The Obsidian Throne Page 30

  ‘I hardly dare ask, but did you find Iolwen?’ Dafydd thought Merriel might be angry at the question, or resigned, but instead it seemed to give her life. She ruffled her wings, stretched the muscles in her neck and shoulders, and stood a little taller.

  ‘I sensed her at Candlehall, as you men call it. She was with the one called Usel who speaks passable Draigiaith, and a group of others. They were underground, deep beneath the hall, and I thought I would just step through the Llinellau to them. But the place where they were repulsed me. It is hard to describe to one who doesn’t know the subtle arts well, but it felt like a great wrong had been done to the very essence of the world.’

  ‘Like the collection of countless dragons’ jewels?’

  Merriel considered for a moment. ‘No. This was no hoard. That would have welcomed me in rather than pushed me away. A hoard is a difficult thing to resist, especially for the unwary and unskilled.’

  ‘And Iolwen disappeared.’ Dafydd tried to steer the conversation back on track.

  ‘She, Usel and all the others. There was a twist in the Llinellau, and then they were gone. I flew high, tried to track them. That was when I began to see things I recognized, at least after a fashion. The Twmp is unmistakable, but the forest surrounding it was sickly, dying. And then I came across a vast fortress in the mountains, heavy with the Grym and yet teeming with men.’

  ‘Emmass Fawr. The headquarters of the Order of the High Ffrydd. It is as well you did not land there. They have hunted and slaughtered dragons for millennia.’

  Earith and Merriel both looked at him aghast as he spoke what was for Dafydd just a matter of fact.

  ‘But why? What could they possibly hope to gain by doing such a thing?’ Merriel asked.

  ‘It is the law handed down to them by their god, the Shepherd. And they collect the bright red jewels that grow in your heads. They are a source of great power, I’m told.’

  If Dafydd thought the two dragons were disturbed by his first revelation, this new one left an even more terrible silence hanging in the air. Merriel slumped slowly back on to the sleeping platform, and Earith stood so still that she looked like a statue.

  ‘It is terrible, I know,’ he said after an awkward pause. ‘My own people have not been much better in their treatment of your kind, but at least we haven’t hunted and slaughtered them to extinction.’

  ‘You do not understand.’ Merriel spoke, her voice soft even though she was clearly in shock. ‘A dragon’s jewels must be reckoned on death. Our bodies must be consumed by the Fflam Gwir so our memories and experiences can be set. Only then can we join our ancestors and live on through the Grym. Only then can we be added to a hoard.’ She shook her head slowly, staring at her hands for a moment before once more looking up at him. ‘These jewels in the cavern underneath Candlehall. Are they clear and bright, or red like anger?’

  ‘Near the centre of the chamber, by the pillar that supports the ceiling and the Obsidian Throne above it, they are white. But as the cells go further out, so their contents turn red. They whisper too. A thousand thousand voices that might turn a man mad if he tried to listen to them.’

  ‘Cells?’ Earith asked. ‘What do you mean by this? The jewels are not piled high, all intermingled?’

  It was Dafydd’s turn to be confused. ‘No. They are in individual piles. I had assumed each was from a single dragon, although some of the piles were much larger than others. And they are arranged in little cells carved out of solid rock pillars, spiralling out from the centre.’

  ‘And some are white, you say? Those nearest the centre?’ Earith went back to her bench and slumped down upon it. ‘Ah, this is monstrous. Bad enough that men should covet our unreckoned jewels, but I suspect they have only continued something begun by one of our own. No man could produce the true flame, the Fflam Gwir, and yet if what you say is true then dozens, hundreds of dragons have been sacrificed for a purpose I can only begin to guess at. And that guess is too terrible to contemplate. It is a horror. An abomination. No wonder it drove you away, my daughter.’

  ‘You think this is the work of Gog and his mad brother?’ Merriel asked.

  ‘Gog was just as mad as Magog. He only showed it in a different way.’ Earith stood once more, her shoulders drooping as if she carried the weight of Gwlad upon them. ‘And I’ve no doubt this foul practice has something to do with them, but it must go back earlier still. This is Palisander’s work, and it must be destroyed.’

