Wings of Fire

by Jonathan Strahan

  “But there is never any meat in my gravy,” whined Old Linn.

  “Nor any meat in your manner,” replied the brawny smith. “Nor were you mete for battle.” The smith rather fancied himself a words-man as well as a swordsman. And until Old Linn had had a fit, fall-ing face first into his soup in the middle of entertaining the visiting high king, the smith had been spitted regularly by Old Linn’s quick tongue. Now Linn was too slow for such ragging and he never told tales after meals anymore. It was said he had lost the heart for it af-ter his teeth had left prints on the table. But he was kept on at the castle because Lord Ector had a soft heart and a long memory. And because—so backstair gossip had it—Linn had a cupboard full of strange herbs locked up behind doors covered with deep-carved runes.

  Artos, who had been at the smithy to try and purchase a sword with his red jewel, was caught with his bargaining only just begun. He had not even had time to show the gem to Magnus Pieter when Old Linn had shambled in and, without any prelude, started his whining litany. His complaints were always laid at the smith’s door. No one else in the castle was as old as the pair of them. Not even Lord Ector. They were best of friends by their long and rancorous association.

  “My straw is ne’er changed but once a se’nnight,” Linn complained. “My slops are ne’er emptied. I am given the dregs of the wine to drink. And now I must sit, if I am to be welcomed at all, well below the salt.”

  The smith smiled and returned to tapping on his piece of steel. He had stopped when Artos had begun his inquiries. In time to the beat of the hammer, he said, “But you have straw, though you no longer earn it. And a pot for your slops, which you can empty yourself. You have wine, even though you ne’er pay for it. And even below the salt, there is gravy in your bowl.”

  That was when Old Linn had whined piteously, “But there is never any meat in my gravy.”

  It was the word meat and Magnus Pieter’s seven or eight variations on it that rung like a knell in Artos’s head. For meat had been the dragon’s final word.

  He slunk off without even the promise of a sword, that shining piece of steel that might make him an equal in the eyes of the other boys, the gem still burning brightly in his tightly clenched hand.

  He brought a small pot of gravy with three pieces of meat with him. Strolling casually out the back gate as if he had all the time in the world, nodding slightly at the guards over the portcullis, Artos could feel his heartbeat quicken. He had walked rather more quickly over the moat bridge, glancing at the gray-green water where the old moat tortoise lazed atop the rusted crown of a battle helm. Once he was across, however, he began to run.

  It was difficult not to spill the stew, but he managed. The path was a worn thread through a wilderness of peat mosses and tangled brush. He even clambered over two rock outcroppings in the path that were studded with stones that looked rather like lumps of meat themselves. And, actually, climbing over the rocks was easier than wheedling the pot of stew had been. He only had it because Mag the scullion was sweet on him and he had allowed her to kiss him full on the lips. She hadn’t noticed how he had held his breath, hoping to avoid the stink of her garlic, and closed his eyes not to see her bristly mustache. And she sighed so much after the kiss she hadn’t had time to ask what he needed the stew for. But what if the dragon wanted gravy every day and he had to give Mag more kisses? It didn’t bear thinking about, so Artos thought instead about the path. The dragon had been right. There was a quicker route back to the mound. Its only disadvantages were the two large rocks and the old thorny briar bushes. But they, at least, were safer than the peat pools which held bones enough way far down.

  He got to the cave rather more quickly than he had bargained. Breathless, he squinted into the dark hole. This time he heard no heavy dragon breathing.

  “Maybe,” he said aloud to himself, his own voice lending him badly needed courage, “there’s no one home. So I can just leave the gravy—and go.”

  “Staaaaaaaaay,” came the sudden rumbling.

  Artos almost dropped the pot.

  “I have the gravy,” he shouted quickly. He hadn’t meant to be so loud, but fear always made him either too quiet or too loud. He was never sure which it was to be.

  “Then give it meeeeeeeee,” said the voice, followed by the clank-ing as the great claw extended halfway into the cave.

