The Broken World (38 page)

Benfro slumped into his bedding, staring lopsidedly at the ornately plastered ceiling high overhead. Given everything, the loss of one eye was perhaps not something he should moan about. And he could still see his aura, the lines of the Grym, the aethereal, all without any impediment. They hovered on the edge of his vision now, as if
the missing eye were somehow compensating. As he noticed them, so he noticed too the power radiating from Earith and more specifically the creature sitting on her shoulder.

‘My friend.' Benfro looked up at the squirrel. ‘How did you find me, Malkin? How did you even know where to look?'

‘Swimming bird come, say big scaly whale on beach. Malkin not listen, but swimming bird not leave Malkin alone.'

‘Swimming bird?' Benfro asked, then remembered the curious black and white creature and how it had peered at him before wandering off.

‘Swimming bird not clever like Malkin. But swimming bird insist Malkin come see big scaly whale. So Malkin go. Follow swimming bird. Find not whale, but friend Benfro lying there.'

It was probably the most Benfro had ever heard the little creature say in one breath, but it didn't really answer the question.

‘You have met Malkin before, Benfro? You know who he is? What he is?'

‘He is my friend. But he is also part of the mother tree. I must have been looking for her.' Benfro's hearts started to beat harder, thump-thumping out of rhythm as he remembered Fflint picking him up and throwing him against a wall, piercing his eye, tearing his wing half off. ‘When I jumped. I had to escape. Couldn't think straight. Had to get away.'

‘Calm yourself, Benfro. There will be plenty of time for answers later. Now you need to rest. Heal properly.' Earith
reached out, placed one old, leathery hand on his forehead. At her touch, his breathing calmed, his hearts fell into their proper rhythm and slowed. He felt a surge of energy flow into him, but instead of invigorating him, it dragged him down. Like the stupor after a good meal. He began to slip once more into unconsciousness, but before he surrendered himself to it, he saw the cost whatever subtle arts she practised had exacted on Earith. His last sight before his eye closed was of the ancient dragon stumbling away, reaching for the bench across the room. The last he heard were her weak words: ‘Stay with him please, Malkin. I must rest awhile myself.'

The dragons left shortly after Melyn and Frecknock returned from their aethereal tour of the battlefield. Whether their bloodlust was finally sated or there simply wasn't anything left to kill, the inquisitor couldn't be sure. His eyesight had improved noticeably since the Shepherd had healed him last, but even so he couldn't see anything moving on the plain. Only the swiftly dwindling winged shapes, fading into the pale blue sky as they headed east towards the Rim mountains and the Ffrydd.

‘You can release the enchantment now,' Melyn commanded as he climbed on to his patiently waiting horse. Frecknock nodded once, and the air shimmered for a moment.

‘It is done.' The dragon pulled the leather bag over her head and offered it up to the inquisitor. ‘The book, Your Grace.'

Melyn stared at her, trying to reconcile the creature of the aethereal with the dragon that abased herself so in his presence. It annoyed him perhaps more that she sold herself short than that she was trying to hide things from him. Or at least from men in general.

‘Keep it safe for me, and stay close.' He turned in his saddle, finding Osgal just behind him. The look on the captain's face was sour, his eyes darting away from Frecknock and back to the inquisitor. It might have been disapproval; the Shepherd knew Osgal had no reason to suffer dragons, given his recent injuries. Of course it might just have been his normal surly self.

‘Fall in. We'll sweep the camp, finish what they began.' Melyn didn't say who “they” were. ‘Use your judgement regarding prisoners, but be aware many of these men are not professional soldiers. We will need someone to tend the fields and work the gold mines in the north.'

Osgal nodded, barked a few orders. They moved swiftly off the hilltop and down on to the plain, covering the distance to the remains of the camp without anyone speaking. Frecknock kept pace with the fast trot of the horses, but as they came closer, Melyn could see she wanted to be elsewhere. He couldn't blame her; he could smell it too. A miasma of blood and shit, mixed in with
burned flesh and canvas and the sharp scent of disturbed ground. Smoke drifted across the scene on the lightest of winds, ghost-like. At the edge of the encampment he reined in his horse, raising a hand for the army to halt.

‘Split into groups of a dozen men. Spread out and cover the camp in grids. I don't want any surprises.' Osgal dismounted, the rest of the warrior priests falling in behind him. It took moments for them to form their groups and then start picking their way through the debris. A few conjured weak blades of light, but most drew their swords, delivering swift mercy to those too wounded to survive. Those still able to stand surrendered without a fight, and even with his hatred for all things Llanwennog still burning bright, Melyn could not bring himself to blame them.

