The Golden Cage (6 page)

‘Your actions succeeded in foiling an attempt on my life. You took a poisoned quarrel meant for me, and now I offer you this in reward. Do you swear, in front of the assembled noble houses of the Twin Kingdoms, to serve the House of Balwen and to pledge the service of your issue from this time henceforth?'

Clun's voice was thin, scared. It barely travelled beyond his lips. Beulah took the thought behind it and pushed it out to the audience as loud as her own words.

‘I
do so swear.'

‘And do you swear to uphold the laws of our nation, to act as arbiter in matters of justice?'

‘I do so swear.'

‘Do you swear to maintain an army of able-bodied men, equipped and trained in such numbers as are commensurate with the lands and titles I choose to bestow upon you?'

‘I do so swear.'

‘And do you swear to honour me in whatever task I set before you?'

‘Unless death prevents me, I do so swear.'

Beulah was almost taken aback by the deviation from the set protocol, but delighted at Clun's new-found confidence. She could tell by the murmuring of the collected witnesses that they approved. Good. It would make her next proclamation easier for them to accept.

Bending forward to the still-kneeling Clun, she touched the shimmering blade of light to his left shoulder, then his right, smelling the slightest odour of singeing cloth and leaving two almost imperceptible dark lines on the simple shirt that he wore.

‘Then rise, Clun Defaid, Duke of Abervenn.'

Clun stood slowly as the murmurs fluttered back and forth through the hall. There were some among the crowd who thought him perhaps too young to take on the responsibilities of a whole province, others who saw in his elevation a fairy story turned real.

‘Now take my blade, my love.' Beulah whispered the words just for Clun as she held out her hand, offering him the blade of light. His eyes widened in surprise. This had
not been a part of the ceremony he had rehearsed with Padraig the night before. She smiled at him, then released her control, directing the flow of the Grym towards him. An unskilled peasant would likely have been burned alive from the inside, but he caught it naturally, as if he had been practising all his life. Beulah could see the near panic in his face as he realized what he was holding. She didn't need to skim the edge of his thoughts. But she took his free hand, turned him to face the crowd, which stood silent, enthralled.

‘Duke Clun has proven himself worthy as my protector.' She pitched her voice to thunder through the hall, drawing power from the throne even though she wasn't sitting in it. The moment was perfect. She felt like she could have taken on the whole of Llanwennog single-handed.

‘Now hear me, all of you, when I make this proclamation. Today will be a day of celebration for the new Duke of Abervenn. Tomorrow will begin two weeks of festivities, at the end of which I will take this man as my consort.'

Errol slipped into the ice-cold water, shuddering as it rose to his waist, his chest and finally his neck. Downstream of the ford it deepened rapidly, the flow slowing into a long pool. Taking the weight off his ankles was bliss, but the main reason for this morning dip was hygiene. He swam to the opposite side and ripped off some of the soft grass that overhung the bank, tearing it in his hands and pulping it as best he could to form a basic soap. Kneeling in the shallows, he scrubbed at his skin until he began to feel
clean, trying to remember the last time he had bathed properly.

The sun had broken over the treetops and was shining down on the flat rocks closer to the ford and the waterfall. Errol let it dry him, the light breeze causing involuntary shivers to run across his bare skin even though he drew warmth from the Grym. Then he turned his attention to his clothes.

His shirt was frayed and thin, crusted with ingrained dirt and blood; a ragged tear ripped the fabric where Beulah had stabbed him. He plunged it into the cold water then laid it flat on the rock, using a smooth stone to try and work out the worst of the stains. He was pummelling away at the blood on his breeches when Corwen appeared.

‘Is it worth all the effort?' the old dragon asked.

‘I've nothing else to wear.' Errol thought of his novitiate's robes hanging in their locker in the monastery at Emmass Fawr; the selection of unfashionable but well made and hard-wearing clothes in the chest in the back room in his mother's cottage. ‘And I can't wander around naked.'

‘Dragons do.'

