Ways to interpret an image, or, the life and times of Excalibur
Title: Ways to interpret an image, or, the life and times of Excalibur
Art: You Reflect Me by nyargles
Rating: R
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin with some background Arthur/Gwen
Wordcount: ~7400
Summary: Moments from the life of Excalibur, from its forging to its finally destiny, intertwining with Arthur and Merlin's relationship. And also there's a Star Wars reference.
A/N: For merlinreversebb prompt 1010. Beta'd by imnotjkr and archaeologist_d. Canon gen, canon pre-slash, future!fic and reincarnation!fic all at once. Written before the final episodes of S4 aired so there's some slight continuity issues but not enough to call it an AU.
Warnings: Major character death of a semi-permanent nature. Probable self-harm/suicide triggers. Some gore/blood. General angst. Massive tonal shifts/mood whiplash.
The Forging
First, the iron. The raw ore dug out of the earth. The molten metal in the seething, bubbling heat, timing it just - right - to make steel.
The blade. Glowing beneath his hammer, steel wrapping around iron, embracing it, red hot metal as fine as glass. Tang to fuller to tip.
The balance. Follow your instincts, once you’d learned ‘em, check every detail, every angle of the blade, the shape, just right. In the right man’s hand, it would move like a living thing.
The temperature built in his workshop, meticulous sounds echoing around, the sword taking shape beneath his hands, and maybe - maybe - this one would be perfect. Heat prickled at his hands through his gloves, sweat pooling at his temples, and it would not be perfect, for they never were; there was no perfect blade, but maybe.
The long, high hiss of quenching, and then the tempering. The blade cooking in the fire to a dull, dank sheen, glow dimming as the metal hardened. Outside, night was falling, and the orange light of the coals and the setting sun danced around the workshop, glinting off his tools, off the water-bucket, lighting everything up like stained glass.
It was finished, ready to be cooled and ground and polished, and it was not perfect. Not quite. He turned the hot blade in his gloved hands, searching out the flaws - here, yes, and here, he would fix that next time - but it was close, as close as he’d ever been.
In the fading light, the metal seemed to shift before his eyes. For a moment, below the dull grain of the heated blade, he could see the bright, shining steel it would become, and there were colours dancing there, red and gold just beneath the surface of the metal, shaking like a heat shimmer.
It was a trick of the light. The last vestiges of the red-hot glow fading away. He was tired from the day’s work and the light was poor. That was all. Thomas set the blade aside and took off his gloves. He would have it ground in the morning.
Pieces of the Merlin Puzzle
It had rained heavily the night before, and for all Arthur’s cavalier claims that the ground was ‘just a little soft, Merlin’, they were knee-deep in mud. Not that it mattered much, Arthur wasn’t wearing his good breeches and it was Merlin’s job to get the mud out when they got home.
Merlin, naturally, reminded him of this incessantly, and whined about the drizzling rain, and made a completely excessive fuss when he almost lost a boot to a particularly deep patch of mud.
“You won’t catch anything today anyway, sire,” he grumbled as they squelched along. “The game’ll all be away from the mud. Like any sensible people.”
“Shut up, Merlin,” said Arthur absently. He aimed his crossbow at a rustle in the bushes, but it was just the wind.
“I have mud all over my sock,” said Merlin, his tone suddenly so miserable that Arthur almost felt sorry for him.
“You should have brought spares,” he said. “Isn’t it your job to plan ahead?”
“It’s my job to do what you tell me, and you didn’t tell me to bring spare socks,” Merlin said, making altogether too much noise, mud sucking and squelching around his feet. He was doing it on purpose, Arthur was sure of it.
“Well, you need to be more on the ball, Merlin,” said Arthur. The squelching footsteps behind him stopped abruptly. “You should be doing what I tell you before I tell you to do it.” There was no response except another whisper of wind through the trees. “Merlin?” Silence.
Arthur spun around - or awkwardly turned on the spot, anyway, the mud made spinning difficult - half expecting to find that Merlin had vanished, because he was never this quiet. But no, he was there, standing frozen to the spot, arms wrapped around his body as if cold, examining the trees around them intently.
“Is something the matter?” said Arthur.
Merlin’s eyes alighted on a particular spot above Arthur’s left shoulder and fixed there, steady. “I don’t think we should go this way,” he said. “Can we head the other way?”
“No,” said Arthur, purely contrary. Going back wasn’t that bad an idea because they weren’t having any luck in this part of the forest, and the mud looked to be getting even deeper as they headed downhill, but now that Merlin had suggested it, he couldn’t do it without making it sound like his own idea somehow.
