Dreamwalker (11 page)

‘Fetch the medic, Usel,’ Melyn ordered one of the guards who stood at his door. The man nodded a hasty salute and dashed away on his errand as the Inquisitor pushed through into his personal quarters.

It was a sparse room, austere like the man who occupied them. The furniture was old, simple and utilitarian: a couple of hard wooden chairs beside the open, unlit fireplace; a wide desk, placed to get maximum light from the two windows at the expense of the view out over the top of the monastery to the rugged mountains beyond; a small table pushed up against one wall, with a pewter jug and two goblets sitting on top of it. A curtained-off alcove held his bed. Melyn did not agree with Inquisitors of old, who had pampered themselves with large suites of rooms. He bathed in the communal baths, ate in the great dining hall where his subordinates could see him. All he needed to run the Order of the High Ffrydd was in this one small room, most of it in his head.

He went to the table and poured himself a goblet of rich, dark wine. He took a long swig and then, with a thought, released the spell he had cast on himself days before. He set himself down in one of the chairs by the fireplace, stretched his legs out uncomfortably, grimacing at the pain in his right knee, not wanting to look at the damage. A knock at the door was the perfect distraction.

‘Come.’

The door creaked open and a tall, slim fellow stepped in. His face was smooth and he had a crop of sandy hair that seemed out of place in a monastery where all the novitiates and warrior priests were cropped severely short.

‘You wanted to see me, Inquisitor,’ the man said. ‘Is there a problem’

‘Yes, Usel. It’s my knee. I wrenched it a couple of days ago.’

The medic crossed the room and knelt down beside the Inquisitor without a word. Melyn felt a spark of anger at his disrespectful manner; most members of the order would have at least bowed to their Inquisitor, or offered to kiss his ring of office. Usel treated him as no more or less than any other patient. If the man hadn’t been such a good battle surgeon, Melyn thought, he’d have had him flogged for insubordination years ago. As it was he tolerated the medic’s eccentricities, for now.

‘I’ll need to see it, sir,’ Usel said, indicating that Melyn would have to remove his breeches. Trying not to show how much it pained him, the Inquisitor complied, seeing for the first time the livid, purple, swollen mess where his knee should have been; a sharp contrast to the pale white wiry muscle and flesh of his legs.

‘You should have rested this as soon as it happened.’

‘I’ve been healing it myself as best I could. It doesn’t seem to be responding as well to the grym as I’d hoped.’

‘There are some injuries that no amount of magic will heal, especially if you keep stressing them by, oh... riding a horse all day and late into the night.’

‘I was in a hurry to get back.’

‘Well, you’d better not be in a hurry to go away again. I’ll make up a poultice and strap this up, but it’s going to take weeks to heal, even for an adept as skilled as yourself. May I be blunt with you, Inquisitor?’

Melyn looked at Usel with an instant of surprise.

‘You mean you haven’t been up to now?’

‘You’re not as young as you once were, sir. I don’t mean to say you’re not still far more capable than any of us. And most men your age would be happy to be able to clamber onto a horse, let alone ride one to battle. But your body is beginning to show signs of that age. You need to treat it with just a little bit more respect than you’re used to.’

Melyn looked at the medic. He hated the man, it was true. His first instinct was to conjure a blade of light and strike him down where he knelt for daring to even think the things he was saying. But there was a grain of truth in Usel’s words that couldn’t be denied. Perhaps that was why he hated him, because he was right, and because every time he had to consult him, it was a reminder of the passing of years, the frailty of old age.

‘I’ll take it under advisement,’ Melyn said through clenched teeth. ‘Now go. I must pray to the Shepherd for a speedy recovery.’

‘I’ll bring the poultice later tonight,’ Usel said, standing to leave. ‘It’s best applied before you sleep. You do sleep, don’t you?’

Melyn stared at the door as it closed, then looked down at his swollen knee. He reached down and prodded it, then wished he hadn’t as a jab of pain shot up his leg and into his groin. Slowly, he stood again, pulling up his breeches and fastening his belt. He was about to leave the room and head to the chapel when another knock came at the door.