Errol laughed. ‘Yes, I suppose they do. But I'm not a dragon. I don't have thick scales to protect me.' He picked up his shirt, which had almost dried in the sun. It crackled stiffly in his hands as he inspected it. ‘I wish I had a mending kit.'

‘Why not just get a new shirt?'

‘Where from? There's no shirt maker for hundreds of miles, and I haven't any coin to pay him with even if there was.'

‘But there are shirt makers in Gwlad, and tailors,
cobblers – craftsmen whose purpose in life is to fashion clothes and boots for others. I remember a man in Talarddeg who used to make funny little hats with tassels on the top.'

‘But they're not here, are they.' Errol hauled his breeches from the water and squeezed them out a last time. Some bloodstains would never shift, he realized, and pretty soon the knees would be gone.

‘Neither were you, four weeks ago, and yet here you are now. Did you walk here, Errol?'

Errol could remember very little of his arrival apart from the pain. He had walked the lines, that much he knew. But he had intended to go home to Pwllpeiran, where his mother could heal him. Instead he had heard Sir Radnor's voice, felt a gentle but firm force push him elsewhere, and then he had woken up in the cave with Corwen staring down at him.

‘So I could go back,' he said. ‘I could go home and pick up some clothes. Check on my mother. Let her know I'm all right.'

‘That would be one way. Inadvisable but possible.'

‘Except I've never managed to do it on purpose. I've always had help. Or it's been a matter of life and death, and I don't want to end up in Ruthin's Grove again. Or Melyn's chapel.' Errol shuddered at the thought of being back in that cold miserable place.

‘You don't have to go anywhere at all, Errol.' The old dragon sat himself down on the rock, resting his feet in the water, where they made no impression whatsoever. ‘You can reach out to a place and bring what's there to you. It's one of the first of the subtle arts a dragon learns.'

‘I'm
not a dragon.'

‘So you keep saying. And as long as that's how you think of yourself, you never will be. But humour me. Since Benfro has gone off on one of his sulks in the woods, I've no one to teach right now. Perhaps you'd like to learn something new.'

‘Of course,' Errol said. ‘Always.'

‘Well then, try this for me. Close your eyes and imagine your mother's house. Imagine the room where you used to sleep and the chest where all your clothes are stored.'

Errol tried to build the picture in his mind, finding it remarkably hard. He knew the house so well that he couldn't remember ever having studied it in any great detail. Nor did it help that his memories of home had been comprehensively rewritten by Inquisitor Melyn. Errol thought he had sorted out the truth from the jumble of incongruous images, but there was always that doubt at the back of his mind.

‘Concentrate, Errol. Describe the chest. See it.' Corwen's voice was inside him, all around him, and in that instant Errol felt himself slip from his physical body. His eyes were still closed, but suddenly he could see everything around him – the clearing, the trees, the river cascading over the falls past the rock on which he sat and on towards the forest. And he could see the lines linking everything, painting the form of Gwlad, each point linked to every other.

He looked south, in the approximate direction of his mother's house so many hundreds of miles away. It was daft to think that he could see it, but suddenly he was there, standing outside the front door. It looked
dilapidated, lifeless. He supposed that made sense; his mother would have moved into Godric's house in the village. He wondered if she would have taken his things with her, and with that thought he was standing in his bedroom.

It was dark and dusty, even to his strange new sight, but everything seemed to be pretty much where he had left it. His small collection of books sat on the shelf above his narrow bed, and there, under the draughty window that looked out on to the woods, was his clothes chest. He remembered it perfectly.

‘Come back to me now, Errol.' Corwen's voice sounded impossibly distant, and yet at the same time right there with him. Errol realized he could hear the rush of the waterfall and the splashing of the river over the ford. The image of his room was fading, but he could still see the chest and, linking it to where he sat, the endless impossibly complicated web of the Grym. He felt the rock under his backside and feet, anchoring him to the clearing, and yet his clothes chest was only a hand's reach away. He just had to –

A great splash whipped Errol's eyes open. He was suddenly, painfully, fully back in himself, his heart pounding as if he had just run up six flights of stairs. He looked around, first at Corwen, who was still sitting on the next rock along, then at the river, where something had upset the flow just in front of him. Something large and square and wooden.

