The Golden Cage (4 page)

Inside, the fire was warm, filling the cave with welcome
heat. Errol stripped off his soaking clothes, hanging them as best he could to dry before wrapping himself in his cloak. Only then did he notice what looked like a pile of blackened leaves on the edge of the hearth. Intrigued, he dragged it towards him with a stick, and a heavenly aroma of cooked meat burst forth. He pulled the leaves apart to find a large rabbit, gutted and skinned and cooked to perfection. Its empty stomach cavity had even been stuffed with a few choice herbs to add flavour, but Errol didn't care. He would have eaten it raw.

He only remembered his manners when the last bone was licked clean. Wrapping his cloak around him, he limped out of the cave into the evening dark. Across the track there was no sign of Benfro, who had presumably taken himself off to bed.

‘Thank you,' Errol said anyway, if only to the night.

‘My lady, are you sure you should be out of bed? The palace physicians said you should get as much rest as possible.'

‘The palace physicians couldn't heal a cut finger. I've a mind to have them flogged for what they did to me. Useless quacks.' Beulah wished she had thought of it earlier, but the sheer joy of being rid of her tiredness and nausea
had driven everything else from her mind. Even her condition didn't concern her. If anything, the knowledge that she was pregnant had displaced the fear and revulsion of having to produce an heir with a kind of giddy excitement she hadn't experienced in years. But there were serious matters that had to be considered: her heir had to be legitimate.

‘Where are you taking me, my lady?' Clun followed her like a loyal hound; Beulah was certain that he would follow her into the lair of the Running Wolf if she asked him. But as they descended deeper into the old parts of the citadel, the basements and tunnels cut into the rock of the Hill of Kings, so he had fallen a little behind her, as if uncertain he should be seeing the things he was being shown.

‘It's a surprise, my love.' Beulah waited for him to catch up, took him by the hand and led him to the next door, its heavy panel of oak blackened with age and studded with great iron nails. Two locks yielded to the huge keys she had brought with her, and with a great deal of theatrical creaking the door swung open. Beyond, a narrow staircase hewn out of the rock climbed down in a spiral. Darkness seemed to ooze out of the doorway, bringing with it a strange chill and the near-silent whispering of countless voices.

‘Should I bring a torch?'

Beulah smiled. She could hear the fear in his voice, though Clun hid it well.

‘There's no need.' She held out her hand and a ball of pure white light appeared, hovering just over her palm. Holding it ahead of her, she stepped on to the stairs.

‘What
I'm about to show you is a secret few have ever seen. Down here are the collected treasures of over two thousand years of the House of Balwen. Only the royal family and the heads of the three religious orders are allowed to see them.'

‘My lady, I shouldn't …' Beulah reached for Clun with her free hand and pulled him towards her, planting a kiss firmly on his lips.

‘I order it,' she said, handing him the keys. ‘Now follow. And lock the door behind you.'

He said nothing but did as he was told. Beulah could sense his trepidation, but she could also feel his wonder and excitement at this new adventure. It was a mix as potent as any of her father's sweet Fo Afron wines, and she savoured it as they stepped carefully down the narrow winding staircase.

Towards the bottom, light began to seep up from below, dull red but more than enough to see by. Beulah let her conjured light extinguish, absorbing the power of it into herself with a little surge of warmth that spread across her whole skin and made her tingle. Instead of the sensation slowly ebbing away, as it would normally, it grew with each step further down.

‘My lady, I feel …'

‘Powerful? Intoxicated? Aroused? Don't worry, my love. You will come to no harm in this place.' She reached out for his hand again, and as their fingers brushed together sparks flew between them. All of a sudden Beulah could see his thoughts as clearly as if they were her own. He was scared, but also awed and a little confused. He had been told about this place, she realized, but only
as the sort of barrack-room rumour all novitiates might hear. He had no real idea what it truly was, only that the punishment for entering it was an unpleasant and messy death.

With a practised thought Beulah wiped away Clun's fears, assuring him that he had every right to be here. Then, because she couldn't help herself, she went deeper into his mind.

He loved her with an unquestioning, unconditional devotion, she realized. With a start, she discovered that he had loved her since first he had seen her, at his father's wedding. He had never harboured any hope that she would even notice him, but he had dedicated himself to her service. Silently, personally, but with a good deal more conviction than his stepbrother Errol's drunken proclamation.

The image of Errol flickered through Clun's mind, and with it there was a deep sorrow. He believed that the boy had turned traitor, perhaps had always been a traitor, and yet his betrayal didn't square with the Errol he had grown up with. The weedy little book-obsessed outsider had turned out to be far more of a friend than any of the other boys in the village. Clun desperately wanted Errol to have been under some kind of mind control, to have been turned by King Ballah. Beulah left him that small comfort and quietly withdrew from his thoughts. Grasping his hand more firmly, she led him around the last corner.

It was a vast underground store. Squat pillars marched off in all directions, holding up a ceiling that was higher than it felt. Into each pillar had been carved hundreds of small niches, and in each niche sat a collection of red jewels, glowing dully in the darkness.

‘King
Balwen's treasure. The jewels of more than ten thousand dragons.' Beulah watched Clun's open-mouthed expression, his eyes growing wider and wider as he took in each new sight. She walked slowly along the main aisle and he followed her as if hypnotized. His reaction delighted her. She well remembered the first time Melyn had shown her this place, the secret behind the power of the royal house. Then she had been too awestruck to speak, astonished by the endless whispering voices that spoke the thoughts and feelings of her people to her. Later she had learned how to distinguish those voices, how to focus on groups or even individuals. Even the strongest of minds could not long hide its thoughts from this place. The royal house had used that to its advantage down the centuries; no man could keep secrets from the ruler who sat on the Obsidian Throne.

