The Broken World (40 page)

Beulah floated forward, conscious of the guards either side of them but excited nonetheless at this new understanding of something she thought she had known most of her life. Touching the space where the gates stood felt like brushing the surface of a warm bath.

‘Come, my lady. Take my hand. We shall enter my city together.'

Beulah reached out with her aethereal form, took Clun's outstretched hand in her own. Together they moved forward, him walking, her floating a few inches off the ground. The veil that was the gateway parted as lightly as a silk sheet, and then they were inside.

‘We must move swiftly, my lady. I will cover the ground if you will be my eyes.' Clun increased his pace to a run, dragging Beulah along beside him as he crossed the small
square behind the River Gate. Beulah didn't know Abervenn well, but her husband seemed to have the lie of the place imprinted in his memory. His skill at navigating the aethereal was not so much surprising as unbelievable in one who had only learned of its existence a year earlier, and yet she had no time to dwell on the mystery as they moved with increasing speed through the city. It was all Beulah could manage to scan the streets for signs of people. They sped past the Kingsgate, adequately guarded for a city in peacetime, but hardly enough men to give a troop of warrior priests any worry. The Westgate was even less well defended, though its stout construction and towers meant a handful of well-provisioned guards could keep an army out indefinitely. There were few soldiers on duty at the barracks, which left only the castle itself to worry about. Clun avoided it, and they were soon back at the Eastgate.

‘It is as I thought. The city has few soldiers left to guard it. Most must have gone to Candlehall.'

‘Then we should strike at once. Break down this gate and rush the guards at the other two.' Beulah began to relax, feeling her aethereal self pulled back towards her body, but Clun stood motionless, midway between the flickering half-images of the two guards.

‘I see no need to rush, my lady, when we can just ask these two to open the sally port.' He reached out and touched one guard in the area where the man's head should be. A moment's pause in which Beulah felt something like spiders crawling over her skin, and then Clun crossed to the other guard. She shuddered at that same strange sensation, but it lasted mere moments.

‘We should return to the camp now, my lady.' Clun took her hand once more, and with a step they were there. Beulah sank back into her body, waking from the trance with a groan. She felt more weary than at any time since giving birth, a deep tiredness in her bones. Travelling the aethereal had left her this way when she had first learned the skill, many years before, but it was an age since she had felt that way.

‘Take ten of your men. Go quickly to the Eastgate. You'll find it open and the guards asleep. Secure it but do not enter. We will be along soon.' Beulah struggled upright as she heard Clun outside the tent, giving orders like he was born to it. She staggered to the entrance, looking out upon a dark scene of rushing bodies as the small army of warrior priests readied themselves for battle. The motion dizzied her, weakening her knees, and she had to grip the tent fabric tight to keep upright. When had she become so pathetic? She'd not felt this way since she was a little girl.

‘My lady, please. You must not overexert yourself.'

Strong hands took hold of her, and for a moment Beulah's anger flared at the thought that someone could dare to be so familiar. And then she remembered. How had she forgotten? Her mind was as sluggish as her body, drained by their short reconnaissance.

‘Clun, my love. I must lead the assault. This city has defied me once too often. I must see that it pays the penalty for its actions.'

‘We cannot both go, my lady. It is too dangerous. One must stay behind to look after Ellyn. The future of the House of Balwen depends on it.'

‘I am more than capable of looking after myself.'
Beulah said the words even though she didn't feel as if they were true. She was weak still, far weaker than she liked to admit.

‘I have seen you fight, my lady. You are the equal of any warrior priest, better by far than most. But you are still not up to your full strength.' Clun steered her towards the camp bed and Beulah cursed him silently for doing so. The last of her resolve crumbled as he lowered her.

‘You made this my responsibility when you made me duke. The people of this city have defied you, but they have defied me too. They kidnapped my daughter. Abervenn will not forget my wrath. What little of it survives.'

Close by, Ellyn lay in a tiny cot, sleeping silently. Beulah looked at her face, so much of her father's features already showing. Soon the infant would wake and need feeding again, and heroic, loyal, formidable though he was, that was one task Clun could not perform.

