The Golden Cage (35 page)

Beulah saw his whole life leading up to this point, and realized as she tripped through his thoughts that he was picking his way through her own. Her plans for the invasion of Llanwennog, the distribution of her armies between Dina and Tochers, Melyn's diversion.

‘What? Did you think to pass a message on to your allies? Warn King Ballah?' She pushed with all her might, shook his touch from her mind. And still he stared at her, smiling.

‘The Guardians of the Throne care nothing for King Ballah and his godless Llanwennogs. We answer to a
higher power. We serve the true king.' Tolley's voice was all around her now, inside her. He was tearing away at her mind like some frenzied beast, reaching for her core, trying to destroy her from within. And as he spoke, she was paralysed, held fast by the power of his madness.

Beulah gathered herself in the storm that was her thoughts, preparing for one final push, knowing that if she didn't break free of Tolley's control, he would kill her. Or worse, simply destroy her mind and leave her body still alive, an empty husk to be tended, fed, wiped and cleaned until age finally took it. She knew how to do it, if only she could concentrate. If only that voice would stop grating in her head. If only those eyes would let her go.

‘He's coming, Beulah of the stolen throne. And when he gets here, his wrath will be mighty to behold. He will lay waste to the whole of Gwlad, then rebuild it as his own paradise. And only those who have shown him loyalty down the centuries, those who have fought against the lies of his hated brother, only we will be allowed a place in that safe pasture. Only we will live in the presence of –'

Tolley never finished. In an instant Beulah's head was clear, as if she had stood at the edge of a terrible storm, battered by it until she could feel nothing but the wind and the rain, and then someone had closed a door, locking it out. It took a few moments for her brain to catch up with the noise her ears had heard – a sort of rasping sound like the cutting of pigskin. Then her eyes found their focus, saw the light in the predicant's eyes fade away as his pupils rose to the ceiling.

He fell sideways, crumpling to the floor like a sack of
offal, his head tilting as it toppled away from Clun's sizzling blade.

The cave was dark beyond the waterfall, but even so Melyn could feel the power flowing through it. He waded forward, hauling himself up out of the water and on to rocks miraculously dry. No damp moss clung to the walls, no smell of mould hung in the air. Everything was held back by a working of such sophistication it was staggering. He could feel the charge in the air, thickening it, trying to push him back as he walked into the darkness. It was like a solid but silent wind, making each step as heavy as if he weighed as much as a horse, but he knew it was all in his mind. He pushed on, pitting his mental discipline against ancient spells, until with a final surge he broke through.

Only faint light from outside made it through the silently rushing water, but as his eyes adjusted to the gloom it was enough to show the outline of a large cavern. Melyn moved among huge pieces of ancient carved furniture never intended for men. He heaved himself up on to a chair that made him look like a child, and looked across a table that could have sat a party of two dozen. If they were prepared to stand on boxes to eat. Letting himself down to the floor, he disturbed the dry dusty earth on the ground. A spicy aroma rose around him. He had noticed it in the other cave, and it reminded him of something, but he couldn't place it. Shaking off the thought, he went to a large wooden chest that stood against one wall close to a vast bed. It resisted all his attempts to open it, and he was
about to conjure a blade of light to cut his way in when a sound distracted him.

His first instinct was to look back to the waterfall. As he did so he remembered the two warrior priests he had ordered to follow him. They stood close to the deluge, cloaks soaked through, hair matted to their heads and feeling around in the air like a pair of bad mimes. Melyn almost laughed. They obviously couldn't see the magics that protected this place and would be puzzled as to how their inquisitor had disappeared. But he realized as he watched that he could hear nothing of them or the flood of water behind. And then he heard the noise again.

It was behind him. Turning, Melyn saw that the back of the cave wasn't a solid wall but the opening of a black passage. He walked towards it, conjuring a small flame to light his way. It flared in his hand, as bright as the sun, chasing all the shadows away and filling him with a sense of power even more potent than when he conjured his blade. Focusing on the lines, he could see why this cave had been chosen as a hiding place and a focus for the powerful spells that spread from it across the forest. The Grym concentrated here like nowhere else he had seen outside the Neuadd, and its power seemed to flow down the rocky tunnel that led away from the end of the cave.

