The Golden Cage

by J. D. Oswald

  ‘Is that all? Grandpa always said it was worth a king’s ransom. Surely it must be worth a hundred sovereigns.’

  ‘Well, grandparents like to exaggerate, don’t they? Let me see.’ Tibbits made another note in his ledger, crossed it out and scrawled some more numbers. Every so often he would mutter, ‘Let me see, let me see,’ under his breath as he made a great pretence of coming to a difficult decision.

  ‘Master Querel might be able to give you a little more; he’s sometimes willing to dabble in antiquities. But he’s away right now. Perhaps if you came back next week?’

  ‘I can’t. I have to move on. If my horse hadn’t died on me, I’d probably not need to sell the thing at all. It makes me sad to have to part with it.’ Errol didn’t know why he was making up such a woeful story. It seemed like the right thing to do, as if he was supplying answers to questions that Tibbits wanted to ask, but before he could ask them. The man was very transparent, his greed obvious as well as his suspicion. Errol just wished that he had Inquisitor Melyn’s skill at manipulation. Then Tibbits would pay a good price for certain. A hundred and fifty sovereigns, and no need to make any more notes in his ledger.

  ‘I like you, Mr Balch. You have an honest face. And I can see that you’re in a situation that’s, how shall I put it, a bit delicate?’ Tibbits smiled a humourless grimace. His spectacles reflected the light coming in from the door, making his eyes look like two great burning orbs. Errol said nothing, letting the man make his play.

  ‘I’ve been in a spot of bother myself before. I know what it’s like when the world’s out to get you. So I tell you what. I’ll do you a bit of a favour. I’m heading to Tynhelyg myself next month, for the King’s Festival, and I reckon I might be able to make a bit on an artefact like this. So here’s the deal. I’ll give you a hundred sovereigns of my own money. It’ll be just between the two of us. No need to involve Master Querel, see. No need for anything to go in the ledger. You get a better price for your coin, and I might just be able to turn a small profit at the end of the day. Everyone wins, eh?’

  Errol kept silent for a few moments, as if he were thinking it over. In truth he wanted to get out of the room as quickly as possible. He wanted to get away from the town too, though he knew he would have to get a few supplies first, and possibly a horse if he could find an honest dealer. But there was one other thing he had come to town for, and he’d more likely get a straight answer from Tibbits if they did the deal.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Thank you. You’ve no idea how much help that is.’

  Tibbits smiled again, with a little more warmth this time. ‘Sit yourself down then, Errol. You don’t mind if I call you Errol, do you? It’ll take a moment to count out the coins.’

  Errol sat and watched as Tibbits pocketed the gold coin, slipping it expertly into a fold in his gown as if this was something he had done many times before. Then he opened another drawer and heaved out a bag full of sovereigns and smaller change. From another drawer he produced a thin leather purse with a simple drawstring and began counting money into it with a practised ease.

  ‘Tell me, Mr Tibbits,’ Errol said. ‘Do you hear much around these parts about dragons?’

  Tibbits stopped counting for a moment, looked up at Errol and laughed again. ‘Dragons? Why of course. Everyone’s talking about them right now. We had one through just last week. Great big old fellow he was, wings on him that could reach across this room. Flapped about the ring like a huge monster, he did. Almost managed to take off. What a sight.’

  ‘The ring?’ Errol couldn’t quite understand what Tibbits was talking about. Was this some aspect of the Llanwennog language he had missed?

  ‘Where’ve you been, Errol? Camping out in the Rim mountains all your life? The circus ring. Where else are you going to find a dragon?’

  Hiding in a gully not half a day’s walk from here, Errol thought, but kept this to himself. He remembered something he had heard in King Ballah’s palace in Tynhelyg, an off-the-cuff remark about circus dragons. At the time he’d thought nothing of it, but now it came back to him.

  ‘No, not circus dragons,’ he said. ‘Real ones, living in the wild. There must be some out there.’

  Tibbits counted the last coins into the leather purse and pulled it shut, reached across the desk and handed it to Errol. ‘Well, I guess there must be. Never given it much thought, really. You’d be better off asking the circus master. He might tell you where he gets them from.’

