But with time the zeal of the order for its task began to wane. Inquisitor Hardy cast the magic upon the Calling Road, setting it to lure what few dragons were left to the monastery, and the order turned to its more familiar role of protecting the realm from foreign invasion. Of those dragons that had not yet been slain some strayed upon the road and were killed. The rest remained in their simple villages, waiting.
It is one thing to take up arms against a monster that steals your sheep and sets fire to your farmstead, but once the raids ended, so the people of the Hendry found there were more important things to do than hunt dragons. Years turned into decades, decades into centuries, and now there are many who truly believe that dragons are nothing but a myth. As they will never see such a creature in their lives, this belief does them no harm.
There are others who know the truth, who understand the real power of these lumbering, slow, flightless beasts. They do not breathe fire, they pose no threat to the kingdom, but they are creatures of the earth who have an innate understanding of magic. And the seat of this magic is their jewels. For in the brain of every living dragon can be found such gems as are beyond description and to possess one is to be wealthy beyond compare.
Dragon’s Tales, by Fr. Charmoise
Twigs and branches whipped at Benfro’s scales as he ran through the forest. He had no idea where he was, where he was going. There was only fleeing and blind panic. A prickly sensation shivered over his whole body, pulsing and reaching for him with waves of fear as the Inquisitor and his warrior priests extended their search behind him. It felt like an invisible force was reaching out to grab him and each time it came close he could feel his muscles tense and freeze.
A root snagged at his foot and he tumbled headfirst down a steep gully. Benfro felt his wings twisting and snagging on low bushes as the world rolled around him. Then, with a dizzying splash, he was face down in icy, clear water.
The cold shocked some sense into him even as it drove all the air out of his lungs. He sat up in the fast-moving stream, spluttering and gasping but no longer out of control. He could still feel the questing aura of fear coming from the Inquisitor, but it was a weak thing, far distant. He didn’t know how he could be sure, didn’t understand how he could feel the Inquisitor at all, but he knew the man was searching in the wrong direction, getting further away with each passing moment.
Slowly Benfro dragged himself out of the water and onto a low, silty beach that had formed in the lea of a fallen trunk. With his back to the tree he felt slightly more secure, though tremors of fear still grabbed him from time to time. He wanted to gather his thoughts, to try and make some sense of what had happened, but all he could see was that blade crashing down. The sudden slump of his mother’s body as the life leapt from it.
And there it was. His mother was dead. But she couldn’t be dead. She would never have left him like that, so suddenly. She would never have bowed down to anyone, least of all a puny man, and let him chop her head off. Did she love him so little that she could leave him like that?
No, that was unfair, Benfro told himself, guilt flushing through him at the traitorous thought. She had done everything in her power to save him, even if that meant sacrificing herself. And what had he done in return? He had run, scared and mindless, creating such a ruckus in his passing that the whole troop had come bounding after him. He had been lucky, he had evaded them for now. But it could all too easily have ended with him dead. Or worse, captured. Then his mother would have died in vain.
His mother was dead.
Benfro thrust his head into his hands, rubbing his palms hard against his eyes. He wanted to scream, to sob, to cry, anything. Surely there was some emotional response in him. But he could do nothing. Nothing except watch as, over and over again his mother’s head fell lifeless to the ground.
He had abandoned her. He had to go back. His mother was wise, a skilled healer. He had learnt only a tiny fraction of her skills. Maybe it had all been a ruse. Some near-magic trick to get the men off her back. She would be whole and hearty and waiting for him to come home. She would laugh at him in that loving way and explain how she had beaten them once more. And she would have a hot stew of venison bubbling away on the hearth, with thick crusty chunks of forest bread to help it down.
Benfro’s stomach grumbled and he realised that he hadn’t eaten since morning. The sky overhead had the dull purple twinge of twilight about it and already a gloom was settling in between the trees. But how could he think of food at a time like this? How could he be so callous.
And what if his mother needed him? What if the magic she had woven required his help to complete? He had to get back to her, had to make her whole again before she really did die.
Benfro picked himself up and clambered to the top of the bank, realising as he did so that the questing presence of the Inquisitor was gone. No more the soft pulses of fear, no more the prickling in his skin. Evening birds had begun their noisy chorus and the first nocturnal animals were scurrying about in the brush. If there were men in the forest now, they were a long way off.
It took less time than he expected to get back to the clearing. For all that his panicked fleeing felt like it had taken hours, he had travelled only a short distance from home. His senses, those inexplicable feelings he had never noticed before, told him that there were no men around, but still he approached the house with care, his hearts fluttering with a mixture of desperate hope and fatal realism.
The house stood in the darkening night, a familiar shape surrounded by familiar sounds and smells. Fourteen years, his life, had been spent in this clearing. Yet as he approached, even before he could see the spot of his mother’s execution, Benfro knew that there was something wrong. As he edged around the corner of the house, feeling the comforting rough surface of its walls, he saw the one thing he knew would be there and yet had hoped beyond hope would not.
His mother was dead.
Her body lay slumped on the blood-slicked ground.
Her head was nowhere to be seen.
*
Errol knelt in the small apse off the main worshipping hall that was reserved for novitiates. In front of him the rough stone altar was adorned with candles, flickering in the cold draft that always whistled around the older parts of the monastery. They cast shadows on the mottled, rough surface of the walls and ceiling that moved in small leaps and bounds like wild animals in the depths of the forest. Distracted for a moment, he remembered happy times in his childhood when he would sit in the trees and wait and watch. It was something old Father Drebble had taught him, that if he waited long enough, the animals would come to him. But he was not here to dwell on the past, he reminded himself. He was here to pray.
