The Broken World, page 6
‘See here, young Gog. See here.’ The dragon turned his head away from Benfro, angling it as if he was trying to show something behind his ears. Benfro looked more closely at the leathery skin and fine scales. There was a rippled ridge of scar tissue running across the back of the dragon’s head, perhaps a hand’s width across.
‘He takes away your memories.’
It wasn’t hard to follow the route taken by the circus, but Errol found it impossible to catch up. Every time he stopped, the wagons had passed through some days earlier or camped for a night and then gone on without doing a show, much to the disappointment of the locals. It was the considered opinion of almost everyone he spoke to that the circus was heading as fast as possible for the capital, there to perform in front of the king.
‘But they’ve left it very late.’ The barmaid in this tavern was much like any number of barmaids he had seen in similar inns along the way. ‘It’s most unlike old Loghtan to be so late. Normally he’d have been through here a month ago, doing shows in every town until he reached the capital. Must have been something very special to keep him up in the northlands all that time.’
‘I heard he’d captured a new dragon.’ Errol watched the woman for any sign that she had heard this rumour from anyone else. It was too much of a coincidence for it to be anyone other than Loghtan’s circus that had captured Benfro, but still he was plagued by the worry that he might be chasing the wrong quarry, and into the depths of the enemy’s lair too.
‘Well, I dare say that’d keep him back. But he’s losing a lot of money not doing all these shows, and that’s not like Loghtan.’
Errol chatted for a while longer, until his meal was ready, then retired to a table by the fire to eat. It had been a long day on the road, and he was anxious to get to bed. An early start in the morning and he might yet make up some time. His near miss with Dondal he could put down to bad luck, but the closer he came to Tynhelyg, the more chance there was of running into someone else who might recognize him. He wasn’t quite sure what he’d do once he found the circus, but he wanted to get to it before it reached the capital.
He was finishing off his mug of ale when the rider entered the tavern. As the mud-splattered man approached the bar and ordered a drink, there was something about him that immediately put Errol on his guard. Perhaps it was his well-cut riding boots and functional but smart cloak. Maybe it was the way he held himself – with the air of one used to respect. Whatever it was, Errol knew the man was trouble. Making as little fuss as possible, he got up from his table and left the tavern. The rider had cast a casual glance over the room when he entered, but he paid no attention to Errol’s departure, too busy taking deep swallows from his tankard of ale.
Light spilled from the kitchen door across the courtyard. A second door, directly opposite it, led straight behind the bar. Errol stood outside listening intently, trying to make out the conversation between the barmaid and the rider over the general noise of the tavern.
‘Oh, we get all sorts through here – merchants, nobles, soldiers on leave. Why I even had that Duke Dondal in here a few weeks ago. Mean old man waved his ring in front of me and expected to be fed for nothing.’ The barmaid’s words carried strongly. No doubt she had developed a good voice to cope with the more rowdy clientele. The rider, on the other hand, spoke softly, so that Errol had to strain to make out anything at all.
‘Young man … through here … king’s seal …’ It was enough. It was to be expected, he supposed. Even if Duke Dondal hadn’t known exactly who he was, Errol’s hurried departure from Gremmil would have aroused his suspicions. No doubt Poul had recounted the whole tale, and Dondal would have surely put two and two together.
Errol went straight to the stables. He had no luggage other than his purse, no belongings other than his horse. The stable lad was nowhere to be seen, so he saddled up himself.
Out on the open road he felt a little safer. The rider may have been one of Dondal’s soldiers, but he looked like a man who needed ale and rest. Errol doubted he would move beyond the tavern much before morning. Still, if there was one looking for him, there would surely be others. And soon the word would be out, his description in every tavern, with every noble between here and the capital.
Errol pressed on, riding slowly through the night. The road was good and easy to make out in the dark, but every so often there were potholes waiting to catch out the unwary. It was bad enough being tipped off his horse, but if the poor creature injured itself he would be lost. Once he could no longer see the lights of the tavern and village behind him, he dismounted and led the horse instead.
