Jack Whyte - The Singing Sword

The sword lay where I had left it, wrapped in a silken cloth that Luceiia would have skinned me alive for taking, had she known. I undid the silk and lifted the weapon that it caressed. Excalibur! The name was right for it. Lightning flickered along its mirrored blade and sparkled on its finely tempered edges that bore marks like the ripple shadows of pure water. This was my lifetime's work: this single sword, unique from the tip of its blade to the scalloped pommel, a sword fit for a king to wield, a king whose day would come long after I was forgotten dust. Whoever he might be, he would have a sword to reckon with, and as long as Excalibur existed, I would never really be forgotten. I hefted it, admiring the play of light on its great cross-guard and loving the textured firmness of the hilt, bound in the belly skin of a giant shark. Caius Britannicus had never had the opportunity to admire the wonder that his Lady of the Lake had provided. But he had swung it once, before it was gripped with shark skin, and it had not slipped in his bloodied hand. I placed it gently in its case, into the doeskin-lined depression shaped so carefully to its size, and closed the lid.

Ullic's great ceremonial helmet still lay on the bench, and I picked it up and held it at eye-level, looking into the still-fierce, golden eyes of the eagle's head that fronted it above the massive, predatory beak. My professional interest was stirred briefly as I wondered how the artist who made this thing had kept the giant bird so lifelike, but then the eyes dissolved and I saw Caius staring into my face that day, almost fifty years before, when he had found me paralysed among a pile of corpses. A lump swelled in my throat and I grunted and jammed the helmet onto my head. I hoisted the case containing Excalibur up to my shoulder and set out to walk back to my house — to my beloved wife, who might or might not be there, dependent upon her ever-expanding timetable of meetings of the Women's Council — and to the rest of my family and the inheritors of our dream, the grandsons of my best friend and myself.

I wondered which of the two boys would wield the sword in years to come? Would it be Uther, already a brawler at six months and bold with his mother's magpie beauty, or would it be his gentler cousin, Merlyn, the golden-haired Britannicus? The debate gave me pleasure and I found myself whistling for the first time in months as I walked through the summer sunshine. Equus was coming towards me, deep in conversation with Joseph, the young apprentice who was now our best craftsman. I saw what I had not noticed before — that Joseph was now a full-grown man — and I smiled, accepting the knowledge, once and for all, that the world belonged to the young people now growing, and that my own tasks had almost been completed.

The End

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First published in Viking by Penguin Books Canada Limited, 1993 Published in Penguin Books, 1994 9 10 8

Copyright © Jack Whyte, 1993 All rights reserved.

Publisher's note: The Singing Sword is based in part on actual events, but all the principal characters are fictional.

Manufactured in Canada

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Date Whyte, Jack, 1940- The singing sword

ISBN 0-14-017049-9

PS8595.H95S5 1994 C813\54 C92-095682-3 PR9199.3.W59S5 1994

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