Dreamwalker

by Oswald, J. D.

  A buzzard screaming overhead brought Benfro back to his senses. This was the reason why he tended not to come to this place often; it was too exposed, too wild. Downstream, where the river separated into deep, fish-filled pools and short stretches of white water overhung with the close canopy of the forest, he could be more at ease. Still, there was a job to do and here was the only place he knew that it could be done.

  The plants he sought clung to the rock face of the escarpment, seeming to root themselves into the very rock. Their leaves were thick, bulbous and shone with a waxy outer skin that darkened them to the point where they were almost red. Benfro couldn’t remember what potion it was that they contributed to but Morgwm had shaken out the dusty powder from the cracked jar in the storeroom the night before and announced that he would have to fetch more supplies. Of course he had complained, he was supposed to be fishing with Ynys Môn today, but it had been a half-hearted protest. He knew there was no point trying to change his mother’s mind.

  Benfro pulled a handful of the dark plants out of the rock face and shoved them into his leather satchel. There weren’t as many of them on this piece of escarpment as he had thought when he had viewed it from further away. Most of the greenery was moss and long strands of spiky grass. A few clumps higher up the rock face looked promising. Since he was going to have to get up to the next level anyway and he didn’t fancy clambering back over the rocky flats to the forest edge where the slope was easier, he decided it would be more fun to climb.

  The cliff was not quite vertical, riddled with cracks and fissures. Water trickled through most of these, making the stone slippery with moss and lichen, but Benfro was a skilled climber. He managed to gather a couple more handfuls of thick, squelching leaves before he reached the top and was about to haul himself over when he heard a familiar voice.

  ‘Merciful Arhelion, hear my prayer. Show me the ways and the paths to the world.’

  Peering over the edge of the cliff, Benfro looked across the flat, boulder strewn space between him and the next escarpment. It was much like the one he had crossed earlier, like some giant had crushed great rocks and spilled the boulders like gravel over his staircase. This terrace was perhaps a little less ragged than the one below, with more pools of water and fewer rocks. In the middle of it, one particularly large slab stood, flat-topped and surrounded by its own still moat. And atop this sat the one dragon Benfro had no desire to meet. Frecknock.

  ‘Great Rasalene, hear my supplication. Lend power to my voice that I may be heard throughout Gwlad.’

  Benfro shifted his weight, his feet stuck hard into two cracks in the cliff, his arms tensed, ready to drop his head down should his tormentor turn towards him. But Frecknock was not looking at anything. Her eyes were tight shut, her head turned resolutely towards the east. On the rock beside her, Benfro could see a thick, leather-bound book, a heavy gourd of the type his mother used to keep spiced wine and a small pottery bowl in which a pale blue flame struggled to stay alight. As he watched, Frecknock seemed to swell up, puffing out her scaly chest and holding her hands with palms raised upwards away from her body as if holding a pair of invisible weights. Was it his imagination, or could he see a faint colourless glow surrounding her like a second skin?

  ‘Hear my voice, all who walk the long road. I am Frecknock and I would call you to me.’

  Benfro nearly fell from the cliff, such was the power of that voice. Yet Frecknock had not shouted. He had not even heard her words, he realised. They had been in his head. And they carried with them something that he couldn’t quite understand. It was a feeling akin to helplessness, and yet it made him want to go to her side, to comfort her. He could feel the muscles in his arms and legs tensing to pull him over the lip of the cliff. He should go to her side, be with her. She would be good for him, would nurture him and care for him.

  But this was Frecknock. She was the bane of his life. Her every action was designed to get him into trouble, or to punish him regardless of any deed he may have committed. This was Frecknock who had shown him nothing but scorn since he could remember. Shaking his head, he threw off the strange feeling like he might shake rain from his ears. As he did so, he thought he could see faint lines crossing the terrace to the rock and into the sitting dragon. She was so still that for a moment he thought her dead, but that strange, clinging, invisible second skin still hung around her and something told him that it was her life-force.

