The Broken World (33 page)

The gods.

Errol looked at the ropes holding his arms and legs in place. They were thick, sturdy and very well knotted. There was no way he was going to escape from their hold easily. Over to his side, the fire burned strongly. It was wood, but there was some other material in there too, which accounted for the thick black smoke climbing high into the morning sky. A signal that could be seen for hundreds of miles.

He should have been panicking. Soon enough the dragons would come, and Errol had no illusions that these were creatures like Benfro, or even the long-dead Corwen and Sir Radnor. The pieces of the puzzle had been there all along; he'd just been too preoccupied, too stupid to see them. These people worshipped the dragons as gods, made human sacrifice to them. Nellore's father had been taken. Others had gone before. It didn't take a genius to work out where.

He forced himself to relax. There was a way out of this predicament. One he'd used before. This land was powerful with the Grym; all he needed to do was tap into the lines and use one to take him—

‘Hold still, Errol. This ain't easy to cut.'

Errol opened his eyes to see Nellore standing by his left hand, sawing away at the rope with a fearsome-looking knife. In moments it had cut all the way through and she darted round to the other side.

‘What are you doing here? It's not safe.'

‘Safer 'n staying in the village.' Nellore was on to his feet now. ‘They told me you'd left. Murta told me. I thought she was my friend.'

Errol sat up, rubbing the life back into his wrists and ankles before attempting to jump down from the rock. Away in the distance, he couldn't see anything circling the big hill any more, which didn't bode well.

‘I think we should get away from here as quickly as possible,' he said.

Nellore looked up as if only just then realizing her predicament. ‘They're going to be pissed off when they get here and there's no sacrifice.'

Errol slid off the rock, crouching while he got his sense of balance back. He was still looking for the lines, but the sight wouldn't come to him. Tied to the rock, alone, he had been calm. Now he was free and there was Nellore to worry about as well, he could hardly think straight.

‘Which way is the village?'

Nellore pointed in the direction opposite to the Twmp. Now that he looked, Errol could see a track of sorts winding its way through the sparse trees. There seemed to be more ground cover the other way.

‘You'd better hurry up before someone notices you've gone,' he said.

‘I ain't goin' back there.' Nellore's voice was heavy with disbelief.

‘Why not? They're your family, aren't they?'

‘My family? Ma died havin' my little brother. He din't survive neither. And then they all said my da was chosen to be with the gods. They brought him here. Tied him up same as you. Only he wanted to go. He believed them when they said he'd become a god himself.'

Errol glanced nervously at the sky before turning back to the young girl. ‘They believe what? That the dragons take you away and you become one too?'

‘That's what they say. Only I saw what happened to my da, and he din't turn into no god. More like dragon dung after they ate him.'

‘You saw that? Your own father? They brought you here to watch?'

‘They din't know I was watching. Nobody's s'posed to watch. I hid over there, in the rocks.' Nellore pointed to the jumble of rocks that crowned the hill beyond the altar
stone. As she did so, a distant screech pierced the air. Not the sort of noise you might expect a god to make.

‘Is there room there for two?'

Beulah looked at the empty bedchamber, the unlit fire no more than a pile of ashes. She would be glad to see the back of this room, glad to see the back of the ancient castle and its damp stone walls. The fact that she had given birth here only made Tochers worse for her. Far better her child had been born in Candlehall, the seat of her power.

‘The wagons have been loaded, ma'am. We're ready to leave when you are.' Her maid Alicia was dressed for the road already, a heavy travelling cloak over clothes chosen for warmth rather than fashion. Beulah was almost jealous of the girl's faded soft leather boots.

‘Good. I've spent long enough in this place as it is. Fetch my … Ellyn. We will leave together from the grand hall.'

The maid nodded and hurried off. Beulah went to the narrow window, peering out at the courtyard below. Clun was down there sorting out the last few details. Most of the army had already left, but it would take all day for the entire camp to move off. He'd likely be saddling his own horse too, since no one else dared go near the great beast.

