The Rose Cord

by J. D. Oswald

  An evil glint flickered in the dead dragon’s eyes, and what might once have been a smile twitched his twisted mouth, thin and cold with wicked glee.

  ‘Now, you’ve work to do. There is no escape, apprentice. We are joined in a way that cannot be broken. You are my tool and I will use you to rebuild my strength.’

  Benfro fought hard against the implacable force that compelled him to sift the jewels and separate them in cruel isolation. His senses sharpened with time until he could hear the wails of anguish as he ripped apart friends, lovers, husbands and wives, parents and children, separating them to a life after death of torment and an inexorable draining away to nothing. He wept for them even as his hands worked away.

  Then he found Meirionydd.

  She didn’t fight him as he lifted her soft-white gems. Instead she talked to him in that quiet calm voice that he remembered and loved second only to his mother’s.

  ‘He has a power over you, Benfro – that much you know. But it works both ways.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The link between you is a powerful thing. With it he can control you in your dreams, make you do things which I know you don’t want to do. But you can use that link to compel him too. Especially now that he’s weak.’

  ‘But he’s so powerful. He knows so much and controls it all with such ease. How can I hope to compete with such a strong mind?’

  ‘By being true to yourself, Benfro. Magog didn’t create you; he only moulded you. He had nothing to do with the first fifteen years of your life. If anyone’s responsible for that, then it’s us; Sir Frynwy, Ynys Môn, your mother and I. Even Frecknock has had more influence on you than this insane remnant. Remember her, remember us all. That’s the key to your redemption.’

  Tears came to Benfro’s dreaming eyes as he found the last of Meirionydd’s jewels.

  ‘I don’t want to do this.’

  ‘Then don’t do it,’ she replied.

  He stood up, confusion surrounding him, his mind a flurry of images and memories. He could see his mother standing at the cottage door and calling his name. He sat in the corner of the great hall listening to the measured tones of Sir Frynwy as he told, once again, the legend of Gog and Magog and Ammorgwm the Fair. He dived into the dark brown waters of the river, hearing the advice shouted by Ynys Môn as he watched proudly from the bank. He ran home through the bushes and trees, along paths only he knew, eyes streaming tears and ears still burning at the taunts and abuse hurled at him by Frecknock.

  ‘It’s no use, apprentice,’ came the voice of Magog. ‘You can’t escape me.’

  ‘You won’t have me. I swear it!’ Benfro shouted, writhing against the force that held him. Twin pains hit him hard. One burned in his head, an unimaginable blossoming of white and red and orange. The other coursed through his left wing, stabbing up to the knot in his back and spreading to his shoulder. With the last of his remaining wits he focused on the damage to his wing. It was a real thing, a solid fact, an anchor. He could feel the ground digging into his back, a rock lodged painfully against a sprained joint. His head on fire, he rammed himself hard against it. Pain blossomed from his wing as something went pop, but it was a clean, honest pain. It dragged him from the repository, his last vision of the place white jewels tumbling from his grasp and back to the too-small pile at his feet. And then, screaming in agony, he woke up.

  Errol stared at Martha’s face, drinking in every last detail. She had changed in the year and more that had passed since his mother’s wedding, that dreadful night when they had planned to run away together. She was older, seemed more mature. Her eyes reflected a depth of experience he couldn’t begin to fathom. And there was something else about her.

  ‘Your hair,’ he said, his voice little more than a whisper. ‘It’s short.’

  ‘It’s nice to see you too, Errol Ramsbottom,’ she said. And before he could be certain they were tears forming in the corners of her eyes, she swept him up into a great hug. His ribs creaked, and the point in his chest where the queen had stabbed him flared as if someone had poured boiling water on to his heart. He tried not to wince, wanting nothing more than for their embrace to last for ever, but something in his manner must have given him away. Martha released him, slowly lowering him back to the ground.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That was thoughtless of me. But why did you let them hurt you so?’

