The Broken World, page 12
At first he thought he had gone too far. At the mention of thrones the urgent chattering had stopped, total silence once more returning to the hall. Iolwen had been standing slightly behind him, as if afraid to be seen by her people, but he pulled her forward, putting his arm protectively around her shoulder. Iolo slept on in her arms, a contented look on his face, oblivious to all. And then a shout went up from the back of the hall.
‘Long live Princess Iolwen!’
It was followed by another, and another. Soon the whole hall seemed to be chanting her name. Then Dafydd heard the chant change.
‘Long live Prince Dafydd. Long live Prince Iolo!’
He had not realized quite how tense he had been. The whole mad adventure had hinged on this moment, on being accepted by the people of a country with whom his family had been at war more often than not. But he didn’t need Ballah’s lessons in magic to know that these people were genuinely pleased to see him, ecstatic to see their princess returned and in raptures that her son should have waited until he reached Twin Kingdoms soil before being born.
The day passed in a whirl from then. All the noble houses of Abervenn presented themselves, pledging allegiance, men, arms, supplies – anything to help depose the hated Queen Beulah and her puppet duke. From what they promised, Dafydd got the impression they could not have sent any men at all to join the queen’s army, and he said as much to Lord Ansey when they finally sat down to eat that evening.
‘My son is captain of a troop of a hundred men,’ Ansey said, his face grave. ‘I had no option but to send them. The queen would have questioned my allegiance otherwise, and I would have ended up like poor old Angor. But my demesne can field an army twice that size still, and good fighting men too, not the old and infirm. Beulah’s army is vast, but disorganized and ill disciplined. She has split it over two fronts, Dina and Tochers. Messengers take days to cover the ground between the two, and the generals have little idea of what is going on. If I send word to my son, he and his men will simply desert and come back here.’
‘They would be better where they are right now,’ Dafydd said. ‘We have more than enough men to cause havoc with the queen’s supply lines. And far better to have allies in the opposing army when we do meet them, as will surely happen.’
‘I don’t know. Most of the peasants have little appetite for war. Only the warrior priests keep them in line. An army that marches on fear is likely to fall apart under pressure.’
‘Truly spoken, but we would have trouble enough from the warrior priests alone, if they decided to attack us. I don’t relish going head to head with Inquisitor Melyn in a fight.’
‘Me neither.’ Lord Ansey shuddered as if the thought of the inquisitor was abhorrent to him.
‘Which army is he with?’ Dafydd asked.
‘Who?’
‘Melyn. Surely he must be overseeing the whole campaign.’
‘I’m not sure. He wasn’t with the queen when she came here, and he’s not at Candlehall. He’s probably riding back and forth between Tochers and Dina trying to impose some order on the chaos. That would be the sort of thing he’d do. Never trusts a lieutenant, does Melyn. Always has to do it himself.’
Dafydd tuned out Lord Ansey’s moans about the inquisitor and his warrior priests, his mind skirting the edges of a new possibility.
‘So neither the queen nor Melyn are at Candlehall.’
‘What? No. It’s a ghost city at the moment. All the nobles are either with the queen or at the front.’
‘And what sort of military presence is there?’
‘Very little, really. Mostly semi-retired soldiers. A few palace guards. Here! You’re not thinking …?’
‘We don’t need an army to disrupt supplies; everything comes from here anyway. If Abervenn decides not to send food up the Gwy, then it won’t get to Dina. That’s half of the army cut off at the knees. Meanwhile we can ship men up the Abheinn in barges. Candlehall might even surrender without a fight.’
Errol had never seen so many tents. They stretched for what looked like miles over the wide flat plain to the east of the city, right up to the distant blurred green edge of the forest. There were marquees large enough to hold whole villages and smaller tents for single families. Some travellers had no tents at all, taking their chances with the weather and simply laying their bedrolls around communal fires. He wondered how anybody could find where they had slept the night before.
