Dreamwalker (27 page)

More images flickered through his head, reinforcing the Inquisitor’s version of the truth. It was a bit like a dream, Errol realised. Only in this dream he was aware he was dreaming. A part of him watched from a distance, noting the inconsistencies and pondering on the gaps that still blotted his memory.

‘Well, it’s been nice having this little chat, Errol,’ Inquisitor Melyn said and with the words, Errol was back in his head properly. He could feel the edge of the chair hard against his legs, the solid, heavy weight of the goblet in his hands. And he was free to move his eyes away from the Inquisitor’s piercing stare. His mouth felt dry and he instinctively raised the goblet to his lips once more, drinking deeply.

‘It’ll be your birthday soon,’ Melyn said. ‘Then you can be initiated into the order. Once you’ve performed the ceremony you will be able to join the other novitiates in their training.’

‘Soon?’ Errol said. ‘But... It can’t be... I mean it was just last week I... How long have I been here?’

‘Nearly six months, Errol. You’ve been with us half a year.’

~~~~

Chapter Fifteen

The Obsidian Throne, in the Neuadd at Candlehall, is a powerful magical artefact. Some say that it stood on the top of the Hill of Kings, open to the elements, for millennia before King Brynceri built the hall that still surrounds it to this day. Inquisitor Ruthin insisted that it had been put there by The Shepherd himself, so that Balwen might have somewhere to rest after he had driven the Godless across the Gwahanfa Ranges into Llanwennog. Whatever its true history, there is no denying the power it contains. But that power, whilst it has guarded the Twin Kingdoms for many centuries, can also be brutally destructive.

King Weddelm II was crowned when he was only nineteen, after his father had been killed in a hunting accident.  Within six months of his coronation, he had been driven insane by the power of the throne, plunging the land into a decade of terrible war. Diseverin II, who was only eighteen when he came to power, wasted half of the manhood of the kingdom on his futile attempts to drive an army through the Wrthol pass. Other young kings have threatened the stability of the Twin Kingdoms down the years, all through the corrupting influence of the throne.

After almost a century of bloody warring, King Diseverin IV finally made the royal edict that stands to this day. No heir of Balwen may assume the throne until after his twenty-first birthday. Should a king die before his eldest son reaches that age, then the senior amongst the leaders of the three orders, the Candle, the Ram and the High Ffrydd shall act as regent until the heir comes of age. In the four hundred years since Diseverin’s reign, only once has a regent ruled over the Twin Kingdoms, and that for only six months.

A History of the House of Balwen by Barrod Sheepshead

Benfro sat at the table, staring out of the window at the endless rain. He was bored. He hated winter with its storms and wind, its short days and long, dark nights. The cold didn’t bother him much, though he preferred to bask in the heat of the sun. But what was worst about the whole wretched season was that there was so little to do.

There were plenty of chores: firewood to be collected and stacked; water to be carted from the stream; dishes to be washed; floors to be cleaned. And on top of that his mother had set him the task of making copies of several of her books on herbs. But the bad weather meant no trips to the village, no hunting in the woods, no climbing trees in search of nests to raid, no exploring. So he sat at the table with several sheets of parchment, a bottle of ink and a long quill pen, scratching out the letters one by one in precise, neat script, just as he had been taught. He had long since given up reading the words, preferring to stare out the window and lose himself in thoughts.

Weeks had passed since he had awoken in the cave from his strange dream. He could still remember the fear and helplessness, but it was fading now, outshone by the wondrous feeling of flight. He longed for more dreams, to the point where he often went to his bed early and lay for what seemed like hours staring at the dark ceiling, waiting for sleep to come, yet trying to keep a hold of his consciousness. Always he woke the next morning, early, with no memory of anything but the wooden beams overhead. It puzzled him, since he had always dreamt and always been able to remember dreaming. Now it was as if someone had put a fence around his sleeping mind.

