Dragon's Boy (6 page)

“Ah, well, Sir Bedvere is needing a new blade. He snapped his last trying to beat a tree in fair combat,” said Magnus Pieter with a gruff laugh. “Snakes is just for him.”

The smith was right, of course, and so pleased with the coins Bed gave him for the sword (snakes were
just
the thing and Bed insisted on being called “Serpent's Bane” by everyone for weeks), it was a month before Magnus Pieter felt the need to work on another sword, catching up instead on his horseshoeing and a special order from Lady Marion for a new candelabrum.

The second sword had a strange crossbar on it that the smith insisted would protect the hand.

“It's my own invention!” he said, pride getting well in the way of any jokes.

Privately Artos thought the thing unbalanced, but aloud only said he wouldn't have it.

“You
are
a priss,” the smith said sourly. “It's not as if it's to be your last sword ever.”

“But it
is
to be my first sword ever,” Artos answered quietly. “And you
did
say it was a very fine jewel.”

Magnus Pieter growled and shook his head, but as he'd already set the jewel in a sword hilt for Sir Ector and Artos knew it and Magnus Pieter knew he knew it, he couldn't very well give the jewel back.

“Besides, you know how Cai prizes newness above all things,” Artos said, a bit of wisdom the dragon had shared with him just that week when talking about the importance of balancing the old and the new. “I would think he'd give you a gold coin to have the first sword ever made with that kind of hilt.”

Grinning, Magnus Pieter turned back to the forge. He raised his hammer and began to beat out a piece of steel, saying, “I
knew
(
bang
) and you
knew
(
bang
) that Cai loves the very
new
(
bang
) and…”

Artos made his escape quickly, still swordless. He guessed it would be more weeks yet before the smith began
anew
(
bang
). He'd probably spend the next weeks fashioning plowshares and door latches and forks and hoes.

The third sword was still bright from its tempering, with a lovely pattern running down the blade, when Lancot claimed it. Artos didn't even have a chance to try. He came into the smithy just as Lancot was slicing the air with the steel.

“Cai and Bed have new swords,” Lancot was saying, “and I want this.”

Before Artos could complain, Old Linn hobbled in. It had been quite a while since Artos had seen the apothecary. He'd decided not to seek out the old man but rather to puzzle through the dragon's book on his own, and had been delighted to find he'd some skill at deciphering the Latin after all. But he was shocked at Old Linn's appearance. His mouth and hair were yellowed with a lingering illness and his hands trembled. Still, when he spoke, his voice had its old strength, with none of the whine about it.

“You were always a man true to his word,” Old Linn reminded the smith.

“And true to my swords,” Magnus Pieter replied, seemingly delighted to be playing with his old friend again.

“That sword was promised elsewhere,” Old Linn said.
“Remember!”

Artos bit his lip, wondering how the old man had known, then smiled. Of course. Magnus Pieter would have told him.

The smith looked down at his hands and Artos was surprised to see them trembling fully as much as the apothecary's. Taking his cue, Artos stepped from the shadows and held out his own hand. The smith took the sword from Lancot and gave it to Artos, who turned it this way and that to catch the light. The watering on the blade made a pattern that looked a great deal like the flames from a dragon's mouth. It sat well and balanced in his hand, feeling like an extension of his own arm. When he sliced it through the air, the sword actually hummed, a note he could feel straight through to his heart.

“He likes the blade,” said Old Linn. “So it was meant.”

Magnus Pieter shrugged and hid his hands behind him.

Artos gave the sword a few more cuts through the air just to feel that note again. When he turned to thank the apothecary, the old man was gone. So was Lancot. He could see them through the smithy door, walking arm and arm up the castle wynd.

“So, you've got your
Inter Linea
now,” said Magnus Pieter. “And about time you chose one. There was nothing wrong with them other two.”

“You got good prices for them,” Artos reminded him.

The smith turned back to his anvil, the clang of hammer on steel ending their conversation.