He remained mounted as the warrior priests moved towards the centre of the camp, where Geraint's tent had stood. Vision sharper than it had been for years, Melyn saw one of his men stoop and pick up the helmet, shout something to his comrades nearby.

‘Come, follow me.' He kicked his horse forward, Frecknock falling in behind him, and they picked a route through the destruction.

‘Fancy armour, sir,' the warrior priest holding the helmet said as the inquisitor approached. ‘Reckon this might be one of the generals. Maybe Prince Geraint himself.'

‘It is Prince Geraint. I saw him die.' Melyn noticed the question flicker across the warrior priest's face, but the man did not ask it. ‘Have you found any more of him?'

‘No, sir. Just this. It was here in the middle of …'

The ground where Prince Geraint's tent had stood
looked like someone had taken a giant carpenter's plane and shaved off the top six inches of soil. It was clean, damp earth, fine clay smoothed almost perfectly flat. Just a line of tiny parallel grooves to mark where the vast dragon's belly had scraped the ground. It hadn't landed so much as skidded through the camp, taking tent, prince and anything else in the way with it as it clawed back into the sky. The head had left a dent in the soil as it landed, and there just beside it lay a gold chain and amulet.

‘Don't touch it!' The shout came from Frecknock, but Melyn might just as easily have said it himself had he not been momentarily distracted as he dismounted. He could see the glamours woven around the chain as plain as the smoke spiralling from the nearest fire. It was too late, though. The warrior priest had bent forward, scooped up the chain in his bare hand.

His scream echoed across the devastated encampment as if the dragons had wheeled round and were even now returning for a second attack. Frecknock took a couple of steps forward, but Melyn put his hand out, placing it on her chest to stop her. The man was already dead; he just didn't know it yet.

‘Nobody touch him.' Melyn's command was obeyed instantly by the warrior priests who had rushed to their comrade's aid. The man himself was oblivious to anything but pain, his hand gripping the amulet so tightly that blood seeped through his fingers. The skin on his face turned red, then started to blister as he staggered around, his screams growing weaker and weaker. Smoke rose from his robes, and his lurching strides brought him in the
direction of the inquisitor. Closer and closer until he sank to his knees at Melyn's feet. His eyes were white orbs, vision boiled away by the heat coursing through him. Not a pleasant way to die at all. With his last strength, the man raised his hand up to the inquisitor, the amulet clearly visible through the bubbling mess of flesh and bone and pus.

‘Bloody fool. Did you learn nothing in all your years at Emmass Fawr?' With a thought, Melyn conjured a short blade of fire and pushed the point of it deep into the dying man's brain.

Warmed by the southern sea and the waters of the Bay of Kerdigen, Abervenn's climate was markedly better than that of Tochers. The oak and elm were still in full leaf, the first tinges of yellow only now creeping into the edges of the canopy. Beulah sat on her mare alongside Clun's massive stallion and peered at the walls of the city they had not so long ago left.

‘They have no idea we are here?' she asked. A half-dozen paces ahead of them the warrior priest who had been scouting the land ahead tried to hide his nervousness. Not at being in the presence of this queen; he was an old soldier, Siarl was his name, and Beulah had known him since her earliest days at Emmass Fawr. Nor was he cowed by the Duke of Abervenn, a man a third his age who had until very recently been no more than a novitiate in the order, even if that novitiate had single-handedly driven off a dragon that had killed several fully trained warrior priests. No, the thing giving Siarl palpitations was the great Gomoran stallion. No creature that wild should be so utterly, contemptibly still.

‘The city gates are wide, Your Majesty. Not much traffic, but a few merchants are coming and going.'

‘Did you go into the city itself?' Clun asked the question this time, although Beulah had been thinking it.

‘No, Your Grace. I thought it best to raise as little suspicion as possible. If your plan is to take them by surprise, then the fewer strangers the guards see the better.'

‘Very well. Return to your troop. Get something to eat and some rest. We will attack one hour after dusk.'

‘Your Grace, the gates will be closed by then.'

‘I am well aware of that. They would be closed before we could reach them if we just marched up there in the daylight too. Leave it to me to ensure they remain open.'

‘As Your Grace commands.' The scout slapped his chest with a fist in salute, bowed briefly to the queen and then hurried off.

‘You have a plan, my love?' Beulah nudged her horse a little closer to Clun's, even though it meant she had to crane her neck yet higher to speak to him. Her filly was less flighty in the presence of the huge stallion than usual, which probably meant she was coming on heat. Time to swap horses then, unless she wanted this one crushed to death.