Merlin’s eyes were still fixed on the same spot. Arthur twisted around, and for a moment he saw nothing except trees, except no, there was a path between them, the ground very slightly worn by footsteps, like a sheep trail, except there weren’t any sheep to have made it.
He looked from the path to Merlin and back again, then stomped off to investigate.
“Arthur, don’t!” Merlin called after him. “I mean it! Don’t go over there!” There was an awkward squelch that might have been Merlin trying to stamp his foot. “Arthur!”
“Shut up, Merlin!”
Merlin ran after him, a flurry of wet, slippery footsteps, but Arthur was too far ahead. He rounded the last tree and slithered down into the clearing at the end of the path.
There was a sword. In the clearing. A sword, jammed into a crumbling boulder, surrounded by a foot of mud and the damp mist of the rain. Arthur blinked at it, utterly befuddled, just as Merlin tumbled down the slope after him and landed on his arse in the mud. “Ow,” he said.
“Serves you right,” said Arthur. “You need better boots.” He made a mental note to get Merlin some decent boots. Perhaps give him an old pair. He could make out that Merlin wasn’t cleaning them properly, make a fuss over it, insist that Merlin wear them if he wasn’t going to keep them in princely condition, and… it occurred to Arthur that he probably shouldn’t be putting this much thought into planning how to give a pair of boots to his manservant, and also there was a sword.
He tossed his crossbow to the ground and stumbled forward, mud dragging at his feet as if trying to hold him back. Behind him, Merlin tugged himself to his feet in silence.
The mist was unnaturally thick, gliding around the blade of the sword, tinting the blade a dull grey, but he could still make out the inscription, starkly incomprehensible against the metal. Arthur wanted to know what it meant. He wanted to understand it. He wanted to trace his fingers over them and learn every detail, to feel the weight of the sword in his hand, the balance, to see how it moved. He wanted to touch it. He ached to wield it.
The hilt was cool in his fist, and he heard Merlin gasp behind him, the soft sound echoing around the clearing. He tugged on the sword. It didn’t give. He wrapped his other hand around the hilt, pulled with both hands, but it still wouldn’t move, not even an inch.
“It’s stuck,” he said, pulling again.
“It’s not time yet,” Merlin said slowly, far closer than Arthur realised. He started and twisted around. Merlin had somehow silently moved to stand almost beside him, plastered with mud, his hair damp against his forehead. The look on his face was somewhere between awe and horror, and it seemed to balance out into something unreadably neutral, because Merlin was eternally puzzling.
Arthur looked at Merlin. He looked at the sword, one hand still on the hilt. For a moment, it seemed that one tiny piece of the Merlin-puzzle fell into place. “Has this got something to do with you?” He nodded at the sword, because it made sense. A baffling mess of a manservant, an equally baffling sword in the middle of a wood. The two were strange enough to be connected somehow.
Merlin started, and his expression rearranged itself into one of innocent confusion that Arthur recognised, and realised for the first time was completely fake. “Does what have something to do with me?”
“This.” Arthur nodded at the sword again. Merlin shrugged. “The sword, Merlin?”
“Why would that have anything to do with me?” said Merlin. “It’s not like I know anything about swords. What do I know about swords?”
“You said it wasn’t time yet.” Arthur ran his thumb across the runes on the blade.
“Did I say that?” Merlin wrapped his arms around himself again.
“Yes,” said Arthur. “You said that. Not time for what?”
“I don’t know,” said Merlin. “But I can tell you that it is time. For us. To go back to Camelot. Where it’s warm. And dry.” He swallowed and motioned back the way they’d come.
“Not time for what, Merlin?” Arthur repeated, and Merlin’s false expression faded away again.
“It’s just… not time.” He hunched in on himself still further.
“That’s not an answer,” said Arthur.
“Is too.” Merlin paused. “I don’t think you want to hear the answer.”
Arthur folded his arms. “I think I do.”
“No, you really don’t.” Merlin nodded at the sword. “It’ll come out. When it’s time.”
“Whose is it?” said Arthur.
Merlin just said, “Yours,” and then his false-expression was back, like a mask.
Arthur opened his mouth to say that that only raised further questions, because it did, he had more questions now than ever. That one little piece of the Merlin-puzzle had just opened up a least a dozen more gaps. He wasn’t going to get anywhere today, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. Merlin’s expression had been haunted, or perhaps hunted, like a cornered animal, and Arthur could have kept pushing, but not without hurting Merlin. Besides, he was cold and muddy and craving familiar things, like home and a hot bath.