At first the way had been clear and easy to move along, the camp neatly arranged in squares with wide avenues between them, but as he rode deeper into the site, so chaos took hold. People had arrived in groups and taken over as much space as they needed with scant regard for planning. There was obvious rivalry too – in the decorations, for space and for hawking pitches. Petty fights were breaking out all over the place, squads of soldiers constantly on the move, breaking heads and keeping order as best they could.
He thought he would have a hard time locating the circus, but Errol soon found there was little else being talked about – at least among the women washing clothes in the sluggish stream that wound its way through the camp.
‘All the circuses set up under the town walls, lassie,’ one florid lady told him as she slapped wet cloth against a shiny rock. ‘But there’s only one worth looking at. Old Loghtan’s got hisself a new dragon, so they say. Even the king’s gonna come see it when he opens the festival.’
‘And when’s that?’ Errol saw the look of disbelief on the washerwoman’s face, as if no one could be so stupid as not to know. It was a look he had grown accustomed to as he felt his way around Llanwennog society. ‘It’s just that I’ve been on the road so long, I’ve lost track of the days. You know how it is.’
The woman still looked doubtful, but she answered anyway. ‘Day after tomorrow’s when. But don’t think you’ll find any tickets for sale. Them had all gone before the wagon wheels stopped turning.’
Errol thanked her and led his horse away from the stream back towards the grey stone walls of the city. They loomed over the vast camp, growing ever higher as he came nearer. He had no great desire to enter; the city held too many memories of betrayal, torture, pain. And somewhere in there old King Ballah sat on his throne, casting his mind over the thoughts of his people, looking for enemies. Errol remembered the touch of that mind; he didn’t want to feel it again.
Loghtan’s circus was exactly where the washerwoman had said it would be. Quite the largest canvas marquee he had ever seen, of alternating red and white stripes, soared above the city wall at its highest. Smaller tents were arranged around it in groups, and as Errol approached he could see queues of people waiting to go inside.
‘Roll up! Roll up! Come and see the bearded lady. Watch the snake man dance with his poisonous brothers and sisters. Marvel at the fish-boy, born with gills and forced to live underwater all his life.’
Errol felt himself compelled to go in. He almost forgot his horse, following obediently at his shoulder, and was pulling out his purse when he recognized the magic. It was a simple spell, crudely worked but effective if the length of the lines was anything to go by. He shook his head, dispelling the last of it, and walked on.
The nearer he got to the circus, the more certain he was that it was the one he had seen just before Benfro’s capture. He thought he recognized some of the people, and the wagons seemed familiar, but it was impossible to be sure. The circus camp was pitched between the huge tent and the city wall, the wagons forming a tight wall, everything fenced off from view with wooden boards. These were brightly painted, bearing slogans, pictures of wild animals performing tricks and people in daft costumes. One particularly large picture caught his attention. It showed a huge dragon, its wings outstretched, soaring through the air. Another smaller dragon sat on the ground watching. The words, painted in letters as big as his head, read, THE GREAT MAGOG AND GOG. SEE THE FLYING DRAGONS OF LEGEND!
Errol stood back from the board. It was brighter than those around it, obviously newly done. And it was fixed to the side of a large wagon. There had been only one big wagon in the circus, the one Griselda had shown him, where the dragon was kept. The dragon. Just one. And now they had two. It had to be the right circus; it was too much of a coincidence.
There were a few people milling about, most of them heading towards the queues for the freak show. Hoping that no one was watching, Errol moved as close to the boards as possible.
‘Benfro. Are you there?’ He spoke as loudly as he dared, looking constantly back and forth to check he wasn’t attracting too much attention. There was no answer.
‘Benfro. Please. If you’re in there, answer me. It’s Errol. I’ve come to get you out.’
Still no answer. He tried to sense with his mind, feeling the different thoughts and emotions nearby. But there were so many people, and they were so excited, he could scarcely distinguish anything in the noise. The residual magic coming from nearby didn’t help either.
‘Well, you’re a pretty thing, aren’t you.’