Despite his mother’s earlier promises, Benfro had learned nothing of the subtle arts since his misadventure. She had spoken to Sir Frynwy and Meirionydd, as she had promised, but the answer had come back from both of them the same. He could not begin until his fourteenth hatchday had passed. He had only Ynys Môn’s spell of hiding to practice, and that seemed more of a sleight of hand than a proper spell.

The constant patter of rain on the roof almost masked the sound of a footfall creaking on the wooden floor of the veranda outside the front door. In his distracted musings, it took Benfro a moment to register the noise. Even then, he thought he might have imagined it but for the feeling that there was something outside, someone outside. It was almost as if there was a silent hole in the background roar.

Quietly, Benfro rose to his feet and crossed to the door. His mother was out in the forest somewhere. She was not far, he knew; she never went any great distance without either taking him with her or sending him to the village. Whoever, whatever stood outside was no dragon, however. He could tell without knowing how he knew. Or perhaps it was that the tread had been so light that it could only have been made by something much smaller even than him. Benfro reached for the latch and was surprised to find that his arm was trembling slightly. Taking a deep breath, he swung open the door.

The figure standing on the threshold was unlike any he had ever seen before, but Benfro knew instantly that it was a man. No witless beast would come near a house such as this, nor would it clothe itself in what appeared to be dark brown cloth, similar to that with which Frecknock occasionally bedecked herself. Benfro had heard of clothes, but with his thick hide and close-lapping scales they were not something he had ever entertained the thought of wearing. The man, on the other hand, seemed to be almost completely enveloped in them.

He was surprisingly short and slight, much smaller than Benfro had imagined the creatures who inspired such fear in his mother and the villagers would be. Yet there was an otherness about him that sent a shiver down Benfro’s spine to the very tip of his tail. The man was obviously as startled to see him, for he took a step backwards, gabbling something incomprehensible.

‘Who are you?’ Benfro asked. ‘What do you want?’

The man stopped gabbling, lifted pale pink hands from the folds of his cloak and reached up to pull back his hood. With a start, Benfro realised he had seen such hands before.

‘You do not speak our tongue?’ the man said and Benfro’s attention snapped back to his head. It was strange, fleshy pink and round, with a thinning mop of grey hair settled on the top a bit like a crow’s nest in a tall tree. Two small eyes looked up at him, not unkindly.

‘You are Morgwm’s hatchling,’ the man said. ‘I was not sure. I did not think even she would do something so bold.’

‘What do you mean?’ Benfro asked.

‘Forgive me, please,’ the man said. ‘It is a long time since I have heard the ancient language, longer still ere last I tried to speak it. I came here in search for Morgwm the Green. My name is Gideon.’

‘My mother has mentioned you,’ Benfro said, remembering the name. ‘She said that she trusted you.’

‘She does me a very great honour then,’ Gideon said. He was still standing outside, and although the veranda was covered, water dripped from his cloak to the wooden boards. Benfro looked around the clearing, hoping that his mother might be somewhere near, but she was nowhere to be seen.

‘Would you like to come in?’ He asked eventually, unsure what else he could do but offer the hospitality any dragon would give to a weary traveller. For a moment Gideon looked uncertain, but then he stepped through the open doorway, dwarfed by its size.

The man went straight to the fireplace, warming his pink hands in front of the flames for a while before pulling off his damp cloak. Underneath it he wore more clothes, Benfro noticed. They were the same dark material but followed his shape more closely. Aware he was staring, Benfro looked for something else to do.

‘Can I get you something to drink?’ He asked. Gideon returned his stare for perhaps longer than was necessary, as if he was trying to understand what had been said. Benfro resisted the urge to lift a hand to his lips and mimic the action of drinking.

