The Broken World, page 34
‘A dragon? Is it Caradoc?’
Frecknock turned to greet him, her great dark eyes heavy. ‘It is he. And he has found friends. I see at least ten, maybe more.’
Melyn moved closer, taking up a spot beside her. ‘Where have they come from?’
‘I do not know, Your Grace. I sensed … something approaching. But I had no idea. I’m grateful for the spell of concealment, and the Llfyr Draconius. Without them I fear we would be suffering the same fate as Prince Geraint’s army.’
‘This was the Shepherd’s plan all along. To use these creatures of the Wolf against each other.’ Melyn gazed out across the plain, watching as the sun first tinged the eastern horizon with pink, then spread light across a scene of the most terrible carnage. The camp had been well organized, Geraint’s army disciplined enough to take time over lining up the tents, corralling the horses, building basic fortifications even though their home was only a few short miles away. These professional soldiers would have made short work of Beulah’s peasant army, but they were no match for a dozen dragons. More. He watched as three of them swooped on the panicked camp, huge wings blasting campfires in all directions, setting tents alight along with their hapless occupants. One vast creature grabbed a horse, carrying the screaming, terrified animal high into the air before releasing it to fall crashing back down on top of a troop of soldiers. Squinting, Melyn saw a line of archers hurl a swarm of arrows after one dragon, but the shafts simply bounced off its scaly hide. It turned, dived, taloned feet outstretched as it swept through the ranks, scattering the bowmen. Few got up after it had passed.
And so it went on as the sun rimmed the far horizon and began its climb into the morning sky. Melyn counted perhaps twenty dragons, though they swept and dived and spun and spiralled so swiftly it was difficult to be sure. They seemed never to tire, and they put him in mind of foxes among chickens. For them it was not enough to kill what was needed to survive; these creatures were in a frenzy and would not stop until everything was dead, ripped apart, half devoured.
One beast, larger even than Caradoc, landed in the middle of the camp where the biggest tents had been pitched. This was where Prince Geraint would be, his generals with him. Melyn almost pitied them; there was little they could hope to do against such an enemy. Even his warrior priests would have been hard pressed, though with a few like Clun he would have been able to drive them off.
‘Why do they not use the Grym against these beasts?’ Melyn asked. It was perhaps too distant to see whether individual soldiers were conjuring their puissant swords, as the Llanwennogs called them, but he had felt nothing in the Grym himself to suggest multiple adepts were tapping it.
‘A few have managed, Your Grace. But the plain below is as weak in the Grym as this hill is strong. Some great disaster befell this place aeons ago. I have no idea what, but its effects persist. Much like the magics that flourished in the forest of the Ffrydd, only here the opposite is true.’
Melyn relaxed, letting the lines come into his vision. Unbidden, he found himself in the aethereal, only this time the Grym was painted clearly over the scene as well. He could hear the noises of the battle, feel the damp of dewy grass seeping through his robes. Turning his head, he saw Frecknock both as her normal physical self and the larger, more striking dragon she perceived herself to be. The aethereal and the mundane together.
‘How is this happening?’ Melyn held his hand in front of his face, momentarily distracted from the slaughter going on below.
‘Your Grace, this is how it should be. The Grym and the aethereal, as you call it, are but two faces of the same thing. This is central to our subtle arts. Come, let me show you something.’ Frecknock stood, her aethereal self separating from the dragon sitting on the grass hilltop. Melyn rose too, feeling the weight of the world slip from him. Together they descended the hill, covering the space between them and the battle in a heartbeat.
‘Will the dragons not see us like this?’ Melyn asked.
‘I do not think so. Caradoc, maybe. If he is looking. But the others have nothing of the subtle arts about them. They are not magical creatures. I don’t understand how this can be, but to my senses they appear as base animals.’
