‘That’s better,’ she said after taking a long draught. ‘I swear the calling road gets dustier every time I ride it. Now tell me Melyn, what can put my High Inquisitor in such a state that he throws his cup against the wall and would cut the head off the first novitiate unfortunate enough to cross his path?’
Melyn sighed, hefting the blade and feeling the power course along its length for a few moments before extinguishing it with a thought.
‘Dragons, my lady,’ he said. ‘I have reason to believe there is a settlement of them somewhere in the forest of the Ffrydd.’
‘Really?’ Beulah said. ‘Well how splendid.’
‘Not splendid at all princess,’ Melyn said, picking up his chair which had fallen over in his hasty rise and offering it to his guest. When she had sat down he pulled up another chair and settled himself into it.
‘Dragons are dangerous creatures,’ he said. ‘They’re innately magical and if they’re not kept in check they’re terribly destructive. Why do you think King Brynceri founded this order and established the Aurddraig?’
‘But I’ve seen dragons, Melyn,’ the princess said. ‘Back when grandpa was king they used to come to Ystumtuen occasionally to pay him their respects. I always thought they looked kind of sad and pathetic with those droopy wings and saggy scales.’
‘You see only the outward appearance they choose to display to the world, princess. Look here,’ he pointed at the darkened and stained tapestry, now complete with red wine smear. ‘See how the beast really is. That is Maddau, cornered in her lair not far from this monastery. Alone, she nearly killed King Brynceri. If Ruthin hadn’t been near by, our history would be very different; the house of Balwen wouldn’t exist for one thing. To this day, thousands of years later, nothing will grow on the spot where she was finally slain.’
‘You don’t think that time has exaggerated the tale then,’ Beulah said.
‘Princess, don’t mock me,’ Melyn said. ‘I’ve studied these creatures all my life. I’ve seen their true form and I know their deceptions. They’re beasts of The Wolf, an affront to the natural order of things, an accident waiting to happen.’
‘Calm yourself, Inquisitor,’ Beulah said. ‘I’m just teasing. You know I’ve no love of dragons. And if what you say’s true, then they must be dealt with most severely. But you know I can’t do anything until the Obsidian Throne is mine. Have patience for just one more year. Then you can take up arms against your hated dragons.
‘Which brings me to why I’m here. Not that any excuse to get out of Candlehall and the stench of daddy dearest isn’t welcome.’
‘You bear your burden with fortitude, princess,’ Melyn said, noting the rancour with which Beulah spoke of her father. ‘But is it wise to leave the king so long without his protection?’
‘He’ll be fine,’ Beulah said. ‘He’s been better lately. He can go a month without my aid. Perhaps even longer if necessary. A slight lapse about now’d be a good thing anyway. It would show the court that the old man’s health is on the final downturn. There’re many at Candlehall who already believe he’s only hanging on heroically to avoid a regency anyway. They see it as a show of faith in me.’
‘And I’ve no doubt you’ve encouraged this talk at every available opportunity,’ Melyn said.
‘Of course,’ Beulah said. ‘You taught me the art of statecraft, after all, old friend. And it’s a matter of statecraft that brings me here.’
‘Go on,’ Melyn said. Rising, he refilled Beulah’s goblet before retrieving one for himself from an oak dresser beside the door.
‘I’ll reach my majority in less than a year,’ Beulah said. ‘I see no point in hanging around waiting for my father to die. He’ll see the sunset on my twenty-first birthday, but that will be his last. My mourning will, of course, be so much the greater for losing him on such an auspicious date but it’s vitally important that the small faction that will speak out against me find no popular support. So I need to get out of Candlehall and into the countryside, much as I hate it.’
‘You want your people to get to know you,’ Melyn said.
‘Exactly. And now’s the perfect opportunity. The choosing is upon us again. I know Padraig’s tried to exclude your warrior priests from wide areas of the countryside, but I assume you’re not taking that lying down.’
