The Golden Cage (25 page)

‘Corris has been going downhill for years. The river's silted up and the big barges can't make it further than Wright's Ford these days. Lord Beylin spent his money improving the road from there, rather than fighting nature and dredging the river.'

‘I didn't mean the poverty.' Beulah had once again forgotten that Clun was a merchant's son. His knowledge of the geography of the Twin Kingdoms was the equal of
her own, perhaps even better as he seemed to know more about the commercial wealth of each town they visited, whereas all she could remember were the names of the local aristocracy. ‘I meant Lord Queln. He's plainly senile, and yet no one has stepped forward to take his place. If Padraig had heard of his state, he would have petitioned me to appoint a successor.'

‘Maybe it slipped his mind.'

‘You don't know the seneschal well, my love. Nothing slips his mind. If he hasn't brought this to my attention, it is because he is unaware of it.' Beulah climbed out of the now-lukewarm water, accepting a towel and drying herself. Wrapped tightly in a clean bandage, her arm ached but was largely pain free; the same could not be said of her palm, which throbbed in time with her heartbeat. She would have liked a chance to meditate and focus the power of the Grym on healing herself, but she needed answers to too many questions to settle her mind.

The great hall was like something from an ancient fairy tale. A huge open fireplace burned logs the size of small trees, casting a flickering light on two long tables arranged in parallel with low benches along both sides of each. At the far end of the room, raised on a dais, a smaller table sat in front of a large carved throne. Made of oak or a similar wood and almost black with age, this was a facsimile in miniature of the Obsidian Throne back at Candlehall. Two smaller chairs with ornately carved high backs were placed one on either side. All three were unoccupied.

At first Beulah thought that the hall was empty, but a noise from the fireplace, barely audible over the crackling
logs, caught her attention. Sitting on a low stool by the hearth, staring into the flames, was Lord Queln.

‘My lord, I must thank you for your kind hospitality,' Beulah said, crossing the hall with Clun and feeling the fierce heat of the fire on her face from ten paces away. How could Queln bear to sit so close? ‘I was particularly impressed with the plumbing.'

‘Eh? Oh?' Queln looked round as if trying to locate the source of this new noise. Perhaps he truly was blind, Beulah thought. It would explain a lot.

‘Your Majesty. I must apologize for my rudeness. No one told me you were coming. Had I but a day's notice …'

‘It's no matter, Queln. I'm not so pampered that I can't cope with a little hardship. But heralds were sent out over two weeks ago. Are you telling me none made it here?'

‘I don't recall meeting one, ma'am. My memory's not what it was. Tolley normally deals with day-to-day things like that, but I can't seem to find him.'

‘Captain Herren tells me Father Tolley left a few days ago for Beylinstown. Why would he go there?'

‘Herren. He's a good man. A good soldier. He's my grandson, you know.'

Beulah was almost distracted from her question by the admission. Almost, but not quite. There was something not quite right about Queln. She had thought him senile, but perhaps there was a deeper malaise.

‘Father Tolley, Lord Queln. Why did he go to Beylinstown?' Beulah tried to catch the old man's eyes, brushing the edges of his thoughts to see what reaction the priest's name provoked.

‘My
son. My lovely Gerrid. He had a bit of a roving eye, you see. Always after the serving lasses. Who knows? Half of the town might be his children. It wouldn't surprise me. But Herren's the one I can be sure of. He has his father's eyes.' Queln's face slackened, and his head turned back to the fire as if he had been speaking to a page rather than his monarch. Beulah's anger flickered at the snub, and she used that surge of power to push deeper into his thoughts.

He wasn't senile, of that much she could be sure. His mind was a mess, but only because someone had made it that way. It was as skilled a working as any she had seen Melyn perform, taking snippets of memory and mixing them together, jumbling up the order of things, confusing an old man to make him more suggestible.

Beulah knelt in front of Queln, putting her hands on his knees. Instinctively he looked straight at her, and she gazed deep into his eyes.

‘Father Tolley. Where did he really go?' An image flickered in Queln's thoughts, a series of fragments that assembled to form a person. Short, thin, wearing the traditional robes of a predicant, black hair slicked back over a pale almost pointed skull, a nasal, weasely voice that seemed to fill her head.

‘Your reign will be short, Queen Beulah of the stolen throne.' Queln's voice was completely different, hard and cold. He reached forward, grasping Beulah's hands with his own. In the flickering orange glow of the firelight his face was contorted, veins bulging at his temples, sweat beading on his forehead and nose. ‘The true king is coming, and he will wipe all but his own followers from the
face of Gwlad. Enjoy your days while you can. They won't last.'

Riding Queln's thoughts, Beulah felt the full impact of the words. It was as if they had been planted in his head, waiting for the moment when she uncovered them. And whoever had put them there had left a small surprise too. She saw it just in time and leaped back, pulling her hands free, wrenching her mind away as Queln went into a spasm. Clun jumped forward to shield her, but the old man posed no threat now she had released him. He writhed, his bent back twisting and buckling until he fell off the stool and on to the floor. His breath came out in gurgling choking coughs, as if something were stuck in his throat. Blood leaked from his nose and ears, then from his eyelids, streaming down his cheeks in a parody of tears.

‘Lord Queln.' Clun knelt down beside the old man, grasping his arms to stop him convulsing. Beulah just looked on; she knew that there was nothing anyone could do to save the man. Someone had killed him a long time ago, but it took a few more minutes for Lord Queln to die.

Melyn steered his horse through the rocks, leaning forward to keep his balance as the beast struggled up the
steep path. They had cleared the treeline about an hour earlier and now he could look out over the sprawling mass of the forest as it spread away from him.