  Artos could tell it was the foot by its long shadow. This time there was no stream of fire, only a hazy smoldering light from the back of the cave. Feeling a little braver then, he said, “I shall need to take the pot back with me. Sir.”

  “You shall take a bit of wisdom instead,” came the voice.

  Artos wondered if it would make him wise enough to avoid Mag’s sweaty embrace. Somehow he doubted it.

  “Tomorrow you shall have the pot. When you bring me more.”

  “More?” This time Artos’s voice squeaked.

  “Moooooooore,” said the dragon. “With meat!” The nail extended, just as it had the day before, and caught under the pot handle. There was a horrible screeching as the pot was lifted several inches into the air, then slowly withdrawn into the recesses of the cave. There were strange scrabbling noises as if the dragon were sorting through its possessions, and then the clanking resumed. The claw returned and dropped something at Artos’s feet.

  He looked down. It was a book, rather tatty around the edges, he thought, though in the cave light it was hard to be sure. “Wissssssssdom,” said the dragon.

  Artos shrugged. “It’s just a book. I know my letters. Father Bertram taught me.”

  “Lettersssssss turn matter into sssssspirit,” hissed the dragon.

  “You mean it’s a book of magic?”

  “All bookssssss are magic, boy.” The dragon sounded just a bit cranky.

  “Well, I can read,” said Artos, stooping to pick up the book. He added a quick, “Thank you,” thinking he should seem grateful. Old thorns and old dragons… he reminded himself.

  “You can read letters, my boy, which is more than I can say for your castle contemporaries. And you can read words. But you must learn to read inter linea, between the lines.”

  Edging backward to the cave’s mouth, Artos opened the book and scanned the first page. His fingers underlined each word, his mouth formed them. He turned the page. Then he looked up puzzled. “There is nothing written between the lines. Sir.”

  Something rather like a chuckle crossed with a cough echoed from the cave. “There is always something written between the lines. But it takes great wisdom to read it.”

  “Then why me, sir? I have little wisdom.”

  “Because… because you are here.”

  “Here?”

  “Today. And not back at Ector’s feeding his brachet or cleaning out the mews or sweating in the smithy or fighting with that pack of unruly boys. Here. For the getting of wisdom.” The dragon made stretching noises.

  “Oh.”

  There was a sudden tremendous wheezing and clanking and a strange, “Oh-oh,” from the dragon.

  Artos peered into the back of the cave nervously. It was all dark-ness and shadow and an occasional finger of firelight. “Are you all right? Sir?”

  A long silence followed during which Artos wondered whether he should go to the dragon. He wondered if he had even the smallest amount of wisdom needed to help out. Then, just as he was about to make the plunge, the dragon’s voice came hissing back. “Yessssss, boy.”

  “Yes what, sir?”

  “Yessssss I am all right.”

  “Well, then,” said Artos, putting one foot quietly behind the other, “thank you for my wisdom.”

  A furious flame spat across the cave, leaping through the darkness to lick Artos’s feet. He jumped back, startled at the dragon’s accuracy and suddenly hideously afraid. Had it just been preparation for the dragon’s dinner after all? He suddenly wished for the sword he had not yet purchased, turned, and ran out of the cave.

  The dragon’s voice followed him. “Ssssssssilly chi
ld. That was not the wisdom.”

  From a safe place alongside the outside wall of the cave, Artos peeked in. “There’s more?” he asked.

  “By the time I am through with you, Artos Pendragon, Arthur son of the dragon, you will read inter linea in people as well.” There was a loud moan and another round of furious clanking, and then total silence.

  Taking it as a dismissal and holding the book hard against his chest, Artos ran down the hill. Whatever else he thought about as he neared the castle walls, topmost in his mind was what he would tell Mag about the loss of the gravy pot. It might mean another kiss. That was the fell thought that occupied him all the way home.