It was a warm night, and the moonless sky was clear, the stars bright overhead. He knew he ought to stop somewhere, hobble the horse and try to get a few hours’ sleep, but the thought of the rider kept him going. Only when the road dipped into another gully, lined on either side with scrubby trees, did Errol feel safe enough. He found a spot away from the road, tethered the horse to a tree and settled down against the trunk to sleep.
Dozing fitfully, he slipped in and out of dreams in which Isobel and Poul looked at him in dreadful disappointment. If he had told them the truth, they said, then they would have taken him in, protected him. Then he saw Melyn riding at the head of an army of warrior priests. Only they weren’t warrior priests but dragons, and behind them the ground burned, black smoke boiling up into the sky. He tried to turn back to Lord and Lady Gremmil, but they weren’t there any more. And this wasn’t Castle Gremmil either. He knew where this was. It was Gog’s palace.
Almost as if he flew, he sped along the corridors, looking for the long winding stone staircase that would take him up to the top of the highest tower. Errol knew he was dreaming, which added another layer of unreality to the dream. At any moment he might wake, might lose this opportunity, and knowing that made it all the harder to stay asleep.
He moved from the corridors to the tower room in a blink of an eye. Somehow that seemed more natural than anything he had experienced so far. The room was much as he remembered it from his previous visit, only this time he was seeing it from the air rather than the perspective of a young lad. His attention was firmly on the golden cage, still hanging from the rafters like some absurd aviary, and he soared up to it, past it, turning to see inside.
Martha lay huddled on a narrow mattress, asleep. She had rigged up a structure within the cage from bits of stick and blankets to give her some privacy, and to Errol it looked like she had stumbled into the nest of some vast bird. Her face was thin, her long hair ragged and matted. As he watched her, she shivered, drawing her knees up to her chest for warmth. He looked around the huge room, saw the fireplace empty and black, the desk strewn with papers blown about by gusts from the open window. How high up were they here? How cold would it get? Would she freeze to death here, abandoned? She mustn’t sleep; he knew that much about the cold. You had to stay awake.
‘Martha!’ Errol tried to shout, but his voice sounded distant and muffled.
‘Martha!’ She rolled over, eyes still tightly closed, arms wrapped around her legs, head tucked in over her chest. Still his voice was too quiet, almost mumbled.
‘Martha!’ This time he shouted with all his might, and at the same instant he realized he had been bodiless, his muscles contracted, pitching him forward. For a moment too terribly short he saw Martha open her eyes, look up, see him. And then he was awake, back in the woods, gasping for air as his horse looked on placidly.
Errol tried to get back to sleep. He slumped back against the tree and closed his eyes tight, but his heart was racing, his mind fully awake. He gave up, full of anguish for Martha’s plight, more determined than ever to find Benfro and the other dragon that might or might not be Sir Trefaldwyn.
The air glowed with pre-dawn light as he led his horse back to the road and mounted. Not a mile from his resting place he came upon a series of low buildings, labourers’ cottages for a nearby farm. They were still shut up at this early hour, not even a dog or a goose running out to chase him as he rode slowly past. Some even had the look of being unoccupied, but at the last cottage a line of washing was strung between two gnarled apple trees. Shawls, blouses and skirts hung in a row, dry save for the lightest of morning dews. He was reminded of how his mother would sometimes leave clothes out when she knew there would be no rain in the night. ‘It makes them softer,’ she had always told him, though sometimes he wondered if it wasn’t just that she had been too tired to bring it all in and fold it up.
It came to him in a flash, an idea so daring and yet so obvious he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before. A few dozen paces past the row of houses, where he was hidden from view by the trees that surrounded the small hamlet, he stopped and dismounted, then walked quietly back to the washing line. There was no fence separating the road from the garden, and it was a matter of seconds to help himself to what he needed: one skirt of heavy tweed, a pair of canvas trousers of the sort he had seen farm girls wearing, one white cotton blouse and a shawl. Errol counted out coins from the bag Lord Gremmil had given him, more than enough to compensate for the purloined clothes, and placed them in the pocket of one of the remaining dresses, careful not to let them chink against each other.