He let go of the sword and clapped Merlin on the shoulder. “I don’t think we’re going to have much luck hunting here,” he said, letting his voice slip back into his best faux-casual princely tone. “We should head west.” Merlin murmured agreement, but before either of them could move, the rain eased off abruptly and the sun broke through the rolling clouds.
Arthur blinked in the sudden light, eyes falling back on the suddenly glinting sword. For half a second, it was almost blindingly bright, and then the sun began to slip away again and he caught a glimpse of himself and Merlin, reflected side by side. The clouds rolled back in, and the reflection was gone again.
He turned away from the sword, dragging Merlin away behind him. “You’re a mess,” he said. “I suppose we’d better get you some clean clothes. Idiot.”
“Uh-huh,” said Merlin.
“I honestly don’t know why I let you out,” said Arthur as they clambered back up the slope onto the path. “Can’t even walk in a little mud without getting filthy. You’re a terrible excuse for a manservant.”
“Prat,” Merlin muttered.
Arthur kept up his grip on Merlin’s arm, ‘to make sure you don’t fall over again’, as they trudged knee-deep through the drying mud in the direction of Camelot, the sun warm on the back of their necks. The sword, he decided, was best forgotten, and he went back to pondering how to get a new pair of boots to Merlin without seeming generous.
Weight
Arthur was dead weight in his arms. The ground was frozen hard underfoot, frosty leaves crunching, and Arthur was dead. His chainmail was icy under Merlin’s fingertips, cold juddering up his arms, and there was frost forming in his sweat damp hair. Merlin stopped to wipe it away, because that wouldn’t do, he couldn’t leave Arthur like that, and Gwaine grunted, staggering under the weight, but he didn’t complain.
They went on, hauling Arthur’s body through the woods. Merlin was exhausted, right down to his bones, every part of him was screaming for rest, and there was a deep, dark well of grief inside him threatening to overflow, or boil, or tear his guts to shreds, but he couldn’t, not yet, he could only keep on going with the single-minded determination he hadn’t known he possessed until Arthur had come into his life (or until he’d come into Arthur’s life, rather).
Merlin did not think about the first time they met. He forced it out of his mind, focused on his task, on carrying Arthur for the last time, and he was not-thinking about meeting Arthur so hard that he almost missed it at first - the clearing, the trees, the boulder half buried in the snow and the ice. They were there.
“This is it,” he said.
“You sure?” asked Gwaine. Merlin nodded, and they let Arthur down slowly, gently, on to the frozen earth. Merlin brushed the frost out of his hair again, smoothed it down just so, like it had been when he was alive, then screwed his hands into fists, trying to work the feeling back into them.
Gwen picked her way down what was left of the path, shivering. “We’ve stopped,” she said.
“We’re here,” said Gwaine. Gwen’s eyes fell on the boulder, and she nodded, grim. She walked over and knelt beside Merlin. A hand on his shoulder. Her hands were still warm, how were her hands still warm?
Arthur’s hair had been greying when he was alive. Merlin had used to tease him about that. He didn’t want to remember that, didn’t think about it, and the ache in his chest almost swallowed him up. His hair was greyer now, grey with the frost and the pallor of death.
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Of course I’m sure,” said Merlin. “This is the place. I wouldn’t forget it.”
“That’s not what I meant,” said Gwen. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“I don’t have a choice,” said Merlin. His hands were shaking and dry and pale, blue tingling the tips of his fingers. Gwen took them and wrapped them up in her own. She was filthy, hair coming down around her head in strings, blood staining her clothes, but she was so warm, and he wanted her to stay, he wanted her to stay forever.
“You always have a choice.” She pulled him to his feet and dragged him away from Arthur, left Gwaine kneeling over his body. “You’ve barely thought about it. You don’t even know if this’ll work, Merlin.”
“It’ll work,” said Merlin. He took his hands back and clasped them together. “It has to work. This is the only way. We need him back and this is the only way, don’t you see?” His gaze drifted back to Arthur, lying dead on the icy earth, hair frosting over again.
“Merlin,” said Gwen, voice trembling. She took his face in her hands and made him look her in the eye. “Merlin. We just lost our king. I just lost my husband. I can’t lose you too, do you understand that?”
Merlin blinked. It didn’t matter what happened to him, not now. All that mattered was saving Arthur one last time. He said nothing, but Gwen must have realised. She wrapped her arms around him and hugged tight.
When she drew back, there was a glint of determination in her eyes. She unbuckled Excalibur from her belt and held it out silently.
