The Broken World (28 page)

Beyond the fire, to the back of the cave, the stone had been worked to form a private alcove. Benfro approached
with trepidation – this was another dragon's home and he felt uncomfortable intruding – but there was nothing save a heap of dried heather and grass for a bed. It was close enough to get heat from the fire, but far enough away that the bedding was unlikely to catch alight. Well planned, much like the rest of the cave. He spent a while exploring, found an ancient carved desk and bench seat at the back, a locked chest he had no intention of looking inside. Here and there were little things that spoke of the dragon who had lived here, and Benfro couldn't help but wonder what had caused him to leave. Had he meant to go? Flown off without even saying goodbye? Or had something happened to him out there in the endless forest? Maybe he'd had an accident, fallen badly and broken a wing. Had he died alone, slowly starving? It seemed unlikely. So what had happened?

Benfro stifled a yawn. It hadn't been a long day, and he'd not exactly exerted himself much, but the food in his belly weighed heavy and his arm was a constant ache that only sleep could dull. Tomorrow he would find fresh bedding, maybe inspect the other caves to see if they had less of their former occupants in them. He'd start trying to find out where he was too. Maybe ask around if anyone knew anything about Gog. The old dragon, Sir Gwair, would likely tell him. If he didn't drift off into some reminiscence.

He sat in the alcove, still floating the tiny ball of flame above his hand. It was a small thing now, not nearly as bright as he'd at first thought. But it was a cheer in the dark, silent cave, and Benfro found he didn't want to lie in total darkness. Standing again, he crossed to the hearth,
removed most of the logs, then rolled the tiny flame into the midst of what was left. The dry timber caught quickly, a merry little fire dancing on the stone. It would go out in an hour or so, but by then he'd be fast asleep.

‘Think he's waking up. Someone get Murta.'

Errol swam back into consciousness as if he were waking from a deep, deep sleep. His arms felt heavy; his whole body felt heavy for that matter. Lying on his back, the effort of just lifting his chest up and down to breathe was all he could manage. Opening his eyes was beyond him.

‘Here. Drink this. It should help.' A familiar voice nearby, and then he felt something being pressed to his lips. Until that point he hadn't noticed how thirsty he was, but as the thin trickle of liquid entered his mouth it reminded him he'd not drunk anything in a lifetime. It unstuck his tongue from his soft palate, slipped into the tiny dry cracks in his throat, blocked his airway.

‘Careful you don't choke there, Errol.' The water was taken away and strong hands helped him upright as he coughed and spluttered. The movement broke whatever spell it was that had clouded his mind, and Errol woke fully up.

He was lying on a straw pallet in someone's house; he had no idea whose. It was darker but not as cool as Murta's, and there was a smell he couldn't quite place. Nor was he sure he wanted to.

‘Where am I?' he asked when he'd finally cleared his throat enough to speak. The coughing seemed to bring back some of his strength, though he was still weak.

‘Hammie's house.' Nellore appeared at his side, holding
a shallow bowl filled with water which she held out for him. ‘You did something to him, then you passed out.'

Errol took the bowl, drank more carefully this time. A little more of his strength seeped back with the water, memories returning with it.

‘Hammie? The man who fell out of the tree? Is he …?'

‘Shenander's fixing up his bones now. He's going to be OK, I reckon. Not that the others are happy about it.'

In his slightly woozy state Errol couldn't quite understand what the young girl was talking about.

‘Who's Shenander?' he asked eventually. It seemed the easiest piece of the puzzle to get sorted first.

‘Shenander's the medicine man. He patches us up if we need it. And he decides who gets to meet the gods.'

‘The gods. Right.' Errol took another sip, then noticed the slightly stale taste to the water, as if it had been sitting around too long. He passed the bowl back to Nellore, wiped his face with the back of his hand. ‘Why aren't they happy your friend's going to be OK?'

‘Not the gods, silly. They don't care either way, I ‘spect. It's the others in the village, old Ben and his chums. They all think Hammie should've gone to the gods. Reckon it's time again even if it ain't more'n a few months since Jenny went. Him falling out of the tree was a sign, they say.'

