by J. D. Oswald
He knew what it was to fly properly. Not the pale imitation he had managed by jumping off a cliff, nor the heady flights of his dreams. This was true mastery of the air. He could leap up with powerful legs, catch the wind with the great patterned sails of his wings and thrust himself higher and higher. He could see air currents spiralling up from the sun’s heat, wind deflected by the massive ridges that rose from the forest fringes and the magnificent standing waves, born of the violent storms in the east, that would carry him higher and farther than anything else.
Stunned, he put the stone down and moved on to the next alcove. Here eight smaller jewels sat awaiting his touch. They were memories of a different kind, of hopeless love and a desperate need to be recognized. They spoke of rejection, despair and a deep longing for the final release of death. It shuddered Benfro to the core just brushing the edge of those memories. He quickly moved on.
Each alcove, he came to realize, was a different dragon. There were great warriors, wise mages, arrogant lords and beautiful, patient ladies. There were renegades, wastrels and ne’er-do-wells, memories of thoughts so simple Benfro could only assume they were those of hatchlings and ideas so complex they passed him by without even intersecting his plane of intelligence. There were images of great hunts, parties that lasted months, intellectual arguments that raged back and forth over hundreds of years, points never being conceded. There was love and there was hate and there was cold indifference. Above all else there was a certainty bordering on pride that these memories were the lasting legacy of the greatest creatures ever to walk Gwlad and soar through its skies. It was a breathtaking display of perfect superiority.
Benfro ran through the repository, sampling memories as if he were a child left alone and unsupervised in the kitchen when the cook has been called away on other business. It was an intoxicating mix of experiences that were so alien to him, so fantastic, and yet these things had been done by his own kind.
He lost count of the number of alcoves he visited, the lives he dipped into. Each was a perfect encapsulated moment, but each was also a unique life, unshared. It was as if the alcoves separated the jewels in a more fundamental way than he at first realized. The memories were separated, unable to interact even on the most basic level.
‘Benfro, wake up now,’ Malkin said. The little voice startled him; he had quite forgotten the creature sat on his shoulder.
‘I wasn’t asleep,’ he said.
‘Benfro sleepwalk,’ Malkin insisted. ‘Go from bauble to bauble in dream. Many hours pass.’
‘Surely not,’ Benfro said. ‘I’ve only been looking for a few minutes. Half an hour at most.’ But when he looked at the candle in his hand, it was half burned away, great gobbets of wax dripped down its length and over his hand. Judging by its thickness and weight, it should have taken at least half the night to get that far.
‘These are dragons,’ Benfro said, trying to explain his actions.
‘Dragons,’ the squirrel echoed, eyeing the rows of jewels. Then, with no further word, it scampered away into the semi-darkness of the vast room.
Benfro let it go, unsure what it was doing but too wrapped up in the treasures all around him to care much. He looked over the room from where he was standing. It was dominated by the alcoves, each glittering with its cargo of memories. They called to him with a silent voice, so hard to resist. He knew then that he could have lost himself in recollection, wasted away to nothing while he dipped into countless lives more pleasant than his own. Was this a hoard like the one his mother had looked after, in which Ystrad Fflur’s jewels had been laid to rest after his reckoning? It felt different somehow but no less alluring. With an effort of will he dragged his eyes away from them, looked for something else.
The other candle, flickering in its sconce on the reading table, caught his attention. The scroll so carefully laid out for reading was faded with age, the runes picked out in ink turned brown over the years. The characters were archaic. When he peered more closely to read, he recognized, just barely, part of a story he had been told many times as a child: ‘… and it came to pass that Gog and Magog did battle over the love of Ammorgwm the fair, for neither could admit the other favour’.
Fierce was the fight, full fifty days,
The land lashed, wreaked by the wrath of their wings.
Grim Gog gouged his bloodkin, bright wisdom wasted.
Magnificent Magog, master of the air, mighty in all, yet could not best his brother.
Strange spells slung, scales scorched with their sending,
Lightning lit the sky, long lances of fire.
