The Rose Cord

by J. D. Oswald

  ‘And that was a noble thing to do indeed. But it is not enough just to sear the memories. They must be placed at rest, at a nexus. And they must be complete. All but one of your mother’s jewels were taken by Inquisitor Melyn and his band of warrior priests. Until they’re reunited, none will know any peace.’

  ‘I will find them,’ Benfro said. ‘I’ll find every single one and I will destroy those that took them.’

  ‘Be careful what you promise, young Benfro. A dragon’s word is his bond.’

  They sat in silence for a while then. Benfro’s mind raced at the things he had heard. A few of the pieces of the great jigsaw were beginning to fall into place, but there was so much more that he didn’t know, couldn’t understand.

  ‘You are Corwen,’ he said eventually.

  ‘Corwen is long dead,’ the dragon said, a cold evenness in its voice. ‘Dragons live a very long time, some say they can live for ever. But if that great mage is reduced to a single jewel, then what chance has Corwen of still surviving, eh?’

  ‘Then who are you?’ Benfro asked. ‘And how do you know so much about me?’

  ‘Your deeds are already spoken of in all of Gwlad. Yet you’ve a great deal to learn, young Benfro of the Borrowed Wings.’ The old dragon smiled as he said the words, laughing at some inner joke. ‘Some of it you know already, yet you stubbornly refuse to admit it. Open your eyes, kitling, and see.’

  ‘But my eyes are open,’ Benfro said, bemused.

  ‘Are they? Then tell me what you see.’

  ‘I see a dragon, wizened with age, sitting on the other side of this fire. I see cave walls, smoothed by time and glowing as if they were lit from within. I’m guessing the rock contains tiny crystals that reflect the firelight. Through the cave mouth I see the moon rising over the far trees across the clearing. Here beside me I see my leather bag, filled with purloined gold, and on that ledge over there I see nothing where Magog’s jewel should be.’ Benfro fell silent. He wasn’t sure why he felt so smug, nor why he had rattled off such a list of things. It had been, he realized as he closed his mouth, a rhetorical question. Nevertheless, he felt he had held his own with this annoyingly cryptic old dragon.

  ‘And is that all?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Benfro replied, his spirits neatly deflated by a simple question. ‘Would you like me to go on?’

  ‘By all means,’ the dragon said, his smile calculated to cause maximum offence.

  ‘What would you like me to describe first?’ Benfro asked, reverting to the childhood games he had played with Ynys Môn and Sir Frynwy. Answer a question with another question, and if all else fails just say, ‘Why?’

  ‘Describe my face,’ the dragon said, patient amusement hanging from every word.

  ‘Which part?’ Benfro asked.

  ‘Which part do you like best?’

  ‘Which part are you most proud of?’

  ‘Ah, now, pride. There’s a useless emotion if ever I knew one. But tell me about my nose.’

  ‘Your nose?’ Benfro began, but there was no fun in the game any more. It was nice to have someone to speak to, but he had hoped for a slightly less banal conversation and perhaps a less senile companion.

  ‘You think me senile? Well, in many ways you may be right. I haven’t spoken to a living soul since last your mother passed this way. And that was many years before you were hatched. But I don’t need that kind of company to stay sharp. I can see everything, if I wish. I can go anywhere. Yet I choose to remain here, so perhaps I am just a sentimental old dragon.

  ‘You, on the other hand, are a stupid and arrogant little kitling who has strayed into something far bigger and far more dangerous than he can ever hope to understand. Your very existence has tipped the balance of this sphere, and your actions since fleeing your persecutors have been one blunder after another. If it weren’t for a few very powerful allies your mother made in her all-too-short life, you would have died within hours of her. As it is, I can’t help feeling it would have been a blessing if the inquisitor had found you. Taken you off to the royal court to be a plaything for the queen. She might not have tired of you for a year or two before adding your jewels to her pile. So, yes, Benfro, I may be a little senile. But you’re much worse. You are blind.’

  Silence filled the room after this tirade. Benfro felt the life flood out of him as if he had been scolded by his mother. No one else had ever been able to make him feel so small, not even Frecknock with her barbed taunts and cruel pranks. There was truth in the old dragon’s words. Benfro had to admit that he had seen more strange and impossible things since leaving the village than he had ever imagined. His life had been sheltered and insular. He had been protected, and his mother’s kindness had left him completely unprepared for what the world might throw at him.

