The Obsidian Throne Read online

  ‘He still cannot see?’ she asked, and Frecknock didn’t need to say anything for Beulah to know the answer. It was written in the dragon’s face, her shrunken posture and general air of wretchedness. Since Melyn had left, she had kept so close to the royal apartments that Beulah suspected she was sleeping in one of the servant corridors. If she ever slept, that was.

  ‘I will attend to him now. You may leave us.’

  The dragon bowed, then backed away before turning so that her tail would not sweep Beulah’s feet from under her. Whatever magic Frecknock had performed on the queen’s ankle, it had been a miraculous healing. She barely felt anything more than a slight tightness in the muscles, and had been walking limp-free for almost a week.

  Clun slept, as he did for much of the time now. Lying in a bed that would have been vast for two, he looked like a small child. The softest of pillows cushioned him, enveloping his head as if it were some strange creature trying to eat him alive. As Beulah approached, she could sense the disturbed thoughts of a man troubled in his sleep. His face twitched and frowned, but when she sat on the chair placed at the bedside, his features smoothed, his breathing settled and after a few moments he opened his eyes.

  ‘My lady. You are looking well this morning.’

  Beulah tried to smile at his joke, but it was hard to do. Clun’s eyes were milky white, clouded like those of an old man. They did not settle on her face, but stared unmoving at a patch on the ceiling far beyond her shoulder. She reached out and took the hand lying on top of the bedspread, let the warmth of the Grym flow through her and into him.

  ‘You were having a bad dream, my love,’ she said, and the frown returned to his face.

  ‘I was not asleep. Well, not technically. I have been refining my aethereal vision, since there is little else I can do until my body has healed itself. At least Frecknock’s potions keep away the pain, and her ministrations are speeding up the healing. It’s just a shame my injuries were too extensive for her to treat the way she treated yours. Your ankle is as good as new.’

  Beulah looked down at her foot. She had taken to wearing court gowns and pale sheepskin slippers simply because trousers and stiff leather boots were difficult to get in and out of when her ankle was swollen and sore. The swelling had gone, and it had been at least a week since last she’d felt any pain, and yet she still wore the clothes of a queen.

  ‘They suit you.’ Clun reached up and gently ran his fingers down the arm of her pale yellow jacket. ‘Although I think on balance I prefer the tomboy look.’

  ‘How can you …?’ Beulah was unsure if she was annoyed or scared that he could read her thoughts so and that he knew what she was wearing despite having no sight in either eye.

  ‘I saw you in the aethereal, my lady. Without my eyes, it is so much easier to enter the trance. Sometimes I am almost there and here at the same time. If I could just learn how to do that at will, I would not need these any more.’ He lifted a hand vaguely in the direction of his face. ‘I would see so much more than the mundane world.’

  Clun let his hand drop to the bed, then struggled upright, pushing himself against the headboard until his head was on the same level as Beulah’s. It took all his strength and caused him considerable pain, she couldn’t help but notice. And yet he bore his misfortunes with the same good nature that had attracted her to him in the first place. How could a young lad from the back country have caught her eye so? How could he have adapted so well to court life and elevation to the nobility? And how could he have mastered the magic of the warrior priests when the rest of his year’s intake of novitiates had not even ascended to the priesthood yet? He was an enigma, but he was also her strength.

  ‘Frecknock tells me your injuries are healing well, and if it is true you can see after a fashion then I am heartened by the news, my love. We are facing difficult and dangerous times.’

  ‘The dragons?’ Clun asked.

  Beulah paused a moment before answering. ‘This isn’t how I imagined it would be. All my life I have wanted just one thing.’

  ‘Just one?’ Clun smiled in an attempt to lighten the mood.

  ‘I’m serious, my love. My sole aim as queen was to put an end to the warring. To unite the Twin Kingdoms and Llanwennog. I should be happy I have achieved that, and yet everything is turned to dust.’ She ran a finger along the back of the bedstead, which was thick with white powder. Above her the once-fine corniced ceiling was cracked, great chunks of it missing altogether. The palace of Candlehall, indeed the entire city, had been reduced to near-ruin by just a handful of dragons over the course of a few days. ‘This is not the homecoming I had anticipated, not the kingdom I dreamed of ruling.’

  ‘But it is the kingdom you have, and you will rule it well.’ Clun placed a hand on her arm, the warmth radiating from him like a summer sun. Beulah took strength from it, even though she knew he could scarce spare any. Just to have him by her side was enough. One constant in a world changing far too much and too quickly for her liking.

  ‘But what of all these dragons appearing everywhere? What are we to do about them? I can see those mad bastards that call themselves the Guardians of the Throne rejoicing that the end times are upon us. You’ve seen the way they behave, their fanaticism. This is exactly what they’ve been waiting for, this chaos. How do we put a stop to it? How do we put a stop to them?’

  ‘By sending the dragons away, my lady. They cannot exist alongside us. Not the way they are now. Sir Sgarnog and his fold have shown me that much at least. Caradoc too.’

  ‘Send them away? How?’

