Dragon's Boy Read online

  “A swordsmith and a wordsmith, true,” said the smith. Grinning, he added, “How good a sword might you like, boy?”

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

  “And aye their swords soe sore can byte,

  Through help of gramarye…”

  Magnus Pieter looked around quickly. “Best you not let Father Bertram hear you sing that, young Art.” He sighed. “But I know when I must do what must be done. I been warned, I have. I’ve got the signs. So I’ll make you a fine sword, a steel of power. And while I make it, you must think of a name for your sword. A sword bought with a fine stone. A sword from a stone, boy. So it goes. So it goes. There will be history in it.” He reached across the anvil and plucked up the jewel, holding it high over both their heads.

  Artos stood slowly, never once taking his eyes from the jewel, but wondering all the while what the smith had been jabbering about. Old men, he thought, and their strange sentiments, signs, and portents. For a moment he thought he saw dragon fire leaping and crackling across the jewel’s surface, reflecting from the jewel’s core. Then he realized it was merely mirroring the glowing coals of the forge.

  “Perhaps,” he said, thinking out loud, “perhaps I will call my sword Inter Linea.”

  The smith smiled. “A fine name, that. Makes me think of foreign climes.” He pocketed the jewel and began to work, his hammer banging out another chain of jokes around the word clime.

  Artos ran out, heading toward the mews where he knew he’d at least several hours of work helping out the Master of Hawks. It was a job he hated with a passion, as the birds all seemed so desolate to him, standing about on their perches and jangling their jesses when they’d rather be out cresting the currents of air.

  7

  Days of Wisdom

  IF HE WANTED A pot of stew, it would mean another slobbery kiss from Mag. Artos knew this and, at last, accepted it. He’d come to understand that wisdom was not to be gotten easily.

  Fortunately, Mag was content with kisses on the cheek, gathering them in with such blushes and sighs that Artos found himself embarrassed for her, not appalled by her. It was rather sad, really, how little she was willing to settle for. He thought: When I have my wisdom, perhaps I can give Mag some.

  The walk to the dragon’s cave, first taken by accident, then in fear, became something Artos looked forward to each day with positive delight. He still stole out of the Cowgate carefully, unwilling to share the dragon’s whereabouts with any of the boys. But he didn’t care if the guards at the back gate noticed him. If they did, they could hardly guess his destination. One or another usually waved him on, then turned back sleepily to chat with a companion. They were, Artos knew, guards in name only. Sir Ector’s Beau Regarde really was a little place, as small and as insignificant as Cai had always made it out to be. This much wisdom he’d already gained from his time with the dragon.

  The dragon had spoken knowingly of other lands, lands that Artos was sure it had flown over while hunting for a proper cave of its own.

  “The world is round like an apple,” the dragon had said, “and so in the Far East, which is on the bottom side of the world from us, are the Indies where men walk upon their hands instead of their feet.”

  Artos had tried that when he returned to the kennelyard, but only succeeded in wrenching his shoulder so badly he was of no use to the Master of Hounds when later that afternoon Boadie gave birth to a litter of nine pups.

  Another day the dragon had informed him, “In Jerusalem, where the Pilate washed his hands of your Jesus, men wear dresses and turbans and have faces as black as mud.”

  Artos had examined his own face carefully that evening in a bowl of scented water. But even in the flickering candlelight, his face was as pale as the milk Boadie’s pups licked so eagerly. He thought he could love a friend with a face the color of rich earth, so different from his own.

  Each day the dragon doled out its wisdoms, sometimes from the book it had given Artos and sometimes letting him read from other books bound in leathers as variegated as a summer posy, with illuminations in cinnabar, rubric, cobalt blue, and daffodil gold. And sometimes it dropped the books onto the cave floor and simply spun him tales, golden threads of story that wove inevitably into a tapestry of knowledge. He heard about lands beneath the sea, drowned cities where the bells of churches still sounded with each passing wave; about lands where stone beasts with the faces of women ruled over the desert sands; about lands where men could ride on woven carpets high in the temperate air; about a land where a king might hold together a group of unruly knights by the simple magic of making them sit at a round table where no one was below the salt, where no one was higher, where all could be equal in the sight of their lord.

  The dragon sometimes sang him ballads, too, in a voice made soft by music. He sang songs from the prickly, heather-covered lands of the Scots who ran naked and screaming into battle; and sagas from the cold, icy Norsemen who prowled the coasts in their dragon-prowed ships; and songs of love from the silk-and-honey lands of Araby.

  It even told him 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 Artos guessed as “a well,” correctly as it turned out, so wise he was becoming.

  The best day, though, was the sunny spring day when he ran all the way with four lumps of meat in the pot (Mag had been especially susceptible to his kiss) to be greeted by a jolly “Halloooooo, Artos!”

  “Halloooooo, sir,” he called back. “Four lumps of meat, not three!”

  There was a chuckling from the inner cave. “And I have something particular for you as well, my boy.”

  With an especially loud clanking and creaking, a noise that now seemed so comfortably familiar Artos scarcely heard it anymore, the dragon pushed forward three pots, the one from the day before and two it must have secreted in its hoard. All three pots were exactly alike. Carefully the foot chose out a very large green jewel from the cave floor.

