The Broken World (5 page)

So wrapped up was he in his musings that Errol didn't notice the shouting until he was almost upon it. Fortunately he was out of sight, hidden by the bulk of the nearest grain store, but he recognized one of the voices instantly.

‘You're able-bodied men. Why are you here working on barns when the king needs every man for his army?'

‘Your Grace, we're needed to bring in the harvest.'

‘Harvest, pah. Women can cut barley as well as men. Are you cowards? Is that it?'

Errol slipped out of his saddle and let himself down to the ground behind one of the open grain store doors without a sound. Leaving his horse, he crept out of the shadow, hugging the wall of the building as he peered round the corner.

Duke Dondal sat on his horse, backed by at least two dozen men whom Errol recognized as from the palace guard. He was looking down his nose at the gathered workmen, who clustered behind the mason's son
Cerrin. It looked very much as if he had been volunteered spokesman.

‘You'll all of you come with me now to the castle. If you're fit and strong enough to build follies for your lord and master, you're fit and strong enough to carry a pike to war.' Dondal's face was red with the temper Errol remembered all too well from his time as the duke's page.

‘Sergeant, round up these men, and any more you find about the place. Bring them to the castle. Captain, you come with me. I need to have words with Lord Gremmil about holding back on his responsibilities to the king.'

Errol backed away quickly, only just making it into the shadow behind the grain store door as Dondal galloped up the road accompanied by half of the soldiers. He went to his horse, pulling it as much into cover as he could, and yet still felt desperately vulnerable as he waited for his inevitable discovery.

And waited.

Long minutes went past. Errol strained his ears to hear any noise that would indicate a search was under way. Or that the sergeant had decided it would be easier to wait until his captain and lord were both out of sight, then perhaps settle down for a quick smoke before taking the men he already had up to the castle and hang the bother of searching for any more. But he could hear nothing above the low swishing of the wind in the barley.

Finally he could bear it no longer; he had to see what was happening. He edged along the wall and peered round the corner. Seeing nothing, he moved on, still keeping his back to the stone, to look round the next corner, where the workmen had been standing before.

They were still there, sitting on the grass looking miserable. One soldier watched them from his horse, puffing contentedly on a short pipe, but the rest were nowhere to be seen. There were two other grain stores besides the unfinished one and the one Errol was hiding behind, but from where he stood he could see the doors to neither of them. It was as if the soldiers had vanished into thin air or been swallowed up by the still-green crops. But he knew they were somewhere, searching. He had to get back to his horse and hope they weren't being too thorough.

Errol felt the familiar but forgotten tingle as he began to turn, that sensation in the Grym. Too late he realized what it meant. A hand clasped his shoulder roughly, spinning him and making his head burst in waves of pain. He could hardly see, could do nothing about his knees as they folded beneath him, but he could hear the voice that spoke in rough city Llanwennog.

‘Here, what's a lass like you doing here? Go on, get on home to yer mam. This ‘ere's king's business.'

The hands that had spun him round now grabbed the front of Errol's too-long riding cloak and hauled him to his feet.

‘Please, don't hurt me,' Errol begged, but then the soldier's words sank in. He'd called him a lass and said. ‘Get on home to yer mam.' Could he possibly think that Errol was a girl? It was true his hair had grown long over the months since he had escaped from Candlehall, and his face had never been troubled by the need to shave. And his cloak was fine, its hems edged with embroidered silk in a flowery style that would suit a young merchant's daughter, especially given its length. Underneath it he was
wearing a man's clothes, but the soldier couldn't see them. No one at the castle had said anything; none had ever doubted his sex. Lord Gremmil had found him naked and beaten; the castle servants had washed him; the physician examined him.

‘Go on. Get out of here. You've no hope moonin' after any o' these lads. They're King Ballah's men now.' The soldier shoved Errol away, back towards the grain store where his horse stood in the doorway.

