The Golden Cage

by J. D. Oswald

  ‘Come to me, dragons of Gwlad. Come to my side.’

  Like straining his ears to try and pinpoint the source of a noise, Errol tried to determine where the voice he heard directly in his head originated. It was coming to him along the lines, of that much he was sure, but it seemed to come from all directions. Even the pull behind the words was formless: it filled him with an unsettling urge to act, to move, but gave no indication of where he should go. Frustrated, he pulled away and struggled to his feet. He walked slowly back to his clothes, letting the wind dry him as he went and scanning the skies all the while. He needed to talk to Benfro – perhaps he would be able to throw some light on the mystery – but the dragon was nowhere to be seen.

  Pulling on his trousers and shirt, Errol went back to the cave and stoked up the fire, warming himself as best he could without touching the Grym and that unsettling call. He sat for some time wondering about the voice. What could it mean? Were there other dragons out there? Had Benfro heard the call himself and flown off in search of this female? Was she still calling? His natural curiosity, so long suppressed by Melyn’s influence, niggled at him until he just had to find some answers. He brought the lines back into his focus, felt out along them, savouring the different textures each one presented to him, always trying to keep himself centred. He wanted to listen, not to be drawn down any one path, or worse, all of them at once.

  ‘Dragons of Gwlad, hear my call. You who walk the long road, I am Frecknock, daughter of Sir Teifi teul Albarn. Come to me.’

  For an instant Errol thought he heard something else, then the dragon opened her eyes. He could see what she saw: a small clearing in the middle of the forest, a clear blue sky. In the distance a rocky outcrop speared out of the trees like the bleached and dried hulk of some long-dead leviathan and overhead, descending on outstretched wings, Benfro?

  Startled, Errol almost lost whatever strange connection it was he had made through the lines. The vision dimmed and he could see the cave, the fire flickering as it ate into the dry wood. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on the sense of longing that Frecknock seemed to exude. At once he was back with her, watching as a huge creature wheeled and swooped down. Now that he could see it properly, Errol realized that the dragon was not Benfro. He, and it had to be male, was twice Benfro’s size, his wings larger still, blanking out the sun high overhead as he came in to land. Errol was buffeted by a great wind that knocked him back both physically and in his mind. He was pushed away from the scene into his own body, falling back on to his bed in the cave, with such force that he tipped over backwards, knocking his head against the stone wall. Dazed, he sat back up again, felt his skull for lumps. He tried to reconnect with the dragon, but he could hear nothing, though the lines were there as clear as ever. The feeling of longing was gone too, which Errol supposed made sense. If Frecknock had found what she was looking for, then she would of course stop her calling.

  A noise outside the cave distracted Errol from his musings. He levered himself up off his bed and went to see what was happening. As he emerged into the light, he saw Benfro pick himself up off the ground at the far side of the clearing. Dusting himself off with a shake like a wet dog, the dragon slung something over his shoulder and started the long walk to the cave. It was unusual for him to make a bad landing these days, Errol thought.

  As the dragon came closer, Errol could see that he carried a large deer, already gutted and cleaned.

  ‘Good hunting, I see.’ He nodded towards the dead beast. Benfro said nothing, slapping the carcass down on a flat-topped rock and beginning the process of skinning, jointing and butchering. Errol ignored the silence; Benfro was always a bit surly when he fluffed a landing. ‘Did you fly far today?’

  Benfro continued to hack away at the deer with his talons. They were formidable weapons, Errol could see, and the dragon would have made a fearsome enemy for even a skilled warrior priest, such was his size now. But he was a child in comparison to the dragon Errol had just seen.

  ‘I almost didn’t come back.’ Benfro didn’t turn as he spoke, and his voice was so quiet Errol had to strain to hear him over the roar of the waterfall. ‘I was chasing eagles in the morning, and it wasn’t until midday I realized I was heading south, to Cenobus.’

  ‘Cenobus?’

  ‘You know, Magog’s ruined palace. Where his repository is, and all those jewels. I was so near I could see it sticking out of the trees like a great stone finger. As soon as I realized, I turned away, but it’s taken me all day to fly back. I only stopped the once, when I spotted this deer a few miles south of here. Every time I think I’m beginning to fend Magog off, he finds a new way to get to me. I didn’t even feel him this time, just a strange compulsion to fly south.’

