The Broken World (48 page)

‘Yes, dragon. And I don't mean the sort of creature we have in the circus back home. This thing flew in. It barely fits through the doors.'

As if to emphasize the point, a loud thud like a distant clap of thunder shocked the air around them. Swiftly followed by another.

‘But I … The army … The queen!' Padraig flapped his hands like a man who's accidentally pissed on his fingers, then set off across the room to where a set of tall glass windows opened on to a balcony. ‘The queen!'

Dafydd shook his head. The man was obviously losing it. But he was also moving at considerable speed for his age, still muttering ‘The queen' under his breath. Padraig reached the windows and flung them open at the same time as something vast swooped past them. It cast a fleeting shadow over the balcony and the seneschal jumped back in surprise.

‘By the Wolf! What is that?'

Dafydd caught up with him, keeping back from the open window until he was sure it was safe to step outside. The balcony was to the front of the palace, looking out over the parade ground beyond and then down the hill over the rooftops of Candlehall. Behind him, he knew, the buildings climbed to the Neuadd, but it was the view out over the city walls to the plain below that caught his breath and snatched it away.

He had assumed most of Beulah's army would have marched north through the Rhedeg pass from Tochers to
Tynewydd, not wanting to get caught in the pass by the winter snows. A small force could have laid siege to Candlehall, keeping them locked in and using up their supplies over the cold months, before mounting a more serious attack in the spring. Instead she appeared to have brought her entire army back with her and was even now preparing siege engines to pound the walls.

‘How is this possible?' Dafydd whispered the question under his breath, unaware that Seneschal Padraig had joined him on the balcony.

‘Lord Beylin has brought men and barges from the Hendry. Duke Glas has sent more men too. They took Abervenn just a few days ago. Sailed upriver. Your Highness, I am so sorry. I had hoped only for peace between our nations.'

Dafydd ducked as something vast swooped overhead. A gust of wind followed, threatening to knock the seneschal off his feet. He spun round and looked up, saw not one but five dragons, each as big as the creature Usel had called Sir Morwyr. They circled the Neuadd, snarling and biting at each other, play-fighting like gigantic crows. Occasionally one would swoop low over the buildings, raking slates from roofs with outstretched talons. His ears still rang from his earlier close encounter with the dragon, but as they cleared, so Dafydd could begin to make out the sound of screaming.

‘In the Shepherd's name, where did they come from?' Seneschal Padraig's voice was very small as he made the sign of the crook across his chest. ‘What do they want?'

Dafydd stared in horror as one great creature clawed its slow way up into the sky above the Neuadd, clearly
carrying something in its huge claws. Then with a great sweep of its wings, it let go of its trophy. Arms and legs flailing in the air, some poor palace guard tumbled screaming to his death. Before the figure could hit the ground, it was caught in the air by another dragon, tossed around like a mouse being played with by a cat. Dafydd turned back to the seneschal, unable to watch any more.

‘I don't know. But I think Beulah's army is perhaps the least of our problems.'

It didn't take long for the tunnel walls to turn from wood to stone, neatly carved and locked together with joints so tight they barely needed mortar. Benfro felt the ground beneath his feet change from grass to loam and then to smooth cobbles as he walked towards a distant pinpoint of light. It began as green, sunlight filtering through summer leaves, but with each step so it brightened to a harsh white. The temperature dropped too, his breath escaping from his nostrils in great steaming gouts as if there was a fire in his belly. At least he felt warm inside, filled with the mother tree's food and protected by her blessing. Still there was much in what she had told him that was troubling.

Benfro couldn't have said at what point the tunnel stopped being anything to do with the tree and changed into something entirely dragon made. It wasn't really important, although when he noticed the roof arching ever higher above him he turned once to look back at the
warm grassy clearing where he had started, only to see a dark stone corridor leading into black. No going back now, he had no option but to press on.

By the time he reached the end of the tunnel, he already knew where he was going to find himself. Benfro looked out across the flat open expanse between the great outer wall and the buildings of Gog's castle. Far distant and seeming to climb into the clouds, the central tower was even more impossible in reality than it had been in his dreamwalking state. And Benfro was sure this was no dream. He was here now, in flesh and scale and wing, not a hundred paces from the spot where he had dropped Ynys Môn's jewels. How long ago had that been? It felt like years, though scant months could have passed.