The weight of it was familiar in his hands. He’d held it so many times, handed it to Arthur before battle, taken it from him after, even wielded it himself, but it had never been his, not while Arthur still lived.
He took a breath, and said, “You should go. Both of you. It won’t be long before they catch up.” He turned back to Gwaine. He’d taken hold of one of Arthur’s hands, and his lips were moving, like a prayer. He stilled when he caught sight of Merlin, and stood up.
“You sure you know what you’re doing?” he said.
Merlin drew Excalibur, the soft, silken sound of metal and leather, and said, “Always.”
Gwaine held him for a moment, kissed him roughly on the forehead. “You promise me,” he said, voice choked, then stopped, as if he didn’t know what he’d been going to say.
“Yeah,” said Merlin. “Now. Go.”
Gwaine took Gwen by the arm, and led her away through the trees. They’d be fine. It wasn’t Gwen and Gwaine they were after; they wanted Merlin, and Excalibur, and what was left of Arthur. They would get nothing.
He carried Arthur the last few feet himself, took him to the stone, and sank down beside him. “I’m sorry,” he said. He ran his hands down Arthur’s chest, found the gash in his chainmail - the blood was gone, they’d washed it away in a stream, and now the wound didn’t look that bad. It wasn’t that big, the sword had just found exactly the right place, and it was barely bleeding, too cold, and perhaps not enough blood left in Arthur’s body.
He wasn’t quite cold inside, but he wasn’t bleeding enough. Merlin needed blood, he needed Arthur’s blood, because this had to work, it couldn’t not work. “I’m so sorry,” he said, and he kept mouthing apologies while he took the knife from his belt and sliced Arthur open deeper, where he was still not quite cold, and where they was still blood and life in him. It stained Merlin’s hands, and he swayed, dizzy and nauseous and drowning in it.
“It’s the only way,” he said, as if Arthur could still hear him. “You understand, don’t you?”
Arthur stained Merlin’s hands and trailed down his wrists, cooling in the winter air, and it was enough, it was just enough. He took up Excalibur, rested it across the stone, and let Arthur’s blood fall on the blade until it was smeared red, ran his hand down the blade, then lifted it, let his eyes fall closed, and cut.
Excalibur opened the veins of his wrists so easily, for a moment there was barely even any pain, just his blood falling onto the sword and the stone, and then it hurt, but it didn’t hurt as much as the gaping wound in his chest, the empty place where Arthur had been. Nothing would ever hurt as much as that.
His blood mixed with Arthur’s on the sword, and he whispered the words, the words he’d had in his head since Arthur fell on the battlefield. He said them over and over as he blooded the blade, kept saying them as he staggered to his feet and lifted it up, lifted Excalibur as he’d done once, all those years ago, when he was young and Arthur was young and not yet king, and it was time.
He brought it down, and it went into the stone with a jarring, echoing pulse of magic, then a surging wave of white-hot light. For a second - two - three - the forest was on fire around him, washing him away until there was nothing left of him but the magic and the words, repeating over and over. As the light faded, his body screamed, his magic burning and burning until there was nothing left of him but a husk sagging down to the forest floor beside Arthur’s body.
The sword was in the stone, shining as if new, a cacophonic rainbow of colours playing beneath the surface of the metal. It had worked. Merlin couldn’t feel it, couldn’t feel anything but the cold and the weight of Arthur’s body beside him and the hot pulse of him bleeding out.
“It’s done,” he said, voice slurring. He was done, burned out, his magic all poured into this one moment, this one act, but it would be worth it. He slid down further, heaved himself from the stone to Arthur’s cold body, and lay there. It’s done, he mouthed, again, again, it’s done.
In that last moment - the last time he’d lain atop Arthur it had been cold but they’d been warm, piled up beneath furs beside the fire, away from the winter, and they’d both been afraid but Merlin had been doing all the worrying, because that was his job, and Arthur had kissed his frown away and made him forget
- he found other moments -
he holds Arthur when he is injured on the practice ground, curses him over and over, and Arthur laughs and says ‘it’s not that bad, Merlin’, even though it is and he catches a fever and scares them all half to death
- fragments of memory, breaking apart -
Gwen and Arthur are married at last, but it’s not their real wedding, their real wedding had been months before, in the woods, trapped by a horde of bandits, or perhaps it had been ravening beasts, and Arthur had had Merlin marry them, their hands tied together with twined-up grass, and they’d laughed and forgotten that they were about to die
- spiralling -
Gwaine, his laugh, the way his brow crinkled and then once he’d gotten older it had stayed that way,
Lancelot, poor grieving Lancelot who always hurt so deeply,
Leon, Percival, Elyan, Will, a child playing with Merlin in the barn, a man dying in his arms,
his mother singing him to sleep,
Guinevere, the first time he met her, when she was still young and sweet
Morgana before things had gone so very wrong
ArthurArthurArthur
- gone.
