by Jack Whyte
I was a pragmatic boy with an enquiring, logical mind. I did not like mysteries and I could not tolerate unresolved mysteries, so the next day I went over the entire scene in my mind, time and time again, just as it had happened. I had been carrying the book, Uther had tripped me, I had fallen against the table, then Uther righted the table, I wrestled the statue upright and together we lifted it and put it back in its place on the table. Then I had noticed the hole in the floor and panicked because it was so obvious. I had picked up the book, which had fallen open but was luckily undamaged, and replaced it where I had found it, and then we had both fled the room. So what was wrong? Why this uncertainty? The only thing that came to me, eventually, was the terrifying thought that the book had been damaged in falling and that I had not really taken note of the extent of the damage, dismissing it as insignificant beside the damage done to the floor. The more I thought about it, the more chilling the thought became. I knew how highly Uncle Varrus prized his books. To Uther they were unimportant, but I knew better. In truth, it was the gouge in the floor that was insignificant. If Uncle Varrus discovered that I had ruined, or even marred, one of his precious books because of a foolish boy's irreverence, he might bar me forever from using them.
Filled with anger at Uther for his thoughtless stupidity and lack of respect, I ran from my own room to the Armoury. As I approached it, my uncle came striding out, his face white and pinched and angry looking, followed by an equally white-faced servant. I skidded to a halt as he came sweeping towards me and hung my head in shame to receive his wrath, but he ignored me, hurrying past as though I was not there. Hardly daring to believe my good fortune, I went into the empty Armoury and straight to the table that held the precious books. They were all still there, including the one I was looking for. It was one of Grandfather Caius's books and I remembered thinking that day that I had not dipped into it in years, although I knew the entire text almost by rote. I reached for it and examined it minutely. It was absolutely unmarred; not a mark or a blemish anywhere.
Conscious of a feeling of great relief that I had been wrong and that nothing was amiss, I pulled over a stool, made myself comfortable, and opened the book at random, folding the heavy parchment sheets over the bindings that held them in place, and began to read of Grandfather's doubts about the skystones and how they could have fallen from the sky in flames. And then my memory gave a leap and I closed the book with a bang and searched among the others until I found what I was looking for, and there were the words, written as I remembered them in Grandfather's broad script:
"...I reached to pick her up. 'Careful, Caius! She's heavier than you think,' warned Publius. 'Here, let me help you.'
"Between the two of us we picked her up and carried her, with some difficulty, across the yard into the house and placed her in my day-worn on a table by the window..."
There was the source of my mystery, the anomaly that had been plaguing me! I had no recollection of my grandfather, but Uncle Varrus was massively strong, and yet it had taken their combined strength to carry the statue "with some difficulty" from the forge to the house. But Uther and I had picked it up from the floor, although admittedly not easily, and replaced it on the table. I knew I could carry it alone for some distance, given a strong first grip on it, and I had not the slightest doubt that Uther and I together could carry it as far as we wanted to. But Uther and I were three months short of twelve years old. Uncle Varrus and my grandfather had been grown men, big men, strong men, at the time my grandfather had been writing of. Even today, old as he was, Uncle Varrus had more strength than both Uther and me combined.
I rose slowly from my seat and crossed to the table where the statue stood and, reaching out my hand, I traced my fingertips across her cold surface, seeing in my mind other phrases that spoke of "generous curves" and "ample" breasts and buttocks. I thought of Occa and her large breasts, belly and buttocks. They were ample. But the word did not apply, as I understood it, to the Lady's shape.
I heard a movement behind me and turned to see Uncle Varrus staring at me, an odd expression on his face that made me afraid again.
"Uncle?"
He ignored me, turning slowly to walk from the room, and as he did so, I saw a streak of wetness on his cheek. The sight shocked me and I stood there gaping as I watched him walk away. I knew something bad had happened, and as soon as he had gone I went running myself to find out what was wrong. I met Uther in one of the corridors, running to find me and tell me the news. Equus, my uncle's closest friend, had been found dead in the forge. He had been working alone, it seemed, when he died, and had fallen at his anvil. By the time they found him, the blade he had been working on was cold, but it had burned through his thighs to the bone before it cooled.