‘Indeed not, Princess,’ Melyn said, surprised and delighted at how accurate her intelligence was. She knew perfectly well what he had planned or she wouldn’t have made the long journey up from the lower lands of the Hendry.
‘So when are you leaving?’ Beulah asked.
‘Tomorrow at dawn,’ Melyn said, looking over to the window. It was pitch black outside now. What had happened to the afternoon and evening? ‘I was planning on an early night.’
‘As long as you didn’t have sleep in mind,’ the princess said, smiling that predatory smile of hers.
~~~~
Chapter Eight
There is no more worthy calling for a young man than to become a novitiate in one of the three great orders. To dedicate oneself to serving The Shepherd, the King and the Twin Kingdoms is the noblest of all lives. But first you must be chosen, and that is no easy thing.
How then can you hope to succeed at the Choosing? There is no practice or set of exercises that can guarantee your success. When the representatives of the orders come on their annual rounds they will test you rigorously on your physical stamina and your mental agility, but they will be looking for a great deal more than that.
To become a novitiate in the Order of the High Ffrydd you must show a tenacity of spirit, a zeal and an innate ability that few possess. Many are the years that the quaisters return empty handed to the monastery at Emmass Fawr.
An Introduction to the Order of the High Ffrydd by Fr Castlemilk
At first Benfro thought that the scream was in his head, so loudly did it reverberate around his skull. But as he pushed himself choking and spluttering out of the cold water, he realised that he was hearing Frecknock through the normal means. And like normal, she was extremely angry with him. For a moment he considered trying out Ynys Môn’s concealment spell, but he abandoned the idea as soon as he heard Frecknock’s voice.
‘You stupid little worm! What in Rasalene’s name do you think you’re doing here?’
Benfro shook water out of his ears and looked up. Frecknock was standing now, staring at him with terrible wrath writ large across her face. The book, candle pot and gourd were nowhere to be seen, although a heavy leather bag hung over the older dragon’s shoulder, bulging squarely.
‘I was collecting herbs, for my mother,’ Benfro said, holding up his own soggy leather satchel.
‘Some story,’ Frecknock said. ‘You were up to no good. Spying on me.’
‘Why would I want to do that?’ Benfro asked with what he hoped was an innocent voice. Bitter experience told him that it was unlikely to work. That Frecknock hated him and always would was one of the few certainties in his life.
‘Who knows what sick little fantasies go on in your tiny brain,’ Frecknock screamed. Yet Benfro could see she was worried. It occurred to him that she didn’t know how long he had been there, nor what he had seen. Perhaps he could play that to his advantage.
‘I was just climbing the cliff. You know, trying to make a bit of fun out of a boring chore,’ he said. ‘This is the only place where I can get this stuff from.’ He delved into his satchel and pulled out a handful of the sticky weed. Frecknock watched him with narrowed eyes but she said nothing and didn’t move from her rock.
‘There wasn’t as much down there as I thought, so I had to come up here for some more. I lost my grip at the top. Sorry if I startled you.’
‘And how long were you hanging there spying on me?’ Frecknock asked.
‘Spying? Me?’ Benfro tried to put on his best innocent face. It never worked on his mother but Frecknock was not so wise, he was fairly sure. ‘I didn’t even know you were here until you started shouting at me. What’re you doing here anyway?�
��
‘None of your business,’ Frecknock said. She shouldered her bag and leapt down from the rock, wading across the shallow pool towards him. He would have backed away, but he was sitting at the ledge. ‘And if you tell anyone you saw me here, I’ll make you regret it. Understand?’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Benfro said, worried. Sitting in a pool of water, bedraggled and still a bit confused he was easy game. His only course of action was to try and appease her. ‘I’m sorry if I startled you.’
‘You will be,’ Frecknock said, towering over him. Her eyes seemed to glow as if there were a candle lit where her brain should have been, and Benfro could feel his head tightening like some great beast had gripped it in a huge talon.
‘You’ve no idea what trouble you’re in. Now look at me, squirt.’