Errol shook his head. Nothing the girl said made any sense to him, but he was getting used to that now. There was still the matter of her friend though, and his broken legs. He stood up unsteadily, one hand to the wall to stop himself from swaying too much. Then, once the room had settled down a bit, he walked across to the door and stepped through the tangled rope curtain.

Beyond was another, larger room, filled with sickly-sweet cloying smoke. Light fought through shutters over two windows to the front, dimly illuminating a table in the middle of the room on which the injured man had been laid out. He was unconscious but still breathing, and his legs had been straightened out and fitted with crude splints. Errol took a step forward to inspect the handiwork, then noticed the figure sitting in the corner. Man or woman, he couldn't tell. All he could see was a pair of eyes staring out whitely from a face painted dark. Long black straggly hair matted and threaded with beads, feathers, twigs. The figure was dressed in what looked like torn strips and rags, and held a long wooden stick carved with strange looping sigils. It had to be the medicine man Nellore had mentioned.

‘Are you Shenander?' Errol asked. The figure said nothing but stood up and crossed the room to where he stood. He moved with an oddly birdlike gait, head bobbing back and forth with each exaggerated step. He stopped too close for comfort, and Errol had to resist the urge to take a step back.

‘You healed him from the inside. This is old magic.' The medicine man's voice was thin and grating. ‘Who taught you such things?'

‘I … My mother was a herbwoman. She taught me.' It was a lie, but Errol could hardly admit that he'd not known what he was doing.

‘This is more than herbs.' The medicine man shook his head, then broke out into a gap-toothed grin. ‘But it matters not. Hammie lives, and this is a good thing. The gods are pleased. Shenander is pleased.'

As if hearing his name spoken, the injured man groaned. The medicine man turned back to the table, took up a small bowl and tipped it to the injured man's mouth. He swallowed reflexively, muttered something inaudible, then fell back into unconsciousness.

‘There will be many days of pain before the bones knit properly. This will help make it bearable.'

Errol looked at the splints, the careful stitches where the broken bones had been pushed back into place. The medicine man obviously knew what he was doing, assuming of course it was he who had set the bones and splinted the legs. It would be a job to keep infection away, given the heat and the general lack of cleanliness of the place, but at least the bandages looked fresh. He sniffed, coughed on the smoke. It hid any smell of decay but did little else to help.

‘We'll have to take turns looking after him.' Nellore appeared from the room at the back. She took up another bowl, this one with a rag in it, and wiped the unconscious man's forehead. Errol wasn't sure what good that would do him, but it was a nice gesture.

‘This is good. You will stay with him now.' Shenander raised his carved stick, waving it in tight circles as if that was an important part of the healing process. ‘I will go to the forest, fetch the herbs he will need to aid his recovery. And I will speak to the gods, ask for their intervention.'

Without another word, he stalked out of the house, letting a brief flash of sunlight and a waft of fresh air in as he pushed through the doorway.

He woke to almost total darkness, only the dull red glow of spent coals on the hearth. Benfro lay on his side, unsure of what had woken him. And then his nose told him. That unmistakable scent wafted in over the dry wood smoke at the same time as he saw the darkness flow in the shape of a dragon.

‘Cerys?' Benfro rolled over in his nest of heather and grass, sitting up and sniffing the air as he waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness. Without thinking, he reached out along the nearest line, plucking flame from the coals and holding it in a ball of his aura. The action seemed totally natural, as if it were something he had done all his life. He had thought it was something most dragons learned early on in their lives, but the look of wonder on the face of the dragon standing in the doorway suggested otherwise.

‘You can conjure a flame?' Cerys rushed across the cave towards him, her wings rustling in the still air as if she had flown here and only just begun to fold them. Perhaps she had. She crouched down, raising first one hand then the other to the tiny shining ball of light, not daring to touch it but obviously wanting to. Her face was a picture of kitlingish delight, making her seem much younger than Benfro had at first thought her. ‘Does it not burn?'

‘It would, if I let it touch me. The first time Ma— my master showed me how, I burned the palm of my hand badly.'

‘Master?' Cerys rocked back on to her tail, recoiling from the word as if it had spat at her. ‘Dragons have no masters.'

