The Obsidian Throne

by J. D. Oswald

  It took a long time, and his throat was raw before he could even think about moving. Around about the same time he realized that Nellore was standing close by, just watching him. He looked up at her and tried to grin but could only manage a weak cough.

  ‘What you thinking, Errol? Jumping in off that big rock and staying down there so long?’

  He pushed himself up on to all fours, then slumped sideways into an awkward sitting position, holding up his hand with the prize that had almost cost him his life. The piece of bone was smaller than he remembered it from below, coated in slimy green, pitted and worn around the edges.

  ‘Piece of Magog’s skull,’ was all he could say before collapsing into a coughing fit again, vomiting up half the pool. He couldn’t be sure he’d actually managed to say the words. Nellore came closer, sat down a few feet away from him where the sand was dry. The sun had risen well into the morning sky now, and its warmth was welcome as it dried his skin.

  ‘What you want it for?’

  Errol looked across at the girl. Her hair was plastered to her head and she’d stripped off most of her clothes before jumping into the pool to his rescue. What she had left on was stuck to her thin frame, accentuating her thinness and boyish lack of curves. He remembered his own nakedness then, couldn’t imagine how he could have forgotten it, and crossed his legs in embarrassment.

  ‘Thank you. For rescuing me.’ The words croaked out, threatening another coughing fit. He swallowed hard to suppress it. ‘It was stupid. Diving in like that. Didn’t realize how deep it was.’

  ‘An’ all for a manky old bit of rock. What’s so important about it?’ Nellore reached out for his prize and Errol reluctantly let her take it.

  ‘It’s not rock, it’s bone.’ He watched as she scraped a bit of the green coating away with a fingernail to reveal white beneath. She carried it to the water’s edge, scooped up wet sand and cleaned away at it for a while. Errol watched, still trying to catch his breath, still exhausted from his time in the water. How long had it been? It couldn’t have been more than a minute or two or he would certainly have drowned. And yet it felt as if a lifetime had passed.

  ‘Seen boy parts before. You ain’t got nothing to be embarrassed about.’ Nellore came back with the cleaned fragment of skull and handed it back to Errol. He took it but didn’t uncross his legs.

  ‘What happened to my nightclothes?’ he asked, looking briefly around and hoping they hadn’t been carried off downstream. Or worse, sunk to the bottom of the pool.

  ‘I fished ’em out, hung ’em on a bush to dry.’ Nellore slumped back down on to the sand. Closer to him this time, much to Errol’s discomfort. ‘Now what’s so special about this bit of rock or bone or whatever it is?’

  Errol weighed the piece in his hand. It was heavier than he expected bone to be, and doubts crept into his head. Had he hallucinated the whole episode? Dived to the bottom and brought back a stone? He shook his head. ‘This is a piece from the skull of the dragon Magog. The one whose jewel I’ve been carrying around.’ The jewel that was presumably still sitting in a pouch in a wooden chest in a guest room in Myfanwy’s house. At least he hoped so, even if he had no idea how to get back there.

  ‘So why’d you nearly kill yourself fetching it off the bottom? An’ how come it’s there at all. Dint Magog die like a million years ago or something?’

  ‘I told you about Benfro, right? How he’s attached to the jewel by magic? How it makes him do stuff and it’s trying to take him over completely?’

  Nellore nodded.

  ‘Well with this and the jewel, Benfro can free himself of that link. Free everyone of Magog’s influence. All he needs to do is put them together and breathe fire over them.’

  The Council of Nantgrafanglach was not at all what Iolwen had been expecting. They sat in chairs similar in design if not size to the Obsidian Throne, arranged in a semicircle around a large table. A dozen dragons, all clearly of great age, stared at her with eyes squinting to focus or clouded white and impossible to read. A couple, sitting side by side, didn’t stare at all. Instead they slumped so that their heads almost touched, dozing gently. As she watched, the next dragon along reached a bony finger and prodded his neighbour, causing the beast to wake with a start and clatter its head against its companion. Satisfied that all were awake, the dragon who had done the poking turned its attention to Iolwen.