Errol spun around at the voice, almost shrieking when he recognized the man who had spoken. It was the same man who had accosted them on the road weeks earlier, along with the gold trader Tibbits. The man who had escaped before Benfro could catch him.
‘You wanting to see our dragons now, missy? Well, tickets are all sold out, but Tegwin here can get you inside. If you’ve something for him in return.’
Errol could smell the sour beer on his breath. Tegwin put one hand out, leaning against the boards and effectively blocking his escape.
‘Pretty little thing like you’s got plenty to trade. Come all the way to the big city, ain’t you. Well Tegwin’ll show you around. Oh yes.’ With his free hand he reached up to brush Errol’s hair, then the side of his face.
Errol backed away, finding himself pinned against the boards as Tegwin reached down to clasp his waist. He felt strangely helpless, and then felt once more the touch of magic. It was far more subtle than the coercion spell that made otherwise sane people pay money to look at freaks. Errol could only assume that Tegwin didn’t know what he was doing, what innate skill he possessed. No doubt many a maid had fallen for his inexplicable charm before, but Errol was no maid. He pushed Tegwin hard in the chest and at the same time pushed hard with his mind.
‘Leave me alone, you disgusting man. Get out of my way.’
Tegwin staggered, tripped over his own feet and fell hard on to his backside. Errol ignored him. He knew that he had found the right place now, knew too how Benfro had been caught. It was all his fault, and he was just going to have to find a way to help him escape.
8
It is said that King Balwen fashioned himself an orb of clear glass and imbued it with such magic that, when correctly used, it would show the location of any other mage within a hundred leagues. Such a device might seem invaluable at a time when servants of the Wolf were striving to bring darkness to Gwlad, but the glass orb was rendered almost useless by the curious defect it had of identifying dragons as if they too were powerful mages. Since in those days dragons numbered far more than the few hundred surviving today, their presence in the orb obscured Balwen’s true quarry. Some say the Wolf purposely gifted dragons with their innate magical ability so as to thwart Balwen in his task.
Historians and royal scholars alike have searched for this fabled orb, but if it ever truly existed it has long since been destroyed.
Barrod Sheepshead, A History of the House of Balwen
The excitement of the show was contagious. Though he hated the circus, hated Loghtan and his whip, hated the drugs that forced him to do whatever the circus master told him, still Benfro found himself caught up in the frenzy. He had trained for this, however reluctantly, and he found himself anxious to do as good a job as possible. And he was nervous too, surrounded by men who had so far not tried to kill him and yet who might decide he was no longer worth having around if he should fail to perform as expected.
It was like a disturbed anthill, people running back and forth. Men wheeled heavy wooden apparatus in through the large opening at the back of the tent, herded animals dressed in elaborate costumes, shouted instructions to each other in hoarse barks. Soldiers in elegant uniforms assigned to protect the king loitered, got in the way and accosted the circus performers. Benfro and the old dragon had been forced to humiliate themselves in front of one captain, Loghtan making both of them grovel, bow, roll on to their backs and perform numerous other demeaning antics to prove that they were both under his total control.
‘You’re on next. Get over to the big top and wait for the master to call you.’
Benfro watched as Tegwin sorted through the large ring of keys until he found the right one, unlocking the wagon and throwing the door open. Unable to do anything but comply, he stepped out on to the grass, stretching his wings in the night air. The old dragon followed, moving stiffly, stooped by years in the cramped cage, and together they walked across to the marquee.
The tent was lit from within by hundreds of covered lamps, so that from outside it glowed like some monstrous striped grub oozing its way across the plain towards the city. Benfro stared up at the black shadows of the walls, feeling a terrible sense of dread sweat out of the stones. Overhead low cloud reflected the endless fires and torches lining the rough avenues running through the mass of tents, as if the whole night burned. It was a terrible place, a terrible scene, like something from the mythology of men. The Wolf’s lair.