Thunder drummed a death dance through the realm.
Then came forth the fair one, fresh and fey,
Curious to contend what creatures caused such calamity.
Unbidden by the brothers, she breached their barriers.
Wild wizards both their castings combined, caught her by surprise, shield slipped.
Power so potent pierced her through, life left
And there it ended. Yet this was a telling Benfro had not heard before. True, Gog and Magog had fought over Ammorgwm, but she had refused both of their suits and gone to live a life of contemplation in a high eyrie. Or at least that was how it had always been told to him. There was never any suggestion that their warring had caused her death. He knew he was no great judge of poetry, but he recognized this verse as the work of an untalented amateur. The parchment showed signs of repeated scratching where runes had been removed; in places the sheet was worn almost to nothing. Some of the lines had just been crudely scored out with a quill, words replaced inappropriately just for the sake of alliteration. And what possible reason could Magog himself have for keeping such a piece in his repository?
Unless it were his own writing.
The idea thrilled Benfro with its sheer audacity. Until he stumbled across the remains of the great mage he had considered the tale of warring brothers just that, a tale. Sir Frynwy had called it allegory, a cautionary fable to teach the true value of keeping family and friends close. But now he could see a story anchored in fact. He had seen the ghost of Magog and now carried his last jewel. He had felt unnatural rage build at the very mention of the name Gog. He had met the mother tree, and she had appeared to him as the most beautiful dragon ever to have walked the earth, Ammorgwm. These were not mythical creatures but real dragons who had lived and breathed over two thousand years ago.
The fable spoke of how the brothers had split the world so that they wouldn’t have to breathe the same air. And yet that part of the tale had never rung true. Even as a fable it was too severe a reaction to them being spurned. If Ammorgwm had merely gone off and left them, they might have hated each other, but it would have been enough just to stop speaking. They would have parted, gone as far from each other as possible, but it would never have been necessary to do something as drastic as splitting the world, whatever that might mean.
But it made all too terrible sense if their bickering had killed the only thing they both truly loved. And if that were the case then somewhere out there were descendants of Gog, dragons who might yet be alive and well, dragons who might think freely and were not cowed by the power of men.
Dragons who might help him gain his revenge.
Benfro searched around for more parchments in the same formal and archaic hand, but the drawers and tubes close to the reading table contained mostly dust. What few scripts had survived the passage of the years were magical texts so obscure that he could make no sense of them at all: bestiaries with pictures of strange creatures, a series of maps of places he had only ever heard of in stories, with names like Fo Afron, Llanwennog and Mawddwy, the Twin Spires of Idris and the Sea of Tegid. There were other writings archived in the great repository, but he could have spent a lifetime going through the collected scrolls and ancient leather-bound books. The more he looked for things, the more he found. There seemed to be no end to the room.
‘Benfro come. Malkin find friends. Come.’ The squirrel appeared besid
e the writing table, hopping from foot to foot in excitement and pointing to a dark corner of the room. Not waiting to see whether it was followed, Malkin turned and scurried off back to whatever it had found. What could it mean – friends? As far as Benfro was aware he no longer had any friends except Malkin, and that was a strange friendship indeed. Confused, he followed into the mysterious depths of the room.
The little creature scampered away down a corridor formed from the seemingly endless pillars that held up the arched ceiling of the repository. More books and maps, gold and other priceless treasures were neatly stacked, catalogued and separated in their little niches all the way along. When they finally reached the wall, cut from the solid mountain rock, it was carved with hundreds, maybe thousands, of the same alcoves that lined the walls nearer the reading table. Only here most were empty, awaiting memories.
‘What is it?’ Benfro asked.
‘Benfro friends,’ Malkin replied, hopping from foot to foot and pointing at the filled alcoves. Hesitantly Benfro reached into one and picked out a single white jewel. The feeling enveloped him instantly, a sense of relief and joy that was intoxicating. But it was not the feeling that made him gasp so much as the identity behind it. For there was no denying that the dragon whose jewel he held was Sir Frynwy.
