guards Borth and Carno were sons of Sir Nanteos, or at least from the same clan. They shared the old grey dragon’s disdain for him, as well as his drab colouring. They had forced him into the cell and locked the door firmly behind him. Neither of them had said a word as they left, their footsteps echoing away to nothing and leaving him with only his thoughts for company.

  How long he had been down here was difficult to judge. He had slept a little, but mostly he just lay on his side shivering and wincing as the pain lanced ever closer to his heart. He couldn’t judge time so far from daylight, and the days spent in the shuttered room where he had crash-landed had played havoc with his sense of day and night anyway. Many hours had passed, of that he was sure, and no one had come to see him since they had locked the door and left. No one had rattled the door or even brought him water. The only companions he had were rats, and they kept mostly to themselves.

  Where had it all gone so horribly wrong? Benfro rolled on to his other side, feet kicking against the door, and tried to remember when last he had been happy. Recuperating in Pallestre had been nice after the aches and pains of his near-death experience at the hands of Fflint had begun to recede. Visiting the Mother Tree had brought him hope that soon his ordeal might be over, and finding Gog both alive and apparently willing to help had been a moment of pure joy. And then Melyn’s arrival – Magog’s arrival really, for Benfro could see how the inquisitor had become the instrument of the dead mage – had ruined it all. Ever since then he had been fleeing, fighting for his life, his goal of finding a way back to the place where Magog’s bones lay ever further out of reach.

  And even if he managed it, broke through the spell that protected the place, he no longer had Magog’s jewel. Without jewel and bone, he would be unable to use the Fflam Gwir to stop the dead dragon mage.

  The Fflam Gwir. Of course. Benfro sat up so swiftly he banged his head on the ceiling, starring his vision so that for a moment he thought there really were Llinellau Grym in his dungeon. The stabbing in his side brought things more sharply into focus, reminding him of the wound that had almost healed before his captors had reopened it with their rough handling. He shifted about until he found that awkward position where the pain was bearable, at least until his muscles gave up. Listening carefully now, he searched for any noise. The silence was as oppressive as the low ceiling and carved stone walls, which made it feel like the mountains were pressing in on him. He could hear nothing but the steady rhythm of his hearts and the soft scritch of a rat searching through the straw for something to eat. With his blind eye Benfro could see something of the aethereal, although this far from the Grym it was a dark, featureless world. Through the heavy wooden door, the corridor climbed slowly to a large room with a high vaulted ceiling cut with much greater finesse than his cell. In the other direction, it dropped away, until at the end there was just a black maw opening on to nothing. Even the aethereal shunned that place, and it felt like it would suck any Grym down it into oblivion. He would not go that way.

  Confident he was not about to be visited, Benfro shuffled around until his head was close to the door. It was made from oak so old it was as hard as stone, hung on heavy iron hinges with a thick bolt on the other side. Had he been uninjured, he might have hammered at it for days without causing it any damage. Instead, he took a long slow breath in, focused his mind on the metal and blew.

  Th
e flame was thin and palest yellow. It splayed across the door as he breathed out, and then his lungs were empty. Benfro slumped back, exhausted by the effort. His sight dimmed and he thought he might pass out. Then he saw that the yellow clung to the hinges like an aura. Heat seeped into the cell, welcome at first but then stifling as the ironwork began to glow. The oak charred, giving off acrid smoke that swirled around his head, watered his eyes and made him cough. From darkest red to burned orange, the hinges grew hotter and hotter. Orange turned to white and then the iron began to melt, dripping to the straw-strewn floor in great sizzling blobs. Too late Benfro realized his error as the damp straw dried and then ignited. The flames and the glowing iron lit up the cavern as he kicked out, panicking even though his scales would take far more than a bit of burning straw to crack. One foot hit the door and it buckled outwards, hinges and bolt collapsing into puddles of molten metal.

  Benfro scrambled out of the cell as quickly as he could, all too aware that while his bedding might not burn him the molten iron would. By the time he had reached safety, the straw was well ablaze and belching thick black smoke out into the corridor. It billowed down from the ceiling, flowing swiftly towards the large room. Beyond that, stairs would take it up to the lower floors of the palace through which he had been marched earlier. There was no way his escape would go unnoticed.

  Benfro heard noises above the crackling of the flames, dragons maybe, or people, shouting through the smoke. They echoed down the corridor like an army baying for his blood. He couldn’t hope to escape that way, but to go the other was to risk being trapped, and after he’d escaped once, how much more securely would they lock him up? His stomach was empty; there was no way he could hope to breathe more flame without first eating something.