The Broken World by J.D. Oswald Read Free Book Online Page B

left last, surrounded by a small band, Frecknock trailing just behind him.
    They rode out of the woods and across the lush grass towards a point where the road could be seen winding its way across the plain. As soon as they were past the trees, the men began to shimmer and become indistinct as they wrapped the Grym around them like a cloak. Melyn let himself dip in and out of his trance state, seeing brief snippets of the aethereal. Here the men were clearer, some more sharply focused than they would normally appear. It was an interesting new insight into the two different forms of Gwlad’s magic, for so long considered completely separate by the quaisters and librarians back at Emmass Fawr. The irony was not lost on Melyn that this knowledge had come from a dragon, one of the creatures the order had been created to destroy.
    Just as he was dropping back into the real, something caught his eye, a glint in the aethereal. Melyn cursed silently, trying to calm his mind again and slip back into the trance. It came after a few moments, and he saw it again – a strange discolouration, almost like a bruise in the air, a few dozen paces off and not far from the road edge. For a moment he thought it might be a spy, one of Ballah’s men with even more powerful concealment magic than his own, but it didn’t move, just hung there. Noting its position, he rose back out of his trance and steered his horse over to the place. It was easy to find, a long dark patch of ash flattening the grass as if it had been dumped from a cart. The rain had washed it smooth, and in the
middle of the pile something glinted gold in the early-morning sun.
    ‘Something happened here.’ The thought was Melyn’s but the words came from Frecknock, as ever following him like an obedient pet.
    ‘Indeed, but what?’
    Perhaps taking his question as permission to act, Frecknock stepped forward, stooped down and retrieved the shiny object. As her hand touched the ash, she shuddered visibly.
    ‘What is it?’ Melyn leaned forward in his saddle the better to see.
    ‘A man died here, and then his body was consumed by the Fflam Gwir.’ Frecknock stood once more, handing the object to Melyn. He turned it over in his hand, noting the pure gold and the worn stampings that marked it as a coin. It was no currency he knew, but he recognized it as something he had seen before. There had been a handful of them in the cave where Errol and the dragon Benfro had been hiding, left behind along with several other valuable trinkets.
    ‘The boy was here, and the dragon too.’ Melyn slipped the coin into a pocket in his travelling cloak, wondering who the man was and how he had died.
    ‘Benfro did this.’ Frecknock stood up, backing away from the pile of wet ash, and Melyn thought he saw her shudder again. ‘Only a dragon could conjure this flame. But how? He has no herbs, no oils. He doesn’t know the spells.’
    ‘He doesn’t need spells; he breathes fire.’
    ‘He …’ Frecknock lifted a hand to her mouth, her eyes wide. ‘I can’t believe … Not Benfro …’
    ‘He breathes fire. Is that any more shocking than him growing wings and flying?’
    ‘Your Grace, you have no idea.’
    ‘Enlighten me then.’
    ‘Breathing fire is something the old creatures did, before Great Rasalene showed us the way of the Grym. It’s unnatural, bestial. No dragon would ever do it. The Fflam Gwir comes from Gwlad, not from us.’
    ‘Well, this came from Benfro, which means he passed this way. And by the look of that ash, not long ago either. Another couple of heavy showers and there’ll be nothing left to see.’ Melyn looked up at the sky, dark with gathering rain clouds, then back at the patch of damp ash. There was something odd about it, and as he looked, it came to him. The grass was not burned. Fronds were poking up through the pile, paler green where they had been hidden from the sun for a while. He put his hand back in his pocket and drew out the coin. It was scuffed