The scream cut through Beulah's musing like a knife. There was something animal about it, wounded. Before she knew what she was doing, she had crossed the room and yanked open the heavy wooden door. A short corridor led to the stairs, and on one side of it a door opened
on to reception rooms that had been pressed into service as a nursery. It lay ajar, and as Beulah rushed to it she thought she saw movement on the stairs, but she was too distracted by the scene in the nursery to pay much heed.

Blodwyn, the wet nurse, sat sprawled in a chair, staring up at the ceiling as if drunk. Her dress might have been white when she put it on that morning, but now it was soaked in red, blood from the wound that gaped in her neck from ear to ear. Beulah tried to conjure a blade of fire, tuning her senses to the Grym in the hope of detecting the intruder, but the curse of her condition still smothered her. Swearing loudly, she bent and pulled out the slim dagger she had taken to carrying in her boot. Her sword was still in the bedchamber, hung useless across the back of a chair along with her riding cloak.

A groan had her whip round, crouching and ready to fend off any attack, but it was only Alicia, slumped in the corner. Her neck was intact, but she was as pale as the wet nurse's dress wasn't, a sheen of sweat on her forehead and matting her hair.

‘Majesty … Ellyn … taken …' She reached up an arm to point at the cradle set up between the single narrow window and the fireplace, and that was when Beulah saw the blood on her maid's hand, soaking into her sensible travelling clothes.

In two steps, Beulah was at the cradle, but she already knew what she would find there. The sheets had been cast aside and the cot lay empty. The anger came to her then, boiling up like the frustration of the past nine months all condensed into that one moment. And with a snap, the magic came back. The Grym shimmered into view, weak in
the room but there. Those lines connected everything, including her husband.

‘Clun! To me!' Beulah may have used rather too much urgency in her calling, it wasn't something she had ever tried before. Across the room, Alicia gasped and shuddered as if she had been slapped. Hurrying back to the injured maid, Beulah crouched down, appraising her wounds as quickly as she could. Too much blood for them not to be serious. She put a hand on the woman's damp forehead, channelled some of the Grym into her.

‘How many of them? Did you see faces?'

‘Just one. He was tall. Thin. All dressed in black. I couldn't see his … Your Majesty … so sorry.'

‘Hush. You did what you could.' Beulah sent more of the Grym into the young woman, riding in with it to see something of her thoughts. It was all a jumble, fading fast, but Alicia had spoken true. There was a man, tall and thin, his face obscured by a hooded cloak. He was leaning over the cradle, back turned to Blodwyn's twitching corpse. And then he was right in front of her, chin stubbled with grey, stinking of stale garlic and unwashed body. A bright flash of pain in her gut and a single scream before a filthy hand clamped over her mouth, pushed her to the floor.

‘My lady?'

Beulah snapped back into her own head and spun round with her knife in her hand to see Clun standing over her, eyes wide in surprise.

‘Alicia? Is she …?' His eyes lingered on the maid for a moment, then he turned slowly on his heel, taking in the rest of the room.

‘Ellyn!' He was at the cradle side in an instant, snatched
up the bedding as if his daughter could be still hiding within the folds. Beulah felt the air turn chill around her as the Grym surged away from every living thing in the room, sucked into the bright shining blade of light that appeared in his hand. With a scream of rage that was more terrible than anything Beulah had ever heard, Clun drove his other hand through the base of the cradle, not so much shattering the wood as exploding it into a thousand tiny fragments. And then he was running out of the door, shouting the name of his kidnapped daughter.

‘That isn't a sight I ever wished to see.'

Inquisitor Melyn and Captain Osgal sat on their horses and gazed out across the southern plain. To the north and west of them the city of Tynhelyg was a sprawl of buildings clustered around the sluggish River Ystwyth. A brown haze hung over it, the smoke of countless fires, not all of them venting out of chimneys. Beyond it, and at their backs, the great forest marched off towards the Caldy mountains, and thence to Talarddeg and the Sea of Tegid. It was a breathtaking view even as the setting sun leached it of colour, but it wasn't what was upsetting Captain Osgal.

‘The Shepherd said they would be here. Do you doubt his word, Osgal?'