By the time he made it back to his horse, the clothes rolled up under one arm, his heart was pounding. And yet he felt a thrill of excitement. He’d got away with it. Only once he had hauled himself back into the saddle and ridden away from the houses did Errol realize just how much he was shaking. What if he had been caught? How would he have even begun to explain to some burly farmer why he was stealing women’s clothes?
He rode on, fretting that someone would come galloping up from behind. It could be the rider from the tavern, or the farmer, or Duke Dondal and the king’s army. It could have been Inquisitor Melyn come to drag him back to Emmass Fawr. Shaking the fear from his head, Errol kicked his horse into a trot and scanned the horizon for the next copse.
After the incident at Lord Gremmil’s grain stores when one of Dondal’s soldiers had mistaken him for a girl, Errol had thought of taking a knife to his hair. Not having a knife, he had resorted to tying it in a long ponytail and tucking it down the back of his cloak. Dark as it was, it had gone unnoticed, or at least unremarked in all the places he had stopped since. Now he untied his hair and let it fall over his shoulders. He stripped off the clothes Lady Gremmil had given him, stowing them in his saddlebags along with the skirt, then pulled on the rest of the stolen garments. His cloak already looked like something a young woman might wear, but he brushed the worst of the road dirt off it before flinging it once more over his shoulders.
He would have liked a glass to check his appearance in, but as Errol rode into the next town he was confident the people glancing up at him would see not the fugitive boy wanted in two countries, but an apprentice healer heading to the city to buy exotic herbs for her mistress.
4
When all else fails, and your dragon becomes unruly even with the highest doses of calming potion, there is but one option left. Use camphor woodsmoke to render it insensible, then tie the beast firmly to the floor with its head laid straight. Behind the ears the skull is thinner than the rest and not protected by the hard scales that cover most of its body. With utmost care, it is possible to drill out a small section of bone, revealing the living brain beneath. And within the folds of this organ you will see the red jewels forming. Remove one, maybe two if they are large, being mindful not to injure the surrounding tissue. Replace the removed pan of bone, sealing it with the healing salve and Grendor’s invocation. Be careful that your subject remains sedated for two or three days, for that is how long it takes a dragon’s bones to knit.
This procedure should only be used as a last resort. Any surgery on a living brain is fraught with danger, and removing a dragon’s jewels while it lives may result in the beast being rendered idiotic, if it survives the ordeal at all.
From the personal papers of Circus Master Loghtan
The killing didn’t bother him, but Melyn could never get used to the smell of burning flesh. It hung over the town long after the smoke had cleared, clogging the nostrils and clinging to clothes. Normally it wasn’t a problem for him. The villages, with their tiny populations, succumbed to the Grym, the people burned away without smoke or ash. Larger towns he put to the flame, but always he had been able to ride away from the stench.
This place was different. There was little point clearing the northlands if no one knew. He needed word of his army to get out, to draw a large part of King Ballah’s army away from the southern border. So at least some of the women and children would be allowed to flee. His warrior priests had met stiffer resistance here than anywhere else too. There had been Llanwennog regular soldiers billeted in the castle, some of King Ballah’s personal guard among them. Melyn was glad he had encountered them in a town rather than open country. They had been mostly in their barracks and, far from the border, had not been primed for battle. He was lucky that none of them had been on gate duty either, since the town was well fortified. The alarm hadn’t been raised until it was far too late. Even so, it had been their hardest test so far, and he had lost valuable warrior priests in the fight.
Now he sat in the main hall of the castle, trying not to taste the greasy smoke from the pyres. A frightened middle-aged lady stood by the window, staring out across a courtyard slick with blood, still piled with the bodies of the dead. She was pale-skinned for her race, probably a half-breed from one of the earlier vain attempts to bring the two nations closer together by arranged marriages between the noble houses.