  ‘I might just do that. Thanks.’ Errol took the purse, putting it carefully in his bag before standing. ‘You don’t happen to know where the circus is now, do you?’

  Tibbits laughed his asthmatic wheeze again, his face creasing up in a knowing smile. He tapped the side of his nose in a gesture Errol didn’t understand. ‘I see how it is, Errol. You fancy a life on the open road, eh? Got to be better than page to some incontinent old lord in the northlands. Well, don’t worry; old Tibbits won’t tell a soul. And as for the circus. Well, I heard they were headed towards Tynhelyg for the King’s Festival, same as me. Only they’ll take a month or more getting there. Put on a few shows on the way, like.’

  Castell Glas smelled of cattle dung. Beulah’s nose wrinkled as they approached its massive gates, through which flowed an endless stream of people and livestock. Inside the city walls, away from the breeze that flowed in from the Gwastadded Wag to the west, the smell built up in intensity until you could almost taste it.

  Duke Glas’s soldiers cleared the road so that the royal party could make swift progress to the castle high on its hill above the winding river; there was no great welcome from the people here. During the short canter through the northern quarter Beulah could see clearly the source of the city’s wealth and its unpleasant aroma. Cattle waited in endless pens, some patiently, most in a state of high anxiety. Nervousness spread among them like a disease as groups were rounded up, driven to slaughter and butchery. Their hides would end up in the tanneries, smoking off to the south, while the meat was cured or salted, packed into barrels to be shipped downriver and across the Twin Kingdoms. Once more Beulah appreciated the foresight of Lord Beylin in keeping livestock out of his city.

  Things improved marginally as they climbed the hill to the castle. The centre of the city was filled with houses, small manufactories and the occasional warehouse, but mercifully devoid of animals. The higher they rose, the more of the westerly breeze made it past the buildings, sweeping the fetid air away and replacing it with the sweeter smell of warm grass.

  Duke Glas was meant to be in bed, at least that was what the fawning surgeon kept saying as he fussed about his patient. Glas himself had obviously decided that he wasn’t going to greet his queen from his bedchamber, and Beulah was grateful to him for that at least. He was however confined to a litter, borne by several strong men, and he wasn’t a pretty sight.

  ‘Your Majesty, please forgive me for not kneeling. My legs aren’t quite as supple as once they were,’ Glas rumbled in a deep voice that was in better times jovial. He was probably a lot of fun to be around, Beulah thought, a bluff honest counterpoint to the more devious politics of the court. But he was in obvious pain, and one leg had been amputated at the knee, the bandaged stump red with leaking blood.

  ‘Given the circumstances, I think I’ll let you sit, Glas.’ Beulah dismounted, handing her reins to a page, then walked across to the litter and proffered her hand to be kissed. The duke took it in a massive paw rough with scars and dry-scabbed cuts. His other arm was strapped into his chest, its weight held by a sling. He kissed her royal ring lightly before releasing her hand and looking up at her. One of his eyes was covered with a patch, raw flesh and bruising around the socket suggesting that he wouldn’t be seeing from it again soon. If ever.

  ‘May I present His Grace the Duke of Abervenn.’ Beulah stepped back, letting Clun come forward. Her consort’s efforts not to stare at Glas’s injuries were perhaps not as successful as they would have been had he been born to the nobility.

>   ‘So you’re the young lad who stole our queen’s heart.’ Glas slapped Clun on the arm, then collapsed forward, coughing heavily. He tried hard to conceal it as he spat into a clean handkerchief, but Beulah saw the blood and wondered whether these were injuries even a bear of a man like the Duke of Castell Glas could survive.

  ‘Your captain tells us you captured the dragon, Your Grace,’ Clun said.

  ‘None of this “Your Grace” nonsense, lad. You’re a duke too, you know. Act like one. Call me Glas; everyone else does. Except my old mother. She insists on calling me Derryl. Can’t think why.’

  ‘Well, I’d very much like to hear how you trapped it. And I’d like to see it too, if that’s possible.’

