The crack was like thunder, sending a flock of pigeon out of their roost in an explosion of feathers. Benfro looked down to see the dry stick under his foot and cursed himself for being distracted. That was the mistake of a rank amateur and his pride was hurt almost as much as his sole. Spooked, the deer looked up, froze momentarily, then took off into the trees. With a cry of frustrated rage, Benfro set off after it.
Now it was down to the chase. There was no room for subtlety, only speed and the ability to keep an eye on his quarry as it darted this way and that through the trees. As he ran, Benfro was acutely aware that they were at least two day’s walk from the village and headed in the wrong direction. He also knew that without a kill they would be eating roots for supper. And Ynys Môn would never let him forget the elementary mistake he had made in their hunt, especially if he had no meat. So he crashed on through the thinning trees.
The deer began to tire, designed more for a quick flight than any sustained chase. Benfro could sense its weariness in the way it hesitated for a fraction before deciding which way to jump. He was definitely gaining on it, and the widening spaces between the trees helped him even more. His hearts hammered in his chest and his legs felt like they were on fire, but he was determined to fell his quarry.
Closer and closer he came to the deer, jinking left and right, back and forth but always keeping to much the same direction. He began to see the pattern in its flight and so how to put an end to it. With a great forward lunge he leapt at the space the deer was surely going to spring next. Even as he did so, he realised the potential for humiliating and painful injury, but the spooked animal jumped as predicted and Benfro crashed into it, knocking them both to the ground. As they fell he grabbed its head an neatly broke its neck, so that by the time he had rolled to a halt the creature was dead.
‘Bravo, a splendid chase,’ said Ynys Môn, trotting up through the trees. ‘And a good sized beast too. It looks like we won’t be starving tonight after all, though I can’t help thinking you would have been better off using your b… oh.’
Somewhere in the back of his mind, Benfro registered that the old dragon had caught up with him. He was also aware that he had caught and killed the deer with his bare hands and that, strapped to his back, was a hunting bow that would have made the whole chase much quicker and simpler. But what was taking up most of his available attention was the sight his chase had brought him to.
The trees thinned almost to nothing. He was crouching at the top of a steep incline that stretched around in an almost perfect circle half a mile wide, forming a crater perhaps a half hundred yards deep. A few massive trees, ancient and glorious, grew within the great cauldron and in its centre rose a building the likes of which he had never seen before.
It was made from stone, for a start. All the houses in the village had stone foundations, but in the main they were constructed of wood, great beams of oak blackened and twisted with age. This structure was made up of vast blocks, carefully shaped. It was also on a scale that beggared belief. Benfro could count four rows of windows in the main body of the building, but towers rose from that, with the tallest at least the same height again. Instead of thick reed thatch, the roof was covered in a dark stone slate.
A cluster of smaller buildings surrounded the great palace, for that was surely what this must be, but the whole settlement seemed to be deserted. No smoke rose from the myriad chimneys, nothing moved along the overgrown path that wound its way from one side of the crater to the other, climbing out of the depression at each end through cuttings hewn into the rise. Benfro could also see that some of the smaller buildings were in a poor state of repair. Some had roofs that had fallen in to reveal skeletal wooden beams beneath. Others had no roof structure at all, their walls beginning to crumble where small trees had taken hold. Indeed the whole crater was slowly reverting back to forest, what must once have been well-tended pastures now speckled with small shrubs and saplings.
‘Ystumtuen. Well, well,’ Ynys Môn said quietly, standing by Benfro’s side. ‘I must be getting old. I had no idea we’d come so far.’
‘What is it?’ Benfro asked.
‘Now, it’s a sad ruin. Years ago this was King Divitie’s hunting lodge,’ Ynys Môn said. ‘It’s not far from here that he was trapped by a particularly nasty boar. The same boar, as it happens, that gave me this.’ He pointed to the scar and line of missing scales on his flank. ‘He would have died there if I hadn’t been out hunting that day myself.’
