Rhiannon - Dragonrider

Chapter Eleven - Rhian-Ceridwen's Torque

"To eat, you must descend to the village below," he told me at last. "And, to ensure you are not accosted by undesirables, you must be identified as my property."

Then, to my astonishment, he just leaned back and let himself fall off the edge of the veranda. But, of course, I was thinking like a creature that couldn't fly. He casually tumbled in mid air and, with a couple of lazy flicks of his wings, he circled back up and flew into his lair. "Follow me," he said as he glided down the chamber. He had to tuck in his wings for a moment to shoot through the screen bit in the middle then unfolded them to help land on his dais.

I hurried after him but, as I got close to the screen, I felt this funny sort of reluctance to go any further. I tried to do as I was told. I mean... I really didn't want him to think I was being disobedient... but I just couldn't make my feet move.

But, when he saw this, he did this funny bubbly cloud thing that I could sort of tell was a chuckle. "Of course," he said, "you still carry the inhibition."

Without asking for any sort of permission, he plunged inside my cloud. I had to fight my urge to resist him as he started to fiddle around with that disgusting grey lump. "It is a simple trick that serves to prevent the occasional sneak thief from violating my domain," he explained as he slipped out of my head.

At least the reluctance thing had gone so I hurried through the screen after him. But I was brought to a stop by the magnificence of the... well... palace that was built into the back wall. There were four levels of windows all built on a grand scale... though they were obviously human sized. In the middle of the wall, stretching the full height of the chamber, there was a semi-circular tower sticking out from the wall.

There was a grand doorway at the bottom of the tower and, above it, an elaborate balcony from where you could look out on the whole lair. Over on the right of the dais, back against the wall, there was a huge gong.

And that funny 'S' motif thing was everywhere.

The place had obviously been built to impress. I mean... the stone had been so delicately carved that it looked as if it had been plaited.

And I was so amazed that it took me a couple of seconds to work out that dragons would never be able to use any of the palace bits... it was all much too small...

And, when you looked carefully, you could even see that the dais had been added as a bit of an afterthought...

So that meant that, when they'd built this chamber, humans had been in charge.

"Enter the Family Apartments," Rhiannas told me. "On this occasion you may make use of the Grand Entrance, ascend to the first floor and enter the House Hall directly."

As I stepped in through the Grand Entrance, I was pretty much brought to a stop by how beautiful the place was. The semi circle of the tower was completed inside the building to give a huge, circular entrance hall which stretched up through all four floors. It also worked as a stairwell with curving arms of staircase sweeping upwards both left and right. As I climbed one of the staircases, I could look out at the lair through the fancy carved gaps in the stonework.

The two stairway arms met at a broad landing on the far side of the entrance hall. From here, I stepped into the House Hall

It was, of course, magnificent.

There was a row of long windows so, even though it was lined with dark wooden panels, it was still quite light. Much of the panelling was decorated with scenes of battles involving both humans and dragons. The high ceiling gave the room a light, airy feeling.

At the far end of the hall was a dais with a carved wooden table and four intricately carved wooden thrones. Behind each of the thrones was a life sized statue: two adults and two children. Each of them was wearing the finest clothing and jewelry.