At his long break, Artos ran out of the castle by the Cowgate, halloing so loudly and waving the sword with such vigor that the guards laughed and pointed at him. Even the ancient tortoise dozing on the rusted helm lifted its sleepy head for a moment. Overhead a lapwing and a golden plover crossed the roads of air. Artos lifted his face to the sky, a kind of pagan thanks.

Holding the sword with two hands, he fairly leaped over the two lumpy rocks in the path. He recalled one of the stories the dragon had told him—of the wild, naked Scots. For a moment as he leaped, he pretended he was one of them—a Douglas or a MacGregor. Landing on his knees, he did a forward roll and then stood up, the sword still before him.
A naked Scot,
he thought with a smile,
would have gotten terribly bruised with that maneuver.
He was suddenly thankful for his jerkin and hose.

At the cave entrance, he brushed himself off carefully. Then, hefting the sword, he called out as he walked in.

“Ho! Old flame tongue.” The sword seemed to allow him a certain familiarity he'd never attempted with the dragon before. “Furnace lung, look what I've got. My sword. From that jewel you gave me. Magnus Pieter called it a sword from a stone and got all silly about it. And he had to try three times before he made what I wanted. He almost didn't give it to me until Old Linn came in, shaking like an autumn tree, and reminded him of his promise. Come see. It's a rare beauty and I'm going to call it
Inter Linea
because I can cut right through the lines with it.”

There was no answer.

Suddenly afraid that he'd really overstepped the bounds of good manners and rank, and that the dragon lay sulking far back in the cave, Artos peered through the gloom.

The cave was dark and silent and cold.

He walked a few steps farther, then stopped, surrounded by the icy silence. Always before, even when the dragon was quiet, there was a sense of it, large and brooding, in the cave. But Artos knew, with a sudden certainty, that this time the cave was empty.

Still, he called out again in a more mannerly way, putting hope ahead of certainty. “Sir? Father dragon? Are you home?” He put up a hand to one of the hanging stones to steady himself and his sword clanged on the ground.

“It's me. Artos. Pendragon. Son of the dragon. Are you there?”

Then he laughed a forced little laugh that echoed peculiarly, like a demented dove's coo. “You've gone out on a little flight, right?”

It was the only answer that came to him, though the dragon had never once in their months together actually mentioned flying. But everyone
knew
that dragons had wings, great leathery wings stretched between mighty tendons. And wings, of course, meant flight.

Artos laughed again, but this time it was a hollow little chuckle, as if the dove were mourning. He turned toward the small light at the cave's entrance.

“I'll come back again tomorrow. At my regular time. And I'll show you the sword then. I will. I promise.” He said it out loud, just in case the dragon's magic and wisdom extended to retrieving words left in the still cave air. “Tomorrow.”

B
UT ARTOS DIDN'T GO
back to the cave the next day, for the pattern had been subtly altered and, like a weaving gone awry, couldn't be changed back to the way it had been without a weakness in the cloth.

First of all, there was the sword. It changed Artos' standing with the other boys and they invited him to practice with them. He understood that, with the sword, he was no longer a child to them, a child to be teased or ignored at will. With the sword he was immediately raised to the status of a young man, eligible to be a partner in their games, if not an altogether equal partner.

Sword practice was not, of course, with swords but with stiff willow wands and under the watchful eye of the Master of Swords, a burly, brutish man whose broad arms were seamed with old scars.

It turned out that Artos, being small, was compensatingly quick. He was able to turn and duck and roll away from blows that caught Cai on the shoulder and elbow and thigh, to the trumpeting encouragement of the Master. After Artos got the hang of it, he beat Cai soundly.

However, his elation was short-lived. Bedvere beat him by simply overpowering him and Lancot beat him with smooth, liquid strokes that Artos could only admire. Still, he was one of them now, and the dragon's familiar wisdoms seemed like nothing when compared to the unaccustomed and wonderful rioting of real friends.

He spent both his small morning break and his longer afternoon break with his new friends, his voice roughening in their company, his language desperately off-color and mean. Many of the swears he used he didn't even understand, but he borrowed them from the others and used them with fierce abandon.