Waiting by the open mouth of the entrance to the tent, Benfro looked into the circus ring and watched as Griselda performed her act with the lioncats. The creatures were thin and weak, but they too seemed fired up by the excitement of performing to such a large audience. The area around the ring was packed solid with people arranged on tiered seating that creaked and shook as they moved about. The tent had always been empty when he had practised before. Filled, it seemed a much smaller place; he wondered whether he could fly the circuit he had learned without his wing tips hitting some of the audience.
Part of him asked why he should care if a few men were killed or injured; his wings wouldn’t be damaged. But Loghtan wouldn’t allow him to harm anyone. And if he did, the soldiers who stood at strategic points about the ring would soon stop him. Benfro had watched them earlier, pushing their way through the circus, checking all the wagons and generally getting in the way. They were skilled in the brutal magic of men. Just as bad as Melyn and his warrior priests.
‘You’re on. Hurry!’ Griselda’s shout woke Benfro from his stupor. She dragged the two lioncats back towards their cage, their reluctance the first sign of anything resembling rebellion he had seen in the creatures. It was as if the ring was the only place they could be alive; everything else was just a living death. But he didn’t have time to feel sorry for them. Loghtan’s cry carrying over the noisy applause was the cue he had to obey.
‘And now, ladies and gentlemen. From the depths of time, the most ancient of mythologies, I am proud, no honoured, to bring you the brothers Magog and Gog.’
The old dragon lumbered into the tent ahead of him. The applause petered out and excited murmuring took its place. Benfro counted twenty twin beats of his hearts, then followed into the warm muggy interior of the tent.
Silence.
All eyes were on him, and all voices stilled as he stepped from the shadows and into the ring. Even though the drugs Loghtan fed him had robbed him of much of his finer senses, still Benfro could feel the mixture of fear and awe he inspired in these people. Smiling inwardly, he looked around the ring for the royal box, where the king sat. He located the tiny grey-haired man and bowed deeply as he had been ordered. Then he stretched his wings as wide as he dared, took one step, two, three, and leaped into the air.
Some of the audience shrieked in fear, some clapped nervously, some scrambled out of their seats and tried to escape the battering they were convinced was to be their fate. But once he was aloft, Benfro found he had just enough space to fly the circuit he had practised. He could feel the closeness of the audience through his wing tips, but they never quite collided.
There was little to his act beyond flying around the ring while Loghtan told a very inaccurate version of the story of Gog and Magog. The old dragon ran along below him, leaping into the air and gliding short distances with his stubby wings, but Benfro knew no one was watching that sad display. All eyes were on him. He stared back, particularly at the king, whose presence made this such a special performance. Ballah was a small man, old and grey in a way that reminded Benfro of Father Gideon rather than Inquisitor Melyn. But the king exuded a raw cruel power, and he met Benfro’s gaze with a fierceness that forced him to look away.
And then something else caught his eye, a sudden motion up in the shadows at the top of the tiers of seats. His circuit took him away from whatever it was for a while, and when he could look back again it had gone. But so too had the soldier who had been standing there. Puzzled, Benfro scanned the shadows, everywhere seeing dark shapes moving like thieves. Concentrating harder, trying to force his thoughts to clear, he almost flew into one of the great tree trunks that were the central supports of the tent. Making a quick correction, he swung tightly around the end of the tent, and as he did so his peripheral vision showed him what looked for all the world like Captain Osgal.
Astonished, Benfro almost fell to the ground. A great cry of alarm spread through the audience as he beat inelegantly at the air, trying to retain height without hitting anyone. He could feel the closeness of fleshy bodies, just inches from his wing tips as he struggled to remain aloft, then turned so that he was once more heading down the long side of the oval, past the elevated box where the king sat. And finally he was safe again, moving forward in controlled flight.
Benfro started on his next circuit of the tent, his wings beginning to ache. He desperately wanted to stretch them out and glide. But he was bound by Loghtan’s drugs and could do nothing but fly and watch as one by one the king’s guard disappeared into the shadows. Or to be more accurate, just disappeared. Even through his muddled senses Benfro could feel powerful magic going on, and dragon magic at that. But Loghtan, the king, the audience, even the old dragon leaping around beneath him seemed oblivious to it all.