  He had been sent here by the spirit of his mother to learn from Corwen. Even if Corwen was dead, he still had much to learn. This dragon had known his mother, knew Corwen, seemed to know much more than he did. Perhaps it would be wise to listen to what he had to say, to try and learn enough to survive in the world. Benfro swallowed his pride, what little of it he still had, and turned to the old dragon.

  ‘What should I be seeing?’ he asked. But the dragon was gone.

  Errol was growing used to his encounters with King Ballah. They usually played out the same way. First he would be offered some fine food, engaged in casual conversation. The king was always polite, and Errol tried to answer his questions truthfully, but he knew that all the while Ballah was trying to get inside his head.

  King Ballah was far more skilled at magic than Inquisitor Melyn, Errol thought. Melyn’s approach to breaking him down had been first to get him incoherently drunk, then to simply force a completely new set of memories into him. Errol was still trying to pick out what was real from what had been implanted by Melyn, and the king’s subtle diggings didn’t help. Every so often he would ask a seemingly simple question, and Errol would find that he had two contradictory answers presenting themselves to him.

  As the weeks passed, Errol came to realize that this mixture of false and real memories was what kept him alive. King Ballah viewed him as a weapon crafted by his enemy, and he was determined to learn as much as possible about that weapon before disposing of it. In order to stay alive Errol had to remain an enigma, but not one that there was no hope of solving.

  ‘Tell me about your girlfriend, Errol,’ Ballah asked him as they walked through the ornamental gardens in front of the palace. It was warm in the summer afternoon, and the air was full of heady orchid scents that only helped to fuddle Errol’s mind. Behind the words the king was probing his memories for images, and as usual two sprang up. The first was Maggs Clusster, dressed in red. Errol felt no great emotion as he remembered her. If he felt anything at all it was pity rather than love, mixed with a heavy dose of disgust and contempt for the rest of the girl’s family.

  ‘And yet your mind says you love her,’ the king said.

  ‘It must have suited Melyn to make me think I loved her,’ Errol said. It was his stock answer.

  ‘What about the other one? She’s unclear.’ Errol felt the king’s subtle touch on his mind again, only this time no clear face swam into view. He was left with a sense of green, a smell of the forest, a feeling of perfect happiness and with it a gut-wrenching sorrow. There was no name to go with the feeling even though he knew that he had remembered it once. But here, with Ballah pushing ever further into his memories, it had retreated. As if he had to protect her, whoever she was, even from himself.

  ‘Ah now, this is more like it,’ Ballah said. ‘This is closer to the real you. Melyn worked hard to suppress this memory, but it won’t stay down, will it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Errol said. ‘It feels different somehow.’ He wanted to savour the memory, to pore over it and try to tease out its meaning, but he also wanted to keep it to himself. This wasn’t something King Ballah needed to know about, surely. Still the king’s mind pulled at his thoughts and, reflexi
vely, he pushed it away.

  ‘Still fighting,’ Ballah said. ‘Good, I like a challenge. But you won’t win.’

  They continued walking through the gardens, closely trailed by two silent guards. If the king was still riding his mind, Errol couldn’t feel him. Instead he thought about the images the green girl had conjured: the forest back home and the stories he had heard. There were tales of great heroes battling evil, brave explorers travelling to the far corners of Gwlad, tragic lovers doomed to be apart: epic, sweeping tales of such grandeur they made even the royal palace and the city of Tynhelyg seem somehow paltry. And yet he couldn’t grasp any of the details.

  ‘Your Majesty, Prince Dafydd has returned.’

  Errol looked up, startled by the new voice. The palace major domo, Tordu, stood in the path ahead of them.

  ‘Good. I’ll see him in the throne room.’

  ‘He’s already there, sir. Shall I have the boy escorted back to his quarters?’ Tordu said.

  ‘No, no,’ Ballah said. ‘I think he should meet the man he was sent to kill. Lead on, Tordu.’