  Artos could not read the book without help, he knew it at once. The sentences were much too long and interspersed with Latin and other languages. Perhaps that was the between the lines the dragon had meant. The only help available was Old Linn, and he did not appear until well after dinner. Unfortunately, that was the time that Artos was the busiest, feeding the dogs, checking the jesses on the hawks, cleaning the smithy. Father Bertram might have helped had he still been alive, though somehow Artos doubted it. The dragon’s book was neither Testament nor commentary, that much he could read, and the good father had been fierce about what he had considered proper fare. The castle bonfires had often burned texts of which he disapproved. Even Lady Marion’s Book of Hours, which had taken four scribes the full part of a year to set down, had gone up in Father Bertram’s righteous flames because Adam and Eve had no fig leaves. This Artos had on good authority, though he had never seen it himself, for Lady Marion had complained to Lady Sylvia who had tittered about it to her serving girls who passed the news along with the gravy to young Cai who had mentioned it as a joke to his friends in the cow shed when Artos, who had been napping in the haymow, overheard them.

  No, the good Father Bertram would never have helped. Old Linn, though, was different. He could read four tongues well: English, Latin, Greek, and bardic runes. It was said his room was full of books. He could recite the “Conception of Pyrderi,” a tale Artos loved for the sheer sound of it, and the stories about the children of Llyr and the Cauldron and the Iron House and the horse made for Bran. Or at least Linn used to be able to tell them all. Before he had been taken ill so suddenly and dramatically, his best piece had always been the “Battle of the Trees.” Artos could not remember a time when dinners of great importance at the castle had not ended with Linn’s declaiming of it. In fact, Lord Ector’s Irish retainers called Linn shanachie, which, as far as Artos could tell from their garbled and endless explanations, simply meant “storyteller.” But they said the word with awe when coupling it to Old Linn’s name.

  The problem, Artos thought, was that the old man hated him. Well, perhaps hate was too strong a word, but he seemed to prefer the young gentlemen of the house, not the impoverished fosterling. Linn especially lavished attention on Sir Cai who, as far as Artos was concerned, long ago let his muscles o’ertake his head. And Sir Bedvere, slack-jawed and hardhanded. And Sir Lancot, the pretty boy. Once Artos, too, had tried to curry favor with the trio of lordlings, fetching and carrying and helping them with their schoolwork. But then they all grew up, and the three grew up faster and taller and louder. And once Sir Lancot as a joke had pulled Artos’s pants down around his ankles in the courtyard and the other two called out the serving maids to gawk. And that led to Mag’s getting sweet on him, which was why he had grown to despise Mag and pity the boys, even though they were older and bigger and better placed than he.

  Still, there was a time for putting aside such feelings, thought Artos. The getting of wisdom was surely such a time. He would need help in reading the dragon’s book. None of the others, Cai or Bedvere or Lancot, could read half as well as he. They could only just make out the prayers in their psalters. Sir Ector could not read at all. So it would have to be Old Linn.

  But to his despair, the apothecary could not be found after dinner. In desperation, he went to talk to the old man’s best friend, the smith.

  “Come now, young Art,” called out Magnus Pieter as Artos ap-proached the smith. “Did we not have words just yesterday? Some-thing about a sword and a stone?”

  Artos tried to think of a way to get the conversation around to Linn’s whereabouts, but the conversation would not move at his direction. The smith willed it where he would. At last there was nothing left to do but remove the leathern bag around his neck and take out the jewel. He dropped it onto the anvil. It made a funny little pinging sound.

  Magnus sucked on his lower lip and snorted through his nose. “By God, boy, and where’d you get that stone?”

  To tell the truth meant getting swat for a liar. He suddenly realized it would be the same if he showed the book to Linn. So he lied. “I was left it by… Father Bertram,” he said. “And I’ve…” The lies came slowly. He was by inclination an honest boy. He preferred silence to an untruth.

  “Kept it till now, have you?” asked the smith. “Well, well, and of course you have. After all, there’s not much in that village of ours to spend such a jewel on.”

  Artos nodded silently, thankful to have Magnus Pieter do the lying for him.

  “And what would you be wanting for such a jewel?” asked the smith with the heavy-handed jocularity he always confused with cunning.

