In the reign of Diseverin IV, a dreadful plague began to spread through the Hendry Boglands. Fearful that his people would spread the disease as they tried to cross the Twin Kingdoms in search of treatment, he ordered Moorit to release three dozen of his most able medics so that they might travel through the boglands and heal the sick.
So successful were these medics that Diseverin decreed they should continue to wander the Twin Kingdoms, giving freely what medical care was required to any who asked it. This was their charter, and those three dozen became the first coenobites of the Order of the Ram, with Aldwyn their first Archimandrite.
The Order of the Ram by Fr Gideon
‘Concentrate harder, Benfro. See the life that flows through everything.’
Benfro squinted in the semi-darkness of Sir Frynwy’s dusty, book-lined study. He could see the motes dancing in the single shaft of light that shone through a split in the shutters. He could see the dark shapes of the shelves, weighed down with generations of knowledge. He could see the familiar shape of Meirionydd sitting across the room from him, her arms crossed and ears pulled back in concentration. As he creased his eyes up even harder he could see spots and swirls of ghost-light dancing across his vision. What he couldn’t see was anything resembling a glowing line of power.
‘I can’t do it,’ he said, slumping back into his chair. ‘There’s nothing there.’
‘This room is aglow with the grym, Benfro,’ Meirionydd said in her measured, patient tone. ‘It’s one of the best places in the village to seek the llinellau. You’re so certain that you can’t do it. If only you could have that same trust in your ability you’d have no difficulty.’
‘But I believe the llinellau exist,’ Benfro said. ‘I’m sure that I saw them the first time Frecknock…’ He trailed off, not wanting to talk about the incident. He had not seen anything of the young dragon since they had all walked down from the flat rock on his birthday, weeks ago.Meirionydd had come to see him the next morning and he had begun his training in the subtle arts the day after that. Since then, all his attempts to see the Llinellau Grym had failed.
‘It’s not a question of belief, Benfro,’ Meirionydd said. ‘Men believe that an all-powerful god exists who looks over them and protects them from harm. They expend great amounts of energy doing his will, not least in their persecution of our kind. Yet in all my years I’ve never seen this Shepherd, nor met any man who could claim to either. He exists as nothing more than an idea.’
‘Why do they believe in him then?’ Benfro asked, grateful for the distraction from his failed attempts. He could feel a dull pain beginning to grow in his head from all that squinting.
‘They believe because their priests tell them to. And because it’s easier to believe than to know. They live very short lives, some not much more than fifty years. It’s much easier for them to explain their fortune, good or bad, in terms of some all-powerful deity than to accept responsibility for their actions. And the priests wield the power. You’ve heard no doubt that the Order of the High Ffrydd can conjure blades of light, but they have much more insidious ways of compelling people.’
‘What do you mean?’ Benfro asked.
‘The priests have a very limited understanding of the subtle arts,’ Meirionydd said. ‘But they know how to get inside your head, to influence your thoughts. They specialise in fear and violence. That’s how they see power, as a means to keep others in line. Their Shepherd is just a convenient story to justify their brutality.
‘But enough about men,’ Meirionydd said. ‘Your mother’s the expert on them anyway. I’m here to teach you about the subtle arts, so you can stop trying to distract me and concentrate on the task I’ve set you.’
Benfro leaned forward once more, straining to see the ghostly lines that he had been told criss-crossed the room.
‘Don’t try so hard, Benfro,’ Meirionydd said. ‘It’s not like a muscle that can be forced to grow with brute strength. It’s as its name implies, a subtle art. So relax, close your eyes, imagine the room all around you.’
Benfro settled back into his chair and did as he was told. He had not visited Sir Frynwy’s study often, but he could build up a picture of the room in his mind. The walls, with their ceiling high shelves stacked with books, were an unfocussed mass at first, but as he concentrated, so he could recall individual spines, their colours and textures. He left the few gaps in his memory as hazy book-impressions and moved on to the furniture. There was his own chair with its back to the door and across the room, another identical chair obscured the empty fireplace. The shutters were drawn, just that one crack letting in the early spring sun, shining in a sharp line on the desk with its untidy overgrowth of parchments, papers and precariously piled books. Benfro imagined himself looking up and saw the ceiling, crusted with cobwebs in the corners, the plaster cracked and dull even in the poor light.
‘Can you see it now?’ Meirionydd asked and the sound of her voice reminded him of what was missing from the room. In his mind he glanced back at her chair, but instead of the graceful old dragon he had known all his life, he now saw the beautiful young creature who had freed him from Frecknock’s spell. And spreading out from her like the glow of the morning sun through the trees, an outline in vibrant shades of orange and purple and blue of something larger and more magnificent still, a dragon of such a stature and power that she had to be someone from one of Sir Frynwy’s tales.
Then before he knew what was happening, he was flying again, soaring over treetops still brown but tinged in places with the first flush of spring green. For a moment he thought that he was heading back for the mountains, but the great mass of the forest was dropping away from him, spilling down the hills and folds, trees breaking up into small clumps, giving way to grass, short and blue-grey. He could see small settlements, the occasional house nestling in a copse betrayed only by the wisp of woodsmoke spiralling upwards on the windless air. They were small dwellings, too small for any dragon to live in. Some of them had small enclosures around them, where animals Benfro had never seen before grazed or slept in the morning sun. His shadow passed over one of the enclosures, a flash of darkness impossibly large. Frightened, the animals clustered together, looking up to see what hunted them. Blind panic took over and they careered around their pens, crashing through the rough wooden fences and galloping towards the trees. Amused but unconcerned, Benfro sped on.