‘What is it now!’  Melyn could feel the rage building in him as a surging power, ready to be tapped, controlled, used. The door creaked open and a stooped figure came in. There were several thousand novitiates, quaisters and warrior priests based in and around the monastery complex, any of whom he would happily hang in the dungeons for a week without food and water if the mood so took him, but this wasn’t one of them.

‘What is it, Andro?’ He asked, letting the untapped power of his anger seep out into the surrounding walls. If Usel thought that Melyn was starting to get old, then what would the medic think of the master librarian? His face was skeletal and those once piercing blue eyes were now starting to cloud. Blood spots disfigured his dry, leathery skin and his hair was white as the snow that capped the nearby peaks all year long. But then Andro had been old when Melyn had been just a novitiate. It was a miracle he still lived at all, or at least it was a testament to the old man’s skill at magic.

‘Walk while you tell me,’ the Inquisitor said, guiding his old friend out the door and limping slowly along the corridor. ‘I must get to the chapel and pray.’

‘The choosing, Inquisitor,’ Andro said, struggling to keep up with even the reduced pace. Melyn slowed further, secretly grateful.

‘Is it that time already?’ Melyn asked, genuinely surprised. ‘How the years get faster as we grow old, eh?’

‘Indeed, Inquisitor,’ Andro smiled, displaying a complete set of teeth still strong though yellowing with age. ‘And it’s true that Seneschal Padraig will ever play his games. I’ve been over the lists and he’s cut us out of yet more towns this year.’

Melyn let out a short laugh, more of a bark than any sign of humour.

‘Ha! Is that all, old friend? You know as well as I do that we could recruit more than we can train even without the choosing. We don’t need it and he knows as much. Padraig only does it to provoke a response.’

‘Of course, Inquisitor,’ Andro conceded. ‘You yourself were not picked at any choosing. But knowing your interest in such matters, I thought I should bring to your attention the, ah, geography of the situation.’

Melyn stopped and faced his old tutor. ‘What exactly are you trying to say, Andro?’

‘There are a number of villages on the edge of the forest, close by the old hunting lodge at Ystumtuen,’ the old man said. ‘Predicants have been given sole responsibility for all of them this year.’

‘And do you think this a coincidence?’ Melyn asked after a short silence.

‘No, Inquisitor, I don’t,’ Andro said. ‘It’s not just the choosing. Padraig has put his Predicants in every village from Candlehall to the edges of the Ffrydd itself. He’s a canny operator; he’s taken years over it, but every time a village priest dies his replacement is drawn from the Order of the Candle. I dare say old Cassters of the Ram should be more concerned, but he’s always been happy for his lot to do pretty much as they please.’

‘The Rams are wanderers and healers,’ Melyn said. ‘They make good enough teachers but by the time they settle down in one place they’re almost all near gathering. Padraig’s probably putting his people in as much to cut down on the paperwork as anything else.’

‘So you’d consider it of no importance, then?’ For an instant Melyn was transported back to his childhood classroom. One of a hundred novitiates desperate to make their mark, to be noticed, to succeed. That questioning tone, just waiting for him to make a tactical mistake, waiting for him to leave a small opening, was unmistakeable.

‘Ah no,’ Melyn smiled, stopping at the door of his private chapel. ‘Archimandrite Cassters might not mind the Candle taking over his order, but I’m not so forgiving. No, I’m minded to visit these small villages myself this year. It’s been too long since I attended a good choosing. Arrange it for me, will you Andro.’

‘Of course, Inquisitor,’ the old man said. He bowed slightly, then turned and shuffled away down the corridor.

*

The water was cold, but not deep, and after the heat of the day it was rather refreshing. Errol picked himself up and waded to the bank, clambering back onto the rock. He pulled off his boots and emptied them back into the river, then looked around to see who had startled him. No doubt they were hiding behind a nearby tree, doubled over in laughter right now. Or more likely running back to the village to tell everyone. It didn’t matter; wouldn’t be the first time he’d been the butt of everyone’s jokes. Smiling, Errol pulled off his trousers, squeezed the water out of them and laid them on the warm rock to dry. Then he settled himself against the nearest tree, away from the water’s edge this time, and once more closed his eyes.