‘How … ? Did I … ?' He dropped down into the shallow water, dragging the heavy chest out on to the bank before it was completely ruined. His fingers touched its
surface, and he noted the long tracks of dust they left behind. How long had the house been abandoned? Why had his mother left his things behind?

‘I had thought you might just fetch a shirt perhaps, or maybe a pair of breeks. This, this is splendid.'

Errol barely heard Corwen's words. The sudden magical appearance of the clothes chest was a wondrous thing he couldn't comprehend, let alone acknowledge that it had been his own doing. But seeing his old home, his old life abandoned and left to ruin, he was overcome with a loneliness so bleak, so total that it choked his throat and brought tears to his eyes.

‘Your Majesty, I see you've created a new Duke of Abervenn. My congratulations to the Lord Lyon on his subtle work with the new coat of arms.'

Melyn climbed the dais and knelt briefly before the Obsidian Throne before standing again. He had noticed the new pennant fluttering in the breeze and flying from almost every second flagpole in the citadel. ‘So tell me, who presented themselves as such an obvious choice you did not feel the need to consult your old mentor?'

‘Do I detect a note of jealousy, Melyn?' Beulah smiled at him from the throne and he couldn't help notice a change in her. She seemed somehow softer, more feminine.

‘My queen is of course free to take counsel wherever she chooses,' he said.

‘Don't be so po-faced, Melyn. You weren't here, and circumstances forced my hand. I don't think you'll disapprove of my choice. You sent him to me, after all.'

‘Clun!
You made a novitiate duke of the most important region of the Twin Kingdoms?'

‘That's only the half of it, Inquisitor.' Melyn turned to see Seneschal Padraig emerging from a side room. ‘She intends to marry him.'

Melyn looked back at the queen, seeing again that difference in her. He knew she had something of an infatuation with the boy, but he hadn't realized things might go so far. Still, given the choice, he'd take Clun as prince consort over any of the vacuous sons of the noble houses.

‘Padraig disapproves,' Beulah said, an unusual amount of tolerance in her voice. ‘Both about Abervenn and my marriage choice. He thinks I should have forged greater ties with Tochers or Castell Glas.'

‘It's true that a union with either of those houses would have strengthened your position, Your Majesty,' Padraig said. ‘And marrying a commoner is a snub to your courtiers.'

‘Whoever I'd chosen, even if it had been one of those pathetic little lordlings, it would have been seen as a snub to the rest of them. Elevating a common man, then taking him as my consort, makes me popular with the people. It's a fairy tale come true.'

‘Of course, Your Majesty. And that's what my predicants are telling everyone as they spread the news throughout the Twin Kingdoms. Although I would have preferred a little more time to make all the necessary preparations.'

‘More time?' Melyn asked. ‘How soon are you planning on having the ceremony.'

‘Next
Saddith, by the Shepherd!' Padraig settled himself down at a small desk placed close to the throne and shuffled through a pile of scrolls. Melyn looked back at the queen, trying to work out what it was that was different about her. She was wearing a long dress of gold silk rather than her usual boyish suede trousers, for one thing. Was her hair a little longer than he remembered? It was difficult to tell. Her face looked thinner, as if she'd not been eating properly, but she looked healthy, almost glowing with the power of the throne. Then the penny dropped.

‘Your Majesty, would you like to take a walk around the courtyard? It's a beautiful morning.'

‘Why, yes, Inquisitor. I think I should.' Beulah held out her hand and Melyn took it, helping her down from the throne. Beside them Padraig scowled but continued with his paperwork.

At the great oak doors to the Neuadd two guards tried to follow as Melyn escorted the queen outside. She dismissed them with a casual wave.

‘Do you think any harm can come to me when the Inquisitor of the Order of the High Ffrydd is my personal escort?'

They walked across the grass, keeping away from the cloister that surrounded the great hall. Only when Melyn was sure they were beyond eavesdropping range did he speak.

‘How long have you known?'

‘Known what?' Beulah feigned innocence, but he had known her too long for that to work.