The Broken World (6 page)

‘Come, Usel, you're in her way,' he said, and the medic looked startled as if he were a little boy caught dreaming during his lessons.

‘What?'

‘She needs room. Come.' Dafydd walked over to where Captain Pelod was standing at the head of his men. ‘It's all right, Jarius. She means us no harm. Quite the opposite, indeed.'

Opening her wings wide to the last rays of the evening sun, the dragon took a couple of steps forward and sprang into the air. The wind washed over them as she passed, bringing with it the spiced scent of the nearby treetops. Once, twice, she wheeled around the valley,
gaining height all the while. And then, with a haunting cry that filled Dafydd with melancholy, she sped off towards the horizon.

‘Fly, beast. I know you can. Now fly.'

Benfro felt the sting of a whip across his back as he lumbered around a large oval ring formed by the parked circus wagons. He couldn't quite understand why he was running, why he didn't stop and turn on the hateful man standing on a wooden crate in the middle of the ring. Something wasn't right in his mind. He could think, and feel the rage building up in him, but he couldn't stop his body from doing what it was told.

‘Up, I say. Up, beast.' The words were punctuated by nips from the sharp metal point worked into the end of the whip. Benfro knew it well. Every evening for over a week he had been forced to endure this humiliation. Hating himself and hating his captors even more, he opened his wings and leaped into the air.

It was difficult. The circus master's commands prevented him from going higher than the tops of the wagons, and the ring was too small for comfort. The ends of his wings were sore from repeatedly banging into things, and he had developed a sort of half-folded flight that made the muscles in his back scream in pain after just a few minutes.

‘Now land.' Before he could even think about it, Benfro obeyed. It galled him that so commanded he seemed able to take off and land far better than he had ever managed in the months he had practised in Corwen's clearing.

‘Good. That's better.' The circus master stepped down
off his box and walked over to where Benfro stood. Loghtan, he was called, and his son was Tegwin. Benfro wasn't sure who he hated the most. Tegwin was cruel because he liked it, and didn't confine his cruelty to the animals in the circus. Most of the people gave him a wide berth too, especially when he had been drinking. But Loghtan was cruel because that was the only way he seemed to know how to get what he wanted. Benfro didn't suppose the man had ever said please, or simply asked someone for a favour. It was his nature to demand, with a crack of the whip or a fist to the head to make sure his demand was met swiftly.

‘You should have learned by now that I always get my way.' The circus master reached up and clipped a long rope to the chain halter fastened around Benfro's neck when he had first been captured. Loghtan wasn't a big man, not tall like Inquisitor Melyn's captain. He was short and wiry, with a dark face creased by an outdoor life. What little hair he had left curled tight around the edges of his scalp in shades of greasy grey, and spilled out of his overlarge ears. Benfro knew that he could reach out, pick him up and break his back in a single motion. He remembered the ease with which he had killed the man attacking Errol; they broke easily, these people. And he remembered too the fire he had breathed, reducing the dead body to nothing but fine ash. Well, a body didn't need to be dead first, did it? All he had to do was summon up the flame and breathe.

Instead he bowed his head, the easier for Loghtan to tether him like a dog. Though his every thought screamed ‘Kill!', he could do nothing but collude in his own entrapment and humiliation.

Loghtan led him out of the ring through a gap in the wagons, and Benfro followed as docilely as any pack mule. He hunched himself down, his wings folded as tightly to his body as possible in shame as they went past the campfire. The circus performers were having their evening meal, and the smell of cooking meat made his stomach gurgle. Benfro had eaten nothing for days but the rancid scraps thrown into his cage each morning. He knew they were laden with whatever drug it was that Loghtan used to control him, and yet he couldn't stop himself from eating. One barked command from his new master was all it took.

