Dreamwalker (24 page)

The journey was uneventful. They stopped in several other villages, but none of the hopeful young lads put forward came anywhere near to Melyn’s high expectations. Errol and Clun were not allowed to see much as they travelled, confined to the back of the wagon except for evening and morning meals. Even Clun’s irrepressible enthusiasm began to wear off after ten days, and by the time they had been on the road for three weeks almost all topics of conversation had been exhausted. They would spend all day lying around in the wagon, dozing or just staring at the canvas; then lie awake all night listening to the snores of the warrior priests and the occasional whickering neighs of the horses. And so it was a welcome relief when one morning in the fourth week of their progress the canvas was hurriedly pulled aside.

‘Right you two, out,’ Captain Osgal said. ‘You’ve got legs, you can help.’

Errol leapt out onto the track. They were at the base of a steep hill and flanked on both sides by tall trees. He could see the track cutting a zigzag path up the slope, but it disappeared into low cloud before he could see where it went. Before he had time to see more, the wagon lurched away, the horses struggling to pull its weight up the hill.

‘Come on,’ Osgal shouted. ‘Put your backs into it. I don’t fancy a night out on the hill. If we get a move on we can reach Emmass Fawr by nightfall.’

The rest of the day was misery compounded. Errol was sure that Osgal was simply torturing them for the hell of it. There was no real need to push the wagon; once they’d got it moving, the horses were more than capable of pulling it at a good speed. But if they didn’t push hard, the captain would order one of his warrior priests to beat them with a whippy piece of stick. Clun was fit and set to the task with gusto, but even he was struggling after an hour and a half. Errol had been sick once by then, and his back was sore through his rough canvas shirt from repeated twitching.

They stopped for the briefest of lunches and then the torment began again. Yet even as he struggled with the ever-thinning air, Errol could feel some force stronger even than the promise of a beating compelling him along. As if the road itself were calling him to its end. It didn’t give him strength, but as his arms and legs turned to jelly, his lungs burned and his stomach clenched, it kept him going.

And then suddenly they pulled through the cloud, and the road levelled off. They had reached the top.

For the briefest of moments, Errol saw a magical vista played out around him. Tall mountain peaks poked out of a flat white blanket like stones in a sea of milk. But before he could take in more than a blink, a rough hand grabbed him and he was lifted bodily into the back of the wagon. Too weary to do anything else, he fell heavily, winded, and by the time he had recovered, the straps were being tied down, sealing him in. Clun was not with him.

‘What’s going on?’ He asked.

‘You’re not fourteen yet,’ Osgal’s voice replied. ‘Can’t let you see the ceremony.’

‘What ceremony?’ Errol asked, but there was no reply and soon the wagon was moving again. Too exhausted to be curious, he rolled himself up in a blanket and fell asleep.

*

Benfro soared through low clouds, feeling their damp coldness on his outstretched wings. The wind ruffled his ears and whipped his tail. It stroked his scaly belly like autumn grass, holding his weight with gentle pressure. He was in total control, climbing and banking with a simple thought whilst below him the forest galloped past in a blur, shades of black picked out in the clear light of the full moon.

Looking around, he could see for miles, an endless stretch of trees arrayed in their winter finery. The forest sloped away from him, dropping down in a series of undulations towards the low country, the Hendry. To either side, far distant, the rim mountains climbed out of the trees, great walls of stone breached by the cataclysm that had made the Graith Fawr. To his left, the ridge was topped with white snow and something caught his attention, impossibly small over the vast distance, invisible in the bright darkness. Banking without a thought, he headed in its direction.

Too soon the mountains began to rise up in front of him. Benfro swept his powerful wings up and down, tips almost touching at the bottom of each slow stroke. Effortlessly he climbed, matching the slope as he went until with one final great sweep, he burst over the ridge.

The sky was clear here, a deep indigo blue that sparkled with innumerable stars, the reflected light of the glittering snow. A wide track followed the contour of the mountain, snaking back and forth with single-minded purpose. Something about the road was appealing, luring. Benfro found himself following its loops as he flew, rather than crossing the deep chasms and gulleys. The endless turns were as effortless as thinking and he took a simple, perfect pleasure in their ease so that it didn’t occur to him to try to shorten the journey. Neither was he concerned as to where he was going. It was enough just to fly, to explore the world, to be free of the constraints that tied him to the old dragons in the village.

The narrow ridge opened up into a plateau, so high up that clouds scudded along beneath it, their tops picked out in silver moonlight. Snow lay over the ground half hiding the small huddle of houses that clustered around the track. Thin wisps of smoke rose from low chimneys and light escaped from some of the windows, casting oddly angular and yellow shapes on the ground. Benfro banked, circling around the small settlement and wondering who lived there. It was difficult to tell from his vantage point, but the houses seemed small to him, their single storeys inadequate.

Not so the great arch that climbed over the road. It was as magnificent as it was ridiculous, so out of proportion with the houses that he had not noticed at first that it was there. Now he saw it, Benfro could not understand how he could have missed it. Carved from pale stone, it rose from the ground, straddling the path high enough and wide enough for a creature five times his size to pass through without stooping. To either side, it dropped off to into a low wall that cut the houses off from whatever lay beyond. His curiosity piqued, Benfro flapped his great wings together and sped off above the path, leaving the vast gateway behind.

The plateau narrowed again, the track constrained to a thin ridge with sheer cliff drops into uncharted darkness below. Again Benfro felt the urge to follow the short twists and turns as he flew ever closer to what must surely be the journey’s end, for the road seemed to enter the curiously square mountain top.

Only it wasn’t a mountain top. It was a building.