Tides
Gwen was not sure why Merlin had given her Excalibur. She’d known that he couldn’t carry the sword and Arthur’s body at the same time, but there’d seemed more to it than that. He’d cleaned it, like he used to when he was Arthur’s manservant, and sheaved it, then held it in unsteady hands, stood and stared at it for so long, too long, the world crumbling around them and Morgana’s men bearing down, until they’d had to shake him out of his trance. Then he’d given Excalibur to Gwen, and told her to carry it, because he couldn’t.
She’d realised later - not even all that much later - that must have been when he’d decided what to do. That trance. That long, immobile moment had been when he’d realised he had to die so that Arthur could live again some day.
It never felt as if he had died.
Arthur had died. He’d been cut down on the battlefield and died in a bloody mess, torn a great gaping hole in the kingdom and shattered Gwen into so many pieces that she didn’t think she’d ever be able to find them all, but Merlin had just… gone away. They’d meant to go back for his body. She and Gwaine had decided, that first night after the battle, that they would go back as soon as things had quieted, but it took so long, by the time they’d gone back to Excalibur, they’d been a thick fall of snow and a thaw and it was spring, and all trace of Merlin had somehow been washed away. Arthur’s armour had been there, empty, laid out like a corpse, and they had buried it like one.
Gwen had dug about in the earth, gone through the grass and the last vestiges of autumn leaves, tried to find something, some sign that Merlin had died there, but there was nothing. Just the sword in the stone, cold and hard and unforgiving.
Merlin had never been quite of their world. He had blundered into Gwen’s life out of nowhere when she was just a girl and changed everything, and it made a sort of sense that he should vanish the way he’d come, back into his own place, somewhere different and magical where he truly belonged.
Things didn’t stop changing when Merlin and Arthur were gone. Morgana’s new kingdom fell apart within a year, her army crumbled, her power broken, and new forces rolled in, new peoples, a new faith, and Gwen let herself be swept up in the tide, because those who did not were broken apart.
She lived. She’d thought of herself as old when Arthur died, but she hadn’t been, she’d still been so young. By the time she was truly old, Arthur was already fading into a story, and she had long since given up telling people that she, she was Guinevere, the Guinevere of the tales. They wouldn’t believe her. That Guinevere was never been real, and even if she was, Gwen was too old and grey to ever have been a beautiful queen. Perhaps she would have come to believe it herself, were it not for Excalibur.
The forest was darker and greener and deeper than it had been, the path long and twisted, the stone almost entirely subsumed into the undergrowth, but she knew where it was. She retraced her steps, dragged her aching bones to the right spot, cut away the branches, and there it was. The sword, still shining amidst the trees. Their last resting place.
Gwen arranged her flowers around the base of the sword, then sat back, and said, “Hello.”
At first, there was silence, and then there was still silence, but something changed in it. The forest seemed to slow around her, sharpening, as if listening. As if they could hear her. As if they could see her.
For a moment she wanted to cover her face. “I got old,” she said. “I’m sorry. It’s been so long. I wanted to come before.”
The silence didn’t change. Perhaps there was a whisper of wind.
“Everything’s different since you’ve been gone,” she said. “There’s barely anyone left who remembers. Even the magic -”
She stopped, because perhaps it was better Merlin not hear that. It was as if the fabric of the world was changing, and no-one even seemed to notice: the magic draining away, witches and wizards putting their craft aside and forgetting it, as if lost at the back of a drawer, all the creatures of magic crawling into holes in the ground and vanishing. She wondered if it was the loss of Arthur or Merlin or both, or just time passing. (Somewhere Uther must be smiling).
“I don’t know if I’ll come back again.” She rested a hand on the stone. “I’ll try. But it’s so hard.” She took a deep breath and tried not to cry. It was too late to still be mourning. “I miss you both. The world misses you both.”
She blinked, and then they were there, both of them, gazing out at her from the sword, like a hazy reflection, young and strong again. It was so like a reflection that she turned, hoping to see them behind her, but there was nothing, just the forest, and when she looked back they were gone.