Uther turned and ran towards the stables as soon as he had blurted out his news, assuming that I would be at his heels, as keen as he to see whatever was to be seen, but I made no move to follow him. His excited words had immediately plunged me into a state of complete terror and overwhelming nausea, and I sank to the floor to huddle with my knees gripped tightly between my arms and the cold sweat of sickening fear fouling my hot skin.
I had dreamed Equus's death two nights before, but his agony had been mine! My mind quaked with horror as I remembered, in awful detail, the excruciating pain that had consumed me and brought me screaming to wakefulness in the darkness of my room. A glowing, white-hot band of pain had fallen across my legs, searing my thighs and groin, and I had seen the smoke belching from the awful wound it caused and smelled the charring stench of my own cooking flesh.
I had long been plagued by such dreams. Indeed, I could not remember a time when I had not been disturbed by the formless memory of some nocturnal terror. They did not come often, but when they did, I awoke in horror, sickened to the point of vomiting and drenched with the sweat of abject fear. I seldom remembered any details, but invariably I suffered for hours afterward, wracked with chills and cramps and painful nausea. And always, it seemed, formless as the dreams had been, they returned in splintered fragments to haunt me during my waking hours, unexpectedly recalled by some detail or incident that seemed to waken echoes in my soul and frightened me unreasonably.
Now it had happened again, but this time I could not deny the reality. Equus, the gentle, friendly giant, lifelong companion of Uncle Varrus, had died in just the manner I had dreamed! A series of images of Equus flashed through my mind, all of them portraying him as I had always known him, working alone with his beloved iron amid the smoke- hazed half-light of his smithy. Sparks showered upward from his hammer as he lovingly crafted the furnace-heated metal of sword and spearhead and ploughshare, and suddenly I saw him fall, dropping his pincers and their glowing contents, and again I felt the pain and smelled the stink of burning.
I do not know how long I crouched there in terrified solitude, but I arose at length and went out into the bright afternoon. No one sought to stop me, and I ran for miles, vainly trying to escape the terror I bore inside me. When I stopped at last, I sat beneath a tree and wept, shuddering with formless guilt, until the trembling in my limbs died down. And for a while I slept.
On my return to Camulod, however, I told no one what I thought, or what I felt, or what I had dreamed. People would have thought me mad. At times—on those few occasions when I could overcome my inner fears enough to think about my terrors for a brief spell—I, too, feared I might be mad. And so I made myself forget the entire incident. Only once more, when Uncle Varrus mentioned that Equus could have felt no pain, since his apoplexy would have rendered him unconscious, did I feel guilt and fear.
That episode marked the beginning of a tragic time in our household. The Druids say that deaths occur in threes and I must admit now, in my old age, that three has always seemed to me to be a potent number, endowed with mystical proclivities, and never more so than in this strangeness of deaths. Old Bishop Alaric, close and longtime friend of both my grandfather and Uncle Varrus, died in his sleep within three days of Equus and wa
s found at the third hour of the morning. My great-uncle Ullic, Uther's grandfather, also died within the month, his back broken in a fall from a rock. Throughout his life he had often sat on this rock, a boulder on a bare hillside from which he swore he could overlook his entire kingdom. I heard that he had risen to climb down from his seat and simply pitched over backwards as though his heel had caught on. some projection, although none was there.
There was no gaiety in our house that winter and for a long, long time I had no other opportunity to speak to my uncle about the mystery of the statue. It was not until the springtime that I found myself alone with him again, and him in the frame of mind that might at last make allowance for my curiosity. It had been the kind of afternoon I had grown used to in the long winter months. Uncle Varrus had done no writing since the day Equus died, seeming content to sit unmoving by the fire, his eyes far off as though he were living elsewhere. His hair, even his beard, had turned white and he looked very old. I was reading that day, and Uther was about his own affairs, probably in the woods below with some girl. Aunt Luceiia had come into the room and I had half heard her. fussing over my uncle. There had been a mention of "the boy" and then I had been aware of her leaving.