‘Sorry, sir. I'll be going right away, sir.' Errol tried to make his voice sound flighty, like the chambermaids who chattered in the corridors of Castle Gremmil. He took up his horse's reins and hauled himself into the saddle in what was probably a most unladylike manner. The soldier just laughed.

‘Tryin' ter be one o' the boys, eh?' He slapped the horse on its rump, making it start. Errol reined it back, trotting out on to the road and heading back towards the town. Other soldiers appeared from behind the various grain stores, looking at him with puzzled expressions on their faces.

‘Just a town girl wantin' ter play with the big boys,' the soldier shouted, which raised a laugh. Dropping his head as if in shame, Errol kicked his horse into a trot and then a canter. As soon as he was sure he could no longer be seen he turned into a field and rode far out into the barley, leaving the soldiers well out of sight as he made a long detour back to the king's road.

There was something very liberating about having a simple task to do and knowing how to go about completing it. Melyn found the cleansing of the northlands of Llanwennog a joy after the endless months of planning, the long slog through the forest of the Ffrydd and the dash through the Rim mountains. Now that he was actually in his enemy's lair and laying down the foundations of his great diversion, he was as close as he had ever come to being happy. It helped that he was ridding Gwlad of the godless Llanwennog; he could feel no sorrow in their deaths, as he would feel no sorrow at the death of any vermin. These people had long ago denied the word of the Shepherd. Their fate was a just one.

So far they had only cleared villages and a few remote farmsteads. Out on the edges of settled country these people would not be missed for months, maybe longer, but it made no sense to leave too many enemies at his back. And so his scouts worked their way across the open plains, seeking out the next targets, while the bulk of the army remained out of sight. And hiding wasn't difficult: at first the terrain might look like one endless flat plain stretching to the horizon, but it was cut across with gullies, most dry at the height of summer, but some still filled with sluggish rivers.

They had camped on the edge of a large gully overnight, sheltering in some straggly woodland from the squalls of rain that swept in on sudden gusts of wind. Now Melyn was contemplating how best to attack Cerdys, the first sizeable town they had approached.

‘There's no armed force stationed there?' Melyn interrogated a spy he had sent into the town, a short wiry fellow with enough of the look of the local people to go about unremarked. All the warrior priests were proficient in Frecknock's hiding spell now, so in theory any of them could go out and scout the area, but Melyn didn't believe in leaving anything to chance.

‘There's a constable and two deputies, but they've no skill at magic as far as I can tell. They carry short swords, but since they spend most of their time in the tavern at the centre of town, I don't think they'll pose much of a threat.'

‘Good. We'll surround the town and close in using all the roads. We don't leave until everyone is dead.'

The scout nodded, leaving to rejoin his troop. Captain
Osgal handed out orders to his sergeants, and the camp began to dissolve, bands of men heading off in different directions at timed intervals. Melyn left last, surrounded by a small band, Frecknock trailing just behind him.

They rode out of the woods and across the lush grass towards a point where the road could be seen winding its way across the plain. As soon as they were past the trees, the men began to shimmer and become indistinct as they wrapped the Grym around them like a cloak. Melyn let himself dip in and out of his trance state, seeing brief snippets of the aethereal. Here the men were clearer, some more sharply focused than they would normally appear. It was an interesting new insight into the two different forms of Gwlad's magic, for so long considered completely separate by the quaisters and librarians back at Emmass Fawr. The irony was not lost on Melyn that this knowledge had come from a dragon, one of the creatures the order had been created to destroy.

Just as he was dropping back into the real, something caught his eye, a glint in the aethereal. Melyn cursed silently, trying to calm his mind again and slip back into the trance. It came after a few moments, and he saw it again – a strange discolouration, almost like a bruise in the air, a few dozen paces off and not far from the road edge. For a moment he thought it might be a spy, one of Ballah's men with even more powerful concealment magic than his own, but it didn't move, just hung there. Noting its position, he rose back out of his trance and steered his horse over to the place. It was easy to find, a long dark patch of ash flattening the grass as if it had been dumped from a cart. The rain had washed it smooth, and in the
middle of the pile something glinted gold in the early-morning sun.

