by J. D. Oswald
It was as if someone were trying to inflate him. The wind rammed down his throat, cold as ice and laced with tiny flakes of powder. He could feel the gusts and eddies ripping at his ears, trying to pull his head from his shoulders. He braced himself against the stone edges and exhaled hard before letting the wind fill him once more. The chill spread through his chest, threatening to dampen any flame he might have been able to produce. Doubt flickered through his mind then. True, he had made flame before, but he was still not quite sure how. It had come to him because he had wanted it to, but that couldn’t be all there was to the trick, could it? Unsure, he turned from the wind, thought of warmth and blew out hard.
Nothing happened.
He turned once more into the maelstrom, filling himself with cold clean air. There had to be something, some state of mind. How had he done it before? He didn’t really know. Back in the cave he had been too tired to care what was happening. He just wanted to be warm and to sleep. Well, he was tired now, the cold sapping his energy as effectively as a rain cloud in front of the sun. He had not been thinking about what he was doing, but that was a difficult trick to carry off, if that was what he had to do.
The wind dipped for a moment, the constant slash of cold powder against his face halting as abruptly as if it had never been. Tentatively, he opened his eyes, slits only at first, ready to clamp them shut should the storm try to blind him again. What he saw made him forget the cold and difficulty he had breathing.
He was surrounded by stars.
They filled his vision, above and below and to the sides. There were so many of them it was like a dream. There surely couldn’t be that many in the sky, and yet he was seeing them. He thought he recognized a few of the constellations, but they were accompanied by so many other bright points he could not be sure of the Carw Hela or the Blaidd yn Rhedeg. Neither could he understand how he could see them without looking up. Here there was nothing but sky all around. Scudding clouds blustered around the nightscape, obscuring much of the view, but most alarming was the fact that he couldn’t see the ground.
A gust of wind kicked up again, peppering his face with icy shards of powder. Open-mouthed with awe, he swallowed a faceful, spluttering and gagging as he turned away from the incredible view. The powder turned to water, fresh and cold in his mouth, chilling all the way down to his stomach, which clenched convulsively as the liquid hit its void. For the first time since his strange journey began, Benfro remembered the hunger he had felt, the terrible emptiness as if the fire had consumed everything inside him. A few mouthfuls of water were not much to keep him going, but they were something. He swallowed again, belching to try and clear what had gone down his airway, and a thin, weedy flame billowed out from his nostrils.
He understood then. He needed something in his belly to create the flame. But there was nothing to eat, only this endless white powder swirling in through the opening. It was, he realized, frozen water. Sir Frynwy had told him about ice and hail and snow, but he had never seen any of them before. And Corwen had mentioned that snow would come in the winter, but he had been too preoccupied with other thoughts to give this information much heed. The only place he knew where snow was found was at the top of the tallest mountains. And the higher you went, the thinner the air – that was something Ynys Môn had told him. Well, the air here was thin indeed. He was panting as if he had run a mile and still his lungs called for more.
The heat of his tiny flame had not helped clear the snow at all, but the warmth of its generation spread through his veins, bringing life back to his cold tired muscles. Pain lanced through his fingers and hands. It was the first thing he had felt from them for what seemed like ages. He flexed them, then winced in agony and wished he hadn’t. More snow was blowing in through the opening behind him, but the light of the stars filtered through too, illuminating the scene.
White dominated. Benfro was standing in a tiny space not much bigger than his body, surrounded by packed snow. At his feet he could just about make out a stone floor. There were flagstones, which meant that someone had built the place he was in. The opening behind him was too regular a shape to have been natural anyway. He turned once more and felt around it with his newly sensitive and very painful hands. There was a smooth sill, several feet deep, and on one of the sides what appeared to be a metal latch. Feeling for the other side, Benfro discovered two hinges disappearing into the snow. He brushed it aside, scooping great chunks away to reveal a flat plate of glass set in a metal frame. He dug deeper, shifting great mounds of chilling white into the area around his feet. Finally he had cleared enough space. He grasped the window and swung it on its hinges. They protested at first, bending alarmingly under his fading strength, but finally gave in. The whole thing swung around to cover the opening, its latch clicking into place and holding it against the wind.
