The Golden Cage (8 page)

‘How?
The boy can't even walk.'

‘His name's Errol, Benfro. As you well know. Don't you think it's a bit kitlingish, ignoring him the whole time?'

‘I just helped him.'

‘For only the second time in a month. He saved your life.'

‘How? You've said that before, but just how exactly did someone I've never met before save my life?'

‘You have met before, Benfro. You and Errol are far closer than you can imagine. And who do you think it was told you to jump when you were surrounded by warrior priests at Emmass Fawr?'

Benfro remembered the voice in his head telling him to jump. ‘That was him?'

‘That was him. He was kidnapped, brainwashed by Inquisitor Melyn. He was taken to their monastery and trained to be their spy. But he still managed to break free. Help him, Benfro, and he'll help you fight Magog.'

Benfro doubted very much there was anything the boy could do for him, but the simple act of helping with the chest had made him feel better. It had been something to do rather than sitting around trying not to fall asleep. He needed activity, things to occupy his body as much as his mind. And Errol was in need of medical help. Even if he was a man. His mother had never refused help to anyone. It would shame her if he left the boy untended.

‘I need to gather some herbs.' Benfro stepped into the woods, dark with the coming storm. Corwen said nothing, but Benfro was sure the old dragon smiled as he faded from sight.

‘Your
Majesty, this is too soon. Half of the provinces don't even know of your betrothal yet. How can they be expected to send tribute?'

Beulah looked up at her seneschal sitting beside the Obsidian Throne, his little desk once more strewn with scrolls as he delivered his daily report on the state of the Twin Kingdoms. Every day since her announcement he had used the briefing to moan about her upcoming wedding.

‘I neither expect their tribute nor their presence, Padraig. I fully intend travelling the whole country myself, just as soon as Clun and I are wed.'

‘A royal tour? But no ruler has done that since –'

‘My great-grandfather. I know. And even he missed out most of it. I saw more of my kingdom travelling with Melyn for the choosing than my father saw in all of his reign. It's no wonder the people aren't happy with my call to arms. They don't know who I am. I shall show them and recruit them to my army.'

‘Your Majesty, is it wise to pursue this war? No one has ever succeeded in breaking through the passes before.'

Beulah let the seneschal make his case, unsure quite why she was so tolerant of him. Perhaps it was because he ran the palace and citadel so effectively. Beyond Candlehall the entire machinery of state was kept running by predicants of the Order of the Candle. Avoiding the upheaval his replacement would cause was well worth the hassle of his arguments for peace. And Beulah knew that Padraig's loyalty to the throne was unquestionable. He would never ally himself with the factions that plotted against her; he just didn't want a messy war mucking up his accounts.

‘King
Ballah has made three attempts on my life since I came to power, Padraig. We know he has plans to put his grandson and my traitorous sister on this throne. I'll not sit back and let him do that.'

‘You know I will always serve you, my queen, but I must advise caution. Ballah provokes you with these attacks. He wants a war. What better way to thwart him than to refuse?'

‘No, Padraig. I understand your reluctance, and I value your counsel, but I cannot tolerate a belligerent nation to the north. Ballah will have his war, but he won't like the outcome. I don't intend fighting it by his rules.'

‘Very well, Your Majesty.' Padraig went back to his scrolls, but Beulah knew that she would have the same argument, couched in different terms, the next day.

Errol didn't need to look at his ankles to know that he had undone weeks of healing. The pain was constant even when he kept as still as possible. Movement sent waves of agony rushing up his legs so intense he felt he might vomit. He lay back on his bed of grass and tried not to twitch.

It had been monumentally stupid, he realized, to try and move the entire chest at once. Far easier to have taken all the clothes out, piece by piece if necessary, and carried them to the cave. Then he might have been able to shift the empty chest without doing himself harm. But at the time he had been so amazed to see it, so determined to get it out of the water and into the cave, he hadn't thought of the consequences of putting so much strain on his
partially healed bones. Now there was little else he could think about.

