The Rose Cord

by J. D. Oswald

  She turned again, stalking down the corridor towards the guest wing. When she reached the door she had been looking for she stopped.

  ‘Now you can stand guard. Make sure no one enters until I am finished in here.’

  The two guards saluted and stationed themselves either side of the door.

  ‘Or leaves, for that matter,’ Beulah said with a wry smile before opening the door and stepping inside.

  The room was dark, only starlight picking out the vague shapes of the furniture. Quietly Beulah stepped around a low couch and two plump armchairs, approaching the great bed that dominated the far wall. By the time she reached its edge, her eyes had adjusted to the darkness. She stood for long minutes, watching the sleeping figure of Merrl, heir to the duchy of Abervenn.

  He wore no nightclothes and the sheets covered only half of his body. His chest was broad, the muscles in his arms and shoulders well developed. His ginger-blond hair draped across his face, which was boyish and relaxed in sleep. Beulah sniffed the air, noting the gentle aroma of bathing oils. He was clean and biddable; he would do.

  Silently, gently, she climbed on to the bed, reached out and stroked the light golden hairs on Merrl’s chest, felt the tension in his stomach muscles and the powerful tautness of his ribs. He woke slowly, which was how she had planned it. Beulah could feel the colour of his thoughts deepen and coalesce as he slowly swam up out of the depths of sleep and into the dream state. Here he was at his most suggestible; here she could mould him to her will. It was just a question of finding the place she already occupied in his mind, finding the image he held of her, and reinforcing it with suggestions of love, loyalty and total commitment.

  It was almost too easy. Beulah found that she was already at the centre of Merrl’s thoughts and feelings. For an instant she was flattered to be the recipient of so much attention. But its flavour was wrong – this was not slavish devotion. Beulah knew what that tasted like; she dined on it daily from the masses who thronged her halls. No, this was a different thing altogether, something closer to the way her own thoughts had been: dominated by images of her rotting father in the weeks and months before he had finally died. Before she had finally killed him.

  Merrl didn’t love her; he wanted her dead.

  Beulah probed deeper, her hands still caressing the firm body she now straddled. A tumble of images flickered past her: shadowy figures in cloaks with deep hoods standing around a fire in the darkness; an impossibly old man, yet still vital and brooding, undeniably Llanwennog – King Ballah; a young woman, still a girl in many ways, her face unmistakable despite her foreign garb – Iolwen; a dagger concealed in the sleeve of an elegant evening coat. The meaning was quite clear: Merrl was part of a plan to assassinate her and put her sister on the throne.

  Beulah sighed. It was predictable, to be expected in many ways, but she had hoped for more from Merrl and the House of Abervenn. She knew that producing an heir was essential, however much the thought of pregnancy and childbirth disgusted her. There were other potential suitors, but none brought the huge financial benefits of a union with Abervenn. Then again perhaps she didn’t need to worry about that any more.

  She leaned in close to Merrl, her silk gown brushing against his chest as she whispered quietly in his ear, ‘Wake, my love. Wake.’

  Slowly Merrl’s eyelids began to flicker. His body tensed beneath her as he sensed her presence; his hands reached out to feel her soft skin. Then he opened his eyes and gazed dreamily into her face. For a split second he was all contentment and hazy joy as she pushed herself against him, feeling his drowsy pleasure. Then his whole body stiffened, his stare widened in alarm and surprise.

  ‘My queen … Beulah …’ he started to say. She pushed him back against the pillows, silencing him with a single finger to the lips.

  ‘This could have been yours,’ she said, sitting up on his stomach and caressing his cheek lazily with one hand. ‘You could have ruled by my side. In time a child of Abervenn would have sat on the Obsidian Throne. That won’t happen now.’

  It was a small blade of light, short like a huntsman’s knife, but its blaze chased all shadow from the room. Merrl’s struggle was futile and short-lived, his head swiftly parted from his neck. A bloom of warm red spread over the white sheet and sprayed across her face and arms, ruining her gown as, still riding his thoughts, Beulah felt the astonished life leach out of her would-be assassin.

