When the time came, Arthur wasn’t ready. He supposed no one ever was. He embraced his father tightly, wishing he could shield him from what he faced.
Eventually, Matthias pulled gently away. He gestured to Arthur’s sword. “May I see it?” When he handed it over, his father laid it across his palms. Tilting it this way and that, he smiled at the patterns in the steel. “Did I ever tell you about the provenance of this blade?”
“Grandpapa made it as a wedding gift to Grandfather.”
“Before that. I’d traveled with Philip to Monte Tumba. It’s a great island off the north coast of Gaul, where scholars met. I had to fight to make that journey, too. Neither of my fathers was happy about it, and Britte?” He chuckled. “Furious.”
Arthur laughed.
“While Philip and I were there on the island, I visited a blacksmith’s workshop and noticed this chunk of something on the scrap heap outside. It was about so big and lumpy in a way I’d never seen before. When I asked about it, the fellow practically cursed the thing. He’d been unable to work it, no matter what he tried. So I made him an offer and took it home. But that smith said something about it that has lingered in my mind ever since.”
“What’s that?”
“He said he’d bought it from a wandering merchant, a man from the east. And that man called the hunk of material the King Stone. He said it had the power within it to turn an ordinary man into a king.”
Arthur stared at his sword. A king?
“When I told your grandfather Wolf, he brushed it off as a tale any hawker might tell. But I’ve never forgotten it. And that day you revealed in the hall that you’d claimed this sword from their tomb…” He looked at Arthur squarely, his gaze steady. “I began to believe it.”
Arthur’s heart pounded. He frowned at the sword. “We don’t trust kings. It was only a tale.”
His father smiled at him. “Every tale carries a kernel of truth at its core. Like a pearl in an oyster. We usually assume the truth creates the tale, but sometimes I wonder if the tale creates the truth, as the oyster does the pearl. All it needs to begin is a grain of sand.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying you have an extraordinary blade, made for a love few will ever experience, and claimed with an audacity even fewer would dare.” His father handed Storm’s Edge back to him. Then he leaned in and kissed Arthur’s hair. “I’m planting a grain of sand.”
Bedwyr and the others said their goodbyes to Matthias, and to Cai and Agravain, who were escorting him home.
His father was the one who looked like a king, flanked as he was by two large gray wolves.
Arthur waved as they started down the track. The other men went back inside to the fire, but Bedwyr stayed next to him until Matthias rounded the bend out of sight.
Bedwyr set a hand on his back. “Are you all right?”
“I will be.” He kissed Bed. “Thank you. Oh, damn!”
“What?”
“He had dirt on Uthyr, and he promised to give me a piece of it.”
Bedwyr laughed. “And why would you want that?”
“Never know when these things might be useful.”
“Well, I’m sure you can discover some morsel on your own.”
“I suppose.”
They turned for the hall as fresh snow began to fall. Bedwyr opened the door and gestured him through. “My liege.”
Arthur punched him in the arm. “Don’t start.”
Bedwyr snorted. “King Stone.”
He closed the door against the chill winter air, and together they headed for the warmth of their hall and the long quiet of the winter ahead.
We’re close.
They had come into a valley Cai knew. Only a few more slopes to climb on this winding track, and he would step back into the village he’d grown up in. He nudged his father’s hand, and Matthias nodded down to him.
Are you ready? Agravain asked.
Aye. It’s time. How about you? Missing Lura?
They had waited for Agravain’s first shift, which Lura had witnessed with wide, curious eyes and no apparent fear, before taking her to Gwen’s. She would stay there for the duration of their journey to the mountains, and they were both feeling her absence.
Like a forward sail, Agravain said.
Gwen and Elain will keep her snug and occupied until we return.
I know, and I’m grateful for it.
Cai looked across the track at him.
Fierce. Watchful. Commanding.
Agravain made a damned handsome wolf.
Cai leaned over and licked his nose. Don’t worry about Lura. She’ll have charmed half the household by now.
He sat across from the girl, waiting.
And waiting and waiting. “How long does it take?”
“Patience.”
He picked at the wool of the rug. Easy for her to say; she’d seen it before. Her grandmother had taught her.
Sort of.
He looked at her again. She was awfully small, and she played with a crude wooden dolphin sometimes, swimming it through water only she could see, but he liked her. For one thing, she called him Galahad. He was too old for Gally now, though he hadn’t convinced his mothers of that yet. Or cousin Gawain or his uncles, Bedwyr and Arthur, or anyone else. But he would.
And this would help.
He sat up, stretching his back. The floor was getting cold. Coals glowed bright in his brazier, but the heat didn’t reach the flagstones. He’d heard that the Romans had built their floors raised, with furnaces that pushed hot air underneath, all through their villas. He wished he lived in one of those villas. If he had, his arse wouldn’t be numb right now. He wished—
A cramp in his belly bent him double. The pain there grew hot, as if he’d swallowed one of the coals, and he groaned.
“Are you well?”
“I don’t—ah!”
Later, he would decide it felt as if his body were turning itself inside out. Right now, it was all pressure and confusion and pain. Why hadn’t she warned him about the pain before she sang the strange words? He opened his mouth to shout, their vow of secrecy be damned…
…and his breath whooshed out in a roar of flames.
He jerked his head away from them and knocked it on something hard. He groaned again, which didn’t sound right at all, and then he opened his eyes to find himself hunched against the roof beams. He had struck his head on one of the timbers.
But he still sat on the floor—he could feel its chill on his bare feet.
He looked down at himself and gasped.
His feet had claws. His nose seemed very long. And his skin was even paler than usual. It shone in the brazier light, and it looked…scaly.
He huffed in surprise, sending more flames. They took hold on one of the rafters, but when he reached out and snuffed them, he didn’t have hands.
He had wings.
Big, white, leathery wings that crackled as he unfurled them.
The girl, his new-met cousin Lura, stood in the far corner of his chamber, staring up at him. “It worked,” she said, as if she hadn’t been sure it would. But it had: he was a shifter.
And not just any shifter.
Galahad smiled to himself. Just wait until he showed Medraut. Then they would see who was ready to become one of Uncle Arthur’s warriors, and who wasn’t.
The Bear and the Dragon.
They were, after all, written in the stars.
Thank you for reading Hounded by Fate!
The Sons of Britain series continues with Uthyr’s story.