‘Errol.’ The voice was quiet this time, almost a whisper, yet somehow louder than the rushing of the water and the rustling of autumn breeze in the drying leaves. Errol’s eyes snapped open and he looked around, startled.

‘Clun? Is that you?’ He asked. No reply came and he could see no one close by. Nor was there anywhere for someone to hide close enough. It was too warm to worry about such things anyway, the solitude too enjoyable. Settling once more against the rock, Errol let his mind wander again, noting with slight interest the pattern of the grym as it spread away from where he lay, as if he were the spider in the middle of a web that spread over the whole world.

‘Errol!’ The voice was more insistent now, and louder. It spoke directly to his mind, the wind and the river mere backdrop. And it was a voice that he recognised.

‘Sir Radnor?’ Errol said. ‘Dragon?’

‘Ah, at last,’ the voice said. ‘I was beginning to think you would never hear.’

‘I…’, Errol found he was lost for words

‘You thought I was no more than a figment of your imagination? Well, there’s gratitude for you, I suppose.’

‘I…’

‘Never mind,’ the voice said. ‘Your summer has not been wasted. I can sense that you have been sharpening your skill at perceiving the grym. This is good. For only when you have mastered its perception can you ever hope to use it to your benefit.’

‘Use it?’ Errol said, finally managing to find his voice. The image that he held in his mind, of himself at the centre of a web of grym, had changed subtly, almost imperceptibly. Now he was still in a web, still near its centre. But he was no longer the spider.

‘The grym is in us all, surrounds us all, links us all together. But we need not be passive to it. Cows are passive, and sheep. It is enough for them simply to exist. Dragons are much more. We can take control of our lives and we can manipulate the grym to our own ends.’

‘But I’m not a dragon,’ Errol said.

‘You are so sure of that,’ the voice said. ‘But there is much of the dragon about you, young Errol. Like Martha you have an insatiable curiosity about the world. And unlike most of your kind you do not have a thirst for power, only knowledge. You have been touched by dragons, Errol Ramsbottom. We have marked you as one of our own.’

Distracted by the thoughts of Martha that cascaded unbidden into his mind at the mention of her name, Errol almost missed the rest of what Sir Radnor was saying. Only as he was sinking in the memory of her scent as she sat close to him atop Jagged Leap did the full import of what had been said sink in.

‘Touched by dragons?’ Errol asked, a curious rush of excitement pulsing through his chest. ‘But I’ve never met a dragon. I mean, when? How?’

‘That is something you will learn in time,’ Sir Radnor said, his bodiless voice clear and strong. As he listened to it reverberating around his skull, Errol realised that it wasn’t completely formless. It had a power about it that filled him with strength, and it had a direction that called him towards it. Instinctively turning his head to try and pinpoint the location, he laughed at himself for being so stupid. The voice was inside his head, not out there in the warm afternoon. And he knew anyway where the last resting place of Sir Radnor was to be found.

‘Good, Errol,’ the voice said. ‘Come to me.’

Errol looked upstream. Jagged Leap was a good mile away, obscured by trees and the folds in the hill that marked the river’s passage. Yet he could picture the place in his mind with perfect clarity. He could see the rock, jutting out over the pool, the dark waters moving slowly but strongly past it, swirling around in that deadly eddy. He could see the low sand beach where he had breathed life back into Martha’s cold, wet, still body. And he could see the lines, criss-crossing everything, defining it all like some artist’s sketch beneath the finished picture.

One line in particular caught his attention. It should have been impossible to see it travel all the way from the rock to the point where he stood, but somehow he could. It was a line but it was also two points with nothing between them, the distance no more than thought. The crossing no more difficult than an idea. It seemed the most natural thing simply to step from one place to the other.