‘I pledge my loyalty to thee, oh Shepherd, and to my queen, Beulah of the House of Balwen, and to this most holy Order of the High Ffrydd. I humbly beg thee to give me your wisdom, to guide me in my studies; your discipline to resist the myriad temptations laid in my path by the wolf. I thank you for gifting me the opportunity to serve in thy name and promise always to do thy will in all things.’
Errol savoured the words, and the sentiments behind them, revelling in the power and purpose of them and the pledge he made daily. This morning the apse was empty save for himself, and he was able to take some time over his meditations. When he felt ready to face the day, he rose, bowing his head once. Stepping forward, he pinched out the wick of his candle, snuffing the flame that he had lit after his prayers the night before. His candle was large; only a few hours passed between each lighting and extinguishing. Not all the novitiates were as conscientious as he was, and some of the other candles were almost burnt to the base. If their owners did not graduate to the priesthood before they were melted completely, then they would be cast out of the order. To be candled was the greatest of shames and Errol had no intention of falling from grace that way. He would work hard and learn all he could learn. He would graduate with honour and serve the Inquisitor’s will, the Shepherd’s will, in whatever way was seen fit. His loyalty was without question – had he not pledged as much even at his choosing?
‘No, no, no, no!’
A sharp pain cracked across Errol’s hands and he looked down to see a raw red welt across them. For a moment he was confused, but then the image of the apse in the worshipping hall faded away, to be replaced by the familiar surrounds of the library archives. Andro sat across a small table from him, glaring. The old man held a thin length of cane in one hand.
‘I… I was there,’ Errol said, trying to shake the disorientation from his mind. ‘It was real enough, wasn’t it?’
‘Oh yes,’ Andro said. ‘Very convincing. I particularly liked the bit where you let your mind wander briefly to your childhood. Just the sort of thing a real novitiate would do. But you went too far, Errol. You started trying to justify your loyalty. No one’s questioning it, not directly. Melyn won’t come up to you and say “are you loyal to me?” He’s going to look for signs that suggest you aren’t.’
‘It’s too hard,’ Errol said. ‘I can’t keep everything together at once. And that’s without Melyn charging around inside my head. Ow!’
‘Inquisitor Melyn,’ Andro said. ‘Or Inquisitor, or His Grace. He may be your enemy Errol, but he’s also the head of this order and as such your superior. You will give him respect at all times.’
‘Sorry, quaister,’ Errol said, bowing his head. ‘I forget myself.’
‘Exactly Errol,’ Andro said. ‘You forget yourself. And you must not do that. Never. Your only hope is eternal vigilance. You’ve got to immerse yourself totally. Be the person who is unquestioning in his loyalty to the order.’
‘But I hate the order,’ Errol said.
‘No, you only hate what it’s become. Remember that. If it helps, imagine that you’re loyal to what the order used to stand for – knowledge and learning. Now I want you to start again, only this time I’m not going to tell you when I start trying to pry into your thoughts. You should be able to sense me and block me. Melyn will expect you to block him, too. But he won’t expect you to succeed for any length of time.’
Errol settled himself down into his chair once more, laid his hands out on the table top and closed his eyes, building the image of the perfect novitiate in his mind. A sharp rap on the knuckles startled him out of concentration.
‘Eyes open this time,’ Andro said.
*
The bulk of Morgwm’s prone body lay exactly where it had fallen. Dark blood stained the ground around it, lending an iron tang to the air that reminded Benfro sickeningly of the end of the hunt, when a young hind or stag would be strung up and bled. For once he cursed his keen eyes that could pick up the slightest detail even in the quickening gloom. The ground around his mother’s body was trampled where dozens of feet had milled around. The vegetable patch was ruined, the cabbage leaves all torn, potatoes smashed off at the haulm before they could ever have reached a decent size. The swing chair where he had spent many a warm evening listening to his mother’s herb lore lay on its side now, shattered beyond repair. And someone had kicked in the door to the house. His eyes darted from this to that, never once settling on the one thing he didn’t want to see.
He found his mother’s head some distance from her body. A deep runnel in the ground showed where it had been dragged. His hearts leaden, Benfro stole himself to approach. Any hope that his mother might have been alive, any triumph over the evil terror that had so suddenly swept into his life, had long since disappeared. He had to accept that his mother was dead. She would not be coming back. And now there was an important ceremony to be performed.
Benfro had touched his mother a thousand times before, hugged her, kissed her, held onto her and sobbed into her shoulder as only a son could. Yet it was the hardest thing he ever did to stoop down to pick up her severed head. And as he came close, he saw something that made him first pause, then leap away to retch dry, empty heavings into the vegetable patch. For the once proud and beautiful features of Morgwm the Green had been split, lengthwise between her eyes, exposing a raw, ruddy mess of brain and bone within.
If Benfro had been angry before it had been tempered by fear. Now his rage was pure and unbridled. Bad enough that these men should kill his mother, but to mutilate her after her death was beyond his comprehension. What manner of beasts could do that? And why? In his fury, he lashed out at the vegetables, finishing the job of destruction begun by his tormentors before collapsing in a heap. The tears that had so long eluded him came thick and fast then, great sobs of pain and grief, anger, despair and hatred.
It was a long time before Benfro could bring himself to go back to his mother’s mutilated remains. Night had fallen completely by the time he managed to place her head in some semblance of the right position beside her neck. The sticky blood on his hands felt like a curse, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to wash it off.
Inside the house, the last embers were still glowing in the hearth. For a fleeting instant, he felt a flush of guilt, knowing the trouble he would be in for letting the fire burn so low. Then reality came back to him. His mother was beyond caring about such matters.