‘What happened? And who’s King Divitie?’ Benfro asked, bemused.
‘Goodness, has your mother told you nothing of men?’ The old dragon seemed shocked as much as surprised.
‘Only that they’re not to be trusted. That they’ll try and kill me if they find me.’
Ynys Môn sighed, resting his hand on Benfro’s shoulder. ‘That’s true,’ he said. ‘They live such short lives and you can’t expect one to honour the word of another. But Morgwm is very remiss not to have told you more. What if you’d blundered in there before I caught up with you?’
‘There’s nobody there,’ Benfro said. ‘It looks like it’s been deserted for ages.’
‘You’ve better eyes than me, young Benfro,’ Ynys Môn said. ‘And you’re right. Ystumtuen has been abandoned nearly ten years now. Not long after you were hatched. When Princess Lleyn died.’
‘Princess Lleyn?’ Benfro asked, his mind filling with questions. He longed to ask Ynys Môn everything, but even more he wanted to go down to that great palace and explore its ruined halls. And yet the place shivered him with a deep-seated fear. This was a place of men, only a few days walk from the village.
‘You’re wondering how it is that we can live so close to them, how your mother can have dealings with them if they want only to kill us,’ Ynys Môn said, correctly anticipating Benfro’s worry. ‘It wasn’t always that way,’ he continued. ‘In fact it’s only been a hundred and fifty years or so since the aurddraig was stopped.’
‘Aurddraig?’ Benfro asked.
‘A bounty, paid by the Royal House of Balwen, for the head of any dragon presented at court.’
‘That’s monstrous,’ Benfro said, a shiver running down his spine to the tip of his tail.
‘Quite so,’ Ynys Môn said, his voice calm with the resignation of centuries. ‘But we were powerless to stop them then and we still are today. They wield the power of the earth and killing is in their blood. It’s what they do. But we’re not without resources ourselves you know. And not all men hate us. Remember that, Benfro. There are some who simply fear what they don’t understand, and others who fight their own kind, kill them even, just to protect us. Up here in the forest we’ve largely been left alone. That’s why we all live in the village. It’s protected by magics that even the most powerful of men can’t penetrate.’
‘So why’d they stop. Killing us that is,’ Benfro asked. ‘Have they stopped killing us? Mother never stops telling me all the terrible things they’d do to me if they caught me.’
Ynys Môn pulled out his flask, considered it for a moment and then put it back again without drinking. He seemed to be weighing something up in his mind and Benfro’s hearts sank. He was going to be told to ask his mother.
‘I suppose you could say it was all down to me,’ the old dragon said finally and Benfro looked up, his excitement burning as bright once more.
‘As I said, it was a hundred and fifty years ago. Possibly a bit more. In the time of King Divitie. Actually I think he was King Divitie the twenty-third or something, they’re not very imaginative with their names, the Royal House of Balwen. The men are all Balwen, Divitie or Diseverin, the women usually Beulah or Lleyn. But I digress.
‘King Divitie - this King Divitie, well, he was the great grandfather of the current King Diseverin and he loved to hunt. Not dragons, strangely enough. He had always thought our persecution monstrous and unnecessary. He preferred smaller, faster prey. He also preferred not to kill things that could talk. Civilised, for a man, was Ki
ng Divitie. So he went after deer and wild boar, things like that. He built Ystumtuen. Oh, there’s been a settlement here for millennia, but he developed it into the great palace you can see now. And he spent most of his time there.
‘It was a time of great anxiety for those of us already living in the village, being so close to so many men. Before he came, this part of the Ffrydd was almost forgotten, just a few small villages out on the forest edge. But having the royal court move close by was terrifying. That’s when your mother arrived. She set some kind of protective ward around us, but for it to work she needed to be outside its influence. That’s why you live away from us all, you know. We built her that house, cleared that clearing and in return she became our protector. She could have been a great mage, your mother, but she turned to healing instead.’
