Their eyes met. Guy’s were tranquil, but didn’t hide a faint gleam. Arthur blushed like a rising sun. “Wearefriends. And, er... thanks.”
“My pleasure. Come and help me try to shift this thing.”
They both tried, Art clasping his hands round his brother’s on the hilt and lifting, first of all directly upwards, then leaning against the wall of rock to get some angle and purchase. Gaius gestured Art aside and tried it again by himself, bracing his thighs and pitting all his considerable muscle against the blade’s entrapment.
But the sword was balanced there as if in a perfect-made scabbard of stone, as if it had grown in place. “Sorry, Bear,” Guy said, after another few efforts. “I think we might have to leave it.”
Bear.Arthur smiled, eyes stinging. Guy hadn’t called him that since their arrival at Vindolanda, as if aware of the changes the place had wrought in him, the sudden scramble to adulthood. Why did the old name touch him so deeply now? Art couldn’t have said, except that some moments felt more than others like knife edges, like forks in the road when he knew that his path and Guy’s would divide unimaginably far, and he had grown to love him dearly. “All right,” he said roughly. “Thank you for trying. We’d better go and see to Lance.”
He was turning away when the skies darkened. Guy was ahead of him: Art was tired, and only too willing now to follow his brother’s better idea of how to get back to the top. “Wait,” he said. “I have to try it again.”
Guy shook his head. “I gave it all I had, and you’re two thirds the man I am. Don’t bother. It really is caught fast.”
Had the light changed? Arthur shivered, and ran a hand over his eyes. No—the jagged patch of sky between the jaws of the rock above them was still diamond bright. The hairs on his nape prickled up. His eardrums popped as if he’d galloped too fast downhill. He’d scarcely known a day’s illness in his life, and couldn’t identify the horrible weakness undoing his joints, the cold sweat damping his spine and his palms, at the thought of leaving the weapon behind. Evading the hand Guy had put out to steady him, he went back.
He took hold of it lightly, just beneath the guard. He didn’t brace to pull. There was no need. He simply stepped outside his flesh. He let all his bones turn to rock, breathed through lungs made out of the sweet north wind. He watched with the eyes of the sun, as the white-faced boy who was himself effortlessly pulled the sword from the stone.
Chapter Fourteen
“That’s ridiculous,” Guy said. “I must have slackened it. Put it back and let me try again.”
Art stared at him, one disbelieving eyebrow on the rise. “You are kidding me, aren’t you?”
“No, I really want to have another—”
A tremor shook the ridge. Guy flung out both hands to stay upright. A baker’s dozen of ravens shot up from their nest-ledges into the blue. “Guy,” Art whispered, when the cawing and the shudder of the ground had ceased. “Take the sword back to Lance.”
“Take it yourself. What was that?”
“Can’t you hear it?”
“Hear what?”
“The song of the dragon. Uther tried to seize it—that inheritance, that old magic—but he could only ever pass it on. The song of the sacred earth.”
“For pity’s sake.” Guy strode to catch him before he could drop. “Sit down. Put your head between your knees. Give me that wretched sword.”
“You have to take it back to Lance, Guy.”
“All right, all right. In a minute. Are you going to faint?”
“Of course not.”
“Then sit still while I look at the crack in the rock.” Cradling the sword, Guy knelt to examine the place where the blade had been wedged—forever, he’d thought. “I don’t understand,” he said after a moment. “It’s gone. The whole surface here is in one piece, as if it...”
“As if it healed itself?”
“Yes, but that has to be nonsense.”
“It doesn’t matter. Will you just take it up and give it back to him?”
“Arthur, it’s yours,” Guy said harshly. His father had always made him swear not to burden the lad with the prophecies, but Art had ever been too bright and inquisitive for secrets to stay covered long in Ector’s small, ingenuous household. “You must know that.”
Art turned on him. He was sweat-damped, shivering, and yet when his grey gaze met Guy’s, there was command in it. “Didn’t you hear me? I must rest here for a while. Take this sword and restore it to my friend.”
Gaius climbed carefully, the sword tucked awkwardly through his belt. Occasionally he glanced down to see that Arthur was safe. After a while the boy began to follow, but slowly and at a distance, as if he didn’t yet want to emerge into the light.
As he hauled himself over the edge, the beauty of this strange countryside seemed to strike Guy for the first time, with almost painful force. His focus had been on Arthur, on keeping him safe and returning him in one piece to Ectorius after each ride. The hills to the northeast caught his breath—endless, marked out in cloudshadows. Guy, not overly sensitive to landscape, was bemused by his sudden awakening now. The air smelled so sweet. It was as if the whole earth was silently laughing at him. He stood for a moment, distracted.