  ‘I didn’t seem to have much choice at the time,’ Errol said. He had begun to take in his surroundings. They were in a stone-walled chamber, where he didn’t know. The ceiling was vaulted, the apex of each arch hidden by an ornate carving. Following the arches down, he could see more decoration cut into the stone. And throughout the carvings were unmistakable signs of vandalism, the removal of all dragon imagery.

  ‘We’re still in the Neuadd,’ he said, and his euphoria at being alive turned instantly to terrible dread. He hadn’t escaped after all.

  ‘The soldiers dumped you here,’ Martha said in a matter-of-fact voice. She was running her hands over his chest, feeling his ribs and the narrow slit of a wound over his heart. ‘The queen told them to cut off your head and display it on the north gate. I persuaded them not to.’

  Errol was going to ask how, but he was knocked back by a wave of sensation. It wasn’t pain, far from it. He felt like he had been squatting down and had stood up too quickly. Everything faded yet somehow intensified at the same time. He was aware that he was looking at the room, but he couldn’t register any of the details his eyes were seeing. And then slowly everything seeped back to normal. Except that now when he breathed his chest didn’t creak and groan. He couldn’t feel his cracked bones grinding against each other. And the wound in his chest felt like just a memory.

  Amazed, he looked down. There was a neat short scar showing through the tear in his shirt. He touched it and it felt old.

  ‘What did you do?’

  Martha just smiled in that way he had always found so annoying. She was busy untying the messy bandages that had been wrapped around his ankles. As the wraps came off, so a sour rotting odour filled the small chamber. Errol tried not to gag even as he realized that it was his own flesh that was putrid. In all the pain of the last few days he had hardly noticed as the sensation had ebbed away from his lower legs. Now there was no feeling there at all.

  ‘Maggots,’ Martha said.

  ‘Is it that bad?’ Errol asked, wondering if he would ever walk again.

  ‘No, Errol,’ Martha said. ‘We need to find some. They’ll eat the rotten flesh away, clean out the wound so that I can help heal it. I can’t do anything more for you here.’

  ‘Then I’m lost,’ Errol said. ‘I can’t walk. You can escape though, Martha. Go quickly before someone comes.’

  ‘I can look after myself,’ Martha said. ‘And you don’t need to walk, silly; just go home. Hennas will look after you.’

  ‘Home?’ Errol asked. ‘How? Oh.’ He blushed at how foolish he had been. So happy to see Martha, so amazed at the power she wielded with such confidence, he had completely forgotten about the lines. But even as he remembered them, so too he remembered his old doubts and uncertainties. He could feel for the lines, see something of the places they went, but he had never mastered their use in the way Martha had. She seemed to step from place to place with ease. He could only see the infinite possibilities, each one calling him with equal force. When his life had depended on it, he had walked the lines without a thought, but that was the problem: if he thought about it, he couldn’t seem to do it.

  ‘Remember Jagged Leap,’ Martha said. ‘Remember Sir Radnor. Call to him if it helps. He’s sure to answer. But do it quickly; more guards are coming.’

  Errol let the lines flood into his vision. They were everywhere in this place, as if the building had been designed to channel them towards the throne. For a long while he was drawn to its dark brooding presence, fascinated by its seemingly limitless power and the susurrus of uncountable voices that echoed around it. They didn’t sp
eak any language he could understand, or maybe they spoke all languages; their jabbering was relentless, numbing and yet strangely compelling.

  ‘Not the throne, Errol,’ Martha said. ‘It was never meant for you.’ And Errol realized that he had been seconds from travelling straight there, right into the lap of the queen.

  ‘Look outwards,’ Martha said. ‘Look for Sir Radnor.’

  Errol tried. He imagined the rock at Jagged Leap, building a picture in his mind. He remembered the sound of the water as it splashed over the rocks, the smell of the trees in the warm summer sun, the feel of the grass beneath him and the gentle breeze. Somewhere along the lines it was there. In a million million possibilities, one was the right place. The place he needed to be. Sir Radnor, he thought. Help me, please.

  ‘Treachery! Guards, to me!’ The voice shocked Errol out of his meditation. He looked up to see Inquisitor Melyn at the door to the chamber. His face was red with rage, and as he stepped forward he conjured up a blade of pure white energy in one hand, hurled a ball of flame with the other.