The passageway dropped slowly and turned a long arc so that he could never see more than a dozen paces ahead. The further he went, the more he was convinced he could hear a voice. He couldn't make out the words, but the inflections, the accent and pitch were all unmistakable. Errol was ahead, in earnest conversation with someone.

Melyn increased his speed, thankful for the soft dry earth that muffled his footfalls. He dimmed his light, fighting against the surge of excitement that threatened to make it blaze out again. If he could get close enough to the boy without him realizing, then a swift blow would render him unconscious. He could drug him with wine and get back into his head, find out the secrets he held, the power that had helped him survive a stab to the heart and allowed him to move from place to place with just a thought. And with the old dragon's spell book to help him, Melyn knew he could master those skills himself. Then no one would dare oppose him. He would take the whole of Gwlad in Beulah's name.

The rock caught him unawares, poking up from the floor to trip him. Melyn pitched forward. He released his light and made no more noise than the wind that was driven out of him as he fell to the ground, but in the otherwise near-silent passageway he might as well have been wearing fools' bells and banging a drum. Pain screamed at him from his foot and from both hands where he had thrown them out to break his fall. Ignoring it, he scrambled back upright and hobbled on as fast as he could, running his fingers along the wall to get his bearings until he could collect his wits enough to conjure another ball of light.

Ears straining against the hiss of silence, he listened for the slightest sound that might indicate Errol was still there. He had to believe that the boy had no control over his strange power. Hadn't he only disappeared before when threatened with immediate physical harm – when Ballah's executioner was about to swing his axe; when
Osgal had thrown him into the Faaeren Chasm? Melyn knew he was deluding himself; fear would be enough of a trigger. Cursing under his breath, he pushed on faster, all too aware that if Errol could have escaped, he would have done so by now.

The passageway opened on to a large cavern without warning, almost as if he had stepped through an invisible door. For a brief instant Melyn thought he saw movement darting away from him, a confusing shifting of perspective that made his head spin. He put his hand out to steady himself and looked up into the eyes of the largest dragon he had ever seen.

It was impossible. The cave was not big enough to hold such a creature. It made Caradoc look like a kitling and could have swallowed Melyn whole. It stared at him with a curious expression, like one might reserve for a precocious child or a dog that has mastered a particularly impressive trick.

‘So you are Melyn, son of Arall.' The voice was as loud as the creature was big, surrounding him, filling him entirely, squeezing out any other thought. Melyn tried to pull himself together, but he felt like a pile of dead leaves in a gale. His mental discipline, honed over a lifetime, disappeared as if he were no more than an empty-headed little girl.

‘Who … are … you … ?' He couldn't be sure whether he actually spoke the words or not. Melyn could feel himself slowly unravelling under that terrible stare.

‘I am Corwen teul Maddau. The last of her direct line. You know Maddau, of course. From your history. We call her Maddau the Wise. She was the gentlest, most studious
of our kind. And your little proto-king, Balwen, slew her like a dog.'

Melyn was transported back to his childhood, standing at the front of the class and being chided for his presumption by his teacher. He knew the burning sense of embarrassment, the mortification of being ridiculed in front of his peers even if he thought them no better than the mindless peasants who were their parents. He knew too the terrible feeling of injustice – that he should be rewarded for his achievement, not humiliated. He pushed against that humiliation, taking strength from his persecution. And as he did so, he felt his body around him. How long he had been trapped, caught by this most powerful magic of all, was anyone's guess. But as it dawned on him what he had stumbled upon, so its power waned.

He flexed his hands, feeling the rough stone of a carved pedestal under them, in front of him. He could still see the great form of the dragon, but it was shrinking in front of his eyes, its solidity fading away to a smoky wispiness, the cave wall showing through from behind. And then his fingers caressed something cold and hard and smooth.