‘It's best you don't touch them, my love. They are powerful things, but they are dangerous too. It takes decades of discipline and study to be able to handle a dragon's jewels without losing yourself in them.'

Clun had been reaching towards a niche, but he snapped back his hand as if the alcove had contained a venomous snake.

‘Why are these ones white when all the others are red?'

Beulah walked over to where he stood at the end of the long aisle. The niches in the pillar before him were only half filled. Most of the jewels were blood-red, small and irregular in shape, but the ones Clun had pointed out were the size of hens' eggs, brilliantly faceted as if they had been cut by a master jeweller and as white as a bridal gown.

‘These
are the jewels Melyn brought back from his last hunt. Sometimes they turn white like that, but it's very rare.'

‘They sing such a sad song, so lonely and incomplete.'

Beulah stared at the young man who had suddenly come to mean so much to her. She could hear the whispering of the jewels all around her, telling their endless tales of petty lives, the little triumphs and disasters that made up each day for her subjects. With an effort of will she could focus her attention on a single niche, find her way into the mind of a single person, but from the white jewels she heard only silence.

‘The white jewels are of little use here. I don't know why Melyn bothers collecting them at all. But come, my love; there's one more thing you must see.'

Clun seemed almost reluctant to leave the pillar and its curious white stones, but he dragged himself away and followed Beulah as she strode along the aisles towards the centre of the vast room. The central pillar was ten times as thick as the rest and made from stone that was pitch black. It had been polished to a mirror-smooth finish, reflecting the glow of the thousands of jewels surrounding it, and underneath the shiny surface strange markings scrolled like an ancient language.

‘We are directly underneath the Obsidian Throne,' Beulah said, once more taking Clun's hand. He looked nervously up as if expecting the massive structure to come crashing down through the ceiling at any moment. She reached up to his face and pulled his gaze back down to her. ‘It's stood there for more than two thousand years, my love. It's not going to fall down today.'

‘Why
are you showing me this?' Clun asked.

‘Because you need to know. The father of my child must share the responsibility of raising the heir to the throne.'

He was in the forest again. Errol stood on legs blissfully free of pain and looked out over a familiar landscape of ancient trees. Close by, shaded by great cooling canopies of pale green leaves, the path meandered its way past their massive trunks. High overhead, the sky was duck-egg blue and dotted with the whirling forms of distant birds at play. The air smelled sweet and fresh, overlaid with the subtlest fragrance of spice. He was happy just to stand and breathe, free from pain, free from worry.

And then he caught it, a lingering odour on the slightest of breezes. Complex and beautiful, it was spring flowers and autumn leaves, sun-baked rocks and cold water, the smell of soft soap and clean hair. He knew at once who was coming, and his heart soared at the thought of seeing her again.

She came along the path, keeping to the leafy shade. Every so often she would look up at the gyring birds so high above. Then she would bustle across to the next tree, not running but moving with deceptive speed nonetheless. Errol was content to wait for her; he knew that she would reach him soon. Then they could be together. But when she reached where he stood, she didn't turn to greet him. Instead she hurried on towards the next clearing.

He tried to call out to her, but there was something wrong with his voice. He could hear her name as he spoke it deep in his head. But his ears heard nothing, only the
constant hiss of the breeze in the leaves. He wanted to run after her, but his legs seemed fixed to the ground. And now she had reached the edge of the tree, pausing briefly before stepping out into the clearing.

He knew what was going to happen next. He had seen it dozens of times already. Every night since he had arrived at Corwen's cave. He was dreaming the scene. Martha was going to be captured by dragons and there was nothing he could do about it.

He watched helplessly as first she confronted the dragons, seemed almost to convince them to leave her alone, then finally allowed herself to be carried off. Any minute now I'll wake up, Errol thought as he realized that Martha hadn't put up a struggle, had almost gone willingly with her captors. But instead of waking, he found himself out in the clearing. The ground was scuffed and marked where the dragons had landed; otherwise there was nothing remarkable about the scene. Looking up, Errol could see birds wheeling and turning in the sunlit sky. They seemed so free, so joyful as they played. Then he realized they weren't birds. They were dragons, dozens of them, chasing each other back and forth, clashing together in mid-air, tumbling down, over and over, before breaking apart at the last possible moment and climbing back into the sky on huge wings.

Then they seemed to notice him. As one, the whole group turned and dived. Errol tried to run, but once more he was fixed in place. He tried to scream, but his voice would not come out. The great beasts grew bigger and bigger as they closed the gap with impossible speed, and he could see the bloody wounds of their play, the scars
and missing scales of earlier battles. The dragons were filled with bloodlust, their eyes devoid of any intelligent spark. These were not magnificent creatures of magic and learning. These were feral monsters, wild as the birds of prey for which he had mistaken them.

Errol shut his eyes against the rushing mass. He could hear their screeching and the dreadful sound of their leathery wings beating the air into submission. Louder and louder, they narrowed the gap, and he instinctively turned away at the moment of impact.

It never came.

Instead there was a roar of frustration, a great billowing wind that threatened to topple him over, then silence.

At first he didn't dare open his eyes, but Errol could tell that he was no longer in the forest clearing. There was a different quality to the air, a stillness that spoke of being indoors. Then through the silence he began to hear sounds: the soft clinking of stone upon stone, the near-silent creak of someone moving and a low miserable sobbing. Unsure whether he was awake or still slept, Errol opened his eyes.