The Sword in the Fairy Wood
The wood behind Martin’s house was a fairy-wood. He was sure of it. He could hear the fairies rustling in leaves every time he went in there, and every tree was so gnarled and twisted that he was sure there must be tiny doors hidden in the trunks somewhere.
There were fairies in the wood. He was sure each and every tree housed a dryad. There were centaurs and dragons and probably elves. He kept searching for them until he was far too old to be believing in silly things like that, until he was almost ten, but he never found anything in the fairy-wood at all.
Until, that is, until he was nine years and three hundred and sixty-four days old, and he strayed a long way off the path.
There wasn’t much off the path to stray into, because it was just a tiny scrap of a wood tucked in amongst the houses, barely anything left, and usually he couldn’t walk far off the path before reaching the wire mesh fence, but that day he found he’d been walking for a long time - hours, it seemed to him, though it probably wasn’t that long - and the sound of the traffic on the road sounded very far away.
He’d been bashing at the bushes with a stick he’d decided was his sword - or maybe a magician’s staff, yes, he preferred that - for a good few minutes before he realised he didn’t recognise them, which made no sense because he knew the fairy-wood, he knew it inside out, and yet somehow he’d found a part of it he’d never seen before.
Martin walked backwards carefully, exactly as he’d come, best he remembered, all the way back to the path, where he recognised the trees and the traffic sounded close and everything was normal, then forwards again, slowly, cautiously. It was as if there was an invisible line on the floor of the wood, and if he followed it closely enough it led to somewhere different than all the other paths, somewhere further away. He traced it back and forth, marked it with his stick, scoring a line into the bare earth, then went on following it to see where it would go, heart thrumming in his chest, because he’d always known, he’d known there was magic in the wood and perhaps now he’d finally find the fairies.
There were no fairies. Instead, there was a story.
He knew the story. He’d read it in books countless times, seen pictures of it, and now here it was, real and solid before him - a sword in a stone, set glinting amid a bramble patch in the fairy-wood.
The sound of the traffic faded away once and for all. He shuffled forward, laces of his trainers trailing on the ground, and poked at the sword with his stick, to make sure it was real. It made a solid thunk of wood on metal. He poked it again, then put his stick down carefully, climbed up onto the stone, wincing a little as the brambles tore at his clothes, took hold of the handle, and tugged. It didn’t give.
Well. Not the true King of England, then. He jumped back down, wiped his hands on his trousers, and retrieved his stick. It was a pity, he thought, he’d have liked to have had a sword of his own. Perhaps a different tack would work.
He tapped the sword with his stick again, and said, “Come out! Abracadabra!”
Silence. The fairy-wind whistled through the trees and whipped at his clothes, setting a chill in his bones, and the sword seemed to glow, a rainbow sheen of light dancing within it. The stick in his hand felt like a real wizard’s staff, like a lightning rod connecting him to the earth, drawing the raw thrumming energy of the world down through him, and it was as if he was brushing the edge of something spectacular with his fingertips, and it was gone.
“Wow,” he said.
“I’ll say,” said a voice, ringing out from the air. “This wasn’t supposed to happen yet.”
Martin blinked, stunned, then brandished his stick in front of himself. “Who said that?”
“I did.” It was a perfectly ordinary voice, a man’s voice, with the hint of a smile in it, and it was coming from the sword. Martin tip-toed closer, peering at the still-shining metal, and saw a face - no, two faces, one dark-haired, one blond, peeping out at him like a reflection.
“Hello,” he said. “Who are you?”
“I’m you,” said the voice. “Well, part of you. Sort of. I -”
“Stop making this more confusing than it already is,” said another voice, a deeper voice. The faces shifted, as if the blond one were pushing forward to get a better look. “Is that him? Good god, Merlin, you were an ugly child. At least you grew into your ears a little.”
Martin touched his ears, self-conscious. “I’m not ugly!” he said. “And anyway, at least I’m not a sword.”
“Don’t listen to him,” said the first voice. “You’re here too soon. You shouldn’t have found this till you were older, and not alone.”
“I don’t understand,” said Martin.
“He’s just a child, let him be,” said the second voice.
“Settle down, Arthur,” said the first voice. “Look. It’s really not as complicated as it sounds. I’m you. I put myself here - well, you put me here - well, we put me here and left you out there. A long time ago.”
“Okay,” said Martin. He sat himself down on the ground. He had a feeling this might take some time. “Why?”
“Because he’s an idiot,” said the second voice.
“To save him,” said the first voice.
“And now we all have to live with it. All three of us.”