  They cut across the gardens and in through one of the full-height windows that led directly into the throne room. A young man was waiting by the throne. As Errol drew closer to him he felt like he was looking in a mirror, only one which reflected an older self. Judging by the look on Dafydd’s face, the prince was having similarly unsettling feelings.

  ‘Your Majesty,’ Dafydd said, bowing slightly to the king. ‘Who’s this?’

  ‘This is Errol Ramsbottom,’ Ballah said. ‘Melyn sent him here to spy on us and kill you.’

  Errol felt the touch of Dafydd’s mind like a shove in the chest. His knees buckled and he would have fallen had not one of the guards grabbed him, perhaps interpreting his movement as hostile. Unlike Ballah’s soft almost mesmeric touch, Dafydd’s grasp of magic was brutal and coarse.

  Angry at the sudden onslaught, Errol retaliated. With a little gasp of surprise Dafydd rocked backwards, stumbled and fell to the floor. For a moment there was a tense silence in the room, then Ballah burst into loud, braying laughter.

  ‘You weren’t expecting that, were you, Dafydd.’ Ballah chortled.

  ‘What’s he doing here? Why haven’t you executed him?’

  ‘Never mind that,’ Ballah said. ‘What’s the situation in the Twin Kingdoms?’

  ‘The noble houses are preparing for war,’ Dafydd said. ‘The normal crossings are closed and anyone looking even remotely Llanwennog is being treated with great suspicion. The lucky ones are being rounded up and escorted to Dina. The unlucky ones will be filling unmarked graves.’

  ‘And what of the troops: how are they being deployed? What’s Melyn’s plan?’

  Dafydd looked from King Ballah across to Errol, who was still held by a guard.

  ‘Should I be telling you this in front of him?’

  ‘Do you think me a fool, Dafydd?’ The king’s voice was suddenly hard.

  ‘No … No, sir.’

  ‘Then don’t question my authority. Especially not in the presence of others.’ Errol felt a rushing sensation and Dafydd fell to the floor once more. He seemed to accept his punishment with good grace, but Errol could see by the look the prince flashed in his direction that he had made another enemy.

  ‘The warrior priests are largely still cooped up in Emmass Fawr, sir,’ Dafydd said quietly. ‘The peasant armies are making camps in the foothills of the Dinas Dwyrain mountains, close to the Tynewydd pass and near Dina itself. I suspect Melyn thinks he can come through Dondal’s lands unopposed. The duke’s always been flexible in his allegiances.’

  All the while the prince was talking Errol could feel the delicate touch of the king’s mind skimming over his own thoughts. Ballah was looking to see whether any of the report rang true. Errol suddenly recalled Captain Osgal scouting the hillside as they approached Dondal’s fortified town. And he saw the gold being handed over – too much surely just to have him presented at court.

  ‘Duke Dondal has chosen his side in this conflict,’ Ballah said. ‘This young lad here’s proof enough of that. If Melyn tries to send forces through the pass, we’ll cut them down before they even reach Tynewydd.’

  ‘And are we going to sit tight, just let them attack us?’ Dafydd asked.

  ‘Queen Beulah’s hold on the throne’s not as strong as she’d like to think,’ Ballah said. ‘As yet she has no heir. I’m quite happy for her to waste as many lives as she feels appropriate on her foolish adventures. Each death will weaken her a little more. Meanwhile, your beloved Iolwen already carries your child. And is it not written that only a son of both houses can ever hope to bring peace to our two nations?’

  Dafydd bowed his head, saying nothing, but Errol could see that his demeanour had lightened at the mention of Iolwen. It didn’t take a mind-reader to see how much in love Prince Dafydd was.

  ‘What of the boy?’ the prince said finally, nodding towards Errol, who dropped his gaze hurriedly.

  ‘He’s a puzzle,’ Ballah said. ‘I’d really like to believe him when he says he means us no harm. But he’s proving surprisingly resistant to my interrogation. And who knows what trigger Melyn’s left in that addled brain of his. No, I’ve kept him this long simply because he reminds me of Balch. But that’s a sentimental old man’s reason. I can’t really afford to have him around, not when there’s a war in the offing.’