  ‘Beautiful Frecknock,’ a voice thundered in Benfro’s head and he nearly fell from his perch. Frecknock herself went rigid, her arms spreading wider and her head lifting up, questing from side to side as if looking for the source of the voice. Still she kept her eyes closed.

  ‘At last, an answer!’ She cried. ‘Who is it who heeds my call?’

  ‘I am Sir Felyn,’ the voice said. ‘Long have I travelled the hard road, looking for more of my kind. Yours is a voice of salvation, a spring of sweet water to the sun-parched throat. But I fear the distance between us is too great. I would come to you but I cannot see where you are.’

  Listening in, Benfro felt a twinge of guilt. This was a personal matter and however much he might dislike Frecknock, she was still entitled to her privacy. And yet he was fascinated too. Here was actual magic being performed, something his mother would never let him see.

  ‘Tell me of your travels, good Sir Felyn,’ Frecknock said, her voice tinged with that same strange allure she had cast out before. Benfro had to suppress the urge to shout out his life story, but the other voice, wherever it was coming from, was made of sterner stuff.

  ‘Ah, sweet Frecknock,’ it said. ‘If I were to waste my time telling you of all the places I have seen, I would never find my way to your side.’

  Benfro could feel a cramp beginning to form in his legs where they were splayed awkwardly to reach the two footholds. He realised that he was still tensed on the verge of clambering over the cliff edge and rushing to Frecknock’s side. Her need was such a palpable thing. It reached out from her straight to him like a line. And as he thought it, so he could see it. A thick chord that hugged the ground as it speared from the rock where she sat and seemed to pass straight through his head. Almost imperceptible pulses of light flowed along the line towards him and with each one the desire grew to join the dragon he most detested. With a conscious effort he shifted his weight, edging sideways a fraction so that he could move his head out of the flow. Instantly the feeling was lessened. Across the clearing he could see Frecknock’s mouth moving but he could hear no words over the trickle and splash of water through the rocks. Neither could he see the line, though he was sure he had not imagined it. Slowly, as if he expected to be stung or burnt, Benfro shifted back to his original position.

  ‘…a terrible mistake. They mean well, but they are so old, so set in their ways.’ Frecknock’s voice came back strong and clear and with it the line swam again into Benfro’s vision. Once more he could feel the longing, the desperate loneliness and deep desire to be loved pouring out from her like the musk of a roe deer in the spring. The image sprang unbidden into Benfro’s mind and with it the realisation of what Frecknock was doing. Embarrassment burned the tips of his ears and he was about to slink away, to return to his herb collection, when Sir Felyn spoke again.

  ‘Yours is a tragic tale indeed, beautiful Frecknock,’ he said and it seemed to Benfro that the voice came from beneath him, as if the other dragon were standing at the foot of the cliff. He looked down, but there was no-one there, just that same pale line, following the lie of the land and spearing away into the distant trees. Somehow that line was connecting Frecknock with her would-be suitor across some immeasurable distance. But how had she known what to do? And what chance was there of her finding another dragon out there? Sir Frynwy had always led him to believe that the villagers were the only dragons left in the Ffrydd, but he had also told Benfro many tales of far-distant lands. Were there other villages out there in the wider world? And other dragons living in them? And who was this Sir Felyn? What w
as this hard road he had travelled?

  Without knowing quite what he was doing, Benfro tried to get closer to the strange dragon whose voice in his head was now praising Frecknock’s strength of character and nobility. He leaned out from the cliff at first, then realised the folly of moving himself physically as the voice faded away almost to nothing. Swinging back into his original position, Benfro strained his ears, as he would when out hunting with Ynys Môn and wanted to locate new prey. The roar of the forest came to him with all its jumbled cacophony, drowning out Frecknock’s reply to Sir Felyn’s latest outrageous flattery. Shaking his head, Benfro tried once more to focus on the words forming in his head and ignore the world outside.

  ‘But sweet Frecknock, I must come to you quickly,’ Sir Felyn said. ‘Though the distance between us be half the world, I will make that journey. If only you will tell me where you are.’