Snow covered the ground where before there had been grass. It hid the paths, and the nearby ornamental ponds showed only as indentations in the ground, which was otherwise perfectly flat and white. There was little chance the jewels would still be where they had fallen, or that they had ever been there given he had been dreaming when he had lost them. Still, Benfro walked across to the spot he thought was right. It wasn't easy to judge. He was seeing the place from a new perspective – he had never landed in his dream – and yet he was sure now he was here, building the image in his head in the same way his mother had taught him to remember the herb store back home. His one eye noted the position of the outer wall in relation to the nearby buildings and the distant tower, and his blind eye layered the Grym and the aethereal on top of that vision, painting a history of what had happened here – the living creatures that had passed by and left some
measure of themselves upon the fabric of the world. The Grym flowed through this place with a single-mindedness he had not encountered before, everything converging towards a single point. Benfro didn't have to look up to know where that point would be.

And then he noticed, just off to one side, a subtle bend in the lines. A junction where he would not have expected one to be, it had a familiar feeling to it but one he couldn't fathom. Like the softest hint of a smell can trigger a memory of something long forgotten. He hurried to the spot, brushed aside the snow until he reached the neatly trimmed grass beneath, then parted the sward with fingers that shook more in trepidation than cold to reveal the tiniest of pale white jewels nestling against the frozen soil. Without his strangely enhanced sight it would have been just another ice crystal, oddly shaped but not so unusual for that. And yet Benfro knew better. He plucked it from the ground with something akin to reverence, balling his hand around it in a tight fist.

‘Benfro? Is that you?' Ynys Môn's voice floated into Benfro's head. It was weak, distant, as if the old dragon was a mile away, shouting into the wind.

‘It's me,' he whispered and saw the great forest of the Ffrydd surround him in his memory. He had just run like a mad beast after a deer, bringing it down by hand despite the bow hanging at his back. His friend and mentor and perhaps the closest thing to a father he had ever known was standing nearby, grinning at his idiocy. Soon they would make camp for the night, settle down to food and stories.

‘I can't see anything. Don't know where I am,' Ynys
Môn said, and the memory burst like an eyeball pierced by a talon. Benfro clutched the jewel so tight he could feel it dig into his palm. He scanned the ground, using all his senses old and new to find more of his old friend, but there was nothing. And then he sensed something else, something threatening.

‘Well, what have we here? An intruder.'

They spiralled out of the sky like massive black snowflakes, three great dragons that Benfro recognized as the ones who had attacked him in his dream. Their true forms were larger even than their aethereal bodies, larger even than Fflint. They were older too. The biggest of them landed just a dozen paces away, dark as the night and with no discernible pattern to his scales in the flat white light of the snow. He swept the ground with a final arc of his wings, sending up a fine flurry of powder that hung in the air between them like a threat. Benfro knew him then for certain, recognized the dragon he had encountered in his dream. Reflexively his hand went up to his chest, feeling for the scratch across his scales that wasn't there.

‘Do you lot never learn? You are not welcome here.' The great beast folded his wings tight, the bony joints rising high above him as he spoke. Benfro was aware of the other two coming in to land behind him, taking up positions for an attack.

‘I don't know who you mean by “you lot”.' Benfro lied. He knew perfectly well who they took him to be, but he also knew he could not fight them. ‘I am Sir Benfro, son of Sir Trefaldwyn of the Great Span and Morgwm the Green. I have come here seeking Gog, Son of the Winter Moon.'

Something like fire flashed in the black dragon's eyes as Benfro spoke the name of Gog. He heard the other two take in simultaneous sharp breaths.

‘How dare you speak his name? How dare you even set foot in his castle?' The black dragon advanced on Benfro, who stood his ground. He should have felt afraid, he knew. He'd almost died in his fight with Fflint, lost his hand to Melyn, succumbed to Tegwyn and Loghtan without even realizing he was being attacked. This huge beast could rip him apart, and the two behind him weren't much smaller. And yet all he felt was calm. Any doubt as to whether he was in the right place, whether Gog was still alive, had evaporated at those words.

‘I dare by right of birth,' Benfro said. ‘And in the name of Magog, Son of the Summer Moon.'

If naming Gog had enraged the black dragon, naming his brother seemed to plunge the whole castle into a deep freeze. Everything stopped. Even the wind, whistling about the crenellations and around the distant tower, fell to nothing. Silence blanketed the world like newly fallen snow. And then a low growl, so deep Benfro could feel it in his legs, rose from the black dragon. His breath steamed out of his mouth as he crouched in readiness to spring, wings half-opening, talons extended. Behind the beast Benfro watched the aethereal doubles of the other two dragons inch closer. Deep in his own stomach the flame began to grow. He would use it if he had to; he hoped that he wouldn't.

‘I will kill you where you stand for uttering—'

‘You will do no such thing.'

The voice slammed into Benfro. He was battered by it,
his knees buckling under an impossible weight. The black dragon clearly felt the same way, cringing like a kitling scolded. Benfro looked up to see another dragon circling as he descended. He landed with considerably less grace than the others, sending snow in all directions and shaking out his wings before walking slowly up to the group.