  2

  In the most ancient days, when dragons were little more than base creatures hunting in packs through the forest, when meat was eaten raw and bloody, when pleasure was taken where it might be found with no thought for consequences or responsibilities, when petty rivalries might lead to murder and none think it of any great import; in those days of pain and anger and ignorance the living flame was considered just another weapon to be used. A dragon might breathe fire simply for the warmth of it, or to defend against the attack, aggressive or amorous, of another.

  When the tree gave wisdom to the first of our kind, he looked upon the antics of his brothers with disgust, considering them no better than the wolves that roamed the land in murderous packs. He saw the nature of the land, knew the power that ran through it, and determined to be better. He learned to create with herbs and oils what once had been belched from uncouth lips, and this great knowledge has been passed down through generations of healers. With time, dragons have lost the ability to breathe fire, as they have lost the desire to kill one another for sport.

  And so it is that the most important duty of any healer comes after they have finally failed in their calling, as all must fail eventually. For no other may conjure the fire of reckoning.

  Healer Trefnog, The Apothecarium

  Flames leaped up as the powder came into contact with the resinous oil. They caught readily, fire spreading over the prostrate form and turning it into a great pyre. Close as he was, the flame was not too hot. Not like the wood fire that heated the house. Many was the time Benfro had burned his fingers and, on one memorable occasion, his tail in that. This conflagration was more intense, and yet it seemed to him a friend, welcoming. On a mad impulse he put a hand into the flames. He could see how they consumed his mother’s body, but they left him untouched, only tickling his scaly skin.

  ‘Ah Benfro, you should never have had to see this day.’ The voice was in his head, all around him, and with the sound of it his hearts leaped in his chest.

  ‘Mother!’ he cried. ‘Mother, where are you?’

  ‘I am here, Benfro,’ the voice said. ‘But I am incomplete.’

  Benfro looked this way and that, staring at the edges of the clearing and over to the house. A desperate hope flooded him: his mother wasn’t dead, she had simply cast some powerful trick that had fooled the men.

  ‘If only it were so, young one,’ the voice said, and it seemed to him that there was something not right about it. He knew his mother’s voice like he knew nothing else. It was the first sound he had ever heard. This voice was like Morgwm’s, but there was something missing, some depth or warmth he couldn’t quite identify.

  ‘I knew as soon as Melyn appeared that my time was finished,’ the voice continued. ‘The only thing of any importance was to protect you. I could have fought, yes. But I would have lost. At least this way I had time to lay a hiding spell on you.’

  ‘A hiding spell?’ Benfro was still clinging to his hope, but a part of him knew it was futile.

  ‘I couldn’t let them find you,’ the voice said. ‘Nothing else mattered. The spell protects you from them; it dampens the fear they cast around and cloaks your thoughts from their senses. But it won’t last for ever, Benfro. Already I can feel myself ebbing away. When I’m gone, they’ll be able to track you down.’

  ‘Gone?’ Benfro asked. ‘Gone where? Don’t go.’

  ‘Dearest Benfro, I can’t stop myself. Melyn has taken a great part of me, and the further he carries it away, the less I know myself. I won’t be able to protect you for much longer. You must flee here. Go to
Corwen. He will teach you all the things I never had time to.’

  ‘Corwen? Who’s Corwen?’

  ‘The dragon who taught me, who taught your father. He is wiser than either of us ever were.’ The voice was fainter now, receding as if his mother were slowly walking away.

  ‘Where will I find him?’ Benfro asked, feeling the cold chill of night close around him as the flames flickered lower.

  ‘North, beyond the Deepening Pools. Through the Graith Fawr and across the great forest of the Ffrydd. Keep north and Corwen will bring you to him.’

  ‘But what of the others?’ Benfro asked. ‘What of Sir Frynwy and Ynys Môn? Can’t Meirionydd help?’ But there came no answer. The voice was silent, the image in the flames long gone. Like an echo of an idea, it was almost as if Benfro had dreamed the whole thing. But he clung to the memory of that voice. It had been real and it had been his mother. It had been his mother and she was dead.