Errol had begun to wonder whether he would ever see the outside world again. He was in a comfortably furnished suite of rooms, bigger by far than any of the houses in Pwllpeiran. Meals were brought to him three times a day by silent servants; no matter how he tried to engage them in conversation they would say nothing. Even the guards outside his door refused to talk to him. His windows overlooked a courtyard which seemed always to be empty. He had considered trying to escape, but a thorough exploration of the options brought him no joy. So he lived from day to day, with minimal human contact and no idea of what the future held in store for him. Were it not for the books, he would probably have gone quietly mad.
There was a small library in the West Tower to which he had unlimited access. It was nothing compared to the great archives at Emmass Fawr, but it contained a wonderful collection of travel journals, including maps of places he had never even heard of. He lost track of the hours and days he spent poring over spidery handwriting, his grasp of the Llanwennog language becoming ever greater as he traced its development through hundreds of years. He found parchment, ink and quills, and for want of anything better to do started compiling a detailed list of the common roots between the language of his captors and the Saesneg he had grown up speaking.
It was while he was at this task one afternoon that he felt the brush of air on the back of his neck that meant someone had opened the door.
‘Just put it on the table there,’ he said without looking round, assuming it was time for his evening meal.
‘Put what where?’ a voice asked. Startled, Errol dropped his quill and looked up.
She had to be Princess Iolwen, there was no one else she could have been. Her face was light, her hair so blonde as to be almost white. Her cheeks and nose were not marked as much as her sister’s, but she was freckled nonetheless. Only where Queen Beulah’s expression was hard and uncompromising, Iolwen’s was sad and wistful. She had been holding a book in her hand, but when she saw Errol she let it fall to the floor.
‘Balch,’ she said, her hand going to her mouth. Errol leaped to his feet, stepping forward to retrieve the fallen book. He dusted it off, straightening a folded page before handing it back.
‘I’m sorry.’ The princess took the book with hesitant fingers. ‘For a moment there I thought you were … But he’s … I mean …’ She trailed off as if unsure what to say, still staring intently at Errol’s face.
‘Your Highness, my name is Errol Ramsbottom,’ Errol said, bowing. ‘Am I right in assuming I’m addressing Princess Iolwen?’
It took a moment for the princess to realize that he had addressed her in her native tongue, and Errol wondered if he had given her one shock too many.
‘I haven’t heard anyone speak Saesneg in so long,’ the princess said. ‘Where did you learn it? You speak it so well.’
‘I grew up in a little village about two days’ ride from Ystumtuen,’ Errol said.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I was sent here by Inquisitor Melyn to spy for him,’ Errol said. ‘Duke Dondal handed me straight over to King Ballah – having taken Melyn’s money, I might add.’
A look of understanding dawned on Iolwen’s face. ‘I’d heard snippets of the story,’ she said. ‘But it never occurred to me the spy was still alive. I assumed he’d been executed like all the others. Why would they spare you?’
‘I don’t know, Your Highness. You’re the first person who’s spoken to me since I met the king. He said something about my aura being unusual and ordered me to be kept here. So here I am.’
‘No doubt he has some scheme in mind,’ the princess said. ‘That’s all he ever does – scheme and plot and manipulate people. But what about you? You seem very young to be a spy?’
Errol told her his story: of how he had been chosen against his will; how the inquisitor had tried to rewrite his memories and succeeded for a while; how he had learned to hide his true self from the probing of adepts; and finally why he had been sent. At this last revelation the princess scowled.
‘Do you know how long I’ve been here?’ she asked. ‘I was made hostage when I was five. I’m nineteen now. Fourteen years of my life have been spent here. These are my people far more than anyone from Candlehall or Ystumtuen can ever be. They’ve raised me, educated me. They’re my friends. Why shouldn’t I love them in return? Why shouldn’t I marry Dafydd if I want to? By the Shepherd, I don’t even know why our two nations hate each other so.’