‘But how can we learn, if not from our masters?'

Cerys cocked her head to one side, much like the old healer Myfanwy had done. ‘We learn from our friends, our family. We are dragons. We just know.'

‘He was a dragon, of sorts, my master. Both of them, if I'm being honest.' Benfro considered Magog and Corwen, two dragons as different as could be. Other than that they were both dead, of course.

‘Both? How can you serve two masters? How can you even serve one?'

‘Badly, as it turned out. One I would not learn from until it was too late, the other only wanted to use me so that he could live again. There is much to be said for your attitude.'

‘Where are you from, Benfro of the Borrowed Wings?' Cerys settled, leaning against the entrance to the small sleeping alcove. Benfro couldn't help but notice her scent. Not unpleasant, but strange and heady and confusing. Part of him understood that the question was not meant literally, but the greater part of him leaped at the opportunity to explain.

‘I was hatched at the Confluence, in a village close to the edge of the great Ffrydd forest, not eighteen summers ago. My mother was Morgwm the Green, a healer much like your Myfanwy, though she was also skilled in the subtle arts. We were different from your fold, if that's what you call your group. None of us could fly, for one thing. And the other villagers were old. Older even than Sir Gwair. Sir Frynwy was the head of the village, and he was over a thousand years old. I was the only young dragon there. Well, apart from Frecknock, I suppose.'

‘Frecknock? That is a female dragon's name, is it not?'

‘Yes. She came to the village as a hatchling. Long before my time. They took her in, tried to teach her their ways, but she wanted more.'

‘Sounds very sensible to me. Old dragons are so staid and stuffy. Never telling you what you want to know. It's always “You're not old enough, Cerys,” or “You'll find out when you've seen a few more summers, Cerys.” I've seen thirty summers and more. How many must I wait before they admit I'm old enough?'

Benfro almost laughed, and the effort of not doing so made him lose concentration on his light. He could feel the heat threatening to sear his palm and let the flame die. They were plunged into darkness, even the coals in the fire now blackened and dead.

‘Sorry. I can only keep it going for so long,' he said.

‘Don't be. I prefer the dark.' Cerys shuffled closer so that she was leaning against him, sitting on the edge of Benfro's nest of heather and grass. Her wings brushing against his seemed to tremble and her scent was stronger still, filling his head and making it difficult to think.

‘Were you hatched here? Up on the Twmp?' he asked. At his words, Cerys stilled, though she leaned close to him.

‘In a cave not far from here. My mother died in a fight not long afterwards. My father … We don't speak of him.'

‘I'm sorry.' Benfro fell silent, unsure what to say. Then a question forced its way out of his mouth before he could stop it. ‘In a fight?'

‘That's what I'm told. I was too young to know anything about it. Myfanwy took me under her wing. Raised me. She tries to teach me herb lore and healing, but I can't
tell one plant from another. And collecting them all, drying them, labelling them. It's so tedious.'

This time Benfro couldn't stop himself from laughing.

‘What's so funny?' Cerys hit him on the chest, not hard, but it brought her closer still.

‘My mother taught me herbs, showed me how to prepare them and store them, use them for healing or taking away pain. I hated every minute of it, but I'd give my hand –' he held up his damaged arm in the darkness, flexing the tiny talons ‘– my other hand just to see her again.'

‘How did she die?' Cerys leaned her head on Benfro's shoulder, her wings trembling again. All he could see was the bright blade of fire, swinging in its terrible arc through the air.

‘The same way I lost my hand. Only they took her head.'

‘I'm so sorry—'

‘I was there, Cerys. I watched it happen, and there was nothing I could do about it. She knew they would kill me if they found me. She died to give me time to escape. I swore then that I would kill them, all of them.'

‘And you will, Benfro. I am sure of it.' Cerys leaned closer still, one hand resting on his chest now, one wing loosely draped across his nest of heather and grass. He remembered his fever dreams while Myfanwy was healing him. A wing wrapped around him, the warmth and security of another dragon lying close. Not his mother, nor the ancient healer, but Cerys herself, nursing him back to health.