Benfro stood silent, aware that he was staring at Frecknock and yet unable to look away. He hadn’t known. He’d never even thought to ask where her parents might be. None of the other dragons in the village had parents, but then they were all many hundreds of years old. Frecknock was not much older than him, really. Not on the scale of the lives they might hope to live. How self-centred was he to never even ask about her? But then he had asked very little about the lives of any of the villagers. It wasn’t right to pry, surely. If they wanted to tell him, they would. Just as Frecknock was doing now, though he couldn’t for the life of him think why.
‘Clear off squirt,’ Frecknock said, her mood suddenly changed, as if she suddenly realised who she was talking to. ‘I’ve got to get on with dusting out this house. Just because it’s empty doesn’t mean we can let it fall to ruin.’ She turned away from him and walked away towards Ystrad Fflur’s front door. Bemused, Benfro watched her back as she went, wondering whether he should say something. He looked down at the half-eaten apple in his hand and then remembered himself. This was Frecknock, after all. She could have made the whole thing up as some elaborate plot to get him into trouble. If he knew one thing about her, it was that he was better off where she wasn’t. Taking another bite of the sweet fruit, he hurried off in search of Ynys Môn.
~~~~
Chapter Twenty-Five
The alms-houses of the mindless are a potent reminder of the dangers inherent in magic. These low stone buildings were begun in the time of Inquisitor Hardy, and are separated from the main monastery complex by Meddwyn’s arch. Every novitiate must take his turn caring for the lost souls who inhabit these houses. These are the victims of magic gone wrong, of spells miscast. Some have brought their woes upon themselves, others have been unlucky enough to be in the way of another’s mistakes. All are beyond healing, condemned to live out their lives with no more self-awareness than sheep.
Some say that it would be a kindness to deliver a swift death to the mindless, but in truth they do not suffer as we might imagine they should, for they have no imagination with which to suffer. Keeping them close by the monastery serves as a constant reminder of the terrible responsibility that allegiance to the order brings.
An Introduction to the Order of the High Ffrydd by Fr Castlemilk
Errol sat in the library archives staring blankly at the parchment laid out on the table in front of him. It was written in tiny, curling letters and the text was obscure. The words of whatever language it was written in sounded vaguely familiar, but he could make no sense of them.
Not that he would have been able to concentrate on it if it had been clearly printed in modern saesneg. His mind was too much of a turmoil for that, too full of worries and a burning sense of anger. Ten days had passed since his last encounter with the Inquisitor and over those long hours his memories, his true memories, of his childhood had slowly reformed from the mess of contradictions and lies that Melyn had put in their place.
He had spoken to Clun that first evening, but his stepbrother had just laughed, caught up in the excitement of being picked for his first proper mission. Ten of the new intake of novitiates were accompanying the Inquisitor and his personal guard on an important mission. Errol knew exactly what they were going to do, but when he tried to explain it to Clun, the older boy had asked him what he thought he had joined the order for if it wasn’t to rid the world of dragons. Errol could see the Inquisitor’s teachings patterned onto his step-brother’s mind, but he could also see how easily they fitted the boy who had once been his friend.
The troop had all ridden out the next morning and with each passing day since, Errol had grown more and more uneasy at the prospect of their return. He wanted them to fail, but he didn’t want any blame for that failure falling on Clun. Neither did he particularly wish for the Inquisitor to return, successful or not. He couldn’t imagine what would happen the next time they had one of their meetings.
In his wilder fantasies, Errol saw a ragged troop returning with the dead body of the Inquisitor, slain as he fought against a great army of dragons. When he allowed his mind to wander, he saw Clun as the hero, rescuing the body of his leader at great personal risk. But the image soon dissolved under the remorseless logic of his situation. The Inquisitor was powerful enough to rewrite a person’s memories. A few dragons would be no match for him at all. And those dragons that remained in the forest of the Ffrydd were sad and pathetic things, pale shadows of the great monsters of legend. He had seen one, after all, so vain and stupid that she couldn’t see she was condemning herself to death. It was far more likely that they would return soon in bloody triumph. Errol didn’t want to be around to see that.