Sometime after that, my uncle spoke. "What are you doing, Caius?"
"Reading, Uncle." This was the first time he had spoken directly to me in months.
"I can see that, boy. What are you reading? That's what I want to know."
"Your books, Uncle. I was reading about your forge in Colchester." With a sinking feeling, I realized he would think immediately of Equus and feared he might withdraw into his thoughts again, but he surprised me.
"And what about it? Why does that interest you?"
"Well, I was reading again about how you found the dagger that your grandfather had made for you."
"Ah! The skystone dagger." He fell silent for a spell, thinking of it, then, just as I was thinking he had forgotten me, he spoke again. "It was beautiful, Caius, the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Equus had hidden it, along with all the other treasures my grandfather had left for me. Poor Equus! I miss him, Cay. You never saw the dagger, did you?"
"No. You buried it with Grandfather, when I was still a baby."
"Aye, that I did. It seemed fitting."
"Uncle?"
"Aye? What is it?"
"Why did you bury the dagger with Grandfather? It must have been very valuable." I was looking directly at him and was happy to see the fond, real smile that had been absent for so long from that beloved face.
"You think it was wrong of me to bury the thing I had loved most in this world with the man I had loved most?" He paused and considered that for a few moments. "Well, there are probably others who would agree with you." Again he paused. "I wonder if I can explain that to you. The dagger was a dream, Cay. A dream come true for my grandfather and for me. But Caius Britannicus had had a dream that came true, too."
"Camulod," I said.
"Aye, Camulod. His Colony. That dagger of mine, with its mirror-bright blade, seemed to me to embody whatever it was that drove both your grandfather and me to make our dreams real. It was a shining proof that great and wondrous things, things miraculous, can spring from the minds of men. It pointed the way for both of us and led us to satisfaction. So, when he died, it seemed to me fitting that he should take it with him, wherever he might go. I buried it and him together and I have never regretted the impulse." He looked straight at me. "Does that make any sense to you at all?"
"Yes, Uncle, it does, but I have a question to ask. May I ask it now?"
"Of course! Since when do you need permission to ask questions?"
I made no comment on that, but pressed ahead with the question that had been puzzling me for months. "You know the statue? The Lady?"
"The Lady of the Lake. What about her?"
"Is she really made from a skystone?"
"What do you think?"
"I think she is. Your books, both yours and Grandfather's, say that she is."
"So? Was that your question?"
"No, not really, but..." I grappled for the right words, now that I had my chance. "Do you remember the first night Grandfather Caius saw the statue in the forge?"
"Very well. Why?" He was lounging in his chair, watching me curiously, with one eyebrow raised.
"Well, Grandfather Caius says in his book that it took both of you to carry it to the house that night."
"It did. She's a heavy lady."
"She's not that heavy now, Uncle." He sat up straighter, his expression changing, the blanket that had been around his shoulders slipping away unheeded. I gulped and charged ahead. "I knocked her over, one day, and picked her up and put her back on the table. She made a gouge in the floor, over there." I pointed to the spot, but he did not even glance that way.
"So? What are you saying, boy?"
"Just that if she's...if the statue's as heavy as Grandfather said it was, I shouldn't be able to lift it."
"Perhaps he exaggerated a little. Is that all?"
"No, Uncle, not all. Several times, in both of your books, each of you talks about the Lady as if she were much.. .fatter...bigger, somehow. That would have made her heavier." I fell silent and he looked at me very seriously.
"I'll ask you again, Caius. What are you saying to me?"
I felt a kind of panic. "I don't know, Uncle Varrus. It just seems strange to me, that's all. She should be bigger."