*
The summer lasted long into autumn, one hot sunny day following another in a seemingly endless procession. A bumper harvest had been cut and stored and now the hedgerows were filled with an abundance of berries. Food was plentiful and everyone was at ease.
After a few months of keen learning, Clun had decided that there was more to being chosen by the Order of the High Ffrydd than simply books and coloured patterns in the grass. He had taken to staging mock battles, sometimes just between Errol and himself, sometimes involving all the village boys. Only Kewick’s elite, Trell and a few others, were excluded from these events, although Errol himself would try to slip away as soon as the melee descended into anarchy.
It was increasingly difficult to get time to himself, he had found. And that meant the short afternoons and evenings when he could make his way up to Jagged Leap were all too few. It was nice to see his mother happy. Hennas had let down some of her barriers and was a changed woman, Errol admitted. But it also meant that Godric was never far from the house, Clun his constant companion. After twelve years of being the outcast, it was nice to have a friend, but Errol had also grown used to his own company.
Jagged Leap became his sanctuary and Errol would head there whenever he could. Sir Radnor would query him about the goings on in the village, demanding a studious attention to detail and constantly goading him for yet more. Errol found himself remembering things he had not realised he had noticed. Only when the old dragon’s spirit was satisfied would he answer Errol’s own questions, and then only obliquely. More often than not he would instead begin the telling of some ancient dragon history so that, over the months, Errol became something of an expert on the exploits of Rasalene and Arhelion, the Seven Quests of Palisander and the tragic tale of Ammorgwm the Fair. What he had not learned was much in the way of magic, or so it seemed to him.
‘Sir Radnor,’ Errol asked one evening as the sun was settling red in the treetops to the west. ‘That night you called me, when I was sitting at the riverbank downstream. I came to you, but I can’t remember how. One moment I was standing there, the next I was here. I don’t remember walking up the path.’
‘That’s because you didn’t walk up the path,’ the dragon said.
‘So how did I get here?’
‘Did Palisander fly to Angharad’s side when he had completed all seven of his tasks? Did he walk there?’
‘No,’ Errol said, recalling the story. ‘He came to her side in a single step. At least, that’s how you told it.’
‘I do not make up these tales for your amusement, young Errol. Indeed I did not make up these tales at all. They happened and every detail is as important as the next. Once he had slain the boar of Caer Idris, Palisander knew that he had won his lady’s heart. He could not bear to be apart from her any longer and so, though half the world separated them, he was at her side in one step. You too took only one step from the riverbank a mile downstream to this rock. It is not something men have been able to do before. I know of only one other of your kind who has ever done such a thing, and she is more dragon in her spirit than even she knows.’
‘But how did I do it?’ Errol asked, excitement making him impatient though he knew from experience that there was no profit in trying to hurry a dragon.
‘That is something that you must remember for yourself,’ Sir Radnor said. ‘You have done it once, so surely you will do it again. I cannot show you how to do something that is so intrinsic to your self, only try to open your mind to the possibilities. But beware, Errol, for the world is a vast place and most of it is hostile.’
‘I…’ Errol started, then fell silent as he began to digest the words of the dragon. ‘Who else has done this? You said ‘she’’.
‘Do you still wish to join the Order of the High Ffrydd, Errol? To become a warrior priest for your king?’
‘I don’t really know,’ Errol said. ‘I used to. It was all me and Clun used to talk about. But there’s so much more to the world. I want to see Caer Idris and the Deepening Pools. I’d like to meet live dragons and learn more of magic.’
‘You could do all of that in the order,’ Sir Radnor said.
‘But I’d have to fight and kill other men just because I was told to,’ Errol said. It was the first time he had voiced the doubts that had been growing in him ever since he had begun to understand something of dragons. The Order no longer hunted them, that much was true. But the romance of being a great warrior had begun to wear off in the light of Sir Radnor’s tales. There was little that was great about the battlefield from his perspective.
‘There is more to the order than just killing,’ the dragon said and Errol wondered what his tutor was trying to do. It was almost as if the long-dead spirit wanted him to join the same group that had been responsible for the slaughter of most of dragonkind. ‘There is learning and the chance to master the ways of the Grym.’