The captain's horse stood motionless, but the man atop it moved in his saddle as if he had piles. Osgal's burns had still not healed properly, and Melyn could tell they pained him beneath his robes. It made him even more surly than usual, which must have been popular with the warrior priests under his command.

‘Never, Your Grace. But Prince Geraint's army numbers ten thousand. A thousand of them are adepts, some few even as skilled as us. We are hopelessly outnumbered.'

‘Hopelessly? An interesting choice of word, Captain.' Melyn looked south across the plain and had to admit that Osgal had a point. The lights of a thousand cooking fires dotted the darkening ground, night come early to the land. His scouts had seen the approaching army first as a dark swirl of dust and carrion birds whirling in the afternoon air, and that was when Melyn had marched the bulk of his warrior priests out of the city and up to the summit of the hill. From there the noise had reached them slowly, a low clanking and rumbling that shook the earth even though it was still leagues distant. And finally they had seen the army itself, Prince Geraint's scouts riding out ahead and the main bulk moving at a punishing speed. Riders had reached the gates of the city at dusk, then turned and raced back to report that their capital was taken. Melyn knew the distance from Wrthol to Tynhelyg, knew how long it would take a man to walk at a reasonable pace. And he knew too how many days had passed since he had removed King Ballah's head from his shoulders. Even if Geraint had known that very instant his father was slain, the two sets of numbers didn't add up.

‘This army has force-marched for more than ten days. Its supplies will be strung out in a line all the way back to the pass. We are rested and we have the better ground. I have no doubt that we could deal them a dreadful blow if we were to attack now. However, none of these things matters because the Shepherd has other plans.'

‘Forgive me, sir. I have absolute faith in him. I just wish I knew what those plans were.'

‘All in good time.' Melyn turned his horse, riding slowly back to the camp just below the ridge of the hill. ‘Tell the men to bed down. Get some sleep. No fires tonight and no tapping the Grym for warmth either. Our lord's plan will be revealed with the dawn.'

Osgal saluted, then spurred his horse on, passing the message to the troops. Some were old hands, battle-hardened and able to catch sleep wherever and whenever the opportunity arose. Most of his warrior priests would lie awake all night though. Taking on an army so much bigger than your own would worry even the most serene mind. And yet Melyn was calm. As he scratched absent-mindedly at the hard scales underneath his robes he knew that the Shepherd would bring him victory.

‘You know what you have to do?' The inquisitor spoke to the growing darkness. Frecknock unfolded from the gloom, her dull dark scales the perfect camouflage. She had a leather bag slung over one shoulder, and in it the book that contained so much power. The stolen wisdom of God.

‘Yes, Your Grace. I will need to find a suitable spot, but this hill is powerful with the Grym. The working should not be too hard to do.'

‘Then set to it. I feel the moment is upon us.'

He sensed the working as Frecknock cast it. An invisible veil shimmered the stars for the briefest of moments, like someone passing the thinnest of silks over the whole of the hill. Melyn knew that his army was hidden. Prince Geraint himself could ride right through the middle of
their camp and not see a single warrior priest. His scouts would cross this hill, find it empty, report back that all the invading forces were in Tynhelyg. The army would wait until dawn to mount an attack on those walls, confident it was not fit to withstand a siege. They would take time to rest, regain their strength, eat and maybe try to sleep. Perhaps he should try and do the same.

‘Ho, Jarius. Well met.'

Captain Pelod stood guard at the main doors to the royal apartments, looking slightly nervous that his friend and prince was wandering about alone. No doubt there were other members of the troop stationed all about. Llanwennog men, not the newly recruited Abervenn Irregulars. Their darker skin marked them out as different, an easy target for anyone still sympathetic to Beulah.

‘I wish I had your confidence, sir. Can't quite throw the feeling that this is some kind of elaborate trap.'

‘You're not the only one. I'm just better at hiding it.'

‘Well, I'll be a great deal happier when the princess is here. I think the people of Candlehall will take to their own rather better than us.'

Captain Pelod had fallen in beside Dafydd, and they walked up towards the cloisters that separated the Neuadd from the surrounding palace complex together. The sun was high in a pale blue sky, but its lack of warming heat warned of winter's approach.