  ‘Destroyed?’ Dafydd asked. ‘But how?’

  ‘I do not know. A dragon’s jewels must be burned with their body in order for the reckoning to succeed. At least that is what I have always understood. If these jewels you have seen are unreckoned, ripped from the skulls of the slaughtered, then their bodies are long since turned to dust and dirt. What hope of setting them right? They must be in such torment, such mad pain.’

  Dafydd stood up, his only possible course of action now obvious. ‘Take me back there.’

  ‘What?’ Merriel and Earith both asked.

  ‘Back to Candlehall. If you cannot enter the chamber, then I can. I have been there, seen it. At the very least I can free the jewels from their cells. Mix them all up together like they should be.’

  The two dragons stared at him for a while, then Earith shook her head. ‘To mix the reckoned and the unreckoned would be worse torment than they are currently in. And a hoard of unreckoned jewels on its own? I have no idea what manner of beast that might be. Mad, certainly. And powerful beyond imagining. But the reckoned jewels, the white ones. If they are truly the last memories of dragons who lived in Palisander’s time, then they will almost certainly have knowledge lost to me. They may know a way to deal with the others.’

  ‘So I collect together only the white jewels, leave the red ones where they are.’

  ‘It will not be easy. Even dragons can be overwhelmed by the power of a jewel hoard, which is why they are usually left in the care of the most skilled mages. You will need the utmost mental discipline, and you must not physically touch any of the jewels. That would be fatal.’ Earith spoke to herself as much as to Dafydd, pacing back and forth as she did so.

  ‘I will take my chances. It’s the least I can do to repay the kindness you have shown me.’

  Earith stopped her pacing, looked straight at him. ‘You truly mean that, Prince Dafydd. It gives me hope that not all of your kind are tainted by Gog’s curse. Very well. I shall take you back to the Hall of Candles and we will put an end to this madness once and for all.’

  She reached out a hand for him to take, but Merriel stepped between them.

  ‘I shall take him, mother. We have travelled the Llinellau together before, so it will be easier.’

  ‘No, Merriel. You are not strong enough. Your wounds—’

  ‘Are healing. I will be fine. And you need to stay here. Prepare Pallestre for the wounded I am sure will be coming soon. People and dragons both.’

  Earith opened her mouth to speak, and Dafydd could almost see the arguments she was mustering. But then she closed it again, drew herself up tall. ‘I’ve known for a long time now there’s no point arguing with you, Merriel. So go, take Prince Dafydd to the Hall of Candles. But be careful, be safe. And come home as soon as you can.’ She turned and left the room swiftly, but not before Dafydd had seen her tears. He had not known dragons capable of them.

  ‘Are you ready then?’

  He turned back to see Merriel with her hand outstretched, exactly the way she had been on the steps in front of the Neuadd.

  ‘As I’ll ever be.’ He reached out, grasped one massive finger as best he could. And tried not to think about how he was going to get into the chamber without Iolwen or his son to open the door.

  A day and a night passed before he was able to relax, convinced that he had evaded all the warrior priests. Benfro trudged through the forest, always heading downhill, using his missing eye and the aethereal view it gave him to keep from going in circles. He would have hunted, or at the very leas
t scavenged for berries and herbs to dull the gnawing emptiness in his stomach, but the snow hid everything, and the cold meant even the hardiest of beasts was tucked away in shelter, keeping its head down and praying to whatever gods small beasts prayed to for an end to this storm.

  The morning of the second day saw that prayer answered. Benfro was so weary, stumbling as he half-dozed, half-walked, that he didn’t notice when the snow stopped, didn’t register the transition to silence as the wind died away to nothing. It wasn’t until he tripped on a tree root and went sprawling face first into a mixture of mud and fat brown leaves that he saw the change. Even then it took a while to register, his mind racing in panic that he might have dropped his mother’s jewel.

  But no, it was still there, clasped in a hand so tight it had seized completely. He needn’t have worried about dropping the tiny stone; more difficult would be to put it down intentionally.