‘Lord Beylin's fleet will arrive on the dawn tide. The smaller craft are hugging the coast, but he's sent some larger ships out to sea to cut off any attempt at escape that way. I will take a small troop of warrior priests to the Eastgate at dusk. It will be closed and locked, of course, but there are ways around that.'

Beulah looked out from under the trees, judging the
hour by the tone of the light. Nightfall was not far away. Two hours, perhaps.

‘Is the Eastgate not a bit small? Our men will be trapped in the courtyard beyond.'

‘We won't need more than a hundred warrior priests. Maybe a hundred and fifty. Abervenn must be almost deserted. All the able-bodied men not already in our army will have left for Candlehall.'

‘How can you be sure?' Beulah looked towards the distant towers, all she could see of the city from their hiding place on the edge of the woods. No flag flew, but that was normal when the duke was away.

‘It's very unlikely there will be any adepts in the city to intercept me, so I will scout in the aethereal and make sure our men are not seen.'

‘I will accompany you. It is best to have someone watch your back.'

Clun turned in his saddle, looking down at her from his high seat. ‘My lady, is it—'

‘I would advise you not to finish that sentence, my love. I am your queen, remember.'

‘Always, my lady.' Clun bowed deep. ‘We must prepare then. And perhaps attend to our daughter first.'

Beulah sighed, wondering where her anger had gone. Worn away by her tiredness perhaps. Of all the calamities to befall her following the kidnapping of the infant Ellyn, the loss of Blodwyn had been the hardest. No other wet nurse could be found before the army had marched out, which tied the queen into someone else's timetable of feeding and sleeping. Her daughter might have been tiny, but she was insatiable. No doubt Melyn would have had
something amusing to say about that. Too bad the old man was hundreds of leagues away.

At least a week passed before Benfro could stand, possibly more as he had no idea how long he slept. It might just have been a few hours at a time, or it might have been days. Always when he woke, Malkin was there, and sometimes Earith as well. At first he managed only a few minutes before the panic engulfed him and the ancient dragon would send him back into the darkness and the peace. But with each passing day, so he built up his strength both physically and mentally. He made it out to the courtyard with just a little more difficulty than walking back from Mount Arnahi to Corwen's cave, and spent a pleasant afternoon being warmed by a sun much hotter than he was used to. It helped with the stiffness in his joints, the aches in his wings and the sudden, unexpected panic attacks when he remembered how swiftly and brutally Fflint had almost killed him. How much more swiftly and brutally he had killed Fflint.

‘You never said what this place is called – where it is.' Benfro spoke in an attempt to fend off the inevitable return of those traumatic memories. He sat on a low stone bench, the perfect size for a dragon, facing the fountain and ornamental pond that were the main feature of the courtyard. The constantly bubbling water helped cool the air, as did the well-tended plants growing in raised beds all around him. The courtyard was the centrepiece of a large building, quite clearly built to dragon scale, but everywhere there were touches that reminded him of men. Lower benches, doorways through which a kitling
would struggle to go, pathways too narrow to negotiate without brushing his still-tender wings against the walls on either side.

‘This is my home,' Earith said. ‘It stands at the centre of the city of Pallestre in the land they call Eirawen.'

‘Eirawen?' Benfro recognized the name, racked his memory until he remembered where he had seen it before. The maps in Magog's repository underneath his ruined palace at Cenobus. ‘Beyond the great southern sea? Past the Caldy archipelago?'

‘You know something of the geography of Gwlad?' Earith raised a greying eyebrow. ‘Tell me, Benfro. Where do you call home? Where were you hatched and raised?'

‘I never knew the name of the village. It was just the village. It was at the bottom end of the great forest of the Ffrydd. My mother wove a spell around it so that men couldn't find the place. They always ended up at our cottage instead. Until Frecknock ruined it all, that is. It was her who invited Melyn and his warrior priests in. They killed everyone, my mother first but then the rest of them. Sir Frynwy, Meirionydd, Ynys Môn, all of them. It all happened because of her. Just because she wanted a stupid mate.' Benfro couldn't have said why he chose to give so much detail in his answer or even that particular detail. Perhaps it was the way Eirawen looked at him, patiently giving him the time to speak without interruption. Perhaps it was the frustration of days spent barely able to move, only his thoughts able to wander. Whatever the reason for his outburst, he only stopped because he needed to breathe, his lungs still weak from the injuries Fflint had dealt him.