  Knowing that he must play the innocent in order to get the better bargain, Artos said simply, “Why, a sword, of course.”

  “Of course!” Magnus Pieter laughed, hands on hips, throwing his head way back.

  Since the other two smiths he had met laughed in just that way, Artos assumed it was something taught.

  The smith stopped laughing and cocked his head to one side. “Well?”

  “I am old enough to have a sword of my own,” said Artos. “And now I can pay for a good one.”

  “How good?” asked the smith in his heavy manner.

  Artos knelt before the anvil and the red jewel was at the level of his eyes. As if he were addressing the stone and not the smith, he chanted a bit from a song Old Linn used to sing:

  And aye their swordes soe sore can byte,

  Throughe help of gramarye…

  From behind him the smith sighed. “Aye,” the old man said, “and a good sword it shall be. A fine blade, a steel of power. And while I make it for you, young poet, you must think of a good name for your sword from this stone.” He reached across Artos’s shoulder and plucked up the jewel, holding it high over both their heads.

  Artos stood slowly, never once taking his eyes from the jewel. For a moment he thought he saw dragon fire leaping and crackling there. Then he remembered the glowing coals of the forge. The stone reflected that, nothing more.

  “Perhaps,” he said, thinking out loud, “perhaps I shall call it Inter Linea.”

  The smith smiled. “Fine name, that. Makes me think of foreign climes.” He pocketed the stone and began to work. Artos turned and left, for he had chores to do in the mews.

  Each day that followed meant another slobbery kiss from Mag and another pot of stew. It seemed to Artos a rather messy prelude to wisdom. But after a week of it, he found the conversations with the dragon worth the mess.

  The dragon spoke knowingly of other lands where men walked on their heads instead of feet. Of lands down beneath the sea where the bells rang in underwater churches with each passing wave. It taught Artos riddles and their answers, like

  As round as an apple, as deep as a cup,

  And all the king’s horses can’t pull it up,

  which was a well, of course.

  And it sang him ballads from the prickly, gorse-covered land of the Scots who ran naked and screaming into battle. And songs from the cold, icy Norsemen who prowled in their dragon ships. And love songs from the silk-and-honey lands of Araby.

  And once the dragon taught him a trick with pots and jewels, clanking and creaking noisily all the while, its huge foot mixing up the pots till Artos’s head fair ached to know under which one lay the emerald as big as an egg. An
d that game he had used later with Lancot and Bedvere and Cai and won from them a number of gold coins till they threatened him. With his promised new sword he might have beaten them, but not with his bare hands. So he used a small man’s wiles to trick them once again, picked up the winnings, and left them grumbling over the cups and peas he had used for the game.

  And so day by day, week by week, month by month, Artos gained wisdom.

  It took three tries and seven months before Artos had his sword. Each new steel had something unacceptable about it. The first had a hilt that did not sit comfortably in his hand. Bedvere claimed it instead, and Magnus Pieter was so pleased with the coins Sir Bedvere paid it was weeks before he was ready to work another. Instead he shoed horses, made latches, and built a gigantic candelabrum for the dining room to Lady Marion’s specifications.

  The second sword had a strange crossbar that the smith swore would help protect the hand. Artos thought the sword unbalanced but Cai, who prized newness over all things, insisted that he wanted that blade. Again Magnus Pieter was pleased enough to spend the weeks following making farm implements like plowshares and hoes.

  The third sword was still bright with its tempering when Lancot claimed it.

  “Cai and Bedvere have new swords,” Lancot said, his handsome face drawn down with longing. He reached his hand out.

  Artos, who had been standing in the shadows of the smithy, was about to say something when Old Linn hobbled in. His mouth and hair spoke of a lingering illness, both being yellowed and lifeless. But his voice was strong.

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

  “And true to my swords,” said Magnus Pieter, pleased with the play.

  Artos stepped from the shadows then and held out his hand. The smith put the sword in it and Artos turned it this way and that to catch the light. The watering on the blade made a strange pattern that looked like the flame from a dragon’s mouth. It sat well and balanced in his hand.