  Wiping dirt from his snout with the back of his hand, Benfro rolled over and pushed himself up into a sitting position. The wound in his side took that moment to remind him it was still there. His sight dimmed, and he spent a long while breathing hard, fighting back the pain and the terrible sensation he was about to pass out.

  When the darkness lifted and his hearts returned to their more normal rhythm, Benfro saw that he was sitting at the top of a steep rise, looking out over a wide valley softened by a canopy of oak and elm trees. The sky was still grey with clouds scudding swiftly in the direction he had walked from, but off in the distance he could see patches of blue, pale as a stolen egg, the occasional ray of sunshine. Distant mountains curved in the haze, only their upper flanks dusted with white. As he stared at them, a flock of birds took off suddenly from the closer treetops, clattering into the air as if startled by something below. They wheeled around two or three times before coming back to rest in another tree nearby.

  And that was then he started to recognize the shape of the place.

  Benfro couldn’t have said how; he’d only ever been here once before, after all, and he was on the other side of the valley this time. But somehow he just knew he was right. Perhaps it was the familiar curve of the distant hills, or maybe it was the smell – a thousand different scents that he could name with ease. As the air began to warm with the growing day, so the animals stirred too. He heard the barking of deer not far off, and then with a busy rustling a nearby bush shook itself open to reveal a sow surrounded by a litter of piglets.

  Even though he kept himself perfectly still the sow must have smelled him. She backed up swiftly, squealing at her brood to follow. Benfro’s stomach gurgled in anticipation, but he was too far from them to even hope to be able to catch one. He struggled to his feet, leaning on the nearest tree trunk as the world swayed around him. After a moment, when things had begun to settle down, he carefully picked a route down the slope, angling between the trees as he went.

  He found herbs as he walked, snapping off flower heads and chewing on them to help with his hunger. A massive honey fungus grew out of the side of one old elm tree and he carefully cut it away. It was better cooked, but thin strips sliced off with one extended talon soon began to fill the hole. By the time he reached the bottom of the valley, Benfro was beginning to feel a lot better. All he needed was a stream to slake his thirst, and he could hear the sound of water not far off.

  The trees thinned as he walked towards the water. Coarse grass underfoot had clearly once been a pasture. Saplings had taken it over though, the grazing animals long gone. A few wildflowers bloomed in the spaces between the young trees, but soon the forest would reclaim this place completely.

  A shallow stream ran straight and true, its banks quite obviously not shaped by natural forces. Benfro waded in, drinking his fill and eyeing the fish that darted away from him over the gravel riverbed. They would have been a welcome addition to his diet, but he was still too tired to think straight, let alone catch anything. Climbing the bank opposite to where he had entered, he pressed on across the valley.

  When he saw the first building, it was with a mixture of surprise and relief. Surprise at quite how more derelict it looked than he was expecting, relieved that it was here at all. He had never actually been here and walked among the ruins, but he had looked down upon them from nearby. Ynys Môn had stood at his side, told him a little of this place called Ystumtuen, of how he had saved the king of men from being gored to death by a tusker boar, and in so doing freed dragons from centuries – millennia – of persecution at their hands. Benfro remembered the story, but now he saw it in the wider context of what he knew.

  He walked through the ruins of the hunting lodge, marvelling at the way nature was reclaiming the place as her own. The stone walls of the larger buildings still stood, though some were beginning to crumble at the top. All the roofs had caved in, and trees grew in what must once have been stately rooms. Everything was on a scale for men, which wouldn’t have seemed so small when first he had seen it from afar. Now, close in and peering through doorways he would struggle to enter, he could scarce believe the tiny, fragile creatures who had built them could have hunted down and killed his kind.

  Past the main collection of buildings, Benfro found an area that must once have been formal gardens. The plants here had grown wild, but they stood in straight lines and were too exotic to have found their way here by chance. A bit beyond them, a low stone wall still stood strong, even though the area enclosed by it was beginning to succumb to the encroaching forest. There were more lines here, but instead of cultivated plants there were stones, ornately carved and shaped. Some had the writing of men on them, and as he stared Benfro understood that they were gravestones. He had heard how men buried their dead in the ground, bodies and all. Did they even have jewels like a dragon? Somehow he didn’t think so. The Grym would take them back as it did all base things.