Instantly the noise died away to a quiet whistling. The storm that had been battering his face dropped to nothing, and the last of the swirling snow fell to the floor. Benfro was shivering uncontrollably now. He had never been so cold in his life as he slipped down into a crouch and then rolled over to sit on the snow-spattered floor. The hollow space in his stomach gnawed and groaned at him, reminding him of what he had to do now, though he was reluctant to even try.
Slowly, fearful that he might not be able to stay awake if he got any colder, he took a large handful of snow and shoved it into his mouth. It was difficult to swallow: he had to wait for it to melt so that he could gulp it down as water. A pathetic dribble that drained life from him made its way down into his gut. He needed more, so he took another mouthful, and another. His tongue went numb, his teeth ached and the endless white powder took longer and longer to melt. But slowly, oh so slowly, he could feel a frozen fullness coming upon him. True it was a water-bloated satiety, but it would have to do.
Finally he could swallow no more. His mouth was so cold that the snow would not melt. He was dimly aware that somewhere down below the numbness of his waist there were legs, feet, a tail, but he could no longer feel them. And if his plan didn’t work, then he would not be able to stand up again. He would die here, surrounded by white.
At least breathing seemed to have become easier, he thought as he took a deep breath and concentrated on warm thoughts. The icy lump in his stomach gurgled and churned. Good. It was time. He pictured the hearth in his mind, piled up with logs in a neat pyre, a funeral for some tiny but important creature. Then, with the last of his fading energy, he exhaled.
‘Honestly I’ve no idea how he got there. Someone must have beaten him up for the gold he was carrying, or something.’
Errol understood the words on a basic level, but they meant nothing to him. He was dead, surely. But if he was dead, then why did he hurt so much? His whole body ached with a dull intensity that couldn’t be ignored. He tried to move, hoping to find a more comfortable position in which to be dead, but sparks of fire lanced through his ankles, forcing a gasp of pain through lips that felt swollen and cracked.
‘I think he’s waking up,’ the voice said, and Errol thought that he recognized it. He tried to open his eyes but one of them seemed unwilling to cooperate. The other would only half work, and he looked out of a narrow slit at a white-haired old man. At first he thought it was Andro, but he was wearing a different cloak to the librarian, the dull brown robes of a coenobite of the Ram.
‘Where am I?’ Errol tried to ask, but his throat was dry and the sound that came out was indistinct.
‘Here, let me give him some water,’ another voice said. Tilting his head, Errol managed to make out the face of Usel, the medic, before a wave of nausea washed everything in red. He felt his head tilted back by strong hands and then liquid sweeter than honey trickled through his lips.
‘Not too much at once. We don’t want him to choke.’
Even swallowing was painful, but slowly Errol managed to drink. And as the liquid washed the dust and dryness from his throat, so it seemed to wake him from the stupor of his dulled thoughts. By th
e time he felt strong enough to open his eye again, he realized that it had been nothing more than water.
‘Someone’s had some fun with you.’ Usel peered closely at Errol, pulling open his eyelid with a gentle thumb. ‘What did you do to upset them?’
‘Duke Dondal handed me over to King Ballah.’ Errol’s words came out something like ‘Dugdunnl hundev blah.’ Then it began to dawn on him that he was in a bed, being tended to by Usel. He wasn’t kneeling at the executioner’s block in Tynhelyg.
‘Where’m I?’ he asked, trying hard not to slur the words.
‘You’re in the infirmary at Emmass Fawr,’ the old coenobite said. ‘We found you lying on the stone plinth down in Ruthin’s Grove. You’ve been unconscious for three days. What happened, Errol? You were supposed to be in Tynhelyg.’
‘Who?’ Errol asked, his voice rasping in his throat as if he’d been shouting for days.