He tried to sit up, the better to examine the damage, but the pain dimmed his vision and forced an involuntary gasp past his lips. It seemed worse now than in the dungeons below King Ballah's castle, when the hammer had first fallen. Back then he had been able to tune out of the pain somehow, to move out of his body and observe it from a distance. It was the same when he had recalled his bedroom and the chest: it hadn't been memory but a part of him actually there.

Errol searched for that feeling, a strange mixture of anticipation and indifference which had come over him as he had followed Corwen's instructions. The throbbing in his ankles made it impossible to concentrate. Giving up, he listened instead to the noise of the wind outside. It was strengthening with the promise of a fearsome storm, and he was glad of his shelter, the warmth of the fire. He wondered what had caused Benfro to help. He wondered too where the dragon had gone.

Almost as if it were waiting for him to stop trying, the strange feeling of otherness slid over him. The pain of his ankles didn't so much diminish as become something that was happening a very long way away, to someone else. He felt light, as if his already skinny body had turned to air, and all around him the lines of the Grym shimmered into view, adding their own form to the shape of the cave.

Errol sat up and experienced the disorienting feeling of watching his body stay where it was. He lifted his hands to inspect them, and saw an image of muted flickering
colours, pale as he flexed his fingers. Looking down at his legs, he could see the same swirl of pastel shades, closely hugging his real shape like a second skin. And then, surrounding his shattered ankles, a livid pulsing mass of purple and red.

‘There are very few of your kind who can master this skill.' Corwen sat on the far side of the fire. But it was a different-looking Corwen to the one he was used to seeing. This dragon was old, yes, and he bore the same scars as Corwen, but he was fully twice his size, with huge wings folded neatly at his back. He glowed with a rainbow of colours that shifted and flowed over his form in a mesmerizing pattern that shouted vitality. All except for one arm, his left. It was small, like the arm Errol was used to seeing, only now it seemed shrivelled and useless. It hung limply at the dragon's side, the hand twisted into a crude fist, talons digging into the palm. And it glowed with a malignant red shimmer that hugged the leathery skin like sweat.

‘It is a manifestation of the Grym,' Corwen continued. ‘Those who can see it call it the aethereal in your language. We have another name for it, an mhorfa, but it doesn't translate well from the Draigiaith.'

‘I … What am I seeing?'

‘You're seeing the Grym with your mind's eye. Freed from the physicality of your body. This is an intermediate step between the magic of men and what we call the subtle arts.'

‘And these colours, my ankles?'

‘Your aura, Errol. The power of the Grym that flows
from you, that defines you. Your ankles are badly damaged, and your aura reflects that.'

‘So what's wrong with your arm?'

‘I think you already know that.'

‘Magog.'

‘His influence is insidious. His power infects the very Grym itself, turning it into something I've never encountered before. I am holding him back as best I can, but in time he will prevail. I don't want to think what I will become when that happens.'

‘We'll find a way to stop him,' Errol said, feeling the pull of his body dragging him back to a world of pain. ‘There has to be a way.'

‘Your concern is admirable, Errol. But you've got to heal yourself first. And you need to help Benfro. Then you can worry about me.'

Errol wanted to ask more. There was so much he didn't understand, so many things he needed to know, but his leg twitched and a wave of pain sparked through him so intense it leached all the colour out of his new vision. He was back in his body with a terrible snap that had him sitting bolt upright. For a moment he could see nothing at all but sparks of red light flickering in front of his eyes. Wave after wave of nausea washed over him. His mouth ran wet with the promise of throwing up.

And then there was a hand on his forehead. In his confusion Errol thought it must be his mother, come to soothe his fever away. But the hand was too big, its texture rough on his skin. Another hand pressed something into his palm and he heard a voice say, ‘Chew this. It will take
away the pain for a while.' Without thinking, Errol put what felt like a rolled-up leaf into his mouth and bit down on it. A bitter taste filled his mouth briefly, then turned sweet, making his mouth water more. He chewed reflexively, feeling the agony recede almost immediately. With the relief came a crushing weariness that pulled him downwards, back on to the soft bed of dry grass and into a deep warm sleep.