  Moving on, he climbed a steep bank that took him into the forest proper, turning every so often to check back, adjusting his course to a memory from a much happier time. When he found the spot where first he had viewed the abandoned buildings, it was almost a disappointment. Had he been expecting a flash of magic and for it all to have never happened? Perhaps in a tiny part of his mind he had. Nothing changed though. He was still battle-scarred and bruised by his experiences. His mother was still dead at the hands of Inquisitor Melyn, her only remaining jewel clutched tight in his regrown hand. Ynys Môn was still dead too, and all the other villagers with him, most of their jewels isolated from each other in Magog’s repository at Cenobus. That was a task he would have to attend to, if he ever managed to rid himself of the dead mage. But for now he had a simple mission. He hadn’t known it until he had found the old hunting lodge, but seeing it had planted the idea in his mind. He knew the way from here, knew the forests like he knew his own tail.

  He was going home.

  ‘Summon the warrior priests, the quaisters and the novitiates. I will address the whole order in Ruthin’s Hall in one hour.’

  Melyn shook snow from his robes as he strode through the front gates of Emmass Fawr, shouting his command to the captain of the guard. The man stared at him for a moment, slack-jawed. Perhaps that was fair enough; the inquisitor had just stepped out of nowhere to appear before him.

  ‘Your Grace … how …?’ he began, and then his training caught up with him. Snapping to attention, he slapped a fist across his chest in salute. ‘One hour, sire. Do you require an escort?’

  Melyn stopped, stared at the man for a moment. ‘Do I look like I need an escort?’ He shook his head and carried on walking.

  Emmass Fawr was huge, built on a scale far greater than human. As a novitiate, warrior priest and finally inquisitor, he had sometimes wondered about the width of the corridors, the height of the ceilings in the most ancient parts of the complex. Even deep in the mountain upon which it had been built, the dungeons were cavernous and went on for miles, carved from the rock and then lined with straight-cut stone blocks as tall as a man. The histories had it that the monastery had
taken a thousand years to build. Melyn didn’t doubt it, although he knew now that it was not men who had done the building.

  He viewed the structure with new eyes, his own memories of the place coloured by Magog’s. This had been the home of Maddau the Wise, ancient even when the twin brothers were still hatchlings. With a humourless laugh, Melyn recalled the story of how King Brynceri I had fought the great dragon Maddau, losing his finger and Balwen’s ring in the process. Only with the help of Ruthin had he managed to defeat the fearsome beast, cutting open its belly and presenting ring and finger both as a gift to the wandering monk. Ruthin had become the first inquisitor of the Order of the High Ffrydd, the ringed finger passed down the generations as the order’s most sacred relic. Emmass Fawr, so the legend went, was built on the spot where Maddau had died. Now he knew better.

  ‘Maddau was ever a thorn in my side. Always favoured my brother over me.’ Magog’s voice in his head was almost Melyn’s own now. ‘And yet when we split Gwlad, she chose to remain here.’

  ‘So you gave Brynceri the power to kill her?’

  ‘She deserved no more. She knew of my brother’s treachery, how he gave magic to your kind and set them to the destruction of all dragons. And yet rather than help me fight, she withdrew and cast a spell of secrecy over her home. Had she not been such a coward I would surely still live.’

  ‘But if she withdrew, then the tales of her terrorizing the local population are just that. Tales.’ Melyn spoke aloud as he strode the long corridors to the inquisitor’s tower, ignoring the strange looks he received from those few people he met. Most were more fearful than anything, scuttling away or backing into the shadows at this approach.

  ‘It is true she took some coaxing out. And first I had to convince that arrogant oaf Balwen that I was a god. It became easier after he died, and your kind live such short lives. His heirs soon learned that respect and honour for the Shepherd was something worth cultivating.’