‘You need not fear for your life, Lady Gremmil. Nor for the safety of your serving girls. My men have orders not to harm them.’
‘But they can do what they want to the men. To my husband. Will you leave any man alive?’
Melyn reappraised the woman. It wasn’t fear that made her shake, but rage. ‘This is war, my lady,’ he said.
‘War? Invasion more like. And just why do you need to wage this war anyway? What did we ever do to your precious Twin Kingdoms that you have to murder innocents?’
‘There have been three separate assassination attempts on Queen Beulah since she ascended to the throne less than a year ago. All of them can be traced directly back to King Ballah. If your king wasn’t so keen on toppling our rightful monarch and putting his puppet in her place, we wouldn’t have to do everything in our power to stop him.’
Lady Gremmil turned away from him, not answering his accusation. He gazed at the back of her head as she stared out the window again. His captains would start reporting in soon. The town was taken; it was just a matter of mopping up.
A scuffle in the hall outside dragged both his and Lady Gremmil’s attention to the door. It was kicked open, and Captain Osgal strode in, dragging another man by the scruff of his neck. He paid no heed to the lady, but hauled his captive up to the table where Melyn sat, then threw the man to the floor.
‘I found him hiding in the stables. Thought you might want to talk to him before I cut off his head, sir.’
Melyn looked down at the cowering figure. He had grey hair and wore an expensive cloak. His fingers were covered in fine jewels, which flashed in the pale light from the window as he held his hands over his head.
‘Well, this is a surprise. I didn’t think to see you again so soon.’
The grey-haired man looked up at Melyn’s voice. Duke Dondal had managed to avoid injury so far, which only confirmed the inquisitor’s low opinion of him. Unlike Lord Gremmil, who had led his men against an army of shadows, trying to buy time for messengers to escape the city.
‘Inquisitor Melyn? But how—’ Dondal struggled to his feet, but Osgal floored him again with a well-placed boot.
‘You stay on the floor in front of His Grace.’
‘I had hoped we might run into each other eventually, Dondal. I’m anxious to hear how you managed to keep your head after plotting against your king. After introducing an assassin into his royal palace.’
‘I had no choice, Melyn. The plot was uncovered before I even arrived in Tynhelyg. My only option was to persuade Ballah my plan had always been to hand the boy over to him.’
‘How very convenient for you. And I suppose you gave Ballah all my gold as well. That might have convinced him of your loyalty. Not much consolation for poor old Errol though. Mind you, he fooled us all.’
‘Errol? Errol who?’
Melyn looked up in surprise. He wanted Lady Gremmil to witness all he did in the castle, so that she could report back to Ballah, but he hadn’t anticipated any questions from her.
‘He’s of no concern to you. Just a spy.’
‘Oh, so not the Errol Balch we found near death on the king’s road then. Only he was a spy, of sorts.’
‘Errol … Balch?’ Melyn looked straight at Lady Gremmil, picking out images and memories from her mind. She was remembering a young man with long black hair and an earnest expression. She cared about his well-being for some unaccountable reason. So he had passed through Gremmil. Melyn wondered what had become of the dragon. ‘He’s calling himself Balch, is he? How amusing. I wonder if he knows. Tell me, when did you last see him?’
‘It must have been a week ago. Just before Dondal arrived. He said he was carrying a message to the king about a possible invasion from the north. It would seem he was right about that.’
‘The boy’s still alive? I thought Queen Beulah had killed him,’ said Dondal, first staring at Melyn, then at Lady Gremmil, then back at Melyn.
‘So did she. But Errol’s proved himself quite hard to kill on more than one occasion now. We can talk about him later. Right now I want to know how Ballah has deployed his armies in the south.’
‘And why would I tell you that? Assuming, that is, I know anything about it.’