‘Not sleeping at your desk are you, Errol?’ Andro asked. Errol looked around, startled. He had been so wrapped up in his thoughts that he hadn’t heard the old man coming.
‘I keep staring at this parchment, but it only makes half sense,’ he said, hoping that he might be able to find some distraction from the endless circle of thoughts that kept dragging him down into despair.
‘Let’s see,’ Andro said, leaning over the desk and peering so closely at the tiny letters that his hooked nose almost touched the parchment. ‘Ah, yes. Father Charmoise’s attempts at writing the draigiaith in a phonetic variation of saesneg script. Fascinating attempt. Brilliant mind, Father Charmoise. A pity he went mad in the end.’
‘Draigiaith?’ Errol asked.
‘The language of the dragons,’ Andro said. ‘Oh, I know, most of them speak saesneg now, those that are still around to speak it. Us poor humans find it quite hard to get our mouths around some of the sounds. Still, I expect when they chat amongst themselves it sounds pretty much like this.’
‘You’ve met dragons?’ Errol asked.
‘Oh, of course. Many, many times,’ the old man said.
‘But you’re part of the Order of the High Ffrydd. Our charter’s to hunt down and kill dragons. Have you…?’
‘Killed dragons?’ Andro’s face changed from its cheerful welcoming smile to a more sombre visage, thoughtful and sad. ‘Regrettably, yes. In my youth I once killed a dragon. It’s not something that I’m especially proud of, but it happened. I’ve done my best ever since to make amends.’
‘That’s why you took the scroll, wasn’t it,’ Errol said.
‘When I compiled that list, it was to be a simple census. I spent years travelling around the Twin Kingdoms seeking out those dragons that were still alive. There weren’t many, even then. Most people just thought they were a myth. A few old folks would speak of a great beast that lived not far from their village, or they’d tell tales of great buried hordes of treasure guarded by monstrous creatures that breathed fire and ate children. But mostly they thought of them as stories. They used them to keep children in line. No one actually believed that they existed.’
‘I know,’ Errol said. ‘It was like that in my village.’
‘But you knew better,’ Andro said. ‘What made you so sure that they existed?’
‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘It just seemed right that they did. Then Martha introduced me to Sir Radnor.’
‘Martha? Sir Radnor?’ Andro asked. Errol explained, as best he could, about his childhood and the spirit of the old mage that lived under the rock at Jagged Leap. He told him about his mother’s wedding and the arrival of the Inquisitor and the princess, about waking up in the back of the wagon with confused memories. And he told him about his meetings with Melyn, particularly the last one where everything had come back to him. Andro listened, patiently, without interrupting, and when Errol finally lapsed into silence, the old man sank onto the bench beside him.
‘Melyn wants you as a spy, because of your Llanwennog looks,’ Andro said. ‘But he won’t trust you until he’s certain he has you completely under his control. That’s why he invites you to his study, so he can bring you round to his way of thinking.’
‘But I don’t want to be a spy. I don’t want to kill dragons. I just want to learn about them, and about the rest of Gwlad.’
‘Then maybe you should have been a ram.’ Andro sighed. ‘Ah, Errol, fate dealt you a cruel hand when it sent Melyn to your village. Crueller even than you realise. And now that he has you, he’ll use you to further his own ends without a care for what happens to you, whether you live or die. The Inquisitor lives only to rid the world of his two worst evils, Llanwennogs and dragons.’
‘What is it about dragons?’ Errol asked. ‘Why does he want to kill them?’
‘I don’t really know. Because they exist, and because he believes they’re an affront to his god? He wasn’t always that way. Before he became Inquisitor he was merely fascinated by them. He used to spend days down here going through the archives. I believe he may even have taught himself their language from this very document.’
Errol glanced back down at the parchment. He had to fight the urge to recoil from it as something touched by the Inquisitor, as if somehow he might catch whatever contagion it was that Melyn had.