‘Something happened here.' The thought was Melyn's but the words came from Frecknock, as ever following him like an obedient pet.

‘Indeed, but what?'

Perhaps taking his question as permission to act, Frecknock stepped forward, stooped down and retrieved the shiny object. As her hand touched the ash, she shuddered visibly.

‘What is it?' Melyn leaned forward in his saddle the better to see.

‘A man died here, and then his body was consumed by the Fflam Gwir.' Frecknock stood once more, handing the object to Melyn. He turned it over in his hand, noting the pure gold and the worn stampings that marked it as a coin. It was no currency he knew, but he recognized it as something he had seen before. There had been a handful of them in the cave where Errol and the dragon Benfro had been hiding, left behind along with several other valuable trinkets.

‘The boy was here, and the dragon too.' Melyn slipped the coin into a pocket in his travelling cloak, wondering who the man was and how he had died.

‘Benfro did this.' Frecknock stood up, backing away from the pile of wet ash, and Melyn thought he saw her shudder again. ‘Only a dragon could conjure this flame. But how? He has no herbs, no oils. He doesn't know the spells.'

‘He doesn't need spells; he breathes fire.'

‘He …' Frecknock lifted a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide. ‘I can't believe … Not Benfro …'

‘He breathes fire. Is that any more shocking than him growing wings and flying?'

‘Your Grace, you have no idea.'

‘Enlighten me then.'

‘Breathing fire is something the old creatures did, before Great Rasalene showed us the way of the Grym. It's unnatural, bestial. No dragon would ever do it. The Fflam Gwir comes from Gwlad, not from us.'

‘Well, this came from Benfro, which means he passed this way. And by the look of that ash, not long ago either. Another couple of heavy showers and there'll be nothing left to see.' Melyn looked up at the sky, dark with gathering rain clouds, then back at the patch of damp ash. There was something odd about it, and as he looked, it came to him. The grass was not burned. Fronds were poking up through the pile, paler green where they had been hidden from the sun for a while. He put his hand back in his pocket and drew out the coin. It was scuffed and worn, but a fire that could have rendered a man to ash would have surely melted it. Even the magical fire he had conjured to dispose of the dead Llanwennog villagers had burned with a terrible heat.

‘How is it this coin survived intact? Why isn't the grass burned?'

‘The Fflam Gwir burns only dead flesh and bone and scale. As we come from the Grym, so it takes us back when we are dead.' Frecknock sounded like she was reciting a passage from a litany.

‘Then how do you account for Osgal's burns? How could Benfro produce this flame in the aethereal?'

‘I truly do not know, Your Grace. He should not be
able to breathe fire at all. This is something I've never encountered before.'

Melyn could see Frecknock's fear as she spoke, and it made him feel better. She knew how precarious her position was; knew that she could be killed in an instant should she stop being useful. Admitting that there was something she didn't know meant that her end was a little bit closer.

‘Well then, let us hurry into town before my warrior priests kill everyone. Perhaps one of the good citizens of Cerdys will be able to shed some light on the matter.'

Dafydd didn't know who was the more astonished, the dragon, Usel or himself. They all stood motionless, staring at each other for long moments. It seemed as if the chittering forest noise and babble of the stream had been cut off. It was Iolwen who finally broke the stillness.

‘Um. Hello?' She spoke in Llanwennog, taking a single pace forward from their group and opening her arms wide in a gesture of peace. The dragon said something incomprehensible. Its voice was melodic, almost hypnotizing, and though he couldn't understand the words, Dafydd thought he would be happy to listen to it for ever. Then Usel spoke, and his words were a crude imitation of the dragon's, halting and uncertain but clearly the same language. Dafydd heard his own name, and Iolwen's, and assumed that they were being introduced to the beast.