‘Long live Princess Iolwen!’
It was followed by another, and another. Soon the whole hall seemed to be chanting her name. Then Dafydd heard the chant change.
‘Long live Prince Dafydd. Long live Prince Iolo!’
He had not realized quite how tense he had been. The whole mad adventure had hinged on this moment, on being accepted by the people of a country with whom his family had been at war more often than not. But he didn’t need Ballah’s lessons in magic to know that these people were genuinely pleased to see him, ecstatic to see their princess returned and in raptures that her son should have waited until he reached Twin Kingdoms soil before being born.
The day passed in a whirl from then. All the noble houses of Abervenn presented themselves, pledging allegiance, men, arms, supplies – anything to help depose the hated Queen Beulah and her puppet duke. From what they promised, Dafydd got the impression they could not have sent any men at all to join the queen’s army, and he said as much to Lord Ansey when they finally sat down to eat that evening.
‘My son is captain of a troop of a hundred men,’ Ansey said, his face grave. ‘I had no option but to send them. The queen would have questioned my allegiance otherwise, and I would have ended up like poor old Angor. But my demesne can field an army twice that size still, and good fighting men too, not the old and infirm. Beulah’s army is vast, but disorganized and ill disciplined. She has split it over two fronts, Dina and Tochers. Messengers take days to cover the ground between the two, and the generals have little idea of what is going on. If I send word to my son, he and his men will simply desert and come back here.’
‘They would be better where they are right now,’ Dafydd said. ‘We have more than enough men to cause havoc with the queen’s supply lines. And far better to have allies in the opposing army when we do meet them, as will surely happen.’
‘I don’t know. Most of the peasants have little appetite for war. Only the warrior priests keep them in line. An army that marches on fear is likely to fall apart under pressure.’
‘Truly spoken, but we would have trouble enough from the warrior priests alone, if they decided to attack us. I don’t relish going head to head with Inquisitor Melyn in a fight.’
‘Me neither.’ Lord Ansey shuddered as if the thought of the inquisitor was abhorrent to him.
‘Which army is he with?’ Dafydd asked.
‘Who?’
‘Melyn. Surely he must be overseeing the whole campaign.’
‘I’m not sure. He wasn’t with the queen when she came here, and he’s not at Candlehall. He’s probably riding back and forth between Tochers and Dina trying to impose some order on the chaos. That would be the sort of thing he’d do. Never trusts a lieutenant, does Melyn. Always has to do it himself.’
Dafydd tuned out Lord Ansey’s moans about the inquisitor and his warrior priests, his mind skirting the edges of a new possibility.
‘So neither the queen nor Melyn are at Candlehall.’
‘What? No. It’s a ghost city at the moment. All the nobles are either with the queen or at the front.’
‘And what sort of military presence is there?’
‘Very little, really. Mostly semi-retired soldiers. A few palace guards. Here! You’re not thinking …?’
‘We don’t need an army to disrupt supplies; everything comes from here anyway. If Abervenn decides not to send food up the Gwy, then it won’t get to Dina. That’s half of the army cut off at the knees. Meanwhile we can ship men up the Abheinn in barges. Candlehall might even surrender without a fight.’
Errol had never seen so many tents. They stretched for what looked like miles over the wide flat plain to the east of the city, right up to the distant blurred green edge of the forest. There were marquees large enough to hold whole villages and smaller tents for single families. Some travellers had no tents at all, taking their chances with the weather and simply laying their bedrolls around communal fires. He wondered how anybody could find where they had slept the night before.
At first the way had been clear and easy to move along, the camp neatly arranged in squares with wide avenues between them, but as he rode deeper into the site, so chaos took hold. People had arrived in groups and taken over as much space as they needed with scant regard for planning. There was obvious rivalry too – in the decorations, for space and for hawking pitches. Petty fights were breaking out all over the place, squads of soldiers constantly on the move, breaking heads and keeping order as best they could.