  “An emerald,” said the dragon. “Do you know it?”

  “An emerald,” repeated Artos, who by now had discovered that if he repeated anything the dragon taught him two or three times, he never forgot it. “An emerald.”

  “There are those who say emeralds have an evil temperament, but I have always thought them one of the most beautiful jewels in the world. What do you think, boy?”

  Artos considered the jewel by the flickering light of the dragon’s breath.

  “An emerald,” he said thoughtfully, the word now fully his. “Grass is as green, and new leaves, and the hills all glowing in early spring. Green has always seemed to me one of God’s favorite colors.”

  The dragon was silent. It was usually a sign that he was pleased with Artos’ answer. A wrong answer always brought a swift correction.

  Encouraged by the silence, Artos continued, “So I think a jewel that is green cannot be evil at all. Not on this world, anyway.”

  The dragon chuckled fondly at him, a strange chu-chu-chu sound. “Now I will give you this lovely green jewel to keep for your very own if you can find it under the right pot.” It placed the emerald carefully under one of the pots and began to mix the pots around.

  Leaning forward on his stone seat, Artos concentrated with all his will. He didn’t really want the jewel as much as he wanted to make the dragon proud of him.

  Round and round the pots went, until Artos was almost dizzy with them. Then the clacketing of the dragon’s leg slowed and, at last, stopped.

  “Do you know which pot the jewel lies under?” the dragon asked.

  “That one,” he said, pointing confidently.

  The dragon lifted the pot he’d indicated. The jewel was not there.

  “It has to be,” Artos said. “I never took my eye off it.”

&nbs
p; “But it is not,” the dragon said. “Watch again. I will still give you the jewel if you guess the right pot this time.”

  Artos watched again as the pots circled. The dragon used two feet this time, not one, and the extra clatter was loud in the cave, but Artos was never distracted. When the dragon stopped moving the pots around, Artos said nothing but pointed, to the correct pot this time.

  When the dragon lifted it up, there was nothing underneath.

  Angrily, Artos leaned forward and picked up the other two pots. The emerald was not under any of them.

  Chuckling loudly, the dragon turned over its claw. The emerald was firmly tucked into the deep sharp creases of the palm.

  “That’s a cheat!” Artos cried petulantly.

  “Will you watch again?”

  “NO!”

  But he did, not once but many times, though he could never catch the dragon palming the green jewel. At last he sat back.

  “What wisdom is this, O Master of Riddles?”

  “It is many different wisdoms,” the dragon said, “but you shall have to figure them out for yourself.”

  Then he taught Artos exactly how the game was played.

  Artos went back to the castle, having practiced the game of pot and jewel for over an hour till he got it right. He refused the emerald when the dragon offered it, saying, “I didn’t guess the right pot, so I’ve no right to the jewel.”

  The dragon had snorted, then answered, “But there wasn’t any right pot.”

  Still, Artos wouldn’t take it, and felt marvelously righteous and impoverished as he trotted home. It was a wonderful feeling.

  Even better was the feeling he got after supper when, borrowing three identical cups from the table and using a rather large pea he’d saved out, he fooled Cai, Lancot, and Bed. They even bet coins on the outcome and lost seven times in a row. It made for a handsome pile of coins.

  That’s when Cai had threatened him and Artos, grandly and with great apparent pleasure, pushed the coins back across the table toward Cai saying, “If the future lord of Beau Regarde insists…”

  Lancot had put his hand over Cai’s before he could pick up the coppers.

  “He beat you fairly, Cai,” Lancot said.

  Bedvere had grunted his grudging agreement.

  Straightening up and looking sourly across the table at Artos, Cai had left the coins.

  Fairly. The word rankled. All at once the good feeling was gone. Artos wondered if he had beaten Cai fairly. Was tricking someone the same as beating him? What if that someone were bigger and older and higher in rank—was it all right to cheat then? Or what, he wondered suddenly, if it were the other way around. Was it all right to trick someone like Mag, someone insignificant and worthless and way down the ranks? And—the traitor thought insisted on winding into his brain—was anyone that insignificant, that worthless?

  He felt all out of sorts at the questions. None of them seemed to have easy answers.

  It was when he was almost asleep, lying comfortably in the featherbed, that he knew that this idea of fairness was at least one of the wisdoms to be gotten from the dragon’s game.

  But the dragon had said there were many different wisdoms therein. He wondered, right before sleep claimed him, if wisdom itself was the jewel under the cup. Not really there at all. He dreamed about jewels and cups and dragons far, far into the night.

  8

  Day of the Sword

  ALL THE WHILE ARTOS was trotting back and forth to the dragon’s cave gaining his wisdom, Magnus Pieter was fast at work on the sword. But he didn’t get it right, not at first. Each new steel had something wrong with it, and Artos refused each in turn.

  “I don’t have this much trouble with Sir Ector himself, I don’t,” complained the smith, forgetting in his grousing to beat out any new jokes on the anvil.

  “But the hilt doesn’t sit comfortably in my hand,” Arthur said of the first sword. That hilt, artfully shaped like two entwined serpents, was in fact much too big for him. But even if it had been smaller, he wouldn’t have wanted it. He had a horror of serpents.

  “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.