  ‘It might not have been Magog.’ Errol tried to make out Benfro’s aura and the almost invisible loop of the rose cord that tied him to the red jewel hidden in Corwen’s cave. That he found it almost impossible to see showed that Magog’s influence was minimal, and the colours shifting and swirling around the dragon were far more vibrant than he had ever seen them. Benfro was in rude health.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Benfro finally turned, still holding a slab of venison in one hand, dark blood dripping from his claws and covering the top of the flat rock.

  ‘I heard a dragon make a calling this afternoon.’ Errol told Benfro all that he had seen and heard, watching the expression change on the dragon’s face from weary resignation to wonder and perhaps fear.

  ‘This dragon you saw,’ Benfro asked when Errol had finally finished. ‘Was there anything noticeable about him? Apart from his size?’

  Errol thought back to the brief glimpses he had seen, trying to build a picture of the creature beyond his sheer size. Details came to him now – the shape of his ears and the tufts of hair that sprouted from their ends like in the pictures of mountain cats he had seen in the library archives at Emmass Fawr. The dragon’s wings had been patterned too, each one showing an image of a dragon with its wings outstretched, and on them a pattern of a dragon, and so on in mesmerizing detail. But there was one detail he had missed before, though rebuilding the image in his head, it was strange that he could have overlooked it.

  ‘He had one hand in some kind of bandage, strapped to his chest.’

  ‘Then he’s the same dragon I saw before, flying over Cenobus. And you’re sure it was Frecknock who was calling him?’

  ‘That’s what she said her name was: Frecknock, daughter of Sir Teifi teul Albarn. I didn’t see her, but her voice was familiar. I think I saw her once before, when she spoke to Melyn.’

  ‘But that doesn’t make sense. Melyn captured her and took her off to Candlehall in chains. There’s no way she could have escaped from the queen.’

  Errol’s hand went up to his chest, feeling the pain of Beulah’s knife sliding between his ribs even though there was no longer even a scar to mark its passage. Most of his memories of that time were a haze of drugs and pain, but he remembered a dragon, small and frightened, chained to the Obsidian Throne like some obscene parody of the toy dogs favoured by court ladies.

  ‘I saw her at Candlehall,’ Errol said, dredging up the past. ‘I spoke to her, but she didn’t reply. She couldn’t have escaped from there alive.’

  ‘So what’s she doing in the forest not more than a day’s flight from here?’

  Corris was a miserable little town clinging to the highest navigable reaches of the mighty River Hafren. Even so, seeing its low defensive wall surrounding a motley collection of two- and three-storey houses clustered around the unimposing bulk of the castle, Beulah could have wept for joy.

  They had dumped the dead mercenaries in the woods after searching them for any clues as to who might have paid them and finding nothing more illuminating than a large supply of narcotic leaves, which explained the berserker rage of the attack. Two warrior priests had been killed, and they were given a proper burial, then the wounded had been loaded on to one of the carts and the whole royal procession set off onc
e again, silent and more vigilant. Beulah herself had refused to ride in a wagon, taking the horse of one of the dead warrior priests and hoping it would last her longer than her previous mount.

  Her arm hurt constantly, the jerking of the horse’s walk making it almost impossible to concentrate on tapping the Grym to speed her healing. At least the crossbow quarrel that had hit her had not been poisoned and the wound had been clean. Once the field surgeon had stitched it up and the bleeding had stopped, she had gritted her teeth against the discomfort and tried to show a brave face to her guard.

  There had been a small but noticeable shift in the hierarchy of the group. In the days before the attack the captain had taken his orders from her and passed them on to his men without so much as consulting Clun. That was fair enough, Beulah supposed; Captain Celtin was an experienced warrior priest, and despite what Melyn might say, Clun was still a novitiate who hadn’t finished his training. But since the fight the captain had deferred to Clun in almost everything. The whole troop looked up to him now. For his part, Clun was bemused by their sudden change in attitude, unaware of the stir his use of two blades of light had caused.

