The Rose Cord

by J. D. Oswald

  The track rose gently in one direction, and Benfro was reasonably certain that was the way he had been walking. He knew from home that the men lived downhill, in the rich green valleys of the Hendry so often described to him by Ynys Môn. Perhaps that subconscious knowledge had directed his feet. In his current predicament uphill was the best decision he could make.

  It seemed to go on for miles. Certainly hours passed as he walked the green road. His footfalls were dulled by the grass, any other sounds masked by the mist until it seemed like he had strayed into another land, an in-between reality. His stomach began to rumble as the day fell towards evening, the grey of the sky darkening like a threat of storm.

  Night fell with the briefest of twilights as Benfro was making his way up a series of switchbacks. The trees still clung to the hillside in regiments, only sheer cliffs breaking their ranks. In the rarefied atmosphere they were shorter but still tightly packed, an impenetrable barrier that herded the young dragon ever onwards, ever upwards. He climbed wearily through the darkness, unwilling to rest on the road lest someone, some men, discover him while he slept. Some time in the night the cloud finally blew through and the moon climbed into the sky. Still he trudged on, mind blank of anything but the need to keep moving.

  At some uncounted hour Benfro stopped climbing. Darkness hemmed him in on all sides. The road now took him in a great arc first one way then another, following a ridge as it snaked along. The rocky course narrowed to only a dozen feet or so, the sky so big it felt like he walked in the heavens. The horizon stretched far, a jagged edge of deeper black with occasional white-tipped peaks circling his vision like some improbable protective wall. And off in the distance there was a glow, always just beyond the next twist in the ridge, always a nagging fear in the empty pit of his stomach, the fear that he was being pursued, always the compelling need to keep moving, never rest.

  And then finally he saw it, at the tip of a ridge whose near-vertical sides plunged into total blackness below. Silhouetted against the first glow of the dawn was a building from his worst nightmare. Vast, even at a distance of many miles, it was hewn from the same stone as the mountain it so totally dominated. Hundreds of tiny windows pocked its flanks, climbed its towers, and behind each a light glowed. It was a place he had been before, if only in his dreams.

  Emmass Fawr, the home of Inquisitor Melyn and his warrior priests.

  The ridge dipped around the next corner, dropping into a small plateau. Benfro hurried down towards it, searching frantically for a place to hide. As he approached, cautious at every sound, he caught an all-too-familiar odour on the breeze. Instantly he froze as the fear swept into him. There were men close by. But it was only their smell, not the paralysing mind-fear of the inquisitor. Benfro hoped they were unaware of his approach.

  Carefully, as silently as he could manage on the now rock-strewn road, he crept across the plateau. There was a palpable sense of freedom, a lightening in his shoulders at the sight of flat ground to either side of the path. Benfro stepped on to the short wiry grass that struggled to grow at this altitude, heading for the plateau edge, hoping against all the odds that there might be a way down back into the forest.

  The pre-dawn light had confused his sense of scale. The little scrubby bushes he had imagined from a distance were in fact large and ancient trees, their bark gnarled and their limbs twisted as if by some dread torture. Their cracked and mottled trunks afforded little in the way of a hiding place, and all the while dawn’s thin glow was seeping into the world, painting faded colours over everything.

  The edge of the plateau, when at last he reached it, was as vertical as the cliffs which climbed up to the vast building above. Shadowed from the rising sun, the valley below was a mottled dark mass of patterns that could have been a tree canopy. In the half-light it was almost impossible to gauge the distance down, but it was far enough to rule out jumping as an option. His hearts sank almost as deep as the drop. In the dark mass of Emmass Fawr smoke was rising from dozens of chimneys now, which meant that its inhabitants, the warrior priests, were awake. Soon they would be out and about, and if Benfro knew only one thing, it was that he didn’t want to be around to see them.

  He walked along the cliff edge, peering down into the gloom to try and make out a ledge. There was something down there, faint even to his keen eyesight, but it was further along, always just out of sight, always looking like he would be able to make it out if he moved just a little further. And then, suddenly, he felt something nudge his tail.