Benfro looked at the old dragon with a mixture of surprise and excitement. No one had ever spoken to him about his mother before. He had never really considered what had gone on before he was hatched, but she must have had a life. And if Ynys Môn knew about Morgwm, then he would surely know about the other unanswered question that bothered Benfro most days.
‘So you would have known my father,’ he said, then wished he hadn’t as the old dragon stiffened visibly. Benfro cursed himself for being so impetuous. If there was one good way to have his inquisitiveness snubbed it was to bring up this subject.
‘I met your father once, yes,’ Ynys Môn said, gravely. Benfro wasn’t sure what it was he could hear in the old dragon’s voice. Was it regret, or disapproval? There was a story there to be told, but he bit his lip, suppressing the urge to ask further.
‘He came along much later, though.’ Ynys Môn continued. ‘I… We… Well, he’s dead now, so let’s leave it at that, eh.’
Though he longed to know more about his father, bitter experience had taught Benfro not to push the matter.
‘What became of the king?’ He asked in a small voice, hoping to recreate the earlier mood. It seemed to work, or maybe Ynys Môn was looking for a subject, any subject to talk about other than Benfro’s father.
‘Divitie, yes,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘Well, one day, the king was out hunting, not far from here, when he got separated from his followers chasing a great big vicious tusker. I’ve already told you how it gouged me. Well it killed Divitie’s horse and would’ve finished him off too if I hadn’t been hunting it through the same part of the forest. I don’t know why I helped him. Maybe I was so angry at that boar for the injury it’d caused me I just wanted to kill it myself before someone else robbed me of my revenge. Maybe your mother’s magic had lulled me into believing the threat from men was over.’
Benfro started at the words. His mother’s magic. What was the old dragon saying? He had said she could have been a powerful mage too. Suddenly he began to see her in a different light, one that he longed to explore further. But he knew too well what would happen if he interrupted Ynys Môn now. With supreme effort, he choked down the question before it could burst from his lips. Seemingly oblivious to his internal battle, the old dragon continued with his tale.
‘Between the two of us we managed to kill the beast, though not without injury. The king was wounded in the leg and could hardly stand, let alone walk. He said he would grant me a boon if I would help him. I ask that he abolish the aurddraig and he laughed, saying he was going to do that anyway. He was a good man, Divitie.
‘I helped him back here. That caused a bit of a stir. A whole troop of warrior priests surrounding me with their blades of light held high. You can imagine how I felt. Pretty foolish for allowing a man to get me to trust him, for one thing. But he was good to his word. There in front of them all he declared an end to the aurddraig and said that henceforth anyone found persecuting our kind would be put to the sword. He even went as far as to say we would be welcome in his court.
‘For a few years, whilst Divitie still lived, there was a peace of sorts between the men and us. Some of them came to see what they could learn from us and left amazed that they could have been ignorant for so long. Others continued to distrust and hate us, though there were few actual killings. The Order of the High Frydd, the warrior priests, were the worst. They were set up to eliminate dragonkind from the world. It’s written into their holy charter. But Divitie held them in check. He even executed a few Inquisitors, though I suspect that was more because they challenged his power than because they persecuted us.
‘The problem with men, or the blessing, I suppose, is that they live such short lives. I’m not that old in dragon terms, Benfro, but I’ve lived ten men’s lives and hope to live at least fifty more. King Divitie died at a ripe old age for a man. He was eighty-eight, I’m told. His son took the throne and his son after him, as is their way. None of them undid his proclamation, but with each passing generation, so we were forced to be more and more accountable to the royal court. First we had to be counted, then we had to pay homage to the king, taxes to the treasury. And worst indignity of all, any of our kitlings must be presented to the king’s master of dragons before they reached three years of age.
