Free The Golden Cage by J.D. Oswald

there, under the draughty window that looked out on to the woods, was his clothes chest. He remembered it perfectly.
    ‘Come back to me now, Errol.’ Corwen’s voice sounded impossibly distant, and yet at the same time right there with him. Errol realized he could hear the rush of the waterfall and the splashing of the river over the ford. The image of his room was fading, but he could still see the chest and, linking it to where he sat, the endless impossibly complicated web of the Grym. He felt the rock under his backside and feet, anchoring him to the clearing, and yet his clothes chest was only a hand’s reach away. He just had to –
    A great splash whipped Errol’s eyes open. He was suddenly, painfully, fully back in himself, his heart pounding as if he had just run up six flights of stairs. He looked around, first at Corwen, who was still sitting on the next rock along, then at the river, where something had upset the flow just in front of him. Something large and square and wooden.
    ‘How … ? Did I … ?’ He dropped down into the shallow water, dragging the heavy chest out on to the bank before it was completely ruined. His fingers touched its
surface, and he noted the long tracks of dust they left behind. How long had the house been abandoned? Why had his mother left his things behind?
    ‘I had thought you might just fetch a shirt perhaps, or maybe a pair of breeks. This, this is splendid.’
    Errol barely heard Corwen’s words. The sudden magical appearance of the clothes chest was a wondrous thing he couldn’t comprehend, let alone acknowledge that it had been his own doing. But seeing his old home, his old life abandoned and left to ruin, he was overcome with a loneliness so bleak, so total that it choked his throat and brought tears to his eyes.
    ‘Your Majesty, I see you’ve created a new Duke of Abervenn. My congratulations to the Lord Lyon on his subtle work with the new coat of arms.’
    Melyn climbed the dais and knelt briefly before the Obsidian Throne before standing again. He had noticed the new pennant fluttering in the breeze and flying from almost every second flagpole in the citadel. ‘So tell me, who presented themselves as such an obvious choice you did not feel the need to consult your old mentor?’
    ‘Do I detect a note of jealousy, Melyn?’ Beulah smiled at him from the throne and he couldn’t help notice a change in her. She seemed somehow softer, more feminine.
    ‘My queen is of course free to take counsel wherever she chooses,’ he said.
    ‘Don’t be so po-faced, Melyn. You weren’t here, and circumstances forced my hand. I don’t think you’ll disapprove of my choice. You sent him to me, after all.’
    ‘Clun!
You made a novitiate duke of the most important region of the Twin Kingdoms?’
    ‘That’s only the half of it, Inquisitor.’ Melyn turned to see Seneschal Padraig emerging from a side room. ‘She intends to marry him.’
    Melyn looked back at the queen, seeing again that difference in her. He knew she had something of an infatuation with the boy, but he hadn’t realized things might go so far. Still, given the choice, he’d take Clun as prince consort over any of the vacuous sons of the noble houses.
    ‘Padraig disapproves,’ Beulah said, an unusual amount of tolerance in her voice. ‘Both about Abervenn and my marriage choice. He thinks I should have forged greater ties with Tochers or Castell Glas.’
    ‘It’s true that a union with either of those houses would have strengthened your position, Your Majesty,’ Padraig said. ‘And marrying a commoner is a snub to your courtiers.’
    ‘Whoever I’d chosen, even if it had been one of those pathetic little lordlings, it would have been seen as a snub to the rest of them. Elevating a common man, then taking him as my consort, makes me popular with the people. It’s a fairy tale come true.’
    ‘Of course, Your Majesty. And that’s what my predicants are telling everyone as they spread the