  ‘They call you Princess Iolwen, is that not so?’ The dragon who had asked was ancient, but her voice was clear and unmistakably female for all its deep tones.

  ‘I am Iolwen, yes. Might I ask to whom I am speaking?’

  The dragon smiled and turned to Sir Conwil. He was still standing, and there were no spare seats. Not a member of the council then.

  ‘I like her,’ she said, still speaking Saesneg, then turned back to Iolwen. ‘I am Myfanwy. Some call me Myfanwy the …’ She paused a moment, then shook her head. ‘No, we don’t need to bother with any of that nonsense. Myfanwy’s just fine.’

  ‘Why have you brought me here?’ Iolwen gestured around the room. ‘Where is here, for that matter?’

  ‘Have you told them nothing, Sir Conwil?’ Myfanwy asked.

  The dragon produced that half-nod, half-bow motion he had used with Iolwen before. ‘It has been a trying time. Hundreds, no thousands of people to rehouse, the prisoner escaping, this terrible storm. You yourself returning to the palace after years of exile, only to disappear without a word. I did not think a few days’ delay would harm anyone. Give us time to take stock.’

  Myfanwy’s irritation was plain for Iolwen to see, the scolding in her voice unrestrained. ‘I told you, Conwil. Times have changed. You cannot treat these people as you have the palace servants and their families. They are not of the Old One’s world, but of his brother’s. Not Gog’s but Magog’s.’

  At the sound of the last name all the other dragons in the room sat upright and breathed in sharply. Some even gasped. Sir Conwil looked over his shoulder as if some mortal enemy were close by.

  ‘Myfanwy, I—’

  ‘Your great-grandfather is past caring whether or not that name is spoken aloud here. He is dead, and by the centuries-long reach of his brother’s hand. We all know the spells he wove to keep himself hidden from his twin. Now both are gone and those magics are falling apart. Can you not see that? Or are you as weak in the subtle arts as our kin who have turned savage and gone to live in caves?’

  Sir Conwil said nothing in reply, just lowered his head as if accepting the old dragon’s wisdom on the matter. She in turn settled in her seat and brought her attention back to Iolwen.

  ‘Please accept my apologies. As you may have realized, things are changing all too rapidly in Gwlad. Or at least the Gwlad we know. I think you have grown up in a very different place. One where our kind are far fewer in number and far less threatening. That was the Old One’s parting gift to his brother’s folk. He laid a curse upon them that caused them to dwindle in stature. I remember him boasting of it when he was younger, not that he ever spoke much of his brother. You cannot begin to understand the hatred between the two of them.’

  Iolwen thought of the dragons she had seen as she was growing up, on those rare occasions she was allowed to visit the circus at the King’s Fair. Compared to the massive beast that had killed Seneschal Padraig, they were as mice to the great carthorses that pulled the grain wagons from the Northlands to the city.

  ‘There is more to the story than that.’ Beside her, Usel spoke up for the first time since they had arrived in front of the council.

  ‘Usel of the Ram,’ Myfanwy said. ‘I have heard of your order. You are healers, it seems. A noble calling.’

  ‘I thank you, Lady Myfanwy. Though you might not think so, were you to realize the nature of our healing. We began as battlefield surgeons, stitching up those unfortunate enough to be wounded while slaughtering your kind. It was only once there were no more dragons to kill that we turned our skills to more peaceful ends.’

  ‘You have kill
ed dragons?’ The question came from one of the two who had been asleep on their arrival. Now he was awake and alert, something about his stare suggesting that he might soon even become angry.

  ‘No, sire. I have not. Indeed I have sworn an oath to protect those few who remain in my world, and I have spent a lifetime studying them, trying to learn as much as I can about them and from them.’

  The old dragon gave a snort that suggested very human-like derision, but Usel ignored him.

  ‘Which is how I have come to hear many of their stories, the greatest of which is the tale of Gog and Magog. The two brothers who battled for the affection of Ammorgwm the Fair and in so doing split Gwlad in two.’

  Another member of the council let out a bark of laughter, but Myfanwy waved him silent. ‘Go on, Usel of the Ram.’