  Benfro whirled around, almost falling backwards into the void as he saw what had touched him. It was a man, or at least a man-kit. Much smaller than the inquisitor and quite a bit shorter than the other warrior priests he had seen. He was dressed in a rough sacking material, rudely fashioned into trousers and a smock top. His hair was untamed and his face was smeared in mud. He had a long thin whipping stick in one hand and he was using it to prod Benfro’s tail.

  ‘What’re you?’ the boy asked in that curious tongue he had heard Gideon use with his mother. The meaning was clear from the expression on the boy’s face. Benfro was surprised at how high-pitched and squeaky his voice sounded. Nothing like the sinister deep growl of the inquisitor. There was no aura of fear about him, no questing sense of malice. Instead he had an insatiable curiosity in his gaze.

  ‘You after my sheep?’ he asked again, and Benfro noticed for the first time that a small flock of white creatures had gathered to see what was going on. They were shorter even than the boy, with spindly black legs and a heavy coat of fibrous-looking wool. He could see no intelligence whatsoever in them as they tore at the meagre grass.

  ‘Gonna tell my da’ ’bout you,’ the boy said, then turned and fled towards the arch that rose over the road closer to the monastery. Now that he looked closely, Benfro could see a number of rude huts clustered close to the road and sheltered by the monastery’s great stone wall. Wisps of smoke were rising from the roofs of some of them, climbing straight up in the still morning air. The boy moved with some speed and was soon at the nearest of the huts. Benfro saw a brief flicker of light as he darted inside and then another a few seconds later as someone poked a head out. He could just make out the sound of shouting over the distance, and then the boy reappeared, running under the arch and up the road to the great stone building.

  Benfro looked around in panic. It would take the boy only moments to reach his destination. A troop of warrior priests would be after him before he could even make the top of the ridge.

  The road carried on up to the monastery, that much he had seen from farther away and remembered from his dream flight. But just beyond the arch it split, a narrow track heading down towards the forest, following a gorge that cut steeply into the cliff. Benfro’s hearts leaped. There was a way he might evade the warriors yet. All he needed to do was pass through the arch, down the hundred yards or so of open road to the junction and then carry on down to the forest below. But fear held him where he crouched. He didn’t want to expose himself to the castle’s faceless stone stare, preferring the false security of the low wall between him and the warrior priests.

  In the end the decision was made for him. Glancing back along the road, he saw two things that popped the bubble of his quiet euphoria. First the sheep had gathered around him in a silent circle. Some lay on the grass, others stood chewing silently. They were all staring at him as if he were the most interesting thing they had ever seen. Second and distant even to his keen eyes, he could make out a column of dust rising into the bright morning air. Someone was coming up the road, and judging by the cloud they were creating it was either a dragon the size of Magog or a full troop of warrior priests.

  His mind made up, Benfro scrabbled over the wall. It was high enough to stop sheep from wandering, but nothing to his greater bulk and agility. The ledge on the other side was narrow, but widened nearer the road, the cliff giving way to a steep slope that led down to the narrow track. There were a few bushes and scrubby trees here too, Benfro no
ted as he picked a careful path down. The deeper into the gorge he went, the thicker and taller they became, sheltered from the worst of the elements. Soon he felt a lessening in fear as the wiry green vegetation spread around him, options for hiding opening up with every step. As the light from the rising sun shortened the mountain shadow over the distant trees, he began to relax and almost to enjoy the morning. Despite the lack of food, he was not hungry, and it even felt like the pain in his back was gone, his wings no longer sore against his sides. He was almost carefree trotting down to the track to whatever might await him.

  Errol was in his dormitory going through his pack and checking off everything he needed when Carstairs, one of the younger novitiates, burst in through the door.

  ‘Errol, come quickly,’ the boy said. He was part of the new year’s intake and less dismissive of Errol since he was much the same age.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Down in Ruthin’s grove,’ Carstairs said, gulping great breaths down as he did. ‘There’s a dragon. It came up the Calling Road.’