A jolt of energy shot through him. Melyn was thrown back, landing on his backside in the dirt. But the image of the dragon had gone, and now he could see what really filled the small cave.

‘Not so grand now, Corwen teul Maddau,' he muttered under his breath as he climbed painfully back to his feet and looked down on the pile of two dozen or so small white jewels. He reached out and picked one up, conjuring his light as he did so, the better to see it. Images, memories, the shadow of the creature that had left these
powerful nuggets behind, brushed at his mind. Melyn was used to the way the white jewels called him, promised him great things. He was wise to them, though he knew many men who had fallen for their allure. He closed his mind to their song and studied them one by one as a gemsmith might appraise diamonds before setting about cutting them. Most were white, but of the twenty-four, six had taken on a pale pink tinge. There was a different quality to them too, as if they belonged to another creature. A puzzle for later, he put them all in a pocket of his robe before taking a last look around the small chamber.

Aside from a few scratchy runes etched into the walls and around the stone pedestal, there was nothing of interest. Then he looked down, seeing how the soft dry earth had been disturbed by feet, recently if he was any judge. Crouching, Melyn held out his light, trying to make sense of the patterns of prints. They had been made by small boots. He didn't know what size Errol wore, but Melyn was pretty sure they were his. The boy had stepped from the rock face opposite the entrance and then stumbled; there were two hand-shaped prints in the dirt, and Melyn knew there would be larger ones much the same back down the passageway where he had fallen. After picking himself up, Errol had walked slowly around the pedestal once, then stepped back into the cave wall.

Melyn studied the rock, feeling it with his hand, then let himself slip into the trance that would show him the aethereal imprint of the place. In front of him was still nothing more than a solid wall of stone; no magics hid a second chamber or escape route. Indeed the magics that filled the place were fast unravelling, their centre disrupted
when he had disturbed the jewels. Remembering Frecknock's words, he concentrated on the Grym, and sure enough he could see the lines converging on the pedestal. But whereas before he had seen them only as conduits of power, now he could see how they diffused into the air, formed the shape of the cavern. There were subtle differences between the lines that criss-crossed the floor and those that ran through the rock, something he had never noticed in all his years of studying magic and the Grym.

And then it hit him. He shouldn't have been able to see the lines at all. Quite apart from being in an aethereal trance, he was deep underground, far from living things. Back at Emmass Fawr the basement levels, hewn into the granite of the mountain on which the monastery sat, were almost devoid of power. Even he struggled to conjure a light down there. But in here the Grym was as powerful as anywhere he had seen it, and it reached out in all directions, connecting this one spot to everywhere in Gwlad. From here he could eavesdrop on conversations in Candlehall. Or Tynhelyg. He could seek out Queen Beulah and check on her progress. Maybe even communicate with her as the dragons did. He could see where Errol had gone. Follow him.

‘Your Grace?' The voice cut through Melyn's concentration and he dropped out of his trance, spinning to see who had dared interrupt him. One of the damp warrior priests stood at the entrance to the cavern, his companion behind him. Anger made Melyn's conjured light glow bright. The two men drew back from him, fear etched into their faces, as well it should be. He would strike them down where they stood.

‘Are you all right, sire?' The nearest warrior priest was dripping on to the dusty earth, making a ring of damp darkness around him like a protective ward. Melyn's rage turned off almost as instantly as it had come. He looked down at his own robes, soaked from his entrance. His shirt clung to his skin, cold and rough, sending an involuntary shiver through him. He could see how he had trailed drips of water into the cavern, and yet he hadn't noticed them at all when he had been tracing Errol's footsteps. Crouching down again to inspect the floor, he could see no sign of the boy at all. A different shudder ran up his spine as he began to understand what had happened. He had been seduced by the strange potency of this place. He had acted like a novitiate on first being introduced to the lines, had almost been sucked into them, his mind ripped apart by their endless possibilities. If anything, the two warrior priests had saved him from a fate far worse than death.