  Martha stood between Errol and the inquisitor. She lifted her hand almost casually, and the flame exploded as if it had hit a glass wall.

  ‘Go now, Errol,’ she said. ‘I’ll follow. I found you twice already. Another time won’t be hard.’

  The inquisitor was almost upon her now, and Errol watched in paralysed terror as more guards appeared in the doorway and spread out along the walls to surround them.

  ‘I can’t leave you here,’ he protested.

  ‘You can’t help me by being here,’ Martha said. ‘And I’m not leaving until you’ve gone. So go.’

  There was such force in her words that Errol found himself reaching out for the lines without thinking. He knew where home was and how to get there. It was as easy as sliding from one room to the next. But as he faded out of the chamber in the Neuadd the last thing he saw was Martha face to face with the inquisitor and surrounded by a dozen warrior priests.

  ‘Martha!’ he screamed, but all around him was blackness. He felt weak and weary, as if the magic that had restored his ribs and healed his wounds in moments was now taking back the weeks from him. He could feel himself slipping into unconsciousness, but he had to make sure he arrived home. Lose control in the lines, and he would be dissipated all over Gwlad. With the last of his strength Errol re-formed the image of Jagged Leap in his mind and cast out towards it.

  Something pushed him away.

  ‘It’s not safe.’ Sir Radnor’s voice boomed in his head. ‘You must go somewhere else.’ And with the dragon’s last word Errol felt himself pushed in a direction he hadn’t realized existed. It was like falling and standing still at the same time, a nauseating wrenching of his mind. The darkness spun and he felt like he was going to be sick. And then he was lying on dry grass and heather. There was a rich spicy aroma about the place, and a fire crackled warmly beside him.

  ‘Ahh, there you are,’ a voice said in Draigiaith. Errol tried to look, wanted to see who had spoken, but a wave of fatigue washed over him. He couldn’t open his eyes, and he no longer had the strength to fight. Finally defeated, he surrendered himself to sleep.

  26

  The mother tree takes many guises, it is said. Some dragons claim to have travelled to the centre of the forest and seen it, standing in all its improbable grandiosity as tall as a mountain and home to all the beasts of the world. Others tell tales of a strange lonely creature, as beautiful as the full moon, coming to them in the hour of their greatest need. Yet more ascribe unusual behaviour by familiar forest animals to its presence, while there are those who swear that they have been touched by its magic even though they cannot recall seeing anything unusual at all.

  Given the nature of dragon superstition and the lengths to which some of their kind will go in seeking the tree, it is hardly surprising that a wide range of hallucinations has come to be associated with its presence. Almost any event can be given undue meaning if it coincides with a random change in fortune.

  Father Charmoise, Dragons’ Tales

  There was nothing but pain. It was the same overwhelming debilitation he had felt when he had tried to throw away the jewel, only multiplied a thousand times. His muscles twitched and spasmed and his head was so full it felt like it was going to explode. He could see only red, with the occasional flash of white. Noise roared in his ears as if every forest sound were magnified beyond belief. He could hear the desperate singing of morning birds as if they were inside him and clamouring to get out. The roar of the stream over rocks was like a thunderstorm trapped in a cellar. Even his hearts banged away like battering rams at a castle gate.

  Everything hurt. His skin prickled and burned at the slightest touch. His muscles were cramped and filled with tiny hot knives. His joints ached and swelled, bursting with acid pus. His stomach churned and roiled as if it were gorged with real fire. And above everything, above the wrecking of his being, he could hear a strong strident voice laughing as it spoke. Magog.

  ‘I will take you now, Sir Benfro of the Borrowed Wings. Here, in this desolate place, your soul is forfeit.’

  Benfro tried to fight. He tried to find his aura, to grip the cord that joined him with the object of his destruction. But he was too weak and the pain was too great. He could feel himself slipping away towards the darkness. There was nothing he could do any more. He had used up all his strength just breaking free of the dream, and Magog had been waiting for him anyway. The dead dragon might use his body to destroy mankind, but it would not be Benfro who avenged the villagers for the atrocity inflicted upon them. A pit of despair opened beneath him, and he fell, all sense of self being stripped away.