He thought he would have a hard time locating the circus, but Errol soon found there was little else being talked about – at least among the women washing clothes in the sluggish stream that wound its way through the camp.
‘All the circuses set up under the town walls, lassie,’ one florid lady told him as she slapped wet cloth against a shiny rock. ‘But there’s only one worth looking at. Old Loghtan’s got hisself a new dragon, so they say. Even the king’s gonna come see it when he opens the festival.’
‘And when’s that?’ Errol saw the look of disbelief on the washerwoman’s face, as if no one could be so stupid as not to know. It was a look he had grown accustomed to as he felt his way around Llanwennog society. ‘It’s just that I’ve been on the road so long, I’ve lost track of the days. You know how it is.’
The woman still looked doubtful, but she answered anyway. ‘Day after tomorrow’s when. But don’t think you’ll find any tickets for sale. Them had all gone before the wagon wheels stopped turning.’
Errol thanked her and led his horse away from the stream back towards the grey stone walls of the city. They loomed over the vast camp, growing ever higher as he came nearer. He had no great desire to enter; the city held too many memories of betrayal, torture, pain. And somewhere in there old King Ballah sat on his throne, casting his mind over the thoughts of his people, looking for enemies. Errol remembered the touch of that mind; he didn’t want to feel it again.
Loghtan’s circus was exactly where the washerwoman had said it would be. Quite the largest canvas marquee he had ever seen, of alternating red and white stripes, soared above the city wall at its highest. Smaller tents were arranged around it in groups, and as Errol approached he could see queues of people waiting to go inside.
‘Roll up! Roll up! Come and see the bearded lady. Watch the snake man dance with his poisonous brothers and sisters. Marvel at the fish-boy, born with gills and forced to live underwater all his life.’
Errol felt himself compelled to go in. He almost forgot his horse, following obediently at his shoulder, and was pulling out his purse when he recognized the magic. It was a simple spell, crudely worked but effective if the length of the lines was anything to go by. He shook his head, dispelling the last of it, and walked on.
The nearer he got to the circus, the more certain he was that it was the one he had seen just before Benfro’s capture. He thought he recognized some of the people, and the wagons seemed familiar, but it was impossible to be sure. The circus camp was pitched between the huge tent and the city wall, the wagons forming a tight wall, everything fenced off from view with wooden boards. These were brightly painted, bearing slogans, pictures of wild animals performing tricks and people in daft costumes. One particularly large picture caught his attention. It showed a huge dragon, its wings outstretched, soaring through the air. Another smaller dragon sat on the ground watching. The words, painted in letters as big as his head, read, THE GREAT MAGOG AND GOG. SEE THE FLYING DRAGONS OF LEGEND!
Errol stood back from the board. It was brighter than those around it, obviously newly done. And it was fixed to the side of a large wagon. There had been only one big wagon in the circus, the one Griselda had shown him, where the dragon was kept. The dragon. Just one. And now they had two. It had to be the right circus; it was too much of a coincidence.
There were a few people milling about, most of them heading towards the queues for the freak show. Hoping that no one was watching, Errol moved as close to the boards as possible.
‘Benfro. Are you there?’ He spoke as loudly as he dared, looking constantly back and forth to check he wasn’t attracting too much attention. There was no answer.
‘Benfro. Please. If you’re in there, answer me. It’s Errol. I’ve come to get you out.’
Still no answer. He tried to sense with his mind, feeling the different thoughts and emotions nearby. But there were so many people, and they were so excited, he could scarcely distinguish anything in the noise. The residual magic coming from nearby didn’t help either.
‘Well, you’re a pretty thing, aren’t you.’
Errol spun around at the voice, almost shrieking when he recognized the man who had spoken. It was the same man who had accosted them on the road weeks earlier, along with the gold trader Tibbits. The man who had escaped before Benfro could catch him.