  Beulah had asked him about it, and he had merely replied that he had needed two blades to fight off so many attackers. No one had ever told him he couldn’t have two at once. It had seemed the natural thing to do.

  She smiled at the memory as her horse walked slowly down the well-used track towards the sleepy little town. Ahead of her, the gates stood closed, but Corris promised hot water to wash in, clean linen and dry beds, and food that hadn’t been burned to a crisp over a campfire. It had never been part of the plan to spend long there; their itinerary took them swiftly downstream, first to Beylinstown, then to Castell Glas. Beulah would send a messenger ahead, warning Lord Beylin of their delay and requesting more patrols on the roads. Meantime she had business to attend to in this backwater.

  As the party approached the gates, they flew open and a band of mounted soldiers rode out at a gallop. Without a word, the warrior priests formed a shield around the main party, fanning out to cover the road and the verges alongside. As the soldiers neared, the warrior priests conjured their blades, ready for an attack. But before they were closer than a half-hundred paces, the troop of soldiers reined to a halt, their leader leaping from his horse and kneeling in the road, where he remained until the travellers halted in front of him.

  ‘Your Majesty, I have just received word of your visit. Please forgive me. Had I known, I would have ridden out to meet you days ago. The woods around here are not as safe as …’ He trailed off as he looked up and saw the state of the royal party, his eyes widening, his mouth hanging open. Beulah nudged her horse forward, noting idly that it responded much better to her commands than the previous animal. She rode through the line of warrior priests, Clun at her side, and stopped within sword reach of the kneeling man.

  ‘And you are?’

  ‘Captain Herren of the Corris Guard, Your Majesty.’ The soldier bowed even lower.

  ‘Look at me, Captain Herren.’ He complied, and Beulah stared into his eyes. He wasn’t a man given to fear; battle didn’t worry him, she could see. And yet he was plainly terrified of her. She brushed his mind, trying to discern whether what he said was true. It was possible that their messenger hadn’t arrived, that he lay somewhere in the woods, feeding the animals, naked and dead at the hands of the same brigands who had attacked her party. Possible but unlikely.

  ‘When did you hear of our visit, Captain?’

  ‘Your Majesty, are you wounded? What happened?’

  ‘Answer the queen’s question.’ Clun conjured his blade of light, thinner and longer than normal, and pointed it straight at Herren’s head, the tip just a hand’s breadth from his sweat-sheened brow.

  ‘Just this morning.’ The captain gulped. ‘We’d heard you was going to Beylinstown, thought you might come by this way, since it’s on the road. But we didn’t hear nothing. Then we got word of a big party attacked out on the moors. We’ve been tracking a group of bandits around there for months now. I swear, Your Majesty, if I’d known I’d have been out there myself waiting for you.’

  Beulah tried to keep up with the man’s racing thoughts, fighting against the pain from her wound. There was some subterfuge in him, she could tell, but it wasn’t aimed directly at her. It was true that he hadn’t known she was coming, true too that they had been hunting a band of brigands in the nearby woods for months now, but the reason he hadn’t been out on the road was less clear, as if the captain wasn’t quite sure himself. She would let him live, at least for now.

  ‘Send word to your lord. We will be taking up residence for a few days. Our wounded need tending.’ Beulah nodded, and Clun extinguished his blade to the captain’s palpable relief.

  ‘Of course, Your Majesty. I will see to it myself.’ He bowed and rose.

  ‘Oh, Captain. One more thing.’

  ‘Your Majesty?’

  ‘You needn’t worry about that band of brigands any more. We left their bodies for the crows.’

  The captain nodded his understanding, swinging up into his saddle and turning back towards the town. He rode off at a similarly frenetic pace to the gallop that had brought him, his men falling in behind. The gates stayed open behind them, and the royal party passed through at a more leisurely pace.

  Beulah’s impression of Corris worsened with closer inspection. The three-storey buildings she had seen from afar were almost all warehouses ranged along the riverbank, and all of them were run-down. Some had no roofs, only weathered grey timber rafters reaching for the sky like skeletal fingers. Crumbling eye-socket windows stared sightlessly on to the streets and one terrace end had collapsed, spilling rubble into the swollen river. As they rode past, children stopped playing among the stones to stare open-mouthed at the warrior priests. Clothed in rags, they wore no shoes on their feet.