‘And there’s the opportunity to be bullied by bigger boys, the chance to be taught yet more biased history, to learn how to use the power of the world for violent ends. To become a too-powerful weapon in the hands of a weak-minded king.’ Errol was surprised at the strength of his feelings on the matter. He had not really thought about it in great depth until now and yet Sir Radnor had drawn him out and forced him to consider the matter. It reminded him of the way old Father Drebble had encouraged him to read.
‘Drebble was a kind-hearted man, as many who serve the Ram are,’ Sir Radnor said. ‘He used to come and talk to me from time to time.’
There was an almost wistful tone in the spirit-dragon’s voice and Errol felt the terrible, crushing loneliness behind it at the same time as he realised just how easily his thoughts leaked out.
‘Yes, that is another thing you will have to learn to do,’ the dragon’s voice said. ‘But I think you have done enough for one evening, Errol. It’s getting late and you will be missed. I do not think you would wish to be caught out here again.’
Errol realised then how dark it had become. Sometimes he thought he could see Sir Radnor, impossibly vast and regal, towering over the rock. Most days, and this was one of them, he could only hear the voice, booming in his head. Then he would retreat inside himself too, building worlds in his imagination so that the day could pass and night fall without his noticing. A few stars had begun twinkling in the indigo sky and a smear of red like distant fire silhouetted the treetops.
He did not want to go, but he knew when he was being dismissed. Thanking Sir Radnor, he jumped down from the rock and made his way along the path into the trees. He would have happily stayed out all night. The chances were that Godric would be at the cottage when he returned, sharing a meal and then most likely staying the night. That meant Clun would once more be sharing Errol’s room and at the moment he really wanted to be alone. Clun’s undiminished enthusiasm for the Order of the High Ffrydd had become increasingly difficult to reciprocate and now he began to understand why.
A strange sensation running down Errol’s spine put him on edge. He didn’t know how he knew, but he was convinced that he was no longer alone. It was almost as if someone had just popped into existence nearby and the faint echo of a memory tickled at his thoughts, like a
delicate scent taking him back to an earlier experience he could remember only as feelings.
‘Who’s there?’ He asked the darkness, turning slowly to try and catch any movement. Something flitted across his vision a few yards further down the path, where a gap in the trees lit a small clearing with rising moonlight. For an instant he was afraid, then realisation dawned and with it a great, exciting joy filled him. ‘Martha?’
She stepped into the light like some ghostly spectre and for a terrible instant Errol thought he had been mistaken. The figure before him seemed taller than he remembered, and slimmer though she had never been fat. Her hair was no longer a short-cropped unruly mop, but hung over her shoulder in a loose ponytail. She was dressed in a pair of trousers that made her legs look longer and a white cotton blouse that seemed almost to glow in the moonlight. A long cloak was clasped at her throat and though the moon washed it of all colour, he was sure it was dark green, to match her eyes. Could a person really change so much in a year?
‘You’ve been sitting up on Jagged Leap, Errol Ramsbottom,’ she said and at once Errol was certain, though there was a change to her accent, her words better pronounced, her speech less like the clipped brogue of the villagers. ‘You’ve been talking to old dragon Radnor.’
‘When did you get back?’ Errol asked, stepping closer and suddenly not sure what he should do. The last time he had seen her, Martha had been bedraggled, weak and cold. He had just pulled her from the river and breathed life back into her. True, she had annoyed him at times with her seemingly inane comments and awkward habit of turning up unannounced in the most unlikely of places. Yet he couldn’t deny that he had missed her company every single day since she had been sent away.
‘You’ve grown, Errol Ramsbottom,’ Martha said, and before he could say anything she had grabbed him in a fierce hug. She was warm and smelled of exotic, far-off places. Her hair was clean and soft against his cheek and in a flustered moment Errol couldn’t think where to put his hands. All too soon though the embrace was over and she stepped away.
Dreamwalker Page 11