She replied with a smile and a nod. He didn't know how, but he understood then the dragon was female. He had only ever seen one of her kind before, at a circus many years earlier. That creature had been male and nothing like as large or splendid as this one. Her scales glistened
in the evening sunshine, reflecting a thousand different colours. Her tail coiled around her massive legs like some tame snake, its tip pointed and spiky. Long sharp talons sprang from her feet, and her fingers ended in lethal claw-like nails. Narrow fangs protruded past her lips, white as bone against the darkness of her face. She was fierce and yet also somehow unthreatening.

Dafydd listened as she spoke some more unintelligible words in that strange lilting accent. He felt at peace, relaxed and calm. The whole clearing was a safe place, a magic place.

‘But this is wonderful.' Usel's words broke through Dafydd's reverie, bringing him back to the real world with a start. How long had he drifted? He had no idea. But somehow he had taken Iolwen's hand in his own.

‘You can speak to her?' he asked.

‘After a fashion. My Draigiaith is very poor, and she speaks a dialect I've never heard before. But I think I get the gist of her story. She's lost. One moment she was flying over the forests, searching the islands for more of her kin, the next she was in a land she didn't recognize. When she approached a town of men for help, they pursued her with weapons and magic, tried to kill her. She escaped and flew here, feeling the call of this place. But the carving puzzles her. She knows of no reason why anyone should have created it. No dragon has ever courted such veneration, she tells me. Her mistress would be appalled.'

‘Her mistress? Who could command such a creature? Does this dragon have a name?' Dafydd's questions bubbled out of him as if he had no control over his actions.

‘She is Merriel, daughter of Earith. At least I think
that's what she said. Not a dragon I've ever heard of, I have to admit. But as to her mistress, that's far more revealing. She is the dragon portrayed in this carving.' Usel pointed to the great rock face. ‘Earith, favoured of the Shepherd. Gifted with the powers of healing. In human guise at least she is the founder of our order. Her existence as a dragon is … troubling to those who would see dragons as mere beasts.'

Dafydd began to ask how that could possibly be, but he was interrupted by shouts from behind and above. Whirling he saw Captain Pelod and his guards charging towards their little group, potent blades shining in the gloaming and eyes filled with bloodlust. On the ridge above them sailors appeared with crossbows, and before he could say anything the air was full of ill-aimed bolts.

‘Hold!' Dafydd threw all of his will into the command, reaching out to everyone he could see. His voice echoed around the narrow valley end, bouncing off the rock wall and seeming to amplify with each repeat. A flock of brightly coloured birds clattered into the air from the nearby trees with squawks of alarm. The attack stopped as if it had run into an invisible wall. Pelod looked for a moment as if he had been slapped, and an unnatural quiet descended on the scene.

‘What were you doing?' Dafydd asked as the guards extinguished their blades.

‘We saw the beast attacking you.' Pelod's words were uncertain, as if he was no longer quite sure what he had seen.

‘She was doing nothing of the sort. We're in no danger from this dragon.' Usel turned away and said something
to the startled creature in its own language. Dafydd felt something brush his mind, like the touch of King Ballah, and then he understood her words.

‘There is much to learn about this world into which I have stumbled. It is a place where men are cruel and wield the subtle arts with a brutality I've rarely seen. But you, Prince Dafydd, have shown me kindness. I shall not forget it.'

For a fleeting instant Dafydd felt something of the dragon's thoughts. She was old, far older than he could conceive. And she had seen much, felt joy and sadness through her long life. He caught glimpses of a world where dragons wheeled and turned in the sky, as numerous as crows, as elegant as eagles. Then that connection was broken, leaving him feeling flat. Merriel daughter of Earith bowed once to the small party, then stepped back and away from them. Dafydd knew what she was about to do and, still holding Iolwen's hand, he pulled his wife away.