‘You wanting to see our dragons now, missy? Well, tickets are all sold out, but Tegwin here can get you inside. If you’ve something for him in return.’
Errol could smell the sour beer on his breath. Tegwin put one hand out, leaning against the boards and effectively blocking his escape.
‘Pretty little thing like you’s got plenty to trade. Come all the way to the big city, ain’t you. Well Tegwin’ll show you around. Oh yes.’ With his free hand he reached up to brush Errol’s hair, then the side of his face.
Errol backed away, finding himself pinned against the boards as Tegwin reached down to clasp his waist. He felt strangely helpless, and then felt once more the touch of magic. It was far more subtle than the coercion spell that made otherwise sane people pay money to look at freaks. Errol could only assume that Tegwin didn’t know what he was doing, what innate skill he possessed. No doubt many a maid had fallen for his inexplicable charm before, but Errol was no maid. He pushed Tegwin hard in the chest and at the same time pushed hard with his mind.
‘Leave me alone, you disgusting man. Get out of my way.’
Tegwin staggered, tripped over his own feet and fell hard on to his backside. Errol ignored him. He knew that he had found the right place now, knew too how Benfro had been caught. It was all his fault, and he was just going to have to find a way to help him escape.
8
It is said that King Balwen fashioned himself an orb of clear glass and imbued it with such magic that, when correctly used, it would show the location of any other mage within a hundred leagues. Such a device might seem invaluable at a time when servants of the Wolf were striving to bring darkness to Gwlad, but the glass orb was rendered almost useless by the curious defect it had of identifying dragons as if they too were powerful mages. Since in those days dragons numbered far more than the few hundred surviving today, their presence in the orb obscured Balwen’s true quarry. Some say the Wolf purposely gifted dragons with their innate magical ability so as to thwart Balwen in his task.
Historians and royal scholars alike have searched for this fabled orb, but if it ever truly existed it has long since been destroyed.
Barrod Sheepshead, A History of the House of Balwen
The excitement of the show was contagious. Though he hated the circus, hated Loghtan and his whip, hated the drugs that forced him to do whatever the circus master told him, still Benfro found himself caught up in the frenzy. He had trained for this, however reluctantly, and he found himself anxious to do as good a job as possible. And he was nervous too, surrounded by men who had so far not tried to kill him and yet who might decide he was no longer worth having around if he should fail to perform as expected.
It was like a disturbed anthill, people running back and forth. Men wheeled heavy wooden apparatus in through the large opening at the back of the tent, herded animals dressed in elaborate costumes, shouted instructions to each other in hoarse barks. Soldiers in elegant uniforms assigned to protect the king loitered, got in the way and accosted the circus performers. Benfro and the old dragon had been forced to humiliate themselves in front of one captain, Loghtan making both of them grovel, bow, roll on to their backs and perform numerous other demeaning antics to prove that they were both under his total control.
‘You’re on next. Get over to the big top and wait for the master to call you.’
Benfro watched as Tegwin sorted through the large ring of keys until he found the right one, unlocking the wagon and throwing the door open. Unable to do anything but comply, he stepped out on to the grass, stretching his wings in the night air. The old dragon followed, moving stiffly, stooped by years in the cramped cage, and together they walked across to the marquee.
The tent was lit from within by hundreds of covered lamps, so that from outside it glowed like some monstrous striped grub oozing its way across the plain towards the city. Benfro stared up at the black shadows of the walls, feeling a terrible sense of dread sweat out of the stones. Overhead low cloud reflected the endless fires and torches lining the rough avenues running through the mass of tents, as if the whole night burned. It was a terrible place, a terrible scene, like something from the mythology of men. The Wolf’s lair.
Waiting by the open mouth of the entrance to the tent, Benfro looked into the circus ring and watched as Griselda performed her act with the lioncats. The creatures were thin and weak, but they too seemed fired up by the excitement of performing to such a large audience. The area around the ring was packed solid with people arranged on tiered seating that creaked and shook as they moved about. The tent had always been empty when he had practised before. Filled, it seemed a much smaller place; he wondered whether he could fly the circuit he had learned without his wing tips hitting some of the audience.