  ‘Most dragons’ tales, at least where I come from, are part entertainment and part teaching. I had always considered the story of the two brothers to be a morality tale, a warning about the folly of selfishness and the abuse of power. And it is all those things, of course, but it is even more because it is true.’

  Silence fell across the hall for a while, then Myfanwy spoke.

  ‘It is indeed true, after a fashion. Gog and Magog were brothers, twins hatched from the one egg. They were powerful mages, perhaps the equal of great Rasalene himself. None but the most skilled could have done what they did, and none but the most depraved would ever have tried. Gwlad herself has been riven in two for millennia. That rift has been weakening for years, but now, with Gog’s death, she is being made whole again too quickly. This is not something that will happen easily. This blizzard that has raged around us since the Old One’s death is no natural storm.’

  It made a horrible kind of sense, Iolwen knew. The dragons in this council were ancient, but they were also huge and shimmered with the power of the Grym. The pieces of the puzzle began to slot into place now.

  ‘The Neuadd,’ she said. ‘That is Gog’s hall, is it not? The Obsidian Throne is his seat. That’s why the tunnel brought us here.’

  ‘The Neuadd y Ganhwyllau was built by Palisander, but Gog spoke lovingly of it. If that is the place you mean, then yes, it was his hall once Palisander had passed.’

  ‘And so I ask again, Lady Myfanwy. Where in Gwlad is this place?’ Iolwen repeated her question. ‘What mountains are these that surround us?’

  Myfanwy frowned, as if she couldn’t understand the importance of the question. ‘These are the Rim mountains, surrounding the endless desert wasteland of the Ffrydd, where Magog once had his great palace Cenobus and before that, Palisander’s home, Claerwen. Nantgrafanglach lies towards the eastern edge, not far from the Caenant plain.’

  ‘Not much more than a day’s flight from Emmass Fawr then.’ Usel spoke the words, even though they were what Iolwen had been thinking.

  ‘The home of Maddau the Wise is far closer than a day’s flight. Of Magog’s favoured, she was perhaps the one closest still to the Old One. Emmass Fawr lies just a few leagues from here. Had it not vanished when Gwlad was split you would be able to see it from the top of the great tower. Except that you cannot see anything in this foul weather.’

  Iolwen shuddered at these words. She turned to face Usel and could see that they had given him cause for concern too. No doubt he was thinking the same things as her, for he spoke in a quiet voice that nevertheless carried across the room.

  ‘Then we must pray this storm continues for a long time.’

  ‘Pray?’ It was not Myfanwy who spoke, but one of the larger dragons on the council. He still seemed impossibly old to Iolwen’s eyes, but there was an impression of relative youthfulness about him. ‘And exactly whom should we pray to?’

  There was a long silence as Usel failed to answer. ‘It is just a figure of speech,’ Iolwen said eventually. ‘Perhaps hope would be a better word. Better still would be to ready yourselves for the inevitable attack.’

  ‘Attack? Who would dare attack us? We are all-powerful. And besides, Nantgrafanglach is protected by the most sophisticated workings of the subtle arts ever conceived.’ The old dragon who spoke wheezed and coughed as his throat caught on his last word, but the murmuring of agreement that echoed around the chamber didn’t fill Iolwen with much joy.

  ‘Workings performed by your Old One, I take it?’ she asked. The murmuring stopped as the implications of her words sank in.

  ‘They are still potent, and we are not without our own skills in these matters.’ Myfanwy cocked her head to one side as if listening for a far-off sound that Iolwen couldn’t hear. ‘But there is wisdom in what you say. Nantgrafanglach can no longer rely on the protections it once had. I am still unsure what danger could threaten us though. The feral dragons of our world are easily fooled by the most basic of magics. Are those in yours any different?’

  ‘It is not dragons you should be afraid of. It’s men. In particular Inquisitor Melyn and the warrior priests of the Order of the High Ffrydd. Emmass Fawr is their headquarters now, the dragon you knew as Maddau the Wise long slain. If they discover a city filled with your kind they will descend upon it like wolves on a flock of sheep.’

