The Hollow Hills - Mary Stewart [130]
"And how old are you?" I asked him. "Ten?"
He looked pleased. "As a matter of fact I've just had my ninth birthday."
"And can ride already better than I do now."
"Well, you're only a -- " He bit it off, and went scarlet.
"I only started work as a hermit at Christmas," I said mildly. "I've really ridden around the place quite a lot."
"What doing?"
"Travelling. Even fighting, when I had to."
"Fighting? Where?"
As we talked I had led him round to the front entrance of the chapel, and up the steps. These were mossed with age, and steep, and I was surprised at the child's lightness of foot as he trod up them beside me. He was a tall boy, sturdily built, with bones that gave promise of strength. There was another kind of promise, too, Uther's sort; he would be a handsome man. But the first impression one got of Arthur was of a controlled swiftness of movement almost like a dancer's or a skilled swordsman's. There was something in it of Uther's restlessness, but it was not the same; this sprang from some deep inner core of harmony. An athlete would have talked of co-ordination, an archer of a straight eye, a sculptor of a steady hand. Already in this boy, they came together in the impression of a blazing but controlled vitality.
"What battles were you in? You would be young, even when the Great Wars were being fought? My guardian says that I will have to wait until I am fourteen before I go to war. It's not fair, because Cei is three years older, and I can beat him three times out of four. Well, twice perhaps...Oh!"
As we went in through the chapel doorway the bright sunlight behind us had thrown our shadows forward, so that at first the altar had been hidden. Now, as we moved, the light reached it, the strong light of early morning, by some freak falling straight on the carved sword so that the blade seemed to lift clear and shining from its shadows on the stone.
Before I could say a word he had darted forward and reached for the hilt. I saw his hand meet the stone, and the shock of it go through his flesh. He stood like that for seconds, as if tranced, then dropped the hand to his side and stepped back, still facing the altar.
He spoke without looking at me. "That was the queerest thing. I thought it was real. I thought, 'There is the most beautiful and deadly sword in the world, and it is for me.' And all the time it wasn't real."
"Oh, it's real," I said. Through the dazzling swirl of sun-motes I saw the boy, hazed with brightness, turn to stare at me. Behind him the altar shimmered white with the ice-cold fire. "It's real enough. Some day it will lie on this very altar, in the sight of all men. And he who then dares to touch and lift it from where it lies shall..."
"Shall what? What shall he do, Myrddin?"
I blinked, shook the sun from my eyes, and steadied myself. It is one thing to watch what is happening elsewhere on middle-earth; it is quite another to see what has not yet come out of the heavens. This last, which men call prophecy, and which they honour me for, is like being struck through the entrails by that whip of God that we call lightning. But even as my flesh winced from it I welcomed it as a woman welcomes the final pang of childbirth. In this flash of vision I had seen it as it would happen in this very place; the sword, the fire, the young King. So my own quest through the Middle Sea, the painful journey to Segontium, the shouldering of Prosper's tasks, the hiding of the sword in Caer Bannog -- now I knew for certain that I had read the god's will aright. From now, it was only waiting.
"What shall I do?" the voice