His voice was very soft. "Caius, do you remember the day a few years ago when I told you I would be waiting for a certain question from you?" I nodded, staring. "Well, you have almost asked me that question. Would you like to try to rephrase it?"
Suddenly I knew! The question lay in Grandfather's book, not Uncle Varrus's! My mouth was dry and my thoughts were racing. A thousand possible questions flashed through my mind and I rejected all of them, all save one, which I knew had to be exactly the right question. Yet I reviewed what I knew before committing myself to the asking of it. He had buried the skystone dagger with Grandfather Caius because, he said, his own dream had come true. He had smelted the skystone into the metal statue because, he said, he had not yet discovered the proper use for it. And now the statue was lighter, much lighter, if I could pick it up, and his greatest treasure was hidden in this room.
"Uncle?" His eyes snapped open, wide and alert. "What did you do with the rest of the skystone metal after you melted the Lady down again?"
There was a long silence before he rose to his feet and placed a hand on each of my shoulders. "Caius," he said, deep voiced, "there were times when I thought you would never ask me. I had begun to fear you would never see it, that I had covered my tracks too well. Bring me the wooden hammers."
Mystified, but extremely excited, I went immediately to the far wall and took down the two wooden hammers he referred to. Of all the wonderful things in this great room, these were the most innocuous and I had asked about them long before. He had told me then that they were no more than mementos carved for him by an old friend, replicas of the hammers that he used in beating silver. As I retrieved them he strode across the room and closed the great doors, dropping the bar in place to lock them.
"Bring them here." I crossed to where he stood in the middle of the floor. "Give me one of them." I did so. "Now stand there, opposite me. Move back, further. Now look down. What do you see?"
"The floor. The end of a board. Like the one at your feet.
The same board."
"What else?"
"The studs that hold it in place."
"Put the end of your handle on the left stud." I did. It fitted perfectly. "Now push down, hard and steady." I felt my eyes grow wide as the stud sank into the floor and its neighbour in the opposite corner of the board rose out of its hole. "That's enough! Now, take hold of the raised stud and lift."
The board came out of the floor easily, revealing a long case of highly polished wood in the recess beneath. Carved into the lid of this box, about two-thirds of t
he way up its length from where I stood, a star was inlaid in silver, trailing long, arcing streamers of gold behind it. I stood gating at it, seeing the significance of the symbol immediately and wondering what miracle might be contained beneath it.
My uncle interrupted my trance by leaning over to grasp the ends of a leather strap that lay on top of the case at his end. "Hey," he said, "this is only the case. Lift it out." I fumbled for the strap at my end and we lifted it together. It was not heavy. Balancing it between us, we carried it to the light and placed it reverently on a table top. I ran my fingertips through the dust that coated it, marvelling at the silken smoothness of the polished wood. "Hold the ridge on the bottom at your end."
My fingers sought and found the ridge and then held it firm while he twisted something and pulled the cover free. A rush of blood to my head almost deprived me of my senses as I saw what lay inside. Of course, it was the Sword.
It lies here beside me as I write. Men have talked of it for years now, even the men who own this land today. Many search for it, and there are already people living in this land who doubt it ever was. No such Sword existed, they say, save in the minds of dreamers and minstrels. I could have told them that they were wrong, but they did not even know I was nearby, and had they seen me they would have killed me instantly, so I left them to their ignorance and their doubts.
Many eyes have seen this Sword, but none lives today, save only myself, who ever held it. It came into the lives of ordinary men in one moment of pure magic, and from that day forward, all men believed it to be truly magical, and I suppose it is, if the word magical means not of this earth.
I write of ordinary men and how the Sword came into their lives in a summer moment, so I must now, I suppose, think of myself as being extraordinary, since it came into my life fully thirty years and more before any other saw it. Mine were among the first eyes ever to gaze upon its beauty, and I was shown it by the man who made it, and I, myself, became the eventual Keeper of the Sword. That, I know, would make me extraordinary if nothing else did. My name is whispered in fear and awe today. Magician, they call me; sorcerer. That makes me extraordinary.