The trees thinned further still, greening fast as spring brought their sap back up from the ground. Unnaturally straight hedgerows quartered the open land; grass filling some of the squares, most just dark, bare earth. The hills here were smaller, gently undulating away on both sides so that the world looked like a vast patchwork blanket thrown down carelessly on the ground. Wide tracks of hard-packed earth criss-crossed the land, linking the settlements that seemed to get bigger and bigger as he flew further down the valley. The river that had been little more than a meandering stream grew steadily wider, its curves and bends straightening as it snaked its way ever downwards. Benfro was entranced by the way the light flickered on its waters, sparkling like candlelit jewels over shallow rapids, reflecting a solid, more powerful presence through the deeps. Still he flew on.
It appeared first as a dirty brown smudge in the air, far in the distance. With a few lazy flaps of his great wings, Benfro propelled himself forward, curious to see what lay ahead. Beneath the haze, a hill rose sharply out of the flat plain, the river ribboning around it like a flash of light, almost completely encircling it before turning away once more. As he came closer, the hill seemed to be encrusted with small square boulders, arranged in neat lines as if some giant kitling had been at play. Closer still and he realised what it was he approached, though even then the scale of it took his breath away. They were not boulders but buildings.
They stretched around the hill in all directions for miles, seemingly endless variations on the theme of four walls and a roof. There were long lines of grimy-faced two-storey houses that followed the straight lines of roads spearing in towards the hill like killing blows. Larger buildings cropped up here and there, as if dropped from above. Tall towers spired into the sky, reaching upwards to mock his flight. The acrid smell of burning wood reached his nostrils, the air stinging his eyes. Benfro swept over a massive wall that sought in vain to contain the flood of construction, great eruptions of new building pouring out where it had failed at several gates and along the lines of the roads that fed into this incredible place.
Benfro banked away from his course and followed the line of the wall as it rose and fell around the city, for that was what this place must surely be. And yet clear though the buildings and streets were from his height above them, he could see no men. Surely in a place this large there should have been hundreds of them, more even, though he had difficulty in conceiving of such a number. Someone had to have lit the fires that filled the air with their unpleasant smoke. And yet there was no one.
Dogs, he saw, padding the streets and scavenging in the piles of refuse heaped up against the wall. Pack animals stood tethered to buildings, patiently waiting with their loads still strapped to their backs. Benfro had only ever seen such animals in books before and it was only as his wings brushed the edge of a nearby tower that he realised he had been slowly sinking downwards to get a better look. Panicked and slightly alarmed at his lack of caution, he climbed swiftly back into the air, the wind from his powerful downstrokes spooking the animals. Several dogs looked up at him and began howling, their bays like the wolves that lurked in the edges of the forest. The noise raised his hackles, a faint prickling of fear seeping into the wonder that had been his only sense.
There seemed to be a centre for that fear. It wasn’t within him so much as smothering him from outside. Looking up, Benfro saw the buildings of the city climbing the side of the hill, his gaze rising ever higher as he gained altitude until he could see the top. It was dominated by a massive structure like the great hall in the village only a hundred times its size, maybe more. It was made of dark stone, different to that of all the other buildings in the city, its surface strangely fuzzy and unfocussed. Tall, thin windows of coloured glass rose from the ground right up into the eaves. At one end of the hall huge black oak doors, studded with great iron rivets, stood open. The entrance was a giant mouth, calling him in like the great palace atop the mountains. Only here the fear was less. It was discomfiting, yes, but not paralysing. He could still control his wings, still fly away, though it caused him great anxiety to turn his back on the empty hall.
Suddenly Benfro realised the strangeness of the situation. He was flying, and yet his wings were thin scraps of skin that couldn’t possibly lift him off the ground. He was circling a great city of men, somewhere far to the south of his village, and yet he was sitting in Sir Frynwy’s study being taught the subtle arts by Meirionydd. Or at least that was where he should be. Caught between two incompatible worlds, he panicked and his mastery over the air vanished. With a sickening lurch in the pit of his stomach, he plummeted down towards the great stone hall.
*
‘You, boy. What are you doing here?’
The voice cut through Errol’s thoughts like a knife. He turned to see a lone man dressed in the pale robes of a medic striding along the corridor towards him.
‘I’m on my way to the exercise courtyard, quaister,’ Errol said, bowing his head. ‘I’ve come from the library archives where Master Librarian Timon has discharged me of my duties for the day.’ He kept his voice low and polite, aware that to be found wandering the corridors alone was excuse enough for some of the more irascible quaisters to start handing out dreadful punishments.
‘Never mind all that, boy,’ the man said. ‘Have you any medical knowledge?’
Startled by the direct manner of the question, it took Errol a while to gather his wits.
‘Yes sir,’ he said. ‘My mother’s a herbwoman. I’ve often helped her with the sick in our village.’
‘Fine. Good,’ the man said. ‘I’ve need of assistance in a medical matter, though I doubt me anything either of us can do will save my patient. Come.’ He turned on his heels and Errol had to jog to keep up with him as they hurried along the corridor and then down a twisting flight of stairs hewn into the rock. Catching what glimpses he could, he saw that the medic was a young man, perhaps in his early thirties, with close-cropped dark brown hair and a clean-shaven chin. His robes were paler than those the novitiates wore, and woven from a finer cloth. Repeated washings had only served to harden the stains that clung to the front and sides.
‘You could be flogged for what you just said, you know,’ the man said after they had been walking for several minutes. Errol had not been in this part of the monastery before and he was concentrating hard to remember salient details should he have to find his way back to the library archives alone.
‘I could?’ He asked.
‘You said that your mother’s a herbwoman. Now I don’t know if things have changed since I was a novitiate, but I was taught that the church was my mother, the Shepherd my father and the Order the only other family I would ever have or need. It’s a stupid convention, really. Why should we pretend we have no past before we come here? You, for instance,’ he stopped mid-stride and turned to face Errol. ‘What’s your name, boy?’