The Broken World (42 page)

‘What're you doing in here, boy?'

Errol lunged for the roast at the same time as his view changed. The eyes he was borrowing swung round to see a large bearded man standing in the doorway. He felt the meat, hot beneath his fingers. Gripped it tight even as a terrible fear washed over him, sent him spinning back to himself.

‘Hey! You did it! Wow!'

For a moment Errol couldn't work out where he was. Who he was. And then he couldn't understand why it was so dark. The sun had set, nothing but shadows under the cedar tree. Nellore was sitting at his feet, cross-legged, no longer beside him though he had no memory of her moving. He could scarcely make out her expression in the darkness and had no idea how hours could have passed in what felt like seconds.

But there was no denying the rolled joint of roast beef burning his hand.

‘Malkin going home again. See mother!'

The squirrel leaped from Benfro's shoulder on to the nearest branch, scuttling up the tree and disappearing into the canopy for what felt like the hundredth time since they had left Pallestre. Alongside him, Earith walked with a steady gait that seemed slow but nevertheless ate up the distance with surprising swiftness. Benfro had long since given up trying to talk; it took all his strength just to match the older dragon's pace as she forged a path through the forest. His beating had left him weak as a kitling.

‘Do we know where we're going?' he asked, pausing for a moment and resting his arm against a massive cedar. It was the first time in a while he had noticed, but the forest here was quite unlike that through which they had first walked. When had the trees changed, the air cooled?

‘The mother tree is where she wants to be, Benfro. You should know that. If she grants you an audience, then we will find her soon enough.' Earith didn't pause, just swept aside the next branch and plunged on into the trees.
Benfro found himself momentarily alone, only the familiar noises of the forest for company. If he ignored the aches and pains in his body and wings he could almost persuade himself that he was back home in the Ffrydd. There were stands of giant cedar not more than a couple of hours' walk from his mother's cottage. These could easily be them. All he needed to do was turn east, listen out for the sound of the river, perhaps pick up one of the deer trails that criss-crossed the whole area. He could go home, and his mother would be waiting for him, a look on her face that was a mixture of scolding and relief. And all this nightmare would never have happened.

‘Benfro come!'

Malkin reappeared from the branches of the nearest tree, upside down for a moment, then swinging acrobatically to leap on to Benfro's shoulder. With a weary sigh, he pulled his heavy wings tight around him, stooped low and pushed through.

It was like stepping from night into day.

One moment he was in deep forest, surrounded by ancient cedars reaching skywards and ranging in all directions. The next he was standing at the edge of a vast clearing, the ground dropping away in a gentle grassy slope towards its middle. And there in the centre she grew, the most enormous tree possible, her branches spread wide, each sporting a different kind of leaf, a different kind of life. Confused, Benfro turned back the way he had come. He should have known better than to expect to see the forest he had been walking through. He was several paces into the clearing, and the edge was marked with dense bramble bushes, fat with juicy blackberries and pure white flowers.

‘Come, Benfro. Don't dawdle. It doesn't do to keep the mother tree waiting.'

Benfro turned again to see Earith just a few paces ahead of him. He could have sworn she was not there a moment earlier, but then he had been somewhat distracted by the sight of the tree. He nodded, stepped forward to join her, and together they walked down the slope to the great spread of branches. They were almost there when a voice rang out.

‘Gog! You came back!'

Benfro stopped mid-stride as a dragon appeared from under the canopy. He was shabby, limped badly on the leg that had been shackled for so long, and his wings were never going to lift his body from the ground, but he had a grin on his face that wasn't the mad thing Benfro remembered.

‘The lady said you would be here soon. She is very kind to me, you know.' Sir Tremadog waddled up to Earith and sniffed her much the way a dog sniffs a lamp post. ‘You are not the lady.'

‘Sir Tremadog, this is Earith the Wise.' Benfro distracted the old dragon before he did something embarrassing.

‘Pleased to meet you,' Sir Tremadog said, then wandered off across the grass, stooping every now and then to collect flowers.

‘What's the matter with him?' Earith asked.

‘He was captured by a circus. They took his jewels out, one by one, to make him biddable.'

‘Actually I meant his wings, his size. He's an old dragon but he's barely bigger than a kitling. And he could never hope to fly.'