“All four of us,” said the first voice. Martin shuffled forward on his knees, reached up, and traced the runes on the blade of the sword. “I’m part of you. I’m your memories. Once you’re older and we’re back in one piece you’ll remember why I - you - we had to do this, and then you’ll understand.”
“How long have you been in there?”
“Too long,” said the second voice.
“What century is this?” said the first voice.
“The twentieth,” said Martin. The first voice said a very bad word, and he laughed.
“What’s been taking you so long?” he said.
“I thought you said it was too soon?” said Martin.
“Only because you’re too young,” said the first voice.
“And you haven’t found the other part of me yet,” added the second voice.
“Well, where is he?” said Martin.
“Damned if I know, that’s your job,” said the second voice. The blond face slipped out of sight.
“He’s grumpy,” said Martin.
“Fifteen centuries living in a sword will do that to you,” said the first voice. “The rest of him should turn up soon. It’s destiny.”
“What if he doesn’t?” said Martin.
“He will,” said the voice. “Destiny.”
Martin frowned. “And you’re… part of me?” he said, dubious.
“If it helps,” said the voice. “I’m also your magic.”
Martin sat up a little straighter. “I have magic?” he said.
“Well, not right now,” said the voice. “Not till you’re older. But you will have magic.”
If Martin had been a little older, or a little more grown-up, he might have suggested that really, bringing magic into things wasn’t likely to make him less dubious, but as it was he was nine years and three hundred and sixty-four days old, and he still believed in fairies, so instead he said, “Is this a secret?”
“Probably for the best,” said the voice. “How are things at your end? How’s the world? Last I heard things had changed a lot.”
Martin considered this. “Well, people don’t live in swords any more,” he said. “Does that count?” The voice laughed a breathy, ethereal laugh, and Martin thought back to history lessons, tried to remember what had happened in the last fifteen hundred years.
In the end what came out was a gabble of aeroplanes and Queen Victoria and the Battle of Hastings and Mickey Mouse, and the other voice came back to listen as well once he started explaining what tanks were and summarising the plot of Star Wars.
“And then they’re all - whooosh! Set s-foils in attack position!” He held his arms out on either side of him like wings. “And Lando and Chewie fly inside the Death Star to find the main reactor and they blow it up, and it looks like they’re going to be stuck inside but they make it out just in time, and then they all have a party with the Ewoks.”
“Which one’s Lando again?” said the second voice. “Is that the princess?”
“No, that’s Leia.” Martin slumped back down, exasperated.
“I don’t see what this has to do with anything,” said the first voice.
“No, let him finish, I want to know what happens next,” said the second voice.
“Nothing happens next,” said Martin. “That’s the end?”
“Seriously?” said the second voice. “They kill the king -”
“Emperor,” Martin corrected.
“- Emperor, and that’s it, story over? What about the power vacuum that would create? What about the mess that would make of the government? What about -” The voice broke off, and Martin suspected he’d touched a nerve, if a disembodied voice that lived in a sword could have nerves.
“There’s a prequel,” he offered. It was starting to get dark, and the air was beginning to chill around him. It was probably dinner time, and his mum would be calling him in, except he was in the magic part of the woods that she probably couldn’t get to because it was magic and all. “I should go. Mum’ll be worried about me.” He clambered to his feet and brushed the forest off his knees. “It was nice meeting you both!”
There was no response. He peered at the sword. Both faces seemed to be gone. “I’ll come back soon!”
He waited, and he waited, just in case they were going to come back, but there was still nothing, so he turned and picked his way back down the path until he passed a few stray crisp packets, and yes, he was back in the normal, non-magic wood now. He could hear the traffic from the road, and he could hear his mum calling him in for dinner.
The kitchen was warm and golden, and she’d made Spaghetti Bolognese.
“You were out there for a long time, love,” she said. “I was starting to worry.”
He paused in twisting the spaghetti onto his fork, and said, “I found the sword in the stone!”
“That’s nice, love,” she said. “Did you pull it out?”
“No, I’m not a king,” he said. “I’m going to be a wizard instead.”
“Good for you,” said his mum. “That sounds like a fun game.” He smiled, and nodded, because he’d known she would say that, then dug into his spaghetti properly.
“We’ve got new neighbours, did you see?” she said after a moment or two. “I went round to talk to them today. They’ve got a son around your age. I hope you don’t mind, I said he could come along to your party next weekend, since he doesn’t know anyone here yet.” Martin set down his fork and glared. “Now, don’t be like that.”
“It’s my party,” he said, “and you said I could only have seven people, so I didn’t invite James Henderson even though I wanted to, and now he’s annoyed with me because everyone else is going, and now there’s going to be eight of us anyway!”