  ‘Of course, of course. But let us go into the hall. There’s food and drink after your journey.’ Glas clapped his hands lightly together, wincing as he did so, and his litter was lifted. Beulah followed him into the great hall of the castle, which was laid out for a banquet. She was given the place of honour at the top table, with Clun at her right and Glas laid out on his litter off to the left. Servants brought food and wine, but Beulah had little appetite. As she picked at some beef, the meat cooked until it was soft and flaking off the bone, Glas recounted his tale, his booming voice occasionally cut off by bouts of horrible coughing.

  ‘Blasted creature appeared about three weeks ago. Right out of nowhere. It has a liking for beef, so I suppose it was attracted by our cows. It certainly took enough of them. And those that it didn’t get damned near killed themselves in terror. I sent men out after it, but it’s blasted hard to catch a beast that flies away at the first sign of trouble.’

  ‘It flew away?’ Clun asked the question, but Beulah had been thinking it too. The dragon that had attacked them had not seemed afraid of a troop of warrior priests; why would it be wary of ordinary soldiers?

  ‘Oh yes. Every time. Usually with a prize bull or heifer in its claws. So I put guards on all the collecting pens. That kept it away for a while, but then it turned nasty. Killed two men and a herder’s boy. Tore ’em in two. Begging your pardon, ma’am.’

  Beulah put down her knife, all thoughts of food gone. ‘So you laid a trap for it, I take it?’

  ‘Oversaw it myself. Couldn’t expect my men to face it while I stayed at home. It took a while, but eventually we surrounded it in a small wood not far from the city. Couldn’t take off for the trees. We pelted it with arrows, but most of them bounced off. So I went in close and kept it nice and distracted while Captain Tole and his troop sneaked round behind and dropped an oak tree on its head. Knocked it stone cold. Would have killed it there and then, but I knew you were coming. Thought I’d let you see it first.’ Glas descended into another fit of coughing, and Beulah had to look away. The sight of his freshly spewed blood was enough to turn her stomach. She wished he would go back to bed but hadn’t the heart to dismiss him. His bravery might have been born of stupidity, but it still deserved reward. It was just a pity that he most likely wouldn’t live to enjoy whatever boon she chose to bestow.

  ‘Perhaps Captain Tole would be able to show us the creature,’ Beulah said. ‘I think your surgeon will have a heart attack if we keep you out of bed any longer.’

  ‘Ah, horse shit, ma’am. If you’ll pardon my crude language. I’ve got at least two ribs floating around and making a mess of my lungs. It’ll be a miracle if I live out the night. But I wanted to welcome you to Castell Glas. It’s been too long since a monarch of the Obsidian Throne came out to the Hendry.’

  ‘Too long indeed, Glas. But you must rest. You can heal if you let yourself. Give it a few days and you’ll be feeling much better. I’ll send my own physician to help, and meantime the captain will show us your dragon.’ Beulah stood, prompting the whole hall to do the same and effectively cutting off any further protest from the duke.

  ‘I will await your return, ma’am. There’s much yet in the way of hospitality we have to offer.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it, Your Grace.’ Beulah nodded her thanks and descended from the high table, walking across the hall to the corner where her warrior priests had been eating with the Castell Glas guards. Captain Celtin bowed his head in salute and she motioned him close, whispering in his ear so that the duke’s men couldn’t hear.

  ‘You’ve some skill at using the Grym for healing, Captain. See what you can do for Duke Glas, and don’t suffer any nonsense from his surgeon.’

  ‘Of course, Your Majesty.’

  ‘And if he’s too far gone, make his passing easy.’

  Celtin nodded in understanding, bowed once more and hurried off to carry out his assignment. Healer or assassin, Beulah wondered which he would be, finding herself hoping for the former.

  Captain Tole looked terrified as he led the royal party back down into the city. There was nowhere in the castle with a big enough doorway for the beast to pass through, he explained, so Duke Glas had commandeered one of the largest stone warehouses in the old merchant district.

  The stench of the city was thick in the narrow streets between the tall warehouses, but the nearer they came to their destination, the more Beulah could smell something else. It was an odour that made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, a stench she had first smelled in a little village a thousand miles from here, the overpowering reek of dragon. It was not something she had noticed with the creature Frecknock that Clun had brought to her. Perhaps it was something to do with the male of the species. Or something different about these new beasts. They had appeared from nowhere, after all.

