It was the first time Errol had thought of her in months. The green girl, he liked to call her. Sometimes she was in his dreams, sad and silently calling his name. Always he had thought of her as Maggs, but now it was as if a barrier in his brain had been pulled down. He knew that she wasn’t Maggs. So who was she?
The familiar dull ache spread across the front of his head. It always seemed to come when he thought hard about his past. Errol tried his best to ignore it, massaging his temples and concentrating on the floor as he wracked his memory for a name, even a face. Without summoning, the lines appeared to his eyes, criss-crossing the floor and walls in a pattern far more intricate than any he had seen before. They were smaller, thinner, than usual, almost invisible like the lightest of morning dews evaporating from leaves. The corridor pulsed with the power of the grym as if it were alive. Instinctively, Errol reached out and connected with it, looking for relief.
In an instance his perspective changed. It was as if he no longer stood in the darkness looking at the flickering torch light that lit the door to the Inquisitor’s study. Instead he was the walls and ceiling. He was the floor and the heavy wooden door. He was the heat of the flame, fluttering as it consumed the thick grease. The ache in his head was gone simply because he could no longer feel his head. He was far greater than that, spreading out along the lines, becoming the building, the monastery, the mountain, the whole of Gwlad.
Errol bit his tongue, a reflex action that pulled him back into himself with a sharp tang of pain. His heart hammered in his chest and cold sweat prickled the back of his neck. He had been drawn out so quickly it was breathtaking. There would have been nothing of him left. He would have spread himself too thinly and dissipated into the colossal emptiness of the grym. Somewhere in the back of his mind he remembered the words of Father Castlemilk about the perils of losing oneself in the web of power. Down in the classroom, when they had practised the application of magic, it had been controlled and they had been closely watched by the quaisters. Here, the whole world was open to him and he had almost lost himself to it.
On the other hand, his headache was gone and he could think more clearly than ever. He buzzed with an energy that knew no restraint. Only the realisation of where he was stopped him from laughing out loud. Deep down, he knew that it would be foolish even to think about going back into the grym, but like an alcoholic faced with an unopened bottle of wine, he could no more help himself than he could deny his true nature.
This time when he gave himself up to the lines he was ready for its terrible, dissipating pull. Errol held tight to an image of himself and was pleased to see him coalesce into existence in the corridor. It was slightly disorienting to see himself and see through his own eyes at the same time, but it felt oddly familiar, as if this were something he had done many times before. Even the pull of the grym all around him was a reassurance, as if it was there merely to remind him that he existed. And he had known instinctively how to cope with it.
Curious, Errol looked around. He knew that he was in the corridor outside Melyn’s study, and yet it was subtly different. The walls were still the same rough stone, the sconces and torches were there, even the floorboards, polished by age and uncounted thousands of feet were unchanged from the many times he had stared at them before, waiting to be summoned into the Inquisitor’s rooms. Only the doorway was different.
It glowed with an unnatural red light, a sickly emanation that clashed with the peaceful quiet surrounding him. It was obvious to Errol that it was a ward of some form, meant to keep him out. It pushed him away in much the same way as the grym pulled him, an insistence that was not physical but which was nonetheless hard to deny. As he inspected the door more closely, he could feel the pain once more at his temples, as if his head were being squeezed by a vast hand of cold stone. Whatever lay beyond that door, the Inquisitor did not want anyone seeing it.
Errol didn’t know how he had done it. One moment he was looking over the corridor, the next he was back inside the Inquisitor’s study, staring at the old man as he sat at his desk, eyes closed as if asleep. Maybe it was the voices that had called him, or maybe it was the thought of the door as an impenetrable barrier that had piqued his curiosity. Either way, he felt a surge of guilt and fear. What if he were caught here? He wasn’t even really sure where here was. It looked like the Inquisitor’s study but it felt very different, somehow colder and even more uninviting than it usually was.