Benfro remembered the circus arena, Sir Tremadog in his guise as Magog running around in circles, flapping his stubby wings and leaping into the air like a cockerel. ‘He is big for a dragon from my world. And his wings are much the same size as most. We are small, drawn in on ourselves to avoid being noticed. Our wings were never big enough to fly, at least not until Magog gifted me with these.'

‘Actually they were, Sir Benfro. But Gog played a cruel trick on his brother's kin when the two of them broke the world apart.'

Benfro and Earith both looked up to see the mother tree standing in front of them. She wore the guise of the dragon Ammorgwm, though she appeared aged from the vision of perfect beauty Benfro recalled at their first meeting.

‘Lady Earith, it is good to see you again. And thank you for nursing young Benfro back to health. He has a dreadful habit of injuring himself.'

‘I suspected you might have sent him my way. Young Malkin only ever visits when you are near.'

‘I am always near.' The mother tree smiled, the fine glittery scales around her eyes sparkling in the sunlight as they moved. ‘But you are right. I've had my eye on Benfro for a while. He holds the key to undoing the great wrong his ancestor wrought on the land.'

‘He … I … What?' Benfro looked from Earith to the mother tree and back again. Sir Tremadog wandered up, a bunch of flowers in one hand. He seemed perplexed by the presence of two female dragons, holding up the flowers and waving them slowly from side to side as if
unsure who he should be giving them to. After a few seconds of this he shrugged, then pushed the whole bunch into his mouth, chewing thoughtfully.

‘Let us sit a while, and perhaps eat something a little more savoury.' The mother tree waved, and behind her now there was a table laden with food. Benfro's stomach growled, empty after half a day's trek through the deep forest. He tried not to appear too eager as he clambered on to one of the low benches and cast a hungry eye over the incredible selection on offer.

‘To be young and have such an appetite.' Earith smiled as she took her place alongside him more slowly. The mother tree herself seemed not to walk so much as slide from where she had been standing and into her chair. Sir Tremadog, tiring of his flowers, lumbered around to the other side of the table and began helping himself, humming a little tune as he did so.

The mother tree watched him indulgently, then turned to Benfro and Earith. ‘Please, eat. You have travelled far to get here, and Benfro needs to build up his strength.'

Benfro needed no second telling. He was perhaps a little less hasty in his eating than Sir Tremadog, but he had a powerful hunger nonetheless. As he worked his way through a plate heaped high with delicious-smelling vegetables, the mother tree spoke, her voice slow and measured.

‘You know the story of Gog and Magog, Benfro,' she said. ‘You know Sir Frynwy thought of it merely as a tale. Told to warn of the perils of too much power and pride, but a story nonetheless. And you also know that it is much more than that. You know that it is true. What you don't
know is the cruel trick Gog played on his brother when the worlds were split. And you, dear Earith, don't know the extent of Magog's evil concerning his brother. Gog gave knowledge of the subtle arts to the men in his brother's world, set them on the path of destruction that has seen Benfro's kin all but wiped out. And Magog sowed the seeds in his brother's line that you see flowering today. The abandonment of study in favour of hunting and feasting. The loss of all connection with the Grym and the subtle arts. These are his gifts.'

‘But Benfro is born of Magog's world and yet here he is,' Earith said. ‘Surely the magic that tore Gwlad apart is unravelling now. And if what Benfro has told me, if Magog truly is dead, then it can only be a matter of time before the spell collapses completely.'

‘Not while Gog still lives. Nor while Magog's jewels spread their unreckoned influence across his world. The two Gwlads will remain apart, but closer than they have ever been. Dragons, men, places long lost. All of these have begun slipping between the worlds, in both directions. I can feel myself, my other self, in a way I've not for millennia.' The mother tree shuddered as she spoke, as if some degenerative disease were eating away at her.

‘Are you not the same then?' Benfro paused with a perfect roast potato poised in front of his mouth. ‘Not the mother tree I met in the great forest of the Ffrydd? Nor the one who helped me escape from the warrior priests at Tynhelyg?'

‘The same, but not. It is hard for me to put into words, Benfro. When Gog and Magog split the worlds, they split
me too, for I am Gwlad in many ways. I am incomplete. You cannot imagine what agony that is for me.'