The track was narrow, picking a path between huge boulders that seemed almost to have been carved. At first they had been able to ride three or four abreast, and the warrior priests had spoken quietly among themselves, sharing their experiences of the fight with the dragon. Now they were down to single file, Melyn in the middle of the group with Frecknock walking ahead of him, and everyone was silent. Overhead, the sun beat down on them through hazy clouds, heating the air and making everything seem heavy. A storm was on its way.

The climb took far longer than he had expected. From the clearing where they had battled Caradoc the rocky ridge had seemed no more than a half-hour's ride away, but as with everything else in the forest this was a deception. Four or five times higher than he had estimated, it had taken them all morning to reach. Now, making their slow way up towards its spine, Melyn imagined they must look something like a line of ants headed back to the nest with their spoils. The thought of riding towards a nest made him uneasy. The creature they hunted was somewhat larger than an ant.

The little column stopped, and Melyn almost rode into the back of Frecknock. She had said little since the failed ambush, and he couldn't find it in himself to blame her for the fiasco, even though he had lost a good man. She had done all that he had asked of her, perhaps even more. If there were blame to be apportioned, then it was his. He had underestimated his enemy twice now. He wouldn't make that mistake a third time.

‘What's
going on?' Melyn saw Captain Osgal dismount and pick his way back along the track towards him.

‘Can't ride any further, Your Grace,' Osgal said. ‘The path's too narrow and steep. A horse could break its leg with a man on its back. We'll have to lead them from here.'

Melyn knew Osgal doted on his horse, but he could also see the wisdom in the man's words. It was a long way back to the main camp and the spare horses. This diversion to track down and kill the renegade dragon had already taken too much time; he couldn't afford to waste more while half of his troop walked back through the forest.

Nodding his agreement, Melyn dismounted, his knees creaking. The other warrior priests followed suit, and they were soon off again, trudging up the winding path. Ahead of him Frecknock appeared to be paying a lot of attention to the rocks, occasionally tripping over her feet as she wasn't looking where she was going.

‘What is it?' Melyn asked. ‘What can you see?'

She turned back towards him, forcing those behind him to stop while the rest carried on ahead.

‘These rocks and boulders. They were once a building. A vast building. But something destroyed it.'

Melyn looked at the nearest boulder. It was almost square, its edges chipped and rounded by the wind and rain. Twice as high as him, its flat surfaces were dimpled and cracked just like any other boulder. He couldn't see how it could have been part of anything. It was far too big.

‘Nothing could move a rock this size. Not even that creature Caradoc. It's just tumbled down in an earthquake.'

‘Begging
your pardon, Your Grace, but if you look more closely, you can see where it's been carved out of a quarry. See, here, and here?' Frecknock pointed with her long taloned finger, the claw extruding from its tip in an unconscious reminder of her beastly nature. Melyn moved closer to the rock and peered at its surface. There were striations, marks that could have been made by a chisel, but he wasn't convinced.

‘You're imagining things,' he said, pulling his horse by its reins as he stepped forward.

‘Then what about these?' Frecknock pointed to a jumble of smaller rocks a little off the path. Wondering why he was humouring her, Melyn allowed himself to be led towards them. They were made from the same stone as the ridge. Everything around him was the same material, dark red granite made friable by endless wind and rain. There was nothing remarkable about them, and yet as Frecknock bent down, grasped one of the rocks and heaved it over, he couldn't help but feel a tingle of anticipation.

‘There. I thought so.' The dragon stepped back so he could see.

It was ornately carved; no weathering this. Quite plainly a craftsmen of great skill had chipped and smoothed out an image in the surface of the rock. Kneeling before it, Melyn traced his finger over the form, trying to work out what it could be. This piece was obviously just a small chunk broken off a much larger whole.

‘What is it?'

‘I think it's part of a wing tip.' Frecknock crouched
down beside him, reaching out to the stonework and tracing her extended claw over the shape. ‘See. You can make out the scales on the leading edge, and here's the last joint.'

‘No, it's part of an arm, and a spear.' Melyn looked back at the enormous square block and the hundreds of others like it scattered all over the ridge. ‘But you're right: at least some of these blocks have been cut for building.'

He pushed himself back up on to his feet and went to retrieve his horse. Frecknock looked like she wanted to explore the rubble more, but she dragged herself away and rejoined the line.

Melyn noted more obvious carving as they continued up through the afternoon. A light wind built up with their increased altitude, whipping a fine dust into little whirlwinds that skidded across the path, alternately blanking out the view ahead or plunging them into choking, eye-watering darkness. And still they climbed.

He had thought himself fit, but Melyn was sweating profusely by the time they neared the crest. The larger boulders thinned out, leaving a barren desert of smaller rocks and more dust for the wind to play with. The path widened, no longer constricted by the big blocks, but still they couldn't see the top, each new rise just revealing another false summit. And then, finally, they crested the last ridge, and the warrior priest at the head of the troop stopped in his tracks, forcing those following to fan out into the rubble. Angered, Melyn pushed his way through to see what could break the discipline of his elite troops.

It was an arch not unlike Brynceri's back at Emmass Fawr. Only where that rose over the road away from other
buildings, this one had been incorporated into a massive wall that stretched across the top of the rocky outcrop, reaching more than five hundred paces across to the cliffs on either side. The wall was crumbling in places, almost completely gone near the western edge, but in the middle it climbed three or four storeys high.

‘What is this place?' Captain Osgal spoke the words, but Melyn knew all his men were thinking the same thing. It felt wrong, as if it had been hidden away for a long time and still didn't want to be discovered.

‘I think this is Cenobus, the fabled palace of Magog, Son of the Summer Moon.' Melyn looked around to see Frecknock standing beside him. Her expression was even more rapt than when she had first seen Caradoc.

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.