At dinner he amazed the boys with stories about naked warriors in the heather and carpets flying high above great towered cities.

“You've made it up,” Bedvere said with admiration, though previously he'd called any of Artos' stories lies.

Artos didn't deny it.

Then he stumped them with a dizzying succession of riddles, only one of which Lancot got, and that only because he'd heard it somewhere before recently.

“Do the cup game again,” Cai urged, his face red with laughter from the riddles.

“Yes,” Bed and Lancot chimed in. “The cup game.”

Artos found three identical cups, no chips or chinks to mark them out, and though there was no pea, he borrowed Cai's crested ring. Six times he fooled them and not once did they check under
all
the cups, so sure that he'd never cheat. When Cai lost for the last time, he slapped Artos companionably on the shoulder and took back his ring.

“Well done, Art,” he said, as if it had been the others who were fooled by the game and not he.

That was friendship indeed,
Artos thought as he went to bed that night, dreaming of his new manhood counted in willow wands, swords, cup games, naughty words, and lies.

As if she already knew about the change in Artos' status, Lady Marion called all four of the boys to her chambers in the morning. Since it was a summons from the chatelaine herself, the Masters of Hounds and Hawks couldn't fault Artos for being late. He smoothed his fair hair down carefully, paying special attention to the cowlick in the front, and waited with Bedvere and Lancot outside the door while Cai went in to see his mother alone.

A minute later, Cai stuck his head out of the door. “Hullo,” he called. “All in.”

They went in, Lancot in the lead, Bed next, and last Artos conscious of the newness of his position. He was determined to say nothing that might be taken as a mistake.

Looking around as unobtrusively as he could, Artos was awed by everything. There were floor-to-ceiling hanging tapestries with picture-story designs, many of which he recognized from the dragon's tales—Adam and Eve
with
fig leaves on one, the children of Pryderi on another, a third with what could only have been the alphabet of trees. He tried not to stare. There were cut flowers arranged in bowls and hanging pots of flowering plants, and a mix of rushes and dried verbena on the floor, all of which lent the room a sweet, fresh smell.
Women,
he thought with both admiration and envy,
have the best of it.
He wondered if his own mother had dwelled in such a room.

In a gown the color of new primroses, Lady Marion sat in a high carved chair whose back quite dwarfed her. An illuminated Bible rested on her lap. As the boys filed in, she closed the book and handed it to Cai, who set it on the lectern near the hearth. Waving the boys to stand before her, her rings winking at them in the sunlight, Lady Marion waited until they were fully at attention. Then she smiled.

“Good boys, and an especial welcome to you, young Artos. I understand from our Cai that you are become a man.”

Artos bobbed his head and said, quite quietly in case it was the wrong thing to say, “I have a sword now, Ma'am.”

“And so you do, with a fine watering down the blade,” she said. “Cai says it looks like a rush of wind.”

“Like dragon's fire, Ma'am,” he said. Then, seeing her smile again, he wondered if he should have been silent. But her smile was sweet, not forced.
It's all right then,
he thought.

“You will need a new suit of clothes to go with your new state. More gentlemanly and less…less…kennel boy. Sylvia?” She turned and nodded to one of her maids, who stepped forward in a wave of perfume that made Artos quite dizzy. “Be sure and find something his size but allow for growth. He's small now, but young men grow so rapidly once they begin.”

Artos felt his cheeks grow hotter with each word. It was bad enough being small and insignificant, but far worse having it pointed out in so public a fashion by a lady, especially in such gentle and caring tones. Fortunately, Lady Marion changed the subject. Not, Artos suspected, to spare his feelings but because the subject had been exhausted.

“Now there is to be a market fair in Shapwick next week and another three days after in Woolvington. Since it's but a short autumn till the Holy Days are here, we must start thinking about gifts. Remembering, always, that not everyone here at
Beau Regarde
is Christian as Sir Ector and I and all of you are. We have some who still follow the Druids…”