  Tightly packed houses lined the narrow streets leading from the riverfront up to the castle. Beulah saw occasional flickers of movement from windows, the odd door pulled hastily closed, but otherwise the town seemed deserted. Tufts of grass and small flowers grew between the cobbles. Everything had about it an air of seedy decay.

  The castle itself wasn’t much better. Two elderly guards stood at the open gates, but it would have been as easy to get in over the rubble where a section of the wall had collapsed. Wooden scaffolding suggested that repairs were under way, but there was no sign of any workmen, no mixing of mortar or shaping of stones, and the rickety structure erected around the breach looked like it would crack under the weight of no more than an apprentice.

  Though the royal party was not large, it was not possible to fit them all into the courtyard. The castle itself consisted of an ancient round tower five or six storeys high, with slits for windows and a narrow wooden door at the top of a steep flight of stone steps. Beulah recognized the design from her studies of warfare; it dated back at least five centuries. Any self-respecting lord would have demolished it and started again, or at least remodelled it into a more comfortable home. Her hopes of decent medical care for the wounded, of hot water and baths, receded. More so when the door to the tower creaked open.

  Captain Herren, his riding cloak swapped for a moth-eaten herald’s tabard, walked slowly down the steps ahead of a decrepit old man bent low and supporting his weight on a gnarled cane. When they finally reached the bottom of the steps, the captain once more went down on one knee – over-theatrically, Beulah thought.

  ‘Your Majesty, on behalf of Lord Queln, I bid you welcome to Corris.’

  ‘And is Lord Queln incapable of welcoming me himself?’ Beulah dismounted from her horse, not without some discomfort, and stepped forward. The old man shuffled a bit, wheezing as if the walk down the steps had exhausted him. He coughed once, then looked up through rheumy eyes, blinking as if he had only just noticed his courtyard crammed with people, horses and wagons.

  ‘Eh? Herren? What’s all this about then? What’ve you dragged me dow
n here for?’

  ‘Her Majesty the queen, sir.’ The captain tried to whisper out of the side of his mouth and smile at Beulah at the same time. Had she not been in some pain, she might have found it amusing. As it was, her anger, never far from the surface, came to the boil. Who were these people to treat her like a common traveller? And what lord could run his fiefdom so poorly that he couldn’t even afford to maintain his own castle? The same sort of lord who would let armed brigands roam the roads he was supposed to protect. The sort of lord who might soon find himself without a fiefdom.

  ‘Lord Queln, is it?’ She walked to the old man, who looked up with considerable difficulty, seeing her for the first time. His back was so bent and his neck so crooked he seemed to spend most of his time peering at the ground.

  ‘And who are you, young lady?’ Queln took quick glances, tilting his head sideways in a manner that reminded Beulah disturbingly of a fly on a sunlit windowsill. After each glimpse he dropped his head swiftly, as if holding it up pained him.

  ‘I am your queen.’

  It finally seemed to sink into the old man’s doddery brain. He stiffened noticeably, lifting his head once more, slowly this time, and fixing Beulah with a watery stare. Then he dropped his head back down again, bending his back even more so that she feared he would topple over into the dirt of the courtyard.

  ‘Your Majesty, forgive my rudeness. I was not informed of your visit.’

  ‘So everyone tells me. But it’s of no matter. We have wounded who need tending, and all of us could do with a wash and a good meal. Have your staff prepare some rooms for us.’

  ‘Of course, ma’am. At once.’ Queln looked from side to side as if trying to find his servant. ‘Herren?’

  ‘I am here, sir.’ The captain stood and touched his lord’s arm as if he were blind rather than addled.

  ‘Herren, it seems the queen is here,’ Queln said. ‘Damned odd if you ask me. I thought we had a king. But there it is. See if you can’t rustle up something for her and her friends, there’s a good chap. Can’t have our reputation for hospitality being ruined now, can we?’