The voices came to him again. He couldn’t quite make out what they were saying, as if the two speakers were standing in an adjacent room. Yet one of the voices he recognised as that of the Inquisitor. As he recognised the speaker, so the words became clearer, but Melyn was not using his usual tone, nor was he speaking Saesneg. Instead the words were a language so foreign to him it could have been from another world, guttural and sibilant, with odd glottal stops and strange clicking sounds. Yet for all the effort speaking in such a bizarre tongue must have been exacting on the Inquisitor, he was not moving a muscle.
The other speaker was female. Errol didn’t know how he knew this, but as he focussed on her voice, so he began to see the link that joined her to the Inquisitor. Without knowing what he was doing, he followed that link. It was as if he had stepped across an enormous chasm. He knew that he had covered a vast distance and yet in the blink of an eye he was no longer in the Inquisitor’s study but standing on the edge of a clearing in the deep forest.
It was dark, a few stars overhead twinkling through gaps in the cloud. Around him Errol could see that the trees were putting on their first spring growth of leaves. The scent of blossom hung heavy in the warm air and the night was full of the sounds of animals waking from their long winter sleep. All of these things registered only lightly on his consciousness; for what grabbed his attention and held it as strongly as any cord sat still and stiff in the middle of the clearing.
It was a dragon.
She was a dragon. Again Errol did not know how he knew, but he was certain that the creature in front of him was female. She had her eyes tightly shut and sat in a very similar pose to the Inquisitor. With a start, Errol realised that they were communicating. But what possible reason could a dragon have for wanting to speak to Melyn? He hated them with every fibre of his being. His mission in life was to hunt them all down and exterminate them. Only King Divitie’s edict had thwarted his ambition, but it was months since Queen Beulah had lifted that. All the talk in the dormitories and refectory had been about the preparations for the hunt.
Errol was deeply troubled by the promise of slaughter. He knew that he felt no antipathy towards dragons. Quite the opposite indeed. Seeing this one now, seated and calm in the dark, he was filled with a strange melancholy, an inexplicable feeling that he wanted to be friends with her and all her kind. The creature should have filled him with fear and disgust, but instead he felt safe and loved. He knew so much about dragons, about their history, their legends and their teachings. But how could he have learned all that if he had never even met one before?
Father Kewick taught you, the voice of his memory told him. But it wasn’t right. It didn’t sound like him. It sounded like Inquisitor Melyn. And Errol knew Father Kewick. The fat old priest from the Order of the Candle was interested only in his books on administration, accounting, cleric work. Errol could distinctly recall the dull lessons in which his unwanted teacher had told him that dragons did not actually exist, that they had been invented by King Brynceri as an excuse to form his military order. There was no way that the priest would ever have taught him about dragon lore. So how did he know about Palisander? Gog and Magog? Rasalene and Arhelion?
A name appeared in Errol’s mind like a bubble of marsh gas erupting from a muddy pool. Sir Radnor. With it came an image of a familiar place. Jagged Leap, the rock standing proud above the river, and sitting on its flat top much the way this small, thin dragon sat in her clearing, a massive, magnificent beast fully three times her size, with huge wings outstretched to reveal the intricate patter
ns of his multi-coloured scales. A warm happiness filled Errol. He remembered the endless hours he had spent listening to the spirit of the mage as it told him its stories. But alongside the happiness was a growing rage. He had been tricked.
As the memories came back, Errol began to see what had happened to him. At his mother’s wedding the Inquisitor had tried to get into his mind and failed. A sudden terror gripped him as he realised that he had not wanted to join the order. Quite the reverse, he had been planning on running away from them. Not alone, with somebody else. But who? He was so close, but still that memory was locked away from him.
He remembered the princess staring at him as if he had personally insulted her whole family. He remembered going outside, being cold. What had he done with his jacket? He’d given it to someone. Then…?