‘Dear me, I’m forgetting my manners,’ the coenobite said. ‘My name is Gideon. I knew your mother. But we can speak of her later. Tell me how you got here.’
‘I was in Tynhelyg.’ Errol’s words came a little more easily with each sip of water from the bowl Usel held to his lips. ‘But Duke Dondal sold me out to the king. They were going to execute me. Then … I don’t know.’
‘That much I already know,’ Gideon said. ‘I was in Tynhelyg myself when you were captured. Usel here’s been tending the injuries I sustained while escaping. Our kind aren’t very welcome in Llanwennog any more. But how did you get to Ruthin’s Grove, Errol? Who brought you and why?’
‘I don’t know. Honestly, the last thing I remember was seeing Princess Iolwen at the window. They tied my head down on the block. Then …’
‘Rest, Errol,’ Gideon said. ‘You’ve been badly beaten; it’s not surprising if you’re confused and disorientated. You’ll need time to heal. Use it to think hard about what happened.’
‘But …’ he started to say, but Gideon held up his hand, and Usel once more tipped the bowl to his lips. It tasted slightly different this time, a faint edge of bitterness that reminded him of some leaves his mother used to infuse in hot water. Applied to a wound, they would cleanse it of all foul humours; drunk as a tea, he recalled, it was a powerful sleeping draught. Too much of it could kill.
Errol tried to fight the poison, but Usel’s hold was firm.
‘You must sleep now, Errol. This will help.’
Errol drank a little, feeling unconsciousness creep up on him. And at the last moment, as he slipped under, he felt the familiar tendrils of thought in his mind and heard the hated voice of Inquisitor Melyn shout from the far end of the room, ‘Is he awake yet? Damn the boy, I need answers.’
20
Apart from the palace of Cenobus and the Place of the Silent Stone, Magog had one other retreat, to which he would go when there was some great magic that needed to be wrought. None knew where this place was save Magog himself, though many speculated that it lay in the warm dry lands on the far side of the Sea of Tegid. Rumour had it that this was where he cast the spell that would split the world, and that here resided his secret library, the collected knowledge of the greatest mages that had ever lived, right back to the time of Rasalene himself.
When the years that passed had turned into centuries and still Magog did not return from his battle with the men, some of his followers feared for the worst and prepared themselves to fight. They knew that they could not hope to succeed, for who could possibly vanquish a foe that had defeated the most magnificent mage to have ever lived? And yet with the reach of men growing ever wider and ever stronger, it was only a matter of time before the palace itself was overrun. So it was that a small band set out in search of Magog’s retreat, hoping to find the lost secrets of his great power.
There were four of them: wise Ceredig, who flew west, towards the setting sun; brave Ogwy, who headed south; noble Rhagfyr, who ventured into the far north; and fair Meinir, who searched ever east. Onwards and outwards they flew, further and further to the four corners of the world.
And to this day they fly still, become the four winds blowing in endless search of a name they can no longer recall.
Sir Frynwy, Tales of the Ffrydd
The flame was not what Benfro expected. He had hoped to produce a hot orange conflagration that would consume all it touched, belching thick black smoke into the air. This was a different thing altogether. It was blue and clean and burned with a heat so fierce he could feel it through his face scales. And it seemed to be selective. It billowed up against the wall of packed snow, cutting it away like a shovel, turning it instantly into steam. It swirled around his body, licking his scales with a thousand tiny tongues that cleaned him like he had never been cleaned before. It warmed him but it didn’t burn.
With remarkable speed the room was cleared. A thick fog hung in the air, condensing on to the stone walls and dripping down to the flagged floor. As his eyes reaccustomed themselves to the near-darkness, Benfro was surprised to see furniture: a large comfortable-looking wooden chair, a vast reading table similar to the one he had found in Magog’s repository, an elegantly carved glass-fronted bookshelf, lined with leather-bound tomes. Most gratifyingly, though the heat of his fire-breathing was beginning to work its way through his muscles and bones, there was a large open fireplace with a stack of logs piled beside it. And alongside this, positioned to receive the fire’s warmth but not any sparks it might produce, lay a large camp bed. It was as if the room’s previous occupier had merely stepped out for a moment, forgetting to close the window, and the room had filled up with snow. But how long ago that had happened, he could only guess.