The sword drifted to the back of his mind in all the consternation, and then away altogether. He forgot about it completely until he was lying in bed that night. It drifted back just before he fell asleep, and how could he have forgotten about it all evening? It was as if the memory were like the magic wood, barely tangible and easy to lose.
Well. He wasn’t going to lose it. He sat up in bed, switched on the lamp, dug a pencil out of the drawer in his bedside table and scrawled sword in the stone and two voices and destiny on the wall, down low where it’d be covered by his mattress and his mum wouldn’t see. He was going to remember.
But the next morning he was too caught up in the rush of opening presents to remember, and the writing was too tucked away for him to notice. By the time the next weekend came around, both the sword and the note on his wall had slipped his mind completely. The line he’d drawn in the woods with his stick had been washed away by a sudden heavy rainfall on Friday, and it was still raining on Saturday, which put rather a damper on his party mood.
The new neighbour arrived unpleasantly promptly, with a pristinely-wrapped present that Martin didn’t particular want and a smile that was probably painted on by his mother, who was awfully sweet and polite and hard to dislike. Martin couldn’t bring himself to be rude to her, and he wasn’t allowed to be rude to the boy, so he was rude to the present instead, snatched it away and glowered at it.
“Martin, that wasn’t very polite,” said his mother sternly. “Say sorry.”
“Sorry,” said Martin, eyes fixed on the present, because that was what he was apologising to. His mother made him apologise again to the boy and his mother, then introduced them.
“Martin, this is Mrs. Penn,” she said. “And this is Benjy.”
“Benjamin,” hissed the boy.
“Benjy,” Mrs. Penn insisted.
“Martin, go put that present with the others,” said his mum, then bustled Mrs. Penn away for a cup of tea.
Benjy was glaring at Martin the whole time he put the present on the pile (which was not much of a pile yet). “It’s a jigsaw puzzle,” he said. “There. I’ve spoiled the surprise.” He glared, and Martin glared back.
“I don’t like jigsaw puzzles,” said Martin. He met Benjy’s gaze, and his eyes were a bright, startling blue, and he’d seen those eyes before.
“I like jigsaw puzzles!” offered up Will, the only other boy to arrive, from the corner.
He’d seen those eyes inside the sword, glaring out at him just like that from the blond face. The whole incident came back to him in a rush, and he staggered a little under the weight of it all. Trust destiny to land him with a stupid surprise-spoiling jigsaw-giving Benjy.
“Bollocks,” he said loudly.
“Language, Martin!” his mother called from the kitchen, scandalised.
Just when he was on the brink of rushing outside and giving the sword a good kick for this, Benjy said, “I don’t like them either. I wanted to get you a sword. They had great ones. But my Mum insisted we get something everyone would like rather than something I’d like.”
“I like swords,” said Martin.
“I like swords too!” said Will.
Benjy scowled, and turned to face the open door. “Mum! He says he does like swords and he doesn’t like puzzles!”
“Stop spoiling the surprise, Benjy!” Benjy’s Mum called back.
“I bet they weren’t that great, though,” said Martin. “The swords in the shop. I know where the very greatest sword ever is.”
“Oh yeah?” said Benjy.
Martin nodded. “Maybe if you’re extra-good, I’ll show you some time,” he said.
The next guest arrived, and he had to go play host, and by the time he’d done that the sword was starting to slip his mind again, but he grabbed on, determined not to forget this time, because destiny.
Eternal
There had been a forge. After that, a lake; after that, a stone. Then, after waiting so long, for a few brief years Excalibur had been in the right hands, and had been able to live and fight and sing as it was supposed to.
Excalibur knew what it was. It was a tool to forge a bright new future, to weld Albion into one; it was the last of the fire of the dragons formed into metal; it was water, living and quenching and filled to the brim with magic; it was as resilient and eternal as stone.
All that had turned to ashes. The world had crumbled and been rebuilt, and through it all Excalibur had stood hidden away, waiting for its masters to come back.
Excalibur knew that it had two masters. One had brought magic and fire, had held and loved Excalibur first. One was a creature of magic and of the earth, a child of the dragonfire.
The other was mere flesh as Excalibur was mere metal, the hand made to hold Excalibur, to wield it and use it to build victory. The other was a man and a child of men.
Excalibur outlived both. But Excalibur had been given what remained of them in a blaze of magic and it would protect them till the end of time, or until they returned, and they would return, because their future was as eternal as Excalibur and it had yet to come to pass.
When it was time, Excalibur would still be waiting.