The floodgates opened. Then he had been captured by the troop of warrior priests who had accompanied the princess and the Inquisitor to the village. He had been tied up and Captain Osgal had forced a skinful of wine down his throat. Errol could taste the sour liquid, feel it burning as it went down. He had never drunk alcohol before and it had hit his stomach with unfamiliar harshness. He had brought it straight back up again, he remembered, peppering Osgal’s tunic with bits of the wedding feast and a dark red stain like blood. The Captain had just laughed and then forced another skinful down. This one had stayed put, as had the third, by which time Errol’s senses had almost entirely gone. Yet he watched from this strange dreamscape as if he recalled it all perfectly.
About an hour had passed. He must have slept a bit and then been woken. His head had whirled sickeningly and someone had held him up so that the Inquisitor could stare straight into his eyes. Errol had tried to fight, but she was not holding his hand and lending him her strength. Who was she? He knew, but he couldn’t remember. Green. The girl in green.
What had passed next was a nightmare of embarrassment. Melyn had taken control of him as if he were no more than a puppet at the Lammas Fair. He had staggered back into the hall, reeking drunk and with wine and vomit staining his wedding shirt, and announced to all who were still awake to hear it that he was going to join the Order of the High Ffrydd. His mother had been proud, crying a lot but saying that she knew it was the best thing for him. The Inquisitor must have cast his magic on her as well, for Errol knew that Hennas hated everything to do with the warrior priests who had hounded her around the Twin Kingdoms.
Sometime after pledging to serve his princess as her personal protector, Errol had finally succumbed to the wine and passed out. Even so, he saw the proceedings continue as if he had witnessed it all. He had been carried to the cart and thrown onto the bed of hay in the back. Clun had clung to his father for long moments before finally climbing in too. And then the whole troop had ridden out of Pwllpeiran leaving the happy couple dazed, confused and childless. Errol could only assume that the Inquisitor’s glamour had been powerful enough to cloud the judgement of both bride and groom, for it was a most unusual wedding gift.
Outside the village, the troop had moved at a slow pace along the track towards the old ruined palace at Ystumtuen, at least two days ride away. Errol watched their progress in his mind, wondering how it was that he could see things he had not witnessed before. And then he saw her.
The girl in green.
She was wrapped in a long, dark cloak that camouflaged her well. She hid in the trees to the side of the track, watching the caravan pass with a look of sadness and horror on her face. As he saw her, his heart was filled with such sorrow and yearning that he feared it might stop beating. She was his greatest love, the only thing in the whole of Gwlad that he cared for. They had planned to escape, to run away from the persecution of the religious orders. But he had been captured. He wondered where she had gone, what she had done, even as he struggled to remember her name.
‘I said wake up boy. Can’t you even stay awake for ten minutes?’
Errol felt a hand on his shoulder, shaking him hard. He was standing once more in the clearing watching the dragon mouth silent words in an alien tongue. He was standing in the Inquisitor’s study, watching his most hated enemy set a trap that would exterminate an entire race of noble creatures for no better reason than spite. He was standing in the shadows in the corridor and Captain Osgal was beside him.
‘I… I wasn’t asleep,’ Errol said, shaking his head to try and bring some order to his maelstrom of thoughts as the three images faded back into just one.
‘A likely story,’ Osgal said, then shoved Errol away towards the end of the corridor and the stairs. ‘Go on, get out of here you useless little shit,’ he said.
Errol bolted like a rabbit from a ferreted hole. He took the stairs two at a time and caused untold mirth amongst the gathered warriors on the ground floor as he burst through their guardroom and out into the courtyard. He sprinted across to the library building and only once he was surrounded by its massive old stone blocks and unreasonably high ceilings did he slow down. There was so much to think about, so much to try and piece together. He had to find Clun and warn him. They had to try and escape. The whole of the Order of the High Ffrydd was founded on a lie, he knew now. He wanted no part of it.