‘If it makes things any better,’ Errol said, ‘I never intended to carry out my orders. I just wanted to get away from Melyn and the Order of the High Ffrydd. Perhaps if I can persuade King Ballah that I’m no threat he’ll …’ But he didn’t finish his sentence. Partly because he realized then that his best possible future was one in which he spent the rest of his days in the West Tower, the worst in which the rest of his days could be counted on the fingers of one hand, and partly because two uniformed guards had stepped into the room. Confusion flickered across their faces when they saw the princess seated at the reading table.
‘Princess Iolwen,’ one of the guards said. ‘Your Highness, you should not be here.’
Iolwen sighed deeply, then stood.
‘Well, it’s been nice talking to you,’ she said to Errol. ‘Perhaps we can do it again some time, if the king will permit it. I’d like to hear more about the Twin Kingdoms, even if I can’t really think of them as home any more.’
‘I’d like that.’ Errol looked nervously at the guards. ‘If the king permits it.’
Iolwen left the room, and Errol expected the guards to follow her. Instead they stayed, waiting in silence while the echoes of the princess’s footsteps died away.
‘I presume you want me to come with you.’ He addresed the guard who had spoken. ‘And I assume I’m not about to be set free.’
12
The power of flight is a dragon’s birthright. Not for the dragon the tyranny of the ground, the dull trudging from place to place on feet worn sore by stony roads. The air is his home, and it is his duty to gain mastery over it. A young hatchling, even before his wings have begun to set, should be put to studying the manner of birds, much as he studies his runecraft and histories. For it is through such early observation that he will begin to understand the invisible currents that eddy and flow.
Particular attention should be paid to raptors, those masters of the aerial hunt. A diligent kit with patience and fortitude will learn much from their twisting and gyring, so that when he first takes to the air he will know instinctively how to soar and dive. If he lives near to the sea, then the youngling must observe the ways of the gulls and the giant albatross, for only then will he understand how to make the wind work for him,
rather than battle against its unassailable power.
There are many who scoff at the notion that a dragon might need to learn to fly, let alone that anything as humble as a mere bird might be able to teach him. But there is no room for such arrogance in one who would truly be a king of the skies.
Aderyn, Educational Notes for the Young
Benfro rolled the memory of Sir Frynwy around in his hand. It was a partial thing, like hearing a laugh down a corridor and knowing that a welcome guest was arriving. It sent a thrill through him to know that the old dragon was here. But how had he come to this place?
‘Malkin find Benfro friends,’ the squirrel said, a note of pride in its voice. ‘All here.’
And they were, all neatly ordered and separated by inches of cold stone. Benfro counted enough filled alcoves for each and every one of the dead villagers. And they were all white. Reckoned. Not red and raw. After the agony of witnessing their deaths in his dream, knowing that they lay unreckoned and lost for ever in the burned-out remains of the village, it was an untold joy to see them here. But how had they come to this place? And who had performed their reckoning?
Benfro put Sir Frynwy’s single jewel back with its companions, sensing a momentary trepidation bordering on fear as he released his hold. How had they got here, these final remains of the old dragons? The great hall of the village, which should have been their resting place, was far distant, on the other side of the mountains. It made no sense to him at all.
He reached out with shaking fingers to take one of the jewels from a different alcove. With a touch he recognized Meirionydd. It was almost as if she stood behind him, talked to him. At once a hundred sweet memories of her filled his mind, the practical joker who had delighted him with her magical tricks and had taught him the best way to steal food from the communal kitchens. It was Meirionydd who had encouraged him into trouble, and she who had stood up for him when others, particularly Frecknock, sought to make his life a misery. She had always been the cheerful one, the first with a joke to ease a difficult situation. Yet now she seemed to be alarmed, alone, frightened. Something bad had happened, something terrible that the other villagers needed to know about, but try as she might she could not find them anywhere. Only their lonely cries echoed to her in the darkness. He tried to speak to her, called to her, but she was consumed with panic and could not hear. Or maybe the imprint of memories went only one way? That couldn’t be right, surely. Ystrad Fflur had talked to him; Magog had controlled him. But touching only one of Meirionydd’s jewels he could only sense a part of her.
