Dragon's Boy by Jane Yolen Read Free Book Online Page A

“If the future lord of Beau Regarde insists…”
    Lancot had put his hand over Cai’s before he could pick up the coppers.
    â€œHe beat you fairly, Cai,” Lancot said.
    Bedvere had grunted his grudging agreement.
    Straightening up and looking sourly across the table at Artos, Cai had left the coins.
    Fairly. The word rankled. All at once the good feeling was gone. Artos wondered if he had beaten Cai fairly. Was tricking someone the same as beating him? What if that someone were bigger and older and higher in rank—was it all right to cheat then? Or what, he wondered suddenly, if it were the other way around. Was it all right to trick someone like Mag, someone insignificant and worthless and way down the ranks? And—the traitor thought insisted on winding into his brain—was anyone that insignificant, that worthless?
    He felt all out of sorts at the questions. None of them seemed to have easy answers.
    It was when he was almost asleep, lying comfortably in the featherbed, that he knew that this idea of fairness was at least one of the wisdoms to be gotten from the dragon’s game.
    But the dragon had said there were many different wisdoms therein. He wondered, right before sleep claimed him, if wisdom itself was the jewel under the cup. Not really there at all. He dreamed about jewels and cups and dragons far, far into the night.

8
Day of the Sword
    A LL THE WHILE ARTOS was trotting back and forth to the dragon’s cave gaining his wisdom, Magnus Pieter was fast at work on the sword. But he didn’t get it right, not at first. Each new steel had something wrong with it, and Artos refused each in turn.
    â€œI don’t have this much trouble with Sir Ector himself, I don’t,” complained the smith, forgetting in his grousing to beat out any new jokes on the anvil.
    â€œBut the hilt doesn’t sit comfortably in my hand,” Arthur said of the first sword. That hilt, artfully shaped like two entwined serpents, was in fact much too big for him. But even if it had been smaller, he wouldn’t have wanted it. He had a horror of serpents.
    â€œAh, well, Sir Bedvere is needing a new blade. He snapped his last trying to beat a tree in fair combat,” said Magnus Pieter with a gruff laugh. “Snakes is just for him.”
    The smith was right, of course, and so pleased with the coins Bed gave him for the sword (snakes were just the thing and Bed insisted on being called “Serpent’s Bane” by everyone for weeks), it was a month before Magnus Pieter felt the need to work on another sword, catching up instead on his horseshoeing and a special order from Lady Marion for a new candelabrum.
    The second sword had a strange crossbar on it that the smith insisted would protect the hand.
    â€œIt’s my own invention!” he said, pride getting well in the way of any jokes.
    Privately Artos thought the thing unbalanced, but aloud only said he wouldn’t have it.
    â€œYou are a priss,” the smith said sourly. “It’s not as if it’s to be your last sword ever.”
    â€œBut it is to be my first sword ever,” Artos answered quietly. “And you did say it was a very fine jewel.”
    Magnus Pieter growled and shook his head, but as he’d already set the jewel in a sword hilt for Sir Ector and Artos knew it and Magnus Pieter knew he knew it, he couldn’t very well give the jewel back.
    â€œBesides, you know how Cai prizes newness above all things,” Artos said, a bit of wisdom the dragon had shared with him just that week when talking about the importance of balancing the old and the new. “I would think he’d give you a gold coin to have the first sword ever made with that kind of hilt.”
    Grinning, Magnus Pieter turned back to the forge. He raised his hammer and began to beat out a piece of steel, saying, “I knew ( bang ) and you knew ( bang ) that Cai loves the very new ( bang )