Benfro looked down at the sleeping boy, glad that he had found the sedda leaves on his forest search. Too many and they would knock out even a fully grown dragon, but one, chewed for a few minutes, would make what he had to do next at least painless if hardly pleasant.

He set about arranging the ingredients for the potion around the edge of the hearth, then realized he had no pot in which to mix them. On the ledge above the bed his battered old leather bag still sat with its contents of purloined gold from Magog's repository. He opened it, sure that he had taken a wide goblet along with the other treasures. Sure enough he found it, wedged in the bottom of the bag, but it was too small. He had seen a cauldron somewhere, he was sure, but had it been in Magog's retreat on Mount Arnahi?

Benfro's eyes lost their focus as he tried to remember, and unbidden the Llinellau Grym swam into view. They patterned the walls and the floor, thick lines intersecting under the hearth. He could almost hear them calling to him, inviting him to investigate their endless paths, but he knew better than to give in to that temptation. He was too weary to concentrate, and he knew that Magog would
whisk him away somewhere if he tried to walk the lines, like he had done the last time, diverting his attention away from Corwen's cave and across the miles to his mountaintop retreat.

Corwen's cave. Benfro remembered now where he had seen a cauldron. And many other things he might find useful. They were just a few dozen paces away, through a wall of solid rock. He could see the way there. It was as simple as stepping over a fallen branch in the forest. All he needed to do was take that first step. In an instant he would be there, with the familiar old furniture, the writing table with its unfinished manuscript laid out waiting, the bookcase with its store of ancient knowledge, the fire and comfortable bed alongside.

Benfro shook his head, driving away the stupor that had crept up over him. He had seen the room at the top of Mount Arnahi, Magog's retreat. Even with his jewels dislodged from their pillar-top resting place, the ancient dead dragon mage was trying to drag him back to that inhospitable place.

Benfro turned away from the cave wall and headed out into the clearing. The storm had darkened the sky almost to black, though nightfall was hours away. The trees writhed around in a frenzy, their fresh new leaves ripping in the wind. As he watched, a squall of rain lashed across the track, kicking up the dust and turning it to mud. He hunched his shoulders against the wet and made his way to the ford, turning upstream into the deeper water and wading to the waterfall, pushing through into the cold dark cavern beyond.

With almost no light filtering in from outside, Benfro
had to wait long moments for his eyes to adjust enough to see what he was doing. He thought of conjuring a flame – there was fire just the other side of the cave wall – but he was terrified of manipulating the Grym. Magog lay in wait for him that way. So instead he hauled himself out of the icy water and stood shivering until the gloom resolved itself into familiar shapes.

It took a while to find the cauldron, and by feel a set of long iron spoons. All the while he wondered why Corwen didn't appear to him, but the old dragon's movements were a mystery. Sometimes he was absent for days, other times he was always around, watching, making occasionally helpful comments. Benfro was about to head back to the water's edge when he realized what else had been bothering him the whole time he had searched the cave. There was an unusual odour, as if someone had visited the place recently, certainly in the last week. He tried to pin down the scent, but it was very faint and the ground underfoot had that faint spicy smell that covered everything else. Then, finally, he realized what it was. The boy had been in here.

He wasn't sure whether he was more angry or surprised at this. It seemed somehow wrong that Errol should have been in here, but there was no way he could have found it without Corwen's help. Confused, Benfro pushed through the curtain of water, pausing to rinse the cauldron thoroughly in the strong current. When he was halfway across the clearing, a squall peeled the makeshift roof off the corral with a great crashing noise, branches splintering and careening off into the darkness. He stood staring at
his sleeping place as the rain rattled off the inside of the walls, no doubt soaking the once-dry grass that was his bedding. Shrugging in defeat, Benfro turned away and entered the cave.

The warmth was welcoming after the chill of the storm. He put some more dry logs on the fire and placed the cauldron on top of them, then checked on Errol. The boy was still asleep and probably would be for hours yet, which was just as well. Benfro recalled the times before when he had prepared this medication, back at home with his mother watching over him to make sure he made no mistakes. Would she be proud of him now? Would she praise him for what he was doing? He hoped so.