They stood at the edge of the enemy camp now, watching in silence as the chaos unfolded. Men ran this way and that, grabbing for swords, bows, anything that might be used to fight. But the dragons swept in too swiftly to be targeted, grabbed a man or a tent or whatever came to claw, threw it about or heaved it into the air before dropping it. Nearby, one great beast had landed and was simply lashing out at anything that came near. It caught one soldier with its tail, taking his legs out from underneath him. Before he could move, much less stand, the dragon opened its mouth wide and half swallowed him before biting him clean in two. One half fell wetly to the trampled ground, the other continued its way down the beast’s gullet.
‘These are worse than base animals, Frecknock.’ Melyn had seen his fair share of carnage. He knew the battlefield was friend only to carrion birds and the corpse collectors who would pick the dead for anything of value. He knew too that these men were his enemy, the godless Llanwennogs who had sent spies and assassins to kill Queen Beulah. There was a joy to be had in witnessing their destruction, but a small part of him, long hidden, almost wept.
And then he saw it, in the heart of the camp. One tent still stood, surrounded by the cream of Llanwennog soldiery. Prince Geraint’s standard flew from a lance planted in the churned earth just a few paces from the tent’s entrance. As he watched, Melyn saw the prince himself march out of the tent, place a helmet over his head and conjure into being a blade of white fire. He felt the surge in the Grym as the prince sucked life out of a place already lacking.
It happened in an instant. No brave fight, no cunning strategy. One moment Geraint was there, the next a flash of green and gold scales glittering in the low morning sunlight as something the size of a house smashed past, and then there was nothing. No tent, no lance, no standard, no soldiers. Just a helmet spinning in the flat-skimmed mud. A helmet with a head still inside.
The first thing he noticed was the noise. Like nothing he had ever heard before, it was as if the wind were whistling through distant trees, but rising and falling with a regular tempo. It was a peaceful sound, gentle after the screaming mayhem of the village, the bone-crunching violence of his fight with Fflint. Benfro couldn’t see anything, had no idea where he was. He tried opening his eyes, then remembered the terrible noise of talon piercing eyeball, the hot fluid running down his cheek. Was he blind now?
Something warm and wet slapped against his face, then retreated. Benfro tasted saltwater and choked as it ran up his nose. The movement brought agonizing stabs of pain to his chest and a bubbling wheeziness to his breathing that suggested all was not well. He tried to move, but his wings were tangled around him like broken branches and he couldn’t even feel his arms.
Another wash of saltwater in his face, stronger this time. He felt it surge along his body and realized he was half buried. It took all his strength to raise his head, but at least the retreating water washed out his eye so he could see. What he saw didn’t make much sense.
He was lying on a beach of fine black sand, staring out over an expanse of water that faded off into a haze so distant he couldn’t see the other shore. Perhaps their wasn’t another shore at all. Waves lapped gently a few feet from him, most falling back before they reached his face. Every so often a larger one would break, rush up to his body and slap his legs, his belly and tail before running back like a frightened kitling. These waves were getting more frequent, bolder. Another rushed up his side, splashing his nose even though he was holding his head as high as his failing strength would let him. Benfro didn’t understand how this could be happening, but he knew he had to move or drown.
But even the strain of holding his head up was too much. He let it drop back down to the sand in despair. At least he could see each wave approaching now, and stop the worst of it from going up his nose.
Something squawked just out of his line of sight, a strange sound he didn’t recognize. Then the sand crunched under shuffling feet as whatever it was approached. Benfro first saw webbed orange feet and a squat black body, a round smear of white on the front of the creature as it waddled into view. It had tiny wings, more like flippers, and its head merged into its body without any obvious sign of neck. Close up, he could see it was a bird, simply by the tiny tight-knit feathers covering its body, but it was unlike any bird he had ever seen. It shuffled even closer, bending slightly as it fixed him with a quizzical stare from its black, beady eyes. It made that noise again, a cross between a gurgle and a cough, and a smell of rotting fish filled the air.