‘Go then, my love.' Beulah kissed her husband with more urgency and passion than she had intended. It was too long, but not long enough, and finally she pulled away from his embrace.

‘Spare no one. This night Abervenn will burn.'

‘If I may?' Usel stepped forward, conjuring a tiny ball of light that hovered just over his outstretched palm. The glow illuminated steps worn down in the middle by the passage of many feet over even more years.

‘Have you been down here before?' Iolwen asked before Dafydd could himself.

‘Never, Your Highness. I have heard stories, and it should be perfectly safe; there are few others who can
open that door and only one key. But I will go ahead, just to be sure.'

The medic set off slowly down the steps, holding up his light more for Iolwen and Dafydd than himself. The staircase was wide and the ceiling above them higher than necessary, but it still took a long time to descend deep into the rocky heart of the hill on which Candlehall had been built. Dafydd didn't notice the glow at first, as it was outshone by Usel's light, but slowly he came to see a dull red tinge to the stone walls. The air grew warmer too, and young Iolo stirred in his mother's arms, not waking but troubled by the dreams of infants. Then they rounded the final turn in the steps and stopped.

It was a huge cavern. Whether it was a natural cave deep beneath the Neuadd or had been hewn out by main force, Dafydd couldn't have said. It didn't really matter; that it existed was enough. The ceiling rose from the edge where they stood, arcing up towards a point a hundred spans or more up. A central pillar climbed to that apex, and Dafydd didn't need telling to know that the Obsidian Throne sat directly above it.

‘What is this place?' Iolwen walked slowly forward to the nearest of a series of stone walls that radiated out from the centre, rising twice the height of a tall man. Small alcoves had been cut into each wall, hundreds upon thousands, and they all glowed with a dull red light that whispered terrible mad things in the silence.

‘The treasure of the House of Balwen. The jewels of every dragon ever slain in King Balwen's name. More besides.' Usel walked slowly towards the centre of the cavern, passing close to the nearest wall with its dully
vibrant load. ‘I never thought I would see this. Hoped it wasn't true.'

‘There are so many. And they're all so lost, so frightened.' Iolwen reached up to one of the alcoves, fingers hovering over the small pile of jewels that lay inside.

‘I would suggest you don't, Your Highness.' Usel was suddenly at her side, one hand wrapped around her wrist and pulling it away. Dafydd could have sworn he'd been twenty paces away, more even, and yet he had covered the distance in the blink of an eye.

‘Are they dangerous?' Iolwen asked.

‘Not so much dangerous as lonely. This is not how a dragon should live after its mortal existence is done. This is not how its jewels should be left, either. This whole place is deeply unnatural. I had heard rumours, but the truth of it is much more terrible.'

‘How so?' Dafydd stepped further into the cavern, feeling the swirl and ebb of the Grym all around him. ‘Men have collected dragons' jewels for centuries. They are highly prized.'

‘And do you know why that is, Prince Dafydd?'

‘They are a short cut to the Grym. They help an adept focus its power to his own use.'

‘That is how they have been used, it's true. But if you knew just what it meant to treat a dragon's jewels so, you would weep for these countless tortured souls.'

‘Tortured? How? Surely they are dead.'

Usel went very still, as if he were struggling to control his temper. Dafydd was reminded of one of his old tutors. Tolt Moorit had been his name, a good teacher but not prepared to suffer fools. Tolt had known better than to
strike a prince of the royal house, and had adopted this very same motionless pose whenever Dafydd did something particularly stupid.

‘Do they sound dead, Prince Dafydd?' the medic asked eventually. Then he cocked his head as if hearing something unusual himself. ‘Come. Follow me. And touch nothing.'

He headed off at such a pace they wouldn't have had the chance to touch anything even had they wanted to. The walls, which had looked like they formed simple spokes from the central pillar, were more like the walls of a maze, narrowing and branching with bewildering complexity. Without constantly glancing up at the stone roof of the cavern and the pillar, Dafydd would soon have been hopelessly lost, and even with them he wasn't sure he could easily make his way back to the exit. Usel seemed to have no such problem though, leading them swiftly past an uncountable number of alcoves, each with its collection of jewels, until the colours of the light suffusing the cavern changed. In a pace the red switched to bright white, almost blinding after so long in near-dark.