Part of him asked why he should care if a few men were killed or injured; his wings wouldn’t be damaged. But Loghtan wouldn’t allow him to harm anyone. And if he did, the soldiers who stood at strategic points about the ring would soon stop him. Benfro had watched them earlier, pushing their way through the circus, checking all the wagons and generally getting in the way. They were skilled in the brutal magic of men. Just as bad as Melyn and his warrior priests.
‘You’re on. Hurry!’ Griselda’s shout woke Benfro from his stupor. She dragged the two lioncats back towards their cage, their reluctance the first sign of anything resembling rebellion he had seen in the creatures. It was as if the ring was the only place they could be alive; everything else was just a living death. But he didn’t have time to feel sorry for them. Loghtan’s cry carrying over the noisy applause was the cue he had to obey.
‘And now, ladies and gentlemen. From the depths of time, the most ancient of mythologies, I am proud, no honoured, to bring you the brothers Magog and Gog.’
The old dragon lumbered into the tent ahead of him. The applause petered out and excited murmuring took its place. Benfro counted twenty twin beats of his hearts, then followed into the warm muggy interior of the tent.
Silence.
All eyes were on him, and all voices stilled as he stepped from the shadows and into the ring. Even though the drugs Loghtan fed him had robbed him of much of his finer senses, still Benfro could feel the mixture of fear and awe he inspired in these people. Smiling inwardly, he looked around the ring for the royal box, where the king sat. He located the tiny grey-haired man and bowed deeply as he had been ordered. Then he stretched his wings as wide as he dared, took one step, two, three, and leaped into the air.
Some of the audience shrieked in fear, some clapped nervously, some scrambled out of their seats and tried to escape the battering they were convinced was to be their fate. But once he was aloft, Benfro found he had just enough space to fly the circuit he had practised. He could feel the closeness of the audience through his wing tips, but they never quite collided.
There was little to his act beyond flying around the ring while Loghtan told a very inaccurate version of the story of Gog and Magog. The old dragon ran along below him, leaping into the air and gliding short distances with his stubby wings, but Benfro knew no one was watching that sad display. All eyes were on him. He stared back, particularly at the king, whose presence made this such a special performance. Ballah was a small man, old and grey in a way that reminded Benfro of Father Gideon rather than Inquisitor Melyn. But the king exuded a raw cruel power, and he met Benfro’s gaze with a fierceness that forced him to look away.
And then something else caught his eye, a sudden motion up in the shadows at the top of the tiers of seats. His circuit took him away from whatever it was for a while, and when he could look back again it had gone. But so too had the soldier who had been standing there. Puzzled, Benfro scanned the shadows, everywhere seeing dark shapes moving like thieves. Concentrating harder, trying to force his thoughts to clear, he almost flew into one of the great tree trunks that were the central supports of the tent. Making a quick correction, he swung tightly around the end of the tent, and as he did so his peripheral vision showed him what looked for all the world like Captain Osgal.
Astonished, Benfro almost fell to the ground. A great cry of alarm spread through the audience as he beat inelegantly at the air, trying to retain height without hitting anyone. He could feel the closeness of fleshy bodies, just inches from his wing tips as he struggled to remain aloft, then turned so that he was once more heading down the long side of the oval, past the elevated box where the king sat. And finally he was safe again, moving forward in controlled flight.
Benfro started on his next circuit of the tent, his wings beginning to ache. He desperately wanted to stretch them out and glide. But he was bound by Loghtan’s drugs and could do nothing but fly and watch as one by one the king’s guard disappeared into the shadows. Or to be more accurate, just disappeared. Even through his muddled senses Benfro could feel powerful magic going on, and dragon magic at that. But Loghtan, the king, the audience, even the old dragon leaping around beneath him seemed oblivious to it all.