Powerless to move, Benfro could only watch as the creature looked first at him, then out at the water, then back at him again, then out at the water again. After a dozen or so repetitions, it leaned in close, pecked him lightly on the snout as if checking to see he really existed and wasn’t some strange hallucination. Then it turned, gurgle-coughing to itself as it waddled away again. He heard the noise of its feet in the sand and that curious call like an argument with itself fading away gently to be replaced by the wash of the waves on the beach, the swish of the wind in unseen trees. Perhaps it had gone to get help, though Benfro doubted it. More likely it had gone to find its friends and tell them of the feast it had just found.
A larger wave rocked him, taking some of his weight and shifting his body a fraction. Benfro felt bones grinding together in ways they were never meant to, but he also felt his trapped arm free up. Pins and needles were the least of his troubles as he waited for another wave to help him. Everything hurt, and the pain in his chest made it all but impossible to breathe deeply. The short, rapid breaths he could take were unsatisfying, leaving him tired beyond belief and light-headed. Still he had to try. He wasn’t going to die here.
When the wave came, the agony of freeing his arm completely almost knocked him cold. He used the pain and the momentum to roll over as best he could, trying to get his legs to work enough to at least push him further up the beach and away from the water. It sort of worked, but he was left so exhausted all he could do was stare at his new view, panting like a deer chased to the edge of death.
Benfro had grown up in the forest of the Ffrydd. He thought he knew all about trees, but the ones he was staring at now with his one good eye were like nothing he had ever seen before. They were in many ways the complete opposite of the great Bondaris trees, their trunks thin and whippy, with no branches at the top, just long spiky leaves in great profusion. They swayed from side to side in a breeze he could not feel, the motion strangely hypnotic, lulling him into a stupor. It was easier this way, he thought, to drift off peacefully, lapped by the warm water at his back. Moving was too painful, breathing was too difficult. Perhaps if he rested a little his strength would return, at least enough to think straight.
‘Dragon?’
The voice was part of his delirium, Benfro was sure. Same as the tiny weight on his head, the upside-down face peering so close that he couldn’t focus on it. Just an image of red-tufted ears and black button eyes.
‘Benfro?’
He swallowed, tried to speak, found he couldn’t. He had no strength left to chase off this cruel hallucination. Why couldn’t he be left alone to die in peace?
‘Malkin fetch help.’
The weight was gone and with it all feeling. Benfro drifted away, warm as if he were nestling in his mother’s arms. The soft swish of waves breaking on the sand behind him grew quieter and quieter. His eye closed of its own accord, and he welcomed the darkness. Everything hurt and he was so very tired. All he wanted to do was sleep.
How much time passed, he couldn’t have said. Benfro had been listening to the slow breaking of the waves for so long that it took a while for him to realize the noise he was hearing was different. Where the sound of the water was soft, now something crunched rhythmically through the sand, heavier by far than the strange bird-like creature from earlier. It came closer and closer, then stopped. Benfro couldn’t have moved if he had wanted to, but he was happy enough just to lie and wait for the end.
‘By the moon! What’s happened to him?’
As he heard the words, so Benfro felt the presence of someone close by. Soft hands touched his cheek, his ears, moved to his neck and shoulders. He should have felt fearful, unable to stop whoever had come from doing to him whatever they wished, but he was too weak. Too weak even to open his one remaining eye.
‘These are bites. And see here, talons have done this. He’s been attacked by a dragon. But what manner of creature would do this to one of its own? And why dump him here?’
There was something soothing about the voice. It reminded Benfro of his mother. He struggled to open his eye, roll over. He wanted to see her, tell her he was sorry, though he wasn’t quite sure what he was sorry for. Or where he was, for that matter.
‘Shhh. Calm yourself. Don’t try to move.’ He felt a hand on his forehead, gently restraining him. The touch was warm, comforting. An energy seemed to flow from it, easing the pain that racked his whole body. Benfro managed to open his eye, just a slit, and saw another dragon’s face close to his. She was immeasurably old and yet more beautiful than he would have thought possible.
‘Wh … Who?’ His voice was barely audible above the quiet wash of the waves, the rustling of the wind in those high leaves.
‘I am Earith. And you are very badly injured. Do not try to move or you will only make things worse.’
‘Don’t think I can. Can’t feel my legs.’