‘Thank you, some chamomile tea perhaps,’ Gideon said after a while. Benfro set the kettle on the fire and went through to the storeroom for the herbs. He lingered longer in the dark room than was polite. Certainly it was only the work of a moment to locate the pot which held the dried flowers. All the while he listened out for his mother’s return. Although everything he had been taught since he was a kit told him he should flee, he didn’t feel any fear at the presence of this man. And yet his normally burning curiosity was quenched by an overwhelming sense of awkwardness. Were it another dragon who had come to visit he would have known what to do, what to talk about. But this was so completely beyond anything he had ever experienced that he could only stand, indecisive and fretful in the dark.

Finally the whistle of the kettle meant he could linger no longer. He went back into the main room, took down the smallest of the drinking bowls and sprinkled a handful of the herbs into it before adding boiling water. The smell of the flowers reminded him of autumn, sunshine and dry-baked earth. It was a welcome distraction from the endless rain.

‘My humblest thanks to you,’ Gideon said as Benfro handed him the bowl. His speech was formal, like the old dragons in Sir Frynwy’s tales, and it occurred to Benfro that the man must have learned it from books. He had never thought about such things before but now it made sense that men and dragons would have different ways of speaking.

‘Pray tell me, what is your name, good sir dragon?’ Gideon asked. Benfro tried not to smirk at the overblown question.

‘Benfro,’ he said. ‘My name’s Benfro.’

‘Well, Sir Benfro,’ Gideon said. ‘This is a fine bowl of chamomile tea.’

Benfro was about to respond when he heard a heavy thump on the wooden deck, closely followed by the door crashing open. Morgwm stood there, dripping with rain, her eyes darting swiftly about the room as she took in the details. For an instant she looked so terrifying, so feral and monstrous that both he and Gideon cringed, ready for the killing blow. Then in an instant it was gone.

‘Gideon, by the moon!’ Morgwm said. Then she slipped into the same gibberish that the man had spoken when first he had arrived.

‘I am sorry, Morgwm,’ Gideon said in that same stilted and formal speech that Benfro could understand. ‘It was never my intention to come unannounced. Always in the past you have known of my arrival e’en ere I was a league from your door.’

Morgwm looked silently at the man for a long moment, then across at Benfro before understanding lit up her face with a happy grin.

‘You speak our language well,’ she said. ‘If a little archaically. I never knew that you had learned it.’

‘Twas a folly of my youth,’ Gideon said. ‘Or so didst seem at the time. Seldom has the opportunity presented itself for me to practice. And never before have I been honoured with a true speaker with whom to converse.’

‘But you’ve visited me countless times, Gideon,’ Morgwm said. ‘Did it never occur to you to speak the draigiaith then?’

‘In truth our visits were ever too short, their business too urgent. And your command of the saesneg made it most sensible to use my native tongue.’

‘Well, as you’ve no doubt discovered, Benfro speaks only draigiaith. He’ll learn other languages in time but he’s only thirteen years old. There’s plenty of time for such learning.’

‘I would that it were so, good Morgwm,’ Gideon said. ‘For I come with ill tidings. The boy has been chosen to become one of the Warrior Priests.’

‘That cannot be,’ Morgwm said. ‘Hennas would never allow such a thing.’

‘Her mind has been turned since last you visited her,’ Gideon said. ‘And by a practitioner far more skilled than I. She believes her son has been granted the greatest of honours.’

‘Her son, you say Gideon,’ Morgwm said. ‘That’s something then. The persuasion she made me put on her when she agreed to take the boy is still holding. His true identity may not yet have been discovered.’

‘I hope that is so,’ Gideon said. ‘But even if it is, forces conspire against his continued good fortune. The villagers of Pwllpeiran told me that Princess Beulah attended the choosing this year, and that she showed great interest in the boy. I can only think that she saw something in his appearance that aroused her suspicions. That he was chosen at all is unusual, for he is not yet old enough to become a novitiate.’

‘I’m sorry, indeed, Gideon,’ Morgwm said. ‘I’ve done everything I can for the boy. I don’t see how I can help any more.’

‘Neither would I presume to ask,’ Gideon said. ‘Even as we speak, others strive to protect him. We are not without our allies in the Order of the High Ffrydd. Not all of them are Melyn’s men.’