The large wagon was parked at the edge of the camp, its sides down for a change, letting the warm plains air through the metal bars. It looked like one of the animal handlers had thrown a few buckets of water in, no doubt as a token gesture towards cleaning out the mess. The cage was large enough to house two dragons, but not so big that they could avoid fouling it. As he was led up the short ramp and waited for Loghtan to open the vast padlock, Benfro looked across to the nearest wagon, where the two lioncats sat, staring despondently at nothing in particular. They were so bowed down, so defeated as to be barely alive. He was beginning to know how they felt.

‘In.' Loghtan's command was necessary; Benfro could do almost nothing without the circus master's express order. He bent low and squeezed through the small door. Inside the cage what little straw that hadn't been washed out was sodden and rank-smelling. The other dragon sat at the far end, staring at the sunset over the grassland. He didn't move as the door was slammed shut and locked again.

‘Rest yourself. We'll have another practice in the morning before we leave. I want you to put on a good show for the king.' With a last flick of his whip across the bars, Loghtan strode off in search of some food.

There was nothing for Benfro, and despite the buckets that had been thrown through the bars, there was no water to drink either. He slumped down against the closed door, thirsty, hungry, but not tired. Most of his days were taken up with sitting in this dreadful cage, either cramped like now or more uncomfortably rocking back and forth as the circus rolled slowly south and east.

‘Another day gone. Goodbye, sweet Arhelion.'

Benfro looked up from his musings. The old dragon spoke to the sunset as the last shimmer of red disappeared. He sounded so sad and lost that Benfro was left wondering how many times he had said the same thing.

‘How long have you been in here?'

‘Magog was always in here. Magog will always be in here. How long is how long?'

Benfro sighed. Getting sense out of the old dragon was like squeezing water out of a stone.

‘But surely there must have been a time when you weren't caged like this?'

‘This is Cenobus, Magog's home. Do not call it a cage.'

Benfro remembered the ruins deep in the heart of the great forest of the Ffrydd. It was difficult to decide which was worse: being stuck there under Magog's control or here under Loghtan's. At least he didn't dream here. There must have been something in the drugs he was given that made him sleep soundly. It would have been too much indeed to be caged during the day and forced to sort
through the dwindling pile of dragon's jewels in Magog's repository through the night.

‘Have you met many other dragons here?' Memories of his mother, of Sir Frynwy and the other villagers, of Corwen, reminded him of something he had forgotten under the influence of Loghtan's drugs. A shiver ran down his spine to the tip of his tail as his slow brain followed the logic of it.

‘Magog has seen many dragons. They come to his court for his wisdom.'

‘What about a dragon called Sir Trefaldwyn? Do you remember meeting him?'

The old dragon considered a moment, his rheumy eyes glinting in the failing evening light.

‘No. I knew Palisander, of course. And Albarn the Bard, but no Sir Trefaldwyn. What manner of name is that for a dragon anyway?'

‘How about Morgwm. Morgwm the Green?' Benfro studied the old dragon's face for the faintest flicker of recognition. But there was nothing. It was both frustrating and a relief; if this had been the sorry, mad wreck of his father, then what hope was there left?

‘I knew a Morrin the Fool once. But he was no dragon. No, he was an ass, and a fine fellow to boot.'

‘What happened to him?'

‘Old Loghtan didn't like him, so he struck him down with an axe. Then they chopped him up and fed him to us. Very good he tasted too. You should be careful, young Gog. Loghtan doesn't like you much.'

‘I don't think he much likes anyone.'

‘Hee. Old Loghtan's a misery guts. That's for sure. But
you don't want to upset him. Oh no, sir. That would be bad.'

‘Worse than this?'

‘You think this is bad?' The old dragon laughed, a noise like pigs fighting in a sack. ‘You don't know nothing, my boy. You don't know nothing.'

‘What? We're locked up in this shit hole for days on end, drugged into submission, made to fly endlessly round and round, whipped … What could be worse than that?' Benfro's anger came out in his voice, but he was powerless to lash out, to kick and punch like he wanted to. His body was barely under his control. It took all of his strength just to find a slightly less uncomfortable place to sit.

‘Old Loghtan's a magician, see.' The dragon went on as if Benfro had said nothing. ‘He knows things. Oh yes, he does. He can do things to you. Bad things.'