  Cold wind whipped at his feet, swirling the ashen remains of Morgwm the Green. It was as if he were waking from a dream. The grief and the terror, the almost vertiginous feeling of being alone swamped him as the warmth ebbed away. Still that voice echoed in his head, and with a last desperate hope he dropped to his knees and plunged his hands into the ashes.

  It was finer than any dust, enveloping him in a cold smoke that was at once peaceful and very sad. Soon he was covered from head to foot in white powder, and each individual mote seemed to be a different memory of his mother. Her smile, the tone of her voice when he was being scolded, the shimmer of her scales as she moved about the kitchen, her frustrated anger, slow to rise and quickly dissipated: all these and more flooded through him as if he was reliving the sum of his fourteen years in as many minutes.

  He was so wrapped up in the memories, mingling images of his mother with dreams of great winged dragons soaring through the night sky, that Benfro had the stone in his hand for long minutes before he realized what he had found. It was small, no bigger than a pebble from the stream that burbled around the edge of the clearing. In the half-light of coming dawn it was cold and white, the dust of his mother’s ashes dropping from it unnaturally. But it was the feeling that emanated from the tiny jewel that entranced him so.

  It was as if his mother were in the next room, singing softly to herself. He could hear her voice but not make out the words. He could feel her presence close by, that reassuring knowledge that no harm would come while she watched over him. He could almost smell her, that familiar taste in the air that was as much a part of his life as his snout. And yet she was always, frustratingly, just out of reach.

  Benfro couldn’t say how long he knelt there, in his mother’s ashes, clutching on to her last legacy. He was at once happy and plunged into the deepest pits of despair. Tears fell freely from his eyes and his breath came in great ragged sobs as slowly the darkness of the clearing lifted. Only when a cool morning breeze picked up the ashes and began to spread them thinly over the ground did he begin to wake from his stupor.

  Inside the house the hearth was cold; what grey light filtered in showed a scene he could no longer recognize as home. Everything was broken, trampled, thick with the taint of men. Benfro had few possessions, but those special things he had been given for his birthday he gathered together. The heavy leather bag his mother had used for her herb gathering and to take medicines and poultices to the villagers still hung from a brass hook on the back of the storeroom door, miraculously untouched. It was much sturdier than the collection bag he had woven from fibrous leaves, and had many small pockets expertly sewn into it. Lifting it down, he slipped it over his shoulder, turned his back on the ruination and left the cottage for the last time.

  Outside the moon was gone, and to the east he could see the faintest glow of the rising sun, red like the advance of a violent storm. And then he realized that the dawn light was flickering. Too late he remembered what also lay to the east. The village.

  As they stepped out of the woods and back into the clearing Melyn felt a shiver course through him like someone had walked on his grave. Many of the novitiates and warrior priests in his small troop felt it too; he could see the shudder pass through their ranks like a ripple on a pond. Even dour Captain Osgal unconsciously made the sign of the crook with his right hand. At the back of the line, flanked by her four nervous guards, the dragon threw back her head and wailed at the sky.

  ‘Halt.’ Melyn backed his voice with a mental command. As one the entire troop came to a stop. Even the dragon he had spared ceased her moaning. He looked across the trampled earth to the empty cottage.

  ‘What is it, Inquisitor?’ Osgal asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Melyn said, heading for the cottage and the remains of the beast he had slain. ‘But something just happened here. Bring the dragon. I want to see how she reacts.’

  She was a pathetic figure, limp-winged and pulled in on herself. Even so, her existence filled Melyn with a deep loathing. He longed to kill her, to part her head from her shoulders like he had the other one, but he knew that she was more valuable alive. For now at least.

  ‘What was it that made you cry out, sweet Frecknock?’ He spoke her native tongue and she raised her head sharply at the insult, the first sign of rebellion he had seen in her since her capture; the first sign of life.

  ‘It felt like the passing of an old soul, the ending of a great magic,’ Frecknock replied in his language, her words stilted and awkward-sounding, her mastery of Saesneg less than complete.

  ‘An old soul? What do you mean?’ Melyn asked.