Pulling himself to his feet, Benfro struggled across the room to the fireplace. It was heavy going, as if he were wading through thick mud. His legs were weary beyond compare and every little effort reduced him to breathlessness. Slowly he built a pile of logs in the hearth. They were damp on the outside from the recent thaw, but brittle and dry beneath. All he needed was a little flame to get the thing started and he would have light and heat. But his stomach was empty.
Once more he looked around. The snow was all gone and the water it had turned into was draining steadily away in the direction of a wooden door set into the wall on the far side of the room. He hadn’t noticed this before, but it was the only way in or out. The window was far too small for his bulk. There was nothing to eat or drink in the room. He could have opened the window, scooped more snow from the sill – it was piling up against the glass nicely – but somehow he couldn’t bring himself to eat more. He was hungry beyond belief and tired beyond reason. All he wanted to do was lie somewhere warm and sleep. He didn’t much care about the damp. Breathing in, he tried to squeeze his stomach, to produce just a tiny flame. He broke some of the smaller logs up into dry kindling, splitting them down and down with his talons until they were little more than tapers. He blew on them, hope desperate to win out against reason.
Nothing.
Dispirited, he rolled over until his back was against the inglenook inside the fireplace and stared at the logs. All he wanted was a fire; was that so much to ask? He didn’t care how he had got here, or even where here was. He couldn’t even worry about how he was going to get back to Corwen’s clearing, his home. He just wanted to see flames leaping from the wood, feel their true heat filling the room. He just wanted to sleep.
The crackling noise woke him. He had not dreamed and could not know how long he had been asleep. The light dancing in his eyes confused him at first. Daylight wasn’t meant to shift and shimmer so. Slowly he opened his lids and focused on the fire blazing in the hearth. It had not consumed much of the wood he had placed there. Bemused but not ungrateful, he fed it some more and basked in the welcome heat.
The fire spread light through the room, turning the window pane into a slab of black slashed across at a strange angle with white. He could see now that the walls were hewn from rock. The skill of whoever had carved the stone was evident in the fireplace, which was large enou
gh to sit in but whose chimney narrowed quickly, allowing the smoke easy escape but trapping the fire’s heat. Overhead, the ceiling rose into a vault whose point, nestling in flickering shadow, was situated over the centre of the room. Directly beneath it, the chair and reading table were positioned to allow both a view out of the window and to receive warmth from the fire.
The bookcase was a huge piece of carved ornamentation, quite unlike anything Benfro had seen in his life. Black as the night, it shone where the firelight struck its ornate fretwork. The bottom half of it was split into three hinged doors with three thick drawers above them. On top of this were eight shelves, each filled with large leather-bound books. He wondered why they had not been damaged by the snow, or even by its recent melting, but a slight reflection gave the reason away. There were two doors, glazed with huge sheets of flawless glass and framed in the same dark carved wood, only so thinly as to be almost invisible.
Benfro stared at all this for a long time, concentrating on just breathing in and out. He still had no strength to explore, even though his curiosity was piqued. He would have done anything for some food. The warmth that had spread through him after breathing the fire had now faded, leaving only the pit of his stomach, abused and empty, for company. Stripped bare, it couldn’t even gurgle and groan. At least the wood on the fire seemed to be burning steadily. Although the bed was only feet away, he had not the energy to clamber on to it. He was as comfortable as he would ever be, slumped in the inglenook. It was just a matter of waiting until his strength returned.
And then what? He had no idea where he was, except that it was high up. He wasn’t sure how he had come here either, although there was something about the Llinellau he knew he should be remembering. He tried to see them, fully expecting there to be a major intersection at the point where the chair and table were arranged in the centre of the room. There was nothing, or at least there was nothing he could see.