  ‘That’s the question. I imagine many of them will simply go, maybe to Eirawen, or east across the Gwastadded Wag. There is much more to Gwlad than just the Twin Kingdoms and Llanwennog.’ Clun turned to face her, and Beulah shivered. His milk-white eyes looked so old in that boyish face. ‘Some will not be so easy to persuade. Sadly the likes of Gwynedd Bach and Caradoc will only respond to violence.’

  ‘Sadly?’ Beulah asked. ‘She ate Seneschal Padraig, and he nearly killed us both. I would have thought their deaths would be something to rejoice.’

  ‘Indeed they would. Not even the dragons mourn Caradoc and few of them will miss Gwynedd when she’s gone. But how many more are there like them? How many must we kill before they leave? And how many of us will they kill in return? We sought to unite the Twin Kingdoms with Llanwennog to put an end to centuries of war and bloodshed. I fear it will be as nothing compared to the carnage yet to come.’

  27

  The empty plains, the Gwastadded Wag, to the east of the Hendry lands, are renowned for their inhospitable nature. Nothing but league beyond league of emptiness, rough grass and soil so thin it yields but a single cultivated crop before turning to dust. The weather is unpredictable in all aspects but its harshness, decades of drought punctuated by month-long storms of such violence they shake the very core of Gwlad. Few creatures survive out there, and fewer still thrive.

  One notable exception is the Gomorran horses, who roam the plains in herds a thousand strong and more. Theirs is the knowledge of this unforgiving land, the location of the few oases in the endless sea of dry grass and sand. A hardy breed, the mares are much prized, bringing hybrid vigour into the horses of the Twin Kingdoms. The men who ride out into the wastelands to hunt and catch them are a rare breed themselves, tough beyond reckoning.

  Gomorran mares are difficult to capture and harder to break, but once in a hundred years a lucky rider will trap a Gomorran stallion. None of these magnificent beasts have ever been broken, but breeders prize them beyond anything. One stallion will serve a hundred mares and not think it too many. His offspring will be strong, smart and loyal to their owner. Traits which will pass down generations.

  Gomorran stallions are never kept. Men have tried, but always the great beasts escape. A wise breeder will put the stallion to his mares but once, then let it go. Back to its own kind in the endless, forbidden wastelands it calls home.

  Moorit of the Ram,


  The Gwastadded Wag, A Geography

  The taste of sweet ginger still on his tongue, Benfro left Ystrad Fflur’s cottage and returned to the track winding its way through what had once been his village. The forest had taken it back completely, far too much to be entirely natural. He suspected the hand of the mother tree, enveloping this place and protecting it, although from what and for what reason he could not imagine. To see Meirionydd’s garden a riot of colour and filled with life was bittersweet. Close to the great hall, her tumbledown cottage had been one of those the warrior priests had put to the torch, and little of it remained save for a jumble of stones. He had such fond memories of visiting here, of the dragon who had been second only to his mother in importance in his life.

  Turning away from the pain, his eyes swept over what remained of the central green and the hall. The trees had not invaded the open space here, save for some sturdy saplings that had rooted through the ashes of the dead villagers. They rose in the middle of the green, a tight copse surrounded by fallen stonework and the glint of heat-broken glass. Benfro approached slowly, the chest-high grass tickling his scales as he pushed his way through to where the old oak doors had stood. He had only ever seen them closed twice in his life, on the day of Ystrad Fflur’s reckoning and on his fourteenth hatchday, when his mother had acknowledged him as the head of the family and he had finally been freed of the crude spell Frecknock had cast upon him. Now they lay flat on the ground, almost completely hidden by the vegetation, their ancient surfaces charred.

  Benfro stepped over them carefully. He had been meaning to enter the hall, the doorway still framed by its heavy stone pillars, but as he approached it seemed to shrink. For a moment he thought it some cruel trick, some ancient spell that denied him the melancholy pleasure of seeing the place where his extended family had died. And then he realized that it was no trick at all. He was too large to fit through the entrance without squeezing now, his wings too bulky to let him pass. The hall he had always thought vast was not so great any more, and the tight-packed trees that speared up from the cracked flagstone floor made it seem smaller still. Perhaps it was for the best. There was little to be gained from standing here, mourning those who were past caring.

  Sir Frynwy’s house stood on the other side of the green from Meirionydd’s. Benfro had visited it often, and though it had been set on fire by the warrior priests, it had mostly survived, protected by the old bard’s magics and the solidity of its construction. His missing eye showed him the shape of it more clearly than his mundane sight. Like everywhere else in the village, the forest had overgrown it as if trying to hide it from view. He approached it cautiously, remembering the time he had been brought in front of the old dragon accused of stealing Sir Frynwy’s most prized possession.

  Pulling aside the twisting clematis that obscured the doorway, Benfro saw that the door itself had been broken down, shards of timber lying in the hall. Too much to hope that the Llyfr Draconius would still be inside, and like the great hall behind him this doorway was too narrow now for him to enter comfortably. His missing eye showed him all he needed to know: the traces of ancient spells still gently unravelling, the more recent touch of less skilled or less subtle hands. Melyn had been here, had broken through the protections woven around Sir Frynwy’s library. Not just the Llyfr Draconius, but all of his books and scrolls had been taken. Was that why Frecknock had stayed with the inquisitor? Because he had her precious, beloved book? Benfro wanted to believe it was that simple, but he had seen her at Tynhelyg, and before that when Melyn had tracked him and Errol down to Corwen’s cave. Both times she had warned him to flee, done her best to protect him. He couldn’t begin to understand what she was going through, or why. But somehow she had managed to stay alive. Standing alone in the overgrown remains of the place he had once called home, Benfro realized that Frecknock was truly all he had left of that life. Frecknock and his mother’s one remaining jewel.