  And then something grabbed him, yanking him back. A voice he recognized but couldn’t place rang clear through the fog of his pain.

  ‘Fight him, Benfro. You must not let him win.’

  Grabbing the voice like it was a hand extended to save him from drowning, something in his mind clicked. The pain subsided, fading away with a howl that died like a wolf call on the mountain wind. With a gasp he was awake. He could see again, sense his aura around him, ragged and weak but nonetheless intact. The rose cord stretched from his forehead, fading into the distance. He reached up for it, clasping it with his aura and squeezing hard. There was no point trying to pull it away. He knew it was fixed to him with something far more potent than his own magic, but there was no reason why he should let it leach the life out of him.

  As he squeezed, so he could feel the strength returning to him, and with it the will to live. He couldn’t understand how he had fallen into such misery now that his depression was lifted. It was as if that had been a different person, indistinct and alien to him. With a last effort he extruded a length of his aura and tied it, with one of the locking slip-knots that Ynys Môn had taught him, around the line that connected him to the diffuse spirit of Magog.

  Melyn stared at the slight girl standing over Errol’s prone body. He knew her from somewhere, he was sure. Perhaps she was a palace servant, but it was of no matter. He would deal with her just as soon as he had seen to the boy. How Errol had survived Beulah’s knife he didn’t know, but he wouldn’t last long against a blade of light.

  Shouting for his warrior priests to join him, the inquisitor stepped into the chamber. He called up his blade and for good measure conjured a ball of flame which he threw at the girl. She deflected it with a casual wave of her hand, and in that moment he recognized her – the girl of Errol’s dreams, the one he had worked so hard to erase from the boy’s memory, the one he had tried to read at the wedding party, who had intrigued him then with her innate ability.

  ‘You can’t hope to escape,’ he said to both of them as a dozen warrior priests ran in through the door, fanning out to encircle the pair. Then, right in front of his eyes, Errol faded away. There was a flash in Melyn’s inner vision as the lines flared out from the spot where the boy had lain. And then he was gone.

  ‘It looks like he has.’ A whimsical smile s
pread across the girl’s face.

  ‘Do you think yourself so superior that you dare mock the Inquisitor of the Order of the High Ffrydd?’ He wanted to distract her, play for time to get his men close enough to grab her. He was certain that she shared Errol’s secret, and he was beginning to understand something of how it might work, but he needed to break her down, to cut open her mind and find out just how she functioned.

  ‘You worry so much over such a little thing,’ the girl said. She was surrounded by warrior priests now but didn’t seem overly concerned. Directly behind her, Sergeant Oenfach stepped forward, blade of light in one hand, the hilt of his heavy fighting sword raised in the other, ready to deal a concussing blow. Melyn expected to see her topple, but something else happened entirely. First the warrior stopped. His blade faltered, sputtering like a candle out of wax. Then he fell to his knees, light spilling from his mouth and eyes, sword clattering to the floor. He screamed, but no sound escaped from him, only light. Melyn watched, equally horrified and astounded as the sergeant dissolved in an explosion of the Grym, his life radiating out along the lines in all directions until there was nothing left of him at all. The girl hadn’t even looked round.

  ‘What did you do to him?’ Melyn asked.

  ‘Me?’ the girl said. ‘Nothing. He was the one trying to bend the Grym to his will.’

  ‘Oenfach was a skilled magician, a trained warrior priest,’ Melyn said. ‘What just happened to him? Where is he?’

  ‘He took from the Grym; it took him back. He’s everywhere, lighting up the whole of Gwlad.’

  The inquisitor sized up the slight girl in front of him. She seemed completely immune to his mental probing, her mind as closed as the vaults deep beneath the Neuadd. Neither was she affected by the aura of fear with which he was filling the room. Any non-adept within a hundred paces of the hall should be quaking if not actually incapacitated by terror at the moment, yet she stood before him unafraid, unchallenged, mocking.