Benfro put the potato back down on his plate somewhat unwillingly. He had some small notion of the pain the mother tree must have endured. Had he not watched helplessly as his own body sorted through the pile of jewels in Magog's repository? Had he not suffered the cruel influence of the rose cord that connected him to the dead mage?

‘You have suffered much, Benfro. There can be no denying it. But I have been in this terrible limbo for many thousands of years. And now I can finally see a way to be whole.' The mother tree – or was she really Ammorgwm? – fixed Benfro with a sad, serious look. ‘But I will need your help.'

‘My help?' Benfro swallowed even though there was nothing in his mouth. All eyes were on him, even Malkin and Sir Tremadog had stopped their self-absorbed feasting and now stared his way. ‘What can I do? I'm just …'

‘You are the last of Magog's line, Benfro. And you are joined to him, joined to his essence more fundamentally even than that.' The mother tree's eyes shifted ever so slightly to that point in his forehead where the rose cord had attached itself to his aura.

‘But it's gone. He has no influence over me here.'

The mother tree dropped her stare, let her head droop. ‘It is true he cannot reach you here in Gog's world. Not while the Old One lives at least, and not while Magog is so distracted elsewhere. You disrupted his plans when you scattered his jewels from their nest in Mount Arnahi, but
the link between the two of you is still there. Even if you cannot see it.'

Benfro couldn't stop himself from reaching up to his face, as if he could touch the insubstantial loop that linked him to Magog. He could see his own aura, healthier now than it had been for days. It flowed around him constantly, pulsing with strength. He could see the lines of the Grym, almost too bright for his aethereal sight in this most magical of places, but of the rose cord he could see no sign. Of Magog's influence he could sense nothing.

‘Are you sure?' he asked.

‘As sure as anything.' The mother tree waved her arm, in the same instant transforming from the image of Ammorgwm into the slender white-haired creature Benfro had seen once before. The Grym shivered as she moved, as if it lay on the surface of a pond and someone was stirring the water. And then he saw it, motionless where all around was motion, the palest shade of pink in among the blinding white.

‘I am sorry, Benfro, but you will never be free of Magog until his jewels are reckoned. Even then something of him will remain with you, but it will have no power over you.'

‘Then I have no choice. I must find Gog, persuade him to take me to the place of his hatching. Magog's bones are there. I can breathe the Fflam Gwir. I just need …' And then Benfro remembered the one thing that was missing. ‘The jewel. I don't have it. Not my mother's either.'

‘You don't have them?' A flicker of worry spread over the mother tree's pale face, and the sun dipped behind a cloud, dropping the temperature in the clearing in an instant. ‘Where are they?'

Benfro tried to think back past the beating he had taken from Fflint, past losing his hand to Melyn's blade of fire, past the rage that had cleared his mind at the circus and the long weeks he had spent with Loghtan, Tegwin and the crew. It felt like a lifetime ago that he and Errol had fled Corwen's clearing, and then Errol had gone back for the jewels. Errol had taken charge of them, wrapped in cloth and hidden at the bottom of his hastily made bag. But the last time he had seen Errol, watched the boy fade away along the lines to the moon-knew-where, there had been no cloth bag slung around his shoulders.

‘I have to find Errol. I have to go back to the village. He was there.' Benfro pushed away his plate, stood up and looked around the clearing as if his friend might be hiding there. With a wave of her hand, the mother tree made the table and all the food vanish, much to the astonished indignation of Sir Tremadog. Earith stood more slowly, her great age showing in that one difficult movement.

‘I can take you there, Benfro. But you must realize that your friend is most probably dead. Men have not fared well in Gog's world.'

‘No. Errol yet lives, Earith, and he is not at the village where Fflint, son of Caradoc, met his end.' The creature that was the mother tree approached the two dragons, and as she did it was as if the vast tree itself approached too. The canopy of every kind of leaf loomed overhead, blotting out the sun, and the great trunk of the tree swelled and widened even as it drew closer and closer. Then there was just the tree; no strange, thin, white-haired woman, no Malkin, no Sir Tremadog, and when he looked around, no Earith either.