And there was the small matter of the girl in green. He had promised to be with her forever. He longed to see her again, to be with her. There was so much they had to do together, a whole world to explore and understand. He knew her name now. It had come back to him with Osgal’s harsh touch.
Martha.
~~~~
Chapter Twenty-Four
Sir Teifi teul Albarn, claimed age 1035 – killed by rioting mob, fourteenth day of Ragger-month in the sixtieth year of King Divitie XXIII – 7 large jewels, 1 small
Morwenna the Wise, claimed age 895 – killed by rioting mob, fourteenth day of Ragger-month in the sixtieth year of King Divitie XXIII – 4 large jewels, 3 small
Unnamed female kitling, age 4 years – missing, assumed killed by rioting mob, fourteenth day of Ragger-month in the sixtieth year of King Divitie XXIII – no jewels
From the Dragon Register of the Order of the Candle
‘Where’re you going squirt?’
Benfro froze in his tracks, feeling the warmth of spring leach out of the day as if a cloud had passed over the sun. The birds were trilling in the trees, new flowers had blossomed in the grass around the gnarled old trunks and the forest sang with life. He had spent the morning cooped up in Sir Frynwy’s study with Meirionydd, still with no success in his quest to see the elusive llinellau, and he had been looking forward to an afternoon’s fishing with Ynys Môn as a precursor to a planned week long hunting trip into the deep forest. Despite his lack of magical success, Benfro felt upbeat and confident that in time he would crack the problem. The winter was over and he had been filled with a delicious optimism. Until now.
Turning in the road that ran up through the village towards the green and the great hall, Benfro saw his nemesis standing in the unkempt garden of one of the cottages. With a start he realised that it was Ystrad Fflur’s house and that someone had thrown open the shutters, letting air into the empty rooms.
‘What are you doing?’ Benfro asked as Frecknock stared at him, an unusually indulgent look on her face.
‘Oh, I just thought this old place could do with some attention,’ she said. ‘It’s been well over a year since the old boy died and no-one’s been in here except the spiders.’
‘Why should you care?’ Benfro asked. ‘You’ve got a perfectly good house. You weren’t thinking of moving were you?’ He added, appalled at the thought of Frecknock taking over the cottage where he had spent so many happy hours. Better for it to sink into decay or even burn to the ground than to have that happen to it.
‘Of course not squirt,’ Frecknock said. ‘But you never know, someone might. So, what are you doing this afternoon?’
Benfro did a double take. He could see no malice in the question, no sneering condescension. Frecknock’s tone was almost jovial, as if she were simply making
polite conversation. He had seen her out and about a couple of times since the night of his hatchday party, but she had not uttered a single word to him. Until now.
‘I’m going to find Ynys Môn,’ he said. ‘We thought we might see if the spring trout have started running.’
‘Ah yes, fishing,’ Frecknock said. ‘Ynys Môn’s very proud of his skills as a hunter. Personally I can’t see the point when you can just reach out and help yourself.’ As she spoke, she stretched out her hand and plucked something out of the air. Benfro couldn’t help but stare. It was one thing to know how the villagers kept themselves fed, another to watch it in action. Frecknock’s brazen display fascinated him, but it also appalled him in its lack of decorum.
‘Here, squirt,’ she said and threw the object at him. She wasn’t very good at throwing, but Benfro was a good catch. He caught the object and stared down at a shiny red apple just beginning to show the wrinkling signs of long storage.
‘It’s all right, I haven’t poisoned it,’ Frecknock added. ‘Can’t promise whoever grew it in the first place hasn’t though.’
‘Why are you giving me this?’ Benfro asked, eyeing both the apple and the dragon suspiciously.
‘Because I can,’ Frecknock said. The implication was obvious. And you can’t. Benfro knew that there had to be something to her good humour. So that was it, someone had let her know that he was struggling with his studies. Well, he could cope with her crowing. She had been learning for almost a hundred years after all. If it meant that she wouldn’t be as spiteful as he had become used to then he could put up with her taunts.
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