"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 the 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.