His sooty, tear-stained face was uncovered, and he looked unblinking to the western hills, where dark clouds gathered.
“It … it is burned up,” the abbot said quietly. “Completely gone. Day has brought it to light, and who of us will survive these flames?”
Merlin rose, still tired from the failed efforts to extinguish the abbey’s flames. Yet a new sense of urgency gripped him as he remembered the unfinished sword and the imminent coming of the High King. In the house, he woke his father and they devoured the day-old barley porridge along with a few hard biscuits.
After pushing the bowls to the center of the table, they walked to the smithy with purpose in their steps.
“After you fell asleep last night,” Owain said, “I heated the hoof shavings and left the blade to temper overnight. It should be ready for us to clean and then attach the handle.” He went over to where they kept a waist-high barrel, removed the lid, and fished through the hot shavings with a pair of tongs until he found the blade and pulled it out by the tang.
Merlin turned the handle of the grinding stone while his father removed the scale created by hardening the blade. After that, Owain smoothed the transition to the ricasso near the tang with a set of handmade files.
Next they ground the tang so the bronze guard, handle, and pommel fit snugly. These pieces had been poured from liquid metal two months ago using a split clay mold Merlin’s father had carved.
A craftsman from Fowavenoc had inlayed red glass into the pommel as well as the guard. Owain explained that the center inlay of glass bore a triskelion design — a triple spiral. Merlin surmised from this that the craftsman must have been a Christian, for the triskelion design had come from Erin with missionaries who used it to represent the Trinity.
All Merlin could see, however, was the flash of red when the sun played upon the surface of the inlays. Red like blood and fit for a king who must rule by the justice of his blade.
When all the pieces fit, they wrapped wet leather around the blade to protect it and then heated the tang’s tip to a bright apple color. The guard, handle, and pommel were tapped into place, and Owain hammered the tang tip flat into a small recess in the pommel. In this way, the sword was made whole and, barring some catastrophe, would not come apart.
Using the reflected morning light to reveal flaws, Merlin’s father examined his work and said that he could find nothing disagreeable.
Merlin took the blade then, and he felt all the bevels and edges, tracing each detail of the hilt with his fingertips. He finally tested its weight and balance as he swung it with both hands in the center of the shop.
“This is the best work you’ve ever done, Tas. An expert blade to rival the finest in the kingdom!”
“They say an old blade’s always better than a new, so we’ll see. Many’s the dying warrior who cursed his smith. The ones that bent or broke taught me more than the ones I did right. Only through fire, quench, and battle is any man and his work truly known.”
“Shall we sharpen it?”
“Aye. And carve ‘OAG’ onto the handle to mark it as one of my blades. There’s just enough time before Uther arrives.”
“What will you do if the High King won’t receive it?”
His father sat down heavily. “I haven’t decided. Very little that I have is precious enough to show my sorrow. What else could I offer to make amends? There’s a puzzle to think on.”
Merlin swung the sword one last time before offering it to his father. “Will Uther give the monks justice for the burning of the abbey? Mórganthu better not show his face.”
“If I know Mórganthu, he’ll be there.”
Merlin winced. “Then may Jesu and the king help us.”
In all of Dybris’s years as a monk, he had never felt the way he felt this morning. Standing there beside the road with the other monks as they awaited the arrival of the High King, he was utterly embarrassed. Aching, swollen, bloodied, unshaven, and with spilled pigment on his robe, he wanted to crawl back to the chapel.
Oh, he’d protested to Crogen, but the new abbot said they all must appear before the king. Of course, yesterday Dybris just had to choose the white pigment, and when the Stone’s iniquitous power had knocked him away, he just