Moving as quickly and silently as she could, she had then climbed back through the window under the eaves and made her way to the ground, although much more slowly than she would have wished. It had rained only a short time before and the surfaces she had to cross were slippery and treacherous. Then, as she had dropped cautiously down the last, dangerous slope of the lowest outhouse in her "ladder" of roofs, she had seen Uther pass by in the distance, evidently headed to meet his grandfather.
Now he stood glaring wildly at her, his face a grimacing mask, waving her away with one hand. Pitching her voice so that he alone might hear her, she called to him, "He's not angry, Uther! The King's not angry." But before she could finish, he stepped inside, and the door closed behind him.
Uther had heard what Nemo said, however, and he found himself instantly angry at what he saw as her presumption in daring to tell him something that he knew to be untrue. But then he saw his grandfather, and all thoughts of Nemo were dashed from his mind.
Ullic stood with his back to the doors, so that Uther saw only the imposing height of the old man and the enormous breadth of his back and shoulders. He suspected his grandfather knew he was there, but he could not be certain.
"Tata?"
"Come over here. What were you trying to do?"
Uther's heart sank at the directness of the question. This was going to be even more difficult than he had feared. He moved forward, speaking to the back of Ullic's head.
"I don't know."
The King swung around to look at him. "What's that supposed to mean? Of course you know. I know, so you must. Look here."
Uther stepped to the old man's side and looked at the piece of coal that lay in front of him, cleanly split into two pieces. His jaw dropped open in astonishment.
"I didn't do that."
"No, I did it. But it's what you were trying to do, isn't it?"
Uther nodded, unable to take his eyes off the split coal. "Yes."
"Good, then we both know what you were trying to do, so perhaps I asked you the wrong question. Let's try again. If you had succeeded in splitting this the first time, what else would you have done, afterwards?"
"I don't know . . . I'm not sure."
Ullic Pendragon said nothing for a long time, standing with pursed lips, gazing down at the sundered stone, and then he looked again at his grandson. "But you did think it was important . . . that you could split this thing?"
"Yes . . "
"Why? And don't tell me you don't know again."
The boy bit back the words that had been rising to his lips and stood quietly for a moment. Then he frowned in puzzlement and looked up at the old man who towered above him.
"You're not angry."
"No, I'm not angry. Should I be? Or do you intend to make me angry, insisting that you know nothing about why you interrupted my Council this morning?"
"No, I'll try not to . . . But I might not have the right words."
"Well, you won't be the first man I've listened to who suffered from that complaint. Why did you attack the thing the way you did? And where did you get that awful weapon?"
"The sword? I borrowed it from my friend Lucius. His uncle gave it to him. It was not a very good blade."
"It wasn't a blade at all. The thing split and broke like a dried- out branch. If that's the best you can do on your own behalf, I'll have to make sure you get a decent blade. But why did you swing the thing over your head like that? Why not simply split the coal the way I did? Come and sit down with me. I'm getting too old to stand all day on a stony floor."
He led the way up onto the dais that held the King's heavy seat of ornately carved oak and sat down, thrusting a footstool towards Uther with one foot as he did so. Uther caught the stool, hooking it with his foot, and pulled it over to him to sit, avoiding his grandfather's eyes while his head spun with wonder over so much ease and friendliness where he had expected bluntness and pain.
"So," his grandfather continued, "why the overhead swing?"
"Forgive me, Grandfather, but this time I truly don't know, save that it seemed to be the right thing to do at the time. But of course, it wasn't. How did you split the coal?"
"With a blade, the way you tried to do it. But I used the point of mine like a wedge and forced it into the crack with the weight of my body." Ullic leaned back until his shoulders found the comfort of his deep chair, then crossed his arms, lowering his chin onto his chest as he stared at his grandson. "I'll admit, you had me wondering for a moment or two if you had taken leave of your senses . . . especially when I saw what happened to the blade of the sword. I just about had you thrown into a cell then to teach you a lesson about good manners. Only one thing stopped me. Can you guess what it was?"
"No, Tata."
"The coal. Had you merely wanted to look like a fool and humiliate me and your father, you could have chosen any old stone on which to break that sword, but instead you chose a piece of coal— black, dirty, hard to find. And soft—softer than any other kind of stone. Once I began to think about the coal, I couldn't stop. So I went and looked at it. Your blade hacked a big chip out of it, destroying itself in the doing of it. But I could not make myself believe that you would go to such pigheaded lengths simply to destroy even such a poor weapon. It seemed beyond belief that you would be so stupid and vicious. So I told myself that you must have had a reason for doing what you did, even if I could not imagine what it was . . .
"And then I saw the lines running along the coal from one end to the other, and I remembered the care with which you took aim, the way you bent down and laid the blade so carefully against the stone before bringing it up to strike. You did all that slowly and with great concentration. And so I guessed that what you were trying to do must have had something to do with those lines. They looked strangely familiar, even though I had never noticed any- thing like them before, and the only thing I could think of doing with them was to split them, to force them apart, and so I did that. I drove the point of a sword blade hard into one of the lines, and the entire block fell apart in two pieces."
Ullic stopped and looked appraisingly at his grandson. "I was impressed that you would have known that would happen, even if you did not know quite how to achieve it. But tell me, if you will, man to man, why you did it. What do you think is so important about being able to split coal?"
"Nothing, Tata . . . I mean, there's nothing important about doing it with coal. Coal is easy, or it should be easy. What I didn't know until this morning is that there are different kinds of coal. I know now."
"What d'you mean?"
The boy shrugged. "The coal they use in Camulod is very different from ours. It is shinier and cleaner-looking, almost polished, if you know what I mean. And it's lighter, too . . . easier to carry and easier to break apart. I never thought to ask about that, and I never thought to question the weight of the piece I brought here today. I knew it was heavier, and I knew it was duller, and I knew it was dirtier. . . dustier. . . but it never occurred to me that it could be a completely different kind of coal."
Ullic sat staring at his grandson for a moment and then shrugged, frowning slightly. "I know what you are saying must make sense to you, but I have no idea what you are talking about. You began by telling me that coal is unimportant, but since then all you have talked about is coal."
"Oh . . . well, yes, I know it must sound strange. But you see, it's the stone and cleaving it that matters . . ."
King Ullic Pendragon stood up and raised his arms high in a mighty stretch, yawning and rising to his tiptoes as he did so. "I'm hungry," he said. "You must be, too. Come with me and we'll pass by the kitchens and find something to eat, then you and I will walk for a while and talk, and perhaps by then you'll be able to tell me sensibly about what's in your mind."