  Errol leaped to his feet, dropping his pack on his bed before sprinting out of the door. He raced up stairs, along corridors and through open halls become familiar with the time he had spent in the monastery. Behind him his companion struggled to keep up, still acclimatizing to the thin air and the labyrinth. At the great courtyard entrance they both stopped. It was a hive of activity as novitiates, warrior priests and quaisters milled around.

  ‘I can’t go out,’ Carstairs said, pointing towards the dark-tunnelled entrance passage. ‘I’ve not achieved the first level.’

  ‘I’ll tell you all about it,’ Errol said, noting the boy’s obvious disappointment. It had been only a week since he himself had been granted leave to go out of the monastery, so it was with a distinct thrill that he crossed the threshold.

  Beyond the monastery walls the early morning light was beginning to lift the night’s mist. Errol followed a mass of people along the path and into the narrow gorge. Thorn bushes and whins crowded in on either side as they hurried down, narrowing the available space until everyone was backed up, immobile. Errol ducked under a scrubby tree, scraped past some thorns and scrambled part way up the side of the gully until he could see over the heads of everyone else.

  At its base the gully opened up into a flat space, not much bigger than the archery practice yard back in the monastery. The far edge seemed to drop away abruptly, revealing a dark green vista overlooking the endless forest of the Ffrydd. A small stream trickled through the bushes, collecting in a still pool that must have emptied over the edge. Beside it a stone plinth had been carved right on the lip of the cliff, and for an instant Errol thought it was a statue of a dragon that stood looking out over the distant trees.

  Then the statue moved.

  Errol had seen a live dragon only once before, and he wasn’t sure how real that experience had been. Sir Radnor had appeared to him as a magnificent mythical beast, but from what little he had learned of the Ffrydd dragons, he knew that they were simple, crude creatures. They were bigger than a large horse, it was true, but they were timid and bent, impossibly old. Their wings were small flaps of skin that most manuscripts said were used to regulate their body temperature and had never been intended for flight. They were opportunistic hunters and scavengers, thieving from flocks and herds, which was why men had taken to hunting them in the first place.

  Much that he had read was at odds with what Sir Radnor had told him, and yet the female dragon he had seen in his strange trance had been a weedy, pathetic thing. The creature that stood on the plinth was much more like a dragon should be.

  He was big, much the biggest living animal Errol had ever seen. He stood tall and proud, his legs as thick as tree trunks, his tail like some vast tropical snake coiled around his heavy-clawed feet. His scales were bright, reflecting the morning light in a shimmer of greens and blues, but it was his wings that were most magnificent, even hanging limp at his sides. They were huge, mottled with a pattern that would only reveal itself when they were stretched fully to take the air.

  Slowly, as if only just noticing that there were people around him, the dragon turned. Errol was transfixed by the creature’s face, its eyes, its long elegant nose and tufted ears. He was certain that they had met before. At the bottom of the gully the inquisitor strode purposefully towards the plinth, shouting angry words, blade of light held high, but the dragon paid him no heed. He was staring straight at Errol.

  Why did you come here, of all places? Errol thought, and fancied that on some level he was communicating with the intruder. He knew the answer. He’d felt the pull of the Calling Road himself. If the inquisitor had strengthened it, then it was remarkable this dragon hadn’t walked mindlessly straight to the monastery gate. Now Melyn would fight it, and it would die. Already he could feel the numbing mind-fear swamping the whole terrace, freezing many of the less adept warrior priests as it held the dragon tight. There wouldn’t even be a fight. The inquisitor would strike at a helpless foe.

  The wrongness of it all filled Errol with a cold rage. Sir Radnor had been his friend and teacher. He couldn’t stand and watch as one of his kind was cut down, but what could he do?