‘But something changed his mind about them. For years now he’s argued that the dragons are a threat to the natural order of things. That they should all be exterminated,’ Andro continued. ‘But until now his words have fallen on deaf ears at court.’
‘Until now?’ Errol said. ‘Oh. Queen Beulah.’
‘The queen’s Melyn’s puppet,’ Andro said. ‘He more or less raised her. She was given to him to tutor when she was only eight. It’s hardly surprising that one of her first declarations as queen has been to reinstate the aurddraig and Brynceri’s original charter of the order.’
‘That’s why you took the parchment,’ Errol said. ‘You wanted to protect them.’
‘Oh, I doubt there’s much I can do that they can’t do for themselves, Errol,’ Andro said. ‘Dragons are far wiser and far more skilled in magic... how does it translate? Oh yes, the subtle arts. They can do things we can’t even conceive. But yes, I took the census and destroyed it. I see no point in giving Melyn a head start.’
‘But if they’re so strong, why do they let us kill them?’
‘I truly don’t know, Errol,’ Andro said. ‘They’re complicated creatures, quite unlike us. Who can tell how their minds work. Still, they’re not stupid. They built this place, after all.’
‘But they’re… they did what?’ Errol asked, his brain catching up with his ears.
‘Emmass Fawr,’ Andro said, lofting his hand around the archive room as if to indicate the whole of the vast edifice around them. ‘At least the central core of it. Generations of warrior priests have added to the complex, but the original building, including this library archive, was once the palace of Maddau the Wise.’
‘Maddau,’ Errol said, trying to recall the name. ‘I’ve heard of her. Some of Sir Radnor’s stories about Palisander of the Spreading Span mention her. But how could a dragon, even lots of dragons, build such a vast place? And why build it so big?’
‘Why would men do the same thing?’ Andro asked. ‘Have you never wondered why the ceilings are thirty feet high, why the doors are tall enough and wide enough to drive a wagon through? Haven’t you noticed how the quality of building materials and the skill of the builders changes between these old halls and the Inquisitor’s lodgings?’
Errol had, ever since his first day in the place. ‘But that still doesn’t explain why they built so big,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen a dragon, she wasn’t much bigger than a pony.’
‘You’ve seen what dragons have allowed themselves to become,’ Andro said. ‘But the creatures who used to inspire fear and awe in our ancestors were huge and powerful beasts. They had wings that could carry them high into the sky and they could breathe flames that devoured only what they wanted them to devour. These were the great dragons of legend, Palisander, Gog, Magog, Maddau. You’ve heard their tales and how they warred amongst themselves. Back then, when the Twin Kingdoms were no more than a collection of tribes brought together by the wise leadership of King Balwen, dragons barely noticed us. And that was the problem.’
‘How so?’ Errol asked, fascinated.
‘Because they destroyed the land with their warring. People were killed simply because they were in the way. Crops were burned and livestock slaughtered. Famine and pestilence followed. For hundreds, maybe thousands of years, men lived in caves along the coast or up in the mountains, scarcely daring to travel to the plains. Then Brynceri came along and showed that dragons could be killed, that men could master the same magic, tap the power of Gwlad and use it against the enemy. That’s when we began to take the land back from them and it’s the reason why we’ve persecuted them ever since. We keep them down so that they don’t become the great power that they once were. Melyn, on the other hand, would go a step further and eliminate them entirely from existence. I don’t agree with him on that, and many other points. But he’s by far the most powerful magician on the planet, and for my sins I taught him most of what he knows.’
The old man fell silent and Errol sat beside him wondering at his words. The parchment lay in front of them, the tiny letters spelling out words in a language utterly alien yet hauntingly familiar. But still it was a language, rich and complex like the species that spoke it. Dragons might have killed men indiscriminately thousands of years ago, but now they were a race on the brink of extinction. And they had so much knowledge, such grace and dignity. He couldn’t feel indifference towards them even if he tried, let alone enmity. If nothing else, the fact that Inquisitor Melyn sought their destruction was enough to put him firmly on the side of the dragons.