  ‘We are not sheep, young woman!’ The wheezy old dragon pulled himself to his feet, then burst into a fit of coughing so violent he had to sit down again.

  ‘You are not, no. But Melyn and his men are much worse than wolves.’ Iolwen considered for a moment how best to get through to these elderly dragons. They were not unlike the council of viziers who had met once a month to discuss matters of state and give advice to King Ballah. She had listened in on a few of those sessions, so dry and formal and ultimately pointless as the king trusted no other counsel but his own. Or at a pinch that of his brother, Tordu. These dragons meant well; they had agreed to see her, after all. But they were so old and set in their ways. They needed something to convince them that times had changed.

  It was obvious, in the end, what she had to do, but still it took all her courage. She knew the magic but lacked the practice, and here the Grym was so much more powerful than she was used to. Still, Iolwen steeled herself, tapped into that life force and brought forth a puissant blade. She had meant it to be only small, but it blazed brighter and fiercer than any she had seen. A moment’s uncertainty almost let the power of it devour her, and she took a hurried step forward, swinging it down through the nearest table before she recovered enough control to let the Grym dissipate once more. Her ears rang with the noise of it, but even so she could hear the alarm among the council members. Smoke wafted up to her nose, the charred table split in two, the elderly dragon fell from his bench and stared up at her with a wild, frightened look in his eyes that must have mirrored her own.

  ‘I am but a novice in this magic.’ Iolwen’s voice sounded strained, its pitch higher than normal to her ears. ‘The warrior priests can conjure and wield such blades for hours at a time. That is what you must ready yourselves for. They are coming, and they number in the thousands.’

  Errol’s shivering woke him from troubled slumber. He was cold even though he lay by the fire, too tired and confused to concentrate on using the Grym to warm himself. The day had passed in fitful sleep, his dreams a jumble of images that made no sense. Nellore must have been collecting firewood and keeping the flames going for him. Now she sat close by, running grubby fingers through her tangled hair.

  ‘You awake now?’

  Errol groaned and sat up. His whole body ached; even his throat was sore. There was a gentle breeze across the clearing, which cooled the top of his bald head, made goosebumps on the skin of his arms and back. Looking down, he realized he was still naked. His thin nightshirt still hung on a nearby bush, but he could see it was torn along one seam and full of holes. Nellore’s clothes weren’t much better, scorched by her contact with Gog’s jewels to the point where they were falling off in great clumps. He needed to find something better for both of them, but how? He wasn’t even sure where he was.

  Except that he was in Magog’s world. His world.
Somewhere out there, up near the foothills of the distant mountains, there was a cave. And in that cave there should be a chest. He had managed to bring it to him once; maybe he could do that again.

  ‘Keep an eye out, will you? I’m going to try and get us some clothes. Like I did with food before.’

  Nellore perked up at the mention of food, and Errol’s stomach grumbled in sympathy. The fish they had eaten the night before had been large, but it was all gone now.

  ‘Clothes first. Then I’ll see if I’ve the energy to find something to eat.’

  He settled himself as best he could by the fire, opened himself up to the Grym and tried to form a picture in his mind of the clearing where Corwen’s cave lay. It hadn’t been that long since he and Benfro had left. A few months at most, though so much had happened in that time. Still, he could picture the meadow grass and the low stone corral, the river he had bathed and swum in as he tried to build strength in his shattered ankles, and the cave where he had slept with its strange-smelling dry dusty earth floor. His clothes chest was in there, tucked up against the wall opposite the sleeping alcove. Slowly he built up the image, going over it time and again until he was sure he had the details right, the feel of the place. Then he felt out along the lines, guided by that feeling.

  It was slow work, but the power flowing up from the pool helped him. The piece of skull clutched in his hands was an anchor too. Something that he could easily return to should he become lost. In his mind Errol saw the cave, dark now that the fire had gone out, but still with that strange smell about it. The alcove was piled high with dried grass and heather draped in a blanket that would do if he could reach nothing else. The ground had been disturbed, the pile of firewood kicked this way and that by Melyn’s men as they searched the place. For a moment Errol almost lost his concentration. What if they’d taken the chest? Or just thrown it in the river?