‘Have you become so like your feral cousins you treat all visitors this way, Enedoc?' The black dragon abased himself even further as his master passed him, and Benfro finally saw what he knew he would see. The newcomer was old. As old as Earith perhaps. Maybe even older. He wasn't as large as Enedoc, but he had more presence. His aethereal form was so overwhelming Benfro had to avert his blind eye.

‘You are Gog.' The words were foolish, but he said them anyway.

‘And you are Sir Benfro. I've heard a lot about you.' The ancient dragon held himself erect and peered down his long nose at Benfro as if he were some curious specimen found under a rock.

‘You … you have?'

‘Indeed yes. Mostly from your friend Ynys Môn. A fascinating dragon. Such insights. I take it you found his last jewel there.' Gog nodded towards Benfro's fist. ‘It would have been better if you'd not dropped them in the first place, but given the circumstances of your arrival, I think it can be forgiven.'

‘Is he all right?' Benfro clenched the tiny jewel harder.

‘All right? My dear Benfro, he's dead.' Gog let out a long wheezing laugh that ended in a cough. ‘Dear me, this cold doesn't agree with my old lungs. Come, let us continue
this conversation somewhere warmer.' He turned away, snapping open his wings. Two long strides and he was in the air. Enedoc and his companions leaped to follow. The three younger dragons wheeled away over the first building, while Gog headed straight for his high tower, leaving Benfro alone in the snow as he climbed swiftly. Only when he was halfway there did he slow, wheel in the air, then speed back, landing once more in a cascade of snow.

‘Why do you not follow?' Benfro couldn't help but notice the wheeziness in the old dragon's voice, the rapid breathing.

‘My wings were damaged. They need more time to heal.'

Gog came closer, cocking his head to one side as he peered more closely. ‘Lost your eye too, eh? Out beyond the wall, I take it.'

Benfro nodded. Close up, he could see Gog's great age painted on his features, but he also saw the similarity to Magog. Or at least the image of a dragon in his prime Magog had chosen to project. With his blind eye, Benfro could tell that Gog was well past that. The effort of flying even a short distance had shrunk the magnificent presence, and now the old dragon's joints glowed dull yellow with arthritis, his aura clung to him like a purple miasma. There was a weakness about him at odds with the way he held himself.

‘They grow worse with each passing year. Regressing to the mindless beasts our kind were back at the birth of Gwlad. They have no appreciation of the subtle arts, grow no jewels.' Gog indicated Benfro's hand.

‘It was your brother's parting gift. His curse to your world.'

Gog raised a grey and bushy eyebrow. ‘Indeed? And how could you know this?'

‘The mother tree told me. Same as you cursed my world, gave men the magic that killed Ynys Môn. Killed my mother.'

Gog's head drooped, though whether from shame or simple tiredness, Benfro could not tell.

‘It has been thousands of years. I am not the dragon I was back then. Nor could I have foreseen the ultimate result of my rash actions. I am sorry, Benfro. For all the good it does.' He shivered again, ruffling his wings against the cold. Even Benfro could feel it now, seeping into his feet. He was surprised to see that the sky was darkening, the sun setting already.

‘We cannot stay here all night though, and you can't fly – I can see that much is true. We can't walk; that would take days. It seemed a good idea building this place so big when I was young. I can see I was foolish then.' Gog shook his head, held out a gnarled and twisted hand. ‘Come then, we will use the Llinellau. Here, I will help you.'

Benfro hesitated, unsure whether he could bring himself to take the hand that had, in a way, caused him all his troubles. ‘I know how to walk the Llinellau Grym,' he said. ‘That's how I got here, after all. To your world.'

‘Really? And so young? I am impressed. Then you'll have no trouble following me.' Gog withdrew his hand, turned on the spot and vanished. Benfro's good eye barely registered what had happened, but his blind eye showed him the Grym in far greater detail than he had ever been
able to see it before. The route the old dragon had taken wasn't hard to see, easier still to follow. And besides, he knew where he was going. In a step he was there.

It was back-breaking work. The dung stuck to his shovel unless he heaped it so high he could scarcely lift it to the wagon. The first load seemed to take for ever, and all the while the stench of the place, the bad air and the mesmerizing pull of the chain on his wrist made thinking all but impossible. Finally when the wagon was almost overflowing, Errol stopped digging, put his shoulder to it and heaved. The iron wheels ran on metal rails that at least made moving it relatively easy once he had got it started. The rails led through a short tunnel to an even larger cavern, and here he was directed to unload the dung over a cliff edge into a bottomless black pit. At first Errol used his shovel to scoop great chunks out of the top of the wagon, but then one of the other workers silently showed him how to open the end and operate a tipping mechanism. It was a small act of kindness in a world of utter and inexplicable misery that earned the man a kicking from the overseer.