  The inquisitor was close now, coaxing the dragon with words of compulsion, urging it to come down, to submit to his will. With a start Errol realized that he could hear the words perfectly despite his distance from the scene. He could feel the glamour tugging at him too. And he shared the dragon’s fear, exhaustion, confusion and grief. Improbable images tumbled through his mind with one repeating itself time and time again in an endless loop of horror: Inquisitor Melyn swinging his blade through the neck of a supine dragon. Morgwm the Green, he knew her. Mother.

  ‘Who are you?’ Errol asked, forming the words silently with his lips as he tried to project them across the empty space to the tottering dragon.

  ‘Benfro,’ came back the reply, heavy with a weariness it was difficult to comprehend.

  ‘You have wings, Benfro,’ Errol thought, seeing an image of a magnificent dragon rising from a pool of water, launching itself into the air on great sails of skin and bone.

  ‘I have wings,’ Benfro replied, but his mind was almost dead with exhaustion, his thoughts so sluggish they could barely form in the maelstrom that was his memory.

  ‘So use them,’ Errol thought, seeing through Benfro’s eyes the cliff edge and the drop to the forest far below. ‘Jump.’

  And to his surprise and delight, the dragon did.

  6

  An unguarded mind is an open book just waiting to be directed. Catch your opponent unaware and you can mould his every action to your own will. A skilled warrior will use his enemy to fight on his behalf, or lure an invading army into a trap without him ever realizing. Until it is too late.

  As with all such magics, the key to success in this manipulation is mental discipline. If you cannot control your own thoughts, how can you hope to control those of someone else, let alone his actions? Meditation exercises can help to build up this discipline, but to truly succeed every moment of your life, both waking and asleep, must become a meditation. You must meditate while carrying out your daily chores, meditate while taking your lessons in swordcraft, meditate while making your sacrifice to the Shepherd, meditate while reading this book. Only when you can live your life in perfect control can you hope to take the next step towards becoming a true warrior priest.

  In the course of your studies with the order you will find yourself under constant attack, tested by your classmates, by novitiates more senior to you and by the quaisters and warrior priests who call this monastery their home. You will find yourself doing things that you did not intend to do, drawn to places you never intended to go. If you even realize that this is happening to you, then you will have taken the first, most difficult step in your education. Very few who embark on this journey will make it even that far.

  Father Castlemilk, An Introduction to the Order of the

  High Ffrydd />
  Benfro had never known fear of heights. He recalled how some of the old dragons had become agitated when he climbed tall trees or played near the bluffs that flanked the south side of the village. Meirionydd in particular would not go anywhere near the edge and had scolded him severely whenever she had caught him peering down at the treetops. Now, as he plummeted with increasing speed, he began to understand why.

  The wind whipped at his face and hands, pulling his leather bag around his neck and threatening to spill its precious cargo over the rapidly approaching tree canopy. He twisted and turned in the air, head over heels. Everything was moving at great speed, and yet somehow time seemed to slow. He could feel the wave of hatred and fury from the warrior priests above, diminishing all the while. The fear grabbed at him like a huge pair of hands, as if the inquisitor were trying to defy gravity and pull him back, but Benfro knew it was not real and struggled to fight it off. Like taking a heavy weight from his shoulders, it faded away leaving him weightless as he fell.

  Twisting and turning, he felt the aches and pains of the past days come back, bringing new ones with them. His stomach was an empty pit, churning with acid fire. His legs cramped as if he had been running all his life, and his sides burned raw with the chafing of his wings.

  His wings.

  The thought hit his mind with the force of his inevitable impact with the forest floor. He had wings. True they were more of a hindrance than a help, so weighty they had knotted the muscles in his back beyond pain. But if he could inch them open just a fraction to slow his descent, he might even survive this fall. He tried to stretch them open, concentrating on the lumpen mass between his shoulders and flexing. For some reason his arms spread wide, grasping the air, the wind whistling through his outstretched talons. His tumbling increased in speed with his panic and he rolled over in an arc that spun the scenery round his vision: first the trees, then the rocky cliff face, cracked and scarred and pocked with tiny brave outcrops of vegetation. Then the sky whirled past him, the sun just beginning to reach over the wildly moving horizon.