  He held up his hand, fingers stiff from clasping the tiny stone, and opened his palm. It caught the sunlight filtering through the leaves, sparkling in his one working eye. The missing one saw a different picture, a shimmering fog of Grym that enveloped his whole arm, creeping up to his shoulder. It was a lovely warm feeling, of being comforted when the night was full of unnamed terrors, of being loved unconditionally, but a part of him could see the danger too. Closing his fist and hardening his aura against the longing, Benfro turned away from the ruined houses and headed out of the village.

  As a kitling he had never understood why they lived apart from the rest of the dragons, nor had he ever questioned it. He knew now, of course. The magic that hid the villagers from the sight of men required a focus, and Morgwm the Green had shouldered that task without complaint. Any wanderer straying into this part of the forest would find themselves at the cottage, and so it was that Benfro’s tired feet brought him home. The forest had not reclaimed his mother’s cottage, nor the clearing in which it sat, but it was messy and untended nevertheless. The vegetable patch he had weeded and dug over so many times before was gone completely to seed, butterflies flitting merrily through a feast of greenery. The house itself looked much the same, albeit smaller than he remembered. A few shingles had fallen from the roof, and the chimney leaked no welcome smoke into the sky.

  The clearing was silent save for the twittering of countless birds, the soft rush of the wind in the treetops and the hum of a thousand thousand industrious insects. He wondered idly what would have become of the hives around the back of the house. Their racks filled with honeycomb, would the bees have departed in search of somewhere else to live? How many swarms might have split off now? He shook his head at the thought. So much had happened, but truly it had not been all that long since he had left here. A year? Two?

  And then the wind veered round, as it so often did in the clearing, bringing with it the scent of the cottage itself. Benfro stopped in his tracks, not quite able to believe what his nose told him. He flitted between confusion, fear and then rage, breaking into a run and scarce noticing that he trampled the once-well-tended herb beds underfoot. One leap took him on to the porch where before he had needed to climb each of the three steps in turn. The front door hung crooked, never repaired after the warrior priests had kicked it open and rifled through his mother’s belongings. His belongings. He pulled it open so hard it almost came off its hinges completely, then shoved his much greater bulk through a door designed for a dragon half his size.

  ‘How dare you!’ His roar was the pent-up frustration of everything that had happened since Inquisitor Melyn had ridden into this clearing at the head of a troop of warrior priests. All the enmity he felt towards men boiled up in him at that point, and Benfro could feel the flame growing ready. His missing eye had already told him there was a man in his mother’s front room, and that was an insult too far. What it hadn’t told him was who that man was, and as he saw him, recognized him, so the anger melted away.

  Father Gideon was asleep in a makeshift bed close by the front window. He looked as old as Gog. Older. And his aura was that of a sick man near to death. Perhaps disturbed by the noise of Benfro’s arrival, he stirred, opened gummy eyes and looked around the room in momentary confusion before focusing finally on the dragon. Something like relief passed across his features.

  ‘Sir Benfro,’ he said, and his voice was as weak as his aura. ‘I have been waiting for you.’

  ‘Your Grace, is this wise? You are not yet fully healed.’

  Beulah looked up from the chair in her chambers where she had been nursing Princess Ellyn to see Frecknock fussing over her patient. For several days now the dragon had been using the ancient leather book that Melyn had left in her charge, reciting passages from it that she claimed would focus the Grym and harness it to speeding Clun’s recovery.

  ‘Do not try to stop him, dragon. The Duke of Abervenn is his own man.’

  Frecknock stood back as if slapped by the queen’s words. She bowed in that obsequious manner of hers that made her seem s
maller than she truly was. Beulah rose from her chair, handed her child to the waiting maid and crossed the room just in time to catch her husband as his weak legs failed under him.

  ‘I cannot fathom why you persist in tolerating this creature, my love. All she does is mouth words from that insensible book. I don’t know why I even tolerate her presence in here.’

  Clun smiled, the gaze of his white eyes passing over her face unfocused. Beulah felt the whispering of the Grym flowing around her as he drew strength from the lines, got his legs back underneath him and regained his balance.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ she asked.

  ‘How we change. How circumstances change us.’ Clun took a couple of wobbly steps, then reached out and put a hand on the edge of a nearby table he couldn’t possibly have seen. He turned slowly, as if taking in the room for the first time, then once again gazed blindly at Beulah. ‘It is true that not so long ago you would have put Frecknock to death. Hacked open her head and taken her jewels to add to the hoard in the cavern beneath the Neuadd. Yet now you do tolerate her presence. And Inquisitor Melyn relies on her despite the most holy charter of our order.’