  ‘Your Majesty, in here, please.’ The captain’s wavering voice interrupted Beulah’s musings, and she turned to see a small opening in a much larger set of heavy wooden doors. They towered twenty paces over her, and together were wider than they were tall. The Shepherd only knew what wares were so large they needed such an entrance, but whatever they might have been, the market for them had dried up years ago. Stepping into the cool expanse of the warehouse, Beulah saw only a vast empty space lit by sunlight from windows set high in the walls and torches hung from sconces in the thick stone pillars that supported the slate roof high overhead. Nervous-looking soldiers snapped to attention as she was announced, and then her eyes fell on the reason for their discomfort.

  It might have been sleeping, or more likely was simply weighed down by the mass of chains attaching it to the floor. Glas’s men had taken no chances with their trophy, using the heaviest links they could find and anchoring them in the flagstones. Yet even sprawled out, flattened like a dog run over by a cart, the dragon looked bigger than she remembered.

  ‘Your Majesty, please be careful. It could wake at any moment.’ Captain Tole sounded more nervous by the minute, and Beulah had to remind herself that he had been part of the party that had captured this creature.

  ‘It’s already awake.’ Clun stepped forward, perhaps the only person in the warehouse who didn’t exude any kind of fear.

  ‘Have a care, my love,’ Beulah said, watching as her consort walked calmly up to the dragon and hunkered down just out of reach of its enormous head.

  ‘I know you can hear me, dragon,’ Clun said. ‘Do you remember me?’

  Somewhere in the warehouse a soldier let out a high-pitched gasp. Not quite a scream, but not far off one either. The dragon opened its eyes with a slow arrogance, as if it could scarcely be bothered, and flexed its limbs against the chains holding it down, testing their strength, then relaxed before opening its mouth. A stream of sounds came out which might have been language, though Beulah understood none of it. Instead her head filled with scenes: flying over an unfamiliar landscape, swooping and diving with other dragons, approaching a huge castle on top of a mountain. She shook the images out of her head, seeing the soldiers around her staring mindlessly into space. Only the warrior priests who had accompanied her looked alert. Then she heard more of the strange tongue and realized that it was Clun talking.

  ‘What are you saying? What language is this?’ Beulah walked towards the dragon and her
consort, hearing more words in what she realized must be Draigiaith, the language of dragons. But when had Clun learned it? Only a few of the senior quaisters and Melyn himself had any understanding of it.

  ‘My lady, this dragon is not the creature who attacked us before. This is not Caradoc, son of Edryd.’

  ‘How can you be sure?’ Beulah looked more closely at the huge beast, trying to compare it with her memories of the dragon that had attacked her in the mist. It seemed bigger, but that could have been because it was indoors. However, it had both hands, and no mark of where Clun had scored his hit before. But if half the stories told of dragons were true, then they were capable of growing back whole limbs. She tried to remember something of the markings on the creature that had attacked her, but her most abiding memory was of her beloved horse dying in agony.

  ‘She told me so.’ Clun’s voice broke into Beulah’s horrified thoughts, and she realized that her mental guards had been brushed aside as if they were no more than paper. She pushed them up again, stronger than before, staring at the prone dragon.

  ‘She?’

  ‘She is Morwenna the Subtle, apparently.’ Clun turned back to the dragon and spoke once more to it, his voice oddly compelling as it formed the alien sounds. Beulah felt the pressure on her mind ease as Morwenna turned her attention back to Clun. And then it – she – let out a mighty bellow of rage. Rearing up, flagstones popping out of the floor like corks, chains snapping as if they were made of thread, she rose to her full height, thrusting her wings out until they hit the warehouse walls and punched on through.

  Beulah leaped back as her warrior priests conjured their blades of fire. Glas’s soldiers still stood stupefied, either by fear or by some ensorcellment. It didn’t matter; the result was the same. The dragon used her wings as weapons, cutting down the men where they stood as she tried to manoeuvre in the tight confines of the warehouse to strike at Clun.