‘This is what a dragon's jewels should be like.' Usel put his hands into one of the alcoves, coming out with a pile of glowing white gems. ‘You can touch these, but I'd recommend you don't hold on to any for too long.'

Dafydd picked up one of the clear stones, marvelling at how pure it seemed in comparison to the red ones. Its edges were perfectly cut, though in a complex pattern he couldn't quite understand. Nevertheless it felt right, lying in the palm of his hand with a sense of satisfaction. And then the images began to fill his mind: of flying high
above the trees, the wind warm against his skin, the distant line of mountains tipped with white snow that glared in the bright afternoon sun.

‘These are ancient, some of the first to be collected here if I read the design of the place correctly.' Dafydd's mind lurched back to reality with such a shock he almost fell over. Looking down, he saw that Usel had taken the jewel from his hand and was placing them all back in their alcove. Such potency was astonishing; he had never felt anything like it before and even now could feel the desire to experience it again creeping up on him.

‘What do you mean, the design of this place?' Iolwen asked.

‘A dragon's jewels are inherently magical. They focus the Grym in ways you and I cannot begin to understand. To some extent they are the Grym. When they die, dragons are traditionally burned with the Fflam Gwir, the true flame. It returns their earthly form to the land and sets their jewels to this white, pure state. The jewels are taken to a secret place and added to a pile, so that in death they may commune with others of their family or fold. Their shared wisdom and experience is not lost with their physical forms, but carries on in Gwlad. All knowledge is there, for those who know how to access it.'

‘This doesn't look much like a pile to me.' Dafydd walked up to the great stone pillar rising to the ceiling high above. It was round, polished smooth and carved with symbols he didn't recognize.

‘That's because this place is an abomination. All these jewels are being kept apart from each other by lifeless stone. Bad enough that men have hunted and killed
dragons for centuries – longer – but to keep them in this state of living death afterwards …' Usel tailed off, as if the horror he was seeing were too much for him to take. Dafydd had never seen the man so agitated.

‘We should go,' Dafydd said even as he felt the tendrils of that one white jewel reaching out to his mind. ‘There is nothing we can do about this here and now. When the throne is secure and Beulah dealt with, then we can turn our attention to righting this wrong.'

The city of Pallestre was not large, Benfro discovered over the days of his recuperation. He longed to go in search of the mother tree, and each morning when he woke he would have the same conversation with Earith about the journey, but as he grew stronger and ventured out of the house with her, he had to admit anything more than a short stroll was beyond him. The thought of flying left him in cold sweats, his wings were so tender.

‘I don't think I'll ever get used to seeing men and dragons together like this,' he said as they paused at a corner of one of the larger squares towards the centre of the city. Awnings in a hundred different bright colours shaded market stalls where men traded food, clothing and all manner of things Benfro had no names for. A few dragons wandered through the crowd, pausing to view wares or chat with the stallholders much as the men and women did. Everything was on a scale somewhere between just a little too large for men and a little too small for dragons, but it seemed to work.

‘Dragons and men have always coexisted peacefully in Eirawen. It used to be the same in the north, until Gog
and Magog fought their pointless battle.' Earith led the way to one of the nearer stalls, which Benfro could smell sold ginger even before they arrived.

‘M'lady Earith.' The stall keeper nodded his head by way of greeting, then did the same in Benfro's direction. ‘Sir. Could I interest you in some fine ginger?'

Benfro looked at the man's wares laid out on a wide table under the awning. Wooden pails were piled high with chunks in various sizes and to one side lay a pile of what he imagined must be the root itself, before whatever magical process turned it into the delicious product he remembered so well. Behind the man a stack of large wooden barrels were covered with heavy cloth sacking and chunks of ice. Some of them had taps hammered into their fronts, reminding Benfro of the barrels of wine that had always been a feature of village feasts, even if he had never been allowed to sample their contents.