  ‘It’s not death. Rather a presence. Someone there but not there. It was as if someone I hadn’t seen for many years was there, by my side. Then, all of a sudden, she was gone. It felt like Morgwm.’

  Something in the dragon’s voice made Melyn look up. She was staring not at him but at a large heap of white ash that lay in front of the cottage. Something had disturbed it, spreading the pile around at one end. There was no sign of the mutilated corpse he had been expecting.

  ‘Where is she?’ Melyn asked, his anger rising. ‘She was dead. Where’s she gone?’

  ‘She’s been reckoned,’ Frecknock said with what might have been a note of triumph in her voice. ‘It must have been Benfro. Poor useless squirt, to reckon his own mother. And she must have been holding on to some great spell right until the end. No wonder I felt it.’

  Melyn dredged his memory of dragon lore. He knew something of their reverence for the reckoning. What was it? A burning ceremony where the body was cremated and the soul freed to roam the afterlife? Something like that. Whatever the ceremony, it meant the young dragon could not be far away. He cast his mind out over the surrounding area, feeling for anything that might be a frightened mind. There was nothing. But what if he was not frightened any more? What if he never had been? Mind-fear was a potent weapon when used against a man, but this Benfro had already proved resilient to it.

  ‘How could he have escaped us?’ Melyn barked.

  ‘He had his mother’s protection,’ Frecknock said. ‘Even in death, she shielded him.’

  ‘But he won’t go far, will he?’ Melyn said. ‘He won’t stray from what he knows.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Frecknock asked.

  ‘This reckoning,’ Melyn said, ignoring the question. ‘It means a lot to you, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It is our way,’ Frecknock said. ‘We can find no peace in death without it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Melyn said, turning away from the bemused dragon. With a practised leap he swung himself back up into the saddle and spoke to the troop.

  ‘Back to the village, lads, double-quick time. I’ve a hunch that’s where we’ll find our young Benfro.’

  Benfro picked his way through the remains of the village, trying hard not to breathe in the tarry smoke that rose from the ruined houses. It was a small place; no more than four dozen dragons lived there. Most were older than Benfro could imagine, great lumbering beasts living out their lives in companionable misery. But it
was home.

  The houses, such as they were, sat back from the track which wound its way through the forest from the south, speared through the great clearing where the ford ran through the river and then plunged east to places Benfro had only ever heard of in stories: Beteltown and the Norne Kingdoms beyond the High Ffrydd, Llanwennog and darkest Mawddwy. To the south lay the Hendry, low country and the lands of men.

  Benfro’s legs grew heavier at the thought of them: that creeping, paralysing numbness spread through his bones. The warmth and loving sadness he had carried with him since his mother’s reckoning flickered and died, a chill wind whipping the ash from his scales and hide. It was more and more difficult to move. He wanted only to stand and wait for the inevitable to happen. If he just stopped, then soon it would be over.

  A crashing noise of falling timbers broke through his misery and Benfro shook his head, trying to push the heavy weight of fear from his shoulders. To his surprise it worked. The more he moved, the less he felt trapped and helpless, the less inevitable was his capture and death. The fear still hung around him like flies on a warm day, but it was a frustrated unfocused thing born of anger. He could almost see the burning eyes of the inquisitor searching out over the forest for him, but he knew he could hide from that gaze. He wasn’t powerless after all, and he took solace in that small victory, treading lightly through the destruction with a new sense of hope that was as misplaced as it was short-lived.

  He found the elder dragons in the great hall. It had been an important building, the focus of village life. Some of Benfro’s earliest and happiest memories were of the vast kitchens at the back, where he had found a steady supply of food, some graciously given, most inexpertly thieved. He had sat for many hours at the white-scrubbed table, watching the intricacies of meal preparation and all the while pestering with his endless kitlingish questions whoever’s turn it was to prepare the food. All the dragons of the village took their meals in the great hall, meeting twice a day at dawn and dusk to discuss their mundane lives and to listen to the tales of old, when dragons, not men, had ruled the world. If ever there were a symbol of the permanence of dragon culture, the great hall had been it.