‘That is the least of your worries. Now rest.’ With these words Benfro felt a surge of something he couldn’t explain. It washed away his pain, cooled the fever he had not realized he was running, filled him with a perfect, blissful warmth. His eyelid drooped closed, but he didn’t mind the darkness. For the first time in ages he felt safe as he drifted away.
The dungeons of Tochers Castle were perhaps the most dismal Beulah had seen this side of Beylinstown, hewn deep into the rock where the Grym could scarcely reach. She felt the chill in the air as she followed Clun and Captain Celtin down the narrow steps, her newly reawakened sense of magic ebbing away with each footfall. The only light came from small torches set at too-distant intervals along a wall slick with seeping dampness and green algae. Silence hemmed them in, dulling even the click of boot on flagstone, killing any thought of conversation as they passed door after open door until, finally, they reached the end.
The two warrior priests on guard came to attention as the interrogation party stopped. ‘Your Majesty. Your Grace. Sir.’
‘Is he still alive?’ Beulah asked.
‘He’s still moaning, so I guess so, ma’am.’
‘Open up then. I want a word with him before we leave this shitty little place.’
The warrior priests nodded, unlocked the door and stood aside so they could enter the cell. It was larger than Beulah had been expecting, hacked out of the rock with rough blows that left a jagged finish to the walls and low ceiling. A torch hung near the door, casting scant light over the room, and on the other side, lying on a pile of damp straw, the young adept lay shivering. Every so often he let out a low moan, but he didn’t seem to notice them come in. The stump of his amputated leg was wrapped in a bandage, already red from his blood. The stench of the place suggested he’d soiled himself at some point, although it might just have been that this was where all the sewage in the castle ended up.
‘He is awake, my lady.’ Clun strode across the cell and gave the man a prod with his boot. He groaned, rolling over on to his back before opening his eyes and staring straight at Beulah.
‘You came. I knew you would. Couldn’t keep away, eh?’
Beulah felt the whisperings of the man’s mind as he tried to cast a glamour over her, but it was a weak effort. He had lost too much blood and the wound was already turning septic, poisons flowing through sluggish veins to his brain.
‘Spare us the cheap parlour tricks. Who put you up to this mad scheme? What did you hope to achieve by kidnapping my daughter?’
‘A diversion, perhaps? A delay? The Shepherd is near, can you not feel him?’
Beulah skimmed the man’s thoughts as he spoke. The pain was dragging down his defences, the infection weakening him yet further. She could read him far more easily in this state than when they had first met. Then he had been cocky and sure of himself. Here he was struggling, but that certainty was still rock solid. He knew his god was coming, knew that his place in the gathering fields was assured, his life of eternal bliss and happiness. But there was more to his belief than blind faith. There was knowledge there that Beulah could not quite glean.
‘Can you? Can you truly say the Shepherd speaks to you?’
‘Speaks, and more. He comes to me in my dreams. Comes in his true form. Not the god you worship, no god of men.’
Beulah saw an image unfurl in darkness. Eyes burning red like disturbed coals. Black upon black, writhing snakes and scaly skin as something uncoiled itself in the young man’s mind. With an involuntary step back, she withdrew from his mind, bringing down her own mental barriers hard before she had even registered the primal fear that had made her react so. Something mad had possessed his soul long ago. They would get nothing of value from him.
‘We’re done here.’ Beulah turned her back on the man as he slumped back down on to his bed of fetid straw. Clun looked up at her, the question in his eyes going unasked as he nodded once, then walked out.
‘The torch. He’ll not need that.’ Beulah pointed, and Captain Celtin plucked it from its sconce on the wall. The corridor felt crowded with five of them standing by the door, but she waited until the first of the guards had made sure it was locked tight.
‘Come. We’re leaving. All of us.’ She headed back up the corridor, sensing the warrior priests fall in behind her, Clun bringing up the rear. If the Shepherd truly was coming for his fanatic disciple, then he could find him lying in the darkness with his sliding, scuttling thoughts.