The sheer scale of it was impossible for him to comprehend. He recalled the great tower and buildings at Ystumtuen, but the whole circular depression in which that hunting lodge sat would have fitted inside one wing of this massive structure. It squatted on the top of the mountain like some angular fungus, growing tendrils down into the depths, thrusting spore-towers towards the sky.

Benfro circled the great palace, gazing down on its intricate, random pattern of wings and courtyards. Pinpricks of light shone out from some windows but hundreds, thousands more were dark. Even though the wind on his face spoke to him of great speed, it took long minutes to complete a full circuit of the structure and all the while Benfro sank in the air so that the great sheer walls rose up above him like some giant of stone waking, standing and reaching out a huge hand to crush him like a fly.

The wonder and awe turned to fear slowly. In all his short life, Benfro had known little real horror. Heights scarcely worried him, despite, or maybe because of  the number of times he had fallen out of trees and off high rocks into the river. There were no animals in the forest that could do him harm, though Sir Frynwy had told him of snakes that could kill a dragon with a single bite of their venomous fangs. The only thing he had been raised to dread was men, and that was an abstract threat. He had never woken sweating in the darkness from a nightmare where men had trapped him, so at first Benfro did not understand the feeling that swept over him. It was as if the weather had worsened, the temperature dropping until his joints ached with the cold. Even though the moon hung full overhead, a bright orb in a night sky studded with steadfast stars, still it seemed darker somehow. The great rising mass of the fortress was a threatening thing, a promise of harm and all of a sudden he wanted to get away from it.

Wheeling about, Benfro swung his wings in heavy, panicky sweeps. He could see the great arch over the track not half a mile away. And yet it could have been the other side of Gwlad for all that the distance shrank. However he flew, pitching from side to side in great spiralling turns, he always came back to the monstrous great building. And with each turn he lost more height, coming closer and closer to the track and the great gawping maw of a mouth where it disappeared inside. The endless ranks of dead windows were no longer secrets to be unearthed, but the myriad facets of a giant spider’s eye. A beast of such mythical proportions it would not fit into one of Ynys Môn’s bestiaries.

Benfro could hear the building calling to him. It sang a song of wonders, but he could see that it was just a distraction. There was nothing inside but hurt, pain, death. He had to get away, but his wings were so heavy now, his whole body tired as if he had not slept for weeks. He couldn’t keep in the air anymore. He had to land. But to land on that path was to give in to it, to be sucked in and chewed up.

To land was surely to die.

*

A rough hand at his shoulder dragged Errol from sleep.

‘Wake up boy. Now’s no time for dozing.’

He didn’t recognise the voice, nor could he see who spoke in the darkness. Shaking his head, he threw off the blanket and clambered out of the wagon. He was in a large hall, lit by too few guttering torches hanging from iron sconces on the walls. The floor was smooth stone flags, glistening with slippery moisture, and over in a far corner he could just make out what he assumed was a pile of manure, judging by the smell.

‘Help me here, won’t you,’ the voice said. Errol turned to see who spoke. He was an elderly man, back bent out of shape by years of hard labour. His hair was thinning on top, but made up for the loss by spilling out of his chin in all directions in a great thick beard.

‘Who are you?’ Errol asked.

‘You c’n call me Danno,’ the man said. ‘Now give me a hand wi’ these horses. Can’t leave them here inna cold sweat.’

Errol shivered as he realised it was cold. His canvas shirt was no protection and he longed for something more substantial like a cloak. But he had only his blanket. Wrapping it around him, he set to helping the old man unhitch the horses and led them into a stable. There had been few horses in Pwllpeiran and Errol knew very little about how to look after them. These great beasts seemed content enough to get their heads down and eat. Danno took a handful of straw and began to rub down the flanks of one animal, so Errol copied him and attended to the other.

‘Umm,  is this Emmass Fawr?’ He asked after a while. Danno just laughed.

‘Where’d you think you were. Tynhelyg?’ The old man asked.

‘I don’t know. I was expecting...’ But he couldn’t finish the sentence because he hadn’t known what to expect.

‘You’re too young, aren’t you,’ Danno said. ‘To be a novitiate.’

‘Yes,’ Errol said. ‘But Inquisitor Melyn said that I could learn lots before my birthday.’

‘Well, you’ve just learned how to wipe down a horse,’ Danno said. ‘And now you’re going to learn how to push a wagon into the corner of the courtyard. Then we’ll see about learning how to clean the leather tack, and maybe how to fetch water for the drinking troughs and muck out the stables.’

Errol’s heart fell. It wasn’t that he hated manual work, but he had assumed his learning would have been more bookwork than animal husbandry. He followed Danno out of the stable and back across the open hall to the wagon. Together they manoeuvred it into the corner close to the midden.

‘Why are there no windows in here?’ Errol asked when they had finished and the old man was leaning against the wall to get his breath back.

‘Cos we’re underground is why,’ he said. ‘No point havin’ windows underground now, is there.’

‘Well, can you show me how to get outside?’ Errol asked. ‘Once I’ve finished helping you here of course,’ he added.

‘No, he cannot,’ a voice said from across the hall. ‘No one who has not been through the ceremony of the novitiate can be allowed to see the light of day in Emmass Fawr.’

Straining his eyes in the semi-darkness, Errol made out a tall, thin man with white hair. At the sight of him, Danno dropped to his knees and bowed his head.

‘Master Andro,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry Danno,’ the man said. ‘But Errol’s not for you.’

‘You know my name?’ Errol said.

‘Oh I know a great deal more than that about you, Errol Ramsbottom. Come. Follow me. The library awaits us.’

~~~~

Chapter Fourteen

When using magic to influence your enemy’s thoughts, it is imperative always to complete the task before withdrawing. The spell should never be attempted if circumstances are likely to lead to distraction. At best, such an interruption will unravel any earlier workings you have made. At worst it will leave your mind open to your enemy should he wish to retaliate.