  Something nagged at the back of Benfro’s mind. There was something wrong, yet he couldn’t put his finger on it. He listened closely to Sir Felyn’s voice, trying hard to imagine what the traveling dragon might look like. Certainly he was well-spoken, if a little overzealous in his praise of Frecknock. Benfro had little to go on by way of comparison but he had never considered her to be a great beauty, certainly not in the same league as Ammorgwm the Fair or even Wise Maddau from Sir Frynwy’s tales.

  An image swam into Benfro’s mind then which made no sense to him. It was a small room with walls of dark stone, cut square. Heavy tapestries, their pictures obscured by years of dust, hung all around; a couple of chairs, too small for any dragon to fit in, sat on either side of a small fireplace, unlit even though a shiver of cold ran through him. He appeared to be sitting at a wooden desk, upon which stood a half-empty goblet and a wooden platter with the remains of a small meal on it. A window opened out onto a bright vista and as Benfro concentrated, he could see mountain tops covered in a heavy coating of white, etched sharply against a sky so blue it was almost black.

  ‘That’s right, my pretty one,’ Benfro heard the voice of Sir Felyn say and it was as if he was saying it. He could almost feel his lips moving. ‘Come closer to me, give yourself to me. Let me see where you are hiding.’

  Benfro was thirsty. He had tramped all morning through the forest and spent several hours on the escarpment in the full glare of the sun. Now, without thinking, he reached out for the goblet. It seemed the most natural thing to do, at first, but then he remembered where he was. He could see the cliff face close by, feel the rough stone under his fingers. But at the same time he saw his hand stretch out for the goblet. Only it wasn’t his hand. It was a short, stubby, fleshy thing. Pink and with flat-ended clear talons fixed in place, it was an alien thing. Revolting.

  In that instant the link snapped and Benfro found himself clinging to the cliff-face, bewildered. What had he just seen? Was that Sir Felyn? If so, he was no dragon and Frecknock was being deceived. Part of him laughed inwardly at the thought that vain, foolish Frecknock would once more be thwarted. But there was something more worrying about the situation.

  ‘Are you alone, sweet Frecknock?’ The voice came back as Benfro moved his head back into the line.

  ‘Of course, Sir Felyn,’ Frecknock replied, a touch of her normal waspish self behind her words, as if the question annoyed her.

  ‘Only I thought for a moment I felt another…’

  ‘Do you think me so foolish?’ Frecknock asked. ‘You know as well as do I the dangers in using the llinellau. I’ve taken every precaution to ensure I’m heard by none but my own kind.’

  ‘And you are a skilled mage, brave Frecknock,’ Sir Felyn said. ‘One I should very much like to meet. So tell me where you have chosen to perform this rite. It must surely be a place of ancient power.’

  Benfro’s muscles ached with hanging from the cliff top. He wanted to shift his weight around, but doing so meant he lost contact with this fascinating conversation. He was also convinced that Sir Felyn, whoever he was, meant no good. The voice seemed overly interested in where Frecknock was, and not at all concerned with who she was. And that hand had been so alien, so wrong.

  ‘You will come to me soon?’ Frecknock asked.

  ‘Like the wind,’ Sir Felyn replied. ‘Just tell me where I should fly.’

  ‘I live in a small village, deep in the forest of the Ffrydd,’ Frecknock began, at the same time as Benfro’s grip on the cliff edge gave way. Desperately scrabbling for another hold, he flung himself upwards and over the ledge. It was a narrow strip of rock, holding back a shallow pool and in his desperation not to fall, he rolled swiftly over and into the water with a great splash.

  *

  ‘By the Wolf! I was so close!’

  Melyn picked up his goblet, considered it for a moment and then threw it across the room. It clattered dully against an old tapestry, spilling what remained of the wine down a faded picture of King Brynceri slaying the beast Maddau. It was millennia since the truly powerful dragons had all been slain, but there were still plenty of their kind out there. It galled him that he could do virtually nothing about the ones living in far off lands, pained him even more that for the past one hundred and fifty years his order had been prevented by King Divitie’s edict from performing its sacred duty. But even if the old king had put an end to the persecution of dragons, that didn’t mean he had been foolish enough to grant them free licence. They were closely monitored, prevented from breeding and forbidden above all else to practice the subtle arts.