  Errol looked up at the king who moments earlier had been joking with him. He thought about the weeks he’d spent in captivity, well cared for but a prisoner nonetheless. He’d always known there would come a time when he was more of a hindrance than a useful pawn in this terrible game. He’d just hoped it would come a lot later than now.

  ‘Take him to the dungeons.’ Ballah did not meet Errol’s eye as he spoke. ‘I’ll decide what to do with him later.’

  Benfro slept badly that night, and in the morning he searched high and wide for the old dragon, but with no success. Neither could he find any sign of the food bag and Magog’s jewel. But as the day progressed and he felt none of the debilitation that had hit him before, so he began to relax and explore his new surroundings. The forest around the clearing was rich with wildlife and he spent the afternoon hunting. Come the evening, full of food, he settled himself down by the fire and waited to see if anything happened. Slowly the warmth, his full belly and the gentle rushing of water outside lulled him to sleep.

  The next day was the same, and the next. A week passed and he was still alone. He ranged far and wide, sometimes camping out for a night or two as he explored the area, but always returning to the cave. He began to wonder whether he had imagined the whole incident, but something told him it had been real. It was as if he had been set a task and the old dragon would return just as soon as he had completed it. If only he could work out what that task was supposed to be.

  So it was that he once again sat on his bed of dried grass, listening to the constant noise of the waterfall and watching the dancing flames. And then all of a sudden he was overwhelmed with a great melancholy. He was alone in the world, imprisoned in a solitude he had never known before. His family were all gone, even his mother. There was no one and no reason to exist at all.

  Wrapped up in his misery, Benfro didn’t notice when the cave darkened. He had been staring sightlessly at the flames, but then the fire just went out. Only the cave walls glowed as if they were alive, pulsing with a steady rhythm like the beating of the world’s heart. It was hypnotic, a slow tune that took his growing despondency and soothed it away. He felt light-headed and incorporeal, as if he were floating in warm water. A quiet murmuring noise distracted him from the strangeness. There were voices just outside the cave. He couldn’t make out the words, but he knew the cadences and tones of the villagers. They were in discussion. It was a sound he remembered from his earliest days, huddled in a swaddling bed close to the fire in the great hall. There was the booming bass of Sir Frynwy, the coarse gravelly croak of Ynys Môn. A trill of happy laughter was Meirio
nydd, her jokes echoing around the other voices like waves breaking on a beach.

  Without thinking, Benfro moved towards the voices, stepping through the cave mouth. But as he reached where he thought they were, so the voices quietened, faded away. He took another step forward, out into the clearing, and a wave of fear swept over him, trembling up his spine and making his loosely folded wings shiver. The night was cold and dark, cloud covering the stars and swathing everything in black. Suddenly afraid, he turned to go back into the cave. The entrance was no longer there.

  Scrabbling and beating mindlessly at the rough stone, it was some moments before he realized that what he was pounding was not the sheer rock wall in the clearing but dressed blocks placed one upon another with tight mortar gaps in between. A wall.

  He stood in a courtyard of immense size. The wall he had been hammering formed the outer edge of a roofed cloister that ran around the whole yard. Elegant pillars supported arches on the opposite side. They opened out into a great space, in the middle of which sat a huge stone building. It had tall windows of coloured glass that caught the sunlight on the other side of the yard, shining straight through the building and painting the grass in myriad hues. With dread pulling his hearts down, Benfro realized he had been to this place before.

  ‘Do you think the queen will see us today?’

  The voice cut through Benfro’s dreaming like a talon. He looked round to see who had spoken and froze in terror.

  Two men were walking up the cloister towards him.

  ‘I don’t know. I hope so. But you know what she’s like with a new toy,’ one of them said.

  ‘It disgusts me the way she consorts with this commoner. I’ve heard she nursed him back to health herself. The Shepherd alone knows what they get up to.’

  It occurred to Benfro that these two men were not warriors. They were slight, even by the standards of men, and dressed in long dark cloaks. Their heads were uncovered, and what little hair they had was white, like the tufts that sprouted from Sir Frynwy’s ears. No paralysing fear emanated from them; in fact he could feel little of their presence, which explained how they had come so close without him sensing them. He understood then that they had not seen him and that he could kill them easily. All he had to do was to wait until they came past where he stood, obscured by shadow, and grab them.