The Rose Cord - The Ballad of Sir Benfro ~ Volume Two

When Balwen's last sits on the stolen throne,
And kitling sleeps beside the babe ne'er born,
When darkness stills the forest birds at noon,
In blood and fire Gwlad shall rise anew.
The Prophecies of Mad Goronwy

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The dragons of Glwad are dying. A sad, shrunken echo of the once-proud creatures they were, now they shuffle through their last days, hidden by their subtle arts from the men who have persecuted and killed them for over two millennia. Yet in amongst this quiet decline, there is new life. Benfro, son of Morgwm the Green, the first male kitling in a thousand years. His hatching at the confluence, when great Rasalene the moon covers Arhelion the sun, must surely mark him for great things. For long ago dragons wrought a terrible wrong to the land, and now is come the time to make amends.

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Every young boy in the Twin Kingdoms dreams of being chosen for one of the great orders, and Errol Ramsbottom is no different. He longs to be a Warrior Priest of the High Ffrydd, riding to glorious victory in battle. But you should be careful what you wish for; it might just come to pass.

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For almost a century there has been an uneasy truce between the Twin Kingdoms and the godless Llanwennogs to the north, but as King Diseverin descends ever further into drunken madness, his ruthless daughter Beulah takes up the reins of power. A time of war looks set to descend upon Gwlad, and it will surely draw everyone, man and dragon both, into its cruel game.

The third book in the epic fantasy series The Ballad of Sir Benfro.

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Although they have a reputation for terrorising remote settlements and killing people for sport, there is no reliable documented evidence of dragons ever having caused anyone intentional harm. Mander Keece’s fairy tales tell of ferocious battles fought between dragons, and of unfortunate peasant farmers caught up in the mêlée, but it is only in the later, more derivative works of fiction that dragons actually go out of their way to do men ill.

This accords well with the nature of the beasts. Few and far between, they are peaceable, gentle creatures, only their savage appearance lending credence to the tales spun around them.

from Dragon’s Tales by Fr Charmois

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Fate has thrown Benfro and Errol together once more, but it is far from a happy meeting. For the dragon, Errol represents all that he hates most in the world - mankind who are responsible for the death of his mother and the slaughter of the villagers he called family. He also has to contend with the ever-stronger influence of Magog, reaching out to him along the rose cord and forcing him to rebuild the collection of jewels he scattered.

Errol is beset with dreams of a far-off place, following the footsteps of his beloved Martha, but unable to reach her. She has been trapped in a great fortress, at the top of a high tower, in a cage with bars of gold. He longs to find her, to rescue her as she rescued him. But his ankles are broken, his body wrecked in King Ballah's torture chamber beyond even the healing skills he learned from his mother to repair.

Benfro has the knowledge of a dragon healer, and Errol holds the key to holding off Magog long enough for Benfro to regain his strength. Enough that the young dragon can set about finding a way to be rid of the dead mage forever.

Working together, they might just survive. Apart, they will surely perish at the hands of Inquisitor Melyn.

The body of a young woman is found walled up in the basement of an old Edinburgh mansion. A prominent local figure is brutally murdered. An illegal immigrant cuts his throat in a city centre pub. As violence descends upon the city, Detective Inspector McLean must think the unthinkable. An ancient evil has been set free and only if he can accept that it exists will he be able to stop it.

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Short-Listed for the prestigious Crime Writers Association (CWA) Debut Dagger prize, Natural Causes is the first of an ongoing series featuring Edinburgh-based Detective Inspector Anthony McLean. In a world where demons are not supposed to exist, he is one of the few unlucky enough to be able to sense their presence.

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When Edinburgh police find the killer of a prominent city elder less than twenty-four hours after the crime, they are justifiably pleased. So the murderer has killed himself; that just saves the time and cost of a trial. But a second murder days later bears haunting similarities to the first, even though once more the murderer swiftly confesses and kills himself.

Detective Inspector Anthony McLean is investigating the discovery of a dead girl, walled up in the basement of an old Edinburgh mansion. She has been brutally murdered, her internal organs removed and placed around her in six preserving jars. The evidence suggests this all happened over sixty years ago, an attempt to re-enact an ancient ceremony that by trapping a demon in the dead girl’s body would supposedly confer immortality on the six men who took one of her organs each.

McLean’s grandmother – the woman who raised him after his parents were killed when he was a young boy – dies after months in a coma following a stroke. On top of this he has to investigate a series of unusual, violent suicides and a cat-burglar who targets the homes of the recently dead. But as another prominent Edinburgh businessman is killed, he begins to suspect that there may be a connection between the murders, the suicides and the ritual killing of the girl found in the basement. The same names keep cropping up. He just can’t find a rational explanation as to how that connection works.

As he digs deeper, and as the coincidences stack up, McLean is forced to consider an irrational explanation. Could there really be something evil stalking the city he has sworn to protect? And if so, how on earth can he hope to stop it?