  And yet here, just this afternoon as he sat in quiet contemplation, he had heard one of them make a calling. A sad, pathetic female desperately searching for a mate, she had been so poor at her scrying that she had been unable to see his true nature. No great threat to the order then, but something far older and far more potent had prevented him from locating her and that worried him. She had said she lived in a village in the forest of the Ffrydd, but as far as he knew there were no dragon settlements anymore. They lived alone, what few remained.

  So either she had lied, desperate to lure a mate with promises of more of her kind, or some power he could not overcome protected and hid a group of dragons not a fortnight’s march from where he sat. Not without justification, Inquisitor Melyn considered himself the foremost practitioner of magic in the whole Twin Kingdoms of the Hafod and Hendry. To be met with an obstacle even his skill could not surmount was both a blow to his pride, and more importantly a threat to the security of the throne he served.

  Steadying himself, Inquisitor Melyn settled back in his chair and sought the place where he could tap into the power that was all around him. It was a basic skill, one that a novitiate was expected to master in his first few months of training, and yet lately he had been finding it difficult sometimes to get that perfect focus. Was he grown so old now that his mind was slipping away? It was unlikely. More probably he was just distracted by the endless round of petty politics played by the bureaucrats of the Candle. Day by day Padraig built up his power base in the hope that he would be able to steer young Beulah when finally she took the Obsidian Throne. Little did the old Seneschal know that the princess was Melyn’s, body and soul.

  Focus, Melyn thought. Let the power flow. Here in the great monastery complex high on the edge of the Rim mountains there was no need to concern himself with city matters. Here he was Grand Inquisitor of the Order of the High Ffrydd. He must use his skill to find this Frecknock. And if she truly was one of a group, hiding out in the forest against the laws of the Twin Kingdoms, then he would not flinch in delivering swift justice to her and all her kind.

  Hours passed and the light in the room began to dim, but Melyn did not notice, so intent was he on his task. He tried to rebuild the feel in his mind of the calling, the timbre of that voice and the strange way he had suddenly felt thirsty, reached for his goblet and… what? If he didn’t know better he would have said that another mind had touched his own, undetected. But that was not possible. No one had got the better of him like that since he was a novitiate. Even Andro h
ad never been able to truly walk his mind undetected. Yet now he was uncertain.

  Focus. Forget what happened. Try to find Frecknock. Melyn knew the paths he had travelled to get back to her. He retraced his route carefully time and time again, always with the same result. A dead end, a twist in the web would send him spinning back to where he had started. Again and again he tried and with each failed attempt the cold fury that fed his questing grew warmer, the task harder, until he was no more than floating angrily in his own thoughts.

  A light knock at the door interrupted his seething irritation.

  ‘Who is it?’ He asked, flicking the candles into life with a single mental command. At least he could take satisfaction in still being able to perform that small piece of magic.

  Instead of an answer, the latch rose and the door swung open. For an instant Melyn was about to strike out at the interloper. Who dared enter his private chambers unannounced. He was on his feet, a blade of light already conjured from his hand ready to deal the fatal blow before he recognised the slight figure of Princess Beulah.

  ‘Princess,’ Melyn said, lowering his weapon but keeping it alight. ‘You should not come here unannounced. I might have taken your head off.’

  Beulah simply smiled, shrugging off her travelling cloak and throwing it to the floor. She was dressed for the road, long leather boots, soft suede trousers and a balloon-sleeved jacket over a heavy cotton shirt laced loosely to the neck. With her straw blonde hair cut short, she could have been mistaken for a tall, slender boy not yet troubled by the need to shave. Only the speckling across the tops of her cheeks might make a man look twice. She took in the room with a slow turn of the head, then crossed to where the empty goblet lay on the floor, picked it up and filled it from the flagon sitting on the table.