Jack Whyte - Uther

He led the way up onto the dais that held the King's heavy seat of ornately carved oak and sat down, thrusting a footstool towards Uther with one foot as he did so. Uther caught the stool, hooking it with his foot, and pulled it over to him to sit, avoiding his grandfather's eyes while his head spun with wonder over so much ease and friendliness where he had expected bluntness and pain.

"So," his grandfather continued, "why the overhead swing?"

"Forgive me, Grandfather, but this time I truly don't know, save that it seemed to be the right thing to do at the time. But of course, it wasn't. How did you split the coal?"

"With a blade, the way you tried to do it. But I used the point of mine like a wedge and forced it into the crack with the weight of my body." Ullic leaned back until his shoulders found the comfort of his deep chair, then crossed his arms, lowering his chin onto his chest as he stared at his grandson. "I'll admit, you had me wondering for a moment or two if you had taken leave of your senses . . . especially when I saw what happened to the blade of the sword. I just about had you thrown into a cell then to teach you a lesson about good manners. Only one thing stopped me. Can you guess what it was?"

"No, Tata."

"The coal. Had you merely wanted to look like a fool and humiliate me and your father, you could have chosen any old stone on which to break that sword, but instead you chose a piece of coal— black, dirty, hard to find. And soft—softer than any other kind of stone. Once I began to think about the coal, I couldn't stop. So I went and looked at it. Your blade hacked a big chip out of it, destroying itself in the doing of it. But I could not make myself believe that you would go to such pigheaded lengths simply to destroy even such a poor weapon. It seemed beyond belief that you would be so stupid and vicious. So I told myself that you must have had a reason for doing what you did, even if I could not imagine what it was . . .

"And then I saw the lines running along the coal from one end to the other, and I remembered the care with which you took aim, the way you bent down and laid the blade so carefully against the stone before bringing it up to strike. You did all that slowly and with great concentration. And so I guessed that what you were trying to do must have had something to do with those lines. They looked strangely familiar, even though I had never noticed any- thing like them before, and the only thing I could think of doing with them was to split them, to force them apart, and so I did that. I drove the point of a sword blade hard into one of the lines, and the entire block fell apart in two pieces."

Ullic stopped and looked appraisingly at his grandson. "I was impressed that you would have known that would happen, even if you did not know quite how to achieve it. But tell me, if you will, man to man, why you did it. What do you think is so important about being able to split coal?"

"Nothing, Tata . . . I mean, there's nothing important about doing it with coal. Coal is easy, or it should be easy. What I didn't know until this morning is that there are different kinds of coal. I know now."

"What d'you mean?"

The boy shrugged. "The coal they use in Camulod is very different from ours. It is shinier and cleaner-looking, almost polished, if you know what I mean. And it's lighter, too . . . easier to carry and easier to break apart. I never thought to ask about that, and I never thought to question the weight of the piece I brought here today. I knew it was heavier, and I knew it was duller, and I knew it was dirtier. . . dustier. . . but it never occurred to me that it could be a completely different kind of coal."

Ullic sat staring at his grandson for a moment and then shrugged, frowning slightly. "I know what you are saying must make sense to you, but I have no idea what you are talking about. You began by telling me that coal is unimportant, but since then all you have talked about is coal."

"Oh . . . well, yes, I know it must sound strange. But you see, it's the stone and cleaving it that matters . . ."

King Ullic Pendragon stood up and raised his arms high in a mighty stretch, yawning and rising to his tiptoes as he did so. "I'm hungry," he said. "You must be, too. Come with me and we'll pass by the kitchens and find something to eat, then you and I will walk for a while and talk, and perhaps by then you'll be able to tell me sensibly about what's in your mind."

Within the space of the hour that followed—thanks to the pleasant distractions afforded by visiting his grandfather's kitchens and procuring an entire feast, comprising a hot, freshly spit-roasted hare and a cloth-twist bag of salt, a loaf of fresh bread, a damp cloth full of soft, new-made cheese, a small raw turnip cut into wedges and a jug of cold beer—Uther went from being angry and afraid to feeling completely at his ease. He and his grandfather shared the load as they carried their meal with them, sauntering at their leisure through the King's Holding and into the woods outside Tir Manila. Only three men attempted to approach King Ullic in that time, and he waved all of them away, growling an explanation that he was spending time with his grandson and did not wish to be interrupted. Uther said nothing about that, but he was highly conscious of the honour being accorded to him and, in consequence, even more appreciative than his boyish appetite would normally have made him when the two of them finally sat down side by side on a fallen tree trunk and shared the delicious meal.

By that time, he had also come to accept that his grandfather, far from being angry at him, was honestly interested in what Uther had to say. As a result, when the time came to start from the beginning and explain all that had been going through his mind in recent weeks, he found that every trace of complexity had vanished, and he was able to tell the story fluently and without pause, going from his first encounter with the old craftsman Murdo in Camulod through all that he had learned from the old man and almost successfully through the ensuing labyrinth of thoughts, many of them contradictory, that had brought him to this day's doings.

When he had finished talking, his grandfather sat staring at him for some time, then sniffed and made a low throat-clearing sound somewhere deep in his chest.

"Very well," he said. "I think I follow you . . . At least I know what lines of cleavage are now. Here I am, more than five times your age, and I never knew that before. So. You hoped to split the coal—or the stone, if you prefer—with your sword. Why? What would that have proved?"

"That it could be done."

"What d'you mean?"

The boy shrugged. "It would have amazed you, Tata, don't you see? Because you didn't know it could be done. Do you think any of your Councillors would have known, when you didn't? What would you have said, or thought, if I had been able to do it . . . if the stone had split clean in two?"

Ullic Pendragon nodded and actually chuckled. "You're right, I would have been amazed. And I might even have been amused, too. But what makes you think I would not then have thrown you out for interrupting my Council?"

"Because I did it with a sword."

"A sword . . . I don't follow you. You're ten years old, and you've lost me. What are you saying?"

"I don't know, Tata—I know you told me not to say that but it's the truth. It's a—I had a vision, I think."

"A vision. I see. What kind of a vision was it?"

"It happened one afternoon last week when I was thinking about Murdo's chisel striking one of his big, yellow topaz stones. I le always does it—splitting a stone, I mean—with great care, and lie spends ages studying each stone before he can decide where to place the chisel blade. If he selects the wrong spot, or if he strikes too hard or not hard enough, he can destroy the stone, smashing it into powder. He let me try it once, and I ended up with a small pile of yellow dust and splinters. But when Murdo does it right, Tata, he splits the stone cleanly, and each side of the split is smooth, as though polished, like the glass in Grandma Luceiia's window in her family room in Camulod. And then I thought of something that I hadn't thought about before . . . and I saw it again today when I came back into the Council chamber and saw how you had split the coal . . ." His voice died away and he looked up into Ullic's eyes.