‘The current king is Diseverin and he is a weak man, overfond of strong drink. Under his reign things have begun to slip back to the old ways. When he took the throne he introduced a law requiring us to seek his permission to have hatchlings. We don’t breed often, as you know, but long ago we decided this was an imposition too far. So Morgwm reworked the protective spell on the village. Men cannot find it; no matter how hard they try, if they follow the paths or hack their way through the trees, they will always end up in the clearing where you and your mother live.’
‘But I’ve never seen a man,’ Benfro said. ‘Let alone been presented to any master of dragons.’
‘Your mother’s a skilled mage, Benfro. Even if she doesn’t show it off.’ Ynys Môn said. ‘She can sense when men are coming. That’s why she sends you away to stay with us.’
‘So they’re at my home now?’ Benfro asked, a sudden flurry of panic spurring him to his feet.
‘What do you think you’re doing, young dragon?’ Ynys Môn said.
‘We’ve got to get back. We’ve got to help her. They could be killing her.’
‘Sit down, Benfro,’ Yns Môn said.
‘But...’ Benfro protested.
‘What can you do?’ Ynys Môn asked. ‘You can barely hunt a deer without making a mess of it. How’re you going to defend your mother against a troop of warrior priests? I won’t lie to you, Benfro. Morgwm is in danger every time a man comes to her clearing. They might decide to kill her on a whim. Men are like that.’
~~~~
Chapter Four
Perhaps the first spell a young kitling might be encouraged to learn is that of concealment. Any dragon skilled in the subtle arts will easily see through it, but the mental exercise is a good grounding for later workings, and a novice can safely be left to practise unsupervised. It is also of great use in hunting, and in avoiding the unexpected attention of men.
Aderyn’s Educational Notes for the Young.
The rock jutted out over the stream, creating a permanent shade on one corner of the deep pool where huge old salmon hid, lazily waiting for the next great spate. Errol had sat for many an hour here in his childhood, staring at the water and trying to glimpse those elusive fish. The villagers occasionally tried to catch them using nets or lines. But ever since old Ben Coulter had been found face down in the pool, his net still clutched in one hand and a gaping wound on the side of his face seeping dark blood into the calm waters, the villagers shunned the place as haunted and evil. It had taken Errol less than five minutes to piece together what had really happened. It was obvious that the man had slipped whilst trying to sweep his net around the base of the great rock, banged his head open and fallen unconscious into the water. The current eddied around the deepest part of the pool in a continuous slow circle which could have kept the dead body in place for days if there was no rain.
Errol kept his deductions to himself, happ
y for the villagers to treat the place as if it were cursed. It was a strange place anyway, though he had never felt afraid there. There were stories of people hearing voices. Some told tall tales of dragons coming down out of the woods to drink from the waters, though Errol had never experienced either. He liked the place for its aura of peace and calm. Even when storm winds shook the nearby trees and threw dead leaves and branches across the ground, the flat space on top of the rock always seemed sheltered. He had never known it to be cold there either.
He sat there now, perched on the edge above a twelve foot drop into the black water below, his legs dangling as he watched the sunlight sparkle on the surface. Evening was fast fading and the birds were a riot of noise in the trees, competing with the rush and babble as the stream scrambled over rocks and gurgled its never-ending downward journey. It wasn’t a dangerous pool, really, he mused. It was deep where the rock jutted out over it, but a little further downstream it shallowed and a bank of sand formed a small beach. If only old Ben had kept his wits about him he would probably have survived his fall and hauled himself out there, but he must have been knocked senseless.
‘Wotcher thinkin’ about Errol Ramsbottom?’ The voice startled him for an instant. He had heard no one approaching, but by the time he turned to see who spoke he already knew.
Martha seemed to be stalking him these days. And she had the irritating ability to move around as if invisible. She would turn up in the most unexpected of places, always with her curious questioning and her oddly formal way of addressing him by his full name. He never knew when she would appear. Sometimes a week or two would go without him hearing her voice, sometimes she would pop up two or three times a day. He hadn’t seen her for several days now and he was surprised to find his spirits lifted by her arrival.
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