‘Like forcing you to parade in front of some king like a performing animal?'

‘Oh no. Much worse, much worse. He can steal your memories from you.'

The sun was well below the horizon now, and the only light came from its reflection on the few high clouds sitting motionless in the evening sky. Benfro half-listened to the other dragon's words, responded because there was very little else he could do. His companion was completely mad, and he wondered how long it would take for him to get the same way.

‘How can he steal your memories? Don't you mean he just makes you forget things?'

In the deepening gloom, Benfro saw the bulk of the
other dragon shift, shuffling in a stoop across the wagon to drop beside him. He was smaller than Benfro, withered with age and the treatment he had received at the hands of Loghtan and Tegwin. Benfro wondered how many decades he had been with the circus; how long it had taken for his spirit to be completely broken.

‘See here, young Gog. See here.' The dragon turned his head away from Benfro, angling it as if he was trying to show something behind his ears. Benfro looked more closely at the leathery skin and fine scales. There was a rippled ridge of scar tissue running across the back of the dragon's head, perhaps a hand's width across.

‘He takes away your memories.'

It wasn't hard to follow the route taken by the circus, but Errol found it impossible to catch up. Every time he stopped, the wagons had passed through some days earlier or camped for a night and then gone on without doing a show, much to the disappointment of the locals. It was the considered opinion of almost everyone he spoke to that the circus was heading as fast as possible for the capital, there to perform in front of the king.

‘But they've left it very late.' The barmaid in this tavern was much like any number of barmaids he had seen in similar inns along the way. ‘It's most unlike old Loghtan to be so late. Normally he'd have been through here a month ago, doing shows in every town until he reached the capital. Must have been something very special to keep him up in the northlands all that time.'

‘I heard he'd captured a new dragon.' Errol watched the woman for any sign that she had heard this rumour
from anyone else. It was too much of a coincidence for it to be anyone other than Loghtan's circus that had captured Benfro, but still he was plagued by the worry that he might be chasing the wrong quarry, and into the depths of the enemy's lair too.

‘Well, I dare say that'd keep him back. But he's losing a lot of money not doing all these shows, and that's not like Loghtan.'

Errol chatted for a while longer, until his meal was ready, then retired to a table by the fire to eat. It had been a long day on the road, and he was anxious to get to bed. An early start in the morning and he might yet make up some time. His near miss with Dondal he could put down to bad luck, but the closer he came to Tynhelyg, the more chance there was of running into someone else who might recognize him. He wasn't quite sure what he'd do once he found the circus, but he wanted to get to it before it reached the capital.

He was finishing off his mug of ale when the rider entered the tavern. As the mud-splattered man approached the bar and ordered a drink, there was something about him that immediately put Errol on his guard. Perhaps it was his well-cut riding boots and functional but smart cloak. Maybe it was the way he held himself – with the air of one used to respect. Whatever it was, Errol knew the man was trouble. Making as little fuss as possible, he got up from his table and left the tavern. The rider had cast a casual glance over the room when he entered, but he paid no attention to Errol's departure, too busy taking deep swallows from his tankard of ale.

Light spilled from the kitchen door across the
courtyard. A second door, directly opposite it, led straight behind the bar. Errol stood outside listening intently, trying to make out the conversation between the barmaid and the rider over the general noise of the tavern.

‘Oh, we get all sorts through here – merchants, nobles, soldiers on leave. Why I even had that Duke Dondal in here a few weeks ago. Mean old man waved his ring in front of me and expected to be fed for nothing.' The barmaid's words carried strongly. No doubt she had developed a good voice to cope with the more rowdy clientele. The rider, on the other hand, spoke softly, so that Errol had to strain to make out anything at all.

‘Young man … through here … king's seal …' It was enough. It was to be expected, he supposed. Even if Duke Dondal hadn't known exactly who he was, Errol's hurried departure from Gremmil would have aroused